Chapter Text
October 31st – two hours earlier
Apparently, the ‘next shipment’ hadn’t gone by without a hitch.
And judging by the state of the guy tied to the chair, placed in the middle of the room of the closed speakeasy for a ‘private meeting’, he was the culprit.
Husk finished drying yet another glass – he had lost count and probably didn’t even matter, but it was a way like any other to keep his hands busy - while Tex’s knuckles adorned with brass knuckles fell in a dull crack on the aforementioned guy’s jaw, making him spit out another tooth on the floor and let out a gasp of pain that sounded a lot like “stop please stop”.
Zestiel’s dark eyes, standing in front of the scene – a pool of soft light like a theatrical spotlight – shone in the dim light like the ember of the cigar he had just taken a drag from.
Sitting at the bar a couple of stools away from Henry, Alastor drummed his long fingers idly on the polished wood surface, the perfect image of someone waiting his turn.
Husk took a slow breath, forcing himself to swallow the all-too-vivid memory of his Accident that made his back tingle.
The casino basement. A chair in a pool of light. His blood on the floor.
Stop please stop— hold him the fuck down, just hold him—
As much as he hated to think about it, it had happened some Halloweens ago.
Gruesome coincidences.
“Have you got your memory back?”
Zestiel had moved closer to the guy in question, bending on his knees so he could look him in the eyes, even though the other guy didn’t look like he could even hold his head straight at the moment.
Who knows if he too had been such a pitiful sight that time.
“I d-don’t—” the gurgling breath of someone who clearly has too much blood in their lungs came after a few moments. “I don’t k-know ‘nythin'els— I s-swear.”
“Are you really sure that’s the right answer?” Zestiel inquired, removing the cigar from his lips and tapping it to let the ashes fall directly on the man’s knee. “Considering I was told you were at the dock the night the cops came to pry, that seems a quite odd coincidence.”
The guy started to cry as if he’d run out of excuses. Husk watched Tex wrinkle his nose in disgust, before dragging his amber gaze back to the man and realizing why: the stain on his crotch suggested he’d just pissed himself.
Stop please stop.
The itch on his back had started to become unbearable and, absentmindedly, he found himself scratching between his shoulder blades.
Zestiel clicked his tongue a couple of times, sighing and getting back up.
“Such a disappointment, Frank.” he put the cigar back between his teeth and snapped his fingers at Tex, who nodded and headed towards the stairs that led to the gangster’s mezzanine office.
He blinked a couple of times, focusing on the now lifeless form of Frank slumping completely into the chair, a hole in his forehead where the barrel of Zestiel’s gun had put a bullet in his head to show him exactly how much he had disappointed in him.
The gangster put the gun back in the shoulder holster hidden under his tailored suit, before sighing again with an annoyed expression.
“This filthy traitor even soiled my sleeve.”
It seems that Frank’s sins were not over yet.
On that past Halloween night, when he had dragged himself home, they had to simply throw away his clothes. Or at least, that’s what Lidia had told him, between sobs, because he couldn’t remember a fucking thing about how and when he had arrived at the hospital.
The pain, however, he remembered that all too well.
Hold him the fuck down, just hold him down.
“Don’t worry Zestiel.” Alastor’s nonchalant tone, as if they hadn’t just witnessed torture and subsequent execution, brought him back from his memories.
He stopped scratching his back.
“I can ask Rosie to send you one of her lovely girls and measure you for a new suit today.”
Zestiel smiled softly at the doctor, joining them both at the bar to put out his cigar in the first available ashtray – one that Husk promptly took care to place in front of him.
“Thank you Alastor, but I have to meet Carmilla soon.” he informed him, eyeing Henry and gesturing vaguely towards the glass that Alastor himself had in front of him.
Husker silently filled a new tumblr with two fingers of rye whiskey, neat, pushing it towards the gangster.
“This unpleasant hassle with Frank and the seized cargo was not needed. It risks compromising my business with Miss Carmine as well and it frankly would bother me a lot .” he continued, in a low tone, taking the glass and thanking Husk with a nod.
On the chair, Frank’s corpse was still dripping blood onto the floor in a rather disturbing rhythmic noise. Halloween coded, after all.
The iron smell of his own blood had continued to torment him for months, after the Accident. They had left him there, in that basement, until they decided he had learned his lesson. He had only realized how much time had passed when Lidia told him that he hadn’t been home for three days.
