by Cole McCade
Cocking his head, Damon risked, “...y’know, some of ’em aren’t half bad. I mean, there’s a lot of talent in the third o—”
“You shut it.” Rian jabbed one slim finger at him, still supporting the shelf full of dicks on his opposite palm like a waiter balancing a tray; Valdez let out an explosive burst of laughter, then choked it off with a hoarse sound, struggling to keep a straight face when those tawny hazel eyes snapped to him once more. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“...sorry...?” Valdez tried, trailing off into a wheeze.
Oh fuck.
Oh, fuck.
Damon shoved his knuckles against his mouth, forcing back a laugh—and barely managed to mangle it down to a rather pointed clearing of his throat, earning him another snapping glare.
“Not helping, Mr. Louis,” Rian ground out through his teeth.
“Sorry,” he strangled out in echo of Valdez, only for both him and the kid to lose it in a round of snickers. Damon closed his eyes, shoulders shaking helplessly, and tried to hold it back. “What the hell do you expect from a class full of teenage boys? For Christ’s sake, Falwell, put the fucking dicks down if you’re gonna yell at us.”
Rian made a fuming sound, blowing at a wisp of rippling black hair that had escaped its knot.
Then just groaned, sliding the shelf of lovingly molded phalluses down onto one of the back tables, lips twitching in a tired, self-mocking smile.
“Enjoy the laugh,” he said. “Tomorrow, I’m finding out which of these belongs to whom. You’re going to finish them, fire them, properly paint and glaze them, put them in for final firing, and then present them in your final semester project.”
Valdez’s laughter vanished immediately. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
“I am not,” Rian said primly, his smile chilling as he straightened and folded his arms over his chest, a touch of triumph glinting in his eyes. “So would you care to discuss what I brought you here for, now that you’ve been so helpful about your fun little side projects?”
Merry made a face, but slouched down in the chair with a low sound of defeat, grinding the heel of his palm against one eye and digging his fingers into the spikes of black his hair had been styled into in the front. “...sure. What’d I do?”
With his head held high, that transparent excuse for a shirt trailing behind him like a royal cloak, Rian swept back up to the head of the room.
And for some reason, he seemed to be pointedly ignoring Damon, not even looking at him as he settled to lean against his desk at the corner farthest away from the spot Damon had claimed.
That shouldn’t be so irritating.
But Damon held his tongue, while Rian leveled Valdez with a look that somehow managed to be gently stern, oxymoron and a goddamned half, but then that was Rian all the fuck over and it was really starting to annoy the fuck out of Damon.
“Come on, Merry,” Rian said patiently. “You can’t tell me you don’t know you’re holding a pretty shaky C in my class, while you’ve got steady As and Bs in every other course, and you’ve been a solid three-point-eight GPA since your freshman year. You’re not a slacker, and you keep up with your grades. So what’s going on here?”
Valdez shrugged, gaze skittering to the side, his jaw jutting forward. “Dunno, didn’t realize I was doing so bad. I mean, it’s art? It’s not like you give tests?”
“There have been four quizzes on the rise of the Renaissance and an essay on how that influences modern media today,” Rian pointed out dryly. “You slept through three of the quizzes, and never turned in the essay.”
“...oh.” Valdez sank down deeper into his chair, his chin practically disappearing into his collar, above the knot of his uniform tie. “I, um, forgot?”
“You forgot what?” Rian asked in that same dry, mild tone. “To turn in your essay, or to wake up for my class?”
“Yes...?”
“That wasn’t a yes or no question, Merry.” Rian sighed, folding his hands. “I’m not upset with you. I’m also aware a C in elective art isn’t that much of an impact on your final graduating GPA. I’m just wondering if there’s something going on that you want to talk about. When we’re stressed out by external factors, it affects our work.”
Valdez wouldn’t lift his head as he mumbled, “...like what...?”
“Problems with friends. Problems with your parents. Even being stretched too thin with social activities can make it hard to keep up with responsibilities.”
