Cole McGinnis 05 - Down and Dirty (3 page)

The doctor looked worn, probably as tired as they all felt, but his gentle smile was enough to send a ripple of relief through the crowd. He spoke, but Ichiro couldn’t precisely pinpoint anything the man said, other than Jae would be okay, and Cole was able to be with him in a private room as soon as they got everything settled.

A buzz rose up, too many voices starting up like a murmuring of starlings before a storm, and Ichiro sat down, falling heavily into the chair he’d been sitting on a few seconds earlier. Legs became a tide of motion around him, and he focused solely on breathing, then on keeping down the sour crawling up his throat with its sandpaper claws.

“God, I need to… throw up,” he gasped, reaching out blindly to the man next to him.

“Yeah, I’m here, Sunshine,” Bobby murmured, turning in so he blocked out most of the light. The warm darkness felt good, comfortable, and Ichi folded himself into it, pressing his shoulder against Bobby’s to anchor himself against the man’s solid form. “It’ll be okay. He’s all good. You heard the doc.”

“I know,” he confessed. “Now…. God, I don’t know if I want to sleep, get drunk, or get fucked.”

“Hey, I’m up for the fucking,” the man teased. “The other two would be okay too.”

Startled, he looked up, drowning in Bobby’s glittering attention. It would be so damned easy to suck on the man’s mouth. Even better, it would feel good, the rush of pleasure and aching release after the hours spent tied up in knots and worry.

Odd how the feeling of losing everything suddenly made a man feel alive, Ichiro thought as he stared up into Bobby’s rakish face. With the tightness of his skin loosening, he needed a release, a primal drive to spread a part of himself over another person—preferably one who could take him hard and fast and give as good as he got.

Bobby Dawson looked like that kind of man, and for a moment—a brief, insane, fiery moment—Ichiro seriously considered finding a broom closet somewhere and spreading himself open for Bobby’s dick and fingers.

One. Brief. Insane. Moment.

Just so he could feel safe… and maybe for a second, loved.

“You are my brother’s best friend. And from what Cole’s told me about you, not someone I’d wake up to the next morning,” Ichiro murmured, scrubbing at his tired face. Peering out between his fingers, he barked a short laugh. “Fucking you would be a huge mistake, Bobby.”

Bobby’s laughter was nearly as bitter as the coffee he’d brought over for Ichiro to drink. “Well, if there’s one thing I’m good at, Sunshine, it’s making huge fucking mistakes.”

Chapter 2

I
N
THE
early hours of a foggy Los Angeles morning, JoJo’s gym was empty except for the lingering smell of leather, sweat, and pain. Bobby grew up breathing that soupy thickness, and as he taped his right hand up, he sucked in the gym’s rank musk, wondering what was so broken in him that the stink of men made his cock harder than a newly minted steel bar.

In the six months since Sheila shot Jae, Ichiro Tokugawa haunted Bobby’s every step and breath. Being Cole’s best friend was never easy. It was a job fraught with danger and sometimes immense stupidity. He could live with the occasional gunshot and maybe even a knifing or two, but what Bobby found he couldn’t deal with was the slightly sarcastic and temperamental artist seemingly stitched to Cole’s shadow.

He was growing sick with the wanting, and to make matters worse, the damned man seemed oblivious to the reaction he got when he brushed up against Bobby’s body. The inside of Bobby’s cheek was chewed up from his teeth closing in on the tender meat in an effort to control his response to Ichiro’s casual touches.

It’d gotten to the point where he had to verbally antagonize Ichiro just to keep the man away, then promise Cole he’d work on being Ichi’s friend. He’d thought being a cop and in the closet was a bitch. Nothing said caught between a rock and a hard place like lusting for a best friend’s hot and very untouchable younger brother.

“You’re a sick fuck, Dawson, if sweat and men turn you on. Okay, maybe not sick, just off in the head.” He wrapped up his wrist and took a small jab at the heavy, long bag dangling from a chain coming off an overhead beam. “And shit, Ichi’s the same age as your kid. Anything that young is fuck-and-drop only… not something Cole wants for his little brother.”

