by Sidney Bell
Tobias laughed. “I put that together from your panicked desperation to avoid the breakup conversation. But thanks for saying it. It’s really nice to hear, even if you’re making fun of my completely nonscientific theory in the process.”
“Sure. Hey, that thing you said earlier that wasn’t English? I’m assuming that was you telling me to shut up?”
Tobias made a noncommittal humming sound.
“Yeah, I thought so,” Sullivan said dryly. “That wasn’t French, was it?”
“No, it was Kreyòl.”
“You’re fluent?”
“Yeah.”
Sullivan hesitated a second. “Will you teach me?”
Tobias pressed his face against Sullivan’s shoulder, inhaled the scent of his skin, and whispered, “Try and stop me.”
* * *
Sullivan felt like he’d only just drifted off when his phone rang, but out the window the morning was blue as a bruise already. It was Lisbeth.
Sullivan shook Tobias enough to wake him and sat up, the sheets puddling in his lap. Coherence, he told himself, though it was a high expectation for five-thirty. He gave her a quick and dirty rundown of everything that’d happened.
“What’s she saying?” Tobias asked, knuckling sleep out of his eyes like a little kid, and Sullivan wished he had enough dignity not to find it adorable, but such was his lot in life. The guy was cute, and Sullivan was stuck stupid on him.
Fortunately, Tobias had a similar problem.
“Let the grownups talk,” Sullivan told him, ignoring the vengeful finger that poked him in the stomach as Lisbeth filled him in on her news.
Her friend’s name was Walter Wathers, and he’d turned toward home before his daughter had managed to pass Lisbeth’s message on. Something to do with spark plugs and a questionable mechanic, Sullivan gathered, and that meant that instead of a week they had to wait only two hours—Wathers had called Lisbeth from a pay phone in Laramie not five minutes ago, and he was on his way to Sullivan’s. As Lisbeth was, to facilitate the introductions.
“You’ll only do smart things until I get there, won’t you, Sullivan?” Lisbeth asked as the conversation wrapped up.
“The smartest,” he agreed.
Tobias poked him again. “What’s she saying?”
Sullivan batted at his hand and tried to muffle the phone’s speaker against his shoulder so he could hiss, “She’s giving me the recipe to life everlasting. And if you keep poking me—ow—I’m not going to share it with you.”
Tobias was grinning, and after a second, when he heard Lisbeth cough pointedly in his ear, Sullivan realized he was sitting there silently grinning back. They were just two half-asleep idiots grinning at each other in bed.
“That would be the college boy stealing your attention, I’m assuming?” Lisbeth asked dryly.
“It would.”
“Is this a nice development?”
Sullivan watched Tobias lift an eyebrow and kick the sheet down a few inches, the filthy tease, and all Sullivan could think was that it was so clean. So happy, so pure. Nothing perverted about him, about them, no matter how dirty they played together. “The nicest.”
“Good. I’ll tell Caty you’re bringing him over for dinner in a few days. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“Hey, now—” Sullivan started, but she’d already hung up. He wasn’t grinning anymore, unfortunately, because he had a mental picture of Caty tugging Tobias away to teach him all about “the ways of the sub,” which Sullivan knew all too well was just a collection of tips and tricks meant to annoy the shit out of Doms. Though he had to admit, a bratty Tobias wasn’t an unattractive one.
“What was she saying?” Tobias asked.
“We have two hours before this ex-cop guy gets here and half an hour before Lisbeth does,” Sullivan said, and tugged at the sheet, thinking that teasing was a crime definitely worthy of punishment. Blow job punishment. Sounded fair. He slid down the bed and added, “Plenty of time.”
“Wait, what?” Tobias sat upright, yanking the sheet back up to his navel. “Two hours? I can’t convince Ghost to give the USB to a cop in two hours.”
“You don’t have to,” Sullivan said, rather reasonably in his opinion, considering that Tobias was now doing the opposite of having sex with him. “We have the USB. We can give it to the ex-cop without Ghost’s permission. Ghost can make up his own mind about whether he sticks around to testify or get deposed, but either way, you know we can’t trust him to give the USB up on his own.”
