In Your Corner
Friday evening traffic was the usual snarl of people coming home from work and those heading for a night out. Jack followed the line of cars from Kingston to Clapham, eyes on the road and mind elsewhere. Ever since Raf had yanked him off his flight, he’d been waiting for explosions.
So far, Gareth had been the calm in the eye of the storm, and Daniel and Nico hung on by the skin of their teeth—nightmares notwithstanding. They ate when it was time to eat. They answered when Jack asked questions. And they’d made their own choice where to spend the night.
Yet the itch between Jack’s shoulder blades hadn’t lessened. He’d been on first-name terms with rage since he’d allowed himself to be recruited to take down Jericho. And he’d been ready and waiting for fallout.
This morning, as he’d watched Gareth sleep on the sofa, he’d wondered how that fallout would materialise.
He’d expected the first move to come from Nico—and Nico had run true to form, though not with rage, but with frustration.
Much easier to defuse and deal with. Daniel would take longer or only talk to Nico, but he would react eventually. And Gareth…
Jack had known Gareth wouldn’t let this go.
Gareth controlled his environment and watched over the welfare of those around him.
He’d see the attack on his home as a personal failure.
And while he held definite opinions of Jack’s need to take responsibility for events in his vicinity, when it came down to it, he wasn’t any different.
A fight, though…Jack hadn’t expected that.
Gareth loved to box. He was skilled at hand-to-hand combat.
Jack had served with him, had fought by his side, yet could count on one hand the times when Gareth had lost his cool.
Jack wished he’d been there to see him cut loose and wondered for the rest of the drive who’d been at the receiving end of all that ire.
Rio was waiting as Jack parked his bike, his smile fond and touch mischievous. “You didn’ hang about. Record run?”
“Didn’t even break the speed limit.” Jack set his helmet on the Gixxer’s seat and unzipped his riding jacket. “Did you have to bail him out?”
“No. We left before the law arrived. He’s spittin’ mad.”
“He would be. The boys had to hide on the roof.”
“Yeah, Ah can see tha’. An’ he’s like you and thinks it’s his fault.” Rio nodded in a way Jack remembered, as if he had it all sorted out and classified, with no mysteries left to unravel. “You gonna fight with him?”
“When that was me a time or five? Don’t be stupid.”
“You’ll do. Both of you.”
Rio’s hand landed on his shoulder, and Jack took the comfort without complaint.
If Gareth thought Jack was mad at him… He followed Rio inside and found Gareth standing in the living room as if he didn’t know how he’d ended up there.
Jack could sympathise. He was familiar with the confusion of trying to trace a line of reasoning and not finding a scrap of thought that made sense.
“Your ride is here.” Rio’s grin got wider as Gareth flinched. He held out his hand for Jack’s bike keys. “Ah’ll keep your bike for you.”
“I can drive,” Gareth said quietly.
“You can,” Rio agreed. “But Ah’m not sure you should after tha’ bop to your head. Tha’s why Ah called Jack, righ’?”
Gareth said nothing, just followed Jack outside.
They made the drive home in silence. Jack kept one eye on the traffic and the other on Gareth, who sat stock-still and staring forward, seeing neither cars nor pedestrians.
“Say it already,” Gareth rasped when they stepped into their kitchen.
Jack went for beer and ice packs first. As well as the twice-bruised knuckles, a bruise was spreading on Gareth’s jaw. And as he had during the drive, Jack wondered what Gareth needed to hear when Jack wasn’t of the ‘do as I say, don’t do as I do’ persuasion. And when he knew all about rage.
“Next time,” he said, as he set the bottles on the table and passed an ice pack to his lover, “make sure you have decent intel. Getting you out of the clink is easier if you aren’t charged with beating up random civilians.”
“They weren’t random civilians,” Gareth admitted. “I went to Purple Line.”
“Whatever for?”
“I wanted to see for myself. What you did, I mean. Why you did it.”
“Fuel for the fire? You don’t need to leave the house to find that.”
“I know. I just…” Gareth knuckled his eyes as if trying to erase what he’d seen. “Fuck knows why I went.”
Helpless rage. The reason was helpless rage. Not that Jack would say that. He dropped a kiss into Gareth’s hair, smelled the club-appropriate mix of sweat, smoke, and cheap beer, and couldn’t hold back a smile. They were alike in every way that mattered. He loved it.
“Any damage that needs more than ice? Pain pills?”
Gareth shook his head.
