Just Like That (Albin Academy)

by Cole McCade

  With the psych class as an elective, it only ran in three blocks after the lunch period; the mornings, per the rather tersely written schedule he’d been emailed a week or so back, were for lesson planning, grading papers, and discussion. Summer supposed they were also his own informal class periods—where he’d ask Iseya what he needed to know, learn what he needed to ask.

  As if he had any idea what to ask.

  Any idea what to even say, as he stood outside Iseya’s office and tried to calm the flutters and the twists in his chest, his stomach, even in his legs. Swallowing, his mouth like nettles and sand, he scrubbed his hands against his thighs. He’d settled on simple black slacks, dress shoes, a white dress shirt, though he couldn’t breathe and he pulled the top two buttons loose until the collar no longer felt like it was choking him to death.

  Just...go in.

  He was supposed to be here.

  Iseya wasn’t going to tell him to get out.

  He wasn’t.

  And that note in Summer’s pocket...

  He slipped his fingers into the pocket of his slacks and just touched the paper, feeling its somewhat brittle, strange texture against his fingertips.

  Challenge accepted.

  His heart gave a strange little flutter.

  And he pushed the doorknob open, and stepped inside.

  In years, Professor Iseya’s office hadn’t changed a bit.

  Still the same orderly, sparse designs, dark furniture chosen to naturally complement the building’s darkly weathered wood finish, minimal decorations save for small bits of terra-cotta pottery tucked here and there on shelves, tastefully spaced among rows and rows of neatly organized textbooks, reference books, literature on every aspect of psychology under the sun. Yet touches of green brightened the room, with delicate hanging basket planters suspended from the ceiling, overflowing with dangling, fragile tendrils of honeysuckle vines.

  The honeysuckles were blooming now, even at this time of year—and their soft, alluring fragrance subtly wafted through the room, their curling petals and long stamens nearly dripping with it.

  Summer remembered, once, coming to turn in an extra credit assignment he’d asked for to make up for missing a quiz after his mother had taken him out of school one day to spend the day in the woods with her, hunting bluebells and sunflowers and digging up medicinal herbs.

  He’d caught Professor Iseya watering the honeysuckles, reaching up to spray them with a little bottle, handling them with those long, graceful fingers that touched them as if they would burst apart and scatter if he was the slightest bit too rough.

  That moment, for young Summer, had been...

  Magic.

  And it brought a little of that magic back, to see that Iseya still kept his honeysuckles. That touch of softness, that sweetness, that hint into something more human than the cold façade he tried to project.

  Even if, right now, Iseya might as well be made of stone, for all that he reacted to Summer’s entrance.

  He sat behind a long, smooth desk made of polished cherrywood that gleamed almost burgundy in the low hanging overhead light, glossed so deeply that it almost perfectly mirrored his reflection—from the stark silver of his eyes to the sharp edges of his glasses, from the streaks of gray in his tightly-bound hair to the deep, steely color of today’s perfectly pressed button-down, a dark gray that only brought out the pale amber of his skin in a luminous glow.

  The precision of his posture only accented the angular, broad strength of his shoulders, and the fact that at his height his chair was a little too small for him; any chair would be a little too small for him, Summer thought, when he was larger than life...

  ...and currently refusing to look up from the stack of student papers in front of him.

  Summer tilted his head.

  ...I know you know I’m standing right here.

  But Iseya only scratched off a quick-dashed mark in red ink.

  And Summer smiled fondly, his heart squeezing in the best and worst ways.

  “Good morning, Professor Iseya,” he said, stepping in and closing the door behind him.

  Iseya still didn’t look up.

  He just pointed his pen at the curving chair opposite his desk and bit off a terse, almost subvocal, “Sit.”

  It was almost embarrassing, how quickly Summer scrambled to obey.

  But then he always had had a weak spot for the natural sense of authority Iseya exuded, and it made Summer’s breaths catch just a little to let himself give in to the urge to do exactly as Iseya said.

