by Cole McCade
“Ta for now,” Rian said brightly, wiggling his fingers at Damon with that...
That fucking smile.
That artificial one that got Damon’s hackles up, fake and shallow and telling Damon that Rian wasn’t leaving out of fucking courtesy.
He’d gotten in his head that he needed to escape, instead.
Fine. Whatever.
I wasn’t gonna kick you out, he thought. You could’ve stayed to finish.
Saying that out loud didn’t seem like the best idea.
So he just kept it to himself.
And watched as Rian disappeared from Damon’s suite, the last sight of him a flick of his hair and the flittering fringe of his shawl before he was gone into the hallowed and haunted halls of Albin Academy, and into the night.
* * *
Rian really didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts right now.
Because he couldn’t seem to manage to be alone in his thoughts at all.
He’d sat by himself in the living room of his suite, curled up against the pillows piled along the window seat, the plate he’d stolen from Damon resting at his feet, empty after Rian had satisfied his ravening belly clearing it out. And told himself it didn’t taste better just because he’d helped a little, with the awkwardly cut vegetables that crunched crisply with the seared-in flavors of the pepper and salt and steak with every bite. Didn’t taste better because he’d rather enjoyed that—cooking for himself from something other than a microwave container, or eating in the school cafeteria.
Didn’t taste better because perhaps, just perhaps, he’d enjoyed those little moments with Damon, even if it wasn’t hard to tell he’d been exasperating the man to hell and back with his clumsiness and apparent inability to resist teasing him.
Damon.
He hadn’t meant anything by the way he liked to capture Damon’s name between his lips and tongue, sucking on it like an overripe cherry.
Sometimes Rian couldn’t help flirting. It was just as shallow as his smiles, just another way to keep people slightly at one remove with that flippant teasing where every coy little sally was less come hither and more stay just that far away.
But when he’d purred Damon in that moment when Damon’s body had been a wall of heat at his back and Damon’s arms had been bars of steel walling him in...
There’d been a moment.
A moment when Damon’s eyes had widened, when the fierce sinew in his arms had rippled and tightened, a moment when that fire that sometimes melted the ice in Damon’s eyes was something other than anger, frustration, exasperation.
And Rian couldn’t stop replaying that moment again and again, his skin alive with the feeling of Damon’s body heat imprinted on him.
He needed...something. Not to sit here trying to talk himself into taking the plate he’d so brazenly stolen back tonight. Not to be alone in this suite, when either Walden had turned in early—silent behind his locked door—or was once again not even coming back tonight. Not to twist himself out of his own skin with questioning, confusion, wondering why the hell he couldn’t stop thinking about a man who made him want to rip his own hair out...and who had been a near-stranger to him just yesterday morning, a vaguely familiar face recognized in the halls as another faculty member.
Air.
He needed air, a walk beneath the golden September trees, the crisp scent of descending autumn on the night.
In a restless movement, he catapulted himself off the window seat and slipped through the dark-shadowed living room, pausing only to lock the door before pocketing his keys and slipping down the chilly, slightly drafty hall to the stairwell. Every stair in Albin Academy creaked, it seemed, but from his very first day Rian had made something of a game of seeing if he could walk light enough, will himself feather-drift enough, to flit down the spiraling corner staircases without making a sound.
He didn’t quite make it this time, soft groans and whines rising under his steps until he felt like a ghost haunting the dark and rattling his bones to frighten the students. The whimsical thought made him smile, lifted the heaviness pushing down on his brow, and he already felt better by the time he spilled out into the empty first-floor hallway.
He’d meant to cut out through the adjacent door and into the main entry hall; the front doors would be locked at this time of night, but being faculty did have its perks—and one of those perks was the security code to unlock the main door and the front gates.
But before Rian could make that detour, he paused as motion down the hall caught his attention. Several doors down, Summer Iseya was just stepping out of the office adjacent to his husband’s, his short, wild black hair a mess, his button-down and slacks a bit limp with the droop that came from a long day not even starch could hold up against.
“Summer,” Rian called, and raised his hand.
Summer lifted his head and broke into a warm smile. “Rian. Hi,” he said, slipping his hands into his pockets and stepping closer. “I was just closing up.”
Rian settled to lean against the wall next to the stairs. “Stayed late?”
“A little. One of the seniors is trying to figure out how to tell his parents he doesn’t want to go to college, and he’s more interested in trade schools.” Summer stopped a few feet away from him, studying him with bright, cheerful blue eyes. “Mechanics, electricians, that sort of thing.”
“That’s unusual, for this school.”
“Everyone’s got to have a dream.” Summer cocked his head. “Were you looking for me?”
“Oh! No, I—I was going to head out for a walk, but I just saw you and...” Rian shrugged. “Thought I’d say hello.”
“Really?” Summer was entirely disarming, practically like a puppy—but that was what made it so easy for him to catch people off guard. Just as he caught Rian off guard as, after barely a moment of looking Rian over, he said carefully, “Seems like you could use someone to talk to, though.”
