by Amy Lane
But just like Dex was worried about getting a present for Kane, he knew Kane was worried about getting him a present, so on this day, he gave Kane his space. And thus, he had a chance to lie to his parents without Kane hearing, because the lie shamed him more than usual this year.
“Oh, honey!” His mother sounded happy, and he thought a little bitterly that he’d worked hard for that happiness. “Is it Allison? Or do I know her?”
He almost flinched. Had it really been only seven months since he’d broken up with Allison and then broken up with Scott, who was the reason he’d broken up with Allison in the first place? Had he really only been sleeping with Kane since October? It seemed like longer. Surely it took more than two and a half months to form a froth-at-the-mouth, shaking-hands-without-a-fix addiction, right?
“No, Mom. It’s not a girlfriend. He’s a good guy. We’re rooming together. I can’t leave him here alone for the holidays.” He didn’t say why he couldn’t. He didn’t say that he wasn’t sure he could let the plane take off with Kane here on the ground without him. He didn’t say that nothing he could think of would be worth not sleeping next to Kane for two weeks, when everyone was supposed to be happy and joyful and celebrating. There was no celebration without Kane. There just wasn’t. Sometimes Kane was right—things were that simple.
“Okay, honey. He’s welcome. I think the only place we’d have to put him is in bed with you. Will that be okay?”
Perfect, he thought. “That’s fine, Mom. We don’t mind.”
“Good. So, when are you landing?”
THEY were landing in Butte in six hours, and then Dex was going to remember how to drive in the snow all over again and rent a car for the three-hour trip home.
It was okay, he told himself stoically. He’d seen Kane’s ugly, and Kane had been like a shiny, rough diamond in the midst of it. Whether Dex’s ugly came down to the lying or the ugly that happened if he told his family the truth, now at least Kane would know who Dex was in the middle. That was only fair.
DEX was still looking at Kane when his eyes opened slowly.
“What’s wrong?” he murmured, and Dex shook his head. They would land in the morning, so it was dark outside, and he peered out the window like magic answers might appear on a little cube against the glass.
“Driving in the snow’s gonna be a bitch,” he said, and Kane squinted at him.
“I’ve never seen you do that before,” he said softly.
“Do what?”
“That thing Chase did before he tried to off himself. That thing where what you’re thinking isn’t really what’s going to come out of your mouth.”
Dex laughed softly, thought about putting his hand on Kane’s cheek, and decided what the hell—it wasn’t like he was going to get a chance to do it that much at his parents’ house. Kane’s was soft at the cheek and a little stubbly at the jaw, and the soul patch under his chin was surprisingly silky. His blunt, wide-palmed hand came up and trapped Dex’s hand, right there.
“I’m thinking that I wish this was normal. That I could tell my mom I was bringing home a boyfriend, and she’d be happy for me. I’m thinking I’d rather this get ugly than do this as a lie.”
Kane looked troubled for a minute. “Why? I mean, it’s just me. You and me know we’re good, right?”
Dex leaned forward in the darkened cabin, pretty sure that no one could see the two of them and even if they could, no one would care. “You may not believe this, Carlos, but you’re sort of a big deal for me. You don’t have to feel the same way, but it’s the truth.”
Kane closed the difference and kissed him, his lips and breath warm. Dex shut his eyes and tried not to wish too hard for their bed and their smells and their room and their books and their snakes and turtles and iguanas.
“I ain’t never been anyone’s big deal before,” Kane said, his voice barely audible under the engine noise. “How come I get to be yours?”
Dex wiggled for a minute, and Kane clicked the little wooden armrest up and undid both their seat belts so he could wrap his arm around Dex and haul him close. In spite of the fact that the little plane only sat four across, in the tight half circle of Kane’s muscled arm, Dex suddenly felt like there was air to breathe.
“You’re my big deal because you were nice to me when I was at my lowest,” Dex said softly. “And because nobody asked you to, but not once have you let me down. You’re my big deal because you’re kind to animals—even ones nobody would think about—and because you would rather blow off a pretty girl than have us sleep in separate beds. You take care of the people at Johnnies like they were yours—”
“So do you,” Kane said, sounding surprised, and Dex relaxed, warm with his cheek against Kane’s shoulder.
