by Jaime Samms
“Has everyone gone fucking country?” Len muttered.
Stanley lifted an eyebrow, Vance chuckled, and Len let out a soft breath. “Fine. Will it make them happy?”
“Will it make you happy?” Vance asked.
Len shrugged. “I do miss them.”
“So invite them,” Stanley said. “Be the one to start the ball rolling. If you want to be back in the band, make an effort.”
Len nodded. “Okay.”
Stanley sat back and spread his hands. “Okay? Just like that?”
“What did you think I was going to say?” Len asked.
“Actually, I thought he’d veto the idea before it got halfway out my mouth.”
Len looked over his shoulder at Vance. “You didn’t.”
“No, darlin’, I didn’t. If you want to see your friends, then you should see them. I think it’s best they come here, though. Good enough?”
Len nodded. Better than good enough. This was home. He wanted to see them but doing so on his own turf made the idea less intimidating. “Thanks, Vance.”
Once more, Vance smiled the wide smile Len strove so hard to get from him, and a bit of the morning’s insanity slipped into its proper perspective. He managed to return the smile with a smaller one, but it was more genuine than Len could remember offering over something so insignificant in a long, long time.
“Well.” Stanley placed both hands flat on the table and pushed to his feet. He shrugged out of his suit jacket, which he hung on the back of the chair, and removed his tie. “Vance, you got some of my old clothes here still? I’m ready for that ride you promised.”
“What ride?” Len asked, jumping up and putting himself between the two men.
Vance placed a calming hand on his shoulder. “Relax, lover. Stan’s comin’ with us to fetch your horse and mine. Go find your hat and let’s get a move on. Let Kilmer know you’ll be back for evening chores.”
Len glanced out the kitchen window, but the Hummer was gone and there was no sign of the gaggle of girls who had accosted him.
“Okay,” he said at last. “I’ll be right back.” He prided himself that he didn’t quite dash across the open yard as though expecting enemy fire at any second. He found Kilmer in the barn and was relieved to see the rancher wasn’t upset about the earlier fiasco.
“Forgot you’re just as famous as Vance, Len. I should have warned you about the boarders and the sometimes-crazy people who leave their horses here as an excuse to try and catch a glimpse of a star. I’ll make sure you know when to expect ’em from now on. Here.” He dropped Len’s hat onto his head. “One of ’em tried to run off with that.”
Len took the hat off his head and inspected it, but there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it.
“Don’t worry,” Kilmer laughed at him. “I made sure to clean the girl cooties off.”
Len made a face but put the hat back on. “Vance said to tell you we’re going to get the horses now. I’ll be back in time for evening chores.”
“Sounds good.” Kilmer nodded. “Take care, and don’t forget to show Hooligan who’s boss. That horse’ll take a mile if you give him an inch.”
“Don’t I know it,” Len muttered as he left.
10
“YOU DON’T seem happy about this,” Lenore said amicably. She was on the far side of the room from the window where Len was standing, watching the small park across the street. Vance had disappeared under the thick foliage, and Len waited, hoping for a glimpse of his man, but he didn’t seem in a hurry to return.
“You want a cup of coffee?” Lenore asked, brandishing the carafe in his general direction.
Len shook his head. “I’m good.” They had moved his appointments from afternoons to mornings. For one thing, earlier in the day it tended to be easier to avoid the sneak attacks of eager paparazzi and get off the grounds unmolested, and for another, if Len was getting up at the godforsaken hour he was to shovel shit, he might as well keep it up, metaphorically speaking, without a break. Get it all over with before lunch.
Lenore Stanton, it turned out, was not so much a morning person. They were halfway through his hour-long session, and she was on her third cup. The ritual was much the same every day, and he found it amusing. It was one of her very few flaws.
“You should come,” he said suddenly, turning to watch her dress her coffee with mounds of sugar.
She chuckled. “Because that wouldn’t be awkward, introducing your friends to your shrink.”
“You said you want to meet them.”
“I said it would be interesting to meet them. To see if they are as you say they are. But I don’t think your birthday party is the place for your doctor, Len. If you want me to, I’ll meet them in a more controlled setting, but that isn’t what we were talking about.”
“No.” He slumped back against the window. “I suppose not.”
“Why on earth would you want me there?” She turned, sipping her coffee and eyeing him curiously.
“I’d have someone to talk to.”
Her smile was amused, but short-lived. “You talk about these people like they’re your family, and you don’t think you would be able to talk to them at a party?”
“They’re going to have a thousand questions, aren’t they.” He wasn’t asking, really. They would. Beks would want to see what he’d written lately. Jethro would be all over him to jam, and Clive would sulk. Trevor probably wouldn’t come.
How was he supposed to tell Beks he hadn’t had a song pass through his broken brain in weeks, and explain to Jethro that the thought of picking up his guitar made his stomach churn? Maybe his music days were just done, and he should stick to mucking out stalls. He was good at that. Kilmer told him every day how good he was at it. Thorough. Dependable. Hardworking. Those were all good things.
Besides, the stable was one place where his dyslexia and ADHD and unsteady nerves didn’t factor in. He could be himself there, and nothing else mattered.
