by Andrea Speed
“You’re one of our trainers,” Grey said, apparently settling on an excuse. “And you are, kinda. I mean, I’d spar with you all the time if you’d let me.”
“I can’t gauge my own strength anymore. I might kill you.”
“Now that’s just bragging,” Tank said. “Bragging that I’d totally pay to see.”
How could he make a joke of it? But you know what, Roan let it go. And felt all the better for just pretending that’s all it was: an exaggeration, a lie, a joke, not the increasingly horrible truth.
“Up yours, Frenchie,” Grey said, in a mock-threatening manner.
Tank told him to eat him in French again, giving Roan a second phrase he knew in the language, although honestly, how useful could that one be?
The phone rang, cutting off their mock-bilingual argument, and shirtless Scott, the only one on his feet, answered it before Roan could decide whether he wanted to or not. “Hello?” After a moment’s pause, he said, “Mr. McKichan has no comment for the media right now. When he has a comment, you will be informed. Good day.” Scott then hung up the phone, and asked, “You didn’t wanna talk to them, did you?”
“God no.”
“Who was it?” Grey wondered.
“Q-13.”
“Was it that Asian chick that anchors the news sometimes?” Jeff asked. “She’s hot.”
The door opened, and Dylan stood in the doorway, clearly surprised to be confronted with several of the Falcons in their living room, including a shirtless Scott (who was ripped and honestly attractive, with a lean torso and six-pack abs—Roan knew this from having seen him shirtless before, but he knew from the way Dyl had to tear his eyes away from his chest it was new to him). “Ah, hockey players.”
“Namaste,” Jeff said, the Buddhist (and Hindu) all-purpose word. Grey stared at him like he’d suddenly grown a second head.
Dylan stared at him in surprise as well. “Namaste. What the hell’s going on?”
Scott retrieved his shirt and put it on. “We knew things were gettin’ bad, so we dropped by to see if we could help.”
“As homoerotically as possible,” Grey added.
“Well, that explains the nudity,” Dylan admitted, and then fixed Roan with a concerned, almost heartbroken look. “I heard on the news about the thing at the college. You were involved, weren’t you?”
Scott clapped his hands together, and said, “Come on guys, let’s give ’em some privacy.”
Tank shoved the remainder of his pizza in his mouth, while Jeff stood up with a groan. “What’re we supposed to do?”
“Stand out on the lawn and look menacing,” Grey suggested.
“Take out your junk. That’ll scare away anyone,” Jeff replied, making Scott laugh. Scott held the door and made sure they were all out before leaving himself.
As soon as the door shut, Dylan asked, “Do I wanna know what that was about?”
“Probably not.”
Dylan touched Roan’s face, stroking his new beard. The look in his eyes told him Dylan knew exactly what that meant. “Are you all right?”
With the slightest of sighs, he admitted, “No. But I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
He nodded in understanding. “Okay.” He embraced him, and Roan fell easily into the hug, glad to feel Dylan’s warmth and strength, to smell his scent (tinted slightly with incense smoke). Dylan held him for a long time, although it wasn’t long enough for Roan; Dylan could have held him forever as far as he was concerned. It felt good, safe, Human.
“You’re shivering,” Dylan noted. “But you’re warm. Do you have a fever?” He stood back far enough to put his hand on his forehead.
“No, it’s just posttransition havoc.” He tried to smile, and was sure he failed. Dylan echoed it with a heartbroken smile.
“Kevin called back. He said his house was our house, and we could come over at any time.”
“Great. Let’s throw some stuff in a bag and get going.”
He nodded in agreement, but still stroked Roan’s stubble. “You sure you’re going to be okay?”
“I will be, yeah. I just need time to recover.”
“From today or the Falcons?”
That made him smile. “Ah, they were actually a help. They gave me pizza and an improv comedy routine.”
“And some nudity.”
“Sadly not full frontal. Gonna have to ask for that next time.”
Dylan gave him the look for that—that skeptical, “don’t you dare” kind of boyfriend look—but let it go.
