Breed The Informant

Ryan dropped his duffel on the warped floorboards of the safehouse that stank of mildlew and swept the room with a cop’s automatic scan. peeling wallpaper, nicotine-stained ceiling, windows that hadn’t seen Windex since the Bush administration. One bed. Queen-size. Sagging in the middle like it had given up on life a decade ago.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Behind him, Jax shouldered through the doorway with a duffel of his own and a smirk already curling the corner of his mouth. “Problem, Officer?”

“Don’t call me that.” Ryan didn’t turn around. His jaw was tight enough to crack molars. “And yeah, problem. One bed.”

“I’ve got eyes.” The duffel hit the floor with a soft thump. “They work just fine. Unlike your taste in cover identities.”

Ryan finally turned. Jax had already shrugged off his jacket and was eyeing the room with a detached amusement that made Ryan want to put his fist through the drywall. The informant was lean in that wiry, deceptively strong way, dark hair falling across his forehead, eyes the color of cheap whiskey catching the shitty overhead light. Sharp cheekbones. Sharper tongue with a face that probably got him whatever he wanted in whatever circles he ran in.

Circles that had nothing to do with Ryan’s world.

“Look,” Ryan said, forcing his voice level, “I’ll take the floor.”

“The fuck you will.” Jax was already moving toward the bed, testing the mattress with one palm. “You’re built like a refrigerator. You sleep on these floorboards, you won’t be able to move tomorrow, and then who’s going to watch my back at the drop?”

“I’ll manage.”

“I don’t give a shit about your tough-guy routine. We share the bed. It’s not a marriage proposal.” That smirk again, sharper now, deliberately needling. “Unless you’re worried you might like it.”

Ryan’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you’re so far in the closet you’re having tea with Narnians. But that’s your business.” Jax straightened up, dusting his hands off. “My business is staying alive long enough to see Dominic Vega in handcuffs. So you do what you need to do, and I’ll do what I need to do, and we don’t have to be friends. We just have to look like we’re fucking.”

The word landed in the room like a grenade.

Ryan’s ears went hot. He turned away before Jax could see the flush creeping up his neck, busying himself with his duffel, with the pointless task of unpacking clothes into a dresser that looked like it had been salvaged from a shipwreck.

“That’s what the cover is,” Jax continued, utterly unbothered. “New couple. Renting a cheap place on the edge of Vega’s territory. We’re supposed to be all over each other.” A pause. “You can touch me without breaking out in hives, can’t you?”

“I can do my job.”

“Sure you can, sweetheart.”

Ryan’s teeth ground together. “Don’t call me that either.”

“What should I call you? Baby? Honey? Babe?” Jax was enjoying this. It was written all over his face. “We need to sell it. The neighbors are watching. Vega’s people are watching. You think they’re going to buy us as a couple if you flinch every time I stand within three feet of you?”

He had a point. Ryan hated that he had a point.

“We’ll figure it out,” Ryan muttered.

“We’d better. Because I didn’t sign up to get my brains blown out because my fake boyfriend can’t fake holding my hand.” Jax flopped onto the bed, arms spread wide, staring at the ceiling. “God, this mattress is a war crime.”

Ryan didn’t answer. He was staring at the surveillance photos tacked to the wall across from the bed. Vega’s operation. Supply routes, drop points, known associates. The job. Focus on the job.

Not on the informant sprawled across the bed like he owned it.

Not on the way the lamplight caught the line of his throat.

Not on anything that didn’t matter.

---

The first three days were a masterclass in mutual loathing. Stakeouts meant hours crammed into a sedan that smelled like Jax’s infuriatingly expensive cologne. Ryan would drive. Jax would navigate, his feet up on the dashboard until Ryan smacked them down. They’d sit in silence broken only by the crackle of the police scanner and the occasional update from Ryan’s handler, Sergeant Lena Okonkwo, whose patience was clearly wearing thinner with every check-in.

“How’s our boy?” Lena asked on the third night, her voice tinny through the burner phone.

“Alive,” Ryan said flatly.