“You made a good argument yesterday,” Tobias pointed out. “He might agree. He might do the right thing of his own volition.”
“I don’t know.” Sullivan thought of Tobias running downstairs in Spratt’s house, and reminded himself of Tobias explaining last night that it’d been about trust, not love.
“I’ve had a lot of important choices that I didn’t fight to make for myself,” Tobias said, taking his hand. “I want to give him that option. He’s going to have to live with the consequences; he should at least get a say.”
“Do you really think he’ll do the right thing?”
Tobias dropped his gaze.
“More to the point,” Sullivan said gently, “Can you live with yourself if you’re wrong?”
“Let me talk to him.” Tobias spoke more to Sullivan’s belly than his face. “Don’t do anything until I do that much, okay? Maybe I can convince him to go along with this.”
Sullivan sighed and rolled to his back. “This isn’t you choosing him, right? This is you trusting me to do the right thing even if you’re not babysitting me, right?”
“Yes,” Tobias said fiercely, and threw himself on Sullivan to kiss him, hard, and Sullivan kissed him back, morning breath bedamned. They’d been together for years now anyway, apparently. They were well past worrying about that sort of thing. And the idea that Tobias trusted him was getting easier to believe with every passing second.
“All right.” Sullivan brushed a hand over Tobias’s shoulder. “You’ve got two hours, sweetheart. Do your worst.”
* * *
Ghost was already awake when Tobias went downstairs. He was watching the news with the volume turned low, his skin faintly lavender in the glow of the screen. The morning anchorwoman from Channel 7 was making her way through a story on a bus accident. Tobias hoped there’d been no children involved.
“Anything about us or Spratt?” he asked.
“Not so far.”
“Good sign.”
Ghost lifted an eyebrow a tiny bit as if to say take it how you like, but I know better, and Tobias remembered Sullivan saying you don’t speak the same language.
No, they didn’t, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t work out a translation.
He also remembered Sullivan saying he cares what you think.
Tobias slipped the remote off the arm of the sofa and turned the TV off, then sat on the steamer trunk, a position that forced Ghost to move his legs.
“Look at you,” Ghost mused. “It’s way too early for fight face, Tobias.”
“You’re up,” Tobias pointed out.
“Spratt keeps intolerable hours. I’ll adjust back to my natural rhythms soon enough.”
“Tell me how you got the USB.”
“It’s like your boyfriend said—I had a camera and a laptop and later I made a copy.”
“Why didn’t you send it to Mama right then?”
“Because two seconds after I saved it, Spratt was pounding on my door.”
“Why?”
“For the sex,” Ghost said, batting his eyes. “I’ve been told I’m irresistible to a certain type.”
“You weren’t sleeping together.”
Ghost paused, a bare hiccup of time that made Tobias want to smile. Ghost wasn’t used to having to be on his toes with him. “And you know
that because Boyfriend is a professional busybody, I suppose.”
“I’m pretty good at peeking in windows myself these days, too.”
“You make a lovely couple,” Ghost said earnestly. “But back then we were fucking. It wasn’t until I proved unreliable that he stopped—”
“You said yesterday that he didn’t do anything,” Tobias interrupted, and Ghost’s eyebrows narrowed for a second. “You were talking to yourself, I think, but forgetting I exist doesn’t mean I actually cease to, you know.”
“Fine, we weren’t fucking,” Ghost said carelessly.
“So why didn’t you email the video to Mama?”
“There was no point. I was on my way out the door anyway. I planned to give it to her in person.”
“You made the USB, tried to leave, and Spratt stopped you. And...you threw the USB in the laundry room to conceal it?”
“Ding, ding, ding.” Ghost reached out and bopped Tobias on the nose with one finger. “You’re very clever these days, Tobias.”
