May hierarchy be damned!
The first lecture ended at half past ten and Ciel walked out of the hall, his chin up, his shoulder high like he owned the corridor.
He didn't, of course but the point was;
He needed to make sure nobody saw him for who he really was.
The campus was louder between lectures, students filing out of buildings, congregating on steps, the particular noise of a hundred conversations happening at once. Ciel moved through it with his bag on one shoulder and his mind already three steps ahead, cataloguing exits and routes the way his father had taught him;
'Know every room. Know every door. Never let a space surprise you.'
He was heading for the cafeteria. And underneath his composure, Ciel was conducting a low-grade internal assessment that he'd been running since he stepped onto this campus that morning.
The injection was holding. Probably. He'd administered it himself before dawn, same suppressant formula he'd been using for years and logically he knew it was holding.
But there were alphas everywhere on this campus. That was simply the reality of Vale University, where money attracted money and designation followed money with embarrassing predictability. He'd came across at least four of them in his first lecture alone.
None of them had looked at him twice, still, his jaw tightened slightly as he rounded the corner toward the main building, somehow doubting if the dose wouldn't wear off before he finished the activities on campus.
"Stand still and hold." His father's voice surfaced firmly in his memory.
Ciel exhaled, rolled his shoulders once then kept walking.
"Fuck those alphas anyway," he thought, and almost smiled.
~~~~~
He heard it before he understood it.
A shift in the noise ahead: not silence exactly. Conversations dropping off, footsteps changing direction...
Ciel slowed.
The cafeteria entrance was twenty metres ahead. Students were moving away from it sharply, eyes down, shoulders hung lowly with fear.
"Those darn alphas," Ciel mumbled under his breath as he realized what was happening.
Someone powerful was in the premises... An Alpha.
And since Ciel had decided he wasn't going to be an omega in this university, he kept his chin up and kept walking.
The center of attraction came out of the cafeteria entrance just as Ciel reached it.
Four men. Then two more. Then a space around a single figure that told him, without any further information required, exactly where the centre of gravity was.
Ciel's eyes found that figure. And everything in his body stopped.
He knew that face.
He knew it the way you know a scar, not because you look at it often but because it is written somewhere beneath conscious thought, in the part of the brain that keeps the things that hurt you.
Two years and it was still precise- the way the man moved like he had never once in his life had to accommodate anyone else's presence.
Those dark eyes were still as cold as that night while they simply watched Ciel's life crumbling down as he knew it- his father begging for mercy, his mother weeping on her knees.
Ryiot Vantrell...
"That son of a bitch!" The words formed in Ciel's head first and then, before he had made any decision about them, they were in his chest and rising.
And he did not stop walking.
One of the men clocked him first - big, broad, with the flat professional attention of someone paid to notice things. He stepped forward sharply.
"Hey. Where do you think you're going?" The man, Jayden demanded.
Ciel looked at him blankly then said firmly;
"The cafeteria, obviously."
Something flickered in the man's expression. He had expected a different response; the dropped gaze, the half-step back, the instinctive deference. He got none of those things.
"You don't seem to understand who you're standing in front of." the man said, and there was something almost patient about it, like he was explaining something to an ignorant child.
Ciel looked at the hand on his path, back on the man's face then past him at the figure who had stopped walking and was now, Ciel registered with coldness, looking directly at him.
He let out a dry chuckle which sounded just like a scoff then replied;
"No and I don't care."
The silence that followed was heavy.
Then Ryiot moved and just like the way his name was being pronounced, it seemed riot followed him.
He came forward the way everything about him seemed to operate - without urgency, with the absolute certainty of a man who had never once arrived somewhere and found it unwilling to receive him.
The crowd thinned further without instruction. His men adjusted their positions automatically. And then he was close - closer than Ciel had calculated for and the full atmospheric weight of his presence arrived like pressure dropping before a storm.
"Who are you in the world of nobody?" The voice was quiet - quiet in the way that compelled the surrounding air to hold still so nothing would be missed.
Ciel felt his pulse kick once against his ribs. He acknowledged it and let it go instantly.
"No, I won't tremble in this bastard's presence." He told himself inwardly and held the gaze. He had to tilt his chin slightly to do it - the height difference was what it was, but he held it without adjusting anything else.
"Somebody, obviously. A human being. Same as you." Ciel retorted.
