Headcase - Necessary Evils #4 - Ch. 18 (Patreon)

Chapter 18

Asa

Asa had woken with Avi on his mind and a skull-splitting headache. They’d been apart too long. Was he feeling it, too? Maybe it was all the talk of Avi between Asa and Zane last night. Maybe the distraction of Zane was no longer the buffer it had been. His near constant presence made Avi’s absence feel even bigger.

Asa buried his face against Zane’s neck, smiling when his head tilted to give him better access. “Time to get up, Lois.”

“I’m totally awake,” he grumbled, voice sleep-soaked.

“That’s what you said when I scraped you off the bathroom floor at five a.m.—”

“A gentleman wouldn’t bring that up,” Zane rasped.

“A gentleman wouldn’t bring up that you weigh a lot more when my dick isn’t buried inside you.”

Zane crushed his face deeper into the pillow. “That’s scientifically inaccurate.”

“Whatever you say, Lois, but it’s a good thing I don’t skip leg day.”

“Shh,” Zane said, holding up a finger. “I’m awake. I mean it.”

“And that’s what you said when I woke you up at six-thirty to drink water. And again, at seven, when I made you take ibuprofen.”

Zane squirmed away from him to do one of those big joint-popping stretches he did every time he woke up, then rolled back into Asa’s arms, facing him. “Maybe I’d be more well rested if you’d stop waking me up.”

Asa bit the tip of Zane’s nose. “Maybe I wouldn’t have had to wake you up so many times if you hadn’t drank a liquor store,” Asa countered.

Zane buried his face against Asa’s bare chest, wiggling his knee between his thighs, clearly intent on going back to sleep. “This is nice,” he murmured with a contented sigh.

“Uh-uh. No time for that, sleepyhead. We have to go to my dad’s.”

Zane leaned back, cracking open painfully bloodshot eyes. He had drool dried on his face, his hair was a wreck, and he smelled like vomit and stale vodka, but if given the opportunity, Asa would have gathered him back into his arms and let him sleep off his hangover.

“Did somebody call?”

“Yeah, Lucas and August worked up victimology, and they want us to meet at Dad’s house so we can help narrow it down.”

“How am I supposed to leave the house like this?” Zane asked pitifully.

“Buck up, little camper. We could finally be close to solving this thing, and that means we can finally get with the killing. That’s the fun part.”

Zane stared at him for so long, Asa thought, for a minute, he’d broken him somehow. Then, finally, he said, “Did you ask me to fuck your brother last night?”

Asa blinked at him, dumbfounded. “Well, that was a hell of a non sequitur, Lois. No, I absolutely did not ask you to fuck my brother. Which, by the way, is a sentence I never expected to utter out loud.”

“Did I imagine that?” Zane said. “God, that’s embarrassing.”

“No, what I said was that my brother and I have shared…bedmates…in the past, and then you asked if I expected you to have sex with my brother.”

Zane frowned until creases formed between his brows in that way that he did when he was concentrating really hard. “What did you say?”

“I countered and asked if you wanted to fuck my brother.”

“Then what did I say?” Zane asked, dread leaching into his tone.

Asa grinned. “I believe you said it wasn’t a deal breaker.”

“Oh, my God,” Zane said around a groan. “That’s so embarrassing.”

“That you’d consider fucking my brother and Felix?”

“And Felix?” Zane shouted, then winced. “I’ve never even seen Felix. Why was I so horny?”

“I don’t know, but you definitely wanted to get down last night. Were rather insistent, even. I feared for my virtue,” Asa teased.

“I am willing to bet you don’t even know what that word means. For the record, I don’t want to bone your brother. I don’t even know him. Is he going to think that I’m, like…available to him if I live there?”

“No. I can say this with one hundred percent certainty. My brother will never look at you sexually unless you give very clear indicators that you’re open to it. He’s so wrapped up in Felix at the moment, he can’t see past him.”

Zane chewed on his bottom lip for a long moment, studying Asa. “Do you want me to be…open to the idea of, like, sleeping with him and/or Felix?”

“I was never trying to get you to have a four-way with my brother and his maybe boyfriend. But four men living together in a house can either make us really close or it could start a war. I just want us to all be comfortable together.”

