Talker's Redemption (9 page)

“See,” he said again, jerking himself out of his own head, “I couldn’t have faced Trev again. I couldn’t have. Now maybe. I couldn’t face him tonight, but….”
That was before I puked on the bad cop’s shoes.
“Now, maybe I could see him and not just… just check out and panic dive into my own head and never come out. But not then. So, I’m going to guess….”

“Guess?”

“I don’t remember. I was… I was so far down the fucking rabbit hole, I barely even remember seeing the scars on his hands. But Brian doesn’t go looking for trouble, right? And he was dropping me off at the club every day. And if it happened at the club, I’m going to bet Trev was there, and Brian… just wanted to keep me safe.”

“He couldn’t have gone to the police?” Melville asked, trying to be all tough.

“And tell them what?” Talker asked bitterly. “That his freakish gay roommate had a suicidally bad date?” His smile was all acid. “And that’s not even on you guys. I couldn’t have said the word ‘rape’ to save my life back then. I couldn’t even say it to save Brian’s.”

Melville blew out a breath. “We understand that Mr. Gaines was not hurt nearly as bad as Brian—”

“Brian was one on one—ask Jed. He’ll tell you.”

“Mr. Roberts said he didn’t know,” Melville said mildly, and Talker glared at him.

“He was protecting Brian. But I don’t think Trev will leave it at this, so I’m protecting him too.”

Melville sighed and nodded, conceding, apparently, that he was going to have to ask Jed for particulars of the fight. Talker wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but he told himself stoutly that when he was ready for the details, he’d ask Brian himself.

“So,” Melville said, when Talker wasn’t filling in the silence. “Tonight?”

“Tonight? Tonight we walked outside to our car, and Trev and two other guys were there with chains.”

“You were unhurt?”

The accusation was implicit. And deserved.

“Brian made me run,” Talker said, back in taupe-land again. He remembered then, the sick terror of seeing Trevor, of seeing the chain, of thinking,
I can’t fucking do this again.

“Made you?” And the accusation was still there.

Talker nodded, though. He didn’t have an answer for the accusation. What? Did this guy think Talker didn’t feel the same way?

“I froze,” he whispered. “Just… just fucking froze. I….” His eyes blurred, and suddenly Doc Sutherland’s hand was holding his, and he just grabbed it for dear life, wishing like anything that it was Brian’s hand instead. “I couldn’t do it again, and Brian… he grabbed my shoulders and shoved me to the bar and told me to get Jed, and… and one of the guys got him in the back with a pipe and Trev got in there and swung….”

And it had happened. Just hours ago it had happened, and it wasn’t months ago, because Brian was still not all right.

And now, neither was Talker.

He didn’t throw up, or fugue, or disappear. But the blurring in his eyes wouldn’t stop, and now, instead of Aunt Lyndie, it was Doc Sutherland, pulling him in and letting him cry on the funky homemade gray cardigan, and Talker had no more words, not for the nice detective who seemed to have backed off, not for Doc Sutherland, not for Aunt Lyndie, not even in his head.

He made himself stop after a while, and when he looked up, Melville was still there, being patient.
God, I bet this guy really does have kids. No one can be that patient.

“I need to check with our ADA,” Melville said when he knew he had Talker’s attention. “But I don’t think Brian has to worry. We may need you to swear out a deposition, and then we can get Gaines on assault. We—” Melville grimaced. “If you could talk to Mr. Roberts? Let him know that he wouldn’t be betraying a trust to tell us what happened? That would be
very
helpful.”

Talker scowled at him. “You’re not going to try and pin anything on him, right? I need to see that in writing. Jed’s a good guy.”

Melville nodded. “It’s a deal.”

Talker nodded, and wondered about sleep, and then wondered about Brian and had a moment to spare to absolutely freak out about Brian going into surgery, and then he pulled his attention back to Melville. “Are we done? Can I go…?” His face was swollen and wrecked anyway. What were a few more helpless tears, right?

Melville nodded abstractedly. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said on a sigh. Then he caught himself. “Hey, would you really have… you know. Committed suicide if Brian hadn’t been there?”

Tate shook his head, remembering Brian’s gentleness the night he’d gotten back from Trevor’s. “He’s the only reason I made it home in the first place.”

He stood up then, restlessly, so beyond exhausted he could almost channel the glowing line taking him back to Brian. He didn’t remember the trip back, but he woke up right quick when he ran into the team of medical staff, wheeling Brian’s gurney down the hall.

“Jesus,” he muttered, and Lyndie was there, saying, “Let him through, let him through.”

“Brian?” he asked, all out of words.

“Surgery,” Brian muttered. “Love you, baby. See you soon.”

And they managed a brief clasp of hands before he was wheeled away. The last thing Talker saw was the catheter bag at the end of the bed, like a crimson flag.

They
were lucky. With a little bit of quick talking, and some of Lyndie’s boyfriend’s handyman skills, they were able to get Brian okayed to come home two days before Christmas.

Between the time Brian hobbled through the door of their newly finished threshold, heavily supported by Tate and Jed, and the moment Talker had watched him disappear down the white hospital hallway, Talker thought he might have aged a hundred years, maybe more.

