Savior

by Rhys Ford

  The books were as hard-won as the shirt. There were a few he’d squirreled away in his things and kept hidden from prying eyes and sticky fingers. For some reason books were a source of mocking amusement whenever he was caught with them before, and even then it was hard for Mace to admit his addiction to the printed word. But he brought home shelves he found in trash bins and garage sales and filled them with paperbacks he haggled people out of, sometimes for as little as a quarter for a box. They were his treasures, pieces of gold and bits of worlds he shared with Ivo only after outlining strict rules against bending spines and dog-earing pages.

  He started to unpack his things just as Ivo’s first tear wet his cheek.

  And despite the years, Ivo still had boundary issues.

  “Can we just skip over the conversation about how the key is only to be used for emergencies?” Ivo didn’t even glance up from the sheaf of papers he was reading. Pointing in the general direction of the heavy pair of Doc Martens Mace almost tripped over, he shrugged. “I wasn’t going to stand out in the hallway wearing those. They’re too heavy and new. I just wanted to get them off.”

  As always, Ivo was a mass of contradictions. Barefoot and wearing a schoolgirl skirt that could have possibly passed as a kilt except for the coin-spangled belly dancer belt slung around his hips, Ivo sat cross-legged on the sofa facing the door. His sparkling blue eyes were rimmed with a heavy layer of kohl, a feminine touch contradicted by the dark scruff on his jaw. An inch or two shorter than Mace, he was mostly leg, but at some point, his shoulders had widened out and he’d gained some muscle along his torso. His thighs and calves were sleek and powerful, probably from wearing the deadly heels he liked to sport once in a while. Mace couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Ivo’s natural hair color, and today it was different again, a range of burned reds, yellows, and spots of orange streaked through his ebony-tinted mane.

  “If I didn’t know better, sometimes I could swear someone stole you from Elfhaine.” Mace picked up the offending shoes and placed them on the rack against the wall.

  “Yeah, that’s me,” his brother snorted under his breath. “Ivo, Clan Rogers, Fifth in the House of Bear, Jester of the Ashbury Heights. Pleased to meet you. And since you’re up, can you make me some coffee? I didn’t want to touch the Transformer you’ve got living on your countertop. God only knows what would happen if I pressed the wrong button. Last thing I needed was a sentient Pontiac Firebird popping up in your kitchen.”

  “It’s not that complicated. You pull the pot out of the part where… never mind, I’ll do it. It’ll be easier than having to explain it to you when you obviously don’t want to do it yourself.” Mace toed off his shoes. “I’ll get your coffee going. Then I’m going to take a shower. I’m pretty ripe.”

  “You’re telling me,” Ivo sniped. “I can smell you from here.”

  “Nice. Remind me again why we didn’t smother you with a pillow while you were sleeping?” Mace didn’t get an answer, but he wasn’t expecting one.

  He shuffled the Tupperware he’d gotten from Mrs. Hwang into the sparse interior of his refrigerator and quickly checked the expiration date on his creamer. Satisfied it was still good, he got the coffeepot set up and glanced over to the sitting area he’d set up instead of a dining room next to the kitchen. He’d taken off the chair rail, intending to paint before he lined the walls with the floor-to-ceiling cherrywood shelves he’d salvaged from the brothers’ house.

  The chair rail was still gone, but four feet of the ivory wallpaper he had yet to steam off was now covered with an elaborate underwater scene, complete with mermen and delicate faerie dragons, all done in black marker.

  The lines were beautiful, and the stippling ranged from loose to tight, giving the piece dimension. He could clearly see the current moving through the seaweed fronds and amoeba frills, and he noticed a scattering of manta rays in the upper right corner, barely silhouettes in the background. One of them had bunny ears.

  Mace took a long, steadying breath. “You were supposed to help me take that down, remember? Not draw all over it.”

  “If you bothered to notice, it’s butcher paper I tacked to the wall. I’m taking it with me. I got bored waiting for you,” Ivo remarked. “And then when I was done with that, I went and found what you’re working on so I had something to read. You didn’t tell me you got up to chapter six. Last I heard, you only had a plot, and that was kind of sketchy.”