“You make me feel like I’m not alone,” Dex told him. “Not when I do that, not when I make dinner or watch television or go to bed, even if we’re not having sex. You just make being with someone a good thing. A great thing. You’re a big deal because….” His breath caught. How long had it been? Nine years? Nine and a half years? “Because just talking to you makes me happy. Can you deal with that?”
Something hot hit his temple, and Kane’s breath got harsh and shaky, like an airplane engine before it took off. “I’m only stupid sometimes, David. I’m not gonna blow that shit off when it comes from someone who makes me happy too.”
“You’re not stupid,” Dex said softly, and Kane leaned over and kissed his temple, and Dex knew the taste of the salt sliding down from the deepening creases of his eyes.
“Then I must be crazy, because I think you and me, we’re not ever going to sleep in separate beds again.”
“So I’m not alone?” Dex felt it necessary to clarify.
“Not if you’ll let me stay.”
Dex fell asleep then, safe against Kane’s massive chest. A part of him felt like maybe he should apologize for seeking shelter there, for unloading on Kane right before they were supposed to go meet his family, but most of him was just grateful. All those girls who had shared his bed but hadn’t really known him, all those boys he’d fucked who had been all about the nerve endings, and the whole time, he was just looking for that one thing he’d had once, on a long-ago summer’s afternoon.
He’d been looking to not be alone.
Even in his sleep, he could hear the beating of Kane’s great heart.
DEX was all set to drive the SUV—complete with chains—in the snow to his parents’ house, but Kane wouldn’t let him.
Over the hood of the car, Dex looked at Kane, all warm with his hat over his ears and a cashmere scarf and gloves (yes, Dex had bought them for him! The big doofus was going to freeze to death if he didn’t wear some warm clothes!), and wondered when his life had gotten so damned askew.
“I’m driving because I’ve driven in snow before,” Dex said patiently.
“You were up for forty-eight hours before we left,” Kane said evenly. “You need to sleep.”
Oh yeah! Dex had the cowardly thought that maybe that explained his near-meltdown over the irritating man in front of him. Sleep deprivation. He hadn’t thought of that!
But Kane set his mutinous jaw and stared Dex down with those sweet brown eyes, and Dex found that he was more than a little aroused. Men who made eternal declarations of love on sleep deprivation alone did not get aroused when they were pissed off and confused. Dex loved Kane even when the guy was pissing him off—it had to be real.
“I slept on the plane,” Dex said weakly, and Kane did that thing—that thing—where he lifted the left corner of his mouth and his right eyebrow. Kane wasn’t big on irony, but that thing expressed an amazing amount of skepticism.
“I know you slept on the plane, David,” Kane said patiently, like he was talking to Tomas or Frances. “You slept in my arms. It was nice. But it was about three hours. Our boss kept you up for two days before you left, and you did that without coke, which is good, but you’re not going to drive.”
“You’re not going to drive!�
�� Dex said, suddenly panicked. “You don’t know snow! You don’t know these fuckin’ roads—”
“I can read a map! It’s pretty much straight for two hundred miles, and then you hang a fuckin’ right!”
Dex closed his eyes, opened them, tried to put his thoughts in order. Kane was right. He was tired. John couldn’t get his fuckin’ shit together. Dex had set the schedule so that everybody shot their scenes early (including Kane, who had been a bastard for the three days before without fucking apology, which had made Dex’s life a joy), and then nobody had to work over the two weeks for Christmas. It was a great idea—everyone had been real fuckin’ grateful—but John had forgotten to hire the goddamned cameramen, and Dex had been scrambling to do that and edit the scenes, because John was moving hella slow for a guy snorting so much coke. It had been a nightmare.
If Kane hadn’t been home, shopping for their friends, showing Ethan, Tommy, and Chase how to care for the critters (and telling Ethan he could stay in the house, but if he was going to have sex, he had to wash the fucking sheets!), and generally doing the home front thing, they never would have made it out the door.
