Stories Beneath Our Skin

by Veronica Sloane

  "Depends on the day." Ace shrugged. "Enough money to keep the shop open, enough food to keep me full, and a few friends are usually enough for me. What about you?"

  "A full house." He said before he could stop himself. "I want to come home at the end of a long day doing a job I love and have someone waiting who's happy to see me."

  "Yeah." Ace smoothed down the wrinkled line of his cutoffs, plucked idly at the soft white cotton strings. "That's as good a definition as any."

  "I should probably just get a dog."

  "Heh. Cynical, Professor, very cynical."

  "Animals are more reliable than people."

  Silence descended in the car, the sun superheating Liam's skin where it pierced through the windshield. Yet a prickle rose on the back of his neck just like the night before. This time Liam caught Ace at it.

  "You stare a lot." He grumbled, flicking on the radio.

  "There's a lot to look at." Ace didn't apologize. If anything, with it acknowledged between them, his gaze intensified.

  "It's weird." Weirder still was that Liam sort of liked it. He spent so much time trying not to be seen that it carried an illicit sort of thrill now. He felt naked and vulnerable, but for the first time in too long, also unafraid.

  "Don't know if you've noticed, but I'm weird. Get used to it."

  "You're not. Weird, I mean. Just intense."

  "But my staring is weird."

  "And intense."

  "It's a bit of the old pot and kettle there." Ace snorted. "You've got laser focus sometimes."

  "No idea what you're talking about."

  St. Francis loomed up, and Liam took three steadying breaths. His usual parking space was open, and he tried not to take that as a good omen. There wasn't any sense in looking for hope in these sorts of things. The time for hope was over. Psyching himself up to face reality required most of his energy, and it wasn't until Gretchen asked, "And who's your friend?" that he realized Ace had followed him inside.

  "Oh. Um." Liam nailed Ace with a hard glare, jerking his head back to the car, but Ace missed it entirely, too busy taking in the room. "This is my boss, Ace."

  "Nice to meet you." Gretchen eyed Ace warily. "He going in with you?"

  "Yeah." Liam said, flipping to the defensive fast enough to give himself whiplash. He didn't actually want Ace there, but he didn't like Gretchen's tone either. Just because Ace looked like the poster boy for What Your Mother Warned You About didn't mean he wasn't a decent person. "That okay with you?"

  "Sure." She pushed the visitor's log at him. "You know the drill."

  "Just sign in." Liam pushed it toward Ace and watched him draw in his signature complete with an extra flourish and smarmy smile for Gretchen. Apparently Liam wasn't the only one feeling defensive.

  "Remember to be quiet. People need their rest." Gretchen chirped, eyes still warily on Ace.

  "I remember." Liam sighed. He wanted to tell her that Ace, love of thumping bass lines notwithstanding, carried with him a profound quiet. Even his heavy boots barely squeaked against the shining tile floors.

  "Not bad for what it is," Ace said softly.

  "I hate it."

  "Well, yeah. Guess you would even if it was the Taj Mahal."

  "The Taj Mahal is a tomb." Liam ran a hand through his hair, wondering if his clothes would give away that he hadn't been home.

  There wasn't any time for warnings or admonishments, and, really, Liam didn't know where to start with those anyway. It had been too many years since Liam had introduced anyone to Gene. Once Liam was sixteen, Gene had given him a lot of free rein, and on the surface it hadn't been a bad idea. Good grades, self-motivated kid with a part-time job shouldn't need constant supervision. Sometimes Liam wished it had been different, but he couldn't blame Gene for everything that had happened with Brandon. There was only himself to set that burden on.

  He pushed into the room, smile on his face and Ace on his heels.

  "Sorry I'm late."

  "Started to think you got eaten by a bear." Gene struggled to sit up. Breakfast sat neglected beside him.

  "My fault." Ace stepped inside. "He was playing guardian angel last night for a group of us. Kept him up too late. I'm Ace."

  "Liam's boss?" Gene held out a frail hand, which Ace shook. "He's told me a lot about you."

  "That so?" Ace said mildly. "Good things, I hope."

  "With Liam? Always a mixed bag with him. Boy never met a dog that didn't bite, you understand?"

