Just Like That (Albin Academy)

by Cole McCade

  If he wanted too much?

  He wouldn’t want to leave, when the time came.

  But he still didn’t think he could stand to stay.

  Nor could he stand to sit still. He’d been staring at the stack of homework assignments in his lap for nearly an hour, since Summer had texted and said he was staying late at Lily’s to do some work on the house, and to eat without him.

  No—more, he’d been staring at the coffee table, fixed on a spot just past the tip of his pen.

  Hellfire.

  What was this agitation eating at him?

  With a frustrated sound, Fox tossed his pen onto the coffee table with a clatter, sending it spinning against the dark lacquer, then dropped the stack of pages next to it, stood, and stalked into the kitchen. His fingers fumbled clumsily with the apron strings as he strapped it on over his shirt and slacks, before ducking into the refrigerator to see what was left when he had been too wrapped up in work, in life, in Summer to remember the grocery store this week.

  Except rather than empty shelves...

  He found the refrigerator nearly overflowing.

  Summer must have gone shopping while Fox was visiting Lily to stock his herb cabinet, this morning.

  Fresh mushroom caps in a little plastic-wrapped foam bin—Fox hated the stems. A crisper full of iceberg lettuce and cherry tomatoes and baby carrots; real baby carrots, instead of adult carrots shaved down to nubs, something Fox fussed over because the taste was different and he was something of a picky eater. Even bell peppers...but the yellow ones.

  Fox liked the yellow ones.

  He didn’t care that they were the same vegetables as the green ones, the red ones; he’d swear they tasted different.

  Two percent milk, instead of one percent or skim. Cups of Greek yogurt in every flavor Fox liked. Eggs, but the brown ones, because that, too, was another thing Fox fussed about with food.

  Summer had paid attention to every little thing over these short days, and remembered.

  Something so small shouldn’t hit Fox so hard, but it made him realize exactly why he was so restless.

  He was lonely.

  And rather than cooking dinner alone as he had for twenty years before Summer had come tearing into his life like a summer storm...

  He wanted to be where Summer was.

  Helping him fix up Lily’s tidy little house. Laughing with him over how his mother did so enjoy embarrassing him. Staying to help them make dinner. Creating something not just with his hands, but with other people that he cared about. Being part of something, with both his old friend and the man he was starting to think of not as a casual, temporary fling, but as...but as...

  As his lover.

  How long had they been doing this?

  A week? More?

  Time had no meaning, not when he drifted in a haze of Summer from waking until sleeping, until even those moments in class when they had to separate as Professor Iseya and Mr. Hemlock were only a bristling haze of tension waiting until they were alone again, slamming each other against the desk, devouring each other in kisses that were beginning to feel as if they could never sate the hungry void inside Fox.

  A void that had only seemed to grow larger, since he’d opened himself to this.

  He closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the icy freezer door.

  Was he trying to make up for so many lost years all at once?

  He couldn’t do this.

  Couldn’t fall so fast, so hard.

  He wouldn’t let himself.

  And he forced all thoughts of Summer from his mind, as he pulled the bell peppers out and dragged a cutting board off its wall hook, before turning the sink on and beginning to scrub one of the firm yellow peppers under the warm spray. He’d make a simple stir-fry, he thought; peppers, onions, mushrooms, perhaps the beef tips he’d glimpsed in one of the cooler compartments. He—

  Fox almost hated himself for the delicious, horrible, sweet, painful shock that went through his heart at the sound of the front latch clicking.

  He told himself not to look up, but he couldn’t stop himself.

  As Summer stepped inside—a dirty mess, his T-shirt stained with grass and dirt and rust and who knew what else, his hair sweaty and raked back from his face in a tangle of black fluff, smudges on his cheeks, his arms grimed with sweat and dirt that outlined the hardened shapes of toned musculature. His shirt clung to him in a film of sweat, and his old, ragged jeans hung temptingly low on his hips, as if trying to remind Fox of the way those hips moved and twisted and undulated when Summer straddled Fox’s body and completely lost himself moving in such hungry, wanton rhythm on Fox’s cock.

  Summer froze just inside the door as their gazes met, Summer’s eyes widening briefly as he made a startled sound, before smiling shyly. “Oh—hi.”

  Don’t smile at me that way.

  Fox looked away sharply, lowering his gaze to his hands, and realized he was practically crushing the bell pepper between his palms. He set it aside on the cutting board and picked up another, plunging it under the stream of water and only hoping the cold water would cool the flush of aching, longing need building up inside him.

  Don’t make me want you like this.

  “I wasn’t expecting you back,” he said neutrally. “Should I make dinner for two, then?”

  “Oh, um... I...”

  Even not looking at him, Fox could hear the blush in Summer’s voice. The sweet hesitation, that way he had of being so guileless, so open with his feelings, with his warmth, with a neediness that seemed to sit so much more comfortably on him than it did on Fox.

  “I finished at Mom’s early,” Summer said. “And I wanted to have dinner with you. I can have dinner with Mom any time.”

  ...don’t remind me that I’m just going to leave you.

