by Aiden Bates
The words were more ominous: you can’t ignore me forever.
Ryan’s heart plummeted. The profile, the Strip, the Vegas number. Fuck, he’d forgotten about that. At least, he’d hoped it was just a bad trip.
He snarled and threw another punch at the bag with his aching hands.
Another phone beeped somewhere nearby, because of course it did. He sighed. There was only one person whose phone it could be.
Ryan got down on the ground and scanned for anything that was out of place, and found the offending item on the floor underneath the couch. The stupid thing must have flown out of Anthony’s pocket when Ryan had thrown his pants at him.
Well, shit. A guy couldn’t go without his phone, but Ryan couldn’t risk seeing Anthony again. Not wanting him — needing him — the way he did. He stared down at the offending article.
It had gone off because of a text message from Jamie, of course. Dude, where are you? Dammit, the day got better and better. Anthony and Jamie were more or less inseparable. The one relative who didn’t want Ryan dead was going to change his tune soon enough.
Could Ryan think of a lie plausible enough to convince Jamie that he’d come by Anthony’s phone through innocent means? No. No way. Even if Ryan were up to seeing family again today, which he wasn’t, he couldn’t lie that convincingly.
Someone knocked on his door. It had to be Anthony. No one else knew about this entrance to the apartment.
Ryan considered ignoring him. He’d told Anthony he never wanted to see him again, and it wasn’t a lie. If he ignored him, though, it would never be over. Plus, he’d be the kind of asshole who went around taking guys’ phones. That wasn’t the man he wanted to be.
He answered the door. He tried to just reach through and hand it through, without looking at Anthony, and at first it seemed like Anthony would be content to let that happen. Anthony didn’t even speak, he just held his hand out through the cracked door.
Then he saw Ryan’s hand, and he sighed. “Seriously? I swear, I can’t go five minutes...” He used his shoulder to push his way into the apartment. “Where’s your first aid kit?” He sounded exhausted.
“Just go,” Ryan said. “I’ve got it all under control.”
“Sure you do.” Anthony flashed him the “okay” sign and rummaged under the sink until he found a first aid kit. “Come on, sit down.”
He gestured to the couch like it was his apartment instead of Ryan’s and opened up the kit. “Totally cool. Not like I can see bits in there or anything. Sit down, just let me take care of them a bit, and I’ll be out of your hair.”
Ryan wanted to refuse. He couldn’t let Anthony sit here and take care of him, fuss over his bloody knuckles like he was part of Ryan’s life or something. It was absurd, and it was weak.
At the same time, Ryan’s hands were throbbing. He did need to take care of them, just on the off chance that he got any customers tomorrow.
All of the rage and grief that had been holding Ryan up all day seeped out of him then. He flopped down onto the couch, taking the seat Anthony had indicated. He let Anthony take his hand up without resistance or complaint, and took the ibuprofen Anthony handed him in his other.
Anthony examined his hand like he was some kind of professional at first. He peered carefully at each scrape and cut. Then he broke out the alcohol and a soft cloth from the kit and got to work. His eyes were wide, and shadowed, but his mouth was soft and neutral as he wiped at the scrapes. “A few of these are going to need bandages,” he said after a moment, “but you shouldn’t need stitches if you can keep it clean.”
Ryan snorted, but he let it lie. The alcohol stung as it burned into his skin, but otherwise, it felt nice to be taken care of. Felt good to let someone else handle it, and to have a gentle hand on his skin.
He remembered dreaming about this kind of touch, during one of his stints in solitary. It wasn’t so much the sex that he’d missed, although that was its own set of issues. No, it was easy and free affection like this.
You can’t have this. You don’t deserve him. You’ll destroy him. You destroy everything you touch.
Anthony kept working. “You’ve got a few issues,” he said after maybe five more minutes. Five minutes of silence, during which he carefully tended to Ryan’s self inflicted wounds like he meant something.
“One or two.” Ryan didn’t look up at him. That would make this more real.
One corner of Anthony’s mouth twitched. Ryan didn’t know if he was trying to smile, or trying not to smile. A few minutes later, he spoke again.
