Chapter 1
War wasn’t always bullets and blood in the sand.
It wasn’t always bombs falling and smoke so thick the sky turned black.
Sometimes, it wasn’t even mothers screaming up to the reticent heavens, begging, pleading with an absent God to spare her little ones from the terrors that lurked over them.
No. There were times when war was so much smaller.
Isaac Reid knew those small battlefields of insignificant wars. The taste of gun-powder fueled words still lived against his tongue, locked, loaded, aimed to maim. Pinpointed to destroy. Even now, years long since passed, the bellowing missiles of hatred and rage still deafened him, ringing in his ears in even the stillest of silences.
He may not have worn a uniform or carried a gun, but he knew war in ways that branded him deeper than flesh and bone. It danced the fields of his mind, sowing darkness, casting shadows that bled into the late nights and bloomed like wilted roses through the small hours of the morning.
Most of all, he knew nights like this, the kind that stood still.
In the long hours that had passed, the hands of the clock had moved only a mere fraction, minutes against an eternity. The air had stagnated, thickening and expanding until every breath felt labored. And hell, the pounding against his temple? Yep, the thing was throwing out punches like it was going three rounds with Mike fucking Tyson.
Yip-fuckin-pee.
Trapped in the stifling deadzone, he nursed a glass of Coke, not quite able to force it down. Absently, his fingers stroked against the raised wallpaper. There was an odd degree of comfort in the sensation but eventually his hand fell into his lap, curling into a fist.
The urge to punch something, to throw things to the ground, smash, stomp and spit until the feverish rage and undigested unease fizzled out, reared its ugly head. It’d been a while since he’d felt so disturbed, so unstable, and none of the shitty calming exercises seemed to be helping. In fact, they seemed to make it worse, like the darkness inside was throwing out an explosive temper tantrum at the prospect of being silenced once more.
And God, he really wanted to —
“Another nightmare?”
Isaac froze. His eyes lifted from the pane of glass that overlooked the shadow-kissed garden, turning towards the man that now stood in the doorway of the living room.
The devil’s charm and angel’s smile lived in that man, touched with beauty and stroked with mystery, and together, oh, how they fucked him up.
Bare chested, arms folded against the cold, the dimmed lights danced across Deacon Baxtor's figure, a battle of sin and sainthood that was ever indecisive. His eyes, odd hues that could never quite settle on a shade, blazed through, finding him, holding him hostage.
For a moment or more, it was enough. Like they were bringing oxygen back to his lungs and he could breathe again.
But fuck, that pesky dark companion was playing the bitch tonight, and just as quickly as he felt anchored, it sucker punched the air right out of him.
“You should be asleep,” Isaac said flatly, bare toes curling violently into the plush gray carpet. Pain flared, but he ignored it, pushing deeper.
“So should you.” Deacon moved quickly, with a gracefulness Isaac had never managed to master, body gliding with an ease that seemed to force the atoms around him to bow around him. A hand was placed on his shoulder. He shook it off, scowling.
Rather than react, Deacon stood with him, the both of them peering out of the window, watching the quietness that devoured the neighborhood.
He couldn’t quite depict how long it went on for. Time . . . it really was a brainfuck. Eventually, he glanced up, finding that Deek was already watching him, tenderness kissing his brow.
“Do you think,” Deek began softly, his full mouth shaping into one of those delightful half-smiles, “It was a bad call to defrost the chicken? I’m not sure I fancy it for dinner anymore.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Yes,” he replied confidently, “But I’m your idiot.”
And wasn’t that the truth.
“How bad?” Deek asked eventually, his hand hovering, eager to reach out. Eyes knew he wouldn’t. Not until he gave him the green light. He wanted to, needed him to, but hell, there was a bitterness inside spreading like a forest fire and he just couldn’t bring himself to accept the token of comfort.
“How bad is what? Your breath? It’s fucking awful. Toothbrushes were invented for a reason.” His head fell back against the wall. He drew his legs up against his chest, curling into the small frame of the window seat. His nails bit into the fleshy banks of his palm, digging deeper and deeper.
He hated this; the confrontations after a nightmare always made him feel . . . bleh. He was a man, goddamn it! He was supposed to dream about trucks and hot chicks in wet tee competitions.
“Eyes.” Deek shifted, rubbing his hands along the goosebumps that prickled along his flesh. Little ghost boy needed a stint in the sun because he was looking as pasty as fucking Casper, and Isaac had come to learn that he was awfully fond of the bronzed tint Deek went when the sun was out and blazing.
“Deacon.”
“Talk to me.”
As he squeezed his eyes shut, battling away the daunting shapes and inhuman noises that still lingered in the back of his mind, Isaac shook his head. “I don’t want to.”
“No?” A soft sigh. “I can’t help you unless you let me, sweets. You know that.”
It was a conversation they’d had a thousand times. It was a conversation they’d have a thousand more.
Words were . . . words were difficult. They were tricky and finickity, and they hated him. They fell off his tongue like blunt instruments, bludgeoning and bashing. They didn’t even make sense! Even in his head, they muddled and orbited chaos, merging together, creating a vortex of frustration that inevitably led to anger.
“I don’t want help,” Isaac dismissed, blinking hard. His throat hurt. He chugged against the flat coke. It burnt. Tasted like horse piss. Made no damn difference. “I just want —” He trailed off, kicking against the ground with a gruff growl.
“What do you want?”
“To break everything,” he admitted.
“Then do it.” Deek took a step back, waving to the dining table that was pushed away in the furthest corner of the room, adjourned with neatly tucked chairs. A glass bowl decked the center, brimmed with fruit that Eyes always made a conscious effort to avoid.
“What?” His mouth bobbed open in surprise.
Deek was a stick in the mud. He was all about the whole hugging it out method. Maybe he hadn’t heard correctly. Maybe—
“Break it. Go ahead. Throw it. Smash it. Flip the table if that’s what you need to do, just talk with me after.”
Isaac rose on shaky feet, knocking over the tall glass of pop as he rose. It fell from the window ledge, spilling and fizzing, the glass remaining intact as the blow was absorbed by the carpet.
“Break it?”
Vibrations spread through his bloodstream. His hands trembled. The thin slither of self-control held him back; there was a pathetic part of him that couldn’t bear to see the look of disappointment on Deek’s face.
“Break it,” Deacon confirmed with a nod.
The approach was cautious, paired with a few backwards glances. He waited for the ‘just kidding’ or the ‘stop’, but it never came. The glass bowl was cool against his hands, weighty too. His lip curled up, fingers tightening around it.
Opening up to the pain and anger, it was a mistake. The mild, held-at-bay turmoil he’d been fighting against broke open like a dam. Vision blurred. His chest exploded. Noise. Impact. Disorientation.
He heard the shattering of glass before he’d registered throwing it. Heard the shouting before he acknowledged it was coming from his own mouth. Felt the impact ricocheting up his wrist before it even dawned on him what he was punching.
And when it dimmed, when there was a subside in the blinding-hot shades of red, he stood there, trembling, breathing heavily, clutching his fist to his chest. The world came back into focus in checkerboard flickers; the table had been ragged out, a chair was missing a leg and another’s headrest had a gaping hole in the center. Diamonds of glass coated the floor.
“Fuck,” was all he managed.
