by Jaime Samms
The big stranger nodded and crowded into the cab next to Damian as he shoved him inside.
“What the fuck!” Damian would have bolted out the far door but the bear gripped his wrist and held him in place.
“Stay,” he rumbled.
The grip, coupled with the no-nonsense command, stilled Damian long enough for the cab to roll out into traffic and leave the others behind. His last glimpse of Lenny was the guitar player fighting Vance’s hold on him, jeans soaked and dirty from the knees down. The painful injuries Lenny had inflicted began to throb.
15
STRUGGLING AGAINST Vance’s hold was like trying to push a skyscraper with his bare hands. Useless. Futile. The definition of crazy, yet he tried anyway, hammering his fists against the rock-hard chest and cursing.
Vance pushed him away, held him at arm’s length, and waited.
“If you don’t calm down, someone is going to call the cops. If it’s bad publicity for Firefly you’re tryin’ to avoid, brawlin’ in the streets ain’t goin’ to help.”
With what seemed little effort, he dragged Lenny to a nearby car, opened the back door, and tossed him inside. He didn’t have a chance to right himself on the seat before Vance was in beside him, hand once more clasped tight around his wrist.
“Go,” he said to the driver without breaking eye contact.
Lenny stopped struggling.
“Better.” Vance flexed his fingers, a reminder his big hands could do a lot of damage without much effort. That he could hold him, contain him, because he was a giant next to Lenny’s skinny frame. “You goin’ to take a swing at me if I let go?”
Lenny glared but shook his head.
“Good.”
“Asshole.”
Vance chuckled. “If you say so.”
“Where are we going?” Lenny glanced out the window at the rainy streets. “The hotel is the other way.”
“Somewhere else.” Vance sat back unperturbed and easy in the seat next to Lenny. “Relax.”
“Where’d you come from, anyway?”
“Someone’s got to keep things under control around here,” Vance said. His voice grated and his expression wasn’t pleased.
Lenny shut up.
The car made a right turn, then another, and drove for a few blocks before pulling up in front of a three-story brick building. It looked like it had been built in the twenties, all red brick and carefully aligned geometric patterns. The windows on the ground floor had leaded glass in simple, squared off patterns. It didn’t look high-end, but it was classy and the neighborhood didn’t completely suck.
“Come on.” Vance opened his door and unfolded himself onto the sidewalk.
“Where are we?” Lenny didn’t get out of the car.
“Stop behavin’ like a stubborn, spoiled brat and git out here.” Vance sounded annoyed, which only set Lenny’s teeth on edge. He clamped his hands under his arms.
“Where the hell are we?”
“A dozen blocks from the hotel. I’m borrowin’ a friend’s place for a few months. Git your ass out here.”
“Take me back to the hotel.”
Vance leaned in the door, hands braced on the frame above. “After what you just did? You think I’m lettin’ you anywhere near him again? You’re lucky I don’t turn your ass in.”
Lenny sank against the car seat, staring up at Vance. “I—I should go back and talk to him.”
“And what? Apologize? Swear it will never happen again? How many times have you already told him that?”
“Shut the fuck up.” Lenny’s gut twisted, trying to pull him into oblivion after it.
A cold smile crossed Vance’s face and disappeared. “Get. Out. Of the car.”
“Take me back!”
Vance reached in, grabbed a handful of Lenny’s hair, and pulled.
A flashback to terror, to the imminent expectation of fists on flesh, had Lenny scrambling to comply as Vance hauled him bodily from the vehicle. The second his feet hit the sidewalk, Vance released him. He jerked back against the car, his spine impacting the top of the doorframe, his arms half up to protect himself.
“You know how it feels,” Vance said quietly, his voice as gentle, as calming as it had been angered just a moment ago. “You know.” He held out a hand. “I am not goin’ to hurt you, Leonard. Not like that. But I ain’t goin’ to stand by and let you go down this road. Come inside.”
