Pretty Dogs (Dirty Strays, #2)

by Riley Nash

It’s all very intimidating until you find out he calls the reaper Your Mom and the dragon One-Eyed Brian.

“Where are you going?” he whispered with this crooked, smug little grin. I crossed my arms stubbornly, refusing to sound as desperate as he knows I am. “Looking for a snack.” After a long pause, he leaned in until his forehead almost touched mine. “I’m a snack.” “You’re a bag of rancid prawns. You give everyone the shits.”

There’s just something private about those hours of darkness with Beck’s face in my shoulder, the warm, stale air cut through with the slow pattern of our breathing, the smell of his skin right before he wakes up. I’m not ready to share the irrational joy I get every single morning when he lifts his head, squints at the daylight like it ruined his life, and grumbles, “Make it stop, Dal.”

I’ll never admit to him that I’d consider letting the planet fall into ruin just so he could get another fifteen minutes snuggled under my covers. His ego’s big enough as it is.

Over ten years later, when someone asks “Why did you decide to join a gang? What pushed you over the edge?”, I think back on that hot, lonely afternoon, the bikes, the photo of my mom, and the only two men I’d ever met who didn’t hit me and cuss me out.

“Good puppy,” Scout praises, taking Roman’s hand. I’m glad someone’s having a good time, because I’m not.

Roman does some Googling before holding up a picture of Black Widow. I raise an eyebrow at him, and Dallas giggles. “Hate to break it to you, pup,” Scout teases, nuzzling his shoulder. “But I think you’re gay.”

“Take it one day at a time, okay?” A lot of things happen one day at a time. My mom going from healthy to sick. A kid earning his bicycle from the cool guys in town. A guy and his best friend getting addicted to sleeping in the same bed.

For some reason, my soul demands that I open up to this macho knucklehead with his ripped wife beaters, hand tattoos, and the gun stuffed down the back of his jeans.

All he’s going to find is a King Soopers membership card, two dollars in cash, and a sticky note from Beck that says If you drink my orange juice again I’ll kill you bitch, with a detailed illustration of himself wielding a bloody knife.

I kneel down next to the cat. “How does one pick you up without getting scratched?” I try to slide my hands in one way, then another, second guessing. Do they need their heads supported like a baby, or do I snag them behind the front legs like a lobster?

“Beer gives me reflux. I’m starting to think I might have some kind of gluten intolerance, you know?” I have no idea. Where the hell did this freak come from?

I pull on the blankets, rolling off of the edge so I can wriggle underneath into the soft warmth of his body heat. If I didn’t have this every night, like an anchor, I think I’d go insane.

“I told Scout to grab the formula. If we’re gonna keep collecting ravenous pets though, someone in this house needs to get a better job.”

“I’ll get a goat next; it can mow the yard at least.”

“Good job.” Roman picks up Rambo and solemnly bumps the kitten’s tiny, wet nose against mine. “He says good job, too.”

ANGELS

“They’ll be back in a couple of hours. I told them you needed to take a massive dump.” I cough a weak laugh, propping my head against the brick again. “You’re a sack of soggy coleslaw.”

“I just don’t understand why some people are born with the soul of one person and the body of another, and then get punished for it their whole lives.”

“I think I’m just gonna kill everyone,” he offers happily, when we’re a quarter of the way around the lake. “The whole world, except you and Scout and Rome and your mom.” When I realize that’s the extent of his thoughts, I glance up at him. “Thanks, I guess? That’s not a solution I’d considered.”

I’m not a smart guy, and I don’t know a lot, but I’ll never understand why his mom didn’t burn the entire world down to get him back. Because he’s the only perfect thing there is.

I’d die for any of my friends, but Beck holds some deeper part of me I can’t express. He’s the home I thought I’d never have again when Hayden chased me away.

“Intravenous? You’ll find out soon that I don’t do drugs and I don’t know any words longer than three syllables.”

I’ve quickly learned that ‘baby’ and ‘bitch’ are this man’s love language. If he speaks to you like a normal person, it means he doesn’t give a shit about you.

