Roommates With Benefits [BL]

For three days, life almost felt normal.

I say almost because apparently my life had developed a permanent allergy to the word normal, but those three days came surprisingly close.

Jeremy was gone and the university had stopped feeling like a place where someone might be watching me from across the courtyard, and I could walk from one building to another without checking every reflective window like I was auditioning for a low-budget spy movie.

I hadn’t received any strange messages, hadn’t found any suspicious photographs, and hadn’t had to deal with anyone connected to the Abernathys.

Even the silence in Preston Hall felt different. It wasn’t the tense silence we’d grown used to, where every unfamiliar sound outside the door made me wonder if something else had gone wrong.

It was simply the quiet of an apartment at the end of a long day, the quiet that was supposed to make a person feel safe.

I was beginning to enjoy it.

Which, naturally, should have been my first warning.

Oh...shit.

My days had settled into a ridiculous routine that involved classes, the bar, hospital visits, studying whenever I could squeeze it in, and attempting to remember that food was something I was supposed to consume rather than merely purchase and forget about in a grocery bag. My father was still in the hospital. Still unconscious.

Still lying there beneath the soft white sheets while machines quietly monitored every change in his condition. The doctors continued to tell me that there was no simple timeline for when he might wake up, and I had learned to hate the phrase we’ll have to wait and see with an intensity that probably wasn’t medically reasonable.

Still, I visited him whenever I could. Even when he couldn’t answer me, I talked to him.

Sometimes I told him about school. Sometimes I complained about work. Sometimes I told him things I knew he couldn’t hear, like how expensive the hospital cafeteria was or how I had recently discovered that one of the nurses had apparently developed a crush on a doctor and was about as subtle about it as a marching band. I didn’t know whether any of it reached him.

I just knew I couldn’t stand the thought of him lying there in silence while everyone else went on living. So I kept talking, filling the sterile room with whatever ordinary details I could drag out of the day.

That afternoon, after classes, I went to the hospital before heading home. I’d brought a small bag of groceries with me when I left campus because I’d been determined to prove that I was capable of making responsible adult decisions. The groceries consisted of eggs, bread, pasta, vegetables, cereal, milk, and a bag of cookies that had somehow ended up in my basket despite not being on my list. I blamed capitalism. Or hunger. Probably both. The cookies had looked particularly persuasive under the fluorescent lights, and I had decided that future-me could deal with the nutritional consequences.

After spending a couple of hours beside my father’s bed, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest and listening to the soft mechanical sounds that had become background noise, I finally left the hospital when the evening had already settled over the city.

The sky outside was darkening, and the air had that cool bite that made me wish I had remembered to bring a jacket.

My phone buzzed while I was waiting for the bus. I glanced down, a message from Damien.

Damien😈💖: Are you coming home soon, my love?

I smiled at the screen, the small ordinary question landing softer than most of the messages I had received in the past month. Not the mention the "my love" that made me blush and my tummy flutter like a teenage girl.

God...I was really down bad.

Me: On my way.

A few seconds later, another message appeared.

Damien😈💖:Good.

That was it. Normally, Damien’s short messages didn’t bother me. He had never been the type to send paragraphs of nonsense throughout the day. He could probably communicate his entire emotional state with three words and a raised eyebrow if society allowed it.

Still, something about the message felt different, a little tighter around the edges than usual. I stared at the screen for another second before putting my phone away.

Maybe I was imagining it. I’d been doing that a lot lately. After everything that had happened, I couldn’t exactly blame my brain for treating every unusual tone as the beginning of another disaster.

I got home nearly an hour later, carrying the grocery bag in one hand and my backpack over the other shoulder. By the time I reached Preston Hall, my feet were aching, my shoulders were sore, and I was hungry enough to consider eating one of the vegetables raw. That was when I knew things had gotten serious. I unlocked the door and stepped inside.

