Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
H angman…
Requiem wolfed his breakfast and immediately got back to it while Lorelai curled up in what was becoming her customary corner of the couch. She didn’t bother with the television but rather propped her elbow on the back of the couch and put her chin in her hand, staring sightlessly out the window along the back of the couch, the dappled sunlight through the trees out there casting wild patterns on her auburn hair.
She was silently introspective, lost deep in thought, and I couldn’t help but think the way she looked right now, she reminded me of some lost and captured forest nymph out of Greek mythology. Captured for her beauty, longing for home…
To be honest, I didn’t know what the hell she was thinking. At all. Curiosity gnawing at me relentlessly, I shoved her and all my questions out of my mind to see what kind of damage fuckin’ Requiem was doing to my fucking apartment.
The building was a historical one, and I pretty much lived in this place at the discretion of the Bonaventure Historical Society who owned it, met here on the first floor, and who was working on making a giftshop to rival the one Lainey worked part time at outside the cemetery gates which wasn’t affiliated at all with the cemetery nor the historical society, but was a third party, purely for-profit venture that was cooked up by some unknown.
There were a lot of clashing bodies when it came to the historic cemetery, and yet they all seemed to work in a fair bit of concert with one another – who the hell knew how they did it, they just did it; it was hard.
Every once in a while, there would be some petty volleys tossed back and forth, but for the most part everyone was in a sort of uncomfortable harmony and things just kept on trucking along like a well-oiled machine.
“You fuck that up, the historical society is gonna have my fuckin’ nuts in a vice,” I complained.
“Relax,” he said. “I doubt they’re going to complain about a one-hundred percent, fully funded and operational state-of-the-art security system for their upcoming gift shop. We’ll get it cleared and handled downstairs later – no one will even be the wiser this is even up here until the gift shop is done and I come back to do up here at a later date.”
He gave me a wink.
“Syn already pulled the strings with Enocha and the gang?” I asked.
Requiem snorted, “Of course, he fucking did. He’s always ten steps ahead in the game – you know that.”
“Probably why this whole thing is driving him nucking futs,” I mused aloud.
Requiem snorted, “You got that right.”
“I’ve been more than a little occupado, my brother. I’m afraid I’m in the dark on most things,” I said and I’d dropped my tone so as not to be overheard by the sweet girl out in the living room on my couch.
“We’ll get you all caught up tonight,” he said, putting a screw to the bit in his drill to mount the camera the rest of the way up in the hall.
“That just tells me what an absolute clusterfuck shit is,” I said.
He snorted again and shook his head with a sigh, “The likes we’ve honestly never been in before. Whole situation is confusing as all get out and fucked up. Mostly it’s just trying to figure out if she’s going to fuck us over if we let her loose back out into the wild.”
I shook my head, “If she did, I’d be surprised. She doesn’t honestly seem the type.”
“Trust is a precious commodity in our world,” Requiem said, staring down the hall, his gaze damn near burning a hole in the wall so he could see through to where Lorelai sat in the corner of my couch lost in her own reverie.
I nodded, and sighed, “It goes both ways, bro.”
He looked at me like I’d said something interesting and nodded.
“She’s scared,” he said and while it didn’t sound like a question but more like an observation, I answered it anyway.
“Fuck, wouldn’t you be waking up in a morgue with Reaper’s dick in your hand?” I asked.
He barked a laugh then and I grinned.
“Touché, fucker,” he said, jacking Lainey’s phrase.
“She’s scared,” I affirmed.
“Doesn’t seem to be around you,” he said. “What’s that about?”
I gritted my teeth a second and tersely answered, “A lot of hard work slogging uphill, no thanks to Syn,” I muttered.
“I feel that,” he agreed. Out of all of us, Requiem tended to butt heads with our fearless leader the most – then again, he and Syn had more interaction and thus room for disagreement than the rest of us usually did.
“What would you do?” I asked.
“Morally or pragmatically?” he asked.
“Both,” I reasoned I’d like to hear both his answers, even though I already knew what the pragmatic one would be.
“Pragmatically? Off her and disappear her – mercifully and quickly, of course,” he said.
I nodded and one look at my face probably told him I didn’t want to hear the answer even though I already knew what it was.
