The Long Way

by May Archer

  He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

  The kid - Cain. His name was Cain - seemed like a decent enough human, for all that he was completely lacking the balls, or conscience, or whatever one needed to bring their father to justice. Hell, in a way, Damon could almost understand it. In his quest to get his life back after the crash, Damon had asked his own brother to do some pretty underhanded, not-exactly-legal things in order to keep Damon’s name off everyone’s radar. And Cort had done them, not because he was a shitty person, but because love and family loyalty sometimes trumped everything else. But understanding why Cain had made his choice didn’t mean that Damon wasn’t angry about it - not when it was Damon’s fucking life that hung in the balance. And understanding didn’t mean that he and Cain were friends. Not by a long shot.

  “That’s none of your business, kid.” Damon tried to swing his legs around, but Cain’s feet were in the way. “Move,” he said.

  Cain swallowed hard, but shook his head and planted his feet more firmly on the cushions. “No. Not until you tell me what you’d planned.”

  Was he fucking kidding? “Not happening. I said, move,” Damon yelled. He pushed at Cain’s feet, but from this angle Cain had all the leverage.

  “And I said no.” Though his eyes betrayed some hesitation, Cain cocked his head with pure determination. “Gee, I hope Parker and Rodney aren’t standing outside the door listening, just in case I need their help with the drunk, belligerent dude they apprehended. All that angry yelling would be way tricky to explain, wouldn’t it, since I said you were my friend and all?”

  Damon blinked, stunned. Oh, that fucking brat. The kid had maneuvered him perfectly. He sucked a breath in through his nose and let his eyes go hot. It was gratifying to see Cain squirm, even though he kept his feet braced right where they were.

  Damn it.

  “Now, as I was so politely asking,” Cain said, no hint of a quaver in his voice. “Why were you here? I’m gonna assume you had some kind of plan, however misguided.”

  Damon huffed out a laugh. This was what his life had come to - answering to a punk like Cain Shaw. Jesus.

  “I came to see your father,” Damon drawled, and since he couldn’t get off the sofa - well, not without hurting himself and/or Cain - he flopped back down and propped his hands behind his head, resting and watchful. He’d see what the kid had to say about that.

  “Yeah, duh.” Damon lifted an eyebrow and Cain shrugged. “Well, I figured you weren’t here for the hors d’oeuvres.” He gave Damon a small smile, and his eyes flashed with mischief. “Or to make a campaign donation.”

  Once again, Damon found himself laughing. “Maybe for the free drinks?”

  Cain rolled his eyes. “Maybe for the scintillating conversation. And there are any number of eligible women in the crowd.” He flexed his hand against his bent knee and his smile dimmed. “Just ask my mother.”

  “No eligible guys?” Damon teased.

  Cain’s shocked eyes flew to his.

  “What’s that look for? You remember I was there when Jack confessed everything, right? You know I know that you and he had an affair, just like you know that Jack and I hooked up a couple of times, too.” God, Jack. A name he didn’t even like to think about, let alone say, and judging from Cain’s expression, he didn’t like hearing it any better. He hurried on. “I’m aware that you’re gay, Cain. Just like you’re aware that I am.”

  Cain swallowed and gave a shaky laugh. His eyes darted around the room like he was looking for cameras. “Jesus, just hearing you say it out loud gives me chills. Like, if anyone else heard it… Damn.”

  Damon levered up on one elbow and leaned until his chin was directly above Cain’s knee. “Voldemort,” he whispered.

  God, the kid’s smile was electric- the even white teeth glowing against his perfect skin sent a pang of frustrated arousal directly to Damon’s groin… And holy shit, there was a feeling he hadn’t had in a really long time. At least as long as it had been since he’d laughed. Possibly longer.

  Why this kid? Why was he suddenly so charming?

  Maybe the double shot of whiskey he’d downed to sell his drunk act had hit him harder than he’d thought.

  “What?” Cain chuckled. “What are you even talking about?”

  What was he talking about? Not his dick. Oh, right. “Voldemort. You know, from Harry Potter?”

