Microsoft Word - Talkers_Redemption_Lane.docx

down because it needed to be done. You
    know what?”
    Talker shook his head, still looking at the rat.
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    “Now look at me when I say this, because you need to see it’s
    true.”
    “We both know that’s my weakness,” Tate said, trying to laugh
    and failing. Brian didn’t laugh, and Talker looked up into his lover’s
    amazing eyes. The white part was still rimmed with red, and the
    scars from where the stitches had been were still a little puffy. He
    had a rainbow of bruising under his eye and along his jaw, and
    Talker knew without looking that he was missing one of his back
    teeth. His hair had been shaved unevenly above his eyebrow when
    they’d lanced the swelling over his eye, and the long fall of it was
    interrupted.
    He was still the most beautiful man Tate Walker had ever seen.
    “Are you seeing me?” Brian asked, and Tate nodded soberly.
    “Good, because this is what I need you to know. I’d do it again.
    Even having the rest of that shit coming, I’d do it again. Because…”
    Brian’s voice cracked a little, “because I know what you were
    thinking of doing, those months between. Between you being
    attacked and me talking you out of the crazy tree. I’d do anything to
    make sure that didn’t happen—even get beat to the ground, you
    hear?”
    Talker nodded and wiped some more helpless tears. God, he
    was tired of being weak, he was. But Brian was so easy to lean on,
    even hurt, and the world just turned a better color when he leaned
    his head on Brian’s good shoulder. His hair was back in a queue
    today. He hadn’t spiked it in weeks, and it was, in fact, growing out
    on the sides a little. It was still patchy over his tattoo, but with the
    tatt, you couldn’t see how much was scalp and how much was really
    hair. Talker thought maybe it was time for a new look, because this
    one made it easier to lean his head on Brian’s shoulder, and that
    had to be a good thing.
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    “I can’t believe you did that,” was what he said. “Brian, you’re
    so….” He looked at their still-twined hands, still getting to know New
    Rat. “You’re so gentle. I can’t believe you hit someone.”
    Brian shook his head, and Tate pulled his hand away enough
    to rub the scars on the back of Brian’s knuckles. He’d done this
    many times before, he realized, but he’d never known what put them
    there.
    “I don’t remember much,” Brian said softly. “I gave Trev a
    chance to defend himself, and the next thing I know, Jed was pulling
    me off of him.”
    “Fucker,” Tate said, sincere venom in his voice. “It’s more than
    he deserved.”
    “I threw up afterward,” Brian told him, as though that meant
    something. Talker looked up at him and found himself smiling. He
    remembered throwing up on Henries, and thought that maybe Brian
    was right. Maybe it did mean something.
    He remembered that first day they’d met, on the bus, and the
    day Brian had first seen his scars. The all-American poster child and
    Tate-the-tattooed-twitch—it seemed unlikely, but Brian hadn’t seen
    that. He’d seen that they were more alike than different.
    Maybe they were.
    “So what are we going to name him?” Tate asked after a
    minute.
    Brian scratched the rat under the chin and tutted to him some
    more before answering. “How ’bout we name him after you this
    time?”
    “You’re going to name the rat Talker?”
    “Naw.” Talker looked up to see Brian’s fierce grin, unblemished
    and untainted by the last month. “We’re gonna name him Harry. Big
    Harry Nads.”
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    Talker snickered. “After me?”
    “Yeah, Talker. Man, after what you did to keep my ass out of
    jail, I don’t know who else we’d name Big Harry Nads. You think?”
    Talker blushed and looked down at the rat again. “Well, it is a
    sweet ass,” he murmured, and heard Brian’s chuckle, “but I’m not
    that brave.” Brian’s kiss on the fuzz growing in on the top of his head
    felt like a benediction.
    “You survived all that, Talker. You tore yourself open when you
    were already falling apart, and you did it for me. You’re fucking
    fearless.”
    “God, I love you.”
    “I love you too. So—Big Harry Nads?”
    Tate smiled shyly into the world created by Brian’s chest and
    his faith and the love that seemed to have survived in the core of
    them, and nodded. “Yeah. Big Harry Nads the rat. He’ll fit right