Infected: Shift Page 21

  “Say hi to Tank for me, that crazy bastard.”

  Scott’s grin was genuine and very sweet. “I know. He’s… something else. Even if he sucks, he’s gonna be a star in the NHL. He’s too much of a character not to be. I wish I was that interesting.”

  “Are you kidding me? Out bi hockey player? That’s news.”

  “That might be a little too interesting.”

  “Never know ’til you try.”

  Scott gave him a sad smile and headed for the door. Maybe he wasn’t ready now, but maybe, in a year or two, he would be ready. Roan had no idea, but he was hoping that maybe, in another year or two, it wouldn’t even matter anymore.

  Deciding it was about fucking time to get moving, Roan went upstairs and got dressed, then grabbed his helmet, got the bike out of the garage, and headed for D’Andra’s apartment. He was kind of hoping she wasn’t there, but didn’t count on it.

  It was a good thing, as she answered the door. Her head was still shaved, and she’d gotten another facial piercing in her chin. Good lord, how did you get that without surgery? Nail gun?

  They argued a bit, mainly because he wanted to talk to Dylan and she insisted Dylan didn’t want to talk to him, but she wouldn’t let him talk to Dylan to confirm this. It was a silly, pointless argument that went on much longer than it should have and probably entertained the neighbors with its childishness.

  Finally, Dylan came out, looking sleep disheveled, and exclaimed, “D’Andra, would you just shut the hell up and let him in before someone calls the cops?”

  She looked like she wanted to argue with him but let it go. It helped that D’Andra apparently had an appointment at a gallery or some such, although Dylan had to encourage her to leave. (Really, she got work? She had an artwork of her own design tucked in the corner of her living room—it was a papier mâché papaya, as large as an end table, split open and painted in orange and red glitter with tiny penises cut out from skin mags scattered about the inside and a mannequin’s head at the base with knitting needles sticking out of its green painted scalp. Dylan told him it was titled “Domino Effect.” What the fuck? Seriously, Roan wanted to take a baseball bat to it and light it on fire, and he had no idea why.) When she did finally go, she gave Roan a look so dirty he felt frostbitten.

  But as soon as that front door closed, an awkward silence descended, and Roan wondered if he’d made a mistake. He had been so gung ho after having Scott hit on him, but now he wondered if he was just shifting guilt around.

  He’d obviously woken Dylan up. He was wearing gray sweatpants that sat low on his hips and an oversized yellow T-shirt with a bottle of ketchup on the front. (Why? Who knew?) He scratched his head and rubbed his eyes in that way he did when he’d just gotten up. Sometimes he also scratched the back of his right shoulder, which he was doing now. There was a tiny scar on that shoulder, hard to see, but it was the only remaining sign of the car crash that had killed Jason. The fact that Dylan almost always scratched it was unconscious and probably very telling from a psychological point of view. As was Roan keeping a couple of Paris’s old shirts in the back of his closet, unwashed, just so he could occasionally smell his scent. They had ghosts between them, and maybe that was the ultimate problem.

  “I need to say this in one go,” Roan told him. “Don’t interrupt, just listen. You know how I hate talking about my feelings, and this is going to be hard enough as it is.”

  “Roan—”

  He held up a hand to silence him, and then just launched into it, looking at Dylan’s throat, his stubble-riddled cheek, his forehead, pretty much everywhere but directly at his eyes. Not because he was lying, but because he was sure he’d freeze if he saw a reaction he couldn’t deal with. “Let me just get this out of the way first. I love you, you stupid bastard. I’m sorry you don’t think I do. I’m sure that’s my fault. Do I still love Paris? Yes, and I always will. That’s not going to change, but you know that. Just like I know you still love Jason too. Now, the other thing.” He took a deep breath, then plowed on. “Am I depressed? Yes. Have I been acting recklessly and stupidly lately? Yes. The fact that I’m asking myself questions confirms that. But I’m not suicidal. I’ve talked with Doctor Rosenberg, I’ve agreed to see if seeing someone regularly will do me any good at all, but you knew when you met me I am stupid, Dyl. You can’t be shocked now.”

  “Ro—”

  “Let me finish.” Now Roan looked him in the eye, because this was the part where he would stand or fall, and he had to know the answer before Dylan gave him one. “I fight. It’s what I do. I wish I could take my final years off and sit on a porch with my feet up, watching the sun go down, but I’m not that kind of person. I’ve always lived by the sword, and I’m gonna die by it. We all know an aneurysm could kill me at any time. It could kill me in my sleep. Yes, physical stress can set one off early, but if that blood vessel is going to pop, it will pop. Being propped up on a sofa and watching TV won’t stop it. I have a time bomb in my brain that could go off at any moment, no matter what I’m doing or where I am. I’m taking the meds, I’m doing what I can to stave it off, but we know it’s not a cure. There is no cure. I’m the oldest living virus child in recorded history, and in nearly forty years there hasn’t been a cure. There probably won’t be in my lifetime, no matter how long or short it is. I want to spend time with you, Dylan. You can have as many of my last hours as I can give you, but don’t ask me to stop. Don’t ask me to be something I’m not. I love you, but I’m not going to be treated like I’m fragile, and I’m not gonna act like I am. If you can’t live with that, I understand. But don’t tell me I wanna die when all I’m doing is living my life.”