They really
had
needed to sedate him after Brian went into surgery. He’d started to shake so hard his teeth had rattled and he hadn’t been able to pull himself out of it this time. There hadn’t been any reason to—not a thing he could have done would have helped Brian when he went away into that cold, white room.

He woke up in the OR recovery room, next to Brian’s bed. Lyndie had apparently threatened, begged and cajoled, and he’d lain there, still humming Lyndie’s little hymn, and watched Brian sleep as his body shook off the sedative. Brian was breathing, he was out of danger, he’d survive. The only thing at all in the silence of Talker’s head was the music.

The music had gotten him through the next few weeks, but he’d had help. Lyndie had kept him fed and alive until Brian’s shoulder surgery was finished, and Brian was up and around and very definitely on the mend. Craig had kept an eye on the apartment, kept Sunshine warm and fed, and started immediately on the ramp and handrails that Brian would need to hobble up and down the stairs to their crappy apartment. Jed had taken up a collection at work, and even gone to the restaurant where Brian worked, so they could keep paying rent on their crappy apartment until Brian’s disability payments kicked in.

Doc Sutherland had gone to their professors and gotten them extensions on their finals, so their entire painfully eked out last semester hadn’t been pissed away, and they could continue working toward their degrees. He’d even gone to the administration and gotten some money for Brian’s next semester, since the tip money they depended on for things like registration and books was not going to be coming in, even when Brian was up and about.

And even with all that help, eventually, Talker had needed to go back to their crappy apartment and sleep without Brian next to him.

It had been hard. He’d been so shaken by nightmares the first night that he’d run across the street to the drug store for a mild sleeping pill, just so he would be able to function the next morning. That had been the night before he’d had to go down to the courthouse and swear out the deposition that would get Trevor arrested, so it had been worth it.

The day at the courthouse had been a nightmare; without Doc on one side and Lyndie on the other, he flat out wouldn’t have made it. They had dragged him into rooms that were a blur of faces, and he had given his depositions. He couldn’t remember much of them. He’d had Staind
playing in his head, practically their whole last album, and the things he said and the things people said to him were not ever going to stick.

He remembered Jed, who had given him an actual hug, the kind with the double fist bump on the back, and told him it was okay—as long as Brian wasn’t in trouble, it was okay. Jed hadn’t gotten in trouble either. Melville had kept his word on that, but Talker had insisted he not be there when Jed testified. He didn’t want to hear about the fight from anyone but Brian.

Henries was there, and he gave Talker a wide berth. At one point, as they’d waited in an echoing hallway with pristine granite-colored tiles on the floor, Henries had made a crack about Talker’s courtroom attire. Tate had borrowed a pair of Brian’s nicest khakis and a button down shirt, but he’d kept the woolen half-glove, and the eyeliner. Melville had snapped that if the guy didn’t shut up, someone else would puke on his shoes, and Henries had sulked by the water fountain for the rest of the wait.

And in the end, all that mattered was that Talker made it. Talker’s testimony made it happen: Trev was a bad guy, Brian had been, if not legally right then at least morally strong, and Trev’s response was out of proportion. Trev gave up his two buddies, hired thugs, both of them, and he’d done it through a broken nose. (Go, Jed! Tate wished for money, just so he could buy Jed something kick-ass for Christmas, or even for his kids!)

Tate had seen Trev, from a distance, being escorted through the corridors in handcuffs, with his head up and a sneer twisting what Tate had once thought of as a handsome face. At the end of the day, the Assistant District Attorney had been happy to cut a deal: if Trevor didn’t press charges against Brian, his own charges would be assault with a deadly weapon as opposed to attempted murder. Given the lengthy prison stay that the second charge would probably have landed him, he pled out, and took the eighteen months offered. It wasn’t forever—it certainly didn’t seem long enough—but it would keep him out of their hair until they could toughen up. And a guaranteed restraining order upon his release made Tate feel a little bit better as well.

Talker didn’t even want to think about what would happen to Trev in prison. There was no righteous excitement about the tables being turned. He didn’t gloat or feel justified or vindicated as Trevor had been walked through the courthouse. He didn’t even think about shouting, “Hey, Trev, now you’ll know how it feels!” The whole thing just made him want to vomit, and Lyndie was having a hell of a time trying to get him to eat as it was.

He’d disappeared for a moment then, and when he’d come to himself, he’d been sitting on one of the hellaciously cold granite benches that were part of a fountain sculpture in the front of the courthouse. He sat there, knees drawn up to his chest, until Lyndie and Doc Sutherland found him, and pulled him to his next paneled room, with his next group of people he would never remember.

The only thing that kept him focused that day, the only thing that kept him from losing it, from throwing up and shaking and needing sedation on the stand, was the idea of visiting Brian.

