Why it hurt.
It wasn’t like he...but he...he just...
Oh, Rian. Dearest, must you fuss so over unimportant things? Can’t you just be happy with what you have?
He looked away, pressing his lips together fiercely to stop their sudden and unexpected trembling, a jolt of emotion that made his breaths catch hard in his throat; that voice echoing in his head wasn’t his, but he hated wondering how many of the boys here had heard something similar.
It was cruel. It was horrid.
It was what he’d signed on to when he came to work here. He knew that. He’d almost ended up attending here himself, and it had been his parents’ contacts that led him to the job opening. Because he knew someone who knew someone who knew someone. Couldn’t even do that much on his own.
That didn’t mean he liked having to stare it in the face.
What he wasn’t expecting, though, was Damon’s rumble of assent. “He’s right, Falwell.”
Rian lifted his head sharply, staring at Damon. “What?”
Damon looked at him strangely for several moments, dark brown eyes flickering, his jaw a hard lump—before his gaze shuttered over, and he looked away. “It’s a cruelty to remind these kids they’re not wanted. That they don’t belong. So if we’re gonna open that wound, we’d better do it for a good reason.”
“So what do you suggest we do?” Rian gasped out—only for Walden to cut in.
“I suggest you figure that out elsewhere,” he said. “Come to me when you have something. Stop counting young Mr. Northcote’s team attendance demerits for now, as some small mercy, until you are certain of what you’re dealing with. Until then, I have budget paperwork to approve and disciplinary records to review.” His eyes narrowed behind his glasses, pinning Rian like lancets. “And when I return to our suite tonight, I expect the paint pots to no longer be in the sink, Mr. Falwell.”
Rian winced. “Leaving. Right.”
“And cleaning the sink.”
“...and cleaning the sink,” Rian repeated.
And made his escape for the door.
He didn’t even stop to wait for Damon; he just slipped out of his seat, edged past the back of Damon’s chair, and ducked out the door. He didn’t want to be in that office anymore; despite the careful use of space, the moment he’d been punched in the chest with the realization of how callous the school’s mission was, the air in the room turned choking and the walls became crushing things, everything far too close. The furniture. Lachlan’s coldly indifferent stare.
And Damon Louis.
But Rian didn’t have much chance to escape from Damon, because the moment Rian ducked out into the hall...
Damon was right there, hot on his heels, fitting his wide bulk through the door and closing it in his wake with a slightly too deliberate thump.
“Jackass,” he muttered, flinging a dark glare over his shoulder at the door. “How the fuck do you live with him?”
“By almost never bumping into each other,” Rian said. He wanted to run, to get away from Damon and the way the man seemed to itch at him like a nettle just by breathing in his vicinity, but pride wouldn’t quite let him turn tail. So he just...leaned against the wall, letting the coolness of the ancient, deep-seamed wood against his shoulder blades calm him, and smoothed his hair back from his face with both hands. “He’s hardly ever in our suite. He wakes before I do, comes back after I’ve gone to bed. If he even comes back at all. Sometimes I think he sleeps in that office.”
Walden’s voice drifted through the door. “I do not,” he said tonelessly, “sleep in the office, when I have a perfectly serviceable bed in my room.”
Rian winced—but that horrible bubble of hurt in his chest burst. And maybe it let that hurt out to flood through his entire body...but it eased the building tension inside him, too, letting him breathe.
Letting him snicker, too, clapping a hand over his mouth and peeking over his shoulder at Walden’s door. Damon went still, eyeing the door sidelong, his lips twitching and thinning. He tossed his head down the hall.
He didn’t say a word, but the arrogant, casual gesture spoke as clear as day.
Walk with me.
Rian almost refused.
Everything in him was shouting at him to get away from Damon Louis; to get away from this bizarre feeling that made his entire body seem strung too tight on his bones, until he was stiff-limbed and could hardly move with the tension of it, the alertness, the awareness.
Yet when Damon pushed away from the door, and turned to move down the hall with his slow, prowling lope, every stride swaying with an innate confidence that bordered on a swagger...
Rian followed.
Even if he wasn’t sure why.
This close to dinner, the halls were rather empty; the boys were either getting their homework done early or already in the cafeteria with their friends, lining up to get first pickings before their favorite things ran out. It lent a quiet peace to the normally chaotic school, and with the autumn light already fading into twilight, the dim golden glow of the wall lamps warmed the aged wood from cool gray into a ghost of its former honeyed gleam, lending a richness to old, faded floor runners in a deep violet. Rian walked as far away from Damon as he could get without being obvious, their steps the only sound between them, rising up to echo off the peaks of the high, curving ceilings.
He told himself the silence didn’t make him uncomfortable.
And told himself he wasn’t studying Damon, wondering what he was thinking when his face was inscrutable, his head angled back and his gaze trained distantly upward. When he wasn’t scowling, Damon rather looked thoughtful, as if he was caught up in working through some knotty matter one step at a time, occasionally letting out a sigh that flared his broad, flat nostrils. Rian thought, from the sculpture of his features and the soft red undertones to his coppery brown skin, that Damon might be Indigenous, whether of the Wampanoag of Massachusetts or from another nation elsewhere.
Why are you wondering these things?
Just as, without looking at Rian at all, Damon muttered, “Staring at me again.”
Rian nearly tripped.
Over absolutely nothing.
And used that as an excuse to look away from Damon, sniffing as he focused on smoothing out his next step, continuing as if he hadn’t just stumbled in the middle of the hallway.
As if he couldn’t feel those dark, cold brown eyes on him.
“Don’t you have to be looking at me to notice?” he bit off.
“Fair point,” Damon answered mildly.
“Means you’re staring at me, too, doesn’t it?”