Police Brutality (Hazard and Somerset: A Union of Swords Book 2)

by Gregory Ashe

  “The part about you being an excellent law-enforcement officer? I know; I was wondering about that.”

  “Hardy-har, you dumb fuck. Being around Hazard makes you think you are so goddamn funny. No, the part about the flowers.”

  “What?”

  “He didn’t get me chocolates.”

  Somers rewound the tape and played it back in his head. “What?”

  “Considering the demands of your job, he’s talking about me being fat.”

  “Try that again.”

  “Dude! I deserve chocolates. I’m chocolate-caliber. I’m not flowers, ok? There’s, like, levels. Flowers is rock bottom. I’m at least chocolate. Honestly, he probably should have gotten me jewelry.”

  “You don’t even wear jewelry.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Dulac said. “Have you ever even been on a date?”

  “Listen, Gray, I’ve had a really bad night. So I’m going to go home and pretend you didn’t text me about an emergency that involves flowers instead of chocolate.”

  Somers had almost made it to the door when Dulac said, “Ok, wait.”

  Turning back, Somers turned his hands palm up in question.

  “Can we at least go arrest him again?”

  “Goodbye.”

  “No, wait, wait, wait. Bro, shut the door.” Then, softer, “Please?”

  Somers shut the door and leaned against it, watching Dulac go through his whole gymnastics show again. This time, he’d added scrubbing his hands through his hair. The color in his cheeks had gotten higher, and once or twice Dulac’s mouth quirked as though he was about to say something.

  “Oh my God. You like him.”

  “Dude.” Dulac shook his head. “Dude.” Another, more vigorous shake. This time, drawn out: “Dude.”

  “You do. Hey, that’s great.”

  “It is not fucking great. He’s like a million years old and he’s not my type at all.”

  “He looks pretty good for a million.”

  “He lives out in a trailer. He’s got that huge beard. He’s got no fucking game, dude. Did you hear him at the hospital? Or in that fucking card? I mean, fuck, he just came out and told me he liked me. No fucking game at all.” Dulac did a wild, 360-degree spin. “He wears overalls.”

  “I haven’t had to do this since college, so I might be a little rusty.”

  “Is that what you said to Hazard the first time he banged your brains out?”

  “You know what? Good luck, Gray. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “No, dude, stop. Please. I’m sorry I made fun of your creepy old man sex. Just—you gotta help me.”

  “For the record, I thought this was exclusively a straight-boy problem.”

  “What?”

  “You finally met someone who’s a good fit, and now you’re worried he’s not as pretty or popular as the guys your friends are dating.”

  “Bro. I’m not shallow.”

  Somers waited.

  “Ok, I mean, maybe I thought about that. A little. I mean, he’s cute. He’s actually really cute, you know? Like, in a teddy-bear kind of way. But you’ve seen the guys I get at the Pretty Pretty. Or the ones I get online.”

  “Then it’s easy,” Somers said with a shrug. “Don’t date him. Do you have beer?”

  Dulac waved a hand at the fridge and tried, once again, to settle on the couch. Before Somers had reached the kitchen, though, he bounced back to his feet and came in pursuit. Gay boy or straight boy, Somers thought with a smile as he retrieved two 4 Hands pale ales from the refrigerator, he had found a tried-and-true method for dealing with this kind of bullshit.

  “Maybe I want to date him,” Dulac said as he barged into the kitchen. “Maybe I want to go on at least one date. You know. Just to see.”

  “Sure. At least get a free dinner out of him.”

  “You’re getting old, dude. You better learn how to be funny really fast, because your looks are wearing out.”

  “Bottle opener?”

  Dulac pointed. “I can go on a date with him if I want to. But here’s the thing: how does that affect my game down the line? Right now, I’m scoring 9’s, 9.5’s, 10’s. Easy. Lining them up. But if I go out with Darnell, am I finished? I mean, absolute best, he’s a—”

  “Stop before you cross the line from doofus to asshole.”

