by Amy Lane
“Clay?”
Those dark eyes opened almost immediately. “What’s wrong?”
“If I promise not to be a complete disaster, will you come back to bed?”
He saw the grimace, the flicker of doubt, and remembered the underwear thing again.
“I promise not to go all sexual predator on you again—for real. I… I just wanted to make you happy. And I wasn’t doing it with my stunning personality. It was a fallback maneuver. I… you and me work because we’re honest, but you gotta know, I’ve never really had that before.”
He contemplated getting on his knees, but Clay was already swinging his legs off the couch and gathering up the sheet. Dane folded the afghan and draped it across the back.
“Thank you,” he said, as they turned to go back up the stairs. “I… I don’t deserve this, but I really, really was looking forward to sleeping with you. Just sleeping, I mean.”
“Me too,” Clay said, a little sadly. “Maybe next time, we feel free to say that, okay?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.” They got to the foot of the stairs, and Dane paused, feeling it in his bones. He turned to Clay in the dark and captured his mouth softly, pulling back before the kiss could go anywhere. “I’m, like, really sorry,” he said. “I really want to get this whole emotional honesty thing right.”
Clay gave him a brief flicker of a smile. “Talking’s a start,” he said.
“Well, we can’t do that when you’re on the couch, right?”
“No. And I have to say, I’m sort of relieved you came downstairs.”
“Why? I thought the couch was comfortable.”
“It is, but….” He made a sound of embarrassment. “Man, I think your brother and Terry have been having sex on that thing, because it is starting to smell like fabric freshener with an undertone of come!”
“Oh dear God,” Dane muttered. “That’s horrible!”
“Right? I mean, it’s sort of making my apartment look better and better.”
Oh shit. Talk about being emotionally honest. Dane sighed, wondering if he was about to say the thing that broke Clay, right here in the hallway, in the dark, in their underwear.
“Clay?”
“Yeah?”
“Remember that thing I told you to never mind?”
“Yeah.”
Shit. He had to. It was his biggest fear, maybe. The thing that had driven him to push against his meds, that had driven him into the veterinary science program to begin with.
But Jesus, maybe this was what he really did owe Clay after their shitty evening, after his squirrel-brained emotional manipulation.
“I may never move out of my brother’s house.”
Clay’s eyes widened so much in the dark that Dane could see the glint of the whites around the brown parts. “Really?”
Oh God. “I… I was living with my parents, you understand? They kept me on my medication and kept me sane. And I get that you want to be that guy for me, but I’m afraid…. It’s going to take both you and Mason, and me, and maybe an army, don’t you understand? I… look at me! One sleepover and I’m a mess! What if I need my brother and he’s not here because he thinks I don’t need him because—”
Clay put two fingers gently over his mouth. “We’re just going to stop that train right now,” he said, voice level. “I won’t make you go anywhere you don’t want to. I’ll stop saying things that imply I need you to move out to have you. It’s been one night. Let’s make it to a week. A month. A year. It’s going to be okay.”
Dane nodded and swallowed, his throat tight. “Sorry,” he said, his relief so acute, it hurt. “Sorry.” He sniffled. “I’m sort of falling apart. I don’t know why. I’m all medicated and fed and slept and—” He dragged the back of his hand over his eyes, feeling about twelve, and suddenly Clay Alexander Carpenter did the most magical thing.
He hugged him. Hard and without any bullshit, he wrapped his big arms around Dane’s shoulders and held on. “You’ve had a big weekend,” he whispered. “I know the feeling. Now come on. We both have adulting to do tomorrow. Let’s try this again.”
Dane nodded but stood for a moment, resting his face on Clay’s shoulder. “You really are magic,” he muttered thickly.
“Sure I am. Can we go to bed now?”
“Yeah.”
This time, Clay spooned him from behind, keeping those marvelous arms right where Dane needed them, up until they fell asleep.
