by Cole McCade
“I did.”
“Thought you were just a painter.”
“Painter, sculptor, dancer, pianist, violinist, glassblower, papercrafter... I try many things, linger with none.” Rian let out a quietly humorless scoff that sounded like it wanted to be a laugh and failed. “Changing with the seasons, ever fickle.”
Something in that voice that spoke like honey but stung like pepper compelled Damon to look back at Rian.
He understood, then, why Rian smiled that fake, plastic smile.
Because he was smiling now—but it was a small thing full of soft, quiet hurts Damon felt he was never meant to see.
Because Rian’s real smile was lost, pained.
Because Damon wouldn’t blame him for not wanting to show that to anyone if he could help it.
And he didn’t think Rian would like that he’d shown that face to Damon...so Damon turned away, giving Rian a moment to compose himself, glancing over the room and looking for something, anything to fill the silence.
He fell on the largest clay sculpture left out to dry, set out on a back table of its own, far away from the rest. A wisteria tree spiraled up from roots splayed across wax paper, detailed with absolute artistry and care, its bark textured with tiny scored lines, its leaves shaped in delicate trailers so fine and slender it was a wonder they didn’t snap under their own weight. Everything from the arc of the leafy tendrils to the wizened gnarl of the trunk was so realistic Damon could almost see the colors that would be painted on later, bringing it to life from featureless gray.
He drifted closer to it, then stopped; as fragile as it was, he felt like he shouldn’t get too close, as if he’d crush it with his weight just by standing too near. “Did you make that, too...?”
“No.” Murmured, drawing closer as the whisper of Rian’s worn leather sandals grew louder, bringing him into closer proximity. “Chris did. It’s what he was working on this afternoon, before he left.”
That made Damon take a second look.
Fuck.
This kid was fucking talented, and he was wasting it on...what?
What the hell was he running away from, that he’d lied to both Rian and Damon?
Where was he going, when he claimed he was with both of them?
“It’s good,” he said thickly, because he couldn’t get those questions out just yet. “He’s good.”
“He is,” Rian agreed, drifting to Damon’s side. He had a way of moving that made his every step seem like a slow, quiet wave rolling to shore, with the way his gracefully loose clothing drifted behind him like a train; like a trail of dissolving magic in his wake. He stopped next to Damon, his eyes lidding as he looked down at the wisteria sculpture. “Wisteria symbolizes long life and health, to some. Or to others...victory against struggle. I wonder why he chose it.”
“Sometimes a chair is just a chair,” Damon said.
But he wondered that, too.
The silence held between them for several moments, laden and waiting—until Rian asked, almost too low to hear, raw-edged and broken, “What are we going to do?”
That we should have made Damon bristle more.
“I don’t know,” he said. “If we confront him, he’s probably gonna go to his parents, and that’s exactly what Walden doesn’t want, isn’t it?”
“It’s the why of that that I can’t accept.” Rian’s mouth creased. “How can he say that? How can he just go along with that, aiding these ghastly people in forgetting their own children? Treating them like nuisances and burdens?”
“What do you want him to do?” Damon asked. “Force them all to go to family counseling? Sit all of them down and teach them a good lesson? They’d pull their children out, and Albin would collapse.”
“Maybe it deserves to collapse!” Rian flared, bright spots of red bringing color to his ghost-pale face; the glints in his eyes were the same color as the golden spangles of light spilling down from above. “If this place didn’t exist, maybe they wouldn’t feel so comfortable shunting their sons off out of sight!”
“If this place didn’t exist,” Damon pointed out softly, “they’d just neglect them at home. At least here, we can try to do better by them. Try to give them...”
“Structure?” Rian flung at him, as if the word was some kind of curse.
“Family,” Damon finished.
Rian just looked at him with his eyes hot, his jaw tight—before he turned away sharply, reaching out to smooth his fingertips against the edges of the wax paper under the wisteria sculpture, making it crinkle and crackle as if snapping out the sound of his feelings.
“That still doesn’t tell us what to do about Chris,” he said. “We have to do something.”
“Do we?” Damon frowned, folding his arms over his chest. “What if we’re overreacting? Chris is fucking sixteen, Falwell. He’s gonna do what sixteen-year-olds do. Skip practice. Duck out on teachers. Lie about it.”
“We have a responsibility to be sure that’s all it is, don’t we?”
“We do,” Damon agreed. “But we also have a responsibility not to—”
He didn’t know how to fucking explain it.
How having people hovering, always assuming that if you hadn’t done something wrong already, you would just because that’s who you were...
That could fuck you up just as much for getting shit for the things you actually did.
And sometimes it didn’t matter people’s good intentions when they just flailed around thinking they needed to fix things that didn’t need to be fixed just because it made them feel like they were doing something.
“Look,” he tried again. “Right now I think the best thing we can do is keep an eye on Chris. There are ways we can do it without making him feel like he’s in trouble for something. And if it looks like he needs help, we can do something more direct.”
“Or,” Rian said dryly, “we could ask him why he’s lying to us. I really prefer to confront lies with direct questions, Mr. Louis.”
