School of Fish

by Amy Lane

  Ellery’s eyebrows arched. “I didn’t know she wanted to go.”

  “I think she’d kick ass,” Jackson said softly. “Don’t you?”

  Ellery nodded. “She’d definitely kick ass. But think of how much power she has now.”

  Jackson laughed and nodded, loving how much Ellery knew his family. How much he cared. “I’ll ask her.”

  “But those are very good things,” Ellery said. He gave a crooked smile. “And I appreciate—you have no idea how much I appreciate—being on top of that list. But the two of us, we did a lot of hard growing in this past year. And I don’t think you’re the same guy who would park your car in front of a drunk driver so he’d hit you and you could have your friend arrest him.”

  Jackson blinked and then remembered the incident. “Heh heh heh heh….” And then thought of three other courses of action that wouldn’t involve wrecking his car or hurting his body. “Oh my God,” he said, surprised. “You’re… you’re right.”

  “I am.” Ellery’s eyes sparkled.

  “You’re often right,” Jackson said, his heart suddenly swelling. He knew it wasn’t a heart attack because the feeling filled him with warmth of hope and not the chill of saying goodbye. And the breathlessness? That was all love.

  “I am about this,” Ellery said. “I have never worried about you taking care of my heart, Jackson. But I have worried about you taking care of yourself. And I’ll always worry because you’re not the kind of person to just sit and do nothing when someone is in need. I wouldn’t love you like I do if you were. But now I know that if it’s at all possible, if there’s anything you can do to make it happen, you’ll….” His voice grew thick. Choked with a year of worrying, Jackson knew now. Choked with a year of hoping Jackson could learn this simple lesson.

  “I’ll come home to you,” Jackson finished for him.

  Ellery nodded and used his napkin to wipe discreetly at his eyes. “So I bought you another fucking CR-V, because this one, I suspect, might make it longer than a month or two.”

  Jackson stared at his hands for a minute. “Ellery?” he said, feeling pathetic.

  “Yeah?”

  “You done with your food yet?”

  “It’ll keep,” Ellery said with dignity.

  Which was good, because Jackson needed to hold him badly. He moved without thinking to the other side of the table and sank to his knees, wincing as he strained his stitches. Well, fuck, so much for caring for himself. But it had to be done on his knees. He was so humble before this man. He buried his face in Ellery’s middle and wrapped his arms around his waist and held him, just held him, while Ellery stroked his hair. The touch was soothing, and while not urgent, it was sexual.

  They wanted each other.

  They always wanted each other. That fire was always burning—even if it was banked sometimes, smoldering under the weight of busy lives.

  “Thank you for the car,” Jackson whispered, and when Ellery gave a choked laugh, he realized that was the coward’s way out. “Thank you for the faith. Thank you for loving me and waiting for me to grow up.”

  “Thank you for loving me and keeping me from being old,” Ellery whispered back.

  Jackson pulled back and grinned at him, trying to ignore the burning in his eyes. “I thought I was making you old.”

  Ellery grinned back, and then, very carefully, used his thumbs to wipe away the moisture under Jackson’s lashes.

  “I don’t care which,” Ellery told him. “As long as you’re at least planning on us getting older together, I’m happy.”

  “I am happy,” Jackson told him. And then he heard the words in his own head, and they filled him with wonder. “I am.”

  Ellery gave a broken chuckle before bending over to kiss the top of Jackson’s head. “You don’t need to sound so surprised.”

  “Well,” Jackson said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I… I didn’t think I’d ever be that way.”

  Ellery was so quiet Jackson had to raise his face to see his expression. His prissy, uptight Counselor, who liked breakfast, lunch, and dinner exactly when breakfast, lunch, and dinner were supposed to be, and who knew how to dot every i and cross every t, looked as undone as a child surprised with Disneyland.

  “What?” Jackson asked.

  “I have no words,” Ellery said. “That’s the best compliment I’ve ever gotten. I love you.”

  “Those are good words. I love you back.”

