Breakfall (6 page)

“Very dangerous. And I’d rather not see you get hurt.” As he lowered his voice, he met those soft brown eyes with all the seriousness he could muster, absent-mindedly stroking his thumb over Sean’s jawline. He then flinched his hand away from the soft, stubbled skin now heated by a rising blush.

“So what do you suggest?” Sean asked.

“Study other styles. Enrich your repertoire. Learn how to punch, for crissake.”

“I know how to punch.”

“No. You don’t.”

The argument would have gone on, their now quiet and calmed tones hissing across the table in disagreement lubricated by an occasional swallow of ale, if it were not for three students who walked in for a late study break.

“Sensei!”

Both Asbjorn and Sean turned toward the voice, but it was Asbjorn who responded. “Hey guys. What are you doing up this late?” Asbjorn felt Sean’s eyes on him. “Come slide right in. This is Sean Gallaway, the aikido sensei. Introduce yourselves, will you?” Asbjorn looked from his students to Sean, noting the surprise in his eyes. “I… ah… let me slip out to the bathroom for a minute.”

Asbjorn walked away, ready to dispose of some beer and hoping beyond hope his students would treat Sean with a measure of courtesy.

S
EAN
WAS
silent on the way back. So Asbjorn Lund was the new karate club president. He also seemed considerably richer in world experience than met the eye. And that one time, when Sean had watched baby Stella and Asbjorn came over, looking like a lost soul who took comfort in stolen baby kisses…. James “Tiger” Thorpe had been his sensei, then, and he had died.

Sean thought of how he’d feel if Burrows-sensei had the ill grace to kill himself in an accident, and felt his stomach flip in an uncertain effort to realign itself with the gravitational field. Asbjorn was likely devastated. He might bear it with a stiff upper lip, carrying on.

It all tied together with what Sean found out about James Thorpe. He felt his heart soften with a sudden desire to take Asbjorn’s pain away, all the while knowing there wasn’t much he could say to make it all better.

Their footsteps struck the chill concrete in an even rhythm, their way illuminated by the orange sodium lights filtering through the almost leafless sycamore trees.

“Look, I should have introduced myself properly, but it was my understanding that the relationship between our two dojos wasn’t exactly warm. I came to check you out and I liked what I saw.” Sean heard a pang of regret in Asbjorn’s voice.

They walked another half a block before Sean found his voice. “Why didn’t you say anything later?”

“It seemed like a shame to ruin a good thing. Besides, I kinda enjoyed being the unknown beginner. It’s refreshing to have to set everything you know aside and just learn, you know?”

Sean didn’t know. He never tried it. Burrows-sensei disapproved of contamination by other martial arts.

“Contaminating aikido by other arts would make it too easy to resort to violence,” he said, repeating the word he heard so many times. “If you are defending yourself, and if your timing is right and you keep the principles in mind, all you have to do is trust the technique to work.”

The response to his rehearsed words was action. Strong arms on his biceps and hips against his hip.

Asbjorn pushed him roughly against the brick wall of the building next to them.

“Do something, Sean.” Asbjorn’s voice was calm.

Sean was pinned.

He curled his wrists in and attempted to raise his arms, but with his hips immobilized, it was impossible to use his whole body. He could not simply curl a man like Asbjorn. Frustrated, he stomped on Asbjorn’s foot.

Asbjorn smiled. “Sometimes, your style will be incompatible with the style of somebody else. You can also be smaller or physically weaker.”

The stubborn set of Sean’s jaw told Asbjorn he tried to resist the impending feeling of humiliation and defeat. Sean said, “You’re saying there’s nothing I can do.”

“No. I’m saying you have to learn a few dirty tricks.”

“I can’t use my hands.”

“You can use your head, though. I’m close enough for a head-butt. If you hit my nose with your forehead, I’ll let go right quick.”

