Queer Fires

  QUEER FIRES

  FLINT AND TINDER BOOK TWO

  GREGORY ASHE

  H&B

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Queer Fires

  Copyright © 2023 Gregory Ashe

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. For permission requests and all other inquiries, contact: contact@hodgkinandblount.com

  Published by Hodgkin & Blount

  https://www.hodgkinandblount.com/

  contact@hodgkinandblount.com

  Published 2023

  Printed in the United States of America

  Background photo created by dashu83 - www.freepik.com

  Version 1.05

  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-63621-051-3

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-63621-050-6

  1 | EMMETT

  Rejected, I thought as I climbed the stairs. My phone’s screen timed out and went black. Again.

  I kept climbing.

  I was walking back from my monthly injection of Sublocade—no cravings guaranteed. It was mid-afternoon on a Saturday, with San Elredo’s typical December weather: a marine-damp cold that, every day, warmed up enough to threaten to be pleasant—but only if you were standing in the sun. The sound of my steps echoed up the stairwell, but when the breeze picked up, all I could hear were the loose shingles flapping on the roof.

  As I reached the third-floor landing, I checked my phone again. Still nothing. That was the way with dating apps—be it Grindr or Scruff or Prowler. If you weren’t interested, you didn’t reply. Simple as that.

  The old me would have loved it.

  I pocketed my phone, went to unlock the door to the apartment, and found it already open. After running through a few choice swear words, I went inside.

  All the usual signs: the unfamiliar pair of tennis shoes near the front door, the UC-San Elredo hoodie draped over the back of a chair, the leather-and-tobacco candle that I, me, Emmett Bradley had given Jim on his birthday—I should have included a note that said, Not for hookups. And, of course, Jim’s usual fuck-session playlist, some indie folk shit that made him seem cool and cultured, with that vibe of unflappable chill. I wanted them to see Jim when he got after me about the dishes. How unflappably chill would he seem then?

  I stood there for a minute. I couldn’t hear them yet, which meant they hadn’t gotten started; maybe it said something about Jim, or maybe it was my bad luck, but he tended to bring out the screamer in the guys he hooked up with. Of course, that might have had something to do with the fact that when Jim got excited, spontaneous combustion was a definite possibility. I thought about leaving. Down the hall, I could see that his door was open a couple of inches. After another moment, I started down the hall, making my steps heavier than they needed to be. When I passed his room, I got a glimpse of Jim, wearing the flannel that I, me, Emmett Bradley had picked out for him. He was lying on his bed next to his latest conquest. Or victim, depending on how you wanted to look at it. The guy had to be closer to Jim’s age than mine, and all I got was an impression of shaggy brown hair before I moved on.

  “Hiya, Teach,” I called over my shoulder.

  The sound of something banging against the headboard made me smile.

  “My roommate,” Jim said.

  The hookup said something I couldn’t make out. Then Jim’s steps thudded toward the door. In the moment before it shut, I heard the hookup say, “Are you seriously a teacher?”

  “High school,” Jim said like someone who had made a terrible life choice.

  The hookup laughed. “That’s hot.”

  And then the door closed.

  Oh sure, I thought as I entered my bedroom. Really hot.

  I lay on my bed. I kicked off my sneakers. I rolled onto my side, grabbed my Bluetooth speaker, and turned it on. Then I found a bluegrass playlist on Spotify and cranked it all the way up.

  It took about oh-point-two seconds for Jim to come barreling into the hallway. He’d done up one button on the flannel, probably in the name of modesty and goodness and chastity, or some such bullshit, but I could make out the fine, pale skin of his chest and belly, the scattering of red-gold hair. He was blond, strawberry blond, on his head, so when you saw him with his shirt off, it was a surprise, the dark, red hair there. He shouldn’t have been a teacher, obviously; he had the jawline and cheekbones and wholesome, boy-next-door goodness that made me think of a model in a J. Crew catalogue. He probably should have known how to play polo or row crew or some shit like that.

  He had red spots in his cheeks. He stared at me, and I met his gaze.

  “What?” I finally asked over the twanging of the bluegrass.

  “You know what!” he shouted back.

  I shrugged and picked up my phone.

  He moved in the periphery of my vision, coming across the room. A moment later, his hand slapped down on the speaker, and the music cut off.

  “I was listening to that,” I said.

  “Emmett.” He was taking deep breaths. They probably taught you that in teacher school.

  “That’s mine.”

  “We talked about this.”

  “Can I have my speaker, please?”

  He took a few more of those breaths. His knuckles were white on the hand that gripped my speaker. Then he turned and left, taking the speaker with him.

  “Hey!”

  “You can have it back when you’re ready to behave like an adult.”

  He didn’t even have the decency to slam his door, so I got up and slammed mine for him. You know, so we’d both feel better.

  I went back to the bed. I lay there for a while. I texted my mom, but she didn’t reply. I texted Vie, and he didn’t reply either. That was probably for the best. I’d spent the better part of the last few years falling in love with him and then fucking things up, over and over again—including my most recent fuckup, which had involved a kiss. I checked Prowler again, but nobody had replied. Emmett Bradley, the most popular kid in school.

