Then, without giving Summer or Fox a chance to respond...
He turned and swept out, gliding as if trailing a royal train in his wake and slamming the door quite firmly behind him.
Summer flinched when the door hit home hard enough to echo, then peeked one eye open at Fox. “...could I really get us sued?”
“No,” Fox said, eyeing the door in disgust, before turning his gaze back to Summer. “And a license is not required to fulfill the role of a school guidance counselor. Your teaching certification is quite enough.”
Summer sputtered, then trailed into a groan, slumping to lean against the desk. “So you were bluffing.”
“And you,” Fox pointed out, “fell for it, because you were embarrassed.”
“...he, uh...caught us...um...” With another flustered sound, Summer scrubbed the heel of his palm against one eye, fingers weaving into his hair, and let out a nervous little sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “You know. I just... I guess I’m still working my way toward being brave with people other than you.”
With a sigh, Fox settled to sit next to him once more, just looking down at Summer—how he slouched, how his breaths came in little short pants that told Fox Summer was doing everything he could not to give in to the anxiety trying to rise through him, making his pulse flicker erratically until it stood out against his throat, making his eyes dilate long after any lingering desire could account for the expansion of the pupil.
You are such a mess, Fox thought fondly, and slipped his arm around Summer’s shoulders.
“You will get there,” he said, curling his hand against Summer’s arm. “I firmly believe that.”
Summer immediately turned into him—pressing into his side, burying his face in Fox’s chest.
And Fox let him, just wrapping his other arm around him and drawing him in close.
“You do?” Summer mumbled against Fox’s chest, breaths and lips moving warm through his shirt.
“I do,” Fox agreed, and rested his chin to the top of Summer’s head.
Summer said nothing, and just burrowed in closer to him, wrapping his arms in a tight lock around Fox’s waist.
It wasn’t so bad, staying like this—wrapped around Summer, sheltering him, listening as he slowly paced his breaths until they calmed down and he went softer, warmer, against Fox.
Right now...
Fox wasn’t sure who was comforting whom.
When this only made his entire body ache with the awareness of how long he had been starved for such simple human contact that had nothing to do with attraction, with arousal...
And everything to do with just sharing touch.
“I could do it,” Summer murmured, voice muffled and soft, breaking the silence. “Get my license as a therapist.” Fox felt more than saw Summer’s smile, moving against his ribs. “I spent half my credits in a forensic and behavioral psychology track in university, before I switched to education.”
Fox blinked repeatedly. “You? In forensics?”
He recalled Summer mentioning it before, but trying to picture it...
Impossible.
A soundless laugh shook Summer’s body against him, and he only burrowed his face deeper into Fox’s chest. “Don’t say it like that!” he said, before falling still again, adjusting to lean more into Fox, until it was half the edge of the desk holding him up, half Fox. “...though you’re right. I couldn’t do it. The...the blood, the horror...it was too much. I couldn’t face that.”
“Why did you sign up for that program in the first place?”
“...I thought I could help people,” Summer admitted, gentle and heartfelt. “I thought I could bring people some peace by helping them find out who killed the people they loved. And I enjoyed the psych part of it, but...” He shuddered, tension rippling through the tight planes of muscle under Fox’s palms. “Not the death. And I didn’t know what else to do, so I switched to education...and ended up back here.”
So bitter, Fox thought. As bitter as he had been warm when he spoke of wanting to help people with such a simple, honest desire.
“You didn’t want to come back here?” he asked carefully.
“Not like this.”
“Not like what?”
“...like me.” Choked, low. “Soft and weak and still scared of everything. Scared of me.”
Ah... Summer.
Fox couldn’t stop himself from tightening his hold, spreading his palms over Summer’s back, gathering him in until there was hardly breath or space between them, stroking his hands down Summer’s spine as if he could impress his words on him in touch, in warmth that he didn’t quite know how to express in words.
But he tried, murmuring, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being soft.”
“One of my professors said that, too. Before I left Baltimore.” Summer sighed. “Professor Khalaji. He quit teaching in the criminology program and went back to being a police detective, but...he remembered me, even though I dropped out. And he told me...” He stopped, turning his head to rest his cheek to Fox’s chest, his eyes slipping open, just hints of deep blue glimmering through his lashes. “He told me that ‘soft’ isn’t something many people are anymore, and that it’s not a bad thing to be soft. Not a bad thing to protect that. So maybe...”
He lifted his head, then, looking at Fox eye to eye.
There was so much fear swimming in those depths, Fox thought. So much hesitation, uncertainty, this bright shooting star of a young man with no idea where he was shooting off to.
Yet still... Summer smiled.
And there was something so very beautiful in that.
In the way Summer could crumple under the worst pain, the worst fear, and still smile.
“Maybe I want to protect being soft,” Summer whispered. “And I want to make it safe for other people to be soft, too.”
He said it the same way he said Fox’s name: quiet, pleading, entreating.
Asking, as he always asked...
For Fox to let him in, in so many subtle ways.
I don’t know how, Fox thought, but still...still he reached up to brush Summer’s messy tangle of hair back from his eyes, tracing his fingertips along one arching black brow.
“That feels like a loaded statement,” he said, and
