Fic: Where Two Lines Intersect
Title: Where Two Lines Intersect
Author: wanderhomeagain
Artist: anoncomment7
Fandom: Toy Story
Characters/Pairings: Sid/Andy
Rating/Category: R/Slash
Genre: (ie, romance, action, crossover, au, etc) more pining and fluff than is probably healthy
Word Count: 11.3k
Warnings (ie, major character death, non-con/rape, extreme violence) discussion of previous child abuse, homophobia, and violence
Summary: Sid Phillips never could have imagined when he'd seen A. Davis on his class schedule that the professor in question for his remedial college algebra class would have been the same Andy Davis that had fascinated Sid in some form or another for close to twenty years.
Link to art master post: At anoncomment7's journal here. Please go check out this adorable artwork and leave all the comments!
Author's Notes: I'd like to thank rose_starrand this_is_kelly for their encouragement and help with this story. I'd also like to thank anoncomment7for her artwork, and to the Small Fandom Big Bang mods for their support. Also to snooter, for writing the first story that I read that made me think about what could happen between Sid and Andy on the outside of the 'verse that Disney created.
Sixteen weeks.
An entire semester. Sid Phillips never could have imagined when he'd seen A. Davis on his class schedule that the professor in question for his remedial college algebra class would have been the same Andy Davis that had fascinated Sid in some form or another for close to twenty years.
Seventeen weeks ago he'd sat down in his adviser's office for the first time, feeling annoyed and a little overwhelmed to listen to the guy suggest that, based on his placement scores, he should really consider taking the remedial math course "to brush up."
When Sid didn't respond, his adviser took off his glasses and threw them onto his desk. "You scored well enough on your placement test to go into a regular course, particularly for someone who hasn't been a student for a long time, but-"
Sid stared down at the coffee ring in the middle of one of the many papers on the desk. The brown stain had made the ink blur on what looked to be someone's essay, and Sid felt a sudden, irrational anger on behalf of that student.
"- but you think it's some sort of anomaly, that a garbage man with a GED could manage to score well."
"We have found that most of our non-traditional students benefit from a refresher course when it comes to math." His adviser tried to keep his tone neutral, but Sid could hear the boredom in his voice, as though he argued with students like Sid every day. "It won't hurt you."
"It hurts my wallet," Sid pointed out. "This class is only a pass/fail, according to the course catalog. It's a waste of my time."
His adviser narrowed his eyes at him. "It's an hour course. It will be more expensive in the long run if you fail your math requirements." He paused. "And regardless, you have to have my signature to register for any classes. Unless you can come up with a more persuasive argument for why I should recommend you for a higher level math, I'm afraid you're going to have to take my advice."
"Fine." Sid scrubbed a hand over his face. The sleeve of his jumpsuit slid down towards his elbow, revealing the ink that ran around his wrist. He caught his adviser eying it, but the man looked away just as suddenly, like the tattoo was something he shouldn't have seen, and Sid made a mental note to try and find another adviser before the next semester. Supposedly there were only two for non-traditional students, but Sid figured there had to be a way through that.
The dick didn't bother keeping hours that were conducive to those taking night classes, and Sid had only managed to catch up with him because he got off work at two and was able to race towards campus. He hadn't even bothered to get a shower before coming to this meeting, so he was sure he smelled like other people's trash. He'd definitely have been pissed if he'd had to take off work to find this asshole.
"There's a class on Thursday evenings at five," his adviser said. "That way you'll already be here for your English class at six-thirty."
"Fine." Sid pushed at his sleeves so the tattoos around both wrists showed. "I'll play it your way, but I'll be putting in a request for a different adviser as soon as the semester's over."
It was an empty threat and Sid and the asshole both knew it. The man nodded and filled out Sid's registration form, then handed it to Sid. "Take this to the registrar and she'll get you set up. And make sure to stop by the business office."
"I'm sure now that I'm here they have a tracking device on me," Sid said. "I won't be able to go anywhere until they get their money."
Sid's adviser had not smiled.
Sid had left campus that day imagining that on other, nicer, better funded campuses all of that paperwork was done on the computer and he wouldn't ever have to talk to another person to go to school.
He'd arrived on campus with a calculator that had cost more than the monthly electricity bill for his apartment and a backpack full of books for the four hours worth of classes that night. He'd walked into the math class and found a seat in the third row; if he'd sat any further forward he'd have felt like he looked too eager, and he knew if he sat any further back he wouldn't be able to see the problems on the board. It made him feel like an old man to admit it, even to himself, but then again, just being back in a building so obviously built by the state gave him pause. Its whitewashed cement block walls and flickering fluorescent lights gave him the same claustrophobic feeling that he used to get back when he was in high school.
The class filled up around Sid, and realized that most of the students were either his age or older, which made him some of his anxiety ease, though he did notice more than one scowling teenager joining their number. Sid imagined that if he'd gone to college at eighteen he'd have been the exact same way.
