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THE BOYFRIEND

“ Y ou need to calm the fuck down,” Black growled. He glared at Jem, and now he made the warning in his eyes and voice overt. “You need to calm the fuck down, brother. I don’t know what’s going on between you and that fucking vampire…”

Jem opened his mouth, but Black cut him off.

“…and I don’t give a shit. It’s none of my business, and frankly, I don’t want to know, not unless I have to. I’m your boss, not your shrink.” He glared at those pale green eyes with their violet rings. “But you need to hear me on this, Dalejem… from everything I’ve seen between the two of you these past few weeks, I’m with Nick. One hundred percent. Nick seems like the reasonable, sane one to me. He’s also the one who’s acting more or less the same as he always has. Whereas you’re acting like a gaos- damned lunatic––”

“Excuse me? You just said––”

“I know what I said,” Black growled. “And I don’t want details. Or your reasons. Not unless there’s abuse involved, or some kind of manipulation, and believe me, I’ve got seers looking at your light for both… and for venom addition. So far no one’s found anything.”

Jem’s face turned bright red. “You fucking––”

“I don’t care,” Black growled. “You’ve become a problem for me, so I’m dealing with it. You’ve no one to blame but yourself.”

“How about I just quit?” Jem snapped.

“Go ahead,” Black threw back without hesitation. “Fuck if I care. But it won’t change anything, Dalejem. I’m telling you, as a brother seer, how it looks from the outside. You’re acting like you’ve lost your mind, not to mention any reasonable control over your light. You’re acting like an immature, fixated adolescent with an insecurity problem… and as much as it pains me to admit it, that shit is beneath you, Jem.”

The older seer’s mouth opened again, his green eyes ice.

Black cut him off without a second thought.

“I know you left him out in the water at Santa Cruz,” he growled. “I know this because he had to call Kiks in the middle of the night for someone to go get him, and while she promised Nick she wouldn’t tell me about it, Jax told me plenty… mostly because he agrees with me that you’re acting like a gaos- damned psycho and he doesn’t want you doing anything to Kiko, not to mention Nick… who most of us consider family.”

Fury filled those green eyes.

Before the handsome seer could voice it, Black raised his voice more.

“And don’t get mad at Nick. Did you hear me? He told Kiks not to tell me, and she didn’t. His only other option would have been to spend the night in a hotel, given you’d taken his only ride home and fucked off to gaos- knows-where and he can’t be out in the sunlight. He tried to rent a car, but what the fuck car rental company is open at two in the morning? If you didn’t want anyone to find out about that bullshit, you shouldn’t have bailed on him when it’s going to wake up my second and her very irritated boyfriend…”

Jem continued to glare at him.

Black sharpened his voice still more, enough to make Miri jump.

“But today’s little performance frankly takes the cake,” Black snapped. “I don’t give a shit what crazy, seer-vampire shit you’re going through right now. I don’t care if his venom is making you nuts… we warned you about that shit. I warned you about that shit. I warned you personally, and in great detail, what vampire venom can do to a seer.”

He raised a finger when Jem opened his mouth.

“This is a kid,” Black growled.

He pointed in the rough direction of the penthouse, where Mika had taken Aura.

“A damaged, deeply screwed-up kid who’s been living as a prisoner, not to mention being raped and tortured daily, for at least a year, by multiple humans… probably closer to two or even three years. We won’t even know the extent of it until they’ve gone through all of the tapes, but the recordings so far are making everyone sick. As in, the team will likely need fucking therapy by the time they’re finished…”

“I don’t need to hear––” Jem began coldly.

“You do need to hear it.” Black’s voice grew harsher. “Nick found her,” he growled. “Do you hear me? Nick found her. His was the first friendly face she’d seen, likely in all that time. She’s been a little weird with the doc, too, but she sees Nick as some kind of gaos -damned savior. You need to calm down about that, and not make it about yourself, or about you and Nick. She only sexualized it because that’s likely the only way she knows how to express anything after everything she’s been through.”

Jem’s long jaw hardened.

He aimed his gaze out the nearby window of the penthouse office.

It happened to be the same office Black had been leaving vacant in case Miri wanted it. For the same reason, it only had minimal furniture inside: a desk, a few empty bookshelves, two armchairs, a couch, a random garbage can and an even more random coat rack by the door.

