"I haven't been—"
"You've been incredibly shitty. Not asshole shitty. Shitty with yourself shitty. You spend every free minute in the gym trying to burn yourself out or something. Not healthy. I can only assume things went wrong with KMC which is a shame because you had that whole ‘I'm in love’ vibe going, but you shouldn't be damaging yourself over it."
Jack didn't so much as blink through Dan's little monologue. He wanted to argue that he was fine and did not need to defend his workout schedule.
"I wasn't in love."
"Keep telling yourself that. Maybe you'll believe it."
♦ ♦ ♦
The paragraph Isaac had been trying to read for the last five minutes made no sense. Actually, it probably made perfect sense as it was the cover article in that month's Lancet. His brain just didn't want to focus on it. The house was too quiet. Amalie was working late at the lab, trying to force a breakthrough before a venture capital meeting. Murrcat had wandered off somewhere. He was half tempted to go to bed early but it was barely seven and he knew he wouldn't sleep. He considered doing something like jogging but he hadn't run since high school gym and he wasn't about to start. It wouldn't help anyway.
The sparking energy in his body and mind wanted a very specific outlet. Two months and he'd expected some word from Jack after whatever the crisis had been passed. He was hoping for at least an 'I'm okay' text. Even a 'leave me alone' would at least be some acknowledgment.
He considered rearranging some of the books. Maybe Jack's librarian senses would tingle and he'd show up at the door with a cute little scowl that Isaac could kiss away.
He mentally slapped himself. Getting sappy over ex-subs wouldn't do him any good. It never had in the past and it wouldn't now. Jack was probably sinking back into a pattern of complete self-denial. Hopefully what little time he'd had with Isaac showed him he could do better than whatever he'd been getting before. Isaac grabbed his keys and shoes. He wasn't about to go running, but maybe if he stomped around the block fifty or so times he'd be tired enough to sleep.
♦ ♦ ♦
Jack yanked the tie from around his neck as he pushed through the courtroom doors. He checked his watch. It hadn't even been twenty minutes but he'd spent most of it sure he was about to blackout. He couldn't have come across well. Even the judge asked him if he was okay. "Flu," he'd lied smoothly and everyone in the courtroom had leaned away. There was a bad flu going around, it kept taking out whole juries, so people believed him. It had been an easy lie. Breathing had become harder over the previous three months, along with focusing, but lying had grown easier.
He pressed his head against the cool unfinished concrete of the courthouse halls. He knew what he needed to do. He had a whole list of things he needed to do. The priorities kept shifting around but the items stayed consistent. ‘Get a therapist’ floated to the top after every court day where he felt like he was about to be strangled by his own clothing. That was hard though. Hard and expensive. Find a new Dom. But that was even worse than a therapist. Normally it had taken longer than three months before his head got to a place where he needed it but he'd gotten used to Isaac, how he did it, what it did to him. Hardly two months they had known each other but it had ruined him. It wasn't hitting his job, yet. He could split his mind. Keep the part that kicked in doors cold and logical while the rest of him screamed and craved.
Just quit your job. It kept sounding like a more and more reasonable idea. The coven would have him back. They could probably even find him someone in the lifestyle. He'd have to face his family but it would be better than the day he froze up or zoned out during an operation and got someone killed.
"Jack?"
He spun around blinking hard a couple of times just in case he had finally cracked and was hallucinating or something.
"Hi." Isaac's voice was quiet and his face serious.
"Hi."
"How have you been?"
"Fine," Jack said, the lie feeling unbearably blatant.
"Um… Look before anything else, I just want to say I'm sorry. I know you have your reasons. I know my life is complicated, and it's more to ask of anyone and I'm sorry. And, please, just—" Isaac stammered. "I know there is someone out there who is perfect for you and when you find them you are going to be so happy but please, please don't undervalue yourself. You are so amazing and what you have to give is just spectacular. Please just make sure whomever you find is worthy of you."
