The air in the library was stifling.
Everyone was whispering or flipping pages with the urgency of drowning men clawing at lifeboats. Finals week had descended like a storm cloud, and Ezra, usually calm under pressure, was unraveling one sigh at a time.
Talia sat across from him, highlighter clenched between her fingers, watching as he stared blankly at the same neurology page for ten minutes.
"You haven't blinked in a while," she said softly.
He didn't answer. Just rubbed his temples and leaned further over the textbook like proximity would make the words sink in faster.
"Ezra."
"What?"
She blinked at the sharpness in his voice. So did he.
"I'm sorry," he said instantly, voice cracking. "I didn't mean— I just—"
"You're overwhelmed," she finished for him. "Me too."
He sat back in his chair, letting out a breath that sounded like it had been stuck in his chest for days.
"I keep thinking about the timeline," he said. "Residency applications, GPA cutoffs, interviews. If I mess this up—"
"You won't," she said firmly.
"But what if I do?"
Talia paused, choosing her words carefully. "Then we deal with it. Together."
He met her eyes, and she saw it — the fear. Not of failure, but of disappointing the version of himself he'd worked so hard to become.
"I've never wanted anything this badly," he said. "Except maybe you."
She gave him a crooked smile. "You already have me."
They left the library at midnight, drained and wordless, shoulders brushing as they walked home. The city was hushed under a misting rain, the kind that softened streetlights and made the world feel quieter than it was.
In the apartment, Ezra collapsed onto the bed fully clothed, the sheer weight of exhaustion dragging him under.
Talia watched him for a long time.
Then she curled beside him, whispered something into the silence:
"We're more than this exam."
The next morning was the big one: Neuroanatomy. It was brutal, timed to the second, and dense with trick questions and diagrams that made even Ezra hesitate.
Talia walked out first, pale and tight-lipped.
Ezra followed ten minutes later, looking like he'd aged a year in two hours.
"I blanked," he said numbly.
She reached for his hand. "So did everyone else."
"But I'm not everyone else."
"You're allowed to be human," she said.
He sat down on a bench outside the lecture hall, hands buried in his hair.
"I don't know who I am without this. Without being… the smart one. The reliable one."
Talia sat beside him.
"You're the one who reads me poetry at 2 a.m. when I can't sleep. The one who learned how I take my tea before I even realized I had a preference. The one who stayed when I tried to push you away."
She looked him dead in the eye.
"You are not your GPA. Or your resume. Or your performance on one awful exam."
Silence. And then, like a fragile offering, Ezra asked, "Promise?"
She held out her pinky.
"Promise."
He stared at her hand for a second — then laughed, short and surprised — and locked his finger around hers.
They sat there like that as the world continued to spin around them, as classmates fretted over curve scores and final rankings. In that moment, it didn't matter.
Because this — the quiet handhold, the whispered promise — was what kept them grounded.
That night, Ezra cooked pasta with too much garlic. Talia added wine, and together they rewrote flashcards for the next exam. But this time, with less panic. More breath. More grace.
They weren't perfect students.
But they were becoming something better.