by Amy Lane
Dex remembered the blur of being put in the shower, of being told that his one fuckup with drugs was not nearly as bad, not nearly as shameful, as it had felt in that moment, remembered Kane’s voice, I’ve gotcha.
“No worries,” Dex said, staring at the menagerie in the room. The snake was a big king snake that Kane called Tomas, and that thing had slithered to the end of his cage and was reaching up the glass, poking at the lid of the cage for defects. Just looking at it made Dex’s stomach knot.
“Great. God, excellent. Here.” Kane reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. There had to be three hundred dollars in there, and Kane peeled off most of it and shoved it in Dex’s hand. “Go get what you need. I’ll pay you back if it goes over.”
Dex blinked at him. “What in the hell are you doing with all that green?”
But Kane didn’t hear him. Frances had just said something about “beaw,” and Kane wandered off to her room to go find “beaw,” so Dex had to wonder how often Kane just walked out his front door with fucktons of cash in his pocket. Jesus, the man needed a keeper!
Kane’s clothes were neat and simple—and most of them fit in the extended cab of Dex’s truck. The terrariums barely fit in the bed with the oil heater, and the tarp turned out to be an excellent idea, because the skies opened up just as they were starting to leave. Kane relinquished his hold on Frances at the foyer of his own home (and Dex had to keep reminding himself of that, because Lola glared at them the whole time they were there) after giving the sleeping toddler a kiss on the temple.
“Tell me how she does at her checkup, okay?” Kane said anxiously. “She tired out so quick today, Lola. I don’t want her getting sick again, okay?”
Fabiola’s mouth relaxed, and between the dark hair and the oval face and the eyes, for the first time Dex suspected them of being related by blood. “The doctors said that’ll happen,” she said, rocking her baby in her arms. “She’ll be tired and sad, but she’ll feel better.”
“But you keep taking her, okay?”
Fabiola nodded. “Yeah, okay, fine. Don’t fuss. We’re going to be fine, just don’t stay with her too long. I don’t want her thinking it’s okay.”
“What’s okay?” Dex asked, because Kane just cringed and looked like he’d been socked in the chest.
“The gay thing. She don’t need to know it’s okay for Carlos to be with other men. Where’s he going to be?”
Dex gave her his address, and it wasn’t until he was done speaking that he realized his teeth were grinding. “You know,” he said when he’d made sure she would forward Kane’s mail, “you could try being a little fucking grateful. You’re kicking him out of his own home.”
Fabiola looked at him sorrowfully. “The money he used to buy this place, it wasn’t clean. We’ll move as soon as the baby’s better.” And then before Kane could kiss Frances on the soft bald skin of the back of her head again, Fabiola shut the door.
Dex and Kane stood there for a minute, surprised, looking at the thick blond-wood door of the white house in the middle of the block of all the other big two-story white homes, as the rain came down behind them. Dex threw a companionable arm around Kane’s shoulders and steered him toward the truck before Kane could yearn for one more hug from that baby (who hadn’t wanted Kane to put her down all day) or feel the full hurt of what his sister had just done.
They got into the truck and shut the doors, and Dex started it up so that the oil heater could start working and the guys wouldn’t get too cold. “After we get everybody moved in, what say we get some pizza?”
“Really?” Kane sounded incredibly hopeful. “You’re the one who’s always worried about gas!”
Dex had to laugh. “That’s before we shoot a scene, Kane. As far as I know, you don’t have a scene for another week, and I’m mostly behind the camera now. As long as we don’t get fat, I think a day like this calls for pizza.”
“Excellent! Think we can get some takeout on the way back to tide us over?”
Dex looked at him, at all that heavy muscle that might easily run to fat if he didn’t work out religiously. “Maybe go home and have some fruit, what do you think?” he asked. “Then get the pizza.”
Kane nodded comfortably, and Dex had a random thought. I’ll take care of you, Carlos. This’ll be real good. And then Kane started flipping through the stations on the HD radio and Dex was too concerned about not letting rap music contaminate the air in his truck to follow up on where that particular thought had come from.
