Just Like That

by Cole McCade

  At Albin, the students weren’t the only ones who often had to learn from experience.

  Yet throughout the suppression efforts, Fox repeatedly found his gaze straying toward Summer. His apparent shyness had vanished the moment he dove into the fray, joining the others rather energetically and hauling bucket after bucket of sand to chase down one sparking blaze after the other before it could get out of control.

  By the time the clouds of smoke began to thin, Summer was a mess—his once-white shirt smeared with soot and ash, streaks of it along his cheeks and jaw, underscoring one eye in a rakish dash like face paint. But he was laughing, as he helped an older student shovel sodden, charred remnants of notebooks into a trash bag.

  But the moment Fox called, “Mr. Hemlock,” Summer went stiff, every bit of ease bleeding out of his body to leave his back rigid and his shoulders tight.

  Hm.

  Interesting.

  Summer glanced over his shoulder, looking toward Fox but not quite at him. “Yes, Professor Iseya?”

  “Leave the cleanup to Dr. Liu. It’s the least he can do to compensate for his crimes.”

  “Hey!” came from the corner Liu had sequestered himself in. Fox ignored him, crooking a finger at Summer.

  “If you’ve brought your possessions, fetch them. You can use my suite to clean up and change. We have matters to discuss.”

  Summer ducked his head, scrubbing his hands against his jeans. Beneath the smears of soot streaking pronounced cheekbones, tanned skin turned a decided shade of pink. He nodded quietly, obediently.

  “Yes, Professor Iseya.”

  Fox frowned. There was something...off about Summer’s furtive behavior, something more than just a reticence he clearly hadn’t shaken over seven years away from Omen and Albin Academy.

  It didn’t matter.

  Summer’s demons were Summer’s demons, and Fox wasn’t staying at the school long enough to figure them out.

  * * *

  Fox waited only long enough for Summer to retrieve his suitcase from his car, then retreated to his private suite in the southwest tower. While he let Summer have the run of the bathroom, Fox wiped off his face, washed his hands, and changed into a clean shirt, slacks, and waistcoat, then settled in the easy chair in the living room to wait; to keep himself busy he flipped to his last page marker in the absolutely abysmal Jordan Peterson book he was forcing himself to read for a class exercise.

  Pop psychology, all of it, based in flawed and inhumane principles, but it provided an interesting exercise in logical fallacies and poor application of outdated psychological principles; examples he could use to demonstrate poor reasoning to students as a caution against falling into the same traps. He underlined another passage riddled with subjective bias in red, and jotted down a few notes on his legal pad, idly listening as the shower shut off with a faint squeak and an ending of the quiet, rain-like sounds of water striking tile.

  A few moments later Summer emerged, steaming and still dripping, a pale gray T-shirt clinging damply to his chest and slim waist, a fresh pair of jeans slouching on narrow hips. He scrubbed a towel through his messy wet hair and peeked at Fox from under the tangle of it in that way he had, offering a sheepish smile.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Not really up to dress code, but technically I’m not checking in for work just yet.”

  “I hardly think you need to worry about work attire in my living room.” Fox pointed his pen at the plush easy chair adjacent to the sofa. “Sit.”

  Like an obedient puppy, Summer dropped down into the chair, resting his hands on his knees. “Thank you for accepting my application.”

  “Your qualifications met the requirements, and as a former student you’re familiar with the school, the curriculum, and the standards of my classes.” Fox crossed his legs, tapping his pen against his lower lip, studying Summer thoughtfully. “However, I don’t think you’re suited to teach.”

  “Wh-what?” Summer’s gaze flew up quickly, then darted away. “Then why did you accept me as your assistant?”

  “No one else applied.” Fox arched a brow. “Look me in the eye.”

  Immediately, Summer bowed his head, staring fixedly at his knees. “Why?”

  “You cannot, can you?”

  “Does it matter?” Summer threw back, biting his lip and turning his face to the side.

