A Few Good Fish

by Amy Lane

  “Do I still have a stick up my ass?” Ellery asked dreamily, reminding them both of Jackson’s assessment when they’d first began to explore their attraction.

  “Nope.” Jackson’s wicked, wicked tongue darted under the waistband of Ellery’s boxers, almost grazing the head of Ellery’s cock. “Not enough room in your tight ass after I fucked it.”

  “Nungh….” Maybe it was the dirty word, or Jackson’s breath on Ellery’s head—or even the painkillers that had just kicked in, which was sort of a buzz right there—but Ellery was suddenly swelling softly, tingling and heavy with arousal.

  “You want I should suck your cock?” Jackson breathed. “I mean, I’m pretty sure fucking’s out, but this, I think I can do.”

  “Oh God, yes.” Ellery parted his legs and arched his hips just a tiny bit so Jackson could slide his sweats and boxers down. He was left erect, cock pale in its thatch of dark hair, while Jackson teased the holy hell out of him. Breath, lips, tongue, the barest edge of teeth—all of Jackson’s seduction and expertise were in full force as he brought Ellery up, up, up with a minimum of pressure or jostling—with a minimum of pain.

  Ellery was moaning quietly, so grateful for the attention, for Jackson’s touch, for his mouth, that when Jackson engulfed him completely, hot, wet, and hard, he spilled without thought in a climax so gentle and easy, it was almost like physical therapy for his abused muscles rather than sex.

  “Mm….”

  Jackson pulled up his shorts and sweats, then inched up the bed. He reached around his back and pulled out a quilt that usually lived on their couch at home that he used to cover both of them.

  “This is nice,” Ellery murmured, settling down into the snuggle with Jackson’s head next to his on the pillows. “What made you think to bring this?”

  “Just… you know. Same reason I brought a change of clothes and my shaving kit. In case we couldn’t make it back today. I wanted home with us.”

  Tears prickled behind Ellery’s eyes. “I’m going to say the cornball thing here. You ready for it?”

  “Shoot,” Jackson told him and then giggled, obviously teetering on the edge of his own exhausted nap. “I mean, go ahead. I’m fucking done with shooting for a while.”

  “You are my home. Do you need to throw up?”

  Jackson giggled some more. “If I did, at least I’d know you wouldn’t run away screaming.”

  “I can hardly move to call for takeout,” Ellery muttered, “but no, I’m pretty sure I proved that.”

  “I ordered takeout on my phone while you were whining at me to come snuggle,” Jackson said with a yawn. “It’ll be here in two hours, because I was pretty sure there’d be sleep first.”

  “Oh God.” Ellery yawned too. “You’re turning into me.”

  Jackson kissed his cheek. “Now you’re being mean.”

  They both settled into their recovery naps, but Ellery had a moment between sleeping and waking when he saw the near future.

  Tomorrow they’d drive home and talk this time, planning where they wanted their office, what they wanted their mission statement to say, how they would advertise, how to apply for their business license. Ellery would look into partners, sending out feelers, seeing if he could get a line on anyone else he’d care to practice law with or, at the very least, someone who would want to open a law practice in the same building. They would plan for the future, looking at budgets and time and the things they wanted to do versus the things they swore they’d never do.

  They’d get the jackets on the dangerous men let into the world—they’d spend their free time looking for clues to help Burton get them out.

  In the meantime they’d set about making the world a better place for the Janie Isaacsons of the world, the Ace Atchisons and Sonny Dayes.

  The Kaden Camerons or Anthony Coopers or Jacksons.

  They’d be grateful for each other and their family every day.

  They’d have new adventures, hopefully ones not quite as scary or as painful as this one had been.

  They’d grow. Together.

  “Jackson?”

  “Mm?”

  “You ready for us to have our own business?”

  “Sure. But only because you’re the man.”

  Ellery laughed a little and slid under.

  They had so much more to do.

  Cooking Filet of Soul

  This is a short ficlet from my blog that covers the Thanksgiving before the events in this book.

