Fish Out of Water (24 page)

“Shower,” he mumbled. “Back in ten.”

He was out of the kitchen before Ellery had a chance to answer.

He was careful with his jeans—they had his phone and his wallet in them still—but he didn’t wait until the water heated up to step under. For a few moments, he shivered under the spray, numb and trying desperately to get his sense of self back in place. College. The police academy. A year in the hospital. Eight years putting himself back together.
This
was who he was, not the child mewling for a granola bar from a drug dealer.

This.

He barely startled when the curtain pulled aside and Ellery stepped in. “I’ll be out in a sec,” he mumbled, eyes focused on the corner of the tub.

“Jade’s in the kitchen,” Ellery said, sliding behind him and wrapping an arm around his waist.

Jackson took a breath and straightened his spine. “Damn. I
really
have to—”

“She’s borrowing coffee for Mike’s coffeemaker. She’ll let herself out. I guess she brought him home last night.”

Jackson frowned, trying to remember if he’d seen Jade’s car on the curb or not. He must have, right? “Why didn’t she come in and sleep on my couch?” he asked, grateful for something to think about.

“I guess because she was happier sleeping in his bed,” Ellery said, laughing a little.

Jackson took a moment to absorb that. “I think my head just exploded.”

“Yes, well, she said the same thing about us, so you’re even. I
would
posit the fact that he’s not bad-looking, and leave it at that.”

“You think?” Because Mike had never pinged him that way—not even a little.

“Yeah. He’s like a redneck Sean Bean.”

Jackson took a minute to absorb that. For some reason it made the whole weirdness better. “Well, he’s only forty-five—I mean, stranger things.”

“Yeah.”

The soberness in Ellery’s voice took him by surprise.

“I could have… I could have done without you ever meeting her,” he said after a moment. “Or seeing her. Or hearing her. Or knowing she was alive.” He wasn’t talking about Jade.

“How’d you get out?” Ellery pumped some soap into his hand and lathered it against Jackson’s chest. Jackson leaned into the comfort and tried not to admit he needed it.

“Celia got pregnant,” he said, hating this story. “I told her she had a new source of welfare the day I turned sixteen, and her boyfriend was happy to see me leave.”

“You have a brother or sister?” Ellery sounded stunned.

“Yes and no.” Jackson made a bitter sound—not a laugh, but not much else. “Celia brought her home and, after a month, got bored and tired of not getting high. She left the baby alone in the apartment all night, and Kaden and I called CPS. Welfare came and got her, and Celia had to move. The baby was finally just put into foster care for life.” Jackson hated himself so much for this. “I always felt…. You know, kids in the movies, they would have taken care of the baby.”

“You were sixteen,” Ellery said, lathering up Jackson’s thighs and then his back.

“Yeah. And Celia was fifteen when she had
me
. Which was why I didn’t. ’Cause if she could fuck up that bad with
me
, there was no fucking telling what I would do.”

Ellery’s hand stopped, and he plastered himself along Jackson’s back while the water sluiced off the suds. “Jackson?”

“What?”

“You’re a good man.”

“Shut up.”

“I mean it.”

“No, you don’t. You’re saying it because you think it’s something I need to hear. I’m an asshole.”

“Shut up,” Ellery ordered. He stepped back and soaped up his hands again and started lathering up along Jackson’s crease, under his balls, along his cock.

The fierce arousal of the night before began to gnaw at Jackson’s innards.

“Ellery,” he tried breathlessly, “we’ve got to…
ohhhh
….”

Ellery breached him with two fingers, and Jackson’s vision washed dark as he tried to remember why he didn’t let anybody do this. Anybody.

He couldn’t remember. Something about intimacy and being in control. Something about knowing he could do the job right but not trusting anyone else to be able to do the same. Something about being tired of pain and not willing to risk it.

Something that didn’t matter now that Ellery was stroking him from the inside out, fingers stretching, the delirious pressure in his ass increasing, his cock swelling and aching along his thigh.

“This,” he gasped as Ellery thrust fingers into him again, “needs condoms!”

Ellery swore. “
You
are getting tested. Today. Now turn off the water!”

“No,” Jackson muttered. Ellery pulled his fingers out, and Jackson threw a bad-tempered look over his shoulder. “Shower sex is awkward anyway.”

