Just Like This (Albin Academy)

by Cole McCade

  Damon stepped through the door, his broad bulk blocking Rian’s line of sight for a moment before he stepped aside and Rian followed, pushing the door closed behind him. Inside, the curtain had been pulled back from around Chris’s bed, and Nurse Hadley leaned over him, settling a cafeteria tray atop an overbed table and maneuvering it comfortably into place over his lap, while Chris shifted himself awkwardly with one hand to sit upright, gingerly minding the other with its IV needle still inserted in his inner elbow.

  Chris looked up as they entered; Nurse Hadley did, too, but while Hadley eyed them with thinly veiled disapproval, Chris watched them with a wide-eyed wariness that his smile did little to hide.

  And it broke Rian’s heart.

  Please, Chris. Please.

  We’re not the ones you need to be afraid of.

  “Hey, Mr. Falwell. Hey, Coach Louis,” Chris said. He looked a bit better, at least, his skin no longer so pale and eyes no longer so sunken, likely from at least getting a good night’s sleep and some fluids in him. “Come to spring me without bail?”

  Nurse Hadley answered before either Rian or Damon could, her hands on her hips and her lips compressed tight. “You aren’t leaving this infirmary until I’m satisfied you’re no longer dehydrated or suffering from exhaustion,” she said, and Chris’s smile vanished; he gave her a swift, startled look.

  “What?” he practically choked out, words shallow and riding on too little air. “I can’t—I need to go. I can’t stay here, I have to—I’ll miss—”

  He started to push the overbed tray aside, drawing his legs up to kick them free—but Nurse Hadley pressed a hand to the center of his chest. Although he likely had a good hundred pounds on her, even when Chris strained that hand didn’t move, and she looked down at him with a firm, no-nonsense stare.

  “You absolutely can stay here,” she said, in cool tones that would brook no opposition. “And you will. Whatever you might miss can wait. Nothing is more important than your health. Now settle down, eat, and let your teachers talk to you before I run them out of here for using up your energy again.”

  Chris slowly, reluctantly sank back onto the bed, distress written into his face as if it had been printed and stamped there in indelible ink. Rian cast Damon a helpless glance, only to find Damon looking right back at him, his eyes dark with concern.

  What had that been about?

  Why was Chris so desperate to escape?

  “Hey,” Damon said, looking away from Rian and stepping closer to Chris’s bedside. “What’re you so worried about missing? I’ve got you down on sick leave from the team, so it’s not going to add up to your absences. Your scholarship’s safe.”

  Chris flinched visibly at the word scholarship, but lowered his eyes and pulled the wrapped cafeteria sandwich closer, plucking at the edges of the cling film covering it. “Nothing. I... I was just worried about practice; I didn’t know you’d—I—thanks, Coach Louis.”

  While Rian watched Chris and Damon, Nurse Hadley pulled away from the bed, pausing next to Rian and touching his arm; she leaned in, dropping her voice low. “He’s more stable,” she murmured. “Probably be fine in a week or so. But please try not to upset him.” Quieter still—barely a whisper, as she glanced over her shoulder at Chris. “And please try to get him to talk, or we’ll be seeing him in here again and again. Call it a hunch. He won’t talk to me, but I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

  Rian brushed his fingers to the backs of her knuckles with a nod. “We’ll try,” he promised. “We will.”

  With one more significant look, she slipped away, ducking past the curtain walling off Chris’s bed from a few other empty ones and the exam area, making herself quite pointedly busy organizing shelves that didn’t seem to need organizing. Rian watched her for a few moments more, then stepped closer to the bed, folding his arms against the railing on the footboard and leaning against them.

  “Hey,” Chris said, green eyes shifting to Rian with a touch of pleading, even though he tried to smile again. “Don’t look at me like that, Mr. Falwell.”

  Rian quirked his lips. “Like what?”

  “Like...like you’re disappointed in me.” Chris ducked his head, playing at that bit of cling wrap until it started to ball up, before he peeled it back from his sandwich and toyed with the corner of it until the dark brown crust of the wheat bread began to crumble. “Like I’ve just...you know...let you down so much, and I just... I’m...”

