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October 12, 1984, Cape Cod, Massachusetts
In the two months since Ash got a Tiffany box with a set of car keys, the Rolls Royce had been rotting in Dino’s garage. Last week, after some guilt tripping over “ungrateful teenagers”, Ash had left the don’s mansion behind the wheel and parked the sports car on the street, downtown, two blocks from the shitty apartment he’s “renting”. He’d half-expected to find it off his hands the next morning, or at least be sans rims, but word had gotten out fast that it was the Lynx’s.
Not even Arthur was bold enough to so much as egg it.
Ash taps his hands on the leather wrapped steering wheel, the quiet purr of the engine like a scream as he sits in park, staring at the odometer. He hadn’t paid it any attention since he buckled in at five A.M., so it’s jarring to see the number go from below twenty to a whopping two hundred and eighty five miles.
He hadn’t thought about how he might cover up that .
Right now, if all was going to plan, Marvin or whoever else was on babysitter duty wasn’t aware that the Rolls Royce was out from under its tarp on the corner. While Ash had led Dino’s guy away from his block on foot, Shorter and Alex had swapped out the Royce for some beat up fire engine red Camry they’d found at the dump.
Right now, Dino’s guys probably thought that wherever Ash was in the city, he’d done a good job shaking them off his tail.
He and Dino had had a few talks about his tail. Ash pointed out that it wasn’t fucking fair for Dino to give him an apartment so Ash could practice “leadership” and “independence” if he was going to keep a nanny cam on him 24/7. That was when Dino had called Ash ungrateful, pouring him a full glass of that ‘68 Merlot he’d found; Ash's birth year.
So, Ash had let himself get a little tipsy, loose-limbed on the furniture, tie on the ground, pants around his ankles. In the morning, he’d found Dino's bed empty and his birthday keys re-gifted, under the pillow.
Never let it be said Ash Lynx was a cheap hooker.
Ash is just sitting here, burning gas, staring at the odometer, wondering if Dino would check the mileage. Maybe, to see if Ash was appreciating his gift. He could find a way to explain the uptick in number. Hell, if did get out that he wasn’t anywhere in New York today, he could claim he went on a joyride. It’s half true.
Ash sits back in the leather seat, hating how soft it is, staring up and through the windshield, down green fields and to the Atlantic ocean.
This is the first time he’s left NYC in… too many years.
He feels a prickling on his throat, like Dino’s ring digging in, wondering if he’d be punished if he was caught. Would Dino think he was trying to run away?
He can almost hear the lecture; Dino would start out calm, smoking a cigar, staring out the window. “I guess that’s what they say about children. You give them an inch and they take a mile.”
Two hundred and eighty-five miles, actually.
Ash finally kills the engine, pops open the door, and steps onto the gravel lot. It’s leaving dust on the undercarriage of his luxury car.
He was tempted to park out in one of the corn fields, or around some of the spots he knew where teenagers would get drunk and throw cans. No one would vandalize the Royce in New York, but Ash Lynx wasn’t a thing in Cape Cod.
He’d love to return the Royce to Dino’s garage with a dick drawn up the side of it.
But he couldn’t afford pissing Dino off.
Dino was usually pissed at him, but there was some kind of invisible line between Ash having some kind of spark to Ash being a disrespectful little shit. In the four or five years Ash had known him, he’d gotten pretty good at balancing it.
There was more at stake than before, though. One wrong move and Ash would lose his gang, his apartment, and the new length of his leash.
And more.
As he slams the car door shut, taking in clear blue skies and gulls overhead, he almost feels like he could breathe.
He hadn’t thought this through well enough. He’d left early in the morning to beat traffic and get the jump on Dino’s exhausted night watch, but now he was here before eleven, during business hours. At least you didn’t get here during the lunch rush.
This wasn’t like him, making big, spontaneous moves. A year ago–hell, two months ago–he would have sooner gone back to Club Cod than Cape Cod. Maybe he will put you back at the club if he finds out you fucking left town.