Three minutes before the class was supposed to start a man in a button down shirt and pleated khakis walked in and placed his briefcase and a green coffee mug on the desk at the front of the room. He had wire-rimmed glasses that he pushed back up his nose as he glanced out at the class, and Sid was surprised to see that the professor was in his twenties, not in his late fifties like Sid's adviser.
The man took his glasses off and blew out a warm breath on the lenses, but before he dropped his head to clean them off with the handkerchief he pulled out of the pocket of his khakis, Sid felt a spark of recognition in his gut. The sandy hair, the long nose, and the bearded jaw all seemed familiar, but Sid didn't think he could possibly know the man. He wasn't generally on friendly terms with academics. Unless his professor's house was somewhere along his route and Sid had seen him pulling his trash can to the street in his boxers in the predawn hours, he doubted he knew him.
Until he opened his mouth.
"I am Dr. Andrew Davis," he said, and something clenched in Sid's belly as Dr. Davis started counting out copies of the syllabus and handing it to the students in the front row to take and pass back. The guy in front of Sid took the paper from the bottom of the stack and handed it to Sid while Sid tried not to gape. "This is my first semester here at Central Ohio Community College, though I grew up outside of Clarksburg. Chances are good that if you went to school in Fayette County you knew my mother, who's taught middle school there for thirty years."
Sid's breath caught in his throat as Dr. Andrew Davis- the Andy from his childhood who used to cry when Sid would threaten to take his cowboy doll- perched on the edge of the desk and gave a half-smile to the class. "I went to college to learn about math, but my mom taught me everything I would need to know about teaching. If you didn't like her when you were thirteen you're probably not going to like me now."
That elicited chuckles from the students in the room who obviously didn't know Mrs. Davis, but Sid remembered her all too well; first, as the mom of the neighbor boy who always had new toys and nice clothes and refused to allow her son to play with the other kids on the street, and later as the eighth grade math and English teacher who'd refused to let him fail, but who had also called social services on his father when Sid had shown up to school for two weeks in a row in the middle of January without a coat.
Social services had come out to his house and learned that Sid's dad had been for that same length of time, having taken Sid's only coat- an old army surplus camouflage jacket that Sid had bought with the money he'd made mowing lawns and raking leaves that autumn. Sid had been fifteen at the time, young enough and full of enough bluster to think that he could manage on his own, without his father and certainly without his mother and sister, who had lit out years before.
He had learned three years later, when he was emancipated from the foster system and really on his own, what a stupid idea that really had been.
If Andy recognized Sid in that first night of class, he didn't show it, just answered students' questions about the syllabus and began to remind them how to solve for x. And Sid found that he was in over his head, both in the subject matter and with the fact that his twenty year long crush had suddenly come crashing back into his life.
For ten weeks Sid sat and listened to Andy- Dr. Davis- expound on the principles of algebra and tried to focus on what he was being taught. He wasn't as behind as he had initially thought; the concept of solving for x was not new, he felt like he did that every month when there was inevitably a check that he'd forgotten to write down. Cross multiplying came back to him as well, as did positive and negative integers. The questions were easy enough, but he found that his adviser just might have been right in forcing him to take this class. He'd done well enough figuring out what x was in a multiple choice test where x had to be one of the four given answers, but Andy's tests were not multiple choice. Students were expected to show their work, and Sid really did feel like he was back in Andy's mom's eighth grade classroom, at least in that respect.
Andy didn't make it easy on any of his students, but Sid wondered how many of them were harboring the same crush on teacher that he had. Andy was a good teacher, making sure that Sid and his classmates were clear on the material before moving on, but at the same time he wouldn't let one student slow them down. He emphasized his office hours several times, though Sid always did well enough on his tests to never need to stop by.
He had a fleeting thought, once, to blow an exam just so he'd have an excuse to see Andy in private, but he chased that away as quickly as it came. He knew he wasn't exactly a gay stereotype, but he had seen Mean Girls just like the rest of the planet, and if Lindsey Lohan had done it it was definitely a bad idea.
Sid's Thursdays were long, with an hour of math followed by three hours of English; the history class he was taking on Monday nights and working ten hour days made for long weeks. A lot of the reading he did for his English class was by checking out what texts he could on audio and playing those in the cab of the garbage truck when he did his route. He was particularly proud of this plan, especially because he was certain he'd have fallen asleep over a copy of Go Down, Moses more than once. If his partner in the truck, Tim, had a problem with it, he didn't say- probably just turned up the volume of his iPod the way Sid had always done when he was younger and the drivers he'd ridden with favored conservative talk radio.
It was hard, doing school and working at the same time, but Sid found he enjoyed it. He'd always like to keep busy, and most of the people in his classes were other non-traditional students, with whom he felt a level of commitment not displayed by the kids just out of high school. One of the women nagged Sid until he came to her study group on Saturday mornings at a local diner, and Sid was surprised by the sense of community by people there. He found himself debating Faulkner and pinched himself on the thigh under the table covered with note cards and highlighters and plates of pancakes, unsure whether or not this was his life.
Thirteen weeks into the semester, Sid realized that Andy knew who he was.
