Just Like This (Albin Academy)

by Cole McCade

  So much for putting Damon Louis out of his mind.

  Rian couldn’t help lingering to watch; just as he couldn’t help noticing there was nothing Damon asked of those boys that he wouldn’t and didn’t do himself. Rian guessed these were makeup drills to compensate for missing practice with yesterday’s rain; the rain that had evaporated into thick mist blanketing the school and the trees around in a haunting, ethereal layer of white, concealing what swam beneath the surface.

  Rather like Damon himself, Rian thought.

  On the surface Damon seemed harsh, impatient, blunt, rude, sarcastic...but Rian thought he was just a gentle man who hid his passions. Shutting people out, because he couldn’t trust people not to hurt him with those passions if they were discovered.

  As if you know anything about anyone, Rian Falwell.

  As if you have any idea what his inner world looks like.

  Already looking to fix another man?

  But Damon didn’t need fixing. Not by Rian, and not by anyone else.

  Damon was just fine without him.

  Good, Rian thought...but couldn’t help the painful feeling of wanting, as he brushed his fingertips to the cool, morning-fogged windowpane, watching as Damon took another loop of the plaza with the boys, all of them jogging in uniform rhythm.

  Only to recoil as Damon’s head lifted, turning toward the school.

  And if Rian didn’t know better, he’d think Damon was looking up at his window. At him. As if those brown eyes could cross the distance to find Rian high in his perch, capture him, hold him, ask him what he was thinking, wondering if he truly thought Damon could ever want him in more than a moment of frustrated impulse.

  I see you, that penetrating stare seemed to say. And I see nothing of substance.

  Rian flinched back from the window.

  Of course Damon couldn’t see him. He was probably just...checking the sun in the sky, guessing the time, how long they had before first bell. Rian wasn’t even there, for him.

  That was how it should be.

  Just...forget it happened. That was all he could do. Forget it happened, figure out what was going on with Chris.

  And then never talk to Damon again.

  Rian managed, at least, to avoid thinking overly much about Damon through showering, changing, tracing a little eyeliner and shadow around his eyes, and settling into class throughout the day. But he was drooping by last period, feeling every lost moment of sleep from the night before, and probably looked just as haggard as poor Chris—who didn’t even bother working on his wisteria, today. He just tucked himself into a seat at one of the worktables, and when Rian stole a peek as he slipped past to check a few pots other boys were firing in the kiln, he caught Chris scrolling dully through color images of wisteria. Looking for color references, Rian thought, and smiled sadly, touching Chris’s shoulder.

  “Hey,” he said softly, and Chris jumped, tilting his head back before offering an exhausted smile that almost hurt for its sweetness despite the hollows in his cheeks.

  “Hey, teach,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “You okay?” Rian asked. “You look wiped. Going hard in practice?”

  “Sure,” Chris agreed listlessly, his smile twitching, before he looked away. “Just been staying up late to study. Iseya’s midterm is gonna be awful. Thought I’d get a head start.”

  “Ah,” Rian said, and lingered for a few moments, but...what could he say?

  He didn’t buy that for a second.

  Chris’s averted eyes said he knew it.

  The questions, the pleas, hovered on the tip of Rian’s tongue, before he remembered Walden’s warning. One mistake could blow up into something bigger...and then all the boys could end up hurt, because Rian couldn’t be a bit more patient.

  It hurt.

  It hurt to see Chris suffering and not know what to do about it, his very position of responsibility barring him from intervening just yet.

  But he swallowed against the tightness in his throat, and reached over Chris’s shoulder to tap his phone screen and one of the photos. “That one,” he said. “We’ve got glazes in those shades. Wisteria at night. It... I think it’d look nice on your sculpture.”

  “Yeah?” Chris’s smile warmed. “Thanks, Mr. Falwell.”

  Rian didn’t say anything.

  He couldn’t, or he might crack.

  Lachlan might have said he wasn’t heartless, but this...this ridiculousness about protocol felt just...just...

  Cruel.

  But his phone gave him another reason to escape, and he followed its vibrating buzz back to his desk. He half expected another 585 number, a voicemail or a text.

  Instead it was a new text from Louis, Damon—black diamond, white circle.

  Terse words.

  We need to contact Chris’s parents. He looks like he’s on something.

  Rian sank down in his chair, staring at his phone. That...was all Damon was going to say to him?

  Of course that was all Damon would say.

  That was all that mattered.

  So he tapped back, He looks worse today. Said he’s just been up late studying for Iseya’s midterms. He paused, biting at the inner flesh of his lower lip, then added, What do we do?

  A few moments of silence, then a curt buzz: Let me think.

  Rian stared at his phone helplessly, his heart sinking. His fingers flew over the screen. Why did you kiss me? he typed out.

  But let it sit.

  Unsent.

  Before he deleted it, typed Okay, and hit Send before he could second-guess himself.

  Then turned his phone face-down on the desk and looked away, without waiting for a reply.

  He didn’t want to see it.

  He didn’t want to wonder.

