Just Like This (Albin Academy)

by Cole McCade

  So what the hell had that been about...?

  Rian didn’t have time to wonder. Not when he had approximately two minutes himself to race upstairs, and he managed to skid into his morning class exactly three inches ahead of the last freshman and four seconds before the last bell chimed to start. Thank God he didn’t have a homeroom session, or he’d have been in trouble.

  But he froze behind his desk as he realized...

  The entire class of freshmen was staring at him.

  Probably because he was gasping from running, leaning hard on the desk, his hair falling into his face and one of the loose, oversized linen tunics he didn’t mind getting dirty slipping off of one of his shoulders.

  “What?” He blew his hair out of his face, then straightened and shoved it back, before catching his shirt and tugging it up over his shoulder, sweeping the room with a look. “What are you waiting for? This isn’t a free period, get to work.”

  Normally the boys would be reluctant, groaning and grumbling and slogging to obey, especially in the morning when they were both not particularly eager to start the school day and just far enough past homeroom for the energy kick from breakfast to actually wake them up, versus falling asleep over their seats.

  But apparently he must look an entire hot mess today, because without much more than a few mutters...

  They scrambled to drag their bags off the tables and started digging out their sketchbooks or checking the drawers for the tools for their sculpture projects.

  Well then.

  Rian cleared his throat, smoothing his clothing and gathering his hair back with one hand, rummaging into his desk drawer with the other for a rubber band.

  At least his little slip this morning had had one positive side effect.

  He’d managed to gather himself by the end of first period, though—at least, to outward appearances. Inwardly...

  Inwardly, his mind kept wandering.

  And through first period, second period, third period, fourth, more than once a student had to say his name twice to drag him back on task, leaving him blinking and asking them to repeat the question.

  He couldn’t even say why he was so distracted. Maybe because he’d hardly slept, and started his day so off-kilter. Maybe because he couldn’t stop worrying about Chris, and wondering if the boy would be distracted and dispirited in last period again.

  Or maybe because his mind kept wandering back to the light in the window.

  And the fact that when he’d come back last night, straggling back toward the haunting spires of the school building and tapping in that code on the door...

  That lone silhouette had remained in the window high above.

  Maybe Damon hadn’t been able to sleep, either.

  Rian was nearly dead on his feet by the time the lunch bell rang, and he straggled into the cafeteria to steal a thick wrapped BLT sandwich from the cooler before the boys snagged them all, then checked the coffee pot. Thank God, fresh brewed; sometimes the cafeteria staff didn’t bother putting out fresh after the breakfast rush, but in a school like this half the teachers practically needed the energy injected in their veins twenty-four seven to even function. Rian laced a tall paper cup liberally with sugar, then buried his face in the fresh caffeine infusion and stole a spot against the wall.

  He told himself he was helping out. It wasn’t his day on cafeteria duty, watching the boys to make sure they didn’t start a food fight or a brawl, or sneak contraband under the tables, but an extra pair of eyes never hurt.

  He wasn’t avoiding the faculty lounge.

  Never.

  ...or too sleepy to drag himself back up to his classroom to eat there.

  Alone.

  For some reason, right now, he just...really didn’t want to be alone.

  He let his mind unfocus as he leaned against the wall and nibbled at his sandwich, washing it down with sips of coffee so hot they nearly scalded his tongue—but at least the caffeine was percolating in his brain, pushing him a bit closer to actual alertness. Maybe that was why he finally wandered toward Chris, at one of the long tables beneath the tall windows with their peaked shapes and tiny segmented panes. Chris was practically holding court; people gravitated to his friendly warmth and magnetism so easily, and many of the boys on the football team and from various other little sub-groups that people always seemed to need to define their identity all clustered around as if the only identity they needed was their admiration for Chris.

  He seemed at once gently oblivious to it and cautiously aware of it, and Rian couldn’t help but notice how Chris was careful to pay equal attention to everyone around him, not ignoring a single boy who tried to get his attention. He really was a good kid, Rian thought. Kind. Honest. Forthright.

  So seriously, what was he being so sneaky about?

  What was he hiding, and why?

  Rian still hadn’t thought of any way to get an answer out of Chris without crossing this ridiculous intangible line of What Shall Not Be Spoken, laid out by the Grand Poobah Walden himself. But as his gaze drifted over the table, he found himself caught on the boy sitting at Chris’s right side, just two seats over. His name was Merry; that was what jumped to the forefront of Rian’s mind. Merry. One of those names that he just knew came from having celebrity parents, though Merry apparently attended under a false last name so Rian wasn’t quite sure who had given him that unusual moniker.

  What he was sure of, though, was that Merry wasn’t doing particularly well in Rian’s third-period junior class.

  Which meant it wouldn’t be suspicious at all if he asked Merry to stay after school one day so he could talk, and try to get to the bottom of what was going on. If there was something Chris was involved in that was distracting him from practice, it could be behind Merry’s inattention and lack of focus, too. Merry and Chris weren’t overly close from what Rian had observed, but if he could recall correctly, fishing back through idle memories of impressions and captured moments...he’d seen Merry in the group of boys who went off-campus with Chris over the weekends, more than once.

