Everything Carries Me to You (Axton and Leander Book 3) (60 page)

"I can't even hug you good bye," Dana said, arms crossed over his chest, looking anywhere but Axton. "You're the love of my goddamn life, you're leaving for good, I can't go after you, and I can't even hold you in my arms before you go, can't get the scent of you one last time."

"You
could
," Axton said, unexpected heat rising. It was a surprise, but Axton was still angry. "You
could
, Dana, but you won't, and that's your fucking
choice
. This is a prison of your own making. Most of yours are."

"Ain't that easy, Ax," Dana said, pushing off the car, "ain't never been that easy. Not for me."

They stood across from each other.

"I can't do this," Axton said. "I love him, Dana. He loves me. And he can play on our level, human or not. He's earned the right. Let me go."

"I ain't gonna stop you going," Dana said. "I can't. I told you: you won."

"Let me go from
here
," Axton said, and he took a step forward without thinking about it, to lay his hand over Dana's heart.

There was no one around, but their breath was cold and harsh in the air.

Slowly, Dana brought his right hand up, uncurling one finger at a time.

Axton recognized the rings on his fingers, delicate on his larger hands, as belonging to him, from years ago. The one's he'd chucked at Dana that night, after finding them in Dana's room. Keepsakes.

Dana placed his hand, delicately, over Axton's. His breath made his big chest rise and fall rhythmically. He pressed his hand against Axton's, and Axton's hand into his chest, until they could both feel the aching pulse of his heart.

"I'll let you go," he said, "but I'll love you until the day I die, Axton."

Dana brought Axton's hand to his lips, brushed his nose against Axton's skin. A deep breath to take the scent in, and then Dana kissed Axton's knuckles. Their hands dropped.

Axton's cheeks burned.

Dana nodded at him and then walked away without looking back.

Inside the car, Axton slumped over in the driver's seat, forehead pressed to the wheel.

"I need to get out of here," he said to no one in particular. "I need to get the fuck out of here."

His father. Dana. His mother. Everyone had a fucking revelation. Everyone had a secret. Axton just wanted the world to be uncomplicated for a while. He'd had years to grow scabs over those wounds, and now everyone wanted to scratch him open.

Fuck.

Leander was probably saying good bye to every damn wolf in the house.

Axton took a steadying breath.

Sometimes Dana could talk to a deep dark part of him, a part of Axton buried in a bottomless hole in his heart, someone who was still young and needy and who remembered falling to his knees the first time Dana smiled at him right. Axton was a different person now; he knew this, he welcomed it. Axton wouldn't have been that young and vulnerable again for all the money in the world, or all the mountains. Dana was now his
bested enemy
. That was exactly what Axton wanted him to be.

But sometimes Axton wished he could go back in time and talk to his younger self. Maybe one night when he'd been curled up on the couch, miserable at his taste in shitty not-even-boyfriends, maybe one of the nights nineteen year old Axton had cried himself to sleep over how profoundly unlovable he must be--

Axton dreamed of slipping through the dark to tell his younger self:
Shh, shh. He loves you. It doesn't matter. It's not enough. But he loves you. You don't need him, but he loves you. And he's not the only one. You'll turn out all right
.

Not that it would change anything.

It might have been nice to know, though.

But even now, remembering being in love with Dana just made him ache for Leander. Every cell of his being cried out for him like Axton was dying of thirst and Leander was the only water in the world.

Axton wiped his eyes--he refused to formerly acknowledge, even to himself, with words, that they might have been wet--and straightened up.

"Okay," he said. "Whew. Okay. Right."

He tried the keys. Absolutely nothing happened.

"Let's figure out what's wrong with this bastard."

++

By the time his lover wandered back outside, Axton was just about done--in a positive way. The car was going to run fine, and he'd gathered himself together. Just seeing Leander walk over made him smile.

"Yeah no," Leander was saying into his phone, "I got to do some TV lawyer shit and pull a surprise witness out of my ass."

Axton finished his adjustments under the car hood and listened idly.

