Control Freaks

8:04 PM.

You were curled up by the window of your dorm, cross-legged in a swivel chair, staring blankly at your laptop screen. Open across the desktop were three half-dead PPE essays from last semester—each one a ghost of ambition: a single thesis sentence, a trio of citation placeholders, and a vast stretch of nothing. Like you'd started writing and halfway through, talked yourself out of trying.

From the mini-fridge, you grabbed a can of white peach canned cocktail—the kind they sell at the convenience store pretending to be fancy. The aluminum chilled your fingertips, sharp and sobering. You cracked it open, took two deep gulps, and tossed the empty straight into the bin.

Then you opened another.

"Alright," you muttered, like calling down a curse. Or a war.

Ten minutes later, you'd opened your fifth Word doc, written two paragraphs, and got stuck by the third. Your attention was already fraying.

So you opened another can.

You were supposed to be focused. You were supposed to be cramming.

Instead, your brain kept circling back to this afternoon. To the moment his eyes had flicked toward you and he'd said—

"I prefer brilliant ones. Especially ones who write like you."

And god, the way his mouth had tugged—just barely—at the corners. That tiny shift. That surgical half-smirk. It sliced straight through your entire self-defense system like it was butter.

That bastard.

What even was that?

Erwin Smith was not the kind of man who said "I like you." He said, I like smart. It was dressed up as a compliment, but you knew the flavor. It was bait. A provocation. A test to see if you'd take the hook.

Of course you didn't take it.

Right?

You tipped back another sip. The cocktail was too sweet—syrupy and artificial, like fake affection distilled into fruit-flavored chemicals. You hated it. But you couldn't stop drinking it. It was easier than thinking.

The more you replayed the conversation, the more it sounded like... flirting. Or worse, whatever it was the two of you did that constantly danced the line between flirtation and philosophical combat.

He said "That spark you get when you're provoked..."
You wrote a thousand-word rebuttal in return.
He said "Keep writing."
And you obediently sat back down and typed.

Fuck.

You were pathetic.

He was manipulative.
You liked him.
Which made you worse.

You cracked open a fourth can with more force than necessary, muttering, "Am I just born to simp for toxic men?"

Not everyone would be drawn to a man like him. That cold voice. That constant position three feet behind you, pulling strings without ever breaking a sweat. Another person would've run. But you—

You felt something close to... safety when he dissected your arguments line by line.

Like he saw the sharp edges in you and didn't flinch.

But that raised the real question: what the hell were you chasing?

Was it validation? Was it control? Was it just the luxury of being powerful without apology?

Or—god forbid—was it just textbook daddy issues?

Your fingers slipped on the can.

That thought came too fast. Too sharp. Too humiliating.