Indirection, p.39
Indirection, page 39
part #1 of Borealis: Without a Compass Series
“You are a vengeful prick,” North growled, yanking open the waistband of Shaw’s pants. He hooked his fingers around the waistband and hiked the pants down to mid-thigh. As usual, Shaw was commando, and his dick sprang up and slapped the underside of North’s chin wetly. Shaw groaned. He made another, more animalistic noise when North took the head in his mouth. Just the head. Suckling.
With what sounded like genuine pain, Shaw slid free and dragged himself up a few more steps. Pupils wide, he wrenched the phone from his pocket and met North’s gaze.
“Don’t do it,” North said.
“It’s my mom.”
“At half-past eleven?”
“She’ll be worried sick if I don’t answer.”
“This is the same mom who bought you a one-way ticket to London when you were sixteen?”
“She won’t stop calling.”
“She’ll be just fucking fine for ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes? That’s all?”
“Fuck you, Shaw. Fuck—”
“I knew you’d understand. About taking important phone calls, I mean.”
North dropped back on his heels, eyes narrowing, and Shaw accepted the call.
“Hi, Mom. No, no, you didn’t wake me. Now’s a very good time. I have fourteen new kinds of wallpaper paste I need to tell you about.”
Shaking his head, North rose, and he gave Shaw a hand up. Shaw did an awkward, hopping dance to try to tuck away his erection and keep his pants from sliding down. North took advantage of the opportunity to deliver a cracking, one-handed smack to Shaw’s bare ass. The noise echoed in the stairwell, and Shaw yelped.
“No, Mom—holy shit—no, I just stubbed my toe. I don’t know; that must have been on your end.”
“Tell your mom hi,” North whispered.
Shaw rolled his eyes.
“Hi, Mrs. Aldrich,” North bellowed.
“You heard him? Ok, maybe now he’ll leave me alone.”
“Did she say hi back?”
Grimacing, Shaw gave North a fake push, and North pretended to topple down the stairs. Shaw just made an even more aggravated expression and turned away.
With a grin, North ruffled Shaw’s hair and headed through the bedroom and into the bathroom. He brushed his teeth—real brushing, which involved using the tube of Crest he’d hidden under the sink instead of the coconut oil, for pulling, that Shaw had decided was going to cure his invisible goiter or Christ only knew what. He flossed. He washed his face, considered a shower, and decided he was too tired. When he got back to the bedroom, Shaw was stretched out on the bed, still on the phone with his mom. North lay next to him, head on Shaw’s chest, and Shaw curled an arm around him and scratched his back lightly.
A text came from Haw Ryeo, their contact—and nominal boss—at Aldrich Acquisitions: Attempted break-in at Nonavie. Be ready in case I need you.
North texted back: Any idea who it was? Security cameras get anything?
But Haw didn’t reply.
North checked their business banking accounts; he had nothing better to do. Johanna Griffin was a client who had hired them to find her missing father, who suffered from dementia. Her check had bounced the week before, and when North had called, she had told him it had been an error and the check would clear if the bank processed it again. When it bounced a second time and he’d called, she’d promised an electronic transfer and hung up on him. Surprise, surprise, the bank account showed that Griffin’s payment hadn’t arrived.
Shaw was still talking. He sounded different when he talked to his parents. Nothing easy to pinpoint. It wasn’t like his vocabulary changed, or even the content—sophomore year, when Shaw had been living at home and recovering from being stabbed, North had walked in on Shaw and his mother debating dildo lengths, girths, and materials. With samples. But maybe a slight shift in manner, a hint of education and money that Shaw had dropped early in freshman year—one of the things, North remembered, that had made him hate Shaw at first sight.
Now, he burrowed deeper into Shaw, smelling the cigarette smoke and the slight musk of his hair product, Shaw’s hand warm and comforting and possessive around him. Shaw’s voice rumbled in his chest as he talked. North ran his hand over Shaw’s ribs, tracing them, then pushing up the shirt to caress the wiry muscle and the dusting of auburn hair. He turned his head just enough to kiss Shaw’s bare skin. In spite of his own best efforts, North was hard again. Really hard.
