Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny's Lair (3 page)

He was a bad man. Bad men did not deserve to orbit near the bright and shining sun that was his boy. It wasn’t until Aiden proved he had interesting shadows, dark spots in the sun, was a wolf and not a lapdog, that Jeremy even dared to dream.

They’d had a month, almost two, during which Aiden spent most nights in Jeremy’s little apartment. The past few weeks, he’d been there full-time, all of his clothes in boxes, new towels from his mother in the bathroom, his favorite cereal in the cupboards. Just a breath, just a taste of having Aiden there in his home,
as
his home, and then….

Well, Jeremy had debts to pay. When one of them called him up in a panic, Jeremy had to pony up.

J
EREMY
WOKE
up the next day actually feeling like a person. How did that happen? One minute you were free floating, a specter in a hospital bed, hearing people talk about you, drifting to escape the pain, and the next time you opened your eyes, it was you, in your body, anchored to the sheets by stuff that your body did.

“Aiden?” he murmured.
Aitbhen.
That was what it sounded like. “Jebuth thfuckin’ krith—when bo I ge’ my fhfuckin’ teef?”

Craw had a deep, growly bear voice, and his unmistakable laughter echoed over Jeremy’s head. “Today, actually,” he said. “You get fitted for them, anyway. You didn’t have any dental records, Jeremy. We had to wait until the swelling in your jaw went down to make a model.”

Jeremy remembered that. In fact, he realized that some of the difficulty he’d had talking actually had to do with his jaw still being wired shut.

“Whab bay ith ib?” Oh man, the more conscious he was, the worse he sounded. He felt like he could finally hear what he was
actually
saying instead of what he
thought
he was saying.

“You’ve been here for a week,” Craw said. “We’re going to take some plasters for your teeth and unwire your jaw. They’ll be changing the bandages on your face today and seeing if you need cosmetic surgery.”

“Aiden?” He had to work hard, but it sounded right.

“I made him go home today, Jer. He was dead on his feet.”

Jeremy closed his eyes in relief. “Good. He won’ thee me.”

Craw made a hurt sound. “Don’t worry about Aiden seeing you, okay? He’s always seen you.”

“When I wath preddy.”

Craw growled. “All the crap I gave that boy about you two being together and you’re telling me you’re going to take it back because of a little blood?”

Jeremy had been beaten, talking the whole time, so that guy beating him wouldn’t find Stanley. Suddenly meeting Craw’s eyes was not quite as hard as he’d thought it would be, that not-so-long-ago day when he’d listened to Craw and Aiden argue.

“We bode know ith more.”

And Craw, who didn’t know how to bullshit, shifted his green-brown eyes away. “Have faith,” he said gruffly. “Ben found me, Stanley found Johnny, Aiden found you. Have faith.”

If Jeremy could have talked more, he would have spun sunshine and rabbit crap about how sure, a man had to have faith, and maybe, under a sunny sky, he’d have enough faith for them all. He would have said that faith is a wonderful thing, but it was better to have faith when you had a plan of escape, and that once you had a way out, you could have all the faith you wanted.

But it was all a big, fat, painful, throbbing lie. Aiden would never forgive him for not calling for help, and Jeremy had no hope that he ever could. Jeremy could lie like a champion with his words, but his eyes—well, as a con man he’d had to squint a lot, because his eyes had been touch and go. He’d had to
believe
his bullshit to lie with his eyes.

And now he couldn’t use his words, and his eyes were all he had. He looked at Craw mutely, no con between them, just the painful, painful truth.

Craw nodded, and for a moment his lower lip trembled. “I’ll have faith,” he whispered. “That boy has always known his own mind and been strong about getting his way. He wanted you, I guess, and I admit, when I saw that it was real and not just you two bickering like you were married, I had second thoughts. But….” Oh no.
Craw’s
voice was wobbling. “Jeremy, we’ve been worried. They say you’ll probably be okay, but the lot of us, we’ve been worried. You’re our family, boy.” He swallowed. “I’ll have faith for the two of you.”

Jeremy closed his eyes then, tight, because they were burning. “’Kay,” he mumbled through a mouth full of missing teeth. “I’ll bind tum ob my own.”

“Good man,” Craw told him. Then the doctor came in, and unpleasant things happened with his mouth and dental tools, and in his head he was in Craw’s field with a piece of clover in his mouth, sitting on a rock in the sunshine, warm under the golden sky, teased by the breeze, watching Aiden herd the sheep.

