“Look, man, he needs you.I… I love him.I’d die for him.He may think we’re just boyfriends, but I will put a ring on it one day when he’s not looking, only….”Hunter couldn’t help it.He was used to keeping his body language contained and his emotions even more so, but he found himself waving his hands around like he could produce the words to explain his frustration by magic.
“But we need a day out,” Josh said happily.“I hear you.And actually, it’s time to let him help plan the op.”
Hunter sagged at the table.“Oh my God, thank you.”
Josh nodded his head sagely, like he was doing a favor, but Hunter caught his lips twitching and felt infinitely better.
Josh and Grace ride again—the dynamic duo was being restored.
All was as it should be in the world.
“SO,” GRACEsaid, his voice impossibly low, “what are we doing this for again?”
“We’re practicing,” Josh said, looking down from the balcony of the building two blocks away from the building he was supposed to be working at.They’d chosen this one because it had similar dimensions and composition to their target building, but the room they had access to for “practice” (as he’d told his parents) faced an alleyway and not a main street, the better to not attract attention.
“We’ve done this lots,” Grace said, leaning over the balcony railing until he could lift his legs over his head while outside the railing’s safety area.“Why are we doing it now?”
“Quit that, you idiot,” Josh hissed.“People areless likelyto see what we do here, but that doesn’t mean you’re invisible.”
Grace—who had apparently learnedsomeself-control over the past year, dutifully righted himself and stared at Josh, waiting for an answer.
Josh grimaced and looked away.
“Oh my God,” Grace said, a shaft of pain so raw crossing his lovely features that Josh felt his own eyes water.“You… you can’t.”
“I can,” Josh defended.“I just….”He sighed.“I’ve got to be able to do this, Grace.You know that, right?I’m the only one with access to steal the painting and time to replace it with the forgery.I’m the only one with an excuse to be there if I’m busted.I… everything we’ve put into this job, and it’s gotta be me, but….”He sighed and tried to still the shaking in his hands.
“It’s been a while,” Grace said, his voice neutral.“Since we rappelled down buildings.”
Josh let out a breath, glad that Grace, as ever, got him.
“It’s been a while,” he admitted, still holding on tightly to the other thing he didn’t want to say.
But Grace—as ever—gothim.
“You miss Liam,” Grace said wisely.
“So bad,” Josh said, able to tell Grace this as he could tell nobody else.
“Then ask him to come help,” Grace implored.“Come on, Josh.”Not “Cancer boy” or “Recovery boy” or “idiot.”Josh.“You love the stupid Interpol cop guy—you think this is a secret?”
“No!”Josh felt peevish and scared and whiny, and he couldn’t help it.“Don’t you get it?He comes back now and sees me like—” He indicated himself, healthier than he had been six months ago but stillrecovering.Too thin, too tired, too unsure of things he’d been sure about for years.“Like this—and that’s all I’m ever going to be to him.Some sick, patheticthinghe spent three weeks of his vacation comforting when he could have been out playing Pirates of the Caribbean.”
Grace snorted.“I hate to break this to you, moron, but he was just as happy to be trapped in that berth as you were!God, Josh, I’ve never seen somebody so… so ready to step up and be Captain America, but just for one boy.You are the country of Josh, and Liam wants to be Captain of Josh.The least you could do is call him so he’ll come be Captain of Josh for, you know,Josh.”
Josh squinted at him.“You,” he said after a moment, “are making even less sense than usual.Can we just… I don’t know, set up our equipment and zoom down to that balcony three floors below?Jesus.Captain of Josh.Just because you’ve got a Captain of Grace ready to fly in and rescue you—”
“Captain of Grace fobbed me off on you,” Grace muttered, pulling out his paracord and carabiners.
Josh sighed and started getting his own equipment ready.It had been a while, but God, he and Grace used to do this sort of thing every weekend.
“Only because I hadn’t gotten around to begging yet,” he told Grace.
Grace gave him one of those brilliant smiles before—without warning or lining up his descent or even measuring out paracord—he jumped off the twenty-third floor balcony of a building currently being renovated in downtown Chicago.
“Grace!”Josh cried, furiously rigging his own setup so he could jump off and follow Grace down.Below him he heard the crash of a window—which wasnotin the plan—and the surprised yelp of the construction men on the floorfourstories below, and it took Josh fifteen seconds to jump off the edge of the balcony to chase Grace through the construction site, out another window, and over one more ledge.
This time all the way to the bottom.
