Red Fish, Dead Fish

by Amy Lane

  Jackson groaned. “God—what am I going to say about work?”

  “You were out on a case,” Ellery muttered. “Heroin family is in custody and using our services, and the police are following your lead on the house. What’s to do?” He sat down again next to Jackson on the bed. Jackson had time to look at him, the way his eyes softened with worry, how his lower lip had swollen where he’d bitten it.

  Jackson had thought he’d never see Ellery again. A chasm of ache opened in his stomach that he could, possibly, have never seen Ellery again.

  And then he focused on what Ellery had just said and a whole different relief hit him.

  Oh. Oh yeah. The whole entire world didn’t know about Jackson’s night—just Ellery. Somehow his very pragmatism helped.

  “Did you call Tess Dakin?” he asked, and Ellery’s patently false look of contrition told him all he wanted to know.

  “Oh. Tess. Do you think she’d be interested?”

  “No, Ellery—I don’t. Maybe we never have to talk to her again, and your buddy Kryzynski could take care of all the police work on this one.”

  Ellery grunted. “Touché. I called Kryzynski. You can call Ms. Dakin.”

  And suddenly the jealousy wasn’t even funny. Because Ellery had the courage to say the big words, and Jackson’s heart was still learning how to swim in that and not drown.

  “You, uh….” His chin wobbled, and he willed himself to pull his shit together. “You know—I mean know that I wouldn’t ever… that you and me, it’s different. It’s important. It’s… I’m not going to sleep with anyone else—” Oh God. Owens’s face as he climaxed and shuddered in ecstasy. “On purpose.” Oh for fuck’s sake. This was hard. Taking Billy Bob and finding a hotel to die in would have been easier.

  “Here,” Ellery said quietly. “Take this.” Jackson took the ibuprofen and the juice without question, knocked the one back with the other, and gave Ellery the glass. He took it and set it on the table and then nudged Jackson to the middle of the bed. When Jackson had scooched over, Ellery slid in next to him and laid his cheek on his chest, wrapping his arms around Jackson’s middle.

  Jackson stroked the long strands of hair back from his eyes, uncertain of what to do next.

  “I’m going to keep saying I love you until it sticks,” Ellery said after a moment—apparently talking to Jackson’s navel, but that was okay.

  “I don’t know what to do with that,” Jackson told him honestly.

  “Someday you’ll say it back.”

  Jackson’s heart sped up, and he took a deep breath. Tears threatened, and he didn’t think he could do that—not today.

  “Not now,” Ellery added on a half laugh. “But someday. You’ll look at me, and it will just come out. You won’t be able to not say it.”

  “How do you know this shit?” God—it should have been the other way around. Jackson was the one who’d grown up on the streets. How did Ellery just seem to know so much more about the world?

  “Because I’ve been not saying it for months, Jackson. I’ve been looking at you over breakfast or when we get out of the car and thinking ‘I love you’ and not saying it. But… but you came back to me today, and you knowing it was just that much more important than my pride.”

  Jackson gasped and rested his cheek on top of Ellery’s head. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”

  Not the words. Because he couldn’t say them, not now. What were they worth when he was weak and sad and helpless? He’d say them when Ellery knew he didn’t need anything from them. That the words had all of Jackson’s heart in them. When he was strong enough to love and for it to mean something.

  “Anything interesting happen while I was gone?”

  Ellery didn’t protest the change in subject, instead telling him about his meetings with Buchannan and Lacey—in particular the fact that Lacey seemed more interested in whether or not Owens could be traced back to him than in the fact he’d released a serial killer into the world.

  “Is there any way we can subpoena those records?” Jackson asked, unhappy. It was hard enough proving a civilian guilty or innocent. The military had their own legal system, and civilians weren’t welcome.

  “I was starting the paperwork to make the request,” Ellery admitted, “but….”

  “What?”

  “Remember Victoriana?”

  “Oh God.” Ace and Sonny. Jackson and Ellery had taken exquisite care to not disturb the two of them. Ellery had even voluntarily lost a case, just so they could pretend the things they suspected about the two garage owner/street racers never had to be looked into.

  “Yeah. A subpoena to Lacey would mean Corporal Sonny Daye would have to be looked at, poked at, and subpoenaed.”