Roan realized they had helped, in a way he hadn’t expected. He had considered the possibility of just going upstairs and putting a gun under his chin and pulling the trigger. Would he have actually done it? He wasn’t sure, but the fact that he’d had company meant he’d had no chance to find out.
Roan assumed it was just an overnight stay, that he’d be back tomorrow, so he didn’t pack much. He just threw a change of clothes in a bag (which meant at least three shirts, although he hoped he was done transforming for the day), as well as a book, a gun, and a buttload of pills. He wondered if that summed up his life.
Dylan packed a bit more, but did it fast, and managed to limit himself to two bags. When he saw Roan just had a rucksack, he scowled and asked, “Is packing light a detective thing, or are you just too tired to care?”
“Bit of both.”
They locked things up and left, to find that Tank, Scott, Grey, and Jeff were indeed still hanging around. They told them what they were doing and let them know they appreciated the thought anyways.
Dylan started their car and Roan saw the guys to theirs, stopping Scott by grabbing his arm. “Thanks for everything.” He hoped he knew what he meant, as spelling it all out might be weird.
Scott seemed to understand. “Hey, we all need a little help sometimes. Even superheroes.” At Roan’s grimace, he added, “Or superstuds, like myself.”
Roan rolled his eyes, but still smiled. “With lines like that, it’s hard to believe you ever get a date.”
“I have to beat ’em off with a stick. Tank’s stick, in fact.”
“What about my stick?” Tank asked, as Scott opened the door and got in the back of the Malibu.
“I was saying mine’s bigger,” Scott replied.
Jeff, in the driver’s seat, snorted derisively. “More homoeroticism. Can we stop, please? I’m starting to feel like I’m in a bad porno.”
“Bow chicka wow wow,” Grey said, mimicking ’70s porn music, as Scott closed the door and Jeff shook his head in disgust. Although it was muffled, Roan heard Tank say, “You guys know I’m not letting you touch my stick, right?”
They waved at him as they drove away, and Roan waved back, watching them go, pitying the fool who pissed them off.
When he got in the car, Dylan, who had already turned the radio on to KEXP and started the heater (probably because he thought Roan might be cold), asked, “Am I the only one who was bullied by jocks in school? Do you think they bullied anyone?”
“Well, odds are. But Tank strikes me as too weird to do that, and Grey probably never needed to. He just needed to show up.”
“’Cause he’s as big as Frankenstein’s monster? I can believe that.” He paused, adjusted the rearview mirror, and then asked, “You think that’s why his junk is so scary?”
“Frankendick,” Roan replied, and they both chuckled at the idea.
Yes, it was rather immature of both of them. But sometimes you just needed the laugh, no matter how juvenile it was.
They drove to Kevin’s, Roan telling Dylan which streets to take, and they got there in good time. Obviously Kevin was home, as not only was his battered maroon ’03 Integra in the driveway, but he’d put the dogs in the backyard. Roan heard them barking, and in spite of the drugs, had to swallow back the urge to growl and roar a challenge.
They hefted their bags and Roan knocked on the front door, feeling weird about all of this. But he was doing this for Dylan, which is what you did in rela
tionships—you compromised, you did things you didn’t necessarily want to do to keep stubborn people safe.
He could smell the scents of cooking even before the door was opened (Kevin was a hell of a cook), but Roan was enjoying it enough that the shock of who answered the door just washed over him.
“Oh hey,” the boy said. He looked to be midtwenties at the oldest, slightly tic-y, with shoulder-length brown hair almost covering the black tribal-style tattoo on the side of his neck. “Come in.”
Roan almost didn’t recognize him with all his clothes on. Dylan froze in shock once recognition kicked in, but oddly enough, the boy hadn’t recognized him at all, as he casually turned away and walked deeper into the house.
This was Parker Davis, the male prostitute (under the name Colt Turner) who’d been a suspect in the murder of Eric Chiang, a bartender at Panic. The suspect whom Dylan had identified as the last man seen leaving the bar with Eric. The suspect whom Roan had suspected was a little too close to the way in the closet (and lonely) Kevin.
Wow—just when you thought things were fucked up enough, things got even more fucked up. How that worked he would never know.