When Shaw ended the call, his hand came up to the short mess of North’s hair, playing with it. North rolled onto his stomach, kissed Shaw’s belly again, and pushed the shirt higher. He followed it with another kiss, leaning down to rub himself against Shaw’s leg. Then he realized Shaw was soft.
He let out a slow breath, rested his chin on Shaw’s abdomen, and looked up the length of that slim body. “You ok?”
“What? Oh. Yeah. Sorry.”
North stroked more bare skin in slow, calming movements. “What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Great.”
“Yeah,” Shaw mumbled.
North crawled up the length of his body and then let himself drop, flattening Shaw against the mattress.
Shaw’s breath whooshed, and he grunted under North’s weight. Then he slapped North’s hip. Then he tried to buck North off. Then he tried to shove him.
“North, come on.”
“What?”
“Will you get off me?”
“I’m comfortable. I might fall asleep.”
“This is so juvenile.”
North took slow breaths that alternated with fake snores.
“You are a child. Do you realize that? You’re a teenager at heart. A delinquent.”
More fake snoring.
“A…a hooligan.”
“Could you keep it down, please? I’m trying to get some shut-eye.”
“I’m fine, ok? I’m totally, perfectly fine. It was just a bummer of a conversation. My mom is really stressed about these students in her studio, and I still haven’t figured out what to get my mom and dad for their thirtieth anniversary, and they won’t stop talking about—” Whatever he’d been about to say, he changed it at the last moment. “—the party, and then I had to hear about how my great-aunt’s chemo port keeps coming out.”
North turned his head, scruff dragging on Shaw’s cheek, and kissed his jaw lightly. “What’s the one you’re worried about the most?”
“My aunt, I guess. She’s eighty-three.”
“Are you close?”
“Yeah. She’s always been so nice to me. And now she’s sick and miserable and nothing has gone right with the treatment.”
Sliding onto his side next to Shaw, North said, “Maybe you should take a couple days off and spend them with her.”
“I don’t know.” Shaw shook his head, staring up at the ceiling. The next part burst free, although he seemed to try to stop it. “And why can’t they just drop it about the party? I don’t—I don’t know why I have to keep hearing about it. It’s their party. It’s for them. For their anniversary. Why am I involved at all?”
“I don’t know. Why are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“How are you involved?”
“I don’t know!”
“Ok, ok.” North considered the stubborn-as-a-fucking-mule set of Shaw’s jaw, prayed inwardly to whatever saint protected fools who got involved with complicated, beautiful men who owned an entire drawerful of assless chaps, and tried a different angle. “Should I be expecting an invitation? Delivered on a silver platter of course.”
Shaw rolled off the bed. “I’m going to brush my teeth.”
“Hey, I was just joking.”
“I know.” He delivered the words while walking, without looking back.
“Will you tell me what the fuck is going on?”
The answer was a slammed door.
Whatever the hell coconut oil-pulling involved, it apparently took a lot of time. North finally turned off the lights, crawled under the blankets, and closed his eyes.
Soft steps. The blankets being drawn back, the whisper of cool air, and then a warm body. One arm across North’s waist. Shaw’s head on his shoulder.
“I want you to go to the party with me.”
“Great.”
“It’s a week from Saturday.”
North didn’t say anything about the preparations, about how long a family as rich as Shaw’s might have spent planning and ordering and inviting and arranging. More than a few fucking days, that was for sure. All he said was “I’ll get my day planner.”
“I’m sorry I’m being a pill.”
North grunted. He had kept his eyes closed through this whole exchange, but now they opened. In the faint light from the window, the room was blue-black, bruised. He didn’t mean to say it out loud. He definitely didn’t want to say it out loud. But it slipped out anyway: “You know I’ll be on my best behavior, right? I’m not going to get drunk and make a scene or pick a fight with your Uncle Al or look down your Aunt Suzy’s dress. If you promise me treats, I bet I could even do some nifty tricks like use the right fork and drink out of a glass.”