  Another breath did nothing to soothe Mace’s rattled nerves. Ivo knew how to push every single one of his buttons, much like their brother Gus. But unlike Gus, Ivo knew exactly what he was doing when he was doing it.

  “There are literally boxes of books up against that wall over there,” Mace finally said. “None of which involve turning on my laptop, digging through my files, and then printing them out.”

  “Yeah, sometimes you have to work a little to get something that really satisfies you,” Ivo replied unapologetically. “Go take your shower, and when you come back, we can talk about what you did here with chapter two.”

  THE SHOWER had been long and hot, a welcome respite after a chilled walk down the hill and the cold Mace couldn’t seem to shake out of his bones. He’d come back to the living room to find the stereo set to a low murmur—Stevie Ray Vaughan growling about the high waters in Texas—and Ivo accepting a takeout delivery from the Chinese kitchen up the street. The sliding glass door leading to the balcony had been left open a crack, letting the street noise into the apartment, and the rest of Mace’s prickliness eased away, soothed by the river of sound that washed over him. They’d settled onto the couches, comfortable in a silence punctured only by their slurping up food and sipping from the cold beer Mace retrieved from the fridge.

  “Thanks for ordering.” He saluted Ivo with the Tsingtao. “Appreciate it.”

  “I’m not going to say I’m sick of eating Chinese food, but I’m kind of sick of eating Chinese food,” Ivo commented while he picked through his noodles, probably looking for more shrimp. “You should really learn how to cook more than chili, beef stew, and pulled pork.”

  “I can also make eggs, bacon, and pancakes,” Mace corrected, “and waffles, because that’s just pretty much pancakes. And if you fuck up the batter, you can fold fruit and shit inside of it, cover it with whipped cream, and call it a crepe.”

  Ivo looked up at him, judgmentally and skeptically. “That’s not how it works. That’s not how any of it works. Those things are nothing like—”

  “Don’t see you complaining when I’m making peanut-butter-and-chocolate-chip crepes on Sunday morning if I’m over there. All those are is pancake batter with too much milk. And don’t get me started on the noises you make when I pull out the Nutella.” Mace found a shrimp in his house-special chow fun, picked it out with his chopsticks, and put it in Ivo’s open Styrofoam container. “You sound like a bad porno from the seventies, where the pizza delivery guy never seems to have a pizza when he knocks on the door.”

  “Only you would give a shit about the pizza when watching porn.” Ivo moved the shrimp aside and began to migrate his pile of discarded mushrooms over to Mace’s noodles. “So I’ve got to ask you, did you happen to notice you wrote Rob, the new guy, into chapter three as your main character’s love interest?”

  “I did not.” Mace debated taking back the shrimp, but Ivo would probably stab him with a chopstick in retaliation. “I don’t think I even know what the guy really looks like.”

  “Really?” Again Ivo’s voice dripped skepticism. “Because whenever you’re in the shop, it seems like he’s the only thing that holds your attention. Or haven’t you noticed that too?”

  “Barking up the wrong tree, kiddo.” The lies sat between them like a heavy and bloated tick, drunk on mistruths and deception. Mace knew what Rob looked like. He couldn’t help but know. The tattoo artist haunted Mace’s dreams, and his hammered-gold gaze and full, ripe mouth fed into every sexual desire Mace’s twisted mind could dredge up. But there was no way
he was going to let Ivo know that. “He’s an employee, remember? We do not sleep with anyone who works for us. One of the shop’s rules.”

  “I’m just saying, if you’re going to fantasize about someone, you should probably leave him out of your book.” Ivo pinched Mace with his toes, something Mace would’ve thought was impossible considering the distance between them, but he’d forgotten how long Ivo’s legs were. “And don’t make that face. It didn’t hurt. I barely touched you.”

  “I’m not fantasizing about him. Besides him being one of Bear’s artists, I don’t do relationships, remember?” He was ready for Ivo’s next jab and rubbed at his brother’s foot before it hit its mark. Ivo was ticklish, and Mace knew exactly where. A quick slide of his fingers on Ivo’s arch and his brother quickly retreated, hissing furiously. Sobering after a quick chuckle, Mace said, “I’m too fucked-up, kid. No one’s going to want to wade through my shit for longer than a one-night stand.”

