Up in Flames, a Port Charles vignette by Sue Castle. Rated NC17. No copyright infringement
intended.
"EVE!"
Kevin's scream shook Mac to the core. If he'd been able to do something,
anything, to save his best friend from the anguish of discovering his
wife had been blown to smithereens in a car bomb, he'd've
done it, but he couldn't. The ring recovered from the finger of the charred
corpse trapped in the scorched remains of Ian's car had definitely been Eve's
wedding ring.
Lucy stood beside Kevin, hands fluttering uselessly, eyes and mouth wide
open in sympathetic anguish, fellow feeling she never had for anyone but her
Doc. Mac could relate. He and Kevin had started out as enemies, fought over
Felicia, mutated through time and trial into best friends, and even closer
during the worst times. The debacle of Luke Spencer's trial, when Felicia's
testimony of her affair with the bastard had cleared Spencer of Stefan Cassadine's death, had sounded the death knell for their
marriage. Kevin had helped him come to grips with that, helped him focus on
what was important, his daughters. He, in turn, had helped Kevin as best he
could to come to grips with his own unexpected fatherhood, dealing with Livvie and the legacy of Grace's insanity and death. But at
least Kevin had been able to lean on Eve, trust in her love, believe
in a happy ending.
That happy ending had just gone up in flames.
Kevin's heart beat like a trip-hammer beneath Mac's palm where he held
the grief-stricken man back from the fiery car. The heat from the flames was
nothing to the heat rising from Kevin's body. Kevin's face was white in the
shadows cast by the fires still burning from the results of the car bomb,
smeared with soot, dark brown eyes staring wildly, glazed with tears. Mac could
feel the slender body beneath his hand shaking, and knew how fragile the thread
was that held Kevin's emotions in check. He couldn't last long like this, and
Mac knew it.
"Doc? Doc,
please, oh, please."
Lucy was whimpering helplessly, patting Kevin ineffectually on the arm
and shoulder. Kevin didn't appear to even know she was there, eyes staring
blindly at the wreckage containing his wife's burnt corpse. Mac swallowed hard.
"I'll take care of him, Lucy," he said firmly, pitching the
words as a command in order to pry her attention away from her Doc. "You
see to Livvie, okay?"
"I won't leave him!" Lucy proclaimed, the thread of incipient
hysteria in her voice the only sign that she wasn't quite as forceful as she'd
like to be -- nor as in control of herself. Kevin glanced sideways at her, then
down at the hand Mac still had clamped against the center of his chest.
"It's okay," Mac repeated. Kevin looked at him, and Mac knew
that it wasn't him Kevin was seeing. "Livvie
needs you --"
"Doc needs me!" she broke in. Mac continued inexorably.
"I'll take care of Kevin. You go take care of his daughter, so he
doesn't have to worry about her." With that order also disguised as a
request, Mac raised his other hand and brought it up to sling his arm around
Kevin's shoulders. "I've got Kevin."
Glancing over at Taggart, he signaled for his detective to take over the
on-site investigation, and patted his breast pocket to indicate he was to be called
on his cell phone if the FBI needed him. Taggart nodded understanding, and Mac
gently disengaged Kevin from Lucy's clinging hands.
"C'mon, mate, I'm taking you home with me."
He looked over at Lucy, and saw gratitude and understanding in her eyes.
She knew, and he knew she knew, that Kevin needed something she couldn't give
him this night. She couldn't, but Mac could.
Once in awhile, the divine Ms. Coe could be astonishingly discreet.
Manhandling Kevin into his car took every ounce of persistence and upper
body strength Mac could muster. For a slender man, Kevin could be a hell of a deadweight. Mac had noticed this before, but in more
pleasant circumstances. Emotional shock had a rotten tendency to turn a bloke
into a walking zombie.
Once at his apartment, Mac led his silent, shaking friend into the
bathroom. Kevin didn't say anything as Mac efficiently and gently washed the
soot and grime from his face and hands. He didn't blink. He barely breathed. By
the time Mac got to work undressing him, he was becoming seriously concerned.
"Kevin," he coaxed softly, "talk to me, man. Anything you
need to say, anything, just so I know you're in there." Feeling vaguely
ridiculous but too concerned about Kevin to care, he went on almost under his
breath, feeling a kinship with Lucy and her habit of babbling that he'd never
had before. Kevin, silenced, was spooky. "Please, mate. Say something.
You're the shrink, here. Don't you think it'd be better to let it out?"
