Bonfires

by Amy Lane

  Beautiful, Larx. Now come on, junior rookie reporter with too much blonde hair.

  And she did them proud. “Do you feel anyone was at fault for this incident? Is there anything anyone could have done to keep this student from coming onto the campus armed?”

  “Since you asked, our school board spent last night distracting both the sheriff’s investigation and the community from finding the student in question, instead focusing the blame for a violent crime on the sexual orientation of the victim. This morning—right now, in fact—I could really use my vice principal on campus to help with student crisis management, but he was removed for objecting to the school board’s actions. The kid coming into my classroom with a gun had absolutely nothing to do with either of these things. This campus would have been a lot safer if we had focused on helping students instead of finding ways to not help the ones the school board doesn’t understand.”

  Marissa Schroeder’s big blue eyes grew bigger and rounder as Larx spoke. “That is really unfortunate,” she said sincerely. “What do you think this community should learn from this incident?”

  Larx frowned, and Aaron could tell he’d had his limit. “Be more afraid of the people with the guns and spend less time worrying about who’s kissing whom,” he said shortly. “Give me a day or two and I might come up with something more profound.”

  Marissa turned back toward the camera, and Aaron spotted the wobble in Larx’s knees before he went down entirely. He stepped in and got Larx around the waist and started to guide him away from the camera and the noise. He was waylaid by the tiny blonde blue-eyed reporter, who started to follow them across the quad in her high heels.

  “Deputy? Is Principal Larkin okay?”

  “He’s fine,” Aaron said, grimacing at the mic in his face. “He needs some food and some rest and some antibiotics and he’ll be dandy.”

  “What can you tell us about Principal Larkin’s state of mind before the incident this morning?”

  “I’m still here,” Larx snapped around Aaron. “And I was pissed off. My vice principal had been dragged away for no damned good reason, and my whole damned town wanted to kill gay people with fire. Now go away!”

  “Easy, easy,” Aaron muttered as they came to the squad car. The kids were leaning against the passenger’s side, away from the forensics team currently going over the inside of Julia Olson’s SUV.

  “Christi, where’s his car? I’m going to send him home with you three—”

  “No school today?” Kirby asked. He’d come trotting back from the attendance office right as Larx had gone up for his interview.

  “School’s out for summer!” Larx sang irreverently, and Aaron gave the camera a meaningful look.

  “Well, we’ve got no principal,” Kellan quipped, and the kids, bless them, took over.

  Aaron turned toward the reporter as they hustled Larx to his minivan, and just looked at her until the kids were out of earshot and she covered her microphone.

  “What do you need from us?” he asked quietly.

  “You two looked awfully cozy for a deputy sheriff and a principal,” she said without subtlety.

  Aaron kept his gaze level. “Did you hear nothing he just said? The entire school board was distracted by questions like this—the entire town was distracted by it—and that girl was wandering around, desperate for help, until she came here with a gun on campus. Can we maybe stop focusing on who’s kissing who—”

  “Whom,” she supplied, so grave and sincere he wanted to smack her.

  “Could you just maybe leave us alone to do our jobs?” he asked, his heart sore because his job was going to require that he stay at the school and help sort out the mess, and what he wanted to do was go home and sort out Larx.

  She grimaced. “Fine. I will make you a deal.” She reached into the pocket of her blazer and pulled out a card, and then grabbed the pen from her blazer. “This is me,” she said, circling her name. “I also do online pieces for a couple of websites you might have heard about.” She wrote the titles on the back and waited until his eyebrows went up. Yeah, he recognized them—both sites were extremely civil-rights friendly. “I’ve got footage of the two of you that about breaks my heart it’s so sweet. I’m not going to release it to the network without your permission, because that would be wrong, but in return, I want you to contact me in the next month for an exclusive.”

  “What if we can’t!” he protested. “His job—”

  “I get it. But if he gets his VP back, I want you to at least contact me and let me know why you can’t.”

  God, she looked little and fuzzy, but she was apparently tenacious.

  “Why us?”