  “Really?” Jackson thought about it. “Can’t we just ask for Owens’s records—all of them, without redaction? If they say he worked under Galway, then we can subpoena Galway’s records, and then we can make our way to Lacey.”

  Ellery grunted and pushed himself up on his elbow. “That’s very clever of you. Subtle. I’m impressed.”

  Jackson managed a smile. “Well, there’s a reason you keep me around.”

  Ellery’s eyes grew wide and limpid, and he gasped and licked his lips. Jackson had been reading signals like that his entire life.

  “Really?” he asked, surprised.

  Ellery looked away. “You probably feel like crap—you’re hot and sick and—”

  Jackson captured his jaw with his fingers and kissed him.

  Ah… ah yes. The sweetness flooded him, Ellery’s taste, his eager response. Jackson swept his tongue into Ellery’s mouth, probing, stroking, melding the two of them.

  Sex had always been easy with them—passionate, incendiary. But Jackson was sore and he was sick; he would move aggressively, and Ellery would counter with such tenderness Jackson had to retreat, to match him with gentle touches, caresses rather than squeezes or grabs.

  Ellery moved the pillows behind him so he could lie flat, and he grunted at the change of position.

  “Yeah, it hurts,” Ellery muttered. “Because you couldn’t just let it heal, could you?”

  “Are you going to nag me into orgasm? ’Cause that’s fun!”

  Ellery laughed shortly and kissed him again as he lay on his back, spanning his hands around Ellery’s ribs, his stomach, his narrow, bony hips.

  And he was tired and sore—but his body wanted, craved beyond the tired, beyond the sore. He licked the salt from Ellery’s neck and nipped at his collarbone, and Ellery tilted his head back and gave him full access. His little cries of arousal fed the fire in Jackson’s blood, and he struggled with his good hand to shove Ellery’s boxers down while he scooted on the bed.

  “Stop,” Ellery panted, shucking his own boxers. “Stay right… there….”

  Ellery scooched up and straddled Jackson’s head.

  Jackson took a deep breath and smiled, looking up Ellery’s body and winking.

  “I like this thing,” he confessed.

  “I’m partial to it myself—ahhh….”

  Jackson licked the head, catching his tongue on the edge of the bell and flicking along the tautness of the frenulum. Teasing in its purest form. Ellery clutched the bedframe and rocked unsteadily as Jackson continued.

  “Are you just going to play around all night?” Ellery taunted. “Or are you maybe gonna suck my ahh… yes!”

  Jackson opened his mouth entirely, raised his head, and swallowed Ellery down. Ellery thrust slowly, giving Jackson time to breathe, to adjust, to work his tongue and his throat, and his withdrawal was just as painfully slow.

  Again, and Jackson used all his skill, lost in the act of giving that had always made sex a joy for him—but even more so with Ellery.

  Ellery seemed to like what he gave just because he, Jackson Rivers, gave it.

  I love you.

  Oh God.

  Jackson raised and lowered his head quickly in an attempt to run away from that thought. That Ellery got what he did from thei
r sex because he loved Jackson. That was terrifying—all Jackson could give was sex, right? That’s all anyone had asked from him. Ellery was getting more? What if Jackson fucked this up!

  That whole hallucinogenic night, Jackson had been stumbling for a way home.

  A way here.

  What if he couldn’t stay here? What if Ellery hadn’t wanted him?

  On instinct, he went into power-blow-job mode—the tenderness, the ache forgotten in the sudden panic of losing this, this thing they had between them, this precious connection he’d never had with another human being.

  “Easy,” Ellery hissed. “Easy… not yet….”

  He pulled out of Jackson’s mouth and slid down his body, nipping at Jackson’s jaw, his ear, his chin. Jackson turned his head, giving him access, but his eyes stayed open and focused inward, on the fear of what he had to lose.

  “Hey!” Ellery nipped his earlobe particularly hard. “Where’d you go?”

  Jackson closed his eyes and turned back into the kiss. “I’m cold without you.” Ellery gasped in surprise, and Jackson took over his mouth again, comfortable here, even with Ellery—oh God—on top.