“Thrilled to be here,” Jax called from across the room. “Having the time of my fucking life.”

“He’s cooperative,” Ryan amended.

Lena’s pause was weighty. “The neighbors need to believe you’re together. That means visible affection. Hand-holding on the porch. Kissing goodbye when you leave for ‘work.’ The whole nine yards. You’re not doing any of that, are you?”

Ryan’s silence was answer enough.

“Jesus Christ, Ryan. Do I need to send someone down there to give you acting lessons?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then figure it out. Fast. Vega’s people are already sniffing around. If they don’t buy the cover, you’re both dead. Understood?”

“Understood.”

He hung up and stared at the wall.

Jax was watching him from the bed, one eyebrow arched. “Trouble in paradise?”

“We need to sell the cover better.”

“No shit.” Jax sat up, crossing his legs beneath him. He was wearing a threadbare t-shirt and sweatpants slung low on his hips, and Ryan very deliberately did not look at the strip of stomach that showed when he moved. “So sell it. Come here.”

“What?”

“Come. Here.” Jax patted the mattress beside him. “We need to practice. You think I want to do this any more than you do?”

Ryan’s feet carried him across the room before his brain caught up. He sat on the edge of the bed, stiff as a board, staring straight ahead.

“Okay, this is pathetic.” Jax shifted closer. His hand landed on Ryan’s thigh, casual as anything, and Ryan’s entire body went rigid. “Relax. I’m not going to bite you.”

“Just get on with it.”

“Fine. Put your arm around me.”

Ryan’s arm moved like it was made of rusty machinery. He draped it across Jax’s shoulders, barely making contact.

“That’s not an arm around someone. That’s an arm hovering near someone. Commit.” Jax grabbed Ryan’s wrist and pulled until his hand was resting firmly against Jax’s shoulder, fingers brushing the side of his neck. “There. That’s almost convincing. Now look at me.”

Ryan looked.

Big mistake.

Jax’s face was closer than he’d expected. Close enough to see the faint scar bisecting his left eyebrow, the flecks of gold in his irises, the way his lips curved in that perpetual mocking smile. Close enough to feel his breath.

“You’re supposed to look at me like you want me,” Jax said quietly. “Not like you’re memorizing my face for a police sketch.”

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“Bullshit. You’ve never looked at anyone like you wanted them?”

Ryan’s throat worked. “Not a man.”

Something flickered in Jax’s expression. Not quite surprise but something softer and more careful. “It’s the same. Want is want. You just let yourself feel it and then you let it show.”

“That’s not how I operate.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Jax pulled back, and the sudden absence of warmth was sharper than it should have been. “Okay. We’ll fake it. Tomorrow morning, you kiss me on the porch. Nothing fancy. Just a peck. Make sure the neighbor across the street sees it.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

They didn’t speak for the rest of the night.

---

The kiss on the porch was a disaster. Ryan leaned in too fast and caught the corner of Jax’s mouth instead of his lips, and Jax made a sound that was half laugh, half exasperation, and the neighbor across the street didn’t even look up from her newspaper. Jax shoved him off with a muttered “Jesus Christ, you’re hopeless,” and Ryan spent the entire drive to the observation point stewing in humiliation.

“We’re going to get murdered,” Jax said flatly. “And it’s going to be your fault.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder.”

The observation point was an abandoned laundromat with a sightline to one of Vega’s warehouse entrances. They’d been watching it for four days with nothing to show. A few low-level dealers coming and going. No sign of Vega himself. No sign of the shipment Lena’s intel had promised.

“This is a waste of time,” Jax muttered, binoculars pressed to his eyes.

“Intel says the shipment comes through here.”

“Intel also said my last handler wasn’t dirty, and look how that turned out.”

Ryan didn’t have a response to that. He’d read Jax’s file. The previous handler had been feeding information back to Vega’s crew, burning informants left and right. Jax had almost died twice before anyone figured it out. It was part of why he hated cops. Part of why he hated Ryan by association.

