Jack&Teague [& Katy] stories 1-5

by Amy Lane

  He was still reeling from the shock of all that now, and his mouth opened, and he tasted someone, tasted himself, sucked on that finger hard, swallowed convulsively, tingled and shivered all over.

  He looked groggily down at his chest, where the wound had opened him from his nipple to his hip, and saw that it was healed—completely healed—and as that long finger traced those same fluids down his chest, the scar faded, tingled with light, and became all but a silver-lit memory in the darkness.

  “You healed me.” It was a statement, because obviously he had been healed or his entrails would be spilling out his stomach and he’d be dead.

  “Mmmmm…” soft lips grazed his ear, and Teague found that he’d clutched that hand to his chest and was holding it there like a child holds a teddy bear. “Can you live with what we had to do to make that happen?”

  “Why would you heal me?” Teague had asked, feeling he horror of tears threaten his eyes. “I’ve hunted people like you…”

  “But you were trying to save Adrian, mate,” said that voice—it was musical, and accented, and comforting. “Granted, he didn’t need saving—not at that moment--but that intention… it means the world to me.”

  Teague started shaking all over, and Green’s arms came around him to absorb his panic and his pain. “But…you had to touch me…I’m so…why would you want to touch me to save me? You had to…to fuck me…” Shit. He was crying. He hadn’t cried since he was six.

  “Oh…sh sh sh sh…” Those long fingered hands were strong, and Teague found himself being rolled over, and he faced his savior.

  In his own hill, Green didn’t wear glamour, and his delicate features were more than delicate, triangular, pronounced, and his eyes were bigger and set farther apart on higher, sharper cheekbones than humans actually possessed. He looked like anime come to life, and Teague was sobbing like some sort of dumb kid in his bed.

  “Sh…oh, you are a pure heart under all of that pain, aren’t you, Teague Sullivan?” Those hands on his face were beyond comforting. “We’re going to need to spend a little time here, I think…so much damage to fix.”

  Teague locked gazes with Green like that eye contact was his lifeline from a vast, frozen ocean. “I’m not bleeding anymore,” he said, trying for stoic, but his face was crumpling again like a useless paper sack.

  “That’s only on the outside, Sir Knight,” Green said with a small, sad smile that seemed in place, even on his lovely, clean and impossibly beautiful features. Then Green held his face and kissed him, the kiss as beautiful and sensual a thing as Teague had ever tasted.

  The kisses continued, built, and the whole time, Teague had the sense of being touched, truly touched, hands all over his body, Green’s soothing voice all over his soul. When Green moved down his body and took Teague’s cock in his mouth, Teague’s hands had knotted in that long, butter colored hair, not to control Green, not to try to master him, but to anchor himself to the world. That sweet mouth moved on him, licking at his head, squeezing the length of his shaft, and those hands had continued to work, taking the spend that still leaked from his entrance and playing with it, using it to stretch his ass again, to caress his balls and tickle the sensitive space between, and Teague came again, weeping hoarsely, as Green had swallowed his come and his pain, and his little-boy-lost confusion…

  Teague awoke with a start in the darkened hotel room, nursing a case of the antsies to get the job done, an exploding hard-on, and a heart that still hurt. Green said it would, until he allowed someone else to fill it, but there was a Jacky-sized hole there now because Teague wouldn’t let him in.

  You are my family you dumb motherfucker.

  With a look over at Jack to make sure he was still asleep, Teague grasped his cock under his briefs and squeezed.

  You do have a damned fine body, Green had said during their time together. Teague’s cock was long and thick—not as big as Green’s, but it was still large, especially by human standards. He loved the feeling of his own hands on it, something he could control, a way to give himself a thing he needed since he was so loathe to let anyone he cared about do it for him.

  Now he took his hand to the base and tightened to the point of pain, gasping at the sharp pleasure of it and jerking tightly up. Ah, gods, this was what he liked during sex—rough treatment, a little bit of pain to remind him that he didn’t get the pleasure without it. None of that tenderness that Green had shown him, not for Sean Sullivan’s boy.

