Fall through Spring

by Amy Lane

  “Close our eyes, think of a color,” Dane said. “Blue.”

  “Blue sea,” Clay told him softly. “Blue sky. Blue bells—”

  “Blue balls,” Dane said, voice harsh.

  “Have you met my left hand? I have.” Clay kept his voice caustic, because he didn’t want to go there—not when Dane was hurting like this. “Blue lagoon.”

  “Blue lake,” Dane breathed, and it sounded like he was slowing down.

  “Blue bird of happiness.”

  “Blue raspberry slushy.”

  “Blue suede shoes.”

  “Wouldn’t those pinch?” Dane asked. “I always thought they looked hellishly uncomfortable.”

  “Right? And oxfords or wing-tips?”

  “Definitely wing-tips,” Dane said decisively. “Blue velvet.”

  “Also a song,” Clay said. Dane’s breathing was easier, his voice a little steadier, but he wasn’t sounding great. “Where are you?”

  “At a gas station in West Sac,” Dane said. “I… I sort of had to stop driving.”

  Carpenter inhaled hard. Oh Jesus. “Okay, so I want you to stay there, okay? I’ll take an Uber—”

  “That costs too much,” Dane wailed.

  “Then I’ll take a Skipper,” he said. “I’m going to hang up for ten minutes. Don’t go anywhere, and text me the address, okay? I mean, go in and get a Slurpee or something so you can see the address, but—”

  “Chocolate milk,” Dane muttered. “But I didn’t bring my meds.”

  Clay breathed quietly in through his nose. “I’m stunned. I could have a heart attack and die from that surprise.”

  “Don’t be an asshole!” Dane snarled.

  “Don’t be a whiny baby!” Clay snapped back. “Now go get your chocolate milk and then get in the car and wait for me. I’ll be back on the phone in ten minutes. Set the timer. You need to have your snack and be back in the car in ten minutes. Understand?”

  “God, you’re bossy,” Dane said, sulking. “I hope you know that when we finally make it to having sex, I call all the shots.”

  “If you could get your act together long enough for us to do that, I would let you make a list of shit you wanted to do to me and sign off on every goddamned item. Now ten minutes. I have to kidnap Skipper.”

  He hung up and without compunction invaded Skip’s cubicle and hit the Off-Duty light. Then, while Skip was staring at him in surprise, he texted Mason: Skip’s taking me to get Dane. Get us out of work.

  Skip wrapped up his call, hanging up just as Mason returned: Done. Go. See you at home.

  “What’s up?” Skipper said, standing up and getting ready to bolt out of his cubicle without any of his shit.

  “Get your jacket,” Carpenter nagged. “Do you remember when you were sick in November, Skip? Because I remember. It terrified me. I thought you were going to die.”

  “Yikes!” Skipper dutifully grabbed the work-logo hooded sweatshirt that Carpenter had stolen for him that week because Skip had looked like death and had been walking around wearing a polo shirt in the rain. “Fine. I’ve got my jacket. You’ve got your jacket. So why do we have our jackets, and where are we going, again?”

  “We are going to your car, because I’m probably staying the night at Dane’s house after I drive Dane home in his car.”

  “Car trouble?” Skip asked carefully. Mason called the two of them in to eat lunch with him about once a week. It was a nice little tradition. When Mason wasn’t trying to impress people, he was actually intentionally funny and down-to-earth and generous and kind. He and Clay had let slip a few things about Dane and his painful spiral since February.

  “Dane trouble,” Clay said with a sigh. He looked around, not wanting to broadcast Dane’s problems to the world. “He—his program is really intensive, and he’s just in the preliminary science part of it. He’s not even in the residency part, where he apparently indentures himself for two years and we never see him. Ever. But he keeps forgetting his medication, and I’m not even sure it works when he does take it. It’s hard to know, though, because he’s so stressed, and then he skips it, and it stresses him out more and….” His voice rose and got wobbly, and he looked at his phone and realized he had to get himself back under control in time to talk to Dane again.

  He took a cleansing breath. “He’s not going to make it home. We’re heading toward West Sac and some sort of gas station that you’d probably get to right off of westbound 80.”

