Hey there, darlins!
To everyone who celebrates it, Merry Christmas! I hope you and your loved ones are warm and healthy and enjoying the season together (safely). To everyone who isn't, hey, happy holidays, happy winter, happy upcoming new year.
I love you all, and I wish you the very best. May we all have a warm drink, a chance to relax, and a good book to read.
Cari 😍
PS--there are two new chapters of Triumvirate up on the Radish Fiction app today. Enjoy!
Notes: AAAAHHH personal relationship development for the WIN!!!
Title: Rivalries: Chapter Twelve, Part Two
***
Chapter Twelve, Part Two
“Oh my god.” Charlie set the soup down and wiped his eyes. Johnny watched, dumbstruck, and hoped that the hysterical laughter was a good thing instead of a prelude to an “I’m going to kill you” kind of thing. With Johnny, it could be hard to tell sometimes.
Speaking through the laughter, he said, “I was a part of serious covert ops for almost ten years, I’m not about to get shitcanned because I tell the wrong person about your knack. Which, I mean, is amazing and don’t get me wrong, but I’ve worked with someone who could melt people’s faces off. Literally, that was her knack. You want to talk about traumatic training?”
His chuckles finally slowed down. “I promise, I won’t betray your confidence, and I’m grateful you told me all this.” He shook his head. “Next time, though, really—lead with the disclaimers.”
“I will,” Johnny said faintly. “Um…wow. I guess I’m glad they haven’t tried that one out with me.”
“I doubt they let you work much with purely mental knacks at all,” Charlie replied.
Come to think of it… “Almost never,” Johnny said. “Mostly physical or ornamental, actually. Elemental a few times, but those carry a lot of oomph and I might have broken a few buildings the last time they had me use one.” Needless to say, he knew exactly was Roland had gone through with regards to the high school.
Charlie nodded. “Mental knacks are the hardest to learn to control, which means a lot of dedicated training time. It wouldn’t really fit with the deal you’ve got going with this crew, whoever they are, and they’re probably not excited to be the first people in your firing zone while learning a new mental knack anyway.”
“I get that.” Johnny sighed and leaned back against the arm of the couch. He wasn’t cold anymore, but he was so tired. Tired from today, but also tired from the endless fight that seemed to be his job lately. “All the more reason for the kids from Stheno to start live training with their knacks as soon as possible. I don’t want them to go out into the world with no notion of how to defend themselves.” Defense against lawsuits, defense against predatory government agencies and private companies, defense against their own selves…
“I’ve got a shipment of five full suits of military-grade training gear headed to my place on Monday,” Charlie said.
Johnny sat straight up, his eyes widening. “Holy shit, really?”
“Really.” Wow, nobody made a smug little smile look sexy the way Charlie did. “They’re not new, of course, but the gear at my old fort was due for replacement. Rather than let the stuff get thrown away or auctioned off, my friend and I figured out how to make it a ‘charitable donation.’”
How…was that possible? “The military doesn’t do charitable equipment donations.”
“It does when Lisa Jemison is handling the supply chain,” Charlie assured him.
“Oh my god, that’s…” Amazing, incredible, I could kiss you! “Great,” Johnny settled on. “That’s really great. It’s going to mean so much to the kids, I can’t wait to tell them about it.”
“Tell Debra first,” Charlie said, not at all joking. “I promised her I’d get this done but she’d not going to believe me until the gear is in hand, which should be by the end of next week at the latest.”
“I’ll tell her, but she’d believe you. She likes you!” It could be hard to tell sometimes, with her perfect emotional regulation, but Johnny knew that part for a fact. “Everybody I work with likes you. Your students like you too, for the most part.”
“It’s just the people I work with who don’t think much of me.” Charlie shrugged, but Johnny could tell that it was really bothering him. “Great. I know I don’t really have the teaching pedigree for the place, but I am certified as a knack training instructor.”
“And with your experience, that should be enough,” Johnny agreed. “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you get the job?”