“You know, my mom gets nightmares too. It’s not her fault. She finally took off after he put her in the hospital for the third time that year. Grabbed me while he was at the bar, put me in the car, and never looked back.
“But yeah, she broke three lamps before we just moved to a place that had wall sconces in the main bedroom.” He huffed out a little laugh.
Ryan bit his tongue. Anthony’s mom didn’t have the physical strength to kill a man with one blow. Well, maybe she did, Ryan hadn’t met her, but he wouldn’t bet on it. Anthony was trying to help, but he had no idea what he was talking about.
Anthony let the silence press in on them again. Then, “Where’ve you been? I know it’s family business, and I’m not — but it’s weird. Jamie’s so happy to have you back, but I hadn’t even heard your name until you walked into his birthday party that night. And we’ve been more or less inseparable for ten years, you know?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Ryan didn’t need to be reminded how thoroughly he’d been erased, thank you very much.
“It matters to me.” Anthony’s voice was still soft and calming. He still hadn’t let go of Ryan’s hand. In fact, he was still bandaging it.
“I like you. That’s not a secret. It’s obvious something’s going on with you. Whatever it is, I want to be here for you. I don’t want to —”
“I was in prison. Back in Ely.” Ryan just blurted it out there, half broken honesty, and half desperation to make Anthony stop looking at him like that.
He was looking at Ryan like he saw him, saw someone human. Ryan had to make him stop, and if the word prison didn’t do the job, the name of the facility would.
Ely was where Nevada’s worst of the worst went. Ely was purely maximum security. Ely housed Nevada’s death row.
Anthony didn’t look away. Fuck, he didn’t even drop Ryan’s hand. He just kept working.
“For what?” he asked, meeting Ryan’s eyes. Damn it, there were those eyes again, the ones that reminded Ryan that there might have been something there for them once.
Once, but not now. Ryan wasn’t good for anyone now. He hadn’t gone into Ely as trash, whatever his mother thought of him, but he’d come out of it every bit the waste of life Marianna had called him, and more.
A defensive sort of viciousness rushed through him, twisting his mouth into a sneer and making him snatch his hand away from the tender nurse helping him. “You want to run now? There’s the door.”
Anthony took Ryan’s other hand and started working on it. He looked Ryan in the eye and swallowed hard. “What if I don’t want to leave?”
His pulse fluttered against Ryan’s fingers, but he wasn’t pulling away. He wasn’t afraid of Ryan. He was afraid Ryan wouldn’t want him, and he was the most beautiful thing in the world.
Ryan could see it in his face. He could hardly believe what he was seeing, after everything else he’d had to deal with.
He had to look away. “I’m no good for you,” he muttered. “I’m just not. I’m a mess.”
“Yeah. Heard you the first time.” Anthony gave him an easy grin. He finished this hand more quickly. “I think you’re all set with this one.”
He ran the pad of his thumb over Ryan’s hand and looked up at him again with shining eyes. “Let’s go to bed.”
Ryan let Anthony lead him back to the bedroom. This time, Anthony undressed him, slow and careful and loving. This time, he laid Ryan down in the bed b
efore carefully undressing himself.
He truly was a beautiful man, and he was so gentle and caring with Ryan’s body that Ryan wanted to cry. He treated Ryan like someone special, someone who deserved to be worshipped and cherished; and he knew, and he still did that.
Anthony wasn’t human. Anthony was an angel, and the fact that he existed proved that a kind and benevolent deity did too. Ryan had already been to hell. Now Anthony had come to take him to heaven.
Anthony kissed him, long and sweet and sexy. He tasted like fresh rain on a hot day, and he held Ryan with all of the love and tenderness he’d needed for so long. Ryan had already been half hard when Anthony had showed up, holding his hand and everything, but now Anthony brought him to arousal with slow kisses and gentle caresses.
He opened himself up for Ryan and put on just enough of a show for him to keep it exciting, rolled the condom onto him, and then lowered himself onto Ryan so slowly, Ryan wondered if time had stopped.
