by Amy Lane
“Nothing wrong with treating women right,” Dex said evenly, and Kane bumped knees with him again and scowled. Yeah, Dex had cheated on a girl. Yeah, he felt like crap. He needed to let that shit go. Couldn’t they both see that figuring that shit out with the gay or the straight or the porn or the not porn or the touching or the hearting—that was all complicated and shit? Dex had forgiven Kane for flirting with Donnie’s sister; now he had to forgive himself for cheating on the dumb bitch who couldn’t figure out that he wasn’t straight in the first place. (Kane dimly realized his perspective may have become skewed, but he was annoyed at Dex for feeling like a family tradition of sexism was his to get rid of. So his mom waited on people. So what? So did every woman in Kane’s family. As long as no one was smacking her around, Marlene Worral was one up on Kane’s sister.)
Dex scowled back. Yeah, well, communicating in code didn’t mean you couldn’t bitch at each other with your eyes then either.
“Nothing’s wrong with a woman taking care of her men,” Dex’s mother said mildly in one of those voices that Kane could tell was meant to soothe people.
“Besides,” Dex’s sister said with a little bit of innocent malice, “all of that liberal crap doesn’t seem to be doing you any good anyway. If women are all excited about that crap, why can’t you keep any of ’em?”
Kane double bumped his knee in commiseration, but Dex seemed to have this one covered.
“Didn’t want to keep the last one. Pretty much drove her off. If she’s not doing your dishes or your laundry, Debbie, you’ve got to think of a real reason to keep her around.”
Kane clapped his hand over his mouth and tried hard not to cackle like an evil chicken. Dex bumped his knee back and raised his eyebrows, and Kane looked hard at his stew (his empty bowl of stew—Dex’s mom could cook) so he wouldn’t paw the guy’s head over to him and plant a big one on him.
Then Dex did something stupid and weird, but Kane was the only one who noticed. He stood up with his bowl, grabbed Kane’s from in front of him, took them both to the stove, and filled them up again. Henry and Debbie were still giving him shit about not having a girlfriend, Travis was still arguing with their father about what to do with the sheep, and there was Dex, in front of his family.
Being the little woman.
He set down Kane’s bowl in front of him, sat down himself, and plowed back into the chow. Their knees bumped, and then Kane felt Dex’s hand, ever so gently, patting him there.
Kane swallowed hard. He hadn’t held a damned thing against Dex for coming here in the closet—not a single thought. But if he had, that there would have put paid to anything, anything at all.
“David!” The voice of the family patriarch cut through the crap like a sharp shovel, and Dex jerked up like he hadn’t been expecting it.
“Hi, Dad—wasn’t sure if you saw me here.”
“Who’s that you brought with you? You were supposed to bring a wife!”
“He’s my roommate, Dad. I didn’t want to leave him there by himself.”
There was a low titter then, a breath of gossip.
“Honey, I thought you said he was your friend!” his mom said, more than a little surprised.
“Well, I’m not gonna room with someone I don’t like!” Dex said, twinkling his eyes at her. “Certainly not someone with all of Kane’s baggage!”
“What sorta baggage you bring with you?” Travis asked, and for the first time, Kane was being spoken to directly.
“Reptiles, sir,” he said between bites of stew. “They sort of took over the fu—” He looked at Travis’s other child, five years old and clinging to her mother’s hand behind Travis’s shoulder. She was a slightly built woman with big brown eyes who hadn’t said a thing, just stood there behind her husband, being quiet. Creepy.
“Freakin’ house,” he finished lamely.
“What kind of reptiles?” said the little girl shamelessly.
Kane smiled at her and just her, and ignored all of Dex’s freakishly cloned family staring at him. “Well, we had a gecko, but he got too cold and died, so we’re left with a snake and an iguana and two box turtles and two slider turtles—”
“Why four turtles?” Sean wanted to know.
Kane remembered Sean too—he was the youngest, the one who looked most like Dex in those videos when he was brand-new at Johnnies, but there was a softness around his chin and his eyes that said that maybe Sean couldn’t have done what Dex had, and couldn’t have made himself a new person because the old one was a little lost.
