The Rational Faculty (Hazard and Somerset: A Union of Swords Book 1)

by Gregory Ashe

  But he couldn’t finish because he didn’t know how to finish; he didn’t know, still, what he could have done, what he should have done. He only knew that Hazard had needed him more than he had ever needed him before, and Somers had failed him. And then the tears came again, even harder, and Somers was only vaguely aware of Hazard’s hand fumbling with the buttons on his shirt, of Hazard’s callused palm coming to rest against Somers’s bare chest, just over Somers’s heart. That was all. No teasing. No pinching. No caressing. Just skin to skin. And somehow, it helped, and Somers stopped crying, wiping his face on Hazard’s chest again and no longer caring about the snot or the shirt or anything except being here, now, with Hazard.

  With an effort, Somers pulled himself up a few inches, tucking his face into the crook of Hazard’s neck. He felt feverish still, and Hazard was cool by comparison. Hazard’s fingers ruffled Somers’s short hair, teased the nape of his neck, skimmed under his collar and scratched lightly along his upper back. Somers was suddenly hard, and it came on him the way it did more and more with Hazard: still physical, still a response to the dark hair and muscle and scarecrow eyes. But more than that. An arousal that had to do with the bond he felt, the way Hazard held him, the way Somers could bury his face in this man and know he was safe. He rocked slowly into Hazard, unable to stop the groan that built in his throat. He rocked again. Harder. He fumbled with Hazard’s jeans, yanking on the button.

  Hazard’s hands found his, peeling them away. Somers thrust again, wanting contact, wanting friction and pressure. This time, Hazard’s hands found Somers’s hips, clamping down, holding Somers in place. The need to touch, to kiss, to fuck—Jesus, to make love to this man—it was overpowering. Somers was shaking as Hazard held him at arm’s length. He made a frustrated noise. He wanted to know why Hazard was torturing him.

  Then he remembered: depression, libido.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to,” Hazard said, his voice broken, head turned away, a scarlet fringe along his cheekbones.

  Somers gently lifted each of Hazard’s fingers until he was free. Hazard shifted, trying to get away, but Somers moved faster. He scooted in, wrapping himself around Hazard, hiding his face in that spot where Hazard’s neck joined his shoulder. Hazard held himself stiff, all wire and steel, for almost a full minute. Then, by inches, he relaxed, and his hand came up to sift Somers’s hair again.

  Hazard didn’t ask; he just made a noise, deep in his chest, that was a question.

  Somers laughed into Hazard’s neck. “Yeah, I’m ok. Just, you know, kind of a reaction to all the emotions. Hormones.” He adjusted himself. “Things will be a little tight for a few minutes.”

  Suddenly, Hazard’s hand was there: big, strong, heavy, manipulating Somers through the trousers, gathering bunches of fabric, tightening like a vice. Somers pressed harder into Hazard’s neck, his eyes closed.

  “Ree, you don’t have to—” He cut off as Hazard undid the zipper. “I don’t want you to—”

  “I want to.” His voice was uneven, though, and it took Somers a moment to realize why. Hazard was afraid. “I told you I want you every minute of every day. Every second.”

  Somers had some sort of response to this, but Hazard slid his hand through the fly and pulled Somers’s dick and balls out into the air, and the combination of skin and cool air made Somers whimper. Hazard was slow at first, using just the tips of his fingers, trailing them up and down, gathering the slow leak of wetness at the tip of Somers’s dick and tracing it down the length. With his eyes closed, Somers felt everything more intensely. He felt every drop like a bead of mercury, cold and hot and making him doubly sensitive.

  Then Hazard wrapped his hand around Somers’s dick, pumping slowly at first, then faster. Stars gathered in Somers’s vision. Supernovae, ready to explode. He could hear himself groaning into Hazard’s neck. He knew he should have been doing something, even just kissing, but he couldn’t seem to get enough air, couldn’t get enough of Hazard’s touch.

