Promise Rock 03 - Living Promises (MM) (36 page)

He was thinking about maybe cooking.
It wasn't that the three of them had been starving or anything—in fact, far from it. Amy cooked, Benny cooked, Collin's mother cooked. People dropped by—his mother, his sister, pretty much every damned person he'd met at The Pulpit at one time or another. Shane had been a nice visit, mostly because he talked shop the whole time, and that was one of Collin's favorite languages. That and watching Mikhail sit on the floor and make delighted lurve to the cats had been worth the price of admission.
It was just that Collin was ready to be… a family. Even with Martin there, he'd enjoyed the closeness, the intimacy in their little household. He loved the nights when Jeff sat in the corner, reading a crime thriller (Collin could never get the connection between the guy who used three different smells of shampoo and the guy who read about blood, guts, and entrails, but he liked it), and Collin and Martin played video games or watched television. He knew family—he hadn't been trying to kill himself his entire childhood; there had been quiet times, too, times when he'd just laid his head on his mother's shoulder and watched TV and let the destruction of the world commence without him.
Those moments in Jeff's house felt like that. He liked them.
He realized that he hadn't been to his own apartment in two weeks—and it didn't really bother him. It was a nice place; he sort of missed his own couches under his ass, or the color of his bed spread, but it didn't have Jeff in it, it didn't have Con-the-cat-mountain, and it didn't feel like those moments, putting his head on Mom's shoulder, except with someone infinitely more exciting than Mom.
So there he was, puttering around the apartment, wondering if there was anything new on Netflix or if maybe he should read another chapter or two out of Jeff's book (because he was starting to see the appeal of the things with paper) when the doorbell rang.
He answered it to a six-foot-six-inch black man with a chest like an ale barrel and only a little bit of thickening in the middle to indicate late middle age.
He blinked, feeling very pale and every minute of the last two weeks in convalescence. “Martin's father?”
The man looked surprised and then really, really uncomfortable. Collin did a mental inventory and decided that, no, he didn't look all that gay today—loose jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt with his niece's soccer team's logo on it were butch enough, right?
“Jeff Beachum?” the man asked, squinting, and Collin blushed. Yeah. He was a little young to be Jeff, that was true.
“I'm Collin, Jeff's friend.” For once in his life, Collin kept his gay to himself. This was Martin's father, and it was not time to piss people off. He didn't even hesitate or emphasize or put quotation marks around the word “friend.” “Jeff's at work. We… we, uhm, weren't expecting you.”
Actually, they had talked it over with Martin and made plans to put him on a plane after Christmas. Lucas was staying in Levee Oaks (and Collin was now invested enough in Jeff's life to want more details from Kimmy about why, exactly, that was), and they couldn't bear to put the kid on a bus. Martin had told them that he'd talked to his parents—they were ready to take him back, and he said that was all he'd ask of them for now. He also said he wanted to come back during the summers to work in the shop with Collin, and Collin had been, well, pleased. That had felt good, like a victory except better, because the kid was good company, and because Jeff loved him too.
So they were expecting to say goodbye to Martin, but they thought… oh shit. Jeff was going to be crushed. They thought they'd at least have Christmas, first.
“Well, Martin's mother wanted him home for Christmas,” Mr. Turner said, as if that was enough to change the course of the entire fucking world.
“Well,” Collin said hesitantly, “we were going to put him on a plane the day after. We've got reservations and everything. He's, uhm, sort of looking forward to Christmas with our family.”
God, he really was. Shane, Mikhail, Kimmy—hell, Benny, Andrew, Crick, Deacon, and the little girls. Martin had been going Christmas shopping with Jeff (very often on the Internet, it was true) for everybody, and he'd been enthusiastic and excited. He'd called them “his white-people family,” and Jeff never failed to remind him that Andrew would probably take exception to that.
“Well, he belongs with us,” Mr. Turner said, his ferocious brow furrowing. He ran a hand over his gleaming bald head, and Collin smiled at him weakly. Oh, he was so not in a position to make this argument, but Martin and Jeff weren't here.
“Look,” Collin said with a grim smile, “Jeff's not here. He'll be home around six—”
“I only need Martin,” Martin's father said grimly, and Collin felt his bitch coming on.
“Yeah, well first you've got to prove you're related,” he snapped. “'Cause Martin's a good kid, and he wouldn't leave people who've been good to him without saying goodbye. I don't know where
you
were raised, but I'm seriously doubting he knows you.”
