Just Like This (Albin Academy)

by Cole McCade

  Let himself enjoy the simple pleasure of being held in a sleepy tangle by a man who had him so messed up Rian didn’t know who he was anymore.

  Had he really been in denial all this time?

  Had he really been so angry with himself at this completely illogical, strange, inexplicable instant charge between himself and Damon that he’d lashed out to deny it, push it away, avoid giving in to something so confusing it could only be a little bit frightening...especially when he had no idea if Damon felt even remotely the same way?

  What is this? What...did we just do? he asked—himself, Damon, as he walked his fingertips lightly down his bicep, then stopped on one of the scars on Damon’s forearm. Like the one on his neck, it was a twisted thing that looked as if it had been slashed quickly by a cruel and jagged blade, cut swift and deep and then stitched closed to scar in a gnarled white line. Another one cut a path almost perfectly down the center of his pectorals, starting just to the right and below the dip of his collarbone and snaking down toward the peak of his ribs; still another started at his right shoulder and writhed diagonally, narrowly cutting past the edge of one small, tight dark brown nipple on its way down to Damon’s hip. They all seemed to start somewhere on his right side, and slash outward in a radial pattern spraying out in all directions.

  Rian let himself press his fingers to the scar that started just below Damon’s right pectoral, over the rhythmic wave pattern of his obliques—only to yank his hand back with a rather embarrassing squeak as he felt the rumble of Damon’s voice rising up through tawny muscle, a vibration that touched him before it spilled past Damon’s lips.

  “You know,” Damon said groggily, his voice sleep-soft and husky with restrained, drowsy laughter, “you used to just stare at me.”

  Wincing, Rian coiled his hand against his chest. “...sorry.”

  Damon’s shoulders shook with his short chuckle, before his eyes slipped open—half-lidded, their creases and angles making them look even softer than the haze of slumber that seemed to glaze dark brown like a mist.

  “We just fucked,” Damon murmured bluntly, yet with a subtle edge of... Rian didn’t dare to imagine it was affection. “It’s okay. You can touch.” Then Damon’s eyes opened more, clearing, flicking over Rian’s face searchingly. The arm draped over Rian’s body tightened, sending a ripple of coiling muscle flowing up Damon’s forearm and over his bicep. “You okay? Not too sore? Not hurt?”

  “No. Not...not too sore,” Rian answered shyly—if only because he didn’t have the guts, right now, to say I’m just sore enough. That he’d woken up feeling good, sensuously melted and worked over and sated, and that he wouldn’t mind waking up that way again. So he only flashed Damon a quick smile, and gave in to that invitation to touch, finding the gnarled beginning of the longest diagonal scar-slash and slowly following it down with one fingertip, feeling its strange waxy-ribbed texture, keeping his eyes on that and not on Damon’s face. “I’ll be fine.”

  Silence fell between them, and Rian’s heart beat harder, faster, a quick-snap thing that hurt as if a rubber band shot against his rib cage again and again.

  And that rubber band nearly popped as Damon said, “You want to ask, don’t you.”

  Rian’s eyes widened, his head snapping up; his lips parted, but he couldn’t...he couldn’t say it. He couldn’t say About what we did? About sleeping together? About...about what it means?

  Who knew he was the sort who could be that afraid of rejection.

  His shallow flirtings, his shallow relationships...

  Even when they told him I don’t need you to fix me, Rian, I don’t need...any of this...

  He’d never been worried about them walking away.

  Not when he was always the one who cut and run first, the moment that need they swore they didn’t have started to suffocate him entirely.

  He swallowed, flattening his fingertips and smoothing them against that scar that widened broader as it traveled further down Damon’s chest. “About...about your scars?” he deflected. “I didn’t want to be rude.”

  If Damon caught the pause, that hesitation—his sleepy, amused expression gave nothing away, his entire body relaxed as if he’d melted into a comfortable pile of man. “We’re pretty good at being rude to each other. Why stop now?”