  Biting his lip, Dulac actually looked embarrassed. “Ok, but I mean, if things don’t work out, am I stuck dating way below my weight class?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” Somers took a long pull of the beer, which tasted a little too summery for him. “So don’t date him.”

  “You are no fucking help.” Dulac took a drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why wouldn’t I date him? He’s cute. Actually, he’s hot. He’s strong, you know? And his face, he’s really handsome under that beard. And the overalls actually work for him.”

  Somers drank and waited.

  Taking a few steps around the kitchen, Dulac paused and drank again. “You know what? He’s actually really sweet too. And polite. And thoughtful. And he treats me—” His voice slowed. “He treats me like you should treat another person, you know? Those fucking pretty boys, you want to know how many of them checked to see I was ok after I broke my nose?”

  “It’s not exactly national news.”

  “But everybody knows because I put it on Snapchat. Anyway, two of them wrote back. One of them asked me if I was going to the movie this afternoon and then immediately sent a second message apologizing for sending the first one to the wrong person. And the second one just wrote back, Gross. Nobody asked if I was ok. Nobody offered to buy me a drink or dinner. Nobody even came by the hospital to check on me.”

  “We were only there for about an hour.”

  “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t go on a date with Darnell. One, John-Henry. I want to hear it. He’s sweet. He’s respectful. He’s hot as fuck. Come on, let’s hear why I shouldn’t.”

  Somers shrugged.

  “You’re absolutely no fucking help, you realize that? I had to figure out this whole thing on my own.”

  “And you did a great job. Can I go see if I still have a boyfriend, please?”

  “Bro.”

  Dumping the rest of the beer down the sink, Somers said, “It’s pretty bad this time. I said something I shouldn’t have. And he . . . he shut down afterward. Not the normal Emery Hazard shutdown, either.” Somers frowned. “He made us go to dinner.”

  “Dinner’s good. Dinner means he’s still talking to you, right?”

  “I have absolutely no idea what it means. I’m probably going to get home and find all the locks changed.”

  “Bro, you guys are going to be fine.”

  “Well, if we aren’t, I’m moving in with you and Darnell.”

  “Come on.”

  “Recycling?”

  Dulac took the bottle and held Somers’s gaze. “Bro, he loves you. Like, crazy loves you. It’s kind of goosebumpy intense when he’s watching you and you don’t know it.” Dulac tilted the neck of the bottle as though to underscore his next point. “Which is why you two would be hot as fuck in a threesome—”

  “No.”

  “—or a foursome.”

  “Definitely no. Goodnight.”

  “At least ask him,” Dulac called from the doorway as Somers retreated. “Just in case.”

  The December air stole the taste of hops from Somers’s mouth as he left the walk up. It was one of those frozen nights that felt strangely wet, as though he were rolling an ice cube on his tongue. When he got to the street, the record exchange was still open, an island of pink and blue neon in the dark. Maybe Somers should browse for a little while. Maybe he’d find something Hazard would like. Did they make documentaries on vinyl? The thought should have made Somers laugh.

  He should have driven straight home and handled things like an adult. Instead, he got in the Mustang and drove for hou
rs, around town, along dark country roads, pressing the accelerator harder and harder as though he could catch up to the edge of the headlights’ beams. Like there was something on the other side of the light, something always a few inches ahead. Answers, maybe. Or a way to go back and not screw things up again.

  A sick heat twisted his guts, and finally he had to pull over on a low limestone bluff. The wind parted the patchy bluestem like old hair, exposing bone-white stone that glowed under the moon. He stood, hands on knees, and thought he might shit himself. He settled for throwing up: nothing really, just a thread of pinkishly clear stomach acid while his throat fluttered reflexively.

