"Lechuza had a pot going," Twister called from somewhere down the hall. "I added garlic. Don't listen to him."
Flash huffed out something that was almost a laugh, unable to dismiss those Veil connections. When exactly had Flash become a Shadowguard? He scrubbed his hands down his face and dragged in a long breath that came out shaky at the end and reminded him he hadn't slept well in months and was going to sleep tonight if it killed him. Maybe his tired mind was playing tricks on him. He cut the water and stood there dripping.
"You think she bought the whole Veil thing? She’s going to agree? I for one want a life with my wife." Easy's voice had dropped. He was leaning against the doorframe on the other side of the shower curtain, the joke gone, and Flash was getting used to seeing him as a cross between a man and a cougar. Easy battling in full Veil form? That was going to be something to see.
Flash pushed the curtain back a few inches and reached for the towel.
"She's alive." Flash’s voice came out rougher than he wanted. "She's pissed. She let us stay. I’d say that was a start."
"Yeah, and I saw some evidence of kissy face."
"You didn't see shit."
"I saw your face when we got inside, brother."
Flash didn't answer. He scrubbed the towel through his hair. Easy waited, the way Easy waited, with the patience of a cat at a mouse hole.
"I didn't think she'd let me in the door," Flash said finally, low. "I had it worked out in my head. She was going to put a round through my chest plate and tell me to walk back to Virginia. I had a whole speech ready for after the bullet."
"Instead?"
"She listened."
He wrapped the towel around his hips and stepped out onto the cold tile. Easy was where he'd thought, shoulder against the jamb, arms crossed, one eyebrow up. The bruise on his jaw from the fight in Carlsbad was already yellowing at the edges. He looked tired too. They were all tired. Supernatural shit came at a cost.
"You good?" Easy said.
"I will be."
"That's not what I asked."
Flash met his eyes. He didn't bother with the deflection. He was too worn down to wind up the joke, and Easy had earned more than that anyway. "I almost lost it, brother. When she said my name. I almost went down on the rug."
Easy nodded once. Slow. He didn't say anything.
"Twister," he called, eyes still on Flash. "Flash needs resuscitation."
"Oh? Is he breathing?"
"Barely."
"What does he have? Lechuza fever?" Twister chuckled. “Tell him to find a paper bag and breathe slowly in and out.”
Easy laughed softly, reached over and clapped a hand around the back of Flash's neck, the way he did when they were getting real, brief, and firm, and entirely without ceremony. Then he stepped back into the hall. “What we fight for?” He set his handover his heart. “It’s all right here, man. We equally have way too much to lose.”
“You getting soft on me?”
“Blame it on too little sleep and the face of my wife that never leaves me day or night.” He slipped out the door. "Double time it," he said over his shoulder. "She's downstairs, and we have to convince her to come with us." He tapped his flat stomach. “And, fuck, I’m starving.”
Flash stood in the steam with water still running off his hair, the towel wet at the hip and Easy's hand still warm on the back of his neck, trying, for one second, to remember what it had felt like to be a man who didn't have her.
He couldn't.
He pulled on a clean shirt, underwear, and jeans, and went downstairs.
* * *
Couldthe man be any more devastating, and how was she going to handle having him this close to her? She watched him from across her table while he laughed at something Easy said, and her body cataloged him the way it had been cataloging him since Venezuela without her permission. The easy way he held a room without trying. The achingly broad shoulders that moved loose under his shirt when he laughed. His hands resting open on the table, calloused, large, and so very gentle. His mouth, generous, quick to humor, the lower lip slightly fuller than the upper, was the mouth that had found hers an hour ago and broken her open. He felt expansive in the room, the kinetic warmth opposite of her own contained dark, and the contrast made her chest ache. He looked up. His gaze caught hers, and the easy laugh in his face softened into something steadier, something that knew exactly what she had been doing while she watched him, and herstomach did the thing it had been doing for a year every time she let herself remember him.
