by Rhys Ford
“I’ll get your key,” Ruan muttered, wondering what he’d gotten himself into when he’d fallen for the siren call of Ivo’s gorgeous face and complicated personality. “And if he kills me when I open the front door, you better fucking take care of my cat.”
“Screw that. I’ll give him to that firecracker of a woman you’ve got as a partner. She likes him.” Cranson shook the match to extinguish it, pulling the shadows back around him. “I’m about to go inside as soon as I finish this beer. Mind you try to keep the noise down. Don’t want to hear any headboards hitting the wall while I’m trying to get some sleep. Not like you ever had anyone over to move that headboard before.”
“It’s just past midnight, and I’ve had a long day. There’s not going to be any headboard moving,” he promised, wishing it wasn’t the truth, but his body was too worn out and his brain hurt from the calisthenics of hunting down a murderer. “If I make it up the stairs, I’ll be lucky.”
His boots thumped on the steps, a heavy dirge echoing the languid, hard beats of his tired heart. Resting his forehead against his front door, Ruan took a moment to gather his thoughts, unsure of what lay beyond his threshold. He didn’t know what to do with the unexpected, and finding Ivo in his space both thrilled and scared him. He wasn’t sure if he should feel violated, but his gut told him Cranson was a good judge of character, and he had spent more than a couple of minutes wrapped around Ivo on the couch of his tattoo shop. Turning the doorknob felt much like a five-year-old kid anticipating a massive birthday party being thrown in his dentist’s office.
There was definitely going to be cake, but he didn’t know if he was going to be able to chew it.
Stepping inside, Ruan was greeted by a sight he never thought he would ever see. Then again, he also never imagined Ivo reading a romance novel.
The tattoo artist was tucked into the corner of the sectional, his legs pulled up onto the cushions and Spot sprawled out over him, an orange-dappled purring rug with slitted eyes, the feline’s face smug and happy while Ivo’s fingers scratched at his ears. Ivo looked up when the door opened, his dark eyes nearly black under the shadows of his long lashes, but the smile on his face so much like Spot’s, Ruan couldn’t help but return it.
He was wearing the same tattered jeans he had on at the shop, but he’d changed his T-shirt, its silkscreened front advertising someplace in Los Angeles called Potter’s Field, a sketched-out mechanical toy robot locked in a battle to the death with a windup Godzilla. Ivo’s feet were bare, but a familiar pair of black leather boots with pencil-thin heels and red soles sat next to the front door. Unsurprisingly, Ivo’s toenails were painted black.
What was startling about the whole vignette was the smell of beef stew coming from his kitchen—a very tantalizing, aromatic beef stew Ruan knew he didn’t have the ingredients for when he left for work that morning.
“I could run you in for breaking and entering,” he said as a greeting.
Ivo laughed at him, and his traitorous cat remained firmly perched on Ivo’s lap, his purr loud enough to be heard across the room. “Technically, your landlord let me in. So take it up with him.”
“I did,” Ruan said, not trusting himself to sit down on the couch. “He told me to fuck off. Or something similar.”
“I like him. He’s got some pretty cool stories, and I’d like to see some of his art in the daytime,” Ivo replied, still comfortable on the couch and giving Ruan his cat-ate-a-canary smile for everything he was worth. It broke Ruan’s heart knowing he probably wouldn’t be able to live up to promising much more than falling asleep at Ivo’s bare feet, so he nodded, feeling like an idiot. “Some of his lines are really blown out, but the ink’s old, nothing synthetic. I’d like to take pictures of them and find out where he got them. We don’t get enough down about ink done in the past. He’d be a good source.”
“You sound like a history professor.” Ruan ambled over to the kitchen, studying the pot on the stove. Lifting its lid, he inhaled the rich tomato-beefy stew set to warm on the front burner.
“Well, I do have a master’s in art history,” Ivo remarked, throwing another drop of water across the sizzling plate of Ruan’s impressions of him. “I studied mostly tattoos, mostly the evolution of the art’s introduction to Western civilization from Asia and Polynesia. I also did a heavy course in mythology, because if you’re going to do tattoos, you end up having to know a lot about different types of gods and mythological creatures. One man’s goat is another man’s Baphomet.”