UNLOADING the guys took some time, because fitting them in the guest room with the bed turned out to be like playing Tetris, except with terrariums and live snakes. Finally Dex had to concede to taking the bed apart and putting it into the garage, where the frame could sit in the corner by the tool bench and the mattress could rest in the rafters. It was the only way the snake, lizards, frogs, turtles, and moving dinner could all fit on the tarp on the floor under the Toulouse-Lautrec and Monet prints up on the wall.
Dex called for pizza, which was imperative because by now they were both starving. When he was done, he looked from the living room across the hallway, saw that Kane was lying on his stomach in front of the snake’s cage with his chin propped in his fists and his bare feet swinging above his ass.
He was talking to the snake.
Dex hung up the phone after giving the order and leaned against the doorframe to listen.
“It’s good here, you’ll see. Dex is a nice guy, trust me on this, okay? He’s being nice, and when the baby’s better, Lola will take her and we can go back to the house, okay?” Kane’s voice dropped like this next part was a secret. “I’ll miss having her around, though. Don’t tell anyone—Lola’s afraid I’m some sort of pervert, but I like kids, and not in the sicko way. So you just stay healthy, okay, Tomas? You stay healthy, we’ll be good, right?”
Dex followed a barely understood impulse and walked into the room and sank to his knees on the tarp. He put his hand under Kane’s shirt to the silky skin at the small of his back and just rubbed pleasantly.
“You know something, Carlos?” he said gently.
“What?”
“It’s not really a secret that you’ll miss the baby.”
“I know,” Kane mumbled. “I just don’t want to seem too needy.”
Dex lowered himself to lie side by side with Kane and rested his weight on his elbows. “So noted,” he said, and they lay there companionably, watching Tomas check out his surroundings with snakely interest. Kane deliberately didn’t break contact until the pizza arrived—Dex could tell.
BY THE time the pizza got there and they showered, ate, and watched about an hour of television (Castle—Dex would do Nathan Fillion in a hot second), they were actually pretty tired. Dex opted to sleep in his boxers and Kane did the same. Kane’s clothes were still in a pile on top of Dex’s dresser, and Dex knew that the next day, they’d be dealing with that shit, so he had no problem lying down next to the guy when they were both almost naked.
They were porn models, right? What was one more naked man?
But then Kane rolled away from him, and Dex thought about his eyes that day as he’d turned away from Frances. Dex followed him, wrapping his arm around Kane’s middle and drawing him close, being the big spoon this time, and Kane let him. They were tired and sleep came quickly, and Kane snuggled back into Dex’s arms like that’s how they belonged. Dex was just tired enough not to wonder at whether it was right or wise or even a good thing to do, and then they fell asleep.
At two o’clock Dex’s cell phone rang on the bedside table charger. He answered it so tired he could barely remember how the damned thing worked.
It was Tommy. He was hella fucking freaked out. Chase had tried to slit his wrists, and Tommy needed moral support at the hospital.
Kane was diving for his jeans before Dex could even put the thought together that a guy he thought of as a good friend had almost died.
Kane
“WE CAN’T what?” Dex’s
voice grew shrill. For the first time since they’d scrambled out of bed and into their clothes so they could meet Tommy at the hospital, Kane heard that patina of “we can make this okay” crack.
Tommy had just gotten there when they arrived, and was pacing the halls of the ER waiting room, chewing gum fast enough to bite off his tongue if he missed his aim. Dex hadn’t gone up to him and hugged him, which is what Kane would have done, but then Tommy had turned toward them, his narrow, long-jawed face screwed up into a fierce snarl, and Kane got it. Tommy had a bit of a shotgun temper. He was going to be pissed.
“Tango, brother,” Kane said, trying very hard to radiate goodwill like the sun, “you gonna be okay?”
“I need a fucking cigarette,” Tommy snarled, and Dex nodded easily.
“Okay,” he said, “maybe after Kane and I get some news. Anyone know what happened?”
Tommy glared up at the pretty blond boy who was talking to the nurse at the front desk. “Ask him. Chase thought it would be dandy to call him when he did it. I got no fucking idea why.”
