by Rhys Ford
Despite his claim of Manny’s tea soothing him, Archie looked like shit.
“Archie, at least sit down before you fall over. I’ve seen more life in a Toronto trash panda pancake than I do in you right now.” Rook slid his hand under his grandfather’s forearm, gently tugging him toward the sofa Alex vacated. “I don’t want to fight with you about this. You’d feel the same way I do if someone’d tried to shove you out of your house. You’d tell them to fuck off.”
“I sit down, then you loom. Standing over someone like that gives you the advantage, and this is too fucking important to blow off,” Archie grumbled, shaking him off. His temper was high, flushing his cheeks red. “You’ve got to learn to listen. Sometimes you have to do what you’re told.”
“I’m not anyone’s puppet, Archie. Sit.” He gave another tug, and this time, Archie shuffled forward. “It’s like pulling teeth with you sometimes.”
“It’s that way you with all the time, and now this. It’s too much, Rook. This is all too damned much for me to take,” Archie snapped back, his eyes lit with a fire Rook hadn’t seen before. Something was wrong, something deep and broken, and it rose up, spearing Rook through his gut. “Sometimes I don’t even know why I bother. Just like your mother. You’re not worth fighting for, boy. I swear to God, fucking damned useless—why don’t you do what Beatrice did and just walk away? Make it easier on everyone.”
In that second, Rook bled, knowing something broke between him and Archie, ending them. The thin sliver of longing he’d nursed—the need to be folded into a family, even one as fucked-up as the Martins—finally died. He’d blinked, and without any fanfare, the breath he’d been holding in since the moment he’d first met Archie escaped; that foul, rancid stale hiccup of air he’d trapped in his lungs, waiting for when Archie shoved him away, finally left.
He just hadn’t thought it would hurt so damned much.
Rook let go of Archie’s arm, reeling back a step, then held himself back when the old man reached for him. It’d been a long time since he’d felt pain, that kind of pain. It sliced through Rook’s throat, dragging down the front of his chest, then digging into his heart. A curdled bitterness flooded his mouth, and Rook wasn’t sure if he was tasting actual bile or just the ichor leaking from his torn soul.
He should have known better. There’d been a small part of him waiting for that slap, the sane, rational, wary bits he’d stored in himself for that one day when he’d have to protect himself from the anguish of letting someone in. Someone like Archie. Even someone like Dante. It always fell apart, leading to nothing but a bone-aching pain dark enough to shatter his life into dust.
It was a fight to keep himself from showing his emotions, to mask the scraping rawness Archie left with his burred words, but he did his best, pulling himself up and squaring his shoulders. He wasn’t going to give the man any satisfaction, not like he’d given others. Not like he’d handed his mother when she’d walked away from him for the very last time, rubbing his broken trust into the muck he’d landed in when he’d believed she’d changed.
“Don’t,” he croaked around the thickness in his throat. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
“I’m sorry. Boy… Rook… I am….” Archie strained to grab ahold of Rook’s wrists, but he twisted away, snarling at the older man. “I…. God, you know I don’t think before I open my mouth. I didn’t mean that. I didn’t—”
“Get the fuck out.” He couldn’t see anymore. The world was drowning, a painful sour plunge into salty tears and choked-off air. “Door’s behind you, old man. Use it.”
“Rook—” Archie’s plea was cut short by Dante clearing his throat. “Good, Montoya. Tell him. Tell him—”
Hard as it was to believe, he’d missed Dante coming in, he had. His cop’d slipped through the partially open loft door and stalked in. He couldn’t read Dante. Not now. Not through the tears he couldn’t seem to get out of his eyes or even was brave enough to let fall. Rook wouldn’t give Archie that. He could let himself—Dante was there before he finished his thought. His nerves screamed to shove Dante back when he got near, years—too many long fucking years—of keeping people away yanked at every rage-filled, agonizing need to pick up the pieces of his life and take it someplace else.
But not without Dante.
He couldn’t live without the damned cop. His damned cop. The same cop who was now putting his hands on Rook, hands that stroked him to pleasure, the same ones who’d shoved him outside of the bedroom when Vicks’s head fell out and then pulled back his hair when Rook puked his guts out for five minutes afterward.
