by Ariel Tachna
Derek was skeptical, but he didn’t have anything better to do with his time. Fido stood up as soon as he did, but Derek patted the dog’s head and told him to go lie down. He curled up under Derek’s cot, eyes fixed on Derek as he pulled off his socks.
“Okay, convince me.”
Sambit stood up straight, feet together, palms against each other in front of his chest, and took a deep breath. Derek mimicked the pose awkwardly.
“Just relax and breathe for a moment,” Sambit said, his eyes closing. Derek tried to relax and breathe, but the sounds of people moving around in the hallway distracted him.
“Don’t pay attention to them,” Sambit said without opening his eyes. “Concentrate inward. All that matters is your breath.”
“How did you know I was paying attention to them?” Derek asked. “You didn’t even look at me.”
“I can hear your breathing,” Sambit said, “and it isn’t calm and even yet, which means you’re thinking about something other than that. You can close the door if it will help.”
Derek closed the door, suddenly aware of Sambit’s proximity as he returned to his spot. He told himself to stop being ridiculous. He didn’t know if Sambit was gay, and even if he was, the professor was so not Derek’s type. Except that he had a sharp wit to go with his education, a toned body to go with his conservative clothes, and patience with Derek’s foibles. It was a deadly combination. Then Sambit arched his back, lifting his hands at the same time before exhaling audibly and bending forward to touch his toes. Derek swore Sambit’s body simply folded in half at his hips.
Fuck.
He had to find out if Sambit was gay without giving away his interest.
“So what do I do now?” He needed Sambit to stand back up or he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions.
Sambit stood up and returned to the same position as before. “Start at the beginning. It’s the end of the day, not the beginning, but the Salute to the Sun is still a good way to relax and invigorate your body and mind.”
“Is that what you were doing?”
“That was the first part of it, yes,” Sambit said. “Take a deep breath, lift your hands, and lean back as far as you can without losing your balance.”
Derek did as Sambit said, feeling the stretch along his abdomen as he arched his back. He couldn’t go back nearly as far as Sambit did, but he had already realized this was one field on which he couldn’t compete with the other man.
“Now exhale as you bend forward and touch your toes.”
Derek’s mind skittered back to the image of Sambit bent double. He kept his breathing steady, trying to focus on the yoga rather than on his instructor. He bent forward, groaning at the stretch down the backs of his legs. To his dismay, he couldn’t even touch his toes without bending his knees.
“Right leg back into a lunge,” Sambit directed, moving in time with his words. Derek imitated Sambit’s stance. “Now the other leg, into a plank.”
About the time his shoulders started burning from holding the pushup position, Derek gave up watching Sambit and concentrated on breathing and not making a fool of himself. He pushed his hips up into the position Sambit called Down Dog, pulled his leg forward for another lunge, returned to the toe touch position, and stood, arching his back again before returning to the prayer position where they’d started. “Holy fuck. That hurts.”
“You are stiff,” Sambit said. “That’s why. It should feel good, energizing, not painful.”
“I obviously need more practice, then,” Derek said, slumping back onto his cot.
“Then we should practice,” Sambit insisted. “Up. Two minutes is not enough to help your state of mind or your state of body. We will do it four more times, and then we’ll decide what to do next.”
“Can’t I just go for a run?” Derek asked.
“Where?” Sambit countered. “You can’t go outside because of the radiation, and we don’t know that the rest of this building is any safer. You can do this right here without any extra space or equipment. It might not be ideal, but I assure you I can arrange as hard a workout for you as you would like.”
“I believe it,” Derek said, levering himself off the cot again. “All right. Fifteen minutes. We’ll do fifteen minutes of yoga and we’ll see how I feel then.”
“Half an hour would be better,” Sambit said. “You wouldn’t go for a fifteen-minute run.”
“I would if I’d never been a runner before and didn’t have any stamina,” Derek said. “Just remember I’ve never done this before.”
“I’ll take it easy on you,” Sambit promised, “as long as you don’t take it easy on yourself.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that it’s possible to go through the motions in yoga without investing yourself in it,” Sambit explained. “Or you can do something simple like the Salute to the Sun with great concentration and effort and get a good workout in a few minutes. Yoga is as much about your mind as it is about your body.”
“So you’ll agree to do poses that are relatively uncomplicated if I promise to concentrate on doing them right?” Derek verified.
“Exactly.”
They did four more repetitions of the Salute to the Sun Sambit had started with. By the time that was done, Derek was breathing hard, the muscles in his legs protesting the unfamiliar exercise.
“Five more minutes,” Derek reminded Sambit.
“We will concentrate on balance, then,” Sambit said. “The poses are not hard. Holding them requires great focus, and that is what will take your mind off everything that has brought negative energy into your life in the past few days.”
Derek was skeptical, but he lifted one foot in imitation of Sambit’s pose, resting it on the inside of his other knee as he lifted his hands above his head and tried to keep his balance.
“Find a place on the other wall, a vertical line works best, and look only at that,” Sambit directed. “Nothing exists but that one spot.”