  This was all so very hard. Yes, he got it out, he said what he wanted to say, but tears were starting to spill from Dylan’s warm brown eyes and a lump was forming in Roan’s throat. He hated it when Dylan cried. It made him want to go to him and hold him, lie and say it was all right when they knew that it wasn’t. He was a dead man walking, and wishing he wasn’t wouldn’t change one fucking thing.

  “You still have your key, so if you wanna come home, you can, any time. If you’d rather just get the rest of your stuff and move on, you can do that too. Just think about it. I love you regardless, but I’m not going to live a lie. I just don’t have enough time left to compromise.” He turned away, because he didn’t want Dylan to see him getting teary eyed; it would seem weak. He quickly left, mainly so Dylan didn’t make a rash, knee-jerk decision he would regret later.

  So he’d either torpedoed this relationship or he hadn’t. He wondered when he’d know for sure if he’d fucked things up permanently or managed to save the sinking ship.

  19

  Flathead

  Roan had to take his mind off things as depressing and all consuming as a relationship, so he stopped by a deli and picked up sandwiches before dropping by the hospital to visit Holden.

  Holden seemed to appreciate both the sandwiches and the company. They discussed the Bruen book for a while (Calibre—a fast read, but really enjoyable), and then Holden asked for a lift tomorrow, as he was getting kicked out of the hospital then. He had the state’s health insurance, which wasn’t very good but was marginally better than nothing. And Roan found it amusing that Holden actually thought far enough ahead that he got himself health insurance—he probably listed himself as unemployed, since listing himself as “prostitute” wouldn’t have gone over well—as he couldn’t imagine many hookers did that. They should have. They probably needed health coverage more than anyone, but it was a general reality that people who needed health care the most didn’t get it. Roan told him he was due for a raise since he broke the case, but Holden pointed out that he didn’t actually break it, just got attacked by the right guy. Roan felt it didn’t matter. He had the presence of mind to get a photo, and you had to reward that kind of quick thinking, especially when it was quick thinking done when you were bleeding out from a stomach wound. Not many people could do that.

  He wondered briefl
y if a relationship with someone like Holden would work any better. He knew Holden liked him—how much was a guess; Roan was sometimes under the impression he had a serious crush on him, but he was afraid that was his ego talking—and Holden would accept him without question. Holden accepted everyone, warts and all, which was why he had so many oddball friends. The negative side of this was he’d have to accept Holden selling himself, as he would expect to be accepted without question as well. No, it couldn’t work; they both had too much control freak in them, and he wasn’t sure he could ever live with a guy selling himself to strangers, even if he did make more money than Roan did.

  It wasn’t an office day, but Roan went there and finished up the paperwork he’d fallen asleep on the other day and discovered an odd message on his machine. Not the usual death threat—he erased that without bothering to listen to it beyond the “you faggot” part—but one from a potential client who refused to leave his name. He just said he’d stop by tomorrow, as he wasn’t comfortable leaving this on a machine. Leaving what? His name? That was weird but not unprecedented, especially not with the paranoid. It made Roan wonder exactly who would show up tomorrow, and if he’d have a gun. He called Fi and left a message on her machine, letting her know they’d be open tomorrow. That way, if the mystery man did turn up to kill him, he’d also have a dominatrix to deal with, and for whatever reason, men who didn’t even know she was a dominatrix seemed immediately cowed when she barked out orders. Maybe it was just attitude, like she claimed.

  Roan realized he was being a coward. He was putting off going home, and he had turned off his cell phone. He wanted Dylan to just make up his mind and get it all over with—maybe it wasn’t too late to score a mercy fuck from Scott—but he was afraid of his answer at the same time. Idiotic, schizophrenic, and cowardly. He hoped he got some kind of brownie points for realizing that, but probably not.

  He stopped by a bar, a decent bar, one with lights and everything, although it was a bit of a fern bar and made him feel even gayer just being there. Still, at least they served passable microbrews, and the music they played was easy to ignore. He sat at a table near the window and watched people walking by. He saw a lot of people talking on their cells or texting. Some people actually were talking to each other, but he saw no obvious couples. When a waitress—a young, slim blonde who looked like a college student and wore an honestly astonishing amount of makeup—started flirting with him, he figured it was time to go. If she was serious, he felt bad for her; if she was just doing it for a bigger tip, he felt vaguely disgusted. Either way, it wasn’t ideal.

  He stopped by the store on the way home, but since he’d taken the bike he got very little, just some apples to replace the ones that had gone soft in the crisper drawer (crisper his ass) and an industrial-sized bottle of Excedrin, as he went through it like some people went through mints. And did it help? Sometimes. But it seemed like nothing next to Percocet.