The next breath in is downwind of someone’s cigarette, so Ash reaches into his pocket for one of his own. When he glances down, he nearly jumps out of his skin; lining around the wooden posts marking parking spots, were rows and rows of pumpkins.
Why does it always have to pumpkins?
He shouldn’t have come home in fucking October.
Ash–or at least his car–is already getting some looks; some bumpkins in baseball caps, hard denim, and flannels over wife beaters, dangle cigarettes out their mouths as they gawk at the Royce. He doesn’t even give them a full glance as he grinds his converse into the grit.
He feels overdressed in a new pair of sneakers, a plain white tee with a sports jacket, and Versace sunglasses. He’d just so happened to leave those in the glovebox, and he hopes nobody would notice the logo.
That ugly fucking red car makes him stand out enough that all the designer clothes in the world didn’t matter.
He takes a few drags as he crosses the rough parking lot, past half a dozen neatly parked trucks and family sedans, and all those freshly cut pumpkins. Some little kids are playing with one, running around with it, their mom yelling at them to put it down.
It’s almost cute.
He’s smoked half of the cigarette by the time he makes it to the little diner door.
Ash considers going in letting out a puff, but he looks like enough of a douche with the sunglasses. He stomps his smoke out with the heel of his red shoe as he finally pushes open the door, like a cowboy marching into the saloon.
The little bell tingles and it makes him shiver. He’d forgotten what the bell sounded like, when he’d be sitting doing his homework at the bar, looking up at each patron that walked in, hoping it was Griffin home from work. Griffin home from war. Griffin–
No one really looks at him; a glance in his direction, then back to their own conversations. A couple of families are in the corners for a late breakfast, but it’s mostly just middle aged good old American men, nursing a coffee until they start the afternoon shift.
It’s decorated in here a little bit; some fake cobwebs in the corner (maybe blending in with real ones), fabric spiders and witches hats. Fresh pumpkins on the tables.
Fall after Griff left, Ash had cried and cried every time he saw the pumpkins, until Jennifer decided to chuck them all out behind the diner to rot.
Ash refuses to look over to the corner booth where Jennifer would take his team’s order after Little League practice. She’d happily hand Coach the check at the end, saying each time, “Don’t tell Jim, but I got you that discount!”
Jennifer’s waiting on a table, filling up coffee. “Hello!” She smiles. She still looks like a damn teenager. “You can seat yourself, I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Ash doesn’t say anything. Every part of his plan had been focused on “getting out of New York without Dino noticing” and nothing to do with “what you do when you get to Cape Cod.”
Or what to do about the odometer. Maybe he could roll it back? Maybe the Fly would know someone who could help.
He fidgets as he settles at the bar, feeling up the papers folded inside his jacket, by his heart, which he can hear rattling like a baseball on a chain link fence.
Focus. Focus…
He used to sit here when he did his homework. So he could watch for Griffin.
He’d been sitting here a week after the police laughed Jim out of the station, when Coach had come in, all concerned to Jennifer that Ash hadn’t been around for Little League practice–
“You see that fucking thing out there?” One old fart was saying to another.
“What fucking thing?”
“The sports car , ya son of a bitch!”
A low whistle. “Now that’s a nice car. Know whose it is, Jennifer?”
“No.” She sounds worried, holding the coffee pot with both hands.
Ash can’t blame her; why the hell would a luxury car be sitting at this shitty little dump?
“I wouldn’t leave a beauty like that alone for a second.”
Ash lazily swings the keys out of his pocket, thumb on the fob. He clicks it, double-locking it from all the way inside. The old men and Jennifer flinch at the taillights flashing, oohing and awing.
They notice Ash, holding up and swinging the key around his finger. “Don’t worry; got that state of the art remote locking system.”
Another low whistle; the geezers are sitting at the bar, a few stools down from Ash, and they swivel in his direction. “Quite the car you got, kid. You from out of town?”
