“Not true.”
Okay, not exactly true. “Eventuallyyou know what to say to me.”
“So let me take another stab at this.” He took a deep breath. “I need you to figure out the fire bomb thing.”
“I tried!”
“But whether or not you succeed is….” He made a vague gesture with his hand. “It’s completely irrelevant to how I feel. About you. About us.” He took a step closer. “I want you to be happy. And if that means you have to blow up our basement, then okay. If that means you give up and go back to civilian life—”
“I don’t want to leave!”
“Good. Because I don’t want you to either.” He squeezed Josh’s arm. “Look, with everyone else, I’m always trying to read what they want, to be what they need so that I can lead them. It’s not like that with you. This pack is temporary. It’s until all of you figure out what you want to do. Which means I don’t have to fill in for anyone’s lacks. I don’t have to adjust for their needs. I can be myself.” His voice trailed away, and he looked at Josh, but damned if Josh understood what he was trying to say. “I’m myself with you, Josh. And you like me just as I am.”
“Of course I do.”
“There is no ‘of course.’ That’s a big thing for me. That you like me—just me—even when I hover over you or pray to that asshole fairy. Hell, we watch movies together, and I’m even reading your stupid sci-fi books.”
“Really? Which one?”
Nero waved it away. “I can relax around you because you don’t want me to stop missing my old pack. You let me do as I want while you do what you want, and together….” He shrugged. “We fit.”
“That’s….” He almost saidlove, but a different word came out. “…friendship. That’s packmates.”
“I’ve had packmates before, Josh. This is different. This is….”
“Better?”
“Lots. And maybe it’s new territory for me.”
Josh nodded. “For me too.”
“Okay. So yes, I want you to figure out that demon fire bomb thing, but more than that, I want to hang with you. To….”
“Suck my dick?”
Nero’s cheeks grew ruddy. “You okay with that?”
“Yeah. You okay with me still trying to figure out the demon bomb thing?”
“Yeah. If you want to. It’s an impossible task. No one expects you—”
“I heard. I’m a screw-up—”
“In the best possible way.”
Josh nudged Nero with his shoulder. “That doesn’t help, you know. All it does is make me want to meet my two-hundred-year-old ancestor.”
“Join the crowd. We all want to hang out with him. He’s got this… aura… thing going on.”
Nero fell silent, and Josh did too. They had just stepped onto new ground together. Neither had said the L word, but they were both feeling the shift. Nero liked him whether or not he succeeded at defeating the fire bomb. That made Josh want to kick the thing in its ass all the more. And Josh liked Nero because the guy made him happy. They could relax together, be themselves, and have the greatest sex together.
Was that love? Maybe not yet, but they were getting there. At least until they were forced to separate because of whatever classified thing was going on. But suddenly that didn’t seem like such a big a deal to Josh. Sure, it was a huge axe hanging over Nero’s head. Obviously. But somehow Josh felt like he had the right screwed-up mind-set to figure that problem out too.
Call it an optimistic frame of mind. Finding their happily-ever-after would be his next task. Right after he defeated a demon’s magical burning plasma. And speaking of which, Captain M and Happy were coming out of the lab.
“It’s not as bad as it looks. Or smells!” Laddin said as he bounced onto the deck. He hefted the flamethrower. “And she still works!” He fit words to action and blew out a long plume of flame.
“Stop that!” Captain M snapped. Then she looked at Josh. “Windows blew out, as you can see. But we’d been meaning to replace them anyway. There’s chemical debris everywhere, and you’re going to need a hazmat suit to clean it up, but it’s only minor damage. The mansion has magical reinforcement, so the foundation and both wings are solid.”
