by Cole McCade
Rian shot out of his chair, pushing it back from his desk quickly and darting around it, pattering toward the door in the wake of the last straggle of students. He knew now that Chris wasn’t dashing off to football practice, but if not...
Where was he going?
If Rian could follow him without being seen, he might get some sort of answer. Maybe it was something innocuous, like rushing off to meet a girl. Or a boy. Or a person. It didn’t matter; Chris wouldn’t be the first sixteen-year-old to turn evasive with friends, teachers, and loved ones because he was dating in secret and fully convinced it was true love in sophomore year.
Rian didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of that before.
It was such an obvious, simple explanation, and God, he wanted it to be that and just that.
He’d take that measured look Walden would give him during the rare times when they crossed paths in their suite, that said See? You have no idea what you’re doing, no experience with the world at large, and you overreacted.
And if he told Damon...
Damon might smile. Laugh. Shake his head, rake one of those large, thick hands back through his hair, and say We’re pretty goddamned ridiculous, you know that?
Rian’s neck and ears felt too hot, at that thought—and he tried to push it away as he swung himself around the door frame and into the hall, twisting his body to slip through the milling clusters of students. Chris was almost to the door at the end of the hall that would take him downstairs, to the main hall, the exit, and then either the locker rooms in the attached gym or to the massive football field and open stadium at the foot of the hill, behind the school and on the outskirts of town. If Rian followed him and that was where he did go, it might be a dead end, might mean nothing, might...
He ducked around another knot of students.
And spilled right into a broad chest.
Damon came out of nowhere—stepping out of an open classroom door just as Rian walked right into his path, Rian’s eyes fixed so far ahead on the messy crop of Chris’s hair that he wasn’t looking right in front of him, didn’t see Damon in his way until Rian was tumbling right into a face full of the dark gray Albin Athletics Department T-shirt stretched across the tight expanse of Damon’s chest, molded so close that it might as well have been painted on, cotton doing its best imitation of latex in how it sealed to and followed the contours of Damon’s body.
Damon’s very hard body.
Hard enough that when Rian hit, his nose exploded with throbbing pain as he bounced his entire face off Damon’s chest, then stumbled back, clutching both hands over the sudden knot of ouch nailed right into the front of his head.
“Ow!”
“Whoa, hey!” Damon caught his shoulders, heavy hands steadying and grounding Rian before he could trip more than a few reeling steps. “Hey, you okay?”
Rian froze, peeking up at Damon over his fingers; his nose hurt, pounding and hot, and he didn’t want to pull his hands away to see if it was bleeding. “No,” he mumbled, though it came out more like dbo.
Damon frowned down at him. Those large hands still curled against Rian’s shoulders, drawn in sharp angles that made them seem like cubist art with their starkness, and Rian almost felt captured, the two of them the only points of stillness caught within the space created where the stretch of Damon’s tight-muscled, corded arms connected them.
“Where the hell were you going, running like that?” Damon demanded. “We can’t tell the kids not to run in the halls if we’re doing it, too.”
“I was trying to—”
Still clasping at his nose, Rian twisted in Damon’s grip, trying to peer around the massive wall of his body. But...damn it.
Chris was gone.
Rian slumped.
“... I was trying to follow Chris.” He sighed. “But...well, there goes that.”
“Shit.”
Damon craned to look over his shoulder, his jaw tightening. His jaw was so blunt, so stubborn, dominating the graceful features of his broad, starkly defined face; he had his hair completely swept back today, a few tangled loops twining together at his hairline but the rest curving neatly behind his ear until the arced tips hid all but the smallest edge of that thick scar beneath his jaw.
He turned back to Rian, then, his frown deepening as he let go of Rian’s shoulders, leaving behind a sense of being too light without that heavy weight pressing Rian down.