  Skipper nodded. “I hear you. Get some particulars. I think I can get us there.”

  Just like that, Carpenter’s eyes burned. “Thanks, Skip,” he said gruffly.

  “Yeah, well, remember, Richie’s got a temper. Someday we may need to hide a body.”

  Carpenter had to laugh then. “I’ll do some research so I’m ready. Nobody will ever find it, I promise.”

  “That’s a good friend,” Skipper judged. “Ask Dane for help. I mean, he knows science and shit.”

  It was on the tip of Clay’s tongue to get defensive—didn’t he know science and shit? But then he remembered that this sweet guy who had literally just bailed on the job he was so fiercely proud of to help Carpenter because he asked, didn’t really know what Carpenter’s degree was in.

  And for the first time, really, he felt bad about that. He felt like he was living this life—this quiet, lower-middle-class life, where someone like Skipper would drop every-fucking-thing to make a forty-five minute drive on his say-so—as a lie.

  It was stupid, really, to perpetuate the lie, but Skipper, Dane, Mason—he loved these people. He didn’t want to lose them.

  But that was a discussion for another time. Right now, he had to make sure Dane was okay. He limped out to Skip’s car, panting more for the pain from the infected punctures on his leg than from exertion, and belted into Skip’s painfully small Toyota, a little reassured when Skipper grunted himself because Skip was not short.

  It had been the best thing Skip could afford when he cleared tech school—he’d told Clay that the first time he’d given him a ride. Beggars really couldn’t be choosers, and Clay needed to remember that.

  “Here,” Skip muttered. “Lean the seat back and it won’t hurt your leg quite so much. I’m sorry my car’s so dinky.”

  “Not your fault,” Clay told him, touched a little. “And the leg is all Mason’s fault, so I’m blaming him.”

  Skip gave a strained chuckle. “Man, cleaning up Jefferson’s house is the worst. But I’ll tell you what—it sure did give Richie and me incentive to keep ours up so it doesn’t get that bad.”

  “That’s constructive,” Carpenter told him, because of course Skip would think of it like that—and Skip still had healing scratches from the damned blackberry bushes that had seemed out to get him too. “It just makes me think of the joys of apartment living.”

  Skipper’s chuckle bloomed a little. “You’ll want a house,” he said confidently. “You and….” He gave Carpenter a furtive sideways glance. “The person of your choice,” he finished.

  Carpenter sighed. He hadn’t told Skip anything. But then, Skip had held Richie pretty close to his vest in the beginning too. Skip understood “reasons.” But Carpenter had been hurt then, and now Skip was hurt, and the really good thing about all this was that Carpenter figured he and Skip were tight for life.

  But other than that, secrets sucked, and Carpenter apparently had a lot of them, and he didn’t have time for this right now.

  “I’ll….” He heaved a sigh. “I need to call Dane in a minute,” he said. “He’s really freaking out. I made him go get some food in the quickie-mart while we got out of work.”

  “Yeah. I’ll pretend to be a fly on the wall, no problem.”

  “Thanks, Skip.”

  “You know—I mean, you know you can trust me, right? No judgments?”

  Carpenter sighed. “I know. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

  “You too.”

  “Except Richie,” Carpenter said, on automatic
, because Richie had always been Skip’s bestie, right up until they were lovers.

  “Except Dane,” Skip said with meaning.

  Augh! Carpenter opened his mouth to spill—everything—the kiss, how suddenly weight loss meant a whole new thing, how he couldn’t go to sleep without dreaming of Dane Hayes’s bright brown eyes, when suddenly his phone buzzed in his hand.

  “You were late,” Dane said bitterly after Clay had pushed the button.

  “I’m sorry,” Clay said, looking at his timer. Twelve minutes. He was two minutes over. As wound up as Dane was right now, it probably felt like a zillion years. “We’re on our way. Skipper’s gonna drop me off, and I’ll take you home.”

  “But you have work,” Dane hiccupped, sounding very sorry for himself.

  “Yeah, well, it turns out I know a super-big goober who’s vice president of something important. We do lunch.”

  “Great,” Dane muttered. “Mason knows.”

