by Cole McCade
It felt like a peace offering, at least.
I’m up, he sent back, propping his chin in his palm and Swyping with one thumb. Wondering why you are, though.
Worrying. Restless. Can’t fucking sleep, came back a few seconds later. You heard from his parents?
Rian frowned, sighing. Nothing. No call or email. You?
Not a thing. A pause, then before Rian could answer, another message popped up on the screen, scrolling up the messenger window. Should we go see him again tomorrow?
Even if it was just expressionless text...there was a soft worry there that at once melted Rian’s heart and made it ache, when it echoed his own concerns, half the things keeping him awake at night. I don’t know, he answered. What if putting more pressure on him makes it worse? What if he does something reckless because he feels cornered?
Yeah. That’s a real worry. I don’t fucking know, Rian.
Me either, Rian said—and suddenly wished he was just...
With Damon.
In that quiet lamplit room, that cozy space that belonged to Damon and Damon alone, but that Rian wouldn’t mind being permitted in now and then if only so he could somehow try to comfort Damon in all those small ways that had nothing to do with sex. Leaning close, brushing his hair back, talking to him, listening to all the troubles on his mind instead of giving him more things to worry about; more things to keep him awake at night.
But Rian was the one who’d asked for space, and now he didn’t know what to do with it.
Maybe it was better this way.
Talking to each other through text without all those little things about each other that just set them both off, volatile and so messy.
So maybe, in the silence, his phone still and quiet in his hand...
It might be safer to apologize, too.
Rian still hesitated, though, looking at that window, but there was no little ellipse animating, nothing that said Damon was typing; maybe he didn’t know what to say either, or maybe he was just done with Rian and already pulling away after that careful exchange of information.
Just do it, Rian told himself, then tapped out, I’m...sorry about last weekend. As soon as he hit the Send icon, he followed quickly with, If it’s okay to say that.
Please, he told himself. Please don’t let me be making this worse. Hurting him more.
From how long that little typing ellipse went on...he was ready for Damon to tell him never to talk to him again. To mind his own business, to stop...what had he said? Putting his fingers in open wounds, with a little salt and lemon juice for good measure.
But instead a new message popped up, pastel green against the custom background of Rian’s messenger window, while Rian’s own messages were a soft coral pink.
I know you meant well, Damon said. And it’s not like I haven’t thought about it before. But it’s not something I want to talk about unless *I* want to talk about it.
Rian could almost hear it in that rumbling voice, dry and almost self-deprecating, and he half smiled, relief making his body go loose until he slumped down against the pillow, letting his chin sink into it and holding his phone out in front of him with both hands. I really am sorry, he sent. I shouldn’t have said any of the things I said. I should have minded my own business.
It’s okay, came back, followed by a photo—a selfie of Damon lounging back against the wall next to his bed, the patterned quilts draped over his hips, his bare chest gleaming faintly in the light of the phone screen and a lazy smile on his lips; his unbound hair drifted across his face, shadowing eyes that threw back the reflection of his interface. See? Nothing’s bleeding.
Rian laughed softly, then angled his phone and took a selfie of his own, sticking his tongue out and holding two fingers up in a little peace sign; he flushed when he saw himself, his hair a frazzled mess spilling out of the clean paintbrushes he’d used to pin it up loosely, the light washing out his skin and his ratty, paint-smeared oversized T-shirt bunching all around him.
Fuck it.
Damon had seen him naked; he wasn’t going to care if Rian was a sleepy mess.
So he sent it, watching the loading bar and wondering why his heart was beating so fast when the image went through, before he sent, Think you’re doing better than me. Sleep deprivation is getting to me.
:D, came back immediately, and Rian rolled onto his side, chuckling; he’d never thought Damon would be the type to use actual emojis. But that rapid beat of his heart redoubled as a little <3 popped up as a reaction in the corner of his photo, before Damon sent, You own any clothing in your size?
What’s wrong with my clothing? :P I like the way I look.
Yeah? Damon said. So do I.
Rian stopped breathing, just staring at his phone, his thumbs hovering over the screen. He...he didn’t know what to say to that; how to respond, if Damon meant it as...as...
Oh thank God, Damon was typing something else.
Rian buried his face against the pillow, letting the cool pillowcase soothe the warmth in his cheeks, and waited for the next message to pop up.
Listen, Damon said. I think one reason I get so fucking prickly about my birth parents is because it’s felt pretty damned useless anyway.
Oh, Rian thought. Oh.
Was...was Damon actually okay with talking about this with him?
He lingered on that photo of Damon, that relaxed smile; knowing that was him just a few moments ago felt like Rian had a window into Damon’s room right now, something that let Rian feel connected to him, as if they were sitting in the same space instead of texting from different floors and opposite sides of the school.
Maybe that was why it felt okay to say...is it all right to ask you something, then?
Yeah, Damon replied easily, without a moment of hesitation. It’s fine.