It started when he missed week twelve of his English and math courses, thanks to a labor dispute and possible strike. Sid had been serving as a representative for the truck drivers for two years, and was up for nearly thirty-six hours straight, stuck in a small conference room trying to hammer out a deal with management. When he stepped out into the sunshine, blinking at the glare at four o'clock on Thursday afternoon, the thought of going to class crossed his mind but he quickly dismissed it.
He needed a shower, a fuck, and a nap, and since he was between boyfriends and lacked the desire- and currently, the hygiene- to go out and pick someone up, he decided he'd have to settle for two of the three.
Not to mention his poor beagle, Baxter, had probably torn up his entire apartment after so long. He'd called the building manager to ask him to take her out a couple of times and to put some food in her bowl, but Sid still wasn't sure what state his apartment was going to be in. He normally didn't crate her during the day because she barked too much if she wasn't allowed to explore their little home, and their agreement was that she behaved herself.
He had a feeling he'd reneged on his end of the bargain.
When he unlocked the door she ignored him, even though he got the treats out and tried to tempt her to come and play with him. She was standing at the front door when he got through with his shower and even though it was November and water still clung to his skin, he didn't have the heart to make her wait. He threw on a pair of sweatpants and a coat and took down her leash, and tried not to yawn or shiver while she was particularly choosey in which patch of frosted grass behind their building she was going to defile.
He unclipped her leash from her collar when she finally decided she was ready to go in, long after Sid thought his fingers were going to fall off, and she trotted inside to sit at the foot of the couch, which was her default position in the evenings. She whined when Sid headed down the hall to his bedroom.
He had flopped across his bed and was just drifting to sleep when he felt her cold nose nudge against his hand where it was hanging over the mattress. He cracked open one eye to see her pouting at him. He groaned and inched over to the side, then slipped a hand under her stomach and tugged her onto the bed with him.
"I need to find someone to keep us company, huh?" he asked Baxter, scooting over so she could take three turns before settling down beside him. She woofed out a breath into his ear. "Someone to check on you when I can't?"
Baxter gave him a sleepy growl and Sid laughed and rubbed one of her ears. "You're right. I don't have time for the two of us now, do I? But I should probably give someone the key to this place, just in case we find ourselves in this situation again."
Baxter snored.
"Still would like to get fucked every once in a while, though," Sid mumbled as he, too, drifted off to sleep.
Only when he arrived at the diner on Saturday morning, ready for French toast and bacon and for someone to catch him up on what he had missed did he realized that even if he was missing the real thing, he was figuratively fucked.
"You didn't miss anything in English," Diane, the woman who had started the study group, told him as they unpacked their books and ordered coffee. "We started out discussing 'The Cask of Amontillado' and you know how Dr. Brooks lets us wander off course. So the conversation devolved into someone wondering where the Poe Toaster has been these last couple of years and whether the man had died, which led to the eighteen year‐olds in the room trying to look innocent while that blowhard, Jim,n talked about what alcohol was appropriate to make a toast with, and whether or not cognac was. Started talking about absinthe. Absinthe. I hate that guy."
"I don't know," Sid said and nodded a thanks to the waitress who'd set his coffee on the table and asked him if he wanted his usual. "He's got a great ass."
Diane rolled her eyes and reached for the little plastic tublets of half and half. "He is an ass, you dork."
"You could do worse." Underneath the table, he felt Diane lightly kick at his shins.
"We both could do better."
Diane was a single mom of three who had taken a shine to Sid the first night of class when Sid had been able to shut Jim down in conversation, and had immediately invited him to the study group that she was planning. She also had a strong desire to set him up with everyone she knew, and even after he had told her that he was gay her enthusiasm hadn't dimmed.
"It will be harder to find someone, sure, just because I'm pretty sure most of the gay men who grew up around here didn't actually stay around here, but I'm sure we can find someone for you," she'd said.
Sid had just laughed and told her that she should start a matchmaking service when she finished her degree. The look on her face after he said it had left him frightened that she thought he was serious.
"So you didn't miss anything in English except Jim monopolizing the conversation yet again," Annie said as she joined them. "But Dr. Davis lost us all when he moved onto quadratic equations."
Annie was one of the only people under the age of twenty-four in Sid's classes that he actually liked. Upon talking to her at study group, he'd learned that she, too, was a product of the foster system, a smart, tough girl, who thanks to her mother's continual cycle of meth/arrest/rehab/contrition/court meant that Annie had spent years in and out of various homes, never once finding a permanent place to stay. She'd become a waitress at the Hooters the next town over when she was seventeen, and, she'd told Sid after four years of that figured she'd do what she was telling her customers.
"It makes them feel less guilty about ogling the goods if they have a story behind it," she told Sid with a laugh. "I learned real quick that most guys will tip better if they think they're getting me out of a bad situation- especially the older guys in business suits who probably have daughters my age. So I tell them I'm working my way through school, and finally I thought it would be better if I wasn't lying."
Annie unbuttoned her coat and unwound her scarf as she sat down, making her curly red hair frizz. She eyed their cups of coffee with no small amount of jealousy until their waitress set one down in front of her. She wrapped both hands around the mug and brought it up to mouth. She took a sniff, breathing in the hot, bitter smell before taking a sip, and Sid had the fleeting thought that she looked like she'd stepped right out of a Folgers commercial.
