by Jaime Samms
“I know. So am I. Don’t think for a minute I don’t know I deserved—”
“No.”
“I was a shit.”
“So not the point.” Len turned to face his friend and found Damian staring back at him, belligerent, glaring, but he could see Trevor in there too, looking out past the makeup and spiked hair, hovering, haunted, waiting. “All the things I did to you, Trev, the way I used sex against you, the temper tantrums, throwing things, and the yelling and mocking you. It’s all bullshit, and there’s no excuse for it. I was wrong, and I wish I could go back and undo all the harm I did.”
“You can’t.”
It was so hard to know if it was the persona talking at him, or his best friend trying hard to talk to him. In reality, it was the song he’d just struggled through that gave him more insight than the conversation he was having. Trevor, Damian, it didn’t matter. The man was still hurting and raw. Still waiting for the next thing Len was going to do to him that would wound, one way or another.
“I should go,” Len said.
“I just got here.”
“And you’re scared to death of me.”
“I’m n-not.”
Len smiled sadly. “Then what was that?”
Trevor shrugged. “I d-don’t want to be.”
“But it’s okay that you are. I’ll do better, Trev. I promise. I’ll be better for you. But we shouldn’t be alone together right now. I don’t want to stress you out.”
“D-don’t r-run away from me.”
“I—”
“I’m not fucking fragile. I won’t break because you used to lose your temper.”
“Fuck, Trev, it was more than that, and you know it.”
Trevor closed his eyes, and Len could see the struggle on his face. His friend was fighting his own fear, and it was horrible to watch and know he was the source of that fear. Trevor clenched the back of the chair he was leaning on, arms tense. His head sank, little by little, as though he was losing the battle.
“How do w-we get us b-back?” Trevor asked.
“Right now, I’m working on getting me back. Or maybe on finding who I ever was in the first place. I was lost a long, long time before we met, Trev, and it wasn’t fair of me to make everything I became dependent on you being what I wanted you to be. Now I have to go back to the beginning and start all over. I have to build myself from the ground up, and honestly? I don’t think I can do that with you.” He gently touched Trevor’s arm when his friend opened his mouth to protest. “It doesn’t mean I love you any less than I ever did. Or that I don’t miss the hell out of you. I do. I want us back too, but I was more than just bad for you. I was literally your worst nightmare. Clearly, I still am. So I have to be someone else. Someone you can trust, before we can get anything back. Or build anything new. And I’m not ready yet. I don’t think you are either.”
“You going to build yourself around Vance now?” Trevor asked, and the bitterness in his tone was like acid on Len’s skin.
He stepped back, scalded. “No. Not any more than you’re building yourself around Stan.”
“He wouldn’t let me get away with that shit.”
Len pursed his lips. Would Vance?
“Do you think I’m a victim?” Trevor asked, dropping his gaze to the floor.
Len gaped. “What?”
“A victim. Do you think I’m a victim? Do you think I was helpless to stop you doing what you did?”
“I always thought you were a lot stronger than me. And I was pissed off when you didn’t hold me up. I wasn’t being reasonable or rational. I was just as scared as you were. But I knew how to hurt, and I did. I had that advantage over you from the very beginning, because I knew how to be mean.”
To his surprise, Trevor nodded. “That doesn’t really answer my question, though.”
“Does it matter what I think?”
“Yeah, Lenny, it does.” At last, Trevor lifted his gaze and looked him in the eye, and his pale green eyes were piercingly hard. “It matters what you think. You’ve been my best friend all of my life that matters, and if you think I’m a weak, stupid fool, then how do we still be friends?”
“I don’t think that. I never did.”
“But you say you can’t be around me because you think I’m not strong enough to deal with it.”
“If you’re still having nightmares about me and what I did, then yeah, I think you’re not strong enough. I have them too. About Ace and my dad, and the creep who photographed me. And I don’t think I could ever, in a million years, face any of them again. I’d break apart.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t.”
Len snorted. “I would. I’d crumble to a million pieces, and not even Vance could hold me together.”
Trevor smiled at him and shook his head. “You don’t need Vance to hold you together. That’s always been your mistake. You think you need protection and safety and someone to shelter you or hold you up, and you don’t. You’ve always been the strong one. Look at all the shit you survived and tell me you’re not strong enough to be who you want to be now.”
“I don’t want to hurt you again.”
“I wouldn’t let you.”
Len studied Trevor and tried to see the truth of that. All he saw was uncertainty. Fragility. And he couldn’t honestly say if that was Trevor he was looking at, or a reflection of himself. The fact that he wanted to be better for his friend didn’t necessarily mean he knew how. He hadn’t been kidding when he said he knew how to hurt, how to be mean. He’d been taught a lot of harsh lessons in his life about how to do harm to another human being, and he was good at it.
He wasn’t nearly as sure he could do the opposite.
“I hope you wouldn’t,” he said at last. “But then, I hope you wouldn’t need to defend yourself against me anymore. And until I’m certain I can do right by you, I don’t want to take the chance.”
A crooked smile that was all Damian’s sharp wit on one side and all of Trevor’s sweet longing on the other greeted that statement. “I’m just not sure who it is you’re not giving enough credit to,” his friend said. “Me or you.”