  His other hand came up to his nipple and gave it a brutal squeeze, making him stifle his gasp in dark. He yanked at his cock-head savagely enough to bring tears to his eyes—doing things to his body that he’d never ask a woman to do, because being with a woman was enough to make him come. But not being alone. Not being by himself. Not unless he gave himself the pain he deserved.

  His hands continued their assault, yanking on his penis, bruising his nipples and his testicles, putting his sex through as much pain as his heart, because, dammit, he was a killer and a fool, a throwaway redneck with no brains and no future, and Green may forgive him these things but he would never, ever be good enough for his Jacky.

  Teague’s orgasm was ripped from him with the violent knife of his own self-inflicted pain, and as his come spattered into the inside of his underwear, he couldn’t stop from snarling Jacky’s name.

  Jack jerked in bed, and grunted something incoherent, and Teague couldn’t wait in the dark any longer. He refused to inflict his polluted self on the kid anymore.

  He rolled over, cursing that the room now smelled a little like his come, and grabbed a fresh set of tighties, a T-shirt and his sweats from the duffel next to his gun bag on the floor. They had been gifts, he remembered dimly, twin duffel bags, showing up under their tiny Christmas tree last year, literally while they had slept.

  In a moment he was dressed and lacing up his running shoes, but not soon enough to avoid waking up Jack.

  “Whereyagoin’…” Jack mumbled, and Teague grunted, “Running,” in return, trying to get out the door before he came fully awake.

  “It’s four in the fucking morning, Teague, and pissing down rain…” Jack said pleadingly, struggling to sit up in bed.

  “Good,” Teague flashed his best, most vibrant fuck-me grin. “With any luck, I’ll get hit by a truck, and you can get on with your life.”

  “At least put on a…” but his words were lost as Teague hauled ass out the door into the driving black.

  Jack

  Worth

  “Sweatshirt!” Jack hollered, but by that time he was gone, leaving Jack to throw his fist through the cheap bathroom door. “Fuck!”

  He looked at his bleeding knuckles and swore again, trying not to weep. Dammit. God-fucking-dammit-all-to-shit.

  He had heard Teague, breathing harshly, calling out his name. He’d seen Teague’s body sometimes, over bowls of cold cereal in the morning. He had Irish pale skin and he left bruises on his own chest. Jack had tried once, to bruise his own nipple by pinching, to see what Teague must put himself through, and he hadn’t managed it.

  Of course the bruises and that old knife scar weren’t the only marks on Teague’s body. Cuts from a ring hitting pre-adolescent flesh, small, neat cigarette burns with a blistered ocean around them, even the scar on Teague’s chin, the kind of scar that half the people in the world have, Teague had admitted was what happened when you got pushed into a desk from behind. Sean Sullivan had done a number on his baby boy before he did the world a favor and died, hadn’t he?

  Too bad he hadn’t died before he’d convinced Teague that love had to hurt, and even painful love was too good for the likes of Teague Sullivan.

  With a sigh, Jack stood up and fingered the splintered wooden edges dismally. The hotel was probably going to keep their deposit, he figured glumly, looking at the hole in the door. It’s a good thing Green was paying. He eyed the hole again, still pissed and antsy as hell about not being able to do anything—couldn’t get Katy, couldn’t help Teague, couldn’t do
a goddamned thing to stop this dull, sore-toothed aching in his chest. The door looked pretty fucking tempting—he briefly contemplated beating the thing to shit since they were going to have to replace it already.

  After a few deep breaths he thought of Green and let it go and decided to dress his hand instead. When he was done applying the antiseptic and the dressing, he was too amped up to go back to sleep, so he pulled a book on the history of warfare out of his duffel and lay down to read.

  By the time Teague came in two hours later, sopping wet with blue lips and a shiver that wouldn’t quit, Jack had fallen asleep on the book and was leaving a little drool spot on the third page.

  Jack sat up quickly, blinking his eyes and wiping his mouth, and then looked at Teague in appalled shock. The wind and the rain hadn’t quit, and as Teague moved across the room he was almost shaking too hard to rip his sodden clothes off on the way to the bathroom. When he got there, Jack pushed behind him and started the hot shower. Teague squashed himself against the counter to let Jack by and Jack scowled at him, even as the steam started coming up.

