Free Web NovelChapter 59: The Tattoo, Three New Inmates, And A Very Familiar Face!
The first thing Ruaan registered when he opened his eyes was the ceiling.
The second thing was that the bed felt different. Less warm. Less occupied.
He turned over.
Harolin was gone.
Seo was standing at the side of the room folding the sheet from the floor with the neat efficiency of someone who had been awake for a while. He was already in his uniform. He had the specific settled look of a person who had eaten and moved on with their morning.
Ruaan sat up.
His head did something unpleasant.
Seo heard the sheets rustling and turned around. He put the folded sheet on the bed and sat beside Ruaan.
"Good morning. Are you alright?"
"I’m fine," Ruaan said. He took his hand off his head slowly. "What time is it?"
"Breakfast ended about forty minutes ago."
Ruaan looked at him. "You didn’t wake me."
Seo raised both eyebrows with the expression of someone who had a response to that and was waiting for permission to deliver it.
Ruaan thought about it.
Something came back to him slowly. A hand on his shoulder. His own voice. The specific quality of half-asleep decision-making.
He covered his face as he remembered.
Seo’s voice arrived, gentle and accurate, from beside him.
"Wake up, Ruaan. Breakfast. Let’s go before we miss it."
A slap on Seo’s hand. Ruaan’s voice was thick with sleep. "I’m not eating. I don’t want to see that jerk’s face."
"Are you sure?"
"Hmm mmm mmm."
Then nothing until now.
Ruaan lowered his hands. He looked at the wall. He waved one hand in the general direction of the memory.
"It’s fine," he said. "I’ll eat later."
He stretched both arms above his head and twisted his spine until something clicked and then reached down to adjust his uniform. The hem had ridden up on one side and his hand went to his waist to pull it down.
Seo’s eyes stopped moving.
The tattoo was visible. Dark ink along his ribs. ’RUAAN’ in that curved font. Seo had seen it before in the shower block the first time but seeing it in the morning light of a quiet room was different.
"I’ve always wanted to ask. Where did you get your tattoo?" Seo asked.
Ruaan looked down at his own side. He pulled the hem down the rest of the way and smirked.
"I got it from a dare," he said. "With my friends." He paused. He thought about Jamal and Keston and Derek and the club and the bottle of cocktail he had been nursing in the corner while they disappeared with women. "My ex-friends. Those bastards haven’t come to see me once."
"What was the dare?"
"Sleep with a girl or get a tattoo." Ruaan stood up and moved to the small sink at the end of the room. He found his toothbrush and turned the tap on.
Seo stared at him for a second and then burst out laughing. "You chose the tattoo."
Ruaan pointed at his own ribs with the toothbrush before putting it in his mouth. "Obviously."
Seo kept laughing.
Ruaan looked at him in the small mirror above the sink and started laughing too, toothbrush still in his mouth, which made the laughing worse. He turned back to the sink and focused on brushing.
He felt less alone than he had expected this morning. Maybe it was because Seo was here.
He rinsed and spat and dried his mouth and turned around. Seo had settled down into the warm aftermath of the laughing, still smiling, glasses slightly askew.
Ruaan walked to him and took his hand.
"I’m sorry you have to leave," Ruaan said.
Seo’s cheeks went pink immediately. Ruaan’s hands were soft and warm and the grip was casual and completely unaware of what it was doing to the situation inside Seo’s uniform trousers. Seo bit his lower lip to control himself.
’Don’t get hard, you psycho!’
He told himself but he couldn’t stop feeling Ruaan’s soft hands over his. Even after yesterday’s bath, he still smells so nice and sweet.
"I thought you’d stay till the next game," Ruaan continued.
Seo breathed carefully. "The only way that works is if we’re both top three in the next game. Then I’d have my own room."
The smile dropped off Ruaan’s face.
He let go of Seo’s hand and turned to wipe the water off the sink edge.