Derek focused on the edge of the soda machine and found that his body suddenly felt steadier. “How the hell does that work?” he asked.
“Concentrate,” Sambit replied simply. “Hold that pose.”
Derek looked back to the soda machine and concentrated.
“Now switch legs.”
That side wasn’t nearly as easy, even with the vertical line. Derek had to put his foot down several times to keep from falling.
“Don’t worry so much,” Sambit said, his foot coming gracefully back to the ground. “Everyone has a stability side and a mobility side. You will always balance better on one side than the other, but that will improve with time and practice.”
“You say that like I’m going to do this with you again,” Derek said, sitting down on his cot again.
“You will.” Sambit’s voice was so confident Derek almost refused just to annoy him, but when he took a deep breath and took stock of his body, he realized he was more relaxed than he’d been before. Sore from stretching so much, but more relaxed.
“Maybe. We’ll see how tomorrow goes.”
Chapter 5
SAMBIT left Derek alone after their shared yoga time. As much as he would have liked to linger, Sambit could tell Derek needed a break. The thought amused him because he’d only known the other man for a few hours, but even with the yoga practice, tension rolled off Derek in waves, far more so than when he’d first arrived. Out in the hall, Sambit moved through a few more advanced poses, letting the familiar movements stretch his muscles and ease his own troubled thoughts.
Finding the body of the second shift manager had shaken him. While not as strict as many Hindus about the caste system, he had grown up with a distinct aversion to dead bodies as unclean. To Lyrica, though, the body hadn’t been unclean. It had been a friend who deserved a better end than lying facedown in the mud and being left to rot. Sambit consoled himself that the hazmat suit had protected him from everything else. It could protect him from contact with a dead body as well. That ha
d been bad enough, but the readings on the Geiger counters as they climbed around the core containment buildings were far more troubling in the long term. That level of radiation could kill them—and render large portions of the surrounding areas unusable—if they couldn’t get them under control.
And then there was Derek. Foul-mouthed, prickly Derek, who had adopted a stray dog and now defended that dog with all his considerable temper. Defensive, combative Derek who had insisted on going outside with Lyrica and Sambit even though it was so far beyond his area of expertise that he could have used that as an excuse to stay where it was safe. Out-and-proud Derek.
That was the hardest part for Sambit to understand. He had never felt the need to share his sexuality with anyone other than his lovers, not that he’d had all that many. His family had given up on arranging a marriage for him after he’d repeatedly refused to meet the girls they’d picked out, but that was a matter of principle. Whether he stayed with a lover for a few weeks or for the rest of his life, he intended to pick that person, not have his parents make the decision for him. He’d told them that in no uncertain terms. He’d simply neglected to mention the preferred gender of those lovers. He had a hard and fast rule about mixing business and pleasure, so he’d never dated anyone at work, which meant his colleagues didn’t know he was gay, but they didn’t need to. When they had gatherings away from work, they always invited him and a guest, but since he hadn’t met someone he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, he’d never brought anyone with him. One coworker had tried to set him up, but he’d put an end to that immediately as well.
“You put my yoga instructor to shame.”
Sambit looked up from a monkey pose to see Lyrica standing in the corridor. “I’ve been doing yoga since I could walk,” he explained. “My mother started every day with fifteen minutes of yoga and ended it with an hour. It’s a habit I never saw a reason to break.”
“No reason why you should,” Lyrica said. “If we end up here for very long, I may join you. I go to classes twice a week.”
“You’re welcome to join me anytime,” Sambit said. “I’m hoping Derek will join me as well.”
“Good luck on that one,” Lyrica said with a shake of her head. “I’ve been around good ol’ boys like him my whole life. They’ll do many things, but yoga isn’t one of them. Not even when they’re gay.”
“What does being gay have to do with it?” Sambit asked.
“Nothing,” Lyrica said, “but these Texas boys, they don’t see yoga as a ‘real’ sport so it’s something for the girls to do, not something any self-respecting man would be caught doing.”
Sambit’s opinion of Derek went up a little more. “Derek did a few asanas with me, although perhaps you shouldn’t mention it. I thought it might help his stress level. I still think it will if he’ll do it regularly.”
“I’m impressed,” Lyrica said. “Either you’re very persuasive or he likes you.”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Sambit said quickly, not wanting to encourage speculation about Derek’s motivations for the little bit of yoga he’d done earlier. The protectiveness surprised him after everything Derek had done to try and alienate Sambit when they first met. Sambit chalked it up to the moments of vulnerability when Derek let down his guard and talked to Fido. “We should probably try to get some sleep. I imagine Tucker will be in here in a couple of hours demanding we fix whatever problems the other team finds since they don’t have Derek’s robot.”
“I only hope he doesn’t decide to be a hero and make matters worse,” Lyrica said. “Maybe I should have a word with Thomas. He’s the next senior employee present. I don’t know if he’d stand up to Tucker on his own, but maybe he will on my authority if I tell him not to attempt any repairs he can’t do through the servers.”
“I’m going to set up my cot. Shall I set one up for you as well?”
“Sure,” Lyrica said, “preferably where I have a good view of Derek’s boys. They’ll make for pleasant dreams in the middle of this nightmare.”
