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The first time, Pete dismissed it as a rival gang taking stupid potshots. Later he kicked himself for it, viciously, but that was just the way it was. When you were the quasi-disgraced son of a murdered mafia boss, sometimes people tried to knife you in the street on the way to dinner. Vegas didn’t think anything of it either. He just raised a languid eyebrow at Pete, who still had his gun trained on the man who’d gone for him, and wiped the knife off on Pete’s shirt.
“I think he’s taken care of,” said Vegas, who’d stabbed him three times once he got control of the knife.
What Pete had learned about knife fights was very simple: there were no winners. In close quarters, your goal was to put distance between yourself and the blade. Vegas did not subscribe to this philosophy. The man he’d stabbed let out a wheezing, choking noise. He was still breathing.
Pete rolled his eyes and shot him in the head.
“You’re no fun,” Vegas told him, and tugged Pete in by the waist, running the flat of the knife up his back. Pete let himself be kissed, and didn’t think much more about it.
Two days later, there were more of them: a few men with decent training cornered Vegas when he was out grocery shopping. He was annoyed when he got home, because they’d gotten blood all over the produce, and in the commotion he couldn’t get everything on his list.
At that point Pete started to worry, because they’d had enough foresight to get Vegas alone. Either they’d tailed him out of the compound, or they knew what time he did the shopping, and that bizarrely, he was the one who went out to do it. Vegas had gotten weird about getting the groceries, nearly proud of it. Pete was pretty sure Vegas had never at any prior point in his life done his own shopping, but now he got tetchy when anyone else did it, because it was never up to his standards.
As a rule Vegas didn’t yell at his staff, not out of kindness but out of an old desire to differentiate himself from the main family. He was very polite to them, sometimes conscientiously overfamiliar, right up until the moment he shot them for fucking up. Pete was the one who’d told him to just go and commune with the damn vegetables himself before anyone had to die about it.
Maybe that had been a bad idea. “You shouldn’t do the shopping by yourself anymore,” he said now.
Vegas looked up from where he was rinsing a bunch of greens off in the sink. Pete decided not to ask if they’d had blood on them too.
“Sure,” Vegas said. “As long as you come with me.” Pete had no objections.
Then things were quiet for a week. Pete thought that watching Vegas scrutinize mangos under the harsh lights of the supermarket would be boring, but it was actually kind of nice. Vegas got the same look of concentration on his face as when he was cooking or torturing or putting careful consistent pressure on one of Pete’s bruises. Pete leaned his head on Vegas’s shoulder and made encouraging noises at every comment on the quality of the produce he made.
On Saturday Vegas took Pete for a drive. They went to a night market, and Pete let Vegas buy him way more food than any one person could reasonably eat, each dish spicier than the last. Pete made Vegas try a bite of everything, because Vegas could always be coaxed into it. His face afterward was deeply funny; he couldn’t handle spice at all. It was a good thing Pete hadn’t learned that back in the safehouse. He would have told Vegas it was cute in the hope it would get him killed, and it might have actually worked. Now he could tell Vegas it was cute, and the bruises he got for it were fun.
After they ate they took the long way home, Pete pressed up against Vegas’s back on his bike, warm despite the wind rushing past him. He was strangely, disorientingly happy, in a way he could feel in his whole body, from his buzzing lips to his belly to the bottoms of his feet. It was nice. It was really nice, so much so that it felt like a dream.
It was like Pete was just a normal guy on a good date with his rich boyfriend, the kind of story he told his grandma about what his life was like. The kind of story Vegas had started spinning in the hospital room after everything, when he told Pete that he wasn’t his pet. Maybe that was the problem: sometimes these days, Pete got tricked into forgetting who he was. He was used to stepping into different parts of himself, of being who he needed to be to do what he had to. But when he was with Vegas, everything felt real, even if it shouldn’t. There wasn’t any distance between Pete and the world. It was too easy to forget who they actually were.
He wasn’t stupid; it wasn’t like he let his guard down completely. Even through the unsettling happiness, he noticed they were being followed. Three guys on motorcycles just as flashy as Vegas’s, and a nondescript car. He leaned forward into Vegas, and said it into his ear, as softly as he could while still being heard. Vegas hummed, and turned off onto a side street. After ten minutes of meandering through the city, Pete dug his fingernails into Vegas’s stomach over his T-shirt. No good. They weren’t going to lose them.
Vegas took a sharp turn then, and sped up. He laughed, which Pete couldn’t hear, but he could feel it all along his front. It made Pete smile too, into the wind biting his face. This was nice too. Maybe better. It was at least real in a way that he understood.
They went fast, streetlights and neon blurring past them. Pete pressed his lips to the back of Vegas’s neck and laughed too.
Pete wasn’t sure if Vegas picked a spot at random, or if he had some kind of mental map of Bangkok that included good secluded spots for an ambush. The motorcycle peeled to a stop in an alley, too fast, and they both tumbled off of it. Their pursers overshot them, and there was a screech of wheels as they turned around. Pete drew his gun and stepped in front of Vegas.
Pete shot the first two men without much trouble, but there were more of them than he’d been expecting in the car. He heard a bullet go right past his ear, hot enough that it might have nicked him. It was always hard to tell if he was bleeding until the fighting was over. Vegas yanked him back by the shirt to crouch behind his bike, but it wasn’t great cover, and Pete counted five men left.
In the end they were just lucky: Pete traded shots with their attackers for long minutes, but then they got cocky and tried to rush them, and it was over quickly after that.
Pete checked Vegas over first, and then made the rounds, looking for identification and to make sure no one was still breathing.
“Vegas,” he said. “This is going to be a problem.”
“Yeah.” Vegas was slumped against the motorcycle and panting, his head tipped to the sky. “Let’s go to the safehouse.”
Pete did think about it. Going off with Vegas into the dark, perched on the back of his bike, clinging to him as they ran from everything. Back to the place where they’d become whatever it was they were, bloody and inseparable. They’d feel safe there, even though they weren’t. It wouldn’t be the worst way to die. Vegas was always doing this: accepting that some impending tragedy was inevitable, and trying to negotiate with it on his own terms, like that meant he could win. Like there was no way to win, so he had to pick how he lost.
Still, it was a nice thought. Pete savored it until he was done. “You know we can’t go there,” he said.
“Why not?”
“It’s on the minor family’s books.” Carefully, Pete said, “Vegas, who do you think is after you?”
