(Author's note: If you haven't noticed, this is not about Glee. Apparently the slash monsters have taken over my brain, because re-watching Real Genius (1985) made the plot bunnies start breeding furiously. Five days and over thirteen hundred words later, this is the result. The title is from the song I'm Falling, from the movie soundtrack; lyrics are at the end. Listen to it here: http: /www. youtube. com/watch?v=2O_3RjbBvEQ )


"Jordan?" Mitch said, stumbling into the common room, laden with chart paper, computer punch cards and assorted lab paraphernalia. "Have you seen Chris?"

Jordan looked up from her three-dimensional representation of curved nanowires, and shook her head. "He was at dinner, but I haven't seen him since they smuggled out those meal trays to use for structural support in their tree house, do you think he was planning on coming back after they did some work on that or was he just going to sleep up there again, because you know he sometimes –"

"Okay," he interrupted, sighing. "Thanks, anyway. If you see him, can you remind him he was supposed to work on Dr. Hathaway's project with me tonight? Again?"

When he got to the room, Lazlo Hollyfeld was there, sitting in Chris's chair, with a Rubik's cube in his hands. He had a feeling Lazlo visited their room at specific times for a reason, but for the life of him, he couldn't figure out a pattern. He charted the times of day and analyzed them on his Tandy 2000, but it was no use: Lazlo's comings and goings were a mystery. He wished he could figure it out.

"You ever play with one of these things?" he asked.

Mitch stared at him. They were the first words he'd ever heard Lazlo speak, since he'd arrived at Pacific Tech that January. "Yeah," he whispered. Then, a little louder: "I got one for my tenth birthday."

"What's it for?"

"It's - it's a toy, a puzzle. You know. You mix it up and then you have to get it back the way it's supposed to be."

Lazlo's confusion was palpable. "How do you know the way it's supposed to be?"

Mitch took the scrambled cube from him and, with a few quick twists, solved the cube. "Like this, with all the colors the same."

"Huh." Lazlo looked at the cube, baffled. "Who wants things all the same?"

Mitch sighed. "Me, I guess," he said. "God knows I could use a little more order in my life." He leaned on Chris' desk and picked up the toy Chris had identified as a penis-stretcher. Mitch still didn't know what it really did.

Lazlo nodded. "It's Chris, isn't it?" Mitch looked at him sharply, and he shrugged. "I know. He thrives on chaos. That can be… unnerving."

"Tell me about it," Mitch agreed. "All his flying toys and crazy stunts. I mean, don't get me wrong. He's amazing. The thing with the laser and the mirrors and the waterslides... that – that was freaking genius." He rubbed his forehead. "But this business of abandoning me to deal with Dr. Hathaway's project alone, that's another thing entirely."

"He's not helping you?"

"No!" Mitch snapped. "We've got work to do, hard work, and Chris… he just… distracts me."

"He's pretty distracting," Lazlo said softly. Mitch's face turned red, and he looked away.

"You know, I thought this place was going to be different," he said. "But it's like high school all over again. I feel like I'll always be the outcast, the one who doesn't belong. Dr. Hathaway seems to like me, at least, but nobody else does."

"Except Chris?"

"Chris… confounds me." Mitch shuffled through the colors on the Rubik's Cube, giving it stripes. "I didn't have a social life in high school… my parents were all about extra homework and academic decathlon and special projects. I barely had time to brush my teeth every night, much less hang out with my friends." He snorted. "Not that I had any good ones. But Chris – Chris has nothing but a social life."

"He eats, drinks and breathes a party," agreed Lazlo.

"I mean, I really admire him, in a way. He's clever, funny, full of wild ideas. He's… he's completely unlike anybody I've ever known. But he drives me crazy." He blew out a frustrated sigh, tossing the Rubik's Cube on Chris' bed. "I wish he'd just tell me why he's never here."

"He's avoiding you," Lazlo said. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a roll of candy. "Life Saver?"

"What? Oh… sure." Mitch took one, puzzled. "What do you mean, he's avoiding me? Why?"

Lazlo was silent for a minute, gazing placidly at Mitch. "You know why," he said.

"No," insisted Mitch, but he would not look into Lazlo's eyes.