T
WO
DAYS
later his bandages came off again. The whole world crowded into Jeremy and Ariadne’s room, and they all, Aiden included, took a deep, fortifying breath when the last bandage came off. Jeremy didn’t need to look in a mirror. He would have turned away, but they’d propped his neck so he couldn’t rub his cheek on the sheets. Aiden held his hand the whole time, though, as the doctor probed and prodded, pulled at skin, removed some stitches, made some others.

Jeremy closed his eyes and answered questions with one syllable until finally Aiden squeezed his hand hard enough to make him gasp.

“Don’t be an asshole, Jer. The guy just asked you if you wanted cosmetic surgery, and you said no.”

“Money.” Now that was a word he could say, even if his teeth hadn’t gotten there yet. “Da dafe only had do much.”

“Fuck money,” Aiden snarled, and Craw, standing right behind him, said the same thing at the same time.

“Tereo,” Jeremy said, and he made sure his lips quirked enough for a smile.

“I’m serious,” Aiden growled. “And forget about the fucking safe. We’re not bringing the fucking safe to our new home. The safe means you can pick up and leave, and I’m not having it.”

“I like de dafe. ’Th modprood.”

Aiden’s green eyes bulged. “Mothproof my
ass.
You just want to be able to pick up that thing and run. No.” Aiden shifted his gaze to above Jeremy—Jeremy had almost forgotten the doctor. “He wants the cosmetic surgery.”

“We’ll find a way to pay,” Craw said, but his voice sounded stretched thin. Jeremy knew enough about small businesses to know that this would be a doozy of a blow.

“No,” he mumbled, not wanting to pay them back this way.

“Shut up,” Aiden said, and he wasn’t growling anymore. In fact, he sounded about growled out.

“Check my dafe.”

“I will throw the safe off a fucking mountain and into a river,” Aiden said, sounding stubborn.

“Dake de midden’ ou’!” All the mittens, gloves, cuffs, and fingerless mitts Aiden had knitted him over three years of friendship. Jeremy didn’t have much money—the mittens were the whole reason for the damned safe.

“I will not!” Aiden snapped. “I’ll throw them all away and the cash too, and you will
have
to stay and wait for me to knit them all again. And by
that
time, you’ll have come to your senses.”

The thought of all that beautiful knitting sinking to the bottom of the Colorado River made Jeremy’s eyes more than burn—they spilled over. “Craw! Don’ ’ed him!”

“Then stop talking bullshit,” Craw snapped.

Jeremy glared at both of them. “Abbholed,” he said, feeling the word deep in his stomach, and he was not surprised when Aiden smiled, predatory and proud.

“I made your life miserable for years, Jeremy. No reason to change that now. Now you don’t worry about the money—you go ahead and tell that nice man yes, you’ll take another surgery, thank you.”

Jeremy looked at the doctor and rolled his eyes, and the doc made a notation in his chart. Then the doc looked meaningfully at Craw, and Jeremy knew that the money
was
something to worry about, but that he was helpless and flat on his back and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do.

He closed his eyes then and remembered his little apartment, sleeping in sweats because the heater wasn’t fantastic, but having Aiden’s young heat at his back like a furnace. Aiden, warm and protective—had Jeremy ever felt that safe? In his whole life?

Aiden’s hand engulfed his, squeezed, and Jeremy grunted and squeezed back. He had nowhere to go but in his head, and Aiden was there too.

He must have dozed because when he woke up, his bandages were back on and Aiden and Craw were gone. Ariadne was right next to him, on her side, looking at him anxiously.

He could hear Aiden and Craw, their voices far away down a corridor, yelling. But not, from the sound of things, at each other.

“How you doin’, Mid Ari?” He stopped—Ariadne was a mouthful during the best of times.

Her sober hazel eyes grew shiny too, and he wanted to take back the question.

“Pregnancy diabetes sucks ass,” she said softly, and he was relieved—so relieved—to be able to fixate on someone else’s ills.

“I’m do dorry.” He meant it too. That baby—they had
all
been worried about that baby.

“They think the baby’s got a cleft palate,” she said softly.

Jeremy, his face under the new bandages, couldn’t even wrinkle his nose. “Bub dill okay,” he said, because he knew what that was. It was when the lip was split after the baby came out. Didn’t stop kids from being cute, he thought. Didn’t stop them from being loved.