  Rian lofted a brow, fingertips stopping. “You’re not funny, Damon Louis.”

  “Yes, I am.” Smirking, Damon caught Rian’s hand, drawing it away from his chest and lifting it to trace warm lips over his knuckles, breaths tickling between Rian’s fingers. “I’ll tell you, if you want. It’s just one story. Got ’em all at the same time. Except this one.” Still clasping Rian’s hand, Damon twisted his arm to expose the underside of his forearm, and another scar—one that ripped from his wrist up toward his elbow, tapering in the opposite direction of the other scars. “Fell off the bleachers my first year teaching here. Sober, too. I don’t even drink, so don’t even know what the fuck I was doing, but I ripped my arm on the metal edge of the bleachers. Cut myself open from elbow to wrist. Picture of grace.”

  “You normally are,” Rian ventured softly. “Graceful, that is.”

  Damon jerked oddly—minutely, but there, blinking as he gave Rian a startled look, before he cleared his throat and looked away. “You want the story, or not?”

  “I’m listening if you want to tell me.” Smiling to himself, Rian shifted to pillow his head on his arm, curling his fingers against Damon’s grasp. “I’m guessing they had something to do with the Navy.”

  “Everything to do with it. You know what they say about the Navy—everybody’s taxis.” Damon let out a groaning sigh, settling against the bed, and Rian understood the layered soft futons atop the mattress now; Damon’s weight made the mattress sink, and just one layer of padding would probably mean feeling the box spring underneath after a long night. “I was barely eighteen, on my first deployment. We’d been sent as the taxis to get this Army unit out. Afghanistan. They’d been pinned for weeks, caught in place, half of ’em torn apart by IEDs, the rest of ’em running out of food and water real fast. We’d already tried an airlift, nearly got shot out of the sky. So ground team it was.”

  Rian frowned, stroking his thumb along the edge of Damon’s hand. “They sent you overseas when you were that young?”

  “Anyone fit to move got shipped where we were needed.” Damon’s shrug was diffident—but his eyes were far away, as if he was seeing hot cloudless skies and choking pale sand. “And young blood was cheap meat to throw at a mission to extract just three guys; all they had left. Khalaji, Arcones, don’t remember the last guy’s name.” His fingers tightened idly on Rian’s. “All I knew was we had no business being out there. None of us. Even fresh meat like me could tell that; we didn’t fucking belong there. But...” His mouth tightened. “We thought we’d swept the area before we went in...but we missed one. IED hidden inside a hollow brick in a wall, pressure trigger on the easiest walkway through some ruins.” He let out a bitter snort. “I don’t know how every last one of us survived. Some of us worse off than others, but we lived. And I knew damned well I wasn’t gonna get that lucky again.”

  That same clutching, hurt feeling hit Rian; the same feeling he’d had when he’d first noticed that viscerally deep scar below Damon’s ear, and realized how close the world had come to never having a Damon Louis in it again; never having a Coach Louis, never having a Mr. Louis, never having a frustrating asshole who just made Rian want to rip his own hair out, and then for some reason come back and do it again.

  And he wondered if, if it had happened that way...

  If some days, as he wandered the halls, Rian would pause and listen to the ghosts haunting the spires of Albin Academy, and feel as if there was a fundamental absence in who should be here.

  “But you did get that lucky,” he murmured.

  “Yeah. I just got away with this.” Damon moved their clasped
hands until their twined knuckles touched the scar under his ear...then down, to one of the ones starting on his shoulder. “And this. And this. And this.” Over and over again, guiding Rian’s hand to one scar after another...before stopping, clasping Rian’s hand against Damon’s chest while dark brown eyes watched him thoughtfully. “Spent months in the hospital recovering from blood loss and trying not to move enough to rip my damn stitches and cause more than surface tissue damage. Didn’t take more than a week of being confined to bed rest to know I was out, soon as my tour was up.”

  “So the soldier becomes the football coach.” Rian smoothed his hand against Damon’s chest, flattening his fingers and spreading them under Damon’s palm, soaking his warmth into Rian’s skin. “What made you get into the military in the first place?”