"It was
totally
awesome," Leander confirmed. "You should do it sometime."

Axton shook his head but allowed himself to smile more, hidden by the hood.

"Also, like, super unrelated, but theoretically, would you be an ambassador of the human race, if it came up?" Leander asked. "Sure, I don't know. Maybe there's hot alien bitches. Probably really taboo, though. In theory. Hypothetically."

"As a completely random thought exercise," Axton added, under his breath.

"I think we would make a good team, too," Leander agreed smugly. He paused. "No, I told you, we don't need to be picked up in the tiny death trap plane. No. I don't know yet." Pause. "Right, yeah, that's a good idea. I'll ask him. Thanks."

Axton closed the car hood leisurely and waited.

"Babe," Leander said, after hanging up, "you wanna take a train?"

"Maybe," Axton allowed.

"It's expensive as a plane and slow as driving," Leander said cheerfully.

"I'm won over already," Axton said, deadpan, "but I assume there's a downside."

"Yeah, you can get your own little car or compartment or whatever, right," Leander said, "with beds in it. Or one bed. So like, it's a tiny hotel room, but on wheels."

"So you're saying we'll be stuck in bed," Axton said, "for days."

"Yeah, since it's as slow as driving."

"We'll be terribly bored," Axton said. "We might just have to resort to having sex, to pass the time."

"I'm afraid it might come to that," Leander agreed, nodding gravely.

"That's a sacrifice we'll just have to make," Axton said.

Safe behind a closed door, a wolf snoozed peacefully under a white hotel style sheet. Leander put up the little sign that politely asked to not be disturbed.

The rattling of wheels over rails beat out a strangely soothing rhythm, and soon Leander curled up around Axton and drifted off to sleep.

The proposed compromise was that they split the year: Leander kept his properties and went back to tending to the neighborhood and they both kept their Montana cabins, except that the two tracks of land officially became one. Since the Montana winters were inhospitable to Leander's tastes and Axton wanted a solid chunk of time to stay wolf without interruption, part of the split year plan involved a few snowy solo months. They would shuttle back and forth from the wilderness and out again, together or briefly apart. It should have sounded inefficient and stupid, but instead it seemed promising, potentially satisfying.

There was
just
enough long term relationship flavor to add a nice patina of longing to the seasons, and then they could jump madly into each other's arms again, their ardor agitated to new heights by the spice of this measured separation.

At least, that was the proposal. Before any of that could go into effect, they agreed to kick around in LA for a while. They needed some time to hash out the details before separating again.

Besides, there was a lot of sex to catch up on. You could only make so much noise on a train.

"We haven't been dancing in a while," Axton mentioned one night, casual-casual. Totally casual. Super casual. Casual. Yeah.

Leander didn't look up from his book.

"Correction: we haven't been dancing since the first time we went dancing, because we ran into your psycho ex-boyfriend, setting events in motion which--"

"Right, so what are the odds of that happening
again
?" Axton pointed out, and he flashed one of his quick, increasingly less rare grins.

"I am not going to the seediest gay bar in town," Leander said firmly. "I am not doing that again. I
knew
there was going to be a bar fight last time. I could feel it."

"Then pick somewhere else," Axton said, spreading his hands.

Leander finally looked up at Axton, and he narrowed his eyes in thought.

"I pick?" he asked.

"Sure," Axton said.

"We could go to my favorite bar," Leander said, "where I haven't been in forever and I'm friends with the fake-Scottish bouncer and the usual Saturday night DJ."

"You have a favorite bar?" Axton asked.

"I
did
, before shit went to shit and I had to turn into a grim faced man of action," Leander said. "Back when my life was, you know. Fun."

"My long suffering
hero
," Axton said, with a melodramatic sigh, even though--and it was not a secret between them--he did actually think of Leander in similar terms. They were being playful and sarcastic with each other now, though, so even usually sincere things were said mockingly. Accordingly, Axton said, in a very grave voice: "I bet they serve fancy cocktails there."

"
Yes
, all right, they serve fancy cocktails," Leander said. "My favorite involves egg whites."

