Paint It Black

by Amy Lane

  “We’re sorry,” Kell said, his voice soft. “I know that doesn’t make up for—”

  “It wasn’t your fault.” God. Cheever remembered when Kell’s good opinion could make or break his day. “You guys were trying to get out—trying to help us. It just happened sort of sudden. And Mom put me in that school because she didn’t want me fighting, like you guys had to, and….” He let out a frustrated sigh. “Rich people are mean,” he said sullenly, and Marcia’s smothered laugh made him realize how childish that sounded. “I mean… those kids in that school, they were… they were bullies. And at first, I was friends with one of them, and then Mackey came out, and….” This should have been old—would have been old, he realized, if he hadn’t “put his heart in a jar.”

  “Cheever?”

  He’d been quiet for a really long time.

  “He raped me,” Cheever said, and then swallowed what felt like a golf ball. “For a couple of months. It was my… pass. All of his friends let me into their group because he did. I… I… anyway. It was awful. It was awful, and I decided I wasn’t going to be that person anymore. But… but I turned off all the… all the good stuff in my heart.”

  Oh, he had to make amends for this somehow. He looked up at each of them in turn. “I was a dick,” he said, grimacing. “I just… I didn’t want to bother you guys with the bad, so I didn’t let you see anything at all.”

  Kell regarded him sorrowfully. “We really missed you,” he said, and Cheever nodded.

  “Me too, but I didn’t realize it.” He rubbed his chest. “It was all just so… so cold.” He took a deep breath before he could get derailed. “Anyway, something stupid happened at school, and I… I just remembered feeling helpless, the way I did before. All the parts where I was supposed to be a grown-up felt like a fraud. And that’s when I did what I did.”

  “All the drugs and the permanent bracelet,” Kell said, glaring at the last of the stitches on Cheever’s wrist.

  “Yeah.”

  His brothers nodded grimly.

  “We’re sorry,” Kell said, talking for them all. Well, he was the oldest. “We’re so sorry we didn’t see it, didn’t know it—”

  “You guys were in pain too.” Cheever bit his lip, remembering. “So much pain. It was like all these little worlds, all of us. And every one was hell.”

  “But we could have done something about your hell,” Jefferson said softly. He and Stevie were clasping hands, and not for the first time—or probably the last—Cheever wondered what their relationship really was. “You need to tell us, okay?”

  Stevie nodded soberly next to him, and Cheever smiled, all gentleness.

  “Okay, guys. I promise.” Then, not sure how far family gossip would extend, he added, “You guys know I’m gay too, right?”

  Kell rolled his eyes. “That is the one thing you didn’t have to worry about. Jesus, this family is so far beyond gay, I probably should have come out as straight.”

  “Your wife keeps getting pregnant,” Jefferson said dryly. “It’s an indicator.”

  “So does yours,” Kell responded like this was an old argument. “As far as I can tell, that doesn’t mean shit.”

  Stevie and Jefferson just laughed, in sync, their chests rising and falling at the same time.

  “I declare myself too young for those details,” Cheever said, grateful, so grateful, for his brothers.

  Kell snorted and then looked at the twins. “Yeah—so the drugs thing. You doing that anymore?”

  Cheever shook his head vehemently. “God no. I….” He remembered the terrible buzzing in his head, the racing of his heart, the fear he’d never come down from that rush. “Guys, that was a one-time deal—”

  “The hurting yourself too?” Kell demanded. “Because I get that doing the big party was just to let loose, but that other thing had to have been building in you for a long time.”

  Cheever nodded. Kell had grown up a lot from when he used to yell at Cheever to get out of the goddamned truck. It occurred to Cheever that Kell had been young then—eighteen? Nineteen? Working a dead-end job to help his mom pay the rent. Sure—God, probably so damned sure—that he was never getting out of Tyson/Hepzibah, and he’d die there, as sure as he lived there.