There was a deadly silence. Pete kept still, and watched Vegas. He levered himself up to his feet and paced the alley, from one end to the other. He dropped into a crouch by one of the dead men and contemplated him. He wasn’t dressed like a main family bodyguard. He was dressed like any low level gangster, frankly a little like Vegas, but less expensive. No one single part of it rang false, but taken together it was clearly a costume.
Finally Vegas looked up. “I thought you said you were still loyal to them.” Pete wondered when Porsche had told him that part; Pete hadn’t mentioned it, in his messy recounting of how he’d quit his job. It hadn’t even been a purposeful omission. It had just been hard to think about things that weren’t important while Vegas was laid up in the hospital, even after Pete got on his knees and Vegas put a hand in his hair, gripping tight, reminding Pete that they were both really alive.
“I’m loyal to you.”
Vegas stood and grabbed Pete by the arm, hard, and reeled him in. His nails dug in. It hurt, and Pete closed his eyes, relaxing into it. It was a question, so Pete answered it.
“I was loyal to them. But they can’t have you,” Pete said simply. He hadn’t realized at the time how simple it would be, until the moment he saw Vegas fall at the pool. Until the moment Vegas tried to walk away from him. Nothing was black and white, except maybe for this. There was Vegas and there was everyone else. He’d turned and gunned down Chai completely without thought. If he’d had time to think he would have just done it slower. Pete hadn’t been lying when he’d told Khun Korn he would always love and be loyal to the main family, but Vegas hadn’t been in the room then. Pete was a different person now, or maybe he was just finally himself. He had to be. “I’m not sure he actually…”
“Yeah, yeah. If he wanted me dead, I’d be dead,” Vegas said. “He wants me to come crawling back to him for help. So he can fucking own me.” He looked at Pete, sharp-eyed. “Well? Think he’s right?”
“He told me to take care of you. I’m the one who gets to decide how I do that.”
“Did you ever wonder why they let you go?”
“To use against you,” Pete said. “Or just to be the voice of reason and keep you from blowing things up inconveniently and getting yourself killed.” He shrugged. “That part’s in my interest too, you know.”
Vegas didn’t smile. “If we’re not going to run, we have to attack.”
“Because that went so well last time?”
“What other fucking option do we have?” Vegas demanded. “If we don’t give him what he wants, he’ll just keep trying to get rid of us. That’s how it works.” His face said the rest: he’d die before he rolled over and let his uncle win, because his uncle winning was the same as Kinn winning, and that was the same as the ghost of his father being right.
“We just need to buy time,” Pete said. “But we have to go somewhere they won’t find us.”
Vegas tipped himself against the wall and sighed. He worked his jaw. “We could talk to Porsche.”
“I don’t think Porsche can help us.”
Vegas snorted. “You really are a disloyal friend.”
“If we ask for his help, we might get him killed.”
“Who gives a shit,” Vegas muttered, without heat, and then he groaned and beckoned for Pete. Pete went, leaning into him, making himself small. Vegas wrapped him up in his arms and buried his face in Pete’s hair, which would probably now be sticky with blood from his nicked ear. Pete breathed in deep. Vegas smelled really good, sweaty and metallic.
Pete should feel worse than he did, but even this wasn’t so bad: the situation was hopeless, but they were in it together. Whatever happened would happen to both of them. Maybe this was how Porsche felt, trapped in that house full of ghosts. Pete hoped so. Porsche deserved to have it be worth it.
“Well,” Vegas said, after a few minutes. “Got any ideas?”
“Yeah,” Pete said. He disentangled himself.
They cleaned up as best they could with water bottles and paper towels from a convenience store. Pete got Vegas to drop him off at Hum Bar, and then sent him home.
“They’re not going to try twice in one night,” said Pete. “It’s best if we act like we think nothing’s wrong.”
“Another day, another assassination attempt,” Vegas said, with mock cheer. His face was grim. “In what world am I dropping you off at a bar alone?”
“Maybe you have a headache,” Pete said. Then, seized with a sudden fear, aching in his stomach, “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Vegas kissed him very softly on the cheek. His fingers around Pete’s wrist were tight enough to bruise. “Don’t worry, baby,” he said. “I can take care of myself.”
That wasn’t what Pete was worried about, but he didn’t push it. If Vegas was going to blunder into the main family compound and get his head blown off, Pete was sure that he would get kissed a lot more thoroughly beforehand.
There was no one he knew at Yok’s, thankfully. He flagged down one of the newer bartenders, a guy who’d started after Porsche quit, and started making friends.
It didn’t take long to get the whole sob story out. “I just need to disappear for a little bit,” Pete told him, leaning close, conspiratorial and drunk. The bartender, Bank, nodded and agreed that girl problems were the worst.
“This guy,” Bank told him. “He’ll get you set up. Don’t worry, there’s no paperwork or anything, no one will find you. My lips are sealed! Just, uh. Be sure to pay on time.”
He grabbed Pete’s arm and scribbled a number down on it, stark against the inside of his forearm. Given a choice Pete might have asked him to write it down on paper, but it worked out. Vegas was pacing when Pete got home. He needed something to chew on. He still wanted to march straight back into the main family compound and get himself killed going for Kinn, as if Kinn was the one who actually wanted them dead. Khun Korn wanted them dead, and he was outsourcing.
So it was a better use of Vegas’s time and aggression for him to snarl and shove Pete face first against the wall, scraping his cheek.
“I got us a contact,” Pete said to the wall. He wriggled his arms where Vegas had them pinned behind his back, until Vegas leaned into him with more force, so that it became hard to breathe. “Small time. No connection to the main or minor family. Not to anyone.”
“Yeah?” Vegas said into his ear. His voice was dangerous. He nosed at Pete’s neck and then bit him, hard. Pete went limp against the wall, relying on Vegas to hold him up.
“Yeah,” Pete agreed, losing his train of thought a little.
“I can see that,” Vegas said silkily. He shifted one of Pete’s forearms, and then pinched the soft skin there with his fingernails, right over the inside where the pen had marked him. He did it again, and again, twisting viciously, until Pete made a soft noise. It was a sharp bright pain, nauseatingly impermanent. It wouldn’t even bruise. Vegas had gotten twitchy about leaving scars.
Things had a way of stuttering into focus when Vegas was touching him or hurting him, and it lingered with the ache. Pete tilted his head back until Vegas got the hint, and bit him again, hard. He shoved Pete’s shirt up and kept going, his mouth hot and sharp as he dug his teeth in. Pete shivered into it happily.