  Birds of a feather.

  Maybe Merry and Chris would squawk together.

  Not today, Rian thought.

  He’d want to talk to Damon first, and maybe Damon—

  He groaned, and pressed his forehead to the rim of his coffee cup.

  It was really, really annoying how with almost everything today, his first thought went to Damon.

  It makes sense, he told himself. This is both his problem and yours. It has been since he came looking for you. Chris is your student, too...and it’s easier to keep Damon in the loop than catch him up after the fact.

  That’s all it was. Really.

  He pushed the thought away as the bell rang, though, a fifteen-minute alert warning students to start cleaning up and teachers to get ready to return to class.

  Rian nipped the rest of his sandwich down, tossed back the last of his coffee, and made his way back upstairs to his classroom with a renewed sense of purpose making his shoulders straight and letting him lift his chin high.

  The rest of the afternoon passed uneventfully; in last period, Chris seemed back to his normal cheerful, determined self, completely focused on etching out the last fine details in the dry clay prior to the first bisque firing that would get the wisteria sculpture ready for proper painting. He didn’t even seem to notice Rian watching him.

  But as soon as class ended, he was gone, barely stopping to wash his hands in the sink before he snagged his backpack and escaped out the door before anyone else.

  And Rian had a feeling he wouldn’t find Chris anywhere in sight, when he went down to the football field.

  Still...

  He felt a sinking sense of disappointment when he was right.

  Beyond the back of the school, past the little rowing pond they liked to call Whitemist Lake—or, more ofte
n, Isabella’s Lake, after the legend of the girl in the lake who granted lovelorn wishes—and through the trees was a little paved path of crushed white shells, worn and embedded smooth into the dirt by the passage of many feet. The afternoon was brisk and bright, the cool wan autumn sun reflecting off the white of the shells to turn them silvery, as Rian slipped down the path and through the last fringe of trees that tapered down toward the bottom of the hill.

  From this high, the football field spread out in neat ordered rows of lines, surrounded by a chain link fence and flanked by the gleaming stacks of bleachers. The boys of the varsity and junior varsity football teams were just small figures darting quick across the field, their practice gear padding them out into dramatic shapes with bulky shoulders and small swift feet. They were running obstacle courses today, it looked like—tires set out in alternating rows that they minced through rapidly, bars they dove through to fit their bodies into narrow spaces and roll and tumble to their feet, padded dummies they slammed into to shove across the marked yard lines, the sounds of impact and their grunts of exertion carrying far on the crisp, cool, loamy-scented air.

  And right there with them was a larger shape—not watching from the sidelines or calling out commands, but running drills right alongside them, his shirt stripped away to leave his scar-marked body gleaming bright and sinewy and taut with every movement of tight muscle beneath tawny skin.

  Rian drifted to a halt at the foot of the hill, making his way to the fence and leaning his arms on the top bar just in front of the twisted upward-pointing prongs of metal; this early in autumn the afternoons were still warm despite the cool taste to the air, and the metal had soaked up enough heat for a pleasant burn to melt into Rian through the sleeves of his tunic. He’d wait, he thought, and not interrupt; not when they all looked so completely absorbed in what they were doing, although his chest ached to realize Chris really wasn’t there.

  Especially when, watching Damon run the boys through the course over and over again...

  He couldn’t imagine what could make Chris want to miss it.

  Rian had expected something almost like military drills—harsh, barking, demanding the boys push themselves to the point of pain over and over again, less a sport and more a forced-march hardship that drove them to their absolute limits without mercy, without forgiveness.

  Instead...

  Damon encouraged them. Calling out to them when they tripped, telling them it was all right, jogging over to help a boy up and dust him off and make sure he hadn’t hurt himself. Clasped shoulders; murmured words that the boys hung on eagerly, looking at Damon as if he hung the moon and they’d follow him anywhere. There was a certain sweetness to it that Rian wasn’t expecting, as he watched the flash of white teeth when Damon laughed and shoved a water bottle at one of the JV sophomores, ruffling his hair and pushing him off toward the sidelines. The familiarity there...

  It made Rian think not of a stern taskmaster driving his charges.

  But of family.

  Of fatherhood.

  That was what Damon made him think of, with the gentle way his eyes lidded as he spoke to the boys, and a certain way of cocking his head that said I’m listening, and I hear you: a father with an entire brood of children, every last one of these boys his sons. His responsibility. His duty to care for, shelter, and guide as they made their way through the struggle of just...growing up.

  And Rian wasn’t expecting the soft, almost painfully warm feeling that tightened in his chest and pulled to the point of aching deep, as he watched Damon line the boys back up—and then run the course again himself, showing them how it was done, flashing through the obstacles with lithe, powerful grace that made his athletic body flow and strain with a vibrant energy that seemed to glow through his burnished bronze skin.