“Morally? Find the fucksticks that victimized her, and off them and disappear them slowly and as painfully as possible. Still not sure what the morally correct answer is where she is actually concerned… that’s a whole Gordian knot of different colliding issues.”
I raised an eyebrow at that, and said, “Oh?”
He gave me a meaningful look and let his eyes dart up the hallway and back to me. I nodded. He was right. We’d flirted with being overheard and hurting her feelings or scaring her even more enough for today. If she hadn’t already overheard us already.
I went in and finished getting dressed, leaving him to do his work with a lift of my chin.
He threw some chin back, and off I went into my bedroom to look up at the corner above my rigger’s stand at the new white camera up there.
I sighed thinking to myself, even in the bedroom, huh? Fuck.
There were no lights, so it wasn’t operational yet.
I pulled an older, threadbare, and faded tan henley over my head and down over my stomach. Dropping onto the end of my bed, I worked on putting on some socks, while I thought about things, trying like hell to work them out in my own head.
I wanted to go for a ride but felt like I couldn’t.
That morphed into imagining what it would be like to ride with Lorelai behind me.
I had some thoughts on that… none I wanted to let see the light of day.
Part of my issue was I’d never been so damn comfortable with having someone in my space before.
She was this glorious shade that haunted this place with her beautiful melancholy, but when she smiled and that malaise of sadness and distress eased off of her for a minute? I didn’t think I’d ever seen such a beautiful and vibrant creature. The glimpses of that woman were exceedingly rare at this point, but she was in there, and she made me wonder if that was predominantly the her of before…
If it was, shit , the motherfuckers who’d dulled her sparkle deserved to die slow alright. Days to even months slow if at all possible.
It took Requiem almost the whole day to put up and wire up the apartment’s new system and to bring it online.
I had to spend some time out in the cemetery doing my thing, I made sure to get on back to the old caretaker’s house to fix some lunch for the three of us, only to find Lorelai in the kitchen almost done making a big bowl of salad to go with the sandwiches she’d crafted out of what she’d found in my fridge and cupboards.
Requiem and she seemed to be getting on pretty well. Definitely better than Specter and she had. Hell, even way better than she and Syn had – both of which I laid squarely on my brothers’ attitudes, considering Lorelai was as sweet and demure a good girl from next door type as she could be.
There was honestly nothing Cruel Intentions about her that I could see. She grew up rich, but she didn’t seem to have the head for the mind games the rich kids liked to play with each other.
Fuck knows, the lot of us had seen plenty of that shit growing up among the elite at the fucking boarding school we’d all been unceremoniously dropped into so our parents didn’t have to be bothered.
I felt a pang of guilt. I knew that my mom was never bothered by raising me, my dad on the other hand? Big inconvenience. It was like he couldn’t wait until I was eighteen and not his problem anymore. Fuck, no matter how high I’d reached, no matter what achievement I’d made, none of it was ever good enough for him.
When I’d joined the military, I’d hoped he’d finally be proud of me… and to be fair, he was for a minute. The optics of his son going off to be some big heap American war hero had made him all sorts of proud – until I’d come back a broken man.
Sometimes I genuinely thought that my surviving is what disappointed him the most.
That if I’d died, he would have been able to hold that up somehow – his great sacrifice for his country. Losing his only son… my life sure as fuck didn’t make one bit of fucking difference to him. I was sure he’d all but cut me out of his will. I was surprised to find out he hadn’t when he’d kicked off.
Fuck that guy…
I wish my mom would’ve left him. Or that he’d have kicked sooner like Fear’s old man, leaving her out of it… neither were in the cards it seemed. I mean, I could’ve been so fucking lucky, right?
I was down, closing the gates, when I saw the girls coming. Walking up the street loaded with shopping bags, laughing, and talking.
I finished securing the padlock and big chain and sighed, putting my hands on my hips, and waiting for them to reach me.
“What’re you three troublemakers up to?” I called out as Madisyn, Lainey, and Valory all laughed.
“We come bearing gifts,” Valory called holding her shopping bags up.
“Ah, yeah?” I called back. “You clear this with Original Syn?”
Madisyn looked annoyed, Lainey looked uncertain, and Valory, bless her heart, just looked as affable as ever with just a hint of mischief.
“She’s not a fucking prisoner, Hangman…” Madisyn drawled.