A familiar prickling formed at the base of his spine. He could put a name to it if he wanted to. Shame. Disgust. And sometimes even—fear. He smacked the bag again, hard enough to make it sway back, but its tremendous weight kept it stable and ready for Bobby’s fists.

The bag held faces, or at least some shadowy remnants of people in his past. More importantly, the gym seemed to whisper as he struck the long bag, grunting when the shock of his fist hitting its solid form traveled up his shoulder and down his spine. Bobby kept going, laying out his punches against the bag’s length as if in a street fight. Minutes later, his tank clung to his skin, soaked through with sweat, but the buzzing in his head remained, tiny doubting whispers he couldn’t seem to exorcise.

He didn’t hear the front door open, but the steady thump of JoJo’s stiff leg striking the floor was loud enough to break through Bobby’s strikes. The old man would either come sniff out why Bobby was up before the roosters crowed or not. Some small part of him didn’t care one way or another.

Or at least that’s what he told himself.

JoJo thundered over, a grumbling stick of bones and wrinkled pitch black skin. The years hung heavy on his face and shoulders, his back rolling from side to side as he lumbered toward Bobby’s spot in the gym. A vicious beatdown when he was younger left his legs weak and wobbly, and he’d lost his right eye, but JoJo’d fared better than the white referee who’d been caught sucking JoJo’s cock.
His
body was found crab-eaten and bludgeoned under the Santa Monica Pier, long strands of kelp wrapped around his bloated, crumpled corpse.

It was something JoJo never spoke about, and Bobby never felt like he had to ask. He didn’t need to. The older man screamed his pain and anguish with every stoic drag of his foot across a floor.

“So whatcha doing in here so early, boy?” JoJo dragged over a tall wooden stool and set it down a few feet from Bobby’s area. Settling down, he stretched his legs out and groaned. “Damn, it gets harder every day to get old. When are you going to learn that? Or you still think you can beat the old out of your body?”

Bobby caught the bag in his arms, hugging it to still its sway. Leaning felt damned good, and his legs cried out for some respite from the shuffle, crouch, and lunge repetitions he’d been using. Setting his shoulder into the bag, he rested his weight on it, taking some of the pressure off his knees.

“I don’t want to beat the old out.” Bobby chuckled. “I’ve just got to be fit enough to keep up with the younger guys. Cruising’s kind of like being out in the woods. I don’t have to run faster than the bear, I’ve just got to run faster than the next guy.”

“Huh,” JoJo grunted, working his palm over his knuckles to warm his joints. He’d brought the smell of sour coffee and liniment with him, and Bobby’s eyes began to water when the air grew thick with menthol. Catching Bobby’s assessing look, he shrugged. “Getting old myself. Joints ache like a son of a bitch today. Ain’t going to be running faster than a damned dead dog, much less a twink. You can have them all.”

“Yeah, I’ll do my best.” He winked playfully. “Seriously, if you’re not up—”

“Don’t you be telling me to shuffle off and climb into my coffin just yet.” JoJo shook a fist at him. “Just because I’m not sticking my dick into any guy who’ll let me doesn’t mean I can’t knock some of your teeth in. I’m old. Not sick.”

After letting go of the bag, Bobby balled his hands up again and smacked the leather lightly. His legs were beginning to stiffen. He’d been standing too long without cooling down, and his muscles were quivering for release. Stretching his limbs out, he caught JoJo studying him.

“What?” He shuffled to the side, dropping his shoulder down to round another soft punch into the bag.

“You’re getting too old for that shit, you know?”

“Now what the fuck are you talking about, JoJo?” He needed a cooldown, but JoJo’s offhand comment threw him for a loop. “Guys a fuck of a lot older than me work the bag and ring. Hell, you still get in there when you’re up to it.”

“I’m not talking about the ring, boy. I’m talking about fucking every piece of ass you see. About time you grew up. Be an adult.”

“I did the adult thing, remember?” Bobby left off jabbing and began to stretch his legs out. “Got married, had a kid, fucked guys on the side and screwed up my life. Hell, how many of us did that? At least Marsha and I ended it so she could find someone to make her happy. I think I’m doing pretty good right now.”