“’Cause I made him promise,” Donnie said, walking up to their little group. Dex and Kane shook hands with him because they knew him from a party at Chase’s house about a month before. Kane went in for the chest bump and Donnie clapped him on the back warmly, so that was nice.
“So,” Dex said, breaking up the sweet animal warmth of comfort, “what the fuck?”
Donnie gathered them to the side instead of the middle of the corridor and spoke quickly, looking at Dex the whole time. People did that, spoke to Dex—he always seemed to know what to do. It was comforting. It was the reason Kane had shown up at his house when he’d needed the help.
“So I made him promise to call me if he ever needed to talk,” Donnie said. “I didn’t really expect him to call me up in the middle of the night and tell me he needed to be taken to the hospital because he was bleeding out.” Donnie swallowed tightly, and Kane realized for the first time that the side of his sweater, his shoulder, the top part of his chest, were all sopped with still drying blood.
“Why’d he do it?” Dex asked, and Tommy made a hurt noise and turned away.
Donnie looked at him sourly. “I don’t know, but for some reason he thought it would be a fucking spiffy time to come out to Mercy while he was fucking bleeding in his own doorway. Told her all of it—gay, Johnnies, Tommy—said it was gonna set them both free.”
Kane gaped. When he could close his mouth, he looked over at Dex and saw that Dex was gaping too. Tommy had turned away, but now he was looking back over his shoulder at Donnie, the resentment clearly easing.
“He told her?” Tommy asked, his voice thin and hopeful.
Donnie nodded. “Yeah. He told her. Had me throw his clothes over the rail so she wouldn’t burn them. Kevin’s getting them now.”
Dex managed to close his mouth, which was good because Kane was back to gaping. Chase, Chance, whatthefuckever—he’d said all that? God… even when he was happy, the guy didn’t say that much.
“Why?” Tommy muttered. He pressed a palm against first one eye and then the other, because apparently they were leaking. “Why would he tell her all that if he was gonna die?”
Donnie shook his head. “You don’t get it, Tommy. Tommy, right?”
Tommy nodded. “Yeah. I’m him.”
“Yeah, well, he stopped. He didn’t slit both wrists. He slit one wrist and stopped. And had her get the phone so he could call me. We did all that shit—all that fucking breakup shit, like throw his clothes over the edge and tell his girlfriend he was gay and loved you and all that shit—before he even got in the car. He called you from the car, right? Because he got all that other shit out of the way….”
“He planned that?” Kane heard himself asking in horror. “He planned that? I can’t even plan my next dump and he planned that?” Dex touched his shoulder, and Kane looked at him with eyes even he knew were big and startled. “Why’s a guy who can do all that planning wanna go and hurt himself? Can’t he fucking plan not to hurt himself? Wouldn’t that be a better fucking plan?” Kane’s voice was rising, growing shrill too, he knew it, but dammit, he’d heard that scream in Chase’s heart, heard it. Why couldn’t a guy who was so smart figure out a way to stop screaming that didn’t involve blood? If Chase couldn’t figure out how to be happy, how was Kane supposed to do it? Kane wasn’t nearly as smart as Chase!
There was a hand then, clasping his, and he didn’t care if it was girly, he clung to it. Dex moved in, blocking his field of vision, that perfect, pretty face, the hard little cheeks and the sky-blue eyes, and Kane felt his quickened breathing even out, just looking at him.
“Sometimes when you’re hurting, your plans go to shit,” Dex said, and he sounded like he knew.
“He stopped?” Tommy said, his voice was rising, and Kane realized he might have said this more than once. “He stopped?”
Donnie nodded. “Yeah, you heard me. He’d done one wrist, and then he called me.”
“He stopped.” Tommy nodded like he was trying to put that into a place in his head. “He stopped. And then he called you… because why?”
Donnie had wide blue eyes, but now they were all scrunched up as he tried to make sense of Tommy. “Because I’ve known him since the second grade, that’s why. ’Cause if you’ve just fucked up your life, you want to get it in order before you call the guy you want to share it with—can you handle that?”