  And he didn’t want to make this about himself and his own chaotic, churning, rioting feelings.

  Chris was more important.

  Rian would just...

  He’d deal, that’s all.

  Yeah.

  He’d just...deal.

  Even if he had a feeling he wouldn’t be sleeping tonight.

  ...again.

  Fine. Fuck. Whatever.

  He’d deal with that, too, with enough coffee.

  Whatever happened, he’d just...

  Find a way to deal.

  * * *

  Damon was not fucking dealing with this very well at all.

  He glowered at the punching bag in the small weight room attached to the school’s gym, and slammed his fist into it until a deep dent formed in the rubbery blue casing, the impact reverberating up his arm. Normally a spar with a sandbag and a few hours working himself into a lather calmed him down; it was a simple, quiet pleasure, thoughtless exertion focused only on form and technique that gave him an outlet for his frustrations, leaving him clean and light.

  It wasn’t fucking working.

  Not today.

  Not when he was pretty fucking sure Rian was avoiding him.

  Probably because Damon was avoiding him.

  What the fuck else was he supposed to do? He let out a fuming, irritated sound as he crashed his taped knuckles into the bag again, sending it swinging, the chain overhead creaking. He shouldn’t have kissed Rian. He didn’t know what to do about it. What to say about it. He’d been thinking about it all fucking weekend, until his skin nearly itched with the memory of Rian’s body pressed close against his. But if Rian had just brought it up with that insatiable curiosity he had, they could’ve called each other every damned name in the book, fought it out, and then put it behind them as a fluke.

  As long as neither of them said a damned word...

  Damon couldn’t stop himself from wondering what if.

  What if the janitor hadn’t interrupted?

  What if Damon hadn’t lit out
of there like his ass was on fire?

  What if he’d stayed and pulled Rian into his arms and kissed him again and again, softly and fiercely and every way in between, until Rian’s eyes were hot melted honey and he looked at Damon with his sugar-candy lips bruised so sweet?

  Stop it.

  He sent another hard roundhouse slamming into the bag, the impact shocking through his whole body until he tensed to take it, absorb it, then stopped as the reminder alarm he’d set on his phone went off.

  That faculty meeting.

  Fuck.

  Groaning, Damon caught the bag and stilled its swing, just lingering for a few moments, taking several deep, centering breaths.

  They’d be around nearly two dozen other teachers and staff.

  They wouldn’t even have to look at each other.

  Just...breathe.

  He kept reminding himself to breathe through a shower and through dressing in a clean T-shirt and track pants, before making his way to the large conference room situated between the principal’s and assistant principal’s offices. Principal Chambers wasn’t there; Damon wasn’t sure what Chambers actually did or if he even lived on campus, when the only time he’d ever met the man had been during his job interview. Instead Assistant Principal Walden always presided over these meetings, and it was downright disgusting how crisp and put-together Walden looked at the head of the long oval conference table, when the rest of them looked about ready to fall asleep in their chairs with an hour until the morning bell for breakfast, and two hours until bell for classes.

  Damon was pretty sure Walden held meetings this early not so staff would be clear for cafeteria duty, but because the man was a fucking sadist.

  And Damon had to be a fucking masochist, because even as he stole his usual corner chair under the window...his eyes gravitated to Rian.

  To Rian, and how he’d bundled himself up like a sleepy kitten, folding his tall frame into a high-backed leather chair with his knees hugged to his chest and his oversized clothing falling all over him, his hair a bed-rumpled mess and his eyes clouded and half-closed.

  The ache that punched Damon in the gut took him right back to that rain-streaked afternoon in Rian’s studio; that kiss, fingers in his hair, gasping needy sounds. But he didn’t realize just how intently he was staring at Rian until Rian turned his head with a drowsy noise, pillowing his cheek to his kneecaps—only to go completely still, heavy-lidded eyes opening fully, sharpening, as they crossed paths with Damon’s.

  Color climbed high in Rian’s cheeks as they stared at each other for several stricken moments. Damon looked away first, forcing his gaze aside and fixing out the window. His blood felt like slow poison, and he reminded himself yet again to breathe.

  Fuck, this wasn’t supposed to be this hard.

  Clenching his jaw, Damon kept his focus out the window—and was hardly aware of when Walden started talking. It didn’t matter. He almost never had anything to say in these meetings, anyway, and most of them weren’t relevant to him until he had to get down into the nitty gritty of coordinating away game schedules around teachers’ tests and makeup projects. Someone would yell at him if they needed something.

  Someone was yelling at him, he realized.

  Well...not really yelling. He didn’t think he’d ever heard Lachlan Walden raise his voice.

  But Walden was sure as hell talking very firmly as he said, “Misters Louis and Falwell, if the two of you could stop your personal feud long enough to pay attention, please?”

  Damon jerked, snapping his head up with his entire chest giving a painful thump. Without meaning to, he immediately looked right at Rian—and Rian was looking right back at him with the same wide-eyed, guilty stare.