“I see, ol’ pal. Sounds like an urgent discussion. I’ll talk to Rosie about your new suit anyway, I’m having dinner at her place tonight.” Alastor concluded, before sliding off the stool and starting rolling up his shirt sleeves above his elbows. In the meantime, Tex was returning from Zestiel’s office: a large doctor's bag in one hand and a roll of black plastic bags in the other.
Husker discreetly looked at his watch: seven thirty.
An embarrassing costume, trick or treating, and some sort of date.
He cleared his throat, to get attention.
Zestiel’s black gaze brought him placidly into focus; much less patient was Alastor’s, who in the meantime had put on a pair of gloves taken from the bag now open on one of the round tables. Tex was spreading the plastic bags on the floor, all around poor Frank.
“Do you need anything else or can I go?”
“Are you in a hurry, Husker?” Alastor’s question sounded more threatening than the musical tone suggested.
“I have to pick up my daughter,” he replied sharply. When he looked at Zestiel, his tone was decidedly more subdued. “I promised her we’d go trick-or-treating.”
“Oh, of course.” The gangster smiled slowly, showing a few too many teeth. Husk instinctively thought of a large black crocodile, floating under the Mississippi’s murky waters. “Alastor told me about your divorce, Husker. Hell forbid if I take away time from the already few moments you have with your daughter— Caroline, right?”
There was no intimidation in those words. However, the idea that Zestiel knew his daughter’s name sent a silent shiver down his spine.
“… Right.”
“Wonderful. Sure, you can go.” he dismissed him.
“Go, Husk.” Alastor intervened, taking out various instruments from his bag; the same ones he used to perform autopsies in a morgue that was decidedly more professional than a speakeasy. “We’ll be in touch in the next few days. I may have a job for you.” he warned him lightly, with a meaningful glance over the rim of his glasses.
Henry sighed, nodding with placid resignation.
As much as he worked as a bartender for Zestiel, Alastor was still Alastor.
Having as a friend a medical examiner involved with gangsters and with a lot of odd jobs intertwined with the criminal underworld of New York was definitely challenging.
Henry decided that no, this was not the right time to wonder about his friendships.
Alastor, on the other hand, seemed satisfied; he greeted him with a wink, finishing laying out all the instruments on the table. He began to whistle an unknown tune while Zestiel sipped his whiskey and checked his work emails on the phone.
Husker went up the stairs of the speakeasy, without looking back, before the sound of the saw added to the notes hummed by Alastor.
Stop please stop.
October 31st – present
If it weren’t for the unbearable itch of his wig, Henry Husker might have considered it a perfect night.
“Thank you so much, ma’am! Say hello to your husband for me, your decorations are the perfect kind of spooky.”
Sure, they could have spent less than ten minutes per door, but apparently Anthony’s ability to chat with anyone was at least as overflowing as the amount of candy they had managed to collect thanks to his silver tongue gift.
“Daddy, daddy!” the enthusiastic tug of a small unicorn – mind you, ‘not to be confused with a fairy, because some unicorns have wings too’ Caroline had warned – with a huge happy smile and a bag full of sweets caught his attention, further down.
“Can you keep this for me?”
Without really waiting for an answer, Unicorn Caroline dropped the second, now-full pumpkin basket into his hand to join Anna, who was dressed as a bat. Wearing a rainbow tulle skirt just like Caroline’s. Apparently, she was a Magical Bat.
Henry had long ago given up on understanding the creativity of eight-year-old creatures; when he was eight, after all, the only magic tricks he was interested in were the ones with cards. Or the ones where the magician’s cute assistants disappeared into a box.
“Having fun, whiskers?”
Husk blinked a couple of times, taking the elbow Anthony gave him in the ribs – not very gently, to be fair – to get his attention.
He found himself staring into the mismatched hazel eyes, heavily made up in black, of the blond in question for the hundredth time that night; and for the hundredth time, his thoughts deviated again along with his gaze as he observed the black leather cat-suit he was wearing, so tight that Husk wondered how he could breathe.
“Yeah.”
Anthony curved a mischievous half-smile, passing by him and reaching the two little girls who in the meantime had found another door to beg for trick or treat, in that Manhattan all decorated for the Night of the Witches, among pumpkins, skeletons and an autumn that was increasingly dyeing the island in red, yellow and orange.
Observing that cat tail – and that practically perfect ass – he also asked himself a large series of thoughts that were definitely not suitable for the ears of the two adorable little girls they were accompanying that evening.
So, apart from a couple of details, he was quite convinced: perfect night.
He had picked up Caroline, as promised; he had greeted Lidia’s new partner and purposely ignored his father-in-law’s look of disapproval for his black eye, lurking behind the door. Lidia, on the other hand, had appreciated his costume: he had watched her laugh softly, softly, and the flash of their improvised wedding in Las Vegas chapel with a celebrant dressed as Elvis had made him vaguely melancholic.
