by Riley, A. M.
found a kid in the river with a dime bag up his ass last week,” he said to Peter.
Peter's head lifted and his gaze met Stan's. “You think he has junk in him
somewhere?”
“ME hadn't done a preliminary, but since he thought COD was pretty
clear, he was leaving it until today.” He was talking about my autopsy.
“Hey! I'm right here!” I yelled at them both. “And I think I'd know if I'd
swallowed a balloon.”
Stan looked at me like I was the lying scumbag I knew I was. “Did you?”
“No! Jesus Christ. Somebody killed me, man.”
One of Stan's thick gray eyebrows went up. Peter put out his peacemaking
hand. “Okay, we'll look through all of this, prepare a statement, and when I
come in in the morning it'll all be straightened out.”
“What will our friend here be doing?”
“Cooling my heels,” I said, sulking. “I can't go out in the sun.”
“What?” said Stan.
I turned away and opened the refrigerator, standing there looking at food I
couldn't eat. “Hey, Peter,” I called out. “You're out of Tabasco sauce.”
“Don't mind him,” I heard Peter say, low, to Stan. “The past twenty-four
hours have been rough.”
“What do you care?” said Stan. “That's what I don't get.”
I slammed the refrigerator door as hard as I could.
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Stan still wanted to haul me in to explain my inconvenient survival to the
chief of police, but Peter convinced him that me being dead might lull
Armante's killers into a false sense of security. “And if someone has a death
sentence on Adam or any of his informants, we need to buy time before they
find out he's still alive. Give us a day,” he said.
Stan finally left.
Later, Peter was reading the files and he came across the thing I'd
forgotten about. Trust me, if I'd remembered I would have dug it out of there
and flushed it or something before he could see it. As it was I was completely
unprepared, watching the sports highlights. Damned Lakers need a better
defense and that's the truth. Peter made a noise and I looked over and he had a
page from my personnel file in one hand and his other hand was covering his
mouth.
Oh. Yeah.
He set down the paper. His eyes were tight at the corners and I half
expected him to come across the footstool at me. “Hey,” I said. “It was either
you or some cat hospital.”
Who was I going to leave everything to? My second cousin I haven't seen
since I was ten?
Peter covered his eyes. God, I can't do anything right. I even fuck up being
dead.
“I'm sorry,” I said for the second time in my life. Afterlife. He shook his
head.
“Can I get you another beer?” I asked.
“No,” he said, his voice kind of husky.
I didn't know what the fuck to do. I finally opted for dealing with it here
and now and I sat down next to him on the sofa.
He dropped his hand and turned his head so that I couldn't see his face.
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“I should have left it all to the police benevolent fund,” I said. “Except I
don't know what they'd do with my collection of porn.”
He was silent.
“There's that Colton Ford shower scene in there. I'd hate to see that
wasted.”
I heard something like a soft laugh and I dared to lay my arm over his
shoulder. I knew it was okay when he eased himself into my embrace. We sat
that way for awhile. The news was doing a recap, but they seemed to have
already forgotten me. Thank Christ.
I leaned over and smelled Peter's hair. His head turned slightly. “I don't
think,” I said.
“Sure you do. You just don't think straight.”
He'd turned toward me. I touched his face with my hand. “Nobody else
would give a shit if I died,” I said.
His lashes flickered; eyelids lowered to hide whatever his eyes would have
told me. “Not fair.”
“No, it isn't. I haven't been. I fucked up. You should tell me off.” Peter's
beard was showing and my thumb found the nap of it. I liked the prickly
texture, on top of the soft skin at the nape of his neck. Little goose pimples rose
on his skin as I stroked it. “Go ahead.”
“You're a dick,” he said softly.
“I am.”
He was breathing harder. I could feel his skin warming under my fingers. I
thought it was time to stop worrying about Freeway and Ozone and even Stan.
“Let's go to bed,” I said.
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Chapter Ten
The first time I had sex with Peter was a month into our stint as partners
in Homicide. We'd just closed a case, had a light load pending, and decided to
knock off early and share a couple drinks at a sports bar down on Main Street,
in Venice Beach.
“I live close to here,” he'd said. “Don't try to drive home.” So we'd walked
back to his place.
Now I figured at the time that my secret was pretty secure. You described
your stereotypical fairy and I was not the one you pointed to as an example. So
I was pretty damned surprised when he turned his deadbolt, hung up his
jacket, threw down his keys, grabbed my chin, and planted a big, wet, slobbery
kiss on my mouth.
Surprised and pleased, I should say.
We'd been having sex off and on for over a decade since. Not that I was
counting.
