Hanging the Stars

by Rhys Ford

  “The detective said you can go, but he wants to talk to you tomorrow. I told him you had nothing to do with this… or the car crash in San Francisco, but I don’t think he was convinced. I guess it’s hard to take a man who’s been knocked out by his own lamp very seriously.”

  West’s voice startled him, and Angel banged his head on the slick wood behind him. West hobbled in and stood at the counter near Angel’s knee.

  “You okay?”

  “From you scaring the shit out of me? Or hitting my head?” He rubbed at the spot.

  “Either.” West shrugged. “Both. But mostly about… what happened out there.”

  “I don’t know who shot your place up, West,” Angel sighed. The day was not only catching up with him, it was wringing him dry and making him its bitch. “I just… don’t fucking know.”

  “I’m not talking about that, Angel.” He moved in closer, his hands parting Angel’s knees with a gentle push. Sliding in between the V he made, West leaned in, his palms flat and hard on Angel’s thighs. “I’m talking about what happened before some asshole used my front hall light for target practice. I’m talking about us.”

  Six

  “WEST….” ANGEL’S habit of biting the tip of his tongue as it peeked from his slightly parted lips hadn’t changed. “I can’t… fuck. I can’t stay.”

  His gorgeous face was a mural of emotion, broad strokes of bold, colorful expressions. If West’s heart hadn’t been lodged sideways in his throat, he could have watched Angel chew around his words all day. As it was, the beleaguered organ stammered and shook as West schooled his face into a well-worn cold mask.

  “I understand.” If there was one trick he’d learned from his glacial father, it was a rigid control over his voice. Brittle anger was a good choice for that moment, a wall of something hard and glittering to shove aside the knife plunged through his chest. “Of course, you can’t stay.”

  “You don’t understand… I’ve got….” Angel raked his fingers through his already wild hair, pulling the long strands from his face. The shadows under his eyes were wells of bruised fatigue and stress. “I’ve got to get home to Roman.”

  “Roman. I didn’t know you were seeing anyone.” The burn of Angel’s hot kiss lingered on West’s skin and throat. His head throbbed, and there were still stars on the edges of his vision, but nothing hurt more than hearing another man’s name coming from Angel’s lips. He clearly loved Roman. Angel could never mask his feelings. They ran through his voice, brightening away a bit of the bruises in his eyes.

  That light in Angel’s voice… pissed West off.

  “You’re seeing someone and you… come at me like that?” The pain in his chest turned into a firestorm, charring his throat. “Guess you’ve changed more than I’d—”

  “Roman’s my kid brother. Dad dumped him on me and split,” Angel cut him off. “You know how that is. Except this time, Dad’s not coming back. Sometimes things get too tight around him. Last I talked to him he was doing okay, but I promised I’d be there soon.”

  Angel slid off the counter, his body a long hot slide against West’s chest and legs. He dominated the space, pushing West back with the sheer power of his body and intense stare. The shadows did interesting things to Angel’s features, casting him in a bronze light and gilding his cheekbones. His fingers trembled when they skimmed over West’s jaw. Then Angel brushed over West’s lower lip, a delicate feathering whisper of flesh and nails.

  “If I could, I’d stay, because we’ve got a lot to talk about. Hell, I’m not even sure what happened back there by the door, and I’m not saying it was a mistake, but I don’t know if it ever should have happened. I just don’t know,” Angel murmured, his breath sweet on West’s face. “But Rome’s a kid waiting for his big brother to come home. I’m all he’s got, and I’ve got to be there when he reaches out. I’m sorry. I am.”

  “Like your father wasn’t there for you when you needed him?” His words weren’t meant to be a jab, but even to West, it sounded like he’d sharpened them on a bitter whetstone and aimed for Angel’s jugular. “That… wasn’t… I’m sorry. How old is he?”

  “Eleven going on… six, I think. Sometimes sixty.” Angel’s chuckle lightened the sour between them, but the edge of West’s words remained. His hand dropped, leaving a trail of fading warmth along West’s mouth. “I’m sorry. I am. Because I’d like to hang around and deal with this… with us but—”

  Most fires were doused by water, plumes of steam and hot currents. In this case, the simmer between West and Angel mewled and died with an exasperated gasp, with a flick of a light switch and a worried man wearing West’s face.