“They will have a lot of questions, Len. Given your career, they are questions you’ll have to learn to answer eventually. Not just for your friends, but some day, your fans, the media, they’ll come up a lot, and you have to learn how to cope. I can’t do that for you.”
Len didn’t respond. He didn’t even look at her.
“You know that going to your party isn’t something I can do, Len.”
He supposed he did. That was the limitation of therapy, wasn’t it? It never went beyond these four walls. Out there, he was still on his own.
“Len?”
“Yeah, I get it.”
More silence, like she was waiting for more. He didn’t have more. It was what it was.
“You’re eating better,” Lenore said out of the blue.
“Huh?” He glanced at her.
She’d taken up a position perched on the edge of her desk, coffee cup clasped in both hands, as though it was the elixir of life. She took a sip and nodded. “I can tell. You’ve filled out a bit. Has your stomach settled?”
He made a noncommittal sound. “Just hungrier. Shoveling shit takes a lot of energy.”
“I guess it does. Still, it’s good for you, if it means you’re eating more. You were getting too thin. Hadn’t you noticed?”
He hadn’t, really, but Vance had, now that he thought about it, been cooking more lean meat and buying things like avocadoes and chickpeas. Not that his hapless boyfriend had any idea what to do with the latter two items. Len had rescued them from oblivion by making some guacamole and hummus, which Vance had promptly turned his nose up at.
“Then why the hell did you buy them?” Len had asked.
Vance only shrugged at him as he turned yet another steak over in the marinade, the recipe for which he’d plucked from the Internet. “They’re supposed to be good for you.”
“They are”—Len held a chip with a healthy dollop of hummus on it up in front of Vance’s face—“if you actually eat them. Here. Just try it.”
Vance made a face, but op
ened his mouth and accepted the morsel. He didn’t make a pronouncement one way or the other, even after he’d swallowed and taken a swig of his beer.
“Well?”
“It’s… pasty.”
Len laughed. “Of course it’s pasty, genius. It’s pureed chickpeas.”
“You goin’ to serve that at your party?”
“Maybe. With pita chips, though. These don’t go with hummus.” Len took another bite and dipped a second chip for Vance, which he took delicately between his teeth. “It’s a little bland. I’ll play with it a bit. See if I can make it better.” He set the bowl on the counter and leaned in to smell the marinade. “You should add more Worcestershire to that.”
“I followed the recipe.” Vance tapped Len’s hand when he reached for the bottle, but he grabbed it anyway and twisted off the lid.
“The recipe is wrong.”
“No it ain’t! Gimme that!” He made a grab for the bottle. His tongs clattered into the sink as he chased Len across the kitchen.
Len held the bottle up behind him, as if he had a chance of actually keeping it away from his much larger lover, but the game was fun, and the lure of getting Vance to chase him even more so.
He didn’t stop until his butt was against the counter across the room and Vance pinned him there, crotch-to-crotch, hand tight around his raised wrist. “Hand it over, brat.”
Len grinned. “Make me.”
Instead of trying for the bottle again, Vance changed tactics and leaned into Len, taking his chin in hand, positioning him for a kiss that he took without quarter. In less than a heartbeat, the bottle slipped from Len’s fingers as he opened his mouth to Vance’s tongue and forgot about everything else.
Vance snatched the sauce out of the air, but to his credit, didn’t relinquish his commanding hold on Len or end the kiss to do it. He finished with a deep tongue-probing that left Len panting and weak-kneed.
“Thank you!” He turned back to his steaks, and Len took a moment to catch his breath.
“That was so unfair.”
“You’re just annoyed you didn’t think of it first.” Vance removed the lid from the bottle and held it over the pan of steaks. “So how much of this shit do I put in here, master chef?”
Len grinned and held out a hand, knowing Vance would relinquish it this time. He did, and Len proceeded to sprinkle the liquid over the meat, turning the slabs and sloshing everything around to mix it in. Vance watched and listened and munched on chips and dip as Len explained why the marinade needed more Worcestershire and pepper and a few other things he added as he talked.
“You like cookin’?” Vance asked as he handed over the cover for the pan.
Len shrugged. “I’m good at it.”
“So you should do it more,” Vance decided.
“You don’t like me waiting on you, remember?” Len carefully covered the meat and smoothed the plastic wrap, taking his time, using the exercise as an excuse to not look at Vance.
“I said that, didn’t I?” Vance asked.
Len nodded.
“Maybe I had the wrong end of the stick.”
Len glanced up at him, trying hard not to let himself hope maybe he was making inroads to Vance’s life outside his very strict Dominant needs. “What stick?”
Vance popped a chip into Len’s mouth and smiled. “Maybe I should have looked at it from your point of view. You like it. You’re good at it. Better’n me, that’s for damn sure. And if you want to do it, who am I to say you shouldn’t?”
“Master of your own home,” Len said, very serious. “It’s your call.”
“And you never complained, but darlin’, you really are good at it. So if you want to, then do it.”
“And you won’t feel like I’m pandering? Like I’m serving you in ways you don’t want?”
Vance cupped a hand over the back of his neck. “Do you think it’s servin’ me?”