“As long as you dream about his pinups and not about him,” Sambit said with a laugh. “No reason to set yourself up for heartbreak.”
“And what will you be dreaming about?” Lyrica asked.
“I don’t dream.” Sambit wasn’t about to go down that line of questioning.
“Everyone dreams.”
Sambit shrugged. “Then I don’t remember them. I’ll get your cot ready.” He walked back in the break room before she could say anything else.
“I thought I’d set cots for Lyrica and me up over here,” he said to Derek. “That way we’re a little bit out of the way if the others need to come in during their shift, and vice versa when it’s our shift.”
“Knock yourself out,” Derek said. “Anything that keeps that prick Jeremiah as far away from me as possible.”
“He never would have known if you were a little more discreet,” Sambit said. “You wouldn’t have to deal with his attitude if he didn’t know.”
“So he has the right to rub his piety in my face and I’m supposed to just live with it?” Derek snapped. “Fuck that. At least this way he hates me for a reason and knows why I hate him.”
“His hatred is his own problem,” Sambit said. “You don’t have to fan it.”
“So you’d choose calm over honesty?” Derek demanded.
“It’s always worked for me.”
“Yeah, well, it didn’t work for me. I tried leaving people alone and minding my own business. They came at me until I snapped. I guess that’s the difference between being gay and just being different.”
“You’re making an awfully big assumption there,” Sambit said, bracing for the explosion to come. Derek wouldn’t care that he was gay, but Derek would undoubtedly have a few things to say about his decision not to flaunt that fact.
It took a minute for that to sink in past Derek’s temper, but Sambit could tell the moment it did because Derek’s expression hardened. “If you’re yanking my chain, stop it right the fuck now. If you’re telling me you’re gay too, get the hell out of my sight.”
“Why?” Sambit demanded, not sure why he wasn’t willing to simply give Derek what he wanted. “Why can’t I choose to be discreet rather than combative about something that’s no one’s business but mine and my lover’s?”
“Because it’s a cowardly betrayal of those of us who are out there fighting for our rights,” Derek spat. “You reap the benefits without taking any of the risks.”
“I never asked anyone to take any risks for me,” Sambit said. “I didn’t ask for more rights or different treatment or anything other than what I have as a holder of a green card. If I eventually become a citizen, perhaps I will feel differently, but for now, I am more than content as I am.”
“You don’t want to get married someday?” Derek asked. “Or have the right to let your partner make decisions for you if you’re incapacitated? Or be able to provide health insurance for your partner? Or all the other rights straight couples get the moment they decide to spend their lives together?”
“I have no partner, as you put it,” Sambit said, “and even if I did, my family would never allow him to make decisions for me. They might consult my wife if I had one, but the decisions would not be hers alone. Families don’t work that way in India.”
“You don’t live in India.”
“Not at the moment,” Sambit agreed, “but I don’t know what the future holds. India has many nuclear power plants. I may tire of teaching and decide to return there to work. If I do, this entire conversation will be moot. Even if you get your wish and Texas allows gay marriage, it would not be recognized in India. My partner would have even fewer rights there than he would have here.”
“And you’re just willing to accept that,” Derek said. “I don’t get people like you. How can you just bend over and let the system fuck you?”
Sambit sighed. “Must you curse constantly? It doesn’t make your point any more forcefully. Indeed, it u
ndermines your argument, because all I hear is the vulgarity rather than any logic that might be embedded in what you’re saying.”
“That’s your problem, not mine.”
“It’s not my problem at all,” Sambit retorted. “I can simply choose to ignore you. If you wish to persuade me, however, you must retain my attention and convince me of your point of view. You have not done that if you lose my attention because of your choice of language.”
“So why don’t you just walk away?”
Why don’t I? Sambit had no answer to the question, yet he couldn’t make himself turn around and walk out, and not just because he had nowhere else to go.
“Because you would take that as a victory as well,” Sambit said finally. “You would congratulate yourself on having driven me off, and I refuse to let you win that way.”
“Do you really want to turn this into a pissing match?”
“No.” Sambit already knew he’d lose that battle. “I prefer to turn this into a working relationship that keeps the reactor from melting down and doesn’t turn the control room into a war zone. However, I need a little help to make that happen. I’m happy to meet you halfway, but I can’t do it alone.”
“Maybe we both need a little more of that yoga.”
Sambit took that as the olive branch it was, nodding and bending to pet Fido. “You could have picked a less generic name.”
“I could have left him in the house where I found him.”
“No, you couldn’t have.” Sambit didn’t know a lot of things about Derek Marshall, but he knew that much. No matter what else, Derek wouldn’t leave someone in danger if he could help. “You don’t have that much cruelty in you. You might leave me, but you wouldn’t leave a dog.”
“I wouldn’t leave you.” The scowl on Derek’s face amused Sambit. The other man obviously hadn’t intended to say that out loud.
“Tucker, perhaps?”
“Tucker for sure, and Jeremiah,” Derek said, crossing his arms defensively. “You annoy me, but you don’t piss me off.”