“’Cause PetSmart was having a sale that day,” Dex said with a wink, and Kane socked him in the arm and grinned.
“Naw, ’cause doofus here didn’t know what sort of lizard to get me to make me feel better after the first one died.”
“Aw,” spoke up one of the big guys—Kane couldn’t keep them straight, but since this guy didn’t look like a blond guy, he figured it must be Debbie’s husband, Mal. “That’s cute. How long have you two been a couple?”
And before Kane could think, Oh fuck, we’re done for! all of the grown-up David clones started throwing crackers at him.
“Jeez, Mal!”
“Get your mind out of the gutter!”
“Ohmigod, make me sick whydoncha!”
“Maa-aal! That’s my brother, you moron!”
“Malachi, did we really have you at our table to suggest such a thing?”
And so on. For a minute—an entire minute—Kane thought that he and Dex were safe. This could just be a family visit, and it would be fun.
Then Kane saw Dex looking at something, his expression troubled. Kane followed his gaze and saw Malachi and Henry bitching at each other with their eyes.
TOWARD the end of lunch, Dex’s dad suggested they go out on the horses. Dex took him up on it but told Paul that Kane got to bail.
“He sleeps on vacation, Pops. Don’t fight it.”
And sure enough, Kane felt sleep pushing behind his eyes and a yawn building up in his chest. He smiled sheepishly and allowed Dex to shoo him up the stairs.
Kane turned around to him before he got halfway and said, “You going to be okay?”
“With my own family? Yeah.” Dex gave him a weak smile, and Kane knew he was thinking about things he wanted to talk about and do but couldn’t.
“Remember what’s important, Poindexter. That’s why you’re smart.”
“You make me look brain damaged,” Dex said rawly. He bit his lip then, cast a frantic look over his shoulder, and patted Kane’s cheek like he was being friendly. Kane felt it, though. His skin was softer than just a friend’s.
KANE woke up in the afternoon and came down to help Marlene with dinner. She had him peeling potatoes and chopping up bacon in no time, and Kane didn’t mind. Brainless activity—he could deal.
But then Dex’s mom started to talk to him—really talk to him, and Kane had never been so glad to be trying to be an honest man in his life.
“So, Kane, you’re a model where David works?”
Kane nodded and grunted, because parents weren’t his strong suit.
“Are you working your way through school too?”
Kane shrugged and tried to take a peel off without breaking it. “I am now,” he said honestly. “Dexter had me sign up for classes.”
Marlene was mixing stuff into a big hunk of ground beef, and she almost dropped a handful of onions. “Dexter?” she asked carefully.
“Poindexter, cause he’s smart?” he told her, feeling really smart himself to have thought of this. “Not like his friend who died.”
Oh no, not at all.
Marlene’s laugh was a little forced. “Oh good,” she said. “Otherwise, you know, if he was telling people that’s his name… well, a mother worries.”
You should have worried nine years ago. Letting him wander off to another state—you couldn’t hear him being sad? I could hear him being sad, and it’s an old sound by now!
“I think he was lost after it happened,” K
ane said carefully. “But I didn’t know him then.”
“No, of course not—you’re pretty young, aren’t you? You would have been what? Ten?”
“Twelve,” Kane lied. He’d done the math when he thought Dex was going to leave him because he was too young—back when he was watching all of Dex’s old films. He would have been eleven when Dex shot his first video. Dex had still been nineteen.
“So you’re a model, and you’re going to school,” she said, sounding happy, like that made her view of the world fit. “What are you studying?”
And even though Kane had been practicing, his brain suddenly froze and he couldn’t say the words. “Bugs and snakes,” he said, feeling dumb, and she laughed like he’d made a joke on purpose.
“Well, isn’t that high up and fancy. David said he’s finally gone back for the rest of that degree. That’s a relief. I know he got frustrated when he couldn’t get the classes he wanted, but it’s good to see him back in the ring.”