  The kitchen’s recessed lighting flared to life, bright enough to leave spangles across West’s sight and, if he wasn’t mistaken, certainly more than adequate to perform emergency brain surgery if anyone needed it. Blinking away the tears from the sudden drench of white, West stumbled back, pulling away from Angel’s welcome heat and into the evening chill pouring in from his still open front door.

  “West, are you okay?” Lang grabbed at him. He sounded concerned, a flick of panic perhaps hovering at the upper reaches of his tone, but West couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone other than Marzo sounded concerned about him, and that was mostly job security. “The cops called me. Said you were shot.”

  “It was probably just some idiot in his backyard and didn’t realize the house was here. I’m fine, other than the aches and pains I’d already had, just a small lump on my forehead. I might have twisted my knee. It hurts a little bit.” Pushing his brother off, West shook his head, then winced at the clanging of bells in his brain. The nausea was back, digging into his throat and reminding him he’d taken a beating the day before. “That metal monstrosity in the foyer hit me on its way down. I’m going to instruct my designer to stop using such heavy pieces. I might as well be asking to be murdered by my own house.”

  “I’ll see you around, Harris.” Slipping past Lang, Angel neatly made it to the kitchen doorway before West could tell Lang to get lost. “Sorry about the pizza. I can ask Joey’s crew to send out another one.”

  “Angel, wait!” West turned and nearly lost his balance, caught on his brother’s foot. “Lang, get out of the—”

  “Why is Angel here? And what pizza?”

  Like their birth, Lang was wrapped around him, making it difficult to move. He was also a lot stronger than West remembered, his upper arm bulging under his sleeve when he grabbed at West to stop him from following Angel. “Crap, Joey must have asked—”

  “Lang, I swear to God, if you don’t let me go….” He yanked himself free, his knee twisting under him as he hurried out of the kitchen. “Daniels! Damn it…. Angel!”

  It was already too late. A deep-growling engine started up outside, and Montague was shouting at someone to let Angel leave. West made it to the edge of the foyer, and then the room began to swim. His knees buckled, and West tried to grab at the wall to steady himself before he toppled forward.

  This time Angel wasn’t there to catch him, and West hit the floor, twisting so he struck the hard surface with his shoulder. He made a loud thump and rattled every single inch of his already banged-up body when he landed. Someone nearby shouted something, probably one of the cops, but West was more concerned about not hitting his head even as fiery tendrils of snaking pain grabbed at his joints and squeezed down tight on his spine. There were black leather shoes stomping around near his head, and West turned over onto his back and gently lowered his head to the floor.

  It still hurt. Resting there and breathing hurt. Much like the empty space Angel’d dug up out of him throbbed, and he felt his soul keen at the gaping void stretching through it.

  “God… damn… it,” West ground out, ignoring the buzz of voices flittering around him. “Fucking goddamn it all.”

  Lying in the ruins of his foyer, West stared up at the ceiling and began wondering about which moment his life’d gone from manageable to pure ch
aos when a sweet-faced imp of a girl with tears in her soft brown eyes popped her head in front of his face and stared worriedly down at him.

  “Ah, that must have been it. Probably the second I met you, hellspawn,” West murmured softly as he reached up to hug Zig against him. “You bring the chaos, little girl, and it’s okay.”

  “I thought you were dead.” She tried to keep her bottom lip steady, refusing to be drawn. “You are such a fucking dick.”

  “There’s going to be a hell of a lot of dog shit in your future if your prettier dad hears you, kiddo, and at least I’m not a dead dick,” he pointed out, tugging at her again. “Come here. It’s going to be all right. I’m okay, brat. Totally okay.”

  “You only think he’s pretty because he looks like you,” she sniffed. “Fucker. Don’t tell him I swore.”

  She flopped, boneless, across his chest, pushing all the air out of his lungs, and her arms came up to choke his neck, ensuring him a long, agonizing suffocation in his near future if he didn’t dislodge her. He heard a tight sob. Then his neck was dampened by a brush of tears and blubbering. Stroking her curly hair, he sighed when Lang crouched down next to him.

