darker_london | Trouble - Ryan / Jocelin

"What don't you like about Idris?"

The lights were out in the bedroom. Ryan was lying on Jocelin's arm, and had been nearing sleep with Jocelin spoke to him. He sniffed. Having missed the first words of the question for lack of paying attention, Ryan felt confused.

"What?"

"You don't like Idris."

Ryan screwed up his face and shifted in the bed. "I don't," he admitted.

"Why?"

Groaning, Ryan tilted his head to look at Jocelin. "We have to talk about this now?"

Only scant few parts of Jocelin's face were lit from the light coming in around the curtains of the bedroom. Enough for Ryan to be able to tell that Jocelin was looking back at him, and his expression was, of course, fairly neutral. Ryan looked away.

"You went to the photo shoot he requested." He didn't physically turn away from Jocelin, but his eyes absently searched out the window, rather than looking at Jocelin as they spoke.

"I did."

Ryan bit down his instinctive remark. When he'd been in his relationship with Stephie, he'd had some say on actions he didn't like Stephie taking. He would have at least been able to inform Stephie that the person she was seeing was an angel. He had no such ability here.

With his attention elsewhere, Ryan was taken by surprise when Jocelin's fingers caught his jaw and slowly brought Ryan's attention back to him.

"What are you thinking?" he asked, probing through dim light into Ryan's eyes.

Ryan lowered his eyelids reflexively. Obviously Jocelin had no powers of mind reading, but with certain looks and certain tones of voice, it was sometimes difficult to remember that.

"I'm thinking I shouldn't have brought you, Renee and Justine to the photography club." He would have tried to shift away again, but Jocelin was stronger, and held him in place.

"Why?"

Ryan narrowed his eyes at Jocelin. "Look, you're going to keep on going anyway. I don't need to tell you everything I think."

It was the closest he'd come to raising his voice to Jocelin, and it was a fault Ryan grudgingly lay at Idris' unknowing feet. Jocelin's fingers relinquished Ryan's jaw, and Ryan looked away.

Neither one of them spoke for moments. Any ability Ryan had had to sleep at the beginning of this conversation had been thoroughly stripped from him now. With no sound or movement from Jocelin, Ryan thought that Jocelin could be quite happily asleep now. Sure, the other man showed more emotion to him than to others, but Ryan was more aware than anyone how heartless Jocelin could appear at times.

Deciding that it was more than he wanted to deal with in bed beside the other man, especially when he had his own bedroom in the house, Ryan pushed the covers from him.

Before he could raise up from the bed, Jocelin's hand clamped around his arm. From the edge of the bed, Ryan looked back at him, and saw that Jocelin was half sitting.

"Don't leave."

Ryan looked at Jocelin's form, revealed from the lack of covers. "Why?" he asked, bitterly parodying the single word that Jocelin had asked him twice tonight.

"I don't want you to."

It was an admission from Jocelin, more of an admission than the other man wanted from the look in his eyes. Ryan waited for Jocelin to let go of him, and allow Ryan to make his own decision now that he'd spoken. He wasn't sure. A part of him still thought it would be better spending the remainder of the night in his own room, and sort out the rest of it tomorrow. But Jocelin didn't let go. In fact, he sat up straighter in the bed, and moved closer to Ryan. When their lips touched, Ryan softened, then exhaled and shook his head slightly.

"No..." He was the one to break the contact of their lips.

Jocelin looked at him, searching Ryan's eyes again, and obviously having no better luck at seeing beneath them this time than last time. But he stayed silent, waiting for Ryan to say something.

"Tomorrow. We'll talk tomorrow." Ryan touched light fingers to Jocelin's hand on his arm. If the other man didn't want to let him go, then Ryan wasn't going to be going anywhere.

But Jocelin did let go. And as he did, Ryan lifted his eyes from that hand to Jocelin's eyes. His lips parted, but he caught himself just before the reflective 'I love you' statement. They'd never said that to each other, in the full course of their friendship, and it didn't seem the moment to start now.

Instead, Ryan nodded his head to Jocelin, and moved the rest of the way out of the bed. He grabbed a pair of his pants off the bedroom floor, just in case Justine was about, before padding to his own room and sleeping there.