Whatever the Cost (20 page)

Liam groans through a laugh. “Liam,” he says.

“Nice. Back to the classics, I see.”

“Look, Clay. Man, that’s weird. I don’t want to impose or anything. I know you’ve got your own shit going on, but I’m kind of having a situation. And I need some help.”

“That’s my speciality, helping. What can I do for you?”

“Well,” Liam says slowly, looking like he’s having trouble stating the facts. “I never really ventured far from my original career path. Until today. I just quit. I’m driving right now, up to San Luis Obispo. Looking to start fresh, get on the straight and narrow, but I don’t exactly have family or anyone to go to. I’ve got the means, I just was looking for a friendly face I guess, as I get set up in a new town, find somewhere to live, a job, all of that.”

“Pidge, you’ve got family,” Clay tsks. “What’s up? You got people looking for you or somethin’?”

“Something like that. And all I want is a chance to get away from all of that for good. And be safe. It’s not just about me, either. There’s someone I’m involved with. Someone I care about. He’s with me right now. His name is Jacen,” Liam adds after a quick glance to check if it’s okay to divulge that much. “We left together.”

“Better late than never, I guess. It breaks my heart thinkin’ you never broke free of that shit. I’m a little disappointed in you, kid. But if there’s anything I can do to get you situated, I’ll do it. When are you gonna be in the area?”

“I don’t know. Maybe in an hour?”

“Cool. Cool. Um, let’s see....”

“Is there a motel or something you could recommend?”

“There is. A nice place close to the precinct. Clean, respectable. And close to where I am. I’ll send you the address, okay?”

“That’d be fantastic. Thank you.”

“I think I can get away for some late lunch if you’re interested. Talk face-to-face. We can discuss if you’ll be needing any protection.”

“Yeah. I think Jacen and I would both like that. We appreciate the help.”

“Hey, it’s what I do. And anything for a brother. Gimme a call when you get closer, or if anything comes up. I’ll text you the directions to a diner down the road from me.”

“Thanks, Dice,” Liam says urgently. “Really. Thank you.”

“No problem, little bro. See ya soon.”

Liam hangs up and lets his head fall back against the headrest, a small but honest smile lightening his mood and expression.

“Um,” Jacen says, not sure how to continue.

Liam glances sideways at him then straightens in his seat. “We gave each other nicknames, okay? You don’t pick your own, you’re given it. I had no say.”

“But... why?”

Liam rolls his eyes, flushing pink with embarrassment. “They said I was this harmless looking little scrap of a kid. Big eyes, quiet, street-smart, non-threatening. And I’d swoop in, take what I needed, usually without much warning or conversation about it, and then fly away with the spoils.”

Jacen smiles. It starts small but quickly grows huge, shifting into happy laughter, dimpling his cheeks and breaking a lot of the tension that has been lingering all day long.

“
Try
to be less entertained,” Liam pleads. “Please. I beg of you.”

“But it’s so adorable, I can’t even.... Were you always adorable? You were, weren’t you?”

“Jacen...” Liam warns.

“And, hey, pigeons are very smart. Great sense of direction. They used to deliver the mail and everything.”

“Can we not? Please?”

“But you’re sexy as hell when you blush, and your eyes get all sparkly.”

Liam turns sideways and stares seriously at Jacen until he gives it up. Softening, Jacen says, “So we’ve got a cop on our side? Can’t hurt, can it? Maybe someone’s watching out for us up there,” Jacen suggests, glancing heavenward.

Growing shyer and more pensive, Liam stares down at his lap and considers this. After a moment, Jacen reaches out and takes his hand, holding on to it. Then, when Liam doesn’t pull away, he laces their fingers together.

For a long, long time, Liam is perfectly content, sitting there, staring at their entwined hands, enjoying the warmth radiating from Jacen’s palm, even though it feels strange, and new.

Jacen picks at his fries, trying to reconnect to the conversation and order his thoughts into a more sensible form. The continued surreal nature of it all is making it a struggle just to get from one moment to the next. The only thing he has to anchor him is Liam’s determination, the presence of him at Jacen’s side, and the first item on the shifting to-do list floating in his mind.

Find a place to stay. That’s what’s important. That’s as far as he can think.

He had a brief phone call with Yasha, in which his friend’s doubt of Jacen’s ability to pull this all off was too stark to bear for longer than a minute or so. Promising to drive up to see him soon and to check in with them via phone regularly, Yasha has left Jacen to find his footing and get something to eat.

Now, sitting at the table with Liam and the dark-skinned, hugely tall, broad, physically intimidating Dice, aka Officer Martinez, aka Clay, Jacen lets Liam do the talking. More animated than Jacen has seen him in a long time, Liam can’t seem to stop smiling as he gets caught up with his old acquaintance. Clay tells them how he was taken under the wing of an officer involved with a youth outreach program, and was inspired to begin a career in law enforcement, especially when he saw friend after friend, brother after brother, get their futures taken away from them due to bad decisions and bad luck. Clay wanted to make his own luck, and do his part to keep kids off the streets. Liam listens avidly, and Jacen tries to. Then Liam tells an abbreviated tale of the different places he has lived, the brothers and sisters he used to keep in touch with, asking Clay if he’s aware of whatever happened to this person or that.

As much as Jacen enjoys seeing Liam reconnect with Clay, though, they have their own pressing matters to attend to.

The motel is in sight of the diner. It seems sufficient to their needs, from what Jacen can tell. But then what?

“You two need a cover. New identities,” says Clay. “If you want to distance yourself from who you have been, and keep people from finding you, you need new names, new back stories, and new jobs. I can help you navigate the paperwork and skirt the legal side of it all. But the most important thing to start with are the names. Don’t check in to the motel under your old ones. Don’t leave a trail anyone can follow. It’s so easy to search for people these days. You need to be off the grid. Don’t make it easy for them.”

