Crazy Boy

VAL HAD grown up out and proud—his parents, for all their lack of education and high hopes for their children, had also been so damned kind, so damned accepting, that Val hadn't ever really had any doubts that they'd continue to love him.

Of course they had. Ed and Julie Royal were pretty much the best.

But that didn't mean Val hadn't had his share and Laure's share and Sal's share and even Prock's share of schoolyard disputes. He'd known how to throw a punch, and he'd taught Laure and Sal, and Sal had taught Prock and Dean. Dean had taken martial arts, improved on that information, and taught everybody, including Reg and Chance.

If a Royal kid ever came home with a bloody nose, there was always a note from the teacher that said the kid hadn't started it, but the other kid would be out for a few days because the Royals didn't let anybody else finish it.

So Val knew what was waiting for him when he got out of the bathroom, and while he was sort of surprised when he first emerged and saw the gathering of grim-faced assholes around the door, once he'd assessed the body language, body odor, and the lack of hygiene among those surrounding him, he had absolutely no illusions as to where this trainwreck was heading.

But he was really curious as to who had set it in motion.

Val glanced around, his gaze cutting to the guy toward the front. The leader of sorts.

"Heya, faggot," the guy snarled, and Val tried not to roll his eyes.

"That's original," he said. "'Cause I'm a gay truck driver. I've never been called a name before. I bet you set your brains on fire you thought of that so fast."

The man gaped for a moment, and there was some uneasy shifting as the men tried to make out whether they had been insulted or not.

Val sucked in his stomach and adjusted his stance, every molecule of physics in his brain devoted to how he was going to set these bodies into motion and get them to stay that way until something uncomfortable stopped them.

"Look," Val said, bouncing on his toes a little. "I know what you guys think is going to happen, and I know what I'm planning to happen. But before we start, I need you to answer me one question."

"Yes, you are a total fag," said the twitchy blond guy next to the bruiser with the grizzled brown hair.

Val gave the guy—he could have been between twenty-five and forty-five, because meth was a bad drug that aged you fast—a grim assessment.

"You should go to rehab," he said kindly. "Your liver is starting to go. You're getting sallow, and your teeth, man, that's just bad."

The twitchy guy's lower lip started to wibble, and Val watched him stutter back, as though the words hurt worse than the fists were about to.

Well. The truth really was a weapon.

"But none of that is my question," Val said, pulling his fists up defensively in front of his face. These guys weren't smart, and they weren't fast, but all the guys who weren't twitchy were big enough to level him if one of their punches landed solidly. Val's defensive stance was what would save his bacon. As he squared up, he glanced out the window, wondering if there were more of these assholes waiting to rush in from the wings.

He caught Rory McCauley staring at him from next to the semi, and suddenly Val didn't need his question answered, even though he'd continue to ask it anyway. This whole ambush had nothing to do with Val and everything to do with distracting both men away from the goddamned trailer.

Val pointed at Rory and the truck and mouthed, "Stay there," before returning his attention back to the bulldozer with the grizzled hair and the red ballcap.

"What's your question?" snarled Bulldozer. "We don't got all night."

"You don't," Val conceded. "In fact you're all giving up time on the road to attack somebody who hasn't done a damned thing to you. Who put you up to it? Did someone just get on your channel and stir shit, or was there more?"

There was a frantic meeting of eyes around the circle then, like Val had suddenly produced the magic word, and Val got it.

"There was more," he said, starting some subtle footwork. "Somebody offered to pay you, right?"

Bulldozer started to circle him then, the rest of them forming a tiny ring in the hallway of the minimart outside the men's restroom.

"What's it to you?" Bulldozer asked. "Not like you're gonna be conscious for it anyway!"

He offered a playful jab, not a real swing, more like a test. Whatcha gonna do about it? Val ducked and deflected, not putting all his strength into it because he didn't want them to know how strong he was. Not yet.

"Well," Val breathed, dodging another jab, batting it away from his face with a bit more force, "if I do survive, I need to know what to tell the USDA. Because whoever wants you to beat me up, is trying to—oop!" He almost didn't duck in time, but he watched as his opponent overbalanced himself working for the big swing. Good.

"Trying to what?" the big man asked, spitting on the floor as intimidation.

"Trying to sabotage my load," Val said. And here it came, the committed punch—powerful but slow. So slow.

Val had time to weave to the side and let his assailant hit the concrete wall behind him with all his force. The sound of knuckles cracking on the wall made everybody gathered there wince a little, and while the leader howled and shook his hand, which was bleeding and probably broken, the twitchy blond guy stepped up and caught Val with a glancing blow on the cheek.

Val took the hit and backed up, giving him a feral grin.

These guys were slow, and they weren't bright, and they were hoping for a reward from two guys Val was pretty sure would bug out when they found Rory there, fully armed.

Twitchy blond guy took another swing, and this one Val blocked and then ducked under and hit the guy's ribs with crushingly hard blows. The man doubled over, winded, and Val caught him with a haymaker under the jaw, dodging away when he went down, and Val was left facing three, his adrenaline up and absolute fury burning in his gut.

