Earthquakes

Chapter 1-2

Bryn fired a Ruger SR22. It was a good choice for target practice, a fun little weapon, but Ellis didn’t think Bryn fired for the fun of it. Nor was he a gun nut. Most enthusiasts loved firing s**t they’d not shot before. Or they loved bringing in their crazy weaponry to let everybody squeeze off a few.

Ellis had a hard time imagining Bryn smiling, much less laughing or eagerly picking up a new weapon to try. The only time Ellis had successfully managed to get Bryn to rent a different kind of gun, Bryn had taken it, used every bit of the two boxes of ammo he’d bought to go with it, and then returned the weapon with the same solemn air of a man doing penance. Bryn never again agreed to a different weapon choice. Ellis was pretty sure he’d only done it that one time to get Ellis to stop asking.

Bryn wasn’t the kind of man who fired for fun or practice. He fired to exorcise his demons. Ellis had seen it before.

“Two boxes.” Ellis plunked the ammunition onto the counter and hit buttons on the cash register. He accepted the credit card, swiped it, and waited for the server. His brain skipped over about a dozen stupid small-talk questions. He’d tried them all. “Anything else I can get you?” Ellis finally asked. He ripped off the receipt for Bryn to sign.

Bryn shook his head, scribbled a signature, and picked up his weapon case. He waited. Bryn’s one expressive feature was his left eyebrow. That sucker could lift, twist, and articulate like a mofo when it wanted. Right now, the thing was up, as in, Hurry it up, asshole, I’ve got things to do.

Ellis retrieved safety glasses and ear protection and held them out to Bryn. “Here you go.”

“Thanks,” Bryn said softly. The manners were a rarity, and Ellis rewarded them with a smile.

“No problem. Let me know if you need anything,” Ellis said, but Bryn was already heading toward the range’s door. Ellis pressed the button behind the counter to admit Bryn into the firing area, and a second later, Bryn had been swallowed by darkened, shatterproof glass and solid concrete. Ellis glanced at the security camera feeds Miss Maggie kept on a computer monitor perched on a desk facing so customers couldn’t see it. Bryn took his position in the lane farthest from the door and started setting up.

So that was it. One-half of this week’s opportunity to win the game was over. Ellis would have to do better in round two, or he risked being completely defeated for the ninth week running.

Ellis got his coffee and stood watching Bryn on the security feed until he felt too much like a creep. He retrieved the broom from the closet and started sweeping the floors. It’d been his first job when Miss Maggie had hired him—cleaning. He did the floors, windows, and the weapons. He’d have done anything Miss Maggie asked, really. He’d landed in New Amsterdam after spending two weeks in an overseas hospital after an IED had taken out three vehicles in a convoy, immediately killing two men and injuring a half dozen more, including Ellis. His buddy, Marks, had been shredded. So much raw meat in strips had scattered across the ground like they’d been trying to attract carnivores with fresh food. Ellis’s calf had a hole in it. The puncture had been sewn up on the field and left a nasty, knotted scar. His shoulder had taken a hit that fractured the bone.

And that was what passed for lucky.

So he’d been discharged after serving through two tours that were a hell made of sand, waiting, boredom, and desperate humanity. He’d had a layover in NA International, and instead of making his connecting flight home, he’d collected his gear and started walking. He had some cash for a shitty hotel room and some much better food. God. Real food. It’d been heaven. He’d probably have eaten his way through his funds and been on the streets if he’d not found Maggie’s. He’d been in a bar, and he’d struck up a conversation with the other guy who was drinking at two in the afternoon. The guy had served in a war a couple of decades old but still fresh in his memory. He’d told Ellis about Miss Maggie’s—best place to shoot in the whole fuckin’ city. Only long-range shooting this side of the state line. Perfect for jarheads and men with twitchy, itchy fingers.

Ellis had taken the train. He’d walked in to find a tall, stocky woman in jeans and a T-shirt behind the main counter. She had short dark hair, piercing dark eyes, thin lips, and an expression that gave new definition to the word “determined.”

Miss Maggie had given Ellis the once-over, and after she heard his story with all its rough starts and stops, she’d asked Ellis where he was sleeping and what he’d been eating.

“Nowhere special and anything I can find, ma’am,” Ellis had answered.

“Then drop your bag, get that broom and pan, and get to work, Parker. I got a cot in the storage room that’s rent-free, but I don’t give it to the lazy or the stupid.”

Ellis had gotten to work, completely unsure about his good luck but smart enough to take it without too many questions asked. Miss Maggie had told him later that he’d looked like a big puppy, wet behind the ears and red around the eyes from lack of good in his life. Miss Maggie had let Ellis work short hours for a week, and he’d slept the rest of the time, when he wasn’t stuffing his face with Miss Jillian’s cooking. The two women felt like family so fast, Ellis had been terrified of losing them. He hadn’t understood in those days how much that had to do with them being gay and together and accepting him. He’d only known he needed them to like him.

After the initial trial period was over, Miss Maggie gave him the terms: steady work and a roof over his head in exchange for him getting his ass to support-group meetings. Miss Maggie had gotten Ellis’s number on first sight but hadn’t let on. So it’d shocked Ellis’s socks off when he realized that with one or two exceptions, Clark’s support group was entirely made up of gay men. Like Ellis, of course, but he had never been out to anybody, least of all himself.

Clark had changed all that. Clark had changed everything, really.

With Clark’s help, Ellis had found himself. He’d found friends, stability, and even pride. The good kind of pride, that is. The sort that helped Ellis get out of bed in the mornings with his head high. The kind that allowed Ellis to get involved with the LGBT Center and not look over his shoulder every two seconds, expecting his father to be there with a belt in hand.

