Through Thick and Thin

by J. P. Oliver

  Lance rolled his eyes. “Yeah, maybe I’m just out of sorts after dealing with your mess today. You left water all over the bathroom floor last night too, just so you’re aware.”

  “Honestly, man, I’m sorry about that. What did you expect?”

  “If you say it’s because you’re a guy, Travis, I would like you to take a good hard look at me and remember that I, too, am a guy.”

  “Wait, really?” Travis feigned shock. “My whole life is a lie.”

  Lance flipped him off. “I’m just saying, you can’t use that as an excuse.”

  “All right, fine, I’ll work on it, I promise.”

  Lance nodded, smiling, and Travis felt the knot of nerves in his chest smooth out and fade away. When Lance was happy, Travis was happy. Lance being unhappy felt like there was an ache or an itch that Travis couldn’t scratch. He felt it almost more than his own unhappiness. If something wasn’t going his way, hell, he could rough it. Lance wasn’t like that. Lance had to be taken care of.

  “So, we’re good?” He asked, just to confirm.

  Lance smiled at him. “Yeah, Trav, we’re good.”

  Travis kind of had the urge to say something further, but he’d already thanked Lance for letting him stay with him, so, what else could he possibly say? “You sure? Because I could maybe get on my knees. Grovel a little.”

  “I’ll settle for you helping clean up dinner, okay?”

  All right, so maybe the rooming with Lance thing hadn’t gone as smoothly as he’d originally thought. He was probably going to have to start thinking more about where he put his things and all. Travis could picture quite clearly in his mind’s eye the pile of dishes he’d left on the counter yesterday morning, and the clothes overflowing in the laundry hamper by his closet, and God only knew how many dust bunnies were underneath the couch. So he’d have to adjust. He could do that.

  It was worth it, he thought, for this casual, happy feeling that he got right now. He hated being at home in the evenings, usually, all by himself. It was why he was usually one of the first people to get to Joe’s, but with Lance at home already when he got back, it was nice.

  “Hey,” he said, the thought coming to him, “Maybe we don’t go to Joe’s tonight. We could watch a movie or two, sleep in tomorrow before heading to the café.”

  Lance paused in putting dishes in the sink. “You don’t want to go to Joe’s?”

  “We go every night. How often do we hang out just the two of us anymore? Feels like I only see you as a part of the group nowadays.” Travis shrugged, unsure what to do with the odd look he was seeing in Lance’s pale blue eyes. “Can’t a guy want to spend time with just his best friend?”

  “Okay,” Lance said, still sounding confused but pleased, now, the corners of his mouth turning upwards. “I’ve got popcorn in here somewhere.”

  “Perfect.”

  Lance was a little… stiff, it seemed, when they sat next to one another on the couch and Travis started flicking through the movies they could stream. He didn’t know what was going on with Lance, or if it was his fault or not, but he was determined to find out.

  After all, this was his best friend. If Lance was unhappy, Travis just couldn’t let that lie.

  He’d figure it out.

  Until then it was really nice, actually, to just sit and watch movies with Lance, curling into each other a little to grab popcorn and making each other laugh. He hadn’t realized how little time he’d spent just with Lance, or how long it had been since they’d had a night in together, until now. He’d have to make sure they did more of that in the future.

  This was nice, though. Yeah. Travis thought to himself—what more could he possibly ask for?

  7

  Lance was losing his goddamn mind.

  Travis was not the sort of man known for being in touch with his emotional side. One time, when someone had brought their pet bunny to class—he couldn’t remember who it was or why, but they had—everyone had cooed over the adorable animal. Even Luke had looked almost teary-eyed when he’d gotten to hold it, stroking the soft fur and whispering that he would gladly die for the bunny.

  Luke was a bit of a melodramatic diva in high school. Although Lance would die before he said that out loud, mostly because Luke would then kill him.

