Through Thick and Thin

by J. P. Oliver

  17

  Lance was a lot a bit drunk.

  That is, he was a little bit drunk several times over.

  He hadn’t gotten sloshed like this since… uh… junior year of college, right after the breakup.

  Wow.

  It had started when he’d decided that he was going to have a drink before he began the cleanup of the apartment. He hated going to sleep with a messy apartment. It just threw him off and then he had to start the next day by cleaning, which he always hated.

  Then he’d had another drink, because some of the beers were unfinished and he might as well finish them off, right? No sense in wasting good beer.

  And then he’d started drinking some more of the beer that he’d bought specifically for Travis, because fuck Travis. He would no longer get any nice beer from Lance; he didn’t deserve it.

  It was around that point that Lance had started to move from merely tipsy into really, really fucking drunk.

  He’d gotten his apartment more or less cleaned up, at least. Although he was, again, so really drunk, he might wake up in the morning and find things like dishes put away in the wrong cabinet and that he’d used the iron instead of the vacuum to get to the crumbs on the floor.

  Lance slumped against the refrigerator. This was all—this was all Matthew’s fault. If Matthew had just… if he hadn’t put the sign up, yeah, then Tom wouldn’t have known that Lance was single. Then he wouldn’t have asked Lance out, and Lance wouldn’t have said yes, and then whatever happened between Lance and Travis last night could have been discussed and—

  He should tell Matthew this, Lance realized. He should totally go over and give Matthew a piece of his mind.

  It was kind of late, but who cared? It was fine; it wasn’t that late.

  He definitely wasn’t driving though, so he walked.

  Jake and Matthew’s place was close by, but when he got there, Lance was surprised that nobody was answering the door. They weren’t busy, were they?

  “Are you two having sex or something?” He yelled.

  There came the sound of shuffling and muffled voices, and a moment later the door opened to reveal Jake standing there. He looked surprised. “Lance? Care to explain why you’re yelling at our front door for all my neighbors to hear?”

  “You didn’t answer the door.”

  Jake frowned. “You didn’t knock.”

  Oh. Well. That made sense.

  Jake looked at him for a moment, and Lance realized that he hadn’t said anything. “I’m here to see Matthew.”

  He peered around Jake to try and see if he could get a look into the apartment. He was sure that Matthew had to be hiding somewhere. He must know what he’d done.

  “What?” Jake asked. “What are you mumbling about?”

  Oh. He’d said all that out loud. Um.

  Lance pointed. “Can I come inside?”

  Jake sighed. “Sure, why the hell not.”

  He led Lance inside. Lance sat down on the couch, and was very proud of himself for not tripping over the coffee table, even when the coffee table tried to reach out and trip him. “That was rude,” he told it.

  A moment later Matthew appeared, wearing pajamas and looking confused. Jake looked annoyed. “Lance?” Matthew said. “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s all your fault,” Lance said. He went to rub at his eyes and found himself somehow flat on his back.

  “Bless your heart,” he heard Matthew say. “How drunk are you?”

  Jake peeled his eyes open. He wasn’t sure when he’d closed them. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re an awful person. You should, I don’t know. I should call someone on you. Get you fired.”

  “Okay…” Matthew looked at Jake, who shrugged and raised his eyebrows in a what do you want me to do kind of gesture. “Lance, what did I do that’s so awful?”

  “That sign,” Lance protested. “Why the fuck did you have to put it up? Everything was fine, and then you—did that, and then, Tom, and—it’s all fucked up.”

  “Did Tom do something wrong?” Jake asked quickly. “Did he hurt you? Was he an asshole?”

  “No, he was boring,” Lance replied. Then he frowned. “No, wait, that wasn’t what I meant. Just his dick was boring. The idea of it.”

  Matthew looked like he was trying very hard not to laugh. “You mean you weren’t interested in sex with him?”

  Lance nodded his head vigorously, then winced when this made the world around him tilt dangerously. “Ow.”

