Breakfall (24 page)

Being armed and dangerous didn’t make Sean feel any safer. On the contrary, it drove home the gravity of his situation. He didn’t sleep much that night, waking at every knock in the pipes, rousing at every voice of a late-night partier outside. His alarm system woke him twice due to passersby too close to his windows, and he stalked around his room, fully dressed, debating whether to report the incident or write it off as Thursday-night party traffic. Morning found him exhausted and bleary-eyed, and he wanted a shower and a coffee before his big day in court.

Coffee.

Asbjorn drank coffee—Sean drank tea.

Asbjorn.

He wondered if Asbjorn had found his poem. He wondered if it was obvious enough that it was from him. Maybe not. Asbjorn didn’t seem like the literary type. Maybe he better try again and make his declaration more official. Sean made his way to the kitchen with a pad of paper and a pencil, hoping to beg some coffee from his housemates while trying his hand at another attempt at communication.

“I’
LL
BE
seeing her later today,” Asbjorn reassured Mark while pacing up and down his living room, still dripping wet, with only a towel around his waist and a phone glued to his ear. Three telephone calls in less than twenty-four hours came close to a record for him. Rachel was almost done with the digital recording device. She’d sounded pleased with herself over it last night and insisted on handing it over to Asbjorn in person, extracting a promise of a cup of coffee from him in the process.

He finally hung up and went to get dried and dressed. Classic jeans, a long-sleeve rugby shirt, a leather bomber jacket, and his black Asics. A bit of gel in his hair, just to keep it out of his eyes. Since he decided to grow it out a bit—figuring he could keep Tiger’s message without wearing a buzz cut forever—he might as well make it look devastatingly sexy.

His time in the library was well spent. He made progress on his coursework, and only a few questions were marked with Post-it notes for further exploration. A wild growl emanated from his stomach. He checked the time, gathered his books, and set out to meet Rachel.

T
HE
D
ANCING
Goat Café catered to students with barista-crafted coffee drinks and an assortment of sandwiches and sweets. He picked up a smoked turkey roll-up with chips and a cup of latte with a shot of caramel syrup, then settled down to his well-deserved lunch. But he might as well have been eating sawdust, considering how his mind was dwelling on Sean. Sean and his sunshiny hair, his warm caramel eyes, his soft peach skin just waiting to be ravished by Asbjorn’s lips…. Hell, he even got caramel syrup in his coffee!

“Hey, anybody home?” Rachel scored a punch on Asbjorn’s shoulder, almost making him spill his drink. “Asbjorn-sensei! How about that situational awareness you’re always talking about?”

He looked in her pale green eyes, surrounded by wisps of fine hair dyed black. “Yeah. I got distracted by thinking of something.”

“Or someone.” She grinned.

He ignored it.

“What do you want in your coffee? My treat.”

“An Americano with a shot of mint syrup, please.”

Asbjorn returned with it and sat down. “So what do you have for me?”

“Here.” She handed him a plain white envelope. “It’s essentially an earphone jack connected to a mike, connected to a flash drive. More or less. They’ll be able to pull the data off the flash drive. I tried it with every phone in the dorm, and it works on all of them. The files are saved with a date and time signature. Oh, and make sure he doesn’t yank on the wires much. I hate soldering. It took me several tries.”

Asbjorn peeked inside the envelope, and there it was: a wire with a jack and a thick flash-drive covered in copious amounts of black electrical tape. “What’s with all that tape?”

“I… uh… I had to hold it together somehow.”

“How about heat-shrink tubing?” He grinned as her eyes lit up.

“Okay, then, do you want me to redo it?”

“Nah—this is urgent. We need this yesterday. You have no idea how helpful this is gonna be.”

“Actually, I do.”

He looked at her quizzically. The rumors of the incident made their way through the campus grapevine, but he thought Sean’s identity was being kept out of it.

“People talk…. You know how it is. Besides, Nell-sensei told me to hurry up with it.”

“Did she?” He wasn’t aware of Nell’s involvement.

“Yeah, and she told me to ask you for a favor in return.”

“Oh, did she now?” Asbjorn sat up, alert at her mischievous grin.

“Yeah. I want you to take me to the Warehouse.”