  There’s this part of me that I think of like one of those big control rooms you see in movies, all the instrument panels and dials and gauges and meters, and of course, all the levers and switches and buttons. And I’ve got labels for everything, for everybody. And Jim Spencer currently has a whole quadrant of my brain’s control room dedicated to him. I’ve got sticky notes and scribbles on napkins and sharpie letters on masking tape, all the little things I’ve managed to put together about somebody who was so open and so kind and so genuine that for a long time, I didn’t realize I knew absolutely fucking zero about him.

  And the thing about the levers and the buttons and the gauges and the meters is that you have to keep track of how they react. So, after a while, I got up and went into the kitchen. I opened the lower cabinets. I got out a saucepan. I got out the stockpot. They were Goodwill purchases, the kind with the cheap, price-gun label that leaves the adhesive after you peel it off, a dollar, or maybe a buck fifty. I got to my feet and banged them together. A lot.

  It took Jim a little longer this time, probably because he thought I’d give up. When he did finally appear in the kitchen, that strawberry-blond hair had darkened, threads of copper running through it now, and I could smell a whiff of wood smoke. He crossed the space between us in two long strides and grabbed the pans mid-bang. Then he pulled them away.

  “Sorry about that, Teach,” I said. “I dropped them.”

  His throat moved. He set the stockpot on the stove. He laid the saucepan on the counter. He’d forgotten to button the flannel this time, and when he put his hands on his hips, the fabric parted.

  “Nice,” I said and smirked at the hickey.

  He yanked the flannel shut, but after a heartbeat, he put a hand low on his neck, covering the hickey even though it was hidden by his shirt now, not seeming to realize what he was doing.

  “Did I interrupt the—” I smacked my fist into my open hand and raised my eyebrows. When Jim’s throat moved again, I repeated the movement. And then I did it again. And then again.

  “Cut it out,” he said.

  “Ouch, you sound frustrated.” I drove my fist into my palm. “I guess I did.” My fist smacked home again. “Interrupt, I mean.” Flesh slapped against flesh. “The pounding.”

  “I said cut it out.” He grabbed my wrist, and his touch burned. I yelped, and as fast as I tried to twist away, Jim was faster. He released me and stepped back, hand opening reflexively, his mouth dropping open.

  A red mark in the shape of Jim’s hand cuffed my wrist. It wouldn’t blister, I didn’t think, but it hurt—one of the dangers of playing with all those levers and buttons, especially when the guy in question was the NEA’s answer to the Human Torch.

  “I’m sorry,” Jim said reflexively. Then he seemed to struggle with himself, and he said, “Emmett, I’m so sorry. How—how bad is it?”

  “Owie, owie, owie.”

  Jim’s jaw tightened, and he reached for my arm, checking my face for permission. When I didn’t bite him, or whatever he was expecting, he gingerly drew me closer to inspect the burn. The wood-smoke
smell was stronger up close. I could see the fine golden hairs on the side of his neck.

  “Are you going to kiss it and make it better?” I asked.

  He was holding my arm so gently, and his touch was warm—warmer than anybody’s, because his body always ran hot. He had waterlily eyes.

  “Is everything—” The voice came from the hallway, and Jim released my arm a moment before his hookup reached the kitchen. “—ok?”

  He was cute, I guess, if you went for the nerdy-granola type: wiry, but probably stronger than he looked, with big glasses and long tangles of brown hair. He probably owned a hemp sweater and lived in a pair of Chacos, but right then, he wore nothing but a pair of briefs printed with, of all things, bananas. He hugged himself and looked from Jim to me, and then he froze, and his jaw dropped.

  That’s literally, by the way. My face tends to have that effect on people.

  “This is Emmett,” Jim said. “My roommate.”

  “And former student,” I said with a smirk. “He’s gone through a few of us by this point.”

  “This is Ben,” Jim said in a strained voice. “He’s a grad student at UCSE.”

  “Let me guess: history. No, anthropology. No, something science-y. Maybe something with plants?”

  Ben was still staring.

  “Ben,” Jim said quietly.

  The grad student flinched and tried to cover it by holding out his hand. “Uh—” Then his brain caught up. “Mining, actually. Well, the history of mining. So, I guess you’re kind of right. There are a ton of old mines and quarries around the area. Most of them are from the Gold Rush, but—”

  I reached out to shake, and, of course, he forgot what he was saying and stared at my hand.

  The scars bisect me vertically: everything on my right side—and, ladies and gentlemen, I mean everything—is covered in scars. Everything on the left is one hundred percent original Emmett Bradley.

  “Looks like you’re ok,” Jim said, but I could hear the apology that was going to come later. “So, we’ll go back to my room.”

  “You don’t have to go back.” I pushed the stockpot around on the stove, filling the air with the screech of metal. “I was about to make chili. Doesn’t a nice bowl of piping hot chili sound like just the thing before a vigorous fisting?”

  Ben blinked and looked at Jim.

  “He’s joking,” Jim said.

  “I’m joking,” I said. “Don’t I kind of look like the Joker?”

  Ben looked at my face, realized what he had done, and jerked his gaze away.