The three remaining assailants gave each other uneasy looks, and Val grinned at them, blood dripping from the blow to his cheek and a cut lip. Deliberately he held out his hand and made the universal gesture for "bring it" before lifting his fists in the defensive stance again.

Oh yeah.

Bring it on .

VAL STAGGERED out of the minimart, half a bag of ice held on his eye and cheek, and tried not to trip over the unconscious bodies of his assailants as he cleared the door.

What he saw as he drew near the truck made his blood run cold, and he reluctantly dropped the ice bag and reached for the .45 in the pancake holster under his shirt.

Rory twitched an eyebrow his way, shook his head, and kept his shotgun trained on the two guys—Val assumed they were the Cassidy brothers—who were regarding him with sour expressions and hands raised in the air.

Val pulled his .45 anyway and tried not to let his hands shake as he circled around to the side of the brothers, keeping them tracked against the trailer.

"Now," Rory continued, like he'd been in the middle of a speech, "I don't know who you are—"

"The rightful owners of this trailer," snapped the older, bigger guy.

"Mm… no," Rory told him. "I saw the original contracts, and once the trailer left your premises and until it's delivered into the hands of the buyer, it is our responsibility. That's not me, that's not my opinion, that is the law."

"Like you would know anything about the law!" the younger guy scoffed. "You're trying to steal our trailer!"

"And you're trying to defraud the guy who bought the contents," Val snapped, drawing their attention to him. Both of them took sight of the .45 and scowled. "Care to tell us why?"

The pair of them exchanged glances, and then they all heard the sound at once.

The Cassidy brothers broke first, turning and bolting for their truck, but when Val would have given chase, Rory stopped him with a harsh exclamation.

"No! Val, if those cops get here to question us, they'll do the dirty work for those guys—we'll be here all night, and God knows if the refrigeration unit has a whole day in it, even with your brother's magic touch."

Val grunted and turned around, grabbing his bag of ice before running toward the cab, his head throbbing in time to every step.

"You get the passenger side," Rory said, hoisting himself up on the driver's side. The truck was still in idle, so Val—who had already seen him drive and park—trusted him some more and ran around the truck, double-checking the back gate as he went.

There was a screwdriver wedged between the two door panels, like somebody had been trying to break in while he and Rory had been otherwise occupied.

Shit . What in the hell was going on?

Val finally consigned the bag of ice to the parking lot and pulled himself up, conscious of the strain in his shoulders, his neck, and his battered hands, using the handles on the gate, and pulled out the screwdriver, tucking it under the wheel well of the rig next to his while hardly breaking his own stride.

He was settled and Rory was taking the side road out of the gas station, the one that circumvented the main thoroughfare all the police cars were currently coursing down, before the first unit pulled into the lot.

Rory kept driving, nice and steady, as Val gave him directions to a back way toward the one freeway that would get them where they were going while the whole alien spaceship of Phoenix Arizona taunted them with light pollution, restaurants, and a really good time, far beyond their reach.

"Shit…," Val muttered, slouching in his seat as Rory found his cruising speed down a little-used frontage road, kept dark and lonely by a tall embankment blocking off the freeway.

"You said it," Rory responded, and Val felt more than saw the quick once-over as Val leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.

"I am not okay with that," Rory said. "You look like shit, by the way."

"What, no praise for fighting like a Trojan?" Val asked, a little bit hurt. "I mean, what's a guy got to do to impress you?"

"You want to impress me?" Rory told him. "Go fetch your first aid kit in the back and sit tight. First pullout I see, you're getting tended to, buddy."

Val grunted, wanting to tell him that he could very well fix his own boo-boos but not exactly sure he could tend to the swelling over his eye or the cut leaking blood from his cheek. With a sigh, he hauled himself out of the passenger seat and made his way to the back compartment, sat on the edge of the bed, and pulled the first aid kit out of one of the netted bags strapped to the driver's seat.

He grunted, everything hurting more as he jounced on the bed and unlaced his boots. The plan had been for Rory to drive and him to rest anyway, right? This was just getting ready.

And while he was doing that, he might as well shuck his jeans and fold them on the floor behind the driver's seat, and oh! This pillow on the passenger's side was right there , and there was no reason not to rest his head on it. The purring of the truck, the dappled shadows of the sodium street lamps overhead layering the darkness with a weak pink light—he'd always loved driving, riding, the rumble of floorboards under him as he was driven through the night.

And God, he was tired. It was, what? Nine o'clock now, after their fateful rest stop? The fight? The two days without sleep prepping? He'd been awake at three that morning, and it was so much his bedtime…. He would shut his eyes for a minute. Wait for Rory to find that pullout. It would be fine.

He woke to the sharp smell of antiseptic and Rory's rough fingers probing his wound.

"Ouch," he mumbled, liking the firmness of Rory's ministrations even as they stung. "You couldn't just let me sleep?"

"Here," Rory said. "Open your eyes."

And then he held Val's eye open and shined a penlight in it.