“Stop turning that brain of yours in circles, cuervo,” Dante whispered, wrapping his arms around Rook’s stiff shoulders. “Don’t run from this. I know you want to. I can see it, just… don’t. Let me hold you for a second.”
“Not going to. Not from you. Just from… shit, don’t hold me. Makes me look… weak. I’m not weak,” he stammered, and his spine rattled, a cold creeping out from his belly and icing over his nerves. Rook tried to keep the tremors from spreading through him, but he couldn’t. Nothing he did, nothing he thought of could stop the minute shivers racking through him. “Fuck. Get him the fuck away from me. I’m fucking useless? After everything… screw this. I can’t… fuck. I am not fucking useless, and I’m done being thrown away.”
He needed to cry. Needed to fall to his knees and scream, because something died inside of him, a horribly cold excision of a dream, and it was changing him, closing Rook off and shutting him down. Dante’s voice was a blur of white noise, and through it, Rook heard Archie pleading, begging for something Rook didn’t want to hear.
Or rather, he didn’t know if he was strong enough to hear.
Dante felt good, smelled wonderful, and most of all, was warm. Hugging Dante’s waist, Rook pulled himself in as tightly as he could, wishing he wasn’t smearing snot over Dante’s shirt, but it couldn’t be helped. He didn’t cry well. Even when he ground his pain down, it surfaced, and Dante’s embrace felt safe enough for him to let go.
Rook couldn’t even absorb that. Tired, confused, and heartsick, he let himself be held—let—his brain snagged on the irony of a single word. He needed space to think, to breathe, and he took a step back from Dante, enough to let him pull in a bit of air not Montoya flavored.
Archie’s words snuck in past the crumbling walls. “I can’t let him…. Please, Montoya. Make him understand. I am sorry. I… reacted, and I—”
“I know, Archie. Give us a bit?” Dante’s accent thickened, its fluid roll soothing a bit of the hurt away. He turned slightly, taking Rook with him, moving so Rook couldn’t see Archie’s brittle, agonized expression. “Words hurt, old man. And you two fight like cats and dogs, but sometimes, Archie, you bite for real.”
“I’m not arguing with that. It was stupid, and… and I am sorry. My mouth ran, and before I knew it… I didn’t mean any of that. I was just… angry.” Archie moved, his cane thumping in an uneven rhythm across the floor, and the hand on Rook’s back was cold, trembling, and tentative. “Rook, I am better than this. You deserve more than that from me, and I am begging you to please let me fix this. I love you, son. You mean the world to me, and… I’m scared. I hate to say it, but I’m fucking scared someone is going to take you from me… before I’m ready to let you go. Because I am never going to let you go.”
“Archie….” Dante’s chest rumbled, his deep voice lapping over the edges of Rook’s panicked hurt. “He knows that. It’s been a long day. For both of you. Let me talk to him. Manny’s still downstairs—”
“I need him to know I mean it, Montoya,” Archie snapped, hot and furious words at Rook’s back. “I fucked up. I did what I did to his mother when she didn’t do what I wanted her to do, and I’ll be damned if I make the same mistake twice.”
“Cuervo, what do you want?” Dante murmured gently, stroking the hair from Rook’s face. His thumbs left a trail of rough warmth on Rook’s cheekbones,
“I want to kick him in
the balls and fucking laugh my ass off.” Rook pulled back, then dug the heels of his hands across his eyes to wipe away the ache building there. “Then kick him again.”
“Rook—” Archie stopped when Rook shook his head, his shoulders slumping. “I am sorry. I wasn’t throwing you out. I promise—”
“I need to sit down.” He pressed his fingers against Dante’s hard upper arm, not wanting to lose contact but needing to separate himself. “I’m… off-balance.”
“If you stop and think about what you’ve gone through today, babe.” Dante brushed his lips across Rook’s forehead. They touched noses, a brief moment of touch, and then Dante gave him room to move. “Both of you are… well, you don’t have the best of tempers. Breathe and step back. Might do you both good.”
Leaning on the back of the couch, Rook stared at his grandfather. Archie was a shadow to him, coming out of Beanie’s stories in a rush of evil and malcontent. They’d fought before, slung words at one another in fits of rage, but always came back around to try again. They were too much alike, and if he was aching inside from Archie’s heated exchange, then he owed it to the old man to hear him out.
