Chapter 49: Finn’s Knife, A Dark Cell, And Something Poking Ruaan!

The footsteps stopped outside his stall.

Ruaan pressed himself flat against the tile and held his breath and looked at the gap at the side of the partition and watched Finn’s shadow stop moving.

One second.

Two.

Then Finn’s hand appeared at the edge of the partition and pushed it open.

They looked at each other.

Finn’s expression did not change. It had the same flat, cold quality it had been carrying since the cafeteria days, since before the game, since the moment Ruaan had understood what was actually behind those tired eyes. There was no surprise in it. He had found what he was looking for and his face simply confirmed it.

Ruaan’s eyes went to the pocket and to the edge of metal still visible there.

"Finn," Ruaan said. Carefully. Keeping his voice even. "Whatever you’re thinking right now—"

Finn moved fast.

Not toward the pocket. Straight at Ruaan, both hands grabbing his wet shoulders and slamming him into the tile wall hard enough that Ruaan’s head knocked back and his vision went white for a second at the edges.

Ruaan grabbed his wrists.

He pushed back with everything he had which was more than it had been two weeks ago because Dex had been teaching him things and his body had started remembering them. He got enough space to turn, to get his shoulder between them, to shove Finn sideways into the opposite wall.

Finn came back.

He was smaller than Cullen and smaller than most of the men in this facility but he was fast and he was determined and he had been in Blackmere long enough to know how to move in a fight. He got his arm around Ruaan’s neck from behind and pulled and Ruaan grabbed the arm and bent forward and tried to flip him and almost managed it.

They crashed into the bench at the edge of the stalls.

Both of them went down.

Ruaan got up first. He grabbed the partition for balance and turned and Finn was already up with his hand in his pocket and the cutlery was out and it caught the light from the corridor gap and Ruaan took one step back against the wall with nowhere to go.

Finn raised it.

The block door opened.

Harolin came in.

He took in the situation in approximately one second. Ruaan against the wall with no shirt on. Finn between them with a cafeteria knife raised and his chest heaving and his eyes with that flat dangerous quality.

Harolin crossed the room.

He grabbed Finn’s wrist before the hand could finish moving, twisted it once in a very specific way that made Finn drop the cutlery immediately, and used the momentum to turn him and pin both arms behind his back.

Finn struggled.

He stopped struggling after about four seconds because Harolin was Harolin and the physics of that situation did not work in Finn’s favour.

Harolin looked at Ruaan over Finn’s shoulder. "Go to your room. Now."

"What are you going to—"

"Room, Ru. I’ll come to you."

Ruaan looked at Finn. At the cutlery on the floor. At Harolin’s completely controlled expression, which was doing nothing to show what was happening behind it.

He picked up his clothes from the bench, grabbed Harolin’s soap from the shower floor, and left.

.

.

He heard Finn yelling before the door closed behind him.

"Cullen will hear about this! He’ll come for you! You can’t just—"

The door shut.

Ruaan stood in the corridor for a moment in his damp clothes and listened to his own heartbeat doing something loud and uneven in his chest. His shoulder hurt where it had hit the tile. His neck felt wrong from the arm that had been around it.

He walked back to his room.

.

.

Inside the dark holding cell two blocks down, Harolin pressed the door shut and looked at Finn standing in the middle of the small space.

"You’ll stay here for two days," Harolin said. "No meals."

Finn turned around. "You can’t do this. I have rights as a prisoner and—"

"Section seven of the facility code," Harolin said. "An officer may place any prisoner in temporary isolation for up to seventy two hours following an incident involving a weapon or threat of violence." He looked at Finn. "The cutlery counts."

"It’s a cafeteria knife—"

"It counts."

Finn’s jaw tightened. "Cullen will hear about this."

"Cullen is top two," Harolin said. "I outrank everyone in this building including the director. Cullen can hear about it and do absolutely nothing." He stepped back toward the door. "Two days. Think about your choices."

He closed the door.

Finn’s voice came through the metal, still going, saying something about Cullen and about rights and about what was coming. Harolin listened to it for exactly three seconds and then walked away because the volume decreased and he had somewhere to be.

.

.

Ruaan was sitting on his bed wrapped in the sheet when the knock came.

He wasn’t lying down, he was just sitting up, knees pulled toward his chest, the sheet around his shoulders, looking at the wall with the expression of someone who had been sitting with a lot of adrenaline and nothing to do with it.

He said "Come in" and Harolin pushed the door open and stepped inside.

He looked at Ruaan on the bed, the sheet and the way he was holding himself.

He went to the fridge without saying anything.

He opened it and looked at the contents and took out a small chocolate bar and a bottle of cold juice and brought them to the bed and held them out.

Ruaan looked at them.

"Eat something," Harolin said.

"I just had dinner three hours ago."

"Eat something anyway."

Ruaan took the chocolate. He opened it slowly and broke off a piece and put it in his mouth and chewed and the simple act of doing that seemed to let something out of his shoulders.

He broke off another piece and held it out toward Harolin without thinking about it.

Harolin took it.

They sat like that for a moment. Ruaan, eating chocolate and Harolin sitting in the chair at the desk eating one piece of someone else’s chocolate and the room being quiet around them.

"Where is he?" Ruaan said.

"He’s in a dark cell and he will be there for two days."

"And after two days."

"That’s a different problem. We’ll deal with it when it arrives." Harolin looked at him. "Are you hurt?"

"My shoulder is a bit sore. And my neck." Ruaan touched it. "But, it’s nothing serious."

Harolin nodded.

Ruaan finished the chocolate and opened the juice and drank some and felt incrementally more like a person with each thing he consumed.

The adrenaline was draining out slowly and leaving exhaustion behind it which was at least familiar.

"He’s been planning that for a while," Ruaan said.

"Yes."

"He had it in his pocket at breakfast. I think. The timing lines up."

"I know."

"You know everything before I tell you."

"Usually," Harolin said.

Ruaan looked at him and sighed.

Harolin was in his full uniform still, sitting in the chair with his forearms on his knees, looking at Ruaan with the steady, focused attention he brought to most things. The lamp on the desk was on and it made the room warm in a way that the corridor never was.

"You should sleep," Harolin said. "It’s past midnight."

Ruaan looked at the bed. Then at the chair. Then at the door.

"Okay," he said.

Harolin stood up.

Ruaan said, "Sleep here." 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Harolin stopped.

"I don’t want to be alone in the room right now," Ruaan said. He said it plainly. Not asking for sympathy. Just stating a fact about what he needed the same way he stated most things. "You can leave before it gets light. Nobody will see."

Harolin looked at him.

Ruaan lay down and pulled the sheet up and faced the wall and said nothing else. He left the space behind him available and didn’t make it a bigger conversation than it needed to be.

Harolin stood in the middle of the room for a moment.

Then he took his jacket off and hung it on the chair. He sat on the edge of the bed and took his boots off and set them aside. He lay down behind Ruaan on top of the sheet and the room was quiet.

Ruaan could feel the warmth of him. The steadiness of it. Something in his chest that had been loud and uneven since the shower block started going quieter.

He closed his eyes and he was almost asleep.

And then he felt it.

Something was pressing against his lower back. Firm. Insistent. He could very much tell that it was not a hand and was not a knee.

He went still.

He reached back without thinking. His hand found it through the fabric.

The sound Harolin made was quiet and immediate and pressed between closed lips, but it was there.

"...Hng." A pause. "Take your hand off, Ru."

Ruaan removed his hand.

He lay there for three seconds.

Then he turned his head as much as he could without fully turning over and said, with complete genuine disbelief, "Are you fucking hard right now?"

The room was very quiet.