“How comfortable?”

Asa sighed. Zane was definitely searching for something. “I don’t want anybody inside you but me. I don’t want you loving anybody but me. I don’t want you needing anybody but me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to go without something you need, something maybe I can’t give you, physically or emotionally.”

If possible, Zane frowned even harder. “Like what?”

“Sympathy. Understanding. Empathy. My brother can’t give you that either, no matter how much we’ve been taught to fake it. Others in the family can. Noah, Lucas, hell, even Jericho and my father. But Felix will likely be in our house on a daily basis, not them. I would understand if you became…close.”

“‘Close,’” Zane air-quoted.

“Yes, close. In whatever way works for the two of you. Though, like I said, I don’t want anybody else inside you. That’s just for me. But I can’t be…soft for you. I can try, but it might not be what you need. I don’t want you to feel like I’m not giving you everything you need. We’re going to be together for a long time.”

Zane threw his arms around Asa, causing him to tip over on top of him. “You’re so dumb. What we have is raw and painful and soul-snatchingly real. I like what you do for me. What you give me, physically and emotionally. In all the ways. Nobody has ever treated me as good as you.”

“That’s a really low bar, Lois,” Asa teased. “You have more bruises on you than a prize fighter. Just know, if I’m not giving you something that somebody else can, we can talk about it. But that person will only be inner circle. And that circle is very small.”

“Like a circle of four small?” Zane asked, a touch of humor returning to his voice.

“Yeah, that.”

“You really think Avi is in love with Felix?”

Asa thought about it, pushing Zane’s wild hair back from his forehead. “Not exactly. Well, maybe as much as he can be. Have you ever met two people who fight as foreplay? That’s Avi and Felix. They taunt each other so hard that it’s almost too intimate to watch. I think when they finally admit that there’s something underneath the fighting, that’s when it will all turn around and my brother will be shocked to find that he’s the one with a leash around his neck, not Felix.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a leash around the neck,” Zane said, sniffing delicately, pretending to be offended.

Asa attacked Zane’s neck, dragging his teeth over his skin. “Oh, I definitely like you leashed. And collared.” Asa forced Zane’s thighs open with his legs, rocking against him in a way that had Zane whimpering in seconds. He bit the shell of his ear. “I like the way you respond to pain. I like the way you look when you cry, when you beg.” He bit along his jaw. “When you’re so far gone, you don’t even hear the sick shit you beg for. But my brother, he’s the complete opposite. He wants to be hurt. Loves a good fight. Will never back down. The problem with him is that he thinks he'll always win.”

“But he won’t?” Zane gasped, already hard beneath Asa.

Asa chuckled. “Not against Felix, no. And Avi will never see it coming.”

“Keep doing that. It feels so good,” Zane begged.

“Uh-uh. You need to get in the shower. But, if you’re a good boy, I’ll suck you off while you get clean.”

“I never thought I’d let somebody call me a good boy without punching them in the face,” Zane mused.

“You can punch me in the face if you want, Lois. But I might retaliate by holding you down and reminding you who you belong to.”

“I don’t think that’s the deterrent you think it is,” Zane teased, pumping his hips up against Asa in a maneuver that in no way should have been sexy but was most definitely getting the job done.

“Nope, shower blowjobs is all you’re getting. Now, get your ass up.”

Asa rolled them before sitting up, depositing Zane on his feet. “Oh, God. I’m going to puke again.”

Then he was off, making haste to the bathroom. Asa sighed as the sound of retching reached him. Well, at least he was up. Asa stood, stretching his arms over his head, then cracking his neck. “Hang on, Lois. I’ll come and hold your hair back. That’s what married people do, right?”

###

When it came to looking disheveled, Zane was giving Archer a run for his money. Some might say Archer actually looked more alert than Zane, who currently laid with his head on the conference room table, drooling like a high school student sleeping through math class. He wore a black beanie cap, one of Asa’s Gemini hoodies, and a pair of jeans that molded to his ass and thighs in a way that almost made Asa forget about the meeting.

“What happened to him?” Noah asked, keeping his voice down, as if he was afraid to wake him.