Vegas spent a lot of time afterwards scrubbing the ink off of Pete, and then had the gall to glare at him as he laughed and laughed, half collapsed against the rim of the bathtub. He shook Pete by the hair a little in reprimand, but his heart wasn’t in it. Pete just grinned and pulled him closer for a kiss, and then laughed some more when Vegas slipped and fell halfway into the water with him, cursing. Pete, who currently had bite marks on his ass, did not feel bad.
“You’re lucky I memorized it,” Pete said, still giggling. “Otherwise I’d have to go back.”
Pete tended to either laugh a lot after sex or forget how to talk for hours. Vegas always got a little scared when he didn’t laugh, and sometimes when he did. He really couldn't help it this time; it was so funny when Vegas got jealous. It was actually kind of cute. Pete knew it was genuine, which made it funnier. Some of Vegas’s fears made sense, but this one Pete couldn’t understand.
Pete never got jealous. Not like that. It would be stupid to. After all, he was the one with the imprints of Vegas’s teeth scattered all across his back, promising to bruise. Vegas hurt a lot of people, but he didn’t hurt anyone else the way he hurt Pete. He knew if he ever lost Vegas, it wasn’t going to be because someone else caught his attention. They were it for each other, for the rest of their lives, however long that turned out to be. That depended on Vegas too.
Vegas got serious then. He gave up on his clothes and stayed in the water with Pete, bracketing him in with knees on either side of his hips. He took Pete’s face in both his hands and made him meet his eyes.
“Don’t go back,” he said, his voice low and serious. “Be careful, Pete. They don’t get to have you.”
“Sure,” Pete said. “I’m yours.” But Vegas didn’t smile.
-
After that they waited. Pete made the arrangements, and avoided Porsche as much as possible, because Porsche would know something was wrong, even if he couldn’t figure out what. He responded to his texts with evasive emojis and rescheduled one of their regular “business meetings” that were mostly extended smoke breaks and excuses for gossip. He couldn’t do that forever, though, because Porsche was stubborn and bullheaded, and these days, he had the manpower to back it up.
They should have left as soon as everything was in place, but Vegas had said he had loose ends he wanted to tie up. That could mean anything, from actual business to wanting to set a trap to just wanting to wait and see what would happen.
Vegas still did work for the minor family—for Porsche—as something like a consultant. It made him crazy to do it, but he’d ignored it every time Pete had ever brought up the idea of doing something, anything else. When Pete asked him why, Vegas never gave him a straight answer. More than once he’d used it as an opportunity to take away Pete’s ability to talk for the rest of the night.
Pete supposed it was one of those things Vegas couldn’t understand about himself, but also couldn’t help. A well trained dog would stay even if you left its cage door wide open, and a desperate one would too. Staying and waiting was probably the same. Maybe a part of him still didn’t want to believe his uncle had put a hit out on him; or a part of him was just hoping Khun Korn would succeed at it and solve all his other problems for him.
Pete was still a little worried Vegas would do something stupid. Macau was abroad for school, and had been for months. That meant he was probably safe for now, and also that the other half of Vegas’s self control was gone. Pete had assumed he’d be up to the job all on his own, had in fact had to reassure Macau of that several times before he would agree to go, but he was starting to be less sure.
At least before Vegas could explode, one way or another, they both got jumped while they were out buying dinner. It was one of their usual spots; Vegas ducked into the restaurant and was busy making nice with the auntie who owned it while Pete waited outside. They’d started letting a few bodyguards trail them when they went out, even though it made Vegas tetchy. He didn’t trust them. Apparently he was right not to, because they were either dead or disloyal. When the car pulled up, no one stopped the men who spilled out of it from trying to drag Pete inside. Pete kicked one of them in the head and pulled his gun, but there were more of them, not just coming from the car.
Vegas was holding their curry when he stepped back out; the noise of outrage he made when he dropped it would have been funny in any other circumstances. But it was worse this time; there were too many of them, and once they saw Vegas they went for him, only paying enough attention to Pete to try to incapacitate him. Pete suddenly wasn’t so sure Korn didn’t actually mean to just kill Vegas and be done with it, a spike of sour fear in his stomach. It settled him, though, into his mission: Vegas had to live through this.
Pete managed to drop two of them before they realized they’d have to get rid of him before they had a chance at Vegas, but then one of them wrestled his gun away from him and got a good grip on him. He swung Pete around to face Vegas, who’d dealt neatly with three men who were now corpses at his feet. He’d lost his gun too, but he had a knife and looked pleased to get to use it, a feral edge to his grin. His smile dropped when he saw Pete with a gun to his head.
It wasn’t even a play to get Vegas to come quietly. Maybe it was just cruelty. Pete got to see the look of despair on Vegas’s face when the man behind him pulled the trigger.
The gun gave an empty click; out of ammo. Pete felt himself continue to breathe, his heart continue to beat. His head hurt. He needed to move. The man cursed, frustrated, and drew his hand back to hit Pete across the temple with the gun. And then the world went a little sideways, and there was a loud crack that Pete didn’t feel.
It took him a moment to sort it out: Vegas had knocked him out of the way, and taken the pistol whip to the jaw. He grabbed the gun, though, and wrenched it out of the man’s hand and cracked him in the temple with it, once, twice, three times. He kept going, even after bone was showing, until Pete grabbed him by the neckline of his shirt and yanked him back. He still wasn’t entirely steady, and the momentum overbalanced them both, sending them tumbling to the ground.
Pete fumbled for Vegas’s knife and took it out of his hand. He threw it at the guy Vegas had been so excited to stab, which was a stupid flashy Vegas type of move, but a blade to the face was always a decent distraction. He fumbled a gun from a corpse to finish the job, and then the street was really fucking silent. The restaurant staff had wisely cleared out. Their takeout was oozing out of its containers onto the pavement, mixing with all the blood and bits of bone.
There was blood all over Vegas’s mouth and face, too. He looked like a ghost, or a creature from one of the zombie movies Macau loved. “Pete?” he said. His voice was high and thin. He turned his head to the side and spit out blood, and then his hands were all over Pete, touch light and shaking.
“I’m fine,” Pete said. He was scraped up in several places, dizzy, and his shoulder ached in the way that indicated he’d pulled something. He might have a concussion. Still, nothing was broken, and it wasn’t like he’d never had a concussion before. He struggled to sit up.
“Are you?” Vegas didn’t stop touching him, and shrugged off Pete’s hands when Pete tried to check him over in turn. “I’m fine,” he snapped. It was hard to tell if that was true or not. Vegas was off-kilter in a way he hadn’t been, the last few times they were attacked. It was the way he got when he thought he’d failed at something. Or maybe this was just how he reacted to seeing someone put a gun to Pete’s head and pull the trigger.
