by Amy Lane
Dane sucked in a sob. “Something else?”
“Yeah, baby. Something that might work.”
Dane sank down onto the bed, in tears and hating himself for it. “We could find something that would work?” God, he hated to hope.
“Yeah.” Carpenter sank next to him, a thinner, scruffier Carpenter than the one who’d taken Dane home two weeks before. Three weeks before? He didn’t remember much of the week after that, but somewhere in there, Mason and Clay had done some research and come to the conclusion that Dane’s new meds weren’t suited for Dane at all. The psychiatrist said that he needed to take them regularly for an entire week before he changed them, just so they knew for sure.
Dane remembered some ripe words from both Clay and Mason about that, but he’d been chasing a YouTuber down a rabbit hole and he hadn’t been able to focus. He wanted to game, but Clay and Mason had hidden his gaming system because apparently, he’d disappeared into the PS4 for three days without eating sometime in the last couple of weeks, and they said that was bad.
He had dim memories of Clay and Mason trading off to sleep on the couch, because apparently when Dane did sleep, he was restless as fuck, and there were a couple of nights they’d spent in Clay’s apartment so Mason could get some time with his boyfriend, which, Dane dimly recalled, might be the one thing holding Mason together right now.
Dane had begged him not to call their parents. Sobbing. God, he was fucking useless—and Mason had agreed, on the condition that Dane came to Thursday night practice and game days, even if all he did was stare moodily at the field from the car.
Maybe it had been more than two weeks.
“How long?” he asked hoarsely into Clay’s shoulder.
“What?”
“How long have I been like this?”
Clay hummed in his throat. “Three weeks, give or take,” he said quietly. “I tried to spend a few nights at home. That didn’t go over so well.”
“Jesus,” Dane croaked, rubbing his face on Clay’s shoulder. “You must hate me.” Because right now, he hated himself. So much. After all his talk about wanting to stand alone…. It had made him worse of a pain in the ass than ever. He should probably just walk out of their lives forever.
Clay’s arm tightened around his shoulder. “No,” he whispered. “Not even close.” And for a moment, Dane was confused.
“No what?” They didn’t want him to leave? That was probably a polite lie.
“We don’t hate you. Don’t be dumb. We wouldn’t do this for someone we didn’t care about, Dane. Now come on. Today’s the day things change for the better, okay? You’re going to get your meds changed, and then you’ll remember to eat and sleep, and make it to school every day of the week, and you and me….” He bit his lip and looked away.
“What?” Dane begged. “Come on, man, finish that fucking sentence.” Because suddenly, things weren’t all lost. They still cared about him—and he owed it to them to get his ass out of this hole.
“You and me can… can maybe see where we were going before your train derailed. But that’s not for a while, you know?”
Dane felt… empty. Hollowed out. Suddenly incapable of thought or emotion or even words.
“God, Clay,” he said. “I’ve got to get my train going again. You guys… you can’t live like this.”
And Clay’s shoulders started to shake. He tried to stand up—he probably meant to chivvy Dane to the bathroom and into the shower some more. And God, Dane’s mouth tasted like monkey ass, which meant a toothbrush and a hearty flossing would probably not be amiss. But Dane kept his arm over Clay’s shoulder and held on tight.
“I’m sorry,” Dane whispered into his hair. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to put you through all of this.”
Clay shook some more, rocking back and forth against him in complete helplessness, and Dane had a terrible moment of realization.
Clay had made himself this vulnerable. Not like Dane, who had his dignity and his self-possession ripped away by a terrible accident of chemical imbalance. No, Clay had given those things up voluntarily in the past three weeks.
At one point, Dane had wet the bed. He remembered Clay’s gentle hands, shoving him toward the bathroom while he changed the sheets and sprayed the mattress, and then… Jesus.
He’d shoved Dane into the bathtub and washed his hair and his beard.
Clay had wrecked himself this hard.
For Dane.
Dane would keep getting up. He would try this round of meds, and if it didn’t work, he’d try the next one. And he’d keep going. He had to. Because look what this man—this perfect, wonderful man—had done for him.
And he still cared. For the first time in forever, Dane saw his life as an embarrassment of riches.
“Don’t worry,” Dane whispered, heart aching and bloody—but still beating. “Don’t worry. I won’t fight you anymore. Not today. Let’s get in there and restart my medication. Let’s find some hope, okay?”
Clay nodded, still sobbing, rocking back and forth in Dane’s pretty room, the one he and Mason had redecorated, standing side by side, because Mason wanted him to have some color and some joy in his life.
Dane lowered his ear to make out what Clay was saying.
It sounded like “Please get better, please get better, please get better….”
And Dane closed his eyes and steeled his cynical heart and prayed.
DAY BY day. Later he’d try to figure out how he’d gotten better, and he’d realized it had been day by day.
That day, they’d started him on a new regimen; then Mason had gone to work while Clay had taken him out to lunch. He’d gone home and napped, then woken up, voluntarily, taken a leak, seen his reflection and, God help him, trimmed his beard. His hair was super long—longer than man-bun length—but he wasn’t going to fuck with that.