  His mouth knotted, his eyes screwing up, his voice wavering. Rian leaned over quickly, curling his hand against Chris’s ankle through the sheets.

  “Hey,” he said, putting as much conviction as he could into his voice, trying to hold and keep Chris’s gaze, searching. “I am not disappointed in you. Not at all. I just want to make sure you’re all right. That’s why I’m here, Chris. Because I care about you. I’m not upset with you, and you’re not in trouble, and you are most certainly no one’s disappointment.”

  With an upset sound, Chris looked between Rian and Damon. “But... I’m missing practice, and I still haven’t finished my class project, and now I’m going to miss class...”

  “And none of that matters,” Damon said. His gaze fixed on Chris firmly, words soothing and warm and full of such utter conviction, such reassuring calm. “You matter. You matter more than football practice or homework, or anything like that. We care about your future, yeah, and that means caring about your education. But you come first. Once you’re okay and safe, then we can give a fuck about your grades.”

  Chris sucked in a breath; his voice dropped small. “... I thought you said we were only allowed to say that on the field and never inside school halls.”

  Damon grinned, wide and fierce, white teeth stark against brown skin. “I made the rule, I get to break it.”

  With a shaky laugh, Chris finally left off plucking at his sandwich, though he made no move to pick it up and eat it. “That’s not fair.”

  “Well, when you’re the teacher, you can make those kinds of rules,” Damon teased, as he settled to sit on the edge of the mattress at Chris’s hip. “Is that what you’re so afraid of? Breaking the rules?”

  With his hand still resting on Chris’s ankle, Rian felt the moment Chris tensed again. “I’m not breaking any rules,” Chris said quietly.

  “Maybe not,” Rian murmured. “But someone is. Because whether it’s against the rules of the school or general rules of society, no one’s allowed to hurt you the way someone has been. Decent people don’t do that to others. And if someone’s going to be punished for that, it won’t be you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Chris retorted with a sharp edge, “because no one’s hurting me.”

  Rian closed his eyes, breathing in deep and straightening, pulling his hand back to rest on the footboard. When he opened his eyes, Damon was watching him, clearly troubled, and Rian didn’t have to ask to guess why. Chris was already shutting down—and clearly lying. Unless he was somehow doing that to himself, but...how? How was he bruising himself that way? Why was he dehydrated and exhausted unless he was deliberately depriving himself?

  What could push him to harm himself that way?

  Rian shook his head slightly, helplessly; he didn’t quite know what to say now, and Damon knew Chris better than Rian did. Damon was closer to him, had forged that familial, almost fatherly bond with him as part of the football team. Rian was probably as useless here as he was anywhere else, a presence of moral support and nothing more. He’d been deceiving himself thinking that he and Damon had come together like Chris’s parents, when really...

  Damon was the only one who had that role, here.

  Rian was just...aching to have that feeling of closeness back, and grasping desperately and pathetically at whatever straws he could.

  Damon gave Rian an odd, questioning look, before turning back to Chris. He studied him thoughtfully for several momen
ts, then said without preamble, “We’ve contacted your parents.”

  Chris had started to take a bite of his sandwich, looking like he’d rather chew on raw nails but so obviously trying to put on a pretense of normalcy—but he spluttered around the mouthful he’d been sinking his teeth into, letting it drop from his lips with several bits still clinging and half-tethered to the sandwich.

  A sandwich he dropped messily back to the plate as he strangled out, “What? Why?”

  “Because their son is in the infirmary, dehydrated and exhausted and beat to shit,” Damon said firmly. “And they have a right to know. Don’t you think they’d be worried about you?”

  “I don’t want to worry them!” Chris flared. “That’s why—”

  He cut off short, flushing guiltily and pressing himself back against the mattress, the pillows. Rian leaned forward, hands gripping tighter at the cool metal railing.

  “Why what, Chris?” he pressed. “What are you doing to keep from worrying them?”