  He sank down in the chair, shifting a bit uncomfortably, trying to find the right way to sit before he just gave up and leaned forward, resting his folded arms on the edge of the desk.

  He wanted to ask.

  Nearly vibrated with it.

  But instead he made himself say, “Grading pa—”

  His voice cracked. Squeaked.

  And Iseya’s gaze flicked up, sharp-edged blades of silver skewering Summer over the rims of his glasses.

  Iseya said nothing.

  Summer’s cheeks went hot, and he cleared his throat, dropping his eyes to stare down at the desk. His own reflection stared back up at him, just a little too wide-eyed and timid, and he didn’t think all of the red in his cheeks could be blamed on the cherrywood lacquer.

  Right.

  Try again.

  “Grading papers?” he managed to ask in a rather stilted mumble, then closed his eyes, suppressing a groan.

  Whatever confidence he’d had yesterday morning, standing by the lakeshore and watching how the sunlight dappled over Iseya’s hair and shoulders...

  It had clearly deserted him today.

  His bones felt like water, and the only reason he didn’t turn and bolt was because he didn’t really think his body would hold him up if he tried to stand.

  “If you have the slightest recollection of my classes at all,” Iseya said crisply, his deep, rolling voice edged in glacial frost, “you’ll recall I have no patience for obvious questions.”

  “Don’t,” Summer said. It came out faint, soft, but he made himself say it. That was something he’d been trying to learn to do since he’d escaped Omen: make himself say the things that needed to be said, even if his voice was small when he said them. “Don’t talk to me like I’m one of your misbehaving students. Please. I’m supposed to be your peer, even if I have a lot to learn from you before I’m ready to teach.”

  “Is that what you want to be to me, then?” Iseya asked, deceptively soft when there was a core of flint to those precise words. “My peer?”

  Summer drew his brows together. “I don’t know if you’re asking me that in a professional context or a personal context.” He darted his tongue over his lips. “And I don’t...know what your note meant. ‘Challenge accepted.’ I wasn’t trying to challenge you—”

  “Weren’t you?” Iseya countered. Still so flat, so cool, almost mocking, and Summer deflated. “Isn’t that the point of your little game? Not just to challenge yourself, but to challenge me? To prove that you can convince me to break down my walls for you, one day at a time, one kiss at a time?”

  That stung—like brambles wrapped around his heart and digging in, that stung, and Summer flinched, lifting his gaze to find Iseya watching him with that same icy, impenetrable stare, almost accusing.

  “Why are you being like this?” Summer blurted. “Are you...are you that upset that I want to see you as a person instead of this...this terrifying figurehead?”

  “I am not upset,” Iseya hissed, slamming the pen down atop the pages, the uncapped tip dipping to leave a deep red inkblot like blood spreading against white.

  Summer just stared at him.

  “You’re acting like you are,” he murmured, and bit his lip. “I’m...sorry. I’m sorry if you’re still...hurting so much that it feels like I
’m playing some kind of game with you. Just...forget I ever asked. I didn’t... I didn’t mean to be disrespectful of...”

  “Of what?” Brittle, sharp, Iseya’s eyes flashing—heat slashing through that ice like a stab of lightning. “What do you think you know about me?”

  Right now, looking at Iseya felt like...

  Felt like pleading.

  Pleading with him to just...stop, when Summer didn’t have to be an expert to know that this...

  This was the pain talking.

  Not Iseya himself.

  “I know that twenty years is a long time to grieve,” Summer whispered, heart in his throat.

  This wasn’t how he’d wanted this to go. A simple wish, a silly game, an ache in the pit of his stomach, but somehow it had gone all wrong and he’d upset Iseya—but now that he’d started it, he had to finish it and say what had to be said to see this through.

  He always said all the wrong things anyway.

  He guessed that wasn’t going to change.

