Rust of Control

He’s been Easton’s best friend since before I knew what wanting was. He pulls me out of the worst night of my life, takes me home, makes me coffee, and doesn’t ask for a single thing. I’ve been in love with him since forever. I never said it because he’s straight. Because he’s my brother’s best friend. Because I was with someone. Because the someone was breaking me apart and I was too busy holding myself together to look up and notice that Nate was already there.
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ate is the crew’s doctor. Patches people up, pushes food on them, answers every phone call at two in the morning. He has wanted Jude Davros since before he had the right to, and he has never said a word about it to anyone. Not to Jude. Not even to Easton. He keeps it where he keeps everything that costs him — somewhere quiet, where it can’t do damage.
Then Jude calls from an alley behind a club, voice almost gone, and Nate is already in the truck before the call ends.
He brings Jude home. Sets him up in the safehouse. Patches the ribs. Learns, slowly, over coffee at all hours, that the bruises on Jude’s face aren’t new. That the man Jude has been with for two years has been taking him apart piece by piece while Jude smiled for the crowd and covered the damage with stage makeup and told himself it wasn’t that bad.
It’s that bad.
One safehouse. One crew. Jude at the kitchen table at two in the morning with his notebook and Nate in the doorway not going back to bed, both of them pretending that’s a normal thing to be — and Jude thinking Nate is straight, thinking this warmth is just what Nate is like with everyone, thinking wanting a man who looks at him like that is one more thing he’s not allowed to have.
Nate runs anti-trafficking operations for a vigilante crew Detroit has officially never heard of. Jude is the frontman of Hollow Bright, soft and quiet until the stage lights come up, and then a supernova. Five-five. Tops. The men who’ve laughed at that have never met Nate.
The crew’s case runs straight to Jude’s band. The man who broke Jude’s ribs and called it love has been running kids across the river into Windsor, and Hollow Bright’s shows were the front door. Jude’s voice. Jude’s face. Jude’s crowd.
He didn’t know.
Now Nate has to tell him. And then keep him from breaking. And then work out what to do with wanting a man who is, for the first time, looking back.