Like Breathing

by Tia Fielding

  Seth nodded, his whole being concentrating on Dev in a way nobody ever had before. It should’ve been disconcerting for someone prone to anxiety, but somehow it wasn’t. Instead, it felt like a hug, almost.

  “After our parents took us home, it became glaringly obvious that Angel was an easy kid, no matter what he’d gone through before. Me, on the other hand….” He chuckled. Then Sammy was back with their drinks and Dev took a sip of his water. “See, I had issues with aggression when I was little. It’s gone away ages ago—I somehow mellowed out as a teen—but our parents soon figured that if Angel was the angel baby, I was the little hellion. So they renamed me Devin as a joke… almost.”

  “Angel and Devil?” Seth looked incredulous.

  “Uh-huh. It was all done very lovingly, and mostly because one of our cousins had the name I’d been given before. But it fit. The whole angel-and-devil thing has become family nicknames. Terms of endearment, really. So to this day our mother calls us her Angel Baby and her Devil Child.”

  Seth smiled widely, then laughed out loud. “Oh man, that’s… that’s gonna be hard to top.”

  Dev chuckled. “Yeah? Well, you gotta try because you promised.”

  “Okay, okay,” Seth said, took a drink of his beer, and seemed to think for a while. “When I was nine, I accidentally outed my aunt to my whole extended family.”

  Dev’s eyes widened as he took in the implications. “Holy shit!”

  “Yeah. See, my aunt was in her late thirties then, and she’d been living with this ‘roommate’ of hers for like five years or something like that. And I’d spent time at their place, because it was much more fun than being home alone all summer. My mom’s an artist and my dad worked a lot, anyway. So, we were at this family gathering at my grandparents’ ranch, and those with kids were starting to gather us up for bedtime routines. Somehow, and I still don’t remember the context exactly, I managed to ask in a very bright, loud voice if my aunt would sleep in the same bed with her roommate here too, just like they did at home.”

  Dev groaned out loud and let his head thump theatrically against the table. “You didn’t….”

  “Oh yes. Everyone froze. That I remember.” Seth took another sip from his glass. “Now, let me remind you, this was almost thirty years ago. In rural Texas.”

  Dev let out another wounded sound that made Seth laugh more.

  “Oh my God,” Dev finally managed to say. “This is why I’d never have kids. Well, among other reasons, but you know. Kids can be horrible.”

  “Agreed,” Seth said, grinning.

  They chatted for a moment longer before Sammy brought them their food.

  “Now, I know a lot of people would laugh at me for going into an Italian restaurant for pizza, but….” Dev trailed off as he inhaled the scent wafting from the basil and tomatoes.

  “But it’s Martha’s.” Seth nodded solemnly, cutting into his lasagna. “It’s the same with lasagna, I think. It’s a bit of a cliché, but you know….”

  “Yes, Martha’s,” Dev said in a nearly reverent tone, which made both of them burst out in laughter. “We’re such suckers for this place, aren’t we?”

  “Looks like it, yeah. Let’s dig in.”

  They ate in silence for a while, just enjoying the food and the relative privacy the small balcony provided them.

  Eventually they started to talk again, this time about likes and dislikes, and somehow Dev felt as if he was on a date.

  “Have you ever even seen anything by Lars von Trier?” Seth scoffed as he pushed away the plate, then patted his stomach contently.

  “May I remind you my brother is an art history major, sir.” Dev sniffed delicately. Then he grimaced and admitted, “I’ve only seen Dancer in the Dark and it traumatized me enough not to really care to see his other films.”

  “See, that’s the thing, though. They’re all so different. But I would still agree that they’re an acquired taste,” Seth pondered out loud while Dev finished his pizza. “This was fun,” he said after draining his beer.

  Dev nodded. “Very. I haven’t had lunch company in a while. Angel tends to grab something on campus, and I work from home, so I do the same in the kitchen.”

  “What do you do? I somehow forgot to ask.”

  “Our dad is one of the founders of Nemo Gaming, so I lucked out in a way. I beta test for them and do some coding and so on. Nothing important, but I have a knack for figuring that stuff out and I like gaming, so….”