  "I'm not that bad." Liam slumped into a chair, already regretting not locking Ace in the car. "Just a realist."

  "Half-full or half-empty?" Ace challenged.

  "Depends on how much you started with."

  "Don't bother, he'll argue you to death." Gene gestured at the unused second chair. "Pull it up and tell me how my boy is getting on."

  "He's good." The chair squawked as Ace dragged it closer to the bedside. When he sat, his knee bumped into Liam's thigh. "Got a flair for art and shaky clients."

  "Never did know why he stopped." Gene shrugged. "Don't take much to tattoos or the like myself, but art always had to be more than scribbles on paper for him. Like it was alive inside him, and he wanted it alive in front of him. When he started his apprenticeship, I was worried he'd give up on college there for a while. I was shocked when he gave up tattooing instead. Never did understand why."

  "I am still sitting here." Liam knotted his hands together. He'd told Gene that he didn't have time or a place to tattoo in California and assumed the story had been bought. He should've known better.

  "Doesn't matter. He kept the knack." Ace shrugged, knocking his shoulder gently into Liam's arm.

  "You going to eat that?" Liam brought the oatmeal in, putting the spoon in Gene's hand. "Not going to do you much good in a bowl."

  "Well, it's cold now." But Gene ate a few methodical bites. "Watched the news this morning. Heard about this mess with the Sheriff's department and the gambling ring?"

  "Randy Jacobs, right?" Ace snorted. "Went to high school with him, and the guy has always been as rancid as three day old meat. We all knew when he became a cop that it wasn't going to end pretty."

  "Think he was bad? His father used to work for me. Never actually caught him at anything, but he could make a person uncomfortable. Slimy son of a bitch. Not surprised his kids turned out the same way." Gene leaned forward a little, eyes bright. "If you know the Jacobs, then you have got to know Sandy Pritchard."

  "Sure. She was a little older than me, but everyone knew Sandy."

  The conversation spilled out from there, acquaintance after acquaintance brought up and compared. Liam had always known that he'd grown up in small community, but he'd been a latecomer and often lost in his own world. Most of the names were only familiar to him through Gene's stories. With nothing to add, he sank back and watched Gene grow increasingly animated.

  "You probably don't want to hear an old man's ramblings," Gene scoffed an hour in, halfway through a story about his friend Rick, a plane, and a very confused cow.

  "I can't think of anywhere else I'd rather be right now." Ace grinned, wide, boyish and utterly honest.

  Whatever burgeoning crush Liam might have tried to smother to death in darkness abruptly flowered into bright painful reality. He could have withstood the good looks, amazing art, and animal rescuing, but genuine interest in the only person Liam cared about and a smile that lit up the entire dreary room? He wasn't made of stone.

  Liam spent the next hour trying to focus on the conversation instead of stealing glances at the lean lines of Ace's body or worse, the plush arc of his lips. Despite his late night declarations, there had been people Liam was physically attracted to over the last few years, of course, but it had been all too easy to keep them at a distance. This was different. He recognized the sickening freefall of his stomach and the sweat on his palms. Klaxons blared in his ears, warning danger, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

  "Liam?" Gene said, a note of amusement in h
is voice.

  "What?" He blinked.

  "I was just telling Ace here that I've got to rest my eyes a bit. Maybe you could use a bit of a nap too. Sounds like you had a late night."

  "Yeah." He rubbed at his eyes. "You're probably right. I'll come back this afternoon, okay?"

  "Sure thing. Pick me up some orange juice? There's no pulp in the stuff they serve here. That's like sour water."

  "Pulpy orange juice. I can do that."

  "It was nice meeting you, Ace." Gene smiled sleepily. "You watch out for my boy."

  "Shouldn't be a problem. Been accused of having a staring problem already."

  When the door closed behind them, tension Liam hadn't realized he was storing up bled out of shoulders.

  "Come on, Professor. I'll buy you a burger."

  "Oh, you don't--"

  "'Course I don't." Ace headed back down the hall. "But it's lunchtime. Might as well. You can drop me back off at the shop after. Be about time to open up by then. There's a decent place a few blocks from here."