  “It matters.” Fox set his pen, notepad, and atrocious tome aside to lean forward, resting his hands on his knees and lacing his fingers together. The longer he watched Summer, the more uncomfortable the young man seemed to grow, sinking down into his shoulders and curling his fingers slowly until they dug up the denim of his jeans in little divots. “Do you recall why most parents send their sons to Albin Academy, Mr. Hemlock?”

  “Because...” Barely a murmur. “Because they’re rich and horrible and don’t want to deal with their problem children themselves, so they ship them off where no one can see them?”

  “That is a more crass explanation of our function here, yes,” Fox said dryly. “The point is that these boys have no respect for authority—and while we are not their parents or their disciplinarians, we do at least have to maintain the appropriate seniority and boundaries to keep them out of trouble. They will push those boundaries at every turn, and considering you haven’t changed a bit from when you were a student... I don’t think you’re capable of dealing with that.”

  “That’s not fair!” Summer protested. “I’m not a kid anymore. You don’t know me. You’ve spent all of five minutes talking to me.”

  “One can generally make an accurate psychological assessment in less.”

  “Well, your assessment of me is wrong.” Summer’s jaw tightened. “I can do this job. And since you accepted me, you can at least give me a chance before telling me how much I suck.”

  So there was something of a backbone there, Fox thought—and wondered just what it was that had made Summer so shy, so withdrawn. Leaning back, he steepled his fingers. “You interviewed with Principal Chambers, did you not?”

  “Y-yeah.” Summer nodded.

  “And what did he tell you?”

  “That no one else wanted the job.” Summer smiled faintly. He had a soft, sad mouth that seemed ill-used to smiling, yet was haunted by a perpetual ghost of warmth nonetheless. “And that my mother must be happy to have me back home.”

  “Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Happy to be here.”

  “I...” There—an almost imperceptible flinch. “She needed me here. She’s not young anymore, and it’ll be better for her if I’m close by to help.”

  That, Fox thought, was not an answer. It was a reason, but not an answer to the actual question he had asked. He pressed his lips together, tapping his fingertips to his knuckles.

  “I have a proposition for you,” he said. “We can call it a training exercise, or a psychological experiment—whichever suits you.”

  “Am I a TA or a test subject?”

  “Both, perhaps.” Fox tucked a loose lock of hair behind his ear. Irritating mess; he always meant to cut it, and yet... He let his gaze drift to the mantle. The butsudan resting there, its deep-polished rosewood glinting in the afternoon light drifting through the windows, its doors currently closed and its contents private...as they should be. Tearing his gaze away, he made himself focus on Summer. “Once per day, I expect you to do something outside your comfort zone. Challenge yourself to take on a role as a leader, or mentor. Challenge yourself to approach this job with confidence, rather than asking permission to do what you must do. If you cannot learn to be bold, Mr. Hemlock, at the very least learn to fake it in the necessary environments so that your knees knocking together do not drown out the lesson you are trying to deliver.”

  Summer’s lips twitched faintly. “Pavlovian conditioning is a little 101 level, sir. Are you trying to make me assert my
own authority?”

  “I’m not trying to make you do anything,” Fox replied. “My only goal is to see if you can take the steps needed to face down a classroom of unruly, disrespectful children on your own. Do I need to hold your hand in that, or do you feel capable of attempting it under your own impetus?”

  Summer plucked at his jeans. “The children don’t scare me.”

  “Oh? Then what does?”

  No answer. Simply a heavy silence, fraught with meaning, and yet—for all his understanding of psychology, of psychiatry, of the small markers that gave away intent and thought and emotion... Fox couldn’t quite read what that meaning might be. Not when the Summer he had known as a boy was necessarily a stranger to him, with the appropriate distance between teacher and student; not when the Summer he saw now was a new person, shaped by years of experiences Fox as yet had no insight into, and technically stood on almost equal footing as his peer and assistant.

  And if he were honest with himself...no matter how he tried, no matter what clinical understanding he possessed...