  “It was,” he confessed. “I’ll be seeing Doc Cambridge regularly and taking antidepressants for a while too.” Right now, they seemed to give him peace, and he was good with that. But he was alert for when that went away and left him with anxiety or bled away all his joy. “Mostly, I just needed… need to get out of that room. It was like I got stuck there, in my head. It kept me away from my family, away from relationships, away from my friends.” He looked over at Marcia, who bit her lip in sympathy. He’d been so close to losing her because he didn’t want to commit to the friendship that was saving her life.

  “Good.” Kell let out a breath. “I mean, we don’t really believe you’re all okay, so, you know, you’re moving in with us and shit. Because, dude, that was a close fuckin’ call. Man, you don’t even want to know the look on Trav’s face when he had to tell us that shit. And Mackey—Mackey almost sprained all the things in his body again trying to get out of bed. So yeah. You’re coming to live with us—and Blake said your friend is coming too, which is fine.” Kell nodded at Marcia, who smiled sweetly back. “Although it sucks because he had to move next door—”

  “He can move back,” Stevie said. “We can take over the top floor of the studio house.”

  “After we get back in November,” Jefferson finished.

  “Yeah. Don’t want to do it over the summer. Just gotta pick up and go again.”

  “You’re leaving?” Cheever hated the anxiety in his voice. “The band’s touring again?”

  “We’re finishing up our missed dates,” Kell told him. “The earliest Mackey’s on his feet is August, so we’ll leave in mid-September. Finish the West Coast tour and add another year of studio work before our next one.” He gave a sudden, cavernous yawn. “God… we got in last night—”

  “Night before,” the twins said in unison.

  “Slept for sixteen hours,” Jefferson told Cheever while Kell stared into space and counted on his fingers, obviously too tired to do basic math. “God. And we thought we were tired. Then we got home and saw Blake.”

  “Boy looks like shit,” Stevie agreed.

  Then both of them. “What’d you do to him?”

  Cheever bit his lip and shrugged. “He’s just been real helpful here,” he evaded. “He visits every day, and I guess Mama’s been giving him an earful—”

  “And Trav had him run ragged to set up the house,” Kell said, coming back from how many days he’d been out of it. “He did a great job, but like I said, it sucks that he had to move out. I mean, it’s dumb, but Briony usually has the kids up super early, and we get up and work out and shit. I’ll miss him over orange juice.”

  A sudden vision of Blake, in pajama bottoms, drinking orange juice in a white-tiled kitchen, washed behind Cheever’s eyes. He was so lean, so muscled. Would he have hair on his chest? Did he wax? Cheever had never actually touched a bare chest—that seemed like the pinnacle of his adulthood, right there.

  “I’m sure you’ll still work out,” he placated, but he was suddenly seeing some of the advantages to Blake having his own space.

  “I just don’t like shit changing.” Kell yawned.

  “Says the man who’s trying to get his wife pregnant again.”

  “Shut up.” Kell glared at Jefferson. “That’s all her idea. She’s sick as a dog when she’s pregnant. I hate it. I mean, I love the kids, wouldn’t mind a hundred, but she’s sick and that sucks.”

  “You could adopt,” Cheever said, sort of throwing it out there, because, really, who did that? But Kell’s face went blank.

  Stevie and Jefferson laughed softly and stood up from their story-time circle. “Go, Cheever. You just reminded the boy he makes that kind of money,” Stevie said.

  “Which means we don’t have to hear them b
itching at each other,” Jefferson added. “Now come on out of this room. Let’s get some soda, and you can show us the grounds—”

  “And you can tell us why you get moony-eyed every time Blake’s name is mentioned. Did somebody tell you he’s bi?”

  “Blake did,” Cheever retorted, getting up too. “And he’s been really awesome. Me and Marcia wouldn’t have made it without him. I’m not even shitting around.”

  “Cheever—” Marcia said warningly.

  Cheever shot Marcia a glare, and he noted that Jefferson and Stevie caught the look and made their own eye contact, but Kell did not.

  “He’s been wonderful, right?”

  She knew. She’d watched the two of them together, had even walked in on them kissing once, much to Blake’s embarrassment. But Blake was afraid to tell the guys, and for good reason. They were up in his business, and if whatever this was with Cheever didn’t work out, they would be upset, probably at both of them.

