Through Thick and Thin

by J. P. Oliver

  Shit. He needed to get his shit together and at the very least try and explain himself, because so what if he was a player? So what? He was also Lance’s best friend, and he deserved some goddamn honesty from Lance, not tricks and mind games. He’d been clear, or as clear as he thought he needed to be.

  Lance should have done the same.

  15

  The date was… nice.

  Lance had to admit to himself about ten minutes in that there was no spark. Tom seemed like a great guy and he had some hilarious stories about what went on at the fire station, including the ongoing prank war with the police department, but there was no spine-tingling. There was no rush when he looked into Tom’s hazel eyes. No butterflies when Tom leaned in close and lowered his voice.

  It was awkward, but at the end of the night, Lance was going to have to tell him that it was better if they were just friends.

  That wasn’t the most important part of the date, though. The part that was the most important was the realization, halfway through their entrees, of how nice it was to have someone paying him such single-minded attention.

  Tom was attentive, listening when Lance talked. He expressed interest in Lance’s work, and was considerate, opening the door for him and pulling out his chair when they sat down. It was so different from the way that Travis seemed to take him for granted. It was pleasant.

  Maybe he had been right, the night before, in thinking that he was just attracted to Travis out of habit. Maybe it was time to go on more dates like this with other men, see what he could find.

  At the end of the night, as Tom pulled up to Lance’s apartment, he had to tell him. “Listen, you’re a great guy…”

  “But you just want us to be friends.” Tom smiled, and luckily Lance could see no sadness in his eyes as he did so. “Don’t worry. I could tell you were hung up on that friend of yours about halfway through dinner.”

  “What?” Lance frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you wouldn’t stop talking about him,” Tom said, “and besides, I didn’t really feel a… don’t take this the wrong way…”

  “No spark?” Lance finished for him. “Yeah, me too.”

  They grinned at each other, easy and relaxed.

  “I’m not,” Lance added, “hung up on my friend, I mean.”

  “You sure about that?” Tom’s face got pinched in a way that Lance was realizing meant he was thinking. “You sure seemed like it.”

  “I know. And it’s not—I was. Am. I don’t know. But I need more of this. Dating thing.” Lance sighed. “It’s complicated.”

  Tom shrugged. “Whatever you say. It’s not my business to pry. But hey, if you ever want to get coffee or something, just as friends, you let me know.”

  Lance smiled. “Sure thing.”

  He got out of the car and waved as Tom drove away, feeling pretty proud of himself. He’d gone on a date, in public, with someone that he hardly knew...and he’d actually had a good time, even if the romance wasn’t all there.

  It was a good sign, he told himself as he unlocked the front door,and then his good mood went out the window.

  Luke had not, despite Lance’s reminders, told Travis to clean up.

  There was food all over, plates piled up by the sink, and beer bottles filling up the trash.

  Travis was lying on the couch in a weird position, half sitting, half slumped over, like he’d been sitting there and had fallen asleep without meaning to. The television was playing on mute, showing some horror film, giving Travis’s face a strange, pale tint.

  Lance flicked on the overhead light and turned off the television, clearing his throat.

  Travis snorted and startled awake, blinking rapidly. “You’re home.”

  “Shocking, I know.” Lance gestured at the mess around him. “Care to explain?”

  “Poker night,” Travis said.

  Lance would have prayed for patience, but he already knew that it was a lost cause. “I know that, asshole. I meant why is there a goddamn mess still here? You guys couldn’t clean up afterwards?”

  “We got to talking and stuff,” Travis said, “and then I fell asleep. I was going to clean it up.”

  Now it was Lance’s turn to snort. “Yeah. Sure you were.”

  He went over to start cleaning up the food. Travis got up and followed him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Lance turned around to glare at him. “It means that you can’t stop thinking about yourself for one second, even when everything around you is a mess. Did you give any thought to how it would feel for me to come home late and find my apartment like this?”

  “I don’t know,” Travis said, “Did you give any thought to how you going on a date would make me feel?”

  “Oh, no, I went on a date,” Lance said. His patience was gone, out the window. He’d asked that Travis keep the place clean, that was all he’d ever asked of him, after years and years of putting up with his shit and being his emotional crutch— “Now you know how I feel all the time, you just going and doing whatever and whoever enters your head in the moment and damning the consequences or how it might inconvenience other people.”

  “Oh yeah, obviously, that’s why you let me stick around for years,” Travis shot back. “If you had a problem with how I was treating you, why didn’t you say anything? Oh, right, you’re too goddamn terrified of your own shadow. You know it took a public sign for you to get a date? And it isn’t because you’re bad looking, it’s ‘cause you’re so pathetically shy that a guy takes one look at you and knows that isn’t a nut worth trying to crack.”

  “Fuck you,” Lance spat. “You seemed to think I was plenty worth cracking last night.”

  “Yeah, and then you ditched me for a date.”

  “I didn’t hear you protesting at the time.”

  “Because I showed you my total enthusiasm for the idea,” Travis sneered. “I cheered you on, bought you flowers, made a sign. Lance Finally Gets a Date! It should be in the papers.”