S
EAN
WASN
’
T
picking up his phone nor answering his texts. Concerned, Asbjorn walked over to the Pile. Nobody had seen him. He entered the basement area to knock on the door. There was no reply from within, and the silence of Sean’s intruder system informed him of the man’s absence. He frowned. With the perp on the loose and stalking, anything could have happened.

He picked up the black pen and wrote on the erase message board: “Call me. Asbjorn.”

The kitchen above was empty. The study hall next door, empty. The computer lab across campus, empty. Physics lab upstairs, empty. Electronics lab was full of students finishing their projects, but none of them had seen Sean.

Asbjorn suppressed his growing sense of alarm.

The Café. Empty. The cafeteria was closed in preparation for dinner.

Brisk, cold wind held a note of winter in the air and Asbjorn shuddered despite his warm leather jacket.

Library? Maybe the library—after all, that’s where Asbjorn himself had studied earlier today.

In retrospect, his systematic search pattern had proved to be a waste of time, since all he had to do was check that little nook behind the stacks on the third floor. The study desk was fully occupied, materials spread all over, and Sean’s sprawled form called to him like a beacon at sea.

He tiptoed closer, relief washing over him in waves that made his knees weak. He drew nearer, eager for a glimpse. The honey-colored hair spilled into Sean’s eyes, the skin of his lids tight as he breathed in and out easily, his lips parted and drooling on the notes he had written in his careful, angular handwriting.

Sean’s lips looked soft and inviting, yet… the handwriting.

His brows drawn together in sudden curiosity, Asbjorn unzipped his leather jacket and reached for a piece of paper securely folded in an inside pocket, close to his heart.

There it was: the anagram poem somebody wrote—the poem that spelled “I love you”—seemed to have been written by Sean’s hand.

But was it?

Asbjorn left with a lightness in his heart, returning only minutes later with a large cup of latte with a shot of caramel. He placed it on the floor out of reach, knelt next to Sean’s chair, and stroked Sean’s neck carefully.

S
EAN
BOLTED
upright, eyes wide, a barely suppressed
kiai
almost escaping his lips. He looked around, then down.

Sean had been answering questions and writing them down, his pen scraping gently over the sheet of paper, when he felt somebody touch the back of his neck. It was a soft caress, a kind and caring caress, and he would have enjoyed it if it hadn’t been quite so unexpected.

Then he woke up.

He was in the library, alert, a sudden influx of adrenaline coursing in his veins. He wiped the corner of his mouth with his sleeve.

Below him, on one knee, was Asbjorn, a slight smile full of mischief on his lips. Their eyes met. Sean thought he was going to drown in that inviting blue that seemed to change with every mood.

“Here, I brought you some coffee. You looked like you needed it.” Asbjorn pressed the warm cup into Sean’s hands.

“You came.”

“Yeah. Look. I understand if you don’t wanna go out with me, and I’ll learn to live with that, but I just wanted to tell you that I’ll help you with whatever you need, catching this guy.”

Coffee momentarily forgotten, Sean frowned. “Why do you think I don’t wanna go out with you?”

“I saw you on a date with that aikido student of yours.” Sean saw Asbjorn’s jaw tighten at the memory.

“Sheila? She has a boyfriend at BU. A fashion-design major. She… she’s really nice. A good friend. Nothing romantic, though.”

“Oh.” Tension drained from Asbjorn’s face just enough to allow for a hesitant smile. “Drink your coffee.”

“It’s latte. Asbjorn, I don’t do milk really well….”

“I kinda remembered, so I got you soy. I hope it’s okay.”

“It’s really good!” He put the cup down. Leaning forward to the still-kneeling Asbjorn, he let his hands slide up the leather on his shoulders. “Okay if I kiss you?”

Asbjorn didn’t say yes or no as he pulled Sean into his embrace and buried his face in Sean’s hoodie. “Sean.”

“Yeah?”

“We should go somewhere and talk.”

Sean relaxed as Asbjorn lifted his head, hovering close to Sean’s lips. He felt Asbjorn’s eyes settle on his mouth, and as though drawn by a magnet, he leaned in. Their lips met, and Asbjorn closed his eyes. Sean relished the way he caressed his lower lip, inviting him to dance. Sean grinned into the kiss as Asbjorn’s whole body jolted at the delicious sensation. Sean buried his fingers in Asbjorn’s hair, gripping the short strands and not letting go until they ran out of air. They broke apart, gasping.

