Maniac - Necessary Evils #7 - Ch. 2 (Patreon)

Chapter 2 is only loosely edited. And subject to change as I find Aiden's voice. He's...big mad, y'all. Sorry for the delay but the first chapters are the hardest to write. 

Chapter 2

Aiden

Thomas slept the whole way out of town, slumped in the passenger seat of Aiden’s ‘95 Jeep Wrangler, a gift that had sat forgotten in the back of Thomas’s garage since their fight on the night of his college graduation. A night Aiden had analyzed a million times, in a million different ways for almost two decades.

But now he had a new question to analyze.

Why had Thomas kept the jeep in working order and why had none of the others told him? Surely they’d fucking noticed?

Stop overacting. It’s not like Thomas takes care of the cars himself.

Hell, he had so many cars he probably forgot it was even in there. It was probably just the mechanic performing routine maintenance on all the vehicles in the garage. His guts twisted at the thought and that self loathing he usually drank away at night started rearing its ugly head.

He hated how much the answer still mattered to him. He could torture a man for hours without so much as a drop of remorse, yet when it came to Thomas, he was so fucking weak. Even now, he was just sitting there, wallowing. Nobody else did this to him. Just Thomas. Always fucking Thomas.

He disappointed Aiden at every turn, but when he’d said, ‘I need you’ Aiden’s hopes had soared…until reality set in. He banged his hand on the steering wheel, feeling a modicum of satisfaction when Thomas stirred in his sleep. Why should he get to rest?

Aiden shook his head, forcing himself to focus on the task at hand. Saving Thomas’s ass. He needed to call Lola. He had several open cases he needed covered. He scrubbed a hand over his eyes, then blinked as the world became blurry making everything the headlights touched look warped like something out of a Dali painting.

Calling Lola was just opening a whole other can of worms. She’d never let him just ask for help and go. She’d start prying. Its what she did. And he couldn’t afford to alienate her. She was a great detective, a better bounty hunter and the only friend Aiden had.

He spared another glance at him, worry etched on his face even in sleep. Aiden pictured opening the door and letting Thomas roll on out, could even hear the satisfying clunk he’d make as he hit the ground. It was no less than he deserved. Aiden had punished people for lesser crimes. Had tortured them until they were past the point of begging for the hurt they caused.

Yet, somehow he could never punish Thomas. No matter how much he hated him. And he did. He fucking hated Thomas Mulvaney almost as much as he loved him. It was that hot and cold in near equal measure that combined inside him and created this tornado of emotion that made him want to destroy him, to tear at him until he was just as shredded as Aiden felt.

But what good would that fucking do?

He envied his brothers. Their relationship with Thomas had always been so clearly defined. They were brought in so young, they’d only ever known Thomas as their father. But Aiden had a father. A shitty father, but a father nonetheless. He’d never seen Thomas as anything paternal.

If anything, he was the only one to truly see the cracks in Thomas’s supposedly stable foundation. A foundation that was crumbling. Finally. Aiden had spent countless nights wondering what sins Thomas had committed that left him rejecting any amount of love in his life.

Aiden would know now. He’d finally get to know the source of their combined misery. He’d allow Thomas to think he’d won, to think he was in control. If he needed Aiden’s help, he’d give it, but he’d also keep digging until he knew it all, every deep, dark, dirty fucking secret Thomas was fighting to keep buried.

And then what? Aiden shook his head. Fuck if he knew. Could he punish Thomas for his crimes? That’s why the code existed, after all. To ensure they never strayed from the path. Had Thomas strayed? Whoever was blackmailing him seemed to think so. Thomas seemed to think so too. But what could Aiden do to Thomas that was worse than what he did to himself?

If after all this time, Thomas was the real villain, where did that lead Aiden? Thomas had never been Aiden’s father, but he had been the only person who’d ever given a shit about him, had confided in him. So Aiden had done the same. Told him all his secrets.

