Jack&Teague [& Katy] stories 1-5 Read online

  Jack slammed the door harder than he needed to as he left the car. It was a measure of how badly this conversation had shaken the shorter man that being mean to the car didn’t even earn Jack a reproachful look.

  The alarm clicked in the car behind them.

  Teague gruffly ordered Jack into the shower first, and Jack didn’t argue. It reassured Teague to give him directions, and Jack didn’t mind taking them, never had. It had made him the favorite child of his aesthetic, wealthy parents, but Sara had always worried that he’d find the wrong person to give him orders. Jack knew—knew in the center of his lean stomach--that Teague would never give an order that Jack didn’t want to follow. He looked at his foggy reflection and had that thought again—and thought that he could live with what he saw in his eyes even as he overheard Teague’s phone conversation with Green.

  “No—of course I wouldn’t drag him out there tonight. But I could go. Are you sure? She’s out there in the cold, Green—I could go if I had to. She’s all alone.”

  Teague paced—Jack could hear the floor creak. It didn’t sit well with either of them that they should leave the girl in the hands of this Mikey Daniels one minute longer than they had to, but Jack’s anger built in his chest at the thought that Teague would go alone without him. Of course, Jack thought bitterly, Teague was expendable. It was Jacky the weak, the dreamer, the boy, who had to be protected at all costs.

  “What?” Teague sounded surprised and more than a little pissed off. “Wait until noon? What in the hell for? WHO? Yeah, yeah, right—I’ll ask him. I just thought…I knew her as a girl, Green.” It was a tortured admission—Teague hated to ask for anything. And Green had obviously put his foot down—the wolf was too dangerous on a night like this, and Green kept his people as safe as he possibly could. Jack appreciated the thought, even as he knew exactly what sort of panicky, itchy anxiety would be worming it’s way around Teague’s stomach all night. It was the same thing that would be in his own innards, gnawing away—except Jack would think of Sara, and Teague would think of…redemption? Salvation? What was it Teague had been driving himself towards these past months?

  Jack blew out a breath and started brushing his teeth and combing his hair and hoping the conversation would end soon.

  There was a pause on Teague’s end, an awkward one, and Jack could almost smell Teague’s embarrassment. “Right, Green,” he muttered. “Thanks. I’ll take care of him. You know that. Well, yeah, and me too.”

  That last part was said so reluctantly that Jack wanted to kick something. Teague never believed he needed taking care of—but that didn’t stop Jack from trying.

  The mist from the mirror had faded, and Jack, hearing sounds from the bedroom eyeballed the crack between the door and the frame. When he saw that Teague had started cleaning his guns—standard operating procedure when they were on a run—he breathed a sigh of relief and pressed closer to the short counter, putting down the comb.

  His marriage tackle hung heavily between his legs, dropping from the heat of the shower, and he settled the weight of his balls into his palm, rolling his eyes when the one-eyed-old-man between them woke up and started looking around. He wasn’t interested in that now—what he wanted to see was the four inch tattoo that rested at his inner thigh, just shy of the crease of his scrotum.

  He had been as surprised as anyone when that thing appeared.

  “So,” Jack said into the companionable silence that settled over him and Teague during the frosty December evening, “that…ceremony or whatever. Is it happening tonight?”

  Teague looked up from the bright pool of light and the magnifying glass he’d been using and blinked owlishly. He hit pause on the movie they’d been listening to as he’d been painting the model ’68 Camero on his work-table and Jack had read the newest Harry Dresden. Jack had cooked this night—as he did most nights—and Teague had tackled cleanup, and he’d been safely ensconced in his routine until Jack had opened his big fat mouth and talked.

  Jack regretted his need to interrupt—Teague looked contented. He so rarely settled into contentment, into small things that gave him pleasure. Most of his time at home was spent scrubbing the floors and the bathroom like a fiend, cleaning his guns, or working out until his muscles screamed in protest. Jack had to wonder what Teague’s life had been like before his father had run his car off of Mokolumne Hill after one too many late night conversations with Jose Cuervo.

  “Yeah, I think so,” he muttered and then scowled at his model, making sure his minute brushwork hadn’t been compromised. Teague’s Christmas present from Jack was going to be a set of hand-worked shelves from Green’s Hill, to display his models—Jack was almost as proud of that collection of hand-painted plastic cars as Teague.