  “He’s been great,” Marcia said, glaring at Cheever with narrowed eyes. “I don’t imagine we would have gotten this far without him.”

  “Well, we’re here now,” Kell told them, stomping ahead, because that’s what he did. “He’s not your only family here now. You can give him a rest.”

  “He’ll still come,” Stevie said, under the ungodly racket Kell made as he barreled down the hall. “We’ll make sure of it.”

  “Thanks,” Cheever said. The guys didn’t ask anything else as they sat down for sodas and ice cream, and Cheever was grateful. They left after an hour, bringing Cheever and Marcia back to the room with lots of hugs and lots of “Love you, little brother.” Marcia was on him as soon as the door closed behind them.

  “And you didn’t tell them because…?”

  “Because Blake didn’t want to tell them, and until they were all here, I thought it was bullshit.”

  “What happened to change your mind? They seemed nice!” She put her hands on her hips and actually stomped her foot.

  “They are nice!” he replied, laughing. “But they’re also in everybody’s business. Blake… Blake doesn’t just love my brothers. He reveres them. If we get together and, God help me, I fuck it up, he’s the one who has to face the music. He has to face them in his grill, has to face that he was almost really their brother and it didn’t pan out. I’ll get the ‘Oh, poor Cheever, he got his heart broken!’ card, but Blake’s older. Blake’ll get the ‘Blake, what did you do to our little brother!’ card, and that will destroy him!”

  She folded her arms, still glaring. “Every sitcom I’ve ever seen says this is the wrong move,” she told him earnestly. “Every book I’ve read, every TV show, every movie—”

  Cheever scrubbed his palms over his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, me too, okay? But has it ever occurred to you that this shows up so much in those places for a reason?”

  “Sure. Because people are stupid. That’s why it shows up there. Because people are dumb as shit. But fine. You and Blake try to keep this a secret. I’m telling you, the first time he looks at you, the jig is up.”

  “Do people even say that anymore?”

  “I have a therapy circle to attend,” she said loftily. “And you are officially too stupid to talk to. Now draw your damned boyfriend while you remember him happy, because the rest of this shit can only end in tears.”

  She walked out, her head held high. Cheever watched her go, and then after a minute, he went back to his bed and picked up his sketchbook.

  He thought of Blake in the morning, with orange juice. Thought of his hair—not curly unless it was long—mussed from sleep, from lovemaking. Of a bit of sandy stubble along his jawline and the way he seemed to be built under the T-shirts and denim jacket he wore.

  He thought of his self-deprecating smile, and the way he still tilted his head like he was hiding his teeth. Of the way he hid his solo work, like it was not good enough.

  Thought of all the things he wanted to hide as marks of shame but that Cheever was just so damned glad he’d survived.

  Not perfect.

  He was right—Blake wasn’t a supermodel and didn’t have aspirations to be.

  But he was beautiful.

  Thoughtfully, Cheever began to draw. Not the idealized Blake, the one he wanted Blake to see from his heart, but a real Blake.

  One he wanted to see in his bed.

  TWO WEEKS later, it was his own bed he was surveying. He and Marcia shared a bathroom, and he could hear her, oohing and ahhing in appreciation in her room on the other side of it. Briony and Shelia—super excited that a girl was finally getting recruited to their midst—had gone all-out on Marcia’s room. They’d stopped by the center and visited and gotten her preferences, although she’d insisted on the posters Blake had brought for them, and Cheever thought that was only right.

  He’d brought the one of the kids playing on the beach. He couldn’t say why it was his favorite—certainly the art was ordinary—but something about it… something beautiful… made him keep it.

  The rest of the room had been put together by Blake, one element at a time.

  He’d painted one wall the exact blue of Starry Night and one wall the gold of the stars. He’d found paintings from Renoir and Chagall and Le Fauve and put one on each wall, and bought the bed set to match the walls.

  It was simple—almost childlike in its simplicity—but there were no flowers and no flounces. The area rug under the bed was a simple black, and the desk and bed were done in dark wood.