He brushed his teeth because he’d felt human that morning after he’d brushed and flossed, and he’d remembered he liked that feeling. He’d gone downstairs and eaten the grilled chicken teriyaki that Clay made for him and Mason, and then taken his pills voluntarily with dessert.
He’d been exhausted then, and he’d looked at his brother and his… friend. If nothing else, the best, closest, most loyal friend he’d ever had, and said, “Nobody needs to sleep with me tonight. You guys are beat.”
Mason met his eyes and swallowed. He was such a handsome man—clean-cut, strong jaw, fine brown eyes. They were sunken now, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in… well, three weeks.
Their parents were getting older—and fragile. They needed a break. It was just Mason and Dane, and Dane had just drained his brother of all his color, all his joy.
Dane needed to be a better brother.
“I hope you don’t mind if we don’t take that at face value? Tonight’s my turn. If it goes well, Clay can maybe visit his apartment, check his mail, that sort of thing.”
Clay nodded, and Dane wanted to howl. No! No—don’t cut him loose! God. Clay had obviously been the only thing holding him together.
But he’d seen the tired anticipation on Clay’s face, the willingness to accept “no” and keep doing what they’d been doing.
He wanted Clay for so much more than holding him together. He wanted Clay for Clay. But how was the guy supposed to know that when he’d been a human woobie/zookeeper for most of the last month.
“Yeah,” he forced out through a raw throat. “Let’s give Clay some room to breathe.”
And he knew the look on Clay Carpenter’s face for what it was.
Relief.
THE NEXT day he woke up and called his professors, surprised at how functionally he’d kept up with his homework, and even more surprised by how much they professed to want him back. Well, that was progressive. He didn’t think playing the “crazy” card would get him that far—it felt about played out by now—but he was grateful. Redoing the entire year would have sucked.
He spent the day resting, catching up, doing laundry, taking his meds
, on time, every time.
He put together his own pill calendar so he could have Mason double-check it later.
He texted Carpenter around lunch. How you doing?
Fine. Skipper and I are having lunch with your brother in ten. His turn to buy. He goes fancy.
Sounds fun. And it did. Normal.
Usually is. I think your brother’s worried about Terry.
Dane blinked. Terry, who came over after the games on Saturdays, when they went to Carpenter’s and hung out. Dane had visited Carpenter’s parents one other time—that had been one of his better days.
There had been workdays at Terry’s house, getting it ready for Terry to move out, and Dane was starting to realize this meant more to Mason than it had to him.
What’s to worry about?
The guy’s gonna go squirrelly as soon as he’s out of the house. Mason’s gonna let him. It’s gonna hurt.
Dane stared at the words, knowing what he’d seen of Terry Jefferson, knowing what he knew about his brother.
Mason didn’t want to be another parent. God, didn’t he have enough of that with Dane? He wanted an equal.
Aw, Mace….
Yeah. Gotta go.
Dane stared at the words. He couldn’t ask Clay to come back. Not so soon. Game tonight? But probably not. He wasn’t sure he’d be good to game for a while. It was too seductive, too much like its own drug. His phone pinged.
Text tonight. Promise.
He stared at the screen, feeling both bereft and proud.
Thanks.
THE NEXT day he went to school, taking his medications at strict intervals. It was odd, this new medication. It made him feel hollow and clean—not too extreme on the inside, and not too happy.
Even.
And a part of him mourned. Because that moment when Clay had kissed him had been luminous. Transcendent. Beyond even. The high end of the roller coaster. He was pretty sure that wasn’t the old meds—and he was pretty sure that wasn’t because he’d been on an upswing. And he wanted that moment back again.
Could he get it back like this? Careful, clear, lucid in his own head? His resentment at taking his medication had faded in the last few days. Whether that was the new medication lessening the mood swing or that terrible realization of what he’d put Clay and Mason through, he didn’t know.
He just kept remembering Clay, talking about cookies in the house.
Some adjustments you made for life because you wanted to have a life.
He’d have to have faith that the moment in the car, where Clay had looked at him with all that was hope, had been transcendent because it had been him and Clay—not because he’d been on the chemical roller coaster, clicking up for the crash.
And if he wanted a reminder, all he had to do was look at his phone. It said April was on the downslide. He thought he’d spent Easter Sunday at Clay’s parents’ house, helping the kids search for food-colored cardboard eggs on the lawn and sneaking real chocolate into the kids’ hands instead of carob, and hopefully indebting the little bastards for life.
But so much of that time, he’d been in his own head. Coming out of himself long enough to spend that time entertaining youngsters might have been the most real thing he’d done in almost a month.
He’d spent three weeks with the chance to have Clay Carpenter in his bed, and all he remembered was that big body, that gruff voice, calming him from dreams that ripped him open. No spooning, no tenderness, no banter.
He wanted that back. He wanted the way Clay’s eyes had glinted in the dark, the way he’d seemed charmed and enthralled by Dane’s every move.
The high of the roller coaster was nothing compared to the surety, the joy of having Clay in his life when Dane wasn’t a raving mess.
He’d forsake his gaming system, leave the computer alone, read a book, talk to his brother, take his meds, eat his veggies, drink his milk, trade that roller coaster in for real life.
