Not at all.
He simply liked a quiet classroom, of course.
Of course.
And the classroom was almost painfully quiet after the last bell, once everyone had filed out and there was only Summer and Fox, and Summer gathering up the stacks of assignments he’d been given to grade against Fox’s rubric by tomorrow.
They’d only looked at each other for long moments, and Fox...
For the first time in a very long time, found that he didn’t know what to say.
Most of the time he simply didn’t want to talk.
But he’d never quite found himself at a loss in just this way, before.
Summer had spoken, instead, offering a shy smile, watching him through the messy fringe of his hair, shadowing blue eyes until they glowed like descending twilight.
“See you in the morning?” he offered. “To...to check and make sure I graded things right.”
“Ah,” Fox said, and inclined his head. “Of course.”
For some reason, that had made Summer light up, brilliant and sweet, his smile widening.
Before he nodded, and ducked out of the room like he was actually eager to wade through nearly a hundred papers on why Jung was, quite frankly, a woo-peddling asshole.
Then immediately ducked back in, biting his lower lip, faltering in that way he had that said he was nerving himself up to something; Fox could almost see it ticking over behind his eyes, that rising swell of bravery before he blurted, “Can I have your phone number?”
Fox leaned back in his desk chair, crossing his ankle over his knee and studying Summer, tapping a pen against his thigh. “Why?”
“Um. So I don’t have to go to your room if I have a question?” Summer ventured, then ducked his head...but his mouth was twitching at the corners, struggling so clearly not to turn upward, while he watched Fox from beneath his lashes, the shadow of his brows, the fringe of his hair.
“Email suffices perfectly well,” Fox pointed out.
“It could,” Summer said, trailing off...
And Fox thudded his head back against his chair, closing his eyes for a moment.
Summer might as well be wagging his tail.
Grinding his teeth, slitting his eyes open, he held out his hand. “Phone.”
Tumbling back into the room, Summer plunked the stack of papers in a skewed heap atop Fox’s desk, then fumbled into his pocket, producing a slim Samsung that he almost dropped before he managed to swipe the screen, tap in his code, then thrust the phone at Fox with that annoyingly shy, boyishly sweet smile.
Fox eyed him over the rims of his glasses.
Where did he find the energy?
But, with a sigh, he pulled up Summer’s address book and tapped his number in, saving it under Iseya, Fox before passing the phone back; their fingers brushed as Summer curled his hand around the Samsung, and for a moment they held, Summer staring at him with his lips parted, while Fox wondered distantly, idly, how anyone’s fingertips could be so warm.
Then, clearing his throat, Summer pulled back, straightening and tapping quickly over the screen before giving a decisive little nod. “I sent you a text so you’ll have mine.”
Fox frowned, pressing his palm over the pocket of his slacks, searching—the shape of his iPhone wasn’t there.
Hellfire.
Where had he left the thing?
And why hadn’t he heard it vibrate?
He checked his other pocket, then leaned forward, patted his back pockets. Nothing. Muttering to himself, he pulled the central drawer of his desk open; nothing but legal pads and pencils neatly slotted in their cases, and a fresh gradebook waiting for the current one to run out of pages. He leaned over to check the side drawer, dragging it open and peering past the stacks of file folders; had he left it in his suite?
Summer watched him curiously. “You can’t find your phone?”
“It is an accessory, not a necessity,” Fox bit off, then clamped his lips shut if only because yes, he heard himself quite clearly, and knew exactly how old he sounded.
Too old for Summer to be watching him with that sort of quiet fondness, as if...as if...
He found even Fox’s irritability endearing.
He didn’t have to be so obvious about it.
“So...that means I don’t have to wonder who’s texting you at three in the morning and asking if you’re up,” Summer said, just a little too innocently.
“Anyone texting me at three in the morning would know very well that I am not up, and if they wake me they may forfeit their lives,” Fox growled, before finally unearthing his phone from beneath last semester’s third period gradebook. “Ah.”
He tapped the screen.
Nothing happened.
Pressed the power button.
Nothing.
Summer lightly drummed his fingertips against his own phone with a humming sound. “I think you have to charge it more than once a month, Professor Iseya,” he lilted, and Fox glowered at him, dropping his phone on the desk and leaving it there, silent and dead.
“Silence, impudent whelp,” he hissed.
And Summer just snickered, before clapping a hand over his mouth.
Hmph.
Disobedient and yet obedient at the same time.
Irritating, and just as much of a contradiction as Summer himself.
Thinning his lips, Fox folded his arms over his chest, staring at Summer flatly.
Years ago, Summer would have recoiled, shrinking into himself and scuttling away.
But now the incorrigible, irrepressible thing just smiled wider, a choked half-laugh muffled behind his hand and in the back of his throat.
“Are you quite finished?” Fox said flatly. “I’ll see your text once I’ve charged my phone. That should be quite enough. And if you text me at three in the morning, I should hope it is actually important.”
“Wanting to talk to you isn’t important enough?” Summer asked, a husky little hitch in the words, and Fox let out an exasperated sound, thrusting his hand out and pointing firmly at the door.
“Get out.”
Summer just burst out laughing, a raspy-sweet sound with a touch of shivering depth to it.
Before he gathered up the papers once more, stacking his phone atop them and turning to stroll out, somehow once again managing to do exactly what he was told while still being entirely intolerable about
