Promise Rock 03 - Living Promises (MM) (30 page)

Crick: Not a Gambling Man

S
EVENTEEN
years earlier, Deacon Winters had been the prettiest boy a young Carrick James Francis had ever seen in his life—so pretty, in fact, that he'd even eclipsed the beautiful horse he'd been working in the dusty ring that hot summer day.

He'd been golden, like a god, and patient, and soft spoken. Carrick had never guessed at the almost paralyzing shyness behind that quiet exterior, or the painful vulnerability. He'd never thought his golden god would succumb to alcohol—or have the strength to claw himself out of that pit for love and love alone.

He didn't know that his golden god was recovering from mono at the time, and that his body was still weak and not quite functioning at optimal level. He didn't know that his god's father had a weak heart, and that the loss of Parrish Winters would wound his vulnerable son deeply. He didn't know that the alcohol and the stress, the weight loss and the everyday cold-palm sweat that was Deacon's life talking to strangers, and even to the friends that made up their family, would take their toll.

The one thing he'd loved about Deacon, would always love about Deacon, was his strong, great, generous, golden god's heart.
The one thing that had betrayed them both was the simple fragility of the weakened human organ that powered the living cage of his soul.
The idea that Crick's golden god, who had loved him so simply and so faithfully even as boys and young men, was mortal, that the living cage might someday disintegrate and the soul that Crick was bound to would expand to brighten the larger universe was….
It was a thousand thousand bound, excoriated, flayed, dismembered, bloody, bloody, bloody hells.
And Crick was not okay.
He'd gone home to shower and to take care of the horses and then, supposedly, to sleep. But the horses had been taken care of by the time he got there, and by the time he got out of the shower, his house was full of family. Martin was asleep in Benny's bed, and Benny and Andrew were asleep in his and Deacon's bed (Benny under the covers, hugging Deacon's pillow, Drew tucked chastely under an afghan, which would probably amuse Deacon to no end), and Amy was in the kitchen, working off all of her worry while Jon played with the babies.
Crick showered, looked helplessly around the only house he'd ever really considered his home, and said, to no one in particular, “I can't stay here when he's not here. I'll be back in time for dinner,” and then he bailed, bailed on their family, on his responsibility to keep them together, on everything Deacon had told him to live for and to keep going for. Crick bailed on all of it, not even waiting for an answer to see if any of the people he loved would understand.
He ended up at the hospital, staring with longing at the heart of his home.
Deacon was asleep, but his Crick-sense must have been tingling, because he opened his pretty green eyes and smiled faintly at Crick hovering at the doorway.
“Don't you have a house full of people?” he slurred, and Crick grimaced. That was Deacon—responsibility to the bone.
“Yeah, but there's only one I really wanted to see.”
Deacon closed his eyes, but his smile deepened. “I'm glad.”
Crick pulled a chair up to Deacon's bed and dropped in it, suddenly feeling the thirty-six hours without sleep and the fifteen hours of bonedraining worry. “I don't have words right now,” he apologized. “I….”
Deacon's hand made a restless movement, and Crick captured it. “'S'okay,” Deacon mumbled, and Crick pulled the hand—careful of the IV trickling in and the heart monitor wires that he bumped as he moved Deacon's arm—and held it up to his face.
“Yeah, you stubborn asshole,” he muttered. “You're going to be okay. You keep telling me that. The doctor's even told me that. But… God, Deacon. I don't think I'll be okay. You almost died, and I don't think I'll be okay ever again.” His tears made glossy tracks on that calloused, roughened, workaday hand, and Deacon's fingers tightened on his.
“Maybe our thirties will be better,” he mumbled, and Crick felt a hysterical laugh welling up in his chest.
“First you've got to make it to thirty,” he giggled, and Deacon's chest made a little rise and fall, even though his eyes were still closed. Deacon's birthday was in two weeks. He'd be twenty-nine.
“Better chance now,” Deacon said. “The pacemaker's got at least five years on it.”