“So you’re not just some dinner angel who makes midnight deliveries?” Ruan put the lid back down, fitting it back over the pot. “You are a very complex and slightly insane man. I’m not even sure what to say to you right now other than thank you for the food and everything about you surprises the fuck out of me.”
“Yeah, I get that sometimes. Then again,” Ivo said, cocking his head slightly and shrugging, “I don’t like boxes. I’m going to chase down things that interest me, and I like art. Knowing what other people have done only makes me a better artist. No sense reinventing the wheel when you can spend your time designing a whole new car.”
“I don’t know if I can promise you much more than ten minutes of consciousness while I shovel food in my face,” Ruan warned. “It’s been a hell of a long day, and it wasn’t a good one.”
“I figured.” He shifted the cat off of his lap, then stood up. After sliding the bookmark between the pages of his novel, Ivo said, “How about if we just get you fed first? I came by because I knew you had a shitty day and I figured you had crap to eat, if you ate at all. So, tonight you get stew from my freezer, and if you want to talk or even just fall asleep, I’m here. Because sometimes, the only way to get rid of a shitty day is to spend the last part of it with a full belly and someone who likes you sitting nearby.”
Thirteen
“I DON’T think I can move. I think you broke me.” Ruan groaned, stretching his body out as far as he could until Ivo heard something pop. Then he exhaled a sigh of relief. “God, what did you do to me?”
“I fed you beef stew,” Ivo snorted, nudging his empty bowl from the edge of the coffee table with his bare foot. Spot barely looked up as the bowl moved out from under him, angling his body to follow its new location, his head buried in its depths, looking for any scrap left on its sides. “It was probably the sourdough bread that did you in. Does that to me all the time. Especially hot and covered in butter.”
Ivo was glad he’d brought over two gallon-sized freezer bags of the stew. He’d never raided the family’s food supply before, even though some of his other brothers often shopped in the depths of the two enormous freezers locked away in the garage. Growing men and a tight budget meant exercising frugality, a practice every single one of them mastered to stretch their very thin dollars. Turkeys were purchased at a low cost during the holiday season, stored in a freezer for the coming months, and they’d learned it was cheaper to buy a quarter of a cow or a pig from a butcher than it was to pick up meat from a grocery store. Restaurant food supply stores were where they grabbed frozen vegetables and sometimes large tubs of ice cream, but it was the handy practice of making meals in bulk and storing portions away for quick dinners that made it easy for them to sit down at a table together whenever they could.
He’d taken the stew with Bear’s permission, cognizant of the times he’d gone into the freezer for something only to find one of his brothers had beaten him to something he’d been looking forward to eating. It was easier now everyone else lived in their own homes, but Gus was only down the road, and with a toddler, he often came grazing through their supplies, hunting down a dinner Chris would eat.
“I thought you said you couldn’t cook,” Ruan grumbled, rubbing at his stomach. He’d eaten at least two bowls to Ivo’s one and nearly half of the sourdough loaf. His hair was still wet from the shower Ivo pressed him to take, and at some point while they were eating, he ended up leaning against Ivo’s shoulder, probably when he was using the heel
of the bread to scrape up the gravy left in Ivo’s bowl. “And here I was thinking I was going to have to eat a frozen burrito.”
“Then you really would’ve starved, because there isn’t anything in your freezer other than a sorry bag of corn that’s shaped kind of funny and a banana.” He shifted to better fit into the corner of the sectional, looping his arm around Ruan’s shoulder, turning slightly so the cop could settle between the V of Ivo’s legs. There was a slight hesitation. Then Ruan leaned in, resting his back against Ivo’s chest.
Neither one of them said anything about the shift in their position. Instead, it was as if both of them held their breath, feeling out how it settled while pretending they’d done it a thousand times before.
“Whatever you do, don’t ever cook that bag of corn,” Ruan admitted sheepishly. “I wrap that up in a towel and use it on the small of my back when it hurts. It’s why it’s got duct tape around it.”
