Blood and Destruction

UGH.

Val stopped to refuel around ten in the morning, a growing sense of urgency pushing him as far as he could reasonably go without risking the fuel needed for the refrigeration generator. He figured he had a decent margin. He could get within five hundred miles of his destination if he pushed the rig until it died (and whoever did that shit should be shot, because it would be a terrible death rattle of a good friend), but he'd made good time through the morning.

This stop was a decent compromise.

He'd been standing on the step in front of the door while the pumps whirred, yawning slightly and thinking he'd take Rory up on the rest of his sleep, when he saw the black F-450 turn into the parking lot.

Anxiously he glanced at the pumps, and they were so close… three-hundred gallons, two-hundred, one….

He'd just unhooked the pump on the passenger side and resealed the tank when the truck squealed into the semi lot, the two guys parking it right in front of the rig, where they'd incur a zillion dollars in fines and maybe even some jail time for endangerment, which is what told Val they were serious.

Knowing how the enemy worked now, he sprinted around the backside of the rig, and sure enough there was one of the men from the night before, eye swollen shut, trying to jimmy the doors with yet another screwdriver, and he saw the shadow of a guy who'd pulled in after the 450 lurking in the shade beyond the parking lot. Apparently these guys traveled in packs and the guys in the F-450 were for distraction.

Val didn't waste any time.

The guy with the screwdriver was standing on the back step, the better to get leverage for what he was trying to do. Val didn't slow down, just changed course, took the guy out at the knees, and kept running as he toppled sideways, howling as he hit.

By the time Val had rounded the back end of the rig and was hauling ass for the front, he saw the smaller of the two guys reach for the handle of the driver's side door to haul himself up.

Val had put the gun in his holster when he'd pulled into the gas station, and he drew it out now and shot two shots overhead toward the desert backing the service station before shouting, "Get your fucking hands off my rig!"

"You stole our load!" screamed the blond guy, but he was standing with his hands shaking over his head.

"And if that was true, you would have sent the cops after us instead of trying to sabotage us yourself. Jesus, you guys, what in the hell is in this refrigerator unit? Some sort of hybrid sperm of an alligator and God?"

Both men gaped at him, and in that breath of quiet, Val heard the distinctive sound of a shotgun being racked.

Rory's voice through the now open driver's side window was laconic and calm.

"Now me," he said as though he'd been part of the conversation all along, "I'd like to see a cross between an alligator and God, but I'm thinking giant gorillas and Martians myself."

Val's adrenaline dump slowed a notch at the sound of Rory's voice, but he was still on high alert.

"Why Martians?" he asked, reaching for the door. Rory leaned forward, and Val grabbed the strap on the side of the seat and hauled himself behind the driver's side while Rory watched his back.

"'Cause," Rory said, head and shoulders still outside the driver's window. "It might explain why these assholes keep trying the same trick. They don't know the ways of our people."

"Check your mirror," Val said quietly. "I left a man down back there and another in the shadows."

Rory's eyes darted, and he started to chuckle. "I do believe you broke the one guy's arm," he said just as quietly before turning his attention to the two men under the shotgun's purview. "Since I don't know who else is back there," he said, "I've got no place to go but forward. To that end, you have to the count of five to get that piece of crap out of my way before I take it out. Your man's got a gun," he said, his voice flinty. "You've got until he gets even with my window."

And then he pulled inside, rolled up the window, and put the truck in gear.

"You sure there was only one guy back there?" he asked.

"Nope," Val said, checking the window on the passenger's side and spotting another guy creeping up with a pistol in his hand.

"Well, their time is up," Rory muttered, and he stood on the clutch and put the rig in gear.

The black truck didn't quite make it out of his damage path. Rory took out the driver's side back quarter panel and sent the thing spinning through the big-rig lot before he pulled onto the highway and started driving like fury.

Val was in the passenger's seat by this time, hanging on to the sissy strap and praying the damned F-450 hadn't done too much damage to his chrome. He was a mite vain about his big royal purple rig; the paint job had been his brother's idea, and he'd worked hard to buy himself a good rig with a top-notch engine and then to pay it off.

He didn't want to have to replace it at this stage of the game.

Rory kept driving, not fast enough to get pulled over, but smoothly enough to make some time in the truck lane, and Val's heart started to slow down a bit.

"Goddammit," Rory muttered.

"What?" Val checked the mirrors again.

"We are not going to have time to get coffee, are we?"

