Bounce
by elfin

PART THREE

def: 'Bounce' - to land after freefall without the aid of a parachute



Rico:

I don't know when to keep my mouth shut, my ideas to myself.  Boston Prison, that was one of mine and Sonny didn't speak to me for about a month afterwards.  Goin' under, pretending like the job was pissin' me off and gettin' out, gettin' into all the vigilante and bent cops stuff, that was another; not tellin' my partner being my giant mistake on that one.

'Let's make it sex'?!  Who knew what that had come from?  Havin' said that, I could probably take a not-so-wild guess.  A chance to get my hands on my partner, ex-partner, all legit, was one my dick at least couldn't resist.  And believe it or not, it wasn't an entirely sexual thing.  I'd missed him touchin' me, missed touchin' him, missed the physical contact and the closeness.  It had been the most real thing to me in the whole world and I'd missed it so much I'd felt it hurtin'.  And yeah, at times I got off on it; Sonny's a physically gorgeous man; that's undeniable.  His strength, his ability to protect himself and others, and his caring, his possessive, proprietary nature had rubbed off on me.  Take that French chick who'd tried to twist him up and for a finale tried to kill me.  I'd have been floating down the Miami River with a hole in my chest if he'd decided he fancied her more than he needed me.

"You can't sell sex to a eunuch, Rico."  Sonny's patented 'patient voice of reason'.  He used to talk to Billy like that.

Tyrone winced.  "Pity.  Girls are easier to get hold of than coke."

"No tellin' Nicholas doesn't swing the same way as his brother."

I shrugged.  So I wasn't completely focused on the job.  "We check, and if he doesn't go for us or the girls we offer him coke."

"Play it by ear?"  Just like us to wing it, play it by ear.  We were used to thinkin' on our feet when that was the only thing between keepin' breathing and takin' a bullet. 

If he went for us, I didn't want to imagine how Mandella would react to the idea that the guy who robbed him of his manhood was fucking his brother, but we'd definitely get his undivided attention.  Then all Tyrone had to do was bring the hefty force of the NYPD down on top of him.

Tyrone, who was busy shakin' in his head in our general direction.  "It's too risky, bro."  Then he nailed Sonny with a stare hard enough to hammer nails.  "And don't go tellin' me 'risky's your second name, white meat."

Sonny smiled.  "Wasn't about to.  I don't have a second name.  But Rico and I lived with Risky for ten years, he's a good friend."  He leaned forward and I physically flinched when he patted Ty's knee.  "Trust us, okay?"  He finished his drink in one slug and got to his feet.  I followed.

Tyrone stared up at us both.  "Hey… what?"

"Time to go to work."

"You're seriously gonna bait this guy with yourselves?"  He rolled his eyes.  "You two lived in one weird-ass world."

Sonny grinned.  "Welcome to Vice."

"Yeah, well…. you know, I think I'll wait here."

"Your choice, Ty."  I put one hand on Sonny's shoulder.  "Don't want to watch the masters at work?"  There was that knowing look in his eyes again when he held out his hands. 

"I'll catch the next show."


# # #


Sonny:

Rico's arm around me felt just fine as we strolled back into Club Mandella.  Our impromptu reunion had apparently eased us in if the expression on the barman's face was anything to go by.

"Gentlemen, what can I get you?  Champagne, perhaps?"

I glanced at my partner, hesitated, and nodded.  "Why not?"

He slipped into the character like he'd been playin' it his whole life.  "It's a bit early to be celebrating, isn't it?"

"Nah, we can celebrate again when we find him."

The barman expertly filled two champagne flutes with bubbly, not spilling a single drop.  "And who would you gentlemen be looking for?"

We took two seats at the bar and Rico lifted his drink, chinked his glass to mine, eyes shining, before tipping it to his lips and sipping the bubbles, never lookin' away from me.  My dick gave an appreciative throb and before I knew it I was thinkin' about how that mouth with those ice cold bubbles would feel wrapped around it.  I was losing concentration fast and it was Rico who finally turned back to the barman.

"The owner of this classy joint, Nicholas Garcia.  We've got an offer for him he won't be able to refuse."