  Jackson probably could have stared at him like that forever, but his strained stitches gave a twinge, and he must have given that away with his expression.

  “You should get up,” Ellery said, standing so he could help Jackson to his feet.

  “Yeah.” Jackson paused and saw Ellery’s extended hand, remembering a time when he would have forced himself up to prove that he could. To prove that he didn’t need any help, that he could take care of Jackson Rivers just fine, even though taking care of himself was probably the thing he was worst at. He reached up deliberately and took Ellery’s hand, allowing the leverage to pull him up. He stood, chest to chest with the person he loved most in the world, and closed the gap between them, feeling the moment. The heat of their bodies, the heat of their tears, the heat of their emotions—all of it searing him from the inside out, making him, remaking him, strengthening him so he could be strong enough to hold all the things. What they’d said, what they’d meant. He could handle the total combined weight of the love between them.

  Ellery’s lips on his were salty but Jackson didn’t care. So were his own. A year they’d been doing this, but they’d lost a lot of that year because Jackson hadn’t known how to take care of himself, because he’d been hurt, body and soul, in so many different ways. It had taken them a year before their souls were as naked as their bodies, and a few tears were nothing, nothing at all, to kissing a person—to kissing the person—with his heart on his lips, his soul in his kiss, no veils of uncertainty between every touch.

  They made it to the bed slowly, one item of clothing at a time. Jackson was hurt, but they’d loved each other before while dancing around wounds. This time, they brought each other off with mouths on cocks, the ultimate in reciprocation, and when Ellery cried out and thrust hard to the back of Jackson’s throat, Jackson clutched him closer, swallowing everything Ellery had to give, almost surprised when his own orgasm washed over him, Ellery’s eager mouth stroking him, pulling his come from his body without fear or reserve.

  When they finally parted, each rolling slightly to lie faceup, their hands caressing the other’s thighs, Jackson knew his own hands were decidedly shaky.

  They might have lain there forever, too, but there was a clatter of silverware from the dining room table, and Billy Bob streaked by the open bedroom door.

  He appeared to be holding a pork chop in his mouth.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake…. Fuck!” Jackson sat up too quickly and stretched the stitches they’d just been so careful of only moments ago.

  “Is that cat eating your dinner?” Ellery asked, rolling to his side as Jackson got out of bed and limped slightly toward the kitchen.

  “How do you know it’s not yours?” Jackson called over his shoulder.

  “I ate most of my pork chop. You didn’t.”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake!” Jackson repeated, and then called, “C’mere, you no-thumbs-having motherfucker. Daddy’s gonna make a fur pillow out of you.”

  Ellery laughed softly and fell back against the pillows, obviously content to let Jackson do the cleanup and discipline for the moment.

  Good, Jackson thought, limping grimly through the house naked. Ellery had taken care of Jackson plenty over the past year. It was good that sometimes he got to do the same.

  Fish Bowls in the Air

  ELLERY LAY on his side, watching Jackson chase his cat through the house. After a few entertaining minutes of hearing Jackson swear—and watching him run naked back and forth in front of the door—he swore to himself and gave up. Ellery could hear the mut
ed sounds of cupboards opening and shutting and silverware on plates. When he realized Jackson was going to do dishes too, Ellery got out of bed just long enough to put underwear on and grab his phone.

  There was something really sexy about a naked Jackson doing dishes in his kitchen. He had obviously set about making the night nice for Ellery—for the two of them, really—so Ellery was going to stay there and savor.

  Loving Jackson Rivers had never been easy. Coming to this place, this emotionally satisfying place right here, was like waltzing with a porcupine until his quills turned to feathers. It was like skipping over rolling logs until you met a brick road and could skip down it instead. Like coating yourself with sirloin steak and walking through a panther cage—and coming out on the other side for a fresh shower and some gelato for your trouble.

  A year it had taken them, to get to this place. There had been progress and there had been setbacks, and they had both kept trying and trying again, because separating after everything they’d been through together had absolutely not once been on the roster of possibilities.

