Page 56 of Fish in a Barrel

With a little duck of his head, Ellery met Jackson’s eyes and said, “Good grief!” sending Jackson into another puppy-wriggling paroxysm of sheer cuteness overload.

“Best. Thing.Ever!” he mouthed. Then he got down to business. “Video games?”

“No,” Ellery answered, mouth twisting in appreciation of Jackson’s single-mindedness. “Video games will keep you awake. We want you tosleep. Mike and Henry are authorized to stream any movie you want—Disney, Sony, and Dreamworks are your oyster. But no horror movies—”

“It’s almost Halloween!” he rasped, and then wished he hadn’t.

“Fuck Halloween,” Ellery snapped. “You just lived Halloween.” His face softened, those sharp brown eyes becoming limpid pools of pleasing that Jackson could never resist. “Wouldn’t want you to have bad dreams,” he said softly.

They’d been getting better. At the end of November the year before, he’d been having sit-up-and-scream dreams almost nightly. All the self-care Ellery had begged him to invest in had paid off, and now it was more like once a week, but they were still there. Still waiting for something like the night before—or the entire Ezekiel Halliday trial period—to send his emotions into a spin, to send his subconscious on a feeding frenzy and leave him naked and vulnerable and shaking in the dark of night.

So Jackson knew what Ellery was really saying here, and he hated it. He was saying he wanted Jackson to fall asleep, lulled by the television and by the thought that there were people in the room who cared for him. He was telling Jackson not to keep himself awake, make himself potentially sicker, by battling the digital demons instead of battling the demons in his own soul.

Jackson hated relying on them. Hated it. Since the day they’d moved in, he’d gone out into the living room if he could, to let Ellery sleep when he couldn’t. It hadn’t always happened that way. Some nights he woke up, heart pounding, breath screaming in his chest, and he could fake needing a drink of water and disappear.

But some nights he woke Ellery with this bullshit, and it pissed him off. He didn’t want to trouble Ellery, but Ellery seemed intent on sticking with him through the whole freakshow that was his subconscious, and dammit, couldn’t loving Jackson not be so fucking hard?

Ellery was telling him to have some faith in their friends and to sleep. Jackson knew it wasn’t that simple.

“So maybe stay awake with video games,” he managed to rasp in response to Ellery’s bad-dreams comment, but Ellery shook his head.

“Please,” he asked quietly. “For me?”

Jesus. Ellery only played that card when it was important. Jackson closed his eyes.

“I don’t want them to—”

“The dreams?” Mike asked, popping their little bubble of spoken intimacy with a snort. “I know about the dreams. You had ’em when you lived next door, remember?”

Jackson gave him a sour look. He remembered. He’d had to give Mike a key to his own half of the duplex. Before Ellery, when Jackson knew the night was going to suck, he’d find a hookup. The warm body would keep the dreams at bay, but the lack of intimacy of the impersonal sex didn’t obligate anybody to stay with him. On the nights he couldn’t find a hookup, the dreams would be bad. So bad that Mike had busted down his door more than once to shake Jackson awake to make that noise stop before somebody called the police. Jackson had finally given him the keys so if somebodydidcall the cops, Mike wouldn’t get caught breaking into his house.

“So you’re still having them?” Mike asked, catching his hostility and softening his voice.

“Fine,” Jackson mouthed. “No video games. Not talking about it.”

Mike’s face, smooth-skinned behind his white beard, softened. “I guess you’ve got more worse shit to dream about,” he murmured. He looked at Ellery and said, “No video games. I get it now.”

Ellery’s mouth twisted; it might have been a smile. “Thank you,” he said. Then he moved closer to Jackson and leaned forward. Jackson raised his face, anticipating a kiss and got the little touchless thermometer instead.

“High,” Ellery commented with a sniff. “And you don’t get any more meds for another two hours.” He handed Mike the thermometer and showed him how to use it, saying, “Test him once an hour. If it goes above 102 I’m calling for antibiotics. I can’t believe all they sent him home with was pain pills.”

“Igot the pain pills,” Henry said grimly. “He was going to leave without them.”

Jackson tried to glare at him, but his eyes were gritty. “You’re fired,” he mouthed.

“Oh, color me shocked,” Ellery snapped, and then he took a deep breath, the expression looking very Charlie Brownish to match his costume. “C’mon, Jackson. Don’t fight me on this.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Jackson told him. “Be careful. Stay sharp. Cock out, tits up, cut them to ribbons.”

Ellery gave Jackson one of his most scathing looks. “They won’t know they’re bleeding until I’m gone,” he said with smug certainty.

Jackson smiled proudly. “That’s my boy.”

At that moment Jade came bustling in, her little blue dress and black wig looking very Lucyish. She’d even found saddle shoes from somewhere and had made a sign that said Psychiatric Help 5¢.

Mike grinned at her and held his hand out. She gave him hers, and he raised it to his lips. “All my best fantasies as a little boy. I amsoconfused.”

She laughed wickedly. “Wait till we get home. I’m gonna make you wear Ellery’s costume and things are gonna getkinky!”