Ash rolls back his shoulders, pulling his sunglasses down over his nose, peeking green eyes up at Jennifer. “As of late.”
Jennifer drops the coffeepot; it shatters at her shoes, glass skidding across the floorboards, coffee spilling everywhere.
Her patrons cry out in alarm, fussing over her, a woman in the corner walking over to see she’s all right.
“As…” Jennifer can’t find her voice at first, eyes wide like she’s looking at a ghost. “Aslan?”
He feels a little mean, now, waltzing in with such swagger. She hasn’t seen him since he ran away at nine years old.
For seven years, she must have thought he was dead.
“Aslan!” She repeats, some life coming back to her. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands, clutching her sweater around her throat, walking over the glass to get closer to him. “Aslan, is it really–”
“Aslan?” One of the men repeats. He turns back to Ash, but he’s not impressed anymore.
He’s used to two expressions from old men; lust or fear. This guy looks close to shitting himself.
Jennifer’s shouting, “Jim! Jim!” and she runs off in the other direction, down to the office to go and grab him. It makes Ash think of days when he’d come up from the house with a letter from Griffin, and she’d run back to show it to Jim, a skip to her step, holding his hand.
She was always more of an older sister than a stepmom, even though Griff was more a dad than a brother. But Jennifer hadn’t been dating a forty-something guy at nineteen because she was oh-so-mature.
Not like you can judge . He knew plenty about going after the older guy.
“...Jim’s son?” They're gossiping about him in the corners, not as quiet as they thought. Or maybe they didn’t care, fucking geezers, entitled to talk about everyone else’s business. “Thought he died.”
“That’s the veteran. Aslan was the… you know.”
“The faggot?”
Ash has heard that word everyday since moving to New York, but it feels… different, here, home. “Home.”
He was first called a fag when he was six; he was small for his age, and some older boys were picking on him, and he cried, and they called him that, because they knew it was a mean word. Griffin didn’t tell him what it meant, just told him boys don’t cry, and left it at that.
Griffin got him into Little League so that he’d make some friends, but even though he was a crack shot, he still didn’t fit in with the boys. He got good grades–really, really good grades–so that made him a nerd. And he flinched sometimes from the ball, so that made him a sissy. He told the teacher when his teammates tugged girl’s pigtails in class, and so that made him a faggot.
He should have tried harder to make friends at Little League. Shouldn’t have gone back into his shell when Griffin joined the army. Shouldn’t have become friends with girls in his class, shouldn’t have gone through their mom’s makeup bags with them, should not have turned up to the diner in eyeshadow and lipstick in the middle of the Superbowl because they dared him too.
He wouldn’t have gotten boys throwing him in lockers, defacing his backpack with the word, leaving him crying alone after practice for Coach to find him and try to cheer him up.
There wouldn’t have been a hand on the small of his back one afternoon, a hand on his crotch the next. He wouldn’t be laying with his legs open in a week.
Maybe, when Jim took him to the police station, they wouldn’t have waved it all away, saying that the little fag must have bitten off more than he could chew.
“...he’s here, Jim, he’s alive! Look!” Jennifer comes running from the back, hands clasped together. “There! At the end of the bar. He’s tall and handsome and he’s got a shiny new car–”
“A what?” Jim makes an appearance and Ash straightens up.
Jim’s not too tall, but he’s got a solid frame, a familiar frame, the kind of body that Ash knows a little–no, a lot too well.
Somehow, despite everything, seeing his dad doesn’t make him nervous in… that way. He’s developed a good read on people; can tell from one glance when an old guy is looking at him with lust or fear. Or, sometimes, disgust.
Jim’s always safely been the third.
His hair’s gone gray, but that’s about the biggest change. He puts his thumb in his belt loops, looking out the window, spotting Dino’s fucking car. “Where did you get something like that?”
Seven years. He thought Ash was dead. And his first question is about the car .
