He didn’t think it would go that way, though. Whoever that person had been, he’d died somewhere along the way. Broken down and rebuilt.
Even if they did stay together, and Martin somehow managed to deal with Taggart redeploying — who would he be when he came back the second time? Maybe this Taggart would die, too, get broken down and rebuilt into someone Martin didn’t recognize.
It wasn’t productive thinking, but it did pass the time. Martin coasted into Willow’s End at nearly midnight — his customary arrival time — and snuck through the town as best he could in a car, and into his Aunt’s driveway. Her car was out of the garage. He wondered if she’d driven somewhere. It was an alarming thought, but if the car was here, then she’d clearly made it back. There was light coming from the living room. Maybe she was still up.
He didn’t relish telling her the news, but he did desperately want to lean on her shoulder and feel like he could cry without restraint for a little while.
He oozed out of the car on exhausted legs, and decided he’d made the right choice to come straight here. He could talk to Janey in the morning. Now, he could hear his bed calling him with sweet promises of memory foam and too many blankets.
The door was locked.
It gave Martin a momentary sense of deja vu that he had to shake off.
It got worse when he put his key in the lock and turned it, and heard barking from inside the house.
Martin froze. Grunt?
Confused, he opened the door and crept inside slowly, looking around as he did for signs of a dog to prove he wasn’t just going crazy. He wasn’t, Grunt charged him, and hopped on his back leg when he was close, front paws waving in the air, begging for attention.
Martin crouched, and gave it, trying to make sense of what was happening. He scanned the living room, and saw where the light was coming from. The television was on.
Martin picked Grunt up, and closed the door behind him, keeping his eyes on the screen. It was Keith.
“What?”
The frozen image started to play.
“Who’s this sorry excuse for a soldier,” someone behind the camera said.
“Specialist Keith Warner,” Keith said. “First Infantry division.”
“Hoo-rah,” someone behind the camera shouted.
Keith rolled his eyes. “Who let a god damned jarhead in my barracks?”
“They’re alright, Warner,” one of Keith’s friends said. He sprayed a deck of cards into the air when the camera turned to him.
This was a video that Martin hadn’t seen. Mostly he got personal videos from Keith directly, or they’d talked over Skype. He had all of them recorded, and he’d watched them all dozens of times. He searched the screen as the soldiers barked at one another, shouting vulgarities and catching stupid stunts on camera.
March 17th, 2015.
Martin clutched Grunt close to his chest, desperate to hold onto something.
This was three days before Keith died.
Warm, rough hands slipped over Martin’s upper arms, and he felt the unmistakable shape of Taggart’s body against his back, and those arms encircling him. He wanted to say something, ask where this came from, but he couldn’t. He watched Keith talking to the camera.
“You don’t wanna hear my sentimental bullshit, Max,” Keith groaned.
“Sure we do,” some of his fellow soldiers crowed.
Max, who must have been behind the camera, urged Keith on. “It’s important. Radio silent, we gotta do, like, last messages and stuff. When we come out, we delete it. It’s like tradition.”
“No it’s not,” a voice off camera laughed.
“Well it should be,” Max barked. “Come on, Keith. Set an example, Specialist.”
Keith sighed. “Fine, whatever. Uh, what would be, my last words? I guess I’d tell my Aunt Janey that I love her, and that I miss her and . . . and I’d say thanks. For everything you did for me.”
The room got quieter, and Keith finally looked up at the camera. “Thank you, Auntie. Without you, we wouldn’t have had a home, you know? You made me who I am, you’re the reason I’m out here fighting. Keeping you safe. You and Marty.”
“Thank you auntie,” someone mocked.
Max was on it. “Dude, shut the fuck up. That shit is special, dog. Go on, Keith. That asshole’s got privilege problems.”
Keith chuckled, and threw a bird behind him. “Uh, and Martin, my baby brother.”
Martin’s throat closed until he could barely breathe. Taggart squeezed him tight.
