fic: Semantics
Title: Semantics
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2k
Warnings: bad language. this is a slash comm. :D
Disclaimer: for tourdefierce , because for some reason she inspires me to poop out 2k in a day when I can’t do it in two weeks for something I’m supposed to. Part of the Professor!AU.
There is a reason Karl isn’t an English professor, and that is because he is very, very bad with words. It’s just his absolute fucking luck that Chris is all about words, semantics and grammar and fucking semantics, because Karl has a difficult enough time keeping up with his own brain, let alone Chris’.
~*~
“I’m going to lunch with Duvall,” Karl had said ten hours earlier, key ring twirling around his finger.
“Oh?” Chris’ voice replied, and he’d sounded about as mild as a jalapeño pepper. “Like a work lunch?”
Karl shrugged, waiting for a response, until he turned around and realized he’d been talking to Chris’ feet. The kid was slung upside down on Karl’s couch, his mismatched socks the only bit of him visible.
“I don’t know, I guess.”
Chris’ feet had disappeared and there was a thump that Karl felt through the floor, a few rustling noises and a mumbled shit. Karl blinked.
“So I suppose that means you don’t know when you’ll be back, either?” Chris had asked in a lofty tone that didn’t fool him in the slightest. He tried to look uninterested, but it’s hard to look nonplussed after having just fallen off of a couch. Karl stared for a few seconds, wondering when Chris had become his mother.
Whatever.
“Right. But it shouldn’t matter to you, anyway, since you don’t actually live here,” Karl’d said, pocketing his keys and opening his front door. Chris had made unintelligible noises behind him, clearly disgruntled. “By the way,” Karl had called over his shoulder, “we’re out of milk.”
~*~
Chris isn’t there when Karl gets back, but that’s because he’s got a Linguistics class. There is a jug of milk waiting on the counter, ‘DRINK ME, YOU SLUT’ Sharpie’d in Chris’ inelegant scrawling capitals. Karl rolls his eyes and shoves it into the fridge.
Ten thirty rolls around and Karl’s fingers are cramped from failing so many students, and Chris still hasn’t shown up. Not that Karl’s waiting for him, or anything, because he doesn’t care, he just doesn’t like it when his norm is ruffled.
“It’s not like it even matters,” Karl says to his living room, glasses sliding down his nose. “He’s just the student I have an immoral tryst with.” It comes out much more miserable than he intended.
DeForest lays his head on Karl’s knee. He looks down, and DeForest gazes up, bloodshot and depressed and Karl swears he knows things Karl doesn’t. He stares meaningfully at the dog, hoping he’ll get up and move, but then Karl remembers DeForest is a basset hound.
The dog stays.
“Goddamn you.”
It’s midnight when Karl admits to himself that maybe, maybe he’s a little bit worried. Without Chris to fill it, his house seems empty and quiet and suffocating. Lying on his back on the kitchen floor, Karl pulls out his phone and types out a text message that he desperately hopes doesn’t sound, well, desperate.
To: Trollop (12:03:23)
Where are you? DeForest is roaming the halls looking for you.
Completely a lie, because DeForest roams about as often as Karl cleans behind the toilet.
From: Trollop (12:05:12)
I’m at home.
Frowning, Karl’s thumbs start to tap out No, you’re not, and he gets to the ‘y’ before it clicks and his gut sinks.
Oh.
He swallows.
To: Trollop (12:06:43)
Don’t stay up too late. You have a test tomorrow.
He texts instead, then snaps his phone shut and stares at the ceiling. Chris doesn’t text back, and Karl wonders why he feels so awful all of a sudden.
~*~
Chris doesn’t come over the next day, or the one after that. He smiles at Karl in class and they make idle conversation in the campus café’s coffee line, but neither one mentions getting pizza later and Chris doesn’t ask about DeForest and Karl doesn’t tell him to get more milk.
In five days, he texts Karl once, and it’s to ask about the upcoming assignment that’s due in a week.
“Well, this sucks,” Karl says, and Professor Cho blinks at him.
“You’re a teacher. It’s in the job description,” he replies. “But in all seriousness, you should probably apologize.”
Karl cocks his head and pushes ‘L’. “But it wasn’t directed at you. I don’t mind sharing an elevator.”
Cho gives him the stink eye. “Not me. Her.”
Karl stares.
