Four

“YOU GOT a new office. It’s… bigger.” It wasn’t like Luke didn’t know he’d gotten a new office, but still the change was a bit of a shock. Gone were the comfortable couches and bookcases with toys and other child debris. In their place was something more akin to a lawyer’s office, which—considering Luke—wasn’t off the mark, but it wasn’t… Luke. “Classier. Sort of. Makes it look like they pay child advocates a hell of a lot of money.”

Luke’s snort sounded exactly the same as it did when they were kids, lying awake at night in their shared bed and whisper-arguing about which superhero would make a better dad.

Like they’d known anything about dads.

There was a sliver of a window running up along the top of the outer wall, nothing to see out of, but it flooded the room with natural light. The room itself was a study of traditional furniture and masculine colors, with a lush navy-blue carpet, a pair of sleek leather couches, and a wall of built-in shelves brimming with awards, odd bits, and a mini library of psychology and family law books.

The office was oddly quiet, despite the yard packed with noisy children right outside its wall, and so very formal… too formal for the little boy who protected Gus from the dark, but standing in the middle of it, Luke seemed to fit. Despite the casual clothes and tattoos, there was power about his brother, an invisible cape of authority he wore, and Gus grinned, remembering how they’d played at being superheroes, wearing clothespinned towels around their necks in the afternoons after school.

It seemed Luke never really took off his cape, where Gus’s fell away and he’d walked all over it when he’d turned his back on his childhood.

Luke’s old beat-up metal desk was missing, replaced by a thick-legged wooden monstrosity with lions’ claw feet and heavy iron pulls on its drawers. There was a hint of Bear on it, especially since the desk’s stain looked remarkably similar to the honey-red brown they’d used on the newels back at the house. He also recognized the painting above a credenza behind the desk as something Ivo’d done, a hard-drag of acrylics on thick canvas, a mix of odd colors slashed together to form an impressionistic rendering of Chinatown.

Gus debated if the twist in his chest was jealousy while staring up at the nearly six-foot painting. Then he turned and had to swallow a thick lump in his throat when he spotted a black picture frame on Luke’s desk holding a matted watercolor he’d done in grays and blues of their five faces, something he’d done to practice rendering portraits before inking a final. There were still light traces of pencil marks visible through the paler washes of color. The painting’s paper, while thick, would have torn too much and soaked in more of the medium if he’d erased them, too uncontrollable of a state for Gus’s liking.

He’d painted the piece when they were much younger, when he’d been on the brink of ending his apprenticeship with Nakamura and Ivo was just beginning his under Bear. They’d been so damned young but steeped in cynicism and wariness. There should have been more innocence, more enthusiasm in their faces, but Gus’d painted what he’d seen, what he’d felt… relief. It’d been a point in all their lives when they’d finally been able to exhale, free of a soul-grinding foster system but not quite steady on their own two feet. He’d put their eldest brother in the middle, a three-quarter profile of his scarred, rugged features, and placed Ivo on the far left side with Mason, while a youthful Luke sat between him and Bear, a cunning but wise expression on his boyish Latino face.

He might have been a little bit older, but Luke hadn’t changed much. Not by a long shot. He was still the most idealistic of them, wading into battles even Bear didn’t have the strength for, and Gus admired the hell out of him, even while hating to admit he still needed Luke to fight the demons he’d buried deep inside.

Skimming his finger over the frame, Gus murmured, “I didn’t know you’d kept that.”

“Why wouldn’t I keep that?” Luke replied, a gentle push of soothing tinted with an unspoken tsk. “I’d never ever throw us away.”

“You’d be the first.” He caught Luke’s raised eyebrow out of the corner of his eye. “Okay, not Bear.”

“Never Bear,” his adopted twin agreed.

Twirling his finger around toward the walls, Gus asked, “Where’s all the stuff? The kid stuff?”

“It’s still around. It’s just in another room. I thought it would be easier on me and the kids if we didn’t have those kind of talks in my office. They need a safe place away from adult things, and that way I have some kind of separation from the things that they share. It’s hard to do paperwork when I’m sitting in the remains of someone else’s nightmares.” Luke perched on a corner of the behemoth sucking up nearly a third of the office’s floor space, ankles crossed and his hands draped over the desk’s edge. “You want to talk here? Or in the kids’ rooms? Chairs are shorter there, but there’s beanbags and juice boxes. Might even be a bag of cookies or something if you’re lucky, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’d probably rather have coffee.”

Gus snorted, pushing at Luke’s shoulder when he passed by him. “I didn’t come here to get my head scraped.”