THE NEXT morning was surprisingly normal. Up, shower, let Carpenter have his turn. The only different thing was the touches, small and personal. Carpenter’s hands on his hips as Dane was combing his hair and Carpenter was moving to the shower. Dane’s kiss on Carpenter’s shoulder as he buttoned up his new shirt.
The kiss they shared before they went down to coffee.
They sat quietly, eating toast and fruit, before Clay said, “So, do you want me to stay home ton—”
“No!” Dane shouted, breaking the almost wordless rapport they’d shared all morning, and then clapped his hand over his mouth.
“Jesus fucking Christ! Could you calm down?”
“No,” Dane reiterated, keeping his voice level this time. “No, please, Clay. I would like very much for you to be here tonight so I don’t think we’re a hallucination.”
“You don’t have hallucinations. Why would you—”
“Look, not for real—just, you know. I want you here. As often as possible. I know you have to go get clothes and stuff sometimes. And there may be nights when you stay at home because you need a Dane break. Do you need a Dane break?”
Clay thought about it, which was actually reassuring. “Not as long as you don’t shout at me again.”
“Good. Because I… I’m going to be off-balance with us for a while, and I’d really like you here until it starts to feel real.”
Clay swallowed, and to Dane’s horror, his eyes got red-rimmed. He held out his hand and took a sip of coffee. “Just remember that I love you,” he said gruffly when he was done. “Just—no matter what else happens, remember that I love you.”
Dane took his hand and kissed his knuckles. “I’m pretty sure I won’t forget,” he said. “Just… you know. If you can’t for a night or two, say so. I’ll demand a lot. I shouldn’t get my way all the time.” Oh God, Dane was so afraid. He knew it was irrational, but when had rationality ever entered into it?
“No. I’m good.” Clay was good. He was the best guy Dane would ever know. Dane had to remember that before he wigged out. “I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but I really don’t mind staying over. I….” He glanced around Mason’s kitchen, which had been recently remodeled before they’d moved in and was pretty and sparkling, with tan tiles and a sort of mellow gold counter and paneled cabinets. “Your brother’s house is a nice place. I just… I don’t want to get on your nerves either. But—unless you’re yelling at me—I want us to get back to being comfortable.”
“And also more sex,” Dane said, hoping to make Clay smile. After the night before, he was starting to feel, in his bones, that sex may have been a big thing—but it had never been the only thing.
“Of course.”
“Good. We have an agreement. You’ll pretty much move in here and only leave me when we let you escape from carelessness or you’ve chewed your paw out of the manacle.”
Clay cracked a tired, rather emotional smile. “God forbid.”
At that moment, Mason came crawling in like a slutty college boy. He walked into the kitchen and eyed them both assessingly, trying to figure out the mood. Clay gave Dane a determined look and asked for a ride to work, which meant he was coming home that evening. Dane knew a message when he saw it. Of course Mace agreed, because he was the world’s best brother.
He went upstairs to shower, and Dane walked over to Carpenter and kissed him, hard, wanting, and tender. He pulled back and kissed his cheek. “I’ll leave before he gets out. He won’t have to watch us get weird.”
“Have a good day,” Clay said ea
rnestly. “Text me if you need anything.”
Dane popped a grin. “Or if I feel like messing with you.”
“Of course. Love you.”
Again. There it was. The third—or was it fourth time? Did it matter?—Clay’d said it, and Dane hadn’t responded. He kept whining about never being able to be a grown-up. Maybe it was time he ponied up in one of the few places he could.
I love you too, he thought, and walked thoughtfully out of the kitchen.
THEY DID okay, really. Clay stayed over every night but Wednesday, because he had to pay bills and he didn’t want to drag all his stuff over.
There was lovemaking in between—hand jobs, blowjobs—Dane taught Clay Carpenter the finer points of squeezing, of spitting, and of very gently grazing with his teeth.
Clay taught him how to edge without even knowing he was edging, just by kissing Dane for what felt like hours before he even moved on to grabbing Dane’s cock and working for the big O. Yeah, Clay said it was “lovemaking,” but Dane knew it for potential blue balls, even as he let Clay do it.
