Page 12 of Freedom
It wasn’t nearly enough. Nothing he did could really be enough for Jake, but he was trying, and he had to believe that whatever Hunter Harper said, Jake would keep giving Tobias the chance to prove himself. Tobias was just grateful that he had never heardfreak, FREACS, orASCon Jake’s end.
Even after Jake stopped talking, he didn’t come back right away. Tobias dropped his hands but couldn’t make himself relax. At some point he had pulled his knees up to his chest (all the better to press his palms over his ears, try to drown out things he wasn’t supposed to hear), so Tobias wrapped his arms around them to try to ease the trembling.
When he heard the key card slide in the lock, Tobias started, even though he’d been waiting (hoping desperately) for Jake to come back, watching the door like the power of his gaze alone could draw Jake back to him. The sight of Jake’s drawn face, of the tired lines around his gray eyes, reminded Tobias it was his fault Jake was only twenty and so tired already; having a monster so close was taking its toll on him. Tobias thought for one horrible moment that Jake knew he had heard him through the walls and that Hunter Harper had said he should punish Tobias for eavesdropping and being a useless piece of filth.
But Jake just rubbed at his mouth as though he could force it into a smile. He tossed the phone on the table and shrugged out of his jacket before crawling back onto the bed. Tobias hugged his legs tighter, not sure if he should get out or move more to one side, but Jake stopped, facing him, one hand over his clasped fingers, the other rubbing Tobias’s shoulders and neck.
Tobias relaxed into that touch as the heavy pressure of anxiety eased from him. Whatever Hunter Harper had said, Jake still wasn’t afraid to dirty his hands by touching him, didn’t mind providing that direct comfort for a needy monster. Hunter Harper had never hurt Tobias, but Tobias was still more afraid of him than of any other hunter. No hunter had more influence over Jake. He talked about Roger constantly, far more than about his own father, whom he hadn’t mentioned since he picked Tobias up. Even though Tobias had come to believe that Jake really didn’t want to hurt him, no matter how stupid Tobias was, he also knew that if anyone could change Jake’s mind and remind him of his responsibilities as a hunter, it would be Hunter Harper.
“It’s okay,” Jake said quietly. “It was just Roger calling for a checkup. He wants to make sure we’re still plugging along, y’know, ’cause he cares. Doesn’t want us dying in a bloody crash or cracking up or anything.” His mouth quirked, and another layer of tension in Tobias eased. If Jake could laugh, he wasn’t angry. Not at Tobias. “I told him we’re doing fine, because we are, y’know? Better than fine. Awesome.” Jake squeezed his shoulder, and Tobias made himself smile. It would be okay. They would be okay.
Jake smiled back, wider this time but still sad, and then turned and flopped down on the bed next to Tobias, their shoulders bumping. He kept one hand on Tobias’s leg and reached for the remote with the other.
“So, did you get to hear how mongeese giggle their way through dates?”
“Yes, Jake.” Tobias hadn’t had much success paying attention to the television once Jake left the room, but he remembered the high-pitched noise the little animals had been making and how it was called giggling. Maybe real human giggling sounded the same way.
The program had changed to a special on volcanoes. Jake frowned, finger hovering over the change channel button as computer-generated lava overwhelmed the ancient city of Pompeii. He kept glancing at Tobias out of the corners of his eyes and then sighed, visibly forcing his posture to relax. His voice was soft. “Whaddaya say we call it a night?”
If Jake didn’t want to talk about his phone call, it wasn’t any of Tobias’s business. Even if he had decided that Tobias deserved a beating or shouldn’t sleep that night, it really wouldn’t have been Tobias’s business, but Tobias was relieved nonetheless.
“Okay.”
“Cool. You need to use the bathroom before lights out?”
Tobias shook his head, and Jake smiled and brushed him on the shoulder as he got up.
Jake had been touching him more to reassure him earlier during the day; Jake was always touching him, and it was so good, but Tobias still had the same reaction as he had at Jake’s first touch; his cheeks warmed, and he had to fight the urge to duck his head. It was hard but worth it because seeing it made Jake’s mouth relax into a more natural smile and made his step to the bathroom easier.
In their daily life, waiting for Jake to finish in the bathroom was one of the times when Tobias had the most trouble accepting that his life was better now and that it would stay better. He couldn’t let himself believe that Jake would come back to him when he left the bathroom. That Jake wouldn’t just stay on his side of the bed, stiff and distant, but lie down next to him, reach out and slip his arm over Tobias’s stomach or chest beneath the covers, as though he really did want Tobias that close. Tobias couldn’t believe it, and yet every night, it was true.
Only with the reassuring warmth of Jake at his back and their legs tangled together could Tobias truly believe this was real.
~*~
Roger leaned againstthe kitchen counter, looking at the phone in his hand and wondering if he should have pushed for an exact visiting date or, hell, even a time frame. Or maybe gotten Jake to give him more than the state so Roger could track them down himself.