The swelling in Brian’s face went down daily. By the time they brought him home, there were still visible bruises, but the stitches had been taken out, and the disfigurement was, for the most part, gone. What remained was… Brian. Brian who would listen to Tate rambling about his day—good or bad—with wide, appreciative eyes, and a quiet comment now and then to let Tate know that he was totally invested in the conversation. Brian who told Tate how brave he had been, without any irony at all, and who talked about Christmas like it was a big deal, and Tate’s biggest Christmas present wasn’t just that they were both going to live.

Brian, who, the day after Talker had given his deposition, had shoved his bruised, aching, healing body to one side of his hospital bed, forced Tate to lay up beside him, put the iPod ear buds in and just held him. It had been awkward, and probably painful on Brian’s part, but for Talker, it had been all the Christmas he’d ever wanted. Brian’s flesh was warm, and he was a quiet, comforting heart for Talker to curl up in, and oh, God, it was worth it, all of it, the pushy people with their horrible questions, the personal evisceration, it was all fucking worth it, just to curl up next to Brian and know that they’d be safe.

“So you
didn’t have to see Trevor?” Brian had asked eventually, and Talker had shaken his head against his shoulder.

“That was the whole purpose of the plead-out,” Talker told him candidly, his voice muffled by Brian’s chest. “Because I’m too freaky to put on the stand, and Trev didn’t know that you were too out of it to testify—”

“I wouldn’t have,” Brian said firmly, and Talker closed his eyes.

“I know you wouldn’t have,” he said softly. “I know you wouldn’t have gone up there for the same reason you shoved me back into the bar when you first saw them. You take real good care of me, Brian. It was my turn to do something for you.”

Brian made a little keening sound, and Tate met his gaze. “I just wish it wasn’t something so damned hard,” he murmured, and Tate’s smile had been all bitterness.

“Hard’s relative,” he said, not wanting to talk about it. “You’ve got a year of physical therapy, I had to gut myself for a few days. Hush… this song’s really good… I want to hear it….”

And
they had left it at that.

And now, when Jed had left with a promise to be back the next night (Christmas Eve) with his family in tow to visit, Doc Sutherland had made them promise to keep him on speed dial, and Lyndie and Craig were finally getting a day or two in their own home, it was just the two of them, as they’d started out, Talker and Brian against the world.

Even Talker knew that was a lie.

“Are they all really coming back tomorrow night?” Brian asked, a little bemused. It had been Lyndie’s idea, that everyone wanted to see Brian happy and safe, and wasn’t it Christmas Eve anyway?

“Yup,” Talker told him, making sure the afghan Lyndie had made them while watching over Brian in the hospital was all tucked up around his waist. He was sitting up in their bed, propped up by pillows, his arm in a sling, and he looked like the morning of checking out of the hospital and getting half carried up the stairs really had taken it out of him. “Lyndie said she’d come in the morning and help clean up and shop.” Talker shuddered. He was pretty sure the only thing in the cupboards was cold cereal and milk. It’s what he’d been living on for three weeks, anyway.

Brian’s smile was a little dreamy. “Do you think we could get chips? Man, I’m
dying
for something salty and bad for me!”

Talker grinned at him. “If you want, I’ll go get some for you now, okay?” He would, too. They had bags in the drugstore downstairs and across the street.

“Later.” Brian shook his head. He looked around their room in the sudden silence, and said, “Hey, what’s that thing Sunshine’s in?”

Talker grimaced, feeling guilty. He hadn’t hardly taken the rat out in the past three weeks. She’d almost bitten him the first time he’d gone for her, so he’d tried to be better. She’d warmed up since, but still, the poor creature seemed to be feeling the effects of neglect. Brian would need to make up some time with her.

“Craig made it,” is what he answered, though. “I guess it got cold in here that night you got hurt. It’s like a little hutch, to put the cage in, right? It’s got a little battery operated heater-light, so we don’t have to keep the sunlamp on all the time, and we can mess with her days and nights, so she’s not always running the damned wheel at three in the morning, and sleeping when we want to hold her. It’s pretty cool!” Even if it was totally odd. All Talker knew was that he’d come home after Brian got out of surgery, and there it was. All ready and cool and… just odd.

Brian raised his eyebrows. “Maybe he needed to work off some tension,” he said, and Talker shrugged. Lyndie’s boyfriend—big, quiet, paunchy—had been as much a wreck as Lyndie had been during those first horrible days. But he’d also been her rock, and Talker started to realize how much he and Brian really were part of a family. The Christmas party, although Lyndie’s idea, had seemed perfect. It meant they would be with family, and now Talker was starting to see why that mattered.

He would have been lost without his family in the last few weeks, and if he had been lost, Brian wouldn’t have had anybody to come home to.

He shook off the deep thoughts and reached his hand into the cage gingerly. “She’s been sort of tense,” he explained to Brian. “She actually bit me the first time I picked her up, but we’ve been spending some time and she’s sort of relaxing.” Granted, it had been a distracted time, but the night before, after Jed had dropped him off from work, Tate had simply sat and watched television with the rat on his lap, until the poor thing had curled up and gone to sleep in the front pocket of his sweatshirt.

“But there she is!” He picked up the animal, and made little “ft-ft-ft” sounds while touching noses with it, and then he gave it to Brian, who lifted her from the middle and started examining her like a doctor.