when the case had been dismissed: the bulk of the evidence that their case rested on had been thrown out, because of some issue with the warrant.
Clicking around through the various folders of evidence, he stumbled across a video file. He watched for about three minutes before he closed it and got away from his laptop. For a while he just stood there in the middle of his living room, heart hammering, lungs feeling like they’d shrunk down to the size of two dry pinto beans.
Without changing clothes, he went down to the basement and stripped down to his underwear. Put on his gloves and beat the heavy bag until he’d exhausted the adrenaline and the oxygen in his blood, and he collapsed on the mat. Xavier didn’t move until he started to shiver, chilled in a puddle of cold sweat. He didn’t want to shower down there, among all the hardware and memories of the men he’d trussed up in that tub, so he went to the upstairs bathroom, got cleaned up, and went to bed.
For the first time in almost a year, he had the dream. By chance, by magic, by force of will and the power it has in dreams but not in life, he materialized in Elena’s dorm room just as the three men were pinning her down on the floor, before they’d really hurt her. But then his will faltered. Then it was hours—or what felt like hours—fighting them, his body maddeningly weak, his arms limp, his punches soft, not even connecting half the time. Caught up in the battle, he’d suddenly realize he was only fighting one or two, that Elena was screaming under the others. The horror of trying to get to them, to tear the thrashing, grunting men off of her while another was holding him back, dragging him by his belt or a fistful of shirt, further and further from her as she screamed.
He woke up under the weight of a sadness almost as heavy as it had been nine years earlier. As if all his ideas and feelings about what the world was and what Elena’s and his life were going to be had just been twisted and torn the night before, and not a decade earlier.
But under that crushing, ugly hurt and rage there was a thought, small, shiny, and smooth as a glass marble. The coasters. The coasters were the key. More important than the hieroglyphics Connie and the other artists painted on their living canvases.
Frustrating as fuck he didn’t have a shift that night. At the shop, he had a frat boy, tan, muscled, chest waxed bare, under his needle. It was like fucking kismet, or something, this guy like a reincarnation of Elena’s assailants, coming in now when Xavier was already feeling walled in by the past. Caged like a wounded panther.
So he’d stop thinking about Elena, he thought about the club. About Brian and the four guys higher up pulling his puppet strings. Driving the ink into that smooth, golden skin, embellishing that taut, muscular pec with the crest of the house he’d pledged to, Xavier imagined having Brian on his table. Heat blossomed in his chest, thinking of Brian suffering under the bite of his needle as he branded him with the face of each one of the girls he’d helped the cartel sell to those flabby, balding gin-swilling assholes telling their tales of conquest before the conquest had even happened.
Surprisingly, when he texted Detective James Porter, he agreed to come over. James was one of the randiest fucks Xavier had ever had. That’s what you got, with repressed, in-the-closet lays. A few halfhearted protests, a limp refusal or two because kissing and getting on their back and spreading their legs made them feel too vulnerable and totally fucked with their stupid ideas about manhood and masculinity. But then ten minutes in they’d be bucking and thrashing and howling beyond anything you ever got with the guys who paraded around at Pride in nothing but a tight pair of briefs showing every vein on their cocks, their chests painted with “Love is love,” “NoH8,” or, Xavier’s personal favorite from the summer before, “Your
Clicking around through the various folders of evidence, he stumbled across a video file. He watched for about three minutes before he closed it and got away from his laptop. For a while he just stood there in the middle of his living room, heart hammering, lungs feeling like they’d shrunk down to the size of two dry pinto beans.
Without changing clothes, he went down to the basement and stripped down to his underwear. Put on his gloves and beat the heavy bag until he’d exhausted the adrenaline and the oxygen in his blood, and he collapsed on the mat. Xavier didn’t move until he started to shiver, chilled in a puddle of cold sweat. He didn’t want to shower down there, among all the hardware and memories of the men he’d trussed up in that tub, so he went to the upstairs bathroom, got cleaned up, and went to bed.
For the first time in almost a year, he had the dream. By chance, by magic, by force of will and the power it has in dreams but not in life, he materialized in Elena’s dorm room just as the three men were pinning her down on the floor, before they’d really hurt her. But then his will faltered. Then it was hours—or what felt like hours—fighting them, his body maddeningly weak, his arms limp, his punches soft, not even connecting half the time. Caught up in the battle, he’d suddenly realize he was only fighting one or two, that Elena was screaming under the others. The horror of trying to get to them, to tear the thrashing, grunting men off of her while another was holding him back, dragging him by his belt or a fistful of shirt, further and further from her as she screamed.
He woke up under the weight of a sadness almost as heavy as it had been nine years earlier. As if all his ideas and feelings about what the world was and what Elena’s and his life were going to be had just been twisted and torn the night before, and not a decade earlier.
But under that crushing, ugly hurt and rage there was a thought, small, shiny, and smooth as a glass marble. The coasters. The coasters were the key. More important than the hieroglyphics Connie and the other artists painted on their living canvases.
Frustrating as fuck he didn’t have a shift that night. At the shop, he had a frat boy, tan, muscled, chest waxed bare, under his needle. It was like fucking kismet, or something, this guy like a reincarnation of Elena’s assailants, coming in now when Xavier was already feeling walled in by the past. Caged like a wounded panther.
So he’d stop thinking about Elena, he thought about the club. About Brian and the four guys higher up pulling his puppet strings. Driving the ink into that smooth, golden skin, embellishing that taut, muscular pec with the crest of the house he’d pledged to, Xavier imagined having Brian on his table. Heat blossomed in his chest, thinking of Brian suffering under the bite of his needle as he branded him with the face of each one of the girls he’d helped the cartel sell to those flabby, balding gin-swilling assholes telling their tales of conquest before the conquest had even happened.
Surprisingly, when he texted Detective James Porter, he agreed to come over. James was one of the randiest fucks Xavier had ever had. That’s what you got, with repressed, in-the-closet lays. A few halfhearted protests, a limp refusal or two because kissing and getting on their back and spreading their legs made them feel too vulnerable and totally fucked with their stupid ideas about manhood and masculinity. But then ten minutes in they’d be bucking and thrashing and howling beyond anything you ever got with the guys who paraded around at Pride in nothing but a tight pair of briefs showing every vein on their cocks, their chests painted with “Love is love,” “NoH8,” or, Xavier’s personal favorite from the summer before, “Your
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