Roommates With Benefits [BL]

Damien took his time before answering.

His hands were still holding mine, one thumb resting gently on the bandage he had just secured.

For a few seconds, he stared at me, as if my question had dug up something inside him he wasn’t ready to face tonight.

The silence stretched on long enough that I began to wonder if I should’ve waited until morning or at least until my hand stopped hurting before bringing up something so weighty.

The apartment was quiet; I could hear the quiet buzz of the refrigerator a bit behind us and the distant rush of a car far below our windows.

The usual sounds of our dorm felt strangely removed, almost too calm for the conversation hanging in the air.

I watched him closely, noting how his shoulders remained tense and his gaze stayed somewhere beyond my face.

Damien looked down at my hand, then he let out a slow breath. ”Yes.”

That single word seemed to carry more weight than it had any right to.

I frowned. ”Yes, you knew?”

”I suspected.”

There was something different about his tone now, softer than usual and I realized this wasn’t going to be one of those chats where he threw out a few carefully crafted sentences and expected me to piece together the last six years of his life.

I leaned back in my chair, giving him space, even though a part of me wanted to lean in closer. ”How long?”

His eyes drifted toward the dark window. ”Long enough.”

”That’s a classic Damien answer.”

He met my gaze.

I offered him a small, tired smile. ”Sorry. Go on.”

For a brief moment, a flicker of amusement crossed his face before it faded again, allowing him to speak at his own pace.

”We grew up around each other,” he said. ”Our families were rivals long before we even realized what that meant. Business dealings, investments, social circles... there was always some reason for competition.”

I nodded slowly; that part didn’t surprise me.

Damien had mentioned his family’s rivalry with the Abernathys before, always treating it like a piece of furniture awkwardly left in the middle of the room that everyone just learned to navigate around.

Hearing him articulate it made it feel much less abstract, like a map that had previously been hidden from me.

”Jeremy and I were different.”

His fingers slightly adjusted around mine.

”When we were kids, we didn’t care about all that. We saw each other at parties, family get-togethers, boarding school. Eventually, we became friends.”

I raised an eyebrow, ”You were actually friends like he said you were?”

”For a while.”

”That’s somehow more unsettling than everything else.”

Damien shot me a look that was both unimpressed and a little resigned. ”I’m serious, Sunshine.”

”So am I.”

He sighed, the sound carrying the weariness of someone who knew this conversation was inevitable but still wasn’t fully prepared.

I squeezed his hand gently. ”Sorry.”

”You aren’t.”

”No, but I’m trying to be supportive.”

”You could start by not insulting my childhood.”

”I’ll add it to my to-do list.”

His mouth twitched, and for a moment, the tension in his shoulders eased just enough for me to feel like I hadn’t completely wrecked the mood.

Then his expression turned serious again.

”We were close,” he continued. ”Closer than most people realized.”

I listened quietly, knowing each word came at a cost.

Hearing Damien talk about his childhood instinctively made me slow down. He wasn’t the kind of person who easily shared parts of himself.

Even after everything we’d experienced together, there were still sides of him that felt locked away behind doors I hadn’t known existed.

Tonight, one of those doors seemed to be opening, and I felt a sudden urge to remain still, so I wouldn’t accidentally slam it shut again.

”I told him things I’d never told anyone else.” His voice dropped and I didn’t interrupt.”I was about fourteen when I realized I liked boys.”

My chest tightened at the raw honesty of it.

”Jeremy was the first person I confided in.”

I watched him closely, noting how his eyes were fixed on the table, as if it held answers he still hadn’t uncovered.

Damien’s gaze stayed on the table. ”I trusted him enough to tell him something like that especially with the way my parents are.”

Those words carried a heavy significance, settling in a tight knot under my ribs.

”He didn’t react badly, he didn’t laugh, and he didn’t tell anyone. At the time, I thought I was lucky to have a friend who didn’t see me as some god or expected a lot from him. I could just be myself.”

He paused, and the silence that followed felt like it belonged to a younger version of him I had never met. ”Then things changed.”

I could almost see the memories flit across his face, even if he kept his expression in check, like someone who had mastered the art of hiding certain things.

”Jeremy became attached to me in a way that wasn’t...really normal anymore. At first, I didn’t notice. He just wanted to hang out more, which seemed natural since we were friends. But then he got upset if I spent time with anyone else.”

”Like jealous?”

”Yes.”

I frowned, trying to picture a teenage Damien dealing with that kind of intensity. It was an unexpectedly painful image. ”And he was fourteen, too?”

”Fourteen, fifteen.”

”Jesus.”

Damien nodded once. ”He’d ask where I’d been, who I was with, why I hadn’t replied to his messages. If I didn’t tell him something, he’d get angry.”

I felt my stomach churn at the thought of what that must’ve felt like back then.

”And you were just supposed to fucking accept that?”

”I didn’t.” His answer was immediate, firm enough for me to believe him without question.

”I began pulling away.” He glanced down at our clasped hands, as if that connection helped support the rest of his story. ”That made things worse.”

I swallowed hard. ”How?”

”He started inserting himself into everything.” Damien’s jaw tightened. ”My friends, my schedule, my interests. He wanted to know everything I was doing, and if I made a decision without him, he’d take it personally.”

I stared at him, the puzzle pieces from the last few months falling into unsettling place.

Little things started to make sense, Jeremy’s questions, how he always seemed to know more than he should, his tendency to intrude on conversations, and that strange familiarity whenever Damien’s name was mentioned.

And those tutoring sessions. God.

I gently rubbed my thumb across Damien’s knuckles, needing that small motion to keep me centered.

”He wanted to become you...in a twisted way due to his feelings,” I murmured.

Damien met my gaze. ”Sometimes it felt like that.”

He leaned back in his chair, his eyes distant, making the kitchen feel larger than it was.

”He began liking the same things I did, dressing similarly, echoing things I said. It got uncomfortable.”

”That’s fucking creepy.”

”It was.”

”Like, really creepy.”

”I know.”

”I just want it noted for the record.”

Damien’s mouth twitched. ”Noted.”

I offered a faint smile, but it vanished almost as quickly as the gravity of what he was describing settled back in.

”Did you ever tell him you didn’t feel comfortable with that?”

”Yes.” he said, ”I told him more than once.”

”And he didn’t try to change his behavior?”

”No.”

The quiet response made my stomach twist, fitting every version of Jeremy I had encountered so far.

I thought about Jeremy standing in that penthouse, laughing through blood, talking about Damien as though he were something denied to him instead of a human being capable of making his own choices.

It all made too much sense now.

The kind of clarity that arrived late and still managed to deepen the hurt.

No wonder why Jeremy thought Damien just got up and abandoned him without a word and wanted to punish him for it, the guy was fucking weird.

”The family rivalry probably didn’t help,” I said.

”It made things worse.” Damien’s voice hardened.

”Our families already loathed each other. Once I cut off contact with Jeremy, our parents used it as another reason to attack one another.”

”So you just... stayed away?”

”I tried.”

”And he never got over it?”

”No.”

Damien looked at me, and the honesty in his expression made his admission feel heavier than any grand speech could.

”He never accepted that I chose to leave.”

I felt something ache softly in my chest at the simplicity of it. ”Is that why you hated him so much?”

”I didn’t hate him at first.”