Chapter 2: You don’t Get to ask

Ryan didn’t expect to see Daniel again so soon after the mixer.

He definitely didn’t expect him to show up outside his dorm at 9:32 the next morning, leaning against the brick wall like he was part of the architecture.

“Morning,” Daniel said, without looking up from his phone.

Ryan stopped on the steps, clutching a half-eaten apple and his backpack. “Are you stalking me now?”

Daniel tucked his phone away. “You missed your first mentorship follow-up.”

Ryan frowned. “It’s Saturday.”

“Exactly. You had nothing better to do.”

Ryan considered turning around and going right back inside. But instead, he descended the rest of the steps and walked past Daniel.

“I was going to get coffee,” he said. “Alone.”

Daniel fell in step beside him. “Good. I like coffee.”

“I didn’t say you were invited.”

“You didn’t say I wasn’t.”

Ryan glanced sideways. “This how you make friends? You just attach yourself to people until they give up resisting?”

“No,” Daniel said casually. “This is how I keep people from falling through the cracks.”

They walked in silence for a bit, the kind that wasn’t quite comfortable but wasn’t hostile either. Just two people trying not to say too much.

The small café off campus was quiet, with a few students inside and a wall of windows that let in weak autumn sunlight. Ryan ordered black coffee and sat by the window. Daniel followed suit.

For a while, they just sat. No questions. No jabs.

Then Daniel ruined it.

“Was he like that before?”

Ryan blinked. “Who?”

Daniel gave him a look. “Jake. Was he always that… intense?”

Ryan stiffened. “You don’t get to ask that.”

“Someone should.”

“Well, it’s not you.”

Daniel nodded once. “Fair enough.”

Another silence. This one colder.

Ryan wrapped his hands around the paper cup like it could shield him from something. He hated how the question cracked something open inside him. Not because it was cruel — but because it wasn’t. It was too calm. Too direct. And way too close to the truth he’d spent months trying to silence.

“He wasn’t like that,” Ryan said finally, voice low. “At first.”

Daniel looked up, but didn’t speak.

“He was funny. Charming. Knew how to say the right things.” Ryan swallowed. “And when things started to feel off, I kept thinking it was just stress. That I was being dramatic. Overreacting.”

Daniel was quiet. Still.

“It wasn’t until he stopped letting me hang out with certain people. Started texting non-stop. Making comments about how I dressed. Who I smiled at.” Ryan looked out the window. “By the time I realized what was happening, I didn’t know how to leave. Every time I tried, he’d—”

He stopped himself.

Daniel didn’t push. Just sat there.

Eventually, Ryan laughed bitterly. “This is weird. You and me. Talking like this.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Daniel said. “Unless you want it to.”

Ryan looked at him. “What do you want?”

Daniel hesitated. Just for a second.

“Right now?” he said. “For you to stay safe. And to stop flinching when someone gives a damn.”

Ryan didn’t respond. He couldn’t.

Because that sentence did something to him he wasn’t ready to admit.

Later, when they left the café, the air was colder.

Ryan adjusted his hoodie and shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Do you always play the hero?” he asked.

Daniel glanced at him. “I don’t play anything.”

“That’s not what people say.”

“People don’t know me.”

“And I do?”

Daniel’s eyes locked with his. There was something there — not softness exactly, but depth. A stillness that hinted at something darker, more complex.

“You’re trying to,” Daniel said. “Even if you don’t want to.”

Ryan looked away first.

The next week blurred together. Classes. Assignments. Avoiding Jake.

He hadn’t seen him since the mixer, but the absence didn’t feel like peace. It felt like pressure building behind a closed door. He knew Jake. He didn’t disappear. He waited.

Daniel texted him twice  once to ask about his classes, once to remind him about a mentorship group check-in. Ryan answered both, short and polite.

But on Thursday, Ryan got a note in his dorm mailbox. No return name. Just his own, scrawled in Jake’s handwriting.

“You’re making this harder than it needs to be.

If we talk, I know we can fix it.

You still belong to me.

 J.”

Ryan crumpled the paper immediately. He didn’t even think.

But his hands were shaking again.

He didn’t go to class that afternoon.

Instead, he wandered the campus until he ended up behind the old music building, where no one ever seemed to go. There was a fountain there  dry and cracked, long since shut down and he sat on the edge of it, knees pulled up, hoodie over his head.

He didn’t hear Daniel approach.

“You okay?” Daniel asked quietly.

Ryan didn’t look up. “I’m fine.”

“You suck at lying.”

Ryan exhaled. “Why do you care, Daniel?”

“Because I don’t like watching people drown when I have a rope.”

Ryan looked at him then. “That’s not your job.”

“I never said it was.”

They sat there, just breathing in the quiet. A crow passed overhead. The sun dipped lower. A storm brewing in the clouds.

Ryan’s voice was soft when he said, “If I fall apart, I won’t know how to fix myself again.”

Daniel’s answer came without hesitation.

“Then I’ll hold you together until you can.”

Ryan stared at him. No clever comeback. No sarcasm.

Because for the first time in a long time… someone meant it.