In retrospect, maybe that’s why Thomas had confided in him in the beginning? Maybe it was simply a way to get Aiden to trust him in return? But then Aiden had ruined everything by falling in love. He winced, picturing the face Thomas had made the night Aiden confessed his feelings.

He’d been so young. So fucking stupid. Thomas had been horrified. He’d blamed himself for giving Aiden the wrong idea. Had sent him away with his friends for the summer, just to get away from him. All while blaming himself for Aiden’s ‘crush’.

Thomas the martyr. So put upon. So broken. Aiden tried to force the past back down into the deep, dark recesses of his mind but it was impossible with Thomas sitting right there beside him. So many fucking years had passed between them.

At seventeen, a fourteen year age-gap was insurmountable. It couldn’t be ignored. Aiden had known that when he confessed. It had never occurred to him that Thomas wouldn’t feel the same. That he’d misinterpreted his niceness for love. But even then, he’d thought Thomas would eventually come around, and would stop seeing him as a child. And he had. Eventually. Years later after Aiden’s heart had been run over again and again.

Aiden blinked behind his glasses, his eyes feeling like sandpaper. He couldn’t believe he was rehashing this shit in his head again. Every time he made peace with slamming the door shut on his feelings, Thomas found a way to drag him back in.

Every fucking time.

It was near pathological at this point. Aiden wished he’d been born a psychopath. The peace he could have had if he’d lacked the capacity to love. It would have been easier that way. Or maybe that’s just what Aiden told himself to justify spending twenty fucking years loving someone who refused to love him back.

Who refused to act on it anyway.

Maybe that was the real salt in Aiden’s wound. Thomas loved him. Not then, but later, when Aiden had come home from college graduation, when he’d finally put a voice to his feelings and reminded Thomas he was a fully grown adult…that’s when he’d known there was something between them…or there could have been if Thomas would have just stopped being such a goddamn martyr.

But no matter how Aiden had tried, there had been this fucking wall he’d run up against again and again until he was battered and bloody. Thomas telling him that he did love him, he did care for him, but it didn’t matter—it could never fucking matter—because they could never be together.

But it was Aiden that Thomas called when he was drunk and lonely and desperate for some crumb of affection he couldn’t get from his sons. It was Aiden he called when he was in trouble. It was fucking Aiden he called in the middle of the night just to hear his voice. And Aiden answered. Every. Fucking. Time.

Aiden reached over and turned the knob on the radio, music blaring through the speakers and rocketing Thomas upright in his seat. Aiden tried not to gloat as he watched him look around in confusion, before seemingly remembering where they were and why this was happening.

“Where are we going?” Thomas asked, voice raspy with sleep.

“Safe house,” Aiden said, offering no further explanation.

Just looking at Thomas made him ache, made him mad, so mad he fought the urge not to punch him in the face. He stole another glance at him, watching as he scrubbed his hands over his face for probably the hundredth time since he’d arrived.

Even then, sleep deprived and hungover, Thomas could have easily passed for ten years younger than his true age. Maybe it was genetics or the miracle of modern pharmaceuticals, but he was aging like fine wine. His hair wasn’t gray, but an almost pristine silver that made his pale blue eyes look silver too. His usually clean shaven jaw was now hidden by scruff, but it just added a ruggedness to a man most viewed as elegant.

Nothing detracted from his looks in Aiden’s eyes. That was part of the problem. Thomas never aged. And clearly the same could be said for Thomas. Because even though Aiden was forty, Thomas still acted like he was a child. Like he was his child. Like being together was taboo

Thomas turned down the radio, turning in his seat to look at him. “Aiden, I-”

“Don’t. Seriously. Just…just fucking don’t,” Aiden said, the rage he’d been choking on for hours, bubbling to the surface. “You asked me to come and I’m here and I’m going to fucking help you but I cannot listen to you fucking apologize again.”