All Len could do was shrug.
Damian held up his left hand, showing off the twisted scar tissue and ruined ink. “I don’t need therapy to tell me you weren’t good for me. I have the scars to prove it.”
Before Len could decide just exactly how much that hurt, Damian continued.
“But maybe you do need a shrink to get through the muck and figure out how much I hurt you right back with my own shit. I wasn’t good for you either, and you have to let me own that.”
“So why do we even want such a twisted friendship back?” Len asked quietly.
“Because.” Damian plucked the strings of his guitar, and a shiver of sound reverberated through the amp, drifting through the air around them. “We’re good together too. I don’t want to lose that.”
“You think we’ll still be able to write together once we aren’t fucking each other over?”
“I know it. I never connected to anyone through the music the way I do you, Lenny. We can get that back. It’ll be different, but it’ll still be us. You’ll see.”
“You’re so sure.”
Damian grinned, and this time it was all Damian, and Trevor sank back into his eyes, making him glow from deep inside. “I’m always sure about the music.”
And that was true. When he didn’t know anything else about anything, Damian knew the music. They made it together, and it was as real a thing as Lenny had ever known in his life. None of the abuse could stand up to the music when they were onstage together. Lenny and Damian were unstoppable. Len and Trevor, on the other hand, they were a disaster.
“You don’t want to come back to Firefly, do you?” Damian asked.
“I never said that.”
“But if you wanted it, you’d do it. You’ve always taken what you wanted.”
Len took hold of Damian’s wrist and held it between them, the back of Damian’s han
d facing his friend. “And look what that got you.”
Damian wrenched free, taking a step back. He rubbed the back of his hand on his jeans. “It doesn’t matter about that.”
“Yeah, it does.”
But Damian was shaking his head, even as he backed another step away. “I can take you, Lenny. I always have.”
Len had to agree with him there. “Yeah. You can. And you can hurt me right back. You can pack up everything we had together into a pile of boxes and ship it to Vance without a word to me. You can go out and do stupid, fucked-up shit to get back at me for not letting you into my pants, and one of these days, you’ll let the wrong guy fuck you, or stick the wrong needle in your arm just to show me you can give as good as you get. I won’t be the one who pushes you that far. I won’t. I love you. I won’t ruin you.”
“I don’t know how to do this without you!” Trevor curled his hands into fists. His eyes sparked, and the dark makeup only made him look that much fiercer.
“You fucking do! You do, Trev. You were magic before I came along. Clive was always right about me riding your coattails. If we ever made good music together, it was because you made me try, to reach for your star. We all try to be good enough for you.”
“That’s bullshit.” Trevor forced his stage persona to the fore. “They do fine without me. Jet can sing. Chris can sing. I’m just a slick voice and slinky pair of hips. I’ve got nothing like what the rest of you have.”
“That really what you think? That why you’re fucking up now?” Len asked.
Damian stared at him.
“The guys say you do what you have to, but nothing more. They say it and try to sound pissed off, but they aren’t. They’re scared for you. They miss you too.”
“It’s different without you.”
“Get used to different, Trev. Even if I come back, it won’t be what it was. It can never be what it was. We’re grown-ups now.”
Damian snorted. “Speak for yourself.”
Len almost laughed, but the haunted shadows in his friend’s eyes robbed the sound of mirth, and it came out hollow and thin. “You know Vance calls me his boy sometimes, but it isn’t a boy he wants. It’s a man. Someone who can kneel at his feet and not be afraid. I have to give that to him. I want to give that to him. So I have to leave the rest behind, somehow.”
“Leave me behind, you mean.”
“Leave what we did to each other behind. You know I’m right. You’ve already done it.”
“I’m trying to get us back, here,” Trevor protested.
Len shook his head. “Maybe as a last-ditch effort not to be who you really are. It isn’t about us anymore.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s about you and Stan and me and Vance. You and me, we aren’t a couple. We never really were. But if you’re going to be Stan’s, really be his, you have to let me go.”
“But—”
“You already have. At least you started. You could have brought my stuff here, or put it in storage and cleaned your shit out of the apartment. But you shipped it all to Vance. Every last spoon and pillowcase and book. I can’t even fucking read, and you sent me all your goddamn books. Don’t even tell me you didn’t know how that would make me feel.”
“I—”
“But it’s okay. Because it was what you had to do to move forward, and I get that now. So I’ll put it all away and play my new guitar, and see what happens. Just….”
“Just what?”
“Don’t set your hopes on Firefly being what it was. Make it into what you want it to be, with or without me. Make it yours, because whatever you think, that band is you.” He pointed at Damian’s hand and cocked his head. “I didn’t want to admit that. I didn’t want you to go shooting off into the stratosphere without me, and I could see it happening. I could see you being too big to need me anymore, and I was terrified. What I did was unforgivable, Trev. I was jealous of everything you’re going to have without me. I saw it then, and I see it now. Only now, I’m not as scared as I was, because I have my own life. I have something I can call my own. Even my music that has nothing to do with you. So maybe the way we got where we are was all wrong, but at least we got here. At least we can move on.”
