Tag Team by SJD Peterson Page B

can’t be sure Mason isn’t a danger to himself with just one phone conversation. I think I may have just stroked his already out-of-control ego.”
    “And so he does what?” Bobby asked, lifting his head to meet Rig’s eyes. “He just jumps on a plane to come help someone he doesn’t even know.”
    “Nope.”
    Bobby tilted his head, suspicious of the sparkle in Rig’s eyes. Rig just chuckled and kissed him on the nose before saying. “He’s doing this for us, and I’m thinking a trip to Jonas’s is going to be in our near future.”
    “He’ll deserve it, that’s for sure,” Bobby agreed and laid his head back down on Rig’s shoulder. He was clinging, not something he normally did, but he couldn’t help it. Not only had it been difficult seeing so much anguish in Mason, it had brought his own pain and loss up from a slight throb to a full-blown heartbreaking ache.
    “You okay?” Rig asked and hugged him tighter.
    “I’m just tired,” he admitted. It wasn’t a lie; he was tired in his bones, in his head, and in his heart. “How about you? Did you get any sleep last night?”
    “I’m good. Why don’t you go take a nap with Mason,” Rig encouraged. “It’s going to be another long night.”
    Bobby patted Rig’s chest before pulling free. “I think I’d rather keep myself busy.” He didn’t want to close his eyes and see the beautiful face long lost to him. “I’m going to go take a shower before Mason gets up. Figure out what we’re going to have for supper. I’ll put on a pot of coffee before I go.”
    Rig grabbed his hand as Bobby reached for the can of coffee Rig had brought over with the breakfast foods, stopping him. “I can do it.” Rig looked him up and down and then sighed. “Go shower. You look like hell.”
    Bobby started to protest, but his entire body ached from head to toe and his thoughts were a jumbled mess of anger and despair. He simply couldn’t find it in him to argue. “You’ll be okay?”
    “Jesus, you sound like a mother hen,” Rig grumbled. “Will you just go before I have to bend you over my knee and remind you just who I am? I got this.”
    “That’ll be the day,” he snorted in indignation, but turned and silently made his way to the front door. He paused to look back at Mason, at the even rise and fall of his chest and the peaceful look on his face. Bobby looked back up at Rig, who was leaning against the wall to the kitchen. He glared back at Bobby and pointed, a low rumbling warning sound emitting from him. Bobby rolled his eyes, turned, and stepped out, shutting the door behind him.
    The sun was bright in the perfectly blue, cloudless sky, and Bobby shielded his eyes from the harsh glare. He could hear the roll of the tide, and somewhere in the distance he heard children laughing, a dog barking. He reached up to pull down his shades, but they weren’t on his head. His footsteps faltered when he remembered it had been dark when he’d made his way here the last time. The darkness had followed him into the little house and stayed with him. Now, the gorgeous, bright day was so out of sorts, it momentarily shocked him. A wave of vertigo rattled Bobby’s head, and his feet froze in their tracks. After all the dark ugly things they’d all encountered overnight and throughout the morning, the afternoon with its bright sun and laughing children seemed wrong. The world had just kept right on spinning, oblivious to what he, Rig, and Mason had been forced to face behind the closed doors and drawn window shades.
    But that was the way of it, wasn’t it? He’d learned that after Stephen died. People went on; they went to work, ate, played, breathed, lived. Even when you stood before them, right there in front of them, dead, they just fucking went on, and eventually you did too because life didn’t wait; it just kept on going and going, clicking one moment off the clock after another. Sometimes you could walk among them—hell, you could even manage to