The ride back to his dorm hadn’t been nearly as insane as the ride into town. It was the first time Dane had seen the normally indomitable professor this… boring? calm? Low-key?

Introverted, Dane decided.

Coach Robby was usually lively and full of energy. His enthusiasm was one of the main reasons why Dane found his lectures bearable. Since he picked up Dane he hadn’t done much more than strike up a polite conversation and then let it die.

What did he eat for lunch? Dane thought, A puppy?

He had finished his interview without incident and had even managed to wrangle some baby carrots out of his conversation over lunch. The interview itself had been pretty short and to the point: he proffered his resume, talked about his references and work experience and pretty much laid out his plans.

He hoped he hadn’t screwed up too badly. Who knew her last name started with a silent k? She should have told me after the first three or four times I botched her name. Dane had pretty high hopes of landing the position, but his nerves sit ate at him.

She– no, Serra– had promised to get back to him about the interview by Wednesday.

Dane looked forward to the call with mixed emotions, but set his focus on the events of the coming Sunday: he was to attend a card tournament this weekend and he still had some planning to do.

Serra rubbed her eyes.

The second day of interviews hadn’t been horrible and the third day had left her with some small hope for the future of mankind. It was Monday night and she had been working most of the day on the hardest part of the whole process: narrowing down the applicants.

Sure the first round of cuts had been pretty easy, Too fat, too ugly, too smelly and the second round weren’t too bad, but they required that she actually read the applications, unqualified, no real drive. The third round had given her a headache though she plodded through after popping a few aspirin he doesn’t really need the position.

A glimpse of her desktop clock showed her that she had been sitting in front of her PC for the last four hours. It was 1:30 am on a Monday, No, Tuesday and no sane being had any business doing anything this late on a work night.

She was on her fourth and final run-through of the applications and was determined to finish off the applicants.

Serra got up and stretched, and after a yawn her gaze landed on a picture of one of the six remaining hopefuls. eh… I don’t like his eyebrows.

Five left.

Damn.

“Thank God for the simple pleasures in life,” Dane intoned as he pulled a can of Progresso soup from a cabinet. It wasn’t his cabinet or his soup, but that was the beauty of dorm life, right?

He popped the top off the can, dumped the contents in a bowl and threw it in the microwave. He remembered his first time with one of the machines. Explosions have a way of etching themselves onto one’s long term memory.

There weren’t many people in the dorms now that the semester was officially over, but wearing a diaper in the communal kitchen unnerved him more than usual.

Even from under his pants and a pair of boxers they still made noise. Normally the ambient noise easily drowned out the crinkling, but without the usual deafening cacophony that was two-hundred students crammed into a too small building Dane was a little unnerved.

Then again, Dane had been putting it off for a while and he always felt better about life in general during and after his diaper-related shenanigans.

He retrieved his midnight snack and carried it back to his dorm. It felt nice to lock the door and is felt better to sit down to enjoy his soup.

After slurping the warm meal down Dane threw the bowl onto his desk and it collided with his trading binder and knocked his deck onto the floor.

The tournament hadn’t gone too well, but he had managed to secure an invitation to a sneak preview for the coming set. If he could find out where one was being hosted he’d be happy to attend, but the previews weren’t supposed to happen for another three weeks and he had more pressing concerns at the moment.

Like Tanya Huff’s Smoke and Shadows.

Dane drifted out of consciousness with visions of vampire detectives and extra-dimensional Shadow Lords dancing through his head. And a slightly wet diaper between his legs.

Sometimes life wasn’t pleasant. Sometimes it wasn’t fair, easy or good either.

Marrying Kate had been all of those things. And more.

Sure, his family hadn’t really approved, and he did gain some of their ire, but Robby felt that he had done the right thing.

Two grown kids and half a mortgage later saw Kate’s last summer in their house. Robby had been contacted shortly before by a few of his old friends who didn’t want him to try anything stupid. He had known full well that she would die before he did. He also knew roughly when it was coming.

He always knew that kind of thing.

It wasn’t through some mystical sense or ESP. It was from a cold chill he got whenever he tried to envision their future together. It came to him when he was planning a small vacation and the cold had never made him feel this sick before.

His friends were right. He had tried something stupid.

Really stupid, in fact.

“Kate, I’ve been thinking about… us. I can’t keep lying to you. I’ve been having an affair with one of my students.” He’d never been a good liar, but for her sake he had practiced.

Again and again.

“It’s best if we… uh huh. Yeah, me too. I …okay.” It hadn’t gone as planned, but that was the beauty of it.

So long as she wasn’t with him she would not be at the appointed place and time– 11:19 am, World’s Smallest Church, Plaquemine, Louisiana– the conditions would never be met. She’d be missed and get an extension until they could find her and fix that wrinkle in the paperwork.

Keeping things hidden was one of Robby’s greatest talents.

Sure, doing such would cause a stir. Sure, he’d get in trouble with his family and get kicked out of the family business. He was already in trouble anyway for marrying Kate and having children with her.

After all I’ve done to break with them, why did Gabriel invite me back? How is Kate doing?

With these thoughts the Grigori Ramiel, no longer Robby, sat and drank himself into a stupor.

Where’d the hic worm go?