But that didn’t mean Dex was going to let another man drive down fucking Highway 135 again if he didn’t have to.
“Carlos—”
“José Carlos Ricardo, if we’re gonna go baptismal names here, David Calvin. I’m a better driver’n you, you know it. You keep asking the car to do shit, and sometimes you gotta tell it to do shit, just like your skinny ass in bed. Now how ’bout you hop in the car and get some sleep and I’ll get us there, all right?”
Dex swallowed his temper and would have scrubbed his gloved hands over his face, but they were caked with snow. “Kane, please. Deer jump out in front of cars here, moose—”
“Deers? Really? Mooses? That’ll be cool!” Kane’s eyes lit up, and Dex had a vague out-of-body experience.
“Not cool!” he shouted, surprised at himself. “It’s not cool, Carlos! Those fucking things jump out, and one minute you’re smiling at a guy you’ve known since kindergarten, and the next you’re waking up in a fucking hospital and he’s gone! It’s not cool, it can change the course of your entire fucking life, do you understand me?”
Kane’s entire body went still, and his mouth opened a little, and then he shivered. “Get in the car, David,” he said after a moment. “It’s fucking cold out here, and we’ve got to let it warm up.”
Dex’s hand was shaking too hard for him to open the door, so Kane got in and turned the car on, then opened the door for him. Dex slid in and took off his gloves, blew on his fingers, and tried to figure out exactly how his life had slid so sideways.
It couldn’t possibly be when Kane slept with him. Had it been when he’d left home, trying so hard to leave the memory of Dexter Williams in his rearview that he’d forgotten who David Worral was in the process?
Maybe. Maybe it was that moment—he could remember it, specifically—in the hospital, when he told himself that he would grieve for his friend and not for his lover.
And then set about trying to replace his lover with a hundred different porn models, giving them two or three auditions at twenty-five minutes a pop.
But not Kane. Kane wasn’t twenty-five minutes. Kane wasn’t months of being a dirty little secret. Kane had climbed into his bed and then decided that was where he belonged. Friends first. Lovers second. And then lovers first. Lovers all. How in the hell had that happened?
“Stop worrying about it, David,” Kane said quietly next to him, and Dex couldn’t turn and look.
“What am I worrying about?”
“How there’s an us. You’re just going to make yourself crazy. You said all that deep shit on the plane and then woke up and wondered if you meant it. Of course you meant it. You don’t lie about shit like that, or you would have been sleeping with John all these years and he wouldn’t be doing so much blow.”
Dex’s brain officially shorted out. He couldn’t think about that right now. “I don’t give a shit about John,” he said, consigning nine years of friendship and mentoring to hell. “I just don’t want you to hit something on the fucking road!”
Kane rolled his eyes. “Since I’m not going to be driving with my brains in my fucking johnson, Dexter, I think maybe I can handle it!”
Dex squinted at him, his eyes sore and gritty. He’d been practically walking in his sleep as they’d disembarked and then taken the shuttle to the rental car agency, and it felt like his brains had frozen in the white wasteland of his home state.
“How did you know his brains were in his johnson?”
Kane grunted. “I didn’t,” he said gruffly, checking the brakes and the steering wheel and generally making himself familiar with the interior of the car in that way he had of touching everything at once. “But you were… what? You just turned twenty-eight this summer, and I went back and watched all your videos—”
“You did what?” Dex’s eye started throbbing, and Kane paused before he put the car in reverse.
“I looked at all your old videos. I wanted to see if you were touching me different than you did the guys in the vids. I mean I thought so, ’cause we’d shot a few, but I wanted to see if I could spot it.”
Dex almost whimpered, because he’d thought his brain was going to explode. “Yeah? What’d you see?”
Kane smiled softly like he was remembering something. “You and I would shoot lousy porn right now, Dexter. It’s a good thing that’s not what we do in bed.”