  “And a long time to define yourself as if that grief is all you are,” he finished, the words driving through his tongue like iron nails.

  Iseya faltered, physically recoiling as if Summer had slapped him. His gaze flickered strangely, before he looked away—and when he spoke his voice was softer, that lashing edge gone.

  “If you think you will find anything else underneath that,” he murmured, “you will be sorely disappointed.”

  Summer half-smiled, even though it hurt like someone had pulled his rib cage open and plucked one curving bone out to fit it to the shape of his mouth. “Is that what you’re afraid of? That you’ll disappoint me?”

  “What makes you think I’m afraid of you in any way, Mr. Hemlock?”

  “The fact that you won’t look at me directly unless you’re angry with me,” Summer pointed out. “Because I won’t look at people, either...because then I’m afraid they’ll see too much about how I feel.”

  Iseya made a soft tch sound under his breath, lifting his chin a touch haughtily—and yet still those silver eyes remained on the bookshelf, not on Summer. “Is that why you avoid eye contact? A mystery solved, I suppose.”

  “It’s why I do. I’m wondering if it’s why you do, too.”

  “It’s considered rude to stare at people with prolonged eye contact in Japanese culture.” Iseya thinned his lips. “Granted, I was not raised in Japanese culture outside my family home after my adolescent years, but I believe the common phrase is ‘that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.’”

  That startled a laugh out of Summer, quick but still enough to ease some of the tight feeling in his chest. “It’s not like you to be that indirect.”

  “My father always told me I was too blunt. Perhaps I’m attempting to rectify that now.” But with a sigh, Iseya closed his eyes, lightly adjusting his glasses with his middle finger pressed against the bridge. “We should be discussing today’s lesson plan. Not being inappropriately confrontational with each other.”

  “Kissing is already a pretty inappropriate conversation topic, so throwing in confrontation isn’t really that much worse.”

  Iseya’s jaw twitched.

  His finger slipped on his glasses.

  And slid underneath one lens, nearly poking him in the eye with one gracefully squared, neatly manicured fingertip.

  Iseya swore softly, squinting his eye up and pulling his glasses off, shaking them free from the loose tendrils of hair drifting into his face and glowering at the lens. “Why do you keep returning the subject to kissing?”

  “Because I’m not sure what you meant,” Summer admitted. “You sent me that note, didn’t you? ‘Challenge accepted.’ This.”

  He fumbled in his pocket, finding the folded slip of paper, setting it on the desk and unfolding it, smoothing his fingers over the crease. Some part of him wanted to touch Iseya so painfully bad...but when he couldn’t, he touched that note, paper that had been handled by Iseya’s fingers, as if the indirect contact could transfer.

  And he looked up at Iseya once more, while Iseya stared down at the note with his eyes hard and haunted, as if it was some terrible ghost.

  Summer swallowed against the lump in his throat. “But now you’re angry that I’m challenging you at all, even if it’s something for both of us. A reason for both of us to be brave. So I guess...” He took a shaky breath “I guess I’m asking if we’re doing this. If you agree. If you want to kiss me, Professor Iseya. Even if it’s just to see how Pavlovian I can be.”

  Narrowing his eyes, Iseya pointed the arm of his glasses sternly at Summer. “I was not entirely serious about framing it as an interesting psych experiment, and that will not make me more agreeable,” he bit off, then sniffed, opening his desk drawer and fishing out a microfiber cloth. With brisk motions he wiped off the lens of his glasses, his richly full-lipped mouth firming to a thin line of dusky pink. “You are aware that this is highly unprofessional and may be frowned on by the school board?”

  “Two adults engaging in consenting activity in private?” Summer smiled wryly. “It’s the twenty-first century, Professor Iseya. I really don’t think they’re scared the kids will catch the gay. And I don’t think you have to worry about losing a job you’re planning to quit.”