Two months ago, when he’d turned sixteen, he’d had an open invite from Shorter to crash at Chang Dai. Nadia was planning to buy a cake from the drugstore, and streamers, and then Shorter was gonna take Ash out to take an unreasonable sixteen shots of whatever the birthday boy wanted.
But Dino had organized a soiree in the banquet hall of a fancy French restaurant. He’d invited a lot of business contacts; many involved in the mob, others just rich socialites who funded it. Parties in Dino’s world were networking events, so Ash had worn a three piece suit and an approachable smile, sticking close to Dino’s side, remembering names and past deals, and guessing wine years to delight guests with his precociousness.
It wasn’t the type of party where Dino was open about what Ash was . The company was mixed enough that he introduced Ash as his protégé, but even the rich, elderly women had to know that meant Dino fucked him.
That just wasn’t polite dinner conversation.
As the night dragged on, and Ash was ready to throw himself out the window and into the street to get away from violin music, chandelier light, and rich people laughing, Dino had tapped his wine glass, proposed a toast for many more years, and dropped a ring box on Ash’s dessert plate.
Out of all the things Dino had done to Ash and with Ash, from porn to murder, Ash had never wanted to cut off the old man’s fingers more than in the stomach-turning moment that Dino popped open a fucking Tiffany ring box.
It was just the keys to a car, because Ash was a sixteen year old boy, and there had been polite laughter at the joke.
The joke only made sense when you knew that Ash had been performing wifely duties for the man since he was eleven.
“Oh,” Ash smiles at his dad, and he doesn’t quite know why this is his approach. But something about seeing Jim, and his scowl, in his classic American diner, with his fucking beer-chugging good old boy crew, makes something in him snap. He flips back his hair as he removes the shades, and pulls up, sitting himself on the side of the bar.
He’s drawing more attention. A couple of eyes go his way, and he can sense the shift in the air as he poses like he was taught for photos; legs crossed, body open. Seduction is like a science, and even in a pair of tattered jeans and an old white tee, he knows how to get the right results.
Ash smiles at his dad, swinging the keys on his ring finger. “Just a present from my boyfriend.”
The disgust from the good old boys amps up; the thin veil is gone, and now they’re just grimacing, uncomfortable. A couple of them are uncomfortable because Ash is still posing, hot and young and pretty, and oh gosh what if someone should catch them looking and liking ?
“He’s really fucking rich,” Ash says. Jim’s body is solid, shoulders tight, chest out, no more expression on his face than when Ash came back from Little League with blood in his underwear. “No need to worry, Daddy, your princess is in good hands.”
Jim takes a swing at him. Jennifer cries out, reaching out to grab his arm, crunching the glass even more.
Ash didn’t get the shit kicked out of him by Blanca in training to not be able to judge a sloppy punch from an old fart. He slips off the counter, bouncing on his heels, hands in his back pockets. “What’s the matter, Daddy? Didn’t you want me to find a guy that paid?”
“Jim!” Jennifer’s screaming, trying to hold Jim back.
No one else in the diner is interfering, but everyone watches, scared of Ash and disgusted by Ash and it feels fucking good .
He’s not coming back to this shithole with his tail between his legs. They don’t get to stay with their cute wholesome American values far, far away from his fucked up life.
Feeling confident he’d traumatized everyone well enough, he slides on his sunglasses again, puts his hands in his back pocket, and strolls around the bar, across the diner, and to the back office.
It’s the same in juvie, on the streets, in private parties, or among the hard-working blue collar crowd; just keep your head up and eyes forward.
Jim’s office is unlocked, the business too small to even have an “employees only” sign marking it, and Ash strides in to find it also unchanged. A bulletin board, a desk and a chair, an open folder full of receipts.
No pumpkins, thank God.
Ash’s distracted himself in reading up on the business accounts by the time the door bursts open, Jim coming in like thunder.