Mr and Mrs Dixon had then wanted a proper ceremony for their daughter, but that crazy night full of love had been one of the most beautiful of his life.
In any case, an Elvis Presley dressed in white and a Caroline Unicorn had promised to return soon, before picking up Anna the Magic Bat and the male version of Cat Woman.
He’d had to try really, really hard to suppress the hard-on at seeing Anthony dressed like that – cat ears included – and something in the blond’s challenging smirk suggested to him that he had done it on purpose.
Guess I deserved that.
For a while, Tony had practically ignored him – and who could blame him, after all, he had been the first one to ghost his messages without giving explanations.
Husk had limited himself to following that unlikely trio from house to house, holding the bags of sweets and staying aside while Anthony worked his magic and got the two girls enough sweets to last until next Halloween. But between smiles and coaxing, chatter and compliments, the blond had slowly relaxed with him too.
Henry had smiled at him slightly, a moment in which he had approached to pick some orange confetti from his jacket, casually dusting the lapel and ending up by running his fingers over the dark hair that was peeking out from the very unbuttoned shirt, more or less up to his navel.
Elvis style, after all.
Anthony had observed that smile and had probably read the right thing in it: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ignore you, I’m glad to be here with you tonight.
In fact, he had smiled back at him, a little crookedly, before leaving a scratch under his chin – as if Husk were the cat – and going back to hunting for sweets.
There would have been time to talk.
Speaking of, Husker looked at the time, before eyeing the returning trio.
“Caroline, hun, I have to take you home.”
Caroline pouted adorably, clutching onto Henry’s jacket.
“Just two more houses, pleeeeease~ ”
Anthony chuckled amusedly, watching the scene.
“Come on princess, first we’ll walk Anna home and then on the way back we’ll stop a couple more times.
“That’s not fair uncle, I want to stop again too!”
“I’ll leave you my candies too, hmm?”
Henry watched Anthony’s outstretched hand – his nails painted black this time – towards his niece, who narrowed her pale eyes to consider the offer; with, it must be said, an incredibly professional look. Then she sighed and shook that hand.
“Fine, Uncle Nico will bring me more anyway.”
A great dealmaker.
Anthony let her run ahead on the sidewalk, along with Caroline, towards the road home, clicking his pierced tongue a couple of times.
“Knowing my brother, he must have stolen them from some poor kid.” he commented sarcastically, starting after them and walking next to Husk, who peeked at his profile.
“So you don’t just have a twin.”
The blond shook his head slowly, not looking at him but keeping an eye on the two girls, in a scene very similar to the first time they had seen each other after That Night .
Two strangers sitting on a park bench, with a half-melted ice cream in their hands.
“My brother Nicholas is the older one.”
Husk was silent, waiting for more information that never came.
Either he was still angry, or it was a topic he didn’t want to delve into.
They remained silent for a while, listening to the chatter of children swarming along the sidewalks of the Upper East Side bathed in streetlights and the flickering lights of the many carved pumpkins left lying around.
It wasn’t the same relaxed silence as the morning-after in his apartment. There were a lot of questions, embedded in the way Anthony carefully avoided his gaze and smirked at the stares of strangers who lingered to stare at him.
Henry cleared his throat.
“Look.”
How the fuck was it hard to start a conversation and how the fuck was he bad with words.
“I’m sorry about last Sunday.”
Anthony just looked at him sideways, snorting wryly and looking straight ahead again.
“It was a bad day. I mean, I—”
How do I tell him I couldn’t get up off the floor? How do I tell him I drank everything in the house because I didn’t want to think about the spectacular failure that is my life?
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
One of the simplest and stupidest things in the world to say, but the main feeling that drove Henry was sincerity: the last thing he wanted was to hurt him.
Tony turned to stare at him, this time, looking at him from top to bottom – given the height difference – and narrowing those almost-mismatched eyes slightly.
“Why?”
“Why what.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me you were having a shitty day, instead of ghosting me?”
Husk opened his mouth to reply but realized he had no idea what to say. He opted for silence.
“I would have understood, Henry. I’m blond, not stupid.” Anthony joked and the slightly bitter and slightly mischievous smile seemed to him very much like Angel Dust’s constructed one.
Husk shrugged, again, sliding to look for the silhouette of his daughter who was walking hand in hand with Anna a few meters in front of them, busy comparing their sweet treasure.
