Sunday at six in the evening found the robotics lab dark except for the blue glow of monitors, and Emily looking wrecked, hair messy, eyes red from hours of staring at a screen that refused to cooperate. She hit *ENTER.*
SYSTEM TEST: HYDRAULIC RESPONSE. RESULT: 45ms. STATUS: FAILED.
Emily groaned, putting her head in her hands. It wasn't the code. It was the hardware. The university issued valves were trash, plain and simple, and no amount of elegant programming could coax precision out of parts that had no precision left to give.
Footsteps sounded behind her. Sebastian walked in, unsurprised, looking at the screen over her shoulder.
"Forty five milliseconds." A beat. "You lost, Baker."
Emily didn't argue. She was too tired to fight him on it.
"I'll order the Mil Spec valves from Zurich tomorrow," he said. "We'll have them in three weeks."
Her head snapped up. "Three weeks? The preliminary review is on Monday! Tomorrow! The project will be dead by then."
"Then we delay. I'd rather be late and perfect than on time and mediocre."
"I can't delay! I need a high pressure relief valve now."
She paced the room, mind racing, trying to force a solution out of thin air through sheer force of will. Then she stopped.
"The landing gear assembly of a Cessna 172," she said. "Or a Piper."
Sebastian frowned. "Excuse me?"
"They use a Bendix hydraulic actuator. It's old, but the release time is instantaneous. If I strip one, I can bypass the latency."
"And where do you propose we find an aircraft undercarriage on a Sunday night in Cambridge? Amazon?"
Emily grabbed her coat. "There's an aviation scrapyard in Essex. Near the airfield. It's an hour's drive."
Sebastian looked at her, seeing the desperation in her face, but also the ingenuity underneath it, the same bright, reckless intelligence that had made him sign her thesis form in the first place. He glanced at his watch. Then at her defiant expression.
He sighed, a long, resigned sound.
"Essex it is."
He pulled his car keys from his pocket.
"Get your coat."
❦
Wind howled across the desolate landscape of mud and twisted metal, mountains of rusted fuselages, wings, and engines rising up like skeletons against the moonlight. The Aston Martin crunched over the gravel and came to a halt beside a pile of scrap, the contrast almost violent, a hundred and fifty thousand pound supercar parked in a graveyard of rust.
Emily stepped out and wrapped her coat tighter against the wind, expecting him to stay behind in the pristine cabin while she did the dirty work alone.
Instead, Sebastian opened his door.
He took off his bespoke suit jacket and tossed it into the back seat. He unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled the sleeves of his white shirt up to his elbows. He took off his watch, placing it carefully in the glove box, and stepped out, his polished Oxford shoes sinking immediately into the mud.
He didn't look disgusted. He looked focused. He breathed in the smell of oil and rust like a man coming home to something he'd forgotten he missed.
"Don't look for a Cessna," he said. "The valves are too small." He pointed to a dark hulk in the distance. "That's a Piper Navajo. Twin engine. The hydraulics will be heavy duty."
He started walking. Fast.
Emily stared at him for a second, then ran to catch up.
❦
The fuselage of the dead Piper was small and cramped, smelling of old hydraulic fluid and damp rot, and Sebastian and Emily were squeezed into the wheel well together, the only light coming from the flashlight in Emily's hand.
"Hold the light steady," Sebastian said, voice straining as he wrestled with a rusted bolt on the landing gear strut.
Emily held the light, her face inches from his shoulder.
"It's seized," she said. "We need a breaker bar."
"No time."
He jammed a metal pipe against the wrench for leverage, and veins popped in his forearms as he stopped using technique entirely and started using raw, brute strength instead. He grunted. Crack. The bolt gave way all at once, and a pressurized jet of black hydraulic oil sprayed out, hitting him squarely in the chest, coating his white shirt and his neck, spattering onto his jaw.
He froze. Emily gasped.
"Oh god," she said. "Your shirt..."
Sebastian let go of the wrench and wiped the oil from his jaw with the back of his hand, which only smeared it further. He looked down at his ruined shirt. Then at the valve now in his hand, and shone the light onto it.
Titanium. It gleamed under the oil.