  “Nothing,” Chris said a little too quickly, a little too desperately, and he fumbled for the bottle of orange juice sitting on the tray, fingers shaky on the cap. “I’m just trying to stay out of trouble like I’m supposed to. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”

  “Except I don’t think it is,” Rian said softly. “You know why kids come to Albin, don’t you?”

  Chris smiled a touch bitterly, twisting at the cap without really opening it, squeezing it so tight his knuckles turned stark and ridged. “Little juvenile delinquents, huh. Bet you’re wondering what I did that was the last straw, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not. And I don’t think Dam—Mr. Louis is, either.” Rian shook his head. “I worry about every last one of the boys here. I don’t think they’re bad kids. I think they need their parents, not us, but we’re all they have so we’re doing our best. And if we can give them a safe space to work through their growing pains, that’s...something. But I’ve looked at your records, your intake files...there’s nothing there. Nothing about problems you’ve caused, nothing you’ve done to create a scandal...nothing at all. You’re just... Chris. And you have a perfect disciplinary record. So I have trouble understanding why your parents would want to hide you away here.”

  “Guess they didn’t put that part in my records,” Chris said reluctantly. “Probably so people wouldn’t treat me any different. I’m an alumni baby. My dad graduated from here, and his dad, and his dad before. I guess my great-grandfather got some lady pregnant way back when and they sent him here to shape up, and he came out such a fine, upstanding citizen that now everyone in my family thinks we gotta go here if we want to turn out decent or something.”

  “Oh,” Rian said, blinking. “That’s...well, I suppose that’s not too terrible.”

  “...maybe not for you,” Chris muttered. “I just... I just wanted to be...”

  “Normal,” Damon finished softly. “You wanted to go to a normal high school and be a normal boy with normal friends. Not this secret hideaway where everyone caters to every tiny thing you want, and tries to keep your entire existence a secret from the world.”

  Chris struggled out a weak, troubled smile. “Yeah. Something like that. I don’t hate it here. And my friends here are really cool. I mean...it’s not so bad I wanna leave, it’s just not my favorite place. But...well...what’s that old song? Can’t always get what you want?”

  “Forgot the other half, though.” Rian watched Chris, the little subtle cues of body language that gave away just how upset he was—something that ran deep, something behind whatever he wasn’t telling them. “But if you try sometimes...you might just get what you need. So what is it you need? Can’t hurt to tell us. Try it out.”

  Chris screwed his face up. “I mean... I don’t really need anything?”

  “Those bruises say otherwise,” Damon interjected. “If you’re not going to fill us in, we might have to get the police involved.”

  For the second time, Chris rasped out a garbled “What?” and this time nearly dropped the orange juice bottle, fumbling with the bottle with one hand and the cap on the other, juice splashing out over his fingers before he managed to scramble enough to thunk the bottle solidly down and sling the cap onto it haphazardly while still holding his IV-pinned arm stiffly straight. Clutching at the bottle with wet fingers, he stared at them with a look of such horrified betrayal Rian felt as if he’d kicked a puppy. “You can’t do that; it’s not fair! I didn’t do anything wrong, and I didn’t break any laws!”

  The entire room fell silent, even Nurse Hadley’s movements beyond the curtains stopping.

  Rian and Damon simply watched Chris—and Rian could see the moment Chris realized he’d slipped. Because Rian knew without even asking that Damon had meant calling the police to investigate whoever was hurting Chris...

  ...but Chris had assumed he’d meant calling the police to punish Chris for whatever he might be involved in.

  That...was a little too telling.

  And suddenly that feeling of worry inside Rian expanded from a tiny little frustrated knot into a massive, heavy, deeply tangled thing that felt like it weighed as much as Rian himself, and more.

  This could be worse than they’d thought.

  A lot worse.

  Chris lowered his eyes sharply, biting his lip as he carefully screwed the cap back on the orange juice bottle, then picked up a folded white paper napkin and started wiping at his fingers.