Crick looked up to the bandage site on Deacon's bare chest. It had been shaved and disinfected and was so small. Crick could see the swelling where the tiny device had been implanted, and if it wouldn't have hurt like hell, he would have kissed it reverently. Oh, blessed, blessed technology that gave Deacon more time on the planet.
“I want to go on another vacation,” Crick said out of the blue. “I want to take you to the ocean and let you see whales. I want to go somewhere you've never seen before and watch your face light up as you see it. I want… I want to watch you coach Parry Angel's soccer team when she's five, and I want you to be the one to walk Benny down the aisle. I want to see you in the ring at least once a day this summer, because you're so beautiful when you work horses, it's like watching magic happen, right there in front of my eyes. God, Deacon… there's so much I want for us… I just need you to not ever do this again, okay?”
Deacon's chest rose and fell deliberately. “Is sex included in any of that?” he asked plaintively, and Crick got used to the hysterical sound of his own laughter.
“Every goddamned day. You have a moral obligation to make sure I walk funny for the rest of our lives, okay?”
“Awesome.” He took another deliberate breath, and Crick realized it had been a hell of a day.
“I should leave.”
That hand tightened. “Don't go.”
Crick felt the tears come back, when he thought they'd about dried up. “After everything you did to stay with me, it's the least I can do.”
“Talk to me,” Deacon mumbled. “I may not talk a lot back, but I want to hear.”
So Crick talked. He told Deacon about Benny and Andrew, so tentative, so unassuming, and how the whole family was holding its breath with hope for them. He talked about Amy and Benny, making sure they all gathered around the table to give thanks for each other, and how Jon had been watching cartoons with the little girls as he'd left.
He talked about Jeff.
“I can't imagine,” he said after a moment. “I can't imagine how hard today was on him. And then… he just… he came unglued. And he was furious. And at first I thought he was furious at you, because I was furious at you, and then….” Crick couldn't look at Deacon for this part. He laid his head on the bed and kept stroking that quiescent, workroughened hand.
“It was all about Kevin, you know? And I realized that what Kevin did… how he died… you lived with that fear for two years. I almost did that to you. And Jeff… he'd lived through our worst fears. I couldn't take it, Deacon. I know I promised I'd hold together, I'd keep the family together, but I can't do it. I can't be you, I can't be Jeff. If you didn't pull through, I would have fallen apart, and I would have let you down….”
It wasn't just tears this time. Crick couldn't remember sobbing so hard since his best friend had died in high school. God. Just… oh… Jesus. For that moment, as he unburdened himself on a man who'd just had heart surgery, he felt so small, so weak, and so alone.
And then he felt Deacon's hand in his hair, stroking softly. “Don't cry, baby. You'll be okay.”
“I love you, Deacon.”
“I love you too.”
“I'm not joking about forever.” His voice cracked, cracked horribly on that last note. He didn't care. Jeff had waited five years to fall apart, but Crick had never been great at delayed gratification. He needed to let it all out now, or he might never talk to Deacon again with a whole heart. “You're my one shot. I will
never
love anyone as much as I love you.”
“Me too.”
Crick sniffled, thinking that he didn't sound grown at all. “As long as that's clear.”
Deacon's eyes were partially open, sleepy and wandering, but he squeezed Crick's hand, and Crick turned his head and saw that he'd focused on Crick.
“It's a load off my mind, Carrick James. Now put your head back down and go to sleep for a bit. I'm not going anywhere.”
Crick nodded, reassured. For a moment, as the heart monitor beeped and the purified air chilled his skin, they were kids again. Deacon was the golden god, and all things sat on his shoulders, and Crick would follow wherever he went.
At home, they had people looking to him, and he'd need to return eventually. But as long his hand was in Deacon's, he would always follow where Deacon needed to go.

Mikhail: Big Stupid Feelings

S
HANE
, Kimmy, and Mikhail stopped off at Promise House on the way home from the hospital, the better to tell their four runaways that Deacon was going to be okay.

