Dex in Blue

by Amy Lane

  He woke up when Dex showed up, though. It was dark—much darker than in their house—but Kane knew the different patches of darkness at this point. He was not surprised to hear Dex rooting through his suitcase for pajama bottoms, and he spoke up.

  “Boxer shorts.”

  “But—”

  “Boxer shorts, Dexter. I’m not fucking around. I need to touch you.”

  Dex grunted and slid into bed next to him. The bed was pushed into the corner of the room—they had a wall on two sides and a dresser on the third. Kane actually liked that. He felt protected. He needed to feel protected. Even more, he needed to protect Dex.

  “I’m sleeping on the outside,” he said before Dex could get too comfortable under the heavy comforter and three wool blankets and the sheets. Kane was grateful for all of them—it was around fifty-five degrees up there. “Here. Lay down, I’ll roll on top of you.”

  “Just like at home,” Dex snapped, and Kane kissed that smart mouth while his body was crushing Dex’s into the mattress. He started out hard and irritated, but the way Dex melted into him, soft and sweet and very, very needy, made his own touch softer.

  He finished his roll and crushed Dex so close to his chest he was pretty sure the boy couldn’t breathe, and he didn’t care. Kane would be his breath.

  Dex didn’t object. He accepted the hug and returned it until Kane could no longer clench his muscles that tight.

  “I’m sorry I brought you here,” Dex said after a few minutes of silence. “You would have been happier at home.”

  “Naw. The only thing that makes it home is you.”

  Dex made a sound in the dark that was difficult to hear. “It’s like you read this whole book on the right shit to say when we were on the plane. I need to read that fucking book.”

  Kane didn’t know what to say. He was going to have to read a fuckton of books after winter break—that scared the shit out of him. He certainly wasn’t going to do it now just to talk to his… whatever. Just to talk to his Dex.

  “I really want to make that sail sled,” he said after a moment, because it was true. “I mean, the wind here sucks. It would be awesome to see if it did something good.” The wind did suck—he’d felt it battering at the car the whole drive and knifing through his coat like a scalpel. He thought houses here probably didn’t collapse, they blew away like a doctored photo that took out the house pixel by pixel.

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Dex said softly, bringing Kane’s attention back to good things. “There’s someplace I want to take you.”

  “Yeah. That’d be good. I wonder if we’ll feel free.”

  Dex’s sigh shook his bones. “Free. I think… I think when I left, nine years ago, feeling free was all I really wanted. Now that I’ve been free, I just want something to keep me here on Earth. But not this part of it. I want our little house and your creepy slimy guys and our friends who are unbelievably fucked-up. All the normal on the planet can’t make up for not being able to say the things in my head or love the person I love….”

  Dex trailed off, and Kane felt his face heat next to Kane’s chest. For a minute he wondered why he’d get all embarrassed, and then it hit him.

  Oh shit. Really. How could he not know that? Know that’s what they were supposed to say now?

  “I love you,” Kane said into that painful awkward silence. “Too, I mean. I love you too.”

  Dex’s soft laugh was broken. “God, Kane. I love you so fucking much. I thought I knew what this was supposed to feel like, but it doesn’t feel like any of the other ways I thought love was.”

  Kane swallowed hard. “You know if we were home, I’d fuck you into the mattress so we didn’t have to talk about this, right? ’Cause nothing I’ve got to say is going to sound as huge as this is.”

  “I know, right? And it’s stupid too, because all day I’ve felt like if I could only say the shit in my head, I’d be able to breathe. It was like, I finally understood how fucked-up Chase must have been because—”

  “I know, right? Because if he was doing that same shit I’ve been doing in my head all day, but doing it for his whole fucking life—”

  “Oh my God! No wonder! No wonder! I wouldn’t have made it. I would have crumbled. I would have run my car off the goddamned road or—”

  “Stop it!” And now Kane’s voice clogged. “You wouldn’t have. You wouldn’t have.” He thought of Dex running the hell away from this happy, loving home when he was eighteen and hurt, and his breath made a breaking sound in his chest. “You know how I know? ’Cause you didn’t do any of that. You went to the world’s shittiest town and made porn. And you were good at it. You were fucking beautiful. And you went to school. And you tried to have a life and you tried to fall in love and you tried again and again and again….”