Ryan put his hands on Anthony’s hips, but he didn’t need to direct or help. Anthony was in control of this ship, and he was doing fine all by himself. Ryan could let himself go, lose himself in the sensation of being buried deep inside his lover for the second time today.
Anthony’s body was perfect, hot and tight and made just for him. Part of Ryan clamored to take control, to hammer into that perfect body until Anthony was begging for relief. Anthony had a goal in mind, though, and he wasn’t being subtle about it.
But he wasn’t using words. He stroked Ryan’s face. He moved slowly, rocking up and down, keeping his eyes glued to Ryan’s. He moaned, and he sighed, but he made sure he never lost contact with Ryan’s eyes.
Whatever was going on between them, this bond or this link or whatever, Anthony obviously felt it too. He seemed to want to make that clear to Ryan now, and to show Ryan he was his, and here for him. He was showing Ryan he was here for him, that he saw him.
That he cared for him.
He didn’t use the word. Hell, he might not have even thought the word, but Ryan felt it deep in his soul. What had he done to bring such a light into his life? He couldn’t think of a thing, not a damn thing. Maybe reincarnation was real, and maybe he’d done something spectacular last time around, but whatever the cause, Anthony was here now, and Ryan was never giving him up.
He cried out as his climax snuck up on him, rising up like a choral note and bursting forth. Only then did Anthony allow Ryan to wrap a hand around his red, swollen cock and jerk him to completion.
He collapsed onto Ryan to catch his breath. Then he gingerly dismounted and went off to the bathroom.
Ryan forced himself off the bed and discarded the condom. He wondered if Anthony would be amenable to heading out of town to a clinic, somewhere where they could both get tested. The idea of going bare with Anthony seemed more appealing every time they did this, and he was pretty sure he was healthy, but he wasn’t willing to take any chances with his beautiful angel.
Anthony came back to the bedroom with a wet cloth. He cleaned Ryan with the same gentleness with which he’d brought him to arousal. Then he kissed him. “You going to kick me out again?”
Ryan held out his hand and pulled Anthony back to bed. “No,” he said, and pulled him back down to the bed. “Never again.”
Anthony was Ryan’s now. He didn’t have much in the world, and still less that he cared about. But he wasn’t letting Anthony go.
9
Anthony fixed three cocktails in Jamie’s kitchen. Two of them were Manhattans, because they were easy. One of them was a gin and tonic, because Tommy Roscoe had asked for one.
Anthony was impressed that Tommy could ask for anything in his current state, but he wasn’t going to take Tommy’s ability to speak three words in English as evidence of his sobriety. He splashed a tiny amount of gin into the glass, essentially enough to let the juniper scent waft up, and filled the rest with tonic and ice.
Anthony couldn’t say he knew Tommy well. Tommy was part of the fabric of Culvertown life, and he was part of the Roscoe family, but he wasn’t ever coherent enough to get to know. He was a skinny man, with a bad 1970s style mustache.
He lived with Lincoln and Marianna, and had since his own parents died. Anthony knew that much. The whole clan seemed to be determined to insulate Tommy from the rest of the world, and viewed him as some kind of special case, but as an outsider, Anthony had no idea why.
Personally, he thought they’d do a lot more for him by dropping him into rehab than by buying him more gin. But no one asked his opinion, and without all the facts, his opinion didn’t matter anyway. So he stayed silent, and tried to avoid Tommy when he could. The man's usual aroma of old sweat and booze reminded him too much of his father.
Anthony loaded the drinks onto a tray and brought them out into the TV area. Jamie’s townhouse had a very open floor plan. In fact, it didn’t have any doors at all. It wasn’t the kind of decorating choice Anthony would make, but he didn’t have to live here, and it seemed oddly appropriate for the site. “So,” he said, in a cheery voice, “what’s on tap for tonight?”
“No tap.” Tommy snatched his gin and tonic from the tray. “Hard liquor all around!" He chortled like he’d just delivered comedy gold unto the masses and slumped back into his seat.
Jamie stared at his cousin for a moment, and then he rolled his eyes. “I figured we could maybe hang out and watch the game a little.” He jerked his thumb at Tommy. “It’s not like he’s in any condition to go anywhere, poor thing.”