“Just what in hell do you think you’re doing, strolling in here after all this time?” He’s red in the face, hands clenched into fists.
But he’s not trying to hit Ash anymore–and not just because Jennifer’s attached herself to his back like a baby lemur.
As the office door shuts, giving them some privacy, Ash taps the books, “You are spending way too much on iceberg lettuce,” he snorts. “When’s the last time one of your patrons ordered a salad anyway?”
Jim snaps the book shut, nearly on Ash’s finger. Ash moves around the desk, to the office chair.
It’s not the same swivel-model as before. It’s cheap and black, but it’s new.
Ash would sometimes sit in the old one and spin around and around until Jim came in and threatened to spank him. Threatened; never did.
Jim’s never laid a hand on him.
Ash sinks into the new office chair, leaning back, ankles on the desk. “How’ve ya been, Pops?”
Jim’s big and burly but he doesn’t know what to do, eyebrows bent as he looks down at Ash like he’s a cockroach. “I hope you don’t plan on making yourself at home.”
“ Jim ,” Jennifer presses, letting him go, squeezing herself alongside him in the cramped office. “Please. It…. Aslan, where have you been?”
He shrugs. “Around. Doing jobs. Making friends. Sucking dick.”
Ash’s crudity isn’t making Jim squirm anymore, much to Ash’s disappointment.
It rattles Jennifer, and she pales, drawing into herself.
Ash feels like a piece of shit, acting like a tramp in front of Jennifer, who’d done her best to help him with homework and made sure he ate three square meals. More than she needed to be, seeing as she wasn’t even his stepmom.
It’s weird that she’s still around. That means she’d been putting up with a waste of space like Jim Callenreese for what, twelve years?
“Did you marry her yet?” Ash asks Jim, and wishes he could take it back. It’s mean to Jennifer , and she’s just a bystander in all of this.
Jim sniffs in response, folding his arms over his chest. Jennifer makes herself a little smaller, and Ash holds back a million other retorts, like “Better hurry up before she wizens up” or “At least you didn’t knock this one up.”
“If your John’s so rich, you better not have come all the way out here looking for handouts,” Jim says, getting more impatient by the second.
“Is it a handout when I’m your sweet little boy?” Ash pouts.
Two months ago, Ash would have sooner been back on the street, on his knees, praying he didn’t swallow AIDS, then ask Jim for a damn thing.
Playing with Jim isn’t as fun as he’d hoped, so he gets down to business. “Did you hear that Griff’s not dead?”
Jennifer flinches a little, turning her attention to Jim, who does not budge from the wall.
Jim scrunches his nose. “Not long after you left. If you’d gone to my sister’s in Philly, you’d have heard about it too.”
Ash’s throat constricts but he keeps himself steady. He’s been through grueling twelve-hour shoots and killed more men than he remembers. Jim Callenresse isn’t gonna get a reaction out of him .
“So why is he in a veteran’s hospital in Long Island?”
“Cause he’s a crazy cripple, you stupid whore.” Jim’s mad now, but he doesn’t move from the wall. “Government sent him out to get him fucked up, and now they’re taking care of him.”
Ash’s fingers are starting to tremble, remembering the day he’d finally found trace of Griffin Callenresse in the system, found his hospital, got through the lax security to his room.
The hospital wasn’t the type that veterans ended up in if they had family that cared; overworked and dispassionate nurses, beds full of feces, patients bashing themselves in the head.
Griff hadn’t even made eye-contact with him the whole five hours he was there.
To keep himself from showing a tell, Ash puts his hands to use, reaching inside his jacket.
Jennifer’s flinching again–like she expects him to pull out a gun.
He can’t help a smug smile as he draws out the papers, dropping them on Jim’s desk as he finally drops his feet back to the ground.
Jim grunts again. “What’s that?”
“Boring legal stuff. But see, you’re the guardian for Griffin Callenreese; you’re going to sign those rights over to me.”
Jennifer takes a step closer, gently touching the edge of the paper to get a better look.
