“Curfew is a thing, though.” Rian glanced toward the window, eyes unfocusing thoughtfully as he looked outside, tapping the tines of his fork against his lower lip. “Chris looked so dejected in class today, though. And exhausted.”
“Sneaking around while trying to stay on top of your life is pretty tiring. And teenage romance is pretty dramatic. Probably made the other kid mad and he’s afraid of getting dumped.”
Rian’s smile was troubled. “I really hope that’s all it is.”
“Better than the other alternatives.”
“Such as...?”
“Drugs. Juvenile delinquency. Getting the shit kicked out of him behind the bleachers. The usual things kids lie about, and the usual things you’re hoping they’re not lying about.”
“...fair enough. I’d really prefer to cross those things off the list.” Rian made a face. “Although it appears there’s a list now.”
“Makes it easy, though.”
“How so?”
“We tackle one thing at a time. Rule it out, move on to the next.” Damon speared the final bite of his stir-fry and nipped it off the fork. “How we do that without twisting that stick up Walden’s ass, well...” He grunted. “I’ll let you know when I figure that out.”
“Mm.” Rian leaned forward and set his half-empty plate on the coffee table; he’d picked at his food like a bird, barely eaten enough to satisfy a sparrow, and he still perched precariously on the footrest of the recliner, his legs neatly crossed at the ankles.
“Not hungry?” Damon asked.
“Oh, I’m ravenous, and I will be stealing your plate and bringing it back later, since I have a feeling you’re about to kick me out in a moment. I just need...” Rian reached back to slip a hand under his shawl, fingers searching, before he came up with his phone, shaking the little slim Motorola pointedly. “Digits.”
Damon eyed him. He wasn’t quite sure he wanted Rian having his number, but maybe if they kept it to texts and phone calls he’d stop...stop getting so fucking worked up around Falwell like this. Stop fighting with him, snarling at him, turning so volatile he felt like he’d twisted himself inside out in the past day.
“Sure,” he said, and rattled off his number. Rian tapped it in quickly with his thumb, then tapped out something else; Damon’s phone vibrated in his front pocket, and he shifted to unbend his thigh so he could snag it, narrowing his eyes at the screen.
Cling wrap? the text said.
He jerked his head up to find Rian watching him with that unvoiced laughter dancing in his eyes; Damon groaned and nodded toward the kitchen. “Second drawer to the left.”
Rian flowed to his feet and scooped up his plate, nearly twirling into the kitchen to make short work of wrapping up his stir-fry. “I’ll wash your plate and bring it back to you tomorrow,” he said, without so much as an if-you-please. “Since we’ve got Chris sorted for now, I’d rather not overstay my welcome.”
Damon caught himself frowning as he watched Rian, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t really know what to say yet a-fucking-gain when Rian kept leaving him spinning his wheels, so he just watched the odd willow-wisp the man made, this bright pale thing changing the shape of the space in Damon’s apartment, even as Rian trailed lightly toward the door.
“Ta for now,” Rian said brightly, wiggling his fingers at Damon with that...
That fucking smile.
That artificial one that got Damon’s hackles up, fake and shallow and telling Damon that Rian wasn’t leaving out of fucking courtesy.
He’d gotten in his head that he needed to escape, instead.
Fine. Whatever.
I wasn’t gonna kick you out, he thought. You could’ve stayed to finish.
Saying that out loud didn’t seem like the best idea.
So he just kept it to himself.
And watched as Rian disappeared from Damon’s suite, the last sight of him a flick of his hair and the flittering fringe of his shawl before he was gone into the hallowed and haunted halls of Albin Academy, and into the night.
* * *
Rian really didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts right now.
Because he couldn’t seem to manage to be alone in his thoughts at all.
He’d sat by himself in the living room of his suite, curled up against the pillows piled along the window seat, the plate he’d stolen from Damon resting at his feet, empty after Rian had satisfied his ravening belly clearing it out. And told himself it didn’t taste better just because he’d helped a little, with the awkwardly cut vegetables that crunched crisply with the seared-in flavors of the pepper and salt and steak with every bite. Didn’t taste better because he’d rather enjoyed that—cooking for himself from something other than a microwave container, or eating in the school cafeteria.
Didn’t taste better because perhaps, just perhaps, he’d enjoyed those little moments with Damon, even if it wasn’t hard to tell he’d been exasperating the man to hell and back with his clumsiness and apparent inability to resist teasing him.
Damon.
He hadn’t meant anything by the way he liked to capture Damon’s name between his lips and tongue, sucking on it like an overripe cherry.
Sometimes Rian couldn’t help flirting. It was just as shallow as his smiles, just another way to keep people slightly at one remove with that flippant teasing where every coy little sally was less come hither and more stay just that far away.
But when he’d purred Damon in that moment when Damon’s body had been a wall of heat at his back and Damon’s arms had been bars of steel walling him in...
There’d been a moment.
A moment when Damon’s eyes had widened, when the fierce sinew in his arms had rippled and tightened, a moment when that fire that sometimes melted the ice in Damon’s eyes was something other than anger, frustration, exasperation.
And Rian couldn’t stop replaying that moment again and again, his skin alive with the feeling of Damon’s body heat imprinted on him.
He needed...something. Not to sit here trying to talk himself into taking the plate he’d so brazenly stolen back tonight. Not to be alone in this suite, when either Walden had turned in early—silent behind his locked door—or was once again not even coming back tonight. Not to twist himself out of his own skin with questioning, confusion, wondering why the hell he couldn’t stop thinking about a man who made him want to rip his own hair out...and who had been a near-stranger to him just yesterday morning, a vaguely familiar face recognized in the halls as another faculty member.