  "I know where you're talking about. I did grow up here, you know." Liam walked past Gretchen and offered only a small wave instead of stopping to chat like usual. She frowned, and he felt like an ass.

  "Doesn't show." The sun burnished Ace's dreads white gold. "You sound like you're from somewhere else entirely. California, maybe."

  "Berkeley."

  "What about it?"

  "You wanted to know what college I go to." He unlocked the car, letting the hot air escape. "I've been there three and a half years. Whatever accent I had, I lost."

  "You weren't kidding when you said it wasn't a party school." Ace whistled. "Smarter than you've been letting on, Professor?"

  "I'm good at school. Study hard, write solid papers. I'm not a science student or anything."

  "Right. English major. Shakespeare and all that."

  "And all that," he agreed.

  The diner hadn't changed at all. It still smelled of caramelized onions, and the walls were still too cluttered with knickknacks. It was bizarrely intimate to sit across in a booth from Ace instead of next to him on barstools. Liam's legs were too long for the cramped space, but he worked hard to keep them on his side of the table. The waitress seemed to know Ace, not bothering to ask his order after she was done taking down Liam's.

  "What kind of classes do you take for an English major anyway?" Ace asked as soon as she'd closed her pad and turned away.

  "Just the usual stuff, I guess."

  "Pretend like I never went to college." Ace picked up the butter knife, setting it on its end and spinning it slowly. "Because I didn't. Don't have clue one on the usual stuff."

  "Um, okay. Let's see... I took a lot of survey type classes. English novels and East Asian literature. But I'm down to seminars in my major now. I did 'Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche' last semester. Not sure what I'll take to finish it all off. I only need a few more credits and some other required classes."

  "Nietzsche was the guy who said God is dead, right?" The knife spun on, hypnotically slow.

  "Sort of. I mean, that's one of his main ideas, but it's used wrong a lot. He was interested in people evolving beyond religion. He thought that it was a crutch stopping us from reaching our full potential." Liam frowned. "The Nazis adopted his philosophy of the ubermensch, the superman, but he would have hated that."

  "Why?"

  "Aside from the fact that he wasn't an anti-Semite and hated the state? He was advocating for a more amoral lifestyle. The superman wouldn't be hampered by religion or any kind of conventional morality. Less Nazi, more anarchy. He wanted a world where no one was master or slave. Everyone was equal and the master of their own fate."

  "Now that's a guy I could get behind." Ace let the knife drop with a clatter. "You like him?"

  "Sometimes. I don't agree with everything he has to say."

  "So who's your favorite then? Writer or whatever."

  "Who's yours?"

  "Oh, no. You go first, Professor." Ace grinned. "I've learned your little tricks. Might have been too drunk to catch on last night, but you are the king of redirection. So, favorite author. Go."

  "Depends, I guess." Liam squirmed as Ace stared at him, clearly ready to wait in silence for an answer. "For pleasure, I've got to go with Clive Barker."

  "The horror guy? Man, I tried to read one of his books once. He's disturbing."

  "I like the way he's disturbed. It's dark and vicious, but it's also real and his characters have all these deep feelings that get expressed through mutations of the flesh." Liam gestured between them. "Sort of thing we get."

  "I haven't grown any new limbs recently, but yeah, I can see where that might be something you'd like. You said for pleasure though. What else is there? You read for pain, too?"

  "There's the stuff I read because it make me think even if they're not easy to get through." Liam leaned back in the booth, trying to keep his legs tucked on his side. "Mary Shelley was my favorite. Frankenstein has all these layers when you read it."

  "Layers in a groaning mindless monster?" Ace mimed the classic zombie pose.

  "That's just it!" Liam waved his hands in broad circles. "He isn't mindless at all. In the book, he's a sensitive thoughtful creature rejected by his creator and trying to sort out what it all means. It's about God and motherhood and man's search for meaning."

  "Never got any of that out of the movies." Ace propped his chin in his hand. "So Nietzsche, Barker, and Shelley."

  "And Ginsberg," he added, tearing off a strip of his napkin.

  "Who?"

  "Seriously?" Liam shook his head. "He was a beat poet, and he got banned almost everywhere and wrote all about being gay. His most famous poem is Howl, but he wrote a ton of great stuff."