  “Oh, I’m not a gamer, but even I know Nemo Gaming,” Seth mused.

  “Yeah, a lot of people do. With the competitive gaming scene starting to gather attention, they’re getting a lot of publicity among nongamers too.”

  Seth glanced at his cell, which he’d put on the edge of the table and—now that Dev thought about it—hadn’t glanced until then. “I should get going. I have another lecture in an hour and I need to figure some stuff out,” he said apologetically.

  “It’s okay. I should head back too. See if my brother is alive or has succumbed to his cough.”

  “Where do you guys live?” Seth asked while standing up and pulling his coat on.

  “We’re in Country Club Village, actually. I know it’s pretty weird for two twentysomething guys, but it was ‘an investment’ of our dad’s. He wanted us to have a good house, and since he has the money….” Dev shrugged.

  Seth hummed. “They want you to be safe, your parents.”

  “Yeah. We did give him an upper limit when he started the house hunting. But yeah, we have a nice three-bedroom place with a small backyard. It’s pretty ideal. A bedroom for us both and guest room when the parental units visits. Attached two-car garage and all. Which is ridiculous because we share one tiny old car.” He grinned.

  “Sounds like a good deal, though. I’m glad you have a place like that,” Seth said, ducking his head in the way that Dev recognized meant he was feeling bashful.

  “Yeah.” Had this really been a date? Dev wasn’t sure, nor did he want to be the dweeb to ask.

  “Oh, you’re already done. I’ll run your check to Olivia and you can pay there, since you’re on your feet and all,” Sammy said from the top of the stairs, then vanished down again.

  “That’s one efficient boy,” Seth commented.

  “Yeah, Sammy is awesome.”

  They went down the stairs and through to the front desk, where Olivia smiled at them.

  “Together or separate?” she asked, gesturing at their check.

  “Together, please,” Dev and Seth said at the same time, then turned to frown at each other.

  “Well, one of you has to pay for it, boys,” she said, despite being younger than Dev and definitely more than a decade younger than Seth.

  “I’ll take this one; you’ll have the next, okay?” Dev risked.

  Seth’s face did something complicated, but then he nodded and made the surrender gesture with his hands.

  Dev paid and kissed Olivia’s cheek, then went out through the door Seth was holding open for him.

  “So, we’re doing this again?” Seth asked, nodding at the restaurant door.

  “Yeah, I’d like that. I had fun.”

  “Me too. I don’t have lunch company often either, unless I go with my TA or one of my colleagues, and I’d rather not. I get few breaks as it is, and frankly I’d rather not think of work when I do,” Seth admitted. He stood there with his hands in his jacket pockets and all but scuffed the toe of his loafers against the sidewalk. Adorable. With the perfect slate-gray eyes and stubble and just… everything.

  “Okay. What’s your number?” Dev asked, then programmed it into his cell when Seth rattled it out. Dev texted him a generic “Dev here” and waited for Seth’s pocket to ping. “There, now you have my number. If you give me half an hour warning, I should be able to go wherever at any given weekday. If I have something planned at home, I’ll text you in case you want to join me.” Then, because it suddenly struck him, he asked, “Unless you have some fraternization rul
es? You’re Angel’s mentor, after all.”

  Seth chuckled. “I should think it’s okay. I would have working lunch with him too, but I’m not about to hang out with him otherwise.”

  “Okay, good to know,” Dev said, feeling relieved. He didn’t want to let go of this… whatever it was quite yet.

  “I really need to go. Let’s stay in touch?” Seth dug out his keys from his pocket.

  “I’ll hold you to that. Where’s your car?” Dev asked, and Seth pointed the opposite direction from where he’d left the Fiat. “Okay, well, see you around!”

  They parted ways and Dev grinned widely. Holy fuck had that been awesome, date or no date.

  Chapter Two

  SETH HAD a bit of time before the lecture, so he used it to make sure he had uploaded the file he needed for one of his demonstrations onto his memory stick. The stick had a dog head and paws in the front and a tail in the back. He rolled his eyes at the gadget, like he always did. It made him smile, though, so the silliness wasn’t unwelcome in the least.