Peter's exactly what floats my boat. Hard and muscled and covered with
golden hair. Like a tough teddy bear with dangerous blue eyes, and a tight-
lipped mouth, sure of what it wanted and how to get it.
Right now that mouth was down around my navel, drawing up a mark on
my belly.
“Hey, can you slow down?” I asked him, and he looked up, surprised.
See, something was different. Something had changed in the past twenty-
four hours that I couldn't put my finger on. But I wanted to see his face. I
wanted to hear him breathing in my ear while we did it.
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Now he crawled up next to me, a playful smile on his face. “You feeling
okay?”
“Yeah.” I let my fingers fall down the slope of muscle on his shoulder. I
could hear his heart speeding up.
Maybe that was part of it. I'd never before known that when I looked at
Peter, his heart sped up. I'd never been able to feel his body heat up when I
touched him. I'd had no fucking idea Peter was so affected by me and it was
making me feel a little strange. Not bad strange, just strange strange. More
aware.
I touched his face and his eyes darkened. His lips parted and I planted a
soft kiss on them. I encircled his wrist with my thumb and forefinger. His wrist
was so thick, my fingertips couldn't quite touch each other. I remembered that
on the shooting range, he could sometimes fire one-handed. Now he raised that
hand and it really amazed me how a hand so strong could touch me so gently.
His fingers traced my lip and I kissed them. His mouth followed. This
tough little mouth that withheld so much from strangers, softe
ned and pressed
against mine. His tongue was hungry.
We rolled. His hand was gentle on my cock, drawing it out of its shell, so
to speak, until my hips followed his rhythm, trying to push into his touch.
He laughed softly and said, “You want me, big boy?”
“Oh yeah.”
He was languid beneath me. We found a rhythm and it was slow and good
until the end when I was suddenly desperate to get deeper inside him.
Later, I got up and sat and watched him sleep.
Peter always slept like an old dog by the fire. On his side, legs twitching as
he moaned and whimpered in his sleep. Chasing those bad guys in his dreams,
I guess. And I wondered, for the first time in all this time, if he ever dreamed of
me?
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I slipped off the watch Stan had returned to me and turned it over. The
engraved words were thin and spidery. “Always. Peter.” I remembered when
he'd given it to me. It hadn't been a special occasion, or anything. Just a night
when I stayed after sex and we were watching the news recap.
“Hey.” He came back into the living room and set two beers on the table.
Next to mine, an oblong jeweler's box. “I keep forgetting to give you this.”
I picked it up. “What is it?”
He'd strolled into the hallway and his voice came from near the bathroom.
“Open it.”
By the time he'd come back into the living room, I had it on my wrist.
“So.” He looked worried. Rubbing at the back of his neck. “Is it okay?”
“What? The watch? It's perfect, Peter. Thank you.”
Still he remained standing.
“Peter. I love it. Would you sit down?”
A flush saturated his face and he nodded. “Yeah. Okay.” He sat. After a
minute I threw my arm over his shoulders and felt him ease himself into the
embrace. I could feel the heat in my face as well.
Later, I'd dragged him back in the bedroom for a second go-round. We lay in
the tangle of sheets, his head resting on my chest. “You can stay if you want,” he
said.
I could feel my heart start beating hard, my respiration increase. His head
moved as if he heard and felt the change in me. “Or not,” he said.
“Yeah, I've got an early call in the Palisades,” I said, closing my eyes and
trying to elicit my happy place. My nonsuffocating, nontrapped place. “It would
be easier if I stayed here.”
Peter's entire body relaxed again. “Okay.”
That was about as romantic as we'd ever become, but I knew, didn't I? The
only reason he'd never said anything was because we both knew I'd have a
fucking heart attack if he did.
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So I could pretend that I'd been shocked when Peter had made that
drunken statement the other night, but I'd be bullshitting myself.
Peter moaned in his sleep and rolled to his stomach. He was still naked.
Muscled shoulders, freckled back, the curve of that perfect ass.
“You got something you need to talk out?” He'd just shown up that morning,
something Peter never ever did. Even worse, I had the suspicion that he'd been
watching my apartment for a few weeks.
“Christ, no.” I put some distance between us, moving around my bike to
check what looked like a new drop of oil there on the pavement. “Like I told you,
I've been busy, Peter. Nothing's bothering me, nothing's wrong. I'm clean,” I said
before he could even open his mouth to ask it.
Seated on the lip of a brick wall outside my apartment complex. His arms
folded and he's got that pout he gets when he's thinking hard. Gives me a
glimpse of Peter as a kid.