  “Mace, that’s just—”

  “It’s the truth. Every single guy I hooked up with in the past headed for the door as soon as they got to know me better. I’m not doing it to myself again. I’m not going to give somebody my heart just so they can spit on it like everybody else,” Mace interrupted. “Trust me, Ivo, the only love I’m ever going to get in my lifetime is from you and the rest of the family. That’s just going to have to be enough.”

  Four

  IF THE Craftsman house in Ashbury Heights was a home, the tattoo shop on the edge of Fisherman’s Wharf was a sanctuary.

  Mace liked the bustle of the crowds around the front door and the ambient rush of voices and footsteps that crept into the shotgun-style shop. There were times when he jogged from his Chinatown apartment to 415 Ink in the middle of the night, touched its locked front door as though to tag himself safe, and then headed back up the hill. Depending on how tired he was, it could take anywhere from minutes to an hour, but the city usually kept him company along the way, even in the dead of night.

  But there was nothing like dropping in on the shop in the late hours of the morning, right before 415 Ink opened for business. That was when Mace usually could find a brother or two, and it was better than tagging himself safe on the front door.

  The smell of coffee greeted Mace when he approached the back door. The crowds were already thick on the sidewalk—he’d dodged at least five children and two dogs but failed to see the woman dressed in pink from head to toe and carrying her ferret. She went to the left at the same time he did, and the only one to come out of the exchange without a bump on their head was the ferret. He caught up with it before it could disappear, snagged its leash carefully, and then scooped it up to hand the animal back to her.

  They did mutual apologies, and she was bold enough to place her business card into his hand after he helped her up from the sidewalk. She was pretty in a way that women were when they were comfortable with themselves, and despite his preference for men, her easy smile brightened the edges of the darkness he carried inside. It only took a moment of hemming and hawing before she rattled off a checklist of reasons why he couldn’t date her. She hit on gay at the third try and laughed when he blushed.

  “Keep the card,” she told him. “I could always use a friend who likes ferrets and drinks coffee.”

  He kept the card and tucked it into his wallet as he strode to 415 Ink’s rear entrance. He hadn’t taken more than three steps into the shop when an air-raid siren went off… or at least that’s what it sounded like. If the air-raid siren was a little bit taller than knee height, had enormous eyes that took up most of his face, and was a little bit more than three years old.

  “Uncle Mace!” The little boy’s voice was a shrieking cry, sharp enough to cut through a pack of gulls fighting over french fries, but Mace didn’t mind. He caught Chris as the boy launched himself at him and took a knee to his stomach, but that was better than a few inches below—something Mace learned very early in his relationship with the enthusiastic toddler. “Going to the zoo! Want to come?”

  “You better ask the adult taking you before you start handing out invitations, kid,” Mace laughed. “Unless that’s your devious way of getting another adult in on the trip so you can score more goodies.”

  “You have him confused with Ivo. God knows he looks enough like him, and sometimes I think he opens his mouth and Ivo crawls out,” Gus remarked as he came out of the shop’s office. “Chris, dude, what did we talk about? About jumping on people? If Earl doesn’t get to do it, you don’t get to do it.”

  “That’s a pretty low bar to set for parenting,” Mace teased. “He just has to behave better than the dog? Earl will eat cat shit or any dead squirrel he finds on a walk.”

  “Look, that’s my baseline.” His younger brother shrugged and then took his son out of Mace’s arms. “Earl’s rules are simple—no bringing dead things inside, no eating dead things you find outside, and no jumping on people. If I can get Chris to master that, we can move on to things like not eating crayons or paste.”

  “Really?” He crooked an eyebrow at Gus. “Pretty sure you were still eating crayons just last week.”

  “Yeah, fu—damn it.” Mace saw Gus catch himself as he lifted his hand up and folded his fingers down, but he shook off the gesture before Chris saw him. Gus slid Chris around onto his hip and kept a tight hold on his wiggling kid. “Bear’s setting up. He’s got a twelve thirty coming in, and I’m on this evening, after I drop off the monster here.”