Ellery covered Jackson’s abdomen with his palm and rutted up against his thigh, his cock hard and leaking. Jackson moaned, bracing his weight with one hand and grabbing his own cock with the other, and Ellery continued to thrust, their skin growing slippery with precome because they were too close for the water to rinse it off. Jackson’s own hand wasn’t as
good
as Ellery’s touch, and he beat furiously, trying to make up with speed and roughness what he was missing in touch.

Ellery groaned and bit his shoulder, and that twinge of pain,
that
sent him over. He gave a strangled cry, and Ellery groaned again into his back. The heat of Ellery’s come painted his backside, and Jackson’s semen shot whitely against the shower wall.

Now
he reached down and turned off the water, and their breathing echoed in the small space.

And his ass ached with wanting. A peculiar feeling—he couldn’t recall ever
needing
this act, but the memory of Ellery inside him and his own lack of control… haunted him.

It would have been one thing if he’d hated it, or if Ellery had rutted and come, leaving him high and dry. But that wasn’t what happened at all, was it? Just once, someone had made Jackson’s needs important.

Jackson thought wistfully that it would feel really good not to have to use condoms, even if it was just until this thing with Ellery had run its course.

“Testing?” he said into the silence.

Ellery skated an exquisitely gentle hand across his shoulder blades. “We can both go, but, well, I got tested after my last boyfriend, and it was negative. But yeah. Both of us. You’ll feel safe.”

Jackson reached across his shoulder, ignoring the way his muscles and scar tissue pulled when he made moves like that. He seized Ellery’s hand and gently kissed the fingertips. Their bodies were drying in the air, but since it was already going to be another scorcher, he didn’t think either of them cared. Of course they
might
care at the end of the day when they realized that they hadn’t shampooed their hair, so he figured he should get his act together.

“Sure,” he said, grateful that this, of all things, allowed him to shove Celia and the awfulness of her morning visit back in its hidden drawer in his brain. “But first I need to turn the water back on. You got my creases, but I don’t think either one of us soaped up our hair.”

Ellery groaned. “Ugh. Yeah. Okay. But go quick. I don’t care what you say, shower sex isn’t awkward enough to keep me from trying it again.”

Jackson turned then, wrapped his arms around Ellery’s hips, and held him for a moment before moving his lips next to a small, slightly awkward ear. “
You
are a good man,” he said softly.

Then he turned away and turned the water on and got back to what had the potential to be a really shit day.

HE DROVE.
Didn’t say a word, just grabbed his keys and his wallet and thumped out the door in a button-down and jeans, and Ellery followed him. The night before, he’d pronounced the CR-V decent—the moonroof had been his favorite part. This morning his favorite part was that the air-conditioning system could freeze the balls off a brass monkey in the middle of an inferno.

Ah…
that
was
the stuff.

As he pulled away from the curb, he saw Jade’s car parked on the other side of Mike’s duplex. Oh.

He grunted. “Sean Bean?”

“Yeah,” Ellery said. “Sean Bean. You’ve seen him in
Legends
,
right?”

Jackson nodded, surprised. “Yeah, I watch that one.”

“Hot, right?”

“Of course!” Jade, his first lover—his best friend. “She deserves Sean Bean. She deserves better, but, you know, I’ve only got one tenant that she apparently slept with.”

“As long as she doesn’t get you.” Ellery sniffed prissily.

Jackson guffawed. “It’s been an intense couple of days,” he said when he had breath. “Give it a week and you’ll be ready to pitch me into a pit of lions, trust me.”

“No. Besides, you were born in a pit of lions. I think you’re quite comfortable there. And then when I wanted you back,
I’d
be at risk.” Ellery had one corner of his mouth drawn up in irritation, and Jackson had to shake his head.

“It’s touching that you assume anybody would want me back,” he said. “Or even at all. I know what I am, and I know what I’m not. So please, let’s just—”

“Stop talking,” Ellery responded. “I’m bored. Where are we going?”

“Morgue at UC Davis.” Jackson’s voice hardened. “I know when Celia’s lying and I know when she’s scared. She saw the picture of Luanne, and she was scared. And she said, ‘I thought you weren’t a part of that’ and talked about me getting hurt, which tells us….” He waited for Ellery to pick up the thread.