Mr. Turner blinked slowly, his thick curling lashes making him look almost as young as his son for a moment. “I'm sorry?”
“I'm not. Look, if you give me your contact information, I'll let them know you stopped by, okay?” He'd also let Shane, Mikhail, Crick, Deacon, Jon, and Andrew know. And hell, why not the women and his mother for good measure? Martin's father could come face Jeff's whole famn damily if he was going to try to jerk that boy out of this home against his will.
“Where the hell is he?” Mr. Turner asked gruffly. “I thought he was living here!”
Collin scowled. “He
does
live here. But he's interning over at my garage right now—”
“The garage you work at?”
“The garage I own.”
“Well what in the hell are you doing here?”
“Recovering from the flu.”
“So my boy's working your sweatshop for you?”
Collin sighed and chewed aggressively on his bottom lip as he tried to figure a way out of this conversation. “Your son is with an entire group of runaways, currently learning a trade from my employee and the guy who runs the runaway shelter nearby. The difference is, he stays here, because he's family.”
Martin's father snorted. “Not
your
family!” and Collin resisted the urge to kick him in the shins.
“He is now,” Collin said quietly instead. “And I'm not letting my family get hauled anywhere he doesn't want to go.” He held up a hand. “Look, you can make this a legal thing, but I've got to tell you, the police force is sort of on our side in this neck of the woods. Besides, you take him by force, and he will hate you for life. Trust me, I used to be a headstrong teenager, and I'm telling you that the only reason I'm still talking to my mom right now is because she never tried to force me to be anyone I didn't want to be. So you can make this big and ugly and lose your son in the most important way, or you can take a breath, go find a hotel, and settle in for a day. Everybody”—and he did mean everybody if he could do anything about it—“will be here tonight. Come back and talk to Jeff and Martin then.”
Martin Turner's father made a “humph” sound and backed up a step, and Collin wondered if he looked as pissed off as he felt. He felt like a bantam chicken against this man, but Jesus—come to Jeff's house, insult Jeff, insult
Martin
, and then try to lay down the law.
“I'll be back,” he threatened, and Collin tried very hard not to look relieved.
“Show up around seven—we'll have dinner,” he said, and that, of all things, seemed to surprise the man.
“Dinner?”
“Yeah. Dinner. Like people who have a common interest.”
“I don't have no common interest with you, you little—”
Collin held up a hand. “Think about your sons, Mr. Turner, and maybe stop right there?”
To his surprise, Martin's dad actually stopped talking and looked
really
uncomfortable. “Martin's not a faggot,” he said gruffly, and Collin wondered if there was some sort of medal they awarded to boyfriends who dealt with this sort of thing voluntarily.
“No, sir, but I am, and Martin really likes me. Try not to piss me off, okay? Dinner at seven. We'll see you then.”
And with that he shut the door closed with exaggerated gentleness, then leaned back against it and wondered if it was leftovers from the flu or the sudden adrenaline that left him feeling weak.
Then he went and got himself a soda, and the remote control, and Jeff's house phone. All the numbers were in the phone, and Collin needed them all.
By the time he was done calling, his soda was done, he really needed to pee, and he would have liked a nap. He did the first thing but passed up on the second—there was company coming, and he wanted to do Jeff proud.
Jeff was unsurprisingly meticulous, and he even had a “girl” (aged forty-something) come in and do things like scrub the tile in the bathroom and dust the tchotchkes on the mantle, so Collin didn't have a whole lot to do, but he did it anyway, so Jeff wouldn't have one of those strange freak-out moments that he seemed prone to about the way things were supposed to be. Collin didn't think much about his father these days, but when he did, he realized that Grayson Waters had always been about warmth and heart, and not appearance—and his mother, as much as she loved a nice presentation, was the same. He wondered now about Jeff's life as a child. Jeff often said it was “picture perfect,” and as Collin put absolutely everything in its place, he found himself wondering if maybe Jeff's quest to be a caretaker, to work in the health-care field, to be a reliable friend, wasn't somehow related to that.
Jeff wanted to be the real, and not the picture.
That morning before he'd left for work, Jeff had read off a list of things Collin was absolutely not supposed to do: no cleaning the house, no stressing, no going outside in his bare feet, no opening the door to plague-ridden zombies, no drinking all the soda Jeff had bought for Martin, no playing in the toy drawer….
