Seven

Sacha

 

Sacha stood back, surveying his handiwork. About a third of the false ceiling lay on the wood floor, and Seth was right, the tin tiles were gorgeous. Each one was about the size of his hand, and the center stamp was a stylized green-man emblem surrounded by a frame of leaves. Absolutely worth the effort to clean up and restore.

His stomach rumbled loudly, expressing its displeasure at being ignored since before lunchtime. Circling around the first floor, he dragged the day’s debris into a pile against one wall. Then he made an attempt to clean up using the hand sink, digging around in his duffel for a semi-clean shirt. No point in playing zombie again.

There was a bar a few blocks away; he’d driven past it several times, taking note of the sandwich board on the sidewalk advertising the daily specials. It was as good a place as any to escape his thoughts… or brood, more likely.

Work on the Warrick, while physically demanding, was mindless, giving him far too much time to think. Sacha had spent more than a few hours over the past week wondering if he had misread Seth’s interest. Wondering about him in general. Obviously Seth was a nice guy; maybe he always invited strange men home for showers? Made them breakfast? Pretended to be fascinated by endless construction projects? Maybe Sacha had confused interest in the Warrick with interest in him. The thought depressed him.

Seth was probably gay. He was at least bi. There’d been a few too many appraising glances when Seth thought Sacha wouldn’t notice. Sacha hadn’t been a US Marshal for twelve years only to be the least observant person on the planet once he retired. And he was done trying to fool himself about his attraction to men. Because the gay bars he went to and men’s beds he ended up in were by accident? In the military he’d been able to claim it had been convenience: a hole was a hole. That excuse didn’t hold any longer.

Out on the street, the sunshine felt overly bright and new, shining into corners previously populated by shadows. His truck sat waiting. For a moment Sacha considered walking but, fuck it, he hadn’t changed that drastically.

He stopped short at the entrance to the Loft. There was a little rainbow sticker in the corner of the front window. He felt stupid for not noticing it before and hesitated a beat before pushing the door open. Then he felt like a shit. Wasn’t he trying to change, to accept himself? Hadn’t he moved to Skagit with the intention of not hiding anymore? Of at least hoping to quit living in the closet and fucking men in the dark? The door swung slightly ajar, and cool air from inside washed over his skin. He took a deep breath and entered.

He wasn’t struck by lightning. Only the bartender noticed him—and since that was the guy’s job, Sacha didn’t think he suddenly had a sign around his neck proclaiming his gayness.

The place wasn’t full. It was still early and a weekday. Which one was to blame, Sacha didn’t know. He plopped down at the end of the bar near the servers’ station. He couldn’t stand sitting at a table by himself.

“Hey.” The bartender greeted him, sliding a coaster across the bar. “Can I pour you a drink?” If Sacha wasn’t mistaken, he was being eyed appreciatively.

“A pale ale?” A little discussion and Sacha was given three local ales to choose from. Taking a long, satisfying sip of something with cascade hops and a citrus flavor, Sacha shut his eyes for a moment, enjoying the bitter flavors on his tongue.

“Long day?” The bartender was still watching him. Sacha couldn’t tell if it was out of boredom or something else. “You want the food menu?” He was a younger guy, younger than Sacha was comfortable with, but he was good-looking, with curious, greenish eyes and a mop of auburn hair. What he wasn’t was a rumpled, tall, tangle-haired guy named Seth with a smile that made his entire face light up.

“Yep, to both.” He was being scoped. There was no stopping his grin from forming. He might still be working a few things out, but it always felt nice to be appreciated.

“Are you new to the area? I haven’t seen you here before.”

Sacha took another sip before answering, “I recently relocated, but I, uh, did some business here over the last couple years.” By business he meant undercover as a Russian human trafficker. Another reason why he was reluctant to tell the people he did know in town that he was here. He felt weirdly exposed. Before, he’d been undercover with a script to follow; now he was plain old Sacha, struggling with life choices.

“I’m Cameron.”

“Sacha.” They shook hands across the bar, and Cameron grinned at him. There was no denying he was attractive. He had the same kind of open smile Seth did. Unreserved and unabashed.