He owed it to himself not to walk away from the only man who’d ever called him son… and meant it.
Dante was right. In the muddle of his overwrought emotions, his cop served him up a helping of common sense with a bit of tenderness. It’d only been a few hours since he’d opened the delivery box, and before that, he’d been cornered by the now dead detective, feared for his life, and then Dante peeled him open to expose him to an intimacy he wasn’t sure he was strong enough to survive. Add Manny and Archie’s attempts to bully him into relocating to the Martin estate and Rook stared at the smoking ruins of his day in a new light.
Because if Archie’d looked aged before he’d carpet-bombed Rook, he looked five steps away from death now.
“Okay, I’m going to check on Manny. Last I saw, he was trying to set O’Byrne up with someone. Hank and I were going to go talk to Harold’s housekeeper, but it’s too late now. We’ll get back on the investigation tomorrow. I don’t know who’s picking up Harold’s murder investigation, but I think we should still chase it down. All of this? It’s connected. I just have to figure out how.” He brushed his knuckles over Rook’s chin, then stole another brief kiss, leaving Rook breathless. “What do you need me to do?”
“Let me talk to my grandfather. Then we can figure out what I’m going to need packed up.” The relief in Dante’s face stung a little, and he bit at his lower lip. “I don’t know where we’re going, but we’ll figure that out too.”
“The house is still open to you, son.” Archie leaned forward, his hip resting on the edge of the couch. “I promise you I will never shut my door to you. No matter how much of an asshole I can be.”
“Manny first, then I’ll see if O’Byrne’s wrapping things up downstairs. She’s got a crew on tap to clean the loft tomorrow morning, so maybe just a hotel,” Dante suggested. “Let’s decide after you two are done. We’ve got lots of options.”
He got one final kiss, a low, lingering simmer of a promise wrapped in the flick of Dante’s tongue on his lips. Then his lover was gone, leaving him empty and with a relationship to patch up.
Then the couch’s legs skidded on the floor, driven an inch forward by their weight, and Archie yelped, flinging his arm out to catch himself, but Rook was already there, catching the older man before he fell. His cane shot forward, clattering loudly on the floor, but the edge of the rug stopped them from going any farther.
“Let me sit down before I kill us both,” Archie rasped, his breath heavy. He limped around the sofa, letting Rook guide him. Then heaving a sigh of relief, he eased down into the cushions. Rook sat next to him, glad to be off his feet. “Damned knee is bothering me today, but that’s no excuse for what I said. I’m just scared for you, boy. We’re not… it’s not easy between us. Too much alike. Too stubborn. And yes, you’re like your mother, but that’s because she’s… she’s the only one of my kids besides Alex’s parents that I like. The others—well, that’s something else. The bottom line is I fucked us up and I’m sorry.”
The silence between them thinned, punctured by the pops of noise from the streets outside. There was a window open on the short wall of the living space, the slight crack of the sill barely wide enough to let the night in. Even in the early hours of the morning, Hollywood continued to dance under its own moon. A cat screeched nearby, its cry a long train whistle through the burble of cars rolling down the boulevard. There were still cops outside, the crackle of a radio echoing against the brick and stone exterior and the periodic punch of serious voices with the occasional rolling chuckle of macabre humor to lighten the weight they all carried with their badge.
It seemed like the perfect time to make amends, and Rook had every intention right up until the point his grandfather farted, a quick, explosive brrpt sound. Archie had the good grace to look sheepish after Rook broke out in a fit of laughter.
“Sue me. I’m old. You get gassy when you’re old,” the old man grumbled. “Wait until you get to be my age and they shove broccoli and salad down your throat. Damned nutritionist serves me up a kale and spinach smoothie every morning like I’m some damned cow. Quit your guffawing. It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny. Serious moment and then armpit noises,” Rook gasped out, wiping the corner of his eye. “How the hell can I stay mad at you when you’re over there playing ‘Oh Danny Boy’ with your buttcheeks?”
“That’s what I love about you, boy. You always tell me exactly what you’re thinking.” Archie’s grin was a marvel. It cracked his face, wrinkling up his eyes, lifting the melancholy from his mouth. “I do love you. And I’m sorry. Again. Still. It’s hard watching you make decisions I disagree with. I just want to shove you over until you’re on the right path, even though I know it pisses you off.”