  Once he was sure everything was ready—damned perfectionism!—he went to his favorite auditorium to prep some more. Not that he needed to. Antoinette would’ve stopped by to make sure everything was up to his high standards.

  Those had started when he’d first begun teaching. He’d been so fucking young that some of his students were older than him by a year or two. He’d graduated high school at sixteen, and teaching had been his trajectory ever since. He was always the youngest to leave a school with a degree in his hand and the youngest to settle into a new job. At least here in Colorado Springs, he felt welcome and was given a lot of free rein. Then again, at thirty-six, he wasn’t a kid anymore and had tenure.

  Slowly the students trickled in, and Seth took a fortifying breath or a few, and drank half of his bottle of water to make sure his throat would work fine. He got hoarse sometimes when he had many lectures in one day, and even though he’d only had one today before this one, he’d talked a lot over lunch.

  The thought made him smile. He’d had a lot of fun. As serious as people told him he was, he could have fun, right? In any case, Angel Rice’s brother, Devin, was a delightful new acquaintance, and certainly handsome enough to be nice to look at too.

  “Hey, Professor Kent, here’s my thing. Sorry I couldn’t get it to you earlier today,” said Miranda Jones, one of his favorite students, looking apologetic as all hell.

  “Babysitter trouble?” he asked, accepting the papers.

  “Yeah, Bea’s father decided not to show again. Had to take her to my sister’s instead. So, so sorry.” She looked close to tears, and by now, after having her in three or four of his classes in the last couple of years, he knew it wasn’t because of him and the assignment.

  “Oh, Miranda.” He sighed, pulling a tissue out of the box on the desk. “You know it’s okay. You weren’t late by more than a few hours.” Well, more like five, but who was even counting? “Go to your seat and we’ll get this show on the road.” He smiled at her kindly, and she seemed to draw strength from the gesture, squaring her shoulders and marching to her seat in the front row.

  He was known to be very strict, except for with the single parents in his classes. Those people deserved a break, he’d decided early. If you had to go through raising kids on your own, then it wasn’t for Seth to judge if your assignments were a bit late. He’d only take them in until he was done scoring the last one of the batch, and still didn’t budge on his rule of some things being hand-delivered to him instead of emailed. There were rules. He was fond of rules, always had been. Probably because there hadn’t been too many in his childhood home and frankly he’d never felt fine with that. He’d been an uptight child, he supposed.

  “Okay, let’s get to work, then!” he called out to quiet the chatter and clicked his laptop to flip the first slide onto the projector screen.

  AS USUAL, Seth was one of the last people in the offices by the time he deemed his day done. He was hungry again, so he called for takeout from his favorite Chinese place, knowing it would arrive only minutes after he made it home.

  His drive consisted of trying not to zone out and listening to bad pop music on the radio. Sometimes he loathed to admit it, but he really, really liked the emo music his TA before Antoinette had introduced him to. Occasionally he listened to bands like My Chemical Romance or Fall Out Boy in his office, and he’d been busted by someone who thought it was amusing a professor known for being as strict as him would listen to such music.

  He didn’t care, really, but Antoinette liked to tell him it just made him more appealing to his “fangirls and boys.” Yeah, those were the people Seth didn’t like much. He knew what he looked like. Life thus far had pretty much told him he was far too lucky, having both a great brain and handsome looks. Hell, his mother liked to tell him that occasionally. He knew some people in his extended family thought that his homosexuality was payback for those other things. After all, there needed to be something wrong with him, right?

  Growing up in Texas had been a hoot for sure. At least his mother had gotten away from the worst of it early enough and learned that the world of art was more diverse than her tiny hometown. His dad had had a harder time with all possible minorities, but falling in love with an artist had taught him things very quickly too.

  All in all, the drive home went as it always did for Seth: overthinking the past and analyzing this or that, including the way his great aunt Hannah side-eyed him when he told the family he was gay one fateful Thanksgiving. Yeah, he’d done that in the most clichéd way possible, but hey. Still here, alive, with most of his family intact, and a great life to live. He was one of the lucky ones.

