The Muscle

by Amy Lane

  There were always at least five.

  Sometimes a struggling campaign—usually of a corrupt public official—would get an influx of much-needed cash about a week after the delivery. Maybe a tech company would suddenly announce a breakthrough, often in a field that wasn’t anywhere near its wheelhouse. A fairly wealthy or influential person in the community would suddenly go broke with no explanation, while at the same time, a nobody would win the lottery. A power company, perhaps, would go immediately bankrupt—rolling blackouts and rate increases happened almost like clockwork after the delivery. Someone who’d been in the papers for a very public, usually heinous, crime would be exonerated by anything from a corruption of the jury pool to the dropping of charges. And sometimes—particularly in places with lots of tech companies, like the Bay Area or Chicago itself—there would be one of those huge, terrible hacks in which a company hemorrhaged people’s addresses.

  All within a week or two of a delivery.

  “Oh my God,” Lucius murmured. “That’s…. My company alone didn’t provide all those dates.”

  “No,” Felix agreed. “The pattern we’re looking at here shows several sources. He’s got a hacker on staff who is giving someone the go codes to get into the tech or credit-card companies, for example. He has more than one tech company with a weasel inside to funnel R and D information. Many of the political allies look like incumbents—these are contacts his predecessor cultivated and he’s keeping on staff. The criminals getting the get-out-of-jail card are often….” He caught his breath and looked at Danny. “They’re younger sons of rich men,” Felix said, as though surprised at the connection.

  “Shit,” Danny said succinctly. “Oh, that makes so much sense. I’ll ask Gray if he can hunt that down for us. Excuse me a moment, yes?”

  Felix watched him go, eyebrows knit as though he was perplexed. “You know,” he said musingly, “Torrance Grayson was my friend first. I don’t even know how he does that.”

  There was a pause then, and Chuck was the one who drawled, “He’s Uncle Danny.”

  The laughter was strained, and it took Hunter a moment to realize why. They’d all been waiting for Grace to say it.

  He took a deep breath and looked reflexively to the stairway, but no Grace. Then Felix started talking again, and his attention was drawn back to the matter at hand. But inside he still ached a little; his stomach still burned with an emptiness that had nothing to do with the fifteen zillion oatmeal cookies he’d eaten to make one dancer/thief smile.

  Hallelujah

  GRACE LOOKED at the street sign and frowned. Where the fuck was he?

  “Woodward?” He shuddered. “What suburb am I in?”

  Josh’s parents lived outside of Glencoe, which was the mansion suburb outside of Chicago. He didn’t know if there was a Woodward Avenue in Highland Park. Great.

  His legs ached, because apparently he’d run himself to exhaustion. He was lost, and, thank you motherfucking Chicago, it was starting to rain.

  He looked around and saw row upon row of decent, happy family houses. Not mansions, like in Glencoe, but, well, they all had lawns, and all the lawns were well cared for. Great. He couldn’t even steal from these people.

  He was wearing yoga pants with a pocket in the thigh for his cell phone, and his thigh started to buzz.

  Unconsciously, he answered it, wondering how long he’d been wandering around on this warm and rainy night in the suburbs of Chicago.

  “You are worrying the shit out of me, dumbass,” Josh’s voice said, loud and clear. “Where the fuck are you?”

  “I have no idea,” Grace said, as lost as he’d ever been. “I…. Woodward and Aesop?”

  “Evanston,” Josh said, apparently without thinking. “Seriously? Grace, you are fuck-all miles away. You’ve been gone for two hours—have you been running all this time?”

  Grace tried to think about it, but his brain veered away from his sudden exit from the Salingers’ basement.

  “I guess,” he said. “Wow, I’m pretty fast. Think I could run marathons?”

  “Only if you have the patience to run with a herd of people in the same direction,” Josh said, his voice sounding weak. “Where exactly are you?”

  “The sidewalk,” Grace said. Glumly he looked around and didn’t see shelter anywhere—only people’s front porches. The houses here were decent-sized but not outrageous—someone would notice if he went to sit under someone’s porch to evade the rain. With a sigh, he sat down next to a stop sign and leaned against the pole, ignoring the fact that his ass was now as soaking wet as his hair.

