10. Chapter 10
Andre was three fingers into a whiskey twety-four hours later he didn't remember pouring when his phone buzzed on the counter, an unfamiliar number lighting up the screen.
He stared at it for a full ten seconds. Then the phone buzzed again, and a new thread opened on its own, already populated, already scrolled halfway up a conversation he'd never been part of.
JUDE: oh my god
JUDE: OKAY HI
JUDE: this is going to be a lot i'm so sorry in advance
SETH: it's not gonna be a lot. it's gonna be exactly enough.
TRIP: Welcome, Andre. I promise this group is more functional than it currently appears.
Andre set the whiskey down.
ANDRE: who is this? all of you? why am i in this chat?
JUDE: we're the partners. well some of us. it's a whole thing
JUDE: nate's my boyfriend. seth's with zain. trip's with ghost. jack's just… jack. he's with elijah. (it's new, but not new, be gentle)
JACK: i'm the emotional one. it's been decided.
SETH: it's true. council ruled on it.
Andre read that twice and still didn't have any idea what the fuck was going on.
A support group. For the people dating men who ran Lakefront's actual operation, apparently.
He hadn't known there was a club. He definitely hadn't known there'd be an opening.
He refused to think about why he was now being included.
ANDRE: okay… but why me?
There was a pause long enough that Andre watched the little typing bubble appear and disappear twice before Jude actually sent anything.
JUDE: because marcus watches you like you're the only thing in the room and it's honestly kind of unbearable to witness secondhand
JUDE: he doesn't even know he does it
Andre's throat went tight and his breath caught.
SETH: also he hasn't dated anyone since you. not once. zain would know, zain's the one who'd have heard about it because he's a nosey bitch and mothers marcus even if he won't admit it.
JACK: can confirm. six years. nothing.
TRIP: For what it's worth, and I've watched him for not nearly as long, but long enough to know: he doesn't let people in. You were already in. That's a different thing from how he interacts with people.
JUDE: trip that was almost poetic. are you okay
TRIP: I contain multitudes.
Andre put the phone face-down on the counter and picked the whiskey back up. The long burn of good liquer didn't help.
He picked the phone back up thirty seconds later anyway.
The chat kept moving without him for a while, which was somehow worse than if it had stopped. Andre sat at his kitchen table with the phone face-up now, watching a conversation happen live between four men who loved each other loudly, without any of the careful distance most men kept.
SETH: opener's almost done. jude's up next. everbright is even more popular than when that douche was around. I love success as revenge. And jail. I fucking love that the ex who shall not be named is in jail.
JACK: Jude's gonna be so mad we're this close to the stage
TRIP: We're twelve feet back. It's not that close.
JACK: it's close enough that he'll see us and lose his train of thought and then be mad about THAT.
A photo came through a minute later: a stage lit red and gold, a mic stand catching the light, the crowd a dark wall of shoulders in the foreground.
Andre found himself smiling at his phone alone in his kitchen.
There was a slight blonde man adjusting the mic up front, an elecrtic guitar strapped to his front.
He was dressed like one would expect a rocker; black leather pants laced up the side and a white shirt that said 'Rebell' in red that looked like spraypaint.
Jude, the lead singer of the band Everbright, was well known in local circles, and had plenty of national attention to back him up.
Andre respected that the young man refused larger fame to stay in town.
Motown wasn't so long ago that there weren't recording opportunities right here.
SETH: [photo]
SETH: someone just sent this to me. unknown number. which shouldn't be possible, by the way. we all know ghost stalks the shit out of everyone and keeps our tech on lockdown.
Then a second one arrived, same angle, wider, more of the crowd visible.
JACK: ok why do i not like this photo?
TRIP: What am I looking at?
SETH: bottom left. by the pillar.
Andre pulled the photo up full screen before he'd finished reading the rest of the thread.
Bottom left, by the pillar. A man in a gray jacket, unremarkable, except that he wasn't watching the stage like everyone else in the frame.
He was looking directly at the camera. At whoever had taken the photo.
Like he'd known exactly when the shutter would go.
ANDRE: who is that?
He knew, but needed someone else to say it.
He would never, ever forget the dark hair, strong build, and cruel confidence of the man who had ruined so many lives.
His blood went cold at the thought of him there with the boyfriends…
watching one of Marcus' people like a shark in chum filled water.
That wasn't a coincidence. That picture was a message.
JACK: that's Drakov. The bastard Marcus has been hunting since he started this thing. I've seen him in the case files.