  Even if Summer hadn’t meant it that way...

  It hit hard.

  Their time together was short.

  And it was all because Fox was too afraid to let it be anything else.

  So it would seem Summer, too, was making the most of what they had, while they could.

  Fox closed his eyes, his fingers stilling against the slightly rubbery skin of the bell pepper clasped between his hands, no sound between them but the rush of the water pouring from the faucet, the sound of the spray striking the metal sink with hollow drumming noises like rain.

  He took a deep breath, trying to center himself, trying to just...

  Detach.

  Somehow.

  Because if he didn’t now, it would be that much harder later.

  “Go wash up,” he made himself say, as he set the second pepper down and opened the refrigerator to pull out a third and fourth, since he was now doubling portions. “I won’t have you at dinner looking like you’ve been rolling in the dirt like the overeager puppy you are.”

  Summer’s laughter was soft, startled...so very sweet.

  As sweet as the feeling of his lips, as he slipped into the kitchenette and brushed his mouth to Fox’s cheek. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll try to be fast so I can help you finish up.”

  Then he stepped away, leaving behind only the scents of earth, of grass, of Summer himself.

  While Fox stared into the refrigerator without breathing, without moving, save for the drift of his fingers, rising to touch his cheek.

  Summer made this look so simple, so easy.

  While for Fox, the idea of having this and then losing it...

  Suddenly didn’t feel so easy at all.

  * * *

  Summer didn’t know how he managed to smile, as he finished toweling off his shower-wet hair, dragged on a clean pair of jeans, and stepped out of the bathroom to join Fox in the kitchen.

  When he’d walked in the door and Fox had gone so stiff, looked at him so strangely, then turned away as if n
othing was wrong...

  Maybe Summer was reading into things.

  But he’d felt like he’d run face-first into those stone walls again, the cracks in them sealing over to shut him out.

  He lingered in the bathroom doorway, propping his shoulder against the frame and watching Fox chop vegetables as swiftly, efficiently, and methodically as he did everything else. He seemed calm, relaxed, that initial tension gone as if it had never happened, and Summer tried to tell himself he was imagining things. He was tired, and he’d probably just startled Fox when he’d come back unexpectedly.

  This was still such a new thing, after all.

  But it felt like a knife slid between his third and fourth rib and twisted, every time he remembered he’d never get the chance to make it an old thing, a familiar thing, a thing steady and forever and true.

  Damn it.

  He couldn’t do this to himself right now.

  So he pushed the thoughts down, held on to his smile, and pushed away from the door to join Fox, stepping into the kitchen and pulling the refrigerator door open.

  “All clean,” he said. “What do you want me to start with?”

  “For starters,” Fox said tartly, “you can finish dressing yourself, you heathen. Then you can put some rice on, if you actually want to be helpful.”

  Summer grinned, closing the fridge and pulling open the pantry cabinet instead, but not without stopping to briefly lean his bare shoulder against Fox’s arm. “I don’t need a shirt to cook rice.”

  “You don’t need a shirt to end up with oil burns when I put the stir-fry on, either,” Fox retorted. “Dress yourself, you unruly, uncivilized monster.”

  “Am I a monster now?” Summer turned his head and bit down lightly on Fox’s shoulder, tugging at his shirt in his teeth. “Grawr.”

  “You absolutely insufferable—” With a strangled sound, Fox lightly smacked Summer on the nose with a cold, wet-beaded stalk of celery, glaring at him with narrowed eyes and twitching lips. “Shirt. Now.”

  Summer just laughed, pulling away and heading into the bedroom to find one of the button-down shirts that had somehow ended up staying here instead of in his own suite.

  But there was a raspy ache in the back of his throat.

  Because he hadn’t missed the slightest pause, the faintest moment of hesitation before each of Fox’s reactions, as if he was choosing what to do, holding himself back behind something careful that created just enough distance for Summer to feel it.

  And Summer didn’t have the heart to push him about it.

  Not right now.

  Not when pushing might mean losing what little time he had.

  Having something was better than having nothing at all, wasn’t it?

  ...wasn’t it?

  He asked himself that again and again, as he slid into his shirt and worked his fingers up the row of buttons.

  But he didn’t have an answer.

  So he only told himself to smile, and smile, and smile again...

  And stepped back out to join Fox for dinner.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Summer’s palms were slimed with sweat.

  He could do this. He knew he could do this, he just...

  He was about to face down the very wealthy parents of six different boys—the only ones who had responded to the summons, out of a dozen. People who were annoyed at having to waste their Sunday traveling for this. People who felt they were too important for parent-teacher conferences; people who didn’t even bother coming to get their boys for holidays, from the things Summer had heard from the other teachers, even if he spent less time talking to the other faculty and staff than he should considering how completely wrapped up he often was in Fox.

  Fuck.

  Fox.

  He should be so happy, right now.

  But he felt like he was wearing a mask of a relationship, versus the real thing.

  They’d fallen into the last two uneventful weeks so easily that it had felt almost mechanical, these comfortable days and nights together, evenings of passionate, heady sex that left him wrung out and sore, wordless and clinging to Fox and afraid to say anything into the silence in case he crossed some line that would make Fox just...