"Titanium core," he said, breathless. He looked at her. "This is better than the Zurich part."
He was grinning, a wild, adrenaline fueled thing that stripped twenty years off his face at once.
Emily lowered the flashlight and looked at him, covered in filth, smelling of oil, standing in a wrecked plane in the middle of nowhere. He doesn't look like a billionaire, she thought, and something in her chest turned over, warm and unfamiliar.
"You're a mess, Professor," she said softly.
Sebastian looked at her. He saw the grease on her own hands.
The distance between them, whatever had been left of it, was gone entirely.
"I grew up in a garage in East London, Emily," he said. "My father was a mechanic." He looked at the oil on his hands. "Engine oil was the first cologne I ever wore."
Emily stared at him. The new money snob she had assumed he was simply didn't exist, had perhaps never existed at all. He had fought his way up from the mud exactly the way he was fighting this bolt now, with nothing but strength and stubbornness and the refusal to be beaten by anything.
"It suits you better than the sandalwood," she said, smiling.
Sebastian laughed, a low, raspy sound in the dark fuselage. He handed her the valve, and their fingers locked around the cold metal for one second too long.
"Let's get this home," he said. "We have a robot to build."
❦
The wind had died down by the time they walked back to the car, Sebastian holding the titanium valve like a trophy. The Aston Martin gleamed in the moonlight, looking almost alien against the mud around it.
He opened the rear door and tossed the rusted, oily valve onto the pristine cream leather of the back seat without a second thought. He opened the passenger door for Emily. She hesitated, looking down at her coat, smeared with black grease and mud, then at the immaculate interior.
"I can't. I'll ruin the leather."
"It's just cowhide, Emily," Sebastian said, rounding the car. "Get in."
He slid into the driver's seat. Emily bit her lip, then gingerly lowered herself into the passenger seat, trying to hover slightly to avoid actually touching the upholstery.
The door thudded shut. The silence of the cabin was instant, the outside world cut off entirely. Sebastian hit the start button, and the engine purred to life, warm air flooding the cabin, and Emily relaxed, despite herself, into the heated seat.
A long, loud, prolonged growl echoed through the quiet cabin.
Emily froze, clamping a hand over her stomach, squeezing her eyes shut, mortified.
"Sorry," she said, in a very small voice. "I missed dinner."
Sebastian didn't mock her. He chuckled instead, a warm, low sound, glancing over at her.
"Déjà vu, Miss Baker?" A beat. "Wet clothes. Two in the morning. And you, starving."
Emily opened her eyes. She looked at him, and the memory of London hung in the air between them, unspoken but entirely present.
"At least I'm sober this time," she said, a faint smile touching her mouth.
Sebastian shifted gears, pulling the car out of the mud, tires spinning slightly before gripping the gravel.
"I know a place," he said. "It's not exactly the Ritz, but it's open."
❦
Neon lights buzzed overhead in the truck stop diner, the air thick with the smell of frying bacon, beans, and old coffee, the clientele consisting of three burly lorry drivers and one tired waitress who had clearly seen stranger things walk through her door than this. The bell chimed as Sebastian and Emily walked in, looking for all the world like survivors of a car crash: Sebastian in three thousand pounds of suit trousers and a ruined white shirt soaked black with oil, hair windblown, Emily with a messy bun, grease on her cheek, swallowed by an oversized coat.
The lorry drivers stared. Sebastian ignored them completely, walking to a Formica booth in the corner and pulling out a plastic chair for Emily.
"Sit," he said.
The waitress, fifties, tired, approached with a notepad.
"Two full English breakfasts," Sebastian said. "Extra black pudding. Two teas. Builders' tea, strong, milk, two sugars."
"Coming right up, love," the waitress said, and left.
Emily stared at him. "Black pudding? You? I thought you lived on kale smoothies and air." She gestured vaguely at his general billionaire aura.
Sebastian leaned back in the booth. "Poor man's steak. My father used to cook it on Sundays. It was the only day we ate well."
Emily studied him. He looked, for the first time since she'd met him, completely comfortable in his own skin.
The food arrived, two massive plates of eggs, sausages, bacon, beans, and dark slices of black pudding, and they ate, not politely, but like two people who had been doing manual labour for four hours straight, which, she supposed, they had.