  “Yeah, I know Harry Potter. I’m just surprised you know Harry Potter.”

  “I can read, kid. God.”

  Cain flushed. “I just meant I didn’t know you’d, you know, read those books.”

  “Hasn’t almost every human on the planet read those books? Or at least watched the movies?”

  Cain cleared his throat, his embarrassment somewhat endearing. “Well, I guess I figured it was mostly, you know...” His hand fluttered in the direction of Damon’s head, as though this should somehow explain something.

  It didn’t.

  Cain sighed. “I thought it was mostly a thing younger people would reference,” he blurted out. His cheeks were so red, Damon could feel the heat of them from a foot away, and he felt his own lips twitch.

  “Exactly how old do you think I am, sonny? I’m forty, not a hundred and forty. And this hair has been gray since I was younger than you.”

  Cain pressed his lips together like he was fighting a laugh. “Right. No, I knew that. You’re right. Sorry.”

  Was the kid humoring him? “Now I’m annoyed. I could kick your ass, you know.”

  “I know,” Cain nodded seriously. But then his head tilted to the side. “Like, assuming you didn’t get winded while you were chasing me.”

  Damon squinted and lifted himself up higher, so he was propped on one wrist. “Say again?”

  Christ, this was the craziest conversation Damon had ever had. Why did it feel so good?

  Cain laughed, high and light, but he didn’t move away. “Nothing. I said nothing.”

  “Hmm,” Damon agreed, laying back down again. “That’s what I thought.”

  “But what the heck does anything have to do with Harry Potter?” Cain demanded.

  “Oh, right. Voldemort. Remember, none of the good guys in the books would say his name because they were so scared of him. Even when he wasn’t around and had no power, they’d give him power by refusing to name him out of fear.” He shrugged his shoulders as best he could with his hands behind his head. “When you own the words, you keep the power.”

  A whole parade of emotions chased one another across Cain’s face - surprise, fear, wonder, anger, and finally, a sad sort of acceptance. “It’s a really nice analogy,” he allowed. “But I don’t think it’s entirely the same thing.”

  Damon thought it was probably more apt than Cain was willing to admit, but it was none of his business. He shrugged again. “If you say so.”

  “You haven’t distracted me, either,” Cain warned. He crossed his arms again, and he looked so fucking adorable, all self-righteous and innocent, with that hint of hesitation peeking out beneath his bravado, that Damon rolled his eyes. “I still want to know what your big plan was for tonight. Or did you even have one? Was being arrested part of the plan, or just a fun little afterthought?”

  Did he have one? Little brat. “Oh, I had one. The plan was to cause a scene, Cain,” Damon sighed. “Such a loud and disruptive scene that people would come running out of the fundraiser, phones held aloft like Lady Liberty’s torch, ready to stream it all over social media.”

  “What?” Cain sputtered. “That’s the stupidest plan I’ve ever…”

  “And then, when it was plastered on Facebook and trending on Twitter,” Damon continued. “Your father wouldn’t be able to ignore it anymore. He wouldn’t be able to just go on like nothing had ever happened, like he hadn’t ruined lives and killed people. Maybe the authorities would look into it. Maybe they wouldn’t even have to. Maybe just getting him involved in a scandal would be enough.” He glanced over and saw dawning comprehension in Cain’s e
yes. “Reporters would dig deeper. Voters would remember.”

  “Oh my God,” Cain whispered.

  Damon nodded. “It would’ve been beautiful.” He sighed again and said grudgingly, “But I get that you didn’t know. That you thought you were doing the right thing.”

  Cain shook his head rapidly. “Oh my God,” he repeated. “Not oh-my-God, what an amazing plan, you fucking idiot. I mean oh-my-God, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “The fuck it was.” Damon scowled, sitting up. “It would have worked. People would have flooded out in another minute.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” But Cain waved this away with a flip of his hand and he leaned forward, getting in Damon’s face. He smelled clean and woodsy, like some subtle, no doubt outrageously expensive cologne. Damon was momentarily distracted by the desire to bring him even closer, but then his words brought him back. “But who gives a shit? You’re missing something vitally important here.”