  Ellery pulled away and framed Jackson’s face with his hands. “Look at me,” he commanded.

  Jackson did, feeling vulnerable and naked when he least wanted to be that way in his entire life.

  “I love you,” Ellery whispered, rolling his eyes when Jackson flinched. “You can’t lose me. You can’t fuck this up. Just keep being you. We’ll make it work.”

  To his horror, Jackson found himself nodding, desperate to accept comfort. “All last night,” he confessed, “running in the shadows, trying to stay awake on the bus. Walking from Jade’s—”

  “You walked?”

  “I just wanted to be home.” His throat swelled as he said it, and this time Ellery captured his mouth and filled him with warmth from the inside out.

  “You’re here,” Ellery whispered. “Here.”

  He kissed down Jackson’s throat, skipping his chest for once, making his way to Jackson’s tender midriff. He bit softly right by Jackson’s navel and then kissed his way down, stripping Jackson’s boxers off with a few tugs.

  Jackson’s cock lay, thick and aching, waiting for attention.

  Ellery cast him an evil look over Jackson’s stomach and took him all the way down his throat in one swallow.

  Jackson’s hips came off the bed in spite of his shoulder’s bark of protest. Ellery pushed up on his elbows and used one hand to press Jackson’s abdomen to make him flatten his ass against the mattress.

  “If you’re going to hurt yourself, I’ll stop.”

  Jackson moaned. “If you stop, I’m gonna be hurting!” he protested. “Could we… maybe….” Ellery licked his crown as he was talking, and Jackson grasped the back of his head and held it in place, thrusting slowly and powerfully into Ellery’s waiting mouth.

  Ah, so good. So hot and needy. But Jackson wanted more. He wanted Ellery’s heat surrounding him, holding him safe, promising Jackson that, even in the bubble of time given to them by sex, he would be warm and loved and protected—

  Ah! God!

  Loved!

  He thrust particularly hard, and Ellery gagged. Jackson took his hand off the back of his head and used it to caress his cheek instead.

  Ellery kept sucking, glancing at Jackson again, letting a smile twitch at the corners of his stuffed-full mouth.

  More.

  “Condom,” Jackson gasped, wishing he could reach for one. “We need a condom.”

  “Augh!” Ellery slid off the bed to root through the end table. He came up with an unopened package he’d been keeping there when Jackson had moved in, as well as the lube they’d been using.

  Jackson could see his fingers shaking as he opened the foil packet, and he reached out gently with his good hand.

  “That’s for me, right?” he said, smiling to ease the tension that had so suddenly sprung up between them.

  “I could have lost you,” Ellery said gruffly. “I need you inside me. I need—”

  Jackson helped him put the condom on, helped him spread the lubricant.

  They needed the same things, it seemed.

  “Stretch yourself,” he ordered gruffly. He usually took his time with that part, made Ellery gibber and cry, but they both knew his window of being able to follow through grew smaller with every breath.

  Ellery nodded and straddled him, sliding his lubed fingers behind his back. With a little cry he fell forward, burying his face in Jackson’s shoulder and moaning.

  “You make the best noises,” Jackson whispered. “Make them some more.”

  “Fuuuck… you….”

  Jackson chuckled. “Sit on my cock.” The order was unmistakable, and since Ellery had Jackson at his mercy more often than Jackson liked to admit, it gave him a thrill of power when Ellery did just that.

  Slowly, rocking back and forth, he lowered himself over Jackson. In little spurts he would bounce up and gasp and sit down again, and sit up and gasp, and slowly, inch by inch, he slid down Jackson’s erection until he was flush, his ass pressed up against Jackson’s pubis, his face and chest blotchy with arousal.

  “Good?” Jackson panted, shaking with the need to move.

  “So full…,” he whispered.

  “You maybe, uh, want to fuck yourself on that thing?”

  “Yes!” It came out as a full-throated wail. Ellery rocked forward and back, forward and back, the thrust and pressure around Jackson’s cock growing, becoming urgent as well as beautifully, excruciatingly arousing.

  “Faster,” Jackson urged, resting both hands on Ellery’s thighs. “Faster. Harder….”

  “Deeper!” Ellery growled, coming down hard.

