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Richard woke up at about 5:39am in the morning.

He was first aware that his alarm hadn't gone off, yet, as he stared at the glowing green numbers. This happened sometimes, waking up just minutes before his alarm actually went off at six, but twenty minutes early was a new record for him. The numbers ticked over to 5:40, and he heaved a sigh. He debated getting up now, as opposed to trying to catch twenty more minutes of shut-eye. There was a strong chance he'd fall asleep just in time to wake back up, and then he'd be groggy as a result. That was probably not a good idea. He didn't want to be driving to the studio groggy, trying to get the studio open groggy, trying to teach groggy... He wouldn't be at his best, and then what would be the point of coming in? The students and his mother paid him to be at his best. He was awake now, as much as he didn't want to be. He really should just get up, get dressed, brush his teeth and hair, and get going.

Oh but 5:41 was a positively heinous time to be awake.

If he rolled over and curled up to Ignacio for a bit, could he maybe resist falling asleep and just.. enjoy a few minutes of closeness? Ignacio was probably asleep, but-- Oh, wait, no he wasn't. It was a mix of the absence of Ignacio next to him and the light from the bathroom down the hall eking under the door that clued Richard into Ignacio already being awake. In what had started to become a reflex, Richard reached out to pat the bed next to him. ... It was still warm. Ignacio must've only just gotten up. Yawning, Richard decided he might as well, also, and reached out to shut off the alarm as the clock ticked over to 5:42. Was that water running? Ignacio was brushing his teeth? That was weird. He didn't have to get up for a few hours, yet. Why was he already up and getting ready?

Like the impulse to check the temperature of the sheets next to him, the nagging doubts in the back of his mind were also starting to become a reflex.

He got up and stretched, the sounds of his joints popping and releasing obscured by the sound of running water and Ignacio rummaging around--getting dressed, Richard supposed. He sighed, running a hand through his hair, half out of nerves and half to get it out of his face. Richard had a cold, nauseous feeling in his gut, but he was going to have to do something about it. He couldn't just keep going back to sleep forever. He had told himself he could trust Ignacio, and he still believed that, but... well, it was getting harder to convince himself.

The gnawing guilt that he would even think of distrusting Ignacio was even harder to ignore. All the same, Richard took a deep breath and padded out toward the bathroom just as Ignacio finished up. He watched him flick the light off, watched him walk towards the stairs that led down and out. Richard didn't want to do this. He wanted to go back to bed and repeat to himself that nothing was happening, that he was being stupid.

Oh, but was he?

Because of where their bedroom doorway was relative to the stairs, relative to the upstairs bathroom, Richard got there first, standing between Ignacio and the stairs. What was he going to say? What could he say? What, in the world, could he possibly say that wouldn't make this everything he was afraid of?

"You're up early."

Great, Richard. Just great.

"No, it doesn't."

The firmness in his own voice startled Richard, but he kept a handle on things, stood in front of Ignacio and refused to be moved. No, there was no early morning shoot. He knew that, because just yesterday they had been talking about Richard being jealous that Ignacio got to sleep in. There was no early morning shoot, and probably no scene that took place just after sunrise. The confirmation that Ignacio was lying to him settled cold and hard in the pit of his stomach. The coldness leeched out to his chest, to his arms and legs, and he could feel the blood starting to rush in his ears. He knew his face was getting warm, stealing the warmth from the rest of him. He had known, or at least suspected, before that Ignacio was lying to him, but had decided that he would give him the benefit of the doubt. He trusted Ignacio. Ignacio wouldn't lie to him unless there was a good reason. He could trust Ignacio. Ignacio wouldn't lie to him unless something compelled him to, because in all the years they'd known each other, that Ignacio had been in Richard's house, he had not made lying a habit.

Had he?

Richard shook his head, trying to banish that thought. As angry as he was--because oh, he was angry--he wasn't going to doubt everything he had ever been told. That was excessive. That was an overreaction. He was angry, but he was also hurt, and he wasn't going to let that make him say or do something rash, something he would later regret. So he took a long, deep, grounding breath, realizing then that his fingernails had been biting into his palms and releasing curled fingers gone stiff with tension. Tension had bled into his back, into his shoulders, and he could feel it. He could even feel it behind his eyes. He closed his eyes, but only for a moment, afraid then that if he closed them too long, Ignacio would be gone when he opened them.