  “Oh, really. What’s that?”

  “My father would not have sat by and allowed that to happen, Damon! God. First of all, there have been a million negative stories written about him over the years.”

  Damon raised a skeptical eyebrow. He’d found nothing negative about the senator in all his searching, and while he didn’t believe for a second that the Seavers’ deaths were the only skeletons in the man’s closet, he assumed Emmett Shaw had been too crafty or too lucky to get caught.

  Cain grimaced and looked away. “My father was a businessman for years before he ran for office. You know that, right? Hell, he was one of the original founders of Seaver Tech, along with Cam’s father and Drew’s. You don’t think there were dozens of disgruntled former employees who’d have been only too happy to dish about him? Colleagues who remembered he made some shitty hate-speech comment, or people he’d passed over for promotions they deserved?” His face grew bleak as he added softly, “Or maybe something even worse that I don’t know about yet.”

  “The point is,” he continued, “every one of those stories got buried, Damon. My father’s record is spotless, which is why he’s such a political darling. No one has said a damn thing against him.”

  “Impossible,” Damon said. “You can’t bury every story, Cain. Not every disgruntled employee can be bought off, not when tabloids are happy to pony up just as much cash to get dirt.”

  “You’d think,” Cain agreed, and he seemed to shrink in on himself as he spoke the words. “I never really thought about it, about how convenient it was that he made everything go away. I mean, sure there are plenty of people who write articles disagreeing with my father politically, but… those are almost like advertisements for him, you know? What seems like a bullshit human-rights-violation to one party sounds like the path to American greatness for the other. The stuff about my father personally, though, all goes away. And I know there have been things.” When he lifted his eyes to Damon’s again, they were wide and hurting. “I’ve heard my father talking with… with Jack.”

  Damon inhaled sharply and rubbed the back of his neck. Once again, speaking the man’s name was like launching a verbal grenade. Knowing he’d been idiotic enough to fall for that asshole was bad, but knowing Cain had also been taken in made it even worse somehow.

  Damon took advantage of Cain’s distraction and knocked his feet off the sofa. He swung his own legs around, despite the screaming pain in his leg as he did so.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. That altercation out in the lobby had really messed him up again. He dug in his jeans pocket and produced a single tiny tablet of pain medication, which he dry-swallowed.

  “So what you’re saying is that your dad’s been offing people for years? Every cop who wrote him a parking ticket, every secretary whose ass he grabbed?”

  Cain’s face paled. He bit his lip, but didn’t reply.

  Fine, yes, he was being a complete asshole, but between the throbbing in his leg and the hot rage that made his gut cramp, Damon didn’t care. He pushed himself to his feet, desperate to move, but at the last second, his leg nearly gave out and he had to catch himself against the arm of the sofa. Jesus Christ, he hated being this weak, especially in front of Cain. It made him irrationally angrier.

  “How the hell would that even be possible, Cain, huh? How could a person hide that much for so long?”

  “I didn’t say he offed them,” Cain said hotly, staring at his knees. “He doesn’t have a crew of hit men hanging around the house.” Then he huffed out a dejected little laugh. “Besides Jack.”

  Unwelcome sympathy coiled in Damon’s chest. Cain was a kid. Just a kid. It was the senator who deserved Damon’s ire, and Christ knew, Damon would never want anyone judging him by his absolute dickwad of a father.

  Besides which, the kid surprised him. He was a contradiction, for sure, with the way he seemed to be totally cowed by his father, but had no problem standing up to Damon.

  “What I’m trying to say,” Cain continued in a stronger voice, “is that I have no idea what he did in the past. But after what Jack did, and then what happened to Jack in jail? If I hadn’t happened to be in the lobby tonight, Damon, what would have happened?”

  Damon limped forward, bracing his fists on the vanity. From the mirror, he could see that Cain hadn’t turned, and was still facing the empty sofa, his shoulders hunched over in a way that signified simultaneous tension and defeat - like an animal that knew it had been bested, and was just trying to protect itself.

