Just Like This (Albin Academy)

by Cole McCade

  This time, when Rian purred Damon, there was no denying how that shot right to his gut.

  Lower.

  A tightening, a pulling between his thighs, that made him feel like every muscle in his body was connected through that one point, and every time he breathed it just dragged deep and hot and tense and low, slinking through his flesh like caramel and pouring over his aching, rousing cock.

  What the fuck.

  The fuck is wrong with you, Louis?

  He jerked back, breathing in shakily, drawing his arms back and just staring at Rian. He...fuck. Maybe Rian was pretty, wild and wispy and Bohemian and ethereal, this trailing slip of a thing who looked like the last lingering ghost of some deathly, quiet beauty...

  But Damon wasn’t going there.

  No mixing business with pleasure or...or...something.

  He couldn’t explain it.

  He just knew he kept getting himself so twisted up over Rian, and anything that made him that messy was something he didn’t need to get involved with.

  So while Rian watched him with a confused tilt of his head, Damon focused his attention firmly on snapping the sink back on, and dipping the pepper under the water. “Most of the seeds just rinse out,” he muttered; talking was hard, his voice thick and grinding out of his throat. He set the knife aside on the cutting board. “And you can just scrape the pulp out with your fingers.” He did just that, dipping two fingers into the inner heart of the hollowed-out bell pepper and curving them to stroke along the wet insides, and—fuck. Deep breaths. “Go ahead and cut the stem out of the other pepper, and wash it just like this. Then cut them in half and slice them.”

  He finished rinsing out the inside of the pepper, left the water on for a few seconds longer to sweep the seeds down the drain, then set the pepper on the edge of Rian’s cutting board and retreated to the other side of the sink again. Dinner. Fucking finish making dinner—why had he even offered to let Rian stay to eat, anyway?—and say what they needed to say about Chris.

  And then get Rian the fuck out of his space.

  Before that sharp sugar-candy scent permeated the room, and Damon wouldn’t be able to get it out of his space.

  Or out of his head.

  But he couldn’t seem to bring himself to speak, as that silence fell again—punctuated only by the sound of Rian hesitantly chopping the bell peppers into thin slices, followed by the sharp, crackling hiss as Damon tossed the beef strips into the heated wok and the searing metal instantly set the meat to sizzling, savory scents rising to mingle with the fresh, wet scent of cool cut vegetables. Damon slid the wok in a practiced circle, swirling the cooking meat around, tossing it...and almost tossing it too high, pent-up frustration scoring through him and making his motions too sharp; he let out a soft yelp and scooted the wok forward to catch the beef strips as they fell, rounding them up back into the pan.

  He was half expecting a biting, mocking comment from the man at his side.

  But Rian didn’t say a word.

  Until the silence was almost eating at Damon, the way Rian kept his head bowed as if he was—was—Damon didn’t know, but he growled under his breath and settled the wok, eyeing Rian. He’d piled all the pulled and cut vegetables up into neat little distinct piles, and was just finishing with the second pepper and adding the curving, messily irregular red strips to the last heap, picking them up in both thin hands.

  “Here,” Damon grunted. “Go ahead and add it all.”

  Rian blinked, tilting his head at him. “Just...pour it all in?”

  “That’s how it works, yeah.”

  “Okay...” Rian started to gather up the handful he’d just put down, but Damon shook his head.

  “Seriously. Just pick up the whole cutting board and dump it.”

  Rian looked skeptical, but picked up the cutting board in both hands, balancing it like a newly hired waiter handling his first tray of delicate champagne glasses and maneuvering it over the wok with exaggerated care. Damon watched with a raised eyebrow while Rian slowly, slooowly tipped the cutting board over—then let out a little excited noise, jumping up on the balls of his feet, as the vegetables tumbled into the wok and a cloud of steam went up, bursting with a medley of mingled scents.

  Damon started sliding the wok back and forth again, tossing the food until the steak strips and vegetables mixed so they’d crisp quickly and evenly. “You that excited about stir-fry?”