“Yes, you did. If you hadn’t, you would have just called me up and said let’s have lunch.” His brother’s dark eyes saw too much, peeled back too much for Gus’s comfort. “Instead you drive down here to talk to me. So that tells me, Gus, you did come here to get your head scraped. Do you want to talk in here, or do you want to go get something to eat and talk there? And before you start with you don’t have time for my shit nonsense, I have a full staff today and no appointments I can’t reschedule, so not only have time but I made time. So, do you want to talk?”

He didn’t have the words he needed to make Luke understand the scrabbling anxiety welling out from his spine and at the back of his head. Maybe in time or perhaps never. Maybe if he wasn’t staring up at his younger brother’s genius with a palette knife and three-dollar tubes of acrylic, reminding Gus he’d never be as good as he wanted to be, would never be on top of anything other than the trouble he landed himself into.

There was a burgeoning ache inside of him, one he’d thought he could leave behind when he’d climbed on his bike six months before and left the city as a speck in his rearview mirrors. The push on his belly, the bulge of something heavy in his chest merely grew, expanding out until Gus felt like his skin would burst under the pressure. It needed to break, and the closer he got to when he’d lost Puck, the heavier the tightness got, leaving him to wonder if he’d survive when it finally did give way or if he’d drown in its rank waters.

“Yeah,” he whispered, touching the frame on Luke’s desk once more, desperate for something solid underneath him. “Let’s talk.”

THEY ENDED up in the kids’ room.

It was cozy, walls ringed with shelves packed with all of the things Gus’d expected to find in Luke’s office. There was space now for what looked like an arts and crafts table, and the seating ran to cushions, beanbags, and a couple of hippie-style chairs Gus secretly coveted for the house’s back patio.

Luke’d been right. The beanbags were awesome, even the enormous pink furry one Gus flung himself into while his brother secured them a couple of coffees. The fur got into his nose, and he’d gotten into a more sedate blue leather double papasan when Luke came into the room.

“You’ve got fuzz on your chest.” Luke jerked his chin up, glancing at Gus’s forehead. “And in your hair. Should have told you that damned thing sheds.”

“Jesus. Great.” Gus worked his jacket off, then slid it to the floor. Ruffling his fingers through his hair, he grimaced at the bits of pink fiber wafting from his head. Taking the coffee Luke held out for him, he waited for his brother to climb onto the chair next to him. Instead Luke stood in front of him, assessing him with an inscrutable look on his face. “What? There’s more?”

“You’re clear,” he said, giving his head a small shake. “I was just wondering if I should sit with you or give you some distance. Might be easier to talk if I was across in another chair. Sometimes it is. What do you want to do?”

“Walk out of here and avoid all of this but… I’ve been doing that too much, you know?” His reply was gentle, but something in it stung, Luke because he softened his expression. “I think I need… I don’t know what I need, man. Maybe just start off here, and if it gets too much, I’ll tell you. Okay?”

“Deal. Hold my coffee.” Luke passed him the other cup, laughing as he toed off his sneakers. “And that’s nothing like hold my beer.”

It took a bit of shifting and a couple of swear words. The papasan wasn’t as large as a couch, more of a crumpled love seat, and Gus’s long legs became a problem until he tucked them on either side of Luke’s body, letting his brother’s rest across his knees so they sat together to form a wonky X. Nudging Gus’s calf with his sock-covered foot, Luke motioned for his cup back, then peered into it before taking a sip.

“Not like I spat in it. You were right fucking here, dude,” Gus teased.

“I add cream and sugar. You drink it black.” Taking a long sip, Luke eased into the chair’s curved-up side. “Okay. Damn, I should have asked if you ate. I’ve got… brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts and some of those orange crackers with fake cheese in them. There might be a bean burrito in the freezer, but it’s been there so long I had to make it an employee and give it benefits.”

“No, I’m good,” Gus refused, hoisting his mug in a salute. “But good choice on the Pop-Tarts.”

“Only the best.” Luke’s face went serious, and Gus got nudged again, this time in the ribs. “Talk to me, Goose.”

“God, don’t start calling me that. The kid’ll pick up on it and I won’t hear the end of it.” Hearing an old nickname, one whispered after the lights had been turned off in a too-small room, grabbed at Gus’s chest. His eyes stung a bit, tears doing more than threatening to fall. A drop ran down his cheek, and he pulled in his lips, refusing to let the well of tightness in his throat loose. “I don’t know what to tell you, man. I just feel like I need to do something. Be something. I don’t know if it’s because I’m staring down thirty and I’ve got nowhere to go but where I’ve been before and… there’s nothing there for me.”

Luke protested, hot on Gus’s heels. “You know that’s not true.”