"Nicholas Garcia isn't here at the moment."  I reached for my glass, wrapping my index finger and thumb around the base of the bowl and moving them slowly up and down the long body, eventually lifting it, sipping it, deliberately doing to the poor guy what Rico had knowingly done to me.  "But I tell you, if the offer includes you two, you bet he won't be able to refuse."  Bingo.  "He'll… be here tonight, late.  It's jazz night."

I smiled sweetly.  "Thanks."  We drank our drinks and Rico slipped a note across the bar.

"Keep the change.  Buy yourself someone… filthy."

The barman turned the same perfect red as his shirt and I swear I could feel his eyes burning my ass as we walked out.  Mine and Rico's, probably; imaginin' a nice threesome.

Didn't do threesomes.  Not with guys.  It was what had got me into this mess in the first place.

#

"How'd you hook up?"

"Remember Lieutenant Dutton?"

"Dutton of when we were up here and he tried to have us thrown back to the 'gators?"

"Yeah.  He found me, told me they were light, offered me a job."

"You work for Dutton?"

"No.  Some dude called Larson.  Solid guy."

We were sat in the courtyard garden at the back of Rico's place - a really great ground-floor apartment, light colours, lots of windows.  Not quite what he was used to though - I used to love his beach house almost as much as I loved the boat.  It wasn't a huge place, but the wrought iron spiral staircase climbing from the open plan lounge/diner/kitchen up to the bedroom gave it an erotic feel and after Maybella, I couldn't be in that house without getting a hard-on.  Course, that came in useful now and again.

It was dusk, still hot - that damp heat I hated the first time - last time - I came up here with Rico.  He had my favourite brand of beer in his icebox, which I was gonna ask him about but hadn't got around to yet, and we were sitting out there, drinking, him on the wooden bench he said the last owners had left behind, me on the low wall along the back, leaning against the high fence behind it.  I lit a cigarette and expected him to say something, but he didn't immediately and when I opened my eyes I found he was watching me.

"Haven't seen you smoke in a long time."

"I gave up."

"I know."

"Only smoke now when I'm in New York."  It made him smile.

"So where you been, Sonny?  Where is Apalachicola?"

"Fishing port south of Tallahassee."  I told him about my overnight there, about my day in Alligator Harbor and about finding the town I was living in.  "You'd like it.  Got a little house that's slightly smaller than the Ferrari."  That made him giggle.  "I restored a boat and named it after you."

He stopped giggling and his eyes went all soft.  "Serious?"

"Yeah, man.  Fishing boat.  I thought I could take tourists out, you know?"

"You?  Tourists?"

My turn to laugh.  "Yeah, I know.  Figured that bit out too late."  See - Rico knew me better than I knew myself.

We fell silent, each lost in thought for a few long moments.  Then he looked up, and he said, "I've been thinking about you, Sonny.  Thinking about… that night, with Maybella."


Rico:

Maybella.  Beautiful, sexy, sassy Maybella.  We met her at this outta town bar called the Spiky Cactus.  Not our usual type of place but we'd been out in the Caddy, tooling around, lookin' for somewhere different to have a drink, the plan being to grab some dinner afterwards before we both passed out from exhaustion at the boat or at my place, whichever was nearest.

The whole place was green; green walls, green floor, green lights lighting everything up green.  At least the beer wasn't green as far as we knew.  It had a hint of the grassy colour but we put it down to the neon cactus over the bar.  They were playing Country and Western on the juke box, with its green rope lights dancing in time to the twangy music.  Crockett liked that stuff but it had never really had any impact on my life.  I was a rhythm and blues guy.  Sonny likes jazz and rock.  Two too different tastes; we could never live together, it would never work.

Half an hour after we arrived, the juke box was switched off at the plug and a real life County and Western band stepped up onto the stage - a fancy term for a few up-turned palets in one far corner of the bar - and started playing.  Their singer introduced herself as Maybella.  She was wearing a cream shirt, long black skirt, and a wide brown leather belt on her hips.  Long, dark red hair, pouting red lips, beautiful brown eyes.  God, she was gorgeous.  I couldn't take my eyes off her for ages, and when I did finally manage a glance at my partner I saw he was equally as smitten as I'd known he would be.  She was just his type.

And once she'd spotted us, there at the bar, she was making eyes at us throughout their hour-long set.  She was going to go for Sonny, I knew that deep down, however hard I tried with white women he was usually the winner if we both made a play.  No hard feelin's. 

