by Andrea Speed
Shit. He hadn’t had enough alcohol. Roan took a serious swallow of his Moscow mule, partially hoping the vodka would burn away some of his olfactory abilities, and said, “Hey.” Yeah, that was brilliant. Way to break the awkward ice.
On the plus side, Colton’s skin had apparently cleared up, and while his hair was kind of long and shaggy, it was held back in a pristine ponytail. Hard living had carved itself into his face, though, so he looked a bit older than Roan knew he actually was. Colton brightened a bit, looking down at Kevin. “Hey, did Kev tell you his news?”
Roan looked down at Kevin expectantly. “News?”
“I’m taking early retirement,” Kevin said, grimacing as if embarrassed. That was reflected in his scent palette as well. “It’s just… I’m tired. I shouldn’t be, but it’s like I’m tired of running headfirst into the same goddamn walls, you know?”
“I get it.” He totally did. There was a point where you had to accept the system was rigged a certain way, and try as you might to un-rig it, you were just an easily replaceable cog, and no one really noticed you that much. That sounded achingly cynical, which it was, but it was also painfully true. If there was no will at the very top to change, it would never happen.
“But Puget Sound Pet Rescue offered me a position,” Kevin added, and he visibly brightened. Literally, as his color took on a more golden hue. “Which I really want to take. I think it’ll be a new start, and I feel like I could use one.”
“That’s great.” It was. Kevin loved animals. His friendship with Roan proved that if nothing else. “Does that mean your zoo will get smaller?”
“No. I’m going to try and not expand it any further.”
“You do and we’ll need another house,” Colton said with weary affection. They would probably never stop being a weird couple, but the same could be said about him and Dylan, so he couldn’t start throwing stones.
Holden, Scott, and Grey came in with a woman he’d never seen before. Roan moved to intercept the party train and was suddenly aware that Holden’s and Scott’s scents had smeared together. Shit, were they a thing again? He thought Scott had broken up with Holden.
The woman, a petite Asian with impressive sleeve tattoos, beamed upon seeing Roan and grabbed Scott’s arm. “Ooh, I finally get to meet your man crush in person.”
Scott rolled his eyes, but his aura flushed with embarrassment. “Roan, this is Jessie, my good friend.”
Roan shook her hand, which was cool to the touch, and as soon as they were done, she grabbed the sleeve of Roan’s jacket. “Can I have a look at your ink?”
“She’s a tattoo artist,” Scott said.
“Well, you can’t see all of it, but you can see some of it.” Roan shrugged off his jacket, revealing his bare arms.
She oohed and studied his tattoos, and Dylan came over, smiling crookedly at his husband being pawed by a strange woman. “Friend of yours?” Dylan asked.
Grey pointed at Scott. “One of his exes. One of his better exes.”
“Thanks, sweetie, love you too,” Jessie said, not looking away from his tattoos.
Dylan looked at Holden and managed to keep his expression neutral. “You look… better.”
He did, although his bruises hadn’t gone away. They had faded, weren’t as pronounced, but they took a while, especially on the face. Roan knew that from hard experience.
“I’m this close to wearing makeup,” Holden replied, holding his thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart.
Scott gently bumped Holden with his hip. Having seen him hip check someone into the boards, Roan was impressed he could dial it down to so gentle. “Do it. It’d look good on you.”
“You say that about everything,” Holden said, but it didn’t sound like he was complaining.
“Who did this one?” Jessie asked, referring to his koi yin/yang symbol.
“Him,” Roan said, pointing at Dylan.
Dylan smiled. “Well, I designed it. Someone else actually put it on his arm.”
“Jade Fujikawa, who works at Ink Trade,” Roan said.
But Jessie didn’t seem interested in that piece of information. She looked at Dylan and asked, “Do you do commissions?”
“For tattoo art?” Dylan shrugged. “We could discuss it.”