  He somehow always felt at one remove from other people’s feelings, observing them and yet never quite understanding them, the soul of his own emotions locked away.

  Summer took a deep, slow breath, his shoulders rising and falling. “Every day? Does that include today?”

  “You don’t technically start work until Monday, so you may take the weekend to consider, if you’d like,” Fox said. “Or you may start today. But that is still not an answer as to what frightens you.”

  “Okay,” Summer said shakily, rising to his feet with wooden motions. “Okay then. I’ll show you what scares me.”

  He stepped rigidly across the living room, navigating the low polished coffee table with an awkward bump of his shins against the wood. Fox watched, brow raised, as Summer drew closer to the couch—but startlement prickled down his arms in a rush like goosebumps and fine hairs raising as Summer bent over him, bracing one hand to the back of the sofa.

  Before the young man captured Fox’s chin, his jaw, in roughened fingertips.

  Tipped his face up.

  And kissed him.

  Chapter Two

  Summer had no idea what he was doing.

  He hadn’t meant to kiss Professor Iseya. He’d just—he—after sitting there listening to Iseya list Summer’s faults and remind Summer that he hadn’t changed at all, something had risen up inside him. Something irritated, that whited out his thoughts and smothered his common sense until he wasn’t really choosing to do anything; just reacting to provocation. If he wanted to look at it from a psychology perspective, Iseya had pricked at Summer’s id.

  Until it had bitten back.

  But Freud had been a hack, and dissection of the psyche couldn’t explain why Summer was bent over Professor Iseya with his mouth pressed hot against the man’s and the taste of him on his lips.

  Iseya’s mouth was a stern thing of cruel sensuality, made for whispering cold-edged, cutting words of emotionless logic with articulated precision, every curve and dip of his lips defined as if they’d been shaped by the razor of his tongue...but for just a moment, those lips went soft. Slack. A moment that shot through Summer with a wilding heat; a moment that charged him with a vibrant rush and made his entire body go so hot he felt as though he burned with every harsh draught of smoke he’d inhaled just minutes before.

  He’d thought about this more times than he cared to admit, as a boy. Back when he’d been fascinated by the older man’s frosty demeanor; by the glint of eyes a silver as pale and inscrutable as the forest’s mist; by the controlled elegance in his minimalistic movements; by the quiet hint of command in his every gesture. When Summer had been a teenager, Professor Iseya had been a fantasy, out of reach, unreal.

  Yet he was very much real, now.

  Summer wasn’t a boy anymore.

  And the man whose mouth went fiery and firm against his own was very much not the icy caricature of his dreams.

  That softening, that parting of Iseya’s lips promised heat, promised more—and with a low sound Summer slanted his mouth against Iseya’s, only for firm lips to lock and hold him, the lash of a rough tongue to whip him, his fingers curling and tingling with the sudden rush of warmth as Iseya’s teeth grazed his mouth, teased him, left him shivering.

  Until a hand pressed against his throat, seizing his breaths and stopping his heart.

  He froze as long, firm fingers wrapped against his neck, a heated palm pressing down on his pulse just hard enough for him to feel it; just hard enough to make his next breath come shallow and tight. His knees trembled, an odd, weakening sensation seeming to cut the strength from his limbs and leave his gut liquid-hot and tight as slowly, Iseya pushed him back. That one hand held him in complete thrall, controlling his every movement and keeping him trapped in place in silent command as Iseya parted their lips from each other.

  Frigid eyes as pale as cracked ice fixed on Summer, piercing him. For all the breathless heat that had lived in that stolen moment...those eyes were cold enough to smother it, frostbite in every slowly spoken word.

  “I,” Iseya said softly, “would thank you not to be inappropriate, Mr. Hemlock. And if I am what frightens you...you have every reason to fear.”

  For just a half-second longer, Summer’s focus remained on those lips—their redness, their fullness. On the pressure of that hand against his throat. On the confusing and aching feeling it roused inside him, taut and shaking and thrilling with something not quite fear at all.

