Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny's Lair (6 page)

“Well now, I should have guessed. Our boy’s got family. I keep forgetting that we’re not just a little family by our lonesome. It would be nice, you know, not that I want anyone to not have folks, but it’s just so comfy, you know—” His voice caught in his throat and he couldn’t go on. How to voice the family thing, his yearning for people, his terror of them at the same time.

“It’s okay, Jer,” Ariadne murmured, and she was almost asleep, bless her. “You’re afraid to meet new people. You want Aiden’s folks to love you. They will. Nap now.”

And then she was asleep and it was just Jeremy, alone in the room with his knitting that he couldn’t do and books that he couldn’t hold quite yet and hopes for a family like other folks had and the long litany of people he’d cheated before he’d gone honest.

Christmas was hardly a relief after that. No Christmas at Craw’s this year, with the little mill family gathering, giving quiet gifts, waiting for Aiden to finish with his regular family. No, it was everyone shoved into the hospital room, Aiden’s hard fingers clutching Jeremy’s hand like Jeremy might bolt at any minute. Besides Aiden, warm, protective, adamant by his side, the best thing about Christmas was that everyone gave him socks. Aiden’s fingerless mittens kept his hands warm, but if it hadn’t been for the handmade wool socks, his feet might have frozen clean off.

When he got his bandages taken off after the final cosmetic surgery, that was a trial the likes of which he hadn’t anticipated.

He’d been quietly preparing himself for the day. Yeah, sure, it was gonna be better than without the surgery, in which case he would never have looked in a mirror again, but, well, maybe he could live with the results now.
Pretend
he’d never believed the straight nose, dimples, and playfully pointed chin were the only things he had to offer.

Pretend
he didn’t still secretly believe it now.

But still, one miserable day in January, the bandages came off, and he looked in the mirror with a swallow.

“Boy?” His voice cracked, and he looked at his image with the same agonized resignation he remembered from his sentencing hearing. Two years for a first offense had been pretty harsh, but he’d known he had it coming.

He had this coming.

“It looks good, right, Doc?” Aiden’s voice was actually lighter than Jeremy had heard it since he’d first woken up in this room, and Jeremy plucked restlessly at the quilt. No one could say this place was sterile and white, oh no they couldn’t. Yarn, fabric, blankets, hats, socks—it was a sturdy rainbow of wool and love, keeping this place from being awful, keeping their spirits up so the baby wouldn’t feel the cold.

“It does,” the doctor said, nothing but impartial assessment in his voice. “Really, Jeremy, this could have been so much more disfiguring.”

Jeremy swallowed. Oh, well now—everyone thought it was good. “There’s still swelling, I s’pose,” he muttered, looking at the bright pink of the scars on his cheekbone, down his jaw, across his nose. His eyes looked out from behind two fading shiners, some of the white part of his eyes still brick red.

He felt Aiden’s hand on his, holding the little mirror steady, and he smiled, just for Aiden, and set it down. He hadn’t realized how badly it was shaking.

“It’s good, Jer. It’s an improvement. After the last time the bandages came off, I thought it was gonna be much worse.”

Jeremy smiled into his green eyes, noted that small, perfect face with the bold nose and the square jaw. But then, Aiden hadn’t never sinned like Jeremy had. Aiden got to keep that face—he’d grow old looking pure like an angel.

“Well, you know. Not like I didn’t have it coming, the life I’ve led.” He petted the quilt a little desperately, aware that a spot by one of the felted ties had gone bare and was blooming with all the fussing he gave it.

There was a sound—sort of a comforting sound from Jeremy’s perspective, but apparently not from everyone else’s. The room fell still, waiting, and even the doctor put his kit together in a hurry.

“I’ll let you have a word with your young man here,” he said apologetically before grabbing his tray of sutures and stained bandages and making for safety.

“Aiden,” Craw said warningly, and the sound got louder.

Aiden’s brows—a few shades darker than his hair—were drawn together so tightly his eyes had nearly disappeared. “Craw, could you and Ben give us a few?”

Craw grunted. “Ariadne, are you up for a tour of the cafeteria?”

Her reply was muted. “I’m sorry, Craw—not even in a wheelchair. Don’t mind me. I’m sort of tired.”

Craw growled. “This people being sick bullshit is
not
in my skill set. Ben, let’s find steak.”

Ben let out a breath through his nose, which told Jeremy that there was more to it than that.