“Awesome.” Jessie dug a business card out of the pocket of her fashionably shabby jeans and handed it to Dylan. “Email or text me, okay? I wanna set something up.”
Dylan glanced at the card. “Your shop’s in Vancouver?”
“For now. And it’s not really a shop more than we’re working out of someone else’s place until we can find a more permanent spot.”
“Cool. We’re in Kelowna now.”
“Oh, awesome! We’re neighbors.”
He and Dyl shared a look that screamed “Not exactly,” since driving to Vancouver was not a common experience for them, but maybe in Canadian terms, it was. Canada had a lot of land. “Sort of,” Roan finally said. There was no point in arguing about it.
“I’ll have to invite you two to hard-core night at the Vertigo,” she said.
Roan puzzled over that until Dylan said, “The Vertigo Lounge is a club in Vancouver. I’ve heard friends mention it, but I’ve never been.”
“Yeah, some nights it can be a real bitch to get into. But I know a friend of a friend of one of the co-owners. I can get your names on the list.” Jessie said this with grinning pride. Roan remembered punk shows where all you had to do was pay the cover and maybe show ID to buy a beer—depended on the guy or girl handling the drinks. He would have mentioned this, except it made him feel a million years old. Roan really needed to start going to places that didn’t remind him of his mortality. He wondered where those places might be.
Since Roan felt like he’d put up with the visual overload for long enough, he sat down and closed his eyes for a moment. The problem with shutting down one sense meant he became extremely aware of the others. For instance, sounds had a taste as well as a color, but usually they were weak enough for him to ignore. Right now, he was aware the gallery tasted a bit like candy cigarettes, or maybe that old wax lips candy. Did they make either of those anymore? They were really shit candies, but he’d loved them as a kid. Mainly because a surprising number of the foster and group homes he passed through either didn’t “believe” in candy, or simply counted it as a contraband or special item. Which meant he would eat any candy he could get, including shit candy. This was also how he knew making substances illegal really didn’t work most of the time. Making it “off limits” made it a thousand times more tempting. Thinking back, it was pretty fucked-up. Everybody was of the opinion he was a dying kid who could kick off at any moment, so why not let him have some fucking candy!
Roan was aware of a shift in the air, and he didn’t know why even after he opened his eyes. He had to weed out/process the visual noise, and then he saw a couple of guys working their way toward them. It was Dee and Chai, and for once, Dee wasn’t in his EMT uniform. Chai still had that heavy-headed cane that would double as an effective bludgeon quite nicely, but had also taken Dee’s arm to help him navigate smoothly through the crowd. A shift in colors and the smell in the air led Roan to looking at Holden, who was standing beside Scott. Holden looked genuinely surprised.
“I’m never going to get used to this,” Holden said.
“Nice to see you too, Holden,” Dee said, clearly holding back some epic sass. Roan found it easy to imagine he and Chai had discussed it in the car.
“Hey, Diego, nice to see you again,” Scott said, oblivious to the drama. He must have finally noticed the tension, because he looked between Holden and Dee, puzzled. “Am I missing something?”
“They’ve not always played together well,” Chai said, erring on the side of diplomacy. “But they’re going to try now, aren’t they?” Chai turned blistering glares on Holden and Dee in turn, only looking away when he got an acquiescent nod.
Roan rubbed his chin, trying to hide a smile, but Dee caught it and sta
rted staring daggers at him. What? If the positions were reversed, Dee would have been laughing his ass off, and they both knew it.
Jessie came back to the group with a pink cocktail in her hand. She put a friendly arm around Scott’s shoulders and said, “You guys are a fun group.”
Roan was fairly certain that wasn’t sarcasm. She was going to fit right in.
Dylan leaned in and whispered, “Do you want to leave now?”
It was his show and their party. But Dylan was clearly thinking of his synesthesia issues, and it was very sweet. But did he expect anything less of him? If Dylan were any sweeter, Roan would be in a permanent diabetic coma. He not only didn’t deserve Dylan, he didn’t deserve half of a Dylan.