“I’m no expert, but I’m going to guess alcohol,” Archer mused.

“Oh, you’re definitely selling yourself short,” Adam chided. “If there were a gold medal for alcoholism, you’d definitely be an Olympic champion.”

Archer tipped his fake cap at Adam as if he’d fed him a compliment. Maybe that was a compliment to Archer. Someday, scientists were going to study Archer’s liver under a jar and marvel about how it had survived years of abuse. He honestly couldn’t remember a time before the drinking started.

Lucas and August entered together, both in casual attire. Lucas was in jeans and a henley and August was in dress pants and a zip-front cardigan, which was the equivalent of jeans shorts when it came to August’s level of casual wear. Jericho was there as well, clothes clean but hands stained, and there was grease under his nails.

“Where’s Dad?” Adam asked August.

August shrugged, dropping into a chair while Lucas grabbed himself a diet soda from the fridge. “I thought he’d be in here.”

“What happened there?” Lucas asked with a smirk, pointing at Zane’s barely conscious form.

“Maybe he succumbed to his injuries,” Jericho mused. “Asa finally succeeded in fucking somebody to death.”

“Bold of you to assume I’ve never fucked a man to death,” Asa said before dropping his hand to rub Zane’s back. “Lois just needed some emotional support,” he added, using his pinky and thumb to mime drinking.

“Oof. Been there,” Noah said, looking at Zane sympathetically, before turning to Asa. “You know, I’m gonna need you to—”

Asa cut him off with an eye roll. “Yeah, yeah, replace your bottle. I’m aware. Seriously, where’s Dad? He’s never this late.”

Lucas shrugged. “We haven’t seen him. We left Cricket and the girls in the nursery and came straight down here.”

“Wait, the snot faucets are here?” Asa asked.

“I don’t think anybody whose boyfriend is actually drooling a puddle on the table gets to call our precious daughters snot faucets,” Lucas said.

Asa rolled his eyes but gently shook Zane. “Wakey, wakey, Lois. You can sleep later.”

Zane groaned but sat up, surreptitiously attempting to wipe the drool from his chin and the table.

“It’s too late. We’ve all seen your shame,” Asa said, handing him a bottle of water. “Drink this. All of it.”

“If the girls are here, you know where Dad is,” Archer said. “Hey, Calliope?”

Calliope’s voice echoed around them like the voice of God. “Yes, Captain Sparrow?”

Zane snickered, then quickly stopped when Archer raised one brow in his direction.

“Can you show us the nursery?”

“Any excuse to see those sweet, adorable angel babies,” Calliope crooned.

“See, that is the level of respect my children deserve,” Lucas said, looking at each of them in turn.

The screen came to life. Calliope panned around the sprawling nursery with its carousel-themed wallpaper and custom-built cribs, stopping when she found Thomas. He sat in the overstuffed rocker, his ankle crossed over his other knee, two tiny bundles nestled in his lap.

When Thomas had requested a nursery be built in his home for the girls, Asa had thought it strange. He was the grandfather, not the dad. Wasn’t spending thirty grand on a designer nursery a parent thing? But now, he got it. Or, at least, he got why his dad had wanted it.

The proof was there in 4k resolution. Even with no sound on, it was easy to see his father was in love. Whatever he was saying or doing had the two girls smiling and cooing and blowing spit bubbles. Maybe this was what his father needed. It probably hadn’t been easy raising six kids who could never love him and a teenager Asa was starting to suspect maybe loved him a little too much.

“Should we get him?” Noah asked hesitantly.

“I can fill him in afterwards,” August said. “Let’s just get started. Calliope, did you get the information I asked for last night?”

“Yep. Got it right here.”

Lucas opened the folder he’d had in his hand when he entered, putting on a pair of reading glasses. “Okay, August and I spent all night going over victimology and building a profiler of the handler. Here’s what we suspect. We’re looking for a white man between the ages of thirty to forty-five, likely still living at home. Someone with a massive chip on his shoulder who thinks the world owes him something.”

“Well, that’s sixty percent of the population,” Adam muttered under his breath.