  “I like making things.” Rian watched raptly, holding the empty cutting board clutched in both hands like a chipmunk with a nut clutched in both paws. “It’s just the things I make usually aren’t edible.” He swayed closer—too close, his shoulder brushing against Damon’s arm, his eyes locked on the wok. “Except that time I made stained glass cookies.”

  “Stained glass cookies?”

  “Sugar glaze and food coloring in a frame of dough. It’s really not that much different from making real stained glass, and mixing dough’s about as easy as mixing pottery clay.” Those curious eyes shifted to him. “Do you like sugar candy, Damon?”

  The scent of sugar candy, curling over his tongue and begging to be tasted, every time he stood too close to Rian Falwell.

  Damon took a step away.

  Just enough to break that contact—the warmth of Rian’s shoulder pressing into his arm, angular and lean.

  “You can put that in the sink,” he said, nodding toward the cutting board. “Food’ll be done soon. There’s iced tea in the fridge, if you don’t mind putting out glasses. You can have the chair. I’ll sit on the bed or the floor.”

  An odd noise drifted from his side. He couldn’t really call it anything—a sigh, a pouty mumble, he wasn’t sure. But a moment later Rian’s warmth retreated, his footsteps receding. The clink of ice in glasses. The liquid rush of pouring tea. The thud of glasses against the coffee table, followed by the squeal the recliner always made when someone settled into it, much less noisy than when Damon sank his weight against the cushions. He could feel Rian watching him, but he guessed there was nothing else to look at in his damned suite.

  “May I ask you something...?” Rian asked, so low it mingled with the noise of the sizzling stir-fry—and the whirr of the range fan, as Damon reached up and flicked it on before the smoking peanut oil set off the fire alarm.

  And he tried not to go stiff as he threw over his shoulder, “Depends on what it is.”

  “You don’t like to keep many things around, do you?” Rian said. “Is that an old military habit?”

  “Nah. I didn’t stick with the Navy long enough to pick up more than a few scars overseas. Wasn’t enough of my thing to form habits.” He pressed his lips together, working his jaw, staring down at the pan as the bright colors of the crisping vegetables mixed with the glistening, richly brown-seared meat. “I just...”

  Did he want to answer that?

  But this, right now, felt like an uneasy truce.

  And he didn’t want to break it.

  Not when he didn’t think he had it in him to fight with Rian again tonight.

  “I don’t remember my birth family at all,” he murmured, as he flicked the heat off on the burner, then pulled the cabinet overhead open to draw down plates. “But I know I lost them. I’ve always known that, even if I don’t know the why or the how. So I guess I just always thought...” He struggled to articulate, struggled to find the words to encapsulate this when no one had ever asked, and filled the silence with the scrape of a spatula and the muffled pattering of food heaping onto a plate. He should’ve put on rice or noodles to go with this, but Rian had thrown him for enough of a loop that plain stir-fry would have to do. “Maybe...maybe it’s better if I don’t hold on to things too much. If I don’t hold on, it won’t bother me when it’s taken away.”

  No response.

  Nothing at all.

  Damon grit his teeth. Why had he opened his damned
mouth?

  Why the hell was he pouring out all these small private insecurities to this little rich boy who was so damned spoiled he’d had his own personal chef and couldn’t even figure out how to clean bell peppers?

  Because you feel like you owe him.

  Because you were a fucking ass to him last night, and you hurt him pretty fucking deep, so now you feel like you’ve gotta cut yourself open and give him a wound to poke his fingers into, too.

  So he braced himself—for the sting of fingers against raw nerves; for the razor edge of Rian’s tongue. For withering, cutting looks, too, as Damon turned to face him with plates piled high, forks laid on the sides.

  Only to find Rian perched on the raised footrest of the recliner like it was a faerie toadstool, one knee pulled up to his chest, watching Damon with his brows wrinkled into soft furrows of distress, his eyes as damp-gleaming as they had been last night, watching Damon as if...as if...

  Something hurt.

  And Damon would be fucked if he had the slightest clue what.

  He stopped cold, frozen in place; he didn’t know what to do, what to say. Rian jerked with a guilty flush, as if he’d been caught doing something wrong, and looked away with a shaky breathless sound, letting out a trembling laugh as he sniffled and rubbed at his nose.