  JACKSON STARTED out Thanksgiving morning curled up on the corner of the gigantic white couch in Ellery’s mother’s sitting room. Ellery had woken him up in time for a brisk walk around the block; then they’d gotten back to the absurdly large house in the prestigious Boston neighborhood and showered.

  Not together. Because Ellery’s entire family was sleeping somewhere in this giant old rabbit warren of a house, and Jackson wasn’t sure if his dick would ever work again. Instead, Jackson had sent Ellery ahead and told him to start breakfast, but Jackson wasn’t feeling hungry.

  He hadn’t felt hungry, in fact, since he’d gotten out of the hospital, really. Food—one of his most favorite things in the world—had lost its appeal in the last two weeks, and given that he’d gotten out right before Thanksgiving, his life had turned into a long boring game of pushing food around the plate and trying to convince people he was stuffed.

  He wasn’t stuffed. He didn’t want to be stuffed. He was afraid. There was a feeling in the hospital, of the entire concrete building pressing against his chest, of being trapped underneath it and not being able to breathe. He was afraid if he ate too much, he’d feel like that.

  He’d eaten while he was there and enjoyed it. But food or no food, that oppression would squash him against the bed, so he might as well eat.

  But out of the hospital….

  It was irrational.

  Jackson knew it.

  He didn’t want to tell anybody.

  Ellery and his entire family were rational as fuck. It was almost creepy. Ellery’s sister Rebekah was there, along with her husband Ira and their two adorable, terrifyingly well-behaved children. They sat at the breakfast table and weighed the pros and cons of going out to play in the cold, or staying inside and getting a beneficial amount of exercise from the video game their grandmother provided, or, possibly, having an obliging adult drive them to the mall so they could trot down all the corridors of the mall, which, they’d estimated, were a full mile if walked front to back, twice.

  And those were the children.

  Ellery’s mother and father actually discussed the sodium content of turkey and the amount of water that was necessary to preclude any bloating in the extremities after that much salt.

  Jackson couldn’t face them. He told Ellery he’d meet him downstairs, put on his sweats, and made his way to the sitting room, which was sort of out of the way. Jackson snagged the remote and would have clicked for a game, figuring nobody in this household would actually watch football, but it was too early. He found the parade instead, mildly surprised that he was watching it in real time. He was there, ducking his head below the back of the couch, when Ellery’s father found him.

  Mr. Cramer (Jackson wasn’t sure what his first name was. Everybody but Jackson called him “Dad” or “Daddy”) was a lanky man with curly gray hair around his head like a halo. He had a knife-blade nose much like his son’s, and lower cheekbones, with a firm chin and sort of an average jawline. He didn’t look like a Marine or a scientist or someone who led armies.

  He looked like a children’s book writer, or maybe a lawyer—which he was—and a father. The father thing seemed to be his favorite.

  “Oh! The parade! How wonderful!”

  Jackson gave him a sideways look and nodded. “I enjoy it,” he said quietly. He and Jade and Kaden used to wake up early on Thanksgiving to see it. Jackson kept memories like that to himself, though. He wasn’t sure how much Ellery’s parents and family knew about him. He was used to wearing his past on his
sleeve, proudly, almost offensively so.

  But these were Ellery’s parents. He couldn’t offend them. He was terrified of that happening.

  “Well, excellent. I’ll be right back, then.”

  Mr. Cramer disappeared, and Jackson let himself be absorbed back into the couch.

  “WELL?” ELLERY demanded when his father came into the kitchen.

  “Let me bring out some food,” Sid Cramer said patiently. “We’ll just sit and eat together. No pressure.”

  “Can the kids come and watch the parade?” Rebekah asked, looking at her perfect children to make sure that was all right. Both kids nodded back soberly, and Ellery grimaced at his dad.

  Jackson had put on a good face about the kids, but Ellery could tell—sometimes he’d open his mouth to be real, to finally say something not excruciatingly nice and terrifyingly polite in front of Ellery’s family, and one of the kids would come in. Jackson’s eyes would get big and he’d clamp his mouth shut.

  It was silly—Jackson had a niece and nephew back home. Diamond and River, Kaden and Rhonda’s children, bless them. Ellery had seen him—not a week ago!—playing, razzing, wrestling with River, telling Diamond firmly that nobody had better try to kiss her without her permission. He was great with kids.