  “What’s it entail?” Jack asked, and Teague put down the model with a patience Jack would have doubted before he’d gotten to know him. Teague called him pansy names, sneered at his music, and told him he was too pretty to play rough with the big guys. Teague also never yelled at him when he fucked-up, brought home his favorite pizza every Friday, and set up cinderblock shelves for Jack’s books less than a day after Jack had moved in. Jack hadn’t asked him for them—he’d just woken up, and they’d been there. There was more to Teague than met the eye—except right now, Teague wasn’t meeting his eyes.

  “Touch, blood, and song,” he mumbled, and Jack had blinked and asked him to repeat that. “Touch. Blood. And Song.” Teague enunciated clearly this time, and when Jack had widened his eyes, expecting more information, Teague shrugged.

  “In order for Green’s people to do things, they need touch, blood, and song. Or a proxy, you know? That’s why the kisses on the cheek or the hand, and the hug, and the kind conversation.”

  Jack squinted. “You mean all that was to get something from us?” And Teague shook his head violently.

  “No—you don’t get it. Green wouldn’t see it that way. He wouldn’t have offered the touch, blood and song if he didn’t want us in. It’s just that those things, all…in conjunction and shit—they’re the magic he’s using. Him and whoever else is there.” Green had mentioned a ‘beloved’, and although he seemed happier than when Jack had seen him last, neither Jack nor Teague were sure he’d ever get over Adrian.

  “So what’s going to happen to us when…”

  Could he have been asking a more prophetic question?

  At that moment a warm summer wind blew through their graceless upstairs Hurley Avenue apartment, and both of them closed their eyes in tandem, sticking their noses in the air and scenting things like wildflowers and shady meadows and freedom. And then Teague said “What the fuck?” And Jack stood up as though stung and ran to the bathroom.

  “Jacky, Jacky—you all right?” Teague asked as the door slammed in his face. “Jacky—you’ve got to see this thing on my wrist—it is the damnedest tattoo—healed up and everything seriously—what’d Green give you?”

  Jack had been so upset as he’d tried to examine himself in the bathroom that he didn’t even bother to pull up his jeans when he threw the door open. “Look!” He cried, grabbing his equipment in one hand and shoving it impatiently to the right. “What in the fuck IS that?” Because while Teague had felt a tingling in his wrist, Jack’s tingling had been a hell of a lot more intimate.

  Teague’s expression had been pretty damned comical, and he’d looked down to where Jack was pointing and then averted his eyes to Jack’s face, laughing in shock. “Jesus Humphrey Christmas, Jacky, would you put your shit away?”

  But Jack was too distraught to laugh. “Teague—dude…” he gestured helplessly. “Dude—my mark’s under my…my…”

  Teague had looked down curiously. “It’s under your left nut,” he said, his voice completely matter-of-fact.

  “YES!” Jack cried, practically jumping up and down. “Dude—I can’t see it! Man—what if it says something awful, like, I don’t know, ‘Pull twice to start’ or ‘If lost, call Johnson’—Teague, you’ve got to tell me what the fuc
k is under my nuts!”

  Teague couldn’t help himself. He started to giggle, helplessly, covering his mouth with his hand.

  “Teague!”

  “No…no…Jacky, just calm down.” He showed his own tattoo with its veiny branches and interlaced oak & lime leaves with the rose bush twining over them. He would admit privately—and only to Jack—that he thought it looked pretty damned cool. “Green wouldn’t screw you over like that. Here. Stop…flopping your shit all up and down…dude! Now stand still, and I’ll take a look.”

  Jack stopped doing his panic dance then, and Teague dropped to one knee. With hands as clinical on Jack’s body as they had been on his model, he pushed Jack’s cock and testicles to one side, and squinted a little, moving closer.

  “It’s actually pretty cool, Jacky,” he said, losing his embarrassment as he examined the new tattoo. “It’s a sword, shoved into a bleeding rock—we’ll have to ask Green what all this shit means, by the way—and twined around with the same stuff I’ve got on my wrist. You know, the leaves and shit…wait…” because Jack was backing up to pull up his pants, “there’s something else here.”

