He’d...he’d caught himself noticing now and then just how arrestingly attractive Damon was, from that handsome face with its blunt-edged elegance to the way his body showed the work he put in to hone himself to a pillar of strength, refining every line of his frame into a perfect aesthetic only enhanced by the scars that marked every pain he had survived.
But that was just an artist’s eye for physical beauty, he’d told himself over and over again.
As if that could explain why Damon frustrated him so much.
Made him so angry.
And was never far from the forefront of his mind.
That kiss had felt like a short fuse burning down to the final explosion, fire crackling hotter and hotter until it hit a burst point. And if Rian would stop sticking his head in the sand and playing coy, playing pretend...he had to admit.
He was attracted to Damon Louis.
And he had no idea what to do with that, when they couldn’t go five minutes without nearly ripping each other’s heads off.
Not to mention it just...didn’t make sense.
Rian wanting Damon, perhaps.
But Damon...wanting him? With how coldly he looked at Rian, and the way he stared at Rian as if the two of them were utterly alien to each other, unable to even comprehend the same concept of reality?
But...you’re not the only one looking for somewhere to belong.
By the time morning came, the first faint gray light creeping through the windows and the narrow branches of the trees, Rian had barely caught an hour of sleep. And his restless energy wouldn’t let him lie abed any longer, chasing him from his bedroom and out into the living room—where he caught Lachlan Walden at the kitchen island, settled on a stool and lifting a cup of coffee to his lips, eyes fixed on an unfolded newspaper, distant behind his glasses.
Lachlan froze with his coffee cup halfway to his lips.
Rian halted mid-stride, blinking at him.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you up before seven before,” Lachlan said, his normally stern, cool voice slightly roughened with sleep, his normally precisely swept-back platinum hair lightly mussed, a few strands falling into his eyes.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you without a suit coat before,” Rian countered, staring; Lachlan actually looked vaguely casual, as much as he could when he was still in a crisply ironed pale blue button-down with dark blue pinstripes, paired with a matching dark blue tie.
“You have no reason to,” Lachlan retorted tonelessly. “Why are you up so early?”
Rian shrugged, hefting his gym bag to his shoulder. “Couldn’t sleep. Going to work off some energy before first period.”
“Ah.”
Neutral, disinterested, reminding Rian without a single word that they didn’t really cohabitate; they just happened to awkwardly share a space. He fidgeted for a moment, then mumbled, “Morning, then,” and turned away, toward the door.
Only to stop with his hand on the knob as Walden’s voice drifted after him. “How goes your knotty little problem?”
Which one?
Rian glanced back. “We haven’t pinpointed anything. No one knows anything about what he’s doing after school, not that we can ask directly.” He couldn’t help the simmering snap of resentment there, that Lachlan thought it was so much more important to keep from inconveniencing the parents than it was to just...be certain, with the boys. “But Chris doesn’t look good. He looks sick. Like he’s losing weight, too.”
“Keep me apprised, please,” Walden murmured, lifting his mug to his lips—only to pause as Rian just glared at him, looking back at Rian frostily over the top of the mug. “I’m not heartless, Mr. Falwell. Simply cautious. Previous administrators have managed to keep this school out of the tabloids for decades. I have a responsibility to carry on in their footsteps. That, too, is part of safeguarding the boys’ well-being. They don’t need to be subjected to public scrutiny and paparazzi sensationalism on top of the ignominy of being banished to this... I believe their favorite word for it is ‘backwater.’”
“...most recent one I’ve heard is ‘boring shithole town,’ but backwater works too.” Rian smiled weakly. He wasn’t really ready to forgive Lachlan yet, but...he got it, sort of.
But that didn’t stop him from worrying about Chris.
And that worry haunted him as he made his way through the silent, whispering halls, through the misty shafts of predawn light streaming through the windows, to the room set aside as a dance studio on the fourth floor.
Technically this was one of his classrooms, but he only used it for one period per day, during fifth with the whopping four boys who had enrolled in the dance elective. Rian wasn’t properly trained to teach ballet, anyway, but he had enough foundations to guide the boys through the most basic of steps and proper posture and turn of the foot; he supposed it was another luxury he’d taken for granted, that he’d had time to learn art and music and dance like he was some child of a highbrow family practicing these things not for the love of them, but because they would make him a prettier, more accomplished piece of arm candy for whatever man he would end up arranged to marry.
He supposed it wasn’t far off from the truth.
Private tutors; ballet, violin, piano, painting, sculpting; etiquette lessons; parties just to show their “accomplished” artist son off to their wealthy friends. Even if his family wasn’t as prestigious as some of the lineages who walked these halls, he supposed in some ways he’d had more freedoms than any of these boys. At least he’d been allowed to choose.
That was why he’d let Valdez out of any obligation to finish out Rian’s class.
Not because he was trying to control things.
But because he doubted Valdez had been given a choice in coming here, and Rian had been trying to give him just one thing he could decide for himself.
Not that Damon had given Rian a chance to explain that.
With a frustrated hiss, he tried to push Damon out of his mind.
He’d come here to stop thinking about him.
So he changed in the little room adjacent to the dance studio, slipping into a leotard and off-the-shoulder sweater and a pair of worn slippers whose toes had turned rough and just right for a scuffed, comfortable grip when standing on pointe, turned on a little Tchaikovsky, and just...
Let himself go.
He wasn’t very good. He knew that. Nowhere near professional level, nowhere near even any of the better students at proper ballet schools...but he didn’t have to be good to enjoy it, losing himself in practiced movements as he stepped and twisted and twirled across the glossy floor of the wide studio space, now and then catching a glimpse of himself in the wall of mirrors along one side and correcting his form, but mostly just letting his body take over and move as it pleased so he could do something that didn’t require actually focusing on his racing, hyper-cycling thoughts. Anything to work off this bristling, restless energy; anything to tire himself out with the comforting, pleasant burn of stretching and testing his body.