Right Back After This

Season 2, Episode 9

He never actually sleeps. There just comes a time when he hears a gentle knock on his door, and he knows to open his eyes to the sight of Colian leaning into the room. The edge of his mouth twitches, but with a rookie glance towards the camera in Riz's room, he keeps a straight face. He catches Riz's eye, jerks his head towards the hallway, and then towards Riz's ensuite, his shower. Riz sits up slowly, feigning a slight grogginess, and nods.

It's with a heavy heart that he stands and makes his way to the bathroom. He keeps his cardigan close around him, paying more attention to the light weight inside his pocket than he's ever paid anything else in his life. He looks at himself in the mirror, the slight dishevelment of his hair; he misses when it was wild. He's never going to be used to this.

He crouches down, below the height of the cameras, and opens the cabinet under the sink. Paranoia surrounds him, suffocating- what if somehow there's a back entrance to these cabinets, and someone can reach inside and take this? What if there is a camera down here, after all this time, and he's just fucking screwed?

He takes a deep breath and slides the phone out of his pocket, switching it with his toothbrush and toothpaste. He's always followed a routine that isn't this, and he wonders as he stares at his tired, unfamiliar reflection what people will make of it. Someone will notice- it's the nature of obsession- but as long as nobody can come up with a reason why his routine changed, and it's down to a whim, he's safe.

He spits toothpaste into the sink and stares at it for a moment. Every movement of his has to be calculated. The exhaustion threatens to choke him.

He takes a deep breath, though, and carries on.

He showers thinking about the phone, as if by keeping his mind on it, it can't disappear. At the very least he can be sure he won't forget about it.

He gets dressed in the provided clothes- a loose shirt that glimmers like the sea, if the sea were a pale pink, and tight pants it'll be difficult to hide the phone in. He crouches down in front of the sink and doesn't have time to think as he slides the phone into the waistband and lets the shirt cover it. It's flat, probably designed to be hidden like this. The plastic is cold, against the sensitive skin on the inside of his hip, and he imagines it like Kiel's heart is hiding there, like a pearl, like a promise.

He forces himself to smile at the mirror as he runs hair cream through his curls. Time moves too quickly for him to still feel bad, despite the fact that the worst lies ahead. The people he's smiling at don't know that.

He follows the path he's always followed to the morning meetings, and it's like wading through ankle-deep mud to the mines, except today's the day the mud's been oddly disturbed; today's the day it became a battleground infested with landmines.

Amello smirks at him outside the meeting room. Riz doesn't think he could explain why he doesn't smile back if he wanted to.

They're filed in the same as ever, and the clicking of his jaw is not the slight relief it's been before. At least he can grit his teeth, drop the smile, and let his shoulders tense up, in here- and Shia is the only person to look with pity, the only person to mistake this for still being about Ares, somehow. As if Ares had that much to offer.

Paloma's eyes are lidded. Sonja is anxiously tapping her feet. Dahlia isn't here, but her presence looms over the entire room. Production assistants haven't jumped on them yet, and it's oddly silent. Amello looks over his shoulder, sensing that perhaps him and the other idols are the only ones who don't know that something is wrong. He's perceptive. But not perceptive enough.

"Sorry I'm late!" comes a voice so much softer than Riz was expecting- maybe he forgot how it sounded over the phone, or perhaps he recognised the razorblades so quickly that he forgot they were hidden in softness. "I was on the other side of the galaxy. My apologies!"