by Rhys Ford
“Fuck.” It was a quick mutter, mostly to himself, and thankfully, the guy didn’t hear him, because he was caught up in whatever was playing through his headphones. Rob sighed, wiped down the area, and assessed how much he could do now without shredding his client’s skin.
His mind wasn’t focused on his client, and if he wasn’t careful, the whole damned tiger would end up looking like a paint-by-numbers kitten done by a color-blind preschooler with a unicorn fetish. He couldn’t stop thinking about Mace. It was stupid to wonder if Mace was lonely, silly to worry about a man with enough brothers that he could form a basketball team, but Rob couldn’t help it. His brain gnawed on the persistent idea that Mace’s family knew jack shit about what made him happy or even how much Mace tortured himself over his asshole father and the legacy the man had beaten into him.
“I’ll go back in,” he promised, and then before Ivo could chime in, he added, “and I won’t overwork it.”
There was an unspoken moment between them, an electrified sizzle rising from the clash of Rob’s temper and Ivo’s experience. They might have been the same age, but Ivo was practically born with a tattoo gun in his hand, and he’d sucked in every trick doled out to him by the rounds of visiting inkers who’d come to ply their trade at Bear’s pierside shop. Instinct rather than application now drove Ivo’s work, and his years of working skin and watching others’ mistakes gave him a knowledge base that Rob lusted after and would only achieve if he swallowed his pride and listened when Ivo offered up a suggestion.
Especially when the client was poised for the next pass of needles over his skin, his muscles tight from the already-two-hour stretch of inking.
The guy was good for another half an hour before he tapped out, and Rob was more than willing to let him go. After a thorough wipe-down with green soap and a careful application of clear skin covering, Rob tallied up the charges, cashed the guy out, and put his tip aside. As late as it was, the sidewalks outside of the shop were still packed with people, a mixture of tourists and locals taking advantage of the clear temperate night, and when the guy wheeled his bicycle out of the shop, he left the kick-down doorstop locked into place and the shop open to the street.
A salty damp was in the air, and waves of laughter, conversation, and street noise spilled in and broke through the odd heavy silence that had built up over the past few hours. Ivo’d come to work on the heels of Gus leaving barely ten minutes into Rob’s shift. The brothers had a hot, spitting conversation made up of whispers and wild gestures, their body language tense and combative while they spoke in the hallway at the back of the shop.
Whatever was said, whatever they were arguing about, Ivo appeared to have won because, after a few minutes, Gus shoved his arms into his leather jacket, muttered a goodbye to Rob without making eye contact, and was out of sight before the bells hanging over the front door stopped chiming. Ivo then changed his heeled boots to a pair of Converses and the quiet began.
It cracked a couple of times during the shift, mostly with professional tidbits dropped here and there, but every attempt at conversation Rob threw out was met with a stony nothingness and a blank stare until the next time he needed a bit of a push in the right direction on a tattoo or a sketch. Then Ivo shoved… and hard. The jabs were sparse, quick, professional strikes Rob couldn’t disagree with, because under it all, Ivo knew what he was talking about, even when he delivered the advice wrapped in razor blades and a sly tone.
Rob didn’t have it in him to dodge the verbal jabs. Rolling with the punches seemed easier, especially when he couldn’t get a damned thing out of any of the brothers now that Mace was out of the hospital.
And Rob couldn’t go sneak in to check up on him when no one was looking.
He worked himself to death those first few days, covering shifts and rescheduling appointments for Bear, Gus, and Ivo. When he was done, he’d slip off to the hospital, hoping to catch Mace awake, but his timing sucked each time he could break free. As usual the brothers closed ranks and let very little out, but there were a few times when he’d notice Bear looking at him with a curious expression on his face. Rob was caught between worry over Mace and wondering if he’d still have a job once Bear came up for air. Something was definitely going on.
He just didn’t know what it was.
“You know they let Mace go home, right? He’s over at the house. Not his apartment.” Ivo appeared at Rob’s side and peered over his shoulder. Using the reception desk as an elbow rest, Ivo casually angled his body and cornered Rob. “Did anyone tell you that? Or have you already moved on, so you don’t care?”
