by Cole McCade
Something cold.
Something hateful.
Carson couldn’t make out the color of the man’s eyes, but to him they were black and flat and empty and devoid of all human emotion.
His bladder clenched up as the white rabbit craned his head slowly side to side, those cold and depthless eyes boring into Carson. He was about to turn this wood-paneled, messy office into a fucking lake, between him and Wilkins.
“Ashes, ashes,” the white rabbit whispered.
“W-we all fall down,” Carson parroted dutifully, the others around him mumbling in mimicry.
The rabbit let out a low snicker, a boyish little giggle. “Maybe you, maybe not.”
He pulled away, and Carson’s shoulders slumped.
“Ring around the rosey!” the rabbit shrieked, pumping the baton in the air. “Pocket full of posies!”
“Ashes, ashes, we all fall down,” droned in nervous straggles, and the rabbit did a delighted little jig.
“Very good!” He twirled the baton, again and again and again, then marched to the head of the line and started again. “Bub-ble gum, bub-ble gum, in-a-dish—” Pointing, pointing, always pointing as he made his way down the line, counting out each man with each syllable. “—how-many-pieces-do-you-wish?”
He landed on Huey. He landed on Huey, and Huey made a glottal sound in the back of his throat, looking left to right, again and again, eyes darting back and forth, an that was when Carson realized:
The fucker was counting.
Trying to pick a number that would land on anyone but him.
“Come on now, Huey-Dewey-Louie,” the white rabbit crooned, tapping the baton under Huey’s chin and forcing it up. “Give me a number, one-two-three.”
Huey crumpled up his face, mucus dripping from his nose and down his upper lip. “S-six. I pick six.”
“Six it is, then.” Slower steps, now. Slow, methodical, pacing from one to the next, counting. “One.” Shoving the baton against a flabby chest. “Two.” Knocking it against shaking knees. “Three.” The baton prodded Carson right in the gut, and he swallowed back as the pressure dared him to throw up. For just a second he caught those eyes again, watching him slyly as the rabbit glided past. “Four.” Poor Wilkins, cuffed upside the head but still standing, still holding his ground. “Five and six…mymothertoldmetochoosetheverybestoneandyouarenotIT.”
With a sudden howl, words running together, the white rabbit flashed back up the line, arms flailing behind him as he ran, swung, arced the baton around in both hands, brought it down atop Huey’s head. Huey screamed, stumbling away, but the black leather-sheathed stick smashed down onto his skull with an oddly hollow thock, and every man in the room—prison guard and inmate alike—jumped as Huey went down hard, crumpling into a near-naked and forlorn heap with his briefs slowly going dark and wet in the front, blood trickling down from his forehead.
“I don’t like people who play bad games,” the white rabbit said slowly. “You tried to be Not It…but you had a responsibility, Huey-Dewey-Louie-duck.” He kicked Huey’s rubbery, unresponsive body hard enough to make his thick frame rock back violently, then shudder to a halt. The rabbit stared down at him for several moments longer, then lifted his head, turning it slowly, looking side to side, dragging out his words in a lisping whisper. “My mother your mother on the floor,” he nearly groaned out, then giggled. “Mama punched your mama just a little more.” Closer he drew to Carson. “When her nose be-gan-to-flood…” Closer. Closer, until they stood eye to eye once more, that seething gaze scoring into him. “What color, what color …was…the blood?”
Carson knew this one. He’d played this version as a child. The blood could be blue or green or purple or pink or fucking burnt sienna, it didn’t matter as long as you could count out the letters to pick who was it. P-I-N-K, fourth person out and all done.
He swallowed thickly. He didn’t want to be it, that was for fucking sure, but if he tried to foist it off on someone else he’d end up like goddamned Huey.
Not me, he thought again, and gave the only answer he could.
Trying to be an honest man, but not a dead one.
“Red,” he whispered. “Th-the…the blood is red.”
“That’s right, Carson,” the rabbit breathed, his voice rich with something like pleasure. “You did good…because the blood is very, very red.”
