by J. A. Rock
Couldn’t get his mouth open. Jaw was broken. When the gun went in, so did more blood, and that was what choked Daniel, not the gun itself. He sprayed the barrel with it when he coughed.
He sucked in a breath, trying to get enough air to stay conscious.
“Daniel?”
He wasn’t sure what happened. One minute, his lips were against Bel’s skin, the next he was lying with his head pillowed on Bel’s stomach, tears running down his face. He could feel Bel’s muscles contracting under his cheek. He tried to open his mouth. Was relieved when he could.
’Course you fucking can. This is now.
“Daniel,” Bel whispered, his hand on Daniel’s hair, stroking.
Daniel couldn’t answer. The tears kept flowing. His mouth worked silently.
“Hey. Come on, sit up for me.”
Not a chance. Bel finally dragged Daniel up the bed until Daniel’s head was tucked under Bel’s arm. Daniel buried his face in Bel’s side.
“You’re all right. We ain’t doing anything now. It’s okay.” Bel smoothed Daniel’s hair. “It was a bad idea.”
“I want it.” Daniel forced the words out. “I want you to make me.”
“No,” Bel said. “Not like this.”
Anger and despair tore at Daniel, twin sets of claws dragging down his insides, leaving everything open and ruined. “Can’t suck dick while I’m awake. Can’t suck dick because of the gun. I had to suck the gun,” he said in a rapid monotone. “So he could shoot down my throat. Too fucked up for you, Bel.” He started to choke. “Sorry. I shoulda figured . . .” He pressed his lips against Bel’s ribs, almost a kiss, but more a way of keeping back the sounds that wanted to come out of him.
“Don’t be stupid.” Bel ran his hand over Daniel’s hair and down his neck in long, gentle strokes. “You ain’t too anything for me.”
They were silent a long time. Daniel tried to be quiet. Bad enough Bel’d gotten involved with someone who attempted blowjobs while he was unconscious. Didn’t need to add cries when he tries to give one awake to the mix.
“You think you slayed your demon,” Daniel murmured finally. “And it turns out he’s built a whole wall of himself around your life.”
Bel didn’t say anything, but he didn’t stop touching Daniel.
Daniel swallowed. “Sometimes I don’t regret doing it. Killing him. I think if I had more guts, I’d’ve done it awake.” He paused. “But I pay for thinking like that. I pay because he’s not dead.”
“Yes, he is,” Bel said firmly.
“Then why’s he always here? Why can’t I get a fucking second of rest?”
Bel didn’t answer.
“I do forget him sometimes. Go hours without thinking about what I did. And then it makes it ten times worse, because eventually I remember. And then I hate myself for the time I spent away from it.” Daniel looked up at Bel, willing him to understand. “When I sleepwalk—maybe that’s the only time I really rest. Because I’m someone else. Someone who does something about the shit that scares him and doesn’t feel bad.”
Bel frowned, but he didn’t look pissed—just like he was trying to make sense of it.
“I go out and fuck,” Daniel continued, “even though when I’m awake I can’t do that—too chicken. And Kenny Cooper—never had the guts to do anything about him awake, but once I was asleep . . .”
“Stop,” Bel said sharply. “Don’t talk like that. You shouldn’t’ve done it.”
Daniel’s rage flared. “He shouldn’t’ve fucking beat me!” He struggled up onto his hands and knees, then sat back on his heels. “The problem’s what he did. What he fucking did! Only reason he didn’t kill me was someone was coming, and he didn’t want to get caught.”
“But he didn’t kill you.”
“No, but God, sometimes I wish he had,” Daniel said, voice breaking.
“Quit it!”
“Shut up, Bel. It’s the truth sometimes.” Daniel slid off the bed.
“Where’re you going?”
“Sleeping in the chair.”
“Why?” Bel demanded.
“Because you ain’t on my side! And because if I spend another second near you, I’ll hit you. I’ll hit you wide awake.”
“I am on your side. But I believe in the law. I’ve got to.”