15
Everything Always Goes Wrong
LEANING over, Roan whispered, “Do you want to go?” A hotel was sounding great right now.
It took Dylan a moment to answer, but finally he said, “No.” Roan heard the unspoken “not yet.”
As they came inside, Kevin, who was in the kitchen stirring something inside a large pot on the stove, looked back at them and smiled. He gestured Parker over and handed him a wooden spoon, telling him, “Keep stirring, don’t let them stick to the pot.” Parker nodded and did what he was told, as Kevin wiped his hands on a kitchen towel and came into the living room to join them. “Good to have you here. Wish it could have been under better circumstances.”
“Um, can I talk to you for a moment, Kev? In private?”
“Sure. Why don’t I show you to your room first?”
Kevin led them upstairs to the second floor; they had a guest bedroom off the right of the staircase. It was small but quaint, with pistachio-colored walls and a homey multicolored quilt that looked like it might have been sewn by someone’s grandmother. Roan thought there were two closets, but the second door Kevin opened was actually a small bathroom. “It’s tiny, but I thought you guys might like your own space,” he said.
“That’s kind of you,” Dylan said, the tension obvious in his voice.
Roan closed the bedroom’s main door, even though the odds that Parker would hear them from the kitchen were quite small. “Why is Parker Davis here?”
“Oh, he needed a place to stay as part of his probation, and as he didn’t have any place to go, I figured he could stay here. I have lots of room.”
Roan rubbed his eyes, which felt warm and dry owing to all the painkillers in his system. This wasn’t going to be good.
“No, what’s he doing here with us?” Dylan asked, his voice betraying the slightest edge of frostiness. “Or, more to the point, me?”
“What do you mean?” Kevin looked briefly puzzled, then a slow horror seemed to bloom on his face. “Oh shit! You were the witness on the case, weren’t you? Jesus, Dylan, I completely forgot.”
“How?”
In brief, the story was this: Parker had been set up as a patsy by Gavin Lorimer, who paid Parker to take his “friend” Eric home and show him a good time. He was supposed to slip him an overdose of Ecstasy and kill him, but Parker, a major junkie, took some of the E himself and only left Eric drugged. Gavin checked up on Eric—the witness Gavin wanted to go away—and finding him still alive, killed him himself. Parker was supposed to go down for the killing, but there was no evidence tying him to the murder weapon, and Parker only went down for a drug-related charge. As for Gavin, he seemed to disappear entirely after his stepfather, Clifford Braben, ended up in prison on insider trading and various corruption charges, but since Roan had basically handed Gavin over to the monstrously vindictive and most assuredly evil Jay Bishop, he wasn’t surprised. He was only surprised that Gavin’s body hadn’t turned up in the desert, crucified on a telephone pole.
Not that anyone knew this. Jay knew, he knew, maybe Gavin suspected at the end, but it was one of Roan’s first forays into vigilantism, even though he outsourced it to Jay. And all because Paris was dying and he didn’t know if he wanted to deal with the case anymore. He felt a hollow ache open up in his chest, dull and deep, something pills couldn’t numb. Shame, remorse, grief.
Dylan had been the last person (besides Parker) to see Eric alive that night. He saw Parker pick up Eric and saw them leave together. Dylan described the man he saw with Eric at the station, and it was Kevin who had recognized the guy as Parker. Looking back on it, there were two odd things that night: Roan had had the sinking feeling that Kevin knew Parker better than he should, and it was the first time he had met Dylan. He remembered his first impression of Dylan as pretty but just more of that Panic-specific beefcake, background erotic wallpaper. He was surprised by the flash of strong resolve from him, but otherwise he was just another shirtless bartender. He wondered what Dylan’s first impression of him was, and wondered if he’d ever be brave enough to ask.
Kevin shrugged helplessly, and looked genuinely abashed by it all. “I—I don’t know. I’m really sorry. I wasn’t trying to make this awkward—”
“We passed that marker a while ago,” Roan said, then decided to hell with it, and asked, “Is he your boyfriend?”
Kevin gave him a deer in the headlights stare, as if he’d just slapped him. “What?”