  “Jesus, Teague, look at you,” Jack said softly.

  Teague was down to his skivvies, and he held his hands down in front of his privates, giving that fuck-me grin through blue lips. Water was still dripping from his lashes, his hair was plastered to his head almost in his eyes, and his collarbone and scars stood out in stark relief.

  “Dude,” he said, striving for a light voice through chattering teeth, “if you could leave, that would be awesome. You know, shrinkage—don’t want my boys to take a reputation hit or anything. They’re sensitive.”

  Jack looked at him, his face drawn in anger. “Fuck you, Teague. You didn’t have to do this to yourself.”

  Teague looked away, the chattering of his teeth the only sound for a moment. “Jacky-boy, you’re a good kid. I just want better for you, that’s all.”

  Jack used his height to his advantage for once, wrapping his arms around Teague’s shoulders, knowing that he must be cold and weak when he didn’t fight back.

  “You’re what’s good for me, asshole,” he sighed, and Teague didn’t say anything. When the shivers calmed down, Jack walked him to the tub, helping him step over the side like a child, and making sure he was standing in his skivvies and being pelted by the hot water before he left.

  When he came back, fifteen minutes later, a cardboard carrier full of hot chocolate (Teague hated coffee) and hot egg burritos in his hands, Teague was still in the shower. Jack put the stuff down on the little Formica table, then went and sat on the toilet seat and pretended everything was normal.

  “So when do we ride?” He asked, closing his eyes and hoping Teague would answer.

  “Sometime after noon,” Teague responded, and with the cheap white shower curtain between them, it really felt as though nothing had happened.

  “That’s so damned late. Why?” Jack asked, and almost heard Teague’s convulsive shrug. The wait hadn’t set well with either of them.

  “Something about Gwane and that guy in King Arthur,” he said, sounding positively flummoxed, even through the curtain.

  “Gwane?’ Jack asked, clueless.

  “Something like that. Some guy whose strength got big in the morning and then after noon it started to drop off. G-gr-een said w-w-ere-wolves are l-like that.” Teague’s teeth were starting to chatter again—the water had obviously run cold.

  Jack ripped back the curtain and was the recipient of a resentful scowl. “Would you get out of the fucking shower already? Your chocolate’s getting cold.”

  “Well would you get out of the fucking bathroom already?” Teague returned, those furious green eyes not giving any quarter. “I’m not a little kid.”

  Jack scowled, and deliberately looked at Teague’s crotch, his head jerking back and his eyes widening with some shock. “Dude, if you’re worried about shrinkage, don’t. Now if you don’t get the hell out of this ice-fucking-cold shower, I’m going to wrestle you out.”

  Teague squared his shoulders mutinously, and Jack rethought that last statement.

  “Or I’m going to call Green,” he added. “Take your pick.”

  “Get out of the bathroom, Jack-ass,” Teague growled, and Jack backed up, his hands in the air.

  “Two minutes, Teague. I’m timing you now.”

  Teague was out—naked, his sopping skivvies in the tub—and fishing through his duffel in a minute and a half while still dripping water from the towel around his waist.

  “Hot chocolate?” He asked hopefully.

  Jack pointed to the little Formica table where he’d set breakfast. “Is it the gay thing?” He asked bluntly, and Teague glanced at him briefly, pulling on his jeans over yet another set of tighty-whiteys.

  “No,” he said seriously. But he didn’t elaborate, either.

  “Gawain,” Jack said then, out of the blue and into the sudden silence.

  “You’ve got a pain in the what?” Teague pulled on his last T-shirt and a plain black sweatshirt in short order, grimacing a little when they stuck to his wet skin.

  “Gawain, genius. He’s the guy whose strength waxed until noon and waned afterwards. He used it in an unfair fight against Lancelot, and Lancelot won anyway.”

  Teague’s eyes widened and he moved to the table to take an appreciative sip of the chocolate. “Gotcha. Where in the hell do you learn something like that, anyway?”