Jim almost laughs, lips turned up. “You? You’re what, fourteen?”
Ash lets it roll off him. Last year, before his growth spurt, he was getting clocked at twelve.
Why would Jim remember when he was born? He’d been dead for years.
“I can take care of him.” He jerks his head towards the parking lot. “I got the means, right?”
Jim’s not impressed. Jennifer’s still engrossed in the paperwork.
She makes a little noise, looking up, meeting Ash’s eye. “You want to remove him from the hospital?”
“I think a monkey could take better care of Griffin than that place.”
“You stupid little fuck.” Jim’s moved over to the desk, knuckles on the wood. “You think it’ll be like adopting a dog?”
There are a million things Ash can say to that, because how fucking ironic for father of the year himself to lecture his serial killer son on how to be responsible.
Ash swallows it down like champagne, like Dino’s cum.
Jim was Dino today; Ash couldn’t afford to piss him off.
“What’s it matter to you?” Ash says, keeping down his venom, but unable to try sucking up. Wouldn’t work on Jim anyway. “It’s not like you wanna do it.”
Jim leans over the desk more, his buggy blue eyes taking Ash apart. Ash allows it, trying not to let his skin crawl. He feels naked, blood on his hands, looking down at Coach’s body–
“If I sign this ‘legal document’,” Jim says, his incredulousness for good reason. They both know it won’t be legal for underage Ash to became a guardian for his disabled brother. The paper will just make it easier for Ash to get Griffin out. “Will you keep yourself and your… bullshit away from here? For good?”
Ash clenches his back teeth, the Rolls Royce keys heavy in his pocket.
Jennifer’s appalled. “Jim–”
Jim holds out his hand, and she shuts up. He then swings his hand out, open, to Ash. “We got a deal?”
Ash stares down at his dad’s callouses, a little shocked for it to be so easy. Handshake deals are only ever fair when both parties lose something, but here, Ash gets his brother, and Jim gets to continue on without fathering either of them.
He’s surprised at his hesitation.
You never planned to come back here before. Why the hell would you again? Cape Cod, with its pumpkins and its coots and its old, bad memories….
After he shook that hand, this wouldn’t be home anymore.
You’re a goddamn murderer and prostitute. Why the hell do you care?
It’s not about him, anyway. It’s about Griffin.
He’d give up a hundred homes to pay back a fraction of what he owed his brother.
Ash shakes Jim’s hand, unsettled at how rough it is–-a little rougher than the hands he’s used to on his body, but still old and clammy.
Jim looks down at Ash’s hand with his eyebrows up. He’d probably expected Ash to have soft, sissy hands, not the callouses he’d gotten from the handle of his pistol.
“Pleasure doing business, Mr. Callenreese,” Ash smirks.
~ ~ ~
October 20, 1984, New York, New York
Ash’s clothes aren’t where he left them–well, where Dino left them. Dino’s in the en suite, taking a shower or a five-year shit, but Ash is still in his bed, under the covers, fidgeting with the corner of the silk sheets as he stares at the floor, where he knows he stepped out of his converse and socks, ripped jeans, old white tee.
He loses time staring at the threads of the carpet; Dino’s back, a dressing gown tied over his stomach, threading a hand through Ash’s hair. “Sleep well, sweetheart?”
Ash can’t remember. When he does sleep in Dino’s bed, it’s usually dreamless. Sometimes, he likes sleeping in Dino’s bed, because he knows he won’t have a nightmare.
Maybe that’s cause Dino’s bed is the nightmare.
“I’ll see you for breakfast,” Dino orders, walking past. And once the door’s shut behind him, Ash finally gets the will to sit upright, sheets pooling down to his lap, crusted cum cracking along his thigh.
There’s some on his stomach, too. Did he get a happy ending last night? He can’t remember.
Hanging off the closet door is a fresh set of clothes; designer slacks with a matching jacket, a striped undershirt, satin briefs.