“So that would be a ‘no,’” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “Not a good look, Mads – you know how he gets.”
“Oh, my God – he’s my boyfriend not my fucking daddy!” she said exasperated, drawing up to the gate.
Valory snorted indelicately and turned away while Lainey’s eyes just widened.
“Weren’t you working the gift shop today?” I asked.
“Dawn’s in there,” Lainey said with a shrug. “They had too much to carry just the two of them.” She held up a couple of bags.
I blew a low-pitched whistle, “Would you look at that? What’d you do, buy out the whole mall?”
“Kind of hard to shop for someone based on measurements alone,” Valory said with a sniff. “Some of this stuff might not flatter her figure. Some of it is almost guaranteed to go back.”
“Yeah,” Madisyn agreed and the look in her eyes said she wasn’t going to go down on this one without a fight.
“Mads…” I started and she cut me off saying, “I hate it when you guys do that.”
“Do what?” I asked.
“Call me Mads – you only do it when you’re being overbearing ass goblins like I’m in trouble or something.”
I bit off a laugh and shook my head.
“Call him up, I’ll wait,” I said and I planted my feet shoulder width apart, the locked gate between us as a stubborn set overtook her chin. She dropped her bags and went for her phone in the purse at her hip, stalking a bit away to make the call.
“How much they been going at it lately?” I asked casually. Lainey was looking over her shoulder at Madisyn with worry in her eyes.
“It’s an epic battle of wills lately, I tell you what,” she said.
Valory sighed, “Either he trusts her or he doesn’t. Isn’t like they haven’t been going strong for the last couple three years at this point. Shit’s getting ridiculous.”
“Hey, I can see both sides,” I said holding up my hands in surrender. “Best advice I can give you two is to duck and cover and do your best to stay out of the middle.”
Lainey rolled her eyes, “I’m so glad we don’t live in the manse,” she said. “ So glad. ”
Valory looked troubled, “I’ll be so glad when I can move into my apartment,” she said.
I didn’t even so much as crack a smile.
“Genuine trouble in paradise?” I asked her.
She shrugged non-committedly and said, “That’s between them.”
Aw, shit. That doesn’t sound good.
I took out my phone and shot a text to just Syn…
If ever there was any sort of club business to let the girls stick their nose in – let them occupy themselves with making a new friend here. I sent him.
You know something I should know? He shot back while Madisyn got even more animated, her voice rising.
You just hear her screaming at you, I can see her face, bro. Like you always say – pick your fuckin’ battles each one counts and losing some is just a part of war.
Madisyn stood up a little straighter, listening to whatever Syn was saying on the other end of the line.
“Thank you!” she barked into the phone, paused, let out an exasperated noise and said, “You’re such an asshole sometimes. Right now, I love you, but fuck you ,” before she took the phone down from her ear and stabbed her finger against the ‘end call’ button on her screen. Then she made this scrunched up wild face and stabbed it like a million more times while I fought not to smile and stowed my phone in my back pocket before she had the chance to notice I even had it out. I winked at Lainey and Valory who both tried to suppress their grins.
“Sounds like you won,” I said and my phone buzzed in my back pocket. I took it out and checked the message.
Let ‘em in… fucking Christ.
“Yep, you won,” I said putting my phone back and taking out my keys.
“We’re here now,” Mini-Syn said. “You can take your ass to the clubhouse and get your testosterone fix now if you want to.”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger,” I said with a laugh and she looked a cross between annoyed and very tired.
“Sorry,” she said glumly. “You’re right.”
“It’s okay – I’ve known Syn a long time. He’s fuckin’ bullheaded,” I told her as I unlocked the person’s gate.
“Ain’t that the truth,” she said with a sigh, slipping through the gate, shoving her shopping bags before her. Lainey and Valory followed up and they waited for me as I locked things back up.
“It’s all good,” I said. This complicated things, for sure – but in a way that I liked. Kind of hard to kill a woman that your woman has taken a shine to. I was pretty sure that was off the table from pretty much the word go, but this certainly took out insurance that it was completely off – thank you Madisyn for being a pernicious little kitty and knocking things off. I thought and yeah, I admit it, I couldn’t help it. I pictured her in almost a Playboy bunny outfit only with cat ears instead of bunny sitting atop Syn’s polished desk, shoving all manner of things from pen cups to papers to the floor in front of him while not breaking eye contact.