The kids were happy, jumping and hugging, and even their little meth recovery boy managed to put off his cigarette for fifteen minutes while everyone celebrated over Jeff's extra food in the kitchen. (That really had been thoughtful. Mikhail made a mental note to have the kids write him a note of thanks. Shane had two fortunes to spend on this place, but after seeing how much these children ate, Mikhail thought he might need more.)

The two boys and two girls who were Promise House's population at the moment (Shane had in mind something bigger by the time it was finished) had been really fond of Deacon—Shane had known that. He enjoyed the moment in the brand new, spanking clean industrial kitchen, watching the kids standing up and eating out of plastic containers while the cooking smells of turkey and potatoes heated the tiles and the friendly yellow walls.

What Shane did not know, but Mikhail did, was that the kids were just as happy to see Shane there that morning as they were to hear that Deacon was going to be okay.

Shane would not have fit in with these kids when he was a kid himself, Mikhail thought critically. He would have felt awkward, looming over them with his height and his wide shoulders and his roundabout way of speaking. But as a grown-up, Shane had become comfortable enough in his own skin to love them unconditionally and to acknowledge his own differences cheerfully, in a way that made the kids comfortable with themselves as well as with Mikhail's gigantic-hearted lover.

Mikhail watched as Shane gave the girl who had been working the streets not two months ago a hug, like she was any other fourteen-yearold, and then ruffle the pickpocket's hair—and then checked his pocket theatrically while everyone giggled. The kids all faced Mikhail's big cop like little magnets would face true north, and Shane simply looked out at them and accepted them for who they were.

Mikhail tried to ignore the shake of his hands when he turned away from that tableau to rinse his re-used plastic butter-bowl out in the sink. Kimmy was suddenly there, shoulder to shoulder—the irritating heifer was actually
taller
than he was—and her voice, quiet in his ear, was surprisingly soothing.

