She wagged her tail for him, but her attention was focused on the dish as she waited for permission.
“Go on,” Cloister said. “Dinner.”
She lunged forward and buried her face in the bowl and wolfed down half the food in two hungry, messy bites. Once her immediate appetite was sated, Bon slowed down and went back to fastidiously eating one biscuit at a time.
“I put worming powder in your dinner once,” Cloister said dryly. “Now you act like I’m going to poison you with every meal.”
One biscuit didn’t meet Bourneville’s standards, and she spat it out.
Cloister affectionately patted her bony hip and looked up just in time to see Javi stalk down the path toward him.
“What did I do?” Javi asked as he reached the gate. He leaned on it, long fingers flexed around the wood until his knuckles pushed tight against the skin. His hair was matted and tangled, raked back roughly from his face, and at some point, he’d bitten his lip hard enough to bruise. “I thought we were okay, on the same page. Is this because I kissed you? You don’t want anyone in the station to think it actually matters?”
Guilt pricked at Cloister. “I… checked on you,” he said. It sounded like a weak defense, even to him. “But you were being questioned, and I didn’t know what to say. Then Frome asked me to sit with Tancredi until the doctor could get to her, and….”
It still sounded weak. Cloister knew he could have done better. He’d stood in the hall that smelled of bleach and blood and let the black shadow of his past seep up into his conscious mind. It was as though his brain needed to silt up the gap in his memory, and any emotion similar enough to the original trauma was close enough to throw in—lost children, injured lovers, a friend who might never be able to draw a possum on a cast again—they’d all do as a tithe to his nightmares.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Javi made an exasperated noise. “I didn’t need my hand held,” he said. “I was grazed. Tancredi might have lost the use of her hand. I have some sense of proportion, Cloister. This isn’t about why you weren’t there then. It’s about why you aren’t here now. I gave you a spare key. I said you could stay. What more do you want?”
The microwave beeped a piercing alert that the five minutes were up. Javi glanced over Cloister’s shoulder and sighed.
“Should I consider that an answer?” he asked. “A microwave dinner is better company than me?”
“Sometimes,” Cloister said. He didn’t mean it, but—like the microwave dinner—the words filled a gap, even if not entirely satisfactorily. He rubbed his hand over his face and tried again. “I thought you might not want company. We got you shot.”
A wry smile curved Javi’s mouth. “What can you expect from local law enforcement? Competency?”
Cloister narrowed his eyes. “Don’t push it.”
“I was already shot,” Javi said. He leaned on the gate. The sunset gilded his skin, the cool brown shade warmed with a sheen of gold. “I’m not thrilled that some trigger-happy deputy caused the commotion that let Andrew Macintosh kill himself, but you didn’t shoot anyone. And trust me, I fuck you because you’re cute, but I work with you because you’re good at what you do. So shut up and invite me in.”
“And people say romance is dead,” Cloister said. He unlatched the gate and waved Javi in past Bourneville, who looked up from her food long enough to wag her tail in greeting. Down the row, behind the pink Happy Birthday, there was the hollow smack of a slammed fridge and the sound of raised voices. “I was going to call… later.”
“Liar.”
Maybe. Cloister certainly wasn’t sure enough one way or the other to argue about it. He cupped his hand around the nape of Javi’s neck and pulled him in for a slow, easy, sun-warmed kiss instead.
“I’m glad you’re here.”
“That makes one of us,” Javi said. As he walked past him, Javi grazed the back of his fingers up Cloister’s arm in a lazy, almost possessive gesture, like a cat who wanted to mark its territory. “I like you, Cloister, but at some point, you need to get used to the idea of a roof that isn’t made of tin.”
“It’s just a place to keep my stuff,” Cloister said to Javi’s back. It was just walls and a roof. He didn’t really attach any importance to it. The last time he lived someplace he cared about… it might have felt permanent, but it turned out not to be. “One place is as good as another.”
The smell of microwaved BBQ beef and heated plastic hung in the air inside the trailer. Cloister popped open the door and fumbled the plate out, the plastic hot against his fingers.
“Do you want—”
“No,” Javi said firmly as he shrugged off his jacket. The padded gauze of the dressing was obvious under the thin white cotton of his borrowed shirt. He hung the jacket over the back of a chair and slouched down, his head tilted back and his eyes closed. “I’d rather starve. Although I could do with a drink.”
“Beer?” Cloister offered as he slid his dinner onto the side and opened the fridge. Cold washed out around his calves as he leaned over—a bag of Javi’s coffee shoved into the back of the fridge, a tin of fancy dog food for Bon when she got moody, two sacks of leftover takeout that he should really chuck out, and two beers… beer and a half.
“If it’s all you have,” Javi said. He held out his hand and waited.
Cloister hesitated. There was a bottle of wine in the fridge too, but Cloister had gotten used to not seeing that for the last few months. The vintage was expensive and Spanish and, according to the person who gave it to him, Javi’s favorite. Date wine. Of course they didn’t date, and Cloister was never going to drink the bottle himself.
He snagged the unopened beer and passed it to Javi.