Lenny couldn’t control his shaking, he couldn’t breathe right, and the rain turned to ice on his skin. He didn’t take the offered hand, but did nod and follow Vance into the building and up the stairs to the third floor.
The apartment wasn’t large. It consisted of one living space with a low wall of cabinets separating the kitchen area from the rest of the room. A well-appointed bedroom area was raised three steps and cloistered by more half walls of cabinets and curtains rather than true walls. It was exceptionally large considering the overall size of the place, and a luxurious bath finished off the space in style. Everything about it was vintage twenties, and under better circumstances, Lenny could have appreciated the aesthetic at work.
Vance disappeared for less than thirty seconds into the bathroom, returning with a fistful of clothes, his chest bare. “You have exactly five minutes to get changed and wallow, then we talk.” He tossed the dry clothes at Lenny and pointed to the bathroom. “Go.”
Lenny gaped at the broad expanse of flesh, covered in curling hair and perfectly filled out under skin that glowed in the soft lighting. If Vance noticed his staring, he didn’t acknowledge it. In fact, he didn’t acknowledge Lenny at all as he turned his back to look in the fridge for something.
Lenny stood rooted, at a loss, caught in the whirlwind of emotions and adrenaline.
“Four minutes,” Vance said, snapping him back. The singer straightened, turned, and popped open a beer. He brought it to his lips. It didn’t hide the slight smirk curving around the mouth of the bottle.
Lenny whirled and hurried into the only private space available, closing and locking the door in a flurry.
“Jesus fuck,” he muttered to himself as he shimmied out of damp jeans. Vance was undeniably gorgeous. Buff and perfect. It was unfair his looks could so easily make Lenny forget he was furious with the man.
But then, remembering his anger also made him remember why he was angry. And why Vance had had every right to drag him out of the street. He tried to bury that ugly truth as he shed the rest of his wet clothing.
“Fuck.” He slumped against the counter, naked, the borrowed sweat bottoms crumpled in his hands.
“Two minutes,” Vance called through the door, rapping lightly on the wood.
“Then what?” Lenny grumbled, not moving.
A key scraped in the lock and the button popped out with a sharp snick. Silence. Lenny took a breath, heard the sound of a hand sliding down the wood outside. “Then I come in.”
“What the fuck do you want anyway?” Lenny asked, residual jittery anger making him surly.
“Not through the door. One minute.”
Lenny fumbled into the pants, pulling them up as the door opened.
“Time’s up. You comin’ out, or am I comin’ in?”
Leaving his clothes scattered on the bathroom floor, Lenny grabbed the dry shirt and wiggled out past Vance’s bulk. There was no denying the way the man’s body heat curled a winding path of interest up Lenny’s spine as he passed.
Vance’s snicker carried softly on the air, as if he could see the trail of unbidden desire swirling in Lenny’s wake.
“Leave me the fuck alone,” Lenny warned, throwing himself onto the couch.
“Here’s what I think.” Vance lowered himself next to Lenny. “I think you’ve been alone too long already. At loose ends waitin’ for Damian to man up and losin’ your cool every time you figure out he can’t.”
“I’m not waiting for him to do anything.”
Vance swiveled enough to face Lenny. “Why did you beat him up?”
Lenny’s body flashed with heat and the blood seemed to drain out of his head, down, down, and away. “I don’t….” He shook his head. “I’m not going to talk about thi—” He was halfway up when Vance’s hand closed over his arm.
“Sit,” he said gently. Firmly.
“I can’t.”
“Can’t sit?”
Lenny dumped himself back onto the cushions with a huff.
“You no longer have a choice, Leonard,” Vance said. “That was a very public display of what every media outlet that gets its hands on it is goin’ to call domestic violence.” His drawl drew out every syllable of that word and left it lingering in Lenny’s mind. “Whatever you and Damian say you are, you know your fans paired the two of you off long ago. The truth don’t matter anymore. If it ever did.”
“Oh God. What have I done?”
He looked to Vance, hoping for… something. Some answer. Some way out of the mess he’d made.
