Wow - what was in that cold medicine?

As he pushed himself up and realized that night had rendered Roan’s bedroom dark, he was at least glad he could breathe. The meds might have fucked him up pretty good - and Roan had been right about that - but being able to breathe made him feel better. He got up and stumbled his way to the bathroom in the dark, not tripping over anything but running somewhat painfully into what was probably the dresser. He had to squint for a long time to get used to the bathroom light, which seemed too bright, and took as quick a shower as possible when it felt like he was moving in slow motion. The water felt nice, though.

He hated having to wear Roan’s clothes, but he still needed to get over to his place and get some other clothes, or better yet, just go home. But a torpor had overcome him that had only a bit to do with the cold.

He liked being here. Roan had a nice house, with a lot more room than his apartment, and a warmer atmosphere than the loft where he usually painted. Roan himself was a bit of a puzzle, but one that probably said more about him than Roan himself. Roan wasn’t the type of guy he ever thought he’d be involved with. Sure, he was good looking - his eyes were fascinating; even if he didn’t now know that they could actually transform into cat’s eyes when he was still in his Human state, they were gorgeous and intense, the eyes of someone who was always thinking - and he was, much to his surprise, one of the smartest men he had ever met. He was not pedantic, not a pretentious professorial type, just someone gifted with an easy intelligence that came from the seemingly contrary habit of reading in great quantities and interacting with a lot of different people. Dylan had always found that a turn on, although pretentiousness turned him off, which had led Jason to once ask, laughing at him, “What the fuck are you doin’ in the art world then?” He had never been able to answer that question.

No, what troubled him about Roan was the fact that he used to be a cop, and since his father, he really didn’t trust police officers. He knew consciously that not all cops were bad, and certainly very few could have been as troubled his father, a seemingly stoic man who was just a simmering volcano of rage, and who one day finally erupted. But what the brain knows and how it reacts was often two different things, and it didn’t help that Roan seemed so stoic. Except it was a false impression; Roan was anything but stoic. He made wisecracks and got angry enough to spit words like bullets, he sometimes wore his grief like a shroud to keep the world away, and what seemed initially like stoicism was really an enforced calm brought on by fear, because if he got agitated or upset enough, he wouldn’t erupt: he’d transform. What an odd problem to have - that probably wasn’t in any medical journal.

And was yet another reason to avoid getting involved with him. Both Sheba and his best friend, Tristan, worried about him getting involved with someone who was infected anyways, because you could only be so careful. Shit happened, condoms broke, just an errant drop of blood could ruin your life forever. But he’d learned the hard way that anything could change your life forever - staying later than you expected so you could say goodbye to a friend, taking a shortcut, someone else running a red light. Life was almost ludicrously fragile at times. He refused to live in fear of a possibility, because if he did, he’d never get out of bed. And he trusted Roan to never hurt him - he seemed more freaked out by the idea of accidentally infecting him than Dylan could ever get.

Never getting out of bed sounded like a good idea since it felt like his head was a balloon, but he was really thirsty. He pulled on some sweatpants and a random t-shirt, hoping that Roan wouldn’t really be requiring either item soon, and went downstairs to get something cold to drink. He almost felt like he was floating, which was a bad sign. But that’s how colds and the flu always hit him: he got bad fevers. He’d been prone to them ever since he was a baby; his mother used to claim he just “ran hot”, like his thermostat was slightly off. And maybe it was; maybe that explained everything about him.

He found some pineapple orange juice in his fridge and poured himself a glass, adding ice cubes to make it even colder, and took a deep gulp. Too fast probably, as the cold shot a sharp pain through his head - brain freeze from a glass of juice? Wow, how pathetic was he? - but it tasted good enough that he realized he was kind of hungry. When did he last eat? He sipped his juice while he searched Roan’s refrigerator. There wasn’t a whole lot, it wasn’t hard to tell he was a bachelor who ate out a lot, but there was the Chinese food he brought home. He found the box of vegetable chow mein that he must have gotten for him, and put it in the microwave. It smelled good, so once it was done he plopped right down on the couch and started to eat it with the disposable chopsticks he found in the bag along with the food. That was a kind of surprising thing he had discovered about Roan: he was thoughtful. He never really expected that.

