"Old Habits" by Seuzz

I tilted the iPhone so Paul could see better. "How about this one?"

"He's okay."

"Only okay? Alright, how about him?"

"Better, I guess."

"You guess?" Flick. "Him?"

A shrug.

I continued flicking through the pictures, more and more rapidly, but I stopped looking at them, and watched Paul instead. He was a quiet one, had been ever since I'd known him; not diffident, but thoughtful. If he seemed unenthusiastic, I was sure, it wasn't because he was uninterested, but because he was looking at things from an angle I hadn't appreciated.

He caught me staring at him, blushed a little, and looked away. "Are these the only ones I get to choose from?"

"They're the only ones I have access to."

His eyes crinkled with skepticism. "You can't just go pick up someone?"

"I could," I shrugged. "Within reason. But then you wouldn't get to choose. You'd have to take whatever the special was that day."

He leaned back and gazed over my shoulder, out through the large plate-glass window that looked into my back yard. "And there are no take backs?"

"I'm afraid not. It's a one-way trip."

He smiled softly when I'd expected him to frown, and nestled closer against my shoulder. "Show them to me again. Tell me about them. I have to know more about who I'd be getting into."

Ah. Of course. Paul's a smart one. It was one of the reasons I loved him so much.

"Well, this is Will Coakley," I said, flipping back to the start of the gallery. "He's a finance major, good grades, probably going to get a good job at a major firm. As you can see, he's a snazzy dresser, and he jogs for exercise.

"This is Greg Czernowicz. He's still just a sophomore, hasn't settled on a major yet. I met his family. They're good people. His grades are not spectacular, but then he was mostly interested in athletics in high school. Great starting material, since he's in terrific shape, but totally unformed upstairs."

"This is Adam Elgar. He's already losing his hair, which is why he keeps his head shaved. I don't think the other guys like him much, and he was probably a bully back in high school. Maybe that's why he interests me/—I bet he'd be fun to ... ah ... wrestle with."

I looked up in time to see Paul smiling privately.

And so we went on in this way. I had to concentrate on the pictures, dredging up the memories of who these fraternity brothers were, and which of their qualities might pique Paul's interest and which of their quirks he might find a turn off.

And so it wasn't until I'd lighted, again, on Richard Tigh, that I figured out what Paul was up to. I'd been dying to get to Tigh again: his skeptical, obsidian eyes and level, alabaster teeth; his broad chest and strong shoulders that could not be hidden under a dress shirt at official functions, and which glistened brownly when with hard discipline he drilled a basketball down a blacktop; the fraternity president who quietly boasted that he would clerk for a Supreme Court justice, and no one really doubted that he one day would. I outlined these and all his other advantages to Paul, and glanced up to find him grinning at me.

"This is the only one who really makes you come alive, isn't he?" he said.

"He's the one I'd pick for you."

"Then he's the one I pick. Because you're already in love with him."

"I'm in love with you."

"It'll be the same thing." We kissed lightly. "Are there any disadvantages to him? Bad breath? Dandruff? A hangnail?"

"He has a girlfriend," I shrugged. "We'd have to do something about her."

* * * * *

"Pages two-forty through three-ten for next time," I said, writing the numbers on the board. A groan went up from the room. "It'll go fast," I promised. "Just try to keep the Guelphs straight from the Ghibellines. Mr. Tigh," I called to him as he rose from the table in the corner. "May I see you a moment?"

He came dutifully to the front of the room, his face the very portrait of neutrality.

"I'd like to have a little talk with you tonight."

He shrugged lightly. "Sure. If you stop by around six I think we were gonna be grilling some steaks."

"I'd prefer we meet alone. It's kind of a delicate matter."

His brow clouded. "Nine o'clock? Pool at Ernie's?"

"Private. I was thinking a drink at my place. Around seven. After that, maybe pool at Ernies."

He tensed visibly, but assented. I couldn't help but stare at his retreating back as he left. He walked with a slight rocking motion—I knew his family owned horses—and he was wearing a t-shirt with very short sleeves, so that the bulge of his biceps made everything south of my diaphragm quicken. I started a little when Paul—the last in the room; he'd sat in, to get an in-person view of his home-to-be—materialized at my elbow.