Pete was suddenly furious, at Khun Korn and himself and also at Vegas, at everyone who had put them in this situation, and he couldn’t afford to be right now. He pushed it down deep. “We have to go,” he said, in his steadiest voice. He sounded like he used to, in his old job.
Vegas didn’t seem to hear him. He staggered to his feet and walked over to the man who’d almost shot Pete, whose skull was barely intact. He crouched down, elbows on his knees, and tilted his head as he looked at the body. He stayed there, motionless, and said nothing.
“Vegas,” Pete said sharply into the stillness. “Whatever this is, we don’t have time for it.”
Very calmly, without looking up, Vegas said, “You need to go.”
“That’s what I just said. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Vegas stood up, laboriously, his palms pressed to his knees for leverage. When he turned around to look at Pete, his face was blank. He only met Pete’s eyes for a moment before he made a frustrated noise and lunged forward, towards the wall. He got in one good punch, busting up his knuckles, before Pete could grab his wrist and pull him away.
“Vegas,” he said. Vegas shoved him off.
“You need to go,” Vegas said. “I’m going to get you killed if you stay. There’s money and passports back at the house. Middle drawer of my dresser, on the left. Take them and go.” He pushed Pete again with his bloody hand, not lightly. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“No,” Pete said. He could feel the anger trying to get out of him. Vegas was better than anyone in the world at pulling it out of Pete, even when he thought he didn’t have any left. “Obviously I’m not doing that. Let’s go, we should have been at the safehouse yesterday—”
Vegas stalked towards him. He wrapped his hand around Pete’s throat and slammed him against the wall of the restaurant, right where he’d just scraped off half the skin of his knuckles. “Go,” he said, in an awful wretched voice, a pathetic attempt at a growl. He wiped at his mouth and winced.
Pete tilted his head back into Vegas’s grip, and did a bad job of not laughing. “Getting some mixed messages here.”
“Don’t be fucking stupid,” Vegas snarled, and leaned back so he could knock Pete’s head against the wall again.
It hurt, dully. Pete didn’t make a sound. He thought about being one of the corpses they’d left, his head cracked open. It wasn’t as pleasant a thought as it sometimes was. Vegas would be bent over him, crying, cracked open too. He’d stay there until someone came to put a bullet in his head, if Vegas didn’t do it himself first.
“Vegas,” he said. He’d forgotten how to not sound tired. He blinked up at Vegas’s snarling face, and saw it start to fracture. “If this was going to scare me away, it would’ve worked the first time.”
Vegas dropped him all at once, stumbling back. Pete tried to follow him, but he was dizzy. He staggered to the ground, catching himself on his hands. They slid a little; the pavement was wet with blood.
“Fuck,” Vegas said, falling down on his knees in front of him. “Fuck, Pete, why did you let me do that? Why do you always fucking let me?”
It wasn’t like it wasn’t a reasonable question. Porsche asked it of Pete all the time, in subtle and less subtle ways. Pete never asked it back, to be nice, and also because he knew the answer: you paid what you had to pay for the things you needed to live.
“I’m fine,” Pete said.
“You’re not fucking fine.” Vegas reached out, his hands barely touching Pete, like he was afraid of what they were going to do. “Pete, Pete, Pete…” He was panicking badly, and they didn’t have time.
“If you want me to go, you’ll have to shoot me,” Pete said evenly. Vegas flinched, staring back at him with wounded eyes. “I told you. I’ll follow you anywhere.”
“You shouldn’t.” Vegas’s voice was bitter.
“There’s no ‘should’,” Pete said. “There’s just what we have. And I’m not leaving here without you.”
“Okay,” Vegas whispered. Terrified and miserable and grateful, the way he always was when Pete refused to leave him. He let Pete take his hand and drag them both away.
-
The safehouse Pete had arranged for them to hole up in together wasn’t nearly as nice as that first one. It wasn’t really a safehouse; just a cramped flat that Pete paid for in cash by the week. He paid half as much again so their landlord would forget they existed. The hot plate was finicky, and Vegas found out the hard way you couldn’t plug it and a hair dryer in at the same time without blowing a fuse. The temperature never fell below sticky and scorching, no matter how many fans they kept going. The one window wouldn’t open without a lot of convincing, and Pete’s shoulder was still fucked up from their close call.
Pete liked it so much better than the beautiful house on the water. He didn’t tell Vegas that, because Vegas would take it the wrong way.
It was mostly empty when they arrived, aside from a few things Pete had asked for. Luckily, one of those was a first aid kit. Vegas hissed as Pete disinfected his wounds, dabbing at his bloodied knuckles and not trying to be gentle; Pete was silent as Vegas worked on him in turn, until he caught the wide-eyed look Vegas was giving him. Like Pete was a ghost. He groaned softly the next time Vegas touched one of the cuts on his cheek, and that seemed to settle him.
After that there wasn’t much to do. Pete left sometimes, for supplies and to make sure they weren’t being watched, but he wouldn’t let Vegas. It was dangerous to keep a tiger in a cage, but even when he tried not to be, Vegas was recognizable. He couldn’t help but stand out in a crowd. It was something about the way he carried himself.
“Like you’re so good at sneaking around,” Vegas told him over and over, playful or sneering depending on his mood. Pete didn’t know how to explain how this was different, but it was. Vegas wasn’t interested anyway. He’d started writing out increasingly specific and esoteric grocery lists for Pete, with very specific instructions for how ripe everything should be. It would be really cute under other circumstances.
So they sat around, and made plans with all the integrity of houses of cards, and fucked as much as they could stand to in the heat, and waited for the main family to track them down or decide that Vegas had really fled the country with Pete in tow. Pete had always thought it must be peaceful, to wait for a noose you knew was going to tighten. It turned out he wasn’t wrong. He was as happy as he’d been pressed up against Vegas’s back, racing in the dark, or as he was sighing or choking or bleeding under Vegas’s fingers. He knew what to do and he did it, and Vegas was there, still breathing, almost always within Pete’s line of sight. If he didn’t think about the future, it was nearly perfect. And Pete had spent his whole life practicing not looking farther than the next step ahead.
