Fourteen

A FAINT perfume of oiled wood, old books, and male permeated the brothers’ house, a pleasant hint of sweet and musk Rey’d always liked. It was the scent of a family, one he loved, and sitting up in a quilt-covered king-sized bed with the fading light from the dormer windows picking out the gold in Gus’s long hair, Rey understood the comfort his ex-lover found in the house’s sometimes creaking walls. Especially when it was truly the only home Gus’d ever known.

It’d been a bit of a surprise when Gus led them up into his old room, the one he’d had before Mason and Luke moved out, but even in his own home, Gus was a bit of a wild child, roaming through its spaces, looking for a place to tumble over.

The room they were in still smelled slightly of teenaged boy, but that could have been the San Francisco fog and Gus’s emotional roil clinging to his skin. Posters papered one wall and hung on the slanted parts of the ceiling cutting into the room. He’d stared up at a snarling duo of local rock stars too many times to count, often wondering if they’d fucked each other despite repeated assurances they were brothers, and was mildly surprised to not see a sheet of their new band taped up into an open space. Judging by the scrawls of art covering the tracing and pulp-paper sheets thumbtacked to the corkboard lining the wall next to the door, Gus was spending a lot of time in the small, oddly shaped room.

He’d poured his heart and thoughts out onto the pages, some angry, slashing black-inked creatures looming out from around the edges, but there were softer pieces tucked in between them, blue and soft gray pencil sketches flowing across the paper in a delicate, frothy dance. Rey could make out a few faces—including his own—and a pictorial ode to the shaggy mutt the brothers said they shared but really belonged to Bear.

It was a familiar room, one Rey’d spent at lot of time in, sometimes alone with Gus and other times with one or more of the others. The bed was set on the floor with no frame to support it, and one corner had a small pile of clothes dumped into a plastic laundry basket, but knowing Gus, they were probably clean and simply left there because he never got around to putting anything away. Art books covered most of the long old dresser set on the wall across of the bed, and Rey would bet money most of the drawers were empty.

“Shit, I had sex with you in one of these beds. I just can’t remember if it was this room,” Rey muttered at the drowsy man next to him. “And where the hell did you or Bear find king-sized sheets with spaceships on them?”

A snorfling mumble into the pillows was the only answer he got back.

There was a broken elegance to Gus’s sprawled body, a sensual inconsonance present in nearly everything he did. It’d been what drew Rey’s eye the first time he’d seen Gus on the night of the fire, and even though his teenaged brain couldn’t pinpoint what it was about the cocky dirty blonde almost-man that tripped some switch in the back of his head, once flipped, he couldn’t turn it off. They’d grown up together, or at least he’d thought they had. Looking back over the past few hours, Rey realized he’d waltzed to adulthood while Gus crawled on his hands and knees over glass shards to get to the complicated, smart-mouthed, rebellious mess he’d become.

Lying on his stomach, one knee tucked up while the other leg lay flung out toward the footboard, Gus nested in a cradle of pillows, a soft, feathery pile Rey’d sometimes found himself fighting for space with in the middle of the night. They’d stumbled into the house, Rey holding Gus up after the adrenaline crash finally hit him. He’d cried a bit, curled up in Rey’s front seat, glad to be driven home after taking a lift to the bridge, then nearly face-planted on the sidewalk when he’d gotten out of the SUV, his legs too wobbly to hold him up.

They didn’t talk. Fumbled with the key to the front door, then he dragged Gus upstairs to his room, grateful the house was empty. Shucking off his shoes was as far as Gus got; then he dropped facedown onto the bed, groaning from exhaustion. He’d kept his promise not to have sex with Gus. Even teasingly admitting he’d lied, the timing wasn’t right, and Gus deserved more than…. Rey wasn’t sure what having sex after scraping your soul open and laying it bare to the frigid elements of an encroaching San Francisco fog bank would be called. At the very least, he’d have been taking advantage of Gus.

At the worst, he’d have been no better than any of the other assholes who’d used Gus, then tossed him away.

“Right. Like you haven’t done that before,” Rey snorted to himself. Stroking Gus’s bristled jaw, he murmured, “Going to do it right this time. I promise you that.”

“Go away,” Gus muttered into his pillow. “Or shut up. One of the two. Or both.”