  At that moment, of all things, the bell rang. A student body at about half capacity started to straggle out of rooms, probably to their next class, and Aaron realized he was going to be in charge of getting the kids home and helping Nancy put together a phone message. And when that was done, he’d need to start his end of the paperwork on Julia Olson.

  Marissa kept her steely blue gaze locked on Aaron. “Because you’re important. You’re being positive and active in your community. You’re raising a family. People need to see that.”

  Aaron grunted. “Nobody wants to see that,” he muttered. “Look, I’ve got to do my job.”

  “Please,” she said, her hand on his sleeve. “Please—I’ll cut this to make your guy look like a rock-star martyr—just think about being the poster family for what real love looks like.”

  “I haven’t even moved in,” Aaron muttered.

  Marissa rolled her eyes. “What in the hell are you waiting for? Man, life is short and you never know what’ll happen next.”

  She turned around and clipped away, her cameraman at her heels, and Aaron waved to Eamon and Nancy, who had just come out of the admin building.

  “How’s Larx?” Nancy asked briskly.

  “Falling down,” Aaron replied. “I sent him home with the kids, and he didn’t object. I’ve got some painkillers I can bring him later.”

  Nancy let out a grunt. “Well, sir, I’m going to need someone’s help getting kids home, so if one of you could stay—”

  “Can you get them home?” Aaron asked.

  “Yes—in fact, we programmed a home call that went out about five minutes ago. We’re going to need to plan student pickup and checkout, but I got permission from the district to treat this like a snow day, so the kids can go as soon as we have parent contact. We should probably have them all cleared out in two hours.”

  “Well, then,” Eamon said, looking at Aaron, “that’s going to be your duty, and as soon as it’s done, we need you at the office.” He nodded. “Nancy, you make sure to abuse my boy to the fullest extent of the law.”

  “Yessir,” Nancy replied smartly. “C’mon, Aaron—let’s go take care of Larx’s kids.”

  Seeding

  THE PAINKILLERS the EMTs had given Larx must have been TKO strength, because the kids put him to bed as soon as they got back to the house. He woke up around four, aching and disoriented, surprised to see Aaron at the foot of the bed, throwing his uniform into the hamper while he slid on sweats.

  “You’re home already?” he said, squinting in the darkness.

  “Stay right there,” Aaron said, coming to sit on the edge of the bed. “Here.” A bottle of Vicodin and a bottle of water sat on the end table, and Larx struggled to sit up.

  “Where’d the codeine come from?” he asked, holding out his hand. Aaron put one in his palm and handed him the water to wash it down.

  “My last dentist appointment,” Aaron admitted. Fretfully, he pushed the hair away from Larx’s temples. “Since you opted out of the hospital visit, I thought I’d share.”

  “Decent of you,” Larx said, still tired after sleeping for most of the day. He yawned. “Don’t you get home at six?”

  “Well, Yoshi arrived at the school around noon to finish clearing out kids and dealing with parents, so that freed me up to go help Eamon. He sent me home a
t four because he said I was too worried about you to work right. I figure he was mostly correct about that.”

  Larx moaned and fell back against the bed. His arm was on fire, and his body felt achy and feverish. “If I was in the movies, I’d still be on the run taking down bad guys.”

  “Real life sucks enough,” Aaron agreed, putting his hand on Larx’s forehead. “Yeah, you feel a little warm. Give me your health card. I’ll call your doc for antibiotics.”

  “Ugh. Fine. It’s in my wallet, which is—”

  “In your pants, next to the bed,” Aaron said, smiling a little.

  “Yoshi’s really back?” Larx asked, knowing he sounded plaintive and not caring.

  “He is. He wants me to tell you that getting shot was not what he meant by getting him back. I told him to take whatever help he could get.”

  Larx had to laugh. “You so get me and Yoshi.”

  Aaron nodded soberly and cupped his cheek. “I do. And I’m glad he’s back. But….”

  His voice was cracking, and Larx put out his good arm. “You were worried.”

