“Nope,” Damon said just as mildly. “Doesn’t mean that.”
“Whatever.” Rian folded his arms over his chest and just...just...stopped talking.
They needed to discuss Chris.
They needed to discuss what to do next, because he didn’t think he could let this drop until he’d chased away this feeling that something was off.
But he didn’t know what to say, how to start, how to...anything.
Not when the silence between them felt so charged, so strange—and he didn’t know, if he spoke, if they would erupt into snarls and barbs again.
Rian had fought more with Damon Louis in the last half hour than he could recall fighting with anyone in his life, but then...he tended to be rather low-conflict. He kept himself apart, not really engaging with people, because he didn’t want to admit that he didn’t quite know how. Not when he was far too much like so many of these boys; he’d grown up isolated in his parents’ ivory tower, cut off from social interaction with everyday people, and whatever social graces he was supposed to learn as the son of a wealthy family...
Well, he’d learned to fake them, at least.
If only by being overly polite and pleasant to everyone he met, always deflecting with a smile, never letting conversations get past neutral greetings. He talked about the weather. Lesson plans. Oh, did you see what happened on the news last week?
Shallow thing, aren’t you?
Only most of the men who looked at him, who coveted him, said Pretty thing, aren’t you? when really they meant the exact same thing.
No wonder Lachlan Walden had looked at him with such thinly veiled disdain.
Three years at Albin Academy, and this was likely the first time Rian had shown an emotion other than a plastic smile. If he were in the assistant principal’s shoes, he’d probably think it was...
He didn’t know.
Fake.
Surface concern.
Maybe that was why Walden hadn’t taken them seriously.
Because he didn’t believe someone as shallow as Rian could actually give a damn about a serious matter concerning a student.
Now, dearest, that voice in his head said again, cloying with love and yet speaking to him as if he was a child. You really don’t need to worry yourself about that, do you?
He smiled to himself. It felt so sour, bitter-sharp as the taste of pure clove oil and stinging just as much, and he wondered if his smiles were plastic now.
“Listen,” Damon said—and his grave, rolling voice ground the silence under the tumbling stone of it.
Rian pulled from his entirely ridiculous little wallow in self-loathing, lifting his head and eyeing Damon sidelong. He was almost wary of looking directly at him, not when he might be staring again, but Damon had his head down, one thick hand crunching up a coiled handful of his hair against the nape of his neck, pulling it back from his face. There was another scar just under his right ear, a vicious thick thing gouged into the soft skin behind his jaw, streaking down onto his throat before cutting off short.
And Rian was definitely staring at that scar, feeling an odd hitch in his throat as he realized just how close it came to severing the carotid arteries on the right side; how close that blow could have come to killing him, and suddenly...
Suddenly Rian felt as though, even if he’d run away from his sheltered ivory tower?
He still knew nothing of the real world at all.
A world where parents could abandon their children without thinking twice.
And a world where men did things like that to each other, and carried those scars as casually as if they hadn’t marked a branching between a world where he lived and a world where he died.
For once, though, Damon didn’t call him on staring.
He just cleared his throat. “I, uh...” He stopped, then started again, almost mumbling. “Look...about the way I came at you.”
Rian dragged his gaze back to Damon’s downcast eyes. “Yes, Mr. Louis?”
Damon tensed, a hard ripple flowing down his body and tightening the outer deltoids in his shoulders into stark tapers. He shot Rian an acidic glance, his stride slowing. “For fuck’s sake, my name is Damon.”
Rian held Damon’s gaze.
Ran his tongue against his upper lip.
And very pointedly purred, “Damon,” letting his voice drag ragged and trail into a sigh.
Damon’s eyes widened, then slitted as his mouth turned downward at the corners; he stopped in his tracks, glaring down at Rian. “Never mind. Go back to Mr. Louis.”
Rian didn’t even bother hiding his smirk.
Well.
That had picked his mood up quite a bit.
He stopped as well, lacing his hands together behind his back and tilting his head up toward Mr. Louis. “Was there something you wanted to say to me, Mr. Louis?”
Damon hissed, looking away from Rian. Then back. Then away again. He let go of his hair, arms dropping heavily to his sides. “You’re making me not want to say it.”
“... I’m not doing anything but listening.”
“Why do you have to be so—” Damon stopped with a seething sound through his teeth, closing his eyes, lifting his hands, clenching them tight—then dropped them again with a controlled, measured movement, breathing out slowly and opening his eyes. “Look. I’m sorry I came at you about Chris. I should’ve asked instead of jumping down your throat. Okay?”
Rian recoiled.
The tart retort on his tongue evaporated, and he fumbled, his tongue turning clumsy, his heart playing a little rat-a-tat tune against the inside of his chest.
“I...”
“What?” Damon demanded almost helplessly, practically snarling out his frustration. “What now?”
Okay, Rian thought. Okay. White flag.
Damon was waving the white flag.
So Rian could at least put his slingshots away.
“Nothing. I just...wasn’t expecting you to apologize,” he said, shaking his head—and tried a smile, and wondered once again what his smiles looked like. If he even knew how to smile without it seeming polished and practiced and entirely false. But he offered, “You were worried about Chris. And you didn’t know he wasn’t being entirely truthful with you. I didn’t, either. It’s okay. I understand.” And then, because he didn’t know what else to say...he glanced down the hall, toward the stairwell at the end. “Come on. We can talk in my classroom. Once they ring the bell for dinner, the halls are going to swarm.”
* * *
Damon hadn’t looked around much when he’d been in the art classroom before; just enough to not bump into the desks or ruin someone’s work in progress, when half the hand-sculpted clay mugs and pots sitting on wax paper looked like they were one good jolt away from collapsing in on themselves.