Chapter 19 – Rex #2
She smirks at me, wiping the lint-covered dick off on the outside of her pants. "You really are jealous."
"No," I mutter, watching as she shoves the dick back into her pants, sticking her tongue out as she arranges it.
She's fucking cute, even doing… this.
"Ready?" she asks when she's finished, patting the bulge in her pants into place. "It isn't sideways, is it? There’s a fucking shocking lack of mirrors in this place considering it’s a mask shop."
Because of Orion, I think to myself. He’s like me. Doesn’t want to see himself when he isn’t expecting it. "Not sideways."
I go to the door and reach for it at the same time she does, our cuffed hands brushing together.
For some reason, I don't pull away immediately this time.
She turns to me, biting her lower lip and glancing up at me through those long lashes. And then she leans up on her tiptoes and presses her lips to my cheek.
On the masked side.
Even though she knows the horror show that's beneath it.
I freeze.
And she opens the door and practically skips out of the fucking room, leaving me standing there in the dark like a fucking idiot.
What the fuck?
When I finally come to my senses and follow her, the workshop is exactly as we left it. Masks on walls. Fireplace crackling. Cheeto still sprawled across his chaise like a furry king.
Jamie, however, has the expression of a man exercising truly heroic restraint.
His bright grin is frozen from ear to ear as his eyes ping between us. Our flushed faces. My rumpled shirt. The fact that Bells's hair looks like she lost a fight with a windstorm.
He opens his big smiling mouth, closes it, opens it again.
"Tea's still warm!" he chirps with a single clap.
I head for Orion's heavy workbench along the far wall. It's solid oak, built for a tall alpha, with thick legs bolted to the stone floor and a surface scarred and scuffed from years of detailed work. I sit on the edge.
"No chair at least?" Jamie asks, his voice rising an octave.
Orion looks at him and shrugs.
Bells hops up beside me, then shifts, turning so her back rests against mine, leaning into me while facing the other side of the room.
She's… doing something. Crunching.
"What is that sound?" I ask warily.
"Biscuit. Lemon saffron. Orion's family recipe." Crunch. "They're stupid good."
"There's fucking craft shit and chemicals everywhere—"
"Trust me, Rex, I'm already radioactive. No amount of leather polish is gonna do me in." Her hand appears in my peripheral vision and she waves around some kind of light-colored cookie shaped like a… I don't even know what. It's actually vaguely dick-shaped.
Yeah. It is. Because Jamie would absolutely fucking have dick-shaped cookie cutters laying around.
"You want one?" she asks, waving it around again, like that will entice me.
"I'm good."
"Your loss." Crunch.
Jamie is vibrating. I can see him from across the room, visibly straining with the physical effort of not saying what he's clearly dying to say. I narrow my eyes at him and level him a look that says don't you fucking dare.
He croaks.
Orion places a steadying hand on his shoulder.
"Shall we continue?" Orion asks pleasantly, his vivid green eyes holding mine above the golden skull mask.
"Guess so," I say under my breath.
Orion steps closer to the table, reaching up to the sides of his mask. His elegant fingers push back his hair to find the straps and there's a click, then another click, as he unbuckles them with slow reluctance, like he’s been dreading this all day.
Orion lifts the mask away from his face.
It's the kind of motion that says I've done this a thousand times and it never gets easier. The golden skull separates from his skin with a faint whisper, and Orion holds it in one hand at his side like a knight removing his helm.
I don't look away.
The damage is extensive. Where his lower face should be—lips and cheeks—there's mostly nothing. Scar tissue spreading up from his mouth in pinks and whites lighter than his bronze skin, baring all his teeth in a permanent exposed grin that mirrors the skeletal mask.
He looks like me.
Not exactly, obviously. The specifics are different—his damage covers the lower half, mine the right side.
Different causes, different patterns. Only the right side of my mouth is fucked up like his is, but his nose is untouched.
So are his eyes, which are locked on the fireplace instead of meeting mine.
But the result is the same. A face that registers as wrong and inhuman in that primal reptile-brain way that no amount of logic can immediately override.
Orion looses his auburn hair from the ribbon tie. He drags a hand through it and it falls forward in a practiced way that obscures some of the scars. Then he just stands there, exposed, and waits in silence.
Jamie swallows.
I catch it. That single bob of his throat, quick and involuntary, before his expression settles back into something warm and steady and completely devoid of performance.
He doesn't plaster on a smile.
Doesn't avert his eyes.
Doesn't do the thing people do where they stare through you at the wall behind your head so they can claim they were looking at you while never actually seeing.
He isn't pretending like there's nothing to react to.
But the love in his eyes doesn't dim. It doesn't have to fight past anything to get there. It's there, burning bright, just like it was thirty seconds ago when the mask was still on. The same way it's been there every time I've watched them together.
Orion doesn’t see it. He isn’t looking at Jamie, or anywhere near him. His eyes are still fixed on the fireplace and the giant tiger dozing there.
I turn my head slightly.
Bells is still behind me, her back pressed against mine, her warmth radiating through my shirt. She's angled sideways now, her head turned toward Orion.
She's looking.
Not staring or gawking or pretending to not notice.
She's just looking passively, her eyes roaming over Orion's face without locking onto anything specific.
I can feel her heartbeat through our backs where they're pressed together, and it picks up slightly, just a tick. It’s the kind of increase that says she registered something disturbing.
But she isn't afraid of him.
She takes another bite of dick-shaped biscuit.
