Zhukov's Dogs (38 page)

As I lifted one of his hands and planted a kiss near the cuts, Val chuckled. “You should be more worried about that bullet in your shoulder.”

“I’ll deal with it later,” I mumbled against his skin.

“You are way too nonchalant.”

“I’ve had worse.”

I was lifting his other wrist when Val pulled loose and flicked me in the forehead. I blinked a few times, caught off guard by the immature thwack. Val just smiled and said, “Good, then you can tell me all about the times you’ve ‘had worse’ while we stitch that up.”

“
Or
we could just go back to making out,” I suggested with a small shrug.

Val laughed and rolled his eyes. His fingers closed around the opening of my jacket. The subtle sound of his thumb scratching along the zipper shouldn’t have gotten me excited, but oh it did. It was like a promise that something was coming, something worth waiting for. He leaned toward me, his head lower than before. The light graze of lips on my neck sent me spiraling into madness.

“You’d pass out from blood loss before we got to the fun stuff.”

1401 Boren Avenue—Seattle, WA
Friday, November 20th, 2076—8:03 p.m.

wasn’t sure how we made it from the side of the road to the kitchen of an abandoned house. Some kind of black magic probably. It must have been, because there was no way Val and I scoured the cul-de-sac for a place to hide out. We certainly hadn’t gotten distracted along the way. Definitely not against a streetlamp. And there was no way I’d picked a lock to a nice looking house while Val’s cold fingers toyed with my hair. Nope.

Black magic. That was the only logical explanation for why I was sitting on a kitchen counter with my jacket and shirt discarded on the floor. What else would compel a Y.I.D. dog to sit still while a Grey bastard stitched a bullet hole shut with a sewing needle and black string?

“What are you smirking about?” Val asked, his eyes on the task at hand and mine on his.

“I was just thinking,” I started, unsure how I wanted to phrase it.

“About?”

I paused, my head a bit foggy. When I got the words out, they sounded wrong. “We’re not a very conventional couple.”

Val snorted. I couldn’t see his face very well, but I recognized the faint line of a smile. Aside from the fires’ glow behind the curtains, the only light sources we had were our phones. With my free hand, I kept mine pointed at the gunshot wound so Val could work.

“Yeah, I think that’s putting it mildly,” he said.

The silence that followed was strange—it wasn’t awkward. Since the day I’d met him, I’d always felt the need to break the silences which settled between Val and me. Something had changed, though. Val knew who I really was. No longer did I have to spend every waking moment worrying about the lies I’d told him, how I was going to fix them, and how he’d react to the truth. For the first time, I was free to be and say whatever I wanted. And yet at that moment, I was content to quietly sit on a kitchen counter, watching the person who’d granted me such freedom.

Val finished a few minutes into the unbroken silence, tied off the black string, and cut the excess. I waited on the counter and shined the light after Val as he walked to the sink. We’d both taken enough of a beating for one night; there was no way I was letting him trip over something in the dark.

“Sorry it’s nothing fancy, but it should keep you from bleeding all over the place,” he said over the sound of running water. He dried his hands on his jeans, apparently not keen on fumbling through the darkness for a towel. I slid off the counter despite Val’s quick scolding, “Hey, you need to take it easy!”

“I’m just standing up.” I chuckled. There was something endearing about his snappy concern. “Besides I’ve—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You’ve
had worse
.”

“Well I have. One time I even had to use dental floss to stitch myself up.”

Even though I couldn’t see them, I knew Val was rolling his eyes. I set the phone on the counter once he returned. The light spread over the wall behind us and provided somewhat better visibility, just enough to illuminate whichever half of our bodies pointed at it.

Val checked the time on the screen. He sighed and leaned in further until his arms were folded over the countertop, his chin resting on top of them. “It’s really not even nine o’clock yet?”

“The worst nights are always the longest,” I told him.

Val shrugged, shoulders moving awkwardly, thanks to his position. He turned his head to look up at me with a smirk. “Well, tonight could’ve gone worse,” he said in a perfect blend of sarcasm and optimism. He straightened, rolling the stiffness out of his shoulders and changing the subject. “So, which minty scar is the dental floss incident from?”

I moved to point at the scar on my hip when a thought occurred to me. All this time, I’d been telling Val the stories behind my scars, yet I knew nothing about his. Despite a voice in the back of my head warning me not to, I asked the question.

“What about the ones on your back?”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I wished I could take them back. The lighting was poor, but not quite bad enough to hide the way Val flinched. I stepped in front of him and took his face in my hands, an apology already on my tongue, when Val shook his head.

“No, no, Nik, it’s fine,” he insisted, moving my hands off of his face and wringing them within his own. “I’ll tell you… You’ve probably already guessed what they’re from anyway.”