“Yeah, no one pisses me off like you do. Not even Dante. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry too. I… flew off the handle.” Rook got it out slowly, probing at the tenderness lingering inside him. “Today was fucked. Not as bad as it was for Vicks, but… it got to me, Archie. And nothing gets to me, but that… his head, man… that did. I lost it when you called me useless. She used to call me that, you know. Like I didn’t matter. I couldn’t hear it from you.”
“You matter. God, you and Alex? You’re my legacies. You’ll see that some day. How much you mean to me.” He paused, his eyes hooded and thoughtful. “I’m asking you to be patient with an old man. This old man. Because I’m stuck in my ways, and sometimes—a lot of the times—I punch when I should hug. Can I get a chance to show you that? Can you give me that?”
“Yeah, I can. Hell, I’ll probably need that from you too because… if you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of an asshole.”
Dante’s hugs were always warm, a blanket of protection, love, and a promise of pleasure and forever. The elbow-knock, loose-boned embrace he and Archie shared was not so much comforting as it was affirming. They were awkward, incapable of getting in a decent hug because they were sitting sideways, but to Rook, it felt good. It felt real. And after the day he’d had, he needed the real more than anything else.
“So we’re good?” Rook asked when he let go of Archie’s bony shoulders. The old man nodded, looking away to dab at his face. “Because we’ve got to take better care of us, you know? Neither one of us is good at this shit, and you’ve had a hell of a lot more practice than I have.”
“I forget how young you are, you know? Maybe it’s because you’re with Montoya. Or that you’ve built all this. I forget you and Alex are the same age. Or is he older? I can’t recall.”
“Can’t tell you, remember? Beanie doesn’t know when I was born, and every time I asked, I got a different story and guy she’d hooked up with. Told me my dad was Sam Wong, one of the tent guys, because you know I look half Chinese.”
“Um,” Archie mumbled, sneaking a look at Rook’s face. “Maybe?”
<
br /> “Hey, if it were possible, I’d have been all in. Sam’s cool. First gay guy I knew, but Beanie would have been the last woman he hooked up with if ever he even thought about it.” The red tape of being Beanie’s son was nearly more than Rook could handle. “She just makes life… hard. I get that. I don’t blame you for butting heads with her. Hell, I just got a real driver’s license a couple of years ago, and that’s just because I got a lawyer to work through her being a citizen. Before that, everything I had was fake.”
“She should have left you with me.” His grandfather chuckled. “Although I don’t think I could have survived both you and Alex. Bad enough he blew out one of the tower walls because some idiot gave him an old chemistry kit. Can’t imagine the trouble you’d have gotten into, but… and know this, boy, I’d give my left nut to have had you. And that’s the truth.”
“I know, old man. I know.” He blinked away the dampness in his eyes, and the pain in his chest receded, leaving behind an ache he knew would go away in time. “And now I’m going to say something I never thought I’d ever say… because God knows, they piss me off, but maybe you should give the others a chance. You’ve been kind of an asshole to most everyone else in the family for years, and it’s like a damned gladiator’s arena at that dinner table you’ve got going on Sundays. They’re at each other’s throats. Heck, they’re at my throat, and I don’t want anything from you or them. Maybe Harold would still be alive if he hadn’t felt like he needed to pull one over on me.”
“Harold dying had nothing to do with you, kiddo,” Archie argued. “Someone killed him, and then someone else broke in for God-knows-what when you went in. I’m just thankful you didn’t end up like that detective, and you could have. Bastard hit you on the way out, or did you forget that?”
“I didn’t forget that. I was going to talk to Dante when he got home, but we got sidetracked. Then… well, shit hit the fan,” Rook murmured, squeezing his grandfather’s hand. “After Vicks left and I got to talking to Harsgard, I looked at one of the shop’s old silver-backed mirrors, and the shadows kind of cut across my face. Then it hit me. Stupid how things come back to me later, but I’d seen just a little bit of the guy’s face. It was quick, and I didn’t get a good look because he had a ski mask he had pulled over his head, but swear to God, Archie, it looked like his eyes were two different colors. Like he was one of us. Like he was a Martin.”