Pitstop, CH 05 (Patreon)

The town’s pretty quaint, And I mean that in a good way. I’m serious. 

Every block we walk by once we leave the garage has more tree coverage than buildings. The most I see until we hit the end of the street is two of them. There might have been a third house on one block, but there were so many trees, I can’t be sure.

Then we walk around a block of warehouse types buildings connected with some sort of covered…pipes? Conveyor? I have no idea what they might be for. Being so far from everything, I want to say it’s farming related, but I don’t see any farming equipment. I don’t even think the street we’re on is large enough for one. Those always look pretty big in movies.

I think the most impressive thing is how many people wave at us. At least one each block, either on the porch of a house, or working in the yard, looks up and waves, yelling a hello. I mean, there we are, a trio of strangers, one of which is a pretty scary looking black man, and it’s like we’re long-lost relatives.

After my third uncomfortably returned wave, I lean close to Tristan and whisper. “I think we somehow ended up where all the nice people go when they die.” He doesn’t have a reply.

He’s probably busy doing threat assessment on each of them.

“You okay?” I ask Emil, who’s trying to seem casual, but I see his desire to hunch in on himself.

“Does it make sense I feel kind of exposed?” he answers, and I’m at a loss as to how to answer.

“You like to blend in,” Tristan says. “In Phoenix, you’ve grown to depend on the ingrained habit of people actively not looking at strangers. This location doesn’t seem to have that tendency.”

“Being noticed hasn’t done me a lot of good until recently,” He replies morosely.

“If you want,” Tristan offers, “this can be a good exercise to practice ensuring people see what you want them to, so that while they might notice a person standing where you are, that person wouldn’t be you.”

“I don’t see either of you doing that.”

“It’s because to me they don’t matter,” Tristan replies. “And I know that even without doing anything, because of my skin color, it isn’t me they see, but the preconception of who I am.”

“I don’t think they’d be waving if that was true,” I say, smirking. “You know, black men being monsters and all that.” I take his arm and lean into him. “My monster.”

“What about you, Pop? How come it doesn’t bother you to be noticed like this?”

I laugh. I have to. 

“Come on, Emil. You know me. The only thing I can do is change the intensity of who I am. And I don’t really go below six on a scale of one to ten. The only thing I can do is borrow Raphy’s ID when I want to be sure it’s him they noticed instead of me, and I only bother with that if I’m going to sneak into a place.” I tighten my arm and look at Tristan. “Our first date.”

“You are weird,” Emil says.

“And you love me for it.”

Emil makes gagging noises.

“But I do.” Tristan gives me a gentle kiss and someone wolf-whistles. When I look, a man who has to be past a hundred gives me a thumbs up.

“Okay. There has to be something wrong with this place. Don’t we go back like a decade for every hundred miles away from a major city? In this place, we aught to be sometime in the eighteen hundreds. What’s with all this easy acceptance?”

“I think someone should let go of his own preconception,” Emil says.

“I do not have preconceptions,” I reply. “What I have are well documented facts.”

“Nineties cartoons don’t count as valid sources,” he counters and I sputter.

“Take that back.”

“Nope.”

“Tristan—”

“Emil’s right.”

“Why did I marry you again?”

He locks gaze with me. “Because of how I make you scream,” he states so matter-of-factly, my legs go weak.

“I’m going to be sick,” Emil says.

I mouth a “I love you,” to my man, then get my legs solidly under me and focus on walking. I’m pretty sure that as accepting as they are here. Me, rearranging myself under their gazes, will not be acceptable.

So that’s exactly what I do.

Interestingly, no one comments on that.

* * * * *

Like Ralf said, the motel faces the church. Well, the building’s got a cross on top, and I think that automatically makes whatever’s under it a church, but the thing’s barely larger than a decent farmhouse. I know they aren’t all like the cathedrals Dear Old Dad dragged the family to when I lived there—okay, everyone other than me went there willingly—but I really thought there was something of a minimum size requirement in which to cram all the desperate to believe there was someone up there they could beg to stop administering the torture.

The motel, in comparison, is…quaint, and I mean that in the best way possible. One long and low building with five rooms and matching parking spots in front of them, all empty. If not for the direction, I might not have known this was our destination, because the name’s nothing more than a wooden plaque over the door. It is larger enough to be seen from the road, but there’s nothing to draw the eye to it.

I guess that in a place like this, not having stranger stop by is a good thing?

Small bells tinkles as Tristan pushed the door open.

“Be right there!” a woman calls from the back. “Maurice, if that’s you, the muffins are under the counter. One! You take one more than that and I swear to all that’s holy that I will tell your wife.”

“Not Maurice!” I call.

“I wouldn’t want to be him,” Emil mutters.

“Then feel free to reach over. They’re fresh from this morning. Raspberry muffins. I’ll be right there as soon as I’ve wrestled that old thing into behaving.” She grunts what might have been obscenities as I leaned over the counter and looked under it. A platter of muffins does rest there. I grab two with a hand, and one with the other. Emil takes the one I offer, and Tristan gives me his, now patented, ‘you know I don’t eat those kinds of food,’ look.

“Do you really want to offend her by not eating the food she prepared for us?” I whisper.

He rolls his eyes, takes it, and reached over the counter to put it back.

“Your loss.” I bite into mine and make the most wonderful sounds of enjoying eating them. “What?” I ask at the flat look he gives me. “It’s really that good.” And it is. “Try it and you’ll know.”

