Father Complex (Hazard and Somerset: Arrows in the Hand, #4)

by Gregory Ashe

Somers sighed. He was blond and beautiful, still in his uniform as chief of police but with the coat over one knee and his tie and top button undone.

“He’s an asshole.” “Sometimes. But he’s our asshole, and he loves us, and he has so many good qualities, so we’re nice to him and we put up with it, right?”

This apparently didn’t merit any kind of reply, so Somers decided to try his favorite game of stick-the-fork-in-the-outlet.

That blunted the smile, and Hazard had the feeling he’d done that a lot to John-Henry Somerset over the few years they’d been together—knocked the edges off grins, pulled the shade down on happy moments.

Maybe, Hazard thought. And he thought of his husband at family dinners, his husband at holidays, his husband smiling and nodding and shrinking so his parents could take up more room, his beautiful, smart, hardworking husband squeezing himself into smaller and smaller boxes for this party or that fundraiser or the photo on the door-hanger, until he was nothing but a smile and a badge and, if you were lucky, a handshake. And Hazard thought maybe. He thought maybe the resentment comes later, and by then it’s part of you, and you don’t even know it’s there, let alone how to get out of all those boxes.

“I guess he doesn’t spend his Saturday nights replacing the wax seal on the hall toilet.” “It was one time, and you got some good thank-you sex after. Get off the cross.”

She might have looked like a good girl from Riverdale until she stood up and Hazard saw the massive silicone cock bouncing between her legs.

“Imagine how much fun it would be getting split open by that thing,” Hazard said.

“Someone screaming ‘faggot cocksuckers’ isn’t exactly reason to hide,” Hazard said drily. “If it were, I’d be living in my mother’s basement.”

“You are a moron,” Hazard said and strode off.

“Straight people are so charming,” Hazard murmured.

“That’s a meaningless comparison since Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character,” Hazard said. “If you wanted to compliment me, you could compare me to William Burns—God damn it, now I’m realizing I’ve already had this conversation with John once.”

Through the windshield, Hazard watched as the driver of the other car turned in his seat, checking on the passenger. Then the driver’s door opened, and a man got out of the car. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a thatch of blond hair and a Cardinals tee. He was handsome in a rough trade kind of way, and right then, he looked royally pissed. Hazard tried not to groan. It was North McKinney.

“I knew you did,” Shaw said. “I knew it! I was telling North you had it under control, but he said you didn’t. He said you were going to get your piss nozzle capped if we didn’t help you, which I thought was a strange expression because I’ve heard piss nozzle before—it’s one of North’s Best of March 2020 swears—and I’ve heard the expression ‘get capped’ before, but I’d never heard them together before, and it kind of made me think of a gas nozzle and a fuel cap, so I told North that, and he said I was a piss nozzle—”

“Well, yeah, I mean, North is definitely in some sort of state of arrested development, and I guess calling it child lock is actually pretty accurate. That’s why I have to be the responsible one, you know, like doing surprise cheese-checks and making sure his salad gets tossed, which did you know actually has another meaning, and one time we were visiting this guy in prison and—”

“Will you look at this?” North was crouching at the rear of the car, his fingers tracing something. “Those donkey-wanking fucks scratched her!”

“Hi, John-Henry,” Shaw said as he stepped into the house, crowding Hazard and Somers, followed a moment later by North. “Oh, are we hugging? Hold on, I have this box where I’ve been collecting the ten most magical hugs of my life—North, where’s my hugbox?”

“This is my son,” Hazard said. “Colt, this is North McKinney. He is…here.” After a moment of silent consideration, North said flatly, “My condolences.”

“He’s a goddamn child, for fuck’s sake,” Hazard said. “Watch your motherfucking language.”

“Well,” Somers said, “he told me he wanted to see if it was, uh, quote, ‘drinkable,’ if he put lime in it. I told him we didn’t have any limes, and he said that was ok, he only needed the ethereal essence of a lime.”

Shaw burst out laughing. “Oh my God. I forgot how funny you are. Your sense of humor is one of the one hundred and seventeen reasons we’re a perfect match as best friends.”

“Jesus Christ, thank you,” Hazard said, coming the rest of the way down the stairs. “That’s exactly what I need: something else to keep me up at night. Why the fuck are you two clowns even here?” “The clown college burned down,” North said. “Our clown car ran out of gas,” Shaw said. “We got caught in the middle of a clown three-way.”

“What? You’ve literally invited Hazard to be in a three-way like, I don’t know, eight times, and don’t tell me it’s the clown part because clowns can have three-ways. It’s their God-given right as Americans. Well, if they are Americans, I guess.”

“No! It’s an allegory for resistance and ethical behavior! Colt needs strong role models! Oh, Emery, you know what? You and John-Henry should have an open relationship so Colt can be raised by a variety of men who come in and out of his life. North and I would be happy to be your first, you know, um, partners.”