  “Smells good,” he said weakly. “So...we meant to talk about Chris?”

  “Yeah,” Damon said absently, frowning.

  He was so, so goddamned confused.

  But if Rian wanted to change the subject, Damon was damned well fine with that.

  He’d never felt more uncomfortable in his own space than he did in the awkward moments when he crossed the room—just four strides for him—and settled Rian’s plate on the coffee table. Rian avoided his eyes. And Damon was good with avoiding right back, as he retreated to settle down on the floor with his back against the side of his bed and one arm draped over his upraised knee.

  Long minutes passed in which there was nothing but the scrape of forks against the blue ceramic of the plates. Damon could barely taste the stir-fry; he knew it was fine, knew he’d made it a thousand times before, but his mouth tasted like ash and he kept wondering about the taste of glass-clear sugar candy.

  “It’s good,” Rian said into the silence. “Really good.”

  “Well...now you know how to make it, if you ever want to try cooking for yourself.”

  Rian let out a choked, humorless laugh around his mouthful, then swallowed audibly. “I’d probably set my suite on fire, and Walden would murder me.”

  “He hasn’t killed Dr. Liu yet. Though it’s pretty obvious he wants to.”

  That got a more genuine laugh. “...it took the construction crews the entire summer recess to repair the rooms Liu destroyed last semester.”

  Damon lifted his head from his half-empty plate. “You stayed for summer recess?”

  “I...” Rian faltered, then shrugged, the drape of his shawl swirling restlessly against his arms. “I don’t have anywhere else to go. I couldn’t...really afford to do things on a teacher’s salary.”

  “You could go anywhere for less than the cost of a nice restaurant. Last summer I just threw a few things in a backpack and hit the first Greyhound out of town.”

  “Where’d you end up?”

  “Rhode Island,” Damon said. “Camped out fireside on a beach for a few nights. Dug oysters out of the sand with my bare hands and buried them in the coals to cook overnight.”

  “That sounds nice,” Rian said with a small, wistful smile. “Maybe I should try that.”

  Come camping with me, Damon started to say.

  And then stopped himself cold.

  Twenty-four hours, and this man already had his brain scrambled worse than a fucking omelet.

  “So Chris,” he said firmly. “I was thinking maybe we talk to some of the kids around him. Try not to be obvious, but see if they drop anything useful. First options are his roommate Luke, and this kid Clark he’s friendly with. Maybe this kid Jimmy. Seems like the rug rat idolizes him.”

  “That’s the thing,” Rian said—jumping in quickly, as if he was just as eager as Damon to move on to a safer subject. “Chris is friendly with so many people, but can you name someone he’s really close to? Someone he’d confide in?”

  “Huh. No, not really, but I don’t exactly keep that close an eye on who’s friends with whom.”

  “Close quarters.” Rian toyed his fork between his fingers with a wry smile. “Sometimes it’s hard not to notice.”

  “True. But no one really jumps out at me.” He frowned. “What are you thinking?’

  “That maybe we missed the most obvious explanation.” Rian shrugged, his wry smile turning a touch sweet. “Maybe our young Christopher is just...in love.”

  Damon blinked.

  Then let out an incredulous laugh. “So you think that’s what this is about? He’s sneaking off campus to meet someone?”

  “Maybe,” Rian replied archly, cocking his head with a merry little smile. “He does seem quite popular with the fairer, fiercer, and every other sex. You never did any such thing as a boy? Sneaking off to steal kisses with pretty girls behind the gymnasium?”

  “Pretty boys,” Damon corrected. “And I didn’t sneak. I did it right in plain sight. Micah Randley, junior year, Homecoming Dance. Kissed him right in front of the chaperones and everything.”

  “In front of—oh my.” Eyes glittering, Rian covered his mouth with his fingertips, but that didn’t hide his lilting laughter, the curl of his lips. “So bold, Mr. Louis.”

  “Not ashamed of who I am.” Damon shrugged, scooping up one of the last bites of his stir-fry. “I’ve known I was gay since the first time Justin Timberlake hit a high note and I got a—”

  He strangled off, catching himself before he could finish got a hard-on.