The hum of the bar increased, and Cameron turned away to help a few other customers who had wandered in. When he came back, Sacha was ready for another beer and ordered a burger and fries. It felt good to be sitting and listening to the swirl of conversations around him as other customers came in for a drink or a meal.

“You don’t seem like our usual type.” Cameron was back in front of him.

“Whaddya mean?” Sacha cocked his head at the young man. “Explain.”

Cameron polished an invisible speck off the bar top, obviously embarrassed that he’d broached the subject of Sacha’s appearance in the Loft. “Um, geez, I told Sterling I wasn’t ready for prime time.” Sacha waited for him to continue. “I, uh, am usually pretty good at telling, you know, and…well I haven’t seen you here before.” A blush crept over his face, and his words halted. Sacha turned to see what had caught his attention. Cameron’s gaze was glued to a very handsome man around Sacha’s age. His hair was almost completely silver, with a little dark sprinkled throughout.

The man looked over at the bar area, spotted Cameron with his tongue practically hanging out of his mouth, and quirked a black eyebrow before changing course to go sit in the dining area. Cameron muttered something under his breath. It sounded to Sacha like “Arrogant motherfucker,” but he couldn’t be sure.

“Friend of yours?”

Cameron’s blush deepened further once he realized Sacha had witnessed the exchange. “He thinks I’m too young.”

“Oh. Um, how old are you?”

“Twenty-two. Ira’s,” Cameron waved a frustrated hand in the other man’s direction, “I dunno, your age? Maybe a little older. I heard the lady at the Booking Room talking about his birthday being a big one, so he’s probably going to be forty soon.” Cameron sighed, his eyes still on the mysterious Ira.

“Well, I guess you’ll have to convince him you aren’t too young.” And how did he end up at a gay bar giving advice to the bartender? Weren’t there rules about this sort of thing? Maybe there was a good reason Ira thought Cameron was too young.

“He won’t even look at me, much less talk to me. How am I gonna convince him?”

Sacha considered Cameron’s words. “There’s that old saying: actions speak louder than words. Maybe he needs to see you doing something else, not only being here. Are you in school or anything? What else do you do?”

A customer tapped on the bar, and Cameron went to take their order. On his way back, he picked up Sacha’s burger from the kitchen. The tantalizing scent of grilled beef and melted cheese had Sacha’s mouth watering before Cameron set the food down in front of him. Sacha took a huge bite, chewing while waiting for Cameron’s answer. The burger practically melted in his mouth, and the fries were cooked in some sort of fancy truffle oil. Delicious.

“I’m kind of still getting on my feet. Sterling let me work as a busboy before I turned twenty-one. Now he’s giving me a few bartending shifts, so I’m making more money.” Cameron’s gaze shifted inward. There was more to this story, and Sacha had a feeling he wasn’t going to like it. He already had a soft spot for the kid. Young man.

At twenty-one Sacha’d been in the military kicking ass overseas, pretending to be an adult. He’d had to make adult decisions daily and live with the consequences. Looking back through a lens of experience, yeah, he’d been young, but he hadn’t been innocent.

“My parents threw me out of the house when I came out. I’d like to do more, but I’m still working at making sure I can pay the rent and buy groceries. Plus I have some medical bills I gotta pay,” he mumbled.

“Hey.” Sacha reached out, surprising himself, covering Cameron’s smaller hand with his own. “Don’t beat yourself up. Look how far you’ve come. If this Ira guy can’t see that you’re an adult, you either gotta show him or quit moping about it, because that shit won’t change anything.”

Cameron grinned back at him, seeming to have regained his earlier good humor. “Yeah, screw that.”

Hell had frozen over. Sacha had given advice to a gay man and had dinner in a gay bar without the earth swallowing him. The world hadn’t ended. As he finished his burger and fries, he allowed himself to think about Seth and whether they would meet again.

Sacha wasn’t superstitious, didn’t believe in God—had seen way too much bad shit happen to good people for that—but it was impossible to contemplate recent incidents in his life without wondering if maybe he should be paying a little more attention. Falling off the fire escape in Kansas City had brought him to Skagit. Falling off the ladder the other morning had led him to Seth (who, remarkably, had not run screaming in the other direction).

