Harolin said nothing after that question.
The room stayed quiet. Just the hum of the AC unit and the distant sounds of the facility at night and Harolin's breath against the back of Ruaan's neck, warm and slightly uneven in a way that it hadn't been before.
Ruaan lay completely still.
He could feel it against his lower back. Still there. Still very present and not going anywhere.
He stared at the wall in front of him and remembered that he was going to fall asleep immediately but this situation happened.
He thought about how thirty minutes ago he had been pressed against a tile wall with a cafeteria knife pointed at him and how his body had apparently processed all of that stress and arrived at a completely different conclusion about what it wanted to do with the evening.
His face was hot.
He was tired. He was genuinely tired. His shoulder hurt and his neck hurt and he had been awake too long and he had every reason in the world to close his eyes and go to sleep.