  Not want to do this anymore.

  But it felt like Fox had already checked out, and was going through the motions.

  And it felt like Summer had forgotten how to be brave, because suddenly every time he thought to challenge Fox’s silence, the way he withdrew into himself, the way his very blandness just built those walls thicker around him when for just a moment, Summer had been allowed a glimpse inside...

  The words crumbled on his tongue, and he couldn’t say anything.

  But he was starting to wonder if sleeping with Fox had made things worse, somehow. That threshold had been a turning point, perhaps.

  Yet the path it had turned them down only gave Summer access to Fox’s body and a physical facsimile of his affection.

  While pushing him further away from Fox’s heart.

  He just wanted to know if Fox felt something for him. Anything other than the tired affection one felt for an overly gregarious puppy.

  But he was still so hard to read.

  So hard to understand, and he always seemed to have a way of glossing over and retreating somewhere distant every time Summer looked at him with his heart in his eyes and kissed him with his love on his lips.

  Fox looked almost bored now, though, as he leaned back in his desk chair and tapped a pen against his knee, watching Summer with arched brows.

  “Do stop pacing,” he said. “They’re rich. They’re not gods.”

  “I don’t care about their money,” Summer said, doing another circuit from side to side of the office, swallowing and yet he couldn’t loosen the clotting in his throat. “I just...what if they don’t care? What if they tell me I wasted their time? What if—”

  As he pivoted on his heel for another stalk across the office, he stopped as he slammed right up against the wall of Fox’s chest.

  And suddenly he couldn’t move at all, as Fox’s arms wrapped around him and stopped him in his tracks.

  “Enough what if,” Fox said, a deep rumble that washed over Summer in soothing vibrations, while strong hands curled against his back. “They are here. It is done. This is what you wanted, so you have to follow through. If they don’t care, if they feel you wasted their time...you didn’t waste your own time, because you tried. And is that not what you said matters? That these boys know someone is trying for them.”

  “That’s...that’s what I’m telling myself.” Summer curled his fingers in Fox’s crisply starched shirt-sleeves, resting his head to his shoulder, turning his face into his throat. “But I’m scared to just...jump into this with both feet, and fuck it up.”

  “Ah.” Soft, warm, understanding, and Fox’s arms tightened around him. “I do know that feeling quite well.”

  God, there it was.

  Those ambiguous statements in that low, thrumming voice, that made Summer wish, hope, wonder...

  Wonder if Fox really did feel something for him.

  Deeper than just tolerant affection.

  Deep enough to hold him like this, comfort him like this, because he mattered to Fox—and Summer clung just a little tighter, the question on his tongue.

  The question, and the soft words he’d been holding inside, keeping them in his heart while they grew and grew and grew until they wouldn’t fit anymore and he was going to burst with them.

  I love you.

  He wanted to say it.

  He wanted to say it so much, but if he did...

  Fox might go completely cold on him, and then Summer wouldn’t have even the quiet moments of intimacy he stole with every touch, needing to feel Fox’s heartbeat against his own just so he knew that heart still ran h
ot somewhere behind that cold façade.

  So instead of those words, he swallowed, whispered, “You’ll stay, right?”

  “I will stay,” Fox promised softly. “This is your endeavor, but I will be here. You will not be alone.”

  “Thank you.” Summer pushed himself up to kiss Fox’s chin, smiling weakly. “Seriously, thank you. I don’t think I could do this without you.”

  “You could,” Fox said, something odd in his voice, in his gaze. “That is what makes you strong, Summer. Stronger than you realize.” He brushed his knuckles against Summer’s cheek, a rough graze of sensation—then lifted his head at an imperious knock on his office door, two silhouettes moving restlessly outside the clouded glass. “And you will need that strength. Here they are.”

  “Oh, God.” Summer wet his lips, then breathed in deep, filling his chest so fast his head went dizzy and light. “I can do this. I can do this. I can do this,” he told himself, then strode forward to open the door with the best smile he could manage, squaring his shoulders and reminding himself...

  If Fox believed he was strong, then he had to be.

  He had to be.

  So here we go.

  * * *

  Maybe this hadn’t been the most miserable Sunday of Summer’s life.

  But it had come close.

  And the only reason he hadn’t broken down completely and utterly in front of these boys’ parents was out of sheer disgust, overwhelming his nervousness as he realized everything he was saying was falling on deaf ears.

  If Jay’s grades were slipping, it was a failure of the school, and not anything his parents could do to support him while he tried to survive ostracization and bullying; not anything they even cared to discuss as far as giving Summer permission to step in as a secondary parental figure beyond the strictures allowed by the school and the boarding arrangement. They didn’t want to be bothered, things were fine as they were.

  Eli’s parents were even worse, haughtily annoyed that this wasn’t a real problem, but just some adjunct who seemed to think he had any say in who Eli chose to be friends with.

  The same for the parents of three other boys whose grades in all subjects had been slipping for months, and who had been showing signs of social isolation and victimization to some of the more aggressive boys in the student body.