It seemed the universe was trying to tell him something, and if Sacha sat on his ass watching the world go by instead of participating, he was not going to hear it. He needed to take his own advice to Cameron, modify it a little, but the core message—actions spoke louder than words—held true.

If he was going to change his life, keep changing his life, both metaphorically and for real, he needed to quit using the Warrick as an excuse to avoid seeing people he might know. Which meant Mae-Lin was right, he was hiding. Groaning quietly at the realization, he leaned on the bartop, his head in his hands, pulling the hair at the back of his head. He hated it when Mae-Lin was right.

Being in the military during DADT, and then a US Marshal, had fed his innate tendency toward hiding. Maybe some guys felt safe enough being more open, but he never had. The wall he’d built around himself was so high and deep he wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to break it down, but he was damn well going to try.

Straightening from the bar, Sacha squared his shoulders. He could do this. Deep breath. He had Seth’s cell number. Tomorrow he would call, and they would have coffee, and maybe Sacha wouldn’t make an ass of himself.

A face appeared in his memory, one that haunted him with some regularity even all these years after he’d come to the States. Sacha had been the one to find him, bloody and lifeless; if he’d ever known the boy’s name, it had been forgotten over the intervening years. In the filthy alley, Sacha wouldn’t have recognized him if not for the bits of clothing clinging to his remains. Sacha’d seen him around—he hadn’t been too much older than Sacha—laughing with other boys and older men before disappearing behind a shop or down an alley. The strange boy had been untouchably beautiful, until he was dead.

Sacha himself had been an outcast, left at a state orphanage in Bosnia when he was a toddler—a family with too many mouths to feed, maybe, or a single mother; he didn’t know the reason. When the orphanage closed its doors a few years later, Sacha found his way to the streets of Sarajevo and eventually to a missionary group that brought him and several other children to the United States. A long, strange trip indeed.

He’d never forgotten the lesson, though, about who it was acceptable to be with. That boy had been careless, gone with someone dangerous, and it had cost him the most precious thing he had to give. Even apart from that boy, there had been the anti-gay graffiti, the daily rants blaring from radios and TVs.

A shuffling noise caught his attention, and he raised his eyes to the mirror fixed against the backbar. Behind him a familiar figure stood, eyebrows bunched in confusion, squinting at him. The fucking universe. He’d met Joey James back in December when he’d been finishing up his undercover assignment.

“Oh my God. It is you.”

He twisted around on the bar stool to face the young man standing behind him.

“I thought it was you, and then I thought it couldn’t be. But I looked again and I knew it had to be you. I can’t believe you’re here. What are you doing here?”

Joey was irritating and tenacious, but Sacha respected his bravery and smarts. He hadn’t told him, but it was true. Joey was the reason Sacha didn’t have worse nightmares about the young trafficking victims he had been trying to save.

Before he could say anything, Joey launched himself at Sacha, embracing him in a full-body hug, somehow ending up mostly in Sacha’s lap. Boundaries were not Joey’s strong suit.

“You’re ruining my reputation, kid,” Sacha growled as he hugged Joey back. Nearly a foot shorter than Sacha, Joey was a lot of energy packed into a small body. Sacha wondered how his boyfriend managed, although being big enough and Nordic enough to pass for Thor probably helped. The two of them were clearly very well suited for each other.

“Ppphhft, your reputation. Come sit with us. I want to hear all about it all. Why you are here… wait, are you—” Joey’s voice dropped to a loud whisper, “—undercover?”

“Well, if I was, you just blew it.” Joey’s eyes widened and a horrified expression crossed his face. Sacha took pity on him. “I’m not, though. Actually, I retired from the Marshals.”

“Okay, now you are required to come sit with us.” Joey disentangled himself enough to point at a table across the bar where three other men were watching with amusement. One of them was Joey’s boyfriend, Buck Swanfeldt. Another was Adam Klay, a local fed who had assisted with the Matveev case. Adam cocked his head, indicating the open chair next to him.

Fuck, he was going to do this.