  Jack shrugged. “Four-fifths of a Liberal Arts degree.”

  “What do you do knowing something like that?” Teague asked, on another sip of chocolate.

  Jack smiled faintly, remembering the idealist he’d been before Sara had been killed. “Become a grade school teacher.”

  Teague nodded, and reached inside the bag for an egg-burrito. “You should do that. You’d be good at it.” He took a bite and spoke with his mouth full. “World needs good men to be around kids. There’s not,” swallow, bite, chew, “enough of them,” swallow.

  Jack nodded, knowing what Teague was trying to do and not buying it. “Maybe someday. When you’re ready to quit.”

  Teague winced. “Jacky…”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Jack said, although if Teague was going to be this much of a mule-headed bastard about something they both wanted, Jack would rather they not talk about it, and just keep living the way they had been. “Right now, we’d best take a nap or something, because I don’t know about you, but I slept like shit and woke up early. Since waiting’s what we’ve got to do, we’ve got six hours before we go track down one seriously pissed off werewolf and try to convince her to get in the car. If you’re not going to take care of yourself for you, would you at least consider doing it for me?”

  Teague gulped the rest of his breakfast. “Fine, Aunt Jacqueline, I’ll go to bed like a good boy now!” He sneered, and Jack rolled his eyes, reassured in spite of himself.

  Suddenly, he felt brave. “Teague—could we…could we just do one thing?”

  “If you say ‘share our feelings’, I’m going to toss my totally crapfuckingtacular egg burrito.” Teague set himself up on the bed, crossing his bare feet at the ankles and folding his hands across his chest in classic catnap position.

  “God forbid,” Jack said dryly. He stood and pulled a flannel blanket out of his duffel that was laundered soft and not synthetic or slippery or nasty on the skin. Then he kicked off his boots, shed his wet camo jacket and hung it on the chair, and walked over to Teague’s bed and lay down next to him, spreading the flannel blanket over them both.

  “What in the fuck are you doing, Buttercup?” Teague’s voice was irritated and gruff, but it wasn’t disgusted, and Jack took that as a good sign.

  “I’m getting some sleep, asshole,” Jack shot back, and curled up on his side, laying his head on his arm and wrapping his other arm securely over Teague’s broad chest. If the guy ever ate, he’d be stocky, and his chest was surprisingly wide.

  “Dumbshit kid,” Teague grumbled, but he let his head drop
to the side, against Jack’s chest. As Teague’s eyes were closing, Jack caught him rubbing his cheek on the fabric of Jack’s shirt and smiling. Jack was glad the contact made Teague happy, because he could have laid there forever, arms around Teague, knowing he was safe, knowing that for just a moment, he felt he mattered.

  As it was, Teague muttered, “Set the alarm for ten,” just before he crashed for good. Jack never disobeyed an order.

  Teague

  Hazards of the Job

  Mikey Daniels had not gone out well.

  Teague surveyed the destruction on the bottom floor of Daniels’ little two-story, one-bedroom house and gave a low whistle. Whatever the guy had been doing to the she-wolf, it must have sucked stinky troll ass, because she had chewed through the silver-painted bars of the giant porta-kennel, and laid waste to Daniels’ face.

  Literally. There were kick marks on the floor, soaked in blood, so she had chewed on his face for a good long time before she moved on to his genitalia, which had obviously been exposed when she escaped.

  “Teague,” Jack said, puzzled, staring at the corpse through the nausea, “if she was chewing on him as a wolf, she wouldn’t have had her hands, would she?”

  “No,” came the flat reply. Teague was studying the bloody paw prints—there were a flurry of them, and he wanted to see which way they exited. He frowned when he saw them heading for the back yard. Daniels had a small, fenced in backyard of about half an acre, surrounded by about ten acres of flat out wilderness. If the wolf had gotten over the silver-pained eel-wire and the eight-foot hurricane fence—and who said cocaine didn’t make an asshole paranoid?—they would have to hunt her down and tranq her in a wolf’s favorite place.