  “I dreamed about doing this to you every time I touched myself in high school,” Hazard said in a low, sweet voice, his fist moving faster now. “I wish I could have done it that day in the locker room. I wish I could have held you like this. I wish I could have made you feel like this that day.”

  Somers came. The stars behind his eyes went off, whitening his field of vision, and he heard himself sobbing as Hazard’s hand continued to piston up and down, heard himself begging incoherently until Hazard had taken him through it and he was limp, his face still buried in Hazard’s shoulder, his whole body draped across Hazard’s.

  After a while, Somers tried to pull himself up. “I want to do something for you.” That’s what he tried to say, anyway, but his mouth was gummy, and the words didn’t come out right.

  Hazard chuckled and pressed Somers back against him.

  It was a while later, maybe a lot later, when Somers felt like his bones weren’t liquid anymore, and he managed to sit upright.

  “Hi,” he said.

  Hazard’s eyes glittered with amusement.

  “So, that was intense.”

  One of Hazard’s dark eyebrows went up.

  “And I really want to talk to you about this whole locker room thing because, um, that kind of did something for me.”

  The other dark eyebrow went up.

  “Right,” Somers said, surprised to find himself blushing. “We can talk about it later.”

  “Oh,” Hazard said, “we’ll talk about it.”

  Somers grinned, and then it faded. “I need to apologize. What I said, earlier, I shouldn’t have said any of those things. I want you to do this work. I really do. I want you to be great at it. I want you to crack every case that comes our way. I want you to do it because that’s who you are: you’re amazing, and this is one of the ways you’re amazing.” Somers swallowed. “I know we’re a team, even if we aren’t partners anymore, and I shouldn’t have let a few people at work giving me shit throw me into such a bad headspace.”

  “I’m not police—”

  “Please don’t start that.”

  Hazard actually smiled, a huge smile. “All I meant was that I should have brought everything to you first. I can’t promise that I would have done something differently with the knife; I didn’t have anything solid to take to you until I found it. But with the security video from the arts center, I should have come to you first. You already knew that Mitchell claimed he had seen the killer there. I should have asked you to get the security footage so we could watch it together. I shouldn’t have acted independently.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Somers said. “We’ll have a lot of time to figure it out as you build up your agency.”

  Hazard’s smile died, but all he said was, “What now?”

  “Now, I need a shower. I can’t go back to work like this.”

  “I meant the case.”

  “Shower first. Then case.” Somers got to his feet and realized he had been wrong: his bones still felt partially liquid. “Want to join me?”

  “John, it’s not like I can turn it on and off. I’m not better. I don’t know if I’ll ever get better.”

  Somers wasn’t sure about that. He thought about the other night, when Hazard had fucked him royally after another of their fights, and wasn’t sure Hazard really knew why he was feeling the way he did. Hazard was just inside his head; it was simple.

  “You will,” Somers said. “You’ll be fine; you just need time and help. And I think you just proved—”

  “Don’t say it.” Hazard’s eyes narrowed. “No fucking puns.”

  “—handily that you are more than capable of taking care of me.”

  “I said no puns.”

  “I think a shower would be nice. Hot water. Soap. Plus, you know I like it when you touch me.”

  “You’re getting greedy,” Hazard said, but he stood and stretched.

  “And you like it when I touch you.”

  With
a small shake of his head, Hazard said, “John, I’m not going to be able to—I mean, not right now—”

  “No funny business. Promise.” Somers grinned. “Your honor is safe with me.”

  A laugh burst out of Hazard, and then he held out one hand.

  Somers led him to the shower.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  NOVEMBER 5

  MONDAY

  11:16 AM

  THE SHOWER WAS NICE; Hazard had to admit, even with the two of them competing for space under the spray of hot water, it had been nice. He liked touching Somers, working the soap over every inch of golden perfection. And, as Somers had pointed out, Hazard liked Somers touching him, although Hazard had made an effort to keep that part as short as possible. It was maddening, the dull ache of arousal that didn’t manifest, the way Somers’s touch made him drunk and frustrated and then, when things didn’t work, even more stressed and upset. A vicious cycle, combined with the knowledge that Hazard had botched this investigation.