"I'll get you caught up as best I can," she said after she'd let the caffeine settle in for a minute, "but you're probably better off trying to make an appointment with Dr. Davis."
"Yeah, that'll be a hardship for him," Diane said with a snort. Annie glanced at her and giggled.
"What's that supposed to mean?" A forkful of French toast was halfway to Sid's mouth, but his hand hovered there, syrup dripping onto his plate. Annie and Diane laughed again.
"Oh, honey, I know this Central Ohio Community College and not Harvard or Yale-"
"-but we're not exactly stupid," Annie broke in.
"It's pretty obvious that you're, oh, how shall I put this, hot for teacher."
Sid's fork with the piece of French toast still speared on the tines clattered against his plate. "Where did you get that idea?"
Diane and Annie glanced at each other yet again, then Diane reached out and took his hand. When she started out her next sentence with 'oh, honey' once more he knew he was screwed.
"I know that you probably think that no one notices, but like I said, you're pretty obvious."
"You don't take your eyes off him during class," Annie said.
"He's the teacher!"
"You laugh at all his really bad math jokes," Diane pointed out.
"Even though I don't think you understand them."
"Look," Diane said, and squeezed his hand one more time before letting it go. "It's not like we don't understand. He is adorable."
"And definitely gay," Annie said. "Did you know he's the faculty sponsor for the LGBTQ society? And I think he was totally checking out your ass when you left class the other day."
"I'm not surprised," Sid muttered, and both Annie and Diane let out shrieks so loud the other diners turned to stare at them.
"You're not surprised he was checking out your ass?" Diane hissed, after waving the other restaurant-goers back to their breakfasts. "You do realize how that sounds, right?"
Annie snorted coffee up her nose, then thunked her head down into her hands on the table, laughing and moaning. "It burns, it burns!"
Sid ignored her. "I'm not surprised that- no, wait. I'm not- I would be totally surprised if he was checking out my ass, all right? But I knew he was gay, and I'm not surprised that he's the sponsor for whatever sort of LGBTQ society they've managed to string together on this campus. He was the Gay/Straight Alliance president back when we were in high school."
"Oh," said Diane, clutching at her heart. "Thank God. I didn't think you were the kind of guy who just assumed everyone was looking at his ass. I thought I'd have to rethink my opinion of you entirely, and I kind of like you, Sid Phillips."
"Why wouldn't everyone be checking out my ass though?" Sid barely managed to keep a straight face. "I mean, it looks good, right?"
Annie shrieked again and started throwing packets of Sweet'n'Low at him while Diane buried her face in her hands and pretended to weep.
"Oh, God," Sid moaned, his face in his own hands an hour later after and Annie and Diane had both tried to explain quadratic equations to him and left him feeling like an idiot. "I'm really going to have to make an appointment with him, aren't I?"
"Just think of it this way," Annie said. "Maybe you'll both benefit from some private tutelage."
"I hate you both," Sid said, and left the women, still laughing, at the table while he went to go home and try and set up an appointment.
The email shouldn't have taken as long to write as it did, but Sid spent most of Saturday afternoon on it.
To: A.Davis @cocc.edu
From: sidnphillips @gmail.com
Dr. Davis,
I'm sorry that I missed class on Thursday but I had a work commitment that I couldn't get out of. I'd like to see if you are available at some point this week so that I can catch up on quadratic equations. Diane and Annie did their best to catch me up at our study group, but it appears I am in need of professional help.
Sincerely,
Sid Phillips
The response came later that evening while Sid was flopped on the couch, watching the Ohio University football game. Sid nearly spit out his beer when he heard the email chime on his laptop ding. Baxter, who was lolling on his feet and doing a good job at being a toe warmer, jumped up and wouldn't stop yapping until Sid pulled her into his lap and rubbed at her ears. With his other hand he pulled the laptop to the edge of the coffee table and opened his email.
To: sidnphillips @gmail.com
From: A.Davis @cocc.edu
How does Monday at four-thirty sound? It's not my usual office hours but I've been bombarded recently during those times recently as people start to panic about finals. If you want to actually learn anything that will probably be the best time to catch me alone.
Sid's face flushed at that and he squeezed harder at Baxter's ears than he meant to. She yelped and gave him a reproachful look, her big brown eyes sad for a nanosecond before she licked his hand and growled for him to continue. He scratched at her neck in apology and began to read the rest of the email.
I doubt you'll need a lot of help. Your test scores have been great so far. We'll just get you caught up on the concepts so we can all move on next Thursday, okay?
-Andy
At the bottom of the email was his professional signature with all of his contact info, including a cellphone number that Sid wanted desperately to put into his own phone, but between that and the body of the email was a note that Andy had put in parenthesis, as though hoping Sid would read over it like any other footnote.
(I'd sign this Dr. Davis, but I don't suppose there would be any point standing on formality with the boy who saw me crying my eyes out when I was six and fell of the swing set.)