Val chuckled weakly. "Don't make any sudden moves, okay?" he said.

He knew that some rigs had a truly righteous amount of space in the cabin. Val had gone for a more modest sleeper apartment, but he still had a stocked fridge and a microwave. After some noodling about in the back, he reached for the armrest of Rory's bucket seat to flip out the small food tray and the larger cup holder. He set one of those glass bottles of cold vanilla coffee in the cup holder and a heated breakfast burrito on the tray, along with some paper towels, before dodging into the back again and fixing his own breakfast. When he sat in the passenger's seat, he set his iced coffee in the cup holder, the burrito on the tray, and hung a bag of apples from the arm rest in the middle.

"Apples?" Rory asked, not sounding surprised.

"They keep the doctor away," Val said primly. Then he chuckled. "A good crisp apple in the morning—either that or a tart sweet mandarin… anyway, I was raised to appreciate fruit. You're welcome."

"Thank you," Rory said, inclining his head gratefully and taking a gulp of the coffee. "Seriously, I appreciate this."

Val sighed and picked up his own steaming egg burrito. "Well, you're welcome. I appreciate the backup."

Rory grunted. "I wish you didn't need it so damned bad. What in the hell do you think is in that refrigeration unit?"

Val sighed, because he'd been gnawing at this too. "I don't think it matters," he said after a moment. "It could be the jizz of a Martian alligator trained to eat God's gorillas, and it still wouldn't change one immutable fact."

"What's that?" Rory sounded very interested now.

"That whatever is back there, it is probably not what Vinnie paid for."

Rory made a little oof sound, but Val wasn't discouraged. It wasn't that he felt like Rory didn't believe him. It was just that Rory was easy to talk to like this, and Val needed someone to bounce his ideas off.

"Why do you think that?" Rory said.

"Well, the obvious," Val told him. "They started out trying to get us to take responsibility for a load they wouldn't let us inspect. When we didn't—and adhered to the original contract of inspecting the load upon delivery—that's when the brothers started following us and trying to get back there."

"Why do you think they keep trying to do that?" Rory asked slowly. Again Val got the feeling he had his own conclusions but wanted to hear what Val thought.

"I think they're trying to sabotage the load," Val said. "And it needs to be done before inspection so they can blame us. They've obviously been in some sort of transport business for a while—they've got contacts. And it's not like the road from Bakersfield to Austin has that many nooks and crannies in it for us to hide. They know we have to make a straight shot if we're going to get the product to the lab before the refrigeration unit conks out. Legal or not, they've got us in a tidy corner. It's on us to get that bull jizz or divine alligator Martian gorilla spunk to the lab where Vinnie arranged to test it, because whatever the lab results, it has to be untampered with or Vinnie loses everything."

Rory nodded, taking another gulp of his coffee. "So do we have enough gas to get us to our target destination?"

"Yeah," Val said, taking a slow, luxurious sip of his own. "And I might even go back and get some more of my sleep in the next hour." He suppressed a yawn. "I'm pretty sure breakfast will make me sleepy."

Rory chuckled. "As it should. You covered a lot of ground this morning."

Val shrugged modestly. "You have no idea what a luxury it is to have a driving partner. Part of me is all proud, going, ‘I can do it! I can do it!' but part of me is like, ‘Go sleep, you idiot! How often does this happen!'"

Rory's chuckle changed to an outright guffaw. "Well, then, get some sleep while you can, and then we can switch off in a few hours and talk."

"Talk?" Val asked through a full mouth.

"Oh yeah," Rory said. "If it's ten o'clock, I've got a good ten hours to convince you to sleep with me. As soon as you wake up, I see that as my window to shoot for the stars."

Val had to swallow quick or spit out burrito crumbs as he got caught in a laugh. "Oh my God , you're arrogant!"

"Nope," Rory said, sounding gratifyingly sober. "Just… determined. Now that I know what I want, I need to convince you that I deserve a shot at it."

Val gave his own soft chuckle. "You think it can be done?" he asked, and while he was doubtful—the man had proved himself competent, brave, and excellent at his job, but that still didn't make him boyfriend material—he did feel like Rory might have earned exactly what he was asking for. An honest conversation. How hard could that be?

"Have some faith in me, Perci val ."

Val snorted. "I'll have a conversation with you," he said firmly. "But I'm still not telling you my name."

"We'll see," Rory said sagely. "There are all manner of my personal boundaries I am willing to cross to be a candidate for your affections."