A cold hand covered his as he reached for the buckle of Kevin's belt.
"Mac," Kevin whispered. Mac looked up into the most tortured
eyes he'd ever seen. The lost expression, in eyes that were usually so full of
warmth and sparkle, wrenched at his heart.
"Ah, damnit, Kev,"
he murmured back, hands slipping around Kevin's waist as his friend leaned
forward and rested his head against Mac's shoulder. "I'm so sorry,"
Mac whispered against the cool skin of Kevin's neck.
"Shouldn't've happened, not like that,
not with him. God, Mac," Kevin's voice was strained as the tears he'd held
back fought to clog his throat. "He was s'posed to've left! He should have died alone. He was always
leading her into danger. And now he's killed her!"
Mac didn't waste breath pointing out that Ian was as dead as Eve, as
much a victim as she of the bastard who'd planted a bomb under his car. He
simply listened as the broken litany continued, stripping Kevin down to his
shorts, gently washing away the sweat and cinders from the night's tragedy. By
the time he'd gotten the man clean and steered him to the bed, the words were
dying away to formless mutters, sounds of pain and bewilderment that turned the
pang in Mac's heart to a dull, nagging ache. Kevin'd
been through too much tragedy already in his life. He deserved better than
this.
Pulling the duvet down, he settled Kevin against the linens and lifted
the long legs up under the covers. He started to smooth the downy material over
the spare frame when Kevin's hands came up to cover his. For the first time
since Mac had arrived at the crime scene, the deep eyes were focused on him and
actually seemed to recognize him.
"No," Kevin said quietly. Mac cocked his head at him.
"No what?" he asked just as quietly.
"Don't leave."
Mac swallowed. "You sure, mate?"
"Please." The only color in Kevin's face was a hint of blood
at his lips. His eyes were pools of darkness that seemed to gather all the
light in the room and swallow it up. They threatened to swallow Mac along with
it.
He let himself be caught.
Climbing in beside Kevin, Mac gathered his friend close to him and held
him firmly, rocking gently. Kevin turned his face into the side of Mac's neck
and wrapped his arms around Mac's back, holding on tightly. Mac stared up at
the ceiling, watching the shadows their bodies made against the moonlight reflected
through the window, and bit his lip to keep back words as the first few tears
trickled over his collar bone. Sleep was a very long time coming for Kevin.
Mac didn't bother trying.
A little before two in the morning, his cell phone rang, and he gingerly
unwrapped himself from Kevin to go answer it. The exhausted man in his bed
barely stirred. Taking the phone into the living room, he flipped it open.
"Scorpio."
"Taggart, sir. Update on the car bomb."
"Did Hannah come out?"
"Yes, the FBI's on the scene too." There was a dash of humor
in Taggart's voice when he mentioned the agent, his girlfriend, but it
disappeared as he continued his report. "The remains have been taken to
forensics to confirm identities, but on-scene evidence strongly suggests the
bodies are of Ian Thornheart and Eve Collins. Is
Doctor Collins all right?"
"As well as can be expected," Mac answered, staring back into
the darkened doorway of his bedroom. "Any clues as to who set the
bomb?"
"Not yet, sir, but we're running background checks now to see who
could have targeted Doctor Thornheart. He was
involved with some undercover work back in the
"Keep me informed," Mac ordered, then
cut the connection. Nothing. Too early, of course, for
anything definite, but it would have been nice to catch a break from the scene.
This investigation was going to be ugly and painful. Better if it wasn't slow,
too.
"Mac?"
Kevin's low voice coming from the bedroom jolted him out of his
thoughts. Walking back to stand braced against the doorjamb, he stared at the
bed. Kevin lay on his side, head propped on one hand, hair falling over his
fingers, staring back at him. Mac took a deep breath. Before he could say a
word, Kevin beat him to the punch.
"It was Eve, wasn't it." His
intonation made it clear it wasn't a question. Mac nodded.
"I'm sorry." Every bit of pain he felt for Kevin was clear in
the two inadequate words.
Kevin reached out to him, and Mac stepped forward, lacing his fingers
with Kevin's and allowing himself to be pulled onto
the bed. He ended up face to face with Kevin, leaning over him.
"Make the voices in my head stop, Mac," Kevin asked him. Much
as his own interaction with Lucy earlier, it was more command than request, and
Mac found himself responding as helplessly as Lucy had
to his own orders.