Shaw waved his arms and pitched his voice like they were getting too far away. “Colt, when’s your party? We’re going to bring you so many presents! Do you have a lot of crystals already? Oh! How many clogs do you own?”

Why not? Why the fuck not? He knocked the shit out of you anytime he could get you in arm’s reach. He about beat John to death. He’s a liar and an abusive asshole, and whatever he wants from you, he’ll only hurt you worse, and I can’t stand it, seeing him hurt you again and again, because I’d rather die first than let anyone hurt you.

“I love you.” “What’s this about?” “Nothing. I’m just telling you I love you.” “I should fucking hope so. You married me.

He had a face like the backside of a shovel, with about as much warmth.

“Listen to me, you overgrown sperm—” Hazard started.

“I’m sure you’ve gotten used to terrorizing chickenshit twelve-year-olds and little old ladies, but I’ve got news for you, dick-drip: you’re dealing with something else now. There is no fucking way we’re going in there.”

Hazard brightened and pounded on the door again. “You shit-burrowing fuck weasels!” While his husband made new friends, Somers took the multi-tool and did a more thorough assessment of their surroundings.

“What?” Hazard asked quietly between cries of “You diseased horse pizzles” and “Slut nuggets.”

“I will fuck you with a rotary hammer—” Hazard snapped his fingers, and when Somers glanced over, he pointed up. “—you McLovin ass clowns!”

“You crotch-biscuit, Cheeto-dick, shit-sprayers!” “If you find yourself running low,” Somers suggested sotto voce, “summon up the memory of when you borrowed a welding torch to cut up the barbeque grill and I caught you saying, ‘Take that, motherfucker.’” Hazard flipped him the bird.

Hazard nodded. He launched into “You sandpaper-assed human excuses for dickholes—” as he made his way across the shack.

He raised his hand again. Her face colored, and Somers thought Bible or not, church or not, crown of bullets or not, Gerrit Mass might be sleeping on the couch for the next month.

“You’ve used that line before,” Hazard said. “Find something new, or figure out something useful to say, or go make another fucking pie.”

“Go easy on them. They’re city boys. And I think North might be sensitive, and you ride him hard sometimes.” “That fucker doesn’t know the meaning of rode hard, but he is sure as fuck going to find out. I’m going to ride the shit out of him.” Out of the corner of his eye, Hazard was aware of Somers’s eyebrows going up. “You know what I mean,” Hazard snapped. Somers shook his head and breathed, “Good God.”

He was barely getting started on subpoint 2B, speed dial signifies nothing on a personal level, a follow-up to 2A, speed dial is a professional concession, when they reached the back of the house and Somers said, “Ree, I love you, but you’ve got to shut up now.”

“You want to bitch?” North asked. “You didn’t have to sit here for the last ninety minutes of Shaw coaching this fuckwad on how to awaken his spirit guide and avoid gluten-interactive micronutrients and use his anal rings to dial into the cosmos’s fucking subconscious or whatever the fuck he’s been talking about.”

“Anal sphincters,” Shaw said triumphantly.

“Well, kind of,” Shaw said with an embarrassed shrug. “I mean, you peppered in a lot of ‘dongfuckers’ and ‘assmunches,’ and it was kind of hard to know exactly what you meant.”

“Assgoblin! I knew I was forgetting assgoblin!”

“I was in a fugue state,” Shaw said. “I’m sorry, John-Henry. I looked into the astral impression of Friedrich Nietzsche, and I got lost in the void.”

“You did! That one was so sweet. Like, maybe you’re a Boy Scout. Oh! And there’s another boy in your troop, and he’s been pitching his tent, and you’ve been pitching your tent, and now you want to pitch your tent together, and if you sell enough wrapping paper, you’ll get an even bigger tent—”

Hazard indulged his husband with a lecture on his failing sense of humor, the responsibilities of being chief of police, how to handle a couple of shit-for-brains, and general policies on teasing. It wasn’t one of his best performances; North—and particularly Shaw—had a way of knocking him off balance. At one point, Hazard heard himself reciting part of the national anthem.

“You’re not hysterical. You’re not nervous or anxious or whatever the fuck you’re talking about. You don’t need cold baths or hot baths or plunges or, Christ, Shaw, I don’t know. You saw a mouse. You tried to kiss it. You screamed when it bit your hand. That’s the end of that particular episode of horse-fuckery.”

Turning a dark look on North, Shaw said, “I thought it would turn into someone who would be nice to me and make me soft-boiled eggs and wash my dentures and watch Antiques Roadshow with me and not say things like ‘The Blues are playing’ or ‘my dick is engorged.’”

“It’s his baby, and possibly the only baby we’ll ever have because my hysterical uterus—” Shaw cut off with a cry when North pulled his hair. “North! What if that had been a wig?”

The April evening was the color of crushed lilacs that darkened to the bruised throat of the horizon,