Before the baton exploded across the side of Carson’s face, whipping his head to the side so hard that even as his neck went pop-crack-ow, his vision vanished into a crimson swelling storm and everything went strange and dark.
He thought he was falling, but his body was somewhere separate from him, down the other end of a very, very long string that was unspooling, unspooling, drawing farther and farther away. He heard another pop, another smash, vaguely felt a thudding and a crashing in his skull, a ringing bobbing bounce like his brain was shaking around inside a can. Again. And again, every time the red bursting like it was wet inside his eyes, his sockets filled with blood. Nothing made sense. Nothing made sense, and he didn’t understand what was happening.
“Ashes, ashes!” the white rabbit cried.
“We all fall down!”
“Ashes, ashes!”
“We all fall down!”
“Ashes. ASHES—”
Again and again, the smash and the break.
The thread grew longer, longer, snapped.
Carson felt no more pain, felt nothing at all, even as somewhere distant he knew it was happening again and again, crash and crush and slam and strike. It didn’t matter anymore. He was gone, spiraling down that rosey, rosey ring into nothing.
Ashes, ashes.
We all fall down.
[1: NOT HOLDING ON]
DETECTIVE SEONG-JAE YOON BRACED HIS hands against the headboard and grit his teeth, biting his tongue against the cry of pain building in the back of his throat.
“Harder,” he hissed around his clenched jaw, while Malcolm dug his fingers into Seong-Jae’s shoulder and made agony lance up into his tensed neck and ripple down his spine. “Harder.”
Malcolm gripped tighter, then paused, thick fingers clasped firmly against Seong-Jae’s shoulder, the roughness in his voice a taut and heavy thing as he growled against Seong-Jae’s ear. “Are you sure?”
“Just do it,” Seong-Jae bit off. “Get it over with.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Malcolm exhaled, his heated breaths washing against Seong-Jae’s neck and stirring his hair; the old wolf’s unbound mane of tumbled hair, silver and iron with traces of dark chestnut brown washed throughout, spilled against Seong-Jae’s cheek. Malcolm’s heat nearly pressed against his back, the mattress dipping beneath them both as Malcolm shifted his massive weight, spread his knees, braced.
Then tightened his grip and wrenched, dragging a sharp, gasping cry from Seong-Jae’s throat as Malcolm jerked his dislocated shoulder back into place in a single fiery burst of ripping pain that flared white-hot and then subsided as bone found its rightful home with a pop.
Seong-Jae collapsed against the pillows with a groan, twisting to brace his back against the headboard, and ground the heel of his palm against his aching shoulder. “Mother fucker.”
“…you always manage to sound more vulgar cursing in English than you do in Korean.”
“That is because you are not a native speaker, so you romanticize the sound of the language rather than the meaning. You know quite well what ‘um chang se kki’ means considering that I call you that at least once a day.” Wincing, Seong-Jae rolled his shoulder; it no longer felt as though it had been bound immobile in a vice, at least, but he should probably be ginger with it for the rest of the day.
Which likely meant no more heavy lifting.
Malcolm Khalaji settled to sprawl next to him in their bed—the only thing that was still neat and somewhat intact in the mess of Malcolm’s apartment. Towers of boxes rose everywhere, occupying every available space, and Seong-Jae rather imagined they both smelled like a locker room
, considering both their shirts were drenched in sweat despite the late February chill frosting the windows of the loft and gusting inside with every trip up and down the stairs.
With a lazy sound, Malcolm tilted his head against the headboard, slate blue eyes regarding Seong-Jae with a calm warmth that made them gleam in the shadow of his hair, starkly contrasted against the grizzled silver thatch of his beard. He was all wild animal power and languid ease, right now, his faded old t-shirt stretched obscenely tight against his torso and darkened with such heavy, drenched patches of sweat that the pale gray cotton clung close, outlining every chisel of thick-hewn muscle in a broad barrel chest and hard-packed stomach.
“Hey,” Malcolm rumbled. “Are you sure that’s enough, popping it back into place? You don’t need a doctor?”
“No.” Seong-Jae rolled his shoulder once more, wincing as he tested it and a twinge shot through him. “A doctor will tell me to ice it and bind it. So I will ice it and bind it tonight, and remind you to not be so rough if you want me to help at all with the last of the boxes.”