Val snorted again before he took another bite of his burrito and swallowed. "Look," he said, "I'd love to listen to more American Musical Theater when I go in the back, but maybe we can scan the CB frequencies for a bit."

"Think we'll pick up anything good?" Rory asked, which just confirmed Val's own opinion. They'd been so busy pushing through their next bit of driving they hadn't used one of the key weapons in any trucker's arsenal to do his job. His communications system.

"Only one way to find out," Val said grimly, and then he yawned. "But let's listen first, because I am going to have to finish my six-to-eight hours here, once my breakfast is all comfy in my stomach."

Briefly, Rory took one hand off the wheel to hold a hand to his chest.

"That is the cutest fucking thing I've ever heard a grown-up say in my life."

Val gave him a disgusted look. "My mother is a wonderful woman," he said. "Just because she's raised me with words that give some comfort is no reason to get all jealous."

Rory chuckled, but Val heard an underlying current that actually surprised him. He was jealous. Suddenly Val really did wonder about Rory's family, about what he'd grown up with. Maybe it was easy for Val to open up his heart to someone. He'd had breakups before, and even his worst one, right after his unsuccessful stint in junior college, had been met with soup from his mother, trips to the movies from his younger siblings, and a long-haul trip to Seattle with his father.

It was, Val remembered now, the thing that had cemented his career choice, that trip to Seattle.

Val knew he could survive heartbreak. Maybe Rory didn't. Maybe it was Rory who needed longer to think about it, or more practice to say it.

Val thought maybe, even if Rory hadn't succeeded by the time they reached Austin, he should give the guy just a little more time. So far, he'd been worth the risk.

THE CB chatter was disquieting in that there was none.

"This is weird," Val muttered, switching channels for the umpteenth time. "I look like tenderized steak. I know I left a mark on more than the asshole with a broken arm back in Santa Fe."

"Is that where we were?" Rory asked, only a little surprised. He'd gotten good at finding signs to the freeway, but Val kept to the truck stops outside of town. It all started to blur after a bit.

"Yeah," Val said. "Nice town. Honestly, cold in the winter, and I have to say I'm used to sea-level oxygen, but very rainbow friendly. Great little shops and stuff. I spent three days there once, waiting for a bonded return load in early December. Got a room at a little B and B, went Christmas shopping for the fam. Loved it."

Rory frowned. "Must have been worth it to sacrifice all those deliveries in the busy season."

Val shrugged, and Rory wished he could see the man's expression. "An older couple was moving their staircase from Bakersfield to Santa Fe to install in their daughter's house—apparently Dad had hand carved the thing, and it was for their daughter's custom home. I was supposed to bring a short trailer full of handmade quilts and craft supplies back from a church group to sell at a show in Long Beach. The organizer of the quilt show was in her eighties and had a health scare. It was, you know, the crazy season. My guys all had jobs, I had this one, and everybody was paying premium for deliveries, and, you know, I could have ditched the contract, paid the fees, and left them in the lurch, or I could have hung out, negotiated another contract with a full-sized trailer with some room, and helped the little old ladies out." Rory felt rather than saw his smug little smile. "And get my Christmas shopping done at the same time."

Rory had to laugh. "Buy any of their quilts?" he asked.

"Shh…." Val told him. "My mother thinks I shopped all over Santa Fe for it."

And Rory's little laugh turned into a full-throated guffaw. "You're something, Valatrix Royal."

Val was in the middle of a sip of water, which he promptly spit out. "No, no, no, no, no," he said, wiping his mouth on his shoulder. "Good Lord, where did that come from?"

"Valerie?" Rory asked in a small voice, not wanting Val to kill him in his sleep the next time he went to nap in the cozy little apartment.

"You know, there is a way to solve this mystery, don't you?" Val asked, exasperation in his laugh. His voice gentled. "C'mon, McCauley—"

"Rory."

"Okay, fine. You want me to call you Rory, I'll call you Rory. But if you want the whole of my name, I need to know. Why no past boyfriends? Why no vengeful exes—or needy exes or happy exes. I know you have a son, and I don't need his personal details, but…." He let out a breath. "You know my sister Laure has two teenaged boys, and Prock's on his third baby. You know Dean and I—and most of my siblings—got our sense of humor from my mom. It's unintentional, but a lot of my family history is on a silver platter for you to see. I-I've had too many ‘just passing throughs,' do you understand? I'd rather be alone. If you're going to keep hitting on me, the least you can do is tell me why you're just passing through."