  “Just seemed like what everyone thought I should do. I was good at football in high school. Not much else. Didn’t know where I belonged, so figured I could try to belong in the Navy. Band of brothers and all that crap you hear.” He grunted derisively. “It’s horse shit. I wanted to goddamned well build things, Rian. Whether it was people, or just something I made with my own damned hands. Not kill people just to take what they built.” That distant look in Damon’s eyes cleared, then, finally fully focusing on Rian, the tight line of his lips relaxing to a self-deprecating smile. “In case you haven’t figured out, I got issues with people taking things that ain’t rightly theirs.”

  That shouldn’t have hit like a spear to the chest.

  But wasn’t that what Rian had done?

  Taken Damon’s warmth, his comfort, when they didn’t belong to him—without thinking about Damon’s feelings at all?

  He didn’t even know Damon well enough to know what spending the night together meant to him. If it was something casual, or if he was someone who needed emotional investment to even be able to touch someone, kiss them, be with them. Or if it was somewhere in between, where he could be casual but this wasn’t, or maybe it was a moment of impulse for him too, and now he was just as caught and lost as Rian in wondering just...just...

  Where they went now.

  If they talked to each other, if they felt anything, if those feelings were mutual.

  Or if they just wrote it off.

  One night that served a purpose; a balm on wounds that were no longer so raw and vulnerable this morning, the bleeding effectively stanched when they had just...just...

  Used each other.

  Or maybe you just used him.

  Rian’s chest felt it was crushing in, some fist cracking his ribs and pulverizing them until they collapsed on themselves, and he swallowed thickly, turning his face away and hiding it in his arm, as if he could keep Damon from noticing. As if he could hide this sudden whiplash of emotion that cracked through his sleepy morning contentment and left it in tatters, his heart sinking with the weight of...

  Of just how fucking thoughtless he was.

  So thoughtless that he didn’t deserve to ask Damon for anything.

  He couldn’t stop the harsh sound that hitched in his throat—which meant there was no way to prevent the way Damon’s arm abruptly went hard and tense against him, and a rough, worried growl rose in Damon’s throat. His hand splayed against Rian’s back, broad, protective.

  “Oh—oh, fuck,” Damon said, words tumbling just a little too quickly. “Are you hurt? Did I hurt you? I knew this was a bad idea, I’m sorry, I—”

  I knew this was a bad idea.

  Rian squeezed his eyes shut, breathing in deep.

  Fuck.

  That just cemented it.

  He was a lousy, selfish piece of shit.

  Plain and simple.

  But he wasn’t going to make Damon deal with that, wasn’t going to make Damon comfort him or ease his thoughts or reassure him about anything. He could deal with his feelings himself; he’d already spilled too many all over Damon and left Damon apologizing constantly for being a jackass as if Rian wasn’t always antagonizing him.

  Well.

  They antagonized each other, but...

  Rian could at least not put Damon in the awkward position of dealing with him now.

  Especially if that was how Damon felt.

  This was a bad idea.

  Okay. Okay, Rian could accept that and not...not...be terrible about it.

  He could.

  So he gathered himself together, breathing in again and again until his knotted chest started to loosen, blinking his stinging eyes until he was sure they were clear, before he lifted his head from its hiding place against his arm and tried to offer a reassuring smile.

  “No—no, I’m fine. It... I wasn’t hurt.” He searched over Damon’s face—his features drawn tight with creased lines of concern, lips parted. “Were you?”

  “No.” Damon shook his head slowly, looking at Rian as if he’d grown a pair of horns. “Not hurt. Just...you know. That was a little sudden. Us fucking.”

  “It was,” Rian agreed. “But like we said...we’re adults.” He bit his lip; he felt like he was doing something horrid here, retreating behind this careful practicality, but what the hell else was he supposed to do? “I think we can manage to keep being coworkers after a one-night stand.”