The silence had a heartbeat pulse to it.
“My Aunt Suzy got really good implants,” Shaw finally said, his tone suggesting a joke to smooth everything over. “So if you’re into that thing, you actually probably should look down her dress.”
North bit back the swear words. He bit back the reply. He couldn’t help the rest of it, though: he rolled onto his side, his back to Shaw, and closed his eyes.
Chapter 3
IN MOVIES SOMETIMES—the kind North watched, the kind North made Shaw watch, even when there was a perfectly good four-hour QVC spot on empowerment gemstones—a guy stepped on a landmine, and then he froze because he knew if he moved at all, if he even scratched his nose, he’d get blown to Kingdom Come.
The next morning, Shaw knew how the poor bastard felt. Unfortunately, he couldn’t seem to stay still.
The bed was empty when Shaw woke. It was a Monday, so Shaw found North downstairs, in their office, but North would only reply in grunts and monosyllables. He refused the coffee Shaw brought him. He ignored the slice of cherry danish. When Shaw tried to kiss him, he stood abruptly and left the room. When he came back, he moved his chair away from the desk, under the pretense of kicking up his heels and reading a sheaf of documents. When Shaw moved his chair back, so that they were sitting side by side, North made a noise and rolled his chair closer to the desk. When Shaw rolled his chair back to the desk, North looked over, wild-eyed, and dumped the cherry danish in the trash.
“Now you’re making me mad,” Shaw said.
“Good.”
“I know I hurt your feelings last night, but you won’t talk to me, and I want to apologize, and that was a perfectly good slice of danish!” Shaw lost it a little on the volume at the end.
North stood and pushed back from the desk so hard that the chair caught an uneven floorboard and tipped over. He stomped out of the room; when he came back fifteen minutes later, he smelled like cigarettes. Shaw caught his eye and opened his mouth, but the look on North’s face made him reconsider.
It might have gone on like that all day, except Pari rapped on the door. She used what Shaw considered her professional voice (in contrast to her normal, I’m-going-to-harangue-you-into-an-undeserved-raise voice), which meant that a prospective client was in the reception area.
“There’s a Mrs. Chittenden here to see you.”
“We’re not doing walk-ins today,” North said without looking up. “And if it’s your fault because you forgot to put her on the fucking calendar, you can apologize to her and find a better time for her to come back.”
Stepping into the office, Pari shut the door behind her. She lowered her voice and said, “If the two of you could pull yourselves out of whatever high school relationship drama you’re tangled up in for fifteen seconds and act like professionals, you might be interested to know that Mrs. Chittenden is a state senator from Dore County. In other words, a very important person. And she wants to hire you. Although God only knows why; she’d be better off hiring the cheer squad.”
North didn’t exactly look at Shaw, but his voice was gruff when he said, “You’d probably better send her in, then.”
Pari didn’t reply; the look on her face said it all. A moment later, she was ushering a blond woman into the room. Shaw’s first impression was of a waxwork Kim Novak—and not at the best point in her life. The short, tousled curls. The dark eyebrows. The high cheekbones. Her real age was most visible near her ears—and, of course, in her hands. She wore a navy suit under a scarlet jacket. A dark-haired young man pranced at her heels; Shaw had seen pieces of toast with more personality.
“Mrs. Chittenden,” North said, coming around the desk to shake her hand. “And—”
“We’ll have espressos,” Mrs. Chittenden said, shrugging out of the jacket, which the young man caught like a relic. “Gavin, hold my calls.”
“We actually don’t have an espresso machine,” Shaw said as he approached, “because North decided that only ‘rich twats who have never done an honest day’s work’ own their own espresso machine, which was a jab at me because I had two in my dorm room.” North’s eyebrows were arching sharply now, so Shaw hurried to add, “We don’t even have a Nespresso machine because the pods are so bad for the environment. But we do have coffee, if the coffeemaker isn’t broken again, and we have a thistle tea that I brew, and—”
“Actually,” North said, “we don’t have thistle tea.”