Charlie chuckled again, but it wasn’t a happy sound this time. “Honestly, I’m not better than anybody else at that school. I got the job through pure nepotism. That kid I talk to a lot, Ari? He’s the son of the former American ambassador to Lebanon, and he has a mental knack that’s lead to…extreme emotional attachment.” Charlie sounded embarrassed. “To me. I was saving him from a kidnapping thing when his knack activated for the first time, and…the best way his mom and I have found to deal with it is frequent communication and a face-to-face visit whenever possible. They’re supposed to move here next fall, and he’ll be an incoming freshman, so she thought it would be easier on him if I worked at his school.”
Johnny frowned thoughtfully. “That’s an interesting knack. Some sort of compulsion that got turned on himself instead of onto others?”
Charlie shrugged. “The experts aren’t sure, and they don’t know how to fix it, either.”
“Mmhmm.” Was it possible… “Does he have many friends?”
“Um, not really,” Charlie said. “Not outside of his mother and me.”
“What about a pet? A support animal? Something else for him to lavish with affection, is what I’m getting at,” Johnny said, just laying it out there. “Because if his knack did go wrong due to a traumatic inciting incident, then Ari needs more than a few incidental coping mechanisms. His mother should have him seeing a therapist who specializes in childhood PTSD.”
“She’s been afraid to try that sort of thing,” Charlie said reluctantly. “Her ex’s family is very traditional. If they knew something had happened to Ari under her care that led to needing therapy—”
“Ah-ah, we all need therapy. I get it. I’m sure you get it.” Charlie nodded. “Her kid should definitely be getting it. I’m just a counselor, what do I know, but actually I know a lot and I’m telling you this. A support animal would be a good start, but that recommendation needs to come from a professional who works with Ari and can help him more constructively.”
“That’s a really good point,” Charlie said.
“I’m really good at my job, what can I say,” Johnny replied with a grin.
“You are,” Charlie agreed. “I’ll talk to Huda about it the next time we call.”
“Tonight?” Johnny pressed. He hoped not—he wanted Charlie to stay as long as possible, even if it wasn’t in the capacity he’d like best.
Charlie shook his head. “No, not tonight.”
“Oh, good!” Johnny glanced at the clock on his wall. “How late can you stay?”
“I can get an Uber anytime, I guess.”
Oh shit, right, the ride thing. He needs my car. “No, don’t do that. You can take my car home and come get me in the morning. Or make me take an Uber, it’s only fair. Or stay. Overnight.”
Charlie looked over at him, his brow a little furrowed. I fucked it up. I sounded too desperate, I’ve fucked it up, he’s going to get up and go because I’ve made it weird and uncomfortable and—
Charlie reached out and took Johnny’s bowl, set it down on the floor next to his, then scooted over on the couch until Johnny had to move his legs to make room. He leaned in close and said, in a quiet voice, “Tell me if I’ve got this wrong, okay?”
Then Charlie kissed him.
Notes: Forward momentum for the plot, and perhaps even some forward momentum for our budding romance! The next installment shall tell for sure ;)
Title: Rivalries: Chapter Twelve, Part One
***
Chapter Twelve, Part One
If Johnny had been shivering from the cold before, now he felt like he was shaking from nerves. He hadn’t…lord, how long had it been since he’d willingly told someone his secret? Half a decade, maybe. The last people to know the truth of his own accord were his parents, and they’d taken it to Arizona with them in their retirement and hadn’t told a soul. The other people who knew were all the people who’d taken a professional interest since then, and Johnny didn’t care to think about them if he could avoid it. They were so…so…
All of a sudden he remembered he had a guest. Not just a guest. Charlie. Charlie is in your dirty, dinky duplex and you’re letting him stand there with dinner getting cold in his hand, so maybe you should do something about that, sport. “Sorry, let me get some…um, plates? Bows? Both?”
Charlie shook his head. “How about you tell me where they are and I get them while you sit down? You look like you’re about to fall over.”
“I’m not that bad,” Johnny replied, a little stung even as he pulled the quilt tighter around his shoulders. “I’ve had a lot worse.”
“You have?”