Tobias rolled his eyes. “Thanks, but I still don’t buy it. Maybe Spratt stopped you from leaving, but that’s not why you didn’t email it. If you’d sent it to her then, you wouldn’t have needed the USB at all. It would’ve been faster if you had. Safer, too, because it meant you couldn’t be caught with it by Spratt.”
“Oh, God,” Ghost groaned. “This is the heart of gold part, isn’t it? I didn’t send it to Mama because deep inside I don’t want to contribute to an unjust world, right? Because deep down, you know I just want to be good. Your psychology degree’s arriving in the mail any day now, isn’t it?”
Tobias shifted tacks instantly. He did believe that Ghost’s motivation for hesitating had been worry about what Mama would do, but saying so would only get him laughed at. “You know Sullivan’s right, don’t you? Sooner or later he’s going to go through your laptop, and when he sees that program, he’s going to assume the murder is what you’ve recorded. As long as that USB exists and you’re the only one with access to it, Spratt’s going to have strong motivation to kill you.”
Ghost said nothing.
Tobias said, “You have to blow it wide open. That’s the only way you’ll ever be safe.”
“Turning him in won’t save me from Mama.”
“I know.” Tobias was reasonably sure they’d convinced Ghost to at least stick around long enough to meet Lisbeth’s good cop. But Mama was something else. Tobias had to try to convince Ghost to do the right thing there, as well. He doubted it would work, but he had to try. “About Mama...”
“I’m not testifying against her,” Ghost said flatly. “There’s no fucking way in hell.”
“You’re going to let her get away with trying to blackmail a cop—”
“Damn straight. She’s welcome to him. She can own the entire government for all I care.”
His language, Tobias reminded himself, even if he was ninety-nine percent sure that Ghost was lying about being unbothered. Tobias wasn’t going to get anywhere with moral arguments about self-sacrifice. Survival. That was the only way.
“So imagine this. It’s four years from now. You’ve given up hustling. You’re taking an online class in something. Maybe you’re working in a diner like Church. And you’re actually thinking about putting down roots. Staying still. But you can’t, because you know it’s only a matter of time before she tracks you down.”
“Putting down roots? Moi? Don’t let’s be silly, dear.”
“Okay, it’s been three months in the same town and you’re back at it—looking at a map, figuring out which new city is big enough that you can get lost, but not so big that the Krayevs will have interested partners nearby. And it’s going to keep being like that, you know. A series of bland, pointless jobs and—and dicks to suck for extra cash, and long, boring bus rides before the whole thing starts all over again. And the whole time, you’re wondering if this is the diner or street corner or blank, empty room where Kellen or one of the Krayevs finally catches up with you.”
Tobias took a breath, then said something that was very much Ghost’s language, and absolutely nothing of his own. “Aren’t you tired of waiting for someone to come through your door in the night?”
Ghost might’ve appeared fragile and childlike in his too-large clothes, but in that moment, as his gaze snapped to Tobias’s, he looked nothing short of feral—every spare mannerism and tic of guilelessness vanished, every soft curve of cheek, every tender line of lip, all of it was gone in a finger snap. Tobias swallowed hard, wondering if Ghost was about to hurt him, if it would be like that night in Woodbury when that boy had tried to touch Ghost under the dinner table and Ghost had lost it, everything human about him disappearing, all sense of sanity evaporating until only pure, vicious destruction was left.
Tobias braced himself, but Ghost didn’t move. He didn’t move or speak for long minutes, only sat there staring at Tobias, little flashes of rage and emptiness crossing his features for brief seconds before flickering out again.
And finally, ages later, Ghost cleared his throat. “What do you want?”
“I want you to talk to this ex-cop. I want you to let someone help you. I want you to do the scary thing now so you can have peace later. He’s going to be here in—” He checked the clock. “An hour and a half. I want you to still be here.”
“In a city overflowing with dirty cops—a city like any other, I suppose, but the point stands—you want me to put my life in the hands of a cop?”
“Yes.”
They watched each other for another long beat, a silence that was only broken by Sullivan coming downstairs, damp and pink-cheeked from his shower. He passed behind the couch, close enough that Tobias caught a whiff of the scent of his soap, and gave Tobias a questioning glance over Ghost’s shoulder.