When they finished the set, she jumped down off the stage and walked over to us, confident, smiling, taking my breath away, and I'll never forget the way she looked at us, first at Sonny - predictably - then at me.  Then she slipped one arm around Sonny's shoulders, and one arm around mine, and said, "So where are we goin' boys?  Your place or mine?"

To say the idea had never crossed my mind before that night would be lyin', but I would bet everything I own, right down to my underwear, that it hadn't crossed Sonny's.  He stared at her for a second, and I was about to duck out of the invitation, when he looked across at me and it was like being struck by a lightening bolt.  For a second I couldn't breathe.  No way, I thought, was he proposing what his eyes looked like they were proposing.  And he must have known it, because he said, "How about it, Partner?  Share?"

My dick was most definitely nodding.  If I ignored it, it would give me hell over it, reminding me of the opportunity I'd passed up every time I reached for it.  Like I was ever gonna pass up an opportunity like that, however nervous the thought made me.  So I nodded, smiled like I was the most chilled person in the whole bar. 

Maybella was smiling too.  "Let's go then, I'm gettin' all wet standin' here."


We weren't far from my place.  Maybella followed us in this little red sports car she had.  We didn't speak a word on the drive there, but it wasn't an uncomfortable silence, it was a hot one, like we were about to something we'd both been waited to do for years, with the added frisson that we were about to cross a line we both knew we shouldn't cross, but it was too late to change our minds.

She loved the beach house with its privacy and its wrought iron spiral staircase up to the bedroom.  She led the way, undressing as she went so that by the time she reached the top, she was gloriously naked.  She pressed up against me, that round ass rubbing against my crotch as she beckoned Sonny forward and he moved into her arms, bending slightly to kiss her.  I rubbed my hands down her sides, watched my partner's mouth move on hers as their tongues danced somewhere between.  Then she pulled back from him, turned all the way around to face me, and I stroked my hands over her breasts while I tasted Sonny's saliva in her mouth.

She started to undress me, slowly, takin' her time, kissing my chest, nipping at my nipples, finally dropping my pants and briefs, taking my balls in the palm of her hand.  For a single moment I forgot about Sonny, lost in her, and then a hand too big to be hers settled on my hip and I was suddenly, singularly aware of his presence.  She must have seen something in my eyes, because she stepped around me, behind me, pressing against my back, my dick in her hand as she murmured, "You undress him."  I think I shook my head.  "Why not?  He wants you to."

I wasn't convinced, but I never had known when to resist.  "That right, Sonny?  You want me to?"

He nodded.  I couldn't believe he'd nodded.  He even stepped up close, putting himself within reach.  How the hell I was supposed to resist….  I swear my hands were trembling like a coked-out crackhead's as I put them at Sonny's sides, just above his hips and hooked fingers dancin' the St Vitus under the hem of his T-shirt to lift it over his bowed head. 

Then I couldn't stop myself from puttin' my hands on his chest, stroking his skin, tracing the only mark - the bullet wound Angelina Montepina left him with: a small price to pay for him to be standing in front of me.

Maybella - I'd almost forgotten she was there - put her hands over mine and directed them down to his waistband.  My fingers unbuttoned, unzipped of their own accord and without warning his hard, bronzed cock sprang free to salute me.  I felt Maybella's deep chuckle behind me, let Sonny's pants fall to the floor, but I didn't touch him, not where I knew he wanted me to.  Instead I murmured something utterly unintelligent and meaningless - possibly the age-old compliment, "oh man," - and palmed his heavy balls, rolling them gently.  Then I sank to my knees and did what I'd been wanting to do since Mandella Garcia put his gun and his penis to our heads that fateful night; I swallowed Sonny's cock to the root.


# # #


Sonny:

I remember that night in such clear detail I can close my eyes and re-live every second, and believe me, I've done that about a thousand times, usually with my hand wrapped around my dick.  We fucked Maybella, both together, in some kinda neat gymnastics - me from behind as she lay atop of me, Rico above us, pushin' into her nice and slow, drivin' her crazy - drivin' me crazy.  I could feel him, his dick hittin' mine through thin layers of flesh.  It was the hottest thing I'd ever done.