"Well. Kind of different, actually. Since I'm not a pompous, self-important bastard who expects people to clear the pavement like he's God's gift to the ground he walks on." He added.
The sharp intake of breath from Jayden's direction was genuinely satisfying to Ciel.
Ryiot went very still.
Something moved through his expression, not just rage, though rage was there. The specific look of a person whose internal system has encountered a variable it has no existing category for and doesn't yet know how to process.
Jayden's hand moved toward Ciel's arm, to grab him so he would understand nobody disrespect Ryiot Vantrell. However, Ryiot stopped him. No word, just two fingers raised and Jayden withdrew.
"Aren't you afraid of me?" Ryiot asked the 18-year-old defiant man before him.
The question was almost curious. Like the concept had presented itself to him for the first time and he was genuinely interested in the answer.
Ciel looked at him, holding the gaze of the man he had spent two years hating in every quiet moment he could not fill with something else. Every night studying by a lamp in a room that was too cold. Every time he had passed his father's chair, still in the corner of a storage unit somewhere, because he could not afford to keep it and could not bring himself to throw it away.
He looked at him and felt nothing break. That was the thing about carrying something for two years. Eventually it became something you could hold without bleeding.
"Why would I be afraid of you?" Ciel demanded, his nose scrunching up in disgust.
Ryiot's jaw tightened. The air between them changed - compressed, charged, the particular atmospheric shift of something about to happen that could not be taken back.
He didn't move yet.
Neither did Ciel.
They stood there, two metres apart, with half the campus watching from what it had collectively decided was a safe distance. Ciel could feel the weight of all that held breath.
He could also feel something emanating from Ryiot that he couldn't fully name, not just anger. Something rawer underneath the anger.
He didn't examine it. He just kept his chin up.
"Aren't you afraid of what I could do to you?" Ryiot finally spoke again and a laugh escaped Ciel's throat, sounding so mocking.
"What new thing can you do other than the terrible, evil ones you have been doing?" Ciel asked sharply.
When the question landed, it hit Ryiot like a challenge.
What new thing could he do?
Nobody had ever disrespected Ryiot like that and continued breathing.
Ryiot's eyes moved over him slowly in assessment. It was the gaze of a man solving a problem, working through variables, arriving at a conclusion with the same unhurried certainty he brought to everything else.
After a tensed, suffocating moment
Ryiot moved, not with aggression. He closed the distance between them slowly, until he was close enough that Ciel had to use everything in his power to hold his ground so his knees wouldn't buckle. Close enough that the weight of his pheromones pressed at the edges of Ciel's awareness.
Then he stopped.
And he looked at Ciel. Not the quick assessment of someone deciding how to handle a situation. Something longer, careful. His eyes moved over Ciel's face, dropped briefly, returned. Like he was reading something written in a language he almost recognised but couldn't quite place.
Then he did something Ciel didn't expect.
He leaned in slightly, just enough and inhaled.
Ciel's entire body locked, his breath sizing in fear although he wasn't going to acknowledge that fear.
After a few seconds of inhaling, Ryiot straightened. The unreadable expression had acquired something new in it. Not understanding exactly. The edge of understanding. The look of a man who has noticed a door and not yet decided whether to open it.
"There's something about you," Ryiot said quietly. Almost to himself. "Something wrong."
He said *wrong* the way someone says *interesting.*
"I don't know what it is yet." His eyes stayed on Ciel's face. Level and patient. "But I'll figure it out. And when I do..." He paused, letting the corner of his mouth curved in a cold smile.
"I'll show you exactly what I'm capable of. In ways that will bring you to your knees."
The threat landed in the space between them and sat there.
Ciel stared at him for one long moment.
Then he let out a scoff, of absolute contempt, turned on his heel, and walked away.
The crowd parted for him. Stunned. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. Half of them looked at Ciel like he had just done something either extraordinarily brave or extraordinarily stupid and weren't sure which.
Nobody had ever walked away from Ryiot Vantrell.
Jayden stepped forward instinctively, to drag him back for punishment.
"Leave him." Ryiot ordered quietly and Jayden stopped.
Ryiot watched Ciel's retreating back, his expression had settled back into its usual unreadable stillness. But his eyes stayed on the space where Ciel had been for a moment longer than necessary.
And Jayden, having been around Ryiot for years knew that look and silence so well. It was Ryiot saying;
"Ah, I will enjoy making that nobody bleed."
Without actually saying it!