  And now, happily sexed but body still humming in anticipation of more, Ellery remembered a moment the year before, when Jackson had scorned the idea of a wedding because, in his words, “Who in the fuck would want to marry me?”

  Ellery would.

  Ellery had from the very beginning.

  At first it had been a dream, a distant hope, a thing he tormented himself with before he closed his eyes on the worst nights.

  The ones when Jackson had been in the hospital, for example. There’d been a lot of those.

  But lately, it had become more and more an expected, hoped-for part of the horizon. Someday, Ellery was going to ask him. And when he did, he knew Jackson would say yes.

  Because Jackson loved Ellery enough to give him everything. Including hope.

  Ellery pulled the comforter over his bottom half and practically giggled to himself.

  Especially hope.

  He could have gone to sleep happy right there, but he just had to check his phone.

  “Jackson!” he called, hopping out of bed. “Jackson, what did you do while I was gone?”

  “I’m sorry?” Jackson murmured, and Ellery heard the start of the dishwasher as he rounded the curve. “I made some calls. Why?”

  Ellery held out his phone. “Whatever you did, you managed to piss off the DOJ. My mother needs to talk to us!”

  Jackson’s eyes got amazingly big. “I… hold on. I have to go put on some pants.”

  Ellery rolled his eyes and turned to follow him back into the bedroom. “We’re not Zooming. This isn’t on Skype. How’s she going to know if you’ve got pants on or not?”

  “Oh, she’ll know,” Jackson muttered direly. “Lucy Satan will know.”

  “My mother’s name is… you know, never mind. Call her Lucy Satan. She likes it. I think it makes her feel young.”

  Jackson had scooped up their clothes as he’d stalked back into the bedroom, and now he was rooting for his underwear before pulling out a pair of transparent nylon basketball shorts from the chest of drawers Ellery had bought exclusively for Jackson that summer, along with clothes to fill it.

  Ellery looked at the shorts in despair. Jackson had actually volunteered to retire most of his old clothes from activewear—probably because they were rotting, thread by thread, from his body. He kept the old stuff for mooching about the house, which made complete sense until Ellery had to see him wearing shorts that were transparent and sort of slinky and threatening to reveal all of Jackson’s best parts as he moved.

  “Please,” Ellery said through a dry throat. “If we’re going to talk to my mother, could you put on some sleep pants that don’t give me wood?”

  Jackson paused long enough to give him a filthy, filthy smile of absolute ownership.

  “Heh heh heh heh heh heh….”

  Ellery arched one eyebrow and regarded him stonily, hoping that the knowledge of exactly how badly Ellery’s mother could put a crimp in their sex life would make him see sense.

  After a moment, Jackson grunted and replaced the basketball shorts with a new pair of lightly woven cotton—just as cool, just as practical, but they apparently didn’t tickle Ellery’s little kink.

  “Thank you,” Ellery said as Jackson slid them on. “Now, do I need to know what this is about before I call my—”

  His phone went off in his hand just as Jackson grimaced.

  “Hello, Mother,” Ellery said, soothed to talk to her in spite of himself. “What can we do for you?”

  His mother’s voice was, as always, reasonable and measured. Ellery had very rarely seen his mother ruffled. But that didn’t mean he didn’t know when she was pissed.

  “Ellery, is Jackson there with you?”

  “We’re both here, Mother,” Ellery responded.

  “Hi, ma’am,” Jackson said, his voice taking on the reluctant-schoolboy tones he often used when addressing Taylor Cramer.

  “Good. May I ask what you boys have been up to today?”

  Jackson’s eyes widened in apparent panic, and Ellery gave him a meaningful look. Oh, yes. There would be consequences.

  “Well,” Ellery drawled, “I got a seventeen-year-old boy out of prison where he should have never been, leveraged a bailiff and a prison guard into giving up the blackmailer who wanted to keep him there, and bought Jackson an economy-sized SUV.”