“Nice. That’s how you treat a guy who’s wondering if you need some water?” Rey wanted to touch Gus’s skin. His fingers itched for it, to explore the textures along Gus’s back, arms, and sides, to soothe away long-healed-over hurts because he couldn’t do anything to kiss away the bleeding tears on Gus’s broken heart. “Probably need to hydrate—”

“Fuck, you sound like Mace,” he grumbled, shuffling farther into his nest. “Just… tired, and I can’t wind down. Then you start blabbing about shit so I listen.”

“Want me to go get you something to eat and drink?” Rey lifted a small bolster, grinning when a bit of light from the overhead fixture found Gus’s slightly open left eye. “Or do you want me to lie down next to you until you crash?”

“You going to shut up if you lay down?”

“Probably not. Actually, I’ll probably spend a few minutes apologizing for being an asshole to you and then really regret promising not to strip you naked and have sex with you hard enough to move the bed across the floor.”

“Dude, I love you and all, but if you don’t let me sleep for at least a couple of hours, I’m going to toss you off the bridge.” He groaned. Then Gus twisted his mouth into a regretful grimace. “Fuck, I’m sorry I said that.”

His heart was in his throat, and Rey was having a hard time swallowing around it. Keeping his voice as light as he could, he prodded Gus back, “Which one? That you love me or the bridge thing?”

“Take your pick. Things are too messy now, and my brain hurts.” His eyes were open now, an icy blue simmer of regret and old pain. Turning over, Gus shifted his shoulders until he could lay flat on the bed, then stared up at Rey, his face still pinked from the abrasive wind he’d been standing in. “I’m hungry, thirsty, and tired. I want… everything and maybe you, but right now I can’t deal with much more than sleep. I shouldn’t have gone out there alone. I shouldn’t have told the guys to leave me be, and Ivo had no right to tell you to come look for me but—”

“Are you at least glad he did?” Rey threaded his fingers through the hair covering Gus’s face, moving the strands aside. “Because I’m kind of under pressure to protect him if you aren’t.”

“Yeah, the asshole knew I needed you, and if you tell him that, I’ll gut you where you stand.” His sigh was heavy, burdened by too long of a day and too much guilt. “I can’t think right now. I’m that tired. I want you to stay, but I don’t want to ask because—”

“I’ll stay until you fall asleep. Then I’ll go make you something to eat for when you wake up,” he promised, scooting down to stretch out beside Gus. They lay next to each other, touching shoulders and hips, and Rey felt Gus’s limbs relax, loosening the tenseness in his body. “You’re running on nerves and probably a gallon of coffee.”

“Half a gallon,” Gus muttered back. “I didn’t have time for the full gallon. Jules and I were working out a schedule on the phone. Chris is going to school some mornings, so it makes things a little hard, and until I can take him by myself… until the lawyers and social workers make sure I’m not going to hurt him, I’m pretty much stuck to whenever they can give me some time.”

“Sucky but—”

“Understandable. They don’t know me. Not yet. Shit, I don’t blame them. Look at what my mom did.” Gus’s blinks were slowing, his lashes sweeping down and staying against his cheeks before jerking back up again. “Fuck, I can’t… deal with all of this. I’m not ready but… I can’t walk away from him, you know? He’s a cool kid. Better than I was, that’s for sure. I’ve been trying to talk to him through the web cam at least a little bit every day, but it’s hard. He’s all over the place.”

“Kind of like you used to be,” Rey teased. Gus’s breathing slowed, and his gaze dimmed, losing focus. “And don’t worry. I’m not going to hold you to anything you say today. It’s okay.”

“Meant it. The first part but sometimes the second,” Gus whispered as he turned onto his side to face Rey. His hair tumbled forward, nearly hiding his handsome face, and his shoulders hunched up when he cradled a small pillow against his chest. “I never told you, but I was so fucking crazy stupid in love with you. It broke something in me when you told me to leave, but I get it. I was so damned scared of letting you get close to me. I kept fucking things up between us, but I can’t even explain it. I knew you’d be waiting for me, but I couldn’t get myself over there, even though I knew you’d be mad or hurt. I couldn’t—”

“Years ago, babe.” He found Gus’s mouth amid the fall of golden silk and paisley cotton pillowcase, kissing him fiercely. Stroking at Gus’s hair, Rey traced a finger over the edge of his ear, finding the notch in its curve from a battle fought over a video controller before he’d known any of the brothers. He knew the stories of Gus’s body and a few of his soul, familiar landscapes he hadn’t appreciated when he’d first been given a glimpse. “We can start over. Or start new. Whatever you want to call it, and just so you know, you weren’t the only one crazy stupid in love. You were just the only one of us who was smart enough to know it.”