Nothing lasted forever, though, good or bad. Vegas had gone strange. It took Pete a few days to notice. It wasn’t that he was overly gentle with Pete, which sometimes happened whenever Vegas got scared or woke from a particular nightmare or had a certain kind of conversation with Porsche. He left bruises and he scratched up Pete’s back, but he didn’t kiss him much, and he never bit him. Some nights he barely ate at all, and only watched Pete ravenously as he did instead. It was enough to make Pete uneasy, but he knew better than to ask what was wrong. Vegas would just sneer and give him a list, starting with them being stuck here.
On the fifth night Pete couldn’t sleep. They had two fans going, so the heat was only stifling, not scorching. His body wanted to fidget, but if he got up for a cigarette it would wake Vegas. Pete watched him sleep instead, half sitting up along the wall they’d shoved the mattress up against. Vegas was curled up on his side, around the space Pete had been occupying, half his face tilted up and the other half pressed into the pillow. There was a softness to Vegas when he slept. It made him look sad, close to the expression Pete only ever saw when Vegas cried, crumpled and needy.
It hurt sometimes to see him like this, in the good way and the bad. It made Pete think about the safehouse, the first one. Sometimes Pete thought about who he would be if he’d never seen Vegas cry and curl in on himself over a dead thing that had left him, or if he’d seen it and just done the smart thing and walked away. He couldn’t imagine that person, even though he’d almost been him. It already felt like another life.
He thought about what it would be like if this was their life, and not a vacation. Living in a shitty cramped apartment and doing honey-I’m-home with Vegas. Pete could get a gig as a bouncer, get home at four a.m., and Vegas would insist on waiting up for him with food hot and ready. It was an easier life to believe than the guy riding on a motorcycle with his rich boyfriend.
Vegas always made Pete think about choices, in a way he usually didn’t. The ones he’d made and the ones he hadn’t, the other people he could be. Vegas had let his father steer his life. Pete always thought he’d avoided that, that the past didn’t matter, and neither did the future: you just had what you had. Enjoy it or don’t. But now he knew it wasn’t true. With Vegas everything was real, immediate, harsh and unavoidable, and it was only that way because of who they’d been and what they’d done. History had weight to it now, as strong a pull as a leash around your throat.
It was the kind of thing you could never tell Vegas: thanks for kidnapping me, and torturing me, and making me want to die. It broke something in me, and I’ll never forgive you; it was the best thing that ever happened to me, but only because it was the worst thing too. I’m glad. Pete wasn’t thankful. But the alternative was unthinkable. Pete could have gone on forever, and never known it could be different. It would have been easy. If Pete thought about it too hard it honestly scared him, a sinking weight at the center of him that he couldn’t look at straight on, because it would suck him in. He needed that weight to hold him steady, the past like a rope around his neck. Without it he’d drift away, and he wouldn’t be anyone anymore.
He was careful not to touch Vegas, even though he wanted to, but he still woke up, like maybe Pete’s gaze on him had weight too. One eye gleamed up at Pete in the dark.
“Can’t sleep?” Pete asked, stupidly. Vegas tugged him down onto the blankets, and then settled on top of him. He nuzzled into Pete’s neck, and then grunted softly when Pete rolled him over. They did that for a few minutes, mock-wrestling a little, pinning each other and then slipping out of the holds. Not exactly a fight and not exactly cuddling and not exactly foreplay. Finally they settled with Pete on his front, and Vegas pressing his whole weight onto his wrists flat on the bed over his head.
Pete sighed and stilled beneath him, waiting for the bite. It didn’t come. Vegas nosed between his shoulder blades and kissed him softly there, his breath hot and close. Pete shifted under him, restless. Vegas snorted, and scraped his teeth in a light careful line down his spine. But then he pulled away. Pete could hear him curse lightly under his breath.
Pete squirmed out from under him and sat up to face him. In the dark he could only see Vegas’s outline and the glint of his eyes. He reached out to cradle his jaw, gently, and when Vegas’s eyes slipped shut, he squeezed, pressing hard with his thumb one one side and all four fingers on the other. The noise Vegas made at the pressure was wretched.
His eyes flew open, and he snarled, lunging at Pete. Vegas forced both of his wrists behind his back, one balanced on top of the other so the bones ground against each other. He pressed down hard, and Pete went limp and let him. “You’re hurt,” he said into the pillow.
“I fucked up one of my teeth,” Vegas said against the back of Pete’s neck, all his weight bearing down so that Pete could barely breathe. “In the fight.”
He meant, when he’d taken a pistol to the jaw for Pete.
“Let me see.” Pete shifted, but he couldn’t get leverage to flip Vegas over, and Vegas wouldn’t let him go.
“It’s nothing.”
“Do you really think I’m that fucking stupid?”
“It doesn’t fucking matter,” Vegas said, low and defeated. He let Pete’s wrists go, but collapsed down on top of him, like a very bony blanket. He nosed in against Pete’s pulse and mouthed against it, gently.
Vegas was like an animal when he was hurting; he went quiet and cagey and rude, but clingy too. Pete and Vegas both had the same impulses: to hide away from the world and lick at each other’s wounds, and to give each other more. It wasn’t practical. But part of Pete did wish they could stay here forever, Vegas hurting and snarling but safe, with Pete. It was probably selfish. Pete would feel guilty if he could, but he’d never seen the point in feeling guilty for wanting what you wanted. Everyone was greedy for something they shouldn’t have. That was just life. And if you were really lucky, you could have it anyway. Pete had never been that lucky, but Vegas had a strange way of making his own twisted kind of luck.
Still, luck could only get you so far.
“You should have said something.” And Pete should have looked him over better.
Vegas snorted, a warm puff of air against Pete’s sticky skin. They’d worked up a sweat. “Sure, puppy,” he said. “Go to sleep.”
Thankfully he didn’t move, leaving himself draped over Pete, so that he could feel every breath. Pete listened to each one while they both pretended to sleep.
-
In the morning Pete called into his voicemail; he and Vegas had left their actual phones in the back of a cab to take a ride around the city and really confuse whoever was tracking them. He was up to about twenty missed calls from Porsche. He just skimmed through the messages, because he knew what all of them would say: there’s someone after you. Come to us, and we can protect you. By us, of course, he would mean Kinn, whose only way to protect anyone he loved was to drag them deeper into hell.
It wasn’t like Pete didn’t get that. That was how it worked. He just liked the hell he’d picked out for himself better than the one he’d come from.
Vegas made them both breakfast, a little subdued, avoiding Pete’s eyes. Pete talked about nothing to fill the space, listing off which jobs he’d like to get when money finally became a problem. Vegas played along, and gave him a thumbs up or thumbs down over his shoulder for each. Thumbs up to bartender, bouncer, courier. Thumbs down to hairdresser, chef, personal trainer.
