Chapter 64: Dominic’s Promise, The Auditorium, And Eye Contact!

Dominic smiled like he had been waiting for this moment specifically and even planned to make it happen.

Ruaan stepped back.

His shoulder found the wall before his legs gave him much choice about it. He leaned against it and kept breathing through his mouth.

’No, no. It was just the fever still leaving my system and not the specific nausea that came with seeing someone I had deliberately stopped thinking about standing in front of me in a damn grey uniform!’

"I’ve missed you, Ruaan," Dominic said. He spread his hands wide open, thinking Ruaan would just jump into his arms for a hug.

"What the hell are you doing here," Ruaan said. His voice came out thinner than he wanted.

Dominic’s smile dropped for exactly one second. He stepped forward and reached out and put his hand on Ruaan’s forehead.

Ruaan knocked it away. "Don’t touch me with those hands."

"You’re burning," Dominic said. "You need to go to the hospital. Do they have one here? Let me take you..."

"I just came from the infirmary," Ruaan said. He pushed off the wall and started walking slowly. His hand dragged along the wall and he hated that it needed to but his legs were making their own decisions.

Dominic followed.

Of course, he followed.

"You’re probably wondering why I’m here," Dominic said, falling into step beside him with the ease of someone who had never been told to leave a room and stayed anyway. "I didn’t commit a crime. I want you to know that so you won’t make assumptions. Nothing happened on my end legally."

Ruaan said nothing and kept walking.

"Your father," Dominic continued, "was concerned about you. After the news segment. He wanted someone here who could watch over you and report back to him." He paused. "I volunteered so he made the arrangements."

Ruaan thought about his father. About the card in Harolin’s pocket. About the news camera and ’He deserves whatever came for him’ followed immediately by ’He’s still my son.’

He kept walking.

"Isn’t it something?" Dominic said. "We’ll be in the same place again. It’s been weeks, Ruaan. I’ve thought about you every day."

Ruaan’s head was starting to pound with Dominic talking on and on.

He did not respond. He focused on the corridor ahead and on putting one foot in front of the other and on not giving Dominic any surface to land on.

"Why is your uniform black?" Dominic asked. "And why is mine grey? I thought we would be placed together."

Still nothing.

"The officer who walked me to my cell," Dominic said. "Harolin. Are you two still close? He told me to stay away from you." A pause. "But you know there’s no way I’m staying away from my fiancé."

Ruaan stopped walking and finally turned around.

He looked at Dominic and the specific warm flatness of his own expression surprised him slightly. He had expected to feel more. Anger or something sharp. What he felt instead was something much quieter and much more final.

"Who said anything about me being your fiancé?" Ruaan said.

Dominic looked at him.

"There is no relationship between us, Dominic. You ended it yourself. In a prison visitation room." Ruaan kept his voice even. "If you came here for me, you’ve wasted your time. You should go home before this place decides it likes you."

Dominic stepped closer.

Ruaan had no space to run and his legs were done negotiating so he stayed still.

Dominic caged him, both hands on the wall on either side. He looked at Ruaan’s face. At the flush from the fever. At the eyes that were tired and clear and saying something he apparently did not want to hear.

"Is it because of Harolin?" Dominic said.

Ruaan said nothing.

Dominic looked at him for a long moment. He took the silence and read it as a yes. Then he leaned forward and pressed his lips to Ruaan’s forehead, warm and deliberate.

"I’ll take that position from him," he said against Ruaan’s skin. "Since I’m back."

He stepped back and walked away down the corridor like it was a normal evening.

Ruaan stood against the wall until the footsteps faded. Then he pushed off and walked the rest of the way to his room and closed the door behind him and did not slam it because he did not have the energy for slamming.

Seo’s things were gone from the corner. The LEGO box absent. The spare shirt from the chair was gone. The room was back to being just his.

He looked at the bed.

"Once I wake up I’ll eat something," he said to nobody.

He crawled onto it and was asleep before he finished the thought.

.

.

He woke up before dawn.

The room was dark and cold and quiet and he lay there for a moment taking inventory of himself. The fever was gone. His head was clear. His legs felt like legs again rather than suggestions.

He got up and went to the officer shower block before anyone else was moving and stood under cold water until he felt like a person and then went back and changed his uniform and sat on the bed and bit into an apple from the fridge.

It was Tuesday. Free day. Which meant the bottom ten would still be targets if anyone wanted them to be.

He thought about Seo and his broken glasses and hoped nobody had decided to use Tuesday for anything specific.

"I need to find him," Ruaan said to the apple. " And thank him for taking me to the infirmary." He paused. "Cullen too."

That last part sat in his mouth strangely. He chewed and accepted it.

The morning alarm went off.

Then an announcement came through the speakers, which was new. The facility speakers usually only carried game announcements and schedule notifications. This was different. A different officer’s voice, formal and clear.

’All inmates are required to gather at the main auditorium within one hour. An important announcement will be made by facility management. Attendance is mandatory for all ranks. Repeat, all inmates to the main auditorium within one hour.’

It repeated twice more and then again ten minutes later.

Ruaan sat on his bed and looked at the wall.

He had not known Blackmere had an auditorium.

He finished the apple and threw the core in the bin and drank some water. He adjusted his hair in the small mirror and told himself this was fine and walked out.

.

.

He followed people.

Specifically, he walked out of his corridor and saw a group of inmates moving left and fell in behind them with the casual confidence of someone who had always known where he was going.

He had not always known where he was going.

The group turned twice and went through a set of doors he had not been through before and then the space opened up.

The auditorium was enormous.

It was not the gym or the field. An actual auditorium, high ceiling, rows of seating that curved around a raised platform at the front, space enough for everyone in Blackmere with room left over. The cold of the AC was stronger here. The lighting was better than in any other room in the facility.

Ruaan stood in the entrance and looked at it.

Then he walked to the very back row and found a seat at the end where nobody would immediately notice him and sat down.

He watched the room fill.

The various uniforms sorting themselves by habit into loose sections. The noise level rising and then levelling. Officers and staff on the platform at the front, standing in a line with the formal posture of people who had been placed there deliberately.

He watched people see his black uniform and react. A double take. A nudge to the person beside them. A small smile and a nod in his direction.

He had no idea what the rumour was, but he definitely knew there was one rumour about him.

He did not ask.

The director was introduced by one of the senior officers and the room responded with genuine applause that surprised Ruaan into joining it half a beat late.

The director stepped forward and began talking about facility updates and the talk about the new rules and some procedural changes to the weekly schedule.

Everyone around Ruaan was murmuring about what it could mean for the games. He listened with one ear.

His eyes went to the platform.

Harolin was standing to the left of the director. He was not standing at the microphone. He was in his full uniform, hands behind his back, looking at something on the director’s tablet.

The director leaned toward him and said something quietly.

Harolin looked at the tablet and responded and pointed at something on the screen.

The director nodded and straightened and continued.

Harolin stepped back and lifted his head.

His eyes moved across the room with the attention of someone doing an automatic check of their surroundings. Across the front rows. The middle sections. The back.

They stopped.

Ruaan felt it before he processed it. That specific quality of being seen from a distance that his body had apparently learned to recognise.

Harolin had found him in the last seat of the back row.

Ruaan knew he should look away. It was the reasonable thing to do. He had called him Officer Crowe yesterday. He had put distance there deliberately and he should maintain it.

He could not make himself look away.

They held eye contact across the entire length of the auditorium.

Then Ruaan remembered Oren’s voice in the corridor. ’Long hair. Beautiful face. Harolin walked them to their cells himself.’

He dropped his gaze to the floor.

The announcement continued around him.