  “I’m getting you some water and some pills,” Jake said. “And also maybe some coffee.”

  “See?” Lance said, pointing at Jake. “That’s what I should’ve… but I just, I let him, because… he’s hot, y’know? So hot. I wanted it all over.”

  “Who was hot?” Matthew said patiently, while Jake snorted from the kitchen. “Tom?”

  “Travis!” Lance said, sitting upright and then wishing he hadn’t as his stomach lurched. He really had not been this drunk in years. “He came—he was like me, except better. I would not be good at sex right now. He was very good at sex.”

  “You and Travis slept together,” Matthew said, clarifying.

  What was he, stupid? Lance glared at him. “Yes.” The ‘idiot’ went unspoken.

  “Here,” Jake said, passing Lance some headache medicine and a glass of water.

  Lance obligingly took the pills and drank the water.

  “Okay,” Matthew said in the tone of one who is humoring someone. “Explain, how does my putting up the sign, connect to you sleeping with Travis, and how is all of this a bad thing?”

  Lance sighed. “Tom asked me out because of the sign. I said yes. Then Travis and I slept together. And I said I had a date. And Travis left. Then we fought.” Lance looked over at Matthew. “I was not. I was. An asshole, but Travis, he was an asshole first, but maybe he wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t put up that sign.”

  “You didn’t have to say yes to the date,” Matthew said. “I just wanted to put that up so that you could finally get some nice guys to ask you out and maybe you’d realize that going on a date with someone you don’t know as well is okay, and that you’re worthy of nice guys asking you out. But if you said yes, I hate to tell you Lance, but that’s your choice. I didn’t make you do that.”

  “No, you’re right,” Lance agreed. “Travis made me do it.”

  “And how did Travis make you do it?” Matthew asked.

  “This is ridiculous,” Jake groaned. “I’m going to bed.”

  “You’re not a true friend,” Lance groused.

  “Yeah, yeah, put it on my tab,” Jake replied, disappearing into the bedroom.

  Matthew sighed and came to sit next to Lance on the couch. “How did Travis make you go on the date? I got the impression that he wasn’t happy that you went out.”

  “But I said yes because…” Lance fell back against the couch and gestured helplessly. “You know. I’m stuck. I’m stuck like glue.” He laughed. “That’s a song. But it’s not a good thing when you’re not a couple, y’know? And Travis—we were dating but he didn’t realize it, because there was no sex and that’s all he cares about, and then after, but I said yes before.”

  “You’re losing me a little,” Matthew said.

  Lance huffed. “I said yes to Tom...because I was tired of pining.”

  There it was: he was tired of pining. He was tired of waiting for someone who was never going to show up.

  Matthew sat there for a minute, then said quietly, “You know, it amazes me how almost every time, both people in the couple have the exact same issue.”

  Lance frowned at him. What was he talking about?

  Matthew turned so that he was facing him completely. “Lance. Have you ever actually come straight out—no pun intended—and told Travis that you were in love with him?”

  Lance shook his head. “Didn’t want to make it awkward.”

  Matthew sighed. “Well, there you go. How the hell can you expect Travis
to read your mind? All this time we were yelling at Travis this evening for not communicating with you and you’re doing the exact same thing.

  “I know that it’s scary to put yourself out there. Hell, when I realized that I actually wanted to date Jake instead of just sleep with him, I was absolutely terrified. I put myself out there though. I sent him cupcakes so that there would be no doubt in his mind that I was wooing him, that I wanted something special. You don’t send cupcakes to someone you just want to hook up with, at least, nobody that I know has ever done something like that. It’s too much effort, y’know?

  “From what everyone’s been telling me since I met y’all, you and Travis have been stuck like this for years. Don’t you think that maybe, sometime down the line, you should have said something?

  “Travis isn’t the best at… well, emoting, I know, but you aren’t helping when you do things like just expect him to know what you’re thinking and feeling. He’s been doing the same with you for years, or so Jake tells me, and if that gets you upset, how can you then do the same thing to him and expect different results?”