  Dex’s hands came up on either side of Kane’s face, and he realized his cheeks were wet. “Shh….”

  “No, don’t shh me,” Kane told him, but he lowered his voice. “Don’t make me keep this locked in my chest. You were brave, sweetheart. You were so fucking brave. And I’m so proud of you, coming from here and learning how to be Dex.”

  Dex’s body shivered in his arms. “That’s the dumb thing,” he said, but it didn’t sound dumb to Kane when he said it. “It’s just so stupid, because the thing is that Dex was always the brave one. I was always the one following in his shoes.”

  His cheeks were wet too, and he wiped them on Kane’s chest.

  “I didn’t know that guy,” Kane said. “I didn’t know him. But you’re the guy who tries to take care of all the guys at Johnnies and the guy who’s going back to school. You’re the guy who buys me gloves and makes sure I don’t do stupid things with my money and my life. You’re the guy who got Lola to let me see the baby. That’s the guy I love. That’s you.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Dex said, his voice muffled with wonder, and Kane closed his eyes and held Dex tight and didn’t let him go, hardly let him breathe, until sleep claimed them both.

  THEY slept like they always slept—Kane had his arm anchored around Dex’s middle, drawing him close. Kane hadn’t counted on being awakened by a small person with too much curiosity while they were sleeping that way, but hell, if Dex could wake up with Tomas in his balls, Kane could keep his head, couldn’t he?

  “Heya, uhm, short person,” he mumbled, looking over his shoulder.

  “Heya. I’m supposed to wake you guys up and tell you that if you want to go out with the men, you need to be at breakfast in fifteen minutes.”

  Kane squinted. It was the really short person, the little girl. “Are you going out with the men?” he asked, and she shook her head, her blonde hair—not brushed yet—flying everywhere.

  “I’m not a man,” she told him, and he wrinkled his nose.

  “I don’t know if I like horses enough to be a man in Montana,” he told her frankly. “Maybe I’ll just be a girl here and stay inside where it’s warm.”

  The girl clapped her hand over her mouth and smothered the peal of laughter that threatened to break free. “You’re funny! How come you and Uncle David are sleeping so close together?”

  Kane wrinkled his nose again. “It’s not a very big bed,” he said, and it was true. Usually, in their own bed, Dex would try to escape a few times and Kane would have to capture him and pin him back against Kane’s body, but not here. Nope. Here, he stayed mashed up against Kane’s front all night. Kane thought that if they got a queen-size bed at home, maybe he could fit some terrariums in the room and sleep with Dex like this. It was a good thought. He liked it very much.

  Dex heard the conversation, though, and propped himself up on his elbow, and then rolled over in bed so he could come partially out and talk to her. “Morning, Tanya,” he mumbled, propping his chin on Kane’s shoulder. “We’re not going out with the guys. We’ll get our own breakfast, okay?”

  “Are you going to hang around the house all day? ’Cause grandma says your friend is as useless as tits on a bull!”

>   Dex grunted and Kane said, “I’m what?” and Dex poked him to make him quiet.

  “He’s usually a better cook than that, sweetheart. But no. We’ve got a project outside we were going to work on. You can come too, if you want. It’s in the tool barn.”

  Tanya shook her little blonde head again and wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like it in there. There’s spiders. But if you’re going in there, you must be real men! Daddy kept saying you’re not, and I’m confused.”

  Dex buried his face in Kane’s bicep for a minute and made a growling sound, then looked up. “Tanya, sweetheart, I want you to go downstairs and remind your father that I saw him wet himself when a jackrabbit surprised the hell out of him when we were branding, and he was fifteen years old. Tell him I’ll put that story out on the Internet with his name and picture if he doesn’t shut his trap about real men, okay?”

  Tanya’s eyes got really big. Her mother must have had brown eyes, because they were dark brown in her broad-cheeked little face, and she nodded gravely. “Okay, Uncle David. He’s not going to be happy!”

  “Well then, tell him to keep his opinions on real men to himself, okay?”