  The hell was he doing, blurting that out in front of Rian Falwell?

  A Rian Falwell who was currently blushing as if he’d known exactly what Damon was going to say; the color stood out so starkly on him, highlighting just how pale he was—pale enough that his veins made black spidering lines on the undersides of his wrists; pale enough that the capillaries in his eyelids gave them a permanent reddish blush that faded like eyeshadow into the rings of smoky liner he always seemed to wear. For a moment a curious, questioning look lingered on Damon, enigmatic beneath the delicate fan of tendrils framing Rian’s eyes—before Rian looked away, reaching up to push his hair back in a cascading fall amidst the faint music of the bangles on his wrists.

  “I suppose many people can thank Justin Timberlake for their awakening,” he teased archly. “Not really to my taste, though.”

  Nope.

  Not gonna fucking walk into that.

  “Wonder what Chris’s taste is,” Damon diverted back—then groaned. “Nope. I don’t want to know that. I just want to know he’s not involved in anything that’s gonna fuck up his life. And if he’s dating somebody, that somebody can wait until he’s fucking done with practice so he doesn’t lose his scholarship.”

  “Curfew is a thing, though.” Rian glanced toward the window, eyes unfocusing thoughtfully as he looked outside, tapping the tines of his fork against his lower lip. “Chris looked so dejected in class today, though. And exhausted.”

  “Sneaking around while trying to stay on top of your life is pretty tiring. And teenage romance is pretty dramatic. Probably made the other kid mad and he’s afraid of getting dumped.”

  Rian’s smile was troubled. “I really hope that’s all it is.”

  “Better than the other alternatives.”

  “Such as...?”

  “Drugs. Juvenile delinquency. Getting the shit kicked out of him behind the bleachers. The usual things kids lie about, and the usual things you’re hoping they’re not lying about.”

  “...fair enough. I�
�d really prefer to cross those things off the list.” Rian made a face. “Although it appears there’s a list now.”

  “Makes it easy, though.”

  “How so?”

  “We tackle one thing at a time. Rule it out, move on to the next.” Damon speared the final bite of his stir-fry and nipped it off the fork. “How we do that without twisting that stick up Walden’s ass, well...” He grunted. “I’ll let you know when I figure that out.”

  “Mm.” Rian leaned forward and set his half-empty plate on the coffee table; he’d picked at his food like a bird, barely eaten enough to satisfy a sparrow, and he still perched precariously on the footrest of the recliner, his legs neatly crossed at the ankles.

  “Not hungry?” Damon asked.

  “Oh, I’m ravenous, and I will be stealing your plate and bringing it back later, since I have a feeling you’re about to kick me out in a moment. I just need...” Rian reached back to slip a hand under his shawl, fingers searching, before he came up with his phone, shaking the little slim Motorola pointedly. “Digits.”

  Damon eyed him. He wasn’t quite sure he wanted Rian having his number, but maybe if they kept it to texts and phone calls he’d stop...stop getting so fucking worked up around Falwell like this. Stop fighting with him, snarling at him, turning so volatile he felt like he’d twisted himself inside out in the past day.

  “Sure,” he said, and rattled off his number. Rian tapped it in quickly with his thumb, then tapped out something else; Damon’s phone vibrated in his front pocket, and he shifted to unbend his thigh so he could snag it, narrowing his eyes at the screen.

  Cling wrap? the text said.

  He jerked his head up to find Rian watching him with that unvoiced laughter dancing in his eyes; Damon groaned and nodded toward the kitchen. “Second drawer to the left.”

  Rian flowed to his feet and scooped up his plate, nearly twirling into the kitchen to make short work of wrapping up his stir-fry. “I’ll wash your plate and bring it back to you tomorrow,” he said, without so much as an if-you-please. “Since we’ve got Chris sorted for now, I’d rather not overstay my welcome.”

  Damon caught himself frowning as he watched Rian, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t really know what to say yet a-fucking-gain when Rian kept leaving him spinning his wheels, so he just watched the odd willow-wisp the man made, this bright pale thing changing the shape of the space in Damon’s apartment, even as Rian trailed lightly toward the door.