Hopefully Syn would see it the same way and would just fuck the shit out of her for the trouble she caused him.
With a sense of relief I hadn’t expected, I took the girls up to see my Sweetpea and found her on the couch where she’d pretty much been all day, the remote in her hand and some movie or show paused on the screen while she chatted with Requiem. He was finishing up installing the final camera in here, in the living room, as I stepped in.
“Got company,” I said as Lorelai took in the girls following up behind me with all of their shopping bags.
“Lorelai, meet Synister’s woman Madisyn, her friend Valory, and this is my brother Fear’s woman, Lainey – you haven’t met Fear yet, I don’t think but at this point I’m pretty sure it’s just a matter of time.”
“Hi,” Lorelai said faintly.
“Oh, honey,” Valory said, beaming. “You’re beautiful . I can’t wait to forage around these bags and put some things together for your frame.”
Lorelai blinked, “I’m sorry?” she said.
“Valory is a regular fashionista,” Lainey said. “I’m a writer, and Madisyn paints.”
“Oh,” Lorelai looked taken aback, her silvery eyes drifting from me to the girls.
I shrugged. “They work fast.”
“Never underestimate a woman on a mission when it comes to shopping,” Requiem quipped.
Lainey rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything. Valory and Madisyn exchanged a look and I could all but hear it vocalize, “Men” in that tone – you know the one. We all know the one.
“I’m all done,” Requiem said, stepping down off the chair from the dining room that he’d commandeered to put things up around the apartment.
“Live and everything?” I asked.
“Yup, light glows green camera is on and recording. Light glows red, no one is watching,” he said.
“Light better be fucking glowing red in the bedroom when I’m fuckin’ home.”
“That one will come down before long, I suspect,” he said.
“Surprised he didn’t have you put one up in the bathroom,” Madisyn said rolling her eyes.
“Why that would be illegal,” Requiem said with a wink.
“Right,” Lainey said.
“Like that’s ever stopped any one of you before,” Valory teased scrunching her cute button nose at us.
Requiem and I both got a chuckle out of that one.
“You’re going to be okay with the girls,” I said to Lorelai.
“Might be nice to have some estrogen around after two plus days of nothing but these neanderthals,” Madisyn winked at me as she said it and I smiled and shook my head.
“Right, y’all fuckin’ behave. We’ll be watching,” Requiem declared.
“…and probably listening too,” Madisyn declared.
“Sound’s optional,” Requiem declared. “Also, it’s two-way.”
“What’d you do, install front door cameras on the inside?” Lainey asked.
Requiem looked aghast and put a hand to his chest as though affronted.
“Good sir! ” he declared. “I don’t deal in none of that low-tech hackable bullshit. Nothing but the finest security for my good man’s home.”
“Ha, ha,” Lainey said, “I’ll let that ‘sir’ thing slide being that I do, most likely, have bigger balls than you.”
Requiem winked at her and grinned.
“You deal in all that spooky bullshit. Hell yeah, you do,” he said and she grinned.
It was nice to see her blossom out of her shell after all she’d been through. She was fearless now. I supposed you had to be to be hooked up with the likes of Fear.
“Alright you guys, no wild parties,” I said. “Don’t wait up, Sweetpea.”
Lorelai smiled and Madisyn, Lainey, and Valory all exchanged looks and then fixed their eyes on me.
Ah, shit.
“Later,” I said, ignoring them.
“Don’t do anything I would do,” Requiem sang out as he went out the front door before me.
I snorted, followed him out, and shut the women securely inside my place.
“Busted,” he muttered under his breath at me.
“Fuck you,” I grumbled back.
“You like her,” he accused and I sighed.
“Guilty,” I said. “Don’t make a big deal of it, please. I just want her to be safe.”
“Bro,” he said stopping at the bottom of the steps, “I say go for it if you think it’ll work out and you could be happy.”
I glanced up at the top wrap around porch on three sides of the old house and sighed.
“It’s not about me,” I said.
He nodded, “Not right now, though – just don’t cut yourself off just yet.”
“Whatever, man. Let’s get to church.”
“A-fucking-men,” he said.
At least the girls would be occupied for fucking hours.