make himself care. He was caught between terror and excitement for the next day. As such, sleep evaded him for most of the night.
“So….” Matt began the next morning as they were getting ready to go to their last day of finals. “I have the night off at the bookstore tonight. Would you go out with me?”
Adam blinked at him. “Like… a date?”
“Yes, a date.” Matt found himself ridiculously nervous about this part. They were living together, for fuck’s sake. There was no reason for Adam to turn him down over a date.
“Uh… okay. Why all of a sudden?”
Matt cleared his throat and pointed at the calendar. “To celebrate. I know you didn’t forget what the date—”
Adam’s phone went off, and Matt blinked as he scrambled to get it. “Holy shit. I had lost track with finals and work and stuff.”
Well, Matt felt better because it meant Adam’s stress had eased, at least as far as that was concerned. He grinned at Matt.
“Twelve weeks! Holy shit!”
That made Matt grin back. “Yes. Past the first hurdle. So… celebrate?”
Adam nodded. “Yeah, I think it’s a great excuse, though….” To Matt’s surprise, Adam blushed. “You know….” He looked down, tracing a nonsense pattern on his jeans. “You don’t need an excuse to ask me on a date. In fact… will you let me plan one too?”
Considering Adam had seemed so hesitant about their relationship, that surprised Matt. Surprised him, but didn’t upset him, not by a long shot. Rather, it filled him with warmth. “I’d love it.” He leaned forward and tilted Adam’s face down to catch his lips in a thorough kiss.
When they broke apart, Adam seemed to struggle for breath. “I swear, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re trying to kill me with those.”
“Nah. Just make sure you know how much I care.”
“By killing me,” Adam said, nodding.
Matt laughed. “You gotta have my kid first. Then you can accuse me of killing you.”
Adam rolled his eyes. “Sure. How about make me crazy?”
“That I’ll accept. Crazy in love with me.”
Adam stared at him a moment before shaking his head. “You’re the crazy one. Come on. We have one more final. Let’s get it over with.”
It took every bit of concentration and brain power Matt had to focus on their final. His head was firmly on the evening ahead. Thankfully, it was algebra, so it was just a matter of remembering formulas, which had always been fairly easy for him. The writing final had involved composing long essay answers, and both physics and world history had required remembering facts that Matt would have had no hope of recalling in his state.
He couldn’t wait to be done with their general education classes. He wanted to focus on the literature and other more interesting classes. He wouldn’t get to his major classes in Library Science until his sophomore year, but he could at least get out of some of those he really did not want to take.
Matt didn’t think he did all that well on the final. He was pretty sure he’d do well enough to not fuck up his GPA too badly, but that didn’t say much. He had been careful, though, to do all of his homework and get good grades on his regular tests so he didn’t have to depend on his final. That was probably the only thing that would save him.
Finally, though, they were on their way home from their class. The nervousness only got worse the closer they got to the house, until he was all but shaking. He needed to find a way to calm down. Being a basket case was just going to raise all sorts of red flags for Adam. Matt had no doubt Adam already noticed some of it. They had the entire afternoon to get through, and Matt had no idea how he was going to manage to avoid that basket case–ness he was facing.
Lunch barely filled half an hour. Adam lay down as soon as it was over, and Matt stretched out with him, though he couldn’t calm down for a long time. Surprisingly, he dozed for a while and found himself quite a bit calmer when he got up a couple of hours later.
Adam still slept, so Matt took that opportunity to shower and shave for the evening. He deliberated ridiculously long over his clothes until Adam nearly slapped him over it.
“Is it that important? Should I be worried?”
Oops. “No, no. I just wanted to look good for you. It’s