Everything Carries Me to You (Axton and Leander Book 3) (22 page)

"Yeah, see," New York said smugly, seeing how Leander was gazing thoughtfully at the folder of tantalizing data. "Can't argue with results, bitch."

"Will you be able to sleep tonight?" Leander asked.

New York pulled his sunglasses down a notch, letting Leander see, for the first time, that deep eye bags cut into his face, hanging past his high cheekbones, and that his eyes were bloodshot. His knee was still bouncing up and down to some internal, demanding rhythm, infernal and unceasing, but exposing his eyes made him look exhausted.

You could never tell--New York easily wore sunglasses at night or indoors so often that the presence of shades wasn't proof of anything one way or another. It was hard to distinguish the times he was sincerely and unintentionally a douchebag from the times he was merely pretending to be a douchebag.

"I've been up for fifty something hours," New York said, "and it's not like I was sleeping regularly before then."

"What are you coming down from?" Leander asked.

"What's that matter?" New York asked. "You're not a doctor. You're not a user, either. No book knowledge, no personal experience: it's not like you're going to know what to gently taper me off on. And I'm not going to hit this adventure all the way sober. You trust me to trip responsibly. Gimme."

"I swear to god," Leander muttered. "One day,
one
day, I'm gonna--"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," New York said.

"Fine, go rummage through my medicine cabinet. Try not to kill yourself on my watch."

"I'll try to not demolish your stash all at once."

Thirty minutes later, New York was blissfully passed out and drooling on the couch while Leander thumbed through the profiles of potential werewolf settlements.

Where was Axton most likely to be? Where would werewolves put homosexual or interspecies sex rehabilitation camps? Or--and Leander suspected this was more likely--where would Dana take Axton to hide? Leander was secretly convinced that Dana's agenda was intensely
personal
in a way that Axton had refused to understand.

Dana's accent offered no geographical insight; he had a general blue collar diction that shaded into mild faux Texan, like many wannabe cowboys. Leander's own diction and accent pegged him as solidly West Coast American; it was irritating that Dana had either deliberately concealed or accidently muddled his origins so thoroughly.

How to confirm or deny the presence of Axton in so many potential places?

"Why are you in two hoodies plus the leather jacket?" Leander asked suspiciously in the morning. "It's seventy five degrees out."

"Chills, man," New York said. "Let's wheel you out of here so I can get some breakfast."

It was oddly soothing. Leander had piles of data to go through, and having another person in the apartment was somehow reassuring. Leander hadn't noticed the general sense of emptiness, because he was so fixated on the
specific
emptiness that extended beyond the physical. It wasn't just that the apartment was too quiet; it was that the apartment didn't have Axton in it.

New York didn't fix the real problem by passing out on the couch, but his bizarre sleep murmurs did break up the silence.

Nearly a full minute passed. Leander kept on staring.

"Why," he asked finally, "are you fully clothed, sitting in my bathtub, eating Pop Tarts?"

It was first thing in the morning. It was too early for this shit.

"The shower chair is pretty comfortable," New York said, which had to be a lie, given how he was hunched over his breakfast pastry box. He looked like a gangly gargoyle that happened to be clutching a religious artifact made of rainbow sprinkles.

"Since when do you even eat Pop Tarts?" Leander asked. New York was notoriously strange about food.

"I dunno," New York said vaguely. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. I woke up at 5 AM and was too twitchy to stay still, so I walked to the bodega across the street, and, boom, Pop Tarts."

"Get out of my bathroom," Leander said.

"In a minute," New York said. He chewed. "What's it like?"

Leander gave him a tired look.

"What's what like?" he asked, though he suspected he knew.

"The chair," New York said. "The injury. All the physical stuff."

"Peachy fucking keen," Leander said. "It's been just dandy."

New York waited, and then held out an opened silver packet containing two Pop Tarts.

Leander accepted.

"It sucks and I hate it," Leander said, after he unwrapped his peace offering and took a bite.

New York chewed and nodded encouragingly.