“You getting on okay with your roommate?” Damon added, even as he tried to rack his brain for Valdez’s room assignment. He thought Clark, maybe?
Rian let a soft hissing sound slip out under his breath, and Damon shot him a glare.
So sorry I didn’t keep my mouth shut, your highness.
Valdez just scrunched his face up. “I mean...we’re chill? We get along, not fighting or any shit. I mean, things are normal. Went out to the movies with Chris and a few others last weekend. Is that the kind of shit you’re talking about?”
“Maybe,” Rian said carefully. “Do you meet up with kids from other schools when you go out?”
“Not really. Like, it’s kinda a drive out here? And it’s boring out here. No one wants to come out to a Salem Lite knock-off for us,” Valdez scoffed. “I mean, there’s a few of the girls who live here, the ones who bus it out of town for school? But they think we’re all stuck up and weird. Except Chris. They’re all so in love with Chris the rest of us can’t even get a look.”
Damon went quiet, watching Valdez intently. Rian paused, too, lacing his hands together, looking at Valdez thoughtfully.
“Is there someone Chris is dating that you’re jealous of?” he asked.
Smart.
Frame asking about Chris as asking about Valdez.
“Don’t think Chris is dating anyone,” Valdez said diffidently. “There’d be a fuckin’ riot if he was, yeah? Like, pretty sure half our friends are into him, too? Even the ones who don’t swing that way. He starts dating one person, there’s gonna be a cage match.”
“Being popular must be so hard,” Damon said wryly.
“I wouldn’t know,” Valdez muttered, and Rian chuckled, but the worried question in his eyes didn’t match the curve of his lips, as he glanced at Damon.
His lips moved subtly, and Damon had to focus on them intently—how they bowed, the way the upper lip was slightly thicker and fuller than the lower, a small overbite that made Rian’s upper lip look like a luscious thing that needed to be bitten—to read what he was saying, the syllables carefully shaped out.
Want to try?
Damon shook his head slightly.
He didn’t think they’d get anything useful out of Valdez at this point.
Rian held his eye for a few moments longer, then nodded minutely and looked back at Valdez. “So nothing’s been going on with your life that’s affecting your performance in my class?”
“Nah,” Valdez retorted glibly. “I’m just no good at art, so I don’t feel like doing it.”
Rian slumped. “There are other elective classes besides mine,” he said flatly.
“Yeah, but Iseya’s a fucking tyrant in psych. You’re not.” Valdez shot a look over his shoulder at the row of sculptures on the back table. “Well, you fucking weren’t.”
“There are other elective classes besides Iseya’s,” Rian hissed, coloring hotly. “Take wood shop, if you hate my class that much.”
“Not about to lose a finger. Those circular saws got teeth, yo.” Valdez grinned unrepentantly. “And you let me nap. It ain’t that deep, fam.”
With a deep sigh, Rian dropped his face into his palm, fingers digging in at his hairline. “...go see Mr. Iseya.”
“Which one?” Valdez retorted flippantly, grin never wavering.
“The guidance counselor,” Rian muttered.
> “Oh.” Valdez’s grin wavered. “Am I in trouble?”
“No.” With an exasperated sound, Rian lifted his head, eyeing Valdez tiredly, hazel eyes dull. “Go find an elective you’ll actually enjoy, Merry. I’m not going to make you suffer through mine if it puts you to sleep.” He pursed his lips. “And could you at least try to watch your language in front of staff?”
“Sure. I can try.” Utterly irrepressible, Valdez just smiled wider, utterly unfazed by Rian’s apparent disgust. “Can I go now?”
Rian just flicked his fingers toward the door with a hopeless, unintelligible sound.
Valdez laughed.
And bounced to his feet, scooping up his backpack and making for the door like his ass was on fire.
“Later, Mr. Falwell, Mr. Louis!”
Rian’s only answer was a despairing grunt.
While Damon turned his head to watch the door swing shut, raising his brows. “So...that looked like it stung.”