Why? How? Explain? “So what does that have to do with—”
“With the real Dexter?” Kane asked, still pausing with his arm over the seat, getting ready to look behind him. “It’s easy. I’ve seen your scars, you know. The ones in your arm where your bones popped through? They were there nine years ago. You keep saying things like ‘God, I’m old!’ and your family lives in Montana, so I figure you came right out here after high school, and your guy? He was probably there when you got those scars and not there when you were done getting them. And the way you freaked out just now? Tells me he was driving.”
Dex moaned. “My head hurts,” he whined. “My head hurts, and you know too much about me. Nobody knows that much about me. And you keep taking care of me, and you’re barely twenty. You think I don’t know that you’re barely twenty? If was out to my parents, they’d still kick me out of the house for taking advantage of you.”
Kane let out a growl. “God, I need some fuckin’ coffee, and you need two Advil and a sledgehammer. I know all this shit about you because you been my fuckin’ homework since October. Now give it a rest. You’ll go to sleep, you’ll wake up at your family’s commune or farmhouse or what the hell ever, and you can introduce me as your buddy Kane and it’ll all be fuckin’ okay. Now I wanna see some horses, some cows, and some fuckin’ sheep, and I seem to recall you promised me bunnies and kittens and shit too. I always wanted a fuckin’ rabbit, but I don’t trust Tomas, the fucker, so no rabbit for me. But that doesn’t happen if you get to your parents’ all wired on lack of sleep and fuckin’ insecurities, so get the Advil out of my backpack”—he shoved it at Dex from between the seats on the floor—“and hold your horses until we get some decent fuckin’ drive-through coffee. Now the only thing I want to hear you give me are directions to a goddamned McDonald’s, are we clear on this, Dexter?”
Dex fished out the Advil and a bottle of water gratefully. “Follow the airport road to the freeway,” he said. He palmed the Advil and washed them down. “Go north. The highway will take you through the main drag. You’ll see signs past Helena to Forsythe. Wake me up when we get past Helena, we need to turn right about forty miles before we get to the next big city.”
Kane smiled and cuffed the side of Dex’s head like a bear cuffing her cub. “Good boy. Now kick the seat back and let me fuckin’ drive. God. Dexter, it’s a good thing we don’t have a fuckin’ cat, or you’d be telling it how to untangle the goddamned yarn.”
KANE woke him up shortly after they cl
eared Helena, and sure enough, Dex felt much more himself and much less… what? David? Whatever. He felt like the guy who took care of things, who gave orders, who organized shit. He liked that. He could deal with that.
“Turn right in about a mile,” he said, sipping at the hot chocolate Kane had gotten him in Helena. “You’ll see a yellow T sign telling you the road’s coming.”
Kane grunted. “You weren’t talking out your ass about the fucking roadway, were you? How much snow we driving on?”
Dex grunted back and watched Kane order the car into a straight line, when for Dex, it would surely have been a spinout. “They cleared the roads, Kane—you can see pavement. But yeah. In February, they use the upper-level stop signs and just drive on top of it.”
“Yeah, well, I’m glad you got your little nap, ’cause I’m gonna need one when I get there. I hope your parents don’t hate me for that!”
Dex smiled. “My mom’ll think you’re adorable. She used to just sort of dote over us when we were teenagers—that’s how she’ll see you. A teenager.”
Kane hmmed to himself. “My folks left when I was like, a junior in high school. Had too much of the promised land, I guess, wanted to go back where nothing was promised but it was all easier. I don’t know. Moms woulda liked the baby, maybe. I don’t know if she still woulda spoiled me.”
Dex smiled at him. “Someone oughta spoil you, Carlos. You do a real good job of keeping me from falling apart.”
Kane sucked his teeth. “You don’t fall apart—you get a little frazzled sometimes, but you keep it together. I just don’t like to see you making yourself crazy.” Suddenly he flashed a wholly grown-up grin—but he flashed it forward and didn’t turn his head to the side, which was reassuring, ’cause it meant he was taking Dex seriously about watching the road. “That’s my job.”