Chapter 15
The autumn leaves skittered across the road in the morning sunshine when Damon flicked on the directional. Another road, another switch-back, another way of trying to confuse the men the senator had sent after them - if they were still after them at all.
Still, this morning, Damon couldn’t bring himself to mind taking the long way. Not when he had Cain next to him in the passenger seat singing along to the radio. Not when his ass was still pleasantly sore from last night. Not when he felt stronger and more positive than he had since before the crash, like he could almost see a future where the senator was in jail and he was free to resume a normal life.
He glanced over at Cain, who had stolen one of Damon’s clean t-shirts to go with his jeans this morning, and was calmly sipping the mostly-milk-and-sweetener confection he liked to call coffee.
“You should not be humming along to this trite shit when you’re wearing a Sabaton t-shirt,” Damon said. “It’s disrespectful.”
As expected, Cain turned to glare at him. “Who the fuck is Sabaton?”
“Who are… Are you kidding me? Did you even look at the shirt before you put it on?”
“Uh, nope. Didn’t look. Also, not kidding. Never heard of them.” The brat was totally dismissive.
“They’re only one of the greatest Swedish metal bands inexistence,” Damon informed him.
“Hmm. If you say so.” Cain shrugged. “I picked it because it was the smallest t-shirt you had, and I’m still swimming in it. No disrespect to Swedish metal intended.”
“Clearly your musical education has been sorely lacking.”
“You gonna educate me?”
So fucking saucy. “I could pull over and educate you right now,” Damon threatened, and Cain smiled wickedly.
Fuck. He was sorely tempted. Partly to distract himself from giving in to temptation, and partly from a desire to know more about Cain, he said, “Tell me about your tattoo.” The lines of tiny swirling text interspersed with colorless tongues of flame and skulls that seemed to dance down his arm were as beautiful and mysterious as the man himself.
Cain stuck his arm out, and looked down with a furrow between his brows, like he was somehow surprised to see the ink still on his skin, or maybe just surprised that Damon had asked him. “Oh. Uh. It’s from a poem by T.S. Eliot,” he said simply, then he closed his eyes and quoted:
“What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from….
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea’s throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.”
He cleared this throat when he was done, looking slightly embarrassed. “It…it’s only part of that stanza, but it was important. A reminder.”
Damon blinked. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to hear, but likely something more along the lines of song lyrics. Some ephemeral life motto. He wasn’t sure why he kept wanting to believe that Cain was somehow younger than he was, less mature than he was. Like the tattoo, Cain was complex - half-shaded and with pieces left unfinished, but that did nothing to detract from his beauty.
Or from how much Damon wanted him.
While Damon was lost in his thoughts, Cain had resumed his soft singing, his eyes drinking in the lavish mountain views, now stained with the golden fire of turning trees, and Damon found himself appreciating them, too. One last blaze of glory at the end of a growing season, one last punch of gorgeousness before the blanket of cold fell over this corner of the world. But they held so much promise, too. A reminder that even when stark winter came, it too would fade away into lush green. A cycle.
An end that was also a beginning, just like Cain’s tattoo.
The strains of the alt-rock song on the radio faded into silence and Cain stopped singing.
“Hey!” he grumbled, trying to pick another station. “That was an awesome song.”
Damon hadn’t recognized the track and hadn’t understood a single lyric. If anything, he’d been focused on Cain’s voice, which had sounded happy and peaceful…and not at all like an injured cat, as Cain had claimed. Although maybe Damon was biased. He was beginning to realize he was pretty pitifully gone on Cain.