  But Travis, out of all the class, had just looked at the bunny, went, “oh, cool,” and had gone back to doodling funny aliens to make Lance laugh. He hadn’t wanted to hold the bunny or coo over it, and he certainly hadn’t offered to die for it.

  So, really, Lance was used to Travis being the kind of man who wasn’t all that good at communicating how he felt. Travis was usually uncannily good at knowing when Lance was upset though, and it wasn’t that Lance was upset, necessarily, but… but how the hell was he supposed to function when Travis kept acting like this?

  The mess was bad enough. He should have expected that, really, but c’mon. Travis was a grown-ass man who’d been living on his own for how long? Lance could be affronted if he wanted to be.

  He’d woken up that morning, an hour and a half earlier than usual, and had realized immediately that he had not realized all that he was in for. And not just in the way that Luke had meant last night, but in the very annoying roommate kind of way. Lance hadn’t had a roommate since college and certainly not one who left water all over the floor of the bathroom, dishes piled up in the kitchen, and clothes in the living room.

  That had been plenty annoying, but at least he could confront Travis about it and make Travis do better. He could tell by the stricken look on Travis’s face, the one that Lance was pretty sure only he’d ever seen, that Travis was genuinely upset about making Lance upset—even if all he could muster verbally was a generic ‘sorry,’

  What he couldn’t confront Travis about was the rest of it, the stuff that Luke had, annoyingly, predicted.

  For example, did Travis have to throw his arm around Lance while they were on the couch watching a movie?

  And did he also have to sit so close to Lance, stealing food off of his plate and letting their knees bump, and walking around shirtless while he was scrounging for another shirt of Luke’s to wear and complaining about how goddamn small they were?

  Lance was starting to wonder if he’d done something awful in a past life and now this was his punishment.

  It wasn’t like Travis was suddenly behaving differently, either. He always threw his arm around Lance every chance he got, which was convenient given their height difference. He always sat right up next to Lance so that their legs bumped into each other. He always stole Lance’s food, because Travis could probably win a pie-eating contest if he put his mind to it, and Lance had been told more than once that he ate like a bird.

  So, really, it wasn’t so much that all of this closeness was new to Lance. It was that he had underestimated how it would feel when it was the two of them alone in close quarters. Out at the bar, or getting lunch somewhere, meeting up for their friendly football games on the weekend, they had other people around them. It felt fine. But now, Lance’s traitorous heart couldn’t help but paint it all in another light.

  It made it all feel more intimate, somehow, now that no one else could see. There was no one to distract Lance from how close they were, or how Travis smelled, or the way Travis would get this small smile on his face when he looked at Lance that always made Lance’s insides melt.

  It was all driving him slowly insane.

  Having them sleep separately wasn’t helping. Lance was almost painfully aware of Travis in the living room. It was a small apartment, so he had to leave his bedroom and enter the living room in order to go to the bathroom...which meant that he had to walk past Travis. He could hear Travis’s snoring which, okay, it really bothered Lance and he was getting ear plugs, but it was also that he could hear Travis. It was that Travis was just on the other side of a thin wall, one room over.

  It would be easy, wouldn’t it, to just say, hey, the mattress is way better in here, just stay in my room...or to
do just the opposite and crawl onto the pullout and curl up. Travis always ran hot, like a furnace or something, and Lance knew with their difference in height, it would be easy to just curl up in his arms.

  Thinking about that was dangerous territory. Every time he got to wondering about that, he’d remember what would come next: the pitying looks, the talk, the awkwardness afterwards.

  No. Lance was not going to deal with that. He wasn’t going to lose Travis as a friend.

  He tossed and turned in bed that night, feeling for the first time that it was too big, too empty, too cold. He knew it was all psychological, of course, that it was only because of Travis in the other room that he felt this way. Ordinarily he loved being able to spread out in his big bed. It was just his stupid heart playing tricks on him, reminding him of how much he wanted what he couldn’t have, especially with what he wanted so close by—and yet in a way, farther away than ever.