  He parked his car in the driveway of the powder-pink Victorian he’d called home for the last eight years. He adored the house, even though it was a bit too large, with four bedrooms and two and a half baths. He didn’t mind much, though. That was why he paid for a cleaning service, after all.

  And it had a nice big backyard for the dogs. The thought of the dogs made his happy moment sour. He missed the damned things, but that couldn’t be helped.

  Just as he fitted the key to the lock, a familiar puttering sound announced the delivery moped the Chinese restaurant used. He opened the door, then turned around to receive his meal and tip the delivery girl—he chose to ignore the fact that he knew her name was Macy because he ordered in so often, damn it—with a ten he had put in his pants pocket before leaving work.

  Coming home to an empty house had lost part of its ability to depress him at some point in the last few years. He didn’t get as sad these days, just soldiered on when he had the house to himself. At least it didn’t happen as often nowadays, and the stretches of loneliness only enhanced the joy he felt when it was filled with sound again.

  He turned on all the lights downstairs and took his food to the kitchen. People told him he could get a bit anal about eating takeout, but he preferred food on a plate, even pizza. Everyone who mattered got used to it pretty quickly.

  Seth went to take a quick shower, as his usual routines dictated. He liked to be clean when he ate his dinner. He would work out in the morning and have another quick shower afterward before he headed to his office, but he loathed even the idea of going to bed with the grime of the day on his skin and hair.

  He showered efficiently, conserving water, not touching himself more than necessary. He was hungry—that was the excuse he gave himself because even a leisurely jerking off wasn’t something he could do without some routine and it wasn’t time for that yet.

  In some ways it was odd that he’d had a proper, long lunch with Dev instead of stuffing something in his face and returning to his office as soon as possible. He hadn’t even felt weird about it all day. Then again, he did have a schedule in his head almost at all times. One that said he had an hour and a half for lunch on Thursdays if he wanted to use it. Maybe that had helped?

  He wasn’t sure, so he pushed the thought out of his head for the time being. In
stead, he got dressed in his most comfortable T-shirt and boxer briefs, then pulled on a pair of worn-out sweats and went back downstairs.

  Plating his dinner wasn’t as much of a science, really. Nothing needed to be exactly on a certain part of the plate, for example. Seth felt pretty sure he didn’t have actual OCD, just some control issues, which the schedule in his head helped with.

  He sat on the couch, opened his home laptop on the coffee table so it’d be ready in ten minutes or so, and clicked the TV on for company until the Skype call came through.

  As usual, the food was great, but eating alone in the silence of the house, with just the TV as a background noise, he realized he felt lonelier than usual. The lunch today had made him feel so good for a while. Pleasant company and good, fun conversation. They weren’t things Seth had ever taken for granted.

  His phone buzzed on the coffee table. It was a text. From Devin. Something funny happened in the pit of Seth’s stomach as he opened the message.

  I had fun today. I hope the feeling was mutual. Let’s do it again soon?

  Seth’s mind read the text in Dev’s voice, and he smiled at the thought.

  Definitely fun. I’ll text you early next week?

  It wasn’t that he didn’t know his schedule yet; he just didn’t want to seem too keen on meeting again. There’d been a couple of occasions when he was in high school and then college where people had either told him straight up or heavily hinted at him being a bit clingy in his friendships. He didn’t want to drive Dev away with that.

  Only moments later, Dev texted him back. Absolutely. You let me know. My schedule is probably more flexible anyway.

  Chuckling, Seth started to reply to him, but then the beep-bop sounded from his computer, and he reached to answer the Skype call.

  “Hey, gorgeous.” Leaf’s deep voice rumbled from the speakers.

  “Give me two seconds,” Seth answered and held a finger up at the screen. He nearly missed the surprised and amused look on Leaf’s face completely as he typed out I can pretty much guarantee you that. Inside joke. Will tell you next week. and hit Send. Then he looked at the laptop again and put the phone on the table beside it. “Okay, done,” he said, smiling.