"Ouch!" Val repeated, flailing.

"Stop it!" Rory snapped. "Let me get the other one."

"You suck," Val told him, but he did what Rory told him to because somewhere in his tired brain percolated the thought that there was a very good reason for this.

And then—aha!—there it was.

"I don't have a concussion," he whined. "It's just my bedtime."

There was another cool spray of antiseptic on his cuts and an ice mask over his blackened eye before Rory's hands started dealing with his knuckles.

"I'm sure it is," Rory murmured, "but since I wasn't real keen on you lapsing into a coma in the back of the truck, I'm sure you'll forgive me for checking."

"Whatever," Val grumbled. "Can I go back to sleep now?"

"No," Rory told him gruffly, and Val could see his callused, long-fingered hands over Val's own as he applied antiseptic and bandages, and for a moment there was quiet between them. In fact the air grew a little thicker, and the pain of Val's injuries faded.

"Why not?" Val asked into the suddenly charged darkness. Rory had turned on a lamp affixed to the back of the driver's side headrest, but the recessed area of the bed was still dark.

"Because you scared the shit out of me," Rory confessed softly, smoothing the bandage over with his thumb. "And I'd like to make sure you're okay."

"Not my first fight," Val told him, eyes still on their hands. Rory seemed to be holding Val's fingers less in the name of medical care and more to just… just hold them. To give caresses with rough fingertips and give Val a much-needed sense of connection.

"First fight I've ever seen you in," Rory said, and it wasn't Val's imagination; he was leaning closer in the darkness. "First time I ever took in those odds and actually saw somebody win!"

Val wanted to chuckle like an evil overlord, because yeah, he was proud, but what came out was dryer, softer, almost seductive. "Don't fuck with a Royal asshole," he said, going back on the family pun.

Rory echoed his sound. "That's a shame," he murmured. "I had something like that in mind."

"Yeah, all you want to do is fuck with it," Val grumbled, still disappointed.

"Maybe, maybe not," Rory hedged. He'd pulled out another wipe from Val's kit and was currently getting rid of the blood drips around the bandages, cleaning Val up for show, not for medical necessity. "I never know that sort of thing until afterwards."

Val took a moment to digest this, and it didn't sit well.

"Worst lottery ever," he decided. "Whole reason I don't play anymore."

"Says you!" Rory laughed, but there was a defensive edge to his voice.

"Seriously. Your partner goes into it thinking, ‘Hey, I've got a chance!' and after the sex? You're like, ‘Sorry, it was great, but it wasn't, you know, forever sex, so see you around!' It's like gambling with dick."

Rory winced. "You don't find a lot of men hoping for forever—feels like any relationship's a gamble."

"Doesn't have to be forever," Val defended, which was hard because now that the antiseptics were no longer stinging his nose, Rory was starting to smell good , like leather and dust and diesel. Val wasn't actually fond of diesel, but it was part of his world, and it gave him comfort. "Doesn't have to be just a night. Sometimes there's the hope there will be lots of nights. Maybe somebody to introduce to your parents. Someone to play with your nieces and nephews. Somebody to hug you when you leave for a job. Not forever on a silver platter. Hope."

Rory rocked back on his heels and surveyed his handiwork before focusing his dark eyes on Val's. "You've got some music in your soul for a man in your profession. Where'd you get that music?"

"Our mother," Val said, smiling slightly. "Made us listen to musical theater. Almost constantly."

"You know the downside of that, right?" Rory asked, smiling slightly.

"Most of it ends sad?" Val supplied. "Yeah, I know. But before the sad part, which, you know, happens to most humans in the course of a lifetime, there's always a bright, shining moment when people are glad to be human. That's why my mom loves it. I guess she gave us that."

Rory grunted. "Can't find fault with that," he said after a moment. "That's… well, I may be able to finish the end of Les Mis after all."

Val's laugh was a little goofy—probably tiredness, maybe a little bit of breathlessness. Rory had been crouching so close to him, and his head hurt and his knuckles hurt, and he was very aware that they weren't out of the woods yet. Tomorrow. One more stop to refuel and some backroads and they'd be at the lab, able to make a bona fide delivery to get the product checked out.

It didn't take a genius to see there would be problems, but first they had to get there with the refrigeration unit intact.

As if on instinct, Val's eyes went to the exterior of the cab, where far in the distance he saw a pair of headlights in the rearview.

"You'd better get going," he whispered, and Rory nodded. But before he reached to turn off the light, he feathered a kiss across Val's split lip, and then one on his unbandaged cheek.

"I'll be listening to Les Mis, " he murmured. "See if I can find those daisies and rainbow sparkles."

"Oh, it'll hurt," Val told him, searching Rory's dark eyes. "The important thing is to see if the hurt is worth it."

Rory's mouth twitched up. "I have no doubts," he said, before kissing Val again—just a little bit more firmly—switching off the overhead light, and moving to the front of the cab.

Val allowed himself to nod off this time, and while he was still worried—trouble was still out there—he found it easy to put himself in Rory's capable hands.