  And dammit if that hadn’t been when things had gotten weird. Teague may have been able to treat his touch professionally, but it had been anything but professional to Jack. Those rough, capable hands on his intimate equipment—well, Jack’s prick took kindly to that unusual attention and perked right up, asking for more. Jack had been relieved when Teague told him that the tattoo wasn’t anything embarrassing, and more than ready to back away and resume a normal amount of personal space between them, when Teague had gone in for a closer look. To Jack’s mortification, Mr. Happy sprang to attention and put on his party clothes like he was anticipating a really good time.

  Teague continued to study the tattoo, his breath fanning the fine hairs at Jack’s groin, and then he ran a finger musingly at Jack’s inner thigh, over the tattoo itself.

  “Teague…” Jack’s voice had gone thin and reedy, and for a moment, he wanted to close his eyes and simply savor the way his body felt under Teague’s hands. But at the same time, the sight of Teague, on his knees in front of him…oooh, that mental picture needed to be preserved and mounted on Jack’s inner eyeball, because suddenly it had become the most erotic thing he would ever dream of.

  “It says something here,” Teague muttered, still lost in his model-maker’s attention to detail. “It’s written on the sword…”

  He took another grip on Jack’s equipment—now enlarged and not minding it’s own business at ALL, and spared a glance for Jack’s change in circumstance. He smirked then and winked up at Jack, all good-ol’-boy in that moment, with the same heart-stopping grin he’d always had. “Don’t get no ideas, now, Jacky,” he said, “I like women.”

  And he did, too. He’d brought a couple of them home, in that first six months—he had a preference for bleached-blondes with dark roots. Jack had opened the bedroom door to borrow a shirt one morning and caught Teague, his head buried between the plump thighs of a busty young thing while she bit her palm to keep from screaming in what seemed to be a lot of pleasure. From then on he’d knocked, but until this moment, right here, with Teague in a similar position in front of him, that picture had been one of his favorite moments to use when jacking-off.

  Right then Teague rubbed his thumb across the tattoo, and his other hand convulsively tightened on Jack’s cock. Jack’s breathing went up a notch, and his entire body tingled under Teague’s touch. To his surprise, because he usually wasn’t a fast starter, pre-come started leaking out the end of his cock, and he just stood there, paralyzed with arousal and a heart-stopping desire for the man kneeling in front of him.

  “What’s it say, Teague?” Jack had asked breathlessly, trying to break the moment, but the eyes that met Jack’s hadn’t been nearly so cavalier about Jack’s body this time. Almost unconsciously, as though stroking his own skin, Teague’s hand had tightened around Jack’s cock, stroking up a little, until the rough pad of his thumb came up to the end to smear the pre-come over the purpling head. Jack had no choice but to lean against the bathroom door, tilt his head back, and groan.

  The sound seemed to bring Teague to himself, and Jack had felt—oh nightmare of nightmares—that lovely, rough, pleasurable grip on his cock ease up, as Teague prepared to leave him high and dry.

  With a whimper, Jack closed his fist over Teague’s, and the little sigh that Teague made as he leaned forward and kissed, ever so gently, the new mark on Jack’s skin tickled his balls, but then, so did Teague’s pointed tongue as it came out to taste the crease of Jack’s thigh.

  Jack groaned again, and pushed on Teague’s hand, and Teague rubbed the pad of his thumb over that slick broad head and pumped his fist smoothly and tightly. Jack’s hips thrust, and a little grunt emerged from his throat as Teague’s other hand came up to cup his balls and give them a squeeze. Ah, God…another pump, that thumb rubbing him… the sound of his tortured breathing in the deathly still apartment…and stroke again, and the thumb at his balls rubbed gently, a caress, a bit of tenderness, and that, only that, was enough to send Jack’s head slamming back into the bathroom door and his ejaculation pumping over the area rug on the bathroom hall.

  Jack kept his eyes closed then, not wanting to see how Teague backed out of this. He’d sensed Teague shifting, letting go of Jack’s body and standing slowly up. He felt Teague’s breath on his face and for a moment he’d dared to hope, so he opened his eyes.

