Page 46 of Damian & Jun, Episodes 9-12
“Does he like me?”
“He respects you. I’m not sure he knows you well enough to like you. But all the work you’ve put into being who you are. What you went through to get here with me. What you’ve survived. He respects that.”
Jun rolled that around in his head. “He’s hard to read.”
“Émeric likes it that way. You watch people too, Jun.”
“I’m just hoping to figure them out before shit blows up in my face.”
“Émeric has almost twenty years on you. Give it two more decades, you might be the same. Were you never afraid of Richard?”
Jun shook his head against Damian’s chest. “At first, I mean, he was your dom. And I didn’t know what he wanted. But then…”
Jun shrugged as much as he could, wedged into Damian’s side and half encased in the mattress. “Richard makes sense in my head. He’s straightforward.”
“And Collin?”
Jun couldn’t help it. He giggled. “I know he’s smart and confident and nearly killed his grandfather. But…I want to pet him.”
“That makes four of us. You sure you don’t want to shower?”
Jun squeezed himself against Damian. “No. Tired.”
Friday passed in a blur. The best parts of it were helping Kimbo and Rue with their homework, getting Habibi to smile at him, and feeling the slight ache in his ass where Damian had taken him. Howser had decided to hate him and tore up his homework pages the instant Jun asked him to finish them. For just an instant, the idea of tearing into the preteen the way his own instructors had berated him as a trainee had crossed his mind. Instead, he’d turned on his heel and left the boy to his own devices. It wasn’t good or even right. A kid like Howser couldn’t be expected to thrive going back and forth from school to a hotel room and back again, even with breaks in the pool downstairs. He texted Damian about it.
Damian texted back.
Jun left him alone after that. He made sure to put food on the desk in the room Howser pretty much had to himself and stuck to looking after the younger kids. Damian made it over by eight in the evening and took a turn with Habibi.
“I smell like a baby and not in the good way,” Jun said, pulling his shirt away from his skin.
Damian shook his head. “Go shower. I’ll make sure no one bangs on the door.”
Of course, Habibi chose to have a massive diaper blowout while Jun was getting clean. Damian’s outfit was a loss.
Jun came out, surveyed the damage, and shook his head. “Trade places.”
Damian looked up, eyes red. “Please.”
They really couldn’t keep doing this. Something had to give soon. He didn’t know who was going to crack first, the kids or him and Damian.
Once Damian was clean and in a pair of sweats, he and Jun ate a microwaved meal in the third hotel room with Habibi asleep on the bed between them. Damian caught Jun up on his day. Thaddeus Kramer had not complied with the DNA order. The judge had issued a warrant. Thaddeus had not been at his house the two times officers had dropped by to serve it. Dalia had been home and yelled at the cops, telling them it was all Damian’s fault that Thaddeus had to leave. They assumed he was on the run. Dalia had a criminal court date set three weeks out for assault and battery against Armada. Damian had met with a family court lawyer, and it looked like they were going to be able to get a court date five weeks out for custody orders.
Jun stared at Damian over that piece of information. “Five weeks? The kids can’t do this for five more weeks.”
“It’s the first opening, and the court wants to do everything at once. If Dalia goes to jail, then it’s a different custody hearing than if she’s free to be the custodial parent.”
Jun hung his head. “Da, you can’t do this for five more weeks. We can’t do this for five more weeks.”
“I know. I’m looking into options. Welwick is pushing me to rent a house near their schools and move in there with them.”
Jun shook his head. The very idea of Damian giving up The Residency, what he had of it after his job, to live in the neighborhood he’d sacrificed so much to escape, sat wrong.
“There had to be another way.”
“I can tell Welwick I’m out. He could put them into foster care. Statistically, the outcomes for kids who are placed with non-family members are much worse.”
“Who’s to say Dalia won’t have more kids? When does this end? You can’t just absorb your family’s shit.”