Clay was just so earnest about everything they did in the confines of the bedroom that Dane was starting to think of it as holy too.
“HEY,” DANE said quietly as Clay brought him a drink. “Do you see?”
Clay nodded, both of them having a full-on conversation with only the flicker of their eyelashes so that none of the other people at Mason’s pool party noticed.
The full-bore heat of summer had hit that week, and Mason had offered his house—and swimming pool—after the last game of the spring season. The entire team—plus significant others—were there, including Skip and Richie and their giant fucking dog, who had lived up to his promise of that winter and had turned into a Volkswagen with a lethal weapon attached to his ass.
Mason’s squirrel-bait boyfriend, Terry, had gone off to throw the stick to Ponyboy, and Mason had followed. Clay and Dane watched the entire interaction from the shade by the pool and worried. Terry had been distancing himself from Mason ever since the move, and their body language—Mason holding himself back from getting too close, Terry practically turning away with every step—didn’t look promising.
Apparently they weren’t the only ones who noticed.
“Ya think?” Skipper asked, casually wandering up to the two of them.
“Yeah,” Clay replied, and part of Dane was pissed that Skipper apparently spoke eyeball too. But most of him was just glad somebody loved his brother now like he did and would be watching out for him. Mason spent so much time watching out for Dane—he was happy to see someone had Mason’s back now, as well.
“K-k. I got a plan.”
Dane looked at the big blond god with a little bit of awe. A plan? It was more than he’d had!
“Thrill me with it,” he practically begged.
“We wait until everyone leaves, we get him drunk, and we watch movies with him until morning,” Skipper said sagely.
“That’s a plan?” Dane’s brother was doomed.
Skipper regarded him mildly. “He lost all his friends with the last breakup. This way he knows he’s got us.”
“Yeah, sure he’s got you,” Dane snapped. “Didn’t you tell Terry you’d let that Rudy kid play on the team?”
Behind him he heard a low chuckle that sounded like it came from Satan himself.
“I hate that little puke,” Richie said, and Dane regarded Skipper’s boyfriend with a little bit of awe.
“You do? Why?”
“Keeps sayin’ snide shit about Mason. Whose house does he think he’s in? Don’t worry. Terry we like. He’s one of us. That kid’ll be gone next week.”
Skipper shrugged, like it was a done deal, and suddenly Dane was very interested to see what they had in mind. “Okay,” he said, feeling a little better. “If they break up, we’ve got ourselves a plan.”
Next to him, Clay went in for the fist bump, and Dane returned it. And then the four of them watched beyond the gate to the ravine, where Terry had gone to throw sticks to Ponyboy and Mason had gone to talk.
Terry came back first, the dog trotting at his heels. He walked to the far end of the pool, avoiding the entire little shaded corner where Dane and the others sat. His eyes were noticeably red-rimmed, and when Mason came back to man the grill some more, he avoided eye contact with pretty much everybody.
The minute Terry left, Skip walked around to the stragglers by the pool, looked at Mason, then looked toward the door, and the place was cleared out in twenty minutes.
Dane was reasonably impressed—even more so when Skipper brought his brother a beer and made him a hamburger and generally took care of him while Dane and Clay cleaned up and Richie ran the last of the go out of the dog.
“What?” Clay asked, as they were taking a couple of loads to the recycle bin. “You look surprised.”
“They really do have his back,” Dane said softly.
“That surprises you?”
“It’s nice, is all.” Dane shrugged. “It must be how my brother felt when you came to help with me.”
“Mm. Yeah, you Hayes boys look like you got shit all figured out, but you’re pretty high maintenance.” Clay winked, but Dane could only manage a small smile.
“We’re worth it though, right?” Oh my God, the sixty-four-million-dollar question, wasn’t it? All of Dane’s weirdness, his insecurity, the crazy that had nothing to do with the bipolar depression—he was worth loving, right?