  “Yeah, Mason knows. Nobody told me we were a covert operation. I mean, are we smuggling state secrets? Procuring illicit substances? As far as I know, I’m giving a friend a ride home.”

  “What did you tell Skipper?” Dane wailed.

  “I said, ‘Get in the car, Skipper. We’re going to West Sac,’ and he said, ‘Great. IKEA is in West Sac.’ And that was pretty much it.”

  Skip snorted. “Fucking IKEA,” he murmured, not loud enough to carry over the phone. He and Richie had bought a new kitchen table the week before. It was currently sitting in their garage in the box while Richie tried to figure out the directions and Skipper looked assemblies up online.

  “Well, tell him I’m grateful.” Dane’s voice sank humbly. “I… I really need to see you.”

  “’Course,” Carpenter said easily. “But you know we owe him a kitchen table assembly, right?”

  “Man, I’ll rip out his kitchen floor first and replace that shitty tile. Name a date. I’m good for it.”

  Carpenter chuckled. “I’m excited about this plan. Skip’s having another gaming party before it gets hot. We should do it after that.”

  “Why before it gets hot?” Dane asked, and Carpenter could picture him, long legs pulled up to his chest as he rocked himself in his front seat. The movement—stimming—was something Clay saw him do that first time, after he’d gotten home. He’d put his head trustingly in Clay’s lap and rocked himself until he’d calmed down.

  Clay found himself rocking back and forth, infinitesimally, just to keep him company.

  “Because summer sucks at Skipper’s house. It’s great for a couple of people to play games and stuff, but you put more than five in there and the air-conditioning goes on strike. Especially for gaming—last time we had a game day in June, all the PS4s overheated and we ended out in the backyard under the sprinklers, sliding through the mud.”

  Which was probably how the backyard had ended up looking so raggedy. But since it was Skipper’s idea, he didn’t hold any grudges.

  “Sounds like a good time,” Dane said, voice still shaking. “But, you know. Mason has a pool. He should be back on the field next weekend, at least to sub. I bet we could have people over.”

  “You guys are close to the field too,” Carpenter said. “That would be great. Think he’d be up for it?”

  “Sure. His last boyfriend had these super-boring wine-and-cheese parties and shit. I think Mason would love to have people over drinking beer and jumping in the pool.”

  “His last boyfriend sounds like a real douche.”

  “Yeah, well….” Dane let out a shaky breath. “Terry’s better, because he looks at my brother like he’s a god, but….”

  “Your brother is a god,” Carpenter said fiercely. Because Mason had just told them to go and covered for them like a diaper, and any guy who would do that for his little brother’s nervous breakdown deserved naked porn stars in the pool. Clay didn’t have any of those, though. So Mason would have to settle for a bunch of mostly in-shape guys who did their best but didn’t skimp on the beer or the burgers, at least half of whom were heterosexual or married.

  “Gods are hard to date,” Dane said, and his voice was sinking, like he was falling into his own headspace and losing connection with Carpenter.

  “Which gods have you dated?” Carpenter asked him, putting a little edge into his voice. “I mean, do you have Chris Hemsworth or Chris Evans on your roster? Seems like you’ve kissed a lot of guys, you know.”

  “Like you care,” Dane snarled, suddenly right back in the present. Well, he was pissed because there’d been no follow-up to the kiss, but that was still better than that lost boy he’d been the moment before.

  “Of course I care,” Carpenter said. “Things won’t always be like this. I need to know the competition. I mean, dating is like running from a bear, right?”

  “Oh God—I don’t even want to—”

  “You don’t have to run faster than the bear. You just have to run faster than the guy the bear catches. I don’t have to be better than you. I just have to be better than the last guy you dumped.”

  Dane started to chuckle. “You’re already better than that guy. That guy told me I was a crazy bitch and if I’d just stop going to school and filling my head with ideas, I could sit on his couch and smoke weed and not worry about being productive with my life.”

  Carpenter grunted. “Well, weed has been known to help with bipolar—”

  “He laced his weed with all sorts of random drugs,” Dane muttered. “And didn’t tell me. Besides, it was before I was even diagnosed. God—that was bad. That was when I started redecorating by sledgehammer.”