Before those hands touched his, fingertips callused, grazing along the outsides of Rian’s palms. It felt like being touched by raw organza: soft, yet rough and scraping by its very nature, touch and tingle lit bright and startling Rian to stillness until he realized what Damon was trying to do.
Damon’s fingertips hooked in the curves of Rian’s thumbs lightly, and tugged. “Come on,” he said, the roll of his deep voice as gentle as a heartbeat. “Let me see.”
Rian held perfectly still, except for the erratic and powerful kicking of his heart, hooves drumbeating against his rib cage and running, racing, pounding away. And he didn’t resist as Damon slowly drew his hands away from his face, though as Damon bent in so close that a lock of his hair fell down to dangle between them, bisecting warm brown eyes the color of a deep, quiet, comforting sleep...
Rian realized he couldn’t feel how hot the pain in his nose was anymore.
Because his entire face was burning just as hot, and he couldn’t tell the difference between the two, and he seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.
Especially as Damon’s hands wrapped around his, the pads of his fingers brushing the sensitive centers of Rian’s palms, holding them away from his face while Damon studied him with an intense scrutiny that left everything around them whited out into a dull roar of blank empty noise.
“No blood,” Damon murmured. He was so close his voice was a tangible thing, a rumbling vibrating against the burning-hot skin of Rian’s cheeks. “Feel broken?”
Rian couldn’t find his voice.
It felt too big for his throat, and stuck there trying to get out in—in—words, a cry, something else, he didn’t know.
So he only shook his head numbly, never taking his eyes off Damon.
Who smiled.
Just a small thing, but his mouth was so full and rich that all it took was that slightest curve to soften it into something warm and enticing, easy and casual and full of reassurance.
“Then you’ll be fine,” Damon said. “Just a little banged up.”
“Oh,” Rian managed to squeak out faintly, his fingers twitching helplessly. “Okay.”
Damon said nothing. His smile faded like sunset slipping away to twilight, leaving only the darkness of his eyes fixed on Rian with a penetrating and yet utterly unreadable scrutiny. Rian couldn’t tell what he was thinking; couldn’t figure out why Damon was still holding on to his hands this way; why Damon was so close, or why Rian... Rian...
Rian couldn’t stop the way his pulse roared and his body tingled, as he caught that darkly heady thread of Damon’s scent filling the space between them.
He didn’t know how to break this.
Didn’t know how to stop it, how to stop himself from pulling in when he’d never realized just how starved he was for warmth until Damon was burning him up just from standing so close, just from—
So close.
How had Rian gotten so close, until they were eye to eye, almost nose to nose?
Sucking in a breath, the rush of oxygen a cool wash pouring over his brain and clearing away the heated fog, Rian jerked back, pulling his hands loose from Damon’s and just staring at him, struggling to get the tumble and pour and scream of his blood under control.
“Th-thanks,” he whispered.
Damon’s brows knit; he straightened, his hands falling, as he looked at Rian as if he’d never seen him before. That warmth vanished, leaving that cold stare Rian had seen
the day before, when Damon had come barging into his studio like he belonged there.
Before Damon turned his back on him, giving him the wide breadth of his shoulders, the hard jut of his shoulder blades against his shirt, the taper of that broad back down to the flat-cut, straight lines of his waist disappearing into a pair of track pants.
“Football practice,” Damon threw curtly over his shoulder. “My room. Two hours.”
Rian’s confusion ignited in an instant, burning up into ash and leaving only a sparking, biting simmer of irritation in its wake; he planted his hands to his hips, glaring at the back of Damon’s head.
“Excuse you? I’m not going to—”
“For Chris.” Damon cut him off quietly, but no less firmly, cool withdrawal smothering the burn of Rian’s temper. “We’ll talk about him then.”
Chapter Four
...there is something seriously wrong with you right now, Louis.
Damon stepped out of the shower in his studio suite, wrapping one towel around his waist and dragging another through his wet hair; he still felt overheated after showering off the sweat of running obstacles with the boys in practice, and not even the chill of the autumn evening seeping in through the window over his bed could do much more than make the lingering water on his skin feel too tight, drawing him in until he was bursting and seething in his own skin.
