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Jay was laying on his bed, staring up at his ceiling, unable to fall asleep for the third night in a row when his phone rang. He rolled over onto his stomach and grabbed the phone from the side table where he’d left it. Without looking, he could tell you exactly who was calling. There was only one person who called him this late at night, the only person who was allowed to.
“Hey,” he said softly into the microphone.
“Hey,” Mouse replied, and Jay could almost picture the way Mouse sprawled out across his cot while they were deployed, somehow taking up as much space as possible in his sleep that he never did when he was awake. His voice wasn’t sleep rough, though, awake and alert, almost grumpy .
“What’s up?” Jay asked when nothing else came from the voice on the other end.
“My parents, they’re driving me insane,” he muttered.
“What’d they do now? Introduce you to a wealthy heiress they want you to marry again?”
“No, god, I wish, though. I’d take a fake date than this nothing I’ve got right now. Like, nothing I will do is ever going to be good enough for them, even when I’m actively trying to fit into their ideal of who I should be. I didn’t do it well enough apparently, and now I’m shut up in this big, empty house, hidden away where no one even knows I exist.”
“I know you exist,” Jay offered softly. It wasn’t much, not in the face of how Mouse’s parents had reacted to him coming home from the war, scarred and broken, not the shining little doll they’d been used to posing the way they wanted.
“I know, and I appreciate you,” Mouse said, and it was just as soft, fond. They gone through so much together, and somehow they’d come out the other side holding onto one another. “God, I wish I were anywhere but here.”
“What if you came over?” Jay asked, and he flinched a little. “I mean, I know my childhood bedroom isn’t the most exciting place in the world, especially since my parents are asleep down the hall, but you’re always welcome here.”
“I know,” Mouse said. “But I can’t get out of the house.”
“You can’t get out ?”
“No, they have it shut up so tight, and I’ve got a stupid monitor,” Mouse grumbled.
“A monitor? Like a person keeping watch kind of monitor or like an ankle monitor, for people under house arrest?”
“House arrest ankle monitor.”
“How did your parents get an ankle monitor?” Jay asked, and then he chuckled at himself. “Never mind. I don’t actually want to know what your parents do or who they know.”
“Yeah, I get that. Neither do I, honestly. But yeah, I’m not allowed to leave, not without their supervision. They don’t trust me to uphold the family name and reputation on my own, which makes sense given that when I go out on my own, I get high and fucked by random men they would hate.”
Jay snorted even though his heart squeezed a little bit.
“I’m sure that’s true,” Jay mused. “I could come get you and get the monitor off you.”
“Oh, you will, huh? Is that something they teach you in cop school?”
“No,” Jay replied, “but my dad has tools that would work to disable it.”
“That’s illegal,” Mouse said, almost scandalized. “You can’t do that.”
“You’re not legally under house arrest, Mouse. Actually, them holding you in your house against your will is what’s illegal. They’re not allowed to keep you there if you want to leave. You’re an adult, you can do what you want, including leave the house.”
“Try telling them that.”
“Let me at them, and I will.”
“Jay,” Mouse sighed.
“I’m coming to get you,” he decided, pushing himself up and turning his bedside light on. He grabbed his shirt from the floor and pulled it on over his head. He’d gone to bed in his shorts, unable to really get ready for bed more than just dropping onto the mattress half dressed. He’d stripped his shirt off when it bothered his still healing scars on his side, and chucked it away from the bed in a fit of irritation. “You shouldn’t have to just sit and wait for them to bring you out like a prized horse or something, trotting for an apple or whatever.”
“Jay, it’s fine, man,” Mouse argued.
“Is it? Because you sound like you a minute from drowning yourself in the pool or something,” he said in response, shoving his feet into his shoes and heading towards the door.
“I’m not allowed in the pool either,” Mouse mumbled.
“I’m coming to get you,” Jay repeated.
He pushed open his door and paused outside of his room, listening to the noise machine from his parents’ room drowning out the sound of his father’s snoring, and the sound of the tea kettle boiling downstairs.
“Okay, but I don’t think it’s going to go how you think it will,” Mouse said. “Drive safe.”
“I will. I’ll be there soon.”
