Free Microsoft Word - Talkers_Redemption_Lane.docx by Jim Brown

everything was where it should be.
    “You okay?” Tate asked, splaying his hand on that clenching
    abdomen, and Brian met his eyes and nodded.
    “Great!” His eyes and his nod were fervent, and Tate grinned.
    “You?”
    Talker’s Redemption | Amy Lane
    63

    “On the fucking moon!” Tate answered. Brian’s eyes darted for
    a moment, and his expression indicated deep internal thought.
    “You’re sure you’re good?”
    “Yeah… just… you know. If I go running to the bathroom in a
    minute, don’t take it wrong, ’kay?”
    Talker giggled. He couldn’t help it. He was as susceptible to
    bathroom humor as any other guy. “Gotcha. Forgiven.”
    Brian grinned. “So, are you happy? We’ve had… you know….”
    “Orificial sex!” Tate quipped, and Brian nodded.
    “Yeah, ‘orificial sex’—we’ve had it, and, you know, we’re, like,
    ‘orificial’ now.” Brian sobered, and looked searchingly into Tate’s
    face. “There’s nothing wrong with us. Nothing lacking. You don’t have
    to apologize for us anymore. We’re great.”
    Tate blinked hard. God. All that time in the shrink’s office, and
    Brian would get to the one thing that hadn’t been said.
    “We’re awesome,” he said back. “I love you.”
    “I love you too.”
    Before that promised sprint to the bathroom, they had time for
    one long, wet, sloppy, sweaty, shivering-bodies-in-the-morning-cold
    kiss.
    Talker’s Redemption | Amy Lane
    64

    Speaking Out of School

    “TATE,” Lyndie’s voice was gentle. “Tate, honey, wake up. The
    detectives need to speak to you.”
    “Bwaah?” Tate sat up and wiped drool off the corner of his
    mouth with his damaged hand. The rough tissue caught at his lips
    and he looked at it unhappily—he’d gotten barf on the woolen half-
    glove he usually used to cover up the half-clenched fingers, and he
    hadn’t asked Lyndie’s boyfriend to bring him another one. Speaking
    of which—
    “Where’s Craig?” he asked. He really wanted to go see the
    detectives wearing actual clothes.
    “He’s going to be a little late,” Lyndie said. There was a
    hesitation to her voice, and Tate was going to ask why, but then
    Brian’s fingers tightened over his.
    “Talker?”
    Tate managed a smile from somewhere south of his stomach
    and north of his ankles. “Bruiser?”
    A faint laugh. “Haven’t you gone home to sleep yet?”
    And now it was time for truth. “We need to see if you’re going
    to need surgery,” Tate said, squinting at the bag of fluid by the bed. It
    wasn’t his imagination; the urine was getting darker.
    “What are you wearing?” Brian squinted, and Tate blinked
    owlishly back. His line of hair was flopping sideways, over the white
    side of his scalp, and his eyes were naked. Brian never cared if his
    Talker’s Redemption | Amy Lane
    65

    eyes were naked, or if he’d left his piercings off so you could see the
    flawed shape of his ear. Brian just cared that he was okay.
    He had to be okay.
    “Scrubs,” Tate said, and he tried for the laugh. “I sort of threw
    up on the police—got messy.”
    Brian’s least-bruised eye got wide. The inside of the white part
    was filled with blood. “Jesus, Talker, what happened?”
    Talker shook his head, and looked away. “I didn’t notice, you
    know? You beat the shit out of Trev, and I didn’t notice.”
    Brian groaned—and not in the good way Tate had just been
    remembering. “Don’t tell them shit, Talker,” he rasped. “Man, let them
    arrest me. They don’t need to know. It’s not their business.”
    God, look at him. He was pissing blood and could hardly see.
    His arm and shoulder were plastered and screwed together in some
    hideous way that probably hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, and he was still
    trying to protect Tate.
    “It’s my business,” Tate said after a moment of just looking his
    lover in the (swollen) eyes. “Look, baby, I know why you beat up
    Trev. I thanked God every day that he didn’t show up, because