“Okay,” Liam nods. “We can do that. We’ll talk about it, figure out what to do.”

“Good. I’ll send you the info on the forms and applications you’ll need. And I’m guessing you don’t want to be in the motel longer than you have to. Get yourself a local paper, check the real estate listings. There’s a lot available in the area. I’ll vouch for you, whatever you decide.”

With a fond farewell, a firm handshake and reassuring smile for Jacen and a hug for Liam, Clay excuses himself as his break comes to an end, promising he’ll be in touch.

Reading the weary, lost look on Jacen’s face, Liam gives him a confident grin.

“Eat up. We’ve got boxes to move. You’ll need the energy boost,” he says.

“Yeah. But, um, like Clay said, we can’t check in with our names. What do we do? Any ideas?”

Liam takes a bite of his rapidly diminishing burger, and thinks it over. “Yeah. I do, actually. People within The Company are aware of a small fraction of our pasts, right? Speaking for myself, they know one or two of the names I used to use. It has to be something new. Something they can’t connect us with.”

Jacen grunts, “Yeah, okay. Makes sense.”

“They knew of some of my aliases. But they didn’t know the circumstances, or my friends,” Liam says, thinking aloud. “And it just goes back a couple of years. Beyond that there’s no way to track me. I moved around so much. Fifteen different cities in ten years, and a different name in each one.”

“So, what? We just pick something random? Open a phone book, close our eyes and point?”

Liam’s gaze drifts up from his plate to Jacen’s face.

“I know that look. What? What are you thinking?” Jacen wonders suspiciously.

Fierce color blooms high on Liam’s cheeks. He masks a bashful smile behind a hand.

“What?” Jacen presses. “Tell me.”

“It’s totally out of left field, but that’s a good thing, right?”

“Well, I don’t know until you tell me.”

“They’re looking for two friends travelling together. There’s not much we can do about that, unless....”

Jacen stares blankly at Liam, with no idea where he’s going with this.

“Yes?” he prods.

“What if we take the same name? Like a couple, a married couple. ’Cause, with Prop 8 overturned, it would be technically feasible and all. We might even be able to keep our first names, and just take new last names. It’d be a good back story. And we know enough about each other to pull it off.”

“That is the
lamest
marriage proposal I have ever heard,” Jacen tells him, shaking his head with disappointment. Liam blushes harder and elbows Jacen in his side.

“God, I shouldn’t have even said it,” Liam moans.

“You totally want to marry me! That’s—”
ridiculous
, Jacen intends to say. But the word doesn’t manage to come out. Because in his heart, he thinks it’s a great idea. Surprised into a giddy smile, Jacen licks his lips and tries to overcome his own sudden bout of shyness.

“Okay! It’s a stupid idea. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not stupid,” Jacen admonishes. “I think it’s a great idea.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No, I do. I swear. Let’s do it. Yes, I will marry you, Lee. So, what’s our name going to be? Anything is fine with me, except maybe Lipchitz. Or Gaylord. That’s a hard one to pull off.”

“Um. Well,” Liam starts, stealing one of Jacen’s fries and breaking it up nervously into tiny pieces, popping one in his mouth. “I was thinking, as good luck or something, and since it’s something important to me, and if we’re doing this, I don’t want it to be meaningless. I want it to be for a reason. I was thinking, maybe, Timothy?”

“Oh my god, Liam,” Jacen sighs.

“It’s a bad idea, isn’t it? I knew it. I—” Liam starts, but is silenced when Jacen catches his mouth and kisses him tenderly.

“I’d be honored,” Jacen whispers over Liam’s lips, caressing Liam’s cheek.

“It doesn’t, you know, have to be
real
. It can just be our way to stay safe. I think he’d like that.”

Jacen doesn’t say it immediately. At first, the swelling hope in the words make them too big, too poignant to voice.

“Maybe it should be. Real. I mean, we might need the marriage certificate to prove our identities, right?”

He can see Liam’s chest rising and falling with quickened breath, the anxious questioning in his eyes, the hesitancy, the oh-so-fragile flowering of unfamiliar optimism.

“What do you say?” Jacen asks softly, sitting in a greasy diner, under flickering fluorescent lights on the east side of San Luis Obispo, California. “Wanna get married?”

Liam laughs, his green eyes sparkling even more than before, and kisses Jacen firmly in answer.

“This is insane,” Liam interjects between presses of their lips. He catches an older woman at the next table smirking at them from over Jacen’s shoulder.

“Not any more insane than the rest of today.”

“No, actually, it kind of is.”

And that is how, with the help of someone working both within and just to the side of the law, William Taye, originally born Avery Williams, changed his name to Liam Timothy and, in just a few days’ time, legally wed in a civil union service, Jacen Pruski; though for the sake of the records he went by his legal name, Travis Saxon (Pruski being his mother’s maiden name and Jacen one of two middle names, the other being Michael). Travis Jacen Saxon became Travis Jacen Timothy, husband of Liam Timothy.

With their possessions in boxes, stacked along one wall, living out of suitcases in a well-used motel room located two blocks from the police station in San Luis Obispo, the two friends find themselves suddenly spouses, with new identities. The enormity of the change, though technical more so than actual, lifts some of the load from their shoulders. A handful of days pass in a blur, and they come out on the other side as new people. It’s a quiet dash of time, with the shock and stress stilling their tongues. They share the only bed in their room, but the nights are chaste. The most they touch is to hold hands when they need the comfort of the connection, to hug before bed, and the kiss they share when they are pronounced wed.