I’d had my suspicions since that night he told me about California. Seeing how uncomfortable the topic made him, I was reluctant to voice any of them. The silence was stoic, and the second I started to open my mouth, Val squeezed my hands a fraction tighter. He didn’t want me to say anything; I wouldn’t have known what to say.

Val let go of my hands and turned around so his back was toward me before he pulled the sweater over his head. The darkness wasn’t enough to conceal the long lines of scar tissue carved into his skin. There was no pattern to them, no symmetry to their lengths or angles. Some started high enough that they licked the back of his neck while others crossed over his hips and disappeared under his jeans.

It was a work of pure brutality. Something akin to helplessness coiled in my chest and made me sick to my stomach. Even if the scars were years old, given long before we met, I hated that I hadn’t done anything to protect Val.

“I got caught during a raid in San Diego, back in ‘74. A supplier sold us out,” Val told me. His shoulders rose and fell, scars stretching with the deep breath. “It was early on in the crackdown, back before… Before we were getting sent east. They only wanted names… I got lucky.”

It didn’t look like luck, but it was. Compared to the fate he would’ve faced had he been sent to D.C., Val was
very
lucky. Knowing that, however, didn’t make the mutilation any easier to look at.

I placed my hand on his shoulder. Val stayed still and silent as I grazed a thumb over the scar on his neck. It was shiny and smooth now, but the width of the damaged skin told me it had once been something gruesome. My thumb skimmed the scar over one of the vertebra at the base of his neck.

Goosebumps rose underneath my hand. I paused, waiting for Val to tell me to stop. The vertebra underneath my thumb shifted as he swallowed, but Val himself said nothing.

Soon, my index finger followed the same path. I traced the scar down from his neck, mindlessly ghosting my fingers along. They lingered on the sharp curve of a shoulder blade. I felt the muscles there soften as Val sighed.

My other hand rested on his hip. Val tensed. I froze, worrying I’d read the signs all wrong. That fear was chased away the second Val said, “Idiot. You got shot in that arm, remember?”

“Not really,” I replied.

Val sighed, this one with hints of frustration. “Well I do, and I don’t want to have to stitch—”

“Val?”

“Hmm?”

I pressed a kiss to the back of his head, smiled into the mess of blond hair, and said, “Shut up.”

Val’s shoulders shook when he gave a short, patronizing laugh. I couldn’t see his face, but I recognized the laugh well enough to know he was smiling.

The tension in his body eased again as my fingers on his back resumed their exploration. I followed the scar over the bony ridge of Val’s shoulder blade. It tapered off, halfway through one of the numbers tattooed over his shoulder. Up close, I could finally make out the combination; I finally realized what it was.

“948-569,” I read aloud.

“I never said I gave those names up easily.”

I’d been wrong all along. The marred, black ink wasn’t a brand from some cartel boss. It was a signature—the six-digit, identifying number of the S.O.R. agent responsible for his scars. Someone I probably knew. Someone I almost became. At that moment, I realized Val wasn’t the only one lucky to have escaped.

I dropped my hand from the tattoo and stepped closer to Val, wrapping both arms around his waist, in a way which was definitely too tight to be comfortable, and pulling our bodies flush. I rested my head against the back of his, staring at the tail end of the scar on his neck. Val rested his hands over my arms with a small nod, assuring me he understood everything I was trying to say with the embrace.

I’m sorry that it ever happened. I’m here for you now. I’ll keep you safe, no matter what.

Val’s thumb traced light patterns on my arm. I loosened my grip, just enough so he could breathe easily, then pressed a kiss to his shoulder as an apology for the constraint. As my arms slackened around him, my hands slid a fraction lower. They caught on slender hips. Val’s breath caught in his throat.

I smiled against the skin under my lips and kissed his shoulder again, then again, moving closer to his neck with each one. Val’s heart beat faster, the hint of a moan muffled in his throat. He played the noise off with a scoff.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

Undeterred, I kept working a leisurely trail along his shoulder as I replied, “I thought it was obvious enough.”

Val shrugged me off and turned in my arms, facing me with a smile most fitting. He draped his arms over my shoulders, one hand winding through my hair. “You’re new at this, though.”

“I’m a fast learner.”

In one fluid movement, I tightened my arms around his hips then turned and hoisted him onto the counter. I stepped between his legs and reached to slide him toward me when Val pulled himself forward. His nails scraped into my scalp as his other hand shot between us to grab my belt. The legs on either side of me tightened, demanding everything I was eager to give him.

“Fast learners,” Val said, leaning in and smirking just shy of my lips, “Still need good teachers.”