"Chris plays with those coins," Lazlo said. "Doesn't he? On his knuckles."

"Yeah," Mitch said. "He's really good at it." Mitch couldn't take his eyes off Chris' hands when he did that. "So?"

"He walks around in his underwear. For hours at a time?"

"… Yeah," he said again, his face flaming. "He's comfortable like that, I guess." Chris' boxers left little to the imagination.

"He touches you a lot," Lazlo nodded, and his eyes were kind and gentle. "I bet you can remember every time he ever touched you, even just a hand on your shoulder."

"Stop," Mitch croaked, and turned away from Lazlo, covering his head with his hands. When he looked back at the chair, it was empty. The man had vanished. Mitch stared at the empty chair, running his hand over the leather, and tried to collect his sensibilities.

Mitch didn't know why, but Lazlo was right. He knew what was really keeping him from his work. And, as loathe as he was to admit it, it wasn't one of the girls from the Wanda Tressler School of Beauty.

Mitch relived every memory of Chris' touch in excruciating detail in his dreams, and occasionally, when he was feeling particularly frustrated, in his guilty morning fantasies. His arms came around my neck, he would think, stroking himself to exquisite hardness, and put the lei over my head, and they were on my chest, right there, brushing my left nipple, and that would be enough to make him gasp and leave a sticky mess in his shorts.

Or: He lifted me off the ground when I slipped on the ice outside my dorm room, and wrapped his arms around me as we skated down the hall. His armpits tingled at the memory. He hadn't even realized his armpits were erogenous zones, but they seemed to be, at least where Chris was concerned.

In the lab, he made the stupid joke about cha-chaing, and that led to a whole series of ridiculous fantasies about dancing with him at the winter formal, each of them wearing sport jackets and matching boutonnieres, which always ended with frantic necking in Chris' bed and embarrassingly corny words of endearment.

But none of this mattered, because Chris liked girls, was always chasing them, made the moves on them, and occasionally had one visit for an hour or two while Mitch hung out in the common room and watched to see if the sock would come off the doorknob. And Chris was never around when he really needed him. Like now, for example.

Mitch stared through tear-filled eyes at the calculations on his chart paper, and in a sudden burst of fury, tore the whole thing off the easel and sent it tumbling to the ground. "Dammit," he swore, and stormed across the hall to the office where the phone was, dialing his parents' number with an increasing sense of panic. This was not how things were supposed to go.

"Mom, I want to come home," was what he said. "I don't like it here anymore. I want to come home and live with you." Because there was no way he could use the words he was thinking to people who still called him "Mommy's little soldier." Mom, I'm having absurd fantasies about my roommate, or Mom, I jerk off every morning thinking about Chris's treasure trail wouldn't go over very well. And, it was no use, anyway – apparently his parents had already rented out his room. He wasn't going anywhere.

He knocked into Jordan, coming out of the office, and she knew right away that something was wrong. "I have ice cream," she said, and he followed her in defeat to the kitchenette. She chattered at him while scooping Moose Tracks into a bowl and pushed a spoon into his hand.

Jordan was very nice, it was true. It didn't matter to him that she was hyperkinetic and talked all the time. She had pretty eyes, and her skin was soft, and she was funny and friendly. But it wasn't her chest that he imagined pressed against his in the middle of the night; it wasn't her lips that traced a pattern of tingling kisses down his neck when he daydreamed during p-chem. And it wasn't her name he cried out with increasing regularity upon waking. Thank god Chris was a heavy sleeper, because he'd have a heck of a time explaining that one.

"I talked to Lazlo today," he said, and Jordan's eyes got big.

"He talked to you?" She ate another spoonful. "What did he talk about?"

"Chris."

"Oh." She nodded sagely. "They say he likes him. I mean, likes him likes him."

Mitch felt the blood drain from his face. "Chris… likes Lazlo?"

"No, Lazlo likes Chris. I don't know, do you think Chris likes him back? I haven't really noticed, but they do –"

"He's so much older than him, though," Mitch found himself saying. "And… the beard. I don't think he's really Chris's type."

She eyed Mitch. "What do you think is Chris' type?"

Mitch tried to respond to that, but after three attempts, he gave up.

"Eat more ice cream," advised Jordan. "I think you're gonna need it."