He hung up and headed downstairs, pausing before he stepped into the kitchen. His mom was an infamous insomniac even before her cancer diagnosis, and now with the chemo, even though she was physically exhausted all the time, she still couldn’t sleep. Instead, she’d sit up and do a puzzle at the kitchen table with a cup of tea until she fell asleep with her cheek pressed into her hand.
“Hey kid,” she said without looking up. “You can’t sleep either?”
“Mouse needs me,” he answered. “Is it okay if I bring him back here?”
“Mouse,” she said softly and then nodded when her exhaustion-adled mind caught up, “he’s your friend from your unit. Yes, of course, it’s okay if he comes over, beans.”
He’d been called some variation of bean since he was an infant, a fond term his mother had given him for how small he was, especially compared to Will who had been a chunk of a newborn. Only one person could truly call him beans anymore, especially after everything he’d seen while deployed, and that was this woman sitting at the table.
“Thanks, Mom,” he said, pausing to lean down and kiss her cheek. “Do you want me to make your tea before I go?”
“Oh, you’re a sweetheart, but no, go on. I can tend to myself.”
“Try and rest, Mom. You need it.”
“I know, I know, go on. Don't worry about your mother,” she said, shooing him out of the door. He chuckled and left, pausing just for a moment in the door, watching her over his shoulder as she pushed herself up. The chemo was draining on her, sucking away the brightness in her eyes and the rose in her cheeks, leaving her sallow and weak. She walked like someone much older, holding herself steady on a cane, wobbling over to the tea kettle set on the stovetop. “Beans.”
“I’m going,” he said with a roll of his eyes. Even sick and fragile, his mom had eyes everywhere. He grabbed his keys to his old junker car, the one he and his father had patched together in the garage when he was sixteen, and he grabbed his tool kit from the garage, and he left.
Mouse lived on the other side of the city, almost as far from Canaryville as you could get and still be inside of Chicago, where the houses were large and looming, casting shadows across the pavement like threats to any outsiders. Jay felt like an intruder just driving down the street in his old beat-up Buick, coughing whenever he stepped on the gas too hard for its taste, shaking whenever he broke thirty miles an hour. He was a little afraid that someone would call the cops on him for being suspicious, but it wasn’t illegal to drive a shitty car in a nice neighborhood, at least not for someone who looked like him, with his pale and freckled skin, conventionally attractive and charming enough to slip by without consequence.
He pulled into the driveway that was nearly large enough to contain all of the Halstead home, and parked his car directly out front just to spite the Gerwitzes. He hoped that he leaked oil on their pristine pavement. In fact, he might have a jug in his trunk still that he could spill on purpose on their way out. He’d love to see Thelma and Gregory’s faces when they came home from their trip to find their prisoner gone and their precious driveway destroyed by something as common as motor oil.
His phone rang and he answered it, “hey, I’m here.”
“I know, I can see you,” Mouse replied, and Jay looked up at the house. Calling it a house was a gross understatement. There were so many windows that he couldn’t possibly find Mouse in any of them. “Top right, near the over dressed tree.”
Jay turned his attention towards Mouse and caught sight of him, small but waving gently.
“Hey you,” he said, and Mouse chuckled. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.”
“You’re a dick.”
“I’m here to be your knight in shining armor,” Jay corrected.
“I didn’t know knights wore board shorts and Ranger t-shirts,” Mouse replied with that characteristic snark that Jay had found himself drawn to from the first day. “How do you plan on freeing me, my knight?”
“Are you locked in your room?”
“No, I can go anywhere in the house except my parents’ studies which are locked,” he replied.
“Come let me in, then,” Jay replied.
Mouse sighed and disappeared from view, grumbling to himself over the line the entire way until Jay could hear him pressing buttons, then the door opened. Jay walked over, still holding the phone up to his ear, stopping just in front of the open doorway.
“Hey you,” Jay repeated, and it made Mouse smile a little bit. Then, he hung up and tucked his phone into his pocket. “How far can you go before it alarms?”
“Not far, the front steps usually,” he replied.
“Can I come in, then?”
“Yeah,” Mouse said, and he stepped to the side. Jay, with his tool kit, followed Mouse into the house, which he’d only been to a few times since they’d gotten home, usually when Mouse needed him. Thelma hated him, he was pretty sure, which meant he was doing his job at Mouse’s best friend successfully.