  But Rebekah’s kids seemed to scare him shitless.

  Sid looked at them assessingly. “Hm… one at a time, I think. Sarah, you come in about five minutes after I set up. Simon, wait here for another five minutes. Come in, sit quietly at my feet, don’t say anything. We’re going to let him pretend we’re alone.”

  “Can we eat?” Simon asked practically. “I know dinner is at four, but I’m starving!”

  “Of course we can eat!” Sid ruffled Simon’s curls—much like Ellery’s, before Ellery had learned the trick of straightening his hair and gelling it back.

  “But he never eats!” Simon hissed. “It’s rude to eat in front of a guest who’s not eating!”

  Ellery sighed. “Well, we won’t get him to eat if we don’t eat, so I need you to be rude while he’s here, is that okay?”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Sarah asked bluntly, grabbing a pita square from the basket Sid was making. “He looks like he’s afraid we’re going to bite.”

  Ellery grunted. “He’s had sort of a bad”—month, year, lifetime—“time. He’s was sick in the hospital, and it wasn’t easy on him.”

  “Should we bring him flowers?” Rebekah’s daughter had wide, limpid brown eyes, and Ellery had a hard time looking at her and telling her no to anything. But Jackson, hardened PI and tomcat, was not really the flower loving—

  “I think that would be a lovely idea!” Sid said happily. “You think of the best ways to cheer people up!”

  Ellery did a slow pan. “Dad?”

  “So how is this for a plan? I take the snacks out for the table, Simon comes out five minutes later, and Sarah goes out to the side of the house and cuts the last few mums to put in water for Jackson. Is that a deal!”

  “But wait!” Simon wailed. “What can I give Jackson? I want him to like me too!”

  Ellery sighed. “He likes you very much,” he said, pretty sure it was true. Jackson was usually great with kids. Kids, small animals, women with a pulse, gay men with eyes—Jackson was sweet to those people. Cops, doctors, bosses, bullies, authority figures of any kind, and lawyers with sticks up their asses—not so much.

  Ellery fit into a strange gray area—he should have been Jackson’s least favorite life-form, but somehow he’d become one of the few creatures Jackson cared about unequivocally. Which possibly explained why poor Jackson was so freaked-out about Ellery’s family.

  “You will sit on his lap,” Sid decided. “You will give him a reason to stay in the same room. How’s that?”

  “That’s a good job, zayde,” Simon approved, and Ellery’s father took the tray of pita bread, hummus, and vegetables that he’d been saving for hors d’oeuvres that afternoon into the living room at nine thirty in the morning.

  Ellery watched him go and fought the urge to call after him, “What do I do, Dad? C’mon, I want a job!” He hadn’t realized that taming his feral boyfriend had become a family enterprise.

  Sarah said, “I’m going to go get flowers. Make sure Simon doesn’t go early,” and then she disappeared out the back entrance to behind the house before Ellery could so much as remind her to wear her scarf and gloves.

  “Is it time yet?” Simon asked, like he was a spy about to run the op.

  “No,” Ellery said, trying not to be short with his nephew. “Just wait a minute, okay?”

  “What are we waiting for?” Ellery’s mother asked, walking into the kitchen cradling an empty coffee mug. “And where did the tray of appetizers go?” Unlike the other times when Jackson had seen her, Taylor Cramer’s holiday attire consisted of soft cream-colored leggings and long cream-colored tunic sweaters that hung gracefully past her hips. For Jackson, seeing her in her casual clothes must have been like seeing his cat shave itself while dancing to pop hits. Ellery totally understood why the poor man had been dodging out of rooms the minute she’d entered for the past two days.

  “Isn’t it exciting, Nonni?” Simon asked, looking at his grandmother with wide eyes. “We’re trying to get Ellery’s boyfriend to stay in the room and eat!”

  Ellery grimaced and Simon tugged his sleeve. “Now?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Go ahead.”

  His mother cocked her head while venturing to the coffee maker. “Is this what we’re doing?” Taylor asked, pouring her generously sized mug and adding sugar.