Malcolm grinned, languid and devilish. “You never complained about me being rough before.”
Seong-Jae scowled. “I did not have a dislocated shoulder before, asshole.”
“No, but you did have a near-severed femoral artery and a severe leg wound, but you still kept begging ‘Malcolm, mo—’ ow!”
With a sharp jab of his elbow against Malcolm’s side, Seong-Jae glared at him. “I have not unpacked yet. I will move right the fuck back out.”
“No, you won’t.” Completely intractable—as Malcolm so often was, along with insufferable, irritating, incorrigible, and numerous other i-words that added up to an entirely infuriating ass of a man—Malcolm slouched down against the pillows and rolled over to drape one arm across Seong-Jae’s stomach, burying his face against his side. “How’s your leg feeling, anyway? It wasn’t too much, hauling everything?”
“A mild soreness. Nothing more. It would appear seven weeks is enough to at least restore my mobility.”
“Mmph.” Malcolm rubbed his cheek to Seong-Jae’s side, his beard scratching through Seong-Jae’s shirt. “You were limping on the last trip.”
Sighing, Seong-Jae pressed a fingertip to the center of Malcolm’s forehead and pushed. “You worry too much. And watch me too much.”
“Can’t help it,” Malcolm mumbled into his shirt. “Love you.”
“God damn it.” That fingertip turned into the heel of Seong-Jae’s palm—and with an annoyed sound, flustered irritation bristling through him like a sea urchin’s spikes pricking on the inside, he shoved his hand into Malcolm’s face. “Get off me.”
Laughing, Malcolm rolled back, sprawling out against the sheets. “You still get so angry when I say that.”
“Because you say it just to make me angry!”
“Mm.” Laughter fading, Malcolm stretched out, looking up at Seong-Jae with half-lidded eyes. “It’s not the only reason I say it.”
Seong-Jae met that darkened, heated gaze for only a few moments before he had to turn his face aside. He could not look at Malcolm when he was like this: nearly radiating contented warmth, looking at Seong-Jae with all the love in the world so nakedly unguarded on those handsome, weathered features.
Every time Malcolm said that, it only reminded Seong-Jae that he had not said it in return.
He could not.
He did not know why, when that feeling lived so deep and hot inside him, until it felt like the thing that made his blood flow and gave his heart the fire it needed to burn.
But every time the words hovered on the tip of his tongue, he saw that band of scar tissue around Malcolm’s neck. So much newer, fresher, than that fierce scar slashing down his eye, near-white against that tanned, swarthy skin and left behind by the cold bite of steel wire into his throat.
That collar he could never take off; a binding that had nearly chained him to a fate too terrible to imagine.
All because Seong-Jae had not trusted Malcolm with his secrets, until his past had risen up in all its horror and cruelty to try to consume them both.
And had nearly taken Malcolm from him forever.
Some part of him could not forget that it would happen again. That Sila—Lucas Aleks—was still out there, alive somewhere, possibly moving on to another target, possibly simply biding his time while his obsession with Seong-Jae expanded to include Malcolm.
Seong-Jae knew how Sila thought.
And once he laid claim to someone…
Whether they liked it or not, they were his forever.
No, he thought, staring blankly at the moving boxes. He is mine, and only mine.
But until Seong-Jae felt he could say that with utter certainty, until he knew without a doubt that Sila could never touch either of them again…
He did not feel as if he had the right to say those words.
To say I love you, Malcolm.
I love you more than I have ever loved another, and I cannot endure the thought of life without you.
He took a deep, shaky breath, focusing on the hangul reading chimshil scribbled down the side of one box. He had not unpacked the box since long before he had vacated the apartment Sila had contaminated with his presence to, instead, answer that tentative invitation to move in with Malcolm, but Seong-Jae sincerely doubted he would get the chance to unpack any time soon.
Over the course of their partnership, then relationship, then forcibly idle weeks on suspension and medical leave, Malcolm’s apartment had grown comfortable, safe, beginning to feel something like home…
But that did not change that Malcolm had lived like a bachelor for many years, and had not exactly designed the loft to accommodate space for another.