“I don’t think you’re stupid.” he replied grumpily after a few moments of silence.
Anthony chuckled again, an ironic snort more than anything, and gave him a friendly shove that made him skid just a little.
“Then don’t treat me like that anymore, asshole.”
Henry’s amber eyes flickered at him at that last sentence.
A lump of fragility hidden there, somewhere, under the black makeup.
“Okay.”
“Good. And what about the black eye? If you did it to turn me on, know that it works a lot , Husky.”
Henry chuckled a little, absentmindedly rubbing the cheekbone under his still purple eye.
“A disagreement with a client,” he summed up. “The least funny thing is that I had it when the social worker came in Tuesday morning.”
Anthony looked at him, blinking a couple of times as if he’d realized something.
“And when did you find out about the visit?”
“… Sunday morning.”
Saying it out loud and realizing Anthony had made the connection without even trying made him feel like a complete fool.
He metaphorically ruffled his fur as the blond sighed heavily and shoved him again – a gentler one this time – in silent support.
“You owe me a proper blowjob, Husker.”
Henry realized he was blushing only at Tony’s laugh – soft, crystalline – and suddenly even the itch from his Elvis wig faded into the background.
“You blush like a virgin and yet you’re a fucking animal in bed, what is this magic?”
“Pointing out that I’m blushing doesn’t make it any better.”
“Oh, and who says I want you to stop?”
Anthony’s devilish grin – golden tooth in full view, half sunk into his lower lip with a decidedly mischievous look – told Husk’s spine-beads like a rosary and sent his control straight to Hell.
The blond’s hazel-green gaze slipped to peek at his crotch, raising the eyebrows a couple of times with a satisfied look.
Henry returned the shove, shaking off his embarrassment and getting another half-laugh in return – a cleansing of the stormy sky that had hovered between them until that moment.
That feeling of lightness, warm and pleasant in the pit of his stomach, he felt for the rest of the way to Anna’s house; he greeted the little girl with a half smile and also nodded to Molly, who waved at the door and invited them both to get something – Anthony quickly dismissed her, giving her a hug and the promise of a coffee for the next time.
They started back on the road – with the promised two stops for trick or treating – to what a few months ago was also Husk’s apartment.
As they went up in the elevator, he suddenly felt very nervous about showing up to bring Caroline back accompanied by Tony, who was holding the little girl’s hand while she was ranking his favorite Disney princesses.
The scene seemed so normal to him that a wave of pure panic gripped his stomach.
Get your shit together, Husker.
The ding! of the doors opening, the soft thump of Caroline’s ballet flats as she ran across the carpeted hallway, and the laughter when Steven – Lidia’s new partner – picked her up and spun her around.
Anthony’s hand, silently, slid to find Henry’s to brush his fingers before moving first toward the door.
“We brought her back safe and sound, see?” Tony commented, with a friendly and cheeky smile as usual. “Don’t forget your candies, princess.” and he turned to look for Henry’s gaze, considering he had the loot.
Candies. Right.
He cleared his throat, also reaching the door and holding out the bags.
“Did she behave?” Steven asked, adjusting her better in his arms. “You know better than me that when she eats too much sugar she becomes a pest.”
I know that very well without you pointing it out, dickhead.
That perfect evening, thanks to the omnipresent little voice in his head, threatened to crumble.
He forced a smile, but it was Anthony who replied and saved him again.
“She was lovely, like my niece. I’m Anthony, by the way.” He held out his hand to Steven, who shook it in a calm smile.
“Are you a friend of Henry’s?”
Husk wished with all his heart that a trap door would open under him and swallow him up right then.
Before the blond could respond in any way, Lidia’s appearance behind Steven made the ‘embarrassing’ situation even worse, if that was possible.
Obviously on Henry’s part, Anthony didn’t bat an eyelid. In fact, he smiled at Lidia and held out his hand to her too, with an almost professional look.
“Good evening ma’am, I’m Anthony, the uncle of Caroline’s friend.”
Lidia squeezed his hand and looked back at Husk with a silent question in her eyes and a hint of a smile. He recognized perfectly the twinkle in the back of his ex-wife’s dark eyes: after all, Lidia had known him since he was just a young boy who wandered around Las Vegas chasing dancers’ skirts. And not only that.
“It’s a pleasure, Anthony, I’m happy to meet you.”
Henry felt a hint of sweetness in those words, and the lump of anger that was squeezing his stomach slowly loosened. He found himself staring at her in silence, while Anthony chatted with Steven, and when Lidia’s gaze pointed to the blond in a silent and hopeful question, time seemed to expand for an infinite and very short moment.