“I guess, you know, just like, keep being smart,” Keith said. He shrugged, and rubbed his buzzed head. “Be yourself. Don’t let people push you around. I wish I could be there, to take care of you like when we was kids. Had to let you grow up, you know? But I think about you all the time. One day, I’m gonna come back probably all bashed up and shit, and you can take care of my ass for a while. Just do something with your life. You got too much of a heart to waste. I never would have made it without you. Aunt Janey’s my rock, but you’re my root. I love you bro. I’ll never stop. Not even if I die. Alright, Max. Get this shit outta my face, you’re like the fucking reaper, man, that shit’s depressing. Go creep out the jarheads.” Keith wiped his eyes. The camera wobbled, and Martin almost rushed the screen to steady it, but the video cut out.
He watched the blank screen for a moment more, hoping there was something else, that it would come back, and that maybe it would be later. The day after he died.
When there was nothing more, he sagged against Taggart, and sobbed.
43
“How did you, where did this come from?” Martin asked. “What are you doing here, Taggart?”
Martin had stopped sobbing — he’d pretty much just run dry — but Taggart still held him, holding Martin’s head to his chest. Martin could hear the loud, steady heartbeat underneath it. The thick muscle of Taggart’s chest was soft, and he smelled, well, like him. Like Taggart.
“Why do you think I’m here?” Taggart asked.
Martin laughed against his chest. “Okay. Right. Uh, where did you find this? How did you get it? Did you have it the whole time or?”
Taggart shuffled them toward the couch. His gait was off. Martin pulled away a bit, and looked down. “Are you okay? Was the physical too—Tag what’s that?”
Taggart pulled his pants leg up. The cheap fiberglass prosthesis was barely visible, but the shape was distinct. “I downgraded myself.”
“Downgraded,” Martin breathed. “Jesus, Tag. What happened?”
Taggart shrugged, and waved a hand. “It’s no big deal. This works fine. I’ll get used to it. I gave the other one back. It was too fucking shiny anyway. This one is a little heavier, kind of feels like a real leg, so —”
Martin crashed into Taggart, driving him down onto the couch. He pressed his lips against Taggart’s, and felt wetness on Taggart’s cheeks. “I didn’t know what to do, or what to say,” he muttered between kisses. “I was so scared. That you’d go and that — that I’d never see you again. That you wouldn’t come back this time.”
“I know,” Taggart said. He bit Martin’s lip, and took Martin’s face in his hands and held him still long enough to slow them down.
Martin hung suspended on the tip of Taggart’s tongue. He breathed in the marine’s scent, his breath, tasted his mouth. He could feel Taggart’s pulse echoing through his own chest.
Taggart sighed, and they melted into one another.
When they came up for air, Martin asked again. “How did you get the tape?”
“Those ‘jarheads’ in the background were my battalion,” Taggart said. “I met Keith while we were stationed together before an operation near Mosul, before the siege. I didn’t realize who he was at the time. He was just another army dog. But I remembered noticing how cute he was, to be honest. He stuck in my head. Your aunt showed me pictures, and said he’d been killed a couple of years ago. I remembered there being a camera out. I didn’t know he’d be on it, or tha
t anyone would have the tape, but I called around. Eventually, I got in touch with one of the guys on Keith’s platoon, who was pretty good friends with a guy in my battalion. He did most of the rest of it, and sent me the file.”
Martin’s head spun. “So you —you just dug into all that without knowing for sure you’d find anything?”
Taggart smiled. “That kind of stuff is important over there. It never gets thrown away. Someone always keeps something. It’s our life line.”
“I don’t want to keep you away from the thing you think you’re supposed to do,” Martin said quietly. “Thank you for — for this. It’s, Tag, I don’t even know how to say what it means. Like for a second I was seeing him again. Like he’d sent it to me the way he did before — before we lost him. But I’m afraid that if I take that away from you — the corps — one day you’ll hate me for it.”
“No,” Taggart said. He brushed Martin’s cheek, and ran a finger over his lips. “I won’t. Now that I let it go, I feel like I have a new purpose. A new fight. One that matters to me.”
“What?” Martin asked.
Taggart rolled his eyes. “Come on.”