  “On the corner of Woodward and Aesop,” Josh clarified.

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  “Well, stay there. Someone’s coming to get you.”

  “I don’t know why,” Grace muttered. “I mean, why would you bother?”

  “Because we love you, Dylan.”

  For the first time since he’d bolted out of the mansion, he felt the full weight of hurt crash onto him. “Gabriel didn’t. He left me to die.”

  “Yeah, but Gabriel was a fucking psychopath. You have actual friends now who wouldn’t leave you like that.”

  Grace swallowed, feeling the weight of this thing in his chest. “I haven’t told Hunter yet,” he whispered. “He told me about his dead boyfriend, and I didn’t tell him about almost killing myself because Gabriel Hu was a fucking psychopath. Why didn’t I do that?”

  “Because you’re afraid,” Josh said, his voice tender. “Because you’re embarrassed. It doesn’t matter. Tell him. Get it over with. He’ll understand.”

  “Understand what?” Grace asked bitterly. “Understand that I’m so fucked-up you can’t leave me unsupervised? Understand that I had all the fucking money and a big fucking house but the best I could do with that was… what? What am I? Some sort of mascot?”

  “Mascot?” Josh’s voice rose. “Have you even been to the same places I have? You’re our heart, you fucking moron! Without you, Danny would have gotten shut in an air vent two months ago. He could have died!”

  “That was the other way around,” Grace muttered. “He saved me.”

  “Yeah, but you were the one we sent in first because you’re that good. And it’s not only the skill or the cleverness. Don’t you get it? It’s… it’s that you love us so very purely, you will do anything for us. Do you think that goes unnoticed? Do you think we don’t see what a good person you are? That you use your skills to protect us and, well, to wreak vengeance on our enemies, which is sort of psycho but very much appreciated. You’re a good person, Grace—you’ve made me happy for years. I wouldn’t know what to do if you didn’t have my back. But I’m not your lover. You need to give yourself a chance to have one of those, to see if you can be the guy who can do all that.”

  Grace grunted, suddenly chilled. “What if I fail?” he asked, feeling stupid and wet and sad. “What if I can’t? What if I’m destined to sort of be a human cocksleeve for the rest of my life? If that’s my job?”

  Josh made a hurt sound over the phone, and Grace wondered who was driving while he made his way through the rain. “You are not a human cocksleeve,” he snapped. “And even if that was who you were, just sort of everybody’s one-night man, you’d still be my best friend. But I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think you will fail. I think you’ve grown up, Grace. I think you’re ready. I think if you talk to Hunter, be honest with him, let him care for you, you’ll be surprised. People surprise you all the time. Sometimes they’re super shitty, like Sergei Kadjic or that Jenkins guy, and sometimes they’re like Hunter, who was just walking by when he saw a mugger and decided to take the bad guy out. And sometimes they’re like you, who….” Josh took a breath that sounded like a sob. “Who steals the watch that my Uncle Danny gave me about once a year so you can pretend you had an Uncle Danny too. You do have an Uncle Danny, Grace. You have all of us. My mom will give you her damned emerald earrings if you take a deep breath and remember you’re loved.”

  �
��Not her emerald earrings,” Grace said, something weird and hiccuppy going on with his voice. “They’re the gold-and-pearl drops she wore when we graduated from high school.”

  “You changed it up,” Josh accused, but he didn’t sound mad.

  “The emerald ones were so pretty, but she stopped wearing them. I thought if I stole different earrings, she’d wear them again.”

  Josh’s laugh came out a little hysterical. “Of course.”

  Grace saw a car—the first one in the ten minutes since he’d answered Josh’s call—and stood up, staring into the night to see if it was Josh. “Is that you?”

  “Black SUV?” Josh asked.

  “Yeah—you’re slowing down. Never mind. Hunter’s car. Okay. Bye.”

  He signed off before Josh could answer and stood up, stretching because his muscles had chilled, even though the rain was warm. Josh slowed down and pulled up to the curb, and Grace walked stiffly to open the passenger door when the driver’s side door slammed, and Grace caught his breath, squinting inside the car.

  “What are you looking for?” Hunter demanded.

  “Josh! I thought he was looking for me.”

