Goodnight, Rian, Damon sent, the two words pushing the selfie up, a caption that felt like it was whispered close against Rian’s ear in that low, rumbling voice.
He didn’t want to let this go. This feeling of intimacy and closeness; this connection that seemed so tenuous, when tomorrow...tomorrow they might be all thorns all over again, or even worse...complete strangers to each other. But he didn’t want to keep Damon awake, either.
So after a few moments, he made himself send back just, Goodnight.
Before he let his phone fall to his chest, clutching it over his skipping heart with a soft sound, closing his eyes and just breathing in and letting himself melt.
There was no way he was getting to sleep now.
Not when he felt like he was about to burst out of his skin, bristling everywhere. And after a few restless moments where he couldn’t stop himself from peeking at his phone again and again, he rolled out of bed, catching up a pair of jeans from the chair in the corner and tugging them on before shoving his feet into his sandals.
He didn’t often walk the halls of Albin Academy after midnight, when it made the security guards jumpy if they caught him on their rounds—but he encountered no one as he made his way through halls lit in slivers of moonlight through tall windows, feeling like a ghost as he whispered his way along the floorboards and the stairs, until he found the private space of his art classroom. His studio, waiting for him, and...
That painting.
That painting that stood unfinished beneath the pale light of the overhead light, when Rian flicked it on—picking out the details of that lightning-split tree, the way the fork in its trunk made him think of the flexing muscles of Damon’s shoulder blades, arms spreading to either side. Rian traced his fingers over the texture of the paint that made up the base for the reaching, spidering branches, stripped bare of their bark and glowing against the dark...then picked up his palette and a fresh tube of paint.
He hadn’t finished anything since he’d come to Albin Academy. He hadn’t been sure if he wanted to, when he wasn’t certain if he gave a damn about gallery exhibitions and doubted anyone back in New York was waiting with bated breath for his next showing. Should he want to do it for anyone else, anyway?
Or just for himself?
Like Damon—searching for his place in the world by making something for himself, instead of because of what someone else expected. Could Rian do that?
Did he even know what he would make for himself, if he wanted?
Maybe not.
But the reaching fingers of that tree felt like the reaching grasp of his thoughts, searching, seeking, begging for something to want.
Begging for something for his heart to hold on to...and so Rian gave those grasping fingers color, and texture, and life, as he painted long into the night.
Painted his heart into the burning heart of the tree.
And wondered if he would ever let that heart be seen by any eyes but his own.
* * *
Damon really wondered why the hell he had made his lock screen that image of Rian with his tongue sticking out.
Because now every time he got a text, a call, even an email notification, he had to look down at that ridiculously goofy face Falwell was making, and feel that odd little twitch in his chest as he tried really fucking hard not to think just how fucking cute he was.
And how much Damon missed him.
What the hell, Louis?
He lounged in the recliner in his suite, a stack of unfinished health education performance reports taking up half his tiny coffee table, the other half supporting a steaming plate of chicken carbonara he was just waiting to cool after he’d forgotten to even cook until well after midnight, phone held overhead as he pillowed his head on one arm and scrolled through their past text history, rereading that tentative conversation that had, somewhere along the way, turned familiar and gently curious. They hadn’t said anything to each other since that sleepless Tuesday night; there’d been no reason to, when it was still radio silence from the Northcotes and with the school’s formidable nursing staff on the job, there was no way in hell Chris was escaping the infirmary, and from Nurse Hadley’s terse emails he was healing up nicely but still refusing to talk about anything.
Damon just...he and Rian were fine apart from each other.
There was no fucking reason to miss him, was there?
Like, what the hell was even going on in his head right now?
It wasn’t even about missing the sex. Yeah, the sex had been good the one time it happened, and sometimes he caught himself remembering the way Rian had gone so soft and helpless when Damon kissed him, leaving Damon so flushed and distracted he got smacked in the face with a dodgeball in third-period gym yesterday...
But more often he caught himself thinking about how Rian had fallen asleep against him.
Proving what he’d said—How could I be afraid of you?—more than any words, when Rian had settled in Damon’s arms so trustingly, curled so warm against him and the small bed forcing them so close they’d woken up tangled in each other with Rian’s hair snaking everywhere in a mess and their legs practically hooked around each other.
Now, every time Damon woke up, he woke up feeling for that, only to find the bed empty, just himself sinking the stacked futons down into a pillowy heap.
It was absolutely ridiculous that he wanted it back that much.
But maybe...maybe.
Christ, if he was a drinking man, he’d fucking need one right now. Not that there was anywhere to go after midnight except that festering swillhole just across the Mystic—Hank’s Roadhouse. This time of night there’d be no one there except people who had nothing they wanted to go home to. Damon himself wouldn’t go there if he was dehydrated and the only thing left to drink in the world was a bottle of roadhouse whiskey.
He didn’t need a goddamned drink.
He needed Rian.
Fuck it.
With a frustrated sound, he scrolled down to the bottom of the text message history, and typed out a new message before he lost his nerve.
You make it hard to think. Hard to know which way is up, which way is down, he sent—but that wasn’t enough. That wasn’t enough, and fuck, he probably should have at least said hi first or something, but this was all he had and all that was on his mind. But I feel like the only reason I keep spinning in circles is because I keep trying to turn away from you, when everything else is trying to turn me back.
Part of him hoped Rian was too busy to answer, when he’d just...blurted that out like it was nothing. But after a few moments, the...popped up, and then:
What are you trying to say?
Well if that wasn’t a fuck of a question. Rian seemed to be good at that—asking those questions that left Damon fumbling. I don’t know.