Ooh, that tone…that wasn’t good. “I mean…”
“Save it. Bowls. Spoons. Where.”
“Um…silverware is in the drawer to the right of the dishwasher, bowls are in the cabinet above that.”
“Good.” Charlie headed for the kitchen without another word. Johnny stood there for a long second, torn about following and making himself perform some of the normal tasks of a host—any of them, really—when a chill went through him that took his breath away. Jesus, why weren’t these done with yet? He was so tired of being cold, and the researchers had promised him the aftershocks would stop soon. Why was “soon” three hours after they’d dropped him at home?
Maybe you should have stayed and let them monitor you all the way through your recovery, dumbass. But no. After letting them fuck with his knack for a morning, Johnny had been more than ready to be done with it by afternoon. He wasn’t obligated to give them that kind of time, and he refused to unless they enforced the most draconian of the contract’s medical provisions and forced him to stay there—while paying him quadruple-time for his efforts. Lucky for him, the government researchers were as penurious as they were curious.
Johnny shuddered again, then sank back onto his couch with a sigh. To hell with it, it wasn’t like Charlie could think much worse of him by this point. Between crashing the guy’s car and sending him to the ER to bailing on him when Johnny knew the man was counting on him for a ride, it was a miracle he hadn’t been punched in the face yet. Charlie might only have one arm, but he could still probably rock Johnny’s world with it. So he’d take whatever pity-dinner came his way, spill his guts, and see where the night led them. Undoubtedly not where Johnny wanted it to lead, but he was used to pining by now.
“Here.” Charlie was back in what felt like just a second, handing over a bowl full of savory-smelling pho. “Can you hold it?”
“I can hold it.” It was a challenge, especially as full as the bowl was, but Johnny managed to get it on his knees and get the spoon to his lips. The taste…oh, so delicious, and the soup was so hot. He felt warmed all the way through for a moment, enough to make him sigh with pleasure. He didn’t even notice Charlie sitting down next to him and eating his own food until Johnny had scraped the bottom of the bowl clean. He looked over and saw that Charlie was only halfway done, and looking at him like he was something he’d never seen before.
“Hungry much?”
“Um…yes.” And he wasn’t going to apologize for being ravenous either, because he was still warm and that was amazing. “Thanks for this.”
“You’re welcome.” Charlie took his bowl, but instead of carrying it back to the kitchen he put it on the floor. “So, what’s the story here?”
Do I have to? But he’d promised he would, so… “It’s got to do with my knack,” Johnny said, still reluctantly but he was building up to it, damn it.
“Right.” Charlie looked at him with unfairly bright eyes, almost eager. “Go on.”
“My knack is…well, it’s hard to define.” Johnny laughed weakly as he ran a hand through his messy blond hair. “It might actually be unique. At least, no one’s ever documented something quite like it before.”
Charlie narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Not mimicry, then?”
“Mimic…oh!” Oh, that was a really good guess. Had Johnny been that obvious with his capabilities? “Wow, close but not quite.” A mimicry knack could reproduce the knacks of the people around it, but not at as great a strength, and it couldn’t hold onto those knacks once the target moved out of their range. “No, mine is more like a…well, okay, it’s like mimicry, except after I mimic a knack, I can access it again later. At any time. I can still access knacks that I first produced when I was twenty, and my strength of expression doesn’t diminish. I can…be anything, I guess.”
Charlie’s eyes had gone wide, his mouth dropping open into an unfairly attractive gape. Seriously, who looked good while gaping? This asshole right here. “That’s incredible. That’s…I mean, the things that could be done in the field with that kind of ability are…”
Johnny chuckled darkly. “Yeah, I’ve been down that road with plenty of people, and it’s never ended up where they wanted it to. I can hold onto the knacks, but I’ve got to hunt them down in my brain—they don’t come like a reflex the way other people’s do. And I can’t use my knack more than a few times an hour without experiencing some major side effects. Migraines are the least of it. Two years ago, when they decided to test my limits and have me use knacks until I couldn’t any more, I ended up having a minor stroke.”