Mouse led them to a sitting room that looked like it hadn’t been sat in ever, the furniture was stiff and plush, that kind of expensive that was not subtle about how expensive it was. Then, Mouse flopped into one of these oversized couches without a care, kicking his bare foot up on the table in the middle to display his ankel monitor.
“Holy shit,” Jay breathed, and he dropped down to kneel in front of Mouse to examine it. He knew that Mouse hadn’t been lying to him, but it was something else entirely to see an actual ankle monitor wrapped around his best friend’s leg that wasn’t a court mandate, something that his own parents had placed there. “Who gets called if you trigger this?”
“I haven’t really been in the mood to test it out, but I imagine it’s some private security paid specifically to keep me in line.”
“Yikes,” Jay said, and he reached out to touch the ankle monitor before he stopped. “Is it okay if I touch you? I want to get a good look at it.”
“Oh, baby, you can touch me all over ,” Mouse teased as he spread his legs almost obnoxiously at Jay. Still, even though he knew Mouse was joking with him, Jay felt his stomach flip at the offer. He forced himself to roll his eyes and take Mouse’s ankle in hand. He turned it gently, unable to make himself treat Mouse any less than gently after all they’d been through, and inspected the monitor. It was cinched tight to his skin, and Jay wondered what could possibly make you hate your son this much that you’d prefer him be a captive in your home than out living his life, even if that involved making mistakes.
“How easy is this going to be?” Mouse asked.
“Shouldn’t be too hard, people get out of these all the time,” he said absently, before he grabbed his tool kit and took out the small flashlight to get a better look at it. “Besides, it’s not like this is illegal. You’re not mandated by a judge to wear it, so even if it sounds the alarm, neither of us are going to jail.”
“We’ll just get beat the shit out of us by paid mafia thugs,” Mouse said. “Ruin that pretty boy face of yours.”
“Fuck off,” Jay said before ducking his head and going back to work. He carefully removed the housing for the device from the strap, and quickly disabled it, setting it on the couch cushion beside Mouse. Luckily, Mouse seemed preoccupited and not interested in giving Jay a hard time. He wasn’t sure he could handle Mouse’s teasing while he was knelt in front of him like this, cradling his ankle carefully, feeling smooth skin beneath his fingertips, the steady pulse just below that.
“Thank you for doing this,” Mouse said as Jay switched to wire cutters to cut the strap away from Mouse’s skin. “I’m pretty sure if I couldn’t leave, I was going to find my mom’s prescriptions and take a long nap.”
Jay squeezed his ankle, pausing to let the ache of knowing his best friend was so close to giving up, that he hadn’t noticed, that he hadn’t asked, and he could have lost him for good.
“Call me anytime,” he said. “I don’t care what time, or what for, but you call me.”
“It’s hard, admitting that I’m fucking up again.”
“You’re not.”
“You know, this happened because my mom thought we were fucking. She had no proof. She had no reason to think it, but she saw you and I together, and thought we were fucking, so she said I couldn’t leave the house without them, that way I’m not sullying the family image. I don’t even get the benefit of what she’s angry about while still getting the punishment.”
“The benefit,” Jay mused. “And what’s that?”
Mouse gave him a flat look and went back to looking at the device.
“It’s so fucking stupid, you know, that we went all the way across the globe to fight in that war, and we were heroes even when we were doing god-awful things, and then we come home, and there’s no support. I still hurt every time I wake up in the morning, and you can’t sleep without getting nightmares, and we’re both so fucked up. My parents don’t give a shit what I’m going through. They turned down any idea that I need to see a shrink, and they’re so upset about the drugs, but they don’t do anything about it except this .” He shook the device at Jay and groaned. “I’m sick of living like this.”
“Then, we get you a therapist,” Jay said, still focusing on the strap instead of keeping Mouse’s eyes. He couldn’t focus on anything else or else he’d sit up and kiss his best friend without thinking about the consequences. Jay would absolutely ruin this. “We get a therapist, and we can find a way to get you clean. You don’t have to come back here if you don’t want. It’ll be okay.”