  Iseya made an exasperated sound and tucked his glasses back on, hooking the arms over his ears delicately and then teasing his hair loose with a gesture so practiced and absent he didn’t seem to realize he was doing it. The strands that spilled loose fell down to disappear past the edge of the desk; Summer knew from years of watching him that those loose tendrils trailed nearly to his waist, but...

  But Summer had never seen Iseya with his hair down, even once.

  And he’d always wondered how long those trailing, dark locks really were.

  He watched them with fascination as they fell to settle against Iseya’s chest, before a soft clucking of the professor’s tongue brought his attention back, and he dragged his gaze back up to find those gray eyes watching him with a mixture of frustration and weariness.

  “What is this abrupt change that comes over you around me?” Iseya asked, his brows knitting. “You were never in any way so forward or bold before. And it’s not hard to see that you are entirely petrified of me, and yet still pushing yourself to these extremes in some bizarre attempt to connect with me.”

  “I guess I changed more over the years than I thought.” Summer smiled faintly. “Or maybe I get brave when there’s something I want. I told you, there’s a point where my anxiety hits ‘fuck it’ levels.” He shrugged with a helpless laugh. “I guess I go from zero to ‘fuck’ in seconds around you. If it makes you feel any better, the second I walked away from you yesterday I hyperventilated.”

  Iseya arched a brow. “Why would that make me feel better?”

  “So you know your terrifying mystique and intimidating presence are still entirely effective.” Summer grinned. “Just not enough to scare me off anymore.”

  “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?” Iseya shook his head slightly. “It’s not just about a kiss. You...actually want me. Is that the entire reason you took this position?”

  “It isn’t even part of the reason,” Summer admitted. “I came back because...” He stopped, then exhaled slowly, admitting, “Because it was the path of least resistance. My mother needs more help at home, and the job opened up, and whatever I was looking for in Baltimore... I didn’t find it. So I came back here...and even if I don’t know what I want anywhere else...” His heart gave a hard wild thump, a leap, rising up through him like it would pour out of his mouth on every word. “...I found out that I want you.”

  Iseya said nothing.

  He only looked at Summer, frank and silent and unreadable, while Summer’s heart came plunging back down from its leap to wobble in the center of his chest, hovering and trembling and waiting to combust. It
took everything in him to not flinch, to not lower his eyes, to meet that penetrating stare even though his breaths were coming shorter and shorter and he felt naked, with Iseya’s gaze locked on him so closely.

  Naked, too exposed...

  As if Iseya could see his quivering insides, and stroked his touch down them with a vulnerable and terrifying intimacy.

  “What were you looking for in Baltimore?” Iseya asked softly.

  Summer parted his lips, stopped, searched...

  And realized he didn’t have an answer.

  Nothing concrete, anyway.

  And the only answer he had was...

  “Me,” he said softly. “I... I was looking for me.”

  “And so you haven’t found yourself yet?”

  “No.” Summer half-smiled, a pang tightening and twisting inside him. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop looking.”

  Iseya cocked his head to one side, still watching Summer with that searching gaze that could see all the way to the heart of him and yet that still seemed to see nothing at all.

  Then one long finger crooked, angular and enticing, beckoning.

  “Stand up,” Iseya commanded coolly.

  Summer blinked several times—and realized he’d already obeyed. It was like his body was hard-wired to follow Iseya’s every order, that crooked finger pulling his strings until he was standing on numb, trembling legs with his palms sweating and his fingers clenched and his throat working tight.

  “Why...?”

  Iseya’s chair scraped, as he pushed it back—the sound so loud in the quiet of the office, and suddenly Summer was drowning in the scent of honeysuckles and the warmth of the room and the feeling of nervous sweat licking and trickling down his neck with warm wet tongues as a sense of something anticipatory and hot shivered in the air.

  Iseya rose to his full height—so tall his shadow fell over Summer, so tall he seemed to take up all the space in the room until it was impossible not to feel him.

  He was about to get thrown out, he just knew it.

  Thrown out, told to pack his bags...