“Shut up,” Rian mumbled, bowing his head and rubbing his fingers to his temples.
Damon frowned, shifting his gaze back to Rian. “Was that really necessary, kicking the kid out of your class just because he hurt your ego?”
A spluttering, furious little noise escaped Rian’s lips. He snapped his head up, loose wisps of hair arcing and flaring around his face, and glared at Damon with his color high and his eyes sparking like guttering golden candles. “I wasn’t kicking him out over my ego! He just—” The tiny growl he let out was less menacing and more kittenish. “If he didn’t want to be in my class, I had no intention of forcing him to stay.”
“Didn’t really give him much choice,” Damon said. “You don’t gotta control everything, Falwell.”
That glare crackled hotter, and Rian dropped his hands to his sides, fingers clenching up into tensed fists. “I wasn’t trying to control—I—just shut up.”
“Yeah. Sure. Not trying to control anything. No reason you were hissing at me for opening my damned mouth before you gave me permission,” Damon snarled, and pushed away from the desk. Fuck this. “Pointless of me to be here, anyway. That didn’t help shit. Chris isn’t dating anyone, isn’t up to any shit after school. Guess you got an audience, though.”
He stalked away from Rian, toward the door, only for sharp words to fling at his back.
“So sorry I didn’t hit that one out of the park,” Rian threw at him sardonically. “I tried. I tried, all right? Do you want Chris to realize we’ve figured out something is wrong, and just get better at hiding before we can help him?”
With a sigh, Damon forced himself to stop just in front of the open door, gripping the frame. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we’re building this all up in our heads.” He tightened his hold, the weathered wood smooth against his palm, little rough spots biting. “Then again, maybe not. You knew they’d been sneaking weed?”
“They’re teenage boys. Weed is as ubiquitous as ceramic dicks. So?” Rian retorted sullenly.
“So?”
“I would rather have them in their rooms, relaxed and sleepy with a relentless craving for Cheetos, than out drinking or having unprotected sex or experimenting with harder drugs,” Rian retorted firmly. “So yes, I looked the other way. There’s little way to stop them, anyway. Everyone has an older brother who’ll sneak them a bag, no matter how much we confiscate.”
Damon ground his teeth, forcing himself to look back at that haughty expression, that absolutely insufferably imperious way Rian had of lofting his brows. “And you didn’t think to mention this might have something to do with Chris?”
“I’ve never seen him sneaking anything, so no.” Rian jerked one shoulder in a tense shrug. “And I thought you’d know if he failed a drug screening for team play. That is mandatory for high school sports now, isn’t it?”
“Doesn’t mean they don’t cheat it.”
“Does Chris,” Rian said primly, “seem like the kind of boy who goes around begging for cups of untainted urine, Damon?”
Damon blinked.
Stared into Rian’s tightly irritated face, his mouth drawn in a thin line of disapproval.
And burst into laughter.
He couldn’t help himself. Damon’s chest ached with it, his entire body shaking roughly as he pressed a hand over his sternum and tried to get his wheezing under control.
Jesus Christ, Rian Falwell was something else.
“What,” Rian bit off icily, “is so fucking amusing?”
“I don’t—you—I can’t—” Damon coughed, his eyes stinging, before he managed to take in a deep breath, straightening and doing his best to mimic Rian’s haughtily offended tone as he parroted back, “‘Does Chris seem like the kind of boy who goes around begging for cups of untainted urine, Damon?’”
Rian’s left eye twitched spasmodically.
Before he jerked his face to the side, mouth compressing and cheeks puffing out on a strangled snort of laughter. He closed his eyes and held both hands up as if surrendering.
“...okay. All right. Okay,” he groaned. “I’m aware I sound ridiculous.”
Damon let out a few more snickers, rubbing his knuckles under his eyes, then breathed in deep and pulled himself under control. “Only a little. Not quite as much as when you were slinging that shelf of dicks around.” He peered past Rian, at the little penis forest planted along that back table. “You really gonna make them exhibit them?”