I remember her arching her back, dropping her hand to rest against my shoulder and pulling Rico down to us, kissing him then directing him to kiss me for the first time.  Mouth to mouth.  It was electric - and hey it's a corny cliché but I could feel his dick like he was fucking me through her and his tongue lying heavily against mine reminded me of how it had felt around my hard-on.  I came hard, and I swear my orgasm had little to do with the woman whose body I was inside and almost everything to do with the man I was sharing her with.


# # #


Rico:

That night with Maybella changed things between us, of course it did.  She left sometime in the early hours of the morning - kissed us both and headed out.  I heard her car but I stayed in bed, watching Sonny over on the other side of the mattress, listening to shallow breaths huffed softly out through his nose, fallin' deeper for him with every dark, passing minute.

And as I stared at him across the narrow gap of my New York apartment courtyard, I couldn't work out how I'd thought I could live apart from him.  He was staring right back at me and I knew at that moment he was thinking the exact same thing.

The silence between us stretched, pulled taut, and finally snapped.

He came at me, bottle hanging between his fingers, and I met him half way, both on our feet now, teeth clashing and lips crushing together before we got it right and his tongue was headin' for my tonsils.  His free hand held me in place as if any second I was gonna break from him.  Nothing to worry about there, Sonny.  I wasn't goin' anywhere.  I wrapped my arms around him, hands splaying between his shoulders and at the small of his back.  I could feel him, diamond hard in his pants, and my cock was with him for every inch and more; two erections grinding against one another.  Sixty seconds, ninety tops, and I'd have come in my pants like some horny kid.

"Ric?"

Fucking Tyrone!

Sonny pulled back, a wild look in his eyes.  "You left the door open, man?"

"He's got a key."

I saw the flash of jealousy and my cock strained even harder to get back next to his.

"Ric?"  My new partner was standing in the open plan kitchen cum living room, staring at us like we were some last piece in a puzzle he'd been mulling over for months.  Which I knew he had.  And I waved and called out limply,

"Hey."

#

We ran through the plan, Sonny checking his watch as we finished.

"Gotta go back to the hotel, get changed."  Personally I thought Sonny was lookin' just fine in what he was wearin' right then, especially the way his cock kept twitching under the tight material of his pants whenever he looked at me.  We needed to put this Mandella thing to bed real quick just so we could climb into one.

Ty trailed us out to the front door, Sonny in front, me not able to take my eyes from him; blond hair, slightly tense set of his shoulders, T-shirt damp with sweat between his shoulder blades - knowing he hated the New York heat more than I did.

"Ric!"  The annoyance in Tyrone's call of my name told me he'd said it more than once.  He grabbed me, pulled me back.  Sonny turned and it was sheer instinctive habit that made me raise a hand to stop him intervening.

"You and him need to sort yourselves out first because I don't want you on the street so distracted.  You're gonna get yourself killed, bro'."

I didn't know what to say, didn't know how to react that wouldn't shatter what fragile friendship we'd managed to build.  I could never depend on Sonny to defuse situations; he always preferred to light the touch paper and stand just in range of the explosion.  He took a step, faced off Tyrone.

"Hey, man, you don't want him on the street with you, that's fine, he'll be with me.  We've lived half our lives out there."

"You think I'm a god-damn amateur?"

"No, man.  But this is Vice.  Specialised skills in a fucked up world."

Tyrone still had a death-grip on my arm.  "Lived half your lives on the streets?  Yeah, real hard lives.  Ferraris, boats, Rolex watches and diamond studs."  I glanced at Sonny, saw him not quite get the reference.   Didn't matter 'cause he was smiling - that disarming one he used on men he was usually kicking in the nuts ten seconds later.

"Wasn't all beautiful cars and beautiful women, Dude.  Hotels in Cuba are dumps.  Drug dealers are paranoid and suspicious.  Sitting with a muzzle pressin' into your temple ain't my idea of a good time, and prison is the pits.  Believe me, the risk and the danger is not worth the payoff.  But that isn't why we did it - isn't why we're doing this."

"So you're sayin' it's personal this time?"

I felt the grip slacken on my wrist.  "It's always personal, Ty.  That's Vice.  It gets in your blood, gets in your soul.  I told you, with Homicide you dance to the beat of the bad guys.  With Vice, the idea is to get them to dance to your beat."