“Then you sit there and decompress, while I rustle up dinner. I’m famished.” He headed to the fridge, then turned around and came back. “Oh, and your lemon and tonic ice cubes? Definitely keeping those.”
That earned him a surprised smile, and Gareth pushing out of his seat to wrap Jack in a hug. “Let me cook.”
“Nope. If you need to move, go take a shower. Seeing you and Daniel spent the morning in here, I bet we’re not short of food.”
Gareth left the kitchen without further argument, and Jack turned his mind to dinner, knowing the real conversation would happen once they faced each other across the table.
By the time Gareth returned, showered and in clothes that smelled of nothing but laundry, Jack had steaks under the grill and the table set with salad, bread, paté, and the last few of Daniel’s empanadas.
He’d also opened one of their best bottles of wine, and Gareth recalled with a shock that today was Jack’s birthday, and he had wanted to make the day special. How had that slipped his mind?
“Let’s get one thing straight right away: I don’t want to fight. I don’t even want to argue,” Jack said as soon as he caught sight of Gareth.
“I don’t want to fight either.”
“Excellent. Can you check the steaks?”
Gareth did, found them perfect, and moments later they each had a plate in front of them.
Jack poured wine, and they clinked glasses.
It could have been any other Friday, except for the ruined backdoor, Gareth’s bruised knuckles, and two boys who weren’t where they should have been—at the table with them.
“What a mess,” he sighed and stuck a fork into his steak.
“Definitely not what I expected when I boarded the plane to come home. But you did good, you and Aidan.”
Gareth gaped. “What?”
“Don’t ‘what’ me. You want it in writing? Nico and Daniel are safe because you hauled arse. And Pavel and his mate are in the clink because you don’t run from a threat. You think I’d overlook that and gripe instead about having to re-glaze the backdoor yet again?”
“I thought—”
“You’d let the boys down and disappointed me.
That you couldn’t keep your family safe because you failed to pay attention.
Of course you thought that.” Jack took a sip of wine and the smile on his face was fond, if a touch exasperated.
“You know, you can’t accuse me of wanting to solve all the world’s problems by myself and then go and do the exact same thing. ”
A part of Gareth’s tension dissolved as Jack’s words sunk in. He hadn’t considered his and Aidan’s contributions to Pavel’s arrest, true, but—“It still bugs me I didn’t see this coming.”
“You’re not clairvoyant.”
“That’s what Rio said.”
“He has sense, and you lacked data. Did you know Daniel felt watched when he was at work? He was so rattled, Rachel sent him home in a taxi and had her husband drive the two the next day.”
Had Jack leaned over the table and punched him, Gareth wouldn’t have been more surprised. “What? When was that?”
“Day before your birthday. He didn’t see anyone, just had the sensation someone was watching him. And mind… that’s Nico’s account of it, not Daniel’s.”
“Why didn’t he tell me? Or tell anyone? Why didn’t Rachel?” Gareth tried to wrap his head around the revelation. “That isn’t making me feel better.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Oh, stop it. That’s not on you—and I had that out with Nico this morning, so Daniel will get to hear of it. We can’t do more than remind them over and over that we’ll believe them no matter what—never mind what they hear elsewhere.”
“That again?”
“I blame the school, personally. They’re all for a quiet life and not rocking the boat. But as I told Nico—he and Daniel aren’t like their schoolmates. Their radar is far more acute. Which doesn’t make them paranoid or overexcited. It’s just part of who they are now.”
“Okay.” Gareth returned to his steak and a for a while they ate in silence. “Taking responsibility… I’ve kind of internalised that by now. Not unlike you.” He smiled to show how he meant that. “That’s only part of what’s bothering me, though.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. I don’t… want to screw up what we’ve built by not paying attention or letting things go out of control as soon as you turn your back.”
“Did you talk to your mum? It sounds like something she’d say.”
Gareth gaped.
“Honestly, I love that woman, but she has a knack for messing with your head. I’ve told you before that you not being perfect or omniscient won’t screw up anything between us.
You don’t hear me any better than the boys do.
” He grinned and drained the wine in his glass.
“And neither do I when I’m up to my eyeballs in other people’s problems, so there.
” He held out his glass for a top-up and Gareth reached for the bottle.
“We’ve had this conversation. And we’ve been doing what works for us for over two years now. I’d say we just keep doing it.”
They clinked glasses on that, because it seemed right, and when Jack set his glass down and leaned across the table, Gareth was only too glad to give him the kiss he asked for.