  Rebekah looked over the windowsill to outside. “Well, it’s why Sarah is on the side of the house, butchering the last of the mums.”

  Crap. “It was all Dad’s idea,” Ellery mumbled, cheerfully consigning his father to the bus. “Now hush, or he’ll think we’re talking about him.”

  “Ellery!” Sarah called breathlessly, running back into the kitchen. She had a passable handful of bright purple mums in her hand that she shoved into his grasp. “You have to prepare them. I can’t just give them to him—they need rinsing and wrapping and—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Ellery mumbled, his heart beating every second of Jackson’s exile in the TV room as slow as it could. He rinsed of the flowers, recut the stems, and put them in one of his mother’s plainer ceramic vases. “Here, Sarah. Go in, set this on the end table by Jackson, and then sit between him and Grandpa.”

  “This is more thoroughly planned than my dinner,” Taylor mused. “Is Jackson just sitting there, waiting to be smothered in your relatives, or did you drug him and he’ll wake up later?”

  “He’s watching the parade,” Ellery told her shortly. “And after that, I’m pretty sure there’s a football game. We’re anesthetizing him with pop culture and children. Do you mind?”

  Taylor lifted an elegant eyebrow. “I don’t mind in the least. It sounds very much like your father.”

  “Well, Dad!” Ellery mumbled, and Rebekah—who looked most like their father, with a sweet round face and little point chin—laughed quietly.

  “Dad can charm anybody. Are the flowers done yet, Ellery? We need Sarah to go play her part before Jackson skitters off like a stray cat.”

  Ellery put the vase firmly in Sarah’s hands and shooed her off. “You say that like it’s not a possibility, Bek.”

  Rebekah snorted. “That man is devoted to you. I saw the way he looked at you last night at dinner. You were talking about some case he’d solved with a couple of good questions somewhere and he just… his mouth dropped open. It was like you were standing at the portal of heaven and gesturing him in.”

  Ellery shuddered. “Sure,” he mumbled. His mother knew the story, but he wasn’t sure how much she’d told the rest of the family. “He was probably wishing for death.”

  Bek laughed, and Taylor said kindly, “Or he could just love you and be feeling vulnerable right now, Ellery. Don’t be dramatic.”

  Ellery grunted and looked at the
clock. “So, how long do we have before I go in?” he murmured.

  “Now is good,” Rebekah said softly. “You shouldn’t be timed, Ellery.”

  “Go,” Taylor told him. “Rebekah and I will bring more food in a little while.”

  “But won’t he spoil his dinner?” Bek asked, and it was all Ellery could do not to hiss “Suck-up!” in her general direction.

  “Mmm….” Taylor shook her head. “Let us see. We may have to… change our idea of what dinner should be,” she said. “Let’s just see how things feel, shall we?”

  Ellery raised his eyebrows. “See how things feel?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  His mother, the woman who had planned his and Bek’s every last moment as children, had just announced that during a major holiday—one, for which, he knew for a fact, his father had been cooking for two days—would now be served according to how “things feel.”

  He was almost afraid to go take his place next to Jackson.

  But only almost. His palms actually itched with the need to go sit at his feet, wrap his hand around Jackson’s calf reassuringly.

  He cast a look over his shoulder at his mother and grimly hoped she knew what they were doing.

  ELLERY CAME in and sat on the ground in front of the couch, leaning his head against Jackson’s knee, and Jackson was so comfortable he managed to bury his hands in Ellery’s nonmoussed hair and stroke his head once or twice before just resting it on Ellery’s shoulder. The little boy, Simon, sat on his lap, head back against his shoulder, snoring softly. He’d just clambered up there before Jackson could complain, and Jackson wondered if the late-night card games he’d hear the boy having with his sister had finally caught up with him.

  The girl had walked in on the other side of the couch.

  “Here, Jackson. I brought you flowers. Is that okay?”

  And seriously—what kind of asshole scared a little girl about bringing in flowers, right?

  She’d set the flowers down on the end table and then scooted to the middle of the couch, between Jackson and Ellery’s father. Sid Cramer had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and was pointing out the giant Snoopy balloon going down 5th Avenue.