Sid was too stunned to type out a response.
Part Two
Author: wanderhomeagain
Artist: anoncomment7
Fandom: Toy Story
Characters/Pairings: Sid/Andy
Rating/Category: R/Slash
Genre: (ie, romance, action, crossover, au, etc) more pining and fluff than is probably healthy
Word Count: 11.3k
Warnings (ie, major character death, non-con/rape, extreme violence) discussion of previous child abuse, homophobia, and violence
Summary: Sid Phillips never could have imagined when he'd seen A. Davis on his class schedule that the professor in question for his remedial college algebra class would have been the same Andy Davis that had fascinated Sid in some form or another for close to twenty years.
Link to art master post: At anoncomment7's journal here. Please go check out this adorable artwork and leave all the comments!
Author's Notes: I'd like to thank rose_starrand this_is_kelly for their encouragement and help with this story. I'd also like to thank anoncomment7for her artwork, and to the Small Fandom Big Bang mods for their support. Also to snooter, for writing the first story that I read that made me think about what could happen between Sid and Andy on the outside of the 'verse that Disney created.
Sixteen weeks.
An entire semester. Sid Phillips never could have imagined when he'd seen A. Davis on his class schedule that the professor in question for his remedial college algebra class would have been the same Andy Davis that had fascinated Sid in some form or another for close to twenty years.
Seventeen weeks ago he'd sat down in his adviser's office for the first time, feeling annoyed and a little overwhelmed to listen to the guy suggest that, based on his placement scores, he should really consider taking the remedial math course "to brush up."
When Sid didn't respond, his adviser took off his glasses and threw them onto his desk. "You scored well enough on your placement test to go into a regular course, particularly for someone who hasn't been a student for a long time, but-"
Sid stared down at the coffee ring in the middle of one of the many papers on the desk. The brown stain had made the ink blur on what looked to be someone's essay, and Sid felt a sudden, irrational anger on behalf of that student.
"- but you think it's some sort of anomaly, that a garbage man with a GED could manage to score well."
"We have found that most of our non-traditional students benefit from a refresher course when it comes to math." His adviser tried to keep his tone neutral, but Sid could hear the boredom in his voice, as though he argued with students like Sid every day. "It won't hurt you."
"It hurts my wallet," Sid pointed out. "This class is only a pass/fail, according to the course catalog. It's a waste of my time."
His adviser narrowed his eyes at him. "It's an hour course. It will be more expensive in the long run if you fail your math requirements." He paused. "And regardless, you have to have my signature to register for any classes. Unless you can come up with a more persuasive argument for why I should recommend you for a higher level math, I'm afraid you're going to have to take my advice."
"Fine." Sid scrubbed a hand over his face. The sleeve of his jumpsuit slid down towards his elbow, revealing the ink that ran around his wrist. He caught his adviser eying it, but the man looked away just as suddenly, like the tattoo was something he shouldn't have seen, and Sid made a mental note to try and find another adviser before the next semester. Supposedly there were only two for non-traditional students, but Sid figured there had to be a way through that.
The dick didn't bother keeping hours that were conducive to those taking night classes, and Sid had only managed to catch up with him because he got off work at two and was able to race towards campus. He hadn't even bothered to get a shower before coming to this meeting, so he was sure he smelled like other people's trash. He'd definitely have been pissed if he'd had to take off work to find this asshole.
"There's a class on Thursday evenings at five," his adviser said. "That way you'll already be here for your English class at six-thirty."
"Fine." Sid pushed at his sleeves so the tattoos around both wrists showed. "I'll play it your way, but I'll be putting in a request for a different adviser as soon as the semester's over."
It was an empty threat and Sid and the asshole both knew it. The man nodded and filled out Sid's registration form, then handed it to Sid. "Take this to the registrar and she'll get you set up. And make sure to stop by the business office."
"I'm sure now that I'm here they have a tracking device on me," Sid said. "I won't be able to go anywhere until they get their money."
Sid's adviser had not smiled.
Sid had left campus that day imagining that on other, nicer, better funded campuses all of that paperwork was done on the computer and he wouldn't ever have to talk to another person to go to school.
He'd arrived on campus with a calculator that had cost more than the monthly electricity bill for his apartment and a backpack full of books for the four hours worth of classes that night. He'd walked into the math class and found a seat in the third row; if he'd sat any further forward he'd have felt like he looked too eager, and he knew if he sat any further back he wouldn't be able to see the problems on the board. It made him feel like an old man to admit it, even to himself, but then again, just being back in a building so obviously built by the state gave him pause. Its whitewashed cement block walls and flickering fluorescent lights gave him the same claustrophobic feeling that he used to get back when he was in high school.
The class filled up around Sid, and realized that most of the students were either his age or older, which made him some of his anxiety ease, though he did notice more than one scowling teenager joining their number. Sid imagined that if he'd gone to college at eighteen he'd have been the exact same way.
Three minutes before the class was supposed to start a man in a button down shirt and pleated khakis walked in and placed his briefcase and a green coffee mug on the desk at the front of the room. He had wire-rimmed glasses that he pushed back up his nose as he glanced out at the class, and Sid was surprised to see that the professor was in his twenties, not in his late fifties like Sid's adviser.