  "So lay some on me."

  "What? Why?"

  "Because you like the guy, and now I'm curious." Ace looked serious, eyes soft and mouth a neutral straight line. "Never seen you get your blood up before. Nice to know you've got some passion bottled up in there."

  "It's not really diner appropriate stuff."

  "So don't get up on the counter and yell it. Just me sitting here."

  Stymied, only one piece, the "Sunflower Sutra", came to Liam's lips and it was easier to spill it out than keep it in once he'd thought of it.

  "We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive," he spoke low, mimicking the cadence of Ginsberg's voice from the recordings Liam had played ragged once upon a time, "we're all golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed and hairy naked accomplishment -- bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset."

  Their food came then and Liam broke off, preferring to eat than gauge his performance by Ace's expression.

  "I'm not much of a poetry person. Can't say I even understood all of that, but I liked the sound of it." Ace poured ketchup over his fries. "You'll make a good teacher."

  "You think so?"

  "Yeah, if you can let loose like that. When you care about something, you make me want to care about it, too." Licking a stray spot of ketchup from his thumb, Ace glanced at him under his eyelashes. "That's a talent."

  "Yeah." Liam disassembled his burger. His skin buzzed, and his heart started up double time. It had been ages and he'd never been good at reading signals to begin with, but he could almost swear that Ace was, very gently, flirting with him. "I'm nervous about it. I haven't started applying for masters programs yet."

  "Be strange if you weren't nervous, but it's good that you know what you want to do." Ace shrugged. "I had to kick around for a while, waste time."

  "You're thirty-one, now right? So you started the shop when you were like twenty-seven. Doesn't sound like it was all that much wasted." Which reminded Liam of something else. "You know when I first saw the name of the shop, it reminded me of Nietzsche."

  "Was it the obvious anarchy?" Ace rolled his eyes. "I swear it's like trying to herd cats."

  "No, it was the name like I said. Though
the anarchy is growing on me." He bit into a slice of onion. "There was a quote I liked of his, 'I rejoice in great sin as my great solace.'"

  "I think I liked the sunflower thing better." With a faint smile, Ace pointed to Liam's plate. "I keep wanting to ask. What is it with you and eating in layers?"

  "I like distinct tastes," Liam answered primly. His eating habits were one thing he couldn't escape ribbing about in college, and he'd long worn off the embarrassment. "I've always done it."

  "Remind me never to take you to a fancy restaurant."

  "They don't tend to serve layered foods, so it's less of an issue. Except lasagna. It can take a while to eat lasagna."

  "Remember when I said you calling me weird was pot and kettle?" Ace laughed. "I take it back. You are way weirder than me."

  "I can stop." He dropped the onion back on his burger.

  "Did I say that? Eat your burger however you want. Weird is good."

  "No it isn't. We demonize the Other. Anything weird becomes the enemy. That's the basis of the entire horror genre."

  "Trust me on this. On you, it's good." A boot smacked into Liam's sneaker under the table. "Now eat, Professor."

  Liam ate -- onion, tomato, meat, then bun -- while Ace talked about ink brands and the shipment due in later in the week. At some point in the meal, Liam stopped concentrating on staying to his side of the booth. Their legs tangled together, and neither of them made an attempt to escape.

  Chapter Six

  "Gather all ye strange children for I have brought you the food of the gods!" someone shouted from the lobby.

  Liam didn't break the streak of green he was delineating over hard muscle, but it was a close thing. Pin-ups weren't really his specialty, and this one had the added bonus of a fishtail. Still, he was pleased with the mermaid when all was said and done. The customer slipped him two sweaty twenties as a tip, so apparently he approved, too.

  When Liam finally made it to the lobby, there was already a horrifying carrion pile of gnawed bones on the table and the thick scent of fried grease in the air. Frankie presided over a pile of biscuits, nearly Donna Reed in her full skirt and pumps. The safety-pinned together t-shirt spoiled the image, though it did give Liam a good look at the smirking dragon winding over her side. Frankie looked eminently pleased with herself while Ace and Deb roundly praised her through full mouths.