Whatever the Cost (16 page)

The bed springs shift as Liam tries to get comfortable, pulling a pillow under his head. There are so many questions behind Jacen’s eyes, so much fragility and fear. Liam knows he is the one that put those things there. He also knows that just as the two of them are closer than they’ve ever been, they are also, conversely, just as distant from each other. Miles and miles seem to separate them, though in reality it’s barely inches.

Everything is off-kilter. Neither of them knows where to start.

“So.”

“So?”

“You’re a top,” Jacen says, starting with the basics. “I didn’t expect that.”

“Well, not
all
the time.”

“No, I mean
you
. When you’re not doing things out of necessity for other people, if it’s just about what you want, you’re... a very expressive top. Who loves to kiss, and appreciates the more
tactile
aspects of sex. I’m just trying to figure it all out. Figure
you
out. For my own sake.”

Without confirming or denying any of that, Liam says, “Do you want to get a shower before we do this?”

“Do you
want me
to get a shower before we do this?”

“No. Not really. I like you just like this.”

“Deliberately smeared with both of our bodily fluids? Sweaty? Fucked, by you, into exhaustion?”

“Yeah. All of the above,” Liam smiles.

“That’s,” Jacen says slowly, “interesting.”

“Why?”

“Because I thought this was going to be about me being with
you
in order to, like, break the ice. Or something. Before our job with Claudia. And instead
I’m
on my back with my legs in the air, alternately with my cock down your throat or with your dick up my ass.”

“Your dick was up my ass, too. For the record.”

“Yeah, because you put it there,” Jacen points out.

“I did,” Liam agrees.

“I guess I just didn’t—” Jacen tries, then stops mid-sentence. A moment later he starts again, “Um, think this was going to be about
me
.”

“Of course it’s about you. There’s only the two of us, Jace. You’re kind of a crucial element.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Then what are you talking about? Are you asking me to clarify that when it comes to having sex with you, my preference is to be the giver? I suppose it is. When I think about having the chance to be with you, what I immediately want is to get inside you. But I love having you fuck me, too. Clearly.”

Jacen tries to analyze Liam’s face when he says all of this, like if he can just correctly interpret the quirk of his lips or the meaning behind his eyes, Jacen will be able to tell if it’s all bullshit or not. It leaves him still feeling confused and unsure. One thing is clear, though. “But you like to be in control.”

Not refuting this, Liam asks, “Is that a problem?”

At first Jacen has no answer. Silence descends between them. Liam’s hand snakes over, intertwining with Jacen’s as Jacen’s fear grows noticeably larger in the heaving of his chest, the tension in his body.

“I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. You are a control freak. Maybe it’s more about realizing that I make you want that from me.”

Jacen falls quiet again. The sadness painted on his face worries Liam.

“What’s wrong?”

Brushing a lock of dark hair out of Jacen’s face, Liam sighs as Jacen’s eyes close and his frown deepens.

“What do you want, Lee?” Jacen asks somewhat desperately. “What is this? All of those things you said. Did you mean them? Were they just part of your character? Were they real? I mean—”

Taken aback, Liam stiffens. “I’m not
in character
, Jacen.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No!”

Jacen nods pensively. “Okay. You said you weren’t going to let me give myself to anyone else. What was that?”

Liam’s eyes glaze over as he disengages.

“Liam,
talk to me
,” Jacen pleads. “I just... gave you
so much
of me and you can’t just brush it off like it was nothing!”

Something hard and brittle breaks in Liam. It snaps cleanly in two, allowing secret things to slip out through the cracks.

“I followed you,” he blurts, not meeting Jacen’s gaze. “This morning. I followed you to Patrick’s. I wanted—no, I
needed
to make sure you’d be okay, and go in there to castrate that motherfucker myself if he hurt you. So, I saw. I saw everything. Or mostly everything.”

Jacen withdraws his hand. Liam grabs it, brings it back. “You had
no right
.”

“I couldn’t let you go to him by yourself, okay?! No fucking way!”

“Duke was there. And I can defend myself if I need to. I was safe,” Jacen argues quietly.

“Bullshit! There is no safety with guys like Patrick,” Liam rages. “You can’t go back to him. I forbid it.”

“What do you expect me to do, Liam? This isn’t my call!”

“It
is
your call! It’s
your
life. It’s your
body
. That’s all that matters!”

“So, you’re demanding that I try to break my very much binding contract with The Company? Hide myself from them for god knows how long so they don’t force me to work it off? Live like a fugitive? And you’re what to me that you get to make those demands? Hmm? What are you, Liam? My concerned best friend? My roommate?”

Suddenly, for Liam, there is no air left in the room. There is none at all. Only Jacen has the air, so Liam moves closer to him and touches his lips to Jacen’s in a timid kiss. Breathing out a sigh, filling Liam with much-needed oxygen, Jacen kisses him back, whispering words like damnation, “I’m in love with you. Liam. Liam, I’m in love with you. That’s why it’s hard for me to be okay with all of this. I don’t understand.”

Liam doesn’t respond with words, he just kisses Jacen quiet and holds on to him tighter.

Of all of the ways that Liam has classified and categorized his life, Jacen has been the one thing that he could never fit easily under any sort of label. Jacen just is. He’s the biggest, most constant part of Liam’s life. Without Jacen, everything is hollow and ugly. Without Jacen, there is no reason to do anything, to try or strive or hope. There used to be. There used to be many reasons—to be successful, to find excitement and pleasure in his job, in his roles, to get rich, to be adored. None of those reasons fit anymore. Nothing is what it should be. Everything is in chaos.

“Ask me something,” Liam begs, on the verge of tears by the sound of it.

“Do you care about me?”

“Yes,” Liam gasps urgently.