"Pretty impressive that you can get the president of a major fraternity chapter to just come over to your house at short notice."

"You can do that when you're that fraternity's faculty adviser," I smiled.

"Still, you were masterful," he said quietly, and a faint flush rose up his throat.

* * * * *

"This is probably going to sting like no one's business," I warned him. "It hurt like the very devil when I did it."

Paul leaned forward in my bathtub and clasped his arms around his nakedness. "How did you even manage to do it?"

"Sheer force of desire," I said as I peered at the amber liquid in the heavy syringe. "I baited and hooked him at the dance club, then let him reel me here, to his place. Sucked and swallowed, sucked and swallowed, until I wore him down. He was magnificent, but I was better." I couldn't resist a boast. "Together, we are unstoppable."

"I didn't want to mention anything," Paul murmured, "but you have been on fire since you joined the university faculty."

I said no more as I warmed the needle between my fingers, then swabbed the back of his neck with some alcohol. In truth, it had been a horrifying experience. I'd left him exhausted in his bed, finally, as the fingernails of the dawn dug into the horizon, to hide in his bathroom, in this very tub, where I had plunged a similar syringe into the base of my own skull. Afterwards, outside my skin, I had wobbled and staggered, then crawled, and finally bonelessly clambered back to his bed, and with nerveless, fleshless, flimsy fingers stabbed the object of my lust with the complementary solution. Crawling inside him had been like a return to the womb after the raw, gasping hell that had taken me from my own shell to his, and I slept for hours, hammered into oblivion by the struggle, swimming in the vomited filth that was all that remained of the old professor. The cleaning, the laundering and the scrubbing that ensued had been a vacation by comparison—a reward, even, for I had gained a fine and beautiful body with which to do it.

"There are no take backs?" Paul said to my surprise just as I was about to prick him.

I could have hesitated. I should have, probably. I didn't. I wanted no take backs, even before it became impossible. I wanted him—I needed him—in Richard Tigh's body.

"No take backs," I said, and I drove the needle deep. "I don't know where this stuff came from, I don't know who made it or who wrote the instructions. There were six of these paired syringes when I found it, and I spent four of them on the lab animals, testing it, and testing again, to see if there were take backs." There weren't, and the attempts left a residue whose stench I never wanted to smell again. "And so here we are, with only one shot each, even if we had more of the stuff. I've taken mine—" Paul suddenly heaved forward— "and now here is yours."

He twitched and gasped soundlessly, and flopped onto his side. His mouth opened and closed, and his eyes stared. I swallowed hard and wanted to look away. It had been bad enough with the mice, and naturally I'd not witnessed my own transformation. To see it happen to another human being, to one that I loved ...

His eyes glazed, and he sagged, and suddenly his very form curled up around the edges. He had, of course, split open along his spinal column, and what was left of his exterior tissues curled up, like paper burning in an invisible fire.

And then there was Paul, a livid pink thing of roughly human form; he had limbs and a trunk and a head. But his eyes—though I knew they could see—were blank white protuberances, and his mouth was a sucking, swallowing hole, like that of a toothless hagfish. Tears sprang into my eyes as it trembled and tried to speak. I knew it could feel no pain, but the fear it must have felt ... I patted its head tenderly. "Don't try to talk. Just rest. You'll be fine for hours yet, if you have to wait even that long." The spasms stopped, and the thing became much calmer, though the mouth continued to slowly gulp at the air. "In fact," I said, glancing ostentatiously at my watch. "He should be here in fifteen minutes, for he has never been tardy in my experience."

Quickly, I gathered up what was left of my lover's skin—his face, his hair and coverings, everything I had ever directly perceived of him. I didn't even glance at them or give them a farewell before stuffing them into the bottom of the trash.

* * * * *

"This is the good stuff. The very good stuff. The stuff that is so good that you never ever drink it because the occasion is never right." I set the tumbler of amber liquid down in front of him, and the glass made a satisfying clack against the tabletop. "So that gives you an idea of how serious this is."

