Now that the name and face had clicked into place somewhere deep in Rafayal’s borrowed memory, Ren found himself staring up at the man pinning him against the wall with an entirely different kind of dread settling into his stomach, the kind that came from finally understanding exactly how badly he’d just miscalculated.
’Shit,’ he thought, working hard to keep his expression neutral while his brain scrambled through every fragment of the plot he could actually remember. ’Okay, so that’s him. That’s the second male lead. The one with the whole hidden subplot I couldn’t for the life of me piece together. Fantastic. Wonderful. And my introduction to this extremely important character was using him as a jealousy prop in a hallway, incredible start, really setting the tone here.’
The immediate, overwhelming instinct that followed was simple. Get away. Figure out the rest later, somewhere private, somewhere he could actually think without those pale unsettling eyes tracking every flicker of realization crossing his face.
Ren shifted his weight slightly, testing the grip still loose but firm around his wrists, and when it didn’t tighten immediately he took that as his opening, easing free with a small, practiced twist and stepping back with what he hoped looked like casual, unbothered confidence instead of the barely controlled panic actually running underneath it.
He didn’t get more than half a step before a hand closed around his arm again, gentler this time but no less immovable, and he found himself turned back around to face those same pale eyes, now sharpened with something that looked distinctly like amusement at the attempt.
"Where do you think you’re going," the man said, tone light, almost pleasant, which somehow made it worse than if he’d sounded angry.
Ren reached up and scratched the back of his head, a nervous, entirely human gesture that felt completely out of place on Rafayal’s usually composed face, buying himself half a second to come up with something that sounded better than the truth. "I’ve, uh, actually got some stuff I need to take care of," he said, aiming for breezy and landing somewhere closer to obviously lying. "Command wants me for questioning about the whole diagnostic thing earlier, you probably heard about that, big mess, very time-sensitive, really should get going before they send someone looking for me."
"And you think I’d just let you walk off after that little performance," the man said, and something in his voice dropped lower, quieter, more deliberate, the amusement curling into something with a sharper edge underneath it.
"No, that’s, that’s not what I meant," Ren said quickly, and immediately hated how fast the words came out, how obviously they gave away exactly how rattled he actually was underneath the deflection. ’Smooth,’ he thought, wincing internally. ’Very smooth. Very convincing. You’ve really sold him on the idea that you’re not currently panicking on the inside.’
The man studied him for a long moment, head tilted slightly, that same unnerving stillness settling over his features again, and Ren found himself holding his breath without meaning to, acutely aware of how close they were still standing, of the fact that this particular stranger had already proven he had zero hesitation about closing that distance further whenever he felt like it.
"You used me to make someone jealous," the man said finally, and it wasn’t a question, it was a statement delivered with the flat certainty of someone who’d already worked out every angle of the situation faster than Ren had managed to. "Then the second it worked, you tried to disappear before I could ask a single question about it. That’s an interesting way to treat someone you just publicly claimed as yours in front of half the outpost, don’t you think?"
"I didn’t claim you as anything, it was a spur of the moment thing, I panicked and you were just standing there," Ren said, which was true and also, judging by the look on the man’s face, not remotely the defense he’d hoped it would be.
"Convenient," the man said. "I happened to be standing there. Right after your diagnostic array broke trying to measure whatever’s actually running through you. Right after your engagement to the Grand Marshal ended. Right in the one hallway you happened to storm down while you weren’t paying attention to where you were going." He leaned in slightly, and Ren forced himself not to flinch back. "I don’t believe much in convenient."
Ren’s stomach dropped straight through the floor. ’Damnit,’ he thought, mind racing through every possible way this could get worse from here. ’Great, wonderful, he thinks I planned this, or he thinks something else planned this, either way this conversation has officially stopped being about me being an idiot in a hallway and started being about something a lot bigger, and I have absolutely no idea what that something is because the book conveniently never gave me the details I actually need right now.’
"I promise you, nothing about the last hour of my life has been remotely planned," Ren said, and for once he let genuine exasperation bleed into his voice instead of trying to disguise it, because at this point the truth felt like the only card he had left worth playing. "I woke up yesterday engaged to a man who agreed to end things faster than I could finish the sentence, broke a piece of military equipment today by existing too hard in front of an entire hall of strangers, and somewhere in between that I apparently ran headfirst into whatever you are and made an extremely questionable decision under pressure. If there’s a grand scheme happening here, genuinely, nobody looped me in on it."
Something in the man’s expression shifted at that, the sharp edge softening just slightly into something more contemplative, like Ren’s obvious, unpolished honesty had actually thrown him off more than a smoother lie would have. He released Ren’s arm slowly, though he didn’t step back, still close enough that Ren had to tip his head to keep eye contact.
"You don’t know who I am," the man said, and it wasn’t quite a question either, more like he was testing the theory out loud to see how it landed.
Ren hesitated, weighing exactly how much truth to hand over to a man he’d known for less than ten minutes who’d already pinned him to two different walls in that time. "I have a bad feeling I’m supposed to know," he admitted finally, "and an even worse feeling that whatever I’m supposed to know matters a lot more than I currently understand."
The man’s mouth curved again, slower this time, something almost genuine flickering behind the sharpness for half a second before it smoothed back into that same unreadable composure Ren was rapidly learning seemed to be standard issue for every dangerous man in this particular story. "Reven," he said finally, like he’d decided Ren’s answer had earned him at least that much. "Since you apparently don’t have that filed away anywhere useful. And you’re going to want to remember it, because I meant what I said. I don’t let things go."
’I think I just got myself into a real problem,’ Ren thought, watching Reven finally step back and give him room to breathe properly for the first time since the wall, the weight of that name settling into his chest like a stone dropped into still water, dread and recognition tangling together into something he didn’t have a name for yet. ’A real, actual, this-is-going-to-follow-me-for-the-rest-of-this-story kind of problem.’