“Great. You’ve got a bag of butt corn in your freezer,” Ivo teased, sliding his hand down over Ruan’s as it rested on Ruan’s stomach. Grinning, Ivo played with Ruan’s fingers, tracing the calluses on the curve between Ruan’s thumb and index finger. “Glad I didn’t add that to the stew.”
“It’s not like I pour the corn out and then put it back,” he protested. “I just sometimes have to sit against it on the couch. It’s not easy getting old. Things start to hurt, especially if I’m driving around the city all day and I don’t get to walk some of it off. That’s the worst part about being a detective sometimes. You’re pretty much going from one chair to another. Then you’re running after somebody, trying to make sure you’ve got the right guy.”
“Hazards of being a tattoo artist too,” Ivo said, a thrill going through him when Ruan tangled their fingers together, returning Ivo’s caress. “I get so caught up in what I’m doing, I don’t move, and then two hours later, my client’s got to go pee and my shoulders and legs are locked. Bear uses a timer so he remembers to get up and stretch. I should probably do that, but once you’re in the zone and you’ve got somebody who sits really well, it’s just like flying. You don’t want to stop until it’s done.”
“Never thought about what it’s like to be a tattoo artist,” Ruan confessed, grunting slightly when Spot leaped from the coffee table onto his chest to investigate their intertwined hands. “Cat, you’re going to break my ribs doing that. Off. Tell me what it’s like to tattoo someone.”
“It kind of depends. Most of the time people want something small, something on a whim, or just something from one of the books they like.” Ivo chuckled when Spot meatloafed on top of their fingers, his rear end angled toward Ruan’s face, his swishing tail batting the cop across his mouth. Relocating the cat down onto his legs, Ruan tightened his grip on Ivo’s hand, encouraging him to continue. “The best kind of tattoos for me are the ones when people come to me and say I have this idea but I want you to draw it.”
“Do they usually come to you with examples or just trust you?”
“Those kinds of tattoos are like people. Every one of them is different. Some people like a certain style and that’s how they want their piece drawn, but other people come to me because they know my style and that’s what they want on their body.” Ivo thought about the kelpie he’d finished and the journey Heather took to get to his machine. “Those kinds of tattoos have stories behind them, usually really deep stories. Every single tattoo should be a part of that person coming to the surface of their skin. I think that’s something everyone in the shop believes, or at least they should if they’re going to work there. But those personal tattoos, the ones that wring me out when I’m doing them, feel like something spiritual.”
“It sounds like it can be kind of intimate, like some kind of confessional.” Ruan turned slightly, tilting his head so their eyes met. “Do you like doing those? Digging down into other people’s thoughts and feelings?”
“Sometimes. Most of the times,” Ivo amended. “Sometimes the hardest thing to do is watch and listen to somebody break down because they want to put ink on their skin to remember someone or something, but when they see the art, they can’t go any further. People walk away sometimes, or you get the line work done and then you never see them again. The hardest part for me is knowing I’ve got art out there that’s not finished or will ever be on somebody’s skin because those are parts of me that are left undone. For every tattoo like that, there’s a large part of me in there, and I can’t dwell on that idea or artistic seed never blooming. But there are some who follow me around. Some of the stories that I’ve never inked and I wanted to.”
“Being a cop is like that. There’s things you can’t put down. Stuff you carry with you.” He nodded, sliding his hand over Ivo’s thigh, resting there and smiling when Ivo twined his fingers in that one as well. “I think we’re probably at either side of heartbreaking events. The two sides of the grief coin. I’m there to pick up the pieces, and you’re there to put them back together.”
Sitting together like this, simply talking, felt oddly good. He wanted to hear about Ruan’s day, stupidly happy that a couple of bags of warmed-up beef stew and hot bread with butter eased the tension in Ruan’s too-tight body. Talking things out might undo everything he’d brought to the table that night, but it seemed like the right thing to do—something Ruan might need, someone to listen to him. Ivo understood that all too well. There’d been times when he’d been desperate for someone to just hear him out, to see him as he was and tell him it was okay.