The apartment was warm and softly lit, but Damien wasn’t in his usual place at the dining table with his laptop open. Instead, he was sitting on the couch. He wasn’t studying. He wasn’t reading.

He wasn’t even looking at his phone. He was just sitting there with his elbows resting against his knees, his hands loosely clasped together while he stared at the floor.

I stopped halfway through taking off my coat. Something was wrong. I knew it immediately. There were certain expressions Damien wore so rarely that I had learned to recognize them almost instinctively.

This was one of them. His usual composure was still there, technically, but there were cracks in it...small ones though. His shoulders were tense, his jaw was tight, and there was a distant look in his eyes that told me he had been sitting there thinking about something for a long time.

I put the groceries on the kitchen counter with more care than the bag probably deserved and turned back toward him.

"Okay," I said slowly. "Either you murdered someone, or you’re about to tell me something I don’t want to hear."

His eyes lifted toward me. "Neither."

"That answer somehow made it worse."

He leaned back against the couch, the movement careful, as if he were trying not to startle whatever conversation was about to happen. "You had a long day."

"I did."

"You should eat."

"I will."

I stared at him. He stared back. I narrowed my eyes, already feeling the familiar suspicion that usually preceded one of his carefully measured revelations. "What happened?"

"Nothing."

I let out a disbelieving laugh that came out sharper than I intended. "Damien."

"It’s been a long day."

"Yes, I know. I was there for my long day, and somehow yours looks like it wants to murder me."

His mouth barely moved, but I could tell he was trying not to smile, which only confirmed that whatever was coming was not going to be pleasant.

I walked over and sat beside him, close enough that our knees almost touched. "What’s wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong."

"You’re doing that thing."

"What thing?"

"The thing where you lie because you think you’re protecting me, which is pretty fucking dumb because I can handle shit just fine."

He went quiet. That was all the confirmation I needed. I turned toward him fully. "Damien."

He sighed softly, the sound carrying more weight than most people’s full explanations. "I didn’t want to worry you."

My stomach tightened. "That sentence has never been followed by anything good."

"I know."

"So tell me."

He looked at me for several seconds before finally speaking, as if he were still weighing how much of the truth to hand over. "The family lawyers found a way and froze the remaining accounts of mine."

I stared at him. For a moment, I didn’t understand. The words sat there between us, plain and heavy. "The... what?"

"The accounts I still had access to, my personal account."

What the fuck?!

I sat there, processing his words, feeling the earlier sense of almost-normal start to crack around the edges. "All of them?"

"Most."

"And they can just do that?"

"They have legal grounds to restrict access while the succession dispute is being handled."

"That’s bullshit!"

"It’s complicated."

"No, complicated is when you accidentally buy two identical shirts and have to decide whether you’re keeping both." I gestured toward him, the motion a little too sharp. "This is financial warfare!"

His expression softened slightly, the way it sometimes did when he realized I was already further into the spiral than he had wanted. "They’re making it clear that they’re serious."

I felt my temper beginning to rise, hot and familiar. "Your parents are so fucking unbelievable!"

"Oliver—"

"No, seriously, what the hell is wrong with them?" I stood up and started pacing across the living room, the grocery bag on the counter suddenly looking absurdly ordinary next to the conversation we were having. "They already took the inheritance, they already threatened me, they got me fired, they tried to buy me off. Your stupid fucking dad literally put his hands on you, and now they’re freezing whatever money you still have?!"

Damien watched me quietly, his eyes tracking my path without interrupting. "They’re trying to force me to reconsider."

"Reconsider what?!"

"You."

I stopped walking. The word sat between us, simple and ugly. Something hot twisted inside my chest. I laughed bitterly, the sound short and tired. "Right, of course."

"Oliver."

"No, I’m fine."

"You aren’t."

"Yes, I’m absolutely not fine!" My voice had risen before I could stop it, I turned toward him. "They can’t keep doing this to you. They can’t just decide that because you’re their son, they own your entire life!"

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