“Oh, fuck.” Charlie looked stunned. He also looked…angry. Aw, that was nice. “Those fucking assholes.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” Johnny agreed. “They haven’t pushed so hard since, but today they had me using the same knack for a long time, and it ended up kind of…sticking.”
“What does that mean?”
“Like, staying in the ‘on’ position? Or flickering on and off, kind of. It’s a freezing knack, and when it’s going full throttle I can ice up a pond with it, but getting rid of it has been tricky.”
Charlie extended his hand toward him. “You feel okay now.”
Johnny smiled. “Pho to the rescue.” Good company doesn’t hurt, either.
“Thanks for telling me.”
“You’re welcome, but…” Johnny winced. “About that.”
“What about it?” Charlie asked.
“Um, well…you know how people say things like ‘if I told you, I’d have to kill you’?”
“Yeees?” Charlie drew out. “And?”
“Well, um…this isn’t quite that bad,” Johnny assured him. “We’re not talking death, just imprisonment for both of us if anyone found out I’d blabbed. Wow, I really should have started with this disclaimer, shouldn’t I? Shit, I’m sorry—”
He stopped when he realized Charlie was on the verge of dropping his own soup from laughing so hard.
Hi darlins!
My new release is out today! It's a sweet m/m holiday romance, tropey and delicious and filled with things that will make you go "Awwww!" I know, this is very NOT like what I usually write, but I wanted to try it and I think it turned out really well. My editor and I worked out butts off to get it done in time for this holiday season, so...yeah, I'm proud of it.
Workaholic attorney Max Robertson is one meeting away from making
partner at a big NYC firm when his best friend calls and guilts him into
coming back home for Christmas. But there’s a reason he hasn’t been
back to Edgewood for a decade—too many bad memories. The plan was to go
for just one night, until a wild deer and a snow bank wrecked
everything.
Former Army Sergeant Dominic “Nicky” Bell is the new
guy on the Edgewood police force, so of course he drew the short straw
and is stuck working the night shift. But his evening gets turned
upside-down when he gets called out to a wreck in the snow—and it’s his
one and only high school crush, looking even sexier than he did back
then.
When they both end up stranded together at Dominc’s house,
sparks start to fly and Max isn’t sure what to do. But everyone deserves
a present this holiday season, right?
Notes: More Rivalries at last! Finally, Johnny will spill the beans about his peculiar knack and how the good ol' government is putting him to use. Charlie...will have some strong thoughts about this.
Title: Rivalries: Chapter Eleven, Part Two
***
Chapter Eleven, Part Two
By the time he’d gotten everything he needed, Charlie had to take an Uber to Johnny’s house—there was no way he’d make it in a reasonable time otherwise. He’d been able to Google his address, and handed it over to the driver without compunction, but the closer they got to Johnny’s place the squirmier he felt inside.
Was this too much? It didn’t feel like it should be too much, not between friends, but he wasn’t entirely sure that they were friends. They were…colleagues, right? They were unexpected allies in trying to do things for the Stheno kids. They were forced partners in traveling to and from work—at least, when Johnny wasn’t absent and being mysterious over his whereabouts. Maybe he wasn’t even home. Maybe he was home, but he didn’t want company—something Charlie could infer from the fact that the man still hadn’t answered any of Charlie’s texts.
Fuck it. The only way he was going to get any answers was by showing up, and Charlie would rather be kicked out than leave the other man alone when he was sick and needed help. Treatments…was it something to do with his knack? Or was it something more mundane than that, something mundane and terribly frightening all at once? Cancer or an autoimmune disorder or—
“Here we are!” his driver chirped from the front seat.
“Thank you.” Charlie most of the way out of the car, then hesitated. “Do you mind waiting a minute to see whether or not I get in?” Johnny’s car was there, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he was, or that he’d let Charlie in.
“Sure thing,” the young woman said. “I’ll stick around until you’re inside.”
“I appreciate it.” Charlie shut the door and walked up the central path that led to the front doors of the duplex. It was an odd design for a duplex, actually—who put the doors practically flush together in the middle of the house instead of centering them on their own sides? And who painted their door hot pink?