I know his heartbeat better than my own. It’s fast, too, faster than mine.

“Pretty boy,” he murmurs. “You ever kissed someone?” “No.”

Now I look like a fool. But he just sucks in a breath, his fingers tightening. “Good.”

“You own me, baby,” he says hoarsely. “I’ll do anything.”

There are thousands of boxes in my head. The guys I’ve fucked, the porn I’ve watched, it’s all carelessly dumped together into one messy, fun box I open when I’m bored or need to get off. Dallas is in every single box. He’s the world around the boxes, he’s the boxes, he’s everything.

What he doesn’t get is that I’m never going away. When I pinkie promised not to leave him, that shit stands for eternity.

The boy couldn’t get rid of me if he fucking begged on his knees, if he moved across the world and didn’t leave an address. That was just as true before I kissed him as it is now.

“I’m just dirt.”

“I made peace with that, and you should too. There’s no point in all this rehabilitation crap.”

“Everyone is dirt, Beck,” he mumbles, mostly asleep. I smooth a hand over his hair, stroking it back, and kiss his forehead. “Not you, pretty boy. You’re space dust. All the colors in the universe.”

I don’t want to be settled for. Every single person deserves to be desired, wholly and passionately, exactly as they are.

I had a happy little pansexual dream of a sensitive, intellectual partner who works as a chef and owns two golden retrievers and a blue bungalow. We meditate together, play chess, maybe join a book club. But whenever I retreat to that safe picture, Beck is standing outside the imaginary bungalow with his arms crossed, waiting for me. He refuses to move, rain or shine, until I climb out of a window at night and go to him.

My head hurts. First I watch Beck almost get a bullet through his brain, then I find out he’s been lying for months, then we’re kissing frantically in the dark. I’m scared to leave my room. God knows what will happen today.

My heart claimed him the second he wandered into my trailer, smelling like he hadn’t showered in a week, and asked me why I didn’t have paprika.

Mine, Dallas. Dallas, mine. Like a heartbeat in my brain that never shuts up.

But I think he just claimed me back. For good. Forever. Because nothing about ...

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” “You run,” I blurt desperately. “And I chase you.”

He frees his unbroken arm from the jacket and hesitantly brushes his fingers along the faint, shiny ridges of my scars. For the first time, I’m glad they didn’t heal invisibly.

Some days I look at my trans body, everything it is and isn’t, and I don’t know what it’s for. What it even means. Today, it’s for walking between this kid and the things he’s afraid of, his fist gripping the back of my shirt like a lifeline, and that’s more than enough for me.

His erection fills out his underwear when I help him tug his jeans off and kick them aside. I study the outline of his cock, trying to figure out how we fit that whole thing balls deep in me the other night.

“Any more complaints?” Beck asks, straightening up. I can’t take my eyes off the dildo. “No.” My voice comes out kind of squeaky. “A lot of questions, but no complaints.”

“Make me come without touching me. I know you can, pretty boy, come on. Please. I need it.”

“I wish I could hug my mom.”

“I know.” He rubs his thumb soothingly along the back of my hand for a minute, then says, “Hey, maybe this lady has always wanted to adopt a giant, ugly, white son.”

I have almost no memories of my mom, beyond vague impressions and half-obscured dreams. But as Anjali Santra squeezes the life out of me, I get a sudden, razor-sharp picture of the blonde woman from my picture kneeling down and holding out her arms. Every time I staggered into them, she’d envelop me completely in this soft, warm squeeze that smelled like her and made me feel safe. Even though this woman can barely reach around me, I get that same protected, wrapped-up feeling, like someone’s looking out for me.

“The day you were born,” she says slowly, “I thought I could never love you more. But when I met my son, that love felt small by comparison. Seeing you today, everything you’ve become…I didn’t know this much love was possible. Getting to know each other again may not always be easy, but I just want you to know that.”

I rest my forehead in the hollow of his throat and count backward from five. Three...Two...One. "Did I just drip cum on someone's car?" There it is. I grin to myself; he sounds mortified.