Have you ever looked them up? Rian bit his lip, rolling onto his back and holding his phone up over his head, looking at the screen. Aren’t there any kind of adoption records with the agency? If it’s okay to ask that.
I tried, Damon said after several moments of silence. When they gave me up, they didn’t leave names. Information.
So they could still be alive.
Or they could be dead, and whatever relatives dumped me off didn’t want me to know.
Rian thumbed the screen, scrolling upward to pull up that selfie that had scrolled off...and traced his thumb down the square line of Damon’s jaw, the high crests of his cheekbones. He just...wished he could ease away that bitterness, somehow. But Damon was probably wondering at his silence, and so he tapped back down to the composition box and asked, Do you intend to keep looking?
Damon’s little typing...went on for a long time, but what followed was only a simple No. But then, a moment later, I think the parents who raised me would be hurt if I kept trying. And I want to think about making something for myself, instead of trying to take back something I never had.
Haven’t you done that here, with the boys?
Maybe, Damon sent. But maybe one day I want a family of my own. Most guys are settled with a couple of kids by now.
Rian smiled to himself. He could see it; when Damon was such a dad with the boys on the football team, it wasn’t hard to imagine him with his own little gaggle of rug rats, swinging them up on his shoulders and wrapping them up in big bear hugs and tickling them until they giggled and grabbed at his hair with little baby fingers.
The thought just shouldn’t make Rian sigh so much, his heart beating slow and sweet.
No one says you have to operate on some timeline, he said. It’s not too late.
Maybe.
You okay...?
Yeah. I’m good. Still nothing bleeding.
Another selfie came through, then—this time, Damon lying down on his stomach, his head resting against the pillow he’d hooked an arm around until it bunched up in soft wh
ite mounds around his head, making the deep, shining black of his hair stand out even more starkly, fanning out over the pillowcase and drifting into his face. His eyes were half-closed, sleepy, and so...so...
Soft.
Soft, warm, the dark brown lustrous and deep and intense, and Rian’s heart skipped hard when it felt like Damon was looking right at him through the phone, unguarded and gentle and lingering with a gaze that made Rian flush all the way through, his entire body too warm.
Goodnight, Rian, Damon sent, the two words pushing the selfie up, a caption that felt like it was whispered close against Rian’s ear in that low, rumbling voice.
He didn’t want to let this go. This feeling of intimacy and closeness; this connection that seemed so tenuous, when tomorrow...tomorrow they might be all thorns all over again, or even worse...complete strangers to each other. But he didn’t want to keep Damon awake, either.
So after a few moments, he made himself send back just, Goodnight.
Before he let his phone fall to his chest, clutching it over his skipping heart with a soft sound, closing his eyes and just breathing in and letting himself melt.
There was no way he was getting to sleep now.
Not when he felt like he was about to burst out of his skin, bristling everywhere. And after a few restless moments where he couldn’t stop himself from peeking at his phone again and again, he rolled out of bed, catching up a pair of jeans from the chair in the corner and tugging them on before shoving his feet into his sandals.
He didn’t often walk the halls of Albin Academy after midnight, when it made the security guards jumpy if they caught him on their rounds—but he encountered no one as he made his way through halls lit in slivers of moonlight through tall windows, feeling like a ghost as he whispered his way along the floorboards and the stairs, until he found the private space of his art classroom. His studio, waiting for him, and...
That painting.
That painting that stood unfinished beneath the pale light of the overhead light, when Rian flicked it on—picking out the details of that lightning-split tree, the way the fork in its trunk made him think of the flexing muscles of Damon’s shoulder blades, arms spreading to either side. Rian traced his fingers over the texture of the paint that made up the base for the reaching, spidering branches, stripped bare of their bark and glowing against the dark...then picked up his palette and a fresh tube of paint.
He hadn’t finished anything since he’d come to Albin Academy. He hadn’t been sure if he wanted to, when he wasn’t certain if he gave a damn about gallery exhibitions and doubted anyone back in New York was waiting with bated breath for his next showing. Should he want to do it for anyone else, anyway?
Or just for himself?
Like Damon—searching for his place in the world by making something for himself, instead of because of what someone else expected. Could Rian do that?
Did he even know what he would make for himself, if he wanted?
Maybe not.
But the reaching fingers of that tree felt like the reaching grasp of his thoughts, searching, seeking, begging for something to want.
Begging for something for his heart to hold on to...and so Rian gave those grasping fingers color, and texture, and life, as he painted long into the night.
Painted his heart into the burning heart of the tree.
And wondered if he would ever let that heart be seen by any eyes but his own.
* * *
Damon really wondered why the hell he had made his lock screen that image of Rian with his tongue sticking out.
Because now every time he got a text, a call, even an email notification, he had to look down at that ridiculously goofy face Falwell was making, and feel that odd little twitch in his chest as he tried really fucking hard not to think just how fucking cute he was.
And how much Damon missed him.
What the hell, Louis?
