" No. It's just things seem broke between us. And it sucks."
" Yeah, it sucks."
So they fell into silence except the crackling of the fire.
" Yeah," Atticus whispered finally," I'm sorry I told you. I hate this."
" Atty, this has nothing to do with the mice."
He looked at Ru, dubious.
" This is about you and my sisters," Ru explained, or rather, didn't.
" What?"
" All the girls you dated last term were complete babes, but my sisters . . . I couldn't deal with that."
" Ru, what the hell are you talking about?"
Ru gave him a look of pure agony." You'll hate me."
" What, you've taken up killing babies and torturing puppies when I wasn't looking?"
Ru laughed, and then sobered, falling back to the hurt look.
Atticus didn't know what to say. He never knew what to say. He tried to bridge the gap between them; he went to Ru, awkwardly embraced him, and asked quietly," Tell me what's wrong. Until I know, I can't do anything to fix things."
Ru's heart started to hammer, and he let out a trembling sigh, as if he were going to start crying." Oh, Atty, sometimes you're just so clueless."
Just as Atticus was going to ask him what he meant, Ru reached up to undo Atticus's top three buttons, leaned his head down, and dropped a kiss in the hollow of Atticus's neck. His kisses moved upward, strange for their maleness.
It all clicked for Atticus. Ru was in love with him, and Atticus was straight. Things had been fine as long as Atticus was unattainable, but then they'd gone to Ru's home and Atticus had flirted with Ru's sisters. With Ru's long hair, and his sisters' relatively flat chests, the only difference between the siblings was an X chromosome and some southerly plumbing. He felt stupid not to have realized it before.
Shaking now, Ru whispered," I love you."
Ru, who knew that he wasn't human, who had seen the mice form and be reabsorbed, who watched him die and come back to life, loved him. A jolt of something as pure and blinding as joy flashed through Atticus, stunning him.
Ru kissed him, then, firm male lips against his.
Atticus was fairly sure he was straight-straight; as totally aware of being driven by pheromones and animal instincts as he was mystified that he could not be human and still so desperately want to mate with a human female. In his blackest moods, he felt similar to a randy little dog that humped visitors' legs, driven over the boundaries of his species by lust. But he had no species of his own; he was a solitary creature, a freak of nature.
And Ru loved him just the same.
Ru kissed him again, tasting of tears, and then, realizing that Atticus wasn't responding, tried to pull away. Atticus tightened his hold, sensing that if he let Ru go now, it would tear a larger rift between them. The slight pressure was enough to check Ru. As they stood in the cold darkness, neither wanting to let go, it started to snow. Huge white flakes drifted down silently around them.
Could he maybe not be as straight as he always thought? Certainly he'd never tried . . . that. Never had the desire to. But if he really were entirely straight, why'd he never rebuff Ru? Why would the thought of Ru loving him hit him with lightning-intense happiness? And if asked—just minutes ago—for a word to describe how he felt about Ru, wouldn't he have used the word" love" ?
Ru traced the line of Atticus's jaw with his fingertips, snowflakes in his long black hair.
What was the depth and width of his love? For Ru, couldn't he bend a little?
Wetting his lips, Atticus tilted his head to Ru and kissed him. Strangely, while his senses told him that this was just another set of lips, with an X chromosome instead of a Y, there was something different—some electricity that had nothing to do with taste or smell or touch. Was this love?
So while the snow sprinkled them with cold kisses, they tested the possibilities, Atticus unsure and hesitant, Ru eager and growing bolder.
After having Ru as a roommate for months, his body was imprinted on all his senses, and yet it was like Atticus was discovering him for the first time. His musky scent. His soft skin over hard muscle. His silky black hair.
Ru fumbled with Atticus's belt, undid his pants, and slipped a hand down the flat of Atticus's stomach and into his boxers.
Do I really want this? Can I do this?
There was no denying that what Ru was doing felt good— he grew erect in Ru's hand. Encouraged, Ru slid down his body, freed Atticus from his underwear, and, with a slight groan of want, took Atticus into his mouth.
Am I really ready for this? Atticus didn't know, but his body did as it took up the rhythm of sex.
Ru looked up at him, and in that moment of union it seemed like Atticus could see straight to his soul and knew— Atticus loved him.
Relief and puzzlement went through the Pack. How did Atticus get to college? How did he go from the angry teenager to this protective and sensitive man? And how did he end up selling drugs? How long had he been dealing in Invisible Red? Atticus resisted Helena's probes until she used her personal knowledge of the Iron Horses—and what Ukiah had told the Pack earlier—to dig out memories of tonight's buy. She glossed over the biker's theories about the Pack and focused inon the information on the cult.
" We lost three men at Buffalo," Ru said." You lost three too."
" Four," Daggit said." No one's heard from Toback since; whoever hit the place took him."
There was a weird echo in the memory; Atticus hadn't known the name when Daggit said it, but he'd put a face to the name since then, so the reference had new meaning to him. Hellena pushed into the echo, and Atticus's memory jumped to a hotel suite overlooking the Boston Harbor. Atticus stood with a man, watching a massacre on a computer screen.
Why would drug dealers record a drug buy?
Hellena went digging for an answer. Atticus resisted, trying to divert to other thoughts. They played cat and mouse for a moment, and then Hellena caught hold of a memory and dragged it forward with a cry of dismay from Atticus.
Atticus was starting to hate hospitals. He stopped, found the right room, and glanced in. The now familiar scene of a young man strapped to machines doing the living for him, a family desolate with grief. Hopefully this time he could get some useful information.