“You screwed up. You got out of control.”
“So I have to go and talk to him.”
Vance shook his head. “I’m not talkin’ about tonight. That was spectacular, public, an’ violent. But it was just a symptom.”
“Of what?” Vance seemed to know what he was talking about. He could fix this.
“The media mess is one thing. Stan will do what he can. He’ll smooth it over. But the big picture, Len, is that you and Damian, you’re destroyin’ each other.”
“He’s my best friend. He’s always there.”
Vance nodded. “I know how that is. But he can’t save you or make the bad things always in the back of your mind go away.”
Lenny grasped at the straw Vance seemed to be holding out. “You can.”
To his surprise, Vance actually smiled and didn’t tell him no. “Not exactly.” He touched Lenny’s cheek, and it was the first indication Lenny had that he’d been crying. He felt the dampness as Vance smeared it toward his lips, tasted the saltiness as he licked it away.
“How it works is you own the swingin’ fists, Len. The shoutin’, the mockin’, all the ways you’ve cut him down, you did that. You own it. You figure out where it’s comin’ from. You fix it.”
Lenny sank away from him. “You don’t think I try? You think I want to keep doing this? You think I want to hurt him?”
“You did tonight. You can’t get around that no one swung your fist for you. No one forced you to do what you did. You own the violence, Len. You own whatever’s behind it. That’s how you fix it.”
“I was mad.”
“Clearly.”
Lenny gaped at him, but he didn’t seem to be mocking or sarcastic. He just acknowledged the truth of it, put it out there where Lenny had to look at it and call it what it was or look like a fool and bully by denying it.
“Always mad,” Lenny said softly.
Vance nodded. “Why?”
Lenny shrugged. “Lots of reasons. Lifetimes of ’em.”
Vance agreed and settled more firmly on the couch. “Come ’ere.” He held out an arm and it seemed half like the worst idea in the world, and half like the universe had just handed him something very obvious. Something he’d been looking for a very long time without ever knowing what it looked like. He shifted until his weight sank into Vance’s side and that arm closed over his shoulders.
While he’d been closed up in the bathroom, Vance had found a shirt. It was soft, worn flannel with snaps down the front. Lenny caressed the cozy material for a while, letting his fingertips go numb with the repeated motion. When Vance didn’t say anything or move to stop him, he changed the path of his touches, pressed a little bit harder to feel the man beneath the clothing.
Vance shifted and settled deeper into the cushions with a soft huff. Lenny explored a little bit further, twiddling with the cool snaps, tracing a pattern around them down the front of Vance’s shirt, working up the courage to do what it seemed like he was being invited to do.
He popped the first snap open, then the second.
“You know what you’re doin’?” Vance asked.
Lenny glanced up at him. “Getting another look at you?”
“You think I brought you here to do this?” He closed his giant hand around Lenny’s, engulfing it completely.
Lenny had never felt so miniscule in his life. Not when Ace had hit him. Not when he’d recovered from the flash anger that made him lash out at Trevor. He tugged and twisted to get free, but Vance held him, gentle, but uncompromising.
“I bring you here to talk, and you think you’re goin’ to seduce me away from the point?”
“I wasn’t… I was just… I don’t know.” Lenny gave up the struggle for freedom—it wasn’t one he was going to win—and looked up into Vance’s equally encompassing eyes. “I don’t know,” he whispered, sure anything he’d ever thought he’d known had drained from his mind and left behind a blank slate.
“You really don’t,” Vance said, studying him.
“What am I supposed to know?”
Vance seemed to come to some sort of decision, because he abruptly sat up and squared off, setting Lenny’s hands back in his lap and looking straight into his eyes. “You want to be in control of your life, Len?”
Lenny frowned. “Doesn’t everyone?”
Vance nodded slowly. “Everyone wants to have the choice to be in control, or give the control to someone else. No one likes that choice to be taken away by force or manipulation.”
Lenny nodded agreement, unsure where this was going.