  “I didn’t want to lose him!” Lance blurted out. His voice sounded dangerously close to a whine, but he was drunk so whatever. “If I told him—”

  “And he didn’t feel the same way then yeah, it would have been awkward for a few weeks. But then what? You two are in a small town with the same friend group. We would’ve helped y’all through it. You would’ve gotten over the awkwardness and patched things up and it would have eventually gone back to normal. I think, even, that just saying it out loud and talking with him and actually getting some kind of closure would have helped you to get over him—if he didn’t feel the same way—than this roundabout going on a date with someone else thing would have.

  “We don’t always get closure in life. I had this one guy in culinary school, the only guy I ever genuinely wanted to date before I met Jake, and he was from France. He moved back and I never told him how I felt, and so I never got that closure with him. That’s how life works sometimes. It sucks, but what’re you gonna do? With Travis though, you have a chance of that...and I think that’s important.

  “And you don’t know, Lance. You don’t know what Travis is thinking or feeling about this. You get all angry with him for assuming that you can read his mind. Well, you’re right, you can’t...just like he can’t read yours. Maybe he would have replied that he’s in love with you too.

  “I think that your friendship is strong enough to survive him turning you down—and from what you just told me, I don’t think Travis would have slept with you and then been upset about you going on a date with someone else if his feelings towards you were just platonic.”

  “He was drunk,” Lance pointed out. “When we slept together. He didn’t really—he was drunk.”

  “He was tipsy when he left the bar last night, true,” Matthew acknowledged, “but he wasn’t nearly as drunk as you are right now. Travis can hold his liquor pretty well, remember. What with all the hookups he has in bars, he drinks a lot more than the rest of us do. He’s good with his alcohol. So maybe he was a bit tipsy, but I wouldn’t say that it was enough to make him do something he’d regret in the morning or severely impair his ability to make decisions.”

  “He didn’t say anything,” Lance said, but his voice, and his arguments, were starting to sound pretty feeble, even to his own ears. “When I told him, about the date? He just… ran…”

  “Yeah, well, this is Travis,” Matthew pointed out, “and you didn’t say, hey, you don’t want me going on a date with this guy, do you? And you didn’t say, hey, I’m going to go on a date with this guy and try it out, unless you’re going to give me a better offer. You didn’t communicate with him, Lance. How can anything come of just sitting there silently pining?”

  Lance was starting to admit to himself that Matthew might have had a very good point. It wasn’t like his friendship with Travis hadn’t weathered a bunch of other shitstorms throughout the years, like when Travis thought he was going to fail math and not graduate, or when they’d gotten into that huge fight freshman year of college, or when Lance had told his parents to get out of his life and stay out.

  “You played it too safe, Lance,” Matthew admonished gently. “I think you became complacent with how things were, just like Travis did. You can’t sit there and put it all on Travis when you’ve never come out and said anything, when you’ve never risked anything. It means that you’re standing there, safe, while you’re asking him to be the one to step out onto the ice, so to speak. If you want a chance with someone, then eventually you gotta tell them how you feel.”

  Lance looked down at his hands. They were fading in and out of focus a bit. He was going to crash soon. He knew it; he always crashed after drinking too much alcohol.

  He knew that Matthew was right though.

  “Is it too late?” He asked, still looking down at his hands because he was scared to look up into Matthew’s face.

  There was a pause. Because he wasn’t looking at Matthew’s face, Lance had no idea what the other man was thinking. After a moment, Matthew said slowly,

  “No. No, I don’t think it is. But then, I’m a bit of a romantic. Jake might say it’s too late, but—Jake kept accepting my cupcakes while adamantly telling everyone he wanted me gone, so he’s a hypocrite.” Lance could hear the smile in Matthew’s voice.

  “What else is new?” Lance grumbled.

  “If I were to be completely honest with you and hazard a guess,” Matthew went on, “I would say that Travis is probably going through his own version of what you’re going through right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tracks you down to talk about this.”