“Are you kidding?” Clay looked out into the night, the dark purple of twilight settling around them like a stifling blanket now that they were out on the street instead of by the pool. “It’s like guarding princesses,” he said, dropping his bag of cans into the bin, then taking Dane’s from him. “Yeah, sure, there are lots of battles. But you know, you’re princesses. Totally worth it.”
“I’m a princess?” Dane asked archly, batting his eyelashes.
Clay didn’t let him down. He kissed him instead, not afraid of prying eyes, just… quietly. Dane was starting to feel a sort of heat in his chest when Clay did that, treating what they were doing, who they were, with that sort of quiet tenderness.
“You’re the prettiest one,” Clay said, and even though he’d let his scruff grow in this last week, Dane knew where it was now. He could still spot the dimple. He’d never felt more at peace.
Of course, that was right before Dane found out what Clay had been hiding. Then he was a sucky sucko that sucked—and not in the good way either.
They returned to the backyard and the coolness of the shade and the pool, and sat around the patio table with beer, telling Mason their own breakup stories in the time-honored tradition of making a brother feel better.
And then, instead of talking about his breakup history, Clay Alexander Carpenter dropped a bomb on all of them.
DANE GAVE himself props.
He got a little mad at first when Clay told them he had an MBA—that humble Clay Carpenter from the IT pool, who had been gently schooling Dane on how not to be such a snobby tool about people’s education, actually had an MBA and a science degree to go with it. But Clay had made the revelation with a purpose—to make Mason feel better. He wanted Mason to know that he was special, not just because Mason was rich or because he was smart, but because he was a good person with an eclectic bunch of hosers as friends, and he believed the best of all of them.
Dane was all for that—the entire reason they’d lingered outside in mosquitoland was to make his brother feel better about his stupid breakup with his even stupider boyfriend, who had left because he “didn’t know how to be a boyfriend.” The only reason Dane didn’t roll his eyes at that was because the last week with Carpenter had proved that there was a learning curve to relationships, and Dane had yet to reach peak proficiency as well.
So he could let Carpenter get away with a smack on the head from Skipper while Dane kept his pout to himself in the background, but as the full implication of that MBA began to sink in, Dane’s funk got worse and worse.
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Carpenter hadn’t trusted him. Dane had thought they’d known each other’s secrets—he’d confessed his deep, dark, “I may never move out” fear, and this was such a stupid bullshit secret to keep!
And because he was Dane, he brooded.
They eventually moved inside and watched movies until everyone fell asleep, and Mason woke them up by cooking waffles, and Dane had to hold his tongue for another hour.
It was obvious his brother had been crying. The guy Dane had worshipped his entire life—and who had held Dane together over the last year of it—had been crying over some stupid kid who had seemed to, for the first and only time, get the absolute glory of Dane’s brother. Dane wasn’t going to make it worse.
Breakfast. Cleanup. Skipper and Richie went home. Mason went upstairs to nap.
Dane sat on the couch and waited until he heard the quiet echo of footsteps at the end of the hallway to turn a fulminating glance at the guy who’d just sort of revealed to everybody they knew that he wasn’t who they thought he was.
“So?” he snapped.
“Uhm….” Clay gave a near approximation of a smile.
“Do you care to explain?”
“It’s not like it’s something I’m proud of!” Clay protested, and the fact that he didn’t have to ask what this was about just proved that he knew it was a big deal. “God, it’s hot outside already. Do you want to go swimming? I brought trunks. Now that there’s not a thousand people out there, I can go swimming.”
“So help me, I will hide your trunks and make you go swimming naked,” Dane snarled, standing from his curl on the couch. “We’re going to talk about this!”
“Why? So you can use it as an excuse to break up with me?”
The naked hurt on Clay’s face was tough to take.
“No!” Dane fought the temptation to stamp his foot. “I don’t want to break up with you!” He frowned. “I just, right this minute, got used to the idea that we’re actually together. We’re not a hookup. We’re boyfriends. Go us. Now back to the subject! Why wouldn’t you tell—”