"Of course it does," Axton said. "Of course you would want a drink with added protein in it."

"It's a traditional Latin American cocktail," Leander defended.

"Of course it is," Axton said. "Of course you like a bar that does cool versions of traditional international drinks. The type of bar that has a whole list of signature cocktails. And the bar will be hip but not too hip, not actually
trendy
, because it's not going to play any mainstream billboard top forty songs, and the bar will offer many different brands and ages of Scotch, and it's probably in a building that's interesting either historically or architecturally--"

"Yeah, okay," Leander said. "I'm a type. Point made. Will you go with me?"

"Just to check--it's not gay specific, right? I mean, why would it be, if it was your favorite from..."

"The grand Before Time," Leander supplied. "BC, maybe? Before Cock."

"Before Cock," Axton acquiesced, and then he added, thoughtfully, "and AD for After Dick? I think that works."

"Yeah." Leander put the faux-annoyed attitude away to study Axton carefully. "It's just a bar with a small dance floor. Just another LA night spot. Mixed crowd. Fancy drinks."

Axton hummed.

"Will you go there and dance with me?" Leander asked.

Axton cocked his head to the side.

Leander bounced an eyebrow up.

"Be the change you want to see in the world, Axton," he said, voice somewhere between truth and teasing.

"I have," Axton said, pensive. "I've done that."

"So do it some more," Leander said. "It counts even when it's not at great cost."

"Sometimes things are easy?" Axton asked, with a smile.

"Sometimes," Leander said.

"Like you and me?"

"It never had to be hard," Leander said. Call and response. It was one of their relationship refrains.

Axton drew closer, until he was less than an arm's length away. He looked down. Leander looked up. Without much conscious thought, their hands drifted together, touching in midair, fingers tangling slowly.

"I would love to go to your favorite bar," Axton said finally, "whenever you like. Now, if you want."

"Babe," Leander said, "it's Tuesday night. I work tomorrow."

"Oh." Axton hadn't gotten used to days of the week meaning anything yet. He'd gotten the hang of it before, but it was an easy thing for him to lose. "Saturday, maybe?"

"Sure," Leander said. "I'd like that."

Leander stared hard at his desk phone and willed it to ring.

Nothing. He snuck a look at the clock. A full thirty seconds passed.

With a sigh, Leander picked up the phone. You had to make things happen. That was the way of the world.

"Fuckface," he said, as soon as the line picked up. "I have a hot date this weekend and you don't."

"Oh?" New York asked, with a lazy archness. Leander could picture his feet up on a desk. "What's this? Is this a challenge?"

New York had a hot date every weekend; often, he had several. Some were scheduled at overlapping times. New York partied every weekend unless he aggressively carved time out for staying home and quietly taking psychedelics in pursuit of a shamanic experience. Clearing his schedule like that took effort.

Leander knew that New York knew that
he
knew this.

"Yeah, so, fuck you," Leander tried.

"Well if that's how you're going to be, dick mouth, I'll just have to fly over to show you how it's done. Venue? Time?"

"Saturday night. The bar I like, with the really good pisco sour."

"The extra egg whites one?"

"Last I checked."

"Owned by the mother-daughter team with the tattoos?"

"Yeah, them. That one."

There was a pause.

"You know you could just ask for back up, right?" New York said. "We've had this discussion."

"Fuck you," Leander said, and he hung up the phone, rattled.

What were the odds that something bad would happen? Impossibly low. And if something did happen, wouldn't his bulletproof boyfriend be a better choice for back up?

Leander's shins throbbed in troubled unison. It didn't hurt, exactly, but Dana had left him with a fun little psychosomatic tick.

Whatever. New York's main benefit was psychological. Leander didn't really think anything bad would happen.

Probably.

God, why did Sarah have to be on vacation? He needed someone to soothe his nerves and bring him a coffee without asking so he didn't feel like a jerk.

Ten minutes later Leander was e mailing her to see when she was getting back from Greece. It was this weekend, but
when
this weekend?