“So fricking true,” he retorted. “Shit, I can’t even get the damned dog I rescued to love me. Stupid thing took one look at Bear and that’s all she wrote. No one fucking chooses me, Luke. I’m good enough to fuck, but when I roll over in the morning, bed’s empty… and sometimes, so’s my wallet. I just don’t know… what to say.”

“Then we sit here until you do.” Luke wiggled back into the plush cushion. “Or you don’t. We can just sit here, Goose. Whatever you want to do. Whatever you need. The day is yours.”

It took a little over an hour, a box of colored pencils, and a pulp-paper children’s sketch pad before Gus found the flat of his tongue itching to be rid of the words piling up on it. There was a silence between them—not really a nothingness—but instead a splash of sounds coming from Luke shifting on the cushion, its chenille fabric squeaking slightly with the movement of his jeans.

The walls changed colors with the drifting sun, going from a light sage to a bright celery, the light picking the yellow out of the paint. His heartbeat slowed, and the shapes on the page turned into faces, faded memories of people he’d met when they’d been shuffled through their childhood. A blink later—or it could have been fifteen minutes—and Gus found himself curling hair strands around his mother’s face, his mind and fingers capturing the wildness of her eyes when she’d fallen into one of her moods.

The words came slowly… haltingly… but they tumbled free, driven out by the echo of his mother’s voice rattling around in his thoughts and her screaming his name the last time he ever saw her.

“I put you where Puck used to be. Because… there was a hole, you know?” Gus turned the page. Staring at his mother, Melanie, was too hard on his brain, and he picked out another pencil from the box, a larkspur-caught-in-a-sunbeam kind of color. Letting his fingers go where they wanted, he found Luke’s face in his thoughts, scribing out his brother’s strong jaw. “And you… fit. Well, not really. You weren’t… like Puck.” He made a face at Luke’s snort. “Seriously, my mom raised assholes. I mean, not Bear because he was already more of an adult than Melanie when he got to us, but me, Ivo, and Puck? Assholes. He’d wanted to be with us because we were his cousins, but when he got there, his brain exploded. We were like fucking animals, and man, he tried so damned hard to get us straightened up.”

“I don’t think he ever stopped trying to do that, Gus,” Luke said, chuckling.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll give you that.” He grinned ruefully. “I think he was kind of relieved when CPS took us all away from her later. He was the first person who gave a shit about how I acted and tried to do something about it. You, brother, were the second.”

It was easier speaking to Luke’s scribbled face. He couldn’t see any pity or judgment in his brother’s eyes. He couldn’t face the very real possibility of condemnation creeping into Luke’s expression. Not when he unraveled everything he held inside of him, finally committed to following the broken twine he’d used to mark his way out of the labyrinth he’d built around himself.

“God, I had so many fucking questions then.” Brushing back the confused frustration in his mind, Gus pressed on, his fingers snatching up a line of Ivo’s nose, filling in a bit of space next to Luke’s forehead. “It hurt to think, and I… fuck—”

“What kind of questions?” Luke prodded gently, a soft feathering touch of words on the lightning shattering Gus’s calm. “Talk through it, dude. Find the end of it.”

“I don’t know… shit… stupid crap like… why Puck? He was so much damned smarter than me. Like crazy smart. That’s why you reminded me of him, because he could look at things and figure them out. Sure, I could draw a damned apple, but he could tell you crap about it right off the top of his head.” It was still odd not to see his own face on someone else. To watch his own expressions play through thoughts hidden in a mind so much like his own, they might have been sharing a single brain. “He just couldn’t not be a dick. Luke, Puck was such an asshole—we both were—but he always took it too far. One time I thought Bear was going to punch his face in, but Mom—Melanie—she stepped in. He’d pick on Ivo and be a dick to Bear but… I’ve got to wonder why he… why she…. He should be here, you know? Of the two of us, he had a better chance of turning out to be something, even if he was a bratty kid.”

“First off, you both were kids then. Kids aren’t nice, Gus. Most are maniacal, hyper assholes trying to figure out what the hell is going on in the world. Everyone seems to have answers to shit they don’t understand, but no one’s sharing info or changing the rules when they think they’ve got stuff down….” A nudge of Luke’s toes on his side brought Gus’s head up, and Luke’s gaze stripped him down to the bone, ripping away any pretense Gus threw up between them. “You guys were normal, especially considering what you were living through. And as for Puck being worth more than you, even without knowing him I’m going to tell you that’s bullshit. I wouldn’t trade you for the damned world, and I’m sorry he’s not here with you. You’re my brother now. I’m not willing to give that up.”

