By Any Other Name (19 page)

What the hell?

Skye walked in after Dru and went to take his tank top from where it still was on the table.

“I’ll go hang this outside,” he said and escaped the house when he got another very odd look from Dru.

It was like… like Dru didn’t approve of something? What had he done? Kara was their friend. There was no way Dru was jealous of either of them, so what the fuck was going on?

After placing his top in a spot where the sun hit it perfectly, he decided to drop the subject. There were things he would never understand about social interactions. His own development had been so badly interrupted it was a minor miracle he could do as much as he was doing now.

Skye took in a deep breath and turned to walk back into the house. To his surprise, he found only Kara there.

“Did Dru leave?” he asked, and Kara nodded, not turning to face him. “What’s going on, Kara?”

“He… he thinks there’s something between us, and he’s jealous,” Kara said and turned to look at him.

“He what? How… why… what the….” Skye blinked and gripped the edge of the counter.

Kara was quiet and just looked at him until he could gather his scattered thoughts. He wasn’t sure about her expression; he didn’t know what it meant.

“Kara?” he asked finally, afraid to reach out to touch her. It was another thing he did now, almost as much as the others did, the casual touching to comfort someone or feel the connection to them.

“Do you see it? That all three of you are in love with each other?” she asked quietly, not letting go of his gaze, not backing down.

There was only the truth to tell. “Yes.”

She nodded and seemed to think about it for a while. “I… I think they’d have you as a third,” she said.

For a brief moment hope flared within him, a wild emotion that made something constrict in his chest, but then it died.

“No,” he said, and before she could object, he clarified, “I can’t do that. I
won’t
do that.”

“Why?” Kara asked and looked at him with a serious expression that didn’t seem to fit her usually easygoing nature.

“Because I love them. I won’t… I won’t hurt them like that,” Skye said, again telling the truth as he felt it, no matter how much it startled him.

“Why would it be hurting them if they want you too?” Kara asked, and Skye sighed, walking to one of the chairs at her small table and sitting down.

“Because it won’t end well. And I promised Thom I wouldn’t… wouldn’t get in between them or take Dru from him, because that’s what he’s afraid of. They’re happy without me. They’re in love. They’ll be fine.” He stared at the tablecloth, red-and-white-checkered fabric, as he spoke.

“What about you?” Kara asked and moved to stand next to his shoulder. Soon he felt her fingers combing his hair.

“What about me?”

“Where does it leave you? If you don’t take the chance to be with them?” Kara tilted his head to look into his eyes. “Who will love you, who will you love?”

“I don’t know. I’m… I’m not sure if I can…. Anyone else…. I don’t believe in getting any sort of happily ever after. I’d like to be… content.” He sighed and dropped his eyes.

“I like you, Skye. More than I should, I suppose. From the first moment I saw you. You’re out of reach and I know that, but you need to know I’ll be here if you need me. If you can… like me back, even better. If not, I’ll still be your friend.” She spoke into his hair, where her lips were almost touching him.

Maybe, on some level, Skye had known this all along. He just wasn’t used to reading people, and when he did, he wasn’t sure if he could trust his own thoughts and conclusions. He had been good at anticipating people’s moves when he was a teenager, but then that too had changed into something else, and this adult world terrified him still.

“Can you hold that thought until I’m ready?” he asked quietly.

Kara laughed a little bit, nodding as she leaned back to look at him. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“I’m not sure what I like, you know, boys or girls. I just like them, and I like you too, but not in exactly the same way. So I just… don’t know,” Skye babbled until she placed a finger across his lips.

“Shh, it’s okay. I understand. And I’m not… attractive like that,” she mumbled, making as if to back away from him.

He grabbed her wrist and stopped her. “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked and looked at her sharply.

“I’m… I’m not… pretty… or thin or anything.” She looked everywhere but at him, and there were tears welling in her eyes.