“I’m good,” he whispered back and kissed him on the neck. And Roan was so glad Dylan tasted like good candy. That was definitely one thing that had worked out in his favor.
If this was his last night ever in Seattle, at least it was a good one.
26—We Are Falling Into the Heart of the Sun
HOLDEN WONDERED—not for the first time—how women did this every day. Putting on eyeliner always took longer than he expected it to, and it was so fiddly. How anyone could do something so maddening on a daily basis and not loose their shit was beyond him. The fact that his right hand was in a cast added another layer of futility to this doomed enterprise.
But that was only one of a handful of reasons Holden didn’t wear makeup as a matter of course. He used to when he was a working guy and a client wanted a certain type—a faux hipster, club kid, androgyne—but even then, he did the least he possibly could. Makeup was expensive, and he was not good at wearing it. But guyliner seemed like the most doable thing, at least at first. Then he learned what a complete pain in the ass it was.
Still, he had to admit the dark eyeliner made his eyes pop, and with all these aging bruises on his face, he could still use it. Again, he didn’t like to think of himself as vain, but clearly he had a streak.
Holden was leaning over his bathroom sink, almost pressing his nose against the mirror as he delicately drew eyeliner on his lower lid, when his phone hummed. It was sitting on the edge of the sink, so it made a devilish rattling noise that echoed off the porcelain, but he wasn’t concerned about waking up Scott. Grey’s method of waking him up, which was essentially just shoving him off the bed, really was the only effective way, and sometimes even that needed help. Scott could sleep through an armed border skirmish occurring at the foot of his bed. How did someone learn to sleep like that? It must be a disorder of some sort.
Of course, he and Scott were a whole can of worms he shouldn’t have opened, but how much could he lie to himself? After getting out of the hospital, Holden was fucking lonely. And Scott was one of the few people he could think of who would give a damn what happened to him. Holden didn’t kid himself—he had a rep, and he had a lot of people who owed him favors. But did they like him? Debatable. Scott did. God knows why.
But at least this was a relationship that was moving itself to the back burner no matter what. In a few days, Grey was heading back to Philadelphia to start seriously training for the season, and even though Scott could have done a similar thing in Seattle, he’d be heading back up to Vancouver for the same reason. Scott had actually told him with a straight face that the house seemed too big and empty when Grey wasn’t there, which was fucking bizarre. Roan’s old house really wasn’t that big. But this was probably the only way Scott could express how much he missed his asexual life partner. They were an epic love story.
Holden stopped fussing with his makeup, looked down to see who was calling him, and was surprised to see Dahlia’s name. He instantly wondered if something had gone wrong with Lexi and answered, putting her on speaker so he could keep his hands free. “Everything okay?” he asked, going back to putting on his eyeliner. Pulling down his lower lid made him look monstrous. It also hurt, since he was pressing down on bruises that hadn’t totally healed yet.
“Yeah,” Dahlia said. “Lexi’s doing well in his physical therapy, and he’s starting to remember the night of his attack. But it’s a moot point now.”
“What do you mean?”
She scoffed as if she was still having a hard time believing it. “Gerald confessed.”
“What?”
“You know that weird thing where he was found beaten in a train station bathroom and said he was attacked by one of Alexei’s students before retracting his statement and saying he wasn’t sure who attacked him? One of the police who interviewed him found it suspicious and started looking into his alibi. Apparently it was flimsy, and she thought he was lying when he said he didn’t know who attacked him. Gerald was called in yesterday to look at some mug shots, and he cracked. He said he attacked Alexei because he felt he’d robbed him of tenure. Oh, and a parking space. Can you believe that? Have you ever heard a stupider motive in your life?”
