Please don’t let me ruin this.
...please don’t let me ruin him.
Chapter Fifteen
Fox, Summer thought to himself, didn’t look very well.
Maybe he was coming down with something from the few minutes they’d been out in the rain yesterday, but...he looked grayer, somehow. Sunken. Ashen, even, in the dim light filtering through the curtains, the storm still raging outside and leaving the day swallowed in gloom.
Summer tucked closer to Fox, watching his half-asleep face, his half-open eyes. “Hey,” he murmured, and pressed his palm to Fox’s brow. He felt cooler than usual, but at least not feverish. “Are you okay? Do you feel sick?”
“Tired,” Fox murmured drowsily, then turned his face into the pillows, leaving nothing but a tangle of hair flowing everywhere in dark rivers of silver-streaked black. “Not sick...just sleepy.”
Summer frowned. Fox, despite being so quiet, was such a high-energy man, always alert and ready to do what was necessary, but ever since last night...
He’d just seemed drained.
Like something vital had been sucked out of him, and Summer couldn’t help that flush of guilt that he’d...he’d just told Fox he loved him when those words were probably so damned hard to hear.
He hadn’t known what he’d expected, when Fox had already said he was so afraid to have to stay here. That Summer wasn’t reason enough to want to stay, but instead a trap when Summer’s decisions might hold him here.
That fucking hurt.
He understood. He understood in a lot of ways it wasn’t about him, but about Fox needing to run from a place that had become as much of a prison as his own self-isolation.
That didn’t change that it had hit Summer hard enough to make him reckless, make him say something he shouldn’t have, as if somehow those three words would change Fox’s mind and give him a reason to stay.
Things like that only worked in fairy tales and romcoms.
Not in real life.
He didn’t know what to do.
Not when Fox was motionless and silent, burrowed into the bed.
So Summer only bent to kiss his shoulder blade, stroking the veil of his hair away to find pale amber-ivory skin.
“I can handle class prep this morning on my own,” he said, murmuring against Fox’s skin. “If you’re tired, stay in bed a while longer and I’ll see you in class, okay?”
Fox only made a low sound of affirmative, muted against the pillow, before he lifted his head enough to look at Summer with dull gray eyes.
“Breakfast,” he said listlessly. “Don’t forget to eat. Sometimes I think you wouldn’t if I didn’t feed you.”
It was a shallow attempt at his usual barbed tone, but an attempt nonetheless. Summer smiled, though he felt like crumbling inside. Something was wrong.
Something was deeply wrong, and he didn’t want to leave Fox like this, but...
Maybe space was what they both needed.
Yesterday had been strange and painful, even if they’d fallen into bed together and Fox had kissed him, loved him with such intensity, held him tight deep into the night...
They’d stabbed each other rather deep, before that.
So maybe if Summer just...took care of work this morning, let Fox have space to settle himself, then they could talk things through tonight once they’d gotten through classes and didn’t have anything else to worry about.
So he only smiled, and leaned down to press his lips to Fox’s brow. “I won’t forget,” he said, before pulling away to roll out of bed. “And this time, it’s my turn to leave something in the oven for you. Get some rest, Fox. I’ll check in on you during lunch.”
Fox’s only answer was another muted sound.
Summer lingered, watching him, but Fox only turned his face away, closing his eyes, pulling the covers up around his shoulders.
Fuck.
Eyes stinging, nostrils flaring, Summer made himself turn away and made himself walk out of the bedroom.
Even if it was the last thing he wanted to do.
Fox lay in bed for nearly an hour after Summer left, wishing he...wishing he...
Wishing he had had the courage to at least kiss him goodbye.
He wasn’t sure when he’d decided, concretely. When he’d realized what he meant to do. Some time in the middle of a long, sleepless night, listening to the rain fall.
She’d died on a night like this day, rain-washed and dreary, as if the world was already dead.
Perhaps it was fitting that he should leave on a day like this, too.
He needed to start over.
And he couldn’t do it here.
Couldn’t do it where all he would do was drag Summer down.
The school didn’t need him. They’d find someone else, or abolish the psychology elective. He’d been lying to himself that he was needed at all, as if that could somehow give him an excuse to stay and enjoy this short stolen season of summer in his heart before winter came, gray and terrible, once more.
Excuses.
Always the excuses.
Excuses to stay. Excuses to leave.
No—it was best that he go.
Maybe one day, one year, he might come back as someone better, someone brighter, someone who still knew how to live, someone who knew how to be with a man as lovely as Summer. And maybe Summer would still be here, holding that vulnerable heart, and if he hadn’t given it to someone else...
Yes.
Maybe then.
But for now... Fox was no good for anyone.
And, his body feeling heavy as stone...
He dragged himself up to pack, flinging the walk-in closet doors open and stepping inside.
Summer couldn’t concentrate.
He tried. Words on the page blurred together into marching ants; he couldn’t even keep half a thought focused in his mind, forgetting whose paper he was reading halfway down the page and having to start over at the name, let alone processing the content.
He sat in Fox’s office, surrounded by the sound of rain on the windows and the dripping of honeysuckle scent, and just...
Wished he was back in that