August gave him a sharp look, and he dropped his head. “He has a knack for technology and believes he’s smarter than most people. He’s not. People will always think he’s slightly off. He has a God complex. And any perceived slight will become a vendetta with him whether the other party knows it or not.”

“Perceived slight? Like what?” Zane asked.

Lucas waved a hand. “It could be literally anything. Bumped him in line at Starbucks? Took his parking space? Didn’t smile back when he smiled at you? He will consider you an enemy for life.”

Asa leaned back in his seat, his fingers playing with the hair that curled over the nape of Zane’s neck. “How does that help us get closer to finding the handler?”

Lucas looked to the speaker in the center of the phone. “We had Calliope pull up a list of people who had been rejected from both of the targeted schools.

“Spoiler alert, there’s a lot of them,” Calliope said.

“Okay, well, you can eliminate any women,” Archer said, then looked at Lucas for confirmation. “Right?”

Lucas nodded. “Yeah.”

Rapid-fire typing filled the room. “That only gets rid of about twenty names.”

“Eric said the guy who tried to run him over was very overweight and wore dark-framed glasses,” Asa said. “I don’t suppose there are photographs attached to any of those applications.”

“No, but I did pull DMV photos of the men,” Calliope said. “Unfortunately, there’s no law that demands people update their photos, so some of them could be decades old.”

A series of faces began to fill the screen. She was right. There were a lot of them and some of the pictures did, indeed, look decades old. People could change a lot in that time.

“Of this list, only fifteen are listed as needing corrective lenses. Four or so might classify as ‘very overweight’ but there’s a huge margin of error. The handler might have put on weight since any of these photos.”

Lucas tapped his pen on the file. “Okay, run deep background checks on the fifteen who need corrective lenses. We can probably use their employment and criminal history to at least eliminate them from the suspect pool.”

Calliope made a noise in the affirmative. “I can do that, but it will take me some time.”

“Hey, Calliope?” Zane asked.

“Yes, Zane?” she asked, her voice full of sweetness. She never talked to the Mulvaneys like that. Only the spouses.

“Can you cross reference those fifteen names and see if any of them own an old Buick?”

“An old Buick?” Jericho repeated, perking up.

Zane nodded. “Yeah, Eric said the guy who tried to run him down was driving a really old Buick.”

“Do you think he’d be stupid enough to use his own vehicle?” Archer asked.

“Have you seen those vintage Buicks? It would be like being hit by a Sherman tank. Those cars were built to last,” Jericho said, sounding fond. “What else do you know about it?”

“Just that it’s gold.”

Jericho nodded. “Okay, Calliope, look for anybody who has a registered Buick Riviera or Skylark. They were very popular back in the day and, up until the mid-seventies, came in a color called Cortez Gold.”

“Who knew having a mechanic in the family would come in handy?” Adam said, earning a middle finger from Jericho.

“Okay, there’s nobody on the list who has ever owned that kind of car.”

“Shit,” Zane muttered.

Asa knew Zane was stressed and hungover. He was a wire stretched to its breaking point. He needed this settled once and for all.

“Let me try searching for something else,” Calliope said.

They all sat staring at each other as they listened to Calliope typing away for an obscenely long time. “Jackpot! Holy shit. Jericho, I think you just earned a cookie.”

“You found him?” Jericho asked.

“Not exactly. I found a 1971 Buick Skylark in Cortez Gold registered to a Henry Devlin. Oh, damn. He’s eighty-seven years old.”

Zane suddenly came to life, leaning forward. “Does he have a son or grandson, Calliope?”

More frantic typing ensued. “Um, two sons. Maxwell and Jerome. One is sixty-seven and the other is sixty-four. Jerome has a son and a daughter. The son is thirty-eight. Jerome Jr. Maxwell…never had kids.”

“Jerome Jr. could be our guy. Can you cross reference him with the list of rejections?” Zane asked.

Calliope made a disappointed sound. “He’s not in the list we narrowed down. But,” she said, dragging the word out. “Let me check the ones we eliminated.”

Asa could feel Zane practically vibrating beside him as they waited for Calliope to do all her complicated computer shit. When she cackled like a witch in a horror movie, Asa knew they had a winner. “Yep, Jerome Jr. was rejected by both schools.”