“OKAY, YOU guys have seventeen different kinds of canned beans but you don’t have garlic?” Standing in the middle a former mudroom Bear’d turned into a pantry, Rey dug through a basket of Maui onions, then realized he was staring straight into a braid of garlic bulbs hanging from a nail. With half of the short span already torn off and tucked into the pantry, it was safe to use without anyone losing their mind over Rey cannibalizing it. “Okay, not like they’re going to hang garlic in the pantry for decoration.”

Separating the cloves from the root of the bulb, Rey did a quick inventory. “Rice cooking. Hamburger browning. Onions already in. Some saved back. What the hell am I forgetting?”

“Depends on what you’re making.” Bear’s voice boomed behind him. A rattle of dog tags and toenails on hardwood floor warned Rey to brace himself as Earl scrambled into the kitchen, his hip catching the table in his eagerness to greet Rey.

The dog slammed into his legs, a long-legged powerhouse hit man with a scruff and long, damp tongue. Rey lost his balance, catching the counter with his elbow. Earl’s tongue slathered whatever the dog could reach, and he did a little hop before planting his front paws down on Rey’s bare feet. Hissing, Rey scratched at the dog’s massive head, pushing at one furry shoulder in the hopes of getting enough room to breathe.

“Earl, sit,” Bear ordered, and the dog planted his butt down, wriggling in place. “He’s trained, remember? Just tell him what you want him to do. Where’s Gus?”

“Upstairs, passed out. Got to the bridge and we talked a bit. It was hard for him this year. Or harder.” Rey stepped around the dog and grabbed a wooden spatula to stir the meat with. “Promised I’d have something for him to eat when he woke up—”

“Probably because of the kid,” he mused, stepping up to the stove and sniffing at the browning meat. Bear only had two inches on him, but the man’s breadth made Rey feel like an Oompa Loompa. “Whatcha making?”

“Chili. Seemed like the safest, because you guys have about fifty pounds of hamburger in the freezer and it’s one of the few things I know how to cook.” Stepping back, Rey nearly tripped over the dog’s outstretched leg, and Earl looked at him, his wide mouth curled up into a laughing smile.

“Chili’s good. It’s something Ivo’ll eat.” Bear shook his head. “Boy’s picky. He’ll eat balut but won’t touch a pork chop. We’ve got franks in the freezer too. He’ll eat a chili dog if it’s got sour cream on it. What do you need me to do?”

“I could use some of that garlic peeled and chopped while you lecture me about how I should leave him the hell alone.” Rey put the spatula down, then nudged Earl with his foot. “If the dog doesn’t kill me first. You gotta move, boy.”

Teasing Gus’s older brother was probably one of the dumber things he’d ever done, but the slight poke got him a half smile, a peek of shared humor from behind Bear’s trimmed, dark beard. Lines crinkled around his midnight-blue eyes, and he ordered the canine to lie down on a dog bed at the far end of the kitchen, turning on the faucet to wash his hands. Earl schlepped over, sighing dramatically as he flopped down into the soft bed.

Bear was hands-down the scariest man Rey knew. There was something about the massive, taciturn self-appointed patriarch that unnerved him. There weren’t a lot of years separating them—maybe a handful—but Bear wore decades of authority and strength on his broad shoulders. He was a king among broken princes, sheltering his gathered-up brothers while they healed and giving them room to make mistakes. Rey knew without a doubt there was a line somewhere that, when crossed, would open up Bear’s wrath, and that was a place he never hoped to be.

“I’m not going to lecture you, but I will help,” Bear finally said, drying his hands on a dish towel. After taking two plastic bowls out of a cabinet, he tossed the bulb in one, then covered it with the other. He picked up the bowls and shook vigorously while Rey puzzled over what the hell he was doing. After a few seconds, he set them down on the counter, took the top one off and picked out the peeled, separated cloves, then placed them on the chopping board Rey’d used for the onions. “Easier this way. Pass me the knife, and we can talk later about if I need to threaten you some more or welcome you to the family.”