There was a message on the answering machine, and even though it wasn’t his place, he decided to play the message anyways. It turned out to be Roan, letting him know he was out on a stakeout. Again, more thoughtfulness on his part, along with the assumption he’d be nosy enough to check the machine.

Sitting alone in the house, he didn’t feel quite alone. It was almost like the echo of Paris was still here, still existing in the shadows and the corner of the eye, but it wasn’t a creepy feeling at all. Maybe because he knew Paris before he knew Roan, and never would have known him if it wasn’t for Paris. In fact, he wondered if he should tell him that Paris was the only reason he was in his life. One of the last times he saw Paris at Panic, he had asked him if he’d check in on Roan after his death. Dylan had found the request both odd and uncomfortable, because all he knew of Roan was what Paris had told him, and then that brief time he’d spent with the pair of them at the police station after Eric’s murder. His first impression of Roan had been he was ultra-serious, clearly an ex-cop, intelligent and tough, the winner of any macho man contests you’d throw at him. It was hard to match that with Paris’s description of him as this sweet, almost emotionally fragile man that he wanted Dylan to check up on after his death, because he was sure Roan would retreat from life at the first chance he got. Paris had been so very in love with him that he’d looked at him through rose colored glasses, and yet he was right about him anyways. You could never fault Paris’s personality insights.

It made him wonder sometimes if Paris had picked him out as a future boyfriend for his husband. A really bizarre thought, endlessly creepy, and yet … would he put it past Paris? Not really. Paris knew what Roan wanted and needed, and it wouldn’t have surprised him if he had tried to plan ahead for Roan’s benefit. When Roan got to the point where he could talk about him, maybe he’d mention it.

It made him wonder if things would really work between him and Roan. They seemed to come from two different worlds, intersected only by violence and grief. But sometimes that was a good thing, wasn’t it? Opposites attracting and all.

The remote was sitting on the coffee table, beside a copy of something called the Science News (did he want to know why Roan had a subscription to that?), and he picked it up, deciding to see what was on. When he turned on the TV, he discovered it was on Comedy Central. Hard core science and foul mouthed cartoons - no wonder Roan was so hard to pin down. He was a Renaissance man for a truly fucked up twenty first century.

Dylan pressed the favorites button on the cable remote to see what else Roan had programmed on it. The Sci-Fi Channel, HBO, BBC America, IFC, Here. Well, he certainly liked his cable channels. Dylan had the overwhelming urge to shout, “Nerd!” but managed to suppress it.

There was a knock at the door, which almost made him jump. Was Roan back already? Did he not want to mess with his key? He shut off the television and cautiously walked over to the door, wondering who it might be. Should he be worried?

It must have been the cold fucking him up still, because he normally wasn’t this paranoid. He shook his head, but stopped quickly as it was making him dizzy, and opened the door.

For a moment he stared at the young guy on the doorstep without recognition, even though he thought he should be familiar. The guy, lean and blond, a classic twink, delicate and somewhat surprised looking, just stared back at him for a long moment before finding his voice. “Umm … Toby … hi. I swear, I come in peace.”

The fact that he called him Toby caused the penny to drop. That and his voice, which was fairly unmistakable. “Oh, Matt. Hey. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

He nodded sheepishly, digging his hands nervously in the pocket of his navy windbreaker, looking down at the ground. “Yeah, umm, I lost some weight and um, the facial hair.”

“I can tell.” There was an awkward pause after this, but Dylan was in no hurry to fill it. The last time he’d seen Matt, he was throwing glasses at him at Panic, accusing him of “stealing” Roan.

Matt shifted uneasily, glancing at him askance, as if afraid (or too embarrassed) to look him in the eye. “Look, umm … I’m really sorry about … y’know … I was kinda … fucked up at the time. If you hate me, I understand …”

“I don’t hate you. Grudges only hurt the people who hold them.” Or at least that’s what he told himself when it came to the man who killed Jason. Most of the time, he just tried not to think about him.