Jack blinked at Isaac. He didn't know what to say. He wanted to tell Isaac it wasn't his fault. It was nothing he did or didn't do. He wanted to say he had been happy. Happier than he'd ever been. He was trying to protect him, protect all of them. He opened his mouth but no words came out. Not so much as a squeak. He tried to move. To grab Isaac and pull him close. He wanted to drop to the floor but his knees locked tight.
Isaac reached out and lay a hand on his chest for a fraction of a second before rushing off.
♦ ♦ ♦
The heavy door to Isaac's office closed with a soft click. He leaned against it before sliding to the floor. It was going to happen sooner or later. They went to work in the same complex of buildings. They were in court at least once a week. He had told himself that when it happened he would let Jack take the lead but when he saw Jack, face pressed to the wall, a tie dangling from his fingers he couldn't walk away.
He'd tried to forget Jack. Tried to move on. He even went back to the Windsor Club but only ended up finishing a bottle of wine on his own and getting a cab home. He knew he could have confronted Jack face to face long before running into him but Jack had been so afraid of people knowing it didn't seem right to lurk outside of the station waiting for him.
He wanted to snatch that tie from his hands and burn it. It was ugly and would be no loss. He wanted to bundle Jack up, take him home, take care of him, give him peace. Jack's silence had made it clear that was no longer his place and it hurt. Three months and all it took was a minute to make it hurt like new.
Chapter 29
Jack felt the slither around his body in the dim light. He knew he should be panicking, ripping away the serpents that would try to crush him, but he wasn't, he wasn't sure why. He looked down at himself. Colors were winding their way around his body and down his limbs. They twisted into ropes, pulling around him tightly, holding his limbs spread and his body still. Then he was flying. He dangled there in a room of nothing. Upside down, one leg tucked behind the other, arms spread like the Hanged Man.
Isaac was there now. He was in black and slid in and out of the darkness of the room. His hands roamed over the skin not covered in rope. Words were whispered in his ear so faintly he couldn't understand.
Isaac kissed him deep, tasting of green tea. Then he woke up.
It was too late or too early, and there was a burn between his legs and low in his stomach. He wanted to cry in annoyance. He grabbed his erect cock and stroked it as fast and as hard as he could, just wanting it over with quickly. It refused to happen though. It hurt and that edge was just out of reach. His ass squeezed on nothing and he felt so empty. He had things now. A drawer that he never opened, with things that would at least give him a momentary shadow of what he wanted. He sucked two fingers of his other hand and reached behind himself. It hurt, his fingers not nearly wet enough but he pretended that bit of hurt was coming from someone else, there for a reason he actually wanted. It was enough and he came on his clean sheets with a frustrated scream.
♦ ♦ ♦
He'd only drifted back to sleep when his phone went off. It was the special, extra loud, not to be ignored, emergency ring.
"Hello." His heart was already racing and he was halfway to the bathroom. He needed to wash the cum off his legs if nothing else.
"All teams in, full briefing, half hour," his CO said before hanging up without an extra word.
♦ ♦ ♦
Usually if there was an all-in in the middle of the night, it was for a riot or disaster. Jack flipped through the news radi
o stations as he drove in using his light bar to speed, but the city seemed quiet and all the disasters on the radio were far from his jurisdiction.
He ran into Gonzales at the door. They exchanged questioning looks but said nothing. Dan was already in the briefing room. There were more questioning looks and shrugs. It only took another five minutes for the rest of the team members to arrive.
Their CO stepped to the front of the room. "I'm sorry for the early morning wakeup call but this is going to be a hard one. We're going in after one of our own." There was a murmur around the room. Dread filled Jack. Normally if you arrest another cop you do it quietly after work if you want to keep it quiet, or publicly in the middle of the day if you're making a statement. Three full SWAT teams in the middle of the night means you are expecting it to get ugly.
"Some of you may have noticed a problem with drug related tips over the last few months."
Jack bit back the urge to say something incredibly sarcastic.
