Jitters, Jumps and Thieves A Long Con Short
Jitters, Jumps and Thieves:
A Long Con Short
“SO, JOSH,” Hunter said at dinner that night. “How you feeling?”
Josh regarded him with mild surprise—and deep exhaustion. Deep undercover in order to lure Kadjic out of hiding, he’d been doing an actual job while running the op from the mansion, and Hunter could tell he was exhausted.
But so was Hunter. Hunter thought maybe they could, well, solve each other’s problems.
Josh must have seen something of that on Hunter’s face, because he blinked away the sleep—and the headaches that still plagued him after chemo had robbed his body of a lot of his red blood cells—and obviously tried to think.
“That depends,” he said muzzily. “How close are you to an actual murder rap?”
Hunter grimaced. “He doesn’t have a show right now,” he said apologetically.
“I know,” Josh said.
“Chuck and I went out on a run yesterday. We were trying to corner Kadjic’s main drug distributor in Springfield.”
Josh grimaced. Obviously he’d heard about this. “I know.”
“He hid in the trunk, Josh. Chuck and I are buzzing down the road at a buzzillion miles because, well—”
“Chuck is driving,” Josh filled in.
“Yes, and suddenly the back seat of your little roadster pops open and Grace crawls into the car from the trunk and asks for a milkshake.”
Josh’s lips twitched, and Hunter relented.
“Yes, it was sort of funny,” he admitted.
“But then we track the guy down, and Grace is like… doing grands jetés behind him, and Chuck is trying to lean on the guy and—” Hunter shook his head.
“It’s hard to lean on somebody like that when your boyfriend is looking like Peter Fucking Pan.
It feels dirty. And I know Grace is an amoral little asshole who would sneak a lockpick between this guy’s C1 and C2 vertebrae and render him unable to breathe, but…
but he’s smiling at me and drinking a milkshake and holding his foot over his head and—”
“I get the picture,” Josh said, his lips still twitching. He’d put on enough weight that Hunter could see the dimple on his cheek popping in and out, and Hunter gave a sigh.
“Look, man, he needs you. I… I love him. I’d die for him.
He may think we’re just boyfriends, but I will put a ring on it one day when he’s not looking, only…
.” Hunter couldn’t help it. He was used to keeping his body language contained and his emotions even more so, but he found himself waving his hands around like he could produce the words to explain his frustration by magic.
“But we need a day out,” Josh said happily. “I hear you. And actually, it’s time to let him help plan the op.”
Hunter sagged at the table. “Oh my God, thank you.”
Josh nodded his head sagely, like he was doing a favor, but Hunter caught his lips twitching and felt infinitely better.
Josh and Grace ride again—the dynamic duo was being restored.
All was as it should be in the world.
“SO,” GRACE said, his voice impossibly low, “what are we doing this for again?”
“We’re practicing,” Josh said, looking down from the balcony of the building two blocks away from the building he was supposed to be working at.
They’d chosen this one because it had similar dimensions and composition to their target building, but the room they had access to for “practice” (as he’d told his parents) faced an alleyway and not a main street, the better to not attract attention.
“We’ve done this lots,” Grace said, leaning over the balcony railing until he could lift his legs over his head while outside the railing’s safety area. “Why are we doing it now?”
“Quit that, you idiot,” Josh hissed. “People are less likely to see what we do here, but that doesn’t mean you’re invisible.”
Grace—who had apparently learned some self-control over the past year, dutifully righted himself and stared at Josh, waiting for an answer.
Josh grimaced and looked away.
“Oh my God,” Grace said, a shaft of pain so raw crossing his lovely features that Josh felt his own eyes water. “You… you can’t.”
“I can,” Josh defended. “I just….” He sighed.
“I’ve got to be able to do this, Grace. You know that, right?
I’m the only one with access to steal the painting and time to replace it with the forgery.
I’m the only one with an excuse to be there if I’m busted.
I… everything we’ve put into this job, and it’s gotta be me, but…
.” He sighed and tried to still the shaking in his hands.
“It’s been a while,” Grace said, his voice neutral. “Since we rappelled down buildings.”
Josh let out a breath, glad that Grace, as ever, got him.
“It’s been a while,” he admitted, still holding on tightly to the other thing he didn’t want to say.
But Grace—as ever—got him.
“You miss Liam,” Grace said wisely.
“So bad,” Josh said, able to tell Grace this as he could tell nobody else.
“Then ask him to come help,” Grace implored. “Come on, Josh.” Not “Cancer boy” or “Recovery boy” or “idiot.” Josh. “You love the stupid Interpol cop guy—you think this is a secret?”
“No!” Josh felt peevish and scared and whiny, and he couldn’t help it.
“Don’t you get it? He comes back now and sees me like—” He indicated himself, healthier than he had been six months ago but still recovering.
Too thin, too tired, too unsure of things he’d been sure about for years.
“Like this—and that’s all I’m ever going to be to him.
Some sick, pathetic thing he spent three weeks of his vacation comforting when he could have been out playing Pirates of the Caribbean. ”
Grace snorted. “I hate to break this to you, moron, but he was just as happy to be trapped in that berth as you were! God, Josh, I’ve never seen somebody so…
so ready to step up and be Captain America, but just for one boy.
You are the country of Josh, and Liam wants to be Captain of Josh.
The least you could do is call him so he’ll come be Captain of Josh for, you know, Josh. ”
Josh squinted at him. “You,” he said after a moment, “are making even less sense than usual. Can we just… I don’t know, set up our equipment and zoom down to that balcony three floors below? Jesus. Captain of Josh. Just because you’ve got a Captain of Grace ready to fly in and rescue you—”
“Captain of Grace fobbed me off on you,” Grace muttered, pulling out his paracord and carabiners.
Josh sighed and started getting his own equipment ready. It had been a while, but God, he and Grace used to do this sort of thing every weekend.
“Only because I hadn’t gotten around to begging yet,” he told Grace.
Grace gave him one of those brilliant smiles before—without warning or lining up his descent or even measuring out paracord—he jumped off the twenty-third floor balcony of a building currently being renovated in downtown Chicago.
“Grace!” Josh cried, furiously rigging his own setup so he could jump off and follow Grace down.
Below him he heard the crash of a window—which was not in the plan—and the surprised yelp of the construction men on the floor four stories below, and it took Josh fifteen seconds to jump off the edge of the balcony to chase Grace through the construction site, out another window, and over one more ledge.
This time all the way to the bottom.
They came to a rest on the other side of the building from where they started, three blocks away from their car, looking around the corner to see if the construction guys had managed to follow them here.
“You asshole,” Josh panted, spots swimming in front of his eyes. “That wasn’t the plan at all.”
Grace grinned at him, turning his face up to the tiny bit of sky visible beyond the top of the building. “So,” he said, closing his eyes in the beam of imaginary sunshine, “how’s those jitters?”
“Fuck you,” Josh panted.
Grace cackled. “I don’t see anybody—let’s go!”
And then he took off, Josh after him, both of them sprinting like they hadn’t done in a year. Grace won, of course, which meant he was behind the wheel, Josh’s purloined keys in the ignition before Josh was three steps away—but Josh was three steps away.
And as Grace was zipping through the Chicago streets, shouting, “Wanna see what Chuck taught me last week?” Josh had to admit it.
His bone-deep yearning for Interpol Officer Liam Craig hadn’t gone anywhere.
But his jitters were nowhere in sight.