“What’s wrong with personal trainer? I would actually be good at that.” Pete could admit his chef skills left a lot to be desired. Vegas had once witnessed him burning instant noodles with a look of awed fascination on his face.
Vegas set a bowl of jok down in front of Pete, garnished with all his favorites: chili oil and fried garlic and a perfect soft-boiled egg. “I don’t want your hands on anyone else.”
“I’m not sure you actually know what a personal trainer does,” Pete said, rolling his eyes. He watched as Vegas started eating, delicately. He winced as he did it, even eating something so soft. His brow furrowed. Pete thought about the expression he hadn’t been able to see Vegas making last night in the dark.
Pete reached out to ghost a hand just shy of Vegas’s cheek. “You should go get that looked at,” he said. It was a bad idea, and he knew it just as well as Vegas. They could give the dentist a fake name, and it still wouldn’t be safe. But sitting here and doing nothing wasn’t a good idea either. It was just easier.
Vegas looked up from poking at his egg. He said, “Eat your breakfast.”
Pete picked up his spoon, thought for a moment, and then set it across his bowl. “After we talk about this.”
“I’m not in the mood,” Vegas said, rubbing at his face. “Let’s skip the foreplay. Eat.”
He pushed Pete’s bowl closer to him, a little too hard; it tumbled off the table and clattered to the floor before Pete could catch it. The bowl was cheap plastic, so it didn’t shatter, but by the time Pete told himself not to flinch, it was too late. Vegas had seen him do it.
Vegas shoved himself up and out of his chair. Pete stepped over the congee on the floor and went to him, but Vegas was already backing away. Pete mentally cataloged the weapons in the room: a gun taped under the sink, the knife on the counter, the heavy pan on the stove. He put himself between Vegas and the kitchen counter, and kept a close eye on his hands.
“Pete,” Vegas said, his voice cracking, “why are you still here?”
Ever since that day in the hospital, he’d asked the same question in a hundred different ways. Every few months or so he knocked everything off a piece of furniture and shouted at Pete that he should just leave, get out, why are you still here? Once he freaked out so badly while he was using the riding crop that Pete had to get himself out of the handcuffs, which only made it worse; Vegas was very sweet when he reset Pete’s dislocated thumb, but he also couldn’t seem to stop crying.
And five days ago, he’d very levelly tried to convince Pete to abandon Vegas and leave the country, so he could curl up like a sick dog and die all alone. All of it amounted to the same thing, the same question. Everything Vegas had ever loved left him, except for the things that stayed behind to hurt him.
“It doesn’t matter,” Pete said. “Clean it up.” Vegas raised his hand, but before he could do anything with it, Pete grabbed him by the wrist, hard. “Clean it up,” Pete repeated. “I’m telling you how to fix it, Vegas.”
Vegas bared his teeth at him, but he found paper towels under the sink and cleaned up the mess. There really wasn’t much of one. It was just breakfast. Pete watched him, and reminded himself of that, over and over, and kept his breathing steady.
When he was done, Pete reached out for his cheek again, and Vegas flinched, pure wounded animal instinct. “I’m serious, Vegas. You’re hurt.”
Vegas sneered. “Who cares? It’s just a broken tooth. It’s not like I’m doing anything but sitting on my ass in here. It’ll keep.”
“Not forever.”
“Sure it will,” Vegas said, and smiled, sharp and horrible. “We’ll be dead by then.”
For a moment Pete thought, vividly, about slapping him on the wrong side of his mouth. Vegas would whimper and take it. He’d take anything from Pete, and grin bloodily when it was done. “You shouldn’t have taken that hit for me.”
“Pete,” Vegas said, very patiently. “If they’d hurt you, I would have burned that fucking family to the ground.”
“No. You’d have died trying. You realize that’s probably what he wanted?”
Vegas shrugged. “So it’s a good thing I didn’t let them hurt you.”
“Fuck you,” Pete snapped, suddenly unbearably sick of this. “I don’t care how much you want to die. You know I won’t let you. How many times do I have to prove it?”
Vegas dropped back into his seat. “You don’t have to,” he said. “You can walk out that door right now.”
The shitty crooked ceiling fan spun lazily above them. “It’s pointless to torture yourself,” Pete said. “It’s not helping you and it’s not helping me. We can call a fucking vet. Do it under the table. They won’t check.”
“Of course they’ll check. They know I’m nothing but a fucking dog on their leash.” His voice was Vegas at his most bleak: the way it sounded when he felt like he had no control at all. It made sense. He couldn’t buy groceries or gnaw on Pete properly, and he’d knocked breakfast all over the floor. But he could always break more things, so that’s what he would do until he felt like he had a grip on the world.
Pete pushed the rickety table out of the way and dropped to his knees between Vegas’s legs. Vegas looked down at him. He reached out to grab Pete’s hair and tilt his head back. For him, it was gentle; it only stung a little.
“A blowjob isn’t going to win you this argument,” Vegas told him.
Pete said, “You were right. Feed me first.”
Vegas pressed his thumb to the bottom of Pete’s lip, and then his nail, digging in hard. “That’s not going to win you the argument either.”
Pete wasn’t so sure that was true, but he just leaned his head against Vegas’s thigh and blinked up at him.
“Okay,” Vegas said, quiet, like he thought he’d shatter something if he spoke too loud. It was a good thing the kitchen was so small; Vegas didn’t have to get up to grab the fruit he’d left on the counter, just lean back and stretch out his arm. He’d fussed over it when Pete had brought it back—the mangosteens were overripe and the mangos were underripe, but that was yesterday, so apparently the mangos were acceptable now. He peeled one with the knife from the counter, his brow furrowed in concentration.
Pete opened his mouth for the first slice of fruit. Vegas pushed it onto his tongue with his thumb, his fingers lingering, like he was giving Pete the opportunity to lick them, or bite. Pete just swallowed, and watched Vegas expectantly. So Vegas cut him another piece. Pete closed his eyes, and thought about routines: putting together a gun, unpicking a knot, opening his mouth for Vegas’s fingers. The fruit was sweet on his tongue. The only sound around them was the soft whir of the fans.
Based on how his knees felt, he stayed there for a long time.
Afterwards Pete did lick Vegas’s fingers clean, and rested his forehead on Vegas’s knee. Vegas put his hand on the nape of his neck, digging his fingers up into his hair. Pete felt good, calm like the undisturbed surface of a lake.