  “Zig, I’m fine, and I declare you’re exempt from punishment because things said in battle and stress shouldn’t count against us,” West reassured her. “But once I get up to my feet, I can’t say your Daddy’s going to be okay because I am going to kill him for sticking his nose into my business.”

  “I’d say it’s the last time I ever worry about you, but we’d both know that’s a lie,” Lang sniped back. The hardness and worry in his face softened, and he reached for Zig, stopping only when West shook his head. “Come on. You two need to get up off the floor. You about gave Montague a heart attack there. I think he thought someone was shooting the place up again. Where the hell is Marzo?”

  “Marzo headed back to the city tonight. He’ll be back in the morning. And Montague can go fuck himself, brother. Right now, the terror princess and I are going to have a damned good cry in the foyer, and then….” West tightened his hold on Zig as she hiccupped with another bout of tears. “Someone is going to get me another handful of painkillers and another pizza, because right now, I’m not quite sure which I need more.”

  “ABOUT TIME you got home.” Justin opened the door just as Angel fit his key into the battered knob’s lock. Screams were coming from the mini-apartment mingled with the sounds of gunfire and tires squealing, making it hard to hear Justin, but Angel caught enough of it. Shrugging, his friend said, “He’s fucking losing his mind.”

  “Shit.” Angel pushed past the redhead, then stopped short when he saw Roman sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room, his elbow working hard to jostle Violet, the older woman living in a room down the walk, as they did battle on the screen.

  His brother was still in the clothes he’d worn that day, a sure sign he hadn’t taken a bath, and a couple of open pizza boxes were on the credenza, their lids tossed back and their contents sucked down with only a few smears of oil as evidence of food. Violet barely glanced over her shoulder long enough to give Angel a nod hello, but it was enough of a distraction for Roman to gain an edge. Dragging her attention back to the screen, she began to swear in Hmong.

  Since Violet wasn’t quite five feet tall, ancient, and weighed about eighty pounds only after eating five large bowls of pho, Angel wasn’t too worried about Violet taking his baby brother down.

  Roman, however, had a whole bunch of shit to be concerned about because Violet was wiping the floor with him.

  “I’ll give you another ten minutes. Then wrap it up, Rome.” His reflection dominated the screen, and Roman yelped when Angel loomed over him. “You two find a save point and shut it down.”

  “Just go to bed,” Violet shouted over an explosion. “It’ll be fine. We’ll mute!”

  “We’re in his bedroom,” Roman grumbled, but he reached for the remote, then turned the volume down. “Hold on. Let me find a spot so we can regen there.”

  Roman’s acquiescence was shocking, but Angel wasn’t above embracing small miracles. Not when his pillows and sheets were already stacked up at the far end of the foldout sofa, a tantalizing promise of a few hours of sleep dangled in front of him, but the day’s grime clung to every pore of Angel’s body, and he wanted it off. Still, after driving home in a panic at being late, he’d have expected a bit more than a taciturn grunt or two from his younger brother.

  “Oh yeah, he’s really worried about me,” Angel grumbled to Justin as he toed his sneakers off. “Look at the angst all over his face.”

  “Hey, he was stressing a bit before I called Violet to come over.” Justin leaned against the wall. He looked as tired as Angel felt, his mouth tightening at the corners. “Took a bit to get his meds in him. He wasn’t going to take them. Then the pizza showed up, and I told him he couldn’t have any until a pill went down first. Pepperoni is apparently a great motivator.”

  “Yeah, food rules. Speaking of pizza, any left?” Angel pulled out one of the wooden chairs from the small dining room set near the room’s large window, then sat down with a heavy sigh. “Although I don’t know if I’m that hungry.”

  “At least get something in you. There’s garlic bread too, but I kept that and a small mushroom and olive from the locusts over there.” Justin straddled the other chair, resting his arms on its back. “You doing okay? What took you so long to get home?”

  “West Harris.” There was a stack of envelopes on the table, and Angel sifted through them quickly, looking for any bills. “I kind of… kissed him. Sort of.”

  Justin’s hand slapped the bills down onto the table, trapping Angel’s fingers. Hissing, Justin leaned in. “Shut up! You kissed Voldemort?”

