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Felinus nodded slowly. “I’ll get it.” He turned around to look at Seong. “In the meantime, I need you to do some research for me. Issac’s ready to get his license and I’d like him to be in something damn near indestructible, short of getting him an actual tank.”
Gatekeeping
January had come and gone, and Thomas couldn’t remember time flying by so fast. His therapy sessions were still going on; his therapist had said multiple times now that she was impressed by how he had been handling the changes in his life. She didn’t seem all that concerned when Thomas mentioned his stammer seemed to get worse when he was talking about “normal teenage things.” He really didn’t think he should have a hard time pushing out words over something as simple as being asked by a cheerleader if he and Danny were a couple now or where he was going to college. Those were normal things to be asked and yet he had stammered so badly over both of them he wasn’t even sure if he gave an answer.
It’s not as if I don’t know the fucking answer to them, he thought, still frustrated with how hard it had been to talk. He had made Danny sit down before he had to run off to training after school on Monday to check in to see if they were dating or dating. Danny had made a point the entire day to find Thomas between classes to steal a quick kiss or to hold his hand on the way to another class. Danny had almost seemed hurt that Thomas was asking for the clarification at all, but Thomas pointed out that he had had to ask if Friday was a date, so Danny should have seen it coming. So they were a couple. Thomas knew that.
As for college, despite his guidance counselor’s insistence that he had missed all the deadlines for everything, he had received several packets from the local university that he had been accepted with a full scholarship to the Computer Science program he had applied for on the day after Christmas. He still wasn’t sure if that had been O’Hare’s or Seong’s doing, or if it was some built in clause of the Three Rings’ treaty, but he followed Issac’s advice and just said “thank you.” After all the scholarship would not only cover his tuition but also the required year in the dorms for freshmen. That was a huge relief and it should have been something easy to say.
Yet he stammered. His therapist could only reassure him that the stammer was caused by stress. As he learned to better cope with the stress of being asked questions about himself, the stammer would, too.
“What are you scowling at so intently?”
Thomas blinked and grimaced at the article he had been staring at before he glanced up at Seong. Immediately, he felt a calm wash over him as the other man set down his bag on the table and hooked his foot onto a nearby chair to pull it closer to Thomas’s. It was the opposite of how Danny made him feel. Danny always seemed to make his heart race, where one look at Seong made everything in him relax. Even the frustration with the stutter and the article seemed to fade now that Seong was there. “I think I’m missing… something,” he said, pushing the corner of his computer so Seong could see the screen. “None of this makes any sense.”
“You want to build an app,” Seong asked, his shoulder brushing against Thomas’s as he leaned closer. “What for?”
“I- um-” Thomas paused to think of how to explain. “Do you know what time blindness is?”
Seong chuckled, pulling his mask off and setting it on the table. “Oh, yes. I have it. Used to drive my mom nuts how I could never instinctively tell how long something had been cooking on the stove without a timer or a clock. I assume you have it too?”
Thomas nodded, flushing. “It wasn’t so bad before but it’s been getting worse. Or… I guess it’s not really getting worse but I’m having a harder time keeping track of time. Ceri said that if she caught me still up when she left for work one more time she was taking my computer after ten pm. But setting alarms is…” he trailed off, grimacing.
“Cumbersome,” Seong suggested, tilting his head at him. “So what are you wanting to do?”
“I want to build something where I can have it go off continuously for different times,” Thomas explained. “So every five minutes or three minutes or twenty minutes it’ll go off, and it’ll keep going off until you either turn it off or a set number of alerts go by. But I have no idea how to do that so I was trying to read this article-”
Seong scoffed, his eyes darting over the words for a moment, then reached around Thomas to exit out of the article. “That is a load of gatekeeping bullshit meant to keep the self-taught and novice out of app making,” he said scornfully. “I bet anything there’s a ‘newbie friendly’ course being sold at the bottom of it. Bastard just threw as much technical sounding nonsense at a wall and posted it to scare people.” His hand rested on the top of Thomas’s head as he smiled. “You can build this, Thomas. I know you can. Don’t let some mediocre programmer trying to make his money with ‘courses’ meant to make it harder for people to learn.”
Thomas smiled back, tilting his head to encourage Seong’s hand to stay. “Thanks, Seong.” The anxiety from his chest had loosened completely now and he looked at the computer. “But I still have no idea where to start.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Seong said, beaming at him. “To help point you in the right direction. Let’s take a look.”
* * *
Seong smiled to himself as Thomas worked. It was only two months since that night at the club and Thomas had only grown more and more impressive with each day. The app that Thomas was building wasn’t the most difficult project he could have chosen, but it was a tedious choice. Probably not one that any traditional classroom setting would have him make as his first solo project, but one that Seong was confident that Thomas could pull off. He was pleased to see Thomas thriving and being absolutely adorable with his blue lens glasses and chewing on his lip in thought as he reread code.
Seong’s phone buzzed and he tapped it quickly as green eyes darted up to him.
“Everything alright,” Thomas asked as Seong frowned at the message.
“Fine,” he said slowly. “Uh… Are we still meeting up the third Wednesday this month?”
Thomas’s head cocked to one side, his curls falling against his glasses. “Yes? Why wouldn’t we be?”
Fuck, stop being so cute, Seong thought, stopping himself from reaching over to play with those curls. “Bat mentioned that the National Sign-On’s are that day,” he explained, waving his phone. “Danny, Kevin, and Mark all have full ride scholarships for their athletics so he thought they might be doing that and invited you along?”
“Oh,” Thomas frowned. “They did mention something about being on the news later this month to officially sign paperwork for their schools. But I assumed that it was just them and their guardians that could go. Hang on-” He pulled out his own phone and took a moment to scroll through it, pausing to read periodically. “Yeah, no.” He held out his phone to Seong to a text conversation. “I’m meeting up with them that night for dinner to celebrate, but the afternoon is still clear.”
Seong frowned as well as he looked at the text messages between Danny and Thomas. Sure enough, between a cute good morning text and one where Danny seemed to be trying to find Thomas somewhere was a short conversation.
Thomas: Am I supposed to come along to the Signing with you guys?
Danny: You don’t have to.
It’s not really anything more than the schools showing us off.
It’ll honestly be really boring.