Len let himself lean into the touch and nodded. “Sort of. It’s doing something for you that I can do, because there are shitloads of things I can’t, and too many things you do for me. It’s something I can give back. It seems only fair.”
“It ain’t about bein’ fair. You know that, right? It’s about doin’ what makes you happy. If this is somethin’ that will make you happy, I shouldn’t have denied it to you.”
Len wasn’t sure what to make of his Dom basically admitting to having made a mistake in how he was handling things. He wasn’t supposed to make mistakes. Was he? “I didn’t feel denied,” he said quietly.
Vance squeezed his neck. “Try that one again, darlin’.”
Len swallowed hard and sighed. “Okay. Maybe a bit. But it was your rule. All I could do so far to make you happy was to try and follow your rules. I want more than that.”
He wasn’t expecting Vance to kiss him, so the soft touch of lips on the side of his head was a surprising relief. “Do you know, that’s the first time you’ve told me what you want?”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yeah, lover, it is.”
Len set the pan of meat aside and looked at Vance. “Really?”
Crossing his arms, Vance leaned a hip on the counter. “Yeah. It is.”
“Well.” Len pinched his lips together, unsure where to take the conversation now. Inside, for once, the sticky ball of emotion was, if not gone, at least still. “I’ve told you a lot of what I don’t want, I guess.” He looked at the floor and sighed.
“Yes, you have.” Vance’s agreement was gentle, though. “And that’s okay, because I need to know that too. But this is your life. You do have to start decidin’ what you want.”
It was so much easier to let Vance decide what he could have. To let Lenore dictate what he should have. To figure out what he wanted, on his own, seemed dangerous. He’d wanted to be best friends with Trevor, he’d wanted to be with Trevor, at least on some level, and look how that had turned out.
“You’re quiet this morning, Len.”
Outside, the park was bathed in sweet morning sunlight, and Len watched the leaves rustle and searched for a glimpse of Vance through the green-and-gold kaleidoscope.
“What are you thinking?”
“Just….” He shrugged.
“You do know this whole therapy thing only works if you actually talk, right?”
Len smiled faintly. It was nice they had progressed to that stage where she could make fun of him and not risk a malpractice suit.
“So what are you thinking about?”
“I’m making progress, right?” He liked to think that earning his way into the kitchen, being able to speak out about his dissatisfaction with that rule, at least was a step in the right direction.
“Progress?” Lenore tilted her head. “In what way?”
“The good way. You know”—he waved a hand in the air—“the getting-better way.”
“You keep looking at this as though you think you’re sick or broken. That you can be cured. Fixed.”
It was his turn to look at her sideways. “I can be fixed. What’s the point of all this if I can’t fix anything?”
Her smile was infuriatingly calm. “Fixing yourself begs the assumption you were broken to begin with.”
“What would you call me, if not broken?”
She set her coffee down and straightened her skirt, suddenly all business and in command. “Let me ask you this. You’re dyslexic. Is that a malfunction, something broken to be fixed, or is it just the way you are?”
He squinted at her, unsure if she was being serious. “Drink some more coffee. Dyslexia is in your big book of crazy, isn’t it? There’s a diagnosis.”
“A label, Len. Just a label. Until just a few embarrassingly short years ago, homosexuality was in there too. Masochism is still in there. That doesn’t mean either of those things are deficiencies. Just different ways to be.”
“Dyslexia is a malfunction,” he said. “It’s a hindrance. It’s made my life hell. There are things I can’t do. Things that should be easy t
urn my brain inside out instead.” He snarled and slammed a fist into the window he was leaning on, realized what he’d done, and forced himself to unhinge his knuckles enough to let go. “There, you see? Temper tantrums and ADHD, post-traumatic stress… shit. There are a million things wrong with me.”
She let out a sigh and retrieved her mug. “And as long as you keep thinking like that, there will always be a reason you can’t have the things you want. The things you deserve.
“There are a million and one ways to live your life so those issues don’t slow you down. Exercise and eating right can significantly lessen the symptoms, if you want to call them that, of ADHD. Your brain can be taught to turn the world around the right way, if you want to, or you can develop a way to communicate through means other than the written word.” She peered at him over her mug. “Music, for example. Temper can be controlled through self-discipline. Through consciously asserting control over yourself, and letting the people who love you pick up the slack when you need them to.”
He stared at her.
She shrugged and wandered around to sit at her desk and search the side drawers for her pad of paper. “It took my profession a long time to understand the difference between broken and different. So it never occurred to the professionals that the easiest way to cure the problems surrounding being gay was to let yourself be who you are and find the right man to be happy with.”
“It isn’t that simple.” Len practically choked on the words.
“No. Of course it isn’t. Saying and doing are very far apart, but you can hardly do anything about any of your problems until you put them into proper perspective. Believing yourself broken in ways that can’t be fixed is a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“Is that your way of telling me to change the record?”
“It’s my way of reminding you that however you got to where you are in life, you followed a path. You made decisions. You can’t unmake them, but you can make different ones going forward. So. Let’s begin again. Tell me why you left Firefly.”
Len boggled at her. “That? You want to start with that? We’ve beat that dead horse pretty thoroughly, don’t you think?”