Chris jerked; panic briefly flashed in his eyes, before an expression of puzzlement settled over his face on a second’s delay, the movement of his lips wooden. “What?”
Damon and Rian exchanged glances, before Damon stepped away from the door and dragged over a spare chair from the desk, settling it next to Chris’s bed. While Rian sank to sit on the edge of the mattress, Damon leaned forward and rested his elbows on his spread thighs, clasping his hands together and watching Chris steadily.
“I’m going to be straight with you,” Damon said. “We just came back from Hank’s Roadhouse. We know what you’ve been doing.”
Chris whimpered in the back of his throat, shaking his head, eyes darting to Rian. “What? I haven’t been—I didn’t—”
“Chris.” Rian leaned toward him, a gentle hand resting on his knee over the blankets. “It’s okay. Look, that jerk just fired you for missing work and we already reported him to the police for child exploitation, so you’ve got nothing to lose. Just...tell us the truth. Tell us what’s been going on. We’re not upset with you. Only worried.”
A few more breaths passed as Chris tried to hold that frozen expression of artificial confusion.
Then any attempt at dissembling fell away, and Chris sank back against the bed, dropping his phone limply in his lap. For just one moment, one moment, he tried to steel his face into a smile, and it broke Damon’s heart watching Chris attempt to hold back his emotions, his upset, when he was just a fucking kid and he shouldn’t feel like he had to keep himself bottled up like that.
Then Chris broke.
And he let out a deep sound that turned into a rasping sob, curling forward and pressing his hand over his face as if he could hide, the lamplight shining off the tears beading on his lashes, caught in the shadows of his fingers.
“I’m s-s-sorry,” he croaked out, shoulders shaking. “I’m sorry...”
“Shh, shh.” Damon leaned forward to grip Chris’s shoulder, squeezing tight. “It’s okay. Let it all out.”
“We’re here,” Rian murmured, reaching across Chris’s body to touch the back of the hand resting loose on the bed, arm stretched out with the IV needle still in his inner elbow. “You’re going to be all right, Chris. I promise.”
“But I’m not!” Chris sniffled and straggled his words in glottal half-syllables, gulping to get them out. “I’m g-gonna...gonna...lose...my scholarship and I don’t wanna but I don’t wanna play football, but if...i-if I don’t I can’t...can’t go to school here and my p-parents are gonna be upset...”
Damon blinked, his own breaths catching.
Chris didn’t want to play football...?
That didn’t matter. Damon tightened his grip on Chris’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” he repeated. “Just take a few deep breaths. Tell us when you’re ready. What does football have to do with you working at that bar, kiddo?”
Chris sniffled hard, struggling bravely with big draughts of air, rubbing the heel of his palm against his eye and looking at them both warily, miserably. “I...my parents...can’t afford for me to go here without the scholarship,” he mumbled, voice slurring a little with the thickness of tears; he flushed, hunching shamefacedly. “Don’t tell my friends. They...they wouldn’t know what it’s like. I guess my parents used to be like theirs, but...stuff went bad when I was like, ten or so and they’ve just...kinda been acting like nothing’s wrong and we still have money, but we don’t. But they’d get really embarrassed if their friends knew we’re broke, so... I had to come here.” He bit his lip. “And...and it means a lot to my dad, too. Tradition and that kind of shi—stuff.”
“So you were trying to find a way to pay for it yourself,” Damon finished, dawning horror leaving a sick feeling in his gut. “So you wouldn’t need your football scholarship. Because you didn’t want to play.”
Chris smiled weakly, hurt flickering in his eyes. “M’sorry, Coach Louis. I mean...the team’s great, it’s just...it’s not my thing, you know?”
“Hey. I’m not mad at you. Not at all.” Damon squeezed Chris’s shoulder again. “You shouldn’t have to do something you don’t want to do. You can quit the team, but you’re still one of my kids. And that means I’m gonna take care of you.”
That was what this meant to him, he realized.
Because he did see his boys, his team, as his family.
And part of being family was letting them go their own way if they needed to, instead of boxing them in where they didn’t want to be and didn’t belong. He thought, in their own way, his adopted parents had done the same for him. Loved him—but knew him well enough to let him find his own way, and decide for himself what he wanted to pursue.
A past he might never be able to recover...
...or the future he could build here and now.
And he thought he knew what he wanted, as he looked down the length of the bed at Rian—who was watching Chris with clear concern flickering in his eyes, hazel dark and warm.
“Chris?” Rian asked. “Is that why your parents won’t answer our calls? Are they afraid it’s about tuition costs?”
Chris winced. “Probably,” he said. “Like...if they ignore it and no one tells them the money’s gone, they can’t kick me out, right?”
Damon groaned, dragging his free hand over his face. “...rich people have a fucked up way of handling things. Ignoring problems just doesn’t make them go away. You can’t just pretend it’s not there and hope it fixes itself.”
Then again...was he any better?
Pretending these building feelings inside him weren’t there. This thing that seemed to have been born inside him the moment he and Rian had crashed together, made up of all the messes and tangles they created together, and maybe the moment they’d smashed into each other they’d left fragmented pieces of themselves embedded inside each other.
And Damon had been trying to ignore it; trying to pretend it wasn’t there, and as long as he looked away from it—looked away from Rian—it would go away.
But he wasn’t looking away from Rian now.
In fact, he couldn’t seem to stop watching him.
And once Chris was settled, and safe...
He and Rian needed to talk.
* * *
Rian lingered on Damon for long moments; there was something about him right now, something that made Rian feel like...like...
Like he was part of a family.
This warm, safe bubble of comfort and familiarity, enveloping all three of them in something quiet and strange that helped to ease the raw emotions filling the room from wall to wall.