  The grin Chris exchanged with Gus was heartbreakingly sweet. It was the kind of moment Mace could never admit he longed for. Father and son were nearly two peas in a pod, but Chris’s eyes were nearly Ivo’s in shape and color, a darker blue than Gus’s silvery sky hue. It was easy to see the little boy Gus had been in the toddler he held now. Their smiles were both off-kilter, and even though Gus’s hair was a darker blond and much more golden than Chris’s wheaten locks, the strands fell in the same way—a tousled mane around their attractive faces.

  They would probably eventually share the same body frame, broad shoulders and long legs, just like Ivo, and Chris’s dimples were hints on his cheeks, but his facial structure was pure Gus, a cherubic version of his father’s roguish features. They even laughed the same way, starting off with a small chuckle and building up to a full-throttle guffaw.

  But it was the sheer joy in Chris’s expression that Mace one day hoped Gus would share. None of the other brothers carried their shadows as close to their soul as Gus, and if there was anything Mace wished for most, it wasn’t to exorcise his own ghosts, but rather to put Gus’s to rest—anything to see him smile with as much unabashed pleasure as his son did.

  “He’s probably going to be taller than you,” Mace poked at Gus. “Give it a couple years and the only person you’re going to be standing over will be Luke.”

  “Dude, why don’t you go find your uncle Bear and say goodbye,” Gus muttered as he set Chris down, “so I can kick your uncle Mace in the—”

  “Remember the Rule of Earl.” Mace tsked and brought his knee in to block Gus in case his brother decided against common sense and hit him. “Make sure your kid has better manners than the dog… or in your case, you should have better manners than the kid.”

  “One day….” Gus shook his finger under Mace’s nose. “One day someone is going to come along and kick your ass, and I only hope that I’m there to see it.”

  “Well that day isn’t today, and that someone isn’t you,” he shot back and lightly punched his brother on the arm. “You guys go have fun at the zoo. Bear said there was mail for me up at the house that he brought down. And if you should happen to see the guy who used to live with me sometime today, tell him to swing by and let me know what he wants to do with the storage space in the garage. I don’t want to put anything in front of his stuff if he’s going to run away and join the circus, but I need to build out a couple of shelving units, and I want to store lumber down there for a while.”

  “Got it,” Gus grunted when
Chris came barreling back into him. “I’m going to go pick him up from the station. He should just be getting off shift. I told him he should go home and crash, but he wants to come to the zoo with us.”

  “Rey?” Chris asked, cocking his head. “I like Rey. He shares his fries.”

  “Ivo is never going to be forgiven for that.” Gus slapped Mace on the shoulder, leaving a slight sting. “If you don’t have Bear take care of that touchup for you, come by later and I’ll do it.”

  “I can do a touchup if Bear can’t and you don’t want to wait.” Rob, the bane of Mace’s existence, came out of the employees’ lounge, one hand wrapped around a steaming mug and the other raking through his blue-tipped black hair. “I don’t have anything until three. I’m just doing walk-ins.” He caught the look the brothers exchanged, and then he grimaced. “Okay, Barrett. I don’t know why you guys are such hardasses about that. It’s his fucking nickname.”

  “And with that swearword in front of my kid, I’m out of here,” Gus said with a nod toward Mace. “Hit me up later.”

  “Later. Don’t forget to tag Rey for me.” Mace forced himself not to look in Rob’s direction. He waved Gus and Chris off and turned, only to find Rob standing in front of him. “What?”

  They needed the space between them. He needed space between them. Rob was becoming an itch Mace knew he couldn’t afford to scratch.

  The shop had rules. Bear had rules. And no matter how many years Mace spent calling Bear his brother, he wasn’t willing to risk being tossed out by crossing a line clearly drawn in the sand. He didn’t have to look deeply to know he didn’t have… faith in being loved unconditionally. There’d been too many infractions in the past, both real and imagined, with his father and then the families he’d been handed to. He loved his brothers too much to risk even the taste of Rob’s mouth.