  “At least I’m not so pathetic I have to sleep with people so I can cut and run before they find out about my stunted emotions,” Lance replied. “You couldn’t even tell your dad that you’d survived a fucking fire. I had to go there for emotional support and I guarantee you that you two barely even discussed the issue that needed discussing, didn’t you?

  “I’ve spent years of my life looking after you, Trav. Years! I’ve been told that I’m fluent in Travis-speak. I’ve been there for every bad decision. I’ve helped you do damage control. I even helped you break up with Davis when you dated him for two weeks senior year!”

  “And I’ve never done anything for you?” Travis replied.

  “Beating up anyone who looks at me sideways isn’t actually doing anything for me, Trav!” Lance shouted. He knew that it was a little unfair. Travis, along with his brothers and father, had opened their home to Lance when it had become clear that he didn’t like going back to his own house.

  Right now though, he didn’t want to deal with that. He wanted to focus on the fact that he’d been emotionally supporting Travis for years now and Travis didn’t seem all that inclined to return the favor.

  “Maybe if you actually told me what you wanted, then I could give it to you!” Travis said.

  “Well maybe if you weren’t allergic to serious conversations, I would be able to!” How the hell had Lance become the bad guy here?

  “Fuck this,” Travis growled. “You’re never going to get anyone, you know that? And it won’t be because you’re inadequate. It’ll be because you’re too damn stupid to actually go after what you want.”

  “Oh, so I should be more like you, chasing whatever tail wags at me?” Lance said.

  He wasn’t entirely sure that metaphor worked, actually, but whatever.

  “Hey, I was honest,” Travis said. “I fucking state my intentions. If I’m going to do something, if I’m going to commit to something, I say it.”

  “You want me to say what I want? Then fine.” Lan
ce felt dangerously close to tears and like hell he was going to start crying, of all things, in front of Travis right now.

  The irony was that Travis was usually the only person he was okay with seeing him cry. It made Lance’s gut twist viciously.

  Lance drew himself up. “This is what I want: I want you to get the hell out. Now. Take your clothes, and get the hell out of my home.”

  “Fine,” Travis spat. He grabbed the clothes that Luke had given him and stuffed them into the duffel bag. “You end up alone for the rest of your goddamn life, don’t come crying to me, because I will say I told you so.”

  “Well when you start to get wrinkles and can’t even do the goddamn laundry because there’s no one willing to be your slave and you can’t pick anyone up at a bar because everybody knows your tricks, old dog, don’t come to see me, either,” Lance replied, yanking the front door open so that Travis could just get out.

  Travis didn’t look at him as he left.

  Lance got to slam the door behind him though, so. Small victories and all that.

  He looked at the mess of his apartment. He really should clean it up, have a good cry in the shower, and go to bed.

  Maybe he’d have a drink first though. He fucking needed it.

  16

  Luke didn’t look all that surprised when Travis showed up at his doorstep for the second time that day.

  “I, uh, got kicked out,” Travis said, holding up the duffel bag.

  Luke, to his credit, didn’t make any snide comments as he let Travis in.

  “Hey,” Adam said quietly, like Travis was a hurt child or something. Adam was sitting on the sofa in the living room, curled up, wearing Luke’s old high school sweatshirt with the school logo on it and a pair of sweatpants. With his dark hair curling down over his dark eyes, he looked soft and young and quite the opposite of a corporate lawyer.

  A lawyer he was though, and good at reading people—Travis forgot, sometimes, that reading people and finding out where they were weak was a part of Adam’s job...because the moment that Adam spoke to him in that soft voice, Travis felt something inside of him crack open.

  He sat down on the couch next to Adam and let the smaller man put a hand on his shoulder. “What happened?”

  Travis snorted. “I know that Luke told you everything.”

  “Luke wasn’t there when Lance got home,” Adam reminded him.

  Luke himself came over and sat down on the coffee table, so that he could face Travis directly. “I take it some words were exchanged.”

  “You could say something like that,” Travis admitted.

  He explained what had happened, and who had said what. Lance’s words had hurt, and so Travis had hurled quite a few back at him, words that he only sort of meant.

  “Was I that bad of a friend to him, all this time?” he asked. “Has he been stewing in this for… for that long?”

  Adam looked over at Luke, deferring to him since Luke had obviously known Lance for longer than Adam had.

  “I think that you have been leaning on him,” Luke said, “perhaps more than you realize. And I think that perhaps you weren’t as… explicit as you thought you were, last night.”

  “You of all people have to admit that wanting someone sexually doesn’t mean wanting them romantically,” Adam said.

  Travis thought back to that one guy from a few days ago. Peter, was it? He’d gotten angry at Travis and had assumed that Travis’s purely sexual overtures were romantic. Now Travis was angry with Lance for doing the opposite: assuming that Travis’s advances were only sexual and not also romantic.

  “You can’t really leave a gray area when it comes to these things,” Luke said. He smiled softly, fondly, at Adam. “Take it from me.”

  Adam smiled back at him, and for the first time in what felt like years, Travis felt envy when he looked at the two of them as a happy couple. He hadn’t looked at a couple and wanted what they had since… well, he couldn’t even remember.