“I’m not dirty,” Ryan said quietly.

“Every cop I’ve ever met said the same thing.”

“I’m not them.”

Jax lowered the binoculars. His expression was unreadable. “Prove it.”

The scanner crackled and a voice cut through the static. Movement at the warehouse. Three vehicles approaching from the east. Ryan’s pulse kicked up.

“Showtime,” he said.

They moved fast, out of the laundromat and down the alley, staying low. The warehouse loomed ahead, corrugated metal siding rusted at the edges. Ryan could hear engines idling, doors slamming, voices barking orders in Spanish.

“We need to get closer,” he breathed.

“Closer means exposed.”

“I know what it means.”

They crept along the warehouse wall, pressed flat against the cold metal. Ryan could feel Jax’s shoulder brushing his with every step. The voices were louder now. He could make out individual words. Shipment. Midnight. The docks.

And then a shout.

Not from inside the warehouse but from behind them.

Ryan spun. Three men were advancing down the alley, guns drawn, faces hard. Vega’s people. They’d been marked.

“Run,” Jax snarled.

They ran.

The alley was a gauntlet of bullets punched into the metal siding behind them, whining off concrete, shattering a window somewhere overhead. Ryan’s lungs burned. His sidearm was in his hand without conscious thought, but there was no cover, and no time to turn and fire.

“Left!” Jax yanked him sideways into a side alley, through a gap in a chain-link fence, down a flight of steps that led to a basement entrance. They crashed through the door and into darkness, and Jax slammed it shut behind them, throwing the bolt.

Silence.

Darkness.

The sound of their breathing, ragged and desperate.

“Are you hit?” Ryan demanded.

“No. You?”

“No.”

A shaky laugh. “Fucking miracle.”

Ryan’s hands were shaking. Adrenaline, he told himself. Just adrenaline. He holstered his weapon and reached for his phone, but Jax’s voice stopped him.

“Wait.”

“What?”

“Don’t call it in yet. We don’t know if they’re still out there. Give it ten minutes.”

Ten minutes in the dark. Ten minutes pressed against a wall in a basement that smelled like damp concrete and rust, with Jax’s shoulder still brushing his, with Jax’s breath still warm against his neck. Ten minutes with his heart hammering and his thoughts skittering in directions he didn’t want to examine.

“You saved my ass back there,” Ryan said finally.

“Don’t read into it. I need you alive to get through this operation.”

“Right.”

“Right.”

But Jax hadn’t moved away. And neither had Ryan.

---

The second close call came three days later. They were tailing one of Vega’s lieutenants through the warehouse district when a black SUV materialized out of nowhere, boxing them in. Ryan threw the sedan into reverse, tires screaming, but another vehicle was already blocking their exit.

“Ambush,” Jax said, and his voice was almost calm. Almost.

The first shot punched through the rear windshield. Glass exploded across the back seat. Ryan ducked, cursing, and floored the accelerator. The sedan lurched forward, clipping the SUV’s bumper, and then they were through, fishtailing onto the main road with bullets chasing their taillights.

“They’re following us,” Jax reported, twisted in his seat.

“I know.”

“They’re gaining momentum.”

“I fucking know.”

Ryan took a hard right, then a left, then another right, diving into the maze of side streets that crisscrossed this part of the city. The SUV stayed with them, headlights glaring in the rearview mirror like the eyes of something hungry.

“We need to lose them before we get back to the safehouse,” Jax said. “If they follow us home...”

“I know.”

“Stop saying you know and do something about it.”

Ryan’s jaw clenched. He swerved into an alley barely wide enough for the sedan, scraping the passenger-side mirror off against a brick wall. The SUV couldn’t follow. He heard brakes squealing, horns blaring, and then the alley spat them out onto a different street, that was empty and dark.

They drove in silence for five minutes, looping randomly, checking their six. No tail. No headlights. Nothing.

By the time they got back to the safehouse, Ryan’s hands were cramped from gripping the steering wheel.

Inside, Jax slumped against the door and slid down until he was sitting on the floor. “This is getting too fucking hot.”