“Or whoever it is you’ve pissed off,” Cho says, waving his hand in dismissal. Karl has a five second panic attack, because, how does he know, then the elevator doors whoosh open and Cho steps out, turning back to look at Karl. “I’m tired of kids complaining about you in my class. So whatever you’ve done, buy her flowers or take her out, or something.”
Karl gapes after him, reeling because he’s not entirely sure a) when Cho started knowing anything about woman, b) if Chris is actually the woman in the relationship, c) when this became a relationship, or d) what exactly he’s supposed to apologize for.
The elevator beeps impatiently at him, and Karl snaps back to focus. “Yeah, yeah,” he says, and grumbles all the way to his car.
~*~
“I’m sorry,” Karl blurts, when Chris picks up after the third ring.
“That you’re calling at four in the morning? You should be,” Chris croaks out. He sounds terrible, but that’s probably because he just woke up.
“Yes, but not. That. About the other thing.”
There’s significant silence on Chris’ end, aside from the rustling sound of him sitting up.
“The other thing.”
“Yeah. …The other thing.” Oh, he knows they’re hopeless.
“Karl, do you know why you’re apologizing?” Chris asks, and he sounds tired. Tired of Karl, maybe.
He goes with the honesty approach. “No, and it’s pissing me off. All I know is that your crap is still here but you aren’t and it doesn’t make any sense and I’m out of milk again.”
“I don’t live with you, Karl,” and out of nowhere, Karl is gobsmacked. The counter at his back suddenly doesn’t feel stable enough so he sinks to the floor. “You said it yourself.”
DeForest waddles up and snuffles at his hand. “Why is it that the one time I don’t want you to actually listen to me, you listen to me?” Defeated anger blooms hot and unwelcome in his chest. Chris huffs in laughter but it doesn’t sound right, like it’s forced.
“Good night, Karl.”
“Come back,” he’s saying before he’s fully aware his brain ok’d the message.
“Don’t,” Chris says, and hangs up.
DeForest licks his palm. “I’m the adult here, right? Right.”
So why does he feel so small?
~*~
“I mean, it’s not as though I’ve never said anything jokingly before, right? I always tell him to get out but it’s fondly.”
“Well-”
“What I don’t get is why he picks now to be offended and to storm off when he’s the one that started this whole ridiculous…thing in the first place! It’s like, are there even two people in this relationship?”
“I’m sure it’s-”
“And I can’t even believe I’m calling it a relationship, all we do is eat pizza and have sex and argue, and-”
“Professor,” the student says, and Karl stops.
“Yes?”
“I don’t know if you know,” she starts, hesitating, “but we. I’m. You-I just came in here to get my book.”
Right. “…Yes, well. Have a good. Day.”
She nods, attempting a tight smile, and turns on her heel. The look she throws over her shoulder is probably meant to be reassuring, but it kind of fails when she nearly rips off the door handle trying to get out.
Karl slumps into his chair and plunks his elbows on his desk, head in his hands. “I hate everything I choose to be.”
~*~
Color him dumbfuckingfounded when Chris shows up that night, raised eyebrows judging Karl’s slippers.
“Shut up, you’ve seen them before,” he grumbles, and narrows his eyes.
“Yes, but never in action,” Chris says, and pushes past him like he’s done one thousand times. Karl looks down. Yoshi has never done him wrong. Karl shuts the door behind them and is terrified because he has no idea how this is going to go.
“I’m here for my stuff,” Chris says, already shuffling around the living room. “It doesn’t make sense for me to keep stuff here, anyway.” Karl doesn’t exactly process this as I’m breaking up with you, because he’s never been the one dumped before, so he sort of just stands in the kitchen and watches Chris.
When he comes out of the bathroom holding the extra toothbrush, Karl breaks.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Chris starts, and he’s angry. “Don’t fucking look at me like all of a sudden you actually like me and like this and like us, because I’ve been on that page for a long fucking time waiting for you to catch up.” His eyes are the brightest blue Karl’s ever seen them be, and instantly he recognizes the sharp barb of hurt, and in the crap lighting of Karl’s kitchen, Chris looks as young as his nineteen years say he is.
“Why are you so mature? I’m supposed to be mature,” Karl says, and it’s definitely the wrong thing to say.
“Well, you aren’t,” he spits, and the face he makes after makes it seem like the words tasted bad.
