Just Like This (Albin Academy)

by Cole McCade

  Rian spluttered. “That’s not it at all!”

  “Don’t be a jackass, Walden,” Damon grunted—and Rian tried to suppress his faint flush of pleasure. At least they were on the same page with this. “You know he’s here on scholarship. He fucks up in football, that’s his funding yanked.”

  “That’s a problem for him, his parents, and the finance department,” Walden retorted. “Gentlemen, are you aware of what sort of school this is?”

  “Last I checked, it was the hallowed halls of privileged horseshit,” Damon growled.

  “And if you don’t like it,” Lachlan Walden replied without missing a beat, “you are free to find a job anywhere else.”

  He swiveled away from the laptop to face them once more, steepling his fingers into points, staring at them with the unblinking gaze of a serpent over their tips.

  “At Albin Academy, we are not like other schools,” he bit off—every word a drop of ice, frozen precision with razor edges. “The parents of the boys we teach have very exacting demands of us. Don’t damage their precious sons...and don’t let their precious sons damage their reputations. There is a reason hardly anyone has heard of this school, and we prefer to keep it that way in the interests of respecting parents’ privacy. That means if—” he folded his fingers back, leaving only one sharp index finger extended, but it sure as hell felt like a middle finger, “—you have a problem with one of the students, particularly one that could impact his eligibility to attend, you find me evidence that an infraction has been committed so that we can bring it to his parents. Please keep in mind that most of our parents send their children here to forget they exist. And they don’t take kindly to us reminding them without good reason.”

  Rian stared at him. He didn’t know if the vile taste in the back of his throat was horror or disgust; he just knew he didn’t like it. “That’s terrible. It’s heartless.”

  “On the contrary.” Lachlan lowered his hands to fold them atop the file folder once more. “It’s the kindest we can be, at times. Would you want to be reminded that you’re lost and forgotten? Would you want your caretakers contacting your parents about your problems at school, only to be reminded by their indifference that they simply do not care?”

  Rian didn’t know why that hit so hard.

  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?”

  “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.

  As the
y stepped inside the darkened, faintly echoing space, though, he let himself linger a bit longer, taking in the woven rattan shades that had replaced the standard-issue school blinds over the windows; the table against the wall with the rows of paper-cutting and screen-printing and laminating machines; the rack of thousands of crumpled, well-used paint tubes that took up an entire wall; the crinkled watercolor paintings pinned up all along one wall, some skilled, some clumsy, but enough collected that it would take more than a single year’s classes to account for them.

  Anything to keep from looking at the man who trailed into the room behind him, closing the door with a small click of the latch and reaching over to flick the light switch.

  Anything to avoid thinking about how Rian had purred Damon in a way that made Damon’s entire body knot up with a sudden wash of taut heat, hitting him out of fucking nowhere and making his blood pressure spiral—only to spike into a rush of frustration when, right after, Rian had just...

  Smiled at him.

  In that weird way that made him look like he was playing the part of someone else.

  God damn, it was already getting under Damon’s skin.

  Why the fuck did he smile like that?

  Why smile at all, if you didn’t meant it?

  Damon sure as hell never bothered.

  So he focused not on Rian, but on how the room filled with little discs of spangled gold light; the fluorescent light fixtures in the room had been covered over, their square panels shaded with covers of thin stained glass. Swirling designs of delicate black wrought iron framed fragile panes of gold-tinted glass, until their light fell over the room like motes of faerie dust, gilding everything.

  Damon found himself briefly caught—lingering over how the room changed in that light, haunting and captivating, only for Rian’s muted voice to drift over the space.

  “Sorry,” he murmured. “Normally it blends with the sunlight so it’s not so obvious.”

  “I don’t mind it,” Damon said. “You made those...?”