  Before he smiled—small, thin, goddammit, that shallow smile Damon hated so much when there was not a single fucking thing of Rian in it.

  Just a careful self-protective façade, without a bit of that fire that made him such a pain in the ass to deal with.

  Damon scowled, looking away from that empty smile and focusing on Walden. “We’re fine,” he grunted. “What did you want?”

  “Mr. Falwell?” Walden lilted with lethal cordiality.

  “Seriously, it’s fine,” Rian said softly. “I’m listening.”

  “Then perhaps you could tell me if you intend to hold dance and music curricula next semester,” Walden asked flintily. “You have two students in your music theory course, and four in dance. Hardly a full complement, and your salary will not be affected if you choose to only pursue art curricula for the time being.”

  “No.” Rian shook his head, his voice firming. “If even one student wants to take the classes, I’ll teach them. It’s not something I mind doing.”

  From the corner of his eye, Damon caught himself lingering, watching. Watching the steady way Rian looked at Walden; the calm acceptance of work he didn’t have to do, just because he wanted to do it.

  That shouldn’t make Damon feel fucking...fucking proud of Rian.

  It wasn’t even his goddamned place.

  Silently grumbling to himself, he made himself look away—but as he turned his head aside, he caught the Iseyas watching him. Those two fucking nauseating lovebirds; he never thought he’d see Fox fucking Iseya of all people defrosting enough to dote on someone the way he doted on Summer, but the two of them were so inseparable they were practically one entity.

  And that entity was currently watching him knowingly, one pair of gray eyes, one pair of blue looking him over as if they knew something he didn’t.

  What the fuck ever.

  Damon slouched down in his chair, folding his arms over his chest with a suppressed growl.

  Let them stare at him.

  There was nothing to see.

  Just...focus on doing his job, and on figuring out what to do to help Chris.

  And then he wouldn’t give a good god damn if Rian Falwell smiled at him like they’d never spoken a word to each other at all.

  Chapter Nine

  An entire school week without talking to Damon Louis shouldn’t be this miserable.

  Five days of silent phones. Five days of pointedly pretending not to notice each other when they happened to pass in the halls or cafeterias. Five days of increasing frustration, while Rian tried not to think about—about—anything. About that kiss, about days of arguing that couldn’t possibly have been denial of a wild and hungry instant attraction, but God...

  What else could it be?

  Rian felt like he was trying to look at something by refusing to stare directly at it, with the way his brain kept skittering around the idea that he could actually want Damon.

  He’d read once about how, often, spacecraft launched out beyond Earth’s orbit started not on a direct trajectory, but moving toward some large gravitational object where they could actually fall into orbit around that object and then use the momentum and energy gained to slingshot off in their intended direction, which was apparently a much more effective method of directional navigation than any other.

  Somehow, Rian didn’t think that sort of thing worked well for humans.

  Giving in to the attraction of a large body to send themselves slinging off in another direction, their path defined straight and true.

  There was nothing straight about his attraction to that particular large body.

  But everything true about the reasons why Rian couldn’t stop thinking about Damon.

  Couldn’t stop hurting with every day that passed without a single message.

  Couldn’t stop the tingle in his lips every time he remembered the pressure of Damon’s, the heat of them, the way they turned just soft enough when mouth met mouth and claimed so fiercely.

  Couldn’t stop how his pencil turned to the contours and steely glide of Damon’s musculature every time he let himself drift and started idly doodling in the corners of
his pages.

  Couldn’t stop thinking of how Damon had felt against him, as if Rian had imprinted the shape of him against his fingertips and now nothing else would flow from his hands to the canvas but Damon. Until it felt as though the tree in the painting—the tree he imagined as a man, yearning and reaching—was beginning to take on the same stark, graceful angularity as Damon, reflecting the aestheticism of his physique in how each branch curved and joined the next; in the way the trunk seemed to slouch slightly forward with the same casual arrogance as the way Damon slouched his hips forward, shoulders back, body a sinuous coil of perfection.

  Settled at his desk, Rian hid his flush by burying his face into his folded forearms, just barely keeping his head lifted enough to see his last period class over the upper edge of his arm.

  He had it bad.

  And he didn’t want to dismiss it as just physical attraction, when that meant rendering Damon down to a lust object to satisfy his curiosity, a thing to be enjoyed and then discarded, instead of...of...

  A complex, layered man Rian was only just beginning to see past the surface of.

  But everything he saw just made him want to know more.

  Even if that curiosity, despite how it consumed his thoughts so fully and left him constantly turning his face away so no one would notice how he couldn’t stop blushing...

  ...it didn’t hold a candle to the burning question of what to do about Chris.

  Rian had taken that Let me think to mean Give me space. Whether space from Rian after that kiss or space to sort out what was happening with Chris and figure out what to do, he didn’t know—but although Chris had had better days over the last week, days when he’d looked more rested, more alert, actually smiling while he talked to his friends in class, actually seeming engaged when he held court in the cafeteria...

  The boy still looked just so...tired.