Sebastian paused, watching her butter a slice of toast, his gaze intense, reminiscent of a diner in London months ago, but different somehow. Softer.
"In London," he said. "That night. The dress. The makeup. The M persona." A beat. "How much of that was a performance?"
Emily froze, knife hovering over her toast.
"And how much was the real you?"
She opened her mouth to answer, but stopped. The air between them thickened.
He looked up at her. His eyes locked onto hers. He reached out, and for a second Emily thought he was going to touch her hand. Instead, he pointed to her cheek.
"You have oil. Right there."
Emily rubbed at her cheek. She missed the spot entirely.
Sebastian hesitated. Then instinct took over. He reached across the small table, his thumb brushing her cheekbone, wiping away the black smudge. His skin was rough, warm.
Emily leaned into his touch, just a millimeter. Instinctive. She couldn't have stopped herself if she'd tried.
He didn't pull his hand away immediately. The clatter of cutlery around them faded into silence.
"I prefer this version, Emily," he said, voice low.
Emily stopped breathing. This version. The messy, intelligent, stubborn version, the one with grease on her face and oil-stained jeans, the one who existed without a mask of any kind.
"Me too," she whispered.
The waitress slammed the bill down onto the table. Slap. The moment shattered.
Sebastian pulled his hand back, clearing his throat, reaching for his wallet. But he was smiling.
"Eat your pudding, Baker," he said.
❦
Heavy silence filled the moving car afterward, the world outside dark, punctuated only by the rhythmic orange flash of passing streetlights. Sebastian drove, his hands on the leather steering wheel stained with oil.
Beside him, Emily stared out the window, hugging her oversized coat tighter, shivering despite the blasting heater. The chill had settled somewhere deep in her bones, and no amount of warm air seemed able to reach it.
Sebastian glanced at her, then at his own reflection in the rearview mirror, and grimaced.
"We can't go back to campus like this," he said. "We look like we've crawled out of a swamp."
He gestured at their ruined clothes. Emily looked down at her oil stained jeans. He had a point.
"So what's the plan?" she said. "Hose ourselves down at a petrol station?"
Sebastian ignored the sarcasm, checking the GPS on the dashboard.
"My flat is four miles from here. It's on the way."
Emily stiffened. The air in the car changed instantly.
"Your flat?"
She felt the full weight of the suggestion settle over her. Going to a male teacher's private residence in the middle of the night broke every rule in the handbook that she knew of, and probably several she didn't.
She looked at him. His profile was sharp, illuminated by the dashboard lights, and he didn't look at her, kept his eyes strictly on the road, giving her space, deliberately, to refuse.
"Is that... wise?" she asked.
Sebastian's grip tightened on the steering wheel. The leather squeaked under his oily palm.
"Probably not," he said. "But look at you, Emily. You're shivering. You have motor oil in your hair." A beat, softer now. "I'm not asking you to stay. I'm offering a shower."
Emily hesitated. Maybe, just maybe, she didn't want the night to end quite yet. She sank slightly lower in her seat.
"Okay," she said. "Just a shower."
Sebastian nodded once, a curt, decisive movement.
"Just a shower."
He flicked the indicator. The car took the sharp exit toward the city centre, leaving the route to campus behind, the indicator ticking loudly in the silence that followed.
❦
Four in the morning found the private lift doors of Sebastian's penthouse sliding open with a soft ping, and he and Emily stepped out directly into the living room.
It was vast. Walls of glass overlooked the sleeping city of Cambridge and the dark ribbon of the river Cam below, the floor pristine white Calcutta marble, the furniture Italian, minimalist, and cold.
Squelch. Sebastian's muddy boot landed on the white marble, leaving a thick, dark print behind it. Emily followed, her own boots leaving a trail of mud and oil, and she froze, looking at the floor with open horror.
"Your floor," she said. "Sebastian, we're ruining it."
Sebastian didn't even look down. He kicked off his ruined boots, leaving them in a pile beside what looked like a fifty thousand pound sculpture.
"It's stone, Emily. It washes."
He pointed down a hallway.