“He wants life after the modeling agency,” Kane said, and he felt some pride here. Kane was going to school; Dex was going to school. Suddenly he realized that in a year, they could both say they were porn stars to work through college—and it would be the truth, and people would laugh at it because it made a good story.
And they would be together still, because what they were doing wasn’t a Johnnies thing, it was a real thing.
“Yeah—he never could explain what he does for them. He just says random business, but I don’t know. I mean, I know he gets a paycheck, but I don’t know what he does.”
Kane blinked. “He does everything!” he said, a little upset. “He arranges shoots, chooses the shots, hires the staff, comes up with shot idea, sets up the website—”
“I didn’t know they had a website!”
“They’re under construction—you can’t find it on the web yet.”
Oh fuck. “Oh fuck!”—because right when he’d been spazzing about telling a lie about the website not being up and almost getting caught, he’d slipped with the potato peeler and taken off a slice of his finger.
He looked at it blankly, saw the blood well up, and had a sudden flash to Chase. Yeah, he thought with wonder. Of course Chase had tried to kill himself. If Kane had to keep his lies straight in his mind for his entire life, he’d want to end it all too.
By the time Dex got back, all cold with red cheeks and what looked like perma-frozen dimples, Kane’s mother had recovered from hearing the F-word in her home and Kane’s finger had started to numb out with all of the antibiotic ointment and bandaging on it. He’d been exiled from kitchen duty and told to just put his feet up in the living room and had spent the time prowling from kid photo to kid photo until he found the ones with Dex.
And Dex.
’Cause damn if every picture on the mantel didn’t have that other kid in there.
Kane heard his Dex clattering in after hauling off coat and boots and gloves in the entryway, and when he walked in and looked over Kane’s shoulder, Kane yearned to turn and touch his cheeks and see if they were cold, take his red hands and rub them, let Dex bury his cold nose in Kane’s neck.
He looked sideways and saw where Dex was looking—the original Dex and the original David, about twelve years old, looking thrilled and triumphant in front of a bizarre apparatus that had a sail, a surfboard, and what looked to be bicycle wheels. The original Dex had dark-brown hair and wild black eyes—he looked a little like Tommy. The original David looked…
Sweet. Tow-headed, blue-eyed, with that big, wide, dimpled smile and the little grooves around his mouth, even as a kid. His teeth were a little bucked, mostly because he hadn’t grown into them yet, and his ears still stuck out.
Kane wanted to go back in time for him, go back in time to the day those two perfect boys were separated, and tell them to watch out for the thing in the road. He didn’t know if he’d ever seen Dex, his Dex, smile that wide. He didn’t know if he’d ever seen that much joy, that much unguarded happiness, shining out of his Dex’s face, and for a moment, he felt cheated. He thought he’d give up his spot in Dex’s bed just to be able to see Dex, his Dex, smile that way as a grown-up.
“We still have that thing,” Dex said over his shoulder, and Kane turned to him, surprised.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s in the barn. Dad kept it.”
“What’s it do?”
“When there’s no snow, it’s like a sailboard. Dex and I took it out for about three miles one day. We had to walk against the wind all the way back, but it was worth it.”
Kane looked at it again. “Could you make it work without the wheels? Maybe turn it into a sled and do the same thing?”
Dex was just close enough for Kane to smell him, and he smelled like unfamiliar things. But Kane knew that slow-expanding smile, the mischievous bright-eyed look of him—it was the look he had when he brought home the turtles or when they stood together, shoulder by shoulder, and ate pie filling and graham crackers.
“Wanna try?” he asked, breathless and happy.
“Damned straight!” Kane said, so thrilled to see his Dex was real.
At that moment there was a clatter behind them and Henry said, “Jesus, Davy, give the boy time to breathe! Didn’t you see he wounded himself?” on his way down the hallway.
Kane held up his bandaged finger sheepishly. “I’m sort of a klutz today,” he said, and Dex looked at it sadly, then checked to make sure Henry was gone.
“I’ll kiss it better later,” he said, and Kane nodded, wordless. He was going to need that kiss when they were alone in a bed together with nothing else to prove.