A small part of him worried that Ignacio wouldn't come back.

"You're lying to me." Richard was amazed at how steady his voice was when he didn't feel steady at all. He almost wished it hadn't been steady, wished it displayed less of the anger and more of the concern, more of the 'why?'. He took another deep breath, and this one was less steady. This one rattled a little bit. His arms and legs were tingling now, and he realised that he wasn't breathing as regularly as he needed to. He needed to calm down. There was nothing yet that proved anything, that definitively said something was happening that would confirm Richard's fears.

He could trust Ignacio. He knew he could.

Oh, but could he? He had already lied to him, already taken advantage of how easy it was to lie to Richard. Richard would believe him, had believed him, would have always believed him. In some ways, that hurt more than the rest of it. If Ignacio was going to be dishonest... could he at least have been honest about it? Another deep breath, and Richard leaned on where the railing for the upstairs met the bannisters for the stairs going down. If Ignacio went downstairs, he'd have to nearly push Richard down with him to do it.

He could trust Ignacio. He knew he could.

"What's really going on?"

Richard didn’t want to be doing this. Of all the things in the world, this was high on the list of things Richard least wanted to do. He wanted to believe Ignacio, was tempted to believe him, to apologise, say he must’ve misheard or misunderstood him yesterday, and go back to bed. But the part of him that sat angry and hurt saw Ignacio shift uncomfortably, heard the uncharacteristic quietness in Ignacio’s voice. That part of him saw in Ignacio’s disquiet a confession. It took more effort than Richard would ever admit to keep that knot from spilling out through his voice into words that he would never, ever be able to take back.

“No, you don’t,” was what he said, instead, flinching a bit and looking away as he took yet another deep breath. How many deep breaths was he going to take? How long was a veneer of fragile calm going to last? “You want to go.” The hand on the railing was trembling, just a bit, and Richard noticed with a detached sense of curiosity that it wasn’t his anger causing it. What had he done? What hadn’t he done? He reminded himself, as the blood continued to pound in his ears, that Ignacio had come home hurt sometimes, that that didn’t fit, that it had to be something else.

What, then? And why wouldn’t Ignacio come to him with something that serious? Richard had washed the smudges off of the front door, had heard Ignacio turn fitfully in his sleep, just as he had once seen the way Ignacio’s eyes used to look through him, not at him. He had held Ignacio after nightmares that caused him to wake up thrashing and sobbing. He had insisted to his parents that the strange young man who went near catatonic at times just needed help, wasn’t dangerous. It was one of the finest lies of his life, one of the only times he’d even pulled one off, when he told them he knew Ignacio from school. But he’d had a gut feeling he wasn’t going to ignore, and so he’d insisted.

Just like now, he insisted. What could it be that Richard hadn’t already seen? What did Ignacio need to hide from him, if it were something important? He had talked Ignacio back from flashbacks Richard didn’t, couldn’t understand. Why now would there be something Ignacio couldn’t tell him?

“You need to be honest with me.”

’Can I believe that?’ Richard wasn’t sure if he’d said it aloud. It echoed in his head loud enough, and it was at the very least obvious in the way he shifted, the way one of his arms folded across the front of his body for that hand to rub the other one. He wanted to believe it. He wanted to believe that his fears were for naught, that it was something else, but what, then? Yes, it was what Richard was thinking, and he wanted to grab onto that assurance with both hands. He could hear the plea in Ignacio’s voice and see the desperation in his eyes. It was an effort not to just step aside.

He could trust Ignacio. He knew he could.

Oh, but Ignacio knew he was gullible at times.

“I’m not stupid.” Richard’s voice was smaller than he’d like, lacking the fire of earlier. He couldn’t even be angry, now. Just... Sad. ‘I’m gullible, but I’m not stupid,’ was what underlay his words. It was out in the open, now. Why couldn’t Ignacio just be honest with him? Why keep insisting? Why keep trying to take advantage of the fact that, under most circumstances, Richard would have believed him without question? Richard had been believing him without question.