They stand there, Karl in his Yoshi slippers and Chris in his stupid V-neck shirt, holding pieces of himself that Karl’s gotten alarmingly attached to, like his X-Box controller and his toothbrush and his Stripes T-shirt.
“I think you should move in with me.”
“Why?” Chris retaliates, immediate and guarded. Karl hates it.
“Because I fucking like you, all right? It doesn’t make any sense at all and I’m older than you but you’re smarter than me and it’s horrible because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, I should be grading papers and becoming refined with age, not having incredibly acrobatic sex with a fucking brilliant teenager.” It all comes out without Karl’s permission, messy and blurted and not at all professional.
For an achingly pregnant moment, they stare at each other. Chris still looks guarded but it’s less angry, and a lot more miserable.
“That’s the worst apology I’ve ever heard,” he finally says, but his shoulders aren’t up around his ears anymore and his pupils are wider. Karl lets himself take a breath of relief.
“I mean it.” DeForest rolls over between them, stares up at Chris with his giant brown eyes, and Karl makes a note to give that dog a bone the size of Karl’s leg. “I want you to move in. You complain-well, used to complain, about the dorms, anyway, and this way you won’t really have to pay for housing, and you’ll be here when I wake up, which I’ve always kind of liked, and y-”
Chris’ mouth is familiar, warm and dry and chapped. His hands cup Karl’s face and for a split second he remembers he needs to shave but it really, really doesn’t matter, not when Chris’ eyelashes flutter against the bridge of Karl’s nose.
“Okay,” Chris breathes. “Okay. Shut up, I’ll move in. But you can’t be mean to me anymore.”
Karl snorts. “I’m a professor, not God.” Chris laughs into the skin beneath Karl’s ear, and that’s pretty okay.
“You like me.”
“No,” Karl says, because he can think of a more accurate word but that’s far too scary and heavy for this moment. “It’s more of a toleration sort of thing.”
The good thing is that Chris keeps laughing, his fingers easy and warm just under the waistband of Karl’s pants. “We’ll work on your blatant denial issues after.”
“After?”
Chris’ tongue sneaks out between his teeth, and his nose wrinkles up and so do the corners of his eyes, and Karl’s so gone. “The best part about a fight is the make-up sex. Duh.”
Right. Duh.
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2k
Warnings: bad language. this is a slash comm. :D
Disclaimer: for tourdefierce , because for some reason she inspires me to poop out 2k in a day when I can’t do it in two weeks for something I’m supposed to. Part of the Professor!AU.
There is a reason Karl isn’t an English professor, and that is because he is very, very bad with words. It’s just his absolute fucking luck that Chris is all about words, semantics and grammar and fucking semantics, because Karl has a difficult enough time keeping up with his own brain, let alone Chris’.
~*~
“I’m going to lunch with Duvall,” Karl had said ten hours earlier, key ring twirling around his finger.
“Oh?” Chris’ voice replied, and he’d sounded about as mild as a jalapeño pepper. “Like a work lunch?”
Karl shrugged, waiting for a response, until he turned around and realized he’d been talking to Chris’ feet. The kid was slung upside down on Karl’s couch, his mismatched socks the only bit of him visible.
“I don’t know, I guess.”
Chris’ feet had disappeared and there was a thump that Karl felt through the floor, a few rustling noises and a mumbled shit. Karl blinked.
“So I suppose that means you don’t know when you’ll be back, either?” Chris had asked in a lofty tone that didn’t fool him in the slightest. He tried to look uninterested, but it’s hard to look nonplussed after having just fallen off of a couch. Karl stared for a few seconds, wondering when Chris had become his mother.
Whatever.
“Right. But it shouldn’t matter to you, anyway, since you don’t actually live here,” Karl’d said, pocketing his keys and opening his front door. Chris had made unintelligible noises behind him, clearly disgruntled. “By the way,” Karl had called over his shoulder, “we’re out of milk.”
~*~
Chris isn’t there when Karl gets back, but that’s because he’s got a Linguistics class. There is a jug of milk waiting on the counter, ‘DRINK ME, YOU SLUT’ Sharpie’d in Chris’ inelegant scrawling capitals. Karl rolls his eyes and shoves it into the fridge.
Ten thirty rolls around and Karl’s fingers are cramped from failing so many students, and Chris still hasn’t shown up. Not that Karl’s waiting for him, or anything, because he doesn’t care, he just doesn’t like it when his norm is ruffled.