The man took his glasses off and blew out a warm breath on the lenses, but before he dropped his head to clean them off with the handkerchief he pulled out of the pocket of his khakis, Sid felt a spark of recognition in his gut. The sandy hair, the long nose, and the bearded jaw all seemed familiar, but Sid didn't think he could possibly know the man. He wasn't generally on friendly terms with academics. Unless his professor's house was somewhere along his route and Sid had seen him pulling his trash can to the street in his boxers in the predawn hours, he doubted he knew him.
Until he opened his mouth.
"I am Dr. Andrew Davis," he said, and something clenched in Sid's belly as Dr. Davis started counting out copies of the syllabus and handing it to the students in the front row to take and pass back. The guy in front of Sid took the paper from the bottom of the stack and handed it to Sid while Sid tried not to gape. "This is my first semester here at Central Ohio Community College, though I grew up outside of Clarksburg. Chances are good that if you went to school in Fayette County you knew my mother, who's taught middle school there for thirty years."
Sid's breath caught in his throat as Dr. Andrew Davis- the Andy from his childhood who used to cry when Sid would threaten to take his cowboy doll- perched on the edge of the desk and gave a half-smile to the class. "I went to college to learn about math, but my mom taught me everything I would need to know about teaching. If you didn't like her when you were thirteen you're probably not going to like me now."
That elicited chuckles from the students in the room who obviously didn't know Mrs. Davis, but Sid remembered her all too well; first, as the mom of the neighbor boy who always had new toys and nice clothes and refused to allow her son to play with the other kids on the street, and later as the eighth grade math and English teacher who'd refused to let him fail, but who had also called social services on his father when Sid had shown up to school for two weeks in a row in the middle of January without a coat.
Social services had come out to his house and learned that Sid's dad had been for that same length of time, having taken Sid's only coat- an old army surplus camouflage jacket that Sid had bought with the money he'd made mowing lawns and raking leaves that autumn. Sid had been fifteen at the time, young enough and full of enough bluster to think that he could manage on his own, without his father and certainly without his mother and sister, who had lit out years before.
He had learned three years later, when he was emancipated from the foster system and really on his own, what a stupid idea that really had been.
If Andy recognized Sid in that first night of class, he didn't show it, just answered students' questions about the syllabus and began to remind them how to solve for x. And Sid found that he was in over his head, both in the subject matter and with the fact that his twenty year long crush had suddenly come crashing back into his life.
For ten weeks Sid sat and listened to Andy- Dr. Davis- expound on the principles of algebra and tried to focus on what he was being taught. He wasn't as behind as he had initially thought; the concept of solving for x was not new, he felt like he did that every month when there was inevitably a check that he'd forgotten to write down. Cross multiplying came back to him as well, as did positive and negative integers. The questions were easy enough, but he found that his adviser just might have been right in forcing him to take this class. He'd done well enough figuring out what x was in a multiple choice test where x had to be one of the four given answers, but Andy's tests were not multiple choice. Students were expected to show their work, and Sid really did feel like he was back in Andy's mom's eighth grade classroom, at least in that respect.
Andy didn't make it easy on any of his students, but Sid wondered how many of them were harboring the same crush on teacher that he had. Andy was a good teacher, making sure that Sid and his classmates were clear on the material before moving on, but at the same time he wouldn't let one student slow them down. He emphasized his office hours several times, though Sid always did well enough on his tests to never need to stop by.
He had a fleeting thought, once, to blow an exam just so he'd have an excuse to see Andy in private, but he chased that away as quickly as it came. He knew he wasn't exactly a gay stereotype, but he had seen Mean Girls just like the rest of the planet, and if Lindsey Lohan had done it it was definitely a bad idea.
Sid's Thursdays were long, with an hour of math followed by three hours of English; the history class he was taking on Monday nights and working ten hour days made for long weeks. A lot of the reading he did for his English class was by checking out what texts he could on audio and playing those in the cab of the garbage truck when he did his route. He was particularly proud of this plan, especially because he was certain he'd have fallen asleep over a copy of Go Down, Moses more than once. If his partner in the truck, Tim, had a problem with it, he didn't say- probably just turned up the volume of his iPod the way Sid had always done when he was younger and the drivers he'd ridden with favored conservative talk radio.
It was hard, doing school and working at the same time, but Sid found he enjoyed it. He'd always like to keep busy, and most of the people in his classes were other non-traditional students, with whom he felt a level of commitment not displayed by the kids just out of high school. One of the women nagged Sid until he came to her study group on Saturday mornings at a local diner, and Sid was surprised by the sense of community by people there. He found himself debating Faulkner and pinched himself on the thigh under the table covered with note cards and highlighters and plates of pancakes, unsure whether or not this was his life.
Thirteen weeks into the semester, Sid realized that Andy knew who he was.