Matt’s pale eyebrows rose in surprise, and a briefly suspicious look faded quickly. “Oh, right, you’re a Buddhist.”

He loved the way people said that, like it was a rare species of person. Maybe it was. “Also, I don’t see the point in holding a grudge.”

“Well, yeah,” he admitted, so awkward he was like a teenager asking someone out on a date. Dylan did honestly feel bad for him, which reminded him why he was never really that pissed off at the kid: how could he be? He felt bad for him. He wanted what he couldn’t have, and didn’t know how to deal with it. “Can I, umm, talk to Roan?”

“He’s not here; I’m afraid he’s on a stake out.”

“Oh.”

Matt looked so forlorn it was impossible not to pity him. Poor kid. No matter that many of his problems were ones of his own creation. “Would you like to come in?”

That seemed to surprise him. “Oh, um … yeah, could I?”

Dylan held the door open. “Why not?”

He came in, although he kept looking at him like he expected him to sucker punch him. “So, umm … you live here now?”

“No, I’m just waiting for him too.”

Matt nodded, looking around like he expected that Roan had massively redecorated in his absence. Of course he hadn’t, but maybe Matt was expecting to see big poster sized photos of them together inside heart shaped frames.

It suddenly occurred to him that he’d just let in a slightly crazed former admirer of Roan’s. Was that smart? Oh fuck. Well, hopefully Roan wouldn’t be too pissed off at him when he came home.

****

As smart as he was - and Holden was undoubtedly smart - he seemed stunned that stakeouts were so fucking boring. Roan could have told him this if he had only bothered to ask.

This gave them a lot of time to talk, which Roan absolutely loathed. When Holden started asking him if he’d ever had sex with a woman (no - Holden had, or at least “had given punani a shot”, but mainly because he hadn’t wanted the guys on the team to think he was a fag … which he was. Ah, he was so glad he wasn’t a teenager anymore …) he circumvented him by asking about his necklaces, which had bugged him.

Holden told him he wore many because when he was living on the streets, he had no other place to put them. They were safest around his neck, and people had a tendency to give him necklaces since he was always wearing some, and it became his shtick. He said he found it kind of comforting now, like it was a type of body armor.

The dogtags were real. According to Holden, he was out one night with some friends, and met this cute young guy who seemed to be drowning his sorrows. He was a GI who was shipping out to Iraq on the weekend and wasn’t looking forward to it, mainly because he was sure that he would be coming back in a wooden box. Holden felt bad for him - well, he was cute - and bought him a drink, and let him tag around for a while. Holden said he knew he was gay as soon as he saw him (“That was no straight man’s body,”), but they never discussed it. They did fuck, though, and Holden didn’t charge him or even mention he was a hustler - he said he saw it as “doing his duty for the troops”, even though he saw the war as one of the most goddamn stupid things he’d ever witnessed, and he’d actually seen a Uli Boll film once.

After that, the guy left his dogtags with him, saying he was probably the only person who knew the real him. Holden thought that was “very Lifetime movie”, and while he took the dogtags, he just threw them in his top dresser drawer and forgot about them. Until a couple of months ago, when he saw a newspaper in a client’s hotel room, reporting on the latest local troop casualties. He saw the guy’s picture among them; he’d been taken out by an IED somewhere near Mosul. There was a tiny bio beneath thumbnail sized pictures of the dead troops, and Holden said he was taken by a couple of things: his age (he was only twenty two, which Holden hadn’t known), and the fact that they interviewed his “girlfriend”, a girl he basically met over the internet and never saw in person. She was convinced they were going to get married when he came back from Iraq. Holden couldn’t believe he was the only one who knew he was gay, especially since if he just came out, they’d have kicked his ass out of the Army and he’d still be alive. But being seen as straight - or at least staying in the military - was more important to him than that. So Holden started wearing his dogtags amongst his necklaces, for all the “closet boys”. Roan supposed it was touching in a way, but mostly just tragic. Pointless death was always tragic.