  “Okay, Uncle David.” She looked around. “Uncle David, I see presents in the suitcase. Are those for us?”

  Dex buried his face in Kane’s arm again, and Kane patted the back of his head. Kids. You had to love ’em, ’cause you couldn’t give them to other people to put in a cage.

  “Yes, sweetheart. Would you like me to put them under the tree?”

  Again that grave-eyed nod. “Can I put them under the tree?”

  “You gonna get help?” Dex asked. Kane noticed that his voice got more… more Western when he was here with his family. It was cute.

  “Yeah. Hold on a sec.” And then, after barely turning her head over her shoulders, she yelled at the top of her lungs, “Garth, you get your skinny butt up here and help me with the presents!”

  Kane and Dex looked at each other, surprised and a little horrified, and Kane did what he’d been longing to do since he’d woken up with the little girl staring at him.

  He pulled the covers over his head.

  “Coward,” Dex muttered, but when Kane gave him a hand under the covers, Dex grabbed it and squeezed, so Kane knew he wasn’t really mad.

  Kane heard more feet up the stairs, and then Dex talking to probably the string-bean little boy, and then there was rustling and talking and more pattering and Dex hollering “And could you close the door, Garth? Thanks a lot” before he tugged the covers back and then pulled them over his head so it was him and Kane in the blanket fort.

  “They’re gone,” he whispered, and Kane grunted.

  “That’s what you think. Those kids were never gonna leave.”

  Dex laughed softly, his warm puffs of breath filling the space between them. “Let’s wait another fifteen minutes and then get up and shower. After breakfast, we can go out and look in the tool barn. With any luck, we can have that thing all adapted before lunch. It’ll be like a workout, right?”

  Kane brightened. A workout? Awesome. His muscles were starting to tense up as it was. And then—“Dex, so you think it’ll be private in there?”

  Dex nodded. Kane smiled, knowing it was the same wide, childish, greedy smile that the little girl had given. “Good. I’d really like to kiss you!”

  Dex laughed low and quiet, but they didn’t kiss. Kane didn’t expect them to. Not in the daylight, and not in this house.

  THEY cooked together for breakfast—a sausage egg scramble, and because Dex knew what to do for seasoning, Kane didn’t need quite so much ketchup. Dex’s mom was there with Dex’s sister and sister-in-law, and they were making something at the kitchen table—something that involved hot glue, fabric bits, weirdo little craft store jib-jobs, something called “raffee,” and buttons.

  Kane had no idea what it was, and he didn’t want one in Dex’s house, but when Mrs. Worral asked Dex if he’d like to have a centerpiece for the table when he got home, Dex smiled thinly and said, “Sure, Mom. That would be really sweet of you.”

  Dex turned around then to brown the onions in the bacon grease, and he crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue at Kane, who nearly swallowed his tongue not to bust up. Kane was chopping up leftover baked potatoes from the night before, and he dumped them into the grease too. While Dex stirred them in, Kane went and got the eggs from the refrigerator.

  “Mom, you don’t want to give him one of these! They’re girly! Any girl he brings home is going to see this and think he’s got a girl already!”

  Kane set the eggs down at Dex’s elbow and tried not to cringe. God, Debbie’s voice was really starting to grate on his nerves. One of the best parts about coming clean to Lola about where the money was coming from was that Kane hadn’t had to hear her try to shove him into a relationship anymore.

  Dex looked at his sister and grimaced, then started cracking the eggs into the pan. “If I wanted a girl that badly, I would have made Kane get rid of his snake. That thing would pretty much scare off anyone not serious about the job.”

  Kane heard the double meaning—he wasn’t good at that, but he heard it this time, and he grinned. “Yeah, Tomas isn’t really subtle about staking his claim,” he said. He was throwing away the eggshells in what Dex had called the compost bucket as Dex finished with them.

  Dex finished cracking and started stirring, and Kane looked over at Mrs. Worral when she shuddered. “I really thought you were joking about the animals, Kane. Why would you bring critters like that in the house? Why do you like them, anyway?”