Rory let out a breath. "It's… like I said," he started after a moment. "It's such a small story. I knocked up my wife, she had Anthony, and"—his voice softened—"he's the greatest. I mean, I know he's in his twenties, and I shouldn't be all sweet on my kid at this stage, but he's so awesome. Smart and kind, and he actually likes working with me at the gun range, which, you know, I love . He got a degree in business, and when we started the thing up, I thought, ‘Well, here goes a lot of money into nothing.' But he's making it work and… well, if you ever want to find me when I don't have a security gig, that's where I'll be."

"That's nice," Val said, and the sincerity in his voice did something soft to Rory's soul. It was easy to keep going once Rory heard that sound.

"It really is," Rory said quietly. "And I guess… I like to keep that private. I got in the habit of keeping things close to my vest. I came out right after I applied for Quantico, thinking, you know, I'd never get in. I was a small-town defense attorney, but I'd done some good work and won some shooting contests to be honest, and I guess I had a good reputation. So I couldn't be out at work—not twenty-five years ago—and I definitely couldn't be out when I was taking care of Anthony. And I couldn't ask anybody to share that kind of secrecy. It was bad enough that I had to live my life with a toe in the closet. I couldn't ask anybody else to do it. So… what did you call it? ‘Just passing throughs'? I got used to those. I'd have them when I was traveling with the bureau, and then back at home taking care of my son, I was a single, celibate dad."

"What about your ex?" Val probed delicately, and Rory could hear that it was delicate.

"She's the greatest," Rory said, wanting to put his hand to his heart but needing to keep both hands on the wheel through a wide curve in the road. "I mean that sincerely. I was her bride's attendant for her second wedding, and her husband is the sweetest guy. Good stepdad to Anthony, worships Connie's shapely little toes. I…." He sighed and went for full honesty. "I'd really love what she's got. I just, I guess I assumed it was all too late for me. I spent my life making Anthony my priority and my career a close second. I never planned for what I'd do if my career ended before I was ready."

"How did you get injured?" Val asked, and Rory grimaced. He couldn't say how he knew this was coming, but he had.

"It was… dumb," he said softly. "My partner and I were doing some basic investigating for another case. I'd just come off a big cartel bust, and I wasn't riding point on this one. The bureau tries not to burn people out. My partner and I were calling people in to be interviewed, doing sort of a gentle probe into our suspected drug dealer's personal life." He shook his head. "And we had recently finished interviewing the drug dealer's nephew. No big deal. The kid looked like he'd been part of the enterprise but was sort of a low-level flunky. We didn't have anything to hold him on, but we did get a lot out of him that he didn't realize he'd given. That sort of thing. So we make our report to the team leader, we're off duty, and we decide to stop for a soda and a candy bar on the way back to the hotel. We walk into the damned Wawa of all places, and the kid is there getting cigarettes. He sees us and…." Rory shook his head, still in disbelief. "I think he was rattled. He'd been questioned. He wasn't sure if he'd said what he oughta. He watched Marty and me walk into his safe space, I guess, and just pulled out his gun like this was the Wild West and started shooting." Rory shuddered and kept his concentration on the road and the multi-ton missile he'd be driving if he didn't pay attention for even a moment. "Marty went down first. I managed to make it behind a row of potato chips, but I caught a round in the thigh, which fortunately missed the artery." He shook his head again. "I had to take the kid out—I had to. We were down, he had the gun out, and his common sense had gone right out the window with it. He was shooting at random customers, the clerks. Marty and I needed medical attention, and he wasn't going to let anybody through."

Rory let out a sigh, and that moment came crashing down on him. Allen "Cookie Monster" Giles, in pants hanging down his ass and a Larry Byrd basketball jersey over his white T-shirt, his long yellow hair clumping with sweat, was holding the gun with that inexpert floppy wrist, arcing the barrel all over hell and back while he screamed for people to "Get out of my face!"

Nobody was in his face. Rory had pulled Marty out of his sight, and they were both hunkered behind the chip aisle, and everybody else had found some sort of shelter—including the seven-year-old boy right across from Rory, with limpid brown eyes the size of dinner plates.

He'd looked so much like Anthony, Rory's stomach cramped with it. Rory's gun had been comfortable in his hand, every training exercise, every drill taking over his muscles, taking over his lizard brain, until it was the most natural thing in the world to push himself up and call out, "FBI, drop your weapon!"