His converse sneakers are the only item he recognizes.
He bothers asking about his clothes during breakfast, already knowing the answer.
Dino raises a brow, egg yolk dripping like blood down his plate. “You mean the old rags that were falling off you? Burned; I’m not going to have you catching lice.”
Ash sits perfectly, shirt tucked in, buttons in a row, smiling around a bite. Food doesn’t sit well in his stomach after long nights; he needs to find a good place to jam his fingers into the back of his throat and empty himself. Later. “People are going to think you spoil me.”
“People will know I take care of you,” Dino says back.
They smile at each other, but they both know that Ash is going to dump this new outfit at the thrift store or a second-hand seller and find some rundown replacement.
Even outside of the principle, Dino didn’t know shit about the streets if he thought Ash would command respect while looking like a Barbie doll straight out of the box.
Fully articulated, too . Dino had folded him up last night, Ash’s ankles on the don’s shoulders when he’d gotten railed, looking Dino in the eye—
He had come, squealing like a virgin. Then Dino had kept fucking him, squeezing little “oohs!” and “ahhs!” and “ohs!” out of him like a damn squeaker toy,
“Haven’t I shown I can take care of myself?” Ash raises his eyebrows. He’s been so fucking well behaved since he turned sixteen; coming back for checkups, bitching less about being spied on, and putting on one hell of a show in the sheets.
Dino dabs his face with a napkin. “Where were you last Friday?”
Ash cuts a new bite of his salmon and egg breakfast. “Huh?”
“Marvin said there wasn’t a trace of you, from sunup to sunset.”
Ash squints. He’s gotten good at playing dumb–but not too dumb, not with Dino. “I was at the library.”
“All day?”
“It was a quiet day.” He ingests the salmon and egg, heavy on his tongue, sure to be like lead in his stomach. Dino always feeds him such rich, fatty, disgusting foods, and Ash had to keep squeezing into the same waistband size.
God, he wants to throw up. He keeps chewing instead.
“Not my fault if Marvin wouldn’t know what a library–or a book was–unless it sucked his dick—”
Dino clears his throat. It’s not Ash’s language; he’s chewing while talking.
Ash swallows. “Wanna check my library card, Papa?”
“I trust you, Ash. I know you can be a good boy. When you want to be.”
It’s never that easy. Dino’s not pressing because he knows there’s something bigger going on; maybe he checked the odometer mileage last night. Until he knows the reason Ash has been good, he’s gonna play it cool.
Ash will just play it cooler. Keep up the good boy act for a few more weeks–maybe months. Maybe let Dino think it was just gratitude for the apartment, or his gang, or the fucking car. Wait until Dino got used to it, and hopefully, eased off babysitting.
Then, finally, Ash could misbehave. Within reason.
He’d driven up here in the Royce, so he shouldn’t have been surprised to see it parked out front when Dino finally dismisses him.
“Cushy ride,” Marvin sneers, chucking the keys at Ash.
Ash catches them with his right hand, the left holding his sports jacket over his shoulder.
“Hope it’s got some nice cushy seats for you, baby,” Marvin jeers as Ash walks past him. Ash knows he’s staring at his ass.
Before Blanca and his growth spurt, Ash could have expected a grope.
Ash doesn’t aim as he tosses the keys back over his shoulder, but he hears Marvin shuffle in his instinct to catch them. Could be the fob was worth one of Marvin’s paychecks. “I think I’ll take a walk today.”
“Hey!” Marvin yells after him, “I’m not some fucking chauffeur!”
So much for being a good boy , Ash chides himself, as he leaves on foot, knowing that Dino’s gonna get pissy about Ash returning the car. Should have sucked Dino’s dick after breakfast.
Just thinking about that is enough for him to lose his stomach just past Dino’s property line.
He’ll have to make the argument that the car’s safer in Dino’s garage; Dino would like that, too, to hold onto “Ash’s things.”