  Then, for the first time in hours, his head was clear, and he turned around and drove home.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  DECEMBER 20

  THURSDAY

  11:48 PM

  HAZARD WAITED UP. He didn’t text. He didn’t call. Texting felt like too little. Calling felt like too much. He tried to read; he threw books across the room hard enough to tear the binding. He tried to watch TV; the remote ended up, somehow, in two pieces inside the fireplace. After that, he paced, the old house creaking with every step, and then he thought about that stupid crack Somers had made about the house falling down, that last-ditch effort to turn things around before the fight. Then he had to lean against the counter, head in his hands, and focus on breathing. When it got worse—it kept getting worse—he could hear Rebeca saying, Married or not, in love or not, people still treat each other like shit sometimes, and he heard himself saying, My parents. Sometimes he’d catch something else, something like You know all the secret ways to hurt them, and then—

  —still treat each other like shit sometimes—

  He had been reading about stars, and so he went outside. He lived in the heart of town, but it was a small town, far from anything else. In St. Louis, driving his beat, he had seen men and women spread bedsheets on the sidewalk and pile whatever they had to sell—fake Gucci purses, sunglasses, pirated DVDs—on the sun-bleached polyester. That’s how the sky looked tonight. He stood in the backyard, the wind ruffling the short sleeves of his tee, the cold pimpling his skin. Grass poked through his wool socks. At first, his breath streamed out in banners, blazing in the illumination from the porch light. Then his breath was like that Sandburg poem, the little cat feet. And then it was like he wasn’t breathing at all. Even the cold wasn’t as bad as it had been. Maybe pain was molecular; maybe if you got cold enough, you could slow down all the ricocheting particles. Maybe, then, you wouldn’t feel anything at all.

  When the muted rumble of the garage door reached Hazard, he didn’t move. He heard Somers let himself into the house, but he didn’t hear anything after that. Somers didn’t call Hazard’s name. Didn’t shout for him. For all Hazard knew, Somers had gone to the living room, kicked off his shoes, and turned off the lights. For all Hazard knew, Somers was asleep, and tomorrow—

  The door to the backyard opened, unfolding a wedge of light across the lawn.

  Hazard didn’t look back; he could have that much dignity.

  The door shut, and darkness flooded across Hazard’s wool socks again.

  Well, that answered one of Hazard’s questions, didn’t it?

  But a moment later, the door creaked, and warm yellow light cracked open the night again. Footsteps padded, accompanied by the sound of brittle grass. And then a blanket settled over Hazard’s shoulders. With hurried movements—maybe a little too hurried, even for the cold—Somers moved to press his back to Hazard’s chest, taking Hazard’s arms and wrapping them around him. The blanket was nice, but Somers was sunlight against Hazard’s chest.

  “Jesus, you’re freezing. How long have you been out here?” The wind plucked blades of grass. Then: “Are you too angry for this? I’m not trying to—”

  “No.” Hazard felt part of himself wake; he tightened his arms around Somers, adjusted the blanket, bundling them together. “Never.”

  He couldn’t see Somers’s face, just an ear, the swell of a cheekbone, the curve of his jaw. A very cute ear. And, of course, a perfect cheekbone. A hint of golden stubble because it had been a long day. The heat of Somers’s skin still carried the fragrance of his cologne, like a shard of July that had somehow survived into winter. Hazard’s eyes kept going back to Somers’s ears. Was it possible for ears to be beautiful? He thought maybe someone had done a study on that. He’d never thought ears could be beautiful, never really thought about ears, but now he was thinking that he needed to find out everything about ears, just so he could decide, scientifically, that John-Henry Somerset had the most beautiful ears in the universe. For the sake of science.

  “You’re like ice,” Somers said, shifting against him. “Can you give me an update? Where are you?”

  “I’m ok. Where are you?”

  “I’m ok. I wasn’t going to talk to you for a week, but mostly because I feel awful. I shouldn’t have said—”

  “Do you know what a blue straggler is?”

  Somers sighed. “This is going to be fun, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a star. Stars are basically the result of hydrogen undergoing thermonuclear fusion, which releases energy—”

  “Ree.”

  “Yes?”

  “I know what a star is.”