I'm a poet. 

"You're a mad fucker, Ric."  But he let go of me, looked at Sonny, then back.  "So what do you two heroes need of the NYPD?  Unless you think you can handle Mandella Garcia alone…."

#

Over the years we'd walked that line between who we really are and the personas we wore like a different wardrobe.  Problem was, there was no other wardrobe.  We lived the life - dipping into and out of our covers, sometimes having to switch so quickly, so unexpectedly we were never completely Crockett and Tubbs.  The first time I remember seeing Sonny in anything but the Versace pants and tight designer shirts was the day out in the dustbowl town he'd unfortunately chosen to vacation in at the same time as three crazy sons-of-bitches wanted for armed robbery.  He'd ditched the Ferrari, borrowed a friend's bike and hightailed it outta Miami.  When me, Stan and the Lieutenant caught up with him he'd been wearing a ratty T-shirt and ripped jeans and the sight itself had been enough to unbalance me.  How well did I really know Crockett?  How much of the man I'd fallen in love with was Sonny's evil schizoid side, Burnett?  For just a little while, I doubted everything, and that doubt hadn't come from Sonny trying to kill me, it had come from the sight of a stranger in cheap clothes riding a motorbike.

Having said that, by the time Sonny and I quit Miami we were back in perfect sync, like the workings of an expensive watch.  And despite the months apart, nothing had changed.

There was a different crowd in Club Mandella than had been earlier in the day.  Champagne corks were popping, flutes topped off with bubbles overflowing on to the bar.

We strolled in like we owned the city, arms casually around each other's waists, laughing at some untold joke, smiling easily at the barman who'd come on to Sonny at lunchtime.  Breaking away from me, Sonny leant across the cold, smooth, granite bar, sunglasses between his hands, flirtation like a slash throughout his poise.  I joined him as two glasses of the expensive stuff were slide across the bar towards us.  "On the house," our barman murmured, and I saw a phone number written in ink on the napkin under Sonny's glass.  He slid it out, pocketed it, smiled at the guy like he'd be calling.

I watched him watch Sonny lift the glass and tip the fizzy liquid over his tongue, watched his eyes roam.  I couldn't blame him.  Crockett's attire that evening - a yellow T-shirt slashed at the open, V-neck line to reveal smooth, flawless, tanned skin.  This was over white pants which pulled tight around his ass with no visible underwear line, was enough to give a straight, celibate monk a hard-on.  The barman was clearly sufferin' and he didn't know what I knew - that Sonny wasn't wearing anything under those pants, that with a touch to his crotch you could outline the thick weight of a restless cock aching to fuck.  We'd have done it right there in the courtyard behind my house if Ty hadn't turned up.

I used to watch Sonny on the boat in just speedos and an open shirt, and wonder where the tan lines were, if there were any or if Sonny did indulge in some real worshipping of the sun when he was out on the ocean alone.  It was a hot image.

"Gentlemen?" 

He was instantly recognisable, the mirror image of his older brother.  A short man in an immaculate black suit and white shirt, black hair combed back, dark green eyes like rough-cut emeralds in the club's lights.  "Nicholas Garcia."  There was no outstretched hand of greeting, no smile.  I got the feeling he recognised us too.  Maybe his brother had already introduced us in our absence.  I remembered the photograph and immediately I was on my guard, feeling the tensing of Sonny's shoulders.  "I hear you have an offer for me.  Maybe we should talk in my office."

"I think we should talk out here."  I glanced at Sonny, knew as well as he did if we stepped into a private place with this man we might not step out alive.

"Business should be conducted in private.  Something my brother taught me.  He was a great teacher."  Was?  Something was off.  "But you know that, don't you, Detective Crockett, Detective Tubbs?"  All for naught, as the saying went.  His hand slipped into his jacket as he continued, "He taught you two the taste of each other, didn't he?  He taught us all the taste of him and you two took him away from me."  His voice never rose above its initial, summer-calm pitch and volume, but the anger behind his words, the grief and fury were palpable.  I didn't need to see Sonny's reaction, didn't need Nicholas to explain what he'd said either.  He'd loved his brother, somehow he blamed us from whatever had happened to Mandella, he'd brought us here with a simple photograph and now he was about to shoot us in the middle of his club surrounded by his patrons.  What the hell did he care?  I knew exactly how he felt.  But I'd had restraint.  And I'd had Sonny.

