Fox blinked again.
And again.
And had to look away from this strange young man with his equally strange smile, clearing his throat. “Perhaps you’re only imagining what you’re reading between my lines.”
“It’s possible. Projection is a thing.” Even without looking at him...that smile was still in Summer’s voice. “But it’s not the only reason I’m attracted to you.”
“I can’t imagine more than one reason,” Fox muttered.
“I can imagine a thousand. Only I don’t have to imagine, because they’re as real as the color of your eyes and the way you wear your hair.” Summer laughed. “I don’t know how I’m not hyperventilating right now, but I guess I hit ‘fuck it’ mode and can freak out later. Why do you think I wouldn’t be attracted to you?”
“I...”
It was almost instinct for Fox to want to deflect around that, and yet somehow Summer’s quiet faith in his honesty, his straightforwardness, made him at least want to be somewhat truthful.
“I consider myself a non-entity on that front,” he said. “If romance is a playing field, I benched myself long ago. Most do not pay attention to players who are not actively on the field.”
“You’re bad at sports analogies,” Summer teased softly, and Fox scowled.
“I have little interest in the sports ball.”
“...‘the sports ball.’” That prompted a soft snicker, barely repressed. “And there’s another reason. You’re funny without meaning to be. But just because you’ve benched yourself doesn’t mean you aren’t still someone’s favorite MVP.”
“Now who is making terrible sports analogies?”
“I don’t watch the sports ball either.” Summer shrugged one shoulder ruefully. “Swimming turned out to be my thing.”
Fox arched a brow, risking a glance back at Summer. The way he’d tanned and filled out, building into compact athletic musculature with a sort of flowing, liquid grace to it rather than thick-honed bulk...he could see it. Summer cutting through the water in smooth, fluid strokes.
He should not be picturing this.
“So is that how you finally hit puberty?” he shot back. “Swimming?”
“There it is. The defensive barbs because I managed to fluster you when you’re supposed to be made of stone.” Summer was still looking up at the sky, but his lips curled sweetly, almost slyly. “Keep insulting me, Professor Iseya. It just means I get under your skin a little. Although that’s kind of regressing, don’t you think? Child psychology. I thought we universally agreed as a field to stop telling children when a little boy pulls your pigtails and kicks dirt in your face, it means he likes you.”
“I don’t like you!” Narrowing his eyes, Fox growled, tearing his gaze away and glaring at the water.
What was even happening here?
How was this shy, anxious young man sitting here with that smile on his lips, needling at Fox and leaving Fox completely uncertain of how to handle this at all?
Yet that smile never wavered, even as Summer lowered his eyes from the sky, looking at Fox with a strange and quiet frankness, a soft ache in his voice when he said, “I know.”
That...should not sting.
A sudden sharp pang, as if an arrow had been fired straight from Summer’s bleeding heart to Fox’s own.
With a soft hiss, he clenched his jaw and looked anywhere but at Summer. At the mist slowly beginning to burn away from the surface of the lake, hovering like the last remnants of ghosts that refused to let go with the dawn.
“This,” he bit off, “is the most absolutely ludicrous conversation. What makes you think I’m even attracted to men?”
“Hope,” Summer answered simply, softly, and yet everything was in that one word.
Hellfire.
Fox closed his eyes, breathing in and out slowly, if only so he could keep his tone even and calm. He wasn’t accustomed to this—to feeling out of sorts, shaken out of place, his stone foundations cracked and no longer holding him so steady.
Being around Summer was like seeing the sun after decades buried in a subterranean cave.
And the light hurt his eyes, when all he wanted was the quiet and comforting dark.
“You don’t want me, Summer,” he said firmly. “I’m quite old, used-up, and I don’t even know how to be with someone anymore.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Summer murmured.
“Isn’t it?”
Silence, before Summer said slowly, “Maybe I’m wrong... I’m probably wrong. Or maybe you were a good enough teacher that I can figure some things out. But either way, I think you shut yourself away while you needed to...but your protective walls turned into a cage when you didn’t need them anymore, and now you can’t find your way out.”
Shut yourself away while you needed to.
The simple memory of just why he’d shut himself away cut deep, digging down to a tiny pain that lived at his heart. He’d made it tiny deliberately, so he could compact it down into a thing so small it could fit in the palm of his hand, all of that agony crushed down into nothing so that he could never touch too much of it at any one time, its surface area barely the size of a fingerprint.
And then he’d tucked it away, burying it down where he couldn’t reach it.
But those simple words threatened to expose it, even if it meant cutting him open to do so.
No.
He stood, reminding himself to breathe—to breathe, and to wrap himself in his calm. He was nearly twice Summer’s
