Shower completed and happy to have washed the sweat and grease leftover from several trips into the scrapyard off his skin, Justice pulled on the nicest pair of blue jeans he had, a slightly distressed pair of dark blue denim that Manny had said made him look rugged. He paired it with a dark gray long-sleeved button-down top with winged emblem emblazed on the back, rolled up his sleeves, pulled on the least scuffed up of his three pairs of boots, ran a brush through his hair a few rough strokes, and reminded himself to get it trimmed just a little as the ends were starting to curl up a bit too much.
Deeming himself presentable, he
headed out to his car, pausing for a moment before he slid into the driver’s
seat, to admire the old Challenger. He wasn’t fancy, but he was the one
indulgence Justice had allowed himself once Jude graduated from high school. He
slid the key in the ignition and turned it, but instead of the roar he expected
there was only a sputter. Sucking in a breath, Justice tried again to the same
result.
“Seriously,” he grumbled, rolling his
eyes skyward before trying again. Nothing, not even a sputter this time, just
silence. Resting his head against the steering wheel, he muttered a long stream
of curses before popping the hood and stepping back out.
At first glance, there didn’t appear
to be anything wrong. So much for his hope it was a loose battery connector
like the last time he’d refused to start. He reached in, leaning over to get a
better look, and instantly drew back, reminded of snakes and his plans for the
evening. In the hopes of preserving the clean state of his clothing, he
stripped off his shirt and lay it across the front seat. The jeans he just had
to be hopeful about, because no way was he leaning over hot metal with
sensitive bits unprotected.
Justice began a slow, methodical
search in the hopes of finding the problem. Just when he was coming to believe
it was pointless, Nash’s voice caused him to jump and he damn near hit his head
on the hood.
“Sorry, figured you’d heard me
coming,” Nash professed.
“Was too busy cussing this old boy
for deciding to be the bastard king just when I was planning to get the fuck
out of here.”
Nash’s laugh was low and smooth and
unless Justice was mistaken there was a twinkle of amusement in his eyes as he
stepped up to the car.
“See, that’s your first problem right
there. You can’t call him a bastard and expect him to act right. You gotta
finesse him, love up on him a little bit, remind him why he’s so special to you, and then maybe he’ll show you what the problem is.”
“Are you talking about a car or a
man?”
“Well, considering I don’t know all
that much about cars I’m just speaking from the experience of someone who’s
dealt with a demon bitch of a vehicle a time or two,” Nash remarked with a
wink.
“Thought you said not to call them
names?”
“I said you shouldn’t be cussing out
your old boy until you figure out what’s wrong with him. I can cuss mine out
all I want, she’s dead in the grass and until I can gather all her parts
together, no way am I getting her to purr for me.”
Justice’s jaw dropped and he shook
his head in amazement. “You are truly the only person I’ve ever met who could
make working on a car sound like a fuck fest.”
This time Nash’s chuckle sounded
positively filthy.
“It takes a lot of time, skill, and
effort,” Nash remarked.
“No doubt.”
“So, you want a hand figuring out
what’s wrong?”
“Why do you keep assuming I haven’t
figured out the problem yet,” Justice shot back, a flicker of annoyance surging
through him. He was perfectly capable of figuring out what was wrong with his
god damned vehicle, thank you very much.
“’Cause if you had, I figure you’d
have fixed it by now,” Nash remarked.
Well damn, Justice thought, his
annoyance fleeting as quickly as it had come. He hoped one day very soon Nash
would stop having the ability to shock him, or his mental foot in mouth disease
might transition over to become the real thing. The last thing he wanted was to
snap at Nash just for offering to help him.
Not trusting himself to open his
mouth at the moment, Justice gave a grunt and shifted left in the hopes Nash would
get the point. Fortunately, he did, and the two bent over the engine, shoulder
to shoulder. Nash pulled a small penlight from his back pocket and held it
between his teeth.
“Well, here’s problem number one,”
Nash remarked as he pointed out a belt that looked chewed all to hell. “I’m
willing to bet the missing pieces have wedged themselves places. Fortunately,
if the radiator and fan are shot, I spotted a Challenger with its front end in
pretty good condition the other day. I marked it out on a makeshift map in case
I wanted to harvest parts out of it, but it could be you need it more.”