  “Emmett,” Jim said. Then, “Ben, come on.”

  “You guys have fun,” I said. “Hey, Teach, I’m going to visit Stephen and Roger. Make sure my chili doesn’t burn, will you?”

  Jim held my gaze for a long moment. Then he took Ben’s arm, turned him toward the hall, and started him walking. Before the bedroom door closed, I heard Ben say, “I am so sorry; I didn’t mean to stare.”

  If we’d had a gas oven, I would have tried for a gas leak. Instead, I grabbed my sneakers and left.

  Stephen and Roger lived on the first floor, so I took the stairs down. I stopped on the landing between the first and second floors. The railing looked out on the parking lot; I leaned against it, the iron cold through my shirt. As the first minute ticked past, the rush started to fade, and my wrist throbbed. I wished I’d brought my coat. Or my vape. Or anything, really, to not feel so shitty about myself. A bullet to the brain sounded nice, but since I was already committed to this next stunt, I hugged myself, shivering, and pictured myself pressing all the big red buttons that I knew I wasn’t supposed to press.

  I heard his steps before I saw him—and then a second pair of steps.

  “You don’t have to go,” Jim was saying. “I’ll be right back.”

  “No, I—” But whatever Ben was going to say, he stopped when he turned the corner and saw me. His face colored, and he rushed past me. I blew him a kiss, and he actually missed a step and almost fell down the next flight of stairs.

  Jim came down the steps more slowly.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You told him you were responsible for me. You told him you had to take care of me. You promised my parents you’d watch out for me.”

  “I should have known,” he said. “I should have known you wouldn’t be stupid enough to drop in on a pair of chemsex sociopaths who told you, in front of me, that they’d love to try some edgeplay after they packed you with molly. I should have known that you wouldn’t be so totally moronic that you wouldn’t go anywhere near those two after they promised you they could make you scream. I should have known it was one more thing like the music, like the pots, a way to mess things up for me. But you know what, Emmett? It’s getting hard to tell with you.”

  “Owie, owie, owie.”

  For a moment, I almost had him: the flush that darkened his cheeks, the swollen pupils, the way his hands flexed at his sides. I hadn’t noticed until now that he was in gym shorts, the flannel hanging open, his skin pebbled with cold. He’d taken off his pants, I realized. And then he’d decided he had to come after me, and he’d been so worried that he’d hopped into a pair of shorts and rushed out of the apartment.

  “Sorry about Ben,” I said. “But to be fair, he’s a bit of a loser, even for you, Teach.”

  “Don’t call me that. And don’t talk about Ben. He’s a nice guy, and he felt bad—”

  “Why would he feel bad?”

  Jim stared at me. “Do you like this? Is this how you want things to be between us?”

  I bit my thumb. Then I said, “Tell you what: I feel bad about Ben. So, you can take me upstairs, and we can fuck. How about that? A pity fuck is better than no fuck at all, Teach.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t do this with you right now.”

  “You chubbed up a little, though, right? Those shorts don’t hide much.”

  “And I’m not going to keep doing this, Emmett. I can’t. Not forever.”

  I had to stare past him, at the ragged outdoor carpeting on the steps, the ends of it peeling up from the glue. My lips twitched. And then I whispered, “Owie, owie, owie.”

  Jim made a disgusted noise and turned. Below us, tires screeched. When I looked down, a beat-to-shit Camry skidded to a stop.

  “Maybe Ben changed his mind,” I said. “Maybe he started thinking about what Teach is packing—”

  Jim grabbed my arm so tightly that it hurt. When I looked over at him, it wasn’t anger on his face—it was fear.

  The driver’s door flew open, and a girl stumbled out. I hadn’t seen her in over a year, but I recognized her—we’d been friends in the loony bin. She was white, close to my age, and pretty, but the kind that would punch you for telling her so. She had the same ashy-blue hair and thick-framed glasses, and her face was tight with what I recognized, after a moment, as controlled panic. In one hand, she was carrying a gun.

  “Chloe?”

  Her head snapped up, and she was already raising the gun before she caught herself and lowered it again.

  “Get your ass down here!” she shouted. “We’ve got to run!”

  2 | JIM

  I stared down at Chloe, my brain trying to make sense of the panic that had already gripped my body. I hadn’t seen her in over a year, and as far as I knew, Emmett hadn’t seen her either. She’d been an important part of his life at San Elredo Psychiatric Hospital, but that hadn’t translated into everyday friendship. Like me and Emmett, she had an ability. Like me and Emmett, she’d gotten that ability after coming into contact with a creature that dealt in pain and suffering. And like me and Emmett, she had scars to show the price she’d paid for power.

  And now she was here, the sun lighting up her face so that it looked thin and transparent like a lampshade.

  The unreality of the moment kept me in place. I was standing in this stairwell, in sneakers and shorts and a shirt I’d been too hurried to button, in the middle of yet another fight with my—whatever Emmett was. Roommate was too simple, and guy-I-loved-but-was-much-too-young-plus-he-was-into-somebody-else was too long, although accurate. The breeze raised goose bumps, and I tasted skunky weed laced with the sea-smell on the breeze.