Most of the furniture had been arranged in front of a gas fireplace embedded in a brick-accented wall. Given the size of the high-ceilinged space, those few pieces only served to make it look bigger and more empty.

“You going off on a traumatized cub because you can’t control yourself is frankly pretty gaos- damned bizarre, brother,” Black went on, when Jem refused to look at him. “It’s making me think, whatever’s going on, it’s not just run-of-the-mill mate-obsession-early-relationship psychosis crap. Which means, I want you talking to Yarli. I want you talking to the doc, too. I want you to see them both every day for a while. Professionally. Starting today… as in, right now. I’m reasonably sure the doc has a free time slot for a pain in the ass seer at exactly this moment, so start right the fuck there.”

Jem’s jaw visibly clenched, pushing out the muscle.

“…You’re suspended from duty until then, in case that wasn’t clear,” Black added coldly. “You can quit later, if you want, but it would be irresponsible of me to let you go anywhere until you talk this out with someone. Don’t go to Kiko or Dex to whine about it, either. I’ve already spoken to them, and Yarli and Manny, too. I can’t have you on my team like this. I won’t.”

Jem’s jaw muscle jutted out more.

Black felt Miri’s discomfort that time, too.

He felt her debating whether or not to say something in front of Jem.

Not you, too, he growled at her. Are you saying you disagree with me about any of this?

After the barest pause, she shook her head minutely.

No. No, I don’t disagree. She hesitated as she studied his eyes. I’m just not sure forcing Jem to talk to me is going to yield the results you want. It might just make him shut down more. You can’t really force that kind of thing, especially when––

Black shot a harder glare her way.

Instead of answering in her mind that time, Black spoke aloud.

“This isn’t a fucking debate,” he growled. “It’s a gaos- damned order.” He glared back at Jem. “If Miriam isn’t the right person, then give me a name, brother. Or you can choose to talk to Yarli alone. I’ll set up a call with the two of you tonight.”

He glared at his wife a beat longer, then aimed that glare back at Jem.

“Pick whoever the fuck you want, but you’re talking to someone. Today. I’m not letting you remain here, in the same place as this child. Not if I can’t trust you not to do something to hurt her. Right now, I don’t trust that. And you wouldn’t either, if you were me.”

Jem’s complexion was so dark it was nearly purple.

His jaw still jutted strangely on that disconcertingly beautiful face, but he forced his eyes off Black’s when Black refused to back down, and nodded.

“Good,” Black growled. “Now get the fuck out of my sight.”

Jem didn’t hesitate. He turned on his heel and walked rapidly for the door.

Black raised his voice at the other seer’s back.

“Don’t go far, brother,” he growled. “I only want to talk to my wife. I want you back in this room in thirty minutes. Or, if you won’t do that, then come back with a time and place to speak with Yarli… or offer someone else for my consideration.”

Jem didn’t look back.

He didn’t slam the door, either, but he also didn’t close it. Within a handful of seconds, Black couldn’t hear his footfalls anymore.

Black looked back at Miri only then.

All the fight left him as soon as he did.

It hit him in the same handful of seconds that the intense fight he’d felt in Jem’s light had brought up something nearly as aggressive in him.

“I meant what I said,” he told Miri, his voice subdued. “It doesn’t have to be you. I just thought he might have a prayer of talking to you. And I’m sorry to shove it at you right this instant, with no preparation, but I really don’t think this can wait, do you?”

There was a silence where she stared at him.

Then she let out a low snort and rolled her eyes.

“Well, what am I supposed to say to that?” she asked incredulously. “No? I won’t talk to him? You’ve basically made it impossible for me to give you a real opinion on this, Black.”

“You just said you agreed with me––”

“In principle, sure. But you should have talked to me about how to handle this before, Black. You said you hired me for my expertise, then didn’t even consult me––”

“Do you really think you’re the wrong person for this?” he asked, voice serious. “Or are you just pissed off because you feel like I put you on the spot?”

“Feel like?” she snorted.

“Okay, did,” he said, impatient. “I did put you on the spot. But honestly, Miri, I do need your help. I’m sorry I lost it on him, but I just don’t expect this kind of thing from Jem. He’s usually so fucking mature and reasonable and irritatingly insightful. I don’t really know what to do with a Jem that’s openly defying me and seems to want to hurt Nick.”

