Page 2 of Take You

We each had our own bedroom, but we’d removed the door in the hall that joined the two dorms, so we came and went between them as we pleased. We never cooked, but we used Fox’s kitchenette to heat up shit like Pop Tarts, and to store our beer and chips.

“Dude, you might want to cool it on the blunts if you’re going to eat a family pack of chips afterwards every time, or else you’ll end up living in the gym.”

“Hmm... you make a valid point. One I will consider more fully at some other time. Right now, I want to know what’s eating you, and then I’ll worry about what I’m eating.”

I joined him on the couch, and let the mindless nonsense on-screen wash over me for a moment.

“I heard on the grapevine that they’re halving the Carrington Memorial Fellowship fund.” Fox’s hand paused in the chip bag, and he slowly drew it out, empty. “Well, not halving it, but dividing it.”

“Dividing?”

“Hmm... between you and another student.”

“Who?”

“That I don’t know. I’m not Xavier; I’m not the all-seeing eye, with the Dean in my pocket like he is. My contact on the inside is a small fish with limited access to information.”

“That was going to be my next question. So you’re still fucking that cute little TA?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘fucking.’ That makes it sound like way more of a formal thing than it is. ‘Occasionally fuck’ is a better summary of the situation, but yeah, she told me she’d heard whispers.”

“Shit.” He grabbed at his thick black hair as he paced the room. “If a bottom feeder—no offense—knows about it, then it’s basically a done deal. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

“No offense taken. We’re fucking—I mean, we fuck occasionally—not planning our wedding or anything. I know this is not ideal, but if all else fails, at least you have the trust to fall back on, right?”

“You know full fucking well that I don’t want to use the trust for that. I won’t. I’d rather take on more work, or something.”

“What? You can’t. You realize that sleep is a requisite for human survival, right? And when I say sleep, I mean more than a couple of hours a night. Not to mention the fact that even you need to spend some time doing the study you’re here for in the first place. Between Cygnus, work, and classes, you take on any more, and you’ll fucking kill yourself.” Fox abruptly stopped pacing and stared at me as though I’d grown a second head. “Poor choice of words...” Really fucking poor. I was kicking myself inside, but I carried on, “but you know what I mean.”

He worked God knew how many hours a week, writing papers for people who were too stupid or lazy to do their own, but who had the requisite cash to pay for them. Since there was a ceiling to what could be charged for a paper—he was already commanding the highest rate, plus a slight premium, as his papers were second-to-none—the way to increase income was to write more papers.

Lucky for him, he was quicker than most, and could churn out several papers in a day—many of which weren’t even his area of expertise, like history and liberal arts—often while he was in his classes on completely different subjects. But even with his immense brainpower and skill, there was still a limit to what could be done without him keeling over with nervous exhaustion.

After staring at me for so long, I was beginning to suspect he’d been turned to stone, he resumed pacing. “I’m so close with the mailbox money, but it won’t happen quick enough to fix this, so the only option left is to find out who this person is, and get rid of them.” The mailbox money referred to a few projects he was working on—business ideas he was developing, that one day soon would pay out big, according to Fox. With his skills, expertise, and sheer bloody-mindedness, I didn’t doubt that fact. He was an actual wunderkind.

“You’re going to kill your rival for a college Fellowship fund? Jesus, Fox, that’s a little excessive.”

“When did I say I was going to murder anybody, you fucktard?”

“You didn’t, but—”

“There is no ‘but.’ I didn’t. Period. I said get rid of them. Meaning, send them scuttling the fuck back under whatever rock they’ve recently emerged from.”

“How do you know they’re new?” This time he looked at me as though he was weighing up whether to bother wasting his energy killing me.

“I’m pretty sure you’re being an asshole intentionally, which is annoying, both because it’s my schtick, and because I’m way better at it than you—” He was right on both counts. Even some of the guys in Cygnus with us weren’t quite sure how to take Fox’s dumb/smart routine sometimes, and they knew him better than most people did. “And because you’re wasting my fucking time. Who of the existing students could it be? You know that IQ is fixed at birth, right?

So, unless someone we already know has had a brain transplant, there’s no fucking way that anyone has improved enough to warrant taking half my money. That only leaves someone new. All we have to do is find them, and ‘encourage’ them to leave. Neither of which should take us more than minimal effort and not much more time.”

“Really? And just how do you envisage being able to encourage them to leave?”

“Everyone has a weak spot. All we have to do is find this person’s and work it.”

The stony glint in his eye was kind of terrifying. This was the real Fox—the evil genius almost nobody got to see. Actually, pretty much only I got to see. To the rest of the world he was this affable dudebro who people knew was smart on paper, but had trouble picturing him that way in person, as it mostly didn’t fit with the way he carried himself.

“Really? ’Cos what I’m hearing sounds like a whole bag of time and effort, not to mention trouble. All of which could reasonably be avoided.” I looked at him pointedly.

“Don’t say it.” He stared defiantly back as he replied.

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