“Well, the law says I done my time. So quit tryin’ to make me serve some personal sentence for you.” Daniel sat in the chair and drew his legs up, wrapping his arms around them. “And what the fuck did the law ever do after Kenny bashed me? I said I didn’t know who did it. I said I never saw the guy’s face. I said that so he wouldn’t come back and kill me, but God, Bel, I hoped the cops would figure it out and fucking do something. ’Cause it wasn’t like the whole town didn’t know. That’s the law you believe in? Fuck you.”
They sat without speaking.
“What am I supposed to do?” Bel asked after a while.
Daniel didn’t respond. Fuck him, for being too young, too scared, or too stupid to even want to understand.
“Inside,” Bel said quietly. “Inside, the only reason I wish you hadn’t killed Cooper is so I could kill him myself.”
Daniel pressed his face against his knees until he saw blue and purple shadows on the backs of his eyelids, like he was bruising himself from the inside.
“But outside, I gotta believe in the rules. You know that. You like rules too.”
“The fucking rules say something shoulda happened to Kenny.”
“Yeah. You’re right. You’re right, but if the rules fail sometimes, does that mean we chuck ’em out altogether?” Bel didn’t say anything else for another few minutes, and Daniel wondered if that was it. His heart was still pounding, and he sort of wished the fight would keep going. He hadn’t said half the rotten things he wanted to say to Bel yet. But when Bel spoke, it was just to say, “I wish you’d come back to bed.”
“I wish you’d stop being a fucker.”
Daniel heard Bel’s sigh and wished he was feeling it against his throat as Bel worked his cock with his hand. Wished a movie director would step in with a clapboard and they could take this night again from the top. But he couldn’t stop.
“I’ll bet you’re not even out, are you?” Daniel demanded. “Bet you’re scared to tell anyone you like cock. Bet you hate yourself, and that’s why part of you’s on Kenny Cooper’s side.”
“Would you quit with the what-side-I’m-on bullshit? I’m on your side. Or I wouldn’t be here.”
And maybe he was right. Because Daniel had a bandage on his hand that Bel had put there. Bel had taken Daniel to the diner and told Daniel this was his town too. And he was here. Every fucking night, except when he worked.
Maybe Bel was on his side.
Maybe that was what hurt so much.
After another minute, Daniel heard the bed creak. Bel came over and crouched beside the chair. Daniel glanced down at him suspiciously. More than anything, he wanted himself and Bel on good terms again. Bel settled on the floor, his back against the chair. Daniel couldn’t see his face.
“There ain’t words,” Bel said, “for how sorry I am about what Kenny Cooper did to you. Ain’t words for how angry it makes me. I don’t know what to do sometimes with that. It scares me, how glad I am he’s dead. How much I like to think about him burning.”
Daniel forced himself to breathe. Slow and steady.
“I don’t know if it’s okay to feel like that.”
Something about Bel’s tone—helpless, anxious. Young. Still figuring shit out—made Daniel feel better. Even though it scared him a little to realize Bel didn’t have all the answers, couldn’t fix things, he was glad to know he wasn’t the only one who was confused.
“Me either,” Daniel whispered.
Bel tipped his head back to look at Daniel. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Daniel nodded.
Bel’s hair brushed Daniel’s knee. “You wanna get some sleep?”
“I wanna forget this whole night.”
Daniel started to give Bel his injured hand, but Bel reached down and took the other one instead. He pulled Daniel up, and they stood facing each other. Daniel wanted to touch him. Was almost afraid to—not afraid of Bel. Just . . . afraid. A new kind of fear that wasn’t familiar, that was alive and sharp. That wasn’t of Bel but came from him. Afraid of Bel’s power, not to hurt him, but to give him something to hold on to.
Bel reached out and brushed Daniel’s jaw with his fingers. “Remember when I said I’d need you to be patient with me?” he asked. “Because I’d do the wrong things?”
“Yeah.”
Bel pressed his forehead to Daniel’s. Gave a long, slow exhale that Daniel felt against his nose, his lips, his eyelids. “I wanna keep this. Be patient. I’ll learn.”