He felt like he’d been about to explode since yesterday.
And facing down with fucking Rian Falwell.
Damon still hadn’t been able to stop thinking about flashing, tawny eyes. The pouty, petulant way Rian always glared at him; the soft, almost sensuous way he sulked, like it was just a way to draw attention to that pale little mouth. The way his temper flared and went out just as quickly, flash in the pan and then gone. The quiet self-loathing that lived behind the mask of his surface smiles.
And the sheer audacity of throwing a goddamned balled-up paper towel in Damon’s face.
He caught himself cracking a smile at that thought, and forced it down.
Nah. Nope.
Rian was a pain in his goddamned ass.
They’d talk things over about Chris, share any new information, figure out what to do next, and maybe just...just...
Decide to walk the fuck away from this.
Before they got in another petty little snarling snipe fight, when the constant picking and snipping between them was starting to ride up Damon’s ass in the worst way.
He glanced at the clock on his nightstand, then stepped into a pair of boxer-briefs and jeans, hefting the black denim up over his hips before shrugging on a loose, comfortable black button-down that wouldn’t show the water stains from his still-dripping hair, the fabric so worn it had the texture of thin felt.
He’d just finished rolling the sleeves to his elbows when a quiet knock came at his door, light and almost tentative—and he thought again of a flitting butterfly, those thin fragile wrists and long fingers, so narrow they were almost bony, the pinkened knobs of knuckles that were so awkward they bordered on charmi—
Stop that shit right now.
And stop thinking about that moment this afternoon when he’d leaned in to get a better look at Rian’s flushed, swollen nose and realized...
He could almost taste him.
He kept thinking of honey when he looked at Rian’s eyes, and in the back of his mind he’d thought he would taste like honey, too. But instead Damon had caught something on his breath like sugar candy and white wine, emanating off Rian to pour into Damon and leave him practically drunk on every breath of the heated air between them.
And when Rian had leaned closer, as if...as if...
Nope. No.
Hell fucking nah.
With a growl at himself, Damon stalked to the door and yanked it open before he could talk himself out of it.
Rian flinched back, hand upraised delicately, clearly caught in the middle of starting to knock again only to be startled out of it. He held perfectly still, a deer caught and shocked frozen, blinking up at Damon. He’d changed, too; he’d been wearing a plain, unembroidered caftan with flowing trousers after class earlier, the stains on it clearly indicating it had been consigned for messier work that happened in art class, and had tied his hair back out of his face.
Now, though, the ripples of black had been loosed in a river over his shoulders, chest, and back, seeming to give the thin stalk of his body weight and volume to hold him to earth. The caftan had been replaced by a slouchy knit sleeveless crop-top that laced up the front with black strings, baring the smooth, subtle swell of Rian’s pale stomach above the waist of jeans that were more rips than anything else, relaxed and just a little too long and dragging over his feet to brush the floor and almost hide those leather sandals he wore all the time, his toenails painted a fresh, gleaming black. Yet as always, he seemed to be trying to hide his overall shape, and he’d topped the outfit off with a long-sleeved shawl-style fringed wrap in cloudy shades of mottled blue, the gauzy fabric almost fully covering his arms with its bell sleeves and draping open over his chest like a coat, its ragged ends hanging down almost to his knees.
The slender gold bangles and chains around Rian’s wrist chimed as he lowered his arm, hand falling to curl against one of the many pendants on long leather cords draped around his neck, gathering little silver medallions and a cord-wrapped pink crystal and a tiny bronze cog into his palm as if they were comfort objects.
“Um,” Rian said faintly. “Hi?”
God fucking damn it.
Damon was staring again.
As if he’d ever admit out loud that Rian was fucking right.
He kept catching Rian staring at him—because Damon was always fucking staring at Rian.