“What do you mean no playing in the toy drawer?” Collin was surprised, because… well… because he was there alone, with nothing to do but lie in bed. Why wouldn't he want to play in the toy drawer?
Jeff had raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. “Sparky, we have real live people to play with now. Save yourself for that, okay?”
Collin had given a lazy grin. “You mean, after five or six years, you don't want me to waste myself on the fantasy?”
Jeff nodded adamantly. “Honey, now that I've got the real thing, he'd better be up to the job.”
Now, vacuuming the last of the pine needles (for the moment) out from under the tree, Collin thought that maybe Jeff had been tired of the fantasy all along.
He certainly showed signs of wanting to make it real with Collin.
“You like the cats, don't you?”
Collin raised an eyebrow at him from his prone position on the couch and tried not to grunt as Con kneaded one final round on his abdomen. The cat placed himself carefully and looked at Collin with the imperious glare of an emperor from his big, buggy eyes. Collin started the requisite stroking from the top of the cat's head down to the base of its tail, wrapping it up with a tight scratch there where it made the big lump of fur hump against his hand like a horny club kid.
“„Like' is a mild sort of word for what Con and I have,” Collin replied, leaning forward to touch noses with the big doofus. Constantine half-closed his eyes and twitched his whiskers back. “I'd go with the deeply twisted interpersonal relationship that a hero has for his nemesis, sort of a Batman/Joker thing, if the Joker suddenly started going down on Batman like a porn-star on Viagra.”
Jeff looked at him in alarm. “Jesus, Sparky, stop touching my cat!”
Collin laughed at him. “Not on your life. He's my cat now—you can have Katy, the slut. She'll go down on anyone, but Con will only go down on me.” Collin looked up at Jeff then, an evil glitter in his eye. “Sort of like his owner.”
Jeff got up and flounced off—it was bedtime anyway, and Martin had been asleep for an hour. “Yeah, you want to see some of that action, and you'd better put your horny Joker on the floor and come to bed.”
Collin did just that and caught up with Jeff in the hallway, pulling Jeff's body of sharp angles back against his, marveling at how soft that body became when it was flush against Collin's and nestled right in his arms. “Why does it matter that I'm bonding with the furball, Jeffy?” he asked, nuzzling Jeff's ear. He knew the answer, of course, but he wanted to hear Jeff say it.
Jeff sighed and melted completely. “That cat's been with me for six years, Sparky, you do the math.”
“I will if you say my name.”
Another sigh, and his surrender was trembling against Collin's skin. “I want you to be around longer than the damned cat, Collin. Would you like a diagram?”
“All I need is three little words.”
“I love you. Now let's get out of the hallway, before we wake Martin up and find out he really does vomit on command.”
Of course, he'd said it since, more and more often, but that first time had been so unexpected, so… so
given
, as though Collin should have known. But then, Jeff really did love those cats—maybe Collin
should
have known.
Collin finished vacuuming and then went to take a shower—and then, seriously, that nap. He
did
know, he thought in the shower, and later, sliding between Jeff's fine thread count sheets and a comforter that Jeff had changed right after Thanksgiving to match the season. (Who
did
that? Really?)
How could Collin not know that Jeff loved him? Even without the words, there was the kindness, and the passion, and the caring. The way his eyes gleamed in the dark as they kissed each other, the sound he made when he stretched out in Collin's arms.
It was real. It had
never
been just a crush, it had
never
been about the hero worship. It had
always
been what Collin knew they could have, the terrible flames when they made love, the spitting sparks when they bickered, the constant, enduring warmth when they touched in stillness.
It was love. It was forever. And, for as long as he had any control over the situation at all, Collin wasn't going anywhere.
Which was good, because after his nap, he'd have about fifteen minutes to get dressed and look solid before the entire world showed up at their door to see them as a couple.

D
EACON
and Crick arrived first, and Collin was pleased to see them. It had seemed silly, somehow, convalescing at the same time Deacon was, both of them bored out of their skulls but not allowed to even be in the same room. Of course, the bug that had leveled Collin would also level Deacon, because his immune system had been compromised by the surgery, so they'd had to resort to phone calls, which was a laugh, because Collin did all the talking and Deacon sort of grunted encouragingly into the phone. Collin had remarked to Jeff that he was pretty sure Deacon approved of him, but he couldn't tell for certain.