  He came back to a quiet, darkened house, not really surprised but a tad disappointed. He put in another call to Fiona, got her in, and discussed the odd phone call and the possible scenarios that could play out tomorrow. He refused to give her a gun but agreed to wear one, and he said he’d consider her suggestion about calling some of his “hockey friends” to come and loiter in the lobby. It was a good idea, actually: Grey was big enough to scare any ne’er-do-wells on sight, and while Tank’s natural placidity would fool them, as soon as they caught his hawklike, slightly insane gaze, they’d run screaming from the office like their ass was on fire; doubly so if he brought his big-ass hockey stick. It was amusing to think about.

  He had a beer and vegged on the couch, attempting to watch television, eating one of the apples he’d bought. He had to admit, organic apples tasted a bit more like actual apples and not just cold, vaguely sweet fruits of uniform texture. That was a nice improvement.

  He was insane, wasn’t he? He was insane. He’d lost one of the few guys who would put up with him on a daily basis. That was a small group, growing smaller by the day. And all because he was a stubborn asshole. That’s probably what he needed a cure for, not infection.

  He was just getting into the BBC World News when he heard a jingle of keys, and the front door opened. He looked around and saw Dylan coming in through the door. It wasn’t easy to judge if he was here to tell him to go screw himself or was sticking around; he wasn’t carrying anything.

  “Hey,” Roan said, trying to be casual. “Wanna apple?”

  Dylan fixed him with a slightly disbelieving look, but then he grimaced in a way that was just as good as an eye roll. He was accustomed to Roan and his bullshit. “Not those ones you let rot in the bottom drawer.”

  “No, I got new ones. They’re organic, so they should rot sooner.”

  “That’s thinking ahead.” Actually, Dylan bought nothing but organic produce, so he was just letting him have the joke. That was a good sign. But there was no sign of happiness as he sighed heavily and put his hands in the pockets of his black leather jacket before approaching the sofa. Roan shut off the set and turned to face him, trying very hard not to start begging.

  Dylan sat on the opposite end of the sofa, his shoulders rounded with weariness. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I expect an honest answer, okay?”

  Did any conversation that started that way ever add up to anything good? “Sure.”

  He seemed to steel himself. He took a deep breath and sat up straight before asking, “Does the change ever really sneak up on you?”

  He was bracing himself for that? But come to think of it, Dylan was probably trying to see if he could adjust to having such a freaky boyfriend. “Yes and no. I mean, it always hurts like fuck—imagine having your jaw just snap on its own, shift out of socket like an invisible person has grabbed it and yanked on it—but sometimes if I’m angry, it just happens so fast.” Roan snapped his fingers, and Dylan flinched slightly, mainly in reaction to the description of the broken jaw. “I really can’t hold it back when it comes on like that. I can put the brakes on, but only after it’s started. It’s a nice idea that I can totally control it, but it isn’t close to reality. It’s an impulse, and sometimes it has a mind of its own. I can force a change, but sometimes a change comes on of its own.”

  “If you’re upset.”

  “Yeah. Sometimes fellow cats can bring it close to the surface too.”

  “Why?”

  “Rivals. I’m the King Cat, and if they don’t acknowledge it, I make them. You saw that for yourself.”

  Dylan gave him a quick glance out of the corner of his eye before gazing back down at the carpet, hands held together between his knees. “I had this idea for a painting. You leading an army of cats. Could you do that?”

  “Lead a bunch of cats? I dunno. I’ve never tried.”

  “But they obey you, don’t they? What’s stopping you from assembling your own pride of altered infecteds?”

  He would have been pissed off by this line of questioning normally, but he knew Dyl was still trying to understand this. Dylan didn’t mean anything nasty by it. “In theory? Absolutely nothing. But altered infecteds don’t understand language in that form, so I have no idea how I’d give them an order.”

  “But you managed with the panther. You told it to submit and it did.”

  “That was more of a ’tude thing. The roaring helps.”

  Dylan sat back with a sigh, sinking into the sofa. “That’s a hell of a roar you got there. I wouldn’t have believed a human could make that sound.”

  “I’m not Human.”

  “Stop that shit. Of course you are. You’re just human plus a little extra.” He paused briefly. “The change hurts, I get that, but you change a lot. I know you’re not into S&M, so why do it if it hurts so much? There has to be something in it for you.”

  Oh, he could be so good at spotting the little details sometimes. “Yeah. Maybe it’s the endorphins responding to all the pain, but along with the change comes a… a rush. I feel so fucking powerful when
the change comes. The pain is kind of irrelevant. I feel like I could fight the world and win.”

  Dylan just nodded, like it was something he suspected. “You had that look in your eye.”

  “My cat eyes, you mean?”

  “They’re just your eyes, Roan. You can see it’s you. The pupils change shape, but that’s all.”

  Roan stared at him in disbelief. “Really?”

  He nodded. “You didn’t know?”

  “No. I don’t look in a mirror when I change.” He considered that and wondered why it bothered him. Maybe it had been mentioned before, but he always thought they were joking. “Fuck.”

  “I don’t want you to die,” Dylan said, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did.

  “I don’t want to die. But I can’t just sit down and shut up.”

  “Oh, I know. If you shut up, I’d know you’d been replaced by a pod person.” He scowled at Dylan for that, but he got an affectionate, sad smile in return. “You hafta be patient with me. I never signed up to be the boyfriend of a superhuman or a shapeshifter, whichever you prefer.”