“I want you to say it,” Martin said. He pressed his forehead against Taggart’s, their noses barely touching. “Say it, Tag. Please.”
“It’s you, Martin,” Tag said. “It’s you. I love you. I don’t know if I’m really ready for . . . life, again. But I want to be, and I think that I didn’t before. That’s what’s changed. I don’t want to go back. I want to go forward. With you.”
Martin closed his eyes tight, and pressed his lips to Taggart’s again. “I don’t want to go back either,” Martin whispered. A smile tugged at his lips. “Well, I mean there’s one thing that I’d kind of like to go back for. If you think you can do it with that leg.”
“She’s heavy,” Taggart said, “but sturdy. I’ll take you anywhere you wanna go, baby.”
“Promise?” Martin asked.
“On my honor,” Taggart said. “Anywhere, anytime.”
Martin grinned.
The high school in Willow’s End really was as low security as Taggart said. It took some doing, but there was a window with a broken lock that, in the five years since they’d been students here, was still not fixed.
“This is what we get when we cut education funding,” Martin said. “I can’t believe this. God, it’s creepy, isn’t it?”
“It’s not so bad,” Taggart said. He’d barely made it through the window, but with the right motivation he had pushed himself. For this, Taggart was highly motivated.
“I wonder if I could find my old locker,” Martin muttered.
“Combination’s probably still the same,” Taggart said. “Come on.”
They slipped out through the bathroom door into the hallway. High schools were creepy as fuck at night, it turned out. Martin didn’t know if it was all the loaded memories of being in this place, or just the fact that every other slasher flick he could remember at some point involved a tense and bloody chase through a school. Whatever it was, he couldn’t stop checking darkened hallways and windows expecting something to jump out at them, or some figure to suddenly loom out of a shadow.
They didn’t hunt down Martin’s old locker, or Taggart’s, for that matter. Instead, they headed for the gym, and crept across the polished floor toward the locker rooms.
There were no windows into either set of locker rooms and their associated showers. Taggart led Martin in, and flipped the light switch. The white fluorescent bulbs hummed to life, and they were there in the place where all of Martin’s fantasies had happened.
“Holy shit,” Martin chuckled. “It looks exactly the same but completely different. I used to hide, basically, in that corner over there.” He pointed down the row of lockers closest to the entrance. “And wait for everyone to get out before I changed. I was late every day and didn’t care.”
“I know,” Taggart said. “I used to see you every time I jogged out with everyone else.”
Martin laughed. “I saw you showering in here. Twice. Just from behind.”
“Yeah?” Taggart drew Martin after him. “What did you think?”
“That if you caught me, you’d probably beat me into a pulp,” Martin said. “But I used to have this fantasy that I’d walk in here after classes — for no reason at all, because I hated this place — and that I’d catch you showering. And you’d see me . . .”
Taggart pulled Martin off of the red tile of the main locker room and into the white of the showers. He let him toward the back. “Go on.”
Martin bit his lip. “I imagined that you’d grab my by the shirt, like you did in the hallways a couple of times.”
Taggart smirked, and gathered a handful of Martin’s shirt in his fist. “Like this?”
“Mm hmm.” Martin swallowed. Anxiety and lust mixed together, an old potion he’d just about forgotten. “And you’d push me up against the wall.”
Taggart was firm, but gentle, driving Martin back a step at a time until he was pressed against the cold tile of the shower wall. “What then?”
“You’d be so angry, but, in the middle of it, you’d kiss me,” Martin said.
It was like some switch was flipped in Taggart. He sucked in a sharp breath, jerking Martin forward by the shirt, his face dark with rage but warm with raw wanting. His eyes crawled over Martin’s body, his nostrils flaring. “Just what the fuck,” he growled, “do you think you were looking at?”
Martin was thrust, like magic, into the past, looking up at the strangely mixed face of Taggart Coulson — part fantasy, part memory. He stuttered when he spoke quietly. “I’m s-sorry, Tag. I couldn’t h-help it.”
“Like what you see, Marty?” Taggart asked. “Do you want to taste it?”
“P-please, Tag,” Martin breathed.