Daniel closed his eyes. Licked his lips as he tried to figure out how to answer that. He gripped Bel’s shoulders. Felt all that warm, hard muscle. “I don’t have the right,” he said finally, “to give second chances. I don’t have the right to be anything but patient.”
“That ain’t true.” Bel jostled him. “That ain’t true. You got a right. Talking like that—everything’s about punishing yourself, ain’t it? Because that’s easier than figuring out how to be a whole man again, now that you done your time.” Bel’s voice was fierce. “It’s all about pain with you, huh?”
“It’s gotta be,” Daniel said. His eyes were still shut, but he could feel Bel’s breath quick and warm against his face, could feel how much Bel’s words would change him, if he let himself think too hard about them. If he let them be the truth. He pushed against Bel, gripping his shoulders tighter and tighter, trying to make him understand. He opened his eyes and stared right into Bel’s. “That’s all that keeps me awake.”
13
Bel pulled his phone out of his pocket when it buzzed, and smiled at the text message.
Hi, Bel. It’s Daniel. I miss you.
I miss you too, he sent back. See you tonight.
Bel had big plans for tonight. He’d already been to Harnee’s and bought condoms and lube, and fuck whatever the smirking kid on the counter thought. Didn’t cops deserve to get laid too? Except it wasn’t as simple as that. Half the town was probably already saying he was fucking Daniel, and the other half was probably thinking it. So what? It wasn’t wrong.
He was less worried about what the town thought he was doing than what Daniel wanted him to do. Bel didn’t want to hurt him, and he thought that a part of Daniel didn’t want to be hurt. He said he needed it, but there had to be another way. They were working toward one, weren’t they, with the sleeping bag and the holding? Bel didn’t want Daniel to go back to pain. Hell, he didn’t even want him to use the cuffs if there was nobody there to look out for him.
He stared at the pile of paperwork on his desk. Some file he had to get ready for the prosecutor, a couple of warrants to chase up, and a report that Uncle Joe had sent back to him with all his misspellings underlined. Uncle Joe was a stickler for shit like that, and being his nephew did not give Bel a free ride. Not that he wanted one.
Ginny came in from out back with a blast of warm air. She pushed the door shut again. “Hey, Bel. You coming to the Shack tonight? They got that band playing, you know, them high school kids. They’re pretty good.”
If you liked country. Bel had watched them last time. Swore the kid on the bass guitar was dying to burst into something alternative, but maybe that was just the eyeliner he wore. Bel couldn’t imagine any boys wearing eyeliner when he’d been at school. Fashions changed fast, he guessed, but attitudes didn’t. Wondered how much shit the kid took for doing that.
“I got plans tonight,” Bel told her.
“Okay.” Ginny headed down the hall toward the locker rooms. “Starts at eight, if you change your mind.”
“Thanks.”
Bel reached down for his backpack and unzipped it. He grabbed the sheaf of papers that he was supposed to have read by now and reached for his folder of operating procedures. He’d put them in there and get around to reading them properly at some point. Daniel might like to hear him read it as a bedtime story, but it was boring as hell. He opened the folder, pulled the lever arch open, and lined the pages up.
Then saw it.
On the back of the first page, someone had drawn a picture of Bel sleeping.
Someone. Bel snorted. Daniel.
He turned the pages over and spread them out on his desk.
Shit. Pages and pages of them. And they were good. Just pencil drawings, but they were really fucking good. Bel didn’t have an artist’s eye and couldn’t remember much from art classes at school except for perspective and shading, and cross-hatching. Daniel had used all of those, and other stuff that Bel had forgotten the words for. The drawings were—well, strange to call a thing beautiful when it was your own face on them, but Bel didn’t have another word for it. They were the sort of drawings that you looked at and wished to hell you’d been born with a fraction of the same talent. The sort of drawings that should have been framed and hanging on a wall somewhere, not shoved in a folder full of standard operating procedures.
Daniel never said he could draw.
Bel ran his fingertips over a page, feeling a blemish where the pencil had dug in and snagged on the cheap paper.
Did Daniel do this when he was sleeping? That was crazy, but no crazier than killing a man.