“It’s not like it even matters,” Karl says to his living room, glasses sliding down his nose. “He’s just the student I have an immoral tryst with.” It comes out much more miserable than he intended.
DeForest lays his head on Karl’s knee. He looks down, and DeForest gazes up, bloodshot and depressed and Karl swears he knows things Karl doesn’t. He stares meaningfully at the dog, hoping he’ll get up and move, but then Karl remembers DeForest is a basset hound.
The dog stays.
“Goddamn you.”
It’s midnight when Karl admits to himself that maybe, maybe he’s a little bit worried. Without Chris to fill it, his house seems empty and quiet and suffocating. Lying on his back on the kitchen floor, Karl pulls out his phone and types out a text message that he desperately hopes doesn’t sound, well, desperate.
To: Trollop (12:03:23)
Where are you? DeForest is roaming the halls looking for you.
Completely a lie, because DeForest roams about as often as Karl cleans behind the toilet.
From: Trollop (12:05:12)
I’m at home.
Frowning, Karl’s thumbs start to tap out No, you’re not, and he gets to the ‘y’ before it clicks and his gut sinks.
Oh.
He swallows.
To: Trollop (12:06:43)
Don’t stay up too late. You have a test tomorrow.
He texts instead, then snaps his phone shut and stares at the ceiling. Chris doesn’t text back, and Karl wonders why he feels so awful all of a sudden.
~*~
Chris doesn’t come over the next day, or the one after that. He smiles at Karl in class and they make idle conversation in the campus café’s coffee line, but neither one mentions getting pizza later and Chris doesn’t ask about DeForest and Karl doesn’t tell him to get more milk.
In five days, he texts Karl once, and it’s to ask about the upcoming assignment that’s due in a week.
“Well, this sucks,” Karl says, and Professor Cho blinks at him.
“You’re a teacher. It’s in the job description,” he replies. “But in all seriousness, you should probably apologize.”
Karl cocks his head and pushes ‘L’. “But it wasn’t directed at you. I don’t mind sharing an elevator.”
Cho gives him the stink eye. “Not me. Her.”
Karl stares.
“Or whoever it is you’ve pissed off,” Cho says, waving his hand in dismissal. Karl has a five second panic attack, because, how does he know, then the elevator doors whoosh open and Cho steps out, turning back to look at Karl. “I’m tired of kids complaining about you in my class. So whatever you’ve done, buy her flowers or take her out, or something.”
Karl gapes after him, reeling because he’s not entirely sure a) when Cho started knowing anything about woman, b) if Chris is actually the woman in the relationship, c) when this became a relationship, or d) what exactly he’s supposed to apologize for.
The elevator beeps impatiently at him, and Karl snaps back to focus. “Yeah, yeah,” he says, and grumbles all the way to his car.
~*~
“I’m sorry,” Karl blurts, when Chris picks up after the third ring.
“That you’re calling at four in the morning? You should be,” Chris croaks out. He sounds terrible, but that’s probably because he just woke up.
“Yes, but not. That. About the other thing.”
There’s significant silence on Chris’ end, aside from the rustling sound of him sitting up.
“The other thing.”
“Yeah. …The other thing.” Oh, he knows they’re hopeless.
“Karl, do you know why you’re apologizing?” Chris asks, and he sounds tired. Tired of Karl, maybe.
He goes with the honesty approach. “No, and it’s pissing me off. All I know is that your crap is still here but you aren’t and it doesn’t make any sense and I’m out of milk again.”
“I don’t live with you, Karl,” and out of nowhere, Karl is gobsmacked. The counter at his back suddenly doesn’t feel stable enough so he sinks to the floor. “You said it yourself.”
DeForest waddles up and snuffles at his hand. “Why is it that the one time I don’t want you to actually listen to me, you listen to me?” Defeated anger blooms hot and unwelcome in his chest. Chris huffs in laughter but it doesn’t sound right, like it’s forced.
“Good night, Karl.”
“Come back,” he’s saying before he’s fully aware his brain ok’d the message.
“Don’t,” Chris says, and hangs up.
DeForest licks his palm. “I’m the adult here, right? Right.”
So why does he feel so small?
~*~
“I mean, it’s not as though I’ve never said anything jokingly before, right? I always tell him to get out but it’s fondly.”