Charlie checked the house number to make sure he was on the right side, then raised his hand to knock. Before he could, the other door opened with a bang, and a second later a tiny dog with a huge bark ran out into the front yard. It turned, putting all its canine focus on the intruder in its midst, and charged Charlie, getting a grip on his pantleg with its mouth and pulling for all it was worth.
“Sparkles! No, bad Sparkles!” A tall older woman squeezed into a pink taffeta dress charged out after the chihuahua, a drink in one hand and a rhinestone-studded leash in the other. She was dressed like a chaperone at prom, and smelled about as soused as one too. “You little menace,” she scolded the dog, almost spilling her martini on the ground as she bent over and attached the leash to the tiny thing’s collar. She then detached its mouth from Charlie’s hem.
“There aren’t any punctures,” she assured Charlie as she stood up, the dog tucked into the crook of her free arm now. “This one’s more gum than tooth these days. No harm done, honey, right?” He saw her eye the spot his missing arm should have occupied, and waited for her to say…something. She seemed like the kind of woman who’d say something, no matter how hard he wished otherwise. “Huh. Are you Charlie Verlaine?”
What…the… “Yes?” he answered hesitantly. “How’d you know, Ms…”
“Lori, just call me Lori. And oh, I get all the hot gossip from Johnny on the weekends. I think I could pick most of his coworkers out of a lineup without a formal introduction at this point, and you’re a favorite of his.”
A favorite…wait—“He talks about—”
“Just work stuff,” she assured him, taking a long sip of her drink. “Nothing personal, I promise. He’s not sharing measurements, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She winked, her fake eyelashes drooping down to the top of her blush-encrusted cheekbone.
How long had this lady been drinking? “That’s…great. Do you know if he’s home?”
“Aw, did you bring him supper?” She gestured at the bag in his hand. “That’s so sweet. I was making a pot of cream of zucchini soup to share, but I think the poor guy might like some variety in his diet at this point. Yeah, he should be in. Just give it a knock, I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you.”
Charlie was nowhere near so self-assured, but he was also more than done with this conversation. “Thanks.” He knocked, then stood back and waited self-consciously, very aware of Lori and his Uber driver’s eyes on him. The dog’s continued barking didn’t help. Five seconds…ten seconds…he was about to knock again when the inner wooden door finally opened, revealing Johnny in a frayed t-shirt and a pair of Superman boxers, with a quilt wrapped around his shoulders and an expression of bone-deep fatigue that gave way to shock when he saw Charlie.
“Oh…um.” He looked down at himself, then pulled the quilt around to hide the boxers. “Shit. Um. Hi?”
“Hi.” Way to break the ice. “Uh, can I come in?” He hoisted the bag a little. “I brought dinner.”
“You did?” Johnny sounded stunned. “Why?”
For the love of god. “Why do you think?” Charlie snapped, a little sharper than he’d intended to be, but he’d been worried sick all day and now here was Johnny, looking like he’d just woken up from a nap but otherwise healthy. “I thought you were ill or hurt or something. I wanted to check in, but you wouldn’t answer your damn phone.”
Johnny leaned his forehead against the edge of the door. “Fuck,” he said on a sigh. He really did sound exhausted. “I didn’t even hear it go off.”
How could he…not hear it? “Can I come in?” Charlie repeated, determined to get to the bottom of this. At the very least, Johnny looked like he could use the food. “I can just leave it here if you want…”
“No, no, that’s…please come in.” He glanced at Lori. “No soup tonight, okay?”
“Lucky boy,” she said with gentle maternalism, finally disappearing back inside her half of the duplex and taking her awful dog with her.
“Come on,” Johnny said, opening the screen door and stepping back. “Come inside.”
Charlie did, brushing against Johnny as he went. The rush of cold he got off the other man the moment their skin touched was almost enough to leave a chilblain.
Charlie stopped and stared, aghast. “What happened to you?” he demanded.
Johnny sighed. “Just…come in and I’ll tell you.”