"The chair makes the back of my thighs all sweaty," Leander said, at length. "Sitting all the time hurts, I feel ridiculously out of shape, I knock my legs into things every goddamn day, my muscles cramp up all the time, and I hate asking people for things."

"You dismissed your home health aide early, though," New York said.

"How do you know that?"

"I looked at your insurance paperwork, duh," New York said, "after I read your surgical reports."

"Of course you did," Leander said. To New York, rules were things that happened to other people.

"Why?" New York asked.

"I just didn't feel like I needed someone around that often," Leander said, "and I felt bad for how angry I was about it."

"No," New York said. "Why does asking people for things bother you, under the circumstances?"

"It would bother anyone," Leander said, "to suddenly be less independent."

"Well, yeah," New York said. "I'm not saying your reaction is weird. Just, like, actually think through it for a second. You're angry at whatshisface, who did this to you. Valid. You're angry at Axton--"

"I am not," Leander said.

"You are, though," New York said, peering over the top of his sunglasses. "At least a little."

"Shut up," Leander said.

"But why are you so angry at yourself?" New York asked.

"Because this shouldn't have happened," Leander said.

"Yeah. But why are you taking that out on--"

"Because I should have stopped it," Leander said suddenly. "Because I
knew
something bad was going to happen and I didn't stop it and now we're here and it's my fault." Leander took a deep breath and tried to hide his surprise at his own words.

"Okay, so," New York said slowly, "now that you said that out loud, can you tell how fucked up that sounds?"

"Get out of my bathroom," Leander said. "I came in here to piss and you're getting Pop Tart crumbs in my bathtub."

"You know I'm right, though," New York said easily. "You
are
angry with yourself, and you shouldn't be. You're too angry."

"Who the fuck are you to tell me about being too angry?" Leander asked, incredulous. "I once had to stop you from pulling a knife on a guy in a bar because he insulted your jacket."

"
Exactly
," New York said, pointing at Leander with a half-eaten Pop Tart.

"Get out," Leander said.

"I like it here," New York said. "Wheel yourself to the other bathroom."

"You are such an asshole," Leander said. "Get the fuck out of my tub."

"You can't blame yourself," New York went on, "for what happened. It's not your fault."

Leander wheeled himself out just so he wouldn't have to listen.

When New York finally crawled out of the tub at around noon, he was thankfully out of psychological insights to offer.

"I puked up the Pop Tarts," he announced. "And I'm going back to sleep. Do you have any more blankets? I'm cold again."

"Your schedule is fucked and you are the worst caretaker in the world," Leander said.

"You like it," New York said. "You like not being fussed over." He padded into the kitchen. "And you ate all the food I left at counter level, so fuck you."

"Let's not go to work this week," New York mumbled, muffled by how his face was pressed into the couch cushions.

The couch was command central.

"How are we justifying that?" Leander asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm the boss, I do what I want," New York said, surfacing for air.

"That is exactly the kind of attitude that makes you an asshole to work for," Leander said.

"Whatever," New York said. "I dumped all my work on Chicago."

"He's going to murder the shit out of us one day," Leander said, "with how often you do that."

"I thought
I
was most likely to snap and go all American Psycho."

"Not while you're melting into my couch," Leander pointed out.

"Oooh, don't talk about melting," New York said, rubbing his temples.

"If we're officially taking off, Sarah gets time off," Leander said.

"No, no," New York said. "We are
unofficially
taking off, because I formed an important focus group, and you and I are hard at work, so obviously Sarah must be, too."

"That's really stretching your credibility," Leander said.

"No, I wrote up a report on it already," New York said. "During my last manic episode. It's beautiful. We're a very productive focus group."

"We are going to get so fired one day," Leander said.

"But not this week," New York said.

"I don't know," Sarah said, over the phone. "It's kind of sweet, isn't it?"

"No," Leander said.

"I mean, he's crashing at your place to detox the week that you're supposed to graduate to crutches," Sarah said. "That's kind of cute, you know?"

