Page 45 of Constantly Cotton
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad you told me. I… I like who you are. I think you’re strong… and kind, when you could have been a terrible person, a user. I was so tired, seeing all the worst things humans can do to each other, and suddenly, I was with you, and you’ve seen that too, but you still try your best. I’m falling asleep, but I need to tell you….”
Cotton reached for him, pulledhimclose, like he was giving the comfort, and Jason snuggled his head against Cotton’s chest. “Tell me what?” Cotton murmured, like he really wanted to hear.
“You give me faith. You’re the reason not everything is awful. There’s people like you who do the kind thing sometimes, when people use shitty excuses to do the worst things, just because they can.”
“Thanks, Jason,” Cotton said softly. “Good night.”
“Good night, baby. Can I call you baby now?”
“Only you,” he said, and that seemed to be enough to send Jason right off to sleep.
Two Voices Echoing
COTTON SMILEDnervously at the three soldiers sitting at the kitchen table and tried not to flee for the bedroom. True to his promise, Lee had brought coffee and coffee drinks, with a fruit-and-ham platter and pastries, and the three men with buzzcuts and chests Cotton could only dream of achieving were currently eating all that food like it was about to sprint off the table.
Jason had jumped in and gotten Cotton a plate of fruit and ham, and Burton—who was running the show—had slipped him a carton of peach yogurt. They’d given him small portions, and Cotton was grateful. They wanted to help him, not pressure him, and given there was nothing in the military hero handbook that said “be kind to bulimia boy,” he knew he could have ended up with worse people in his life.
But that didn’t mean the guys at the table, to a one wearing hiking boots, cargo shorts, and olive drab green T-shirts, didn’t scare the crap out of him.
“So,” Burton was saying, obviously in charge of the op thatwasguarding Jason and Cotton. “We’re looking for people connected to Dietrich and Karina Schroeder. Or Dima Siderov. Now, by all accounts Dietrich and Karina have heavy German accents, but Dima, who is Russian, has practically no accent at all. These are city dwellers. They are going to use city-dwelling tactics, and they’re ruthless, determined, and organized. On the minus side, they don’t appear able to think on their feet. The guy we encountered was wearing a black wool suit at the end of August, and you guys checked the surroundings. Did you see signs of anyone else?”
“No,” said the smallest of the security detail, Briggs. He was African American, with pale brown skin, an apple-cheeked face, and tiny dark brown freckles. Cotton was a fan of freckles and apple cheeks. Ordinarily this guy would have turned his key, but right now, his attention was focused mostly on Jason and the quiet intensity he gave the briefing.
Jason was looking better—well rested, for once, and he had a little color. The fever was almost gone, and Cotton had a sudden irrational hope that maybe they could go for a walk that day. The cameras had revealed a wonderland of wilderness, and it had been so long since Cotton had been camping. If he excised the memories of his parents, he could recall the peace of being out in the woods. He’d once sat under a tree when his father thought he was fishing, and he’d read almost half ofAll Creatures Great and Small.His father had been irritated to find out he’d bailed on something “outdoorsy” and masculine, but Cotton remembered the wonder of that moment—the trees, the sounds, the breeze, the sun through the leaves—and it would always mingle with the images of a fallible human being struggling to treat animals whom he obviously loved in pre-WWII Britain.
Cotton remembered Jason and Burton talking about being out in the middle of the “fucking desert.” He wanted Jason to have a good memory to take back with him when he returned to saving the world.
His attention was called back to Briggs, who was outlining what they’d seen and what he planned to do to keep watch.
“No people out here. Daniels spoke to the people in the cabin. They think he looks like Captain America. Children, pets, grandparents all love him.”
Daniels indeed had a bit of a Chris Evans vibe. He gave an aw-shucks grin and took up the thread. “The cabins are run by a family—the Calendars senior, in their sixties, the Calendars junior, in their forties, and junior’s three teenagers, who help out in the summer but are getting ready to move back to town and return to school. Once they move for the fall, it’s going to be the three of us in one of the six-person cabins and two elderly couples sharing the other six-person. As of tomorrow, we should be the only guests, which means any cars coming or going are either going to be the two Chevy Tahoes owned by the Calendars, or somebody new. We’ve set up cameras at the entrance to the cabin road from the main road and at the entrance to your drive from the smaller road that leads to the private cabins. There are ten cabins, maybe, around the lake, and since it’s too late for summer and too early for snow, they’re going to be pretty sparsely populated as well. We’ll be doing a lot of hiking and checking things out while we’re here, but there will always be one person minding the cameras with a set of binocs trained on you guys here. If you see anything fishy on your own monitor or even get the prickles up your spine, give us a signal, any signal, and you should have backup.” He gestured to the third member of their team, midsized, olive-complected, with wicked brown eyes and jet-black hair. “Medina here has the skinny on the coms and electronics.”
Medina finished chewing in a hurry, then gave Burton and Jason anunhurried grin. “Gotta thank ya both for the chow,” he said in an unabashed Texas accent. “Transpo here was a bear, and then we got here and I thought we’d be eatin’ real bear shit for breakfast.”
Briggs put his hand over his eyes in a pained gesture. “Texas, do you really have to share?”
But Daniels grinned. “I saw that episode too! Where the guys got dropped off in the wild with weird random shit and told to find their way home, and that one guy ate bear scat to survive?” He looked around the table, nodding. “See, bears have super bad digestive tracts so their food can sit in their stomachs and sort of… you know, do digesting things when they’re hibernating. But that means when they’re moving around, their droppings are like super rich in nutrients and shit, so you don’t ever have to starve as long as bears still shit in the woods.”
Medina grinned. “Right? So yeah, after learning factoids like that shit, getting fruit and pastry and coffee is a real treat. Thanks, Colonel, Captain.”
They all nodded, and Cotton could tell by the strained looks on Burton’s and Jason’s faces that they were trying very hard to maintain an air of command around their troops.
Cotton had no such requirements. He gave a relieved smile at the three young men who would be holding his and Jason’s lives in their hands. “Oh thank God,” he said with feeling. “I thought I was gonna get, like, those guards at the Tower of London. I was so worried I was going to have to learn how to salute!”
He got three easy grins in return. “Just feed us now and then,” Briggs said after shooting a quelling look at his two teammates. “I swear, we’ll be almost civilized.”
“And I’m used to living in an apartment with five other guys,” Cotton said, nodding enthusiastically. “Seeing some friendly faces once a day will be super awesome.”
“Five guys?” Medina asked, horrified. “Where’d they all fit?”
Cotton shrugged. “Well, we all worked in porn, so sometimes up each other’s asses. But once you quit the business, you pay extra rent for that single bed, you know?”
Daniels spit out his orange juice and choked while Medina and Briggs pounded his back. For a moment, Cotton thought he might have ruined the moment of camaraderie, but they were looking at him with such open, engaging grins he sort of felt like he’d achieved a victory.
“This your friend, Colonel?” Briggs asked.