  Teague’s pupils were dilated with arousal, but his face…his mouth was grim and flat and his eyes were dark green and liquid and his expression was as yearning and as sad and as serious as Jack had ever seen it.

  “So what’s it say?” Jack asked with a hesitant, gamine smile.

  “It says,” Teague began heavily, “that young men with a future should settle down with a nice girl and not get involved with dumb old bastards who don’t know where to draw the line.”

  And with that he stalked off to wash his hands in the kitchen sink and bring back a towel to wipe the come stain off the rug.

  Jack had hidden in the bathroom and tried to pull himself together. Eventually, the television had gone back on, and he’d gone out into the living room and sat down, picked up his book, and watched as Teague worked patiently on his model with hands that barely shook.

  Neither of them mentioned the incident again.

  Until this night, in the car, because Jack had been jealous of the ex-partner and willing to face anything, even Teague’s pissy brush off, to remind him that Jack was different from Jace in a very important way.

  Jack tried to tell himself he was pathetic, but he didn’t care.

  He gave up studying the mark in the mirror—he never could get close enough to see what it said across the blade—and walked into the room for a T-shirt and boxers to sleep in.

  As he was rooting through his duffel, he felt Teague’s glare on his bare back like a brand.

  “What?” He asked, without turning around.

  “You heard?”

  “We’re not going,” Jack said flatly. “I bet you’d bring Jace.”

  Teague growled. “Didn’t care about Jace. Jace was… never more than a friend. A drinking buddy. A spare hand.”

  Jack turned around and Teague suddenly could look anywhere but at him. “And I am?” He asked softly, dreading the answer.

  “A friend,” Teague mumbled, watching his hands as they packed up his gun gear, putting everything carefully in the case, including his .22, his .45, and the long-action rifle that he used mostly for the sight. With a heave he thunked the gun case on the ground by the queen-sized bed, and listened to Jack’s waiting silence. “Family,” he said at last. “You and Green—only family I’ve ever really had. And one day, you’ll find a girl and quit this dumb-assed way of living. Have me over once a week for dinner, let me play with your kids. And you’ll still be family.”

  Jack gave up trying to make eye contact. He found his clothes and slid
them on, rooting under the hotel sheets as Teague shut off the light. He listened to Teague getting undressed, knowing that the plain white T-shirt and jeans would come off in the dark but the tighty-whiteys would stay on. Teague had scars, one of them from under his right nipple down practically to his left hipbone, but he never talked about them. Jack had dreams sometimes, about tracing that longest scar, touching the pale flesh and the dark sand-colored nipples, and hearing the stories that Teague had told nobody else out loud.

  But the silence was all he heard now as Teague slid into his bed, grunting a little like an old dog. Jacky knew his sounds and the thought of Teague, in this hotel without anybody at all, wrecked him.

  “And you’ll still be alone,” he replied clearly into that breathing darkness, when it was obvious no reply had been expected.

  Teague’s next words were spoken lightly, as though he were trying to give Jack a gift. An ugly, fear-knotted, painful gift in black paper.

  “Don’t fret yourself too much, Jacky—I’m likely to die on this job more sooner than later. You and your family, you’ll be just fine.”

  Jacky waited until Teague’s breathing evened out, wondering that he himself could breathe at all for the ice in his chest. You and your family, you’ll be just fine. Asshole. Stupid, blind, dumb-fucking shit-kicking asshole.

  Jack’s voice echoed flatly in the hotel dark. “You are my family, you dumb motherfucker.”

  And with that he rolled away from the window, from Teague’s bed, so he didn’t have to see if the stupid fucking asshole he loved was really awake or if he had fallen asleep in that horrible, numb silence. Jack closed his eyes so tightly he saw stars, so tightly he could pretend the water sliding from his eye creases into the pillow was just tiredness from the drive.

  Teague

  Dreaming and Hunting

  Long fingers skated down the slick damp trickling down the back of Teague’s thigh, then traced that fluid along the corner of Teague’s mouth. Teague was drowsy—he’d been in a great deal of pain, and then the pain had faded into a startling, invasive pleasure, and by the time he figured out what he was doing and who was doing it to him, he was coming and screaming and weeping in another man’s arms.