  “No, I was looking for you. Josh was tracking your phone.” Hunter’s voice was a rough growl, and he loomed over Grace, not so much with height but with anger and frustration.

  And, maybe, worry?

  “No,” Grace insisted. “I was sure it was Josh. Josh is the one who always comes looking for me.”

  “Augh!” Hunter pushed his hand through his hair, which slicked back from his head and hung in lank dreadlocks past his ears. “Why can’t I come looking for you too?”

  “Because I’m not worth it!” Grace argued back. “I’m stupid. Not even my parents cared about me. Why would you?”

  “Because I’m smarter than your parents!” Hunter retorted furiously, taking a step toward him and then another. Grace crossed his arms in front of himself, feeling naked.

  And cold.

  But mostly naked.

  “Baby,” Hunter murmured, venturing to put his hands on Grace’s biceps—not hard, but firm, like he was comforting, or keeping Grace from running away again. “Come on. Can we have this discussion in the car? Or I could take you home—”

  Grace closed his eyes and winced. “Everybody’s there,” he groaned. “Why would I want everybody to see what a mess I am?”

  “Come on, then,” Hunter murmured, wrapping his arms around Grace’s shoulders. “I still have my apartment in the city. I use it mostly to work out in now, so it might smell like dirty socks, but it’s got a couch and a place to sleep and a coffee maker.”

  “Food?” Grace asked, burying his face into Hunter’s chest and staying there, surrounded by him. “I could eat.”

  “We’ll get takeout on the way into the city,” Hunter promised him. “Anything you want. Just come on, baby. Let’s get out of the rain.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Grace muttered, but he didn’t move for a moment. In spite of promises of an apartment and a little bit of quiet and a giant cheeseburger and fries and a shake, the fact was, here, with Hunter’s arms around him, his heart pounding in his ears, was as safe as he thought he’d ever been.

  AN HOUR later, Grace was fed and showered, sitting in Hunter’s loft apartment right off the river, wrapped in a practical fleece blanket and watching the rain falling on the big windows. Hunter had made him coffee and then given him carte blanche to the cream and sugar, which was a mistake. Grace tended to like his coffee as slightly flavored sweet milk, but, well, a little warm.

  Still, it hit that place inside him, the caffeine having its usual atypical effect on him and calming him down instead of ramping him up. Josh had assured him this was because he had untreated ADHD, but Grace had tuned him out after that, so he could never figure out why that meant coffee made him sleepy.

  But it was working its magic on him now, and when Hunter emerged, dressed in navy blue sweats and a white T-shirt, Grace snuggled farther into the slightly battered upholstery of the couch and watched him pour his own cup.

  The loft was sort of an amazing place. The bed and dressers were shoved up against the wall by the bathroom, and the couch was back against the wall farthest away from the window. The kitchen was on the side nearest the door, and it had a fully functioning stove and enough of a marble counter to hold a coffee maker and a toaster and a toaster oven, everything pushed back until it was ready to be used. The table in the kitchen area was small and made of wood, with old-fashioned wooden chairs surrounding it.

  All of that left the center of the apartment empty, and Hunter had filled it with a gym mat and free weights. The couch had a coffee table in front of it, and then? The view was strictly business.

  Except beyond strictly business was the entire city of Chicago in the rain.

  Grace couldn’t help but stare beyond his own worry and his petty bullshit and look out at the entire city of Chicago, which absolutely did not give a crap that he’d been a fucked-up kid who’d made a series of really bad decisions.

  It certainly didn’t care about the fact that Dylan Li couldn’t manage the requirements of being an adult human if someone gave him two roadmaps and let him steal another one.

  “You warm enough?” Hunter asked kindly, and Grace pulled the navy blue fleece blanket around his shoulders. He wasn’t really cold, but Hunter’s hooded sweatshirt and his own yoga pants—as well as the T-shirt and briefs he’d had under them—had been hung up in the bathroom to dry. He was wearing one of Hunter’s white T-shirts and a pair of worn gray sweats, both of them ridiculously big on him.

  He was already making plans to smuggle them out of the apartment.