"I don’t know about that," Ruaan said.
Seo followed him. "What does that mean? Do you want to go back to being bottom ten? You can see the privilege of being top 3, no one would want to let go of that."
"I won the last game by luck," Ruaan said. He was being honest about it because it was true and pretending otherwise was not something he had energy for this early. "If Finn hadn’t shot himself, I would have ended up somewhere in the middle at best. I don’t want to depend on luck again."
Seo looked at him. "I don’t want to be bottom ten anymore either. So what’s the plan? Let’s think of something together so you and I can be together too. Maybe then, we’ll be allowed to share a room."
"I don’t know yet." Ruaan leaned against the wall. "I’ll figure it out." ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom
Seo tilted his head. "Why not ask Harolin for help? I’m sure he would shake heaven and earth to help you."
"I can’t do that," Ruaan looked at him directly. "Because it’s cheating. And if I cheat to get to the top then I got there by cheating. It doesn’t mean anything." He pushed off the wall. "I’ll get there myself or I won’t get there at all."
Seo’s face did something quick and small that Ruaan didn’t see because he was already moving toward the door. He wanted to call Ruaan foolish, but Ruaan was a different species of human being.
The bell rang.
Seo tapped his shoulder. "Departments. Let’s go."
Ruaan paused. "Aren’t you taking your LEGO box?"
Seo waved a hand. "The batteries aren’t all dead. I’ll charge next time."
They walked out together. Ruaan pulled the door closed behind him and checked the key around his neck automatically.
They were halfway down the corridor when Seo said, "Oh. I forgot to tell you."
Ruaan looked at him. "What?"
"Three new inmates arrived this morning."
Ruaan blinked. "Three?"
"Yes, three." Seo walked easily beside him. "Which means you’re officially no longer the newbie."
Ruaan laughed. "Finally. How long has it been?"
"Long enough that it feels significant." Seo smiled. "We should have dinner to celebrate that you’re no longer a newbie."
"Do you know any of them?"
"Not personally. But I heard things from the others during breakfast." Seo paused for exactly one beat, the specific pause of someone deciding how to deliver information. "Apparently one of them is very pretty. The kind of pretty that people mistake for a girl. Beautiful face, the whole thing." Another beat. "Like you. And Finn." ƒrēewebnovel.com
Ruaan looked at him and diverted his gaze to the corridor ahead.
He thought about Harolin.
He thought about a beautiful new inmate arriving and Harolin standing in the processing room searching and...
He slapped himself on both cheeks at the same time.
Seo stopped walking. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing," Ruaan said.
"You just hit yourself in the face."
"I was thinking about something and I stopped." Ruaan kept walking.
’Harolin is not mine. He was never mine. I don’t care what the new inmate looks like. It has nothing to do with me.’
Seo watched him walk ahead and said nothing.
He adjusted his glasses and walked after him. He wanted to say a lot of things, but he pressed his lips.
.
.
The search room was not where Harolin usually spent his mornings.
He had been there for forty minutes already, standing to the side while the regular processing officer worked through the new arrivals. Standard procedure. Three new inmates. Not his job specifically.
He had come because Oren’s warning from the corridor was still sitting in the back of his head.
’Keep an eye on Ruaan. There’s someone close to him who shouldn’t be.’ And new arrivals meant new variables and he wanted to see them before Ruaan did.
The first two had been processed without incident.
The third one walked in.
Harolin looked at him.
The new inmate was tall. Well-dressed in the clothes they had arrived in, before the uniform change. His face was the specific kind of face that attracted attention without trying to, the kind that made people look and then look again. He moved through the search room with the easy confidence of someone who had been in uncomfortable situations before and had decided not to be unsettled by them.
He was cuffed.
He looked at the room and looked at Harolin.
Then he wore a slow smile
Harolin looked at him with his jaw set and his expression doing nothing.
"What are you doing here, Dominic," Harolin said.