“Get Aiden some food,” Jeremy called as they clattered out. “I think he’s hungry. He’s still growing, you know?”

“S’cuse us, Ari,” Aiden mumbled, pulling the curtain, and Jeremy looked over to her bed and saw that she was lying on her side, her peaked face etched with weariness and a little bit of pain, and that her eyes were closed. She nodded faintly, and Jeremy suddenly wished they could all—him especially—just leave her the hell alone.

“You gonna tell me why we did that?” Jeremy asked when Aiden turned back to him.

The boy crossed his arms and squared his shoulders like he was driving an interloper off his land. “You gonna tell me what that bullshit was about having this coming?” he snarled, and if Jeremy could have cringed back more into the mattress, he would have.

“Boy—”

“Call me Aiden when I’m pissed, Jer. It makes me less pissed.”

Well, that would be a good thing, wouldn’t it? “Okay, Aiden. Look, you’re a good boy, and I know you think good of me, but we both know I wasn’t a good man before I showed up at Craw’s—”

“I’m not a good boy, Jeremy. I’ve killed a man.”

Jeremy’s face was too tired and too beaten for much expression, he knew that. He still managed to roll his eyes. “Yeah, well, so’ve a lot of people. The killing the bad guy makes you even more of a good boy. It’s the cheating the good people that makes you a bad guy.”

“You are dizzying me, and I am lost.” Aiden said that, but some of the dark lines in his little face eased up.

“You are a smart boy,” Jeremy accused. “You are probably not lost at all!”

A grim smile flirted with the corners of Aiden’s full mouth. “Very possibly, but it’s your choice. I am either lost in your reasoning or I am pissed that you would think you deserve this.”

Jeremy grabbed the mirror again, like if he could see the swollen ruins of his face, he’d come to accept that those ruins were his.

“I do deserve this,” Jeremy said, his voice little. Abruptly, he was like Ariadne: too tired for these goings-on. His head lolled back in the pillows, and he closed his eyes so Aiden couldn’t stare directly into his soul. “It’s like, I brought the bad people to a good home. I could have you and the ruined face, or have the pretty face and lose you. Man like me only gets so many good things,” he said, his voice sinking.

Aiden took the mirror from his hand and set it by the windowsill, then pulled his habitual chair next to Jeremy’s bed. Jeremy could hear it creaking as that tall, sturdy body abused it again.

“So which one would you rather have, Jer?” Aiden said against his hand.

Jeremy turned toward him and made an effort to open his eyes. Gently, like settling a critter, he let his thumb brush his boy’s full lower lip. “If my boy’ll still have me,” he said slowly, watching the way Aiden closed his eyes and savored that very personal touch.

“He will,” Aiden whispered, and Jeremy was reminded, yet again, of all this boy had taken on for him. Having his bandages taken off was a big thing for Jeremy, but Aiden had been moving their things into Ben’s house, and moving Ben’s things into Craw’s. Aiden had been taking care of livestock and dealing with Craw’s vendors and taking inventory and all sorts of things, and he’d been doing it without his Jer.

“Then if he’ll have me like this,” Jeremy finished, because who could refuse a boy like that, “then I shall have to choose the boy, and not the pretty face.”

Aiden smiled wickedly and pulled Jeremy’s thumb into his mouth. Jeremy gasped, and Aiden scraped the soft pad with his teeth.

A new ache bloomed like a rose in his groin, and Jeremy closed his eyes against the taste of pleasure, not sure he could swallow that down given all the pain he’d eaten lately.

Aiden let his thumb go with a pop but kept licking it like a kitten might. “You think about sex, Jer?” he asked quietly, and Jeremy could feel the blood rushing under his skin. Did it avoid the scars? Forge new traffic paths in his capillaries in order to make him look patched, like a rag doll, the calico man?

“I do
now
,” he accused with ragged breath, and Aiden sucked his thumb in again, giving it some solid tugs and a nip before letting go again.

“So do I,” Aiden told him fiercely. “Before I take you home, Jeremy, I’m going to make sure you can have sex again, and then—”

“Oh, but
boy
!” Jeremy wailed. God, he didn’t want to tell the doctors what he was planning to let Aiden do to him right this moment. “Everyone will
know
!”