Asbjorn loosened his grip on Sean’s arms and slid his large hands onto the rough surface by Sean’s head. He kept his hips pressed forward, his face buried in Sean’s hair, and seemed disinclined to move.

“Sean.” Asbjorn’s voice was but a whisper.

“What are you doing?”

There was a pause before Asbjorn broke the silence. “I’m wondering that myself.”

S
EAN
FELT
Asbjorn’s breath in his hair and shuddered at the unexpected sensation. He lifted his head, scraping his cheek across the stubble of Asbjorn’s chin.

“We should go,” he said in a quiet, breathy voice near Asbjorn’s ear and felt the larger man lean into him some more.

Long fingers slipped through his hair with a measure of hesitation and slid down Sean’s neck as Asbjorn backed away, restoring Sean’s personal space. “Yeah. Let me walk you to your place.” Asbjorn’s voice was but a quiet rasp.

“I can walk myself.”

“Not until you’ve got a few surprises up your sleeve. Not with that nut on the loose.”

Sean glanced at Asbjorn, unnerved by his grim tone. “How likely is it, you think?” There was no need to mention the third attacker, nor his gun.

“Dunno. But you prepare for what could happen, not for what’s likely to happen.”

S
EAN
STEPPED
out of the shower, dried his face, and toweled his hair. If there was one thing he really didn’t care for, it was water in his eyes. He ran the towel with yellow sunflowers—a gift from his sister—up and down his bruised arms, his knuckles still sporting remnants of healing scabs. Going down his trunk, he could feel bruises, old and new, along his ribs. Even farther down, an occasional blue mark from a kick developed into a sickly yellow above his knees and on his shins. Shin bruises were the most painful and the slowest to fade.

He still remembered their private sparring session three days ago. For the first time, Asbjorn’s rakish grin turned into a cold, predatory stare. The startling blue eyes lost their sunny sparkle as though a sheet of polar ice came over them—impenetrable and hard.

“What’s wrong, Asbjorn?” he asked, feeling foolish with both of them standing in Asbjorn’s small living room, with the coffee table pushed against the far wall. They were on neutral ground. Neither one of them was in charge of a class outside of the gym, and any dirty fighting trick was fair game.

Asbjorn answered with a punch to Sean’s floating ribs but remained silent, his expression unchanged.

“Asbjorn?”

Another punch, but this time Sean was ready and moved in an elegant evasion, grasping Asbjorn’s wrist. A wrist lock. A simple wrist lock—yet the larger man’s wrist just would not bend.

Asbjorn reached for Sean’s throat, but Sean got hold of the right hand in midmotion with his own right, brought it up to his shoulder with a well-practiced flourish, and bowed.

“Arrgh!” Asbjorn crashed to his knees by Sean’s feet, his arm bent in an unnatural zigzag, and slapped the floor with his left hand.

Sean released the pressure on his pinched nerve, respecting the tap-out signal.

Asbjorn stood up, rubbing the pain out of his wrist. “Better. Again.”

They went over everything—grabs and kicks, punches and elbow strikes—Sean’s self-defense skills being tested and analyzed by not only Asbjorn, but also by Nell and Dud. He picked up a few good moves, but Asbjorn gave up on teaching him how to punch properly.

“It takes years to develop a good fist. You’re just ripping your hands up. Here, use the palm strike. Like this. And use your elbows. If you decide to punch later, you can start coming to class.”

Their fighting was dirty and mean, and the only moves they didn’t practice full-out were head butts and eye gouges. It wasn’t aikido, but Sean secretly found the unrefined violence of street fighting strangely liberating.

After weeks of hard training, Sean welcomed the relative peace of midterms. He was prepared, his assignments were completed, and his body had a chance to relax with both aikido and karate classes cancelled for the week. Others would cram to the last minute. Sean only reviewed, and did even that at a stately, comfortable pace. Now he slipped into his black stonewashed jeans and a green and white striped rugby shirt and loafers without socks, mocking the dropping temperatures outside. It was hot in the classrooms, and if he dressed too warm, he’d fall asleep over his work.