  “Okay,” Clay said, his heart breaking. “So I’m way the fuck better than that guy. When was that?”

  “About six years ago. I pretty much had to go to school all over again after that. I’ve got a year and a half before the residency, and that’s going to suck, and isn’t this hard enough? And I haven’t even told Mason how much more I’ve got—”

  “Sh… sh….” Because Dane was openly weeping now. “Why wouldn’t you tell Mason that?”

  “Because he thought I finally had my shit together! Getting into this school—it was like my family’s reward for dealing with me when I was falling apart!”

  “Jesus, Dane, don’t be stupid. Dealing with you sane is our reward for dealing with you when you’re falling apart!”

  “Well, when’s that going to happen, because this doesn’t feel like it!”

  Clay took a deep breath and realized he was getting sucked into the mood swing, which was a dangerous mistake. Everything—the anger, the panic, the self-recrimination—it was all part of what was happening in Dane’s head. It was Clay’s job to make Dane’s life doable, not yell at him because it seemed out of his control.

  “Look, we can fix this. I mean, you’ll eventually have to tell your brother what your program is really like, and I don’t think he’ll care. But it’ll be a load off your heart, brother, believe you me. Now let’s not think about that guy. Let’s talk about where you and me go from here.”

  “You could always kiss me again,” Dane said miserably.

  “I’d really like that,” Carpenter told him, feeling just as wretched. “But I can’t do it while you’re crashing, man. You know that. That’s no way for us to figure out how to be happy.”

  “But I’m going to have to talk to the shrink again tomorrow,” Dane whimpered. “And I always feel like such an inarticulate loser and—”

  “I’ll come with you!” It was sheer desperation. “Tell you what. Mason got me and Skip out today, and tomorrow I’ll come with you. We’ll figure out a plan. We’ll work together to get your shit together so it’s not so hard to be on your meds, so you can make it through school. We can do that, right?”

  “You’d do that?” Dane’s voice still trembled, but as Skipper sped through the misty, overcast day down through Rio Linda and past Natomas toward West Sacramento, Carpenter got a feeling of hope.

  “Of course I would,” he sai
d, his own voice as hearty and real and solid as he could make it. “Man, I’d do anything for you.”

  “Except blow me,” Dane muttered, apparently still bitter.

  “That’s not off the table yet. But we’re getting off the subject. Let’s go back to blue.”

  It was possibly the longest conversation in his life—six or seven years crawled by with the scenery, he was almost positive. By the time they got to the address Dane had texted, Carpenter’s hands were sweating, and so was the rest of him. As Skipper pulled off the freeway, he put his hand on Carpenter’s and gave a curt nod.

  “Sign off,” he ordered.

  “We’re almost there, okay? I’m signing off so I can give Skipper directions. Hang on.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Sure he would.

  Clay hit End Call, and Skipper pulled off about two gas stations before the Shell where Dane said he was.

  “Skipper—”

  “Calm yourself down,” Skipper said, his voice warm and no-bullshit. “He thinks you’re his rock, and you’re pretty watery right now. Three deep breaths, man.”

  Oh. “Yeah. Thanks.” Carpenter rested his head against the window. “God, this is hard.”

  “Well, you’re a champion at it. It’s a good thing he has you.”

  “How much of that did you get?” he asked, because the jig was very probably up about his bisexuality and the way he felt about Dane Hayes and how he’d rather die than hear Dane in that much pain.

  “We’re going to pretend I got none of it,” Skipper said irritably. “I thought we’d established that. Now you clear it with Mason that you’ll be gone for a couple of days, and I’ll tell our supervisor—”

  “I thought just tomorrow!”

  Skipper snorted grimly. “Three days. Minimum. Tell Dane it’s nice to be connected.”

  “Ronnie’s gonna hate me,” Carpenter muttered. Veronica Haynes—petty goddess of the IT department at Tesko—tolerated neither slackers nor Y chromosomes in her realm. Unfortunately, Carpenter was a slacker, and Skip was very obviously a man.

  “She hates us both,” Skip replied. “Her flaming bitchiness is not our concern. Maybe Mrs. Bradford will make us cookies again—concentrate on that.”