  Before it hit him just what he was doing, when he had never been so reckless or so forward in his life.

  He flinched back, breaking free from Iseya’s grip. The man regarded him coolly, utterly calm and unreadable, yet for the few breaths that Summer held his eyes he couldn’t help but imagine judgment there.

  Judgment...

  And rejection.

  Because Summer hadn’t been back in Omen for a day before he’d crossed a line, and proven he was still the same awkward, utterly hopeless boy he’d always been.

  “S-sorry,” he whispered, though it barely came out on a dry croak, his throat closing. “Sorry.”

  Iseya said nothing—and Summer didn’t know what else to say.

  He just knew he couldn’t stay here, not when he felt as though his every shortcoming and failure, his every maladjustment and cowardice, were laid bare for that cutting silver gaze to dissect before discarding him as worthless.

  And so “S-sorry,” he stumbled over, one more time.

  Before he bowed his head. Clenched his fists.

  And ran.

  * * *

  He didn’t stop until he was outside, and shut inside the safety of his rental car with at least the barrier of metal walls to hide him.

  Clenching his hands against the steering wheel, Summer groaned and thunked his forehead against the leather of the upper curve—and then again and again, just for good measure.

  What the hell, Summer.

  What the hell, what the hell, what the hell.

  His pulse was on fire, his entire body prickling as if a sunburn had crisped his skin to paper and left him feeling like he was going to split right out of it. He’d...he’d kissed Professor Iseya. Like he was still that same shy fumbling boy with a completely impossible crush, he’d kissed the man without so much as an if-you-please, and probably just fucked himself out of a job.

  One more thud against the steering wheel, hard enough to make his temples throb.

  Dammit.

  He couldn’t go back in there. Not today. He’d left his suitcase at Iseya’s, but he’d wait until the man was in class Monday to get a janitor to let him in to retrieve it. Whether or not he’d be unpacking it in his faculty suite or looking for somewhere else to stay?

  Would probably depend on if Iseya had him fired or not.

  He’d deserve it if
he did.

  Welp.

  At least if he was unemployed, he’d have more time to help his mother fix up a few things around the house.

  And wouldn’t have to worry about having an anxiety attack in front of two dozen staring, snickering boys.

  Summer backed the Acura out of its parking slot and did a U-turn in the now-empty courtyard, the students already back inside and in class like nothing had ever happened, despite the fresh scorch marks on the upstairs wall and window frame. The drive down the high hill felt less ominous than the approach—every foot of space between himself and that mortifying moment of impulse letting him breathe a little easier, put it behind himself, tuck it away as something to be dealt with later.

  The town at the bottom of the hill was still the same—cobbled roadways and colonial style homes, only the more modern shops, street lighting, and sidewalk bus stops reminding Omen of what century it was. Summer had always managed to find a way not to come back, even on holiday and summer breaks, instead flying his mother out to Baltimore when he wanted to see her; Omen had somehow always felt like its name, this ominous trap that would ensnare him in a life, a future, a self he’d never wanted to hold on to.

  But he still remembered the way home—and he couldn’t help but smile, as he pulled up outside his mother’s house. The sunny little cottage hadn’t changed, either, still overgrown with flowers everywhere. Daffodils nodded their sunny heads, while hollyhocks clustered around lavender and flowering azalea bushes; jasmine climbed the walls, dripping blooms whose fragrance nearly drowned him when he stepped out of the car, chasing away the last stinging scent of smoke in his nose. Little glass wind chimes and baubles hung in every tree and from every eave, catching the meager gray light and turning it into winking shards of color.

  He’d barely made it past the wooden gate, stepping under the arch of the flowering bower overhead, before the front door opened and his mother came tumbling out. Small, round, Lily Hemlock was a compact bundle of energy swirled about by gauzy scarves, trailing her in a flutter of color as she nearly launched herself into him.