  Damon looked as if he stopped breathing for a moment. His expression completely blanked, and slowly his arm drew back from around Rian, that reassuring warmth gone as Damon settled to prop himself up on one elbow, looking at Rian with dark brown eyes so completely neutral it was almost worse than that coldness Rian remembered from that first day in his studio.

  “One-night stand,” Damon repeated, sounding out each word one careful syllable at a time. Not quite a question; not quite...anything.

  “That’s... I...” Rian’s throat closed; he curled his hands against his chest, trying not to touch Damon too close when it seemed as if they were both putting up walls. “Do we have to fight about this?”

  After several long moments, Damon rumbled, “No.” Grave, but sincere, and he sighed, that forbidding expression softening slightly—but giving away very little, and Rian realized...at some point, Damon had started to let Rian see him, but now...now that was gone, replaced by a careful withdrawal that wasn’t unkind or even lacking warmth, no, but it was most certainly...wary. “I don’t want to fight with you. We do a lot better when we’re not fighting, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Rian agreed softly. “... Damon, I...” He caught himself starting to reach for Damon, then jerked back, knotting his hands together so he’d keep them to himself. He couldn’t think straight. This felt all wrong, and he thought he’d just made things worse, but he didn’t know how to fix it now. So he just tried, “Last night we were both vulnerable. Hurting.” Maybe if he could explain it away as a logical, pragmatic thing, he could just...clear this tight, choking feeling in the air. “And I’m... I’m grateful to you that we could comfort each other, but...”

  “We weren’t thinking straight,” Damon finished—rapidly, as if rushing to get the words out and fill that space between them with easy explanations, dismissals they could both accept. “No. I get it. I’m...glad we were there for each other, too. But we’re getting ourselves so worked up like Chris is our kid, and it’s affecting our judgment.”

  “Something like that, yes.” Rian pressed his lips together. “So it’s... I just...” Deep breath, shaky, ragged. “I don’t...want to hurt you because we made a mistake when we were looking for some kind of connection to ease the pain. You and I...we...we’ve already made it clear we can barely get along. So maybe we should just call a truce and do our best to figure things out with Chris.”

  “Seems sensible enough, yeah.” It almost hurt that Damon agreed so easily, so readily, before he offered a smile that...that...

  That Rian had seen far too many times in the mirror.

  Shallow, guarded, careful, completely surface.

 
And now Rian wondered if other people had felt this bolt of awful, gut-ripping hurt every time they’d seen it from him.

  Karma sure as hell was something.

  But that smile remained on Damon’s face as he touched the back of Rian’s clasped hands lightly, tentatively, and asked, “No hard feelings?”

  Rian bit his tongue, just looking at Damon, and telling himself this was the way it had to go.

  Because people who fought the way he and Damon did only became lovers in books.

  They didn’t fit.

  They didn’t work.

  They were too different, and he couldn’t ask Damon to hurt himself to try something with Rian when Rian selfishly wanted to give it a shot anyway and...and...

  Hope.

  Hope that maybe, just maybe...

  There was something to those stories after all.

  No, things didn’t work out the way they did in books. And so he only smiled as best he could, as brightly as he could, and turned his hand to squeeze Damon’s briefly. “None,” he said, and pushed himself up, propping himself on one hand, raking his hair back from his face. “So why don’t we get up and give calling Chris’s parents another shot?”

  * * *

  As he pulled his jeans up around his hips, Damon cursed himself up, down, side to side, and a little upside down just for good measure.

  Why the hell had he let things go like that?

  Why the hell had he let Rian smile at him so blankly, so emptily, and then accepted it when Rian had written that whole damned mess last night off as if it was goddamned well nothing when it sure as hell hadn’t felt like nothing to Damon?

  Because he’d known that was exactly how Rian would respond.

  That was damned well why.

  Because deep down, even as he’d pulled Rian close and kissed him, whispered tell me what you want, felt something hot and needy claw inside him with a desperation that went beyond lust as he bit Rian and stroked over smooth skin and groaned and shuddered at the tight heat of his body...