“A map, huh,” Justice remarked,
trying to keep the bitterness out of his tone, though it was hard with how easy
Nash had diagnosed the problem, despite claiming not to be a car guy. True, the
light made it much easier to see and he really should have hunted up a
flashlight before getting started and he could have found it himself. “Worried
about getting lost out there with the goats?”
“Nope,” Nash replied as he leaned
over a little further to check something out. Justice heard him tinkering, but
Nash’s head was blocking his view, and he was whistling Hotel California.
“I just figured it would save time, make it easier to find things when
inspiration hit or I got the sudden urge to do backflips off a Buick.”
Okay, that was it, that was the very
last straw. Justice couldn’t take it anymore. Shoving away from the car he let
out an explosion of expletives loud enough to scare a flock of birds from a
nearby tree. “Fuckin’ Christ, every time I think I’ve gotten you figured out,
you go and say or do something that comes completely out of left field.”
“Maybe, or maybe you’re just used to
spending time with assholes,” Nash grit out. “Yeah, radiators toast, we gotta pull it.”
Groaning, Justice waited for Nash to
emerge before glaring daggers at him.
“What?” Nash shot back. “You’re
acting like you didn’t want me to figure out what was wrong. If we hurry up and
get this done, you might be able to make it to wherever you were going. From
the look of that wicked pair of jeans, I’m guessing you’ve got a hot date
waiting for you. Wouldn’t want to disappoint him. Wanna hand me a five-thirty-two
socket wrench and I’ll get this out. I can tell you where the other car is if
you want to go grab the pieces.”
Justice searched his face for any
signs of mockery or jealousy, but Nash was as relaxed and serene as ever, eyes
darting from Justice to the car like he couldn’t wait to get back under the
hood. Nash’s words rolled through his mind, about spending time with assholes,
and yeah, maybe he was on to something there. The guys he hooked up within the
city were self-serving and cared about one thing and one thing only having a
good time. Which included getting off. Not that Justice had ever minded, that
had been his goal too. Hell, the only selfless person he’d ever known in his
lifetime had been his old man. Even Jude could be stubborn and demanding when
things didn’t go the way he wanted them to, and yet, there was Nash, giving,
giving, giving, it was almost as if he felt he had to give Justice the earth,
sun, and moon just for allowing him to stay with them. Only, the last thing he
wanted was Nash bending over backward for him out of gratitude. Now bending
over forward…the stray thought had come unbidden, but once it was there,
Justice found himself looking from Nash to the car and back again.
“Fuck it, I ain’t goin’ nowhere
tonight,” Justice muttered.
“Dude, don’t scrap your plans over
this, it’s an easy fix, I can have it out of here in no time,” Nash remarked,
pulling his t-shirt off and tossing it aside. When he bent over the hood, it
gave Justice his first fully detailed, close-up view of the massive back piece on Nash’s back. The black and white shading made all of the details of the
octopus pop, but the closer Justice looked there were other images that emerged
from amongst the tones, tangled in the tentacles. A tombstone with a name and dates
etched in it, some type of flower peeking out from between two suction cups.
Justice was almost certain it was a type of lily. Some kind of medical symbol
was there too, with the wings and two serpents, Justice had no clue what it was
actually called but he’d seen the pin on doctors and nurses a time or two. A
big-eared cat with expressive eyes was clutched tight against the octopus’s
body and of all things, there was a phoenix gripped in the tentacles as well.
Justice whistled low. “Holy shit,
that’s a lot of ink. Bet that wasn’t cheap.”
“Nope. It didn’t tickle either, those
phoenix feathers and tentacles down my lower back hurt like hell.”
“I’ll bet,” Justice remarked as he
reached out and brushed a fingertip over one. He heard Nash’s sharp inhale of
breath, a low exhale, then a clatter, like he’d dropped something, but since he
didn’t pull away or tell Justice to stop, Justice kept up the slow, gentle
tracing over the very intricate piece.
“You’re making it very hard, to get
things, loose,” Nash complained, little grunts punctuating the space between
words.
Scrap Parts, Weary Hearts
Beneath the sweltering summer sun love blooms in shades of rust and bone
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