Goddammit. That Mr. Louis got him gritting his teeth again. “Maybe if we were dealing with an adult or our own kids, yeah. But we’re Chris’s teachers. We overstep our bounds, and it makes a big mess. Lawsuit type of mess. Especially with the kind of parents we’re dealing with.”
“You think I care about money when a child’s safety is involved?”
“I think you’re the kind of person who doesn’t have to care about money,” Damon spat back without thinking. “Like you don’t have to give a shit about the consequences of whatever wild shit idea gets into your head, because you’ll be fine no matter what the fallout is to anyone else.”
Rian flinched as if he’d been struck, his restless fingers pausing against the paper, the crinkling stopping to leave only the shallow sound of his breaths. He slowly curled his fingers away from the wax paper, into his palms, staring down at them with wide eyes.
“That was cruel, Mr. Louis,” he said in a strained whisper.
Damon swore, closing his eyes and dragging his hand over his face until he muffled the curses against his palm.
What the fuck was wrong with him?
He didn’t lose his temper.
Ever.
But he’d been sniping at Rian all afternoon, and ready to explode at every tiny word he said.
This wasn’t like him.
And it wasn’t who he wanted to be.
“It was,” he grit out. “I’m sorry.”
Rian didn’t say anything.
Damon opened his eyes. Rian was just as stock-still as before, staring glassily down at his curled fingers; those spangles of golden light fell over him, turning him into a strange wild creature with dappled markings, the mane of tumbling black hair rippling down to his hips turning him into a slim golden jaguar, all black fur and subtly gleaming amber spots. He wasn’t just delicate, Damon thought. He was fragile.
The kind of fragility that made certain types of men want to break him.
And certain types of men want to protect him, make themselves a shield so the crushing blows of life couldn’t break him apart as if he was as thin and easy to ruin as the panes of stained glass overhead.
Damon wasn’t in a position to be either.
But he could sure as hell stop being a jackass.
“I mean it,” he said. “I’m sorry. That was a shitty thing for me to say. I don’t even know you. I don’t get to judge you like that.”
“Apparently you do know me,” Rian said—so thick, so choked, it wasn’t hard to tell he was fighting back against letting that suspicious glossiness in his eyes turn into anything more. “You’re not wrong about me, you know. Spoiled little princeling playing at being a pauper. If I wanted to stop living in a cramped cubicle of a room and letting these boys run roughshod over me like I’m the hired help, I could go back home to Mommy and Daddy and my hired help anytime I want. So maybe I’m out of touch with reality. And consequences.” He lifted his head, then, looking up at Damon with wet yet so very defiant eyes, his mouth drawn stubbornly tight. “But I’m trying. That’s something, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Damon said, and wondered what this lurching feeling in his chest was. “It is.”
They looked at each other for several endless moments—before Rian abruptly turned away, leaving Damon staring after him helplessly while Rian took a few shaky breaths, throwing his shoulders back and making his layered tunics ripple fluidly.
“It’s fine,” Rian said, his voice oddly cool—and Damon wondered if he’d turned his back so Damon wouldn’t see that his expression didn’t match those words. “Not the first time I’ve heard it. At least you didn’t call me a control freak.”
“Who...?”
He almost thought Rian wouldn’t answer, until he let out a rasping, short laugh, so very harsh, filled with enough self-mockery to drip in oozing spades. “Every man I’ve ever dated.”
Damon couldn’t help a small, sad smile. Rian looked like barely a wisp right now, as if he’d crumple at the slightest push, and Damon had to clench his fists to hold still against the urge to...to...
He didn’t know.
Maybe just...
Try to hold Rian up.
Just a little.
Anything to make up for how he’d kicked him down.
But he held himself in place, and only murmured, “You don’t have to tell me this. Not if it hurts. You don’t owe me shit. Not even explanations.”
“Maybe not,” Rian said, barely a sigh. “But maybe, if we’re going to deal with each other until Chris’s issues are resolved, I’d like to be understood anyway.”
Ah, Damon thought.
That, he could empathize with a little too damned much.
“So I’m guessing nobody you dated ever tried to get you, huh?”
A mirthless laugh, dark hair rippling. “No.”
“Sounds like you’ve dated some shitty men.”
“Maybe.” Rian’s thin shoulders moved restlessly as he folded his arms over his chest; the flared sleeves of his outermost tunic spilled down from his sides like a luna moth’s trailing tails. He tilted his head back, looking up at the glass-paneled ceiling, and Damon caught the barest hint of his profile; the delicacy of his upturned nose, the faint hints of freckles that almost seemed to glow in the dark, the way his eyelashes spread out in such distinct, fanning arcs until each black curve stood independent of each other. “They never seem shitty,” he said softly. “They just...seem like they need help. And I always think if I love them enough, I can help them. I can fix them. But it never seems to work, and then they need more and more, and then they resent me for it not being enough...and then I start to feel suffocated.” His voice broke. “And then I run, because I’m too insubstantial to carry that kind of weight.”
Damon didn’t know what to do.
