Funny How Love Is (Maylor AU)

Chapter 54

Luckily for Brian, or maybe unluckily—he couldn't decide—the next thing Ray said about his story was that, "At one point, blondie stormed off into the bathroom, all flustered about something one of the two said." It actually wasn't because of something we said. It was because Reid was all over him and called him Liz, exposing him for his alter ego that he didn't want me finding out about. "I can't remember what it was, but it was hilarious! He's a fairy, Brian! A pufter! A queer. God, I always knew something was off about him since the day he started, and seeing him there, it finally all makes sense!"

The professor's eyebrows furrowed together, locking onto the second thing his colleague said and using it to shift the impending accusation away from himself, asking, "Wait, Ray, you saw him there? Does that mean you were at the bar too?"

"Oh, n-no," he quickly defended himself, his cheeks growing redder than Brian's, "God, no. Are you crazy? I wouldn't be seen dead in a place like that. Ever. How could you even think that? It was...a friend of mine. A friend told me."

"I see," Brian replied, nodding his head in understanding and bringing a hand over his mouth to hide the smirk that grew upon discovering the crack in his colleague's story, relieved and overjoyed that the story hadn't shifted its focus to his involvement in it. Once he calmed himself down, he lowered his hand back down to his side and muttered, "So, let me get this straight. Your friend was at this bar and saw Roger there with two men, and he ran off at one point because of something one of the two men said?"

The women's studies professor's confidence declined exponentially at the question he was presented with. "You know, I-I'm not quite sure anymore. My friend really didn't hear the conversation, and it...it was a while back, you see, and...and I-I haven't gotten the chance to share it with you because...because I've been so busy!" He punched him playfully in the upper arm, eliciting a gasp out of the thinner man and causing him to clutch his stinging bicep. "You know how it is around midterms."

The curly-haired man once again nodded his head, flashing him a forceful yet reassuring smile. "Yeah, I do, Ray. I really do."

An awkward silence fell over the contrasting pair, the faint sound of footsteps and chatter echoing through the deserted halls. Brian bit his lip, feeling as though the two of them were on a tightrope and that whatever was said next would push them over the edge. Either way, below them was certain doom and the astrophysics professor wasn't so sure he was ready for that. He didn't feel ready for anything his future held, except maybe for his impromptu rendezvous with Chrissie.

Oh no, Chrissie!

"Hey, erm, speaking of midterms," Brian blurted out, clearing his throat beforehand and clasping his hands behind his back. "Grades are due soon. You mind if I...?" His voice trailed off, his thumb shooting over his shoulder to the classroom door behind him, despite his intended destination being the janitor's closet downstairs. Ray didn't have to know that, though.

"Ah, yes, there are," he replied matter-of-factly, matching his colleague's previous stance and smiling up at him, "I should let you get to those, but be careful, Brian." His face fell and a seriousness washed over him as he leaned in like he did before and whispered almost forebodingly, "I'd think again about spending as much time with blondie as you have been. You don't want people spreading rumors about you too, do you?"

Brian stared at him blankly, unwilling to let on to the panic that was raging inside of him.

Ray suddenly broke out into a fit of laughter. "Good god, man, lighten up, would you? I'm just busting your balls. Learn to take a joke!"

The astrophysics professor kept quiet, struggling to find the humor in his colleague's self-proclaimed joke. Ray was notorious for his crude and often ill-received comments, so everyone knew better than to give him the satisfaction of letting him know that he'd gotten under their skin, regardless of whether he did or not. In this instance, though, Ray's facetious warning didn't sound like a joke to Brian at all, and it certainly didn't feel like one either.

"I-I'll see you 'round, May," the women's studies teacher grumbled after realizing he wasn't going to get the reaction he wanted out of the curly-haired man, chuckling and giving him one more quick punch to the arm before breaking away from his side.

The second the short man reached the end of the hallway and disappeared around the corner, Brian shot down the corridor in the opposite direction, racing down the stairs and bursting into the hallway he had traversed this morning with an entirely different purpose this time around. He looked at his reflection in the small, dark sliver of a window in the door across from the stairwell and fluffed his hair, making sure there wasn't any food in his teeth when a voice rang in his ear, a voice he didn't expect to hear.

"Brian?"