  He drifted off to sleep—he must have, because he woke up in the morning. At least today, he wasn’t woken up by Travis banging around in the kitchen and stomping into the bathroom, muttering to himself and playing videos from the internet on his phone. Honestly. How could someone have such a lack of self-awareness?

  Lance listened carefully for sounds in the other room. If he walked in on Travis changing or something, he was going to just have to have a heart attack and die in order to preserve his dignity.

  He was aware that he was possibly being a little dramatic about this, yes.

  There was the sound of quiet, careful movement coming from the living room. Lance could move around his apartment in utter silence if he wanted to. He’d long since learned which floorboards creaked, and how to shut the bathroom door without it making that snick-click sound as the latch caught, and how to roll his feet so you didn’t hear the shuffling of socks on the hardwood. Travis didn’t know all of those little tricks, so he only succeeded in being mildly quiet.

  Lance figured that someone who was changing didn’t walk back and forth across the room like that three times, so he got out of bed and threw on some clothes before going out to see what Travis had gotten himself up to.

  He prayed it wasn’t another mess.

  Instead, Travis was looking at his phone and walking back and forth across the living room—although as quietly as possible, it seemed.

  “Texting your family?” Lance guessed. Travis only got that nervous tic in his jaw when he was dealing with his three older brothers or his dad. It wasn’t that Travis’s family were mean or anything but getting jokingly referred to as ‘the runt of the litter’ for years didn’t exactly do good things for a guy’s self-esteem.

  Travis jumped, and Lance couldn’t hold in his answering grin. It was so rare that he got the drop on Travis. “Jesus Christ, man, you scared me.”

  “Whoops, sorry” Lance replied, not feeling sorry in the slightest.

  “And yeah, just sending out a quick group text to let ‘em know what’s up.”

  “A group text?” Lance rolled his eyes. “Trav, you gotta actually call them and let them know that you’re okay.”

  “They know I’m fine through a text just as well as through a phone call. Less hassle this way.”

  “It’s not about what’s a hassle for you, it’s about what will most reassure them.”

  Travis sighed, then waved the phone at Lance, as though Lance could somehow read the text from that far away. “It’s just—you know how they get. They’ll tease me about it more if I’m on the phone with them, and I’d have to take turns calling them one at a time instead of just telling them all at once. Then Dad’ll invite us over for dinner…”

  Lance’s heart clenched. He didn’t think that Travis even realized he was doing it half the time, when he said things like ‘us’ or ‘we’ instead of ‘me’ or ‘I’. It was like… Travis just assumed that Lance was going to be there, without actually examining why that assumption was being made or what it meant.

  It broke Lance’s heart, in other words. He didn’t know how to bring it up though, for fear of Travis taking it all away.

  “The fact that you’ve waited over a day to tell them is bad enough,” he said, instead of all the other words that were cramming up in his throat. “You’ve already sent the text, but we can call them after breakfast, ‘kay?”

  Travis sighed, pocketing his phone. “Fine.”

  “Way to sound like a surly five-year-old, Trav.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “You know, this is why when people take me out on dates I say I don’t want kids. I’ve already got you.”

  Travis looked up at him so fast it looked like he might have given himself whiplash. “When have you gone on a date?”

  “Um…” Lance thought back. When he’d referenced saying he didn’t want kids because he already had Travis, he was actually thinking of a very specific date, back in sophomore year of college. Long story short, it hadn’t gone well. “Six months ago?”

  “Oh Lord.” Travis grabbed a jacket of Luke’s, and then jerked his head at the front door. “C’mon, I owe you breakfast. Or brunch. Whatever it is.”

  “I think it’s late enough to qualify as brunch, but we can call it breakfast if you think brunch is too much of a gay cliché.”

  “Hardy har har, you should have been voted class clown.”