"This department has sadly had a leak. That leak has been traced back to an Officer Jones in Narcotics. Unfortunately, the leak has been the least of his bad behavior. He has been keeping some bad company and doing some bad things with them. Ideally, we will be picking up some of his associates with him tonight. They will be armed. They will be dangerous. And as it's four in the morning they will hopefully be asleep. We gave you minimal warning in case there's another leak. We don't believe so but it's always a risk. You are to maintain full radio silence until you go in. Understood?" There were nods and a chorus of yesses, but Jack had a bad feeling about the night and glancing around at the others he was sure he wasn't the only one.
♦ ♦ ♦
Gunshots don't sound like they do in the movies. Jack winced in pain at the high-pitched crack of a bullet flying past, like the crack of a whip but worse. The ringing in his ears would last the rest of the night. Officer Jones had indeed been keeping some spectacularly bad company, and instead of spending the night at his little condo, he'd taken to spending it with an unsavory woman and her heavily armed colleagues, in a much nicer house. Most of the house had been quickly secured but it only took one light sleeper with a voice that carried to wake up the rest.
Jack threw himself around a corner then pressed himself against a wall. There was the slice of shattered glass across his cheek as a bullet from a department issued weapon shattered a mirror. Blood ran down his cheek but he didn't feel any pain. The adrenalin and endorphins where taking care of that. He'd feel the pain later when he had the time.
"Officer Jones," the Internal Affairs investigator shouted down the hall. "Jones, you know how this works. You know there's only a couple of ways for this to end."
There was another shot, sharp and loud, with a small thump as the bullet sunk into the drywall. Jack crouched low.
There was a shot from somewhere else in the house and the sound of furniture breaking.
"Living room secure," came a breathless voice over the radio. "Jones is the only one left."
"Confirm."
"Did you hear that shot, Jones?" the IA man called out. "That was the last of them. You're the last one left. Just put your gun in the hall and come on out. This night doesn't have to get any uglier than it already has."
There was quiet. The whole house was quiet. Jack heard a dog bark in the distance and a garbage truck a few blocks away.
There was a single gunshot, then silence.
♦ ♦ ♦
Jack was the last to drag himself from the house, doing one final sweep. The paramedics saw the blood on his face and descended. He did his best to shoo them away while he checked over all his men. One had dislocated a shoulder trying to wrestle a far larger suspect to the ground. Another had gotten a bullet in the chest, stopped by his vest. He'd probably cracked a few ribs but he was lucky. There were plenty of rounds that could go right through Kevlar these days. There were two bodies in the house. Jones and another who didn't want to go easy.
A paramedic finally caught up to him to clean his cheek. There was going to be so much paperwork and the debriefing was going to be epically long. His team was alive though. He closed his eyes as the tiny bandages were place on his cheek, holding the fine cut together. Adrenaline was still swimming through his system but he knew a crash was coming. A proper one had been coming for a while but this wasn't going to help.
"Okay everyone." his CO's voice rose above the scene. "If you've been cleared by the paramedics then you're heading back to base to debrief."
Jack turned to the paramedic still working on him. "I don't suppose you could tell them I have a punctured lung or something?"
"Only if you let me jab a tube between your ribs. I could use the practice."
"I'll think about it."
♦ ♦ ♦
The old-style school clock on the locker room wall told Jack it was nearly three in the afternoon. He'd lost track of how many different people had debriefed him. Their prime target had shot himself, and a secondary target had been shot by someone on Dan's team. He'd heard one and hadn't been in the room for the other. He'd played up the dried blood on his face and neck to get a shower before filling out paperwork repeating what he'd already told a dozen or more people.
He needed more than a shower. Technically he hadn't been awake that long. Technically he'd even gotten enough sleep to be functional. He listened to the drip from one of the showers, ever so slightly out of sync with the tick of the clock. He'd put in a request to have that fixed. He was an east coast boy, but he'd been out west long enough to know how much water that drip was wasting. He supposed he could get a wrench and fix it himself. He'd never done it before but there was almost certainly something on YouTube. It couldn't be that hard. He supposed he should do that.