The third man at the table was introduced as Nate Richardson, an agent who worked for Adam. Nate was around Adam’s age, maybe younger, bright red hair and an astounding amount of freckles. He’d recently joined Adam’s team from the east coast. He seemed on edge, and soon after Joey dragged Sacha over he made excuses to leave. Sacha wanted to beg him to stay; as soon as Nate left, Joey would begin his relentless questioning.

“New guy.” Adam smirked, watching Nate leave. “I make him nervous, but he bravely joined us for an impromptu happy hour. Although I don’t know why the fuck I am hanging out with these two.”

Sacha respected Adam. He had good instincts and wasn’t as much of a tool as most of the feebs Sacha had had the misfortune to work with. Adam was shorter than Sacha, but he was built, heavily muscled, still looked like the football player he had been in high school. He was also the son of a prominent local artist who had passed away last fall.

“Because your boyfriend is on a business trip and you are sad and lonely. And we are the only people who will put up with your cranky ass.”

“There’s that,” Adam muttered.

Joey leaned across the table toward Sacha. “Okay, why are you here? Here, here. You do know the Loft is a gay bar, right?”

“Joey, you don’t ask people that,” his much-smarter boyfriend interjected, eyebrows raised almost to his hairline.

Joey didn’t take his eyes off Sacha, narrowing them as if he was threatening. “I disagree. Sacha won’t tell us unless we ask.”

“Unless you ask. Normal people don’t ask that kind of stuff.” Buck rolled his eyes at his boyfriend.

“Fine, I’m not normal. Well?” Joey tapped his index finger impatiently on the table. Sacha shook his head in disbelief.

Adam watched the exchange with amusement, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. Doing nothing to rescue Sacha from the interrogation. Asshole.

“You know, I could have been hungry.” Joey glared, and Sacha continued, “But I still came in when I saw the rainbow sticker.” He interrupted himself. “I need another beer.” If he was going to do this, he was only going to do it once, and there was no way he was getting through it without alcohol. “This story is longer than gay or straight, or whatever.”

“You stay here.” Joey practically bolted to the bar in search of a beer for Sacha. When he returned moments later, Sacha took a long drink before continuing. Pondering life changes, about being open about who he was. That, even though he hadn’t known this group of men very long, they were people he trusted. He felt like he owed it to himself to be completely open, to tell the entire story. Anything else would smack of avoidance.

“It’s not like I recently discovered I’m gay. But I was born in what was then Yugoslavia, which was not known for its progressive politics.” The boy’s battered face came to the forefront of his memory again. “When I came here I was placed with a conservative Christian family. They weren’t horrible, but their attitude didn’t help, plus I was already different enough. I never considered coming out. Then I was in the army during DADT and, as you know, a US Marshal.”

Adam was nodding as Sacha spoke. “I’m a little younger, but law enforcement hasn’t changed overnight. My team is lucky to have a great leader. For the life of me, I do not understand why who we fuck affects our day jobs.”

“Don’t interrupt, I want to know the rest. You left without saying goodbye!” Joey legitimately looked upset that Sacha had left Skagit without contacting him.

“Aw, did you miss me?” This earned Sacha another glare from Joey and a quiet chuckle from Buck.

Taking another sip of his beer, he continued, “Yeah, anyway, getting shot and losing my spleen wasn’t so much fun. Then some other things happened after I returned to the Marshals service that made me take a long, hard look at my life. Long story short, I retired and decided to move here.”

“And do what? Where are you living? What are you doing?”

“I’m surveying the best locations in the county for shallow graves so when I get tired of all the questions I know where to hide the body,” Sacha grumbled. The other three men burst into laughter, and Sacha noticed a glimmer on Joey’s left hand. “Wait, what’s with the ring?”

By the time he extricated himself from the welcoming committee, Sacha had been invited to the social event of the following year. Buck and Joey were getting married, and the entire population of Skagit was descending on Maureen James’s house in the spring to watch the event. Sacha had, in fact, not been invited but commanded to attend.

Adam had laughed before admitting that he and his boyfriend were attending as well. His phone buzzed and the screen flashed at the same time, and the laughing ended as Adam’s expression turned serious. “I’ve got to take this, duty calls.”

Sacha left along with Adam, gladly escaping to the peace and quiet of the Warrick.