He raised his head when Vegas spoke, his voice dipped low. “I just want to give you a life. The kind you deserve. A real life.”
“This is real,” Pete said. He didn’t know how Vegas couldn’t see that this, the two of them locked together in a dingy room with blood on the horizon, was realer than anything else. Pete knew you couldn’t trust a life that didn’t try to bite you back sometimes. That just meant it would hurt worse later; that just meant it was a lie. He wasn’t any good at lying to Vegas. “Now let me look.”
Vegas didn’t move as Pete clambered up into his lap. He opened his mouth obediently, and let Pete peer inside with the flashlight from his phone, fingers splayed over the good side of his jaw, thumb pressed against his top row of teeth. Pete didn’t know what he was looking for. None of the main family’s first aid classes covered dentistry. The right side of Vegas’s mouth was visibly swollen inside, inflamed and red. One of his molars was cracked all the way up.
“Well?” Vegas asked, when Pete’s fingers were out of his mouth. He had his head tilted back against the chair. His peaceful mood wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Vegas’s anger often ran on a hair trigger into despair.
“It needs to come out,” Pete said. He could feel Vegas start to sneer under his hand. “Let me do it.”
Vegas squinted up at him. He reached up to hook two fingers into Pete’s mouth, dragging him forward that way, close enough to kiss. Pete went, and nipped him lightly when Vegas didn’t let him go.
Vegas tipped his head back and started to laugh. He pushed Pete away by the jaw, lightly. “Sure. Why the fuck not. I can even show you how.”
“I’m serious.”
Vegas curled both of his hands around Pete’s face, caging him in. “So am I,” he said. “I’ll tell you what to do. You’ll be good for me, right?”
He pulled Pete into a kiss. Pete tried to squirm away from it, but Vegas’s grip was tight and unyielding. He made an awful sound at the pressure on his jaw, and he didn’t let Pete go until he was done with him. When Pete wrenched himself away, he’d gone pale.
“Come on,” Vegas said. “It was your idea. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Just tell me how much this is going to hurt you. Since you’re the expert.” Sometimes Pete did want to hurt Vegas, but not in the way Vegas thought—like it was something he was owed. Like it was something that would make him understand the world. Like it would let him keep Pete just a little longer.
Vegas shrugged. “Pain tolerance is really more variable than people think,” he said, which was not anything close to an answer. “It’ll be fine, puppy.” He reached up to cradle Pete’s face. “Remember when you watched me do this back then? You couldn’t take your eyes off me.”
Pete remembered. He remembered a lot more about Vegas from those days than he thought Vegas remembered about him. He’d looked a little stupid while he tore out that guy’s tooth, actually, in his ridiculous plastic coat, but he was right: Pete hadn’t been able to look away. Pete didn’t mind about the blood or the screaming either way, so he’d watched the whole time—no one else was going to, and someone needed to keep an eye on Vegas.
It was interesting. That’s what Pete had decided he felt about it then. Vegas had been so intensely focused on what he was doing, nearly delicate about it, his brow furrowed in concentration, the exact same expression he’d had peeling fruit half an hour ago. He’d looked at the tooth with a kind of curious satisfaction when he was done. It was just interesting, but it was also dangerous, because it was Vegas, so back then Pete didn’t have to think more about it.
“Yeah,” Vegas said, to whatever Pete’s face was doing. “See? It’ll be fun.”
“Let’s get this over with,” Pete said, swinging himself out of Vegas’s lap.
“Bossy,” Vegas said in English, with a grin, and he reached up to ruffle Pete’s hair in that nearly dismissive way he had, like he was petting a dog. That was better. If Vegas told Pete to do this, then he had to, and if he had to do it he would. Things were simple like that. Then it wasn’t really him doing anything. He didn’t want to hurt Vegas; but if Vegas needed to be hurt, he could do it.
They arranged things as neatly as they could, with Vegas in the kitchen chair and his head tipped back against the counter, a bundle of rags tucked under his head. Vegas hadn’t brought his neat little torture kit with him, but they had the basics. Gauze and booze and pliers. Pete poured Vegas a glass of vodka, because he was too classy to drink straight from the bottle. Vegas poured more after he’d knocked it back, offering it to Pete; when Pete shook his head, he shrugged and drank that too.
Pete could feel Vegas’s eyes on him as he ran his lighter over the pliers. He didn’t ask if Vegas was sure. It was better not to give either of them an out.
Vegas’s hand came up to grip Pete’s around the pliers. “Like this,” he said, and moved his hand from side to side, showing Pete the motion. “You can’t pull it straight out.” He’d gotten that keen focused look again.
Pete nodded. He stepped between Vegas’s legs and curled his thumb just inside his lip, fanning the rest of his fingers out over his jaw, tilting him back against the counter. He looked into the wet inside of his mouth, and then up into his eyes. Vegas was staring straight back at him, breathing very steadily. Pete thought about being in his place, holding himself still for Vegas’s teeth or blade or nails. He wondered if Vegas was imagining the same thing.
He could feel the corner of Vegas’s mouth curve up around his thumb. “Good instincts,” he said. “The suspense is the worst part.”
Pete bent down to kiss him on the point of his cheekbone, leaning into it, making Vegas let out a stifled pained noise. He wasn’t smiling anymore when Pete pulled away. Still, when Pete cradled that same cheek, he turned his face into it.
“Go ahead,” Vegas said, unsmiling now, but firm like an order. That was better.
Pete put the pliers into Vegas’s mouth, movements slow and careful, until he could clamp them around the broken molar. He smoothed his hand back over Vegas’s sweaty hair and gripped him there. He looked into his mouth, and started to pull, side-to-side like Vegas had shown him.
Vegas let out a harsh breath through his nose. He dug the nails of one hand hard into Pete’s thigh, the other coming up to grip his collar, right beneath his throat. Pete flicked his eyes up to Vegas’s, and then away, back to what he was doing. He moved the pliers back and forth, focusing on not letting them slip, on pulling back with enough force. It could have been meditative, if it was anyone else under him; then Pete could forget they were a person and focus on the work. He’d done that before, though usually not with pliers. In some ways it made him a better torturer than Vegas, because Vegas enjoyed it too much. It made him less precise, less careful; just look at what had happened with Pete.
But Pete couldn’t forget who he was hurting. It didn’t feel much like torture at all.
Vegas was nearly quiet while Pete worked, unnervingly so. It made Pete think of the scared look Vegas had given him a few days ago, when he’d bandaged Pete up and Pete forgot to make any sound.