"Okay, man," I heard Sonny start to try to talk some sense into him, "we'll go through to your office.  That way no one gets hurt who doesn't have to."

Too late.  The gun was out in plain sight.  One or two people had already seen it and were backing away.  No one had screamed yet, but that was New York for you.  The ones who made it to the exit would probably just go and find another bar to drink in, one without a crazy guy waving a gun around.

"We didn't kill your brother," I tried to reason with him although I suspected he was long passed that.  This had gone so screwy so fast I'd barely had chance to take a breath. 

"Might as well have done.  Which one of your shot him and which one of you had his dick in your month?"  Sonny didn't say a word.  He had his eyes on the guy - neither of us were armed and there was a very good chance Nicholas was just going to shoot us right there, right then.

"I was the one who sucked him off," I told him softly.  "He enjoyed it.  Didn't he tell you that?"  I wasn't being cruel, I was trying to distract him, trying to put his head somewhere else.  "I enjoyed it too.  But Sonny here, he has this thing for me and he got real jealous.  You know what that feels like, don't you?  You've been jealous of Mandella's lovers, since you were kids, because you loved him."

I could see him wavering.  What I was saying was still wrong in his eyes, no matter what his older brother had told him, no matter how much he'd wanted it.  It wasn't just a crime in his family, it was a sin.  Murder, extortion, fraud, blackmail, drugs - these were acceptable past times.  Incest most definitely was not.

"I'm sure he loved you too, Nicholas.  Gave you this place, didn't he?  Wouldn't have wanted you to throw it all away just because he died."

"He didn't die!  He killed himself!"  The gun was suddenly very deliberately pointing at Sonny - from that point-blank range, his guts would be dog food and he'd be dead before the ambulance arrived.  "You castrated him!  He couldn't live like that so he drowned himself."

I could guess where. 

Then I'd turned up in town, someone had told someone who'd told Nicholas, and Enrique Fernandez had wound up as bait on his fishing trip to catch not only one of us but both of us.  What had Mandella told him about us?  That we were cops who'd tried to play him so he'd played right back?

"I shot him," Sonny was confessing, all calm and quiet.  "I didn't mean to castrate him."  Liar.  "I was saving Rico's life.  Mandella was gonna kill him.  You'd have done anything for Mandella, wouldn't you?"

"He was my brother."

"Rico's my partner."  Nicholas interpreted the word accurately enough, and the gun's aim dropped a few inches.  Predictable.  We'd lost our touch - we were talkin' ourselves into getting shot instead of out of it! 

"Then maybe I should show you how Mandella suffered."

I heard the crack of the gun going off and for a split second I thought I saw a rose of blood on Sonny's white pants. 

What I'd actually heard was a gun firing somewhere to my left.  And what I saw was Nicholas' blood splatter the light linen, both before I heard Tyrone's voice instructing Nicholas to 'drop the weapon' just a second later.  He wasn't dead.  He was holding his wrist and looking through a bullet hole in his right hand, blood blossoming from the wound before he'd even started to scream.

The rest of the evening was surreal at best.  Tyrone wanted to know everything - Sonny and I gave him the broad strokes and left the rest to his imagination, if he cared to imagine it.  It was the early hours of the next day by the time we caught a cab back to my place.

"Does this city ever sleep?" Sonny asked me as we drove through the busy night streets.

"New York don't sleep," the cab driver told him in a perfect Hollywood-bred Manhattan accent.  "New York never sleeps.  That way, it don't miss nothin'."

It struck me as fairly profound at the time.


# # #


Sonny:


"Does it ever get cooler?"

"Winter.  Then it snows until the whole world is white."

We sat outside, side by side on the bench, Espressos with bourbon chasers at gone three in the morning and for a long time neither of us said anything more intelligent than that.  I didn't know what I wanted - all I knew was that leaving Rico was beyond what I had inside me right then.  Before, when I'd left Miami, I'd been leaving a life gone sour, a job gone awry, and Rico was caught up in all that; Miami had been our connection, why would we have left together?  But now, I was here in New York because of him.

"I've got a car waiting for me back home."