  “Fine,” he said, eyes drawn from the view of the city, impersonal in its watch over thousands of people, to the view of Hunter, very personal as he regarded Grace with concern in his eyes.

  Those eyes, glinting silver in the soft light from a side-table lamp, darkened.

  “I don’t believe you,” Hunter said. “Talk to me.” He took his mug of coffee—a splash of cream, no sugar, Grace noted—and moved to the couch. After he set the mug down on the table, he backed into a corner of the couch and held out his arms.

  Grace eyed him suspiciously. “What dark sorcery is this?” he asked.

  “It’s called a snuggle, Grace. You scared the hell out of me, and I would very much like to hold you until I’m okay.”

  Grace followed his lead and scooted into the vee of his legs, turning slightly to pillow his cheek on Hunter’s non-pillow-soft pecs. For a moment, he lay there, feeling the up and down motion of Hunter’s breaths, watching the rain streak the windows.

  Every emotion running around his frenzied brain like a hamster on methamphetamine stopped in its tracks, licked its own privates, and chilled.

  For a few dazzling heartbeats, Grace could see a clear path of light through all the crazy in his head, and following it was the easiest thing he’d ever done.

  “I was a mess in high school,” he said, eyes on the rain. “My parents were never around, and dance was only three days a week. I spent half my time at Josh’s, but, you know, it wasn’t my house. Not then. Josh was so smart. He came up with different things for us to do. Martial arts. Petty revenge. Breaking and entering just to beat someone’s security system was so much better than the shit I could get into on my own.”

  “With great power comes great potential to fuck up?” Hunter asked, and Grace smiled.

  “I need that as a T-shirt. Could you get me a T-shirt that says that? I want one.”

  “As you wish,” Hunter murmured, kissing the top of his head. “Keep going. You had Josh to channel your criminal impulses. What happened then?”

  Grace sighed. “I gave Gabriel Hu a blowjob after school. He liked it. He decided I should be around to do it whenever he wanted, and I… I was so stupid I thought that meant something good.”

  “Ouch. How bad was it?”

  “He was a bad person,” Grace said helplessly. “He was a fe
w years older, ‘taking a break’ from college, supposedly. He beat up other high school kids, because I don’t know why. He thought it was fun, I guess. I followed him around and picked up the bodies and made sure they got home to their parents and told them to stay out of Gabriel’s way. And then when I’d be asking him why he’d do something like that, he’d drop his pants and I was licking him like a trained poodle. It’s….” Grace couldn’t even shrug while he was tucked against Hunter’s chest, those strong arms around his shoulders. “It’s a mystery.”

  “Not so much,” Hunter murmured, holding him tighter. “You wanted a grown-up, someone to tell you what to do. Josh was a peer, and you couldn’t trust his parents yet. But this guy knew your buttons.”

  “I guess.” And now came the hard part. “I… I liked candy,” he said. “I’m not proud of that. But I would suck dick for X in high school, or coke. You know.”

  “Anything that made it better?” Hunter said gently.

  “Yeah. And Gabriel was like, ‘That’s kid stuff. You know what’s rockin’?’”

  “Oh God.” Hunter’s arms tightened to the point where Grace couldn’t breathe. “Yeah, Grace. I used to bodyguard for drug dealers. I know what’s rockin’.”

  For some reason that was comforting. Hunter didn’t sound like he was proud of that. If Hunter—who was so fucking professional, he was practically a bonded bad guy—could admit to something he wasn’t proud of, Grace could finish this.

  “I didn’t know how to shoot up,” Grace told him, remembering those giggly moments on the floor of his room in his parents’ big, empty house. Gabe’s Rafael-angel profile as he pulled the constrictor around Grace’s arm. “Gabe prepared the fix for me and slipped the needle in the vein.” He actually heard Hunter swallow, as if he didn’t want to hear the rest, which was funny because they were there, right? So it was obvious Grace survived. “I woke up in the hospital.” He had confused images in between—shouts, an ambulance ride, needles—but he could never put them together. “Josh and his parents were there. Gabe called Josh when I started to convulse, and Josh called the ambulance as he and his parents were running over. I was only a few houses down. They saved my life. I never stayed in my parents’ house again after that. They moved all my things into the room I’m in now. I just went home with them.”