He paused at her silence, then tried again.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked. “Should I pull together a conference call with you, me, and Yarli? We could bring Holo in, too, if you think that would be useful. I can just listen while you and Yarli discuss the best way to handle this. I need to know what’s going on, but this really isn’t my area, so I’m more than happy to hand it off to you.”

Something about the pure guilelessness of his voice and aleimi seemed to take the steam out of her annoyance.

He felt her thinking about how Jem had looked just then, how he’d been acting when he confronted Nick, how he’d acted with Aura, and with her and Black. He also felt her thinking Black was right; there was something going on with him, something beyond whatever “mate shit” needed sorting out between him and Nick.

Something tangibly unstable lived in Jem’s light.

Miri had felt that, as much as Black.

She’d never seen Jem like that before, either, and it scared her.

At the very least, it made her worried for Jem, and for Nick, too.

Black felt her wondering if it had something to do with the fact that Nick had been feeding on Jem for over a year now. Had that exposure to vampire venom reached some kind of tipping point? Was there too much of it in Jem’s light and body?

Nick had confessed to Miriam that Jem could get touchingly emotional with him, that he’d been so vulnerable with Nick a few times that Nick turned into a basket-case himself. But Jem didn’t generally get aggressive with Nick, not like that. Even at the beginning of their relationship, Black hadn’t seen Jem lose his shit like that, not even when he’d seen someone as a clear threat to his relationship.

He’d gotten jealous, sure, but that was a pretty standard seer thing.

He’d been jealous in particular of Miriam.

That jealousy angered Black at times, even as well as he understood it.

He hated that he understood it so well.

Both him and Jem felt threatened by Miriam and Nick’s friendship at various times, but that wasn’t all of it, as much as Black wished it was. Miri and Nick were close. They were family close. Not only that, if Black and then Jem hadn’t come along, they very well might have ended up married to one another.

They might have had kids together.

Black struggled with that awareness, even now. He’d struggled with it a fuck of a lot more back when he and Miriam first started “dating,” or whatever the hell it was they’d been doing back then, before they went full-blown exclusive.

Nick and Jem were still comparatively new.

Maybe Jem hadn’t found a way to make peace with that yet.

Even so, Black could tell Jem felt guilty about reacting to Miri the way he did, especially given what happened to her when Nick was a newborn.

He couldn’t help how he felt, though, any more than Black could.

But Jem never reacted to Miriam the way he’d reacted to that kid.

Jem looked at Aura like he intended to kill her.

Until now, Black had never seen Jem look at anyone like that. Frankly, he never would have believed Jem could be capable of that kind of unflinching hatred towards a seer so young, much less one who’d been through what Aura had.

Black was still thinking about that, and about Aura, when Miri spoke.

“I’ll talk to him,” she said.

“Now?” Black asked cautiously. “Or should I tell him––”

“Now,” she said. “I think you’re right. This can’t wait. I can at least try to assess him. If we have another venom-addicted seer, especially one of Jem’s sight rank and abilities, that’s going to be a huge problem. Even apart from what it might do to him if we don’t address it right away.” She gave Black a serious look. “You might want to talk to Nick about laying off on feeding on Jem until we sort out what’s causing this.”

Black felt an intense plume of relief.

“I will,” he promised. “I’ll go find him right now.”

“See if you can get any more information off him, too,” Miri added, scowling a little. “Nick is too secretive about Jem. Tell him it’s important, that we’re worried about him and we need to know. If he gives you a hard time, or if you lose your temper with him…”

She gave Black a meaningful look.

“…Tell him I want the two of us to go out tonight and talk. We can just walk in the park, or by the beach or something, if he’s okay with that. He can bring his new dog, and I’ll bring Panther and we’ll talk.”

Black’s shoulders relaxed even more.

He could see the set expression on her face.

She was working, even now.

It occurred to him only then that he’d genuinely believed it had to be Miri.

Jem wouldn’t talk to Yarli, and worse, Jem was skilled enough with his light to be able to keep Yarli out, even if Black ordered him to conduct sight sessions with the other seer. Nick wouldn’t talk to Yarli either. Hopefully they’d both talk to the doc.

Black smiled at his wife, feeling his shoulders relax.

“Good,” he said, softer. “Thanks, doc. I mean it.”

“Oh, I know you mean it.” She smiled sweetly. “But you still owe me for this, Quentin… and I don’t only mean the beach house you promised me. You’re racking up some serious bills, and I plan to collect, husband.”

He snorted.

His only real answer, though, was a wicked smile of his own.