“No, we do. I picked all those weird, white twigs off the bush in the backyard, and if you pack it into a tea infuser, it tastes just like thistle tea.”
“Oh my God,” North whispered. In a stronger voice, he managed to say, “Coffee?”
Mrs. Chittenden gave each of them a long look. “Gavin, take their girl and get us some espressos. A double for me. For you?”
“Well, I like mine unicorn style—” Shaw began.
“A double is fine,” North said, shooting Shaw a look.
Gavin, who Shaw now noticed wore a headset, was whispering furiously into the microphone as he pranced out of the room again. He pulled the door shut behind him, cutting off his words as he snapped at Pari, “Come on, I don’t have all day.”
North winced. Just barely.
“He’s going to be lucky if she only rips out all his hair,” Shaw whispered.
They got Mrs. Chittenden settled, and when they were seated behind their desks again, North said, “How can we help you?”
Mrs. Chittenden was examining the room. Success had made it possible for North and Shaw to update the room: comfortable chairs for clients, accent tables, a muted landscape painting they’d bought at the Francis Park art fair together. North’s desk, as usual, was perfectly organized: the chrome in-out trays with their neat stacks of documents, the high-def monitor, the organizer with individual compartments for paperclips and binder clips and tacks and staples. North had shouted himself hoarse the one time Shaw had dumped it out to borrow it for his antique button collection. Shaw’s desk, on the other hand, had a less traditional organizational system. Today, for example, was day seven of his exploration of metal racking and shelving systems, so he had a spread of trade magazines and sales catalogues spread across the desk. On top of those was the homemade kilt he was still working on, for which he had used a combination of black vinyl and rayon that was a color North described as “grandma’s stirrup pants.” The one bare spot was where Shaw had set a copy of the Kama Sutra, but when North had looked at it and then looked at Shaw for fifteen seconds, Shaw’s whole face had caught fire, and he’d shoved the book in the bottom drawer of his desk.
Eyebrows drawing together, Mrs. Chittenden bent over the accent table next to her seat, picking up a figurine of dried pasta to examine it.
“That’s elbow-macaroni Emery Hazard,” Shaw said. “He’s my best friend.”
North pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Not the elbow-macaroni version. He’s not a real person. I know that.”
“Now,” North muttered. “After fifteen conversations.”
“I mean the real Emery Hazard. He’s basically my best friend in the whole universe. He’s got a boyfriend who’s really sweet, and his name is John-Henry, and I was going to make an oatmeal-cream-pie John-Henry because, well, Emery is so stiff and prickly, and John-Henry is so sweet and gooey, but North told me I couldn’t. North is always telling me what I can and can’t do. But I just go along with it. I thought it’d be really nice to give elbow-macaroni Emery Hazard a boyfriend, but North said no, and I always do what North tells me to—”
“For fuck’s sake, you said you were going to, quote, ‘cream-pie John-Henry,’ and when I said absolutely not, because God help me if I understood what you actually meant, you sulked for three days and then made the damn oatmeal cream pie anyway. And then you ate it.”
“Oh,” Shaw frowned. “Huh. I forgot about that.”
“Are you the ones who caught the West End Slasher?” Mrs. Chittenden said, leaning forward, clutching the elbow-macaroni figurine without seeming to realize it.
“Yes,” North said. “We had help, of course. And the police—”
“And that man who ran the youth shelter, the one who went missing?”
Shaw nodded.
“And there was something recently, an author who was murdered?”
Elbows on the desk, North leaned forward. “The official charge was manslaughter, I think. Mrs. Chittenden, are you in danger? Because—”
“The job is simple. My son Philip made a very stupid mistake. As a result, he is required to report for weekly drug testing. Since he has proven himself unreliable, you will pick him up at his school, accompany him to be tested, and take him home. I understand you typically require a retainer, so I’ve already written a check for five thousand dollars. Gavin will give it to you when he comes back.”