He’d been on Jake’s side from the start. First of all because he trusted the kid more than his bastard excuse for a father, and second because he’d gotten a long enough look at what those bastards at FREACS were doing to that freak Jake cared so much about to have a certain level of sympathy, just as far as his conscience was concerned. Roger knew where he stood and didn’t regret helping Jake get Tobias out, but he was starting to wish he’d kept a closer eye on him from the start.
It wasn’t unusual for Roger’s acquaintances to disappear like a couple of annual ghosts in between surprise visits and emergency calls, especially if their last name was Hawthorne, but he and Jake had kept in pretty close touch since Leon threw him out of the house. Assuming that the Hawthornes had been living in a house at the time, which Roger doubted. Jake had hung around Roger’s small town of Truth or Consequences and often as not crashed on Roger’s couch for almost a month before picking up some hunts farther west and scouting out a home base to which he could bring Tobias. Roger had liked Boulder and spotted Jake the basics in furniture. Then the months wore on, and Jake just kept brooding—even worse as his paperwork got no attention—until Roger had let him go burn off steam however he could. Roger knew that had involved fights, women, men, and hunts that had been on the crazy edge of dangerous to do alone, and he’d been relieved for more than one reason when Jake finally got the notice that his application had gone through.
Contact had been much more sporadic since Jake picked Tobias up. After that one drunken distress call a few weeks in, Roger had had to piece together a picture of the last few months himself. Jake had insisted they were getting better since then, but tonight he’d let something slip:if some days ought to be salted and torched, and Tobias’s kinda fragile about every fucking thing right now, I think that’s pretty goddamn normal. That could mean a lot of things, from the simple explanation that the kid was as traumatized as a long-time POW to the sinister possibility that the kid’s trauma was making him lash out in ways Jake, or any psychiatrist, wasn’t prepared for.
It hadn’t seemed important when Roger saw those bastards torturing the kid or when he helped Jake with the paperwork, but in this moment, Roger hated like hell not having the least clue what might have made the ASC toss Tobias into FREACS. Roger liked research and backup plans (because Plan A worked about a quarter of the time, and generally speaking, that meant Plan B had to be good because he was damned if he’d let himself get eaten from lack of preparation), but the files on Jake’s freak hadn’t been available, and the unidentified classification could mean anything. Jake had known Tobias since he was a kid himself, but had they ever ruled out every form of mind control? Would it have killed them if Roger had gone to at least interview the kid before signing the papers?
Jake was a smart boy for sure, but he was still awfully young and just at the age where a man’s dick, heart, and stomach had a hell of a lot more control than his head. Roger had known him since he had been a silent four-year-old hidden in the shadow of Leon’s rage, grief, and paranoia. The two of them were mourning Sally, reeling from the national revelation of the supernatural following the White House Massacre, and running from everything they had known before, including—maybe especially—the Dixons. Roger had given them refuge more times than he could count and had talked Leon down from more than one raving, drunken edge. More than once he’d been tempted to wipe the Hawthornes off of his contact list, but he’d always turned the other cheek—generally after giving Leon a matching black eye—for Jake’s sake. God knew that the kid needed more people in his life he could trust to always be there.
Maybe that was why Jake had latched onto Tobias so easy.
Roger wanted to trust Jake. He did. He wanted to believe that Tobias was just a harmless kid on the wrong side of the ASC (though, coward that he was, he tried not to think of how fucking likely it was that someone innocent could end up in that place). But he didn’t know if he, the book he’d sent, or an expert could give Jake the intel he needed to help Tobias. He’d seen only a fraction of what Tobias had survived, and from that alone, he wasn’t sure that anything could really give them all the answers.
He wished he could believe that Jake would call him if he was getting in over his head, but Jake had always been strange about that kid. Obsessed, yeah. He’d learned it from the best. Protective and defensive as hell too, though of course he’d had to be, with Leon breathing down his neck. The few times Roger had tried to nail down the details—whys, wherefores, benefits, threats—with him, Jake had just looked at him and said, simply,He’s Tobias, as though that explained it all.
Roger’s question tonight about hunting had been partly genuine, partly to see if Jake’s priorities had been drastically altered in the few months Tobias had been with him. Jake was a passionate and damn good hunter, even if he was too fucking young to be regularly courting death from the things that went bump in the night. Kid needed someone to watch his back. But if that key personality trait had been changed, that would have been a clear warning sign. If Roger had been a monster, making sure the person he was with had no interest in killing supernaturals would have been high on his priority list.
It hadn’t sounded like Jake didn’t care anymore, but even the fact he was on indefinite hiatus prickled the back of Roger’s neck. What if Tobias was working some kind of mojo on him?
Roger hated the ASC. He’d cut ties with them in every unofficial way, though he kept his license and membership if only because it was stupid to throw away the resources and approval of a nationwide organization like the ASC. If giants actually existed, he’d probably try to kill them, but he wasn’t going to start kicking the metaphorical ones while they were sleeping.