And when Allen Giles had turned his gun toward Rory, it had been training that allowed him to fire.

Marty had survived a chest wound, but his fitness had been compromised, and he'd retired to a desk job. He'd lost forty pounds with PT, and he'd always had a good analytical mind, so the move hadn't bothered him too much, but Rory? Rory just couldn't.

He'd loved the day-to-day variation the job had offered, the flying from place to place, the integration of technology and evidence collection and human psychology that came into play with every case. He'd accrued twenty years—he took his retirement, invested it in the gun club, and Anthony had… well, quit his job in San Francisco and come to live with him in the house Rory had bought about three miles from the range. Rory had gotten his PI's license and kept his gun licenses current, and the combination of the income for his security gigs and what he and Anthony made for giving shooting lessons and running the range with military precision had kept them both well fed and, in Anthony's words, "Not bored stupid."

It had been a good life these last three years, but even Rory had to admit he'd begun to feel the hole left by devoting his younger years to his work and his kid. Anthony had an active—and varied—life dating women and men, and Rory had often thought wistfully about the choices his son had now that he had not.

He'd assumed those choices long gone.

But Val and his stubborn insistence on not a "just passing through" was reminding him of what it had felt like to believe those choices were for him , and not only for his son.

"Rory?" Even over the noise of the engine and the rattle of the road, Rory could hear the gentleness in Val's voice, and he remembered what he'd been talking about before his mind had leapfrogged.

"I shot him," Rory said, crashing back down to earth.

"That must have been hard," Val told him. "I'm sorry."

Rory grimaced. "Well, I'm not sorry Marty's still alive, or that I am. Or the kid and his mom who were just in there for some road snacks and a soda. It… it was a sucky decision to make, but I'd make it again."

Val grunted. "I'm glad you did," he said.

Rory sent him a sharp glance before returning his attention to the road.

"Why is that?" he asked dryly.

"For one thing, I'm not sure anybody else would have had my back quite so effectively," Val told him. "Except maybe Dean, but if I put Dean in this sort of danger, our parents would kill me."

Rory tried to keep his expression neutral, not sure if it was his place to tell Dean's family that Dean often worked violent fugitive task forces, which while not as dangerous as what bomb technicians faced, did have its share of risk.

Val's grim snort told Rory that even if Val's family didn't know, Val had probably guessed.

"Don't say a word," Val told him, confirming Rory's suspicions. "We all know he's probably working in a dangerous department and that his load of crap that he's in no real danger on any particular day is particularly pungent and nowhere close to the truth."

"But…," Rory prodded.

"But what we don't know, we can't tell Mom and Dad—and that's sort of a tacit agreement the whole family has made so they don't worry."

Rory chuckled. "My God, your family. I remember catching Dean texting on his lunch hour once. The expressions he was making, how excited he got when he scored a point—I don't remember having that much fun with anybody besides my own kid."

Val shrugged and then yawned. "Yeah," he said when the yawn had let go. "We're close. We'd die for each other. Which is probably why Laure and Dean risked setting us up together."

"Wait, what?" Rory asked, but Val, chuckling, squeezed his shoulder gently and yawned again.

"I'm gonna take that nap you keep offering," he said. "In the meantime, turn the CB off and keep listening to music. If you really want to turn my key, I'm a sucker for Jesus Christ, Superstar and Into the Woods ."

"You'll listen to Chicago and like it," Rory grumbled.

"Indeed I will," Val said and then disappeared into the cabin.

Rory pulled up the soundtrack, but as the opening chords of "All That Jazz" came on, Rory realized that in the course of their conversation, he'd completely forgotten his goal.

And then he realized that the hope of sleeping with Val Royal was not as all consumingly important as the role of being with the man was becoming.

He remembered that moment of watching Dean text, how animated he'd become, how Dean Royal's flat brown eyes had warmed and crinkled at the corners and how a man who had cut his reputation on being icy and in control had suddenly seemed warm and human and approachable.

Val was all of those things. What would it be like to take a break from his job and find a dry, funny text from Val, inviting Rory to spar with him, goading him to be witty, to poke the man into swiping back.

Their conversation so far had been intriguing, and as much as Rory wanted that powerful, no-nonsense body, he was now hungering as much for Val's company .

When this job was done and they were both back in California, Rory wondered what he'd have to do to make "just passing through," turn into "always wanting to see you."

As he started humming along to "All that Jazz," he realized he just might have what it took.