Tobias put his hand up to the base of his throat, a reminder, he hoped of the bond between them. Trust me, he meant. I’m yours, he meant. Sullivan’s expression softened, and then Ghost let out a tiny noise.
Tobias refocused on him, saw Ghost staring not at his face but at his wrist and—oh, shit, the bruises Sullivan had left there last night when he’d held Tobias down while they had sex, where he’d pushed Tobias so deeply into the mattress, gripped so cruelly, and the sight of them was enough to have his pulse quickening, but Ghost couldn’t know that. All he knew was the sight of bruises, and Tobias put it together a split second too late, because Ghost was already up and over the back of the couch, launching himself at Sullivan, taking him by surprise with his speed.
Tobias scrambled up and over the couch too, more clumsily, more slowly, and Sullivan had, fortunately, been facing them, so he had a half-second to react, and that was probably what saved his life—because Ghost was swinging a knife—where the hell had he gotten a knife?—and Tobias was going to be too late, he was going to be too late...
Tobias heard Sullivan’s grunt of pain a split second before Tobias’s body collided with Ghost’s, taking them both to the floor. He tried to go for Ghost’s knife hand, but he wasn’t good at fighting, and he probably missed, but Ghost wasn’t struggling anyway. Tobias had a vague impression that he’d taken Ghost down with enough force to knock the wind out of him, or maybe he hit his head, but either way, he lay under Tobias still and skinny, uncomfortable as a bag of sticks, his chest heaving, eyes dazed and Tobias realized he was saying, “I asked him to, I like it, I want it, they’re mine, I asked him to.”
He trailed off, thinking Sullivan, and wondering if he dared get up without restarting Ghost’s violence. He’d gotten lucky, he knew that much. It had never occurred to Ghost that Tobias would have the nerve to intervene, but if Ghost knew to anticipate Tobias’s interference, Tobias wouldn’t get lucky again.
So he repeated, “I asked him to.”
“Because he brainwashed you,” Ghost said, staring up at him with something old and conflicted and weary in his face
. “He made you think this is what you should want, but you don’t...you don’t like this. You can’t.”
“I’m not you,” Tobias whispered. “I like different things. I like how it feels. All your time doing what you do, and you’ve never known someone who likes it? Stay down, please. Let me go to him.”
“No, you’re good. You don’t want this.”
Tobias flinched. On some level he knew this was more about Ghost’s issues than his own, but it still cut deep. “If it makes me bad—and it doesn’t, but if it did—it would still be my choice.”
“I can’t let you—”
“I’m not asking for permission,” Tobias said, and he was so tired of all of it, tired of not having his footing, not having his wishes respected, and he shook Ghost a little, making those green eyes widen. “You don’t have to understand it, Ghost, but this isn’t your call, and it’s not your business. I’m the only one who gets to decide what I do in bed. Stay down.”
And after a long second, Ghost nodded.
Tentatively, Tobias got up. He nudged the bloody knife—God, that was way too much blood—away from Ghost’s hand with one careful foot before edging his way over to Sullivan. He never turned his back on Ghost, but it didn’t turn out to be necessary. Ghost stayed slumped on the floor, watching them.
Tobias’s first glance at Sullivan was half-panicked, and the blood took him the rest of the way there. Sullivan had it all over his upper body and his thighs, his hand clamped over the wound in his forearm that he couldn’t quite cover.
“I find your buddy’s shovel talk crude but effective,” Sullivan said.
“Mwen bezwen yon bagay pi blese sa a.” Tobias fell to his knees at Sullivan’s side.
“English,” Sullivan reminded him.
“I—I need a thing for the cut.” He tore his shirt off and wrapped it tightly around the wound, then pushed that arm up over Sullivan’s head to let gravity lend a hand. He put all of his weight on the injury, using direct pressure to stop the bleeding and making Sullivan bite out a curse. “Hold still. Where are your keys?”