As usual, the youngest of the patchwork family Bear pulled together came out swinging, and the glitter in his eyes was intense and personal. Shock stilled Rob’s tongue and left it dead in his mouth. Swallowing didn’t help. No amount of spit could clear the gravel lodged in his throat. Ivo on a normal day was hard to read, cloaked in a complex push-this-button, pull-this-lever kind of personality where the rules were more complicated than a round of Calvinball, but even as little as Rob understood him, he was certain Ivo was fucking pissed off.
“Okay, if we’re going to fight, at least let me close the front door and wait for me to finish entering this session. Guy paid cash, so I’ve got to log it,” Rob shot back, and his fingers shook while he wrote down the amount of cash that he sealed into a session envelope and mentally calculated the store’s cut in his head. “Step back and let me do this.”
Before he walked through the shop’s door, he’d put Mace to the back of his thoughts, far enough for his worry not to spill over, but the dam he’d built out of nerves and professionalism was slowly cracking. Small things surfaced during the oddest moments in the day—the blasts of the guns going off, the scent of blood in the air, and Mace’s pleading cries for his neighbor to survive.
Rob also held on to the sound of his name on Mace’s lips when the medical team loaded him into the ambulance and the final quick squeeze of Mace’s fingers on his wrist before the EMTs pulled him free. His skin burned where Mace touched him last, and when Rob could sneak in a few minutes at Mace’s bedside, he’d absently rubbed the spot until it was red as he watched Mace sleep.
He felt like a stalker, obsessed with a man who’d fought with him, fucked him, and then fed him, all the while promising Rob nothing more than a bit of his time—until everything changed and Rob found himself drowning in a pair of heartbreakingly sad blue eyes while Mace stripped off tiny pieces of the persona he’d hidden behind.
He wanted Mace’s fingers on his wrist again, his lips touching Rob’s mouth, and the sound of Mace laughing at something stupid he’d said. And he was beginning to resent the hell out of Ivo judging him when he knew jack shit about what Rob and Mace shared… even if Rob himself didn’t know where it was going.
“Seriously, unless you want someone walking in on you giving me shit, go close the front.” He nodded toward the open door. Focusing on the register screen was taking every bit of concentration he had, and Ivo’s looming presence didn’t help. Satisfied he’d entered the right totals, Rob punched in his acceptance for the shop to take taxes out of his share, slipped the envelope into the till slot, and closed out the transaction. Ivo stood to get out of his way, and Rob planted his feet and stared up at him. “You’re just standing there. So, no on the door?”
Shoving Ivo was never a good idea, not when he had his temper up, but Rob was taking a page out of Ivo’s book and pushing back… hard.
Ivo studied him with cunning, intelligent eyes. Up close, no amount of makeup could cover the strain around his mouth or the furrow along his brow. He’d gone dark with his eyeliner, smoking out the curves of black under his thick dark lashes. Ivo’s features never crossed the line of feminine the way Rob’s did in certain lights. It came close at times, his facial structure sometimes skewed pretty, but today, under the stress and whatever inner battles Ivo fought, he looked so much like Bear, possessed so much of Bear’s aggressive masculine traits that Rob nearly pull
ed back. It was an instinctive response to the similarities between the artist and the older man Rob openly admired.
“You’re going to say it’s none of my business. And yeah, if we were like most families, you wouldn’t be wrong. We don’t dig into each other’s love lives. Hell, I’d need a damned abacus and a punch card to keep track of Mace’s, but here you are, lurking but not stepping up when Mace needs some support.” Ivo shoved his hands in his pockets, and when he cocked his head, the shop’s overhead lights gilded the unshaven breadth of his firm jaw. “You were there that night with Mace. And then you hung around the hospital, and at the time, I figured you were just a hookup, a one-night stand dragged into the wrong place at the wrong time. Luke and Gus think different, and Bear? Well, he’s Bear, so he doesn’t say jack shit about anything anyone tells him.”
“Is this going anywhere? Because if it isn’t, I’ve got to clean up my station,” Rob cut in as he pushed his shoulders back and stepped in closer to Ivo. Temper flaring, he let loose. “You’ve had half the shift to poke at me, and when you finally get around to it, you can’t even adult up and spit out what you want to say. What your brother and I have going on isn’t any of your fucking business.”