Thomas opened his mouth and closed it and Aiden felt some small sense of satisfaction knowing he’d knee-capped Thomas. If he couldn’t constantly apologize to Aiden, he had nothing to say. Sober Thomas was always painfully polite . Reserved, classy, put together in every way.

Aiden preferred drunken Thomas. Alcohol had always been the key to unlocking Thomas’s real thoughts and feelings. With enough whiskey on board it was hard to shut him up. Drunken Thomas loved Aiden more than his pride, more than his suffering. But only from a distance.

Except for that one time.

“I should call Calliope, make up an excuse…” Thomas mumbled, staring out the window.

“I already did. I told her you’re helping me with a case, but it was clear she didn’t believe it. We only have a limited amount of time before the others realize something is happening. You should just tell them. They deserve to know.”

Thomas gave a stilted nod. “I’ll tell them. I will. I just don’t know what to tell them.”

“You could start with the truth,” Aiden said. “But that would be too easy.”

“Aiden…”

Aiden rolled his eyes at Thomas’s tone. The way he said his name like he was begging for understanding. But Aiden had been understanding. He’d been so understanding he’d choked on it. He was done being understanding. He was just fucking mad. “Don’t fucking ‘Aiden’ me. Just get some sleep until we get to the safe house.”

Aiden could feel Thomas’s gaze on him, but he ignored it, ignored him until he rested his head against the glass once more. He didn’t sleep, but he stayed silent, his sorrows and regret filling the car like radiation until they infected Aiden, making him feel almost sorry for him.

Aiden wished he was a different man. A better man. Someone who learned his lesson and walked away from a relationship that at its very core was far more toxic than anything his emotionally stunted brothers had managed to create with their spouses. But even as he sat there, he wanted to take Thomas’s hand, wanted to drag him to him, bury his face in his scent, wanted to hold him until they both felt whole again.

Just like that one night.

He shook his head, disgusted. With himself, with the situation, with Thomas. He was so fucking tired. Of everything. He reached over and cranked the music back up. He just needed to stay awake for a little while longer.

###

“I need you to take over my cases for a bit.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “What’s a bit?”

That was a fair question, but one Aiden couldn’t answer with any accuracy. He collapsed into the overstuffed leather chair taking up the corner of the sprawling safe house living room.

Thomas had called it a cabin, but it seemed more like a lodge to Aiden. There were two floors, four bedrooms and several windows. It would have been a security nightmare. But there was also strong wifi, a thirty thousand dollar alarm system and a ten foot privacy fence.

This was Thomas’s idea of roughing it.

Aiden sighed. “A week, maybe two. It’s a…it’s an emergency.”

The moment the words left his mouth, he regretted them. Aiden didn’t have emergencies. Emergencies meant obligations, and short of his cases, Aiden had been very good at avoiding obligations. At least as far as his friends knew. Well, friend. His one friend. If he could even call her that. More an associate.

Aiden could hear her judging him from a thousand miles away. “This is about him, isn’t it?”

Aiden didn’t ask who she meant. It was obvious—even to her—this was about Thomas. He had half a mind to lie about it. But if he did, she would just keep pressing him until he said something he couldn’t take back. “Yeah, fine. It’s about him. But it’s not what you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking that he called you—probably drunk—and begged you to help him with some random problem somehow only you could solve,” she said, voice tight.

So maybe it was what she was thinking.

Lola Nixon was a lot of things, but she wasn’t a fool. Aiden was the fool. Aiden was doing exactly what he said he wouldn’t do and making lame ass excuses in the process. But even knowing all that, he wasn’t going to leave Thomas alone. Not now. His brothers meant too much to him.

Thomas means too much to you.

Aiden clenched his teeth until the thought went away. Then glanced at the staircase leading to the bedrooms upstairs. He’d exiled Thomas upstairs the moment they arrived. Mostly just to get him away from him before he did something stupid like smother the man with a five hundred dollar throw pillow.