  “Don’t call him that. And yes, sort of. Mostly.” His stomach and brain definitely wanted nothing to do with the pizza in the fridge and everything to do with lying down. Scrubbing his face with his hands only left Angel with a queasy roil in his stomach at the garlic-tomato odor on his palms. Leaning his head on the back of the chair, Angel slumped down, stretching the muscles in his lower back. “It was stupid. I just… someone just shot his house up, and he just seemed… scared.”

  “He’s trying to kick you out of your home, steal your business out from under you, and you go and feel sorry for the asshole?” His friend snorted. “Did you hit your fricking head?”

  “Not much of a home,” Angel said, looking over his shoulder at his brother. “Maybe I should sell the damned bakery—”

  “You told me to slap you if you said that,” Justin retorted. “Not that I’m going to because you could crush my skull in with your bare hands, but I’d like to remind you how fucking hard you worked to get that bakery going. And sure, this place isn’t a mansion, but it’s… cozy.”

  “I sleep on a fold-out couch in a motel built only a little bit after the Flintstones came out. Cozy it ain’t.” The game was still loud, a barrage of booms and shouts, but it masked their conversation from Roman’s often prying ears. “I just wonder if I’m doing right by him.”

  “You’re the only one who ever has, Ange. Probably the only one who’s ever going to,” Justin replied, bending forward across the table. “Talk to me about you kissing the Snow Miser.”

  “How many nicknames you’ve got for him?”

  “Man, too many to count, and most of them start with fuck or end with ass.” Justin poked at Angel’s shoulder. “Where is he? Why is he here? Did he come find you to harass you? ’Cause if he did, that asshole needs to die.”

  Angel gave a quick rundown of his night, from Joey asking him to deliver a pizza to the tangle he and West got into, then the bullet going through West’s open front door. Laying it all out, it seemed… ridiculous. He hadn’t seen or heard from West Harris in years, but he’d blinked and the burned-up seconds between them faded away, leaving him wanting West’s hands and mouth on him, just like that summer they’d spent together.

  “He just looked… scared and angry, Jus
t. Really fucking scared, and I felt like shit for hating him.” Angel stared out the window at the shack a few hundred yards away. “I guess I wanted to kiss and make it better.”

  “You don’t kiss a gator on the nose, Angel. It’s a good way to lose your lips… and your head.” Justin sighed. “God, why the hell aren’t we attracted to each other? It’d made life a fuck of a lot simpler.”

  “We don’t do simple, dude. Just not our style.” He shrugged. “So there you go. I danced with the devil, then told him to call me. Now I’m going to get them to turn off the game and go grab a shower. Thanks for staying with him, Just. I owe you big time.”

  “Hey, free pizza and a complaining kid, what’s not to love?” The redhead shooed Angel toward the bathroom. “Go get defunked. Use up all the hot water and relax. I’ll stay and make sure they shut this thing off in a few minutes. Then I’ll kick myself and Violet out so you can get some sleep.”

  “Yeah, because we’re doing this all over again in what?” Angel glanced at the clock. “Six hours? Good times. Okay, five minutes, Rome! Then it’s say good-bye to the crazy people and lights out for you.”

  ANGEL LEFT the black-out curtains open, using the lights from the parking lot and nearby houses to illuminate their rooms. The sounds of Roman loudly brushing his teeth drowned out most of the soft murmur coming from the streets, with a backbeat of a barking dog somewhere off in the distance. It was late, and tomorrow wasn’t looking any shorter, but Angel was reluctant to hurry Rome off so he could crash.

  “Perfect damned time of the day,” Angel sighed, picking up the cup of coffee he’d made himself to relax and settled into the couch. “Absolutely damned perfect.”

  As a whole, the apartment wasn’t much. Legally, it probably couldn’t even be called an apartment, but they’d done what they could with it. An end unit situated as close to the driveway as possible, the manager’s apartment was a cubbyhole barely large enough for two roaches to dance a tango, but it’d been home since Angel signed the purchase contract on the Pizza Shack’s ramshackle building. He’d torn out the industrial carpet, sealing off the concrete below, and thick carpet remnants took care of most of the cold. In the summer, they were easy to roll up and store in the motel’s stock rooms, so the apartment stayed cool from the chilly slab.