Breakfall (27 page)

Sean, the master blanket-thief.

Asbjorn shuddered as his bare skin touched the cold sheets, and he couldn’t wait to feel a jolt of warmth and pleasure once he pressed himself against his lover’s supple body. He reached out in the dark. The blinds let him see only the outlines before him.

“Sean?”

His hand met only messy, cold blankets.

“Sean!” Asbjorn turned on his reading light.

There was no Sean. The bed hadn’t been made in the morning, and the sheets still bore evidence of last night’s activities. Goosebumps rose on his pale flesh as he bounded out of bed and struggled into his still-warm jeans. He grabbed his phone and dialed Mark.

“Falwell here.”

Asbjorn exhaled in relief at the sound of the familiar voice. “It’s Asbjorn. Did I wake you?”

“Yeah. It’s okay. Whatsa matter?” Mark cleared his raspy voice with a cough.

“I can’t find Sean.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s missing. He’s not answering his phone. I thought he’d be here, asleep early. He ain’t here.”

“Bjorn. Has it occurred to you he could be staying at his room?”

“No. He’s living here now. He’d tell me first.”

“Okay. Adrian and I were at the Pile, listening to his latest recording. Adrian offered to arrange for some help with his PTSD with a colleague of his, but Sean refused. He says he doesn’t need any help. Then he went downstairs, and we left. That’s, oh, three hours ago.”

Asbjorn stiffened.

“Asbjorn? Are you there?”

Asbjorn cleared his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”

“You okay, Asbjorn?”

“No.” His voice was cold, controlled. “I’m not fucking okay. He… he’s got no discipline. He totally shut me out again. Anything could have happened to him, and I don’t even know where to start looking for him! He and I had this deal! He didn’t even let me know what happened today. He should have called to update me about, oh, two things? Four? Where the fuck is he!”

There was silence on the line until Asbjorn interrupted it again. “Oh God. Mark. I don’t care anymore. I just hope he’s all right.”

Sean hadn’t called him. They had a deal, and Sean welshed on it. Gone for more than half a day, not telling him about the call, about Mark and Adrian’s visit, his plans for the night… and he wasn’t answering his damn phone.

“Should I go check on him?” Asbjorn’s tone of voice made it clear he was ready for action.

“Wanna get arrested again? No. I’ll send a cruiser. They’ll knock on his door. It’ll be quieter that way.”

T
HE
BLARING
sound of his intruder alarm launched Sean out of his bed. He slept fully dressed and with his sneakers on – his paranoia obviously paid off.

It was good to meet the intruder fully dressed.

Adrenaline flooded his system as he readied himself for immediate action. He checked his jacket pocket for his mace and grabbed his iron pipe from its place by the door. Lights off, he waited.

“Turn that damn racket off, Gallaway!” A powerful baritone bellowed from the other side of the door. Sean beeped the system off, and silence assaulted his senses—but only until the man on the other side banged on the door.

“Well, open up, Gallaway! Police!”

“How do I know you’re the real police?” Sean asked, suspicious.

“Look outside.”

Sean stepped on his mattress to peel the blackout shades off his window. Sure enough, two cruisers stood parked by the curb up the hill with their lights flashing. To his utter mortification, he heard two sirens up the street. They were getting closer and closer. A big red fire truck with shiny chrome accessories showed up, closely followed by an ambulance. The sound of the sirens stopped, but their colorful strobe lights remained on, lighting up the street in a dizzying carnival of color.

“Police! Open up!” The door shook with impact once again.

“Coming!” Sean yelled. What happened? An accident? A tight feeling squeezed his chest as he unlocked his door and hid his improvised weapon. He turned the lights on. “What happened?” he asked the two uniformed officers before him. “Is everyone okay?”

“You alone in here?”

“Uh… yeah.”

“Did anyone come and give you any trouble tonight?”

“Uh… no. Is that perp prowling around? Is that why you guys are here?”

Several housemates crept downstairs, observing the scene by the basement-room door with wide eyes.

“No. Not to our knowledge. We’re here to see that you’re okay.”

“At this hour? Why?”