“I hate to say it, but yeah. I’ve heard some pretty ridiculous motives, up to and including not liking someone’s face. But considering he was a professor, it seems especially idiotic.” Yeah, Gerald apparently survived the ass whupping Holden dished out, but he’d played odds there that he’d seriously hurt him. Apparently not. Unlike Alexei, fuckhead Gerald was hard to break. Still, Holden knew he was going to crack one way or another—and Holden would help him along, if need be. In the end, the cops did their fucking job and actually got the dickhead. But if Holden hadn’t beaten the shit out of him, they never would have. And these were upper-middle-class white guys! You’d think they’d always bust their asses to solve those cases.
“You run with a rough crowd.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
There was a pause as Holden fussed with his eyeliner some more. It wasn’t really black. It was a deep indigo that he thought really brought out the color in his eyes. The problem was, it might also bring out the yellow of the fading bruises. But he was kind of committed now, and there was no fucking way he wanted to start over or walk down to the nearest Walgreens with half–made-up eyes. Finally, Dahlia asked, “Did you have anything to do with that?”
“With what?”
“The assault in the train station.”
“I was barely out of the hospital myself. Would I do something like that?”
There was another long pause on her part. Holden smiled. He didn’t think she knew him that well, prostitution diaries aside.
“You know, when I was doing the diaries, your name was passed on to me by one of the first sex workers I talked to. But he told me to be careful around you. He said that’s why everyone called you Fox.”
“’Cause I’m smart and handsome?” Holden replied with false bravado. He liked people to think that, but even he knew that wasn’t the real reason.
Apparently, so did she. “No. He said it was because you were so flashy on the outside, everyone seemed to forget you had teeth and you really liked to bite. Maybe that’s why I hired you in the first place. Do you want your final payment in cash or check form?”
“Cash is great.”
“Figured as much. I’ll drop it by your place tonight.”
“Thanks, Dahlia. Bye.” He ended the call and went back to finishing his eyeliner. Alexei was very much a submissive, in sexual terms. He liked being dominated, controlled. And Dahlia was very much a natural Dom, which was probably why her relationship with Lexi worked. Lexi would fight for ideas and ideals, but he’d never get physical with anyone. But Dahlia? Sister could cut a bitch. You weren’t a Dominant if you didn’t have that in you. He doubted she knew about his whole vigilante thing, but she had to know she wasn’t getting a regular detective when she hired him.
Holden decided his eyeliner was as good as he was ever going to get it, so he capped it and put it away. He’d also used a dark green semipermanent rinse on his hair, as he was unloading the entire tool box in trying to distract attention away from his bruises. Probably none of it would work, but he wanted to at least try.
He too
k his phone and tucked it into his pocket. He found Scott very softly snoring, a lump beneath the covers. Holden tried to wake him up the normal way, by calling his name and slapping him on his shapely butt, but he got no response. So Holden shoved him off the bed and said, “You don’t hafta go home, but you can’t stay here.”
Scott groaned a response, but he was at least half-awake, so that was something. Holden walked out to his kitchenette, wondering what he was going to do with himself. Chai had suggested therapy again and passed on the name of a therapist, but Holden was pretty sure he couldn’t do it.
Holden was fairly certain he was a pathological liar. Lying was his default setting. His first impulse was to lie, even when it didn’t matter, even if the matter was mild or inconsequential. He had to work hard to tell the truth, which was one of the reasons he didn’t do it very often. There was no point in seeing a therapist if he was just going to lie to them most of the time. Of course, pathological lying was probably a thing that needed psychiatric treatment, but he really didn’t care. His natural ability to lie had served him well and kept serving him well. He didn’t know who he’d be if he couldn’t do it anymore. Would there be any Holden at all if he wasn’t allowed to lie? That was an existential question he had no interest in exploring.
He felt too lazy to make coffee, even though it wasn’t that hard, and decided to have an energy drink instead. Yeah, they tasted terrible, but that was the price you paid for liquid crack. Nobody promised you it wouldn’t taste like battery acid served in a butthole. He was nuking a breakfast sandwich when he heard the shower turn on, so Scott was definitely up.