Exhaling, Rian opened his eyes, peering over his shoulder at the pottery dicks. “No. I’m not really into punishment by forced humiliation. Not my kink.” He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t mind letting them think I will, though.”
Damon only half heard the last part.
When his brain had come to a grinding halt at not my kink, when the last thing he needed was his mind connecting anything to do with this stuck up pretty boy and kinks.
Rian just...just...made him too damned angry, and Damon didn’t like it.
Didn’t like himself this way, when this wasn’t who he was, and he couldn’t figure out why the hell every little thing Falwell said got him so fucking heated up until he was ready to snap at the smallest damned things.
He could feel a fight building up inside him right now, like that was his instinctive reaction to the way that irritating wisp of a man seemed to catch his attention in all the wrong ways and it was the only fucking way he could suppress it. No, goddammit. He wasn’t going to start another fucking fight with Rian just to avoid thinking about...about...
About the fact that even when he was being a little snot, Rian Falwell was gorgeous as hell.
And Damon didn’t really know what to do with that.
Other than to just...slump forward, thudding his forehead against the door frame above his curled fingers and muttering, “...sorry. I’m sorry.”
He just...waited. Waited for the rejection, or the sarcastic—whatever. Whatever, let Rian say whatever he wanted.
But Rian didn’t say anything.
And Damon held his tongue for several moments longer, before frowning and lifting his head, glancing back again.
Rian just watched him with his head tilted to one side like a confused kitten, hazel eyes dark and curious, mouth drawn into a puzzled line.
“What?” Damon asked, and nearly winced when he heard the harsh bark in his own voice.
“You keep apologizing to me,” Rian said softly.
Damon took a deep breath and made himself turn to face Rian fully, settling to lean his back against the door frame with the cool wood pressing between his shoulder blades, along his spine. “I keep being a jackass to you,” he admitted. “When you’re a jackass, you apologize.”
Rian opened his mouth, then closed it again, his gaze darting to the side as he held up one finger. “Just a moment.”
“...what...?”
Turning away, Rian sta
lked toward the back of the classroom. “I can’t have a serious conversation with you with those things staring at me.”
Damon blinked, while Rian scooped up the shelf of dicks and carried it back to where it had been hidden behind the kiln before; he watched Rian carefully settle the wooden slab back onto its pegs with probably a little more care than a half-dozen pottery penises deserved. The one with googly eyes wobbled, as it disappeared behind the kiln. But when Rian finished, dusted his hands off, and turned back, Damon caught his eye...and Rian just smiled at him, sweet and tired and almost shy.
And Damon found himself smiling back, shaking his head as he relaxed a little, just...trying to let go of this tension.
“Nothing ever goes the way I expect around you, Falwell,” he murmured.
“No?” Rian twined his fingers behind his back and took a few drifting steps closer. “Is it really so terrible?”
“I don’t know what it is. I don’t really know how to classify ceramic dicks.”
Rian chuckled, settling to sit on the table Valdez had vacated, drawing one leg up to perch his sandaled foot on the edge and clasping his hands together over his knee. “I don’t think anyone knows how to classify ceramic dicks. I’m sure if you ask the right pretentious gallery curator, it’s avant-garde ‘found art.’”
Damon curled his upper lip. “You can’t be serious.”
“Unfortunately, I am.” Rian smiled wryly. “Some of the people I dealt with for my gallery exhibitions were...interesting.”
“You do gallery showings?” Damon winced. “I mean—from what I’ve seen you’re good, so I’m not surprised, I just...”
Rian cut him off with a gently upraised hand. “Claws down... I promise. I know what you meant.”
There was a wealth of unspoken things in those words, in the look that lingered on Damon, drifting over his face thoughtfully.
Things that made Damon wonder if Rian was struggling the same way he was.
If Rian’s sparking temper and fits of pique around Damon were for the same damned reasons.