Rico chuckled.  "It cracks me up that you stole it, man."

"It's the only thing I have, the only physical reminder that I spent twenty years as a Vice cop in Miami.  Like all I have of Catie is a bank account."

"What about me?"

I shook my head.  "Memories, tied in with everythin' else like you've always been there."

Reaching with one hand to the back of his neck, I had no idea what he was doing until he was putting his medallion around my throat, fastening it.  "No, Rico…."  I told him I couldn't, tried to stop him but he wouldn't let me.  He'd had that pendant all the time I'd known him, for all I knew his brother had given it to him.  But he left it there, picked up the bourbon and refilled our shot glasses, chinking his gently against mine.  I dropped it back in one, feeling the burn at the back of my throat, watched Rico do the same, lifted my fingers to the chain resting around my neck.

"Ty's a good man," he told me, out of the blue.  I couldn't disagree.  He'd saved our lives back there, he knew what was between us but he hadn't freaked, hadn't even mentioned it.  "You've no idea how often I've wanted to drive south from here."

"About as often as I've wanted to drive north?"

He looked at me, that intense expression in his eyes and it struck me hard how much I missed him, just how shallow everything seemed without his depth.  "If we don't put our lives on the same path, Sonny, they won't ever cross again." 

See what I mean?

I knew that, I'd known it from the moment I dropped him at Miami International four months ago.  But I didn't know what to do about it.  "You're building a life here, man…."

"It's not a life, it's a stopover."

Shaking my head again, I disagreed with him.  "No.  Apalachicola's a stopover - a rented cabin, restored fishing boat.  But you've got a job, a house, a new partner…."

"I don't want a new partner, Sonny!"  He let out a deep breath and quietened his voice.  "I want you, man."  I felt a little like crying, a little like shouting it from the rooftops.  I felt like I did when I asked Catie to marry me; scared to death but like it was somethin' too good to walk away from.  "It's always been you," Rico carried on, "you know that."  He leaned forward and said what I hadn't the balls to say.  "I don't want to live without you."

What the hell could I say to that?  If I'd told him it wouldn't work out, he'd have let me walk away.  Chances were it wouldn't.  Likely we'd tear each other to pieces.  But maybe not.  We'd practically lived together for the last decade.

"Not sure taking tourists on fishin' trips is your thing either, man."  But I knew he could tell by my tone that it was just a matter of words now.  He sat up, dropped his head back and to the side to look at him with that smile of his, the cat that didn't just get the cream but the whole damn pie.

"I'd give it try, Sonny.  Can't promise it won't be a matter of weeks before I'm transporting coke - "

" - from Cuba just for kicks?"  I smiled and he threw his head back and laughed like I loved him doing, like I'd pictured him doing every morning when I stood out behind the cabin and stared at the ocean.  "Nah.  We need more action, more of a buzz.  Maybe… Mexico?"  He looked at me like I'd just offered him the world on a plate.  "But I want to pick up my stolen car, make sure The Ricardo goes to a good home, get the deposit back on the cabin…."

"Strapped for cash, man?"  He almost tripped over the last word trying to stop it, expression falling.  "Sorry, Sonny….."

I waved it away.  "The passage of time and all that crap.  I still haven't touched a penny of Catie's money.  Mind you, if there was anyone she'd want me to set up some kinda life with it'd be you.  She knew how much you meant to me."

We fell into a comfortable silence, drowned another two shots, then Rico took my hand and led me inside.  It'd take some getting' used to, but as long as I didn't have to miss him every single day, I didn't care.


#


Epilogue

Castillo:

I was stepping into Lupe's Bar, so much on my mind I barely noticed it.  The expression on my face, when my brain caught up with my vision and I turned back to look at the two men sitting in the car pulled up on the other side of the road, was presumably comical.  But they weren't laughing.  They were smiling; at me, at each other.  I waved and they waved back, and as I watched Sonny's hand strayed to Rico's shoulder and rested there for just a moment too long.

I knew what it meant and I nodded once.  They wanted my blessing, they had it.

Then the purr of the Ferrari engine fired into a roar and the white Testarossa sprang from its resting place on the other side of the street, racing away, mingling with the downtown traffic and vanishing out of sight.  Presumably before I could ask for the keys back.


fin

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