  Only to catch one of his sneakered feet on the inside edge of a tire and go stumbling forward, his corded arms windmilling and his hair falling across his face as he flailed to catch himself. He righted himself just short of falling, twisting agilely on one heel and raising his arm with a chuckle; the watching boys burst into laughter and good-natured jeers, shoving each other lightly. Rian couldn’t help smiling himself, pressing his fingers to his mouth.

  Grinning, his full lips stretched broad with mirth, Damon pushed his sweaty, mussed hair back from his face and raised one arm. “First line, up!” he called.

  Six boys separated out from the others, taking starting points at the end of the obstacle course, spaced out neatly and dropping down into crouches like runners at the starting block. They held themselves tense, nearly vibrating with youthful energy, each of them grinning with a touch of eagerness, competitive and bristling to start. Damon held his arm upright for several moments, watching them closely...before dropping his arm like it was the flag at a racetrack.

  “Go!”

  The six boys took off—diving from their starting points, racing forward to leap into the tire run, precise-sharp steps bouncing back and forth as they high-stepped through the openings in the tires, pushing themselves fast, darting glances at each other that made it clear they were checking to see who was in the lead, who was catching up, who was falling behind. It wasn’t hard to tell every last one of them wanted the best time. Wanted to win.

  But when one sandy-haired boy stumbled, tripping over the tires the same way Damon had...

  The others slowed, stopped, and two boys doubled back to catch the sandy-haired one under the arms and help him up, clapping him on the back before giving him a push in the right direction.

  Which told Rian that helping each other, to them, was more important than winning.

  And was the last thing he expected to see out of a group of highly hormonal, impulsive boys engaged in an extremely aggressive competitive sport.

  Rian found himself fascinated by watching them—how they helped each other through the obstacle course, compensating for each other’s shortfalls and reaching for each other’s strengths without the slightest hint of shame at needing help, or having to cooperate to overcome things such as the difficult wooden climbing wall at the end, with its slippery handholds and several areas that looked designed to be impassible without handing each other up.

  Is that what Damon taught you? Rian wondered. To trust each other?

  To turn to each other like family?

  Maybe so. Because as the first group of six finally tumbled, breathless and dirty and covered in shreds of fresh green grass, over the finish line of the obstacle course, they collapsed into each other, laughing—and Damon was right there with them. Gently pushing and shouldering around like an overgrown boy himself, ruffling their hair, and although Rian couldn’t hear what he said from afar...the warmth and approval were apparent, as well as how the boys basked in it. So different from the cold way Damon had looked at Rian; so different from how closed and careful he seemed to be.

  He thought, right now, he was seeing who Damon actually was.

  Instead of the extremely frustrated man who hardly seemed to know what to do with Rian; only that Rian drove him just as sideways as Damon drove Rian himself.

  Why were they at such odds, really?

  They had a common cause. They both cared about Chris, and they weren’t...they weren’t that inimically different. Rian was searching for somewhere to belong.

  And he thought, maybe, Damon was looking for that too.

  They’d just gotten off on the wrong foot. And never really gotten back onto the right one again, with clashing personalities and quick tempers and misunderstandings.

  One of them was going to have to bend.

  Bend, offer an olive branch, try.

  Was there any reason that person couldn’t be Rian?

  Why?

  What do you want from him, that you’re willing to take that step?

  Nothing, he told himself.

  Nothing but maybe a little less stress for both
of them, until they had sorted things out and could part—if not as friends, then at least not as enemies.

  That was all he was worried about.

  Besides, watching Damon with the boys—the way he laughed, the easy way he talked to them, the sense of friendly camaraderie and the sort of quiet bond of trust and support that seemed to stretch visibly to link all of them together as a group, a whole...

  Rian got it.

  He really did.

  Damon had thought Rian was doing something to hurt one of the boys he would put himself on the line to protect. One of the boys Damon cared about.

  Rian didn’t blame him for reacting the way he had, before he’d known the truth.

  He lingered without really thinking on the way Damon moved, as he signaled the next group of six boys to start their run. He was a figure modeler’s dream, with his proportions so tightly defined and the stark definition of his musculature; for a beginner, understanding the plays of light and shadow over each muscle group under a basic spotlight would be so blissfully simple, while for something more advanced...

  Rian wondered how Damon would look, stripped down to his skin and gleaming in soft, dusky shades beneath a complex interplay of low, ever-flickering lights, his body poised to draw out the tension in every flexing stretch of sinew, only to go soft and lazy and—

  “—alwell. Hey. Falwell.”

  With a little lurch of his stomach and leap of his heart, Rian jerked, focusing his eyes—only to recoil sharply.

  Because Damon was standing right in front of him.

  Right there on the other side of the fence, no longer a distant figure but a larger than life presence filling the space around Rian with sun-burnished heat and the scent of warm, sweat-drenched male hormones mingled with the cooler scents of grass crushed and churned beneath many feet.

  Rian flushed guiltily, as if Damon could follow the pattern of his thoughts and how they’d lingered on the hard, almost geometric cut of Damon’s shoulders; the extreme plunge down the curve of his biceps to his triceps; the way his obliques formed ripples like waves left in the sand, as they tapered in toward abdominals cut into hard angular blocks.