“Yeah,” she said, and he heard a certain amount of relief in her voice. “Lots of operations and stuff, and ear tubes, and—”

“Bub dill okay,” he insisted. Oh, damn the words he once threw like dandelions to the wind. Now when he needed them, they were buried under bandages and broken teeth.

And Ariadne was crying. “You get that,” she said, her voice thick. “How come you can get that for my baby, but you can’t get it for you?”

“Baby gon’ be lubbed.” It was one of the few things he knew for sure in life.

“So are you.”

Craw and Aiden’s voices cut off abruptly, and even down the hall, Jeremy could hear the voice of the man whose life he’d saved. There was murmuring then, a voice he didn’t know, and peace.

“Baby gon’ be boodibul,” he murmured, and Ariadne’s hand felt sweet, pulling his hair back from his bandages. Family was exhausting, oh yes they were, but sometimes, when there was no escaping them, they did make a rabbit hutch out of a lump in the straw.

H
E
DOZED
some more, and then Stanley came in a few minutes later, smiling tentatively. The little shop manager had visited a couple of times, and Jeremy had mostly been out of it, too wrecked to talk. Today he came with a basket of yarn for Ariadne and something she could eat that was probably nutritious and tasty, because he did like to bake.

Aiden came hard on Stanley’s heels and threw himself on his vacated chair. He glared at Stanley without heat and stroked Jeremy’s good hand while Stanley talked about the sweater he’d made for Johnny and how he would bring in Christmas dinner and how the doctor told them that Jeremy would be getting teeth tomorrow, so he’d have new teeth for Christmas.

Jeremy said “Thank you,” as best he could, and Aiden nodded thanks too.

Stanley shrugged them off. “Oh, now don’t thank me. Apparently Johnny is pulling big strings at WITSEC, which is nice of him.” Stanley had a ruddy face under white-blonde hair, and little hands he waved around when he talked. He put the
a
in “flame”
and
“gay.” Jeremy had always wondered how his own bright beacon of gayness had managed to stay so covered for so long. Then he’d met Stanley and realized that Stanley just burned bright enough for all of them. “Johnny’ll take care of you,” Stanley said soberly. “He’s really grateful.”

Jeremy nodded. Well, yeah, Johnny had saved his life once upon a time. Jeremy would concede that he was nice. “Mud lub oo.” God, he wanted his teeth.

Stanley smiled, and his entire volume went from eleven to three. It was refreshing—almost like watching a five-hundred-watt light go from “kill the eyeballs” to “read a book.” “He does,” Stanley said with quiet pride. “Imagine my surprise.”

Aiden squeezed his hand, and Jeremy rolled his eyes.

“Don’t you roll your eyes at me,” Aiden argued. “You keep acting like it’s all going to go away. I told you, we’re moving into Ben’s house, you’re getting rid of the floor safe—”

“Keepin’ de door dade!”

“Bullshit. Getting rid of the floor safe, keeping the mittens, and taking care of Ben’s rabbits—”

“Rabbid?” Oh, rabbits. Skittish critters, but if you gave them time, fed them carrots, loved on them a little—Jeremy could live with some damned rabbits.

“Yeah, rabbits. And a dog. We’re gonna get us a big watchdog, something with a head the size of a football.”

“A woov!”

“A wolf? Yeah, sure. A wolf and a Newfoundland or something—”

“Bigger’n’me!”

“You betcha. That fucker’ll guard the house. Ain’t nothing’ getting past it—”

“Care de rabbid!” That wouldn’t be fair!

“Yeah, well, you stopped being scared by me, the rabbits will learn to live with a dog.”

Jeremy glared at him, abruptly tired. “You’re eg-haud-ig.”

“I’m exhausting? Am I making you tired, Jeremy?” Aiden never let go of Jeremy’s hand, but he did drag his other hand through his dark-blond curls. “I’m making you tired.
You are in the hospital.
I wake up tired. So you suck it up and let me plan for the damned future, okay?”

Jeremy’s eyes were closing, but dammit, he still wanted a say. “’Maller dog.” He narrowed his eyes mutinously. He didn’t want no bigass dog that was going to scare the bunnies.

“We’ll see,” Aiden conceded with absolutely no grace whatsoever.

“Boy—”

“No. You get better. You get better, you get home,
then
you’ll have a say in the dog and the rabbits.”

“’Mnod helpledd!” Aw, dammit. He was. He was so damned helpless, and Aiden knew it. Aiden knew it
all.