"Guest bathroom is the second door on the left. Fresh towels in the cupboard." He paused, looking at her, shivering slightly, covered in grime. "Leave the dirty ones outside. I'll find you something dry. Go. Get warm."
Emily hesitated, overwhelmed by the space and the situation in equal measure, then hurried down the hall.
❦
Twenty minutes later, Emily walked into the living area, scrubbed clean, skin glowing pink from the hot water, wet hair combed back, drowning in a thick white Egyptian cotton bathrobe.
The apartment was silent. Too silent. She walked to the kitchen island, a monolith of black granite, and, thirsty, opened the massive fridge.
It was almost empty. Six bottles of Voss water. A bottle of Dom Pérignon. A jar of olives. No milk. No eggs. No photos on the door. No magnets.
She closed it. She looked around the living room. The bookshelves were color coded.
In the corner, a solitary potted cactus sat by the window. It was brown. Shriveled. Dead.
Emily walked over to it. She touched its dry spine. This isn't a home, she thought. It's a waiting room for a man who is never actually here.
A noise startled her, whirr-thump, a robot vacuum cleaner stuck in the corner, fruitlessly bumping against the dead plant's pot over and over. Emily smiled sadly. She crouched down, expertly unlatched the dustbin, cleared the blockage, and set it down. It beeped happily and rolled away.
"Even the robots are lonely here," she said softly.
Footsteps. Sebastian walked in from the master bedroom, transformed, shower fresh, wearing grey joggers and a simple white t-shirt, drying his wet hair with a towel.
He stopped. He saw Emily standing by the window in his robe, the view of the city lights framing her like something out of a painting he hadn't known he wanted. For a second, his guard dropped completely. He just looked.
"That cactus died three months ago," he said, clearing his throat. "I keep forgetting to bin it."
Emily turned. She pulled the robe tighter around herself.
"The house is beautiful," she said. "But... it's very quiet."
"Quiet helps me think." He walked to the sofa. A beat. "Or maybe it's just empty. I haven't decided yet."
He picked up a neat pile of clothes from the sofa arm.
"Here. Clean shirt. Tracksuit bottoms. They'll be miles too big, but better than oil."
Emily took them. Their fingers brushed.
She retreated to the bathroom.
❦
Moments later, she emerged wearing his white dress shirt, which hung down to her mid thighs, the sleeves swallowing her hands completely, the grey joggers rolled at the waist to keep them from falling. She looked ridiculous. And undeniably intimate, in a way neither of them said out loud. She was struggling to roll up the massive cuffs of the shirt.
Sebastian watched her. The image hit him harder than he expected. London, his mind supplied, unhelpfully, insistently. The oversized t-shirt. The hairdryer. The mirror.
He walked over. He didn't say a word. He reached out.
Emily stopped moving.
He took her left wrist. His touch was warm, firm. He folded the cuff back, once, twice, revealing her hand. He moved to the right wrist. He folded the fabric there too, his knuckles brushing the sensitive skin of her inner wrist as he worked.
The air in the room changed. It thickened.
Emily looked up at him. He was close. Too close.
She could smell him, soap, rain, cigarette, and underneath all of it, simply him.
Sebastian paused, his hands still holding her wrists. He looked down at her. His eyes darkened. He leaned in, just an inch.
Emily's breath hitched. Her heart hammered against her ribs, or maybe, she thought dimly, it was his heart she was hearing, the two of them standing close enough that she could no longer tell whose pulse belonged to whom.
"It fits," she whispered. "Enough."
The words broke the spell.
Sebastian blinked. The mask slid back into place, not fully, but enough. He released her wrists. He stepped back, putting a safe distance between them, running a hand through his damp hair.
"Right," he said, voice raspy. He cleared his throat, his tone sharpening deliberately. "We have a valve to install. And if we don't leave now, we'll hit the morning traffic."
He turned and walked toward the door, grabbing his car keys.
Emily stood there for a second, touching her rolled up sleeve, the ghost of his touch still burning against her skin.
"Coming, Baker?" he called back.
Emily straightened up. She took a deep breath.
"Right behind you, Professor."
She followed him out. The door clicked shut behind them, leaving the vast, empty apartment to its silence once more.