  Kane cocked his head, thinking about the answer, while Dex continued to stir the eggs so they didn’t stick to the bottom of the old-fashioned cast-iron frying pan. “I dunno,” he said after a minute. “They’re just all muscle, you know? And their skin, it’s pretty and functional and silky. And they’re really affectionate if you give them a chance.”

  “Yeah right!” Debbie scoffed, and Kane kept his face impassive while he imagined squishing her head between his finger and thumb.

  “No, it’s true,” Dex said. He kept stirring and scraping, which was good because that meant the eggs were getting brown, and Kane liked them that way. He had a thought and went rooting into the refrigerator for cheese while Dex spoke. “Tomas? He likes me. He keeps escaping and crawling into bed with me. The first time it happened, I about crapped my pants—”

  “David!”

  “Mom, it was a snake crawling up my shorts while I slept—”

  “Oh heavens!” Mrs. Worral shuddered.

  “See? You would have too. But he really was just cold. After that, he just kept coming to snuggle when he got cold or lonely. I mean, I stop by his cage when Kane’s not there to say hi—”

  “I didn’t know that!” Kane said, startled, as he opened a bag of pre-grated cheese. Dex took a handful of the stuff out and threw it on and Kane closed the bag.

  “Well yeah. I mean, I was like my mom here. I wanted to know what made them so special.” Dex winked at him, and he smiled back and turned around to put the cheese away.

  “Yeah?” Kane said, straightening and going to fish the plates from the drying rack.

  “Yeah. They were… they were nice. They moved in their own time. They were… they were thoughtful. Even when the snake or iguana moves quick—and they can—it’s a real powerful move. It’s sort of soothing after a while, you know?”

  Kane smiled, happy. “Yeah, I know.”

  “That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want a rabbit eventually.”

  “Why not a cat?” Cathy, Travis’s wife, asked unexpectedly, and Dex grinned at her.

  “Because isn’t a cat a little average, after having snakes? I don’t know—I think Kane set the bar pretty high.”

  Debbie laughed shrilly, but Dex’s mom and Cathy were exchanging weird looks.

  Kane ignored them. “Those eggs about cooked, Dexter?” he asked, a little bit starving, and Dex looked at him.

  “You alw
ays ask that, but you never like them runny. You want them dry, you’re going to have to wait a minute, okay?”

  Kane grunted. “Right. Of course. But I’m gonna make you suffer when I’m making tamale pie, you know that?”

  Dex grunted right back. “That’s different. You always try to cook it until there’s a crust on top. I like it when it’s all juicy. That sauce you use is amazing.”

  “Yeah, there’s supposed to be a crust on top,” Kane told him, but he was pleased anyway. Dex liked his cooking. That’s why they were taking a class. Together. Where they could get better at it.

  Kane looked up then, and it wasn’t his imagination. The women were all having silent, maddening, eye-humping conversation while he and Dex cooked. It was just rude, that’s what it was.

  “What?” he asked, irritably and Cathy spoke up hesitantly.

  “You guys cook together like you’re married.”

  And then Debbie pitched in and both saved their asses and confirmed Kane’s deepest suspicions.

  “I still think you two are crazy,” she muttered. “Henry and Mal are just like that when they’re putting together a car.”

  Kane looked at Dex and saw his jaw locked so tight it was twitching, and decided not to say anything. “It means we know each other,” Dex said, and Kane nodded, not wanting to look at anybody. Instead, he held up the two plates again and Dex dished up the eggs, then turned off the gas and grabbed the ketchup. He knew just how much ketchup Kane liked, which was good. When he was done squirting ketchup, they both moved their plates to the spare, clean corner of the table to sit down to eat.

  “Well, I think it’s neat,” Cathy said encouragingly. “I mean, I don’t know what it’ll take to get Travis to cook, but I’m betting it would be dire.”

  Kane grinned at her. “We just like to eat,” he said gratefully.

  Cathy winked at him, and he and Dex dug into the chow.

  THEY washed up after themselves and then put on their five hundred protective layers of clothes to walk out between the house and the tool barn, which was about three hundred yards off the house. There was a path, but it was still icy and under about a foot of snow, and Kane felt like he was getting a workout just walking in it.