“Do you ever get pissed off because you can’t solve the case?” he asked gently, knowing he was probably going to probe through tender areas of Ruan’s life. “What I go through is nothing compared to what you do. That night in front of the shop—those assholes—that’s the kind of shit you deal with every fucking day. How come it doesn’t get to you?”
“It does. I try to keep perspective about it, but there’s some cases—things that I walk into—I know I’m never going to shake. The things people do to their kids or their grandparents,” Ruan whispered, narrowing his eyes as he stared out into the room, his focus elsewhere. “Sometimes it feels like I’m in the middle of a war zone and we’re up against an army with a hell of a lot more soldiers than we have on our side. We get picked off all the time. If it isn’t someone shooting at us as we go through a door or having to put up with the fallout of one bad officer who has to ride his power trip over someone, it’s hard to keep your head up sometimes.
“I hate bad cops. And we can’t say anything to the public other than we’re sorry and that we’ve got to do better. No matter how much we try to do good, there’s always one asshole who unravels everything.” He snorted, leaning into Ivo’s loose embrace. “And on the other side of it are the cases I can’t close. The guy I’ve seen push a shopping cart full of empty cans who’s found stabbed to death and is missing his shoes and heavy coat sticks with me. There are cases when no one says anything and has seen nothing, and that pisses me off. It’s the mother who won’t tell me who beat her kid to death or the old lady who dies in her apartment and no one notices for a couple of weeks until they miss her rent payment or the smell is too much for the neighbors.”
“Did you have one of those today?” Ivo prodded, pulling his arms in around Ruan’s chest. The cat mumbled, stretching his long body and digging his back feet into Ruan’s crotch, making him flinch. “Do you want me to move him?”
“He’ll just come back,” Ruan said with a laugh. “Honestly, as days go, today wasn’t bad. There’s a couple of things I’m working on where someone on patrol got me some info and then we closed the case that dropped in our laps this morning. It’s always a good day when that happens. They’re right about the first twenty-four hours. If you don’t get a lead or a hit before the first day is up, then it’s a long haul through interviews and lab work. Easy means we can move on to the next case, freeing up resources to hammer at something harder. So today was a decent day.”
Ruan yawned, breaking his hold on Iv
o’s hand to cover his mouth. It was late, into the single digits of the morning, but it didn’t feel like either one of them wanted to let go. Sleep tugged at Ivo’s consciousness, his mind begging to be submerged into the silky ether of a long slumber, but his heart wanted to stay awake forever, his arms wrapped around Ruan while Spot the cat snored his way through kitty dreams.
“You should probably go to bed,” Ivo ventured, trying to keep the sadness out of his voice as he said words he really didn’t want to say. “I’m guessing you work tomorrow.”
“I do,” Ruan admitted. His green eyes grew smoky again, and a moment later, Ruan’s lips brushed across Ivo’s, a gentle sweep leaving a soft tingling behind. “I’m going to ask you something that’s going to sound maybe silly, but I don’t want to let you go. I’m not asking sex or if you’re uncomfortable. I get it if you want to go, but can you stay the night with me? Just to sleep. I just… really don’t want to let you go.”
ASKING IVO to stay was probably the craziest thing Ruan had done in a long time. He didn’t know what came over him or even understand what he needed other than maybe to hold Ivo through the night, unable to let go of the shooting star he’d somehow caught from the sky. Even crazier was Ivo saying yes, then the oddly domestic few minutes of them putting the leftover stew away, loading the dishwasher with their bowls, and turning off the living room lights after checking the front door.
They kissed after Ivo brushed his teeth with the new toothbrush Ruan bought to replace the one he’d had for a few months. And again after Ivo took a shower, coming out of the steaming bathroom dressed in boxer briefs from a package Ruan had just opened and a pair of SFPD cotton sweats, its drawstring waistband riding low on the artist’s hips. There was ink everywhere on Ivo’s pale golden skin, but Ruan’s attention was drawn to the wonky star on Ivo’s shoulder and the flaming lion surrounded by firecrackers and framed in a tattered scroll with Hellion written on it.