“No, it won’t,” Mouse muttered. “It won’t ever be truly okay, will it?”
“If we’re together,” Jay said and he paused to snip more of the strap away from Mouse’s skin, “if we’re together, it can be better .”
“Together,” Mouse said.
“Yeah, well, you can stay with me, right, my parents wouldn’t mind, and then when we have enough, we can find a place to live here together, an apartment nearby the house so I can stay near Mom to take care of her. But we can be together and take care of one another until it’s better.”
When Jay looked up, Mouse wasn’t quite frowning at him, but he certainly looked puzzled.
“What?”
“Nothing, it’s just, you’re stupidly nice sometimes.”
“Stupidly nice,” Jay said, an echo of Mouse’s tone.
“Yeah, like, you’d let a known drug addict into your family’s home with your sick mom. That’s insane, you know that, right?”
“Not if the known drug addict is my best friend, and not if my mom already loves him, and not if I know that the drug addict isn’t going to hurt anyone except maybe himself.” He tilted his head to the side and continued to cut away the strap without Mouse replying right away until it finally came loose and fell away to the ground between Jay’s knees with a light thunk. Jay absently rubbed his thumb into Mouse’s skin where the ankle monitor had irritated it, and set his wirecutters back in his kit. “There. You are free.”
“Thanks, Jay,” Mouse muttered and he reached down to touch where the ankle monitor had been, the space now vacant except for where Jay still had ahold. Their fingers brushed, and Jay blushed, realizing he’d been holding onto Mouse’s leg for too long. He let go, and sat back. “Feels weird now, you know, without it.”
“Yeah.” He sat quietly for a moment before he said softly, “we should get going. Do you want to pack a bag or something?”
“Oh. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. But, only if you’re one hundred percent sure that this is okay. I don’t want to intrude on your family or anything.”
“You’re not intruding since you’re a part of my family, Mouse.”
“I - what?”
“You’re a part of my family. You have been since before you even started going by Mouse. You have been long before the drugs or the IED or all the terrible shit we’ve been through. You have been at my side through all of it, and I can’t let you go, I won’t. You’re not just family anymore, you’re a part of me now.”
“You,” Mouse echoed, and then he was moving. He was knelt in front of Jay, his hands on Jay’s neck and kissing him tentatively, almost timidly, like he was afraid that his kiss would shatter something. That seemed insane to Jay who had been dreaming about this moment since he’d first heard Mouse’s cute little squeak of a snore that got him his nickname, since he’d watch Mouse strip off a soiled undershirt and show off the toned chest that would frequent Jay’s nighttime fantasies.
Instead of pulling away to reassure him with words, Jay curled his fingers around one of Mouse’s wrists to pull him closer, turning the kiss from delicate to something hungry. They were so close, slotted wonderfully into one another, tightly and desperately bound. In turn, Mouse gripped Jay tight, and he groaned, his mouth falling open to invite Jay’s tongue across his own. They shouldn’t do this here of all places, especially if someone could walk in on them, but Jay swept Mouse up into his lap then laid him back across the carpet. It was a surprisingly comfortable rug, but he supposed with the amount of money that Thelma Gerwitz spent on anything, it had better be comfortable.
“Don’t stop,” Mouse moaned as Jay shifted his weight to the side. “Fuck, Jay.”
“No one’s home?” Jay asked, just to confirm, catching his breath even as he pressed wet, nipping kisses into Mouse’s throat.
“Just us.”
“Do you want to continue this here or move somewhere else?”
“I kind of want to cum on my mom’s half million dollar rug and couch set,” Mouse breathed, and Jay looked around at the furniture around them with a frown.
“No way.”
“Yeah, I told you they’re horrendously rich, disgustingly, didn’t bat an eye at the cost kind of wealthy.”
“That’s - that’s so fucked up.”
“I know, that’s why I’m telling you I want to do it here, I don’t want to be anywhere else or go anywhere else besides be right here with you,” Mouse said, almost exasperated if his voice didn’t come out so fond, warmed with the heat of his arousal. He leaned up into Jay and kissed him. It wasn’t as desperate, but the hunger was still there, the need. “Please, Jay.”
“Mm, how can I say no to a sweet request like that?”