“It's okay, you know,” she said quietly.
“What's okay, cow-woman? The fact that someone cooked for you this morning so you can sleep? I have to admit, that is a blessing. You should thank Lucas accordingly, in a way he would not appreciate from me.”
“Stop being an asshole, Mikhail,” she said, but her voice wasn't sharp at all. “It's okay if you're suddenly afraid. You're worried what life would be like without him. What if he hadn't decided to quit the force? What if—”
“What if that was him on a hospital bed? Again? Because I saw it, heifer. I was there. I watched him dying, and I had to leave him there, without knowing….” Mikhail tried to master his own voice. Failed. “And I had to live with that fear—and it was only months, you may think. I only had to worry about him in that job that tried to kill him for months. But… but Jeff only knew his lover for months, and that job
did
kill him, and….”
It was all muddled, wasn't it? That was what you got when you stayed up all night, talking to a teenager about his beloved older brother, who actually
had
succeeded in killing himself with his own fucking valor. That was what you got when you wandered around in a hospital, chased relentlessly by ghosts who all moaned terrible messages about being alone, forever alone, locked in a box, submerged in your own bitterness.
“Yeah,” Kimmy said softly, her arm coming around his shoulders. “Yeah. It's okay if that's what you're thinking. No one's going to call you selfish if a lot of your worry is for Shane and not Deacon. Especially me.” Kimmy's voice wobbled, and Mikhail sighed, trying to get his runaway emotions under control. He was done with being the little lion man, the one who was a world unto himself. He had a family—Shane had given him a family—and part of that was giving cow-woman the benefit of believing she'd been hurt too.
“He is fine,” Mikhail said, lifting his shoulder in his usual shrug. “He is fine, and you and I are not sentimentalists, and so we shall be too.”
Kimmy buried her face in his neck and laugh-sobbed for a moment. “Of course we are.”
“You will see. We will leave and go home, and there will be no caterwauling about our feelings. We will pick up dog shit, that's what we'll do. We will pick up dog shit and feed the shameless pussies and take a shower because he smells like a bull and I smell like hospital cafeteria, and then we will go to bed and this”—his hands came out and encompassed the two of them, shaking shoulders, clogged voices, and all—“this will go away.”
Kimmy nodded. “Everything except the dog shit, Mikhail. I had Lucas go over to your house and pick up this morning so you wouldn't have to deal with it.”
“Lucas?” Mikhail said blankly. “My God, woman, is that some sort of horrible test? The one man in years I find even passable for you, and you make him pick up your brother's dog shit?”
Kimmy's giggle had fewer tears in it this time. “Yeah. That probably means I should really put out for him, you think?”
Mikhail turned around and wiped his hands on a nearby towel and then gave the sister of his heart a very deliberate hug. “Maybe keep the suspense, Kimberly. This one might actually deserve you. Thank you. It will be nice to not wallow in real shit this day.”
With that, he looked up and caught his big cop's eye. Shane smiled amicably, and Mikhail could see the weariness he'd held back with his cheerful banter.
“Enough is enough, children,” Mikhail said crisply. “We have been up all night, and he will not be nearly this entertaining if he is falling asleep in his shoes.”
“Killjoy!” muttered one boy, their street hustler, the one who had found a box of kittens and stayed awake for his first three weeks nursing them all until they could eat for themselves. Shane had found homes for all but one of them, or Promise House would be in the same straits as their own home, pick-up wise.
“But of course I am,” Mikhail said with pride. “It is the Russian in me—I cannot help it.”
Shane rolled eyes in his direction, and the kids laughed, which was fine. “He's right, guys—I'm bone-tired. We'll be back later tonight for pie, so make sure you save us some.”
To the children's credit, not one of them suggested that maybe Shane could stand to skip pie. Which was fine, because Mikhail's cop was not fat.
And he was not stupid either. They didn't say much during the five-minute drive from Promise House to their own home until they pulled up to the gate and Mikhail mentioned that Lucas had picked up for them while they'd been gone.
“Awww,” Shane groaned good-naturedly. “That's awfully sweet of him, but not particularly nice of Kim!”
Mikhail smiled. “I don't think it was that way,” he said, hopping out of the GTO and opening the gate. When Shane had driven through, he didn't close the gate and go running across the clever balance beam Shane had constructed for him so that he might not have to deal with the six dogs. Instead, he braved them, waving tails, insatiable affection and all, to walk to Shane's side.
He wrapped a fierce arm around Shane's waist, thinking that when Deacon had stopped running, Shane and Jon had pushed themselves farther and faster on their runs out of grief, and Shane's waist wasn't as solid as it should be.
“Hey, Mickey,” Shane murmured, dropping a kiss on Mikhail's head. “Long fucking day, you know?”
Mikhail nodded, feeling his chin quiver, and after they got up to the porch and into the house, Shane stopped and turned Mikhail's shoulders so Shane could see his face instead of having Mikhail staring down at his tennis shoes.
“You step in something?” Shane asked, indicating he knew very well their shoes were both clean.
“Just your damned mortality, all over again,” Mikhail replied irritably. He slid his eyes sideways, knowing his face was going to crumple and not wanting his big, brave cop to see it.
Shane didn't have to. In a moment, Mikhail was mashed up against his broad, solid chest, and he wasn't even ashamed when the first sob shook him.
“God, I hate your job,” he muttered, his voice broken and clogged, a general mess all around.
“Baby, I haven't worked that job since June.”
“I don't give a shit.” And that was all he had in way of words. His shoulders shook, and he couldn't seem to stop crying. Shane bent down and dotted his face with little kisses at the corner of his eyes, on his forehead, on his cheeks, whispering soothing bullshit words that seemed to work anyway. What really worked was when Mikhail stood on his toes and took Shane's dear face between his hands, feeling the dark stubble against his palms, and took Shane's mouth furiously, so full of fear that the only way to empty it was into the physical act of taking.
Shane took him instead. First he took him into the shower, and then he took him
in
the shower, and then he took Mikhail to bed and made love to him so tenderly, with such quiet passion, that Mikhail's climax was more of a shattering than anything else.
In the aftermath, when they both fell limply against the mattress, Shane touched his face, his chest, his hands, with such gentleness that finally,
finally
, Mikhail felt put back together.
And only then, in the arms of his big, stupid, perfect, beloved miracle, could he sleep.