  “Really? That’s good to hear.” Taylor Cramer never lied, so Jackson’s little smirk of triumph wasn’t lost on Ellery. “That larger vehicle is quite impractical for tooling around town.”

  “It is,” Ellery said, ignoring the urge to remind her that they usually drove his car. “Jackson came back to work yesterday, and he really does need a vehicle of his own.”

  “Came back to work yesterday,” Taylor purred. “Hm. So, Jackson, what did you do today?”

  “Well, I offered an assist on getting the kid out of jail,” Jackson said, nodding at Ellery like he could will Ellery into compliance, “and then Henry and I went to the high school to do some interviews, and then I came home and rested, because I am a good boy.”

  “Ellery?”

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “Are you and Jackson sitting close together?”

  They were, in fact, their naked thighs touching as Ellery held the phone.

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “You should move, dear boy. God is going to strike your boyfriend down where he sits for telling such outrageous lies.”

  Ellery made a silent fist pump and mouthed “Yes!” in Jackson’s general direction.

  “I told the truth!” Jackson protested.

  “Sure,” Ellery retorted. “But you left out the part where you got shot at and cut up your leg wiggling out of the window to confront a potential assassin.”

  “And,” Taylor Cramer interjected, her voice irritated in the way that only a particularly fractious child can irritate a parent, “he left out the part where he agreed to help a rogue military operative spirit a shipment of valuable property away from the officer who needs it to help with an op!”

  “You did what?” Ellery asked, staring at Jackson.

  “How did you know about that?” Jackson said, obviously surprised. “I didn’t even have a chance to tell Ellery!”

  “Why would you do that in the first place?” Taylor demanded. “I’ve got a brigadier general pounding down my door, telling me to get my son-in-law back in line. What product is so important that you would agree to help law enforcement steal it from a military operation?”

  “Children!” Jackson burst out. “Children. Okay? You all remember Jason Constance?”

  Ellery could hear his mother’s complete stillness through 3,000 miles of fiber-optic network, and he remembered earlier that year, when Constance and his friend Burton had guarded his mother for a week because she had pissed off the wrong people in her job as a corporate attorney who often dealt with military contractors.

  “I do,” Taylor sai
d softly. “Is he our ‘rogue military operative’?”

  “He is, ma’am,” Jackson replied, his voice quiet again. “What happened, I believe, is that Ace and Jai—you remember them?”

  “I remember Ace,” Ellery’s mother said. “I never had a chance to meet their friend.”

  “Well, you’d remember him if you met him,” Jackson understated. The man was nearly seven feet tall and built like a refrigerator. Who wouldn’t remember him? “I believe they intercepted a shipment of children being taken to Las Vegas. The young man we got out of prison had a brother and a sister who were stolen by the local mob. They wanted to silence him and basically let him get eaten by the prison system, so they threatened the kids and then shipped them off anyway.”

  “That’s reprehensible.” It sounded like her throat had turned to concrete, and Ellery didn’t blame her. He and Jackson had been dealing with that feeling for the last two days.

  “It is. And Ace and Jai rescued the kids and then called their friend Burton, who probably told his CO—”

  “Colonel Jason Constance,” she supplied.

  “Yes, ma’am. And Constance is a good guy. He came to help fetch the children and was told that they were going to be used as bait to get the attention of the mob boss in Vegas who was selling kids.”

  “Oh no,” Taylor groaned.

  “Oh yes. I don’t imagine he’d take to that idea too well. I….” Jackson grimaced, and Ellery gave him a look.

  “What?” Ellery mouthed.

  “Later,” Jackson mouthed back. Then, into the phone, he said, “Well, I believe Constance found another way to address the guy in Vegas, and he decided to escort the children back to Sacramento himself.”

  But Ellery’s mother was a long way from stupid. “Another way to address the situation in Vegas?” she asked archly.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Would you know of any of the particulars involved in that?” she asked.

  Jackson grimaced. “Particulars?” He gave Ellery a helpless look. “Ma’am, would you want to know any of the particulars involved in that?”

  There was a silence on the line that lasted at least six thousand years.