  “I don’t want to talk anymore,” he mumbled. “I’m really tired, and I just want to eat and go back to sleep.”

  Damon started to open his mouth—but Rian reached across the bed to touch his wrist, shaking his head and mouthing No.

  Let it be.

  Damon stiffened, then sighed, nodded, and withdrew, standing with his jeans rasping against the sheets as he slid off the bed. “Okay, Chris. We’ll let you rest. But what do you want us to tell your parents, if they call back?”

  Chris shrugged listlessly. “They won’t,” was all he said.

  Rian hated how certain he sounded.

  But Rian held his tongue, and he and Damon filed from the room. Nurse Hadley caught Rian’s eye, and gave up any pretense of “organizing” shelves to follow them; the last Rian saw of Chris was Chris forlornly shredding the edge of his napkin, before Hadley closed the door behind them as they congregated out in the hall.

  “Fuck,” Damon said immediately.

  “That about covers it,” Rian said, and slumped against the wall. “This is worse than we thought. What if he’s involved in something illegal?”

  “That’s what I was thinking.” Grim, scowling, Damon rubbed at his chin. “Something illegal. Someone who’s bad for him. Someone he’s more afraid of than anything else that could be threatening him.”

  “I don’t really think Omen’s a haven for gang activity,” Rian said. “Or even thugs, despite the reasons this school exists. But could he be involved in drugs? Something more serious than marijuana?”

  “Nothing came up on the urine test in his pre-season physical when school started,” Nurse Hadley said. “And I’ve done another one since he was admitted. Now, granted, our facilities aren’t that sophisticated, but on a basic screening he came up clean. He’s also not exhibiting signs of withdrawal from anything addictive. He’s worn down, yes, but the markers just don’t match.”

  Rian sighed heavily; God, how did this just keep getting worse? “So we’re back to square one. No idea where the bruises came from, or why he seems so...so...defeated.”

  “Nothing,” Damon grunted. “But he sure as hell seemed eager to get the fuck out of here.”

  “Do you think he’d try to escape?” Rian asked.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Nurse Hadley said. “Wouldn’t be the first kid to try a prison break. But Nurse Flanaghan’s on night duty, and he’s yet to let anyone pull a Shawshank on him. Chris will be un
der supervision morning, noon, and night. You don’t need to worry about that.”

  “No,” Rian said, and closed his eyes, rubbing at his temples. “Just about everything else.”

  And about what to do.

  Before things went too far, and they might not have a chance to help Chris until it was too late.

  * * *

  Damon didn’t know why he’d invited Rian back to his apartment.

  It had just seemed like the natural thing to do, when Nurse Hadley had shooed them off so they’d stop hovering around her infirmary—especially when no doubt Chris could tell they were still outside, overhear the murmur of their voices and see their silhouettes through the frosted glass inset, and if Damon knew anything he knew that in the mind of a teenage boy, that would be all it took to build Chris up into a panic imagining what they must be saying, what they must be plotting, what the hell they were going to do to him.

  And that’d just make him lock down even more.

  Not that they were doing a great fucking job at getting him to open up in the first place.

  But he didn’t have a single goddamned thing to say to Rian about it that they hadn’t already said in front of Nurse Hadley, and for fuck’s sake Damon already had too many tangled feelings where Rian was concerned to throw close proximity into the mix again when his fucking dick was still sore from how tight Rian was inside; from how hard that slim, needy body had clenched down on him with every thrust.

  Yet somehow here he was, fumbling his key into the lock on his door with Rian fidgeting behind him, being way too goddamned obvious about looking anywhere but at Damon.

  If he didn’t want to be around Damon at all, why’d he even agree to come?

  Damon had to jimmy the key in the lock twice to get it to actually turn when he’d jammed it in at a bad angle, but after a moment managed to shove the door open and stalk inside, tossing over his shoulder, “Tea?”

  “Ah...no thank you,” Rian murmured, straggling inside with his arms clutched against his stomach and bumping the door closed with his shoulder. “I was...thinking of going by the cafeteria for a late brunch after this.”