“We knew the risks.”

“Did we?” Jax looked up at him, and for the first time since they’d met, there was no mockery in his expression. Just exhaustion. “Because I don’t think you know what you’re getting into. I don’t think you know what these people are capable of.”

“I’ve been on the force twelve years.”

“And I’ve been in this shit my whole life.” Jax pushed himself to his feet. “There’s a difference.”

He disappeared into the bathroom, and Ryan heard the shower start. He stood in the middle of the living room, listening to the water run, trying to sort through the tangle of thoughts in his head.

Jax was right. There was a difference. Ryan had always had backup. Always had the badge. Always had the system behind him, even when the system failed. Jax had never had any of that. Jax had survived on his own, through sheer nerve and sharp instincts, and he’d done it without ever having anyone to watch his back.

Until now.

Ryan didn’t know what to do with that realization.

He sat on the edge of the bed and waited.

---

The third week broke something loose. Maybe it was the accumulated exhaustion. Maybe it was the constant proximity, the way they’d learned each other’s rhythms without meaning to. The way Ryan knew Jax took his coffee black with two sugars. The way Jax knew Ryan couldn’t sleep unless his back was to a wall. The way they’d stopped flinching when their shoulders touched during stakeouts.

Or maybe it was the argument.

It started over nothing. Tactics. Whether to move on a lead or wait for confirmation. It escalated into shouting, then into something uglier, accusations and old wounds being dragged into the light.

“You don’t trust anyone,” Jax spat. “That’s your problem. You think everyone’s going to stab you in the back because one asshole did, and you won’t let anyone close enough to prove you wrong.”

“And you trust too easy,” Ryan shot back. “You trusted that last handler. You trusted Vega’s people before you turned. You keep trusting people who don’t deserve it, and you keep getting burned.”

“At least I’m not too chickenshit to try.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you too.”

They were standing inches apart, chest to chest, breathing hard. Ryan could see the pulse jumping in Jax’s throat. He could see the flush spreading across his cheekbones. He could see his lips parted, his eyes bright with something that wasn’t just anger.

Ryan didn’t know who moved first.

Maybe neither of them did. Maybe it was just physics, the inevitable collision of two bodies that had been circling each other for weeks. But suddenly Jax’s mouth was on his, and it wasn’t the clumsy porch kiss, wasn’t the failed attempt at a cover, wasn’t anything but raw and hungry and desperate.

Jax kissed like he argued. Aggressive. Demanding. His hands fisted in Ryan’s shirt, yanking him closer, and Ryan’s back hit the wall with a thud that rattled his teeth. Jax’s tongue swept across his bottom lip, and Ryan’s mouth opened on a sound he didn’t recognize. Then Jax was inside, tasting, exploring, and taking.

Ryan’s brain short-circuited.

His hands came up and grabbed Jax’s hips, fingers digging into the sharp jut of bone beneath worn denim. Jax made a sound against his mouth, half moan, half growl, and ground forward. The friction sent a jolt through Ryan’s entire nervous system. He was hard. He was so fucking hard it hurt, and he didn’t know when that had happened, didn’t know what was happening, didn’t know anything except that Jax’s mouth was the best thing he’d ever felt and he wanted more.

“This doesn’t mean anything,” Jax panted against his lips.

“Shut up.”

“I’m serious. This is just... stress relief. Adrenaline. Whatever.”

“I said shut up.” Ryan’s voice came out rougher than he’d ever heard it. His hands slid up from Jax’s hips to his ribs, feeling the ladder of bone beneath thin cotton. “Stop talking.”

“Make me.”

Ryan made him.

He reversed their positions, slamming Jax against the wall hard enough to knock a picture frame askew. Jax’s head fell back, throat exposed, and Ryan’s mouth was on his neck before conscious thought caught up with instinct. He bit down, sucked hard, tasted salt and skin and something that made his cock throb.