"No," Leander said.

"It is," Sarah said. "It's so cute."

"It's really not," Leander said.

"Is he good to drive you?" Sarah asked.

"Not even remotely," Leander said.

It was late at night. New York's eyes were red rimmed but the sunglasses had finally come off. There was an empty coffee pot next to him.

"Okay, so," he said, an incessantly tapping finger placed over a map of Canada, "most of these are out in the boonies; that's the most obvious connection. Now what?"

"Now we need to observe, uh," Leander said, faltering.

"Observe what?" New York asked.

Leander coughed.

"Wildlife," he said.

"Okay," New York said, scrubbing at his face. "So. Send in people who routinely observe wildlife. Be unobtrusive."

"You're not going to ask what kind of wildlife?" Leander asked.

New York sighed and slumped back across the couch, rubbing his eyes harder.

"You could tell me we're looking for the fucking Loch Ness monster herself by this point," he mumbled, "and I'd be like, 'oh, okay. I didn't know your boyfriend had a dinosaur fetish.'"

"That's just because you were hallucinating those big snakes earlier," Leander said, "when you thought you were drowning."

"Do not," New York said, "talk about the snakes. Ever again."

Leander took a deep breath.

"Wolves," he said. "We're looking for wolves."

"Sarah is going to be really pissed at you, you realize," New York offered.

"For telling you first?" Leander asked.

"For thinking that you're doing her a favor," New York said, "by keeping her in the dark."

"A lot of people are pissed at me right now," Leander said.

"Sure, so let's make it worse," New York nodded. "Gotcha. So, wildlife, huh?"

Then, two days later, in the presence of Sarah since New York was busy puking in the clinic's bathroom stall, Leander officially graduated to crutches.

"It's on now," he muttered privately. "It is
so
on."

The nice thing about New York was that he was an asshole, but he wasn't an asshole when it counted, mostly. When Leander tried an overambitious speed and nearly slipped, New York was there, silent and catching Leander's arm in a grip fast and strong enough to hurt. Not a pause, not a blink, not a single comment--New York waited for Leander to adjust his footing and the position of his crutches and they ambled along like nothing had happened.

Later on he did call Leander several novel iterations of the word
pussy
, sometimes followed by the word
gimp
, but only in private, and only so that Leander could tell him how much of a dickbag asshole he was.

They bumped fists sleepily before parting ways for the night. No one ever mentioned how there were hotels nearby, and New York passed out on the couch again. He had accumulated a messy nest of sweaters and blankets, all of which he had drooled on at some point. It was kind of horrifying and a little endearing. There was going to be so much extra laundry to do when he left, Leander thought.

Exhausted from learning to maneuver all over again, Leander nonetheless stayed sleepless for some time longer, staring fixedly at the ceiling of his bedroom.

With friends around, the days were comparatively easy and getting easier.

But nights, nights were harder, and mornings were the worst of all.

Leander had tried to move his pillow to a more centrally located part of the bed, but still the yawning emptiness at his side sucked at him like a whirlpool. In the silence of the night, Leander's heart would not be distracted.

His muscles hurt in new and promising ways; the skin of his armpits was red and sensitive from the pressure of crutches. And yet Leander could feel only the throbbing of his broken heart, a metaphor made flesh that manifested as anxious tightness and pressure in his chest.

He did not say Axton's name. Leander tried to close his eyes against the urge to speak, to call out, because he knew there could be no answer.

His resolved lasted until his wakefulness was about to run out, and on the verge of sleep, unguarded and vulnerable, with eyebrows drawn together as if in pain, Leander's lips parted to murmur, "Axton--"

It cut off suddenly, as if even in his sleep Leander tried to stop calling out.

After a week, Leander was getting used to finding New York doing something strange and mildly inconvenient each morning. It was the new normal. Yet finding him still, standing by the window, waiting for sunrise, was the strangest of all. The pale grey of the new day had barely crept into the room, and in the pre-dawn shadows, New York looked too tall, too thin, too quiet, more specter than man.