Gus put a hand on Luke’s foot and squeezed his toes. He hadn’t realized how much he missed sitting with Luke, even when they did nothing other than watch television or read a book—or at least Luke read while Gus sketched—but he shouldn’t have forgotten how grounding it was. Right up until the moment when Luke opened his mouth to pry secrets out of him and for the life of him, Gus couldn’t stop telling Luke everything he wanted to know.

“Dude, you were not an asshole. Most of the time.” Gus pressed his own feet down against the cushion before Luke got any ideas on tickling his soles. “You were like a slice of Bear I needed when I couldn’t find him.”

“It’s all relative. There were other ways it leaked out of me. I had my own shit to deal with. Still dealing with,” Luke replied. “But we’re not talking about me. This is about you and… what else? Coming back home? Working at the shop again?” Then Luke picked at the scab Gus desperately wanted him to avoid. “Or Rey? Did Mason say something to you?”

“Fuck, when doesn’t Mace say something to me?” he shot back. His coffee went cold long ago, but it was still a welcome swallow of bitter he could use to wash Mace’s name out of his mouth. Putting his cup back down on the short bookshelf next to the chair, Gus confessed, “I can’t… deal with Rey right now. I don’t know how I’m going to feel seeing him again. And I know I’m going to. He’s getting work down at the shop, so we’re going to cross, and… fuck, it’s going to be some kind of sports season soon, so he’ll be at the house.”

Rey Montenegro lingered at the edges of his existence, a shadow of a life Gus could have had if only… he’d been someone Rey wanted in his world. If anything, that hurt the most. Standing in the middle of an encroaching darkness with razor sharp teeth while the man he’d dared to dream about cranked the monster’s maw closed with every word he apologetically murmured. His heart stopped when the bite hit, when Gus realized… finally heard… what Rey’d been saying.

The final inch of the monster’s jaw closed when Rey whispered, It’s not that I don’t want you, it’s that… we want other things. Need other things in our lives and I can’t… be what you want, Gus. I’m not… like you. I want that damned house with kids. I need someone who….

Gus stopped listening after that, stumbling from the room, or maybe he’d flung out something harshly edged and hurtful. He couldn’t remember what hateful things he found in his pain, but he’d found them, using them to stab at Rey, hooking into his lover’s flesh with his sharp tongue. Then his feet moved on their own, taking Gus far away from where he’d been gutted, and his soul lay bleeding out for Rey to suck from the last of its tattered flesh. He couldn’t even recall where he eventually ended up other than noise, music, and booze. It’d been either a club or some party he’d blown off to be with Rey. Either way, he’d mostly remembered the death of his relationship and the damned burden of still loving the man who’d killed it.

At least it was all he’d remembered until that phone call he got on the road and his once oblivious mind gleefully found the shards of memory it’d stashed away, filling in the gaps of what happened that horrific, heartbreaking night.

“Not to sound like one of my teenagers, but do you want Mason to not bring Rey around?” Luke offered gently. “You’ve got to tell us what you need, man. We’re not going to know what to do or what to say unless you tell us.”

“Rey’s… I’m not going to say he’s not a problem, because damn, you know he is. I can’t shake that fucker loose, no matter what I do,” Gus admitted, hating himself for saying out loud what he’d been denying since the moment he rode out of the city. “I was out there, trying to get away from the shit I’d left behind, but my brain just kept driving me back here, telling me to get more serious about what I want to do, what I’m inking… hell, to take a look at why the fuck me and not Puck. Just… everything, including Rey.”

“So you take some time and figure it out,” Luke proposed. “Do things at your own pace. You’ve got a place at the shop, and it’s not like Bear’s going to evict you from the house. If you don’t want to be there when Rey’s coming over, you can hang at my place—”

“Luke… man… I can’t live my life avoiding Rey. I didn’t leave because he came around the house. I left because it felt like I couldn’t be enough of anything for anyone, like I was always falling short.” Gus took a deep breath, the coffee in his gut going sour and acidic, flirting with purging itself from Gus along with the reality he’d been running from since Los Angeles. “I let Rey down without even fucking trying, and God knows how many times I’ve let Bear down.”

“Bear—”

“Yeah, I’ve let Bear down, Luke. You have no fucking idea how much I’ve let him down.” The coffee was a real threat now, edging its way up to Gus’s throat, and he swallowed so he could spit out the truth of why he’d come home to the man he knew he could always count on, even when the world seemed its darkest. “The night Rey told me to get the fuck out of his life, I went out, got rip-assed drunk, and hooked up with some chick—no, not some chick—Jules, and she got… fuck, Luke… I’ve got a kid, man. A little boy named Chris and I have no fucking idea about what to do.”