After a while, Roan insisted on silence, so Holden pulled out his iPod and started listening to it through one earbud, so his other ear was free for the receiver. The bad part was Roan got to hear what Holden was listening to. He stared at him in disbelief. “You listen to Fall Out Boy?” Roan was genuinely horrified.

Holden rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know, it’s high school girl emo, but some of it’s pretty catchy. We can’t all be hipster indie rock listeners like you.”

“I am not a hipster.”

“And yet listening to at least five bands that no normal person has ever heard of is hip. Face it; you’re on the trend scale.”

If he took a moment to think about it, Roan would realize this was deeply stupid, and yet being called a “hipster” seemed like a major slur. “Since when was Pansy Division trendy?”

He paused briefly, but still hadn’t turned off the Fall Out Boy. “Okay, point taken.”

The stake out seemed to crawl by. At one point he left to get them some fast food down the street, which filled a hunger void but was kind of unsatisfying. He’d have preferred a pizza, but there was no easy way to eat that on a stake out in a small car.

Kai got lots of business, but he was careful about who he picked. Holden assured Roan if he got a “thug” vibe off anyone, he’d go with them, because that’s who they were looking for. That didn’t make him feel very good, but he hadn’t set this up in the first place.

It was approximately two in the morning, and Roan was chewing his caffeinated gum to stay alert, even though it had an aftertaste like diesel. They were unlikely to get their guy to take the bait tonight - or even tomorrow night. The problem with stake outs is they could last a while. In this case he doubted it would last a week, but it could. At least it wouldn’t last a month. Their psycho couldn’t wait that long. They just had no guarantee that he’d pick Kai as his next victim.

Holden continued to be unconscionably nosy, so he told him what he’d discovered about his mother and his still unidentified father. State bureaucracy was slow to move, so he hadn’t gotten back those files on Zoë yet, but he had to give him something. The name Mission Creek Church meant something to him, though. Holden looked off into the middle distance, not focusing on anything but his own thoughts. “Mission Creek? Wow, that sounds familiar.”

“How so?”

Holden just shook his head, brow furrowing as he tried to call it up from he recesses of his memory. “I’m not sure …”

Roan didn’t think he was lying. He couldn’t remember how he knew the name, just that he knew it, and it bugged him.

While they were pondering the imponderable, a black Ford Explorer had pulled up, and Kai was talking to the man inside, hidden by both poor lighting and tinted windows. It was so cold you could see Kai’s breath as quickly dissipating clouds, little ghosts disappearing into the ether. After a few moments of negotiating, Kai got in on the passenger side, and Roan asked Holden, “Do you have a mike you talk to him on? I’d like to wrap this up for the night. I’m exhausted, and I’m sure he must be.”

“No, I can only receive, I can’t transmit. But sure, when he’s done we c-” Holden suddenly sat ramrod straight in the driver’s seat, almost knocking the remains of his Dr. Pepper out of the cup holder. “Holy shit,” he gasped.

“What?”

“This guy, who just picked Kai up? He identified himself as Roan.”

He felt his heart suddenly plummet to the bottom of his stomach. That could only mean one thing. “How did Kai react?”

“He didn’t. He just said his name was Kyle.”

“Good boy. Follow this asshole, just don’t get too close. If he realizes he’s being followed, he might do something stupid.”

Holden hastily started the car, and asked, quite nervously, “Is this our guy?”

“It must be,” he said, pulling out his cell phone. Considering the time, he knew he was going to wake Murphy up, but there was no way to avoid it. After four rings, the phone was picked up, and Murphy’s sleep slurred voice grumbled, “This better be fucking good.”

“It is. We’re tailing our guy right now, but I need you to call in back up. People you can trust, ones who won’t fall back on the “brotherhood is all” bullshit.”

That must have piqued her curiosity, as she sounded a bit more awake. “What? Why, Roan?”