It started when he missed week twelve of his English and math courses, thanks to a labor dispute and possible strike. Sid had been serving as a representative for the truck drivers for two years, and was up for nearly thirty-six hours straight, stuck in a small conference room trying to hammer out a deal with management. When he stepped out into the sunshine, blinking at the glare at four o'clock on Thursday afternoon, the thought of going to class crossed his mind but he quickly dismissed it.
He needed a shower, a fuck, and a nap, and since he was between boyfriends and lacked the desire- and currently, the hygiene- to go out and pick someone up, he decided he'd have to settle for two of the three.
Not to mention his poor beagle, Baxter, had probably torn up his entire apartment after so long. He'd called the building manager to ask him to take her out a couple of times and to put some food in her bowl, but Sid still wasn't sure what state his apartment was going to be in. He normally didn't crate her during the day because she barked too much if she wasn't allowed to explore their little home, and their agreement was that she behaved herself.
He had a feeling he'd reneged on his end of the bargain.
When he unlocked the door she ignored him, even though he got the treats out and tried to tempt her to come and play with him. She was standing at the front door when he got through with his shower and even though it was November and water still clung to his skin, he didn't have the heart to make her wait. He threw on a pair of sweatpants and a coat and took down her leash, and tried not to yawn or shiver while she was particularly choosey in which patch of frosted grass behind their building she was going to defile.
He unclipped her leash from her collar when she finally decided she was ready to go in, long after Sid thought his fingers were going to fall off, and she trotted inside to sit at the foot of the couch, which was her default position in the evenings. She whined when Sid headed down the hall to his bedroom.
He had flopped across his bed and was just drifting to sleep when he felt her cold nose nudge against his hand where it was hanging over the mattress. He cracked open one eye to see her pouting at him. He groaned and inched over to the side, then slipped a hand under her stomach and tugged her onto the bed with him.
"I need to find someone to keep us company, huh?" he asked Baxter, scooting over so she could take three turns before settling down beside him. She woofed out a breath into his ear. "Someone to check on you when I can't?"
Baxter gave him a sleepy growl and Sid laughed and rubbed one of her ears. "You're right. I don't have time for the two of us now, do I? But I should probably give someone the key to this place, just in case we find ourselves in this situation again."
Baxter snored.
"Still would like to get fucked every once in a while, though," Sid mumbled as he, too, drifted off to sleep.
Only when he arrived at the diner on Saturday morning, ready for French toast and bacon and for someone to catch him up on what he had missed did he realized that even if he was missing the real thing, he was figuratively fucked.
"You didn't miss anything in English," Diane, the woman who had started the study group, told him as they unpacked their books and ordered coffee. "We started out discussing 'The Cask of Amontillado' and you know how Dr. Brooks lets us wander off course. So the conversation devolved into someone wondering where the Poe Toaster has been these last couple of years and whether the man had died, which led to the eighteen year‐olds in the room trying to look innocent while that blowhard, Jim,n talked about what alcohol was appropriate to make a toast with, and whether or not cognac was. Started talking about absinthe. Absinthe. I hate that guy."
"I don't know," Sid said and nodded a thanks to the waitress who'd set his coffee on the table and asked him if he wanted his usual. "He's got a great ass."
Diane rolled her eyes and reached for the little plastic tublets of half and half. "He is an ass, you dork."
"You could do worse." Underneath the table, he felt Diane lightly kick at his shins.
"We both could do better."
Diane was a single mom of three who had taken a shine to Sid the first night of class when Sid had been able to shut Jim down in conversation, and had immediately invited him to the study group that she was planning. She also had a strong desire to set him up with everyone she knew, and even after he had told her that he was gay her enthusiasm hadn't dimmed.
"It will be harder to find someone, sure, just because I'm pretty sure most of the gay men who grew up around here didn't actually stay around here, but I'm sure we can find someone for you," she'd said.
Sid had just laughed and told her that she should start a matchmaking service when she finished her degree. The look on her face after he said it had left him frightened that she thought he was serious.
"So you didn't miss anything in English except Jim monopolizing the conversation yet again," Annie said as she joined them. "But Dr. Davis lost us all when he moved onto quadratic equations."
Annie was one of the only people under the age of twenty-four in Sid's classes that he actually liked. Upon talking to her at study group, he'd learned that she, too, was a product of the foster system, a smart, tough girl, who thanks to her mother's continual cycle of meth/arrest/rehab/contrition/court meant that Annie had spent years in and out of various homes, never once finding a permanent place to stay. She'd become a waitress at the Hooters the next town over when she was seventeen, and, she'd told Sid after four years of that figured she'd do what she was telling her customers.
"It makes them feel less guilty about ogling the goods if they have a story behind it," she told Sid with a laugh. "I learned real quick that most guys will tip better if they think they're getting me out of a bad situation- especially the older guys in business suits who probably have daughters my age. So I tell them I'm working my way through school, and finally I thought it would be better if I wasn't lying."
Annie unbuttoned her coat and unwound her scarf as she sat down, making her curly red hair frizz. She eyed their cups of coffee with no small amount of jealousy until their waitress set one down in front of her. She wrapped both hands around the mug and brought it up to mouth. She took a sniff, breathing in the hot, bitter smell before taking a sip, and Sid had the fleeting thought that she looked like she'd stepped right out of a Folgers commercial.