“Do you love me?”

“
Yes.
” A tear slides down Liam’s cheek, dampening Jacen’s skin.

“What do you want from me?”

“Don’t sell yourself anymore. Ever. Come. Come away with me. We’ll leave. We’ll just take our stuff or, hell, just get in the car and drive. We’ll clean out our accounts and just go. They won’t look for us forever. And we can outsmart them. I know we can.”

“Go where?”

“Doesn’t matter. Anywhere. Anywhere but here. We lay low so that they can’t track us down. It’s more cost effective for them to replace us anyway than to waste resources searching. We’ll put all of this shit behind us and start fresh.”

“But why,” Jacen hisses. “
Why
, Liam? Why risk it?”

Angry, determined, Liam growls, “Because I won’t let this kill you too! I won’t.
I won’t let it!
I won’t let it have you. It’s already—” Liam is shaking in Jacen’s arms, raging at something. Jacen doesn’t know what. Sucking in a rough breath, Liam continues, “Everyone I care about!
Everyone that matters.
They just...
leave
. They get stolen away from me before I can stop it or change it and I won’t let it happen to you too!
I won’t!
”

“Baby, what are you talking about?”

Liam turns in Jacen’s arms, pushing back until Jacen is spooned up flush against him. Forcing himself to take a deep breath, he draws Jacen’s arms around him like a living, breathing blanket.

“I don’t know how to talk about this,” Liam warns. “It’s not something I’ve ever had to put into words.”

“Try for me.”

And he does, he really does, but it just won’t come.

“Ask me something.”

“Who died?”

“My parents. And—”

“And?”

Liam shakes his head, putting his hands to his face and growling roughly into them. Pulling them away he rasps, “Timothy.”

His voice breaks on the name, barely whispered, soft as silk.

Liam flushes hot and shudders as he fights not to cry or splinter apart into fragments, even as the tears start to stream.

“Who is Timothy?”

“I loved him,
so much
. I loved him with all I had. And I still—I’m still in love with him. I’ll always be in love with him. What I had with him was the truest thing in my whole life. He was my first love, my dream. He was everything. He was the world to me.”

Sensing that Liam has no more to give, that he needs to first be ready to talk more about this than he has, Jacen waits. He falls quiet and holds Liam, giving him time, letting him decide. They lie there for almost an hour, in the dark, in silence.

And then, slowly, Liam begins to explain.

“My name was Avery Williams. I grew up in foster care. My mom and dad died before I was old enough to remember them. There was no one else, so I went into the system. So many different placements, different families and temporary foster parents. And I tried. I tried
so hard
to be everything they wanted me to be—the perfect son, helpful, obedient, hard-working, honest, loyal, just a good kid. I tried my best in school, got decent grades and listened and did everything I was asked to do. All I wanted, more than anything, was to be adopted; for someone to care enough to want to keep me. But no one did.
No one
adopted me. No matter what I did or who I became for them. It was never enough. They always wound up giving me back. My life was like a dance, home to home, bed to bed, never staying in one place long. And it was all empty, shallow. Right when I began to love my foster brothers and sisters, they’d separate us. One of us would leave and I’d never see or hear from them again. Do you have any idea what that does to someone?”

Jacen presses a tender kiss to the back of Liam’s ear, hugging him.

“I aged out. Eighteen-years-old. Minimum wage job. Homeless. I found some of my old foster siblings living together in this beat-up old house. I moved in there with them. We all tried to hold down jobs. We all contributed to paying the bills. It was nice. It was the closest to happy I ever was in my whole childhood. Timothy was there. He was the oldest of us, at nineteen. He used to be my foster brother, just for a few months when I was eleven. We all looked up to him so much. There wasn’t anything that scared him. Nothing at all. He was so brave. It made us feel safe, protected. All he wanted was to be a family. And then, well, we fell in love. He was everything to me, he took care of me, and I worshipped him completely. I gave him everything I had.”

“But....”

“But things in the house started to go—the furnace, the refrigerator, the roof. The landlord was non-existent. He took off, abandoned the place. It was up to us, and it was decomposing around us. It was our
home
, you know? And we didn’t have the money to fix it or leave. The bills were so expensive. Thousands of dollars. We didn’t have that kind of cash, not even pooling all of our paychecks.”

Jacen sighs by Liam’s ear, knowing what comes next before it’s spoken.

“Timothy started coming home with money. Hundreds at a time. It added up fast. We fixed the roof. We got the furnace working. We bought a new fridge.”

“He was turning tricks.”

“Yeah. I couldn’t even be mad at him for it, because he was doing it to take care of us, our family. He didn’t want to. He never would have started if we hadn’t needed the money so badly.”

For a long time Liam doesn’t say anything. It gives Jacen plenty of time to wonder what manner of death Timothy suffered in his efforts to provide for the people he loved so dearly.

The words sound hollow when Liam speaks them—hopeless, resigned. “He was twenty when he got full-blown AIDS. It progressed really fast. He couldn’t work anymore and he needed medication to stay alive. He was in and out of the hospital all the time. The bills were just... astronomical. I had no choice. I never chose this, you understand? I
never
wanted this. I had to do it. It was easy, too. It was just like growing up. All I had to do was try to be whatever the other person wanted, to read them and adjust accordingly. It was easier, actually. A few minutes, an hour tops, I was out of there with cash in hand. And I was able to keep him alive another year. We had a little bit longer together. He was mad at me, though, for most of it. He hated that I was doing it. But it kept the meds coming. It kept the hospital from ignoring us and letting us sit in the lobby for hours, waiting for a bed when he needed care badly. It kept him with me. It was worth it.

“Then he was dead and nothing else mattered. Whoring was all I had left to define me. There was no reason to stop.”