“Your kid know? That you stick your dick in guys’ asses?” JoJo’s verbal scores were as sharp as his punches. “Or you still keeping that on the down low?”

“My kid doesn’t need to know. Jamie’s… we’re good as we are.” He shrugged. “Life is what it is. I don’t have any complaints.”

“But your life’s still fucked up, isn’t it?” JoJo pointed out. “Why else are you here at six in the morning beating the shit out of a bag and talking to a half-blind black man who can’t get it up anymore?”

“Because I own half of this place?” Bobby shot back, annoyance peppering his tone. “And I’ve got a key?”

“Boy, you come here because you’re frustrated. You don’t even know what you want. When was the last time you slept with someone you liked waking up to?”

“I like every guy I fuck. For as long as I fuck them. Sometimes even a little bit afterwards too. And I don’t really
sleep
with them. Not my style.”

“This the kind of life you want, Dawson? Like me? Sitting in the fucking cold mornings counting your aches and wondering why there isn’t some warm body keeping the aches away when you wake up?”

“Seems to me there was a time when any of us was just glad to wake up.” Bobby twisted about, then shook his arms out, working the feeling back into his fingers. “Wasn’t too long ago when we were all running scared because fucking guys was a death sentence—and not just because some asshole caught us sucking each other off.”

“Boy—”

It was a low blow, but Bobby jabbed anyway, searching for a weakness in JoJo’s words.

“I’m not talking about guys getting worked over or killed because they’re gay. That shit still goes on. You and I both know it. It wasn’t that long ago when even a hint of being sick meant people shunning you. People were afraid to hug anyone who even flounced a bit. Fucking disease ate through us, and if we weren’t pariahs before then we sure as fuck became one afterwards. You ever think about what that did to us?”

“Yeah, people died. Guys died. I don’t forget those days. Shit, I still wake up wondering if my next test is going to show something I can’t handle,” JoJo shot back. “Don’t you think your kid has the right to know it weighs on you?”

“I’m saying that it changed us all—defined how we look and how we act. We have to look healthy. Shit, buff is good. Toned at the least. We’re more worried about how we look than a fricking trophy wife from Brentwood, and it’s all because of a disease people wished we would die from.

“You don’t think I worried about bringing it home every time I went out? Fuck my health. I was worried about giving it to Jamie. I was worried about touching my own kid because I’m gay.” Bobby stopped, inhaling sharply. “Damn it, JoJo. I just want to live my goddamn life outside of the fucking closet. I don’t need a husband and a white picket fence. And why the fuck are you bringing this up now?”

“Because I saw the way you looked at Cole when his lover came by the other day.” JoJo’s rough voice gentled, as if Bobby was a skittish horse in need of soothing. “I saw how much you want what he has—”

“I do not want Jae—”

“I’m not saying you want his boyfriend. You don’t poach. You’re a fucking whore, but you ain’t got time for someone who cheats… well, once you got the cheating out of your system,” JoJo continued. “I’m talking about how they are. You want that, Bobby Dawson. I could see it in your face like a dog craving a steak. Tell me I’m wrong about that.”

“You’re wrong, JoJo.” Suddenly another few rounds with the bag didn’t look too bad, and Bobby started up an off-rhythmic set of jabs. “Because who the fuck’s going to want someone like me? Too old to be pretty and too much of a slut to be faithful. Even Cole the Boy Scout will tell you that.”

“C
OLE
’
S
GOING
to kill me,” Ichi grumbled under his breath at Jae’s back as the Korean scaled the crumbling interior of the abandoned theater. “You’re already going to be dead, because you’re going to fall and break your damned neck!”

“I’m fine,” Jae-Min shouted down at him. “Just make sure you’re out of the way when I start shooting, and watch out for security. Let me know if anyone’s coming.”

Cupping his hands around his mouth, Ichiro yelled across the theater’s cavernous interior. “What do you think you’re going to do if someone
does
come? Fly down?”