  Still, Somers seemed content, and that was enough for Hazard. They dried off; Somers pulled on a fresh pair of trousers and a white undershirt and sprawled on the bed. Hazard found a pair of workout shorts and tugged them on.

  When Hazard looked up, Somers was staring at him.

  “What?”

  Somers just kept staring until heat prickled in Hazard’s belly, a flush blooming across his chest and climbing into his face.

  “Stop it.”

  “I just like you to know how unbelievably hot you are.”

  Hazard snorted.

  “Seriously. I could watch you in nothing but those shorts forever.”

  “Might be a little uncomfortable when I’m frying bacon.”

  “I want to watch you work out in those shorts,” Somers said, arms behind his head as he continued to ogle Hazard. “Squats, preferably. Lots of squats. And lots of chest presses.”

  “Ok, I get the idea.”

  “I want to watch you go running in them. Some days sprints, until you’re so fucking exhausted that I can pin you down and do unspeakable things to you.”

  “You’ve got a very active imagination about a pair of gym shorts.”

  “They’re very short shorts,” Somers said with a shrug. “And other days, I want you to go on long runs and come back with every muscle loose, with your whole body ragged, until I can bend you whatever way I want.”

  “I think I remember you had something like that bookmarked on your computer until I stumbled across it.”

  Red bloomed in Somers’s cheeks, but he just grinned and bit his lip. “I love you.”

  “I love you too. Now can we do some work, or do I need to jerk you off again so you can focus?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt—”

  “That was a rhetorical offer. Get your ass downstairs.”

  At the kitchen table, Hazard served coffee: black for him, lots of cream and sugar for Somers.

  “We haven’t made any progress finding Jesse,” Somers said. “Unless Dulac found him while I’ve been here.”

  “Trust me,” Hazard said, fighting to prevent a roll of his eyes. “Dulac didn’t find him.”

  “We’ve already canvassed his building and the surrounding area. We’ve got people on campus, checking dorms and classrooms. We went back through former addresses. We’ve contacted family, friends, and police in his hometown. Nobody’s seen him. There’s an APB out.” Somers shrugged and drank more coffee. “For the moment, that’s a dead end.”

  Hazard ran his thumb along the edge of the table.

  “Well?” Somers said.

  “You’re doing all of it. People on the run tend to go to familiar places, people they think they can trust, parts of their routine that they imagine would be safe. You’ve already covered all of that. All you can do now is keep your eyes open and hope he makes a mistake.”

  “Fat lot of help you are.”

  Hazard flipped him the bird.

  “You know what really bothers me?” Somers said. “Mitchell.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, the other key witnesses to the murder are either dead or incapacitated. Four people got close enough to the killer that they might be able to identify him, and three of them are now conveniently unable to testify.”

  “You think Jesse got to all of them?”

  Somers frowned. “Well, take Lena for example: she was the only one who really saw him, and she was attacked in her office and left for dead. If we hadn’t gotten there, she’d be gone now.”

  “Devil’s advocate: somebody wrote Bright Lights on her window in blood. It was the same time as the protest. And Lena is a black, lesbian, liberal professor. She’s a perfect target for the Ozark Volunteers or Bright Lights or whatever you want to call them.”

  “But anybody could have written those words. Lena was inside her office in a secure building. You need a student or faculty ID to get in. And anyway, the protest was on North Quad, not South. Someone would have had to go out of their way to leave the protest, get inside a locked building, attack her, and get out while all the attention was still fixed on the protest.”

  “Devil’s advocate: none of that is difficult, really. In fact, the protest was the perfect cover for Bright Lights. They can claim they were all marching in the demonstration when Lena was attacked. They probably set it up that way.”

  “Except we know Jesse has already used the Ozark Volunteers’ reputation to misdirect us once. He dressed up like a stereotypical Volunteer, made sure the association was present in everyone’s mind when he killed Fabbri. Why wouldn’t he do it again with Lena?”