They worked well together, moving out of each other’s way when space got too tight, and in typical Bear fashion, the older man remained silent, letting Rey pull together the chili without the back seat driving he usually got with Mace. The first taste of the chili was a powdery punch of dried peppers, cumin, and too-bright tomatoes, but Rey could see where it would end up in a couple of hours, smoothing out and mellowing as the flavors blended.

“Dishes are in the washer,” Bear rumbled from the open fridge door. “We can grate cheese later. I’ll tell Ivo he’s got to stop for sour cream if he wants some on his, or he can drain the whey out of some of the Greek yogurt. Tastes about the same. How about a beer? It’s after four o’clock. We can go sit in the family room.”

“Always figured so long as it was after noon, you were good to go.” Rey took the cold bottle of IPA Bear handed him.

“Fair enough. Come on. I’ve been on my feet the whole day. I’m ready to chill for a bit.” Clicking his tongue at the dog, Bear headed to the family room. Earl gave Rey a long assessing stare, then trotted after him, tail thumping a steady driving beat on the cabinets and doorway when he passed by.

“You are a judgy dog, Earl,” Rey said to the retreating canine’s back. “Worse than Mace with those looks.”

The family room was quiet when Rey eased himself down onto the sectional taking up a good part of the room. Bear was lounged in one of the corners, his feet resting on the ottoman and his arms flung over the back cushions, his beer held loosely in his left hand. Earl was on the floor, stretched out over a beanbag, his head and legs drooping over its sides.

Oddly enough, the television was off, and there were no other sounds in the room besides their breathing, Earl’s off-key snoring, and the ambient noise drifting in from the street on the other side of the house. A gleeful chopped-up conversation between two or three teenaged girls kept them company for a few seconds. Then someone jogged by, followed by a muted flurry of dog barks Earl didn’t seem to care about, his ear flicking once before he resumed his snoring.

“Hardest thing to get used to was Mace having something on all the time,” Rey finally said, reveling in the quiet. “He’s good about not blasting the TV or stereo, but he always needs… something, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, he does,” Bear agreed slowly. “Well, you know how it is. The noise helps. So does moving around. Better now that he’s got you playing tag with him in the morning, although I’m pretty sure people think you guys are insane. Two grown men chasing each other around Chinatown.”

“I don’t think anyone notices.” Rey recalled a run involving cops and a woman with a rolling pin wielding a deadly aim with a couple of raw chicken thighs. “Well, nothing that gets us arrested, anyway. We’re going to go through everyone before we get to Gus? Because if we are, I’m going to get another beer so I’ll have a cold one when we get into it.”

“You’re the one who brought Mace up,” he reminded Rey, gesturing at him with his beer bottle. “Nothing much to say about Luke with you, and since Ivo’s doing your ink, I could talk about that, but we’re just going to end up back on Gus. We don’t have to talk about what he said on the bridge, because from the look on your face, I’m guessing he told you about what Melanie did and about Puck.”

Bear had a way of peeling back a man’s skin with a steady gaze and inscrutable expression. He could wait anyone out, a rock in the chaotic stream around him, and Rey was torn between heading back into the kitchen to check on the chili or confessing to everything he’d done since he was old enough to know when he was in trouble.

“I don’t know what to do with all of it,” he admitted, lowering his voice. The guilt Gus carried around staggered Rey, and sitting in the brothers’ family room, surrounded by the bits of their accomplishments, he realized how far Gus had come from that day on the bridge. “She stole his innocence, you know? I mean, yeah you do because you were there for it, but—”

“I wasn’t there for it. Social Services kept us apart. I wasn’t allowed to see either one of them for a long while, and by the time someone finally let me see him, he was… it wasn’t good, Rey. They didn’t take care of him. Just tossed him into a couple of shitty homes and walked off.” Bear looked away, his mouth pulled in. Sitting up, he set his beer on the table behind the couch. “Those people didn’t do right by him. Or Ivo. They were little boys who’d lost their mother, and Gus, he lost a hell of a lot more. I just don’t want him to lose anything—anyone—else. Not when he’s finally trying to get his feet under him.”