"I'll get you caught up as best I can," she said after she'd let the caffeine settle in for a minute, "but you're probably better off trying to make an appointment with Dr. Davis."
"Yeah, that'll be a hardship for him," Diane said with a snort. Annie glanced at her and giggled.
"What's that supposed to mean?" A forkful of French toast was halfway to Sid's mouth, but his hand hovered there, syrup dripping onto his plate. Annie and Diane laughed again.
"Oh, honey, I know this Central Ohio Community College and not Harvard or Yale-"
"-but we're not exactly stupid," Annie broke in.
"It's pretty obvious that you're, oh, how shall I put this, hot for teacher."
Sid's fork with the piece of French toast still speared on the tines clattered against his plate. "Where did you get that idea?"
Diane and Annie glanced at each other yet again, then Diane reached out and took his hand. When she started out her next sentence with 'oh, honey' once more he knew he was screwed.
"I know that you probably think that no one notices, but like I said, you're pretty obvious."
"You don't take your eyes off him during class," Annie said.
"He's the teacher!"
"You laugh at all his really bad math jokes," Diane pointed out.
"Even though I don't think you understand them."
"Look," Diane said, and squeezed his hand one more time before letting it go. "It's not like we don't understand. He is adorable."
"And definitely gay," Annie said. "Did you know he's the faculty sponsor for the LGBTQ society? And I think he was totally checking out your ass when you left class the other day."
"I'm not surprised," Sid muttered, and both Annie and Diane let out shrieks so loud the other diners turned to stare at them.
"You're not surprised he was checking out your ass?" Diane hissed, after waving the other restaurant-goers back to their breakfasts. "You do realize how that sounds, right?"
Annie snorted coffee up her nose, then thunked her head down into her hands on the table, laughing and moaning. "It burns, it burns!"
Sid ignored her. "I'm not surprised that- no, wait. I'm not- I would be totally surprised if he was checking out my ass, all right? But I knew he was gay, and I'm not surprised that he's the sponsor for whatever sort of LGBTQ society they've managed to string together on this campus. He was the Gay/Straight Alliance president back when we were in high school."
"Oh," said Diane, clutching at her heart. "Thank God. I didn't think you were the kind of guy who just assumed everyone was looking at his ass. I thought I'd have to rethink my opinion of you entirely, and I kind of like you, Sid Phillips."
"Why wouldn't everyone be checking out my ass though?" Sid barely managed to keep a straight face. "I mean, it looks good, right?"
Annie shrieked again and started throwing packets of Sweet'n'Low at him while Diane buried her face in her hands and pretended to weep.
"Oh, God," Sid moaned, his face in his own hands an hour later after and Annie and Diane had both tried to explain quadratic equations to him and left him feeling like an idiot. "I'm really going to have to make an appointment with him, aren't I?"
"Just think of it this way," Annie said. "Maybe you'll both benefit from some private tutelage."
"I hate you both," Sid said, and left the women, still laughing, at the table while he went to go home and try and set up an appointment.
The email shouldn't have taken as long to write as it did, but Sid spent most of Saturday afternoon on it.
To: A.Davis @cocc.edu
From: sidnphillips @gmail.com
Dr. Davis,
I'm sorry that I missed class on Thursday but I had a work commitment that I couldn't get out of. I'd like to see if you are available at some point this week so that I can catch up on quadratic equations. Diane and Annie did their best to catch me up at our study group, but it appears I am in need of professional help.
Sincerely,
Sid Phillips
The response came later that evening while Sid was flopped on the couch, watching the Ohio University football game. Sid nearly spit out his beer when he heard the email chime on his laptop ding. Baxter, who was lolling on his feet and doing a good job at being a toe warmer, jumped up and wouldn't stop yapping until Sid pulled her into his lap and rubbed at her ears. With his other hand he pulled the laptop to the edge of the coffee table and opened his email.
To: sidnphillips @gmail.com
From: A.Davis @cocc.edu
How does Monday at four-thirty sound? It's not my usual office hours but I've been bombarded recently during those times recently as people start to panic about finals. If you want to actually learn anything that will probably be the best time to catch me alone.
Sid's face flushed at that and he squeezed harder at Baxter's ears than he meant to. She yelped and gave him a reproachful look, her big brown eyes sad for a nanosecond before she licked his hand and growled for him to continue. He scratched at her neck in apology and began to read the rest of the email.
I doubt you'll need a lot of help. Your test scores have been great so far. We'll just get you caught up on the concepts so we can all move on next Thursday, okay?
-Andy
At the bottom of the email was his professional signature with all of his contact info, including a cellphone number that Sid wanted desperately to put into his own phone, but between that and the body of the email was a note that Andy had put in parenthesis, as though hoping Sid would read over it like any other footnote.
(I'd sign this Dr. Davis, but I don't suppose there would be any point standing on formality with the boy who saw me crying my eyes out when I was six and fell of the swing set.)
Sid was too stunned to type out a response.
Part Two