Page 53 of Fear
In Tobias’s world, what a hunter wanted, a hunter got, and that was all Jake was: a fucking hunter, another fist, another voice, another dick. Jake could imagine himself doing all that to Tobias—nausea an old friend, holding back the rage—but what he couldn’t imagine was Tobias saying no.
Tobias would never say no, no matter how bad it was. And Jake would never know what had gone wrong.
“Do you even fucking want to be here, Tobias?” he asked. He wanted to know. He seriously wanted to know. And he didn’t think that Tobias would ever tell him, unless Jake started to hit him, to beat the truth out of him.
Tobias glanced up, panicked, and then away. The line of his back was a tight, graceful curve of bone and sinew. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, the peas just . . . I won’t . . . I promise . . . A-anything for you, Jake, I didn’t mean . . . I’m sorry, s-sorry. Please, don’t—”
Jake made a sharp gesture with his hand and Tobias cut himself off mid-phrase like Jake had hit him to shut him up. Maybe he should, just once, to see if being the monster Tobias expected would make him love him. How could he cringe away every day, how could he keep looking at Jake like he expected to be beaten over fucking spilled peas and not hate him, hate him so much for what Jake had been raised to be?
“This isn’t about the peas, Tobias, this is about”—how you hate me—“you flinching every fucking time I come into a room. About you expecting me to be some kind of . . .” monster, like you’re supposed to be, “sadistic fuck with a hard-on for blood. Why the fuck would you stay, Tobias? Why the fuck would you want to stick around? What the fuck do I have to offer . . .” Nothing, that’s what the fuck he had to offer, and some day Tobias would figure it out, like everyone else in Jake’s life had figured out.
And it wasn’t fucking fair. Jake had burned bridges, had lost the most important things in his life, but he would lose Tobias now, because he had never really had him. The Tobias he had thought he knew was an illusion he constructed during all those brief visits in camp, a fantasy Jake had created for himself so he could believe he was some kind of good person.
But he wasn’t. Tobias made that perfectly clear every time he flinched.
Jake reached down and grabbed Tobias by the arm, pulling him to his feet. The rational part of his brain started ringing alarms and screaming about his stupidity the second he started pulling Tobias toward the door, but the rest of him was so consumed by the festering, formless rage that nothing sane could be heard.
“Do you want to leave, Tobias? So fucking convinced that I want to hurt you all the fucking time, why would you stay with a son of a bitch like me?” Jake couldn’t control anything, not the words coming out of his mouth or the pressure he was exerting on Tobias’s arm.
“J-J-Jake . . .” Tobias tried, but Jake shook him a little, and he shut up.
Part of Jake liked that Tobias wasn’t talking, apologizing, begging for things that he damn well deserved to have without even asking. The rest of him knew he’d just broken any trust they might have built with that shake. He had hurt Tobias to make him do what Jake wanted.
Jake yanked the security chain out as he flung the door open, barely feeling the metal whip past his face even as he jerked Tobias back. The danger from that little chain was nothing worse than an inconvenience, but he would step between Tobias and a hell of a lot worse without hesitation. He just wished he could protect Tobias from Jake himself.
“See,” Jake said. “There’s a fucking door to this apartment, and the lock sucks. I’m not holding you here. You can go any fucking place you want. I didn’t spring you from FREACS so you could be my slave or . . . or whatever the fuck. If you’d be happy somewhere else, then go. Save yourself, get away from me before I become every fucking thing that you’re afraid of, what you—” Jake bit himself off. He’d already said way too much, fucked them both up so badly, and Tobias . . .
Tobias stared at him, horror making his eyes huge, his throat working. One hand wrapped around Jake’s hold on his arm, the other fisted itself in Jake’s shirt. Jake knew it couldn’t be a conscious move. Tobias wouldn’t voluntarily touch him, never let himself make contact unless Jake touched him first.
“You want me . . .” Tobias panted. “You want me to l-leave?” The words fought their way out of his throat, caught and choked by panic. “You’re throwing me . . .”
And just like that, it all crashed. All of Jake’s rage, the undiscriminating conflagration of hate and shame burned away, and he was left with the pain that was all his own. Smiling bitterly to himself, Jake pulled Tobias closer to him. He loved the way Tobias fit in his arms, like he had been specially ordered for Jake to wrap his arms over the warm curve of his back and tuck him close. He hated the way Tobias just yielded in his arms when Jake knew he would have been just as compliant with a blow. Hell, he could still be anticipating violence even as he relaxed against Jake’s chest.
“No, I’m not,” he said heavily, letting his hands move over Tobias’s back, because he was already a fucking bastard. One of the worst people in the world, but still better than everyone else in Tobias’s life. “I’m not fucking kicking you out. I just . . . I can’t stand it. I can’t fucking stand the way you look when you think I’m going to hit you. I’d give you anything, Tobias, anything you want. But what I need you to have the most is a place where you feel safe. How can you want me, how can you possibly want anything to do with me when”—you see me as a monster—“when you’re always fucking afraid? Do you . . . do you even want to be here?”
“I don’t w-w-want to go b-back—” Tobias began painfully.
Jake loosened one hand to touch Tobias’s chin, and Tobias looked up. “I promised, and I never break my promises. Freak Camp isn’t even on the table. You’re never going back there. I didn’t even consider it. This isn’t a question of me or Freak Camp.” Jake hoped he would fucking win that contest. Hoped. “This is whether you want to be with me or with someone else. Somewhere else where you won’t have to be afraid all the time, where you won’t cringe all the time and you can eat whatever the hell you want without me watching you.”
Jake didn’t have the foggiest fucking clue where he could find Tobias a place like that. Didn’t know who he would ask or where he would look. But if Tobias chose that, right now, he would find it, build it, create it. If he had to build him a cabin in the Everglades, or hide Tobias in a castle and spend the rest of his days driving off monsters, Jake would. And he would start right now if Tobias could only tell him that was what he wanted.
Tobias looked away, looked anywhere but at Jake. When his hands slid up over his face, Jake let him go and stepped back.
Tobias took a deep, shaky breath, and then another. And then, so quietly that Jake could barely hear him over the beating of his own heart, Tobias whispered, “I w-want to be with you.”
He hesitated over the word want like he always did. When he turned away and dropped his hands from his eyes, Jake saw wet spots on his hands, on his cheeks, eyes that wouldn’t look at him. He was closed off, shut down, as though he expected nothing, expected a blow, didn’t believe that Jake would give him what he asked for, might even throw him out now because he had dared to ask.
Jake reached out, desperate to give Tobias whatever comfort he could. Then he let his hand fall. He wouldn’t be able to touch Tobias right now and live with himself afterward.
“Then stay,” he said roughly. “I need a drink, I’m going out. Watch TV. Eat pasta. Do whatever the fuck you want.”
Tobias nodded tightly. His face showed nothing, just a great emptiness. He looked brittle enough to shatter if he hit a sharp corner. “You’re leaving?” He said it like a man who just wanted to be sure of an important, irrefutable detail: the date of his execution, the amount of poison he had just ingested.
“Be here when I get back,” Jake said. “I’ll be back. If you want me . . . just fucking be here.”
He walked back into the bedroom to grab his wallet and his keys—decided to leave the gun, no reason to court stupidity—and then left. Tobias watched him all the way out, like he was watching the sun go down and didn’t know that it would ever rise again.
A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER, Jake had nowhere enough alcohol in him to let him forget the look on Tobias’s face—accepting, peaceful, relaxed—when he thought Jake had been almost about to slug him one, but enough alcohol to make his hands fumble for his phone without much conscious thought.