  Lance let Travis get the door for him as they exited, although Lance then had to go around Travis to lock it. “I should get you your own key. I know you’ll only be staying here a few weeks but God knows how long this’ll take. You know contractors always take longer than they say they will, and I don’t want us to have to be paranoid about syncing our schedules.”

  “Makes sense,” Travis replied. “Thanks.”

  Yeah, made sense. It was just a logic thing. Not like Travis was actually his long-term boyfriend and getting a key as a sign of permanence or anything.

  Wow, Lance was starting to sound bitter even to his own ears.

  They walked to the café, since they were close enough. Lance figured it was only a matter of time before things became so spread out, the way they inevitably did in suburbia, that they had to start driving to get to the grocery store and things like that. It made him ache a little, to know that the small town they’d grown up in was morphing so drastically. At the same time though, he liked the new additions, like the Bluebird Café.

  “Y’know,” Travis admitted, flinging an arm around Lance’s shoulders, “don’t tell Matthew this, because he’ll flay me, but when this place first opened, I thought it was annoying and pretentious and all that?”

  “I’m pretty sure Matthew knows you thought that,” Lance replied. “I distinctly remember you yelling something like that at him when you punched him after he slept with both of us.”

  “He was a dick to do that,” Travis pointed out.

  “Trav, you literally do that all the time. What, can’t take your own medicine?”

  “I can take my own medicine just fine,” Travis replied, opening the door to the café for Lance. “It’s you he shouldn’t have been screwing with.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Travis just gave him a look, the kind of raised-eyebrow look that said Lance should know what Travis was talking about. Lance shook his head. “Seriously, what does that mean?”

  “It means that you aren’t the kind of person who can… handle, a player,” Travis said.

  Lance sighed. “You’re a player, I’ve managed to handle you pretty well. And don’t think I didn’t notice that pause there, buster—” He paused as they grabbed a table.

  “Look, you’re a sweet guy. You just deserve better than being another notch on someone’s belt, that’s all,” Travis said, grabbing a menu.

  “You know, the guys you sleep with are probably just as sweet and deserve better too,” Lance replied. “You can’t get all protective over me and then treat other guys the way you don’t want me to be treated. It’s kind of hypocritical.”

  Matthew strode up
just then, even though he was the cook and should be in the back making sure things were running smoothly rather than taking orders. “Hey, I saw y’all come in! How’s it goin’?”

  Lance gestured at Travis. “Matthew, settle this for us. Is it not hypocritical of Travis—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Travis held up a hand. “First, Matthew, settle this for us, is Lance, or is Lance not, the kind of guy who needs to be properly wined and dined by someone who wants a relationship and not some guy just looking to pull?”

  “You two have perfect timing.” Matthew grinned. “I was thinking about what we were discussing the other day, Lance—”

  “We weren’t discussing you were telling me what you thought I should do. Lecturing me, I dare say.”

  “Point is,” Matthew said, steamrolling over Lance, “Our boy here needs to get himself a nice date. If we were back in my hometown, I know some lovely Southern boys—”

  “I think that’s enough,” Travis growled. “Lance doesn’t need—”

  “I can speak for myself, thanks,” Lance cut in, feeling his face heat up. He then looked at Matthew. “I don’t need—”

  “C’mon, even Davis gets laid regularly,” Matthew pointed out.

  “Yeah, and then comes crying to us about it when yet another date doesn’t turn out to be the man of his dreams,” Travis said, snorting.

  “Hey, at least the guy’s trying,” Matthew replied. “Lance here deserves someone, wouldn’t you say, Travis? He needs someone who’s going to take care of him the way he deserves. I’d say that all of us should find someone like that.”

  “Or you’re just disgustingly happy and you’re rubbing it in his face,” Travis replied, his voice going light in that tone that Lance knew meant you should back away, very quickly, and disengage.

  Matthew, luckily, had learned enough about Travis since they’d first met to start recognizing that tone. “All right, whatever you think is what you think. I’ll make sure they bring up your meals ASAP. Travis, you’re getting the usual, right?”