“He’s right,” Emil says. “Not about you trying it, but it is really good.”

“Thank you,” the woman says, stepping out from the back office. “My grand-mother’s recipe.”

“Two rooms,” Emil says before she can ask us anything. “We need two rooms. I am not sleeping in the same room as your two.”

“We need two adjoining rooms,” Tristan says, “connected.”

“I’m afraid we don’t have one of those.”

“Then please give me the one at the other end of the motel,” Emil pleads.

“I take it the trip here was tense?” she asks, sounding more amused than worried.

“That came and went,” I answer, and Emil groans.

“They’re loud,” he says.

“Adjoining,” Tristan says, as if this exchange hasn’t happened.

“Dad,” Emil whines. “Come on, there’s no way the walls have anything resembling the kind of sound insulation needed, so I won’t hear you.”

She’s connecting the dots; if the blush is anything to go by.

“Then you can use the earplugs that you should have put in you bag,” Tristan says. “Adjoining,” he repeats when she looks at him, and he takes his wallet out to pay. “Can I leave a deposit for a week? Our vehicle is being repaired and I won’t know how long that will take until tomorrow.”

“Hun, you don’t have to worry about money until you leave.” She opens a drawer and takes two keys out. “Rooms one and two. There’s a menu in the rooms, but I’m the cook, the receptionist and handy woman, so I can’t promise timely delivery. Unless you absolutely can’t leave the room, I’d recommend you walk to Family’s Diner. It’s just down the road.”

“Are you sure?” I ask. Nothing triggers my ‘this is a diner’ sense, but in a place like this, I’m no longer sure what one of those will look like. There were a couple of buildings with gravel lots large enough for decent parking.

“Yes, it’s on the other side of the highschool.”

Okay, I guess ‘down the road’ reaches further in a place like this than I’m used to.

We step outside, and it’s only a dozen more to room number one, which is Emil’s.

“Forty-five minutes,” Tristan says as our son unlocks the door.

I expect his room matches ours. One queen size bed against the wall that is surprisingly not squeaky as I sit on it. Tristan closes the blinds as I turn the light on. I slip my APX between the mattress and box spring, then open the duffel bag, and another one goes in the side table’s drawer. Tristan puts an Eagle in one of the dresser drawer, and a slim model behind the mirror. He tapes another under the dresser, then the bed, while I place on in the fake flower put on the table by the door. 

In the, small, bathroom one goes behind the toilet, one in the medicine cabinet, and one under the sink. Then I turn the shower on, undress, and step in. Tristan joins me, and we press together in the definitely too small shower, but it isn’t like we have a problem with being close. And it makes washing each other very interesting.

And frustrating, since again, it doesn’t lead to anything other than my balls getting bluer. And I’d just about finally kind of, sort of, forgotten about the training we did while waiting for the tow.

And now it’s a family meeting that acts as my very own cock block.

* * * * *

I’m on the bed, cross-legged, typing on the military grade laptop that is the only thing I’ve been able to use since we left Phoenix. When the knock comes.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad. But it’s a laptop. I’m sorry, but just what do you expect me to be able to do with one laptop?

What I’m doing is scraping online news sites for anything about us or the human trafficking ring we took down. Not that there were any stories about them before. They were that good, but I figure that with the head of that snake with a bullet between the eyes, something will float to the surface as it implodes.

It’s the right sequence of knocks, so Tristan opens the door, Desert Eagle in the other hand, and lets Emil in, looks the empty parking lot over, then closes the door. I’m not watching him do that. I just know my man that well.

“What’s the plan?” Emil asks. “Are we waiting for the repairs? We pretty much have all the necessaries.”

“Ignoring the same issues as earlier still exists,” I say, closing the laptop, “unless we have a reason to think the mechanic and his…boyfriend?”

“No,” Tristan answers. “They aren’t intimate, or have that kind of emotional connection.”

“Okay, roommate. Unless we think they’re secretly bounty hunters who engineered everything to get us here for the reward, I don’t see a reason to do anything other than wait. There hasn’t been anything about us in the news in months, so even if someone here keeps up on what happens four states over, they wouldn’t connect us to that. We’re pretty remote and the most noticeable thing about us is out of sight in that garage.”

“I agree,” Tristan says, “pending doing a proper recon of the town.”

“Is that what we’ll focus on?” Emil asks.

“It’s what your dad is going to focus on,” I reply. “Knowing him. Tomorrow I’m going to look for a place with decent internet I can use to mask my presence and see if I can dig deeper into the black market connections the bounty hunters have been using to connect to this mysterious bounty board.”

“You haven’t mentioned coffee,” our son says, eyeing the coffee machine on the dressed.

I glare at it. “Whatever that is, it isn’t coffee.”

“Can I wander around?” Emil asks.

“Are you going to be comfortable with everyone noticing you?” I counter.

He shrugs. “I’m not going to get used to it hiding in a room. And like dad said, I can work on being someone else while we’re here.”

I put the laptop on the bed-side table. “Unless there’s anything else to discuss, me and your dad have something to take cared of.”

“I’m gone,” Emil says, heading for the door.

“Remember to put the earplugs in,” I say.

He gives me the finger. “I’m going wandering. If I don’t hear you screaming when I walk by again, then I’ll consider going to my room.” He looks at Tristan. “You know they make this thing called a gag, right? You put it in his mouth, tie it at the back of his head and you can do anything you want to him and I’m able to sleep.”

Tristan smiles. “I like hearing him scream.”