Sean pushed his way past the cops and through the students crowding the narrow basement staircase. He walked the gauntlet of the foyer, feeling their burning eyes upon him. Once he opened the door, a blast of cold air freshened up his reddened face, and incredulous, he watched students lean out of windows and pour out the doors of surrounding dormitories. A camera van, bearing the insignia of a local TV station, screeched to a stop in front of the Pile, and a cameraman jumped out. He trained the lens of his camera at the spectacle.

Sean retreated into the shadows behind a wide pillar. A local on-scene reporter disembarked, took her coat off, and fluffed up her hair.

“Take the angle toward the door, Joe,” she called out as she faced the camera and its accompanying bright floodlight.

Sean retreated back inside the house, almost colliding with one of the policemen. “You better make it look like a fire alarm. The perp doesn’t know I’m working with you guys.”

Without a word, the cop pulled on the red fire-alarm switch. The sound of the fire siren split the air. “Everybody out!” The cop called out. “Fire alarm! And don’t talk to the press!”

The students poured out of the building in their pajamas. Sean hid in the shadows, fully dressed, staying away from the camera.

S
LEEP
WAS
the last thing on Asbjorn’s mind after talking to Mark. He was fully dressed, drinking a cup of mint tea at his dining room table, his Physics of Solid Surfaces text swimming before his eyes. If he couldn’t sleep, he might as well try to read until he heard from Mark again.

He kept twirling a bright yellow highlighter in his fingers. He scanned the text, skimming over familiar words, but none of them were connecting enough to make any sense.

Sean.

Visions of blood and gore mocked the frayed edges of his consciousness. That lithe, well-muscled body laid stripped and broken, life spilling out onto the dark and filthy ground of a neighborhood alley. The eyes that smiled with the sweetness of molten chocolate were open and flat, unseeing. Lush lips parted, bruised and bloodied, the air between unstirred. Bones broken, spirit crushed.

Sunshine extinguished.

The blaring sound of sirens broke the silence of the night, getting nearer and nearer. Asbjorn jumped up in his chair, hot tea spilling in his lap, the odor of spearmint inundating his nostrils. He cursed, grabbed his keys and phone, shrugged into his jacket, and ran out his door, down the stairs, and out the front door.

The mile and a half run to the Pile was the fastest he’d ever crossed that distance.

The honking sound of crowd-control horns and the screaming of fire trucks and ambulances was deafening as he ran through it. The street was crowded in the glow of flashing strobe lights. He eyed the crowds gathering by the Pile. They seemed to have thronged around the TV camera truck.

Asbjorn stopped, breathing hard. TV coverage was never a good sign.

He looked around. No medical examiner’s truck. Yet.

He forced himself to center. He pretended to relax.

There was no doubt in his mind that the perp would be around, watching, waiting.

Asbjorn yanked the hood of his sweatshirt from underneath his leather jacket and pulled it up, disguising his face. He then crossed the street, trying to look natural. There were no shadows to hide in anymore.

He scanned the crowd, approaching a bystander. “What happened?”

“I dunno. They said another assault in the basement. Somebody heard the alarm go off. The girl said it woke the whole house.”

Asbjorn paled, tightening his jaw. Time to talk to the police.

Unfortunately, the police had no interest in talking to Asbjorn. Unwilling to cause a scene with the TV cameras around, he slunk away to the side of the house and pulled his phone out. Just as he was about to dial Mark’s number again, the device buzzed in his hand.

“Hey, Bjorn. It’s me.” Sean’s voice sounded rather small on the other side.

“Are you okay? Where are you?” The halting words got out despite the roaring heartbeat in his ears.

“Cut down the lawn behind the Pile, across the parking lot. There is a laundry room in the basement of the big dorm there.”

Asbjorn disconnected without saying good-bye. His relief at hearing Sean’s voice was immediately replaced by a dark, familiar feeling of blood roaring in his ears—a feeling associated with broken noses, detentions, and subsequent lectures by Tiger-sensei.

S
EAN
PLACED
his phone next to his pepper spray and his recording device as he sat on the first washing machine, his legs swinging idly in the brightly lit room.

He called.

He called just like Mark told him he really, really should, but that didn’t make him feel good about having to do so. All this stupid circus was going on outside because Asbjorn’s irrational concern over his safety triggered a screwed-up overreaction by the police department. Sean could only speculate that the news people found out about a posse heading for the Pile again, and came to investigate.