“Fuck,” Jax breathed. “Fuck, okay, that’s—”

Ryan’s hands were under his shirt now, shoving it up, finding his bare skin. Jax wasn’t soft. He was lean muscle and hard angles, a body built for survival, and Ryan wanted to map every inch of it with his tongue. He wanted to bite every ridge of scar tissue he found. He wanted to leave marks that would take weeks to fade.

The thought should have terrified him but It didn’t.

“Bedroom,” Jax managed. “Now. Before I cum in my pants like a fucking teenager.”

They stumbled toward the bedroom, shedding clothes as they went. Ryan’s shirt hit the floor. Jax’s followed. Shoes were kicked off. Belts were unbuckled with shaking fingers. By the time they hit the mattress, Ryan was in his boxers and Jax was in nothing but a pair of briefs that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

Ryan looked at him. Really looked. The long, lean lines of his body. The dark hair trailing down from his navel. The shape of his cock pressing against black cotton, already damp at the tip.

“See something you like?” Jax’s voice was shaky, the bravado cracking at the edges.

Ryan didn’t answer with words. He climbed onto the bed, grabbed Jax’s hips, and flipped him onto his back. Then he was on top of him, knees bracketing Jax’s head, his own face hovering inches above the straining bulge in Jax’s briefs.

“Oh fuck,” Jax said. “Sixty-nine. You want to sixty-nine. Right now.”

“Problem?”

“No. No fucking problem. Get these off.”

Ryan yanked the briefs down, and Jax’s cock sprang free. It was beautiful. There was no other word for it. Uncut, thick enough to stretch his lips, the head flushed deep pink and already slick. Ryan’s mouth actually watered. Some part of his brain that still thought of himself as straight noted this with distant alarm, but the rest of him was too busy cataloguing details. The way it curved slightly to the left. The delicate skin beneath the crown. The heavy weight of Jax’s balls, drawn up tight.

“Stop staring and suck it,” Jax demanded. His voice was wrecked.

Ryan lowered his mouth.

The first taste was musky and something indefinable that made his eyes flutter shut. He licked from base to tip in one long stroke, feeling the vein pulsing against his tongue. Jax’s hips bucked. His moan vibrated through Ryan’s own groin, because Jax had gotten his boxers down while Ryan was distracted, and now his mouth was on Ryan’s cock, wet heat enveloping him without preamble.

“Fuck,” Ryan grunted.

Jax sucked Ryan’s cock hard.

Ryan’s hips jerked forward, driving himself deeper into that hot mouth, and Jax took it, took all of it, his throat working around the intrusion. The sensation was overwhelming. Wet and tight and perfect. Ryan could feel every ridge of Jax’s palate, every flick of his tongue, every swallow that rippled around his shaft.

He wasn’t going to last. Not with Jax’s mouth working him like that, not with the sounds Jax was making, wet and obscene and hungry.

“Slow down,” he managed, but Jax ignored him, sucking harder, and Ryan’s eyes rolled back.

Fine. Two could play that game.

He took Jax’s cock into his mouth and swallowed.

All the way down.

His nose pressed against the wiry hair at the base. His throat constricted, gag reflex screaming, but he pushed through it, breathing through his nose, holding himself there. Jax made a sound that was almost a scream, muffled around Ryan’s own length.

Ryan pulled back, then did it again. And again. Setting a rhythm. Setting a pace. Controlling it. He was in charge here. He was the one who decided when Jax got air, when Jax got to breathe, when Jax got to come. The realization sent a surge of heat through his belly.

He reached down and grabbed Jax’s hips, pinning them to the mattress. No more bucking. No more squirming. Just taking what Ryan gave him.

“Mmff,” Jax protested, but it was weak. His mouth was still working Ryan’s cock, but sloppier now, more desperate, distracted by what Ryan was doing to him.

Ryan pulled off long enough to rasp, “You’re going to cum when I let you cum.”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s not how this works.”

He swallowed Jax again, deeper this time, and Jax’s whole body arched. His cock pulsed on Ryan’s tongue, leaking bitterness that Ryan lapped up without hesitation. He’d never done this before. Never wanted to. But now he couldn’t imagine wanting anything else. The taste. The weight. The way Jax’s thighs trembled against his shoulders.