Tommy scrubbed his face with both hands. “I get this call,” he muttered. “I’m lying in bed thinking that he made his first promise ever, that he’d try to leave her, and he calls me, and he says he’s free, and then he says he’s going to the hospital, and then he fucking passes out. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?” Tommy whirled around to the wall and threw a hard punch, fierce enough to split his knuckles as he howled, “What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”
Kane and Dex let go of each other’s hand, and they each took one of Tommy’s arms and hauled him away from the wall. Tommy fell completely apart on Dex’s shoulder, sobbing hotly.
Kane got on his other side. “You’re gonna help him get better,” he said, and Tommy looked up, his pale skin blotchy and his brown eyes reddened and the skin around them puffy.
“How am I gonna do that?” he asked, and Kane flailed for words.
“He… he was all screaming inside. I’ll bet when he wakes up he’s not anymore. He’s gotta learn to scream on the outside. You gotta teach him how to do that.”
Tommy nodded and buried his face in Dex’s shoulder again. “Okay,” he said, and it was muffled and thick, but still, the word made Kane feel better.
Donnie came over to Kane’s other side and shifted uncomfortably. Kane was shorter than he was—shorter than Dex, for that matter, but Donnie was tall enough to remind him that he missed being short by about two inches.
“His girl’s not here,” Kane said, and Donnie shook his head.
“Don’t think she’s gonna be, either. Man, there he was, bleeding out and babbling all his secrets. Being gay. Tommy. Porn. And we sat down in the car, and he’s like, ‘I got one more thing to do.’ And then the sonovabitch held on just long enough to call Tommy and tell him he was going to be free. It was….”
Kane scrunched up half of his face. “Twisted,” he said with fervor. “Seriously. What is it with all these people who can frickin’ do shit like that?”
“Like what?” Donnie asked.
Kane shook his head. It was hard to put into words, but the reason he carried cash only was so he didn’t spend all the money in the bank. If he pulled out so much cash and stretched it out, he knew it would be okay. It was why he didn’t decorate and his furniture was minimal—he was just being careful, was all. He had to make sure there was money in there when he sent the checks to the baby’s doctors. At the moment, he was pretty sure he was safe, but that’s why he’d been shooting all those scenes for so long. He needed to be sure, so he didn’t let the baby down.
&nbs
p; The actual balancing of a checkbook scared the hell out of him.
“Planning,” he said at last, knowing it was lame. “How could he plan when he was bleeding out and I can’t plan when I wake up in the morning and the house is quiet?”
Unexpectedly, Donnie grinned at him. “Because you’re simple, Kane. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means that when something’s important to you, we’ll know, and”—Donnie’s face fell—“right now simple is sounding really good, because… damn.”
Kane remembered where they were again, and nodded.
They hunkered back on the waiting room couches for a while, almost cuddling. About a half an hour after Dex and Kane got there, Donnie’s boyfriend, Alejandro, showed up with Kevin and pretty much Donnie’s entire family. Donnie held Yandro to one side and kept up his huddle against Kane, and that was reassuring. Kane had actually fallen asleep against Dex’s shoulder and was deep enough under to choke on a snore when the doctor came out.
Tommy and Donnie jumped to go see him, eyeing each other distrustfully as they stood.
“What’s that?” Kane asked Dex softly, and Dex looked at him and shrugged.
“Whose dick is bigger.”
“But Chase isn’t like that,” Kane protested.
“People get weird when they’re sexually compatible,” Dex said with a sigh, “and Tommy doesn’t get how Chase can have a friend without benefits. God, I wish I knew what the doc was saying.”
Whatever it was, it was bad, because Tommy’s face was no longer blotchy and Donnie was no longer eyeing Tommy with distrust. They were, in fact, holding hands.
“They had to… what was it again?” Tommy asked distractedly, and Donnie filled in the blank.
“Resection his artery,” Donnie said, his voice sounding a little flat. “They had to take a part of the blood vessel in his thigh out and put it in his wrist because he….” Donnie swallowed and a blood vessel popped out at his temple. “He did a number on himself. If he hadn’t stopped….”