Rob knew his words were a mistake nearly as soon as they left his lips. For all of the makeup, heels, and plaid skirts Ivo liked to mix in with his leather jackets, jeans, and Doc Martens, there was nothing soft about him. There was more than a little bit of venom beneath Ivo’s practiced charm, and the rough life he’d led threaded enough steel in him that Rob knew he’d break his teeth if he bit off more of Ivo than he could chew.
“You want me to adult up?” His easy grin was a lie, a social grace Ivo could slap on when he needed sleight of hand. “How about if you do the same? First thing Mace asked when I was let in to see him was if you were okay. And the next time. Then the time after that. He sneaks it in. Comes around to it, but he gets it in there. It’s always about you, but I don’t see you there. I don’t hear you asking about him here, but I catch you leaning in when we talk. So what’s the deal?”
“Like I said, I don’t see how it’s any of your fucking business.” Truth was, he wanted to beg Ivo to tell him more than what he’d been able to scrape off of their conversations. He’d seen Luke once at the hospital, but he’d ducked around the corner, not wanting to be seen. Things with Mace were complicated, hung out to dry in a limbo splattered with blood and maybe regret.
“Mace is my business. He’s my brother,” Ivo spat.
“See, that’s the problem right fucking there. You guys circle in, making a wall,” Rob snarled back, leaving any niceties behind. Ivo wasn’t going to give him any quarter, and if he didn’t push back, Ivo would eat him alive. “I tried to get in there. You four wouldn’t let me. Every time I went in, one of you told me to go home, you had it under control. I had to sneak in after visiting hours because I couldn’t get past any of you. None of you let anyone who isn’t family get in. Not at the hospital. Not here.”
“If you’d told us—”
Rob snorted hard. “Yeah, right. If I dropped anything about me and Mace, you’d have torn me apart, maybe even packed my gear from my stall and dropped it off on my front porch. The shop’s got rules and—”
“Ivo, back off,” Mace’s deep voice rumbled behind them and jerked Rob from his rant. “Love you, kid, but you’re fighting a windmill here.”
From where Rob stood, Ivo had no intention of backing off, windmills be damned. He turned to face his older brother, and if anything, the sight of a battered, gun-shot Mace made Ivo’s hackles rise. His shoulders squared off, and if Rob were a betting man, Ivo was about to tear a piece of Mace off and feed it to the dogs.
Mace looked… damned good. A bit beaten up around the edges, but he was walking, breathing, and even with his arm in an ugly blue denim sling, he made Rob’s mouth water. His hair was long enough to stick up from his scalp and fall over his forehead a bit. A tousle of amber, sienna, and dark brown strands nearly brushed one eyebrow. There were crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes, and they deepened when he moved. Pain lingered at the edges of his expression, and Rob caught the tiny hiss of tension when Mace padded slowly into the shop’s main space. His shoulders were tense beneath his gray T-shirt, and his thigh muscles clenched to hold his balance with every step. But Mace’s smile… it was like a ball of stars punching through Rob’s aching heart—bright, warm, and only for him.
“Who the fuck let you out?” Ivo snarled at his brother as he walked over to meet Mace. “You’re supposed to be resting. Fucking hell, dude! They make people who have their wisdom teeth pulled out rest for a couple of days. You got fucking shot!”
“I got it, kid.” Mace caught Ivo’s waist up in a one-armed hug, gave him a light squeeze, and then let go. “I’m okay. Just…. Rob and I need to talk, so—”
“Phones exist, man, and Ivo’s right. You shouldn’t be on your feet.” The reception counter was a hard line against his back, but he didn’t trust his legs to hold him up if he dared to walk. Every bit of fear he’d held on to dug claws into his chest and bled him out as the swarm of what-ifs and maybes fought to gain traction.
The back door opened again, and a disgruntled-looking Bear stomped in and shook something off of his boot. Earl shot past his legs and galloped down the hall. Ivo’s sharp “Stop” brought the dog to a skidding halt, and his long legs went out from under him as he slid. Mace braced himself on one of the stall’s short walls and gave the canine a wide berth.