  “I’m trying to—”

  “There’s a whole bunch of them right up there.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Sometimes they even make pretty pictures when I look at them long enough. And, of course, I know all about where my birth star is and my zodiac sign and—”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  Hazard couldn’t see Somers’s face, but he could have sworn that Somers was smiling when he said, “No, I’m being defensive, and from the outside, it just sounds like I’m being an asshole. Keep going.”

  “Stars are basically the result of hydrogen—”

  Somers mimed pressing something and made a whizzing noise. “I’m fast-forwarding.”

  “John, I’m trying to—”

  “The important part, please.”

  With a growl, Hazard said, “Blue stragglers are brighter, younger than they should be. Astronomers determine it a bunch of different ways, but these stars stand out because they’re anomalies. Do you know why they’re younger than they should be?”

  “They formed later than other stars.”

  “That’s a good guess, but there’s not much evidence for it. There are a lot of answers, actually, but only one that seems to have enough evidence to hold up: they feed on other stars. They’ve got all sorts of fanciful names for them. Cannibal stars. Vampire stars. But they’re pretty sure that’s what’s going on. They’re often binary stars, which means they’re part of a pair, and they steal fuel from their companion star.”

  Somers was quiet and still for a long moment. Then he turned, still inside Hazard’s arms, and looked up at him. “That sounds suspiciously like a metaphor.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You’re making a comparison between us and those stupid stars.”

  “A metaphor is poetic garbage. I’m making an analogy, which is a logical structure that—”

  “So help me God, if you finish that sentence, I’m going to scream.”

  Hazard decided not to complete his explanation—not right then, anyway. But he couldn’t meet Somers’s eyes. He looked off at the woodpile, at the four feet of fence that leaned heavily and probably needed replacing, at the poor grade of the ground at the back of the lot, where water collected on rainy days.

  “Right here, please,” Somers said, using one finger on Hazard’s chin to steer his eyes back to him. “So, finish the analogy. Am I the vampire?”

  “What? God, no.”

  “Am I stealing your freedom or your happiness or something like that?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about me, John.” H
azard wanted to look away, wanted to blink his eyes clear, but he didn’t trust himself to say what he needed to say. If he looked away now, the moment would be lost, and they’d go back to normal. For a while, anyway. “I am taking your happiness. You give it away so freely, all the light and positivity and grace you radiate, and I soak it up. I run on it. I don’t give anything back. I’m closed up, locked away, and that’s not fair to you. I know it’s not right.”

  “What I said tonight, that I feel like Nico and the rest of the guys you’ve dated, that was an awful thing to say.”

  “But it was true.”

  “No.”

  “Please don’t lie.”

  “No,” Somers said again, shaking his head. “There was some truth in it, but I said it the ugliest way I knew how. I don’t feel like you’re closed off, not really. I know you love me. You tell me you love me. Most of why I said that was . . . was wanting you so much, so badly, and being embarrassed that you didn’t want the same thing.”

  “I do, I—”

  “But I don’t really think you’re closed off. And I know I’m not Nico. Or any of them. I just . . . I don’t want to be them, either. I don’t want to become them. I don’t want to be your past someday.”

  “Never.” Hazard pulled out his phone. “I want to figure this out too. I made a list: things we’re in charge of. So it doesn’t happen again. You’re in charge of date nights, breakfast foods, carpet and rug choices, light fixtures on the main floor, dry cleaning arrangements, my shoes, sex toys—”

  “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  “—all future pet choices, naming of dogs and cats but not fish or birds, Evie’s high school attendance but not any disciplinary conferences, I’ll be handling those, alternating dinners, three out of five takeout decisions—”

  “Go back to that one I liked.”

  Hazard blinked the phone’s glare from his eyes. “Don’t be a pervert. And I’m not finished. You’re also in charge of—”

  “Ree, Ree, Ree. Ok. Stop, sweetheart. I get the point.”

  “There’s no point, John. It’s just a list. So neither of us has to feel like he’s getting bossed around.”

  “Sometimes I like you bossing me around. Sometimes. I don’t want a list dividing everything up.”