Anthony made an appropriately sympathetic coo in his throat, but he wasn’t exactly heartbroken about it. He had a plan, and staying in would serve him and his plan better. “Sounds good to me.” He sipped from his drink and asked about how things were going at work.
Jamie was, as usual, only too happy to tell him. The poor guy didn’t have many outlets to talk about his job, or his dislike of it. He nattered on, talking about how he’d rather be doing something else, long enough for Anthony to make another round.
Tommy, as usual, asked for another drink as well. Anthony turned in another barely there drink. He had no idea if Tommy noticed, but Anthony wasn’t about to be responsible if Tommy wrapped his car around a tree or choked on his own vomit or something.
Jamie helpfully shifted the topic over to the family brunch. Anthony had been to one or two of the mandatory events, enough to know how awkward they could be. Someone who’d recently been in prison probably wouldn’t find an environment like a massive family brunch to be a hospitable place, but it was too late to do anything about it now.
“I feel bad,” Jamie was saying. “I basically dragged poor Ryan there, and it went terribly.”
That would have been the day Ryan and Anthony had finally gotten their shit together. Anthony should be grateful, given that it had provided the opportunity to finally nudge Ryan into making him his. When he considered everything they’d done to get to this point, and the devastated condition in which he’d found his lover, he he couldn’t exactly fall all over himself with delight.
“How bad is terribly?” He knew the end result, but not how it had happened.
“Meh.” Jamie waved a hand. “The whole family’s furious about everything that happened before he left, and they let him know. And no one’s exactly thrilled about having a convict in the family.” He slapped his hand over his mouth, eyes wide. “Shit.”
“He already told me.” Anthony smiled gently. He swelled with pride that Ryan had trusted him so far. “Don’t worry too much about it.”
Jamie relaxed minutely. Tommy turned green and ran off toward the bathroom. Anthony had wondered how long it would take him.
“Well.” Jamie sighed and continued. “Some people were a little tense about having him around. And it’s not like Ryan’s stupid; he picked up on that, and it made him tense.
“And then Mom got involved, and she was not subtle about expressing her feelings about the subject. It turns out that while brunch is mandatory for Roscoes, he’s not
exactly included. Which I didn’t quite realize when I dragged him home.”
Anthony flinched, both from the hurt of how Ryan had been rejected, and the sound of Tommy emptying his guts. “That must have been awful for him.”
Jamie chugged back half of his drink in one gulp. “He’s not some innocent, you know?” He licked his lips. “If he’d just kept his mouth shut and his head down, it would have all been fine. He knows what dealing with Mom is like.
“But he couldn’t do that. He never could do that, not ever. So he and Mom got into it, and Mom said some things she probably shouldn’t have. I don’t know. I want to say she didn’t mean them, but … I mean, you know my mom.”
Anthony nodded. Marianna Roscoe never did anything by halves, and she never said anything she didn’t mean, either. Anthony was a little afraid of her. He wasn’t the only one in town who felt that way, either. “Yeah. I do.”
“She wished him dead. And he took off.” Jamie rubbed at his face. “She likes for the family to have a certain position, and having a convict for a son doesn’t exactly bolster that role. But that’s a bridge too far, you know? It’s just too much. It’s too much.”
Anthony licked his lips and leaned forward. He didn’t want to criticize Jamie about his handling of family matters. Jamie had been a good friend to him for a long time, however Anthony might feel about Ryan.
He could try to probe subtly, though. “After he told me he’d been in prison,” he tried in a gentle tone, “I tried to find something about his conviction. Nothing serious, just Google, but I couldn’t find anything at all.”
Jamie’s answering laugh was bitter. “You don’t think Mom would suffer the family name to show up in the media connected to anything related to prison, do you?”
Anthony sat back as Tommy stumbled back into the main room. He didn’t sit back down, but went into the kitchen area to make himself another drink. Somehow Anthony doubted that Tommy would fix himself a soft drink. Oh, well, Anthony had done what he could. “I see.”