  Right now all he could think of were those fond smiles that Lance would give him. He wanted to be on the receiving end of those smiles, and to give one in return, every day if he could.

  “What is it that you want?” Adam asked, turning back to Travis. “Practice on us. And don’t say you’re not good at this. I’ve coached witnesses for the stand, I can sure as hell coach you.”

  “Ah, the benefits of dating a lawyer,” Luke said, grinning. “Told you it’d come in handy.”

  Travis thought for a moment. “Last night, I just wanted what we always had...but with sex, that sort of thing, on top of it.”

  “So, friends with benefits,” Adam hazarded.

  That didn’t seem right. It didn’t feel like enough for the way that his chest got inside when he thought about Lance. “No, I—okay. Lance has been my best friend for years. Right? And, it’s been good. Then came that stupid sign that Matthew put up, and then my dad said some things, and I thought… I started to see him differently, like someone had changed the lens on a camera. And I just...I want him. The way that things have always been except that we’re—nobody else is going to look at him because he’s mine, and we can… do all those… you know.”

  “Hold hands?” Adam teased.

  “You know that Lance is going to need more than just sex,” Luke said. “He’ll need affection. Hand holding. He’ll need you to actually tell him what you’re thinking and feeling instead of just letting him and everyone else assume or guess. Lance is good at reading you. It’s why we’re always asking his opinion on what you’re thinking about something, but nobody should have to do all that extra work.”

  “I think that’s all that Lance meant by the things he said,” Adam added. “You’ve been a good friend to him, Travis. He lights up when you enter the room. You’re not the best at communication though and he’s had to do all the emotional lifting for both of you. If you want to make this work and you’re serious about being with him, then that’s what you’ll need to work on.”

  “But part of what I like about our friendship is that I never have to explain anything to him,” Travis replied. “He just understands.”

  “Just like I’m sure a lot of the time that you understand him, but Travis, c’mon,” Luke said. “Everyone wants to be told ‘I love you.’ Everyone wants to be told, out loud, that their partner cares for them and thinks they look great today and is grateful they have them around. Everyone likes it when their partner volunteers information and actively communicates.”

  “Everyone can see that you’re in love with him,” Adam said. “And he with you.”

  “I didn’t even realize until…” Travis thought about it. “I mean, this is the first time it’s being put into… words.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s always easier to see someone else’s problems, and the solution to said problems, than to see your own,” Luke said. “Why do you think therapists are good at helping people but are so messed up themselves?”

  “Hilarious,” Adam said in his deadpan tone. When he spoke to Travis, his tone gentled again. “But you are in love with him, right?”

  Travis thought about it.

  He’d never really bought into the romance of love. Davis bought into it, and bought into it a little too much, if you asked Travis. Matthew seemed happy to indulge in it, doing things like making cupcakes just for Jake, and calling Jake things like ‘sweetheart’ and ‘hon’—although actually that might just be a Southern thing.

  Travis had never really cared one way or another about that aspect of things. Love, to him, was something that should be easy, something he just sank into and didn’t have to work for. Yet everyone else seemed to expect a ton of work for it, all those dates and things, and if giving up romantic love was the price he had to pay for carefree hookups it had seemed like a fair price, given how many broken hearts he’d been privy to over the years.

  It now seemed that he had, in fact, gotten his wish and had sunk into love, only he hadn’t realized it. And now… it looked like Luke and Adam were
telling him that he was going to have to put in at least some work if he was going to have any chance with Lance.

  “I know that Lance does like romantic gestures,” Luke said, “but he also knows you. He won’t want them all the time. I don’t think he’ll expect them either. We’re not saying you have to have this big fanfare now and constantly pull out all the stops. Just actually start to acknowledge and tell him when you think things like, his ass looks good in those jeans.”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth, Markum,” Travis warned.

  “We’ve seen the way your eyes track him when he wears that pair of dark skinny jeans,” Adam said dryly. “Trust me, we’re not putting any words in your mouth that your eyes weren’t already saying.”

  “Just, for the love of God, talk to him,” Luke said, “and also, maybe, just for right now, do something nice and romantic to win him over. Really though, that’s all that I think Lance is trying to say. Just… talk to him.”

  Adam nodded. “I don’t think you’ve been acknowledging all the thoughts that you have about him,” he said. “You’ve just let them sort of pass by unnoticed. Get into the habit of recognizing them, and then voicing them. It gets easier the more you do it.”

  “We could demonstrate,” Luke said, a wicked gleam in his eye.

  “I would like to escape this house without being scarred for life, thanks,” Travis said.

  Now he just had to find some way to apologize to Lance, then. Great.

  Some of that must have shown on his face because Adam shook his head. “No, oh no. Scheming tomorrow. Bed now. Some of us have a commute in the morning.”

  “In the morning,” Luke confirmed. “We’ll work this out, Travis, I promise. It’ll all be all right.”

  “Thanks,” Travis said, and he meant it. He was starting to suspect that his friends were all a lot more patient with him than he’d previously noticed.

  “Besides,” Adam added, “I’ve got a lot of money riding on this.”

  Travis paused. “Wait, what?”