  “I’ll tell you,” Cain said a second later, his voice hollow. “People would have heard you making a racket, yeah. And the video of you, all drunk and disorderly, suddenly back from the dead, would have gone viral. You’d have been arrested for being threatening tonight, and maybe they would’ve tacked on something about you being the cause of the plane crash. Any chance you ever had of getting your life back would have disappeared in a puff of smoke. And then? Before any reporter had a chance to dig up anything, before any investigator had a chance to ask you a single question?” He spun to his feet and pierced Damon with a glare. “You would have disappeared.”

  Damon returned his look steadily. “Well, maybe it would have been worth it. Maybe my disappearance would seem pretty fucking suspicious to an investigator.”

  Cain’s eyes widened and his mouth went slack. “Your disa… what? You understand what I mean, right? You wouldn’t be disappearing to witness protection? To a farm in Topeka or whereverthefuck? They would kill you, Damon. If Jack was killed before he could talk, they would definitely kill you.”

  Leaning a hip against the vanity to take the weight off his leg, Damon folded his arms across his chest and looked back at Cain. “I gave it sixty-forty odds. That was before I knew he’d done this shit before, though.” He stopped to ponder. “Now, I’d say maybe eighty-twenty.”

  “Jesus,” Cain breathed. “You know, Drew said Cam and Cort are worried about you. That you've just fallen off the radar entirely. But I don't think any of them realize you’re actually suicidal.” If Cain saw Damon flinch, he didn’t show it. He took a step forward, getting in Damon’s space. “They care about you. Cort is your brother. Did you stop for even a second to think what it would do to him to lose you now? Again?”

  Damon’s pulse kicked up, throbbing in time with the ache in his leg, and he blinked against the fog that crept around the edges of his vision as the pain pill, amplified by the double-slug of Jack, hit his nearly-empty stomach. Rich kid. Privileged and entitled. He had no clue what Cort was to Damon - that he’d give anything for his brother, that this was for his brother, in a way, because who the hell would want a brother like Damon? Messed up leg, messed up head, no future, no fucking name, for God’s sake.

  He hadn’t realized he’d spoken some portion of that aloud until Cain shook his head. “So what you’re saying is, you’re feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “No. Fuck.” Damon rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “No. I just want this over. I want Cam and Cort to ride off into the sunset and not worr
y that someone’s gonna find out what they know.”

  “And you think showing up like this, getting your name on my father’s radar, will keep them safe? It can only make things worse.”

  The room wavered when Damon’s head shot up, then wavered again as he shook his head. God, the pills weren’t usually that strong. Then again, he’d never attempted to take them with nothing but liquor in his gut, either.

  “I need something to happen. I need to make something happen.” His explanation came out more like a plea. “Everyone else seems fine waiting, but what the hell are we waiting for? Is your father going to wake up one morning and just confess? Call a press conference and start groveling? Evidence isn’t going to fall into our laps, and I can’t… I can’t sit in this holding pattern forever.” He shook his head. “Maybe that’s me feeling sorry for myself, kid. But I want this over. One way or another.”

  He leaned back more heavily on the vanity, bracing his palms on the slick surface. He was tired. So damn tired. But he met Cain’s deep blue eyes defiantly.

  The kid’s gaze held none of the pity Damon was sure he’d find. Instead, Cain was staring at him like he was a complicated math problem, his brow furrowed and eyes squinted as he ran a risk-benefit analysis on Damon’s life.

  He hoped Cain got a better result than he’d found when he’d tried to do the same thing.

  He tilted his head back against the mirror and closed his eyes. The lights in the ceiling made pink and white sparkles dance across his eyelids, and for just a second, he could imagine he was leaning on the little dock by the pond back in Johnsville, soaking up summer sun while Cort played in the water. He’d hated his life back then, stuck in that shitty foster home. He’d spent hours planning a way to get them both out of there, never letting himself think about the possibility of failure. Hard and easy don’t matter when there’s no plan B, he used to say. He wondered if he would have pushed himself so hard if he’d known how things would end up.

  “Sometimes,” he told Cain, surprised at how slurred his voice was. “Sometimes you get to a point where shit can’t get any worse and doing anything is better than doing nothing.”