  Blake had brought in a music stand and an easel as well. As Cheever looked at the newly painted wall, he made a discovery.

  “You had work done here,” he said, surprised. The wall was put together oddly, as though it had been extended. Blake had made the window much larger than it probably had been originally, and had other windows installed above it.

  “Light,” Blake said with a shrug. “So you can draw or paint. There’s some other open rooms in the two houses—the studio house has some nice areas on the top floor. If you stay for a while, we can set up a work room for you there.”

  “Stevie and Jefferson were talking about relocating there,” Cheever said with a shrug. “This is great—you took real good care of me.”

  He’d been worried about coming. He and Marcia had barely been able to sleep the night before, but as soon as they got out of the car, the family had been there, surrounding them. And suddenly there was nothing to worry about.

  Cheever tilted his head as the voices in Marcia’s room reached a high pitch. “That’s going well.”

  Blake shrugged, smiling a little. “I think Shelia brought in the kids—they bought her some stuffed animals. They get really excited about guests.”

  Cheever bit his lip. The kids hadn’t been all that excited to see him. Grant’s daughter, Katy, had been the worst. She’d taken one look at Cheever, scrunched her little brow together, and said, “Wait—do I have to call him ‘Uncle Cheever’? Or do I just call him Cheever, like I call Uncle Blake Blake?”

  “I… I don’t know how to fix that,” he mumbled, partly to himself. God. He’d spent so many years being Uncle Cheever, too busy to bother with the kids. So much of it was bullshit. He’d been a spoiled diva princess for his entire life. It was time to pay it forward.

  Blake moved a little closer, and a feral, animal part of Cheever relaxed. They needed to be closer. Such a simple answer to making the world better.

  “Don’t worry. Hang out with Marcia. Make kid jokes. Watch movies with them. Play with their toys. Hell, draw them in pictures—you’ll be their favorite in no time.”

  Cheever closed the gap between them even further, lacing their fingers together and touching Blake’s temple with his lips. “What do you do with them?”

  Blake grinned. “Play music. Mackey told them how he started a rock band, and we have piano and guitar lessons daily. Stevie gets in there with drums and bells—they’re getting pretty good.”

  Cheever laughed softly and breathed in the scent of his hair, nipping s
oftly on Blake’s earlobe. Blake leaned into his space and made a pleased sound.

  “Someone’s going to see,” he said, his reluctance obvious.

  “That’s not a problem for me,” Cheever whispered.

  “Maybe… you know. Let’s go on a date fir—”

  Cheever took his mouth, because he and Marcia had been having that discussion for two weeks and Cheever was over it. Blake was standing here, looking proud and pleased, having literally knocked down a wall to make Cheever happy.

  Cheever had to taste him, pull him inside, make him real after the weeks of visits and sunset kisses and holding hands. Blake answered, turning in his arms, cupping his face, plundering. Ah! He tasted good—so good—warmth and home and kindness.

  And passion.

  That’s what this is. Passion. Damn!

  Cheever upped the ante, pushing back, rucking up Blake’s shirt, palming the smooth skin above his belt. They hadn’t gotten this far in the facility—every time Cheever had tried, Blake had pulled away. No sex in rehab. And even though Cheever had been doing something different there, it was a caveat Blake wouldn’t break.

  Blake moaned and took his own liberties, moving his hands so they spanned Cheever’s middle, kissing along Cheever’s jawline and going for his neck. He nibbled there for a moment, and Cheever slid his hands forward, taking in Blake’s chest and… oh damn. Under his shirt it was just as hard, just as impressive as he’d imagined, with a little patch of silky hair. He found a nipple with his thumb and rubbed softly, getting a rush as it hardened. Blake’s teeth sank into his shoulder, just under the shirt line, and Cheever whimpered, arching against Blake’s leg. He was hard and growing harder under his jeans.

  Blake rested his forehead on Cheever’s shoulder then, pulling back and panting with the suddenness of the storm.

  “That’s different than it was in the rehab place,” he mumbled.

  “God yeah. So different.” Cheever slid his fingers through Blake’s hair and tugged until Blake looked at him. “Dating? Still?”