Last week had found him sprawled in the solitary corner nook of the library, his location concealed by stacks of reference books. The warmth of the generously heated building permeated every fiber of his body and coaxed him to loosen up. He leaned back in his chair. His muscles, sore and bruised by practice, slowly began to uncoil. He pulled out his electronics design materials to study the next circuit to solve.

“Sean. Sean. Hey, Sean.”

The smooth, metallic coil of his notebook lay under his cheek, and long fingers combed through his hair. The hushed, familiar voice reassured him there was no cause for alarm. The hand toying with his hair felt so good, so comforting.

“Wake up, Sean.”

Blunt fingernails scraped up the back of his neck and into his hairline, sparking a shiver, and he heard a soft moan, then quiet laughter. He tried to open his lids but couldn’t. He was bespelled by the talented fingertips, and his eyes were languid with comfortable fatigue.

He felt a soft, moist touch under his ear—a kiss—and there was that whisper of a moan again, except this time he realized he was the one who uttered it. His eyes flew open in alarm. Asbjorn’s blue eyes twinkled at him from underneath pale blond hair grown too long to stay up in obedient spikes. His lips were upturned in a mischievous smile.

“Asbjorn! Was that you?”

“Hard to tell, sleeping beauty. You better practice your situational awareness. Want to study at my place?”

Sean shook his head, feeling a blush dust the bridge of his nose. His jeans felt uncomfortably tight. He must have had one of those dreams…. He took a deep breath and waited for the unwelcome reaction to subside.

“Okay, your place, then.”

His color rose at the recollection of Asbjorn’s fingers in his hair. The kiss, gently deposited on his neck, was a sophomoric prank. Nothing more. Just a way to demonstrate Sean had been reckless. Next time, he’d end up duct-taped to the library chair. He had started to pay more attention to his environment since then—not that that was a good thing, because it was starting to make him feel paranoid.

Paying attention, exercising what Asbjorn had called situational awareness, made Sean feel like he was being watched. He felt under surveillance while walking from one building to another, while teaching aikido—he even felt as though anonymous eyes gazed at him through the glazed windows of his group-living home. He considered mentioning the curious phenomenon to Asbjorn but decided against it—appearing weak in front of his new, interesting friend was not in his best interest. It was just in his head, a mere figment of his overactive imagination, and therefore nothing to worry about.

His group-living home was exactly where he and Asbjorn settled the day he fell asleep at the library. The old Victorian pile on the edge of the campus used to be a fraternity but now afforded discounted housing to students who lived together. All eighteen of them shared housework, shopping, and cooking chores, and Sean liked being able to control his own food instead of being dependent on the insipid dishes offered at the school cafeteria.

“Come down to the basement!” He led Asbjorn through a storage area to a white-painted door with his name on the attached erase board. He unlocked it and clicked the light switch. The private, almost secret basement room was huge, with two windows and its own, never-used door to the outside. “Welcome to my kingdom,” Sean said, waving his arms at a cozy collection of reading armchairs around a beat-up wooden table. He watched Asbjorn take in his thrift-store bookshelves and pictures on the wall, the mattress on the floor, and the computer nook.

“Nice. Can I settle anywhere?”

“Yeah. I’ll make some tea. Want any?”

“Tea, coffee if you have it. Sweetened, with milk.”

Sean returned with a pot of tea and a French press of coffee on a tray with all the accoutrements only to find Asbjorn sprawled on his mattress, belly down, his nose in his textbook, and a set of electron microscope images on the notepad under his hand.

He raised his eyebrows but decided to live with the incursion into his personal space.

S
EAN
’
S
MATH
midterm was finished and checked over once. He waited to be called so he could hand the test in together with other students. He wondered how Asbjorn was doing on his “Physics of Solid Surfaces,” and whether a bad grade for Asbjorn would be partially due to the way he had distracted his guest.