His face went hot, and he flicked his gaze aside, stepping back. “You coming in or not?”
He could almost see the irritable snap of Rian’s brows in the piqued tone of his voice, even without looking. “...since you asked so graciously.”
Heaven fucking help him.
But he moved out of the way to make room for Rian to come in; not that there was much space for him to make room at all, and he’d never been more aware of the size of his room than when he was trying to cram a second person in it. There were walk-in closets in some of the more luxurious student quarters that were larger than Damon’s suite—which was why it had been so easy to claim it for himself, when most people didn’t want a room so tiny he could hardly turn around in the cubicle shower without bumping his elbows on the spigots, and his “kitchen” was just a mini-fridge with a microwave on top of it, a sink, two short feet of counter space with a standalone oven, and two cooktop burners.
He normally didn’t care. It was his space, and he needed privacy more than he needed luxury or amenities.
But he was suddenly painfully aware of how sparse it was, as Rian stood past the threshold and turned his head slowly, hazel eyes scanning the room.
Between the kitchen and the open single-room living space, the room was barely fifteen by fifteen; Damon had fit a twin bed in the corner, piled high with a box spring, a base mattress, and not one but two roll-out shikibuton-style futons meant for floor sleeping, but which made better mattress toppers than any Serta he’d ever damned well tried. The futons were stacked with homey handmade quilts, stitched in radial patterns of intersecting circular and square geometries to make designs that centered black on white four-pointed stars. A sofa would have made the place feel cluttered, so he’d opted for a deep, comfortable recliner instead, settled in the opposite corner from the bed and facing the flatscreen TV mounted on the wall.
He had no decorations on the walls. Not even pennants from past team wins, or his own trophies from his high school football days. He’d left those with his parents when he’d moved out, mementos of the boy he wasn’t anymore so they’d have something to keep when he wasn’t there. The only
other things in the room were the small coffee table, the laptop atop it, his nightstand, and a row of bookshelves stretching beneath the window, along the wall opposite the bed. With the minimal furniture choices and most of his belongings in the closet, paired with the fact that he was lucky to get a corner unit in one of the narrow towers, giving him windows on two out of four walls...
Somehow, the space always just felt clean and cozy, instead of cramped.
But he still couldn’t help wondering how Rian—with all his airs and little decorative fripperies and that sense of refined elegance that said he came from a life accustomed to more—saw his space.
If he saw someone who preferred simplicity...
Or if he just saw a man with a barren, empty life, devoid of nearly all trappings save the little subtleties he doubted Rian even noticed.
But rather than the thin judgmental smile Damon expected...
Rian let out a delighted gasp, stepping deeper into the room, standing on the oval rug with its concentric circles of rainbow colors, turning in slow arcs. “You have your own room? How did you even manage...?”
“Luck and timing,” Damon said, after a startled moment. “There are only four cupola units, and they’re all this small; the rest is all staircases. Most people would rather share a room to have five times the space, but a few of the grouchy cranks like me prefer our privacy.”
Rian laughed, and it lit his face up as if someone had touched a match to the sparking wick of a candle inside a lantern. “Oh, I’d kill for this. Especially rooming with Walden. Though I’d probably cram myself in a tiny corner and fill the entire place up with art supplies. I admire your restraint.” On a light, dancing step that made his shawl swirl around him, Rian turned toward the bed, reaching out to run his fingertips lightly along the edge of one quilt. “...these are Mashpee designs, aren’t they?”
“Uh...?” Damon’s brain blanked. He—what—what? “I...yeah. I picked them up at the annual pow-wow up in Cape Cod a few years ago.”
And then never went back.
He’d stood so awkwardly on the edges the entire time, wishing he knew what he was missing in every graceful movement of the fireball ceremony when it was like watching a foreign show without the damned subtitles, wondering how the hell he could be one of the People of the First Light when he was so goddamned much in the dark.