“I know about phones,” Mace finally replied. He scratched at Earl’s floppy ear when the dog snuffled up to his side. “It’s just sometimes it’s good to see someone’s face when you talk to them.”
“Asshole was going to drive down here. Nearly broke his other arm before he’d let me bring him down,” Bear grumbled at Ivo and stalked toward the reception area. He jerked his thumb toward the back of the shop and nodded at Rob. “I’ll cover the rest of the shift for you. And why’s the front door open? Am I paying to heat the sidewalk? Ivo, go close the door. Rob, go clean your station. Then you two can go have your damned talk. Just… don’t go far. Use the art room, and I can’t believe I’ve got to tell you this, but considering it’s the two of you, no sex on the tables. Okay? Actually, no having sex at all. Last thing I want to do tonight is drag your ass down to the hospital, Mace. Bad enough I had to drive it here.”
MACE COULDN’T get comfortable. Coming down to the shop had stretched the last of his energy, and when Earl’s polite bump against his knee jerked him awake, he questioned his sanity for dragging himself down to the wharf. He just knew he couldn’t go another day without seeing Rob—to touch him and make sure he was alive, well, and whole.
Bear hadn’t agreed. His brother actually disagreed violently, but when he understood Mace wasn’t going to budge, he gave in. Then he harped on him all the way over, especially after the shakes hit Mace and his teeth rattled when he rested his temple against the passenger-side window.
The dog was leaving a drool puddle on his thigh, and Mace shifted his butt and angled into one of the wide armchairs they’d dragged home from a thrift store a few years before. His shoulder felt like it was on fire, and it was probably past time for him to take another handful of pills, but he’d left them on the kitchen counter because he was more focused on hurrying Bear out of the door.
“Fuck, that was stupid, pupper,” he informed Earl, who keened when Mace found a sweet spot on his jaw to scratch. “But I also don’t want to be stoned out of my gourd when I talk to him.”
“Well, you’ve got no choice on that,” Rob said as he entered the former storage room. Holding up a Ziploc bag of pills and a water bottle, he edged past the dog. “Bear said to make sure you get these down, because you’re an idiot. Rule one of getting out of the hospital is to take the medication the docs give you.”
“Huh, and what do you know about that?” Mace held his hand up for Rob when he shook the pills out and caught them in his palm.
“Well, considering I was headed into medical school before I decided to throw it all away for the glamorous, extremely profitable world of tattooing, I’d say quite a lot.” Rob tossed the empty bag onto the broad table the artists used to draw on and then worked at opening the water bottle. “Take them. You look like shit. If Ivo takes a peek in here and sees you passed out on the floor from the pain, he’s going to take me apart bone by bone. And probably make me into a soup while he’s at it.”
Mace took the pills.
“Sit down,” Mace mumbled through a mouthful of water. “You’re making the dog nervous.”
“Give me a fucking break. The only thing that bothers Earl is the ice cream truck going by and he doesn’t get a vanilla cone out of it. Swallow.” Rob glanced at the dog sprawled on the floor by Mace’s feet. He snorted. “And then we can talk about what was so damned important you had to come down here when you’re half dead.”
“You are.” Mace carefully took another swig and hoped the rush of water down his throat would dislodge the lump he’d carried there since he first woke up in the hospital and panicked, thinking Rob had been ripped from his life before… anything they could build between them. “I came down here to see you. Because you’re that damned important. Or at least I think I want you to be.”
Fifteen
“SO WHAT did you say to him after he swooped in and slayed the dragon for you?” Lilith asked from her perch on the double-wide armchair facing the fire station. “And are you really eating ice cream for breakfast?”
Rocky road wasn’t his first choice, but since it was the only flavor left in the freezer, it was going to have to do. It was a drugstore brand he’d always wanted when he was a kid, but nothing they would ever stoop for. His family’s preferences ran to shops with creamery in their name or exotic flavors handcrafted by French-trained dessert chefs. There was something satisfying about walking into a store that smelled of pharmaceuticals, charcoal briquettes, and household cleaners just to pick up a hand-packed pint of ice cream.