“Well-”
“What I don’t get is why he picks now to be offended and to storm off when he’s the one that started this whole ridiculous…thing in the first place! It’s like, are there even two people in this relationship?”
“I’m sure it’s-”
“And I can’t even believe I’m calling it a relationship, all we do is eat pizza and have sex and argue, and-”
“Professor,” the student says, and Karl stops.
“Yes?”
“I don’t know if you know,” she starts, hesitating, “but we. I’m. You-I just came in here to get my book.”
Right. “…Yes, well. Have a good. Day.”
She nods, attempting a tight smile, and turns on her heel. The look she throws over her shoulder is probably meant to be reassuring, but it kind of fails when she nearly rips off the door handle trying to get out.
Karl slumps into his chair and plunks his elbows on his desk, head in his hands. “I hate everything I choose to be.”
~*~
Color him dumbfuckingfounded when Chris shows up that night, raised eyebrows judging Karl’s slippers.
“Shut up, you’ve seen them before,” he grumbles, and narrows his eyes.
“Yes, but never in action,” Chris says, and pushes past him like he’s done one thousand times. Karl looks down. Yoshi has never done him wrong. Karl shuts the door behind them and is terrified because he has no idea how this is going to go.
“I’m here for my stuff,” Chris says, already shuffling around the living room. “It doesn’t make sense for me to keep stuff here, anyway.” Karl doesn’t exactly process this as I’m breaking up with you, because he’s never been the one dumped before, so he sort of just stands in the kitchen and watches Chris.
When he comes out of the bathroom holding the extra toothbrush, Karl breaks.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Chris starts, and he’s angry. “Don’t fucking look at me like all of a sudden you actually like me and like this and like us, because I’ve been on that page for a long fucking time waiting for you to catch up.” His eyes are the brightest blue Karl’s ever seen them be, and instantly he recognizes the sharp barb of hurt, and in the crap lighting of Karl’s kitchen, Chris looks as young as his nineteen years say he is.
“Why are you so mature? I’m supposed to be mature,” Karl says, and it’s definitely the wrong thing to say.
“Well, you aren’t,” he spits, and the face he makes after makes it seem like the words tasted bad.
They stand there, Karl in his Yoshi slippers and Chris in his stupid V-neck shirt, holding pieces of himself that Karl’s gotten alarmingly attached to, like his X-Box controller and his toothbrush and his Stripes T-shirt.
“I think you should move in with me.”
“Why?” Chris retaliates, immediate and guarded. Karl hates it.
“Because I fucking like you, all right? It doesn’t make any sense at all and I’m older than you but you’re smarter than me and it’s horrible because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, I should be grading papers and becoming refined with age, not having incredibly acrobatic sex with a fucking brilliant teenager.” It all comes out without Karl’s permission, messy and blurted and not at all professional.
For an achingly pregnant moment, they stare at each other. Chris still looks guarded but it’s less angry, and a lot more miserable.
“That’s the worst apology I’ve ever heard,” he finally says, but his shoulders aren’t up around his ears anymore and his pupils are wider. Karl lets himself take a breath of relief.
“I mean it.” DeForest rolls over between them, stares up at Chris with his giant brown eyes, and Karl makes a note to give that dog a bone the size of Karl’s leg. “I want you to move in. You complain-well, used to complain, about the dorms, anyway, and this way you won’t really have to pay for housing, and you’ll be here when I wake up, which I’ve always kind of liked, and y-”
Chris’ mouth is familiar, warm and dry and chapped. His hands cup Karl’s face and for a split second he remembers he needs to shave but it really, really doesn’t matter, not when Chris’ eyelashes flutter against the bridge of Karl’s nose.
“Okay,” Chris breathes. “Okay. Shut up, I’ll move in. But you can’t be mean to me anymore.”
Karl snorts. “I’m a professor, not God.” Chris laughs into the skin beneath Karl’s ear, and that’s pretty okay.
“You like me.”
“No,” Karl says, because he can think of a more accurate word but that’s far too scary and heavy for this moment. “It’s more of a toleration sort of thing.”
The good thing is that Chris keeps laughing, his fingers easy and warm just under the waistband of Karl’s pants. “We’ll work on your blatant denial issues after.”
“After?”
Chris’ tongue sneaks out between his teeth, and his nose wrinkles up and so do the corners of his eyes, and Karl’s so gone. “The best part about a fight is the make-up sex. Duh.”
Right. Duh.