  “He didn’t handle Cynthia,” Hazard said. “She got hurt facing down that Bright Lights mob.”

  “Cynthia couldn’t have been planned,” Somers said with a shrug. “She got badly hurt in the brawl on campus. But I bet he had something planned anyway. Something to make sure she couldn’t identify him, even if she was only a remote threat.”

  “And Klimich?”

  “Klimich was obviously part of the whole thing; he switched the DVDs, and he wanted everybody’s attention elsewhere when Fabbri died.”

  “Why? I thought the whole point was for people to blame the Volunteers.”

  “No, I think that was the second misdirect. First step, minimize witnesses. Second step, get them thinking about the Volunteers.”

  “Was Klimich behind this whole thing, in your version,” Hazard asked, “or was he an accomplice?”

  “No idea. Jesse made sure Klimich couldn’t tell us, so we won’t know until we run down Jesse and get some answers out of him.”

  Hazard leaned back and took a drink of coffee. “So, you think Mitchell’s dead?”

  “I think that’s the most likely answer. He was close enough to Jesse that he grabbed his shirt. I bet Jesse remembered that. It made Mitchell a risk; if he was close enough to grab Jesse’s shirt, he was close enough to see Jesse’s face. That meant Mitchell needed to be removed.”

  Hazard nodded slowly.

  “You don’t think I’m right,” Somers said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I feel like there are these threads that I can’t quite pull together.” Hazard rolled one shoulder. “Maybe I’m not as good at this as I used to be.”

  “It’s been three months,” Somers said. “Stop playing your tiny violin and help me.”

  “Asshole.”

  “Crybaby,” Somers said with a grin. “What threads?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know what’s important.”

  “Just tell me. Whatever pops into your mind.”

  “The couch.”

  “What?”

  “The couch in Fabbri’s apartment, the way it was positioned.”

  “What about it?”

  “I don’t know,” Hazard growled.

  “Ok, ok. What else?”

  “Lots of
things. Blood on the window, the—”

  “Cynthia explained that. She was looking for the killer.”

  “Do you want me to tell you what bothers me? Or do you want to interrupt me and explain everything like I haven’t been paying attention in school?”

  “Mostly, I want to hear what bothers you. But I like interrupting you because you get all big and growly and . . . You know what? Go ahead.”

  “Thank you. The fact that all our witnesses except Mitchell seemed to have a reason to want Fabbri dead. The fact that our witnesses are dying. Jesus, a million things. The fact that Jesse Clark is a gay student. He’s an actor, and based on that profile, probably the least likely person to murder Jim Fabbri that I could come up with. Even the disappearance of Rory and Phil. It all makes no sense, which means we’re missing something.”

  “Can I say something?”

  Hazard made a noise that did, he had to admit, sound suspiciously like a growl.

  “If it’s not going to interrupt your very important list of things that bother you.”

  “John, don’t fucking push me right now.”

  “It’s just one little thing.”

  “Spit. It. Out.”

  “It’s just that, you know better than anybody: everyone has a reason to kill. It’s just a matter of finding that reason.”

  Hazard sighed. “I know.”

  In a few last swallows, Somers drained his coffee. “You know what I think we should do now?”

  “You think we should go check Mitchell’s apartment.”

  “Bingo.”

  “But we don’t have a warrant.”

  “I believe the private detective Mitchell hired is going to make a call any minute now. He’s going to ask for a wellness check. You know, because his client has gone missing.”

  Hazard couldn’t help himself; he grinned.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  NOVEMBER 5

  MONDAY

  11:56 AM

  WHEN HAZARD AND SOMERS GOT to Mitchell’s apartment, that top floor unit in the shiny new eight-story building, nothing had changed: still no sign of forced entry, still no noises from within the unit, still no answer when they knocked. They rode the elevator back down, and Hazard waited in the lobby while Somers talked to the building manager. Then Somers and the manager came back, and they rode the elevator up again.