  “Yes!” Jackson held him still as he sat and began to thrust his hips up and down, as fast as he could, endorphins rushing his system and blocking the warning signs from his shoulder.

  What shoulder?

  Ellery Cramer was riding him, commanding his body with pure will, and Jackson wasn’t going to let anything—particularly physical weakness—get in his way.

  Together they rushed headlong into Jackson’s climax, and as he felt it build in his balls, he gave another order. “Would it kill you to grab that thing?” Ellery’s cock was probably getting plenty of stimulation bouncing off his stomach, but Jackson didn’t care. He wanted to see Ellery’s orgasm wash over him, wanted to see his face go slack with climax, wanted to feel the stripes of come spatter across his chest.

  Ellery wrapped his hand around himself and kept bouncing, and Jackson kept thrusting, hard, harder, oh God. Ellery climaxed around him, and Jackson’s world was squeezed tight and exploding, coming unglued as red crashed behind his eyes and he pumped into the condom.

  Ellery collapsed into the mess on his stomach and chest, breathing like a sprinter after an endurance run.

  He lay on Jackson’s chest, shaking.

  “Hey,” Jackson soothed, palming the sweating skin of his shoulders, his neck, his back. “Hey… that was great—”

  “You walked home,” Ellery muttered.

  “What?”

  “You walked home.”

  “Didn’t we just have sex?”

  “Yes.” Ellery nodded. “And in the middle of sex, you said you walked home. After a bus ride. And you were alone, and vulnerable and tired and hungry—”

  “I lived it, remember?” Jackson started using his good arm to root for the comforter. “Sex—it was glor—”

  Ellery covered Jackson’s mouth with his own and kissed him hard. He pulled back and glared accusingly. “Baby—why didn’t you go for help? You were at Jade’s—she would have gotten you home!”

  “Can we cover up?” He was starting to shiver.

  “Sure.” Ellery rolled off him and helped him dispose of the condom, then wiped them both off with tissues. Practical to the bone, Ellery, and Jackson appreciated that. But then he pulled the covers over their shoulders and propped himself up, pinn
ing Jackson back against the bed with a furious stare. “I’ve got lasagna in the oven,” he said seriously, “and we can eat dinner in a few minutes. But tell me—”

  “I didn’t want anyone to see me like that,” Jackson muttered. “Not Jade or Mike. Particularly not you. Happy now?”

  Ellery traced his face with gentle fingertips. “You don’t have to go it alone all the time. You know that, right?”

  Jackson sent him what was meant to be a brief look, but the intensity of Ellery’s gaze shocked and held him. “I do now,” he said, trying unsuccessfully to look away.

  Ellery grasped his chin, looked into his soul. “Please—please—don’t think you have to go it alone. Even if it’s not me—you have people. You were right there, Jackson. You could have had Jade call me.”

  He tried to make it a joke. “Yeah, but I was planning to move out with Billy Bob, remember? Jade would have tried to talk me out of it.”

  Ellery closed his eyes, and Jackson let out a sigh of relief. “I am going to have nightmares about that for a long time.”

  “Can we just… you know, enjoy the afterglow now?” Jackson complained, feeling embarrassingly tearful.

  Ellery put a cool hand on Jackson’s hot forehead. “Yeah—given that we’re probably not doing this again until you’re better, I’m all for enjoying it.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jackson lied. “I think I could go again—right now, in fact.” He tried to pump his hips suggestively and ended up yawning instead. “Dammit—I need to get up.”

  “For why?” Ellery asked grumpily. “Are you going to walk barefoot to the gas station to investigate a candy bar theft?”

  “No.” Jackson scowled. “I’ve been sleeping all day. If I don’t get up now, my sleep schedule will be all screwed up.”

  Ellery rolled off him with a bark of laughter. “Fine, cowboy. Get up. Brush your teeth. Hell—get dressed. I’m going to put on my pajamas and make dinner. Go ahead and impress me with your initiative to stay up past ten o’clock tonight. I’m waiting to be dazzled.”

  “What time is it now?” Another yawn hit, as well as that muzzy-headed wrongness that came with an approaching cold.

  “Six.”

  “You lie!” Dammit—it was like he lost an entire day.