Rian winced, folding his arms over his stomach. “Am I that obvious?”
“Sneaking out for walks after curfew?”
“Please. I’m a moon baby. An indigo child,” Rian lilted with mock hauteur, tossing his hair. “I wilt if I don’t walk beneath the autumn sky at least once a month.”
“Mmhm. And you sing to crystals and summon the devil to dance with you beneath the pale moonlight, the usual.” With a sweet smile, Summer settled to lean against the wall next to Rian, his shoulder almost touching. “I’m still getting settled into this whole thing, and technically I’m a student counselor, not a peer counselor, but...” He nudged Rian with his arm. “If you need a little friendly advice, I can try.”
Rian hesitated, then exhaled deeply. “I mean...it’s about a student anyway...”
“What’s going on?”
“Mm. One of my students has been lying to the football coach and skipping practice. He told the coach he was staying to work on a project in my class...but he runs out of my class every day to keep from being late for practice.”
“And you think he might be getting up to some trouble, is that it?”
“Yeah. But we don’t have any proof.” Rian grimaced. “So you can imagine what Assistant Principal Walden said to that.”
“I don’t have to imagine. He’d just give you one of those looks,” Summer said with a dryness that spoke of hard experience.
“If I’m lucky. Try living with him. Every time he talks to me, it’s with the sharp side of his tongue.” Rian sighed heavily, slumping down the wall. “I mean...am I really supposed to say nothing? Do nothing? What if we don’t find out what’s going on until it’s too late and he’s already in too much trouble?”
“It’s almost impossible to keep teenagers out of trouble,” Summer pointed out gently. “Sometimes you have to just let them get it out of their systems, as long as it’s not trouble that could hurt them or people around them.�
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“So...look the other way?”
“Not exactly.” Summer smiled, thoughtful and sweet. “Because it could be that student does need you, and need intervention. That’s what we’re here for. We can’t quite be their parents, but we do still have a responsibility to them, no matter how stuffy Walden gets about the technicalities.” He tapped his fingertip against his lower lip. “What I’m saying is look until you know what you’re seeing.”
That hit Rian somewhere low down in the pit of his stomach.
And for a moment he thought not of Chris...
But of Damon.
Looking at him like he expected Rian to tell him Damon—with that quiet, calm suite of his that looked like such a perfect, private space where Damon could hold back the noise of the world; with that soft whispered anguish; with that loneliness he’d given Rian like he expected him to crush it—just wasn’t good enough for...for...
For what?
“And then...?” he prompted softly.
“Do what you think is right,” Summer said, with a light shrug. “I can’t tell you what that is until you know what you’re dealing with.”
If only it was that easy.
But Rian forced himself to stop thinking about it, and shook his head. “Hopefully nothing.”
“That would be best, yeah.” Summer watch Rian curiously through the mess of hair that tumbled across his eyes. “Do you want to tell me who the student is...?”
“Not yet,” Rian said. “I’ll let you know if there’s something to worry about.”
“Just remember,” Summer said. “You’re not bothering me. It’s my job. And if he doesn’t want to talk to you, you can encourage him to talk to me.”
“Maybe. You’re practically a kid yourself; they seem to open up a bit more around you.”
“Hey!” Summer protested with a laugh. “I’m only a few years younger than you.”
“Ah, but those few years make all the difference, my sweet summer child.”
“No. No puns on my name. None. I forbid them.”
Rian grinned. “Do you have the authority to forbid anything, Mr. Iseya?”
Summer went bright red, his eyes rounding; he spluttered. “I—you—ohmyGod.”
Unable to help laughing, Rian pushed lightly at Summer’s arm. “Go up to your room. I bet your husband’s wondering where you are.”
“...he’s probably so busy grading papers he doesn’t even realize what time it is.”
But from the fond way Summer said it—and the lingering looks Rian frequently caught Summer and Fox giving each other in faculty meetings—Rian deeply doubted it.
Over the last semester, Summer and Fox had bloomed so obviously that no one around them could miss the fact that they were so deeply in love it was almost painful to watch, that anyone should wear such intense emotions so openly, so nakedly, hanging them out where anyone could see them and touch them and hurt them.
But it looked...
Beautiful, too.
Like the kind of moment that arrested the eye until the heart ached to capture it in pen and ink and soft washes of carefully brushed color, only it was a thousand and a million and an eternity of such moments caught again and again and again until they made a book of fanning pages in sweet colors the shades of heart’s blood.
And the naked longing in Summer’s eyes as he turned his head toward the stairs made Rian’s breaths catch; what was it like, to want someone that deeply that the thread connecting the two of you was nearly visible?
Why was Rian even thinking about such things?
He tried to smile, but it felt strange. He touched his fingertips to Summer’s arm lightly. “Goodnight, Summer,” he said softly. “Thank you for listening to me.”