Jax’s mouth tightened around him, and Ryan felt the orgasm building at the base of his spine with pressure and heat. The unbearable tension of holding back. He didn’t want to cum yet, he wanted to draw this out and make Jax fall apart first.

But Jax had other ideas.

His hands, which Ryan had forgotten about, grabbed Ryan’s ass and pulled him down, hard. Ryan’s cock hit the back of Jax’s throat, and Jax swallowed around him, and that was it.

The orgasm hit with a sporadic gush.

Ryan’s vision blackened out. His hips drove forward, burying himself as deep as he could go, and his cock pulsed, and pulsed, and pulsed, flooding Jax’s mouth with thick ropes of cum. Jax made a strangled sound but didn’t pull away. He swallowed, throat milking Ryan’s length, taking every spurt, and every drop.

Ryan couldn’t breathe or think or even feel. The wet suction of Jax’s mouth. The rhythmic clench of his swallowing. The way his fingers were still digging into Ryan’s ass, holding him there.

“Fuck,” Ryan gasped. “Fuck, fuck, fuck—”

His hips kept rocking, little aftershocks that made him twitch and shudder. He was still in Jax’s mouth. Still hard, somehow. Still pumping thin streams of cum across Jax’s tongue.

And Jax hadn’t cum yet.

Ryan forced his eyes open and looked down. Jax’s cock was still bobbing in front of his face, slick with spit, leaking a steady stream of precum. The head was an angry shade of purple now, desperate. Poor guy. He’d been too focused on getting Ryan off to finish himself.

Ryan’s mouth curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile.

He took Jax back in, rough and fast and deep, and sucked hard. His hands slid from Jax’s hips to his balls, cupping them, squeezing gently. Then harder. Then he dragged his tongue along the underside of Jax’s shaft, right along the thick vein, and Jax screamed.

The sound was muffled, but Ryan felt it. Felt Jax’s cock swell against his tongue. Felt his balls draw up impossibly tight. Felt the first hot gush of cum hit the back of his throat.

He swallowed. Swallowed again. Jax kept cumming, spasm after spasm, his hips jerking against Ryan’s grip. The taste was sharp and salty and utterly new. Ryan drank it down, every pulse, every spurt, until Jax was whimpering and trying to push him away.

Ryan let him go with a wet pop.

They lay there, breathing like they’d run a marathon. Ryan’s face was still pressed against Jax’s thigh. He could smell himself there, the musk of his own arousal, the sweat that slicked both their bodies. Jax’s cock was softening against his cheek, still twitching.

“Jesus Christ,” Jax finally said.

“Yeah.”

“We just did that.”

“Yeah.”

A long pause. Then Jax’s hand found the back of Ryan’s head, fingers threading through his hair. Not pulling. Just holding. Gentle in a way that was more disorienting than anything else they’d done.

“Okay,” Jax said quietly. “Okay.”

Ryan didn’t know what that meant but he didn’t ask.

---

Afterward, they lay in the dark. The bed was too small for both of them, but they made it work, bodies slotted together in a way that felt almost natural now. Jax’s back was pressed against Ryan’s chest. Ryan’s arm was draped over his ribs. Neither of them spoke.

Ryan’s mind was a storm.

He’d just had sex with a man. He’d just sucked a man’s cock. He’d just swallowed another man’s cum. The words rattled around his skull like loose screws, looking for somewhere to land. They should have sent him into a spiral and made him recoil or made him get up, get dressed, and get out.

Instead he pulled Jax a little closer.

“You’re thinking too much about it,” Jax murmured.

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

It was an echo of earlier, but softer now. Playful. Ryan huffed a laugh against the back of Jax’s neck.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll make you tomorrow.”

Jax’s body relaxed incrementally. “Promises, promises.”

They fell asleep like that. Wrapped around each other. The first thread of reluctant trust pulled tight between them, fragile and tentative and terrifying.