He lounged in the recliner in his suite, a stack of unfinished health education performance reports taking up half his tiny coffee table, the other half supporting a steaming plate of chicken carbonara he was just waiting to cool after he’d forgotten to even cook until well after midnight, phone held overhead as he pillowed his head on one arm and scrolled through their past text history, rereading that tentative conversation that had, somewhere along the way, turned familiar and gently curious. They hadn’t said anything to each other since that sleepless Tuesday night; there’d been no reason to, when it was still radio silence from the Northcotes and with the school’s formidable nursing staff on the job, there was no way in hell Chris was escaping the infirmary, and from Nurse Hadley’s terse emails he was healing up nicely but still refusing to talk about anything.
Damon just...he and Rian were fine apart from each other.
There was no fucking reason to miss him, was there?
Like, what the hell was even going on in his head right now?
It wasn’t even about missing the sex. Yeah, the sex had been good the one time it happened, and sometimes he caught himself remembering the way Rian had gone so soft and helpless when Damon kissed him, leaving Damon so flushed and distracted he got smacked in the face with a dodgeball in third-period gym yesterday...
But more often he caught himself thinking about how Rian had fallen asleep against him.
Proving what he’d said—How could I be afraid of you?—more than any words, when Rian had settled in Damon’s arms so trustingly, curled so warm against him and the small bed forcing them so close they’d woken up tangled in each other with Rian’s hair snaking everywhere in a mess and their legs practically hooked around each other.
Now, every time Damon woke up, he woke up feeling for that, only to find the bed empty, just himself sinking the stacked futons down into a pillowy heap.
It was absolutely ridiculous that he wanted it back that much.
But maybe...maybe.
Christ, if he was a drinking man, he’d fucking need one right now. Not that there was anywhere to go after midnight except that festering swillhole just across the Mystic—Hank’s Roadhouse. This time of night there’d be no one there except people who had nothing they wanted to go home to. Damon himself wouldn’t go there if he was dehydrated and the only thing left to drink in the world was a bottle of roadhouse whiskey.
He didn’t need a goddamned drink.
He needed Rian.
Fuck it.
With a frustrated sound, he scrolled down to the bottom of the text message history, and typed out a new message before he lost his nerve.
You make it hard to think. Hard to know which way is up, which way is down, he sent—but that wasn’t enough. That wasn’t enough, and fuck, he probably should have at least said hi first or something, but this was all he had and all that was on his mind. But I feel like the only reason I keep spinning in circles is because I keep trying to turn away from you, when everything else is trying to turn me back.
Part of him hoped Rian was too busy to answer, when he’d just...blurted that out like it was nothing. But after a few moments, the...popped up, and then:
What are you trying to say?
Well if that wasn’t a fuck of a question. Rian seemed to be good at that—asking those questions that left Damon fumbling. I don’t know.
Those ellipses started, then disappeared, then started again, then disappeared for so long he thought maybe Rian had just given up on him when he never knew the right words at the right time. But then they popped up again, followed by, What would happen, do you think, if we turned *to* each other?
Damon let that question stew, turning it over, trying to picture it but he just...he kept getting hung up on the difference between these quiet texts, these soft words they shared, and how when they were together they just stabbed at each other until everything hurt.
I don’t know that, either, he answered. I just know I don�
�t feel so alone with you. Even when you’re making me so goddamned angry. But I told you I’m not good at holding on to things.
In his head, he saw the wistful, shy little quirk of Rian’s smile that seemed to come through with his next message. What if someone held on to you?
Thought you were a runner.
And if I’m tired of running?
Damon snorted. Feels like all I’m saying tonight is “I don’t know.”
Well, Rian answered almost merrily. Maybe let me know when you do.
I’ll try, Damon said, when he wasn’t even sure what he would be trying and they’d just...fuck. He’d gone right in but they’d just danced indirectly around this whole goddamned thing, so he guessed he was going to have to figure something out and stop locking himself up inside his own head.
And try.
As soon as he figured out what trying meant at all.
...other than trying to sleep.
Because now the third-period boys thought using him as a dodgeball target was a game.
And if he got smacked in the face again, everyone was doing laps for the rest of the class.
...including him, when if he didn’t at least get three or four hours of sleep...
Making himself run might be the only way he could stay awake.
And the only way he could keep his mind off Rian, when he couldn’t seem to focus on anything else at all.
What the hell are you doing to me, Falwell? he thought, as he stared at his lock screen and Rian’s playful, silly smile. What the hell is this feeling every time I see your goddamned face?
Chapter Fifteen
Damon still didn’t have an answer to that question, by the end of the following day—when, just as he was getting ready to head out to the field to meet the boys for practice, his phone quivered in his pocket with the text tone he’d assigned to Rian; Taylor Swift sang about that feeling you got when you spotted trouble on sight, trilling out of the front of his track pants. He caught a few amused looks from the last of the boys straggling out of the locker room after last period before he snorted and retrieved his phone to check the incoming message, flashing past his lock screen photo of Rian and to the new text.
