He finished rinsing out the inside of the pepper, left the water on for a few seconds longer to sweep the seeds down the drain, then set the pepper on the edge of Rian’s cutting board and retreated to the other side of the sink again. Dinner. Fucking finish making dinner—why had he even offered to let Rian stay to eat, anyway?—and say what they needed to say about Chris.
And then get Rian the fuck out of his space.
Before that sharp sugar-candy scent permeated the room, and Damon wouldn’t be able to get it out of his space.
Or out of his head.
But he couldn’t seem to bring himself to speak, as that silence fell again—punctuated only by the sound of Rian hesitantly chopping the bell peppers into thin slices, followed by the sharp, crackling hiss as Damon tossed the beef strips into the heated wok and the searing metal instantly set the meat to sizzling, savory scents rising to mingle with the fresh, wet scent of cool cut vegetables. Damon slid the wok in a practiced circle, swirling the cooking meat around, tossing it...and almost tossing it too high, pent-up frustration scoring through him and making his motions too sharp; he let out a soft yelp and scooted the wok forward to catch the beef strips as they fell, rounding them up back into the pan.
He was half expecting a biting, mocking comment from the man at his side.
But Rian didn’t say a word.
Until the silence was almost eating at Damon, the way Rian kept his head bowed as if he was—was—Damon didn’t know, but he growled under his breath and settled the wok, eyeing Rian. He’d piled all the pulled and cut vegetables up into neat little distinct piles, and was just finishing with the second pepper and adding the curving, messily irregular red strips to the last heap, picking them up in both thin hands.
“Here,” Damon grunted. “Go ahead and add it all.”
Rian blinked, tilting his head at him. “Just...pour it all in?”
“That’s how it works, yeah.”
“Okay...” Rian started to gather up the handful he’d just put down, but Damon shook his head.
“Seriously. Just pick up the whole cutting board and dump it.”
Rian looked skeptical, but picked up the cutting board in both hands, balancing it like a newly hired waiter handling his first tray of delicate champagne glasses and maneuvering it over the wok with exaggerated care. Damon watched with a raised eyebrow while Rian slowly, slooowly tipped the cutting board over—then let out a little excited noise, jumping up on the balls of his feet, as the vegetables tumbled into the wok and a cloud of steam went up, bursting with a medley of mingled scents.
Damon started sliding the wok back and forth again, tossing the food until the steak strips and vegetables mixed so they’d crisp quickly and evenly. “You that excited about stir-fry?”
“I like making things.” Rian watched raptly, holding the empty cutting board clutched in both hands like a chipmunk with a nut clutched in both paws. “It’s just the things I make usually aren’t edible.” He swayed closer—too close, his shoulder brushing against Damon’s arm, his eyes locked on the wok. “Except that time I made stained glass cookies.”
“Stained glass cookies?”
“Sugar glaze and food coloring in a frame of dough. It’s really not that much different from making real stained glass, and mixing dough’s about as easy as mixing pottery clay.” Those curious eyes shifted to him. “Do you like sugar candy, Damon?”
The scent of sugar candy, curling over his tongue and begging to be tasted, every time he stood too close to Rian Falwell.
Damon took a step away.
Just enough to break that contact—the warmth of Rian’s shoulder pressing into his arm, angular and lean.
“You can put that in the sink,” he said, nodding toward the cutting board. “Food’ll be done soon. There’s iced tea in the fridge, if you don’t mind putting out glasses. You can have the chair. I’ll sit on the bed or the floor.”
An odd noise drifted from his side. He couldn’t really call it anything—a sigh, a pouty mumble, he wasn’t sure. But a moment later Rian’s warmth retreated, his footsteps receding. The clink of ice in glasses. The liquid rush of pouring tea. The thud of glasses against the coffee table, followed by the squeal the recliner always made when someone settled into it, much less noisy than when Damon sank his weight against the cushions. He could feel Rian watching him, but he guessed there was nothing else to look at in his damned suite.
“May I ask you something...?” Rian asked, so low it mingled with the noise of the sizzling stir-fry—and the whirr of the range fan, as Damon reached up and flicked it on before the smoking peanut oil set off the fire alarm.
And he tried not to go stiff as he threw over his shoulder, “Depends on what it is.”
“You don’t like to keep many things around, do you?” Rian said. “Is that an old military habit?”
“Nah. I didn’t stick with the Navy long enough to pick up more than a few scars overseas. Wasn’t enough of my thing to form habits.” He pressed his lips together, working his jaw, staring down at the pan as the bright colors of the crisping vegetables mixed with the glistening, richly brown-seared meat. “I just...”
Did he want to answer that?
But this, right now, felt like an uneasy truce.
And he didn’t want to break it.
Not when he didn’t think he had it in him to fight with Rian again tonight.
“I don’t remember my birth family at all,” he murmured, as he flicked the heat off on the burner, then pulled the cabinet overhead open to draw down plates. “But I know I lost them. I’ve always known that, even if I don’t know the why or the how. So I guess I just always thought...” He struggled to articulate, struggled to find the words to encapsulate this when no one had ever asked, and filled the silence with the scrape of a spatula and the muffled pattering of food heaping onto a plate. He should’ve put on rice or noodles to go with this, but Rian had thrown him for enough of a loop that plain stir-fry would have to do. “Maybe...maybe it’s better if I don’t hold on to things too much. If I don’t hold on, it won’t bother me when it’s taken away.”
No response.
Nothing at all.
Damon grit his teeth. Why had he opened his damned mouth?
Why the hell was he pouring out all these small private insecurities to this little rich boy who was so damned spoiled he’d had his own personal chef and couldn’t even figure out how to clean bell peppers?
Because you feel like you owe him.
Because you were a fucking ass to him last night, and you hurt him pretty fucking deep, so now you feel like you’ve gotta cut yourself open and give him a wound to poke his fingers into, too.