He finally let out a low noise when Pete pulled the pliers out with a sickening crack—it was hard to say if it was pain or relief. Pete dropped the tooth into his palm, and grimaced. It had broken off inside his mouth, and Pete had only pulled half; he wasn’t done.
He showed it to Vegas as he lay panting against the counter, his eyes barely open as he tracked Pete’s movements. He didn’t wince, or change expression at all. He just nodded, and fumbled his hand back along the counter without looking, until he found the glass he’d downed before they started. He spat out the blood in his mouth into it, and looked back up at Pete with the beginnings of a grin, until he caught Pete’s expression. Then he let it drop.
“Okay, baby,” Vegas said, settling back down, opening his mouth.
Pete dropped the remains of his tooth on the counter, and put the pliers back into his mouth. It took him longer to get a good grip this time; Vegas hadn’t gotten rid of all the blood. Once he did, he started to pull the molar out again, the same side to side motion.
When he looked up from Vegas’s bloody mouth to his eyes, he’d closed them against the pain.
“Hey,” Pete said. His voice sounded very loud in the small room. “Don’t go somewhere else. Stay with me.” It was something Vegas told him sometimes: pay attention when I’m hurting you.
Vegas’s eyes snapped open. They caught Pete’s and held. Vegas’s hand flew up, wrapping tight around Pete’s wrist, stilling him. For a moment they just watched each other, breathing hard. It reminded Pete of the first time they’d really seen each other, when Vegas had Pete tied to a pillar and ready to die.
Vegas let out a long breath, nearly a whine. He let Pete’s wrist go. Instead he pressed his hand back to Pete’s sternum, fingers splayed out, and dug the other hard into his neck. He didn’t nod, but he didn’t have to. They understood each other. Pete was struck, again, by that misplaced sense of happiness. Maybe happiness wasn’t the right word—he never knew how to trust that. This was different: just a sense of rightness, that things were where they should be, that he fit where he was without having to try.
Pete curled his other hand around Vegas’s cheek, pressing his thumb there for leverage. He didn’t look away from Vegas’s eyes again, and Vegas didn’t close them. He made the same motions, side to side, loosening the remains of the molar, and Vegas looked at him the entire time, looked through him.
His eyes were wet at the corners, and he wasn’t quiet anymore, letting out small whimpers every time Pete moved. He was letting Pete hear how much it hurt, like a cat finally coming out of hiding to let its owner look at its injured paw. His fingers were going to leave bruises where he was holding Pete, his nails biting in, drawing blood in return.
The rest of the tooth came free, and Vegas sank back against the counter in relief. Then it was done. Pete only realized then how hard he was breathing, like he’d been running extra laps. He dropped the rest of the tooth next to the other half on the counter, and dropped the pliers too.
Vegas reached up to wrap a hand around the back of Pete’s neck. He pulled him down, and made a truly awful sound when he kissed Pete, bloody-tongued and aching. Pete yanked him off by the hair, but Vegas just grinned up at him. It wasn’t one of his satisfied lazy grins. It was more raw, bright and almost dizzy. Pete couldn’t look at it for too long. He wiped his mouth, and tried to remember where he’d put the gauze.
The moments after that had the feeling of leaving a loud concert, or standing in silence after fireworks went off, like living in the ringing silence of something momentous. He gave Vegas painkillers and a glass of water, and watched Vegas spit out more blood. He packed gauze into Vegas’s mouth, and tucked himself on the ground between his legs, head pillowed on his thigh. He didn’t want to move.
Vegas ran his fingers through Pete’s hair, over and over. It was still early, but Pete felt like he could fall asleep like this.
After a while, Vegas said, “I’m not sure there is a way out. They won’t find us at a clinic, but we can’t do this forever.”
“I don’t know,” Pete said. “This isn’t so bad.”
“Yeah,” Vegas said, a little bleary around the gauze. He dug his fingernails into Pete’s scalp. In a little while he’d get up to make lunch, since breakfast had been a bust, and Pete would have to figure out what he could eat. Vegas laughed. “I could drag you anywhere and you wouldn’t mind. You really would do this forever, huh.”
“Why not?” Pete lifted his head. “Don’t you like it too?”
Vegas stared down at him, a strange expression on his face. Then he shook his head. “We’ll give it two more weeks. Find a scapegoat, take care of it, bring back someone’s head to my uncle. Spin it in our favor. Tell them this—” he pointed at his jaw, “was them. Make too big a deal of it for him to bury us. What do you think?”
Pete tipped his head back to look up at him. “Can we make it three weeks instead?”
“Sure. You’re the one paying our rent.” Vegas tugged at Pete’s hair a little, not to hurt him, just to get him to pay attention. “You liked it, didn’t you? Doing that to me.”
He’d liked the way Vegas had watched him the whole time. How close they’d been. Like there was no one else in the world, nothing to complicate it. Things were simple like this, when it was just them. Pete liked it when things were simple, and Vegas so rarely was.
Sometimes you had to hurt things to love them well. Pete liked loving Vegas, even when it hurt.
He didn’t answer. He tucked his head down against Vegas’s thigh. “Don’t get used to it,” he said. “Next time I’ll take the hit.”
Vegas’s hand crept from his hair to his jaw, gripping tight. “You don’t think I’ve earned enough hits?”
“Not from anyone but me,” Pete told him solemnly.
Vegas let him go, leaving the blood pulsing in his wake. He laughed, and tipped his head back. “Okay. Three weeks. Then you can call Porsche with some bullshit.” He turned his head to look at the fragments of his tooth lying on the counter. He picked one up, examining it in the light. He handed it to Pete. “Here. Keep it.”
It was jagged in Pete’s palm, still a little bloody. He wanted to say something sarcastic about trophies, or souvenirs, but the words wouldn’t come. Vegas was always good at giving Pete things he didn’t know he wanted. He closed his hand around it, and nodded at the other half on the counter. “Okay. You keep that one.”
“Good idea,” Vegas said. “Then I won’t forget you’re not all bark, huh?”
If Vegas wanted to think of it that way, that was fine. Pete closed his eyes, listening to the drip of the sink, the whir of the fans, the buzzing of the lightbulbs. He’d learned early on to savor the good moments, to really feel them, because they never lasted. But wherever they ended up, back in Bangkok or somewhere else if their half-cocked plan fell through, maybe they really could do this forever.
Pete pressed his thumb to the sharp edge of Vegas’s tooth, digging in hard, feeling the bite of it against his skin. A body could keep bleeding for a long time, if you fed it and knew where to cut. Maybe love was like that too.