Ignacio had come home injured, though. That, Richard supposed, had been when his ready acceptance had started to wobble. Sure, they weren’t serious injuries, but they were still injuries. What late-night run would leave Ignacio scuffed up and bruised? Though... what liason would, either? He had no answer for that, and perhaps not having any answer was the most maddening.

He looked away entirely, now, toward one of the bedroom doors. Richard’s body language was small, unhappy. Not cheating? “Then what?”

'I'm trying to save your life.'

Richard didn't know if it was the sheer unexpectedness of the response or the way Ignacio's voice cracked--and with it, Richard's resolve--but he visibly deflated. Trying to save his life? How? From what? Richard wasn't in any danger. He was a dance instructor, for crying out loud! His wasn't exactly on the list of top 100 most dangerous occupations. The most danger Richard faced throughout his day was getting whacked in the shin or face or spilling tea on himself in the morning when he was half asleep. He tripped over the little kids, sometimes, in the children's beginner classes, because they were five or six and constantly underfoot. He supposed there was the occasional weird shadow during his nightly jogs, but nothing had ever come of it. How would Ignacio even know about those, anyway? They took different routes when out jogging at the same time.

For all the weird happenings in the city, Richard had never felt like he was in any pressing trouble. He and his family would have probably relocated by now if that were the case. No, sometimes weird things just happened. This was a big city, after all, and there was always an explanation for even the weirdest goings-on. And none of those explanations had ever made Richard feel like his life was personally in danger. So why did Ignacio seem to think it was?

...Unless Ignacio was lying to him, again.

Richard didn't want to believe that, didn't even want to think it. That crack in Ignacio's voice had seemed real, had felt real, but... Ignacio was an actor. It was his job to make his audience feel how the script needed them to feel. Was Ignacio just reciting a mental script to him? Was Richard just the audience? No, that couldn't be it. It couldn't. That was just Richard being paranoid, extrapolating dishonesty where there wasn't any. Right? That crack in Ignacio's voice... Richard refused to believe it was an act. But accepting it as reality meant that he had to react to it as such.

He just turned to the side, leaning heavily against the railing at the top of the stairs with an equally heavy sigh of defeat. Ignacio could get past him if he wanted. Richard had to get ready for work, anyway. The intermediate class was starting on learning the samba today, and he couldn't be late when they were all so excited. He didn't have the energy, now, to keep insisting to Ignacio.

Maybe he was cheating on Richard, maybe he wasn't. Maybe he was actually, somehow, from something, trying to save Richard's life. Richard doubted that, not looking Ignacio in the eye as he turned to walk back to their bedroom. It wasn't like Richard was some undercover head of state in one of the mystery novels he still flipped through now and then when he had the time. He was, ultimately, no one any particular importance, not that kind of importance anyway. He was a dance instructor named Richard Arra Bell, nothing more and nothing less. Dance instructors didn't need that kind of protection. Especially not dance instructors who were going to be late to their first class.

Oh, but his heart had grabbed onto that excuse with both hands and didn't want to let go. It might be a lie, it might not, but Richard didn't have it in him to fight about it anymore.

The brush of Ignacio's fingers against his arm as he passed almost broke Richard's resolve. It took all of his willpower to keep walking, but there was no denying the way he slightly hesitated when it happened. The soft apology that followed made his breath catch almost imperceptibly. There was a lump in his throat that wouldn't've let him reply anyway, and so that hesitation lasted only a moment. He had to get to the studio. He had a class waiting on him. They were excited, and he had a responsibility to them, no matter how much the crack in Ignacio's voice begged him to turn around and look at him.

'I love you.'

Richard paused then, hand resting on the door that led to their bedroom, ready to push it back open so he could go in, so he could get dressed and ready for work. His vision was starting to swim as he looked past the door and into their room, to the bed with rumpled covers, to Ignacio's dirty clothing more or less where it needed to be except for the occasional stray sock here and there. He could hear the stairs creaking as Ignacio ran down them, then the front door closing. He leaned his forehead against the door before finally pushing it back open and walking into their bedroom.

"I love you, too."

'Hey mom can you cover my 8 o' clock? Not feeling well. I'll be there for the 10 o'clock.'

He could trust Ignacio. He knew he could.