Andre's hand tightened around the phone hard enough that the case creaked.
SETH: is that really him
JACK: wait we're checking
TRIP: Everyone stay where you are. I'm going toward the pillar.
SETH: not alone you're not
JACK: circling the other way. Keep eyes on Jude, he's a sitting duck up there on stage.
Long minutes where nothing came through. Andre sat with the phone gripped too hard in one hand, watching three dots appear and disappear, appear and disappear, none of them turning into words.
TRIP: Gone.
JACK: gone how? he was RIGHT there
TRIP: Checked both exits, the bar, outside on Lafayette. Nothing.
SETH: he probably left the second the photo sent. maybe before.
Jude never saw the messages. His set had started somewhere in the middle of it, up on a stage twelve feet from where a stranger had stood watching him.
A stranger who knew them too well. Who wanted them to know he could move fourty people moments before they arrived.
Who had been moving through their world, untouchable. Who knew where to find them.
Andre set the phone down on the table, face up, and didn't pick it back up again for a long time.
His mind was a mess of warnings and wanting to jump into action.
He knew that Marcus was going to lose his mind.
He was a protective man who took care of the people he loved.
Especially the ones who weren't warriors or law enforcement.
Andre felt a burning need to go check on the young man who had worked so hard to rebuild his life from abuse and tragedy, if the pepers were to be believed, but knew he couldn't. Despite the text chain…
he wasn't one of them. He wasn't anything to them.
And they would have to handle their own.
Except… he wasn't sure he could still make himself believe that. Not after the kiss. Not while his world and Marcus were crashing back into one another. Not when all he wanted to do was pick that phone back up and tell Marcus… he was on his way.
Andre stared at the phone for another full minute before he made himself stop staring at it.
He didn't text. Texting meant he would be bound to the terrible choice he was about to make. He'd done that before, more than once, whole paragraphs written and deleted at two in the morning, sent to no one.
He grabbed his keys off the counter instead.
The drive took eighteen minutes, most of it spent not thinking about what he'd say, because if he thought about it he wasn't going to go.
He'd gotten good at that kind of not-thinking over six years.
Tonight it barely worked. His hands stayed steady on the wheel and his foot stayed even on the gas, and underneath all of it, the whole eighteen minutes, one thought ran on a loop he couldn't shut off: Drakov had been close enough to touch someone Marcus loved, and Marcus didn't know yet.
Unless his people moved faster than Andre realized.
Andre wasn't going to let him find out from anyone else, if he could help it.
That was the reason he let himself believe on the drive over. It wasn't the only one. He knew that too.
The stairs were dark except for the one light Marcus never turned off, the same one that had been burning less than a day ago, when everything happening in that office had still been simple enough to call it just work.
He stood outside the door with his hand raised longer than he wanted to admit to himself.
Then he knocked.
Marcus opened the door before Andre's knuckles had properly landed a second time, like he'd been standing right on the other side of it. Whatever he saw on Andre's face wiped the question off his own before he could ask it.
"What happened?"
Not really a question. Andre didn't answer it with words. His hands found Marcus's jaw first, then the sides of his neck, then his shoulders, confirming with touch what his eyes hadn't quite believed, that he was standing there whole, unmarked, breathing, real.
Marcus went still under it and let him.
"You're okay," Andre said, finally, like he was the one who needed to hear it out loud. "You're okay. He didn't… he wasn't near you. He was near Jude. Everyone's okay."
Marcus's hands came up slow, like he wasn't sure yet if they were allowed, and closed around Andre's wrists instead of pulling him in. "Andre. Slow down. Who was near Jude?"
"Drakov." The name came out rougher than he meant it to. "At the show. He let them see him. He wanted them to know he could."
Something moved behind Marcus's eyes, fast and dark, and for a second Andre thought he was about to lose him to the version of Marcus that lived in the darkness. Instead, Marcus's grip on his wrists tightened, and he pulled Andre the rest of the way through the door himself.
The door shut. Andre didn't remember deciding to close what was left of the distance between them, only that he had, both arms around Marcus now, face against his shoulder, breathing him in like it was the one thing keeping the last hour from catching up to him all at once.
Marcus held on just as hard. Neither of them said anything else for a long moment.
"I broke it off," Andre said, finally, muffled against his shoulder. "Last night. I told myself that meant something."
"It did." Marcus's hand moved slow against the back of his head. "It just doesn't change what we've both always known."