It’d been Clark who helped Ellis accept all parts of himself, even the ones that liked belts and buckles, but not when they were swung at him in hatred. Pain inflicted out of love…Ellis had never thought anything like that was possible until Clark.

Ellis supposed he had been and still was a little in love with Clark. Maybe a lot in love. But so was everybody who knew him. Clark owned a bar, Glow, in the Fashion District of New Amsterdam, and he was the epitome of the friendly barkeep. He loved talking to people and figuring out how they ticked, and just, well, he loved people. Period. Not everybody, of course, but the worthy, sure. With Ellis it was a forever loyal kind of love but not the romantic kind. Clark kept those lines clear, and Ellis had never gotten hurt, and besides, he didn’t want Clark like that. Ellis’s affection for Clark wasn’t Love, with the capital. That sort of Love was what Ellis wanted. Eventually, that is. If he ever found somebody who looked at him that way.

For now, he had what he felt for Dancer Boy Bryn. It wasn’t Love. That would be crazy. But it was longing. Curiosity. Lust.

Definitely lust.

Ellis’s flip phone buzzed in his back pocket. Clark teased him mercilessly about the old thing, but Ellis didn’t like technology. He didn’t own a computer, didn’t do online anything, and the idea of his phone working like a homing beacon for anybody who wanted to find him freaked him out.

The tiny readout on the front said MISS JILLIAN. Ellis answered with a smile. “Hi, Miss J.”

“Hi, sweetie,” Miss Jillian answered. “How are the kitties?”

Ellis winced and started walking toward the rear exit, where he kept a bag of cat food for the alley cats Miss Jillian insisted on feeding. “They’re fine, I’m sure. I’ll get ‘em fed.”

“Oh, good.” Ellis could hear the smile in Miss Jillian’s voice. “I appreciate it so much.”

When the phone stayed silent for a few beats too long, Ellis asked, “Was there anything else?”

“Oh! Sorry. There’s this hippo that walks into people’s homes in Australia.”

“Er, Miss J, I think you mean Africa.”

“Do I?”

“I think that’s where they live.”

“Africans?”

Ellis paused with his hand on the scoop in the cat food. “Well, yes, and hippos.”

“It’s some country with an A. Anyway, Jessica just joins them for breakfast.”

“Jessica?”

“The hippo.”

“They named the hippo Jessica?”

“I know. Not a hippo-sounding name, is it?”

Ellis smiled. “You watching Animal Planet again?”

“Mmm-hmm. Mags has already left me for the kitchen.”

“Oh, that’s right. Tonight’s the—”

“—family dinner at the Center,” Jillian finished. Maggie and Jillian were the unofficial lesbian moms at the LGBT Center. They served dinner, offered ears to listen and shoulders on which to cry, passed out fliers, and helped kids who’d been kicked out to find beds and jobs.

“Mags is making lasagna,” Jillian said, drawing Ellis’s wandering thoughts back to the cats and the range.

“Tell me it started out frozen,” Ellis said, finally getting through all the security measures on the rear door. He dumped a heaping pile of cat chow in the bowls and heard yowls announcing that soup was on.

“It did. I made it, froze it, and she’s thawing. But you know how she likes to think that’s cooking.”

“It’d be cooking to me,” Ellis said, and Miss Jillian laughed.

“So,” Jillian said, dropping her voice to a whisper. “How’s the boy?”

“I got a ‘thanks’ today after I gave him ammo.”

“That’s something.”

“I guess. He still isn’t talking. Or noticing me.”

“Keep trying. He will. He should.”

If Ellis and Bryn were playing the Make Him Talk Game, then Ellis and Jillian were playing the Waiting Game. Everyone knew Ellis had a thing for the dancer boy. There were no secrets in Ellis’s circle. Maybe some men would find that irritating, but Ellis found it comforting.

Ellis secured the rear door and headed back into the main part of the range. He glanced at the firing area. “I guess he should pay attention.”

“Don’t guess, sweetie. Know it.”

“Lucian says—”

Jillian sighed loudly enough to interrupt, and Ellis grinned before he continued. “Lucian says he’s not worth it.”

Lucian Gray was a good friend of Clark’s and the son of the corrupt New Amsterdam mayor, Hendrick Gray. Lucian was vain, amoral, and an utter snob. He was ridiculously beautiful and notorious for being a control-freak Dominant at the kink club he owned called Break. He owned the club with several members of their circle, including Clark. Ellis and Clark had played at the club many times before Clark and Daniel hooked up. Ellis had also played with Lucian, so he had firsthand experience under Lucian’s intensely detail-oriented and famously lavender eye.

Despite the long list of flaws, Lucian could be tender, and he was loyal, brilliant, and determined to clean up the streets of New Amsterdam. Anything to undermine his abusive asshole of a father, really. Ellis could understand that impulse for sure.

“That man can wave all the gay-rights flags he wants or donate more millions to charity or whatever it takes for him to sleep better at night. Lucian Gray should be nobody’s compass for anything in life,” Jillian said.

Ellis remembered the way Lucian’s chilly touch could go from granite to velvet in an instant. “He’s not that bad.”

“He’s a snot.” In Jillian’s world, that was the equivalent of calling someone an ass-faced motherfucker. “A dangerous snot.”

Ellis would never win this argument, but he had to defend his friend. “Maybe, but—”

“What are you even doing talking to Lucian about your love life, anyway?”

“It came up.”

“When?”

Ellis took a seat on a stool behind the weapon counter and watched Bryn fire off rounds with a steady grip and practiced stance. He even made that look like an art form more fit for swans than humans. “It was a while ago at one of the poker nights at Glow. I don’t remember how it came up—”