Aiden placed a very careful kiss on his forehead, where, Jeremy assumed, blood and swollen scarring were not to be found. “I want everyone to know. I want you to wear a T-shirt and a hat and a jacket and get a tattoo across your back. It’s going to have some sort of symbol that tells the whole world that your ass is mine, and we’re going to start from there. Your ass is mine, and no one will ever touch you again that I don’t want to. No one hurts you, do you understand?”

Jeremy closed his eyes and remembered those moments on his knees in the barn, the place he’d considered his haven for going on three years, soon to become his tomb.

“Okay,” he mumbled. “Okay. I’m going to leave it to you, boy. Those decisions are yours. I’m tired, and….” He squeezed his eyes tight and confessed to the hurt that he’d tried to squash. “I got no words, knowing I look like this. I can spin sunshine out of bullshit when I think my smile at least will sell, but not this smile, not like this.” He could still see which teeth were new and shiny white, even though the doctor promised they would weather soon. “I don’t know what to sell when I look like I’d scare small animals onto the road.”

The back of his knuckles grew wet. “I’ll take care of it for now, Jer. But you gotta let me know I’m wanted, right? I killed a man for touching you—you gotta let me know you still want that.”

Jeremy’s eyes drifted shut, but he could find a way to nod, to reassure his boy. “I dream about your hands,” he mumbled. “Your big hands. A man can’t bolt outta those hands.”

One of those big hands moved to rest gingerly on his chest. Jeremy’s lips—still full and mending in the split places—curved upward into a smile.

A
IDEN
SLEPT
there on his cot that night, but he needed to fly back in the morning, and Jeremy again felt the weight of his presence on Ariadne.

He tried to keep himself busy with television—which was getting easier now that he had an unobstructed view—and knitting and such. He’d even asked Aiden to get him some books on tape, and the boy brought him an MP3 player as a late Christmas gift, just loaded with as many free titles as he could find. So he thought he was doing her a favor, not talking, letting the silence sort of seep into the quiet room. He liked a good silence—the barn back home had some of the best.

“You’ve got more to offer than a pretty face.” She spoke out of the wild blue.

Jeremy fumbled for the Off button for the MP3 player and tried not to impale himself on the knitting needle he’d propped in his useless hand. “I beg your pardon? Sorry, Ari—I thought you were sleeping.”

“You were trying to give me space, and I appreciate that,” she said crisply, and Jeremy sat up and turned a little so he could see her.

“You look better than last night,” he said, relieved. “All these people here when you should be trying to rest….” They probably shouldn’t even be there together, a boy and a girl in the same room. But he understood that Craw and Ariadne had insisted, and he was grateful. Besides, he was gay. They pulled the curtains for Ari’s personal girl stuff and his personal boy stuff, and seriously, neither of them gave a shit about the naked. He’d already realized that without Ariadne, he might not have made it through the first week.

“No, no. It’s okay.” He could see her smile, and it sure did make her plain face—thin and sharp as a hatchet when she frowned—pretty. “But I suspect they tire you out too.”

Jeremy sighed. He couldn’t deny it. “All but Aiden,” he said apologetically.

“Yeah. I figured. Rory is like that. He could be happy if it was just him and me in a cabin, no people at all.”

“It’s just”—and Jeremy thought maybe Ariadne would understand this when Aiden wouldn’t—“I care for them all. It’s hard, ’cause everything you say needs to be picked apart by all these people who care for you, and you got to pay attention and make sure you don’t say nothin’ that’s gonna make ’em mad or sad. It’s like working a con, but on people who know you’re a con man.” He sighed. “Hardest work I’ve ever done.” Ah, but the night before, just Aiden and him—that had been sweet. “I miss my boy something awful.”

He heard a suspicious sniffle and gingerly rolled a little, just in time to see her wipe her eyes with the back of her hand. “I miss Rory every day. Even when he’s here. There’s just… just magic words in seeing someone every day, and you don’t get that when every visit’s an occasion.”

Jeremy smiled, thinking of the comfort of just having Aiden sitting at the kitchen table, doing his homework. “Magic words,” he murmured. “Magic silences.” He had another memory of Oscar sitting on the bed, counting money from a recent job. Jeremy had been around eleven, and the hotel television was broken, and he hadn’t had a book or a pen or even a scrap of paper to divert his mind. He knew better than to talk when Oscar was counting, so he’d gone inside his head and dreamed of dinner. “Magic thoughts,” he said, thinking his dreams now were more complex and almost more necessary.