Fuck that. Fuck his housemates, who’d kick him out because he’d become inconvenient.

And fuck Joe Green. He wasn’t budging an inch on account of that sorry excuse of a man. Nor was he putting up with being mother-henned anymore. So he didn’t call. Big deal. Asbjorn would just have to take a chill pill.

He was startled from his quiet contemplation by a sound so loud it made him jump. The door flew open, kicked hard enough to fly off its hinges, the glass of its window shattering on the floor. Asbjorn stood in the empty doorframe, filling it with wild and feral energy. Sean met his eyes and found them aflame with emotion. He noticed the hood ripped off the head, his hair pasted against his temples with sweat.

Asbjorn took three steps through the suddenly too-small space and grabbed Sean by the lapels of his jacket. Silently, Asbjorn lifted Sean off the washing machine and, twisting from the hip, threw him across the room into the opposite wall.

Sean slid down the wall. The violence of the action was unexpected.

He had barely regained his footing when Asbjorn was on top of him, pulling him up with his left hand, his right hand balled into a fist.

“Bjorn!” Sean shouted.

“Aaarrrgh!” Asbjorn’s fist flew at his face along with Asbjorn’s scream, deflecting at the last moment and landing on the concrete block wall with a sickening crunch.

Eyes wide, he watched Asbjorn’s grimace of pain come and go. The grasp on his jacket loosened, and Asbjorn took two careful steps backward.

“Sean.” The word was a pain-filled sob. “I ran all the way here. I thought you had died.”

Sean was still stunned into silence. Asbjorn took another two steps back until halted by an unyielding row of washing machines. Sean watched his tall body crumple at the knees and slide to the concrete floor.

He pushed off the wall and came closer.

Asbjorn’s eyes were flat, spent.

Sean reached out to embrace him, shocked at the bleeding hand against Asbjorn’s chest. A hand that had stopped from hitting him.

“You broke your word. You said you’d keep me in the loop.” Sean saw the blue eyes return to his, hard and resolute. “I stuck to my end of the bargain. I didn’t interfere until you fell off the end of the earth. It was killing me to see you do your thing, but I did it. I just hung back. I was being as supportive as I possibly could.”

“I’m sorry, Bjorn.” Sean’s eyes were glued to the crazed, pain-filled look in Asbjorn’s eyes.

“I’m sorry too. I thought we had something. I thought there was trust between us.”

“Wait….”

“No.” Asbjorn rose to his feet. He looked clumsy and awkward, with his good arm swinging by his side.

“I can’t go on like this, Sean. It’s
killing
me. If you can’t stick to your end of the deal and keep me at least informed, at least fucking text or call, then I’m not good enough to be by your side.”

“Asbjorn! Wait….” Sean struggled for words. “I love you, Asbjorn. How about sleeping together? Was that so bad too?”

Asbjorn gave him a small smile full of loss and regret. “The sex was great. But this ain’t about sex. It’s about love. About trust. I love you so much. You keep pushing me away, and… it’s killing me.”

They stood motionless in a dark room that smelled of laundry detergent and socks. The silence was broken by a brief squawk of a police car by the Pile.

“If I can’t stand by your side, be a full partner, then we have nothing to discuss.”

Sean felt his stomach drop. “So you’re walking out on me.”

Asbjorn shook his head. “No. You’re walling me out. I can’t….” He sucked in some more air and expelled it. “I can’t live like this.” He gave Sean a mournful look. “If you need anything, call. I’ll help you, but only as a friend.”

“You can’t just walk out!”

“Look. I ain’t perfect, okay? I’m sorry I burst in like this. You owe me a punch or two. I am not walking away from you, Sean. I’m just trying to preserve what sanity I have left. You’re so reckless, you’re driving me fucking crazy. In my old unit, you’d have ended up in the brig by now.”

Sean saw Asbjorn work hard to calm his breathing and drop the volume a notch.

“Except you don’t answer to me, Sean, and I get that. But I can’t sit on edge all day long, fucking terrified that something horrible happened to you.”

He didn’t raise his voice as he said that, which made his words sound final.

“See you around, Sunshine.”

Sean watched Asbjorn pick his way through the broken glass, disappearing out the broken door.