“I propose we get some Thai takeout and catch up with one another. Talking would be good. My place, okay?”

“Okay.” Sean exhaled his answer, not moving out of Asbjorn’s embrace for a long time.

Dinner preceded the conversation they both knew needed to take place but neither was eager to initiate. Green curry and pad thai paired well with the bottle of Gewurztraminer reserved for the purpose, the slightly fruity white wine toning down the spicy bite of dragon chili peppers. Finally, after a long and luxurious interlude of delicious food and relative silence, they set their forks aside simultaneously, and got up and cleared the table.

Asbjorn put a white envelope in front of Sean. “Mark gave me an update on your situation. Rachel finished making your recorder. Would you like to test it?”

When the device was plugged into the earphone jack of Sean’s iPhone, Asbjorn called him from the bedroom.

“Hey, Sunshine.”

The gravelly, deep voice made Sean smile. “Hey, Moonshine,” he replied.

“Are you calling me dangerous and intoxicating?”

“Don’t forget habit-forming.” Never mind the stupid phone. He wanted Asbjorn and he wanted him now. He terminated the call. “Okay! Let’s see if it worked.”

They plugged the device into Asbjorn’s laptop and easily located the audio file. Its file name contained the date-and-time stamp: 1130132246. Sean peered at it.

“November thirtieth, oh-thirteen… twenty-two, forty-six?” He scratched his head.

“Quarter to eleven at night, military time,” Asbjorn supplied. They played the recording back.

“That’s so mushy,” Sean said, vaguely embarrassed. “Let’s erase it.”

Asbjorn clicked on the delete icon. “‘Editing privileges denied’? What, we can’t erase stuff off of this thing?”

Sean embraced him from behind, feeling Asbjorn’s frustration melt, and whispered in his ear. “Good thing I didn’t say exactly what I wanted to do to you tonight!”

Asbjorn felt a shiver of anticipation. “Talk first, fun later.”

It took them half an hour of settling down before they were ready to broach the subject.

“I can’t have you pushing me away, Sean. It’s killin’ me when you do that. So… either you allow me to be involved and share information, or there is no relationship. We split.”

Sean’s blood drained from his face. “You… you want that? To split?”

“No.” There was no uncertainty in Asbjorn’s tone. “I want to be with you. When you push me away, it hurts. Then I go out and do stupid things. I can’t live like that, Sean. Either I’m in or I’m out.” Asbjorn looked away as though he was afraid to hear Sean’s answer.

Long moments later, Sean broke the silence.

“I want you with me. But I don’t want to be hovered over. Even when I want to be… well, you know, when I want your company and support. I just can’t feel diminished… patronized… by somebody, anybody, acting like I’m an incompetent, weak female.”

Asbjorn grinned. “Nell gave me an earful over that. She thinks both of us are stuck-up, male chauvinist pigs. She says a woman wouldn’t be happy being overprotected either. She’d never put up with it.”

“You talked to her about it?” Sean flushed.

“I talk to her about things that are important to me.” Asbjorn leveled a serious look at Sean. “I need you to tell me how I can help.”

They sat facing each other, their legs tangled between them on the sofa. Sean sat in silence, thinking it all through, greedily soaking up the warmth of Asbjorn’s leg against his, the pressure of Asbjorn’s foot pleasant on his thigh.

“I need to be in charge of what’s going on. I can’t have people telling me what I may or may not do. But in order to be able
not
to take marching orders, it would help not to be alone.”

“I will support you in any way you ask.” Asbjorn hesitated, as though he weighed his words with care. “But I need you to keep me in the loop. I need you to tell me everything that’s going on. And I’ll tell you everything as well. We can function as a team.”

“A team where I’m in charge of the decisions.”

“Yeah, but a team where, if you make a decision to do something wild or crazy, you’ll let me know so I can cover your back.”

“Or so you can talk me out of it.” Sean cast a suspicious eye at Asbjorn.

“Yeah.” Asbjorn grinned. “But I’ll be up-front about it.”

“Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Where do we live?” Sean asked.

“You’re in charge of your manhunt. You tell me.” Asbjorn closed his eyes.

“How about we play it by ear. Your place tonight?”

“Fine.” Asbjorn toyed with the button of his shirt for a while, thinking. “Sean. This puts most of our everyday life in your hands, you know. I need to be in charge of something too.”