Page 9 of Damian & Jun: Episodes 5-8
Jun grinned. Like that was a threat.
Jun
Damian set a pile of clothes on the bed beside Jun. What times was it? Jun stretched and yawned, craning his head. “You really need a window. I have no idea when to wake up.”
“Probably. Okay, yes.” Damian looked around and shrugged. “It’s about eleven.”
“I should get up.” Jun pushed himself away from the mattress carefully and probed his stomach. It was tender, but he could move more than he would have thought he could. The bruising was the worst part now. No more sharp shooting pains.
Damian offered help off the bed.
Jun waved toward the bathroom. “I’ll just clean up and…”
“There’s food in the kitchen for breakfast.”
The Residency was quiet. Not even Artemis was around. Jun tiptoed into the guest room and used the en suite bathroom where all his toiletries were already set out, showered quickly, and went through his skin-care routine. Damian had asked him what he used, and somehow since last night, almost all of it had showed up on the counter.
Damian had picked out another set of clothes Jun was more than happy to wear: loose-legged cargo pants in black with a belt and a color-block chunky sweater in blue and black. The tank top that went under it was tight and red. He combed his hair, slipped the black pouch over his head, hid it under the sweater, then checked himself in the mirror.
The bruises on his face were vibrant and dark, and the stitches were uglier now than they had been. Perhaps he could comb his hair the other way and hide the worst of it or wear a face mask.
No.
He would not hide this.
Jun turned away from the mirror and left the bathroom, going in search of Damian and food.
Over a breakfast of croissants and scrambled eggs, Damian offered a list of potential activities for the day. “We could hang out here, rest, play games, or I could take you out, see the city, or… I could fill in more of those holes for you.”
“How?”
Damian glanced down at his food. For once, he wasn’t meeting Jun’s eyes. “I could take you back to my old neighborhood, to where I grew up.”
What? There was no way he was doing anything else, not when Damian had put himself on the table like that.
“That. We’re doing that.”
Damian glanced up and then back down at his food again, stirring his coffee even though there didn’t seem to be anything in it. “You sure? It’s rough.”
“I want to know anything about you that you’re willing to share.”
“And what if I want to see where you grew up? Would you let me fly us out there?”
Jun paused. Owe Damian more?
Damian shook his head. “Sorry, table that. Don’t worry about it.”
“You want to see where I grew up?”
“If you’re willing. Have you ever been back to Seattle?
“Twice, on tour, but never saw anything I recognized. It was all about the performance and then sleeping and then the airport. I think we visited a museum and helped open an exhibit, but…I might be confusing that with a different city.”
“Travel too much and it blurs together.”
“If you’re doing one performance every night and hitting up a new city every two or three days, yes. I mean, we had breaks, but it was usually four days on a week with three days of travel and prep.”
“I know. Rough.”