“You mean Vance?”
Len bit his lower lip and fiddled with his guitar a moment, trying to decide exactly what he meant. “I mean me, Trev.” He looked up and felt it, that tearing, ripping sensation inside that made him think he was going to leave a bloody mess all over the studio’s nice tan carpeting. “I mean, I can walk out of here tonight and go back to a life I love. If Vance is gone tomorrow”—he took a deep breath because even the thought of his big cowboy being gone was heart-wrenching—“I’d get through it. I have some things that are just mine now. My own music, my own kitchen, when I can sneak it away from Maggie, my own horse.” He chuckled. “It’s crazy, but shit like that, it matters to me. I can look after myself and even if it’s scary, I know I can do it.”
“And Firefly?”
Len shrugged. “Maybe there will be a place for me there, when we’re both ready, but that isn’t now. I still have things I want to do that I can’t if I’m on tour with you.”
“Me personally.”
“I wish I could make you see. What I have to do is about you. It’s about what I did to you and how I have to change because I can’t undo any of it. I can only make myself into a person who doesn’t act like that anymore, and the more I try to be that guy, the more I realize, it’s like being an alcoholic. There isn’t a cure. There isn’t a magic pill that makes a person able to control their temper any more than there’s one that makes them able to stop drinking. I gotta think about this every day. I have to decide every day not to lash out, and it’s hard. And I’m just not ready to be around you, because you make me crazy. You scare me. You’re my whiskey on the rocks.”
“I can change—”
“That isn’t what it’s about. You shouldn’t have to change so I don’t hurt you. That’s just another way for me to not be who I should be. Change if you want to, for you, but don’t do it for me.”
Damian studied him for a long time. Finally, he slumped against the chair and lowered his gaze. “Don’t get rid of my books.”
Len snorted. “Okay.”
“And stop avoiding me.”
“Trev—”
“This band is as much yours as it is ours, and I won’t let you give up on it. Take however long you have to, but stop acting like we can’t be in the same room together. We can.”
Len nodded. “I’ll try.” It was the best he could offer. He’d done a lot more talking tonight than he’d imagined possible, but saying it all out loud to someone other than Dr. Stanton had clarified things in his mind. It did hurt to rip away the old, rotten bits of his soul. It was messy and painful, and he hated it. But it was necessary. The scar tissue underneath would soften and fade in time, but in the end, scraping all the crap out of his heart and learning how to breathe clean air again wasn’t something he could put off doing any longer.
And part of that detestable job had to be letting go of Trevor and accepting that Damian, however wild and frightening Len found him, was here to stay. He had to walk away completely before he could come back.
“Don’t be mad if you don’t see me around a lot, okay?” he said. “Because I need to do this my own way.”
“I don’t like your way.”
Len smiled wryly. “Neither do I, but it’s the right way. You have to trust me.”
“Trust the man who put me through hell.”
Ouch. Len breathed through the sucker punch, but he nodded. “I know. Believe me, I know.” Because he’d been on that side of the abuse, and he knew exactly how impossible it was to trust the person who kept knocking you down.
Trevor raised his face and stared Len in the eye. “I’ve never said that out loud before.”
“I know.”
“Stan always talks about it, wants me to say what happened.”
“You never told him?”
“Not everything.”
“Maybe you should.”
Trevor nodded. “Maybe.”
“It might help.”
“It might.”
“Maybe you should say it to me.”
Trevor shook his head.
“It might help.”
“I was scared of you sometimes. Damian never was. He was hella pissed off at you most of the time, but he didn’t have to be scared of you. He had his own ways to deal with it.”
It was Len’s turn to nod.
“If I forgive you, what happens to Damian?”
“You talk about him like he isn’t you.”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
“When you get up onstage, you’ll always be Damian. You just maybe won’t need to be him so much when you’re not up there.”
“He might go away.”
“I doubt that.” Len offered a small, reassuring smile. “Trevor stutters. You’ll always need that protection to sing. And it’ll always be there. Just, I hope you won’t need it to protect you from me anymore.”
“Maybe.”
“And I’m gonna go out on a limb and say Stan kinda likes the dual-personality thing. As spiffed up and straitlaced as he is, I bet he likes that bad boy you can be.”
Damian did grin at that, and the light flashed through his eyes again. “Maybe.”
For a little while, they were silent, Len playing with his guitar, softly bringing music into the room, and Damian watching him. Forgiveness was possible, maybe. Someday. But Len sensed it wasn’t going to be today. Trevor wanted his safety blanket back, to have what he knew and pull it around him like a shield, even if that shield had spikes that dug into his flesh and bones and did more damage than it protected him from.
Damian was still angry.
Len was willing to wait.
They were like that, facing each other, the space filled with all that hurt and fear and uncertainty, when the door opened and first Clive, then Vance and the rest of the band came in.
“You ready to go, darlin’?” Vance asked from the doorway.
“Yeah.” Len pulled the guitar strap off over his head and gave the rest of his friends small waves and nods. “See you guys next week, I guess.” He stopped at the door and turned to look at Damian. “Take care of yourself.”