Crunch.
"Okay." Orion sets his own mask on the workbench and picks up the half-skull prosthetic. "Let 'e show you how this works."
He reaches for a second piece. It's a replica of my performance mask. Jamie must have cast it from the mold they already had on file. The silver and black lacquer gleams under the workshop lights.
Orion holds both pieces up, one in each hand. The performance mask in his right, the half-skull in his left.
"The outer 'ask—" He raises the performance replica. "—is 'itted with a 'agnetic release. Here." His thumb traces the jawline. "And here." Temple. "There are 'agnets recessed into the structure. Watch."
He demonstrates, hooking two fingers under the jaw edge and pulling sharply toward him at a downward diagonal.
Snap.
The mask separates from the support cleanly. No fumbling, no sticking, no awkward moment where it catches and you have to wrestle it off. Just one crisp motion and it's in his hand, free.
"Whoe’er’s doing the un'asking needs to gra' it here." He taps the jaw edge. "The angle 'atters. Too high and the 'agnets resist. Too low and you'll 'reak the hinge. Fro' here—" He mimes the motion again. "Clean."
He sets the performance replica down and holds up the half-skull prosthetic. It's thin and floppy.
"This is the underlayer." He turns it over, showing me the interior. "'edical-grade 'rosthetic adhesi'e along the contact 'oints. 'orehead, cheek'one, jaw. It 'onds directly to the skin. Co’ers e’ery inch."
Meaning directly over my scars. Over the twisted, grafted, melted mess that passes for the right side of my face.
Orion takes a moment to breathe before continuing. He's an alpha of few words, and now I fully understand why. It isn't easy for him to speak, and without the mask muffling his accented voice, the impediment resulting from not having lips or cheeks at all is obvious.
"When the 'erformance 'ask is torn away," he continues, fitting the half-skull prosthetic against the right side of his face in demonstration, "the audience doesn't see your scars. They see this."
The skull prosthetic clings to his skin. From where I'm sitting, the transition between Orion's real face and the skull is virtually seamless. Up close, you could see the edges. The slight difference in texture where prosthetic meets skin.
But onstage? Under spotlights?
They'd see a skull.
They'd see something just as real and convincing as the leaked photos and they'd think it's an act. It was always an act. The photos were part of the show.
"Can I show you?" Orion asks, stepping closer to me.
I look back at Bells to make sure she can't see me from this angle. She can't. She's engrossed in the fucking biscuits anyway.
This is the last fucking thing I want to do, but Orion is looking expectantly at me, and he took his off, so.
Fair's fair or whatever the fuck the saying is.
I reach up with a low sigh that's more like a growl and remove my mask, angling my face carefully so there's no risk of Bells getting a glimpse.
I swear Orion smiles. He physically can't, but it's there in his eyes.
I risk a glance at Jamie.
He's beaming.
It annoys the fuck out of me.
Like they're making some kind of stupid progress with me. Like I'm a fucking feral cat they convinced to do something domestic.
And I just know Bells is thinking the same thing if she can think about anything right now other than Orion and Jamie's stupid dick cookies.
"Here," Orion says, removing the prosthetic from his own face and carefully applying it to mine. It clings to me like a second skin. He starts to reach for a handheld mirror on the table, but his hand pauses and hovers over it. He glances at me.
I nod stiffly.
He holds up the mirror—carefully angling it away from his own face so he doesn’t catch a glimpse—and shows me.
The prosthetic covers every inch of damage as well as a mask would, transforming the entire right side of my face into a white grinning skull. The painted black socket covers my destroyed eye completely.
Like Orion’s mask, it isn’t far from the truth. But it’s visibly theatrical. He’s right. The audience would think the leaked pictures are fake, too.
"Feels weird," I mutter, reaching up and brushing my fingers against the prosthetic where it covers my scars.
Like a crepe made of cold, dead fish.
"It will hold 'etter 'ith the adhesi'e, of course," Orion explains. "It will last around six hours under stage conditions." He peels the prosthetic away from my face. I slam my own mask back over it the second his hand moves away enough. "Heat, sweat, e'erything. We… tested it."
"Thoroughly," Jamie says from his station by the tea kettle, his cheeks turning pink. "Um, don't worry. It was a different one. One just for testing. It held. My eyebrow did not. Thank the gods for Benefit."
He taps the eyebrow in question.
"The fucking what now?" I ask warily, watching as Jamie crosses the room in a hurry to intercept Orion before he can put his golden skull mask back on. He lunges and starts showering Orion’s scarred jaw and teeth with kisses.
Orion straightens up reflexively like a spooked horse. Jamie’s too short to reach now, but that doesn’t stop him from grabbing his growling mate’s head and physically dragging him back down for more kisses.
The mental image of a raccoon trying to kiss a much taller stag pops into my head and won’t leave.
"They make a really good eyebrow pencil," Bells says from behind me with a mouthful of biscuit. "You wouldn't know. You'd spontaneously combust if you ever stepped into a Sephora. Like a demon stepping into a church."
Jamie briefly stops trying to kiss Orion and points at Bells. "See? See? I told you we need to have Bells over for game night, love. Bells has taste."
Orion shoots Jamie a wary look from above the golden skull mask he's hurriedly strapping back onto his lower face while Jamie’s distracted. Then at me, because I must be narrowing my eyes at them both.
Fucking fantastic.
Now I'm possessive over Bells.
Bells just snorts.
Crunch.