He sat, the towel still around his waist, drips of water rolling occasionally down his back. Now that he was alone, his uniform sitting in the laundry, his mind slipped to the dreams that had interrupted his sleep. He could feel the ropes, the catch of his own breath, the heat of hands on his body, remembering reality now more than any dream, breath against his skin, a voice in his ear. His vision narrowed down to just his locker in front of him.
A hand landed on his bare shoulder. It was warm and strong. So, good. He straightened his back his head dropping.
"Jack?"
Jack felt his lips move but he wasn't sure what he said. The hand squeezed his shoulder, then someone was crouched in front of him. He recognized that face. It wasn't the one he expected, or the one wanted, but the warmth of the hand on his shoulder sunk into him and held him in place.
"Jack, I need you to listen to me." Jack listened. He always listened. "You need to come up from where ever you are. Take a deep breath for me. This isn't the time and really not the place, so you need to come up. Deep breath."
Jack breathed deep as he was told.
"That's right. Deep breath. You know who I am?"
"Dan." Jack answered but he felt confused. Parts of his head didn't seem to be lining up with others the way they should. He needed to get up. He had things that needed to get done before… He wasn't sure before what, but before.
"I need you to try to focus on what I'm saying." Jack watched Dan's lips move and tried to focus. "You are really bottomed out right now and not in a way a cup of coffee and a nap is going to fix, and I think you know that. Nod if you agree."
Jack nodded.
"Do you have someone maybe I can call for you? Take you home?"
Jack wanted to nod. Wanted to call Isaac to come and get him. To apologize. To tell him he had nothing to apologize for. Ask forgiveness for being a coward, for running. He shook his head.
Dan rubbed his face. "Okay, I know all kinds, and I can probably make some calls and get you what you need but it's going to take a few days, which doesn't do you any good now and I don't think it's what you want." Jack twitched. He felt like he should maybe be screaming. "Fuck. I don't suppose you're in a place where you can tell me what you need 'cause I know if I do this wrong
, you're likely to puke on me or go into shock or some shit like that."
An alarm went off, blaring through the building. Jack slapped his hands over his ears as adrenalin slammed into his body, slowing down time and snapping the world into sharp focus. Someone banged open the locker room door.
"Across the street, someone is shooting up the courthouse."
Jack grabbed his pants, pulling them on as he ran.
Chapter 30
The courthouse was technically across the street and around the corner, part of a collection of cinder block county buildings housing most of the local bureaucracy. It was chaos in front of the courthouse. People screamed as they ran. Other’s collapsed, weeping. Someone had pulled an alarm and there was blaring from the other side of the reinforced doors, punctuated by the occasional crack of gunfire. Court bailiffs were yanking people out through broken windows, the individuals not seeming to care about the shards of glass. Some people ran from surrounding buildings while others were locked down. There appeared to be inconsistency in active shooter response training.
Jack looked around for anyone in charge but it was chaos. He grabbed a city cop who was running past. He looked about fourteen and his eyes were wide with terror. "Cordon off this area. Everyone two blocks, no civilians within five. Grab anyone in a uniform to help." Jack knew he had no authority in the situation and the kid probably knew that as well, but he looked grateful to be told what to do.
The cop turned around. "Everyone, away from the building," he shouted. No one argued.
Gonzales jogged up, a few of his team in tow. "What the fuck is going on?" He shouted over the blare of the alarm.
"I don't know," Jack shouted back.
"Don’t we have staging drills for just this sort of shit?" Dan yelled with heavy sarcasm.
There was a rattle of automatic gunfire and a crash of glass hitting the street. All three of them dove behind a gray sedan then looked up. From a broken third floor window, a yellow flag with a coiled snake was flown.
Tactical Submission: A Windsor Club Story Page 23