Velvet Collision

The first time I saw C/N, he was standing in the doorway of the studio with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and I was on my knees in the middle of the floor, covered in clay.

Not the sexy kind of covered. The kind where it's in your hair and under your fingernails and somehow on your earlobe, and you've been fighting the same lump of stoneware for three hours because you promised your professor you'd have something worth firing by the end of the week. I was twenty-two, a senior, and I had exactly zero romantic prospects and a GPA that was doing just fine, thank you. I wasn't looking for anything. I was looking for a way to make a bowl that didn't look like a toddler's ashtray.

He knocked on the doorframe. Actually knocked, like the studio was a house and he was a polite stranger.

"You're Y/N," he said. Not a question.

I sat back on my heels and wiped my forehead with the back of my wrist, which only made things worse. "And you're in the wrong building."

"I don't think so." He came in. Just walked in, like the place belonged to him, which, I would later learn, it sort of did. His father had donated the kiln. His mother had donated the ventilation system. C/N himself had donated nothing except his presence, which he seemed to think was enough.

He was tall. Not in a way that made you feel small, but in a way that made you aware of your own posture. Dark hair, pushed back from his face with the kind of carelessness that takes effort. A jaw that looked like it had been carved by someone with a grudge against softness. And eyes the color of wet slate, which is a cliché, I know, but there they were, looking at me like I was the most interesting thing he'd seen all week.

"You're bleeding," he said.

I looked down. There was a cut on my thumb, small and clean, the kind you get from a stray piece of wire in the clay. I hadn't noticed. I'd been too focused on the bowl.

"It's nothing."

"It's not nothing." He set his coffee on the nearest table and crossed to me in three strides. Before I could tell him to back off, he'd taken my hand. His fingers were warm. Warmer than they had any right to be. He turned my palm up and studied the cut like it was a map to somewhere important.

"You should clean this," he said.

"I should finish my bowl."

"Your bowl isn't going anywhere."

Neither was I, apparently. I stood there with my hand in his, feeling the blood pulse in my thumb, feeling something else pulse somewhere lower, and I thought, *This is a bad idea.* Then I thought, *I don't care.*

That was the first lie I told myself about him.

He let go of my hand. I felt the absence like a cold spot. He picked up his coffee and took a sip, watching me over the rim of the cup.

"I'm C/N," he said.

"I know who you are."

He smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. It was a smile that knew things. "Everyone knows who I am."

"Doesn't mean I'm impressed."

"Good." He stepped back, giving me room. "I'd hate to be boring."

I turned back to my wheel. My hands were shaking, just a little, which was embarrassing. I pressed them into the clay and felt the cool wetness of it, the familiar resistance. I could do this. I'd been doing this for four years. I didn't need some rich boy in a cashmere sweater watching me fail.

"You're not going to ask why I'm here?" he said.

"I assume you'll tell me."

"My father wants me to take over the foundation. The arts grant. He thinks I need to, quote, understand the community I'm serving."

"And you're serving it by loitering in the ceramics studio?"

"I'm serving it by scouting talent." He paused. "You're talented."

I laughed. It came out sharper than I meant it to. "You've been here for five minutes. You haven't seen me make anything."

"I've seen your hands." He said it plainly, without flirtation, which somehow made it worse. "You have the hands of someone who knows what she's doing."

I didn't know what to say to that. So I said nothing. I centered the clay and pulled up the walls of my bowl, and it was better this time. Smoother. I could feel his eyes on my back, on my shoulders, on the curve of my spine where my shirt had ridden up. I could feel him not looking away.

"You're staring," I said.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you're worth staring at."

I stopped the wheel. The bowl was ruined, probably, but I didn't care. I turned to face him. He was leaning against the table now, arms crossed, coffee abandoned. The cigarette was still between his fingers, unlit.

"You don't know me," I said.

"I know enough."

"What's my major?"

"Studio art. Concentration in ceramics. You work part-time at the campus library. You have a roommate named Priya who thinks you need to get laid. You haven't been on a date in eight months. And you're terrified of being ordinary."

My mouth went dry. "How do you know all that?"

"I asked." He shrugged. "People tell me things."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting." He pushed off the table and walked toward me. Stopped close enough that I could smell him, cedar and tobacco and something underneath that was just skin. "I'm not going to pretend I'm here for the grant. I'm here because I saw your work in the student show last spring. The vase with the cracked glaze. The one that looked like it was falling apart."

"It was falling apart."

"No." He shook his head. "It was holding itself together. That's different."

I didn't know what to do with that. So I did the only thing that made sense. I reached up and took the cigarette from his hand.

"You're not supposed to smoke in here," I said.

"Neither are you."

I put it in my pocket. He watched me do it. His eyes were darker now, the slate gone almost black, and I felt something shift in the room. The air got thicker. The silence got louder.

"You should go," I said.

"I should."

He didn't move.

I didn't move either.

And then he reached out and touched my face. Just his thumb, brushing a smear of clay from my cheekbone. It should have been nothing. It should have been a gesture you'd make to a child. But his thumb lingered at the corner of my mouth, and I felt my lips part, just slightly, just enough.

"Y/N," he said. My name in his mouth sounded like something else entirely. Something I wanted to hear again.

"What?"

"I'm going to kiss you now."

It wasn't a question. It wasn't even a warning. It was a statement of fact, and I hated how much I liked it. I hated how my heart was hammering and my knees were weak and how I didn't say no.

He leaned in. Stopped an inch from my mouth. Waited.

"Tell me to stop," he said.

I didn't.

He kissed me.