“I’m not….” Rey took a breath, then a sip of beer. Wiping his mouth on his hand, he picked carefully through the words flaring up in his mind. “I could say what Gus and I get up to isn’t any of your business.”

“You could,” Bear agreed slowly, nodding. “But you know I picked up the pieces the last time, and it wasn’t pretty. It’s different now. He’s got Chris and you’re… steadier. Maybe living with Mace is good for you because you’ve had to compromise, learn how to adjust, being around someone a little wild.”

“Mace would argue about that.” Rey snorted. “He thinks he’s the stable one out of all of you.”

“That’s probably Luke. Mace is more… driven,” he conceded. “Mace’s climbed the farthest. He doesn’t want to go back. Gus… he doesn’t want to go forward.”

“We’re going to go forward. I don’t want to lose him again.” Shifting on the couch, Rey glanced up as the house creaked above them. “I love him, Bear. I do.”

“Sometimes that’s not enough.”

“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “He doesn’t trust me. Hell, he doesn’t trust anyone. I understand that now. I thought I did before but… after today, I understand why he’s scared inside, and I’m kind of pissed off at… a dead woman. I know she was your aunt—”

“She was a parasite,” Bear broke in. “The only reason she wanted me with her was because she got money from the trust to take care of me, and she lost that once they found out she was using the payments to fuel her growing drug habit. They were working to remove me from the moment CPS notified them they’d been to the apartment.”

“You didn’t want to go, did you? Because that meant leaving Gus and the others behind,” Rey speculated, nodding when Bear shrugged. “You were a kid too back then. And from what Gus says, you tried like hell.”

“Still couldn’t keep us together.” The older man leaned over, scratching Earl’s side. The dog’s tail beat a rapid tattoo on the floor. “I worry. Mostly about Gus. So you coming back in, I’m going to worry. And it’s not that I don’t like you—”

“But you’re tempted to grab me by the head and smash it like a grape?” He cocked his head, grinning when Bear chuckled. “If you want reassurance I’m not going to screw this up, I can’t give that to you. Wish I could, but I can only promise I’ll try, and that promise is Gus’s, not yours.”

Bear stretched his hands out, studying his fingernails or maybe a dot of ink only he could see. Rey’d been mostly joking about the head-squishing, but the idea didn’t seem very far from Bear’s thoughts. Or for all he knew, the other man was contemplating how the price of tea in China was affected by a butterfly flapping its wings. The silence grew between them, an uncomfortable glacial drift icing over their words and the camaraderie they’d built up over the years.

“Gus is stronger than a lot of people give him credit for, you included,” Bear finally murmured, looking up to meet Rey’s gaze. “He’d be the first one to tell me to fuck off for getting in between the two of you and that’s a good thing, that confidence, even if we both know a lot of that is him barking to warn us off. I know you care for him. Even Mace can see that. I’m not asking for a promise. I’m asking for your patience. The last time you guys were together, it was pretty much a bit of food and fucking. Both of you are going to need more than that.

“Spend some time with him. Do things together. Sex is great but… if you’re going to go for the long haul, build a foundation under you.” He chuckled again, a throaty roll of amused thunder. “Hell, date. And when the system comes after him and wants him to toe the line so he can see Chris, remind him why it’s worth it. You’ve got a good family. I’ve heard you talk about your stepdad. I’d love to see Gus have that kind of relationship with his son. I’m depending on you for that. Just love him, Rey. Teach him caring about someone and trusting them doesn’t make him weak. It’s what I’ve been telling him all along, but it hasn’t quite sunk in yet. Maybe with you, he’ll finally see it.”

“That I can promise you, man.” Rey saw a gauntlet of interrogations stretching out before him. “Am I going to have to go through this with all of you? Because if I am, I’d like to spread it out over a couple of weeks. Maybe Mace next because I can take him, and he’s the scariest one after you.”

“No, just me. I drew the short straw,” Bear said, reaching for his beer again. “And Mace isn’t the one you should worry about, because if Luke’d lost the draw, he’d planned to shoot you in the back of the head and bury you in a deep hole. It’s always the quiet ones you’ve got to worry about, Rey. Always the quiet ones.”