  Larx wrapped his arm around those broad shoulders while Aaron rested his cheek on Larx’s chest. For a moment all was quiet in the room, and then Larx felt Aaron’s shoulders heave and shudder, heard the constricted breathing of a man trying hard not to come unglued. An insistent wetness seeped through Larx’s shirt, and he realized with a shock that he’d never held another man as he cried.

  He tightened his grip and hung on, giving in to the hot burn behind his eyes.

  The storm passed, and Aaron’s breaths grew deep and even as he struggled to get hold of himself. When he spoke, though, his voice was thick and clogged.

  “I was not okay with what happened today,” he said. “You are not supposed to be the one in danger. I lost someone already, Larx. I don’t… what am I supposed to do if I lose you?”

  Larx bit back the obvious retort of “Welcome to my world.” Instead he said, “You do what you’ve always done. You raise your kids. You raise chickens. You protect people and shit. You….” He swallowed. “You find someone else and you start again.”

  “No,” Aaron whispered, burrowing against him, holding him tight. “No finding someone else. Took me ten years after Caroline. I can’t do this one more time.”

  Larx let out a semihysterical laugh. “Yeah, well, I only just got you. Take care of what’s mine, ’kay?”

  Aaron peered up at him in the darkness, face ravaged by tears and stress. Larx pulled that thick blond hair back from his forehead. Lucky bastard—there was some silver in there, but you’d never know it. It was just all pale hair. “I am yours,” he said gruffly. “I’m building a chicken coop here this weekend. Kirby and I’ll move in.”

  “Your daughters!” Larx half laughed, but he wanted them there too.

  “Goddammit!”

  Larx couldn’t help the laugh that escaped. “We’ll figure it out,” he said softly. “As long as you stay tonight.”

  “And tomorrow.” Aaron came up and gave him a sloppy, salty kiss.

  “And maybe the weekend too,” Larx said when they came up for air.

  “Sure.”

  The quiet then was profound enough that Larx almost fell asleep, but his phone started buzzing. He glanced at it and groaned.

  “Yoshi?” Aaron asked, smiling.

  “Doesn’t he know my texting arm is wounded?” The Vicodin had kicked in, so Larx was feeling decidedly floaty, but he was aware that his arm was a swollen mass of abused muscle.

  “Yeah. Well, you pick up the phone and call him. I’ll go get something started for dinner.”

  Larx closed his eyes. “D’oh! For the life of me I can’t think of a damned thing to make.”

  “We’ve got eggs, cheese, and veggies,” Aaron soothed. “Omelets work every time.”

  He started to stand, and Larx paused him by cupping his jaw. “I just found you,” he said soberly. “I’m not planning to go anywhere for a while.”

  “I’m not taking a single damned chance,” Aaron told him, expression bleak. Well, he’d spent ten years getting over that wound—seeing the same blade swing so close wasn’t going to be easy.

  “Deal,” Larx agreed. His phone buzzed again, and Aaron stood up.

  “Talk to Yoshi,” he said, wiping his face on his shoulder.

  “Hey—”

  “Space,” Aaron rasped. “Need space or I can’t deal with the kids.”

  Larx nodded and sighed.

  And picked up his phone and ignored the texts and called.

  “You got shot, you prick.”

  “Love you too, Yoshi.”

  “No, seriously. I told you to get me back, I didn’t tell you to get shot and pass out on the news.”

  Larx groaned. “Oh God—you saw the news?”

  Yoshi’s laughter sounded like an evil gnome. “Oh, Larx—everybody saw the news. Fred Embree called me sounding like he’d eaten a bug. I heard Heather almost swallowed her own goddamned tongue. The superintendent saw it and apparently served new assholes for lunch. It was be-yoo-ti-ful!” he crowed.

  “You’re welcome?”

  “Yeah, I was welcome, thank you. By the way, your deputy missed looking gay for you by a hair. You need to either come out of the closet or club him over the head and lock him in one.”

  Larx laughed, holding his good hand across his stomach. “I think it will have to be out. I don’t know—should I tell anyone?”