He missed Clay in his real life.
ONE DAY at a time.
Two weeks after the change of his meds, Dane was eating his lunch on a spare patch of grass in the quad, his face turned up toward the sun. Dr. Klein, oh she of the dreaded lab practical that Dane would have to face the next year, suddenly dropped down next to him.
A severe white woman in her fifties, she had a long gray plait down past her bottom that Dane suspected she only braided once a week, but she did it so tightly, in fishtail formation, that it didn’t dare come loose.
“Mr. Hayes,” she said pleasantly.
“Dr. Klein!” He’d been texting Clay, and he hurriedly set the phone down. Clay would understand—he wasn’t sure his professor would.
“Good to see you back among the living,” she told him pleasantly.
“It’s good to be here.”
And then, oh God, her severe expression—the one that seemed to never relax, even when she was with her peers—grew gentle. But what she said next was unexpected.
“Do you know,” she said conversationally, “that I didn’t get my degree in veterinary medicine until I was forty-two?”
Dane gaped. “Uh… no?”
“Yes. I had all of the other things done—the degrees in biology, in husbandry, in chemical science—but the veterinary program was known to suck up your life, and I’d had my twins right after I got my first BA. I went to school nights, got my other degrees, taught high school part-time, but I waited until my girls could drive before I applied for veterinary science. My husband, dear man, was incredibly supportive, but I didn’t want to miss out.” She smiled in a way that almost made her pretty. “I only got to see them young once, you understand?”
Dane thought of his own mother, who had worked hard and put away money so she could be a stay-at-home mom. She’d been older before she’d done that, but she’d done the same thing. Put off one thing for the other so she could enjoy the life she’d chosen.
“I do,” he said softly.
“You have a double major in biology and chemistry—that’s what you came here with, am I right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And most of your master’s classes revolve around those two areas. I’m right there, yes?”
“At the moment, yes, ma’am. I haven’t started the program proper, though. I’m still finishing off the preliminaries.”
She nodded. “You know, when people think of veterinary medicine, they very often only think about taking care of the animals. That’s why I started. I loved animals. I wanted to help them.”
“Animals are better than people,” Dane said loyally.
“But do you even have a cat?” she asked.
Dane swallowed. “Too busy for a cat.” Also, asking Mason to take care of his cat when Mason had a full-grown Dane to look after was just too much.
She cocked her head, and he knew he could do better. “I’m worried about taking care of a cat until my meds are completely balanced again,” he said with more truth.
She nodded, like that satisfied her. “Dane, you’re very bright. Your test scores are great, and your work—especially under the circumstances of the month—is amazing.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said humbly. “But?”
“But there are a lot of things you can do in the realm of veterinary medicine that don’t involve the actual program that lets you be a veterinarian,” she said. “Things that come with less pressure. Things that will get you a job in the field, so when you’re actually ready, you won’t have to retake your classes.”
Dane stared at her, mouth opening and closing, and tried to put his thoughts in order. “Are you saying I can’t—”
She pursed her lips. “I’m sure you can,” she told him. “But ask yourself—do you want to? I mean, life’s short, Mr. Hayes. Is it too short to live without a cat?” Her voice sank to something she knew was probably too personal. “Or a girl or boyfriend?”
“Boyfriend,” Dane clarified, because he’d never been anything other than out.
“A boyfrien
d, then?”
“I’m already thirty,” he told her, as if the fact that he was a good three to six years older than his peers in the graduate program might have escaped her notice.
“I’m sixty-two,” she said amicably. “Isn’t it amazing how much we both have in front of us?”
He swallowed and wondered if she could see how near tears he was. “It would be nice,” he said softly. “You know. To get a cat.”
“Not a boyfriend?” she probed.
“I… I have a candidate in mind,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster. “I just need to….” He turned his face up to the sun. “Stay in the light.”
“Hold still—I’m going to use your shoulder to hoist myself up,” she said, and he grinned at her while she did just that. She gave his shoulder an extra squeeze. “So thin,” she said softly. “Please think about what I said. We’ve got an opening in our research and development department coming up the year after next. You’ll have all your prerequisites done after next year, and you could be a valuable member of our faculty and our team. And in the meantime….”
“I could get a cat,” Dane said softly.
“Or a boyfriend.” She winked saucily, and then her face settled back down into her usual lack of expression. She walked away, her wiry body full of purpose and youth, and Dane watched her go, pondering.
HE CALLED Clay on his way home from school, partly out of habit and partly because he just wanted his opinion. His guilt-meter kicked to about a thousand when Clay answered the phone immediately, his voice an uneasy mixture of panic and forced calm.
“Hey, how goes it?”
“Fine!” Dane said hastily. “I’m fine. You need to know I’m fine. I just… you know. Wanted to talk to you.”
“Oh. Sure. Not a problem.” Off phone, he could hear Clay say, “I’m hitting my Out-of-Service for ten. Do you got it, Skip?” Right after that, Clay picked up again. “So—it’s all good?”
“Yeah. I—well, a professor talked to me, and I wanted to tell you what she said and, you know. Bounce it off you before I talk to Mason and my parents and see what can be done.”
