Chapter 63: Oren’s Mistake, Harolin’s Restraint, And A Familiar Voice!

Harolin sat on the metal stool and said nothing.

Ruaan was looking at the other side of the infirmary, away from him. The drip was still in his hand and the flush was fading slowly from his cheeks and his breathing had evened out since he woke up. Physically he was improving.

Everything else was a different conversation.

Harolin kept his hands on his knees and looked at Ruaan’s profile and thought about the name that had slipped from his mouth. ’Officer Crowe.’

"You should rest," Harolin said.

"I know," Ruaan said. Still at the ceiling.

"Do you want water?"

"I’m fine."

The room was quiet.

Harolin looked at the drip bag. At the small sound of the facility outside. At Ruaan’s hand on the bed, the one he had been holding twenty minutes ago, now just lying there like it had always been just lying there.

"Ru," he said.

"I’m tired," Ruaan said.

He didn’t say ’Don’t talk to me.’ or ’Go away.’ Just ’I’m tired,’ which was somehow harder to respond to because it closed every available opening without being aggressive about it.

Harolin sat with that and didn’t say anything. He just pressed his lips together as he kept wondering what went wrong.

’Is he angry that I left the room without telling him? Or did I do something bad to him overnight?’

He wasn’t sure and he wished Ru could just tell him instead of him making assumptions.

The doctor came back a few minutes later and checked the drip and checked Ruaan’s temperature and said the fever was breaking well and he could rest here until evening and then return to his room.

He looked at Harolin sitting on the stool. "He needs quiet."

"I’ll be back," Harolin said to Ruaan.

But Ruaan said nothing. He was still looking away from Ruaan.

Harolin stood up and walked out.

As soon as he left, Ruaan placed a hand on his chest and exhaled deeply.

"I can’t handle this," he mumbled under his breath.

.

Seo was still in the corridor, waiting. But was he waiting for Ruaan or for Harolin?

Cullen was gone. He left a few minutes ago after he was thinking about what Seo had indirectly suggested to him.

Seo was leaning against the wall with his arms folded. His expression was uncertain like he was thinking about so many things at once.

He straightened when Harolin came out. He didn’t even realise the growing smile on his lips.

Harolin looked at him. "What happened before he got sick?"

"Huh?" He asked.

"You know what I’m asking so don’t get dumb suddenly," Harolin said. "What happened to Ruaan before he got sick?"

Seo considered his answer. "He went to his room after skill day, so I wasn’t with him. I was still in the electrical room."

"Who was with him?"

"I don’t know. A lot of people could have spoken to him before he got to his room," Seo pushed his glasses up. "His former cellmate, Finn or even... Oren."

Harolin looked at him for one more second. He was sure it was Oren. Oren had to be the one who would know what was wrong with Ruaan..

Without a word, he walked away.

Seo’s eyes followed him.

"Oren huh?"

.

.

Oren was in his room doing paperwork when the knock came.

He said come in and Harolin pushed the door open and stepped inside and closed it behind him.

Oren looked up.

Something about the quality of Harolin’s stillness made him put the pen down.

"What did you say to Ruaan?" Harolin said in a flat voice. He didn’t even wave his hand to say hello because it would be a waste of time to him.

Oren looked at him. He had several options here. He could deflect. He could say it was a private conversation between him and Ruaan and he could cite professional boundaries.

He looked at Harolin’s face and discarded all of those.

"I told him about one of the new inmates," Oren said. "The one with the long hair. I said they were beautiful. That people could mistake them for a girl."

Harolin said nothing.

"I mentioned you had walked them to their cells yourself," Oren continued.

Still nothing.

"I thought—"

Harolin moved.

He crossed the small room in three steps and grabbed Oren’s collar with one hand and pulled him forward off the chair and held him there. He didn’t shake him too hard. He just held him at close range with a tight grip, secretly asking himself how much force it would take to punch him across the face so he could fall unconscious.

Oren grabbed his wrist but didn’t pull away. He looked at Harolin’s face.

The pale grey eyes were doing something he had not seen in them before.

"I don’t understand why you’re doing this when I did nothing wrong," he said.

"Do you know he got sick," Harolin said. Very quietly. "Because of what you said?"

"I know," Oren said. "I heard."

"So you did it on purpose."

A pause.

"Yes," Oren said.

Harolin looked at him.

His grip on the collar tightened once. Oren felt the fabric pull. Then Harolin released him and stepped back and turned away and put both hands flat on the desk and stood there with his head down and breathed.

Oren straightened his collar.

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

"I made a mistake," Oren said finally. "That was foolish of me."

"Yes," Harolin said. He did not turn around. "That’s very foolish of you, Oren. I don’t know what you’re aiming for but you won’t get it."

"I won’t do it again."

Harolin picked up the folder from the desk that Oren had been working on and held it out without turning around. Oren took it.

"If you go near him with the intention of hurting him again," Harolin said, still facing the wall, still very quiet, "I will make a phone call. And you will be reassigned somewhere you have never heard of before your first week here is finished."

Oren believed him completely as he watched Harolin walk out. He sighed and held his uniform that was squeezed.

"Getting Ruaan to myself is harder than I thought."

.

By evening the fever had broken properly.

Ruaan sat up in the infirmary bed and felt the difference. He was still tired. A little hollow in the way that fevers left you. But his head was clear and the heat was gone and the ceiling was no longer doing anything strange like... twirling on its own.

The doctor came back and removed the drip and told him to eat something proper tonight and sleep early and come back tomorrow if anything returned.

Ruaan nodded.

"Thank you, doctor."

He changed back into his uniform slowly and stood up and tested his legs. They held.

He exhaled deeply before walking out of the infirmary.

Seo was gone since there was no sign of him anywhere. The corridor was quiet. Evening had settled over the facility and most people were heading toward the cafeteria or back to their cells, the end-of-day movement.

He did not want to go to the VIP cafeteria.

He did not want to see Cullen.

He did not want to see Harolin right now either, which was a thought that sat in his chest in a specific uncomfortable way that he was not ready to examine.

He thought about Oren’s words in the corridor.

The new inmate. Long hair. Beautiful enough to be mistaken for a girl.

’Harolin walked them to their cells himself.’

He pressed his lips together and started walking.

He would eat something from the fridge in his room. He had snacks and fruits and drinks. He would sleep early like the doctor said. He would not think about Harolin and some beautiful new inmate with long hair and—

He turned the corner without paying attention to where he was.

He had been walking like a robot, head down, following a route that felt familiar but was not the route he normally took. A different corridor which was shorter. He had used it once before by accident and realised it was the quickest way to get to his room.

The corridor was quieter than the main ones.

He was looking at the floor. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

He did not see the person until he almost walked into them.

He stepped back and looked up.

The man was standing right in front of him with his hands in the pockets of his grey uniform, looking at Ruaan with the specific expression of someone who had been expecting this and had been patient about it.

The same damn face. Same posture. Same coat replaced now by grey prison fabric but the same quality of comfortable certainty underneath it.

"Hey, Ruaan," the person said.

Ruaan looked at him with a frown.

He felt it come back. The warmth in his face. The specific heaviness behind his eyes. The fever he had spent all afternoon losing pushing back at the edges.

He clenched his fingers at his side.

"Dominic," he said.