  Lance snorted. “You don’t know Travis. He never talks about shit, not this kind of shit.”

  “I know,” Matthew said gently, “but you’re important to him...more important than I think you realize—or than he even realizes, in fact. The point is that I think you should talk to him. I don’t think that you’ve missed your chance at all.”

  Lance nodded, which made his head swim. God, his head felt heavy. “It’s full of too many thoughts,” he said aloud.

  “What is?” Matthew sounded amused.

  “My head,” Lance explained. It had too many thoughts; that was why it was so heavy.

  “Okay, I’m going to get you a blanket and you’re going to go to sleep, okay? Normally I might bother to drive you home, but I’ve got a suspicion you’re going to pass out on me and I am not lugging your sorry ass up the stairs to your apartment.”

  Lance nodded and hummed in response, finding that he was somehow already curled up on his side on the couch. It was so funny how that happened, how time seemed to telescope inward and outward while you were drunk. You couldn’t remember how you got from sitting to lying down one minute, but then the next minute seemed to stretch on and on and on for an eternity.

  “Time is a telescope,” he announced when he heard Matthew approaching the couch again.

  “You’ll have to explain that to me in the morning,” Matthew replied.

  Lance felt a heavy, comfortable blanket being drawn over him, and then Matthew was gently lifting up his head and putting a pillow underneath it.

  He tried to say thank you. He really did, but his mouth wasn’t working and his tongue was floating away, so instead he just passed out.

  18

  Travis woke up the next morning to the sunlight streaming in through the curtains. Oddly enough, despite the fact that this wasn’t his own room, he recognized where he was immediately. He’d spent far too many afternoons in here growing up not to.

  This was Luke’s old room.

  He sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Luke and Adam were in the master bedroom and Seth still had his room, so that left Luke’s childhood bedroom open for guests. Apparently, Luke and Adam hadn’t yet gotten around to redecorating it, so it still had Luke’s old posters and books and things up around the room.

  Well, the day
wasn’t going to get any better, and things with Lance weren’t going to get fixed, if he just lay around in bed being sad about it. It was another thing that Dad had always drilled into his head, the idea that true men were men of action.

  Of course, when Travis had then employed this idea to play pranks with Luke all through high school, Dad had told him that real men also thought through their actions and all possible consequences before they did them.

  Travis could only see two possible consequences, at least at this point, in telling Lance how he felt: either Lance would accept it and it would be awesome, or Lance would turn him down and things were going to be very awkward in their friend group for a long time.

  He was really, really hoping that it was the former.

  Adam and Seth were already gone by the time that Travis got downstairs, and he knew that he had to get to work soon himself. Luke was at the kitchen counter, frying up some bacon, and turned when he heard Travis enter. “Hey there. You sleep okay?”

  “Yeah, your bed’s comfy.”

  “Well you should know, you passed out on it enough times while you were supposed to be helping me with my history homework.” Luke grinned at him and indicated the bacon. “I made extra for you.”

  “Thanks.” Travis grabbed a seat. “I’ve got to run to work but—I wanted to ask you, real quick. Um. The whole Lance thing.”

  “You mean the thing where you actually communicate with him and tell him that you’re in love with him and want to date him?” Luke clarified, putting the bacon, along with some toast and eggs, on a plate for Travis.

  “Yeah, that whole thing. How the hell am I supposed to do that?”

  Luke set the plate in front of Travis and folded his arms. “Well, if you want, you can come over to the bar after work and we can work on it together. Matthew texted me this morning, seems Lance crashed over at his place last night.”

  What? Why? “Is Lance okay?”

  “Drunk as a skunk, apparently, and now nursing a massive hangover despite Jake’s efforts to prevent it, but he’s fine,” Luke said, smiling in response to Travis’s protective growl. “Point is, he’s taking a day off of work and Matthew said he’s just sleeping the hangover off at their place. The apartment’s empty, if you want to do something to surprise him.”