"I'm not sure this is a good idea," he admitted, his breath
ghosting over Kevin's lips. The kiss that met his words stopped his breath in
his lungs.
"You're alone," Kevin reminded him when their mouths parted.
Mac ignored the stab of pain at the reminder that Felicia was no longer his to
listen to the next agonized phrases. "So am
Kevin kissed him again, and Mac accepted it and returned it with fervor.
They'd gone through this before, the first time he'd broken up with Felicia,
when Kevin had separated from Lucy. This time they were both hurting. He needed
the comfort, and God knew Kevin did.
"That I can do," he muttered against Kevin's ear, then set about making sure they both forgot everything but
the here and now. Friendship, the closest tie he had with anyone, leavened with
desire, laced with passion. Secrets of the night that had gotten them through
pain in the past could now be relied upon to see them through the worst pain
imaginable.
He didn't bother speaking after that, putting his mouth to better use
against Kevin's body. Adrenaline fought with exhaustion, the latter making them
both hard to rouse but once there, the rush from the night's events kept them
hard. Mac relearned Kevin's body from temple to ankle, pausing to lay kisses
along his jaw line, down his breastbone, along the line of his ribs, his waist,
his hip, nudging between his thighs to linger on the soft skin and sweet musk
there. Mac's hands alternately soothed and excited, stroking the long lines of
Kevin's legs, palming a bony kneecap, curving around a pointed ankle bone,
around to the length of calf, the dip behind the knee, the soft spare flesh of
buttocks.
By the time he allowed himself to take Kevin's erection in his mouth,
Mac knew from the broken moans and garbled words pouring out over his head that
Kevin was completely caught up in their lovemaking. Sex could be so many
things. Affirmation of life. An anchor in troubled
times. A celebration. A wake.
Fire with which to fight fire.
When Kevin came in his mouth, Mac milked him through his climax,
gentling him with calming caresses along his hips, cradling his sac in one
palm, pressing and stroking between his thighs to heighten the sensation. As
hard as he was, and as needful, he would have contented himself with bringing
himself off and letting Kevin get some rest.
Kevin disagreed.
Strong fingers clenched over his fist as he pulled at his cock, and he
looked up to see Kevin's half-closed eyes staring at him intently. Then Kevin
spread his legs and locked his ankles at the small of Mac's back. The
invitation was certainly clear enough not to need words, but Mac used them
anyway.
"You sure, mate?" They didn't fuck often. Hell, they didn't
bed one another often. Only when the need overwhelmed them.
Like tonight. "I could --"
"I'm not going to ask you twice," Kevin informed him, a hint
of a growl and the shadow of his usual humor underlying his voice. Mac grinned
briefly.
"Right," he agreed, then fumbled for
a condom. He hadn't had much use for them since his wife ran off with Luke
Spencer, but they were there. As was the lube. A damned good thing, too, because he wouldn't have been able to
wait much longer. It was a good thing Kevin was relaxed from his orgasm,
as well, because Mac found himself losing hold of what precious little control
he had left as he pushed forward.
Nothing, but nothing, felt like this. Kevin's arms wrapped around
his shoulders, pulling him closer, and Kevin's legs curled around him, shoving
him in deeper. Kevin's voice rose like smoke trailing through him, the words
making sense somewhere outside himself where thought still existed. Harder, and
yes, and need this, and now, and god, please, tumbled around them, and Mac
wasn't sure if he said the words or Kevin did. It didn't matter. Nothing
mattered but the feel of Kevin under him, around him, holding on to him,
burning him up.
Then he was coming, and he was shouting, and he was holding back as
tightly as he was being held. There was no Felicia, no Luke, no Eve, no Ian, no
divorce, no death -- nothing in the world but Kevin and heat and need and
satiation. Kevin bucked under him and he felt a spurt of fluid against his
stomach corresponding with a clenching around his spasming cock that sent his
head into another spin. He wondered vaguely when Kevin had gotten hard again,
then realized it didn't matter, because neither one of them would be doing
anything more that night but sleeping. The good thing about sex was that it
drained a man's brain of all the mess and chaos of a hellish day. The other
good thing was that it wiped him out.
Kevin's eyes closed before his own, and the steady sounds of his
breathing lulled Mac to sleep. With daylight would come accountability,
responsibility, and proof of heartbreak. Until then,
Kevin was his, and Mac had done everything in his power to ensure that the
flames of passion burned brighter than the flames of loss. He only prayed it
would be enough.
end