He was too mad. He could barely stand to look at him. But, even now, sitting there talking to Lola, all Aiden wanted to do was go upstairs and put himself in Thomas’s way so he could look at him…fight with him. It was so frustrating that it felt like someone tightening a noose around his heart.

“Hello?” Lola said, irritation obvious.

Right.

“Okay, yeah, but this time he really does need my help,” Aiden said lamely.

Lola snorted. “You sound like every client we’ve ever had making excuses for their shitty relationship. Except you don’t even have a relationship. This man uses you, twists you up, rings you out and then spooks himself…every time. I don’t get how he makes you so dumb.”

“It’s not like that,” Aiden said. Except it was. “He…there’s a lot you don’t know.” Aiden didn’t really know either. But he knew-deep down—that there was a reason Thomas kept doing this to him.

“That man is a hundred red flags made out of silk sheets and you’re too busy worrying about the thread count.”

Aiden didn’t even know what that meant but he wasn’t going to be lectured again. It wouldn’t change anything. “The last guy you dated was literally on America’s Most Wanted,” Aiden recalled. “So sticks and stones…”

Lola scoffed. “I didn’t date him. I fucked him. Then I took him to the Marshall’s and collected a big, fat bounty on him. We are not the same.”

Arguing with Lola was pointless. She was as stubborn as she was cunning. They weren’t business partners exactly, but they shared a caseload when things got to be too much to handle. She tended to deal with the more domestic side of things. Cheaters. Domestic abusers. Cases that didn’t get in the way of her bounty hunting gigs.

Aiden covered a lot of fraud cases, sometimes missing persons. It kept him in the industry, but gave him enough plausible deniability when it came to the extracurricular activities the Mulvaney’s still required of him.

“I also need a favor-”

“Another favor,” Lola corrected.

Aiden frowned. “What?”

“Another favor. Taking over your cases is the first favor,” she pointed out. “But go on.”

Aiden sighed. “I need you to—discreetly—do some digging into something?”

“Discretion is my middle name,” she said mockingly.

Aiden rolled his eyes. Discretion was barely in her vocabulary. There was nothing about her that was discreet from her wild kinky curls that fanned around her like a crown to the knee high boots she wore that made her look like a heroine in some movie. Lola liked to be seen. “I thought your middle name was Mabel?”

“I told you not to bring that up?” Lola muttered. “Anyway…What do you need me to do?”

Aiden didn’t know how to phrase his ask without making her suspicious. The last thing he needed was her getting a bug up her ass about his family. But he also couldn’t ask Calliope. Not yet. “I need you to look into the explosion that took out the Mulvaney family.”

Once more that hesitation, then, “You want me to look into your family?”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say ‘they’re not my family’ but he just couldn’t bring himself to say it. His brothers were his brothers. Thomas just wasn’t his father. But that got complicated and Aiden was so fucking done with complicated.

“I don’t need you to investigate how they died. It’s hardly a mystery.” Except it actually was. “I need a list of everybody who worked on the case. And I mean everybody. From the coroner to the dude who strung the crime scene tape. Everybody.”

The crime scene photos were ground zero. Whoever made that video had access to them. That couldn’t have been a huge pool. Not with the cover up that clearly took place. But why the cover up? What had Thomas done? Aiden refused to believe he’d killed his family as the video implied. Thomas was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a family annihilator. They were a very specific breed of killer.

“Yeah, yeah, I got it. Everybody,” she said, like she was quickly tiring of his shit. “Is that it?”

Was it? Yeah. Did he want to hang up with her? No. Talking to her was better than dealing with the man currently unpacking upstairs. Aiden was too pissed.

The minute he hung up the phone with her, he would go upstairs and find Thomas and push his buttons until they both snapped. It’s what happened last time. But it wasn’t the only thing that happened last time. And Aiden wasn’t sure he could taste Thomas and then pretend like nothing happened.

Not again.

He leaned his head back against the chair and closed his eyes, seeking patience he’d never had. “Yeah, let me know what you find.”