Taggart’s lips barely brushed Martin’s.
Martin moaned softly, and craned his neck to reach them.
“Fuck you,” Taggart muttered. “Fuck you for making me want this.”
His kiss was fierce, almost brutal. Everything Martin had fantasized about. It was invasive, overcoming Martin’s lips, taking over his mouth, and sending currents of hot, fear and pleasure laced electricity into his chest, his stomach, his cock. His balls began to boil, and he whimpered around Taggart’s tongue.
Taggart pulled away just as abruptly. “I should show you what you get for putting your eyes where they don’t belong.”
“Fuck, Tag,” Martin whined. “Please. I didn’t mean anything — don’t hurt me.”
Taggart’s feral grin was genuinely frightening, even if it did momentarily crack, showing the real Taggart behind it. He snorted once, and put the mask back in place. “Turn around,” he spat. “Face the fucking wall.”
Martin shivered as he did.
“Hands on the fucking tile,” Taggart said. He grabbed Martin’s wrists and forced his hands up, just above his shoulders. “And don’t you fucking move or I swear I’ll — oh, shit.”
Taggart slipped, but caught himself. “Fucking leg,” he muttered. “Weighs fifty fucking pounds. They make this shit out of concrete?”
“You okay?” Martin asked, and started to turn and check.
Taggart drove him against the wall. “What did I fucking say, Marty?”
“You, ah — weren’t specific, Taggart,” Martin muttered. He tried not to laugh.
The urge to do so went away pretty quickly when Taggart thrust a hand down the back of Martin’s pants and drove a finger hard against his asshole — not enough to get in or damage, but enough to show he was there. He leaned in close, so that Martin felt his breath on his ear. “This sweet little hole belongs to me now, Marty.”
“Tag,” Martin gasped. He lost the power of speech entirely for a second when Taggart’s finger moved, massaging his ring in slow, deep circles.
“Fuck, I want to be inside you,” Taggart rumbled. “Tell me what I want to hear.”
“What do you want me to say?” Martin begged.
“Please, Tag. Anything.”
“Who does this belong to?” Taggart asked, punctuating the question with another deep, long press of his finger.
Martin howled, and spread his legs a bit. “Oh, Jesus — fuck — you, Tag. My . . . my hole is yours. Only yours. Please use it.”
“Good boy,” Taggart crooned. “And —” His other hand slipped inside Martin’s jeans from the front, and thrust down until he was able to grab the handful of balls between Martin’s legs. He gave them a squeeze, enough to send the right blend of pleasure and the threat of imminent pain that made Martin’s cock begin to leak. “What about these?”
“Yours,” Martin wailed. “My fucking balls are yours, Tag, God—please, please fuck me.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Taggart muttered. His hand slipped out of the back of Martin’s jeans and joined the other at the front, working his button and zipper free. “To have my big fucking cock inside that tight hole, filling you up? That what you want, Marty? Tag’s fat dick in your ass?”
“In your ass, Tag,” Martin said. “Made for you. I promise. Warm and tight.”
Tag jerked Martin’s jeans down, and then ripped at his briefs until they tore. It hurt, a little, the elastic jerking against his hips, but when it happened Martin didn’t give a shit. All he could think about was having Tag inside him, filling him up like he said. His hips swayed on their own.
From behind Martin, there was a pop of the bottle of lube they’d brought opening, followed by a quieter snap and zip as Taggart freed his cock from his shorts. It brushed against Martin’s ass, and he twisted a bit to follow it, as if he could catch it and swallow it down.
Cool drips of liquid spattered over the cleft of his cheeks, and Taggart pressed him to the wall again and his thick cock head grazed the lubed passage, sliding between his cheeks to massage Martin’s hole.
“Beg me for it,” Taggart growled. “Beg me to wreck this hole, Marty.”
Martin could barely have said his own name, but he tried. “Please, Tag,” he whined, wiggling his hips to try and take more of Taggart’s cock than just the tip that was barely in. “Please fuck me, baby—“
Grudge (Virtue & Vice Book 5) Page 21