He bundled the pages up again and slid them back into his backpack. No way were they staying in the station. He wanted to keep them at home.
Maybe he ought to drive over to Goose Creek and check out the stores there, see if there was anywhere that sold decent art supplies. God knows Harnee’s didn’t run to anything like that. A proper sketch pad, with good, thick paper. And maybe some pencils and charcoal. Because when it came down to it, Daniel shouldn’t’ve been playing poker when he was asleep. Not when he could be drawing like this. And Bel would love to watch him.
“You got a minute?”
Bel gave a guilty start. He hadn’t even realized Uncle Joe was standing there. “Yes, sir.”
“Come on into my office.”
Well, that was never good. Bel kicked his backpack under his desk and followed Uncle Joe down the hall.
“Sit down,” Uncle Joe said, doing the same. Then he cut straight to it. “You been seeing Daniel Whitlock?”
“I seen him around,” Bel said.
“That ain’t what I asked you, Little Joe.”
Great. So this was how he was coming out to his family? Bel squared his shoulders. “Is there a problem if I am?”
“Won’t be easy,” Uncle Joe said, “being the first gay cop in this town.”
“I got my suspicions about Avery.” Bel knew even before he said it that the joke would fall flat.
Uncle Joe snorted. “C’mon, we can talk about this man-to-man, can’t we?”
“Depends which man is asking. My uncle, or the sheriff.”
“Same man,” Uncle Joe told him.
“I ain’t ashamed of what I am,” Bel said. “Are you?” He held his breath.
Uncle Joe looked at him steadily. “Nope. But like I said, won’t be easy for you.”
“I can handle it.”
“I don’t doubt that. But you’ve gone and put a millstone around your neck, haven’t you? Whitlock will drag you down, Little Joe, make no mistake.”
Bel frowned, thinking of Daniel’s smile, of his trust, and that look on his face when he came. He wasn’t ready to give him up, not yet. Maybe not ever. “He’s done his time.”
“Yeah, he has, according to the law. And you know as well as I do what low account some people around here hold the law in. You want to be the gay cop, that’s hard enough. But you want to be the gay cop sleeping with a killer, well, whole town’s gonna turn against you.”
“I can handle it,” Bel said, less sure this time.
“I been in this job for thirty-five years
,” Uncle Joe said. “Back when I was new, one of the boys married a black woman. Now you can do the math and tell yourself that it shouldn’t have mattered even back then, but I promise you, it mattered. If the town’s against you, you can’t do this job.”
“You firing me?” Bel asked, his voice wooden.
“I ain’t firing you. I’m just warning you that whatever decision you make, you’re gonna have to live by it.”
Bel nodded sharply.
Uncle Joe’s expression softened. “Now go on out there and write me some tickets.”
Bel stood. “Yes, sir.”
He left the office.
* * *
The rest of Bel’s shift went slow. Too fucking slow when he wanted to be out at Daniel’s cabin, watching him and touching him instead of just reading that one text message over and over: Hi, Bel. It’s Daniel. I miss you.
After work, he changed out of his uniform at the station, tossed his cuffs in his backpack, and left before anyone could talk to him.
The drive out to Kamchee Woods wasn’t long enough to settle his nerves. He was still on edge when he pulled up at the cabin, walked up the steps to the sagging porch, and opened the door.
Daniel knelt there, his hands clasped behind his neck, smiling. “Hey, Bel.”
Bel felt a smile spread across his own face. “Hey yourself.”
“Missed you today.”
Bel dumped his backpack on the floor. “Yeah, you said something about that. Why don’t you come over here and see what’s in this bag for you?”
Daniel shuffled forward on his knees, and damn, if that wasn’t one of the hottest things Bel had ever seen. He sat down on the edge of the bed and pushed the backpack forward with the toe of his boot. Daniel reached it, unclasped his hands, and unzipped it.
“This?” he asked in a croaking voice as he pulled the bottle of lube out.
“Yep. There’s more.”
The box of condoms followed. Daniel’s face was red. His chest rose and fell quickly. He dug around in the bag again. “And these?”