He felt like he was watching a heart break in real time, and he didn’t know how to handle that when five minutes ago they’d nearly been at each other’s throats, and three hours ago they hadn’t even been on a first-name basis.
When Rian was right:
Damon didn’t know him at all.
Didn’t know him well enough to have any right to hear these things, or to offer the comfort someone intimately closer might be able to give Rian Falwell freely.
All he knew was that Rian was hurting.
That meeting him had felt like a goddamned car crash.
And that Damon couldn’t shake the realization that Rian dated men, and that seemed to draw into stark clarity that the haughty, impudent, entirely annoying man...
Was also hauntingly, arrestingly beautiful, until he seemed like one of his own delicate, whimsical creations, spun from hands whose fingers were made for ethereal magic.
Damon’s throat tightened, and he forced himself to look away from Rian, standing there beneath showers of golden light like some strange fae creature. Forced himself to speak, too; to fill the silence with words, where he couldn’t offer comfort, but he couldn’t disrespect that moment of honest pain by letting it go ignored.
“Listen,” he said, spreading his hands helplessly, then letting them drop. He started to step toward Rian, then stopped. “If someone wants to fix themselves...they gotta do it for them. Not someone else. If they won’t do it for them, they’re not gonna do it for you, either. That’s on them. But it’s on you to let go of the idea that you can fix people, period. Let go of thinking you’re responsible for other people’s problems. Hell...you may not even understand what they’re going through. Some people...they got different lives. They may be going through things you can’t even see.”
Rian turned his head just enough for one eye to fix on Damon through the tangled curtain of his hair. In the speckled light, his eyes were pure, deep honey, moving slow.
“So you’re telling me to let go of responsibility for Chris, too?”
“No,” Damon said. “No. I’m just saying we’ve got to handle this right, or we could do more harm than good.”
“And how would you suggest we do that, Mr. Louis?”
Damon, he corrected silently. Hearing Mr. Louis in that hurting, strangely empty voice...
It hit him hard, in all the dark, deep places inside him.
And he needed to get out of here, and away from this confusing mess of furious, raging, completely inexplicable emotions that stormed to life around Rian Falwell.
“I don’t know,” Damon said, his throat heavy and tight. “But we’ll have to figure something out.”
Chapter Three
By the following day, Damon still hadn’t figured anything out.
Not what to do about Chris.
Not what the hell that entire mess with Rian had been yesterday.
Or why he couldn’t stop fucking thinking about that aggravating, lofty jackass, with his shallow smiles and that one real, terrible, hurting smile that made Damon want to—to—
He hadn’t figured that out, either.
He just knew he’d slept like hell last night, tossing and turning and trying not to goddamned think about almost eerily pale, delicate lips subtly tinged in pink like a washed-out painting that just barely clung to its last hints of color.
And how sad those lips had seemed when Rian had said, That was cruel, Mr. Louis.
I don’t want to be cruel to you, he thought.
And since that made less sense than anything else at fucking all, he just stopped thinking about it entirely, and lifted his whistle to his lips to blow shrilly, loud enough to echo over the squeak of sneakers and the thudup-thudup-thudup of a basketball striking the laminated court.
“Traveling,” he called, and the two teams he’d split the P.E. class into broke apart, shifting their positions. “Pass it over and throw it in.”
The
boy who’d been caught traveling—his name was Clark Nevans, a redhead with knobby elbows and a high forehead—stopped, slumping with a frustrated groan that turned into a laugh. Damon thought he might be one of Chris’s friends, a vague memory of fist-bumps and casual conversations on the way to the locker room; a memory that was confirmed as Chris jogged over to clap Clark on the back before, as a member of the opposing team, moving to the sidelines and waiting for the hand-over.
That might be a way in, Damon thought. Keep an eye on Chris’s friends, see if they had changed behaviors to cover for him, see if they knew anything. Check on his roommate, too. While he racked his brain to remember who Chris’s roommate was, Damon watched as Clark handed the ball over to Chris with a quick toss, giving Chris five seconds or less to make the throw-in to an in-bounds player on his team. Chris caught the ball lightly and took half a second to feint left, toward a tall boy another player was already defensively blocking—then with a deft roundabout throw, sent the ball rocketing toward an unguarded player, who caught it quickly and started a hard charge down the court toward the opposing net, dribbling furiously.
Chris was back on the court in an instant; his tall, athletic frame was easy to pick out among the other sophomore boys, when half of them were still fighting with puberty and bones that didn’t quite fit together, Chris had been one of the lucky few who settled into himself quickly, easily. Handsome enough that on weekend nights when the boys were allowed out, there were usually quite a few girls from the public school across the Mystic over down the hill in town, making shy overtures to talk to him, from gossip overheard in the locker room and cafeteria; yet Chris never made lewd comments about those girls, always seeming shyly flustered by their interest, ducking his head and running a hand through his messy light brown hair.
Frequently bigger boys realized they had an advantage over other kids—and used it ruthlessly. Chris, though, seemed to treat his advantage as a responsibility.
And he was just as effortlessly good at keeping an eye out for the smaller kids as he was at, it seemed, everything else he decided to do.