The Royce had been useful to fit Griff’s wheelchair, but that was about it.
As soon as he’s back in the city proper, Ash finds a payphone, and dials up his own number.
“Hello?” Skip sounds even smaller over the tinny line. But he’s already louder than he was a few months ago, when he’d been too awestruck by Ash’s very shadow to say more than two words at a time.
“Tell the boys,” Ash says, folding up his sports jacket as he checks the label– Armani . “We’re having a shit load of pizza tonight.”
There’s a shit load to do before pizza, but when it does come, Ash lets his boys have fun in the studio apartment–Bones is chugging beers while the others shout, Alex is keeping Skip from jumping on Ash’s bed, and the (not invited) Shorter is trying to fit three pieces of pizza in his mouth at once–while Ash slips off to the spare room.
He’s made Griff as cozy as he can, but Ash’s dump of an apartment is maybe about as classy as the veteran’s hospital had been.
Still, it’s not Dino’s fucking mansion, and it’s not Jim’s cozy little diner.
It’s theirs .
“Want some pizza, Griff?” Ash asks, holding out a slice.
Pizza doesn’t cure Griff. He stays sitting in his wheelchair, in his robes and slippers, staring at the floor. His eyes are glazed, his hands limp.
“He can hear you ,” the nurse had said. She’d had soft hands and a sad smile, and maybe had been the only person there who cared if Ash’s brother lived or died. “Talk to him.”
“Did I tell you that I saw Dad?” Ash says, sitting on the bed, so he can be on Griff’s level. Griff doesn’t track him. “Last week. He’s gone all gray. And he’s gotten fatter. Jennifer’s still putting up with his bullshit, too. It’s crazy. Like…. Like nothing’s changed, huh?”
Griff was always as soft as the page of an old poetry book, but this is something else. The staff called him a vegetable, but Ash can see something in those eyes.
He recognizes it in the mirror.
Does Griff have bad dreams? Does sitting with the nightmare keep them away?
Hearing his gang continue to make a ruckus on the other side of the door, Ash slides off the bed, settling on the ground, trying to get Griff to look at him. “I should have found you sooner, Griff. I… I’m so sorry.”
He’d waited so long to try and find out if his brother was dead or alive not because he was scared to know he was dead, but scared that he wasn’t. His nightmares had turned into their reunion, Griff looking at him with fear or disgust or worse yet, not looking at him at all.
Not seeing him.
“I shouldn’t have let you leave,” Ash whispers, feeling wet around the eyes.
Isn’t that fucking stupid. He didn’t cry when he found Griff at the hospital, or when Jim told him to never come back, or last night when Dino—
He wipes at his eyes, angry, wishing he had shades, or a fancy car, just something to hide behind. “Why did you leave? Why did you fucking….”
Griff doesn’t answer.
Ash keeps crying, and he bites down on his hand to stop the noise. God, he’d wanted Jim to cry. He’d wanted to turn up all smug and for Jim to break down weeping. Or he wanted him to be mad not that Ash had come back, but that he’d left .
When Ash died, who would be left to miss him?
Ash chokes down the tears, burying his face in Griff’s lap, feeing bad for using his brother like a tissue, like a thing, because God he knew what that was like, and yet—
Griff moves. Ash freezes, fists clenched, as Griff’s arm twitches. His one hand–the dominant hand, the right one–shakes like a leaf and finds itself on the edge of Ash’s shoulder.
Ash holds his breath, waiting for more. For Griff to move the other hand, to speak, to reveal that all he’d needed was Ash and just like that, he was back to normal.
But Griff’s eyes are still staring, as empty as Ash’s in hundreds of photos, drowning in a viewfinder.
Ash swallows. “Sorry. I know, boys don’t cry, right?”
Griff doesn’t say anything but his hand is still there. Ash clutches it, feeling seven, curled up in Griff’s lap, hearing a bedtime story in Cape Cod, and certain that things are going to stay perfect forever and ever.