“What’s his background?” Noah asked.

“Our creepy friend got his GED—”

“And he applied to our school?” August asked. “He does have delusions of grandeur. We barely allow anybody who wasn’t in the International Baccalaureate program with over a 5.0 GPA.”

“You sound like a snob,” Noah said.

August leveled a flat stare at Noah. “I am a snob. But facts are facts. He’s in no way qualified to apply to an Ivy League school, yet he did. That speaks to the profile.”

“Um, he works as a Geek at a tech store. That tracks,” she said, almost under her breath. “Never married. Was arrested three times. Once for stalking, once for sexual battery, and…one for peeking into ladies windows—never a good sign. Um, his LinkedIn profile says he’s a member of MENSA.”

August scoffed. “There’s a database for members, Calliope. You should be able to access it from my phone. I bet you a thousand dollars, he’s lying.”

“Calliope has access to August’s phone?” Zane whispered.

“She has access to every single aspect of our lives. She will be all up in your phone and everywhere else you live digitally. It’s how she fakes GPS locations, tags, and a shit ton of other things I don’t understand. It’s part of the Mulvaney Murder, Inc. membership, so if you have any weird fetish porn on your phone, you might want to get rid of it sooner rather than later.”

“Glad I didn’t take that bet,” Calliope said, “because you are correct. Definitely not a MENSA candidate.”

“You think this is him? You think this is our guy?” Adam asked the group.

“I think it’s worth delving into,” August said.

“Same,” Adam and Jericho agreed at the same time.

“Yes,” Zane added fiercely. “When can we start cutting off appendages?”

“I like him,” Archer said, pointing in Zane’s direction. “You can keep him.”

Asa rolled his eyes. “Thanks ever so much for your approval.” To Zane, he said, “We need a little more proof before we start hacking off appendages.” Zane puffed up like he was going to protest, but Asa said, “I know, it’s annoying and tedious. But my father insists.”

“We just need more proof,” Jericho said.

“Like what?” Zane asked, slamming his fist on the table. “That guy mind-fucked my brother into killing himself, and I want to watch him fucking bleed.”

Even Asa’s eyes went wide at the venom in Zane’s tone. He had a lot of fight in him. That was good. Willing to fight meant not giving up. He needed Zane to keep fighting. “Easy, Lois. If he’s the guy, I’ll make him suffer. I promise. But let’s do a tiny bit of recon. Calliope, you know where he lives?”

She typed for a few more minutes. “He appears to dwell in his father’s and stepmother’s basement.”

“Shocker,” Lucas muttered.

“Well, that’s going to make this slightly more difficult. Can you shoot me the address and maybe track down his work schedule, Calliope?” Asa asked.

“Sure, buttercup.”

“Meeting adjourned?” Asa asked August, already standing up.

August nodded. “I hate to pry the girls away from my father, but I think we’ll reconvene after your recon session.”

Zane was already halfway to the door. “I want to go check this guy out right now.”

“Lois, you’re sick and hungover. It’s broad daylight, and this is not the kind of guy who won’t notice people snooping. I guarantee you he’s got security cameras. Good ones. I know you’re out for blood, but you need to trust me on this,” Asa said, tone firm.

“Fine. But I want him dead. I want them all dead.”

“How quickly you’ve corrupted him,” Archer said as he passed.

Asa wrapped his arms around Zane. “Let’s go get food and then we’ll swing by his house—just drive by—and scope out what we can. Just once. And only if you eat all your lunch.”

Zane made a noise of disgust. “I don’t want to eat.”

“That’s my final offer.”

“I could just go by myself.”

“Lois, believe me when I say this. It will be a cold day in hell before I ever let you do anything murdery without me.” There was no missing the way Zane’s pupils dilated, his tongue darting out to lick over his lower lip. Asa pressed his lips to his ear. “That turned you on, didn’t it? You're such a freak, I love it. Let’s go eat, Lois. I’ll even let you give me a handjob on the way.”

“Wow, what a treat,” Zane quipped.

Asa grinned. “I’m a giver.”