The image, foolishly happy, of what his life could have been from that moment on.
There was the constant beating of his heart that echoed in his ears, since they had left Lidia’s apartment and taken a cab to Anthony’s house, in the Village. While he absentmindedly caressed Anthony’s thigh sitting next to him, he had tried to put his thoughts in order, repressing that voice that kept telling him that it was useless, that he would disappoint someone else, that he should let it go immediately before that something became something else.
Henry’s emotions had the habit of becoming like weeds, grown in an uncultivated garden: invasive and incredibly resistant.
Tony’s long fingers that passed with fingertips over the knuckles of the hand that was on his knee were feathery touches that medicated his thoughts, even though the blond was just as thoughtful as he was.
He had been looking out the window the whole time, and on the way to his apartment – “Let’s stop here, I want to go for a walk” – he had been pretty quiet, sucking on a cherry lollipop that Caroline had left him as a thank you for the evening.
Husk had a cola one tucked into his pocket.
“Home sweet home.”
Anthony’s announcement jolted him from his thoughts again; he blinked a couple of times, realizing that they had indeed climbed the three steps of a nice building in Greenwich, not far from The Cave.
He looked back at the blond, after a quick look around.
“Now I see how you knew the place.”
“Yeah. So, are you going to keep up the small talk or you’re taking me to bed?”
Saying that Anthony always goes straight to the point would be a joke. And yet.
Husk cleared his throat.
“So Sunday’s thing is resolved? We’re good?”
Tony crossed his arms, leaning his weight on his right hip and tilting his head the other way, looking both patient and exasperated.
“Just because you were a dick, Husky, doesn’t mean I’m going to sulk at you forever. I’m a tough guy.” He clicked the pierced tongue against his teeth and Husk had no trouble believing it.
He had seen it, in the dressing room at The Vees.
He thought about himself, about his desire to take refuge in alcohol every time that damned little voice whispered in his ear, and he felt even more of an idiot.
“We’re good.” Anthony said. “Like I told you, I don’t care about your messes.” his smile became mischievous and sharp, as he untangled his arms and took a step to get closer.
He took off Husk’s wig and he let him do it, half closing his eyes in a satisfied breath when he felt those fingers running through his hair.
“I care that you make me cum properly tonight to make up for it. And tomorrow morning too, I’d say.” Anthony illustrated the interesting program, grinning in a mischievous flash and hooking his index finger on the open buttons of his shirt. “It’s not every day you get to fuck Elvis Presley, hm?”
Husk crooked a half-smile, amused, before sighing again.
“It’s just—”
I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want to treat you like that asshole of an ex of yours, I don’t want to ruin everything again, I don’t want you to hate me, I don’t want you to—
“I don’t want you to feel used.” he said, rubbing the back of his neck with his right hand in the classic expression of someone very, very uncomfortable.
And sex wasn’t the problem. It was all of what goes with it, damn it.
It was the crystalline laughter that had gotten into his head and wouldn’t go away, it was the endless desire to tell him that his left eye was green and not brown, it was something that had scrambled his thoughts and refused to stay silent.
Something that was drawing him, like they were magnetically charged, to the man standing in front of him.
“Like the first night, when we almost ended up in bed— I mean, I know I didn’t—” but Husk never finished the sentence, considering that Anthony’s mouth crashed against his, cutting off the words on his tongue and trapping his breath somewhere.
A thick, slow breath, something that automatically softened the posture of his shoulders and made his eyelids heavy, while his left hand went up to seek the hair at the nape of his neck in a firm grip and his right hand slid down, seeking the only thing he could hold on to – the zipper of that catsuit already undone under his chest – as if Anthony were suddenly the only thing that’s real.
The two of them, under the light of the small porch, and all the darkness around in the unconscious replica of a stage without an audience.
And the only breath he wanted to feel on him, inside him – everywhere – was Anthony’s.
“Shut the fuck up. Please .” Angel breathed, moving away just enough to rub his profile against Husk’s in a caress that was more animal than human, something that spoke of a burning, hungry need.
It seemed to tell him ‘don’t leave me alone, please’.
He simply reached behind him, fumbling blindly with the handle to lower it and open the door of the building, dragging Anthony with him and shutting out the world for a while.
I’m not going anywhere.
In the suffused darkness of the hallway, the silent urgency and that nameless thoughts that tormented Tony – the ones that Husk felt on his tongue with the sugary clarity of the stupid cherry lollipop that the other had eaten a little while before – had the sweet taste of something that Henry had almost forgotten by now: the desire to taking care of someone.