“I like to be in control of my life.”
Again, Lenny nodded. That wasn’t much of a surprise.
“Stan, he likes that too. Makes us great friends. We don’t have to worry about lookin’ after each other. Makes us lousy lovers. Neither of us likes to give up that control, even to his best friend. Even for a night.”
“I don’t… want to know about you and Stan,” Lenny said truthfully. He didn’t like the thought of Vance with another man, which was idiotic. Probably the overflow of emotions and the upside-down feeling of being with him and not with Damian, where he could figure out what was going to happen before it happened, even if most of the time he didn’t like what he saw coming. Even if it made him stark, raving, lunatic mad. At least he could predict it.
Vance kept him off-balance. Guessing. Teetering on the edge of some pitfall, some chasm part of him wanted to jump into just to see if Vance would bother to reach out and catch him.
Vance grinned crookedly at him. “That’s an illustration, Len. Stay with me a minute.”
“Fine,” Lenny said, “but if you mention even one word about”—he turned up a lip—“that, I reserve the right to stick my fingers in my ears.”
Vance chuckled. “Fair enough.”
“Okay.” Lenny sat back and let him talk.
“It’s a struggle to take control from someone who doesn’t want to give it up. There’s always a power imbalance. Always someone who wants what the other has. When we ain’t fuckin’ each other, the balance evens out. When we do, someone has to be on top.”
“Which means someone has to be on the bottom,” Lenny said. “Yeah, yeah. I get it. Next topic. Please.”
This time, Vance laughed outright. “Don’t be squeamish. It don’t suit you.”
A blast of heat flared up Lenny’s neck and into his face, but he couldn’t quite hold back a small grin. “Whatever.”
Vance snickered, but drew them both back on topic with a sigh. “It’s different when you got two people tryin’ to give that power away and neither one wants it.”
Lenny shifted uncomfortably. “What do you mean?”
“You think Damian wants to be in control of his life?”
Lenny opened his mouth and closed it again. “I don’t know.”
“Didn’t ask what you know. Asked what you think.”
“I think….” Lenny frowned. He could feel the buildup, the dark base of the anger that always grew, mushrooming until he couldn’t contain it. Until it burst out of
him in a mean taunt, a fake stutter, a cruel tease he couldn’t follow through on. Until he threw something. Until he swung. He shook his head. “I’m not going to sit here and talk about him like this.” He stuffed the feeling down, ruthlessly covering it over with a blanket of care, the threadbare reminder that as annoying as Trev could be, he still loved the guy.
“This isn’t about him, Len. Every waking thought you have doesn’t have to be about him. This is about you and what you think.” He tapped the side of Lenny’s skull.
“Fine. I think he wants to fart around all day waiting for someone to tell him where to be and what to do. I think he doesn’t want to be responsible for anything, but he is. He made this band. He glued together all these misfit pieces and now he’s systematically ripping it apart because he can. Like he’s daring someone to tell him to cut it out and grow up already. He builds us up and he tears us down and he starts all over again and we just let him do it.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s Trev. Because he is.” Lenny shrugged. “Because when he gets it right, he gets us the best manager in the business. He goes out onstage and every face stares up at him, adores him, and by extension, us. Because he made us.”
“So he has the right to destroy you?”
“No!”
“So control him.”
“I can’t!” Lenny shot to his feet, the anger boiling and rising, churning his guts to acid and tightening his fingers into fists. “I can’t! And fuck it! I don’t want to! What about me? When I need that….” He waved a hand in the air. “Someone.” He surged across the room and back, searching for the words. “I don’t want to be… his keeper! Nobody keeps me, least of all him. Back when I had Ace, at least I had someone.”
He stopped and stared at Vance, still seated on the sofa watching him.
The anger evaporated to nothing. To loss. To a cavern of ugly and dark and alone.
“I wanted it,” he said finally, the admission crushing him.
“Wanted what?” Vance asked, so very soft now as he swung to his feet and strode across to Lenny. “What was it you wanted?”