  “Harvey Hassbender,” Yoshi said seriously. “The superintendent. He called me right after Fred and sounded contrite as fuck.”

  “If he was so contrite, why wasn’t he at the damned board meeting?” Larx muttered.

  “Apparently he spent the last week at a workshop for high school inclusion,” Yoshi said, sounding smug. “Some asshole called the DO and told them the principal did a great job at the game a couple of weeks ago and that maybe the entire district should take some classes so all the other schools learn from him.”

  “Whee! I thought Vicodin was a good drug before you started talking rainbows and fairy tales!” Larx was almost at full-on giggle by now.

  “Stop it. I’m being serious—your old school buddy called up and praised you. Apparently Hassbender got back after being gone for five days and realized his district was falling apart. He was not pleased.”

  “He should try getting shot. That’ll really put a crimp in his diaper.”

  “Larx, I’m telling you that you can come out. You can talk about your boyfriend in front of other teachers. You can tell people your plans at the district meeting. You can say things like ‘That’s my boyfriend’s kid’ at ACADECA. You can be out—and the next time two kids want to kiss in front of a bonfire, nobody’s going to give a ripe shit.”

  Larx caught his breath.

  “That’s, uh….” He forced himself to breathe again. “That’s intoxicating,” he said humbly. “And I’ll probably take you up on it.” Focus on real details, the day-to-day—it’s how Larx had lived his life from the moment Olivia had been conceived. “He wants to move in. Like right now.”

  “You okay with that?”

  Larx closed his eyes and thought about that moment when the noise deafened him, before he felt the actual pain and knew he’d live. “All I saw… the gun went off and all I saw was him.”

  Yoshi’s voice grew soft. “That’s a yes, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  Larx sighed. “I think I have a fever.” This was true—the floaty feeling wasn’t going away, and he kept kicking off his blankets. “And his daughters might not like me.”

  “Tough,” Yoshi said. “About the daughters. The fever thing is the direct result of not going to the doctor’s and having them irrigate the damned wound. Yes, Mary-Beth came by and gave me an earful. She told me you were an amazing teacher and probably an awesome principal, but she’d never realized before how irritating you could be when someone tried to tell you what to do.”
>
  Larx was forced to laugh. “Ungrateful brat. She’s right, but I helped her study—she should have more respect.”

  “She would have had more respect if you’d gone to the doctor’s. As it is, I think I get to run your school for another day.”

  Larx grunted. “Don’t do anything nuts like, you know, buy more books or hire an AP teacher for your class.”

  “Your class, stupid. You’re the one who thinks he’s Superman.”

  “Oh ha-ha. I’ll send Christi with lesson plans. Don’t let that asshole Ryan fuck up my kids.”

  “I make no promises. You should have gone—”

  “I get it, I get it! You know, if I’d gone to the doctor’s, they would have made me stay home another day anyway. This way it’s my own bed.”

  Yoshi made a frustrated sound. “You are the most exasperating man I’ve ever met. You got shot and you turn it to your own advantage. It’s like a fucking superpower.”

  Larx half laughed, and then he had the most horrific thought. “Oh God. Yoshi—the news. Did they show my name?”

  Yoshi’s cackle made Larx doubt seven years of solid friendship. “Yeah, Lyman, they did. Best part of my day, I’m fuckin’ telling you. Now get off the phone with me and heal. We need you back here by Friday.”

  Larx tried to think. If it was Tuesday now, then…. “What’s on Friday?”

  “You are. We’re having an assembly. Hassbender is talking, you’re talking—everybody’s talking except Yoshi, who will happily be going back to being second fiddle to you assholes who make all the good quotes.”

  “I may shoot my other arm to avoid this,” Larx said, but he was definitely only kidding. He’d run away first.

  “Don’t you dare. We’re having press too. Hassbender wants to be a poster child for inclusion—it’s a thing.”

  “You guys are pretty tight. Does Tane approve?”

  “He already puts up with your mangy ass. I’m sure he’s thrilled I’m finally kissing up to someone who can do my career some good.”