He can't put into words why he's bothered, but I know why. I have been
avoiding him. Every time I see him my head's in a mess afterward. So I've just
been staying away.
He spoke something unintelligible in his sleep and his hand moved,
fingers curving, as if reaching for something, his arm stretched upward,
muscles flexing from biceps to shoulder and across his back. God, he's
beautiful.
I couldn't stand it anymore and I went into the kitchen and got myself a
beer. In the refrigerator, the remaining container of blood peeked out from
beneath the romaine, and I started thinking about it. About blood, and a
distributor named Ozone, and Freeway.
About the manner of Freeway's death. And mine.
According to the clock on Peter's microwave, it was two p.m. The sun
directly overhead in a cloudless sky intense enough to heat up Peter's shaded
and air-conditioned apartment. The same bright sky would hang over the Los
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97
Angeles morgue, of course. I sat down on the kitchen chair and racked my
memory for the layout of the morgue and what a reanimated corpse might do if
he found himself trapped there during daylight hours.
Assuming, of course, that I wasn't dreaming all of this. I nursed my beer
and set that very real possibility aside for the moment and considered all of the
facts that had been presented.
It was a lot like when I was seventeen and I sat on the roof of my father's
trailer and contemplated a series of facts leading to an obvious conclusion.
1) Every time Jackie Spence, the quarterback on our team, leaned over in
the locker room I popped a boner.
2) Despite being first string on that team, I hadn't done anything with a
girl but get blown.
3) I didn't WANT to do anything with a girl, though I wouldn't have minded
getting blown by Jackie Spence.
4) And need we even mention what I fantasized about while jerking off?
Truthfully, the current series of facts was easier for me to swallow.
1) I'd bled to death in a warehouse. Peter had seen me bleed to death.
2) I'd woken in a morgue.
3) I craved blood.
4) I seemed able to perform athletically far beyond my previous
capabilities.
5) I caught on fire in the sunlight and then I healed at breathtaking speed.
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We'd laughed about it, Peter and I, but what else do you do when your
friend's a vampire? It was a fucking cliché, is what it was. Jeeves, bring me my
cape. Shit.
Now, I don't want you to think I'm saying that figuring out I'm queer was
like discovering I'm the Evil Dead. Damn, I can imagine the letters already.
From the politically correct and the religious right. Of course, if you're the
religious right and you're reading this story, I have to wonder.
But I digress, as they say.
So, assuming I'm dead, but not dead. Assuming Freeway was dead, but
not dead, same as me. He and I had some unfinished business to discuss and
he might be, for all I know, naked and confused and running amok in a
building full of Los Angeles PD officials.
Fuck and fuck. If Freeway was still up and moving, I needed to talk to him
before the LAPD got their hands on him. There were things that Freeway and I
shared. Things he might believe were official and on the books but which
weren't, exactly.
And then there was the blood. I seemed to be able to cruise for about
twenty
-four hours on one quart. Of course, if it were anything like food, I
should factor in unusual activity, or excessive strain.
That gave me about a day to track down a source.
I went out to the dining area and perused the files Stan had left. Noting
every address and location on every sheet. Even the dead, because that seemed
not a given of late. Then I used the prepaid cell again and called another
number from memory.
“Yeah?” The connection was choppy and full of wind. He was probably on
his bike.
“It's Adam.”
“El Demonio!” Albert cried cheerily. The Fiend was Albert's pet name for
me. Fuck knew why.
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“Albert, I need a ride.”
A curse. Albert had a distinctive accent. A little Swiss, a lot Portuguese.
His curses were almost sexy. “You've got shit timing, 'mano.”
Sunset was around six p.m. of late. “At seven p.m. In front of the fish
place at the pier.”
Another curse. Then, “Got it.” He disconnected.
I spent the next couple of hours taking notes from the murder book in tiny
writing in my own little code that I kept on a folded-up paper in my wallet.
By the time Peter woke up, it was late afternoon and I had a plan.
* * * * *
Peter woke up hard.
This could have had something to do with the fact that I had my face in
his crotch, where I was nuzzling and snorting like a big pig after truffles. His
cock had been waking up for about five minutes and then I knew his head had
woken because he muttered and shifted, spreading his legs wider, his hand
landing on the back of my head, heavy and demanding.
I was happy to oblige.
I don't give head, generally, when I'm out cruising random tricks. Mostly
because I don't have to and I'm a selfish prick. But Peter's cock was made for
my mouth. Thick and warm and somehow singularly Peter. Its length pulsed
against my tongue. I swallowed convulsively around the head and he made a
helpless noise. God, I loved making him do that.
I could feel the muscles in his thighs tighten against my ears, his fingers