THE dinner table was just as raucous as the lunch table, and Kane picked at the meatloaf and the potatoes, needing some reassurance like he hadn’t needed since he was a little kid. Suddenly Paul Worral’s over-hearty voice broke into his thoughts.
“You keep eating that way, son, I’m gonna think Mal here is right. Don’t need those people at my table, so you’d better eat!”
Kane blinked, feeling stupid. “What people?” he said, remembering too late the not-funny joke cracked earlier.
“Chase and Tommy’s kind of people,” Dex said, his voice hard. “Dad, you gotta not make those cracks here, okay? Not in front of us. Just for two weeks, do you think you could keep that opinion to yourself?”
“You know gay guys in California, Davy? I thought that was a stereotype.” Marlene’s voice was sweet and trying to make the peace, and Kane heard Dex’s deep breath before he spoke.
“Kane and I know a couple of guys,” he said. “We know one guy who was so afraid of people like you, so afraid of being told he wasn’t good enough to eat at the table, that he got engaged. He lived for two years with the sweetest girl—and he was miserable. He had himself a guy on the side that he really loved, but he broke it off because he knew it was wrong. But remember the miserable? Remember the miserable, Mom and Dad, because it’s important. He tried to kill himself, Dad. He’d rather die than live like that. But you and Mom, that’s not what you see when you make cracks like that. You see an old man a million miles away on television, telling you not to do shit. I see the look on Tommy’s face when we came into the hospital, and he didn’t know if Chase was going to live or die. I see Chase breaking up with Tommy and then buying razor blades. I didn’t know what they were for, right? I was just there as a friend. Well, I should have known what they were for, because my friend almost died. So I don’t want to hear it, Dad. I don’t want to hear it this year. My friend almost died because he didn’t want to disappoint people who kept telling him that he was a bad person when he was actually a really good person—right up until he felt like he had to be straight.”
The table had screeched to a halt. Everyone was looking at Dex with horror and embarrassment, but Kane got it.
He’d been thinking about Chase all day too.
“We’re, uhm, sorry about your friend, Davy,” Marlene said.
Paul didn’t say anything. He l
ooked down and kept shoveling his meatloaf in. One of Dex’s brothers, Joey, the one who obsessed about sports and that shit, started talking about the Super Bowl of all things, and the table built up to its usual level of noise.
Dex and Kane ate silently through the middle of it, not making eye contact at all. Their knees never stopped touching.
BED.
They were almost cockblocked at the last minute. Yeah, sure, Dex called it “thwarted,” but Kane knew a cockblock when he heard one. Kane, true to form, started to get a little tired around nine o’clock, but that didn’t seem like a bad thing, since pretty much the women were sitting around doing thread things with needles and colored floss and charts and shit, and the men were playing poker. Kane had seen a lot of yawns, and since everyone claimed to have a fuckton of work to do in the morning, he figured he’d go to bed early and spend a little time in his own skin, remembering that having Dex get in bed with him was the whole purpose of this trip.
He stood up from the poker table after his loss to Henry, the one who couldn’t stop talking about girls and looking at his sister’s husband, and said, “Night, everybody” without a lot of fancy talk around it, and turned down from the living room to venture up those incredibly narrow stairs at the end of the hall.
“Hey,” Malachi said amicably, “you know, Deb was gonna sleep over at Travis’s place tonight so she and Cathy could talk.” Cathy! That was the name of Travis’s wife. No one ever actually said it. “I could bunk up there and you guys could have the twin beds in our room.”
Sure, Kane thought irritably. And your boy Henry isn’t going to be sneaking out of his room and up those stairs anytime soon. God—at least Chase had stopped before actual marriage. Hell, he’d tried to kill himself just to not do what these two guys were doing to Dex’s sister.
“I’ve got a dent there already” is what he really did say. “I’m good.” He saw Dex’s jaw tighten and the way he glared at his younger brother. Henry didn’t meet his eyes, and Kane suddenly wanted bed in the worst way.