Richard looked up at me from beneath his brows. He had dressed for this "official" visit in a crisp white shirt and tastefully casual khakis; his white ball cap—which was at least brand new—was his only concession to fratdom. "It means it's either really good news or really bad news," he said, and his sour tone suggested he was expecting the latter.

"Perhaps you'd better drink up before I tell you which."

He didn't flinch and he didn't stir. He just stared until the moment became uncomfortable, and I had to swallow and look away. I hadn't counted on having to temporize.

"How is your relationship with Megan," I said abruptly, chasing after a train of thought that had begun with the thing in my bathtub.

He tilted his head stiffly. "It's good."

"How is it progressing?"

"You want clinical details?"

"No. I mean, have you discussed future plans?"

"Yes."

I stared intently at the glass in front of him, trying to will him into picking it up.

"What are they?"

"Our plan is to keep them in the future."

"Do you have any idea what her attitude is toward those ... future plans?"

His lips had whitened as they compressed. "I think her attitude is that future plans will remain in the future until she decides that the future has arrived."

"Then let me ask about your present plans. Do they include allowing each other to play the field while waiting for the future to arrive?"

His eyes, which had merely been dark before, flashed that obsidian glint that excited me. "Is that a hypothetical, professor?" he softly asked.

"Let us call it a freighted question, Mr. Tigh."

I had calculated successfully, though the timing was very close. He slung back his drink in one swallow without expression and set the tumbler back down with a noise that was closer to a crack than to a click. His eyes were now flat, with the reptilian hardness of a serpent with a grudge. His hand still held the tumbler, and I saw the knuckles whiten, and I had the sudden vision of him hurling the heavy glass at my forehead. Probably that is what he intended.

Instead, he of a sudden fell sideways, like tree knocked over by a landslide. Fortunately, I caught him before he could damage his beautiful, beautiful self.

* * * * *

I quickly had him out of his clothes, and bending double I lifted him under the armpits and clasped him close to my chest and dragged him to the bathroom, inhaling deeply of the back of his neck as I went. The thing in the tub smacked its orifice—hungrily, I thought—as I gently laid Richard with his throat on the rim of the toilet and his face hanging over the water. "Five minutes, lover," I said. "That is all. Just five minutes now."

From the medicine cabinet I snatched the last needle and quickly but carefully slid it under Richard's skin. (I wanted not a scratch on his perfect carapace!) A gurgle rumbled from inside his body, and then a groan went up: the air of his last breath, rushing from his lungs, to echo in the porcelain bowl. And then came the slurry, the yellow, foaming slurry that poured out of his mouth in a soundless stream. I flushed the toilet to clear it, and flushed it again; and as it poured out Richard's frame grew slacker and slacker. And when the last dribble of the thing that had been inside his skin dropped into the water, his flat, flap-like head slipped heavily onto the tile floor.

"Now, just slip in here," I said with what I fear was a snigger, "like you've done so many times before. It'll be so lovely." I hauled the heavy skin over to the toilet and pulled apart the flanks of the flaccid buttocks. "Just slip in. You won't get caught on anything."

The process was like watching a snake shed its skin in reverse. First one pink limb, and then the second slid up into Richard, and then the head. The thing's torso narrowed and contracted and wriggled, and the legs merged seamlessly into a worm-like tail to follow. The skin billowed and bulged like a sack, but never came close to splitting. Instead, it filled out, and tightened, and flexed. There were muscles beneath it, and they bulged and swelled before relaxing inside their tight casing.

And then it turned over and took a deep breath, and the eyes opened. They settled on me, skeptical and querying, and then they softened, and a faint smile, of the sort the old Richard had never turned toward me, appeared.

I held out my hand to help him, but he effortlessly rose to his feet and stretched and sighed. He rubbed his forearms and his chest and his taut belly, then stretched down to briefly grip his calves. Without a word he stepped out of the tub and brushed past me, to gaze into the mirror. Gently, curiously, he laid an open palm against his cheek, and turned his face this way and that, to catch the light on its planes. He smoothed his hair, and then, charmingly, blew softly into his hand, to catch a sniff of his own breath. His eyes lit with amusement, and he smiled.