“Sure,” Summer said. “Goodnight, Rian.”
For a moment Summer’s attention returned to Rian, a question flickering in his eyes, but Rian turned away before he could ask it. Rian just...he needed that air, and he needed it now.
Before he started thinking too much.
Before he started wondering if there was such a thing as hate at first sight, and if it was just as complicated and tangled as...as...
No.
He blanked his mind, and slipped through the arching, cavernous chamber of the entry hall. A few quick presses to the key panel just inside the door, and he was outside, the crisp September air hitting him like a slap of cold waves rushing up against him and breaking against the shore of his body. He sucked in a sharp breath and shivered, but he didn’t turn back, just easing the door gently into place and waiting for it to latch and the light on the external lock plate to flash red.
Then, hands in his pockets, he turned to make his way across the broad front paving and toward the lane leading down the hill, through a tunnel of trees with trunks blacker than the moonless night and leaves whose luminous amber shade offered a false promise of light.
He let those false promises lure him outward...but then stopped as his phone vibrated in his pocket, a little spot of warmth against his hip. He paused at the head of the path, pulling the phone out, glancing down at the screen—and the new listing he’d saved just a few hours ago, the icon just a diamond of black against a white circle. A single text message waited, above the notifications for dozens of missed calls from Rochester, stretching back over several months.
But that text message...
That was new.
Don’t get lost, was all it said.
Rian inhaled sharply, his toes curling against his sandals, his heart rising up into his throat. He looked up against the school, a formidable and eerie thing of aged wood and gabled roofs and dark towers spearing their narrow points up into the night, black against darker black.
But in one of the corner cupola towers, a light burned, brilliant and warm against the night.
And a graceful, solidly muscled silhouette perched against the window.
Rian couldn’t make out the face, but he knew that shape, increasingly familiar.
And he wondered if Damon’s eyes were cold, as he watched Rian from so high above.
Or smoldering hot with something that might or might not be the anger that burst so easily between them.
Rian didn’t know what to say.
So he didn’t say anything at all.
He just turned and walked away, his sandals scuffing against the cracked pavement of the road.
Let the forest swallow him, slipping into dappled shadows where he could lose himself for a while.
And try not to think about Damon Louis at all.
Chapter Five
Operation “Not thinking about Damon Louis” wasn’t...exactly going to plan.
Rian had almost slept through morning bell; he’d stayed out much too late last night, wandering off the beaten path and into the trees with the first browned fallen leaves crunching under his feet and the soft sounds of calling owls in the distance and the night filled with the fire-crackle scent of fall coming on hard and impatient and fast. Now and then he’d caught the rustle of things in the trees and brush—rabbits darting away from the sound of his tread, and he thought he glimpsed red, the night swallowing the colors of a fox’s black-tipped tail as it vanished beneath a low tangle of brambles; once, too, he’d thought he’d seen something almost human-sized through the branches, his heart stopping at the thought that there might be a bear out here, but then it had moved away, swift and silent and leaving him alone.
He hadn’t stopped though, until he’d wandered on a glade where a birch tree stood naked and white against the darkness, seeming to create its own light with how it reflected back the soft starlight in its pale flesh. It looked like its bark had been blown off in a lightning strike, exposing the tender smooth wood underneath, judging by the deep pointed fissure of scorched wood framed in crumbling gray ash, bisecting between two of its thickest cen
tral branches and down half the length of its trunk.
He’d stood there for some time, just letting himself follow every twig and branch, memorizing their placement, their spindly reachings, as if they grasped up toward the sky at...
Something.
Maybe the tree didn’t know, any more than Rian knew what he was grasping at with this sudden desperate need to do and be something more than what he was.
He’d thought being content with the life of a simple teacher was enough.
But if it wasn’t...what would be?
What would be enough for him?
Or was he just so accustomed to a life of excess—the chef, the marble-colonnaded house his parents laughed about because it was just a small mansion, how humble, sleeping and flitting about and playing at curating fine art, dabbling at making his own—that he couldn’t appreciate that simplicity itself was the point, and worthy of being enough?
The tree, unfortunately, hadn’t been particularly forthcoming with any answers.
And Rian had turned away to make himself trudge back through the trees, climbing the hill up the path and to the school, guided by that lonely burning light in the upstairs window.
He’d stayed up too late making sketches of the tree, committing it to memory, trying different styles and interpretations so he could choose one to put to canvas—and he’d dozed off over his sketchbook, curled up in a corner of the bed in his room in the suite he shared with Walden. In fact, the only reason he woke up just in time to throw on a clean shirt, shove his feet into his sandals, and race to first period was because...because...
Walden...was late?
Rian barely got a glimpse of Lachlan Walden darting from the suite with his tie flying over his shoulder before the door slammed in his wake. Walden was always last to sleep, first to wake, always on the ball, always five minutes early for every day, every meeting, every school event.