The desk is too small. It’s too small and uncomfortable and he’s sitting in it somehow sideways, but he can’t turn the right way around, because it would interrupt the class and he’s already in trouble for something that he can’t remember. The test. The test in German that he’d failed because he’d never been to lecture. They’ll take his scholarship away.

He looks up at the board, where she’s writing something down. Loquacious, but of course it’s not actually loquacious. It’s meant to be, but it makes his stomach turn when he tries to read the letters all in order. He shuts his eyes and lets it be, because he can’t fail another test. He opens his eyes again. Her perfect pretty mouth is forming the word. “Loquacious.” Only now it’s something different, and he’s not sitting in a desk at all. It’s a pink car, and they’re close close close to it. His eyeball is practically touching the license plate and then he’s sitting in the seat with her in his lap instead of a steering wheel. His hands are on her hips, guiding them, but there’s no satisfaction, no matter how he moves his body. He wants it. He needs it.

Wendy.

Her hair is falling across her breasts, hiding them, but they’re in a red two-piece anyway and she’s running down the beach laughing and singing a song that he’s never heard before, but it would be a hit if he could write it down. Something about loquacious. It makes him want to cry.

Hook opens his eyes, the threads of his dream slipping away like strands of spider silk. He takes in a breath, then another. He sits up a little, disoriented for a moment, blinking in the silver and shadows coming in through the window. There’s someone lying in bed next to him. For a moment, it’s her. But then he narrows his eyes at the body, the hair, and it’s not her at all.

This isn’t his apartment. This isn’t his bed. He never should have fallen asleep. He slides out of bed, careful not to disturb the covers or wake the body lying there. He walks across the room, bare and gleaming, gathering his clothes where they’d left them in their frantic tumble. He pulls his jeans on over nothing, tugs his shirt over his head. The rest he gathers in his hands, creeping out of the room before he has to say good morning and ever give his name.