I reached out to stroke his back, but he pushed my hand away. "Lemme get dressed first," he said in a gentle baritone. "We'll start with the how-dye-dos and work slowly from there.

* * * * *

He sat back on the leather sofa, another glass of Scotch dangling lazily from his fingers. He crossed his legs. He was entirely at ease, and gracefully leonine.

"That was bullshit about Megan cheating on me, wasn't it?" he said with amused contempt, and took an appreciative sip.

"What makes you think I was talking about Megan cheating?" I smiled back at him. I was sitting across from him, and though I was the professor I was feeling more like the abashed student, trying to show off.

His chest swelled with an unreleased laugh. "Of course I'm cheating on her," he said. "Right and left. But I didn't think you'd have known that, and so you wouldn't have meant it."

My eyes widened, for I hadn't thought that Richard would be so casually unchaste. Still: "That will make it easy for you to end it with her. For her to end it with you, I mean."

His eyes dropped. "Maybe. On the other hand, it would be a useful cover. She has her good points, and she is attractive."

"Still, you would make time for me, wouldn't you?" I meant my wheedle to sound like a joke, but it sounded too plaintive, even in my ear.

His smile widened, and he looked over my shoulder. "The faculty advisor can get the fraternity president to stop by his house whenever he wants."

"I promise I won't abuse the power." I was starving by this point, and lurched rather than rose from my chair. I wanted to pin him to the sofa and drive a kiss down his throat. But he intercepted me, standing up and pressing his hand against his chest.

"Paul?" I asked in puzzlement.

The use of his old name seemed to stir something, for he blushed and hung his head. "Sorry," he said. "New reflexes and all."

"I don't mind the new reflexes," I said. "In fact, I'd like to see how they work."

He smiled and relented, wrapping his arms around me and drawing me in. I decided for my part to let him take it slow, and contented myself with nibbling and sucking rather than biting. It wasn't as satisfying as I'd hoped it would be, in part because he was much sloppier than I'd imagined he'd be. He became less ardent, too, until he finally withdrew, even dropping his arms and stepping back.

"What's wrong," I asked, for something queer seemed to coil in the air between us.

He tilted his head to the side. "The instructions ... Did they say anything about ... Well, about how old habits would interact with new ones?"

"Only that the person who took the skin would be the dominant personality, but would be able to convincingly fake being the person whose skin he had assumed."

"And the best way to do that would be to have the same habits and preferences," he mused.

"What are you saying?" I asked, and something cold clutched at my heart.

There was a peculiar gleam in his eye as he turned toward me: not the obsidian gleam of hate, but a jewel-like gleam of amusement, which frightened me almost as much.

"You were gay, and the professor was gay, so of course you didn't notice a change there," he said. "But don't you find yourself like the foods he likes, now?"

"I hadn't paid attention," I admitted.

"Well, start paying attention," he said. "We'd both better start. Because the fact is—" He took a deep, ragged breath and scratched the back of his head. "The fact is that Richard Tigh wasn't gay. He was totally, completely, 100% straight."

"But you're in control now," I protested wildly. "What about your feelings?"

His laugh sounded like a hiccup. "His feelings are so strong that I can't bend them. I've tried, I've been trying. Very hard, believe me. But they won't bend. By even a tiny little bit." He hiccupped again.

"Oh, baby," I said, and I don't know who I pitied more: him or me.

"And that's the good news," he said, and his voice began to teeter toward hysteria. "Now, you want the bad news? The crazy-ass, awful, horrible, not very good at all news?"

There was something like a flame in his eyes now, and I was so fascinated by his gaze that I didn't answer, couldn't answer, and certainly didn't see his fist before it was suddenly in my face. My jaw cracked and I hit the ground hard.

I looked up and could see only a blur. But through the ringing in my ears I heard perfectly the perfectly horrible conclusion to our affair.

"The bad news is that I— Richard— I—" His voice cracked and broke.

"I hate fags! I mean, I just. Fucking. Hate them!"