“Is that why he’s here? You’re taking a hell of a risk—”
“He needed a place to stay!” Kevin snapped, an unaccustomed flash of anger making his expression darken. “I was lending a hand to a man who needed help.”
“A man you’ve employed before.”
“Roan—” Dylan interjected warningly. He didn’t know everything that was going on, but he knew this was bad.
Kevin’s sleepy brown eyes narrowed. “What the fuck are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m saying. Look, it’s not a moral thing, I really don’t give a fuck, you’re lonely and I get that—”
Kevin lunged and grabbed him by the collar of his T-shirt, balling up the fabric in his fist, his face mere inches from him. He’d been drinking something with grapefruit in it. “You judgmental little fuck. You think—”
“Stop it!” Dylan said, pushing them apart. “Knock it off right now! We’re supposed to be friends, not fifth graders, for Christ’s sake!” He sighed angrily and rubbed his forehead like they were giving him a headache. “I think this is a mistake. Thank you for your kindness, Kevin, but we should probably go to a motel.”
“No. I don’t want to put you guys at risk just ’cause Roan is being a butthead. I’ll—I’ll tell Parker he’s got to stay at a friend’s house tonight, okay? We’ll try to work out something tomorrow.”
“No. We’ll find another way,” Roan said, not sure how, but he’d figure that out along the way. “Sorry to bother you, Kev. We’ll—”
“You think you’re leaving in a huff?” Kevin replied. “No, no way. I don’t know what you think my relationship with Parker is, but you’re wrong. Just ’cause he used to be a male prostitute doesn’t mean I fucked him. He’s straight, for god’s sake!”
“That’s debatable.”
He scowled. “You know a male prostitute too. Does that mean you fucked him?”
“Okay. Separate corners,” Dylan insisted, and gestured toward the door. “Could you give me a minute alone with Roan?” It sounded like a request, but it wasn’t. Kevin got that, and with a terse nod, he left the room. Roan expected him to slam the door, but he didn’t. Maybe because it was his house.
Dylan turned on him immediately and asked, “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m arguing with Kevin. What does it look like I’m doing?”
“I ca
n take care of myself, you know. I don’t need you jumping to my defense.”
He stared at him blankly. What? “I wasn’t. We were having our own argument.”
“Which you started because I was upset.”
“No.” He hadn’t, had he? Honestly Roan didn’t know; Dylan was a bit more perceptive with this stuff than he was, and sometimes he just didn’t know what motivated him to do a damn thing. “I was always suspicious of his relationship with Parker. I was willing to let it go, pretend it was nothing, but now he’s back and living in his house. Kevin’s better than that, I can’t ignore—”
“A separate discussion. You just want to fight.”
He felt like denying it, but that seemed pointless. He always liked to fight, and Dylan knew that as much as Roan did. “Actually, I want to know what the hell he’s thinking. He could be risking his career by letting Parker stay here.”
“Fine, I accept that. But why don’t you tell me what’s really going on with you. You’ve got your macho shield up, which tells me how upset you are. It was the incident at the college, wasn’t it?”
Again, denial was his first response, but then he had to turn away as that lacuna of shame seemed to widen in his chest, and suddenly the drugs weren’t enough to numb it. “I’m killing my own kind,” he admitted, his back to Dylan, arms crossed tightly over his chest. “I agreed to work with the cops so the cat squad wouldn’t just kill transformed infecteds. But now I’m doing it.”
Dylan wrapped his arms around him, pressing up against his back, and tears burned in Roan’s eyes. His throat felt clogged, choked up with solid sorrow. “Oh honey, it’s not your fault,” Dylan said softly, resting his head in the crook of Roan’s neck.
Roan didn’t want to cry, but maybe the drugs or the weariness had weakened his resolve, because a sob escaped him anyways, and his struggle to stop it, to hold it back, was futile. He knew they were dead; ingesting the tainted burn and triggering a premature transformation was only the first act of a staggered, messy death. But he kept remembering the feel of that leopard’s skull just bursting beneath his fist, his hand plunging into warm, gelatinous brain matter. That was the point, wasn’t it? That was the point when he realized he was more virus than Human, that the downslide of his humanity had begun in earnest.