“That the dirty cops are well-known in
all
parts of the city,” Ellery deduced. “And that something bad happened to our girl with the pink hair.”

“And not just any girl,” Jackson said, proud of this bit of information. They’d sat at the table for three hours, and he’d been scrubbing the lists of employees for
anyone
by the name of Bill Chisholm who worked at the capitol building. “The daughter of the chief aid to Gary Hallenbeck, Assemblyman District Ten.”

“Huh,” Ellery mumbled to himself. “So big, influential, but close enough to Sacramento to grab himself a bit of local talent at the capitol. Nice.”

“Whatever,” Jackson grunted. “I had to look up District Ten to see where it was, you know that, right? I had no idea we were District Four.”

“You never had a mother who wanted you to run for office,” Ellery said dryly.

“Celia,” Jackson retorted darkly.

“I didn’t say you had it
better
than I did!” Ellery sounded horrified at the thought. “And in this case, it’s helpful. My mother lobbies for fair-trade agreements, many of which involve the port cities. So she may very well know your Assemblyman Hallenbeck, and if just making an appointment with Chisholm doesn’t work, it might get us an invite to the capitol to ask some questions.”

“Very swank.” Awesome. Just fucking awesome.
Jesus
,
what was this guy doing in his front seat, much less his bed?

“But first—”

“The morgue. I called ahead. Toe Tag has a couple for us to see.”

Ellery made a sound of pained nausea, and Jackson grimaced.

“You don’t have to,” he said, feeling like he was about to throw a kitten into the middle of a tractor pull. “It’s not necessary.”

“I’m not going there to
prove
anything to you,” Ellery snapped. “I’m going there so you don’t have to do it alone.”

“And I’m telling you I’ve done it before—”

“You don’t have to do it
now—
”

“And what good is it going to do me the next time I have to go?” Jackson roared. “
Jesus
, Ellery! You’re a sweet guy—”

“No, I’m not.”

“But it’s not necessary to protect me from the big bad world. I’m obviously okay!”

Ellery let out a long, wordless noise that Jackson took to be a negative on the “I’m okay!” theory, and Jackson was done.

“Do you want anything?” he asked, swinging into a fast-food drive-through before he could second-guess himself. Ellery had dressed in slacks and a polo shirt today—Saturday working clothes, apparently—and Jackson figured if the guy was as hot as he was, a soda would be welcome before they ended up charging through the concrete-and-steel bowels of the hospital.

“Diet Coke, extra-large,” Ellery said promptly. “And God, you’re a pain in the ass.”

“You’re fucking welcome.” Jackson laughed evilly, because hey, he’d topped too.

“Shut up.” Ellery crossed his arms and scowled. “I’m not sweet. You know that, right? I spent time between internships volunteering
in prisons
so I could deal with about anyone on the fucking planet. I’m not sweet.”

“You’re not Scott Bridger!” But Jackson was reluctantly impressed. “That was really smart.”

“Thank you,” Ellery said humbly. “I wanted to do it right.”

That phrase sat there between them as Jackson ordered an extra-large soda for himself and a couple of breakfast sandwiches. The silence of eating and thinking took over the car, not unpleasant, and Jackson was almost startled when they paused at a light and Ellery spoke again.

“Why do you do that?”

Jackson looked at the crumpled ball of wax paper in his hand. “Do what? This?” He held up the sphere, roughly an inch in diameter.

“They’re always so perfect. Why do you do that?”

Jackson snorted and shrugged. “Not enough toys as a child.”

“Hunh.” He punched the
n
in that word, probably so Jackson would know it was his sound. Asshole.

They’d reached Stockton Boulevard by this time, and Jackson took a left into the parking garage. He circled around back again and was almost glad when he didn’t spot Dave and Alex taking their smoke break. He loved them, but he was there on grim business. He’d ruined their lives enough for the time being.

Toby Tagliare was the clerk down in the morgue—he kept the bodies from escaping, as he liked to say. He was in his midfifties, a sweet, happy little round man who reminded Jackson of a hobbit or a gnome or something. He had pictures of his very happy, very vibrant, very
large
family on the desk behind him, and Jackson often wondered if he liked working in the morgue for the peace he found there or if he was just
extremely
well-adjusted.