“This is not going to work,” Seong-Jae blurted out.
Anything for a distraction from those deep, storm-colored eyes that seemed to say It’s okay.
It’s okay if you’re not ready.
I’ll wait for you.
Malcolm snorted, the shift of his thickly weighted body enough to shake the bed. “I wish you’d said that before I threw my back out hauling your shit up four flights of stairs. In the snow.”
Seong-Jae looked at him flatly. “The stairs are indoors.”
“My car isn’t.”
“Jot.” Seong-Jae rolled his eyes. “I mean that your apartment does not have enough space for both your possessions and mine. Where am I to unpack everything?”
With a nonchalant shrug, Malcolm closed his eyes, folding one arm underneath his head. “I didn’t exactly plan on storage for two.”
“I do not think more IKEA shelving will solve…” Seong-Jae gestured at the walls of boxes; beyond them the open loft space of Malcolm’s apartment was almost invisible, the stylish yet homey combination of European, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern decorating influences buried under an endless sea of cardboard. “…this.”
One eye snapped open, dark with warning. “There will be no IKEA anything in my apartment,” Malcolm huffed, and Seong-Jae bit back his amusement. Of course the old wolf was offended by the idea of prefabricated furniture. But after a hesitant moment, Malcolm added more softly, “…our apartment.”
Oh, fuck him for that.
Seong-Jae ignored him quite firmly, just as firmly as he ignored the warmth in his own cheeks, and instead glared toward the door. “Then I am not sure what to do about the problem.”
“Maybe we need a bigger apartment,” Malcolm suggested.
“…we just moved my things here. Now you want to move somewhere else?”
“Clearly we’ve got issues with spatial relations, or we could’ve saved the trouble and found another apartment to start with.” Malcolm’s eye slipped closed again, and he lifted one thick, burly forearm bristling with dark curves of arm hair before letting it fall again nonchalantly. “I’m not particularly wedded to this one.”
Seong-Jae blinked.
Even after months working together with BPD homicide, dating, more…
<
br /> Somehow Malcolm always still managed to surprise him.
First the open invitation to make his space their space, and now…
“You have always seemed quite territorial,” Seong-Jae ventured.
“I just need to have a space I can call my own. What space that is doesn’t matter, as long as it’s mine.”
And the devil’s own smile was back as Malcolm rolled over onto his side to face Seong-Jae, propping his head against one hand and the other reaching out to curl, warm and heavy and so wonderfully familiar, against Seong-Jae’s knee, just above the place where, beneath his jeans, hid the last raw edges of the wound that had nearly killed him…and Malcolm’s thumb stroked in a slow arc against the denim, a gesture Seong-Jae had become so very familiar with over more than a week in the hospital, longer in bed on forced rest when there was nothing to do but recover as long as they were suspended.
“I don’t mind staking out new territory with you,” Malcolm murmured.
With a sigh, Seong-Jae leaned down to brush his lips across the top of Malcolm’s head, that tangled mane teasing at his cheeks, his mouth. “You really are an old wolf.”
“Nah.” Malcolm smirked. “I haven’t tried to mount you yet, have I?”
“Today,” Seong-Jae grumbled. “The morning is young.”
“And we left the Camaro unlocked,” Malcolm countered, before laughing that deep, rolling chuckle that always sounded like gritty sand and raw velvet. Pushing himself up in a powerful flex of hard-cut forearms, he rolled out of the bed, then offered Seong-Jae his hand. “C’mon. Let’s at least finish emptying it out. I’ll carry the heavy stuff so you don’t aggravate your shoulder…and then we can start looking at listings.”
Seong-Jae eyed that hand…but in the end, he could not refuse it, and slipped his fingers into that callused palm, the comfort and security of strong, coarse fingers wrapping around his hand. He could never refuse when Malcolm reached for him.
Even if sometimes he did not understand why Malcolm did.
But he would always reach back, he thought, as Malcolm pulled him to his feet with effortless strength and spun Seong-Jae into his arms.