“Stop that right now, Kara,” he said firmly and pulled her back to him. “If you think that you’re unattractive, you’re wrong. You’re beautiful. So what if you don’t look like the skinny girls we see everywhere, you’re perfect just as you are. I don’t even think those girls are pretty, let alone beautiful like you. To be honest, I thought you would be grossed out by my scars, and you weren’t, so… so maybe it’s time we give each other the benefit of a doubt here, okay?” he said, arms around her waist and chest pressed against her stomach.

She made a sniffling sound. “Okay… okay then.” And then she giggled a little.

“Okay,” he repeated and then looked up at her. “So, how about that lunch?”

She swatted his shoulder as she backed away and went back to where she was preparing that lunch. When he realized he had been swatted and hadn’t even really noticed it, he grinned. Maybe there was hope after all.

Thom

Thom
sat in his favorite armchair in the library, surrounded by the new books he hadn’t had time to look at when the boys had first brought them home from the mall. He was just about to open one of the bestsellers he had requested they bring back when he heard the front door slam.

Uh-oh.

“Dru? Babe?” he called out just as the blond stormed into the room.

“What’s wrong?” Thom asked, seeing the emotions flicker on Dru’s face too fast for him to really catch anything. “Babe? You’re scaring me now.” Thom moved the books to the nearby table and held out his hands.

Without a word, Dru stopped pacing and marched to him, curling up on his lap before burying his face in the crook of Thom’s neck. To his horror, Thom felt Dru’s body shake and felt the tears that soon wet his neck. If there was something Dru almost never did, it was cry. He had to be in serious emotional turmoil.

“Whatever it is, calm down and tell me. I love you, it’ll be okay,” Thom murmured as he rubbed Dru’s back and combed his hair with the other hand.

“No, it won’t.” The whisper was pitiful and miserable.

“What happened, baby?”

“I… I went to Kara’s…. He was there. And… and he had been shirtless. Kara said she touched all his scars and he didn’t flinch.” The words were mumbled between sobs that wracked Dru’s body, and Thom wasn’t sure what to do with that.

“Baby, there are tons of explanations. Besides, think about how good it is for him to be that comfortable around
anyone
. It just wasn’t you or me,” Thom said and tried to understand the whole of the situation.

He knew Dru was upset because he wasn’t the first one Skye had revealed his scars to. They had both seen some of them, but Skye had always had a shirt on, and it had been more accidental than anything else, despite what they had talked about before. He knew Dru had thought he would get to see the scars first, that Skye would trust him the most because of their history.

If there was something between Skye and Kara, Thom hadn’t really seen that one coming. Not like this, at least. Not so fast.

“I thought he wanted to be with us,” Dru sobbed.

“Babe, it’s not that simple… for any of us. Not for me and you, not for him, not for Kara. You know she likes him. What if he likes her back? He has a long way to go still. She’d understand that.” Thom tried to say the right things in a situation where nothing could make anything right.

“But… but didn’t you want him with us? I thought you… you wanted him too,” Dru asked, raising his head to look at Thom.

So two things were out, then: Dru wanted Skye, and he knew Thom had feelings for Skye as well. That certainly made things simpler… or something.

“Yes, babe, I really do like Skye, and I want him with us, but we can’t make these decisions for him.”

“If he came to us, said he wanted to… to be like… a threesome with us… what would you say?” Dru asked, hiccupping a little bit like he always did after emotional turmoil. It was endearing and made him seem about six years old, no matter what the subject was.

“I’d say I don’t know. I mean…
you’re
my
everything
. I don’t know if… if I could believe you two wouldn’t just dump me when you got tired of me,” Thom said honestly.

“I would never… you know I would never…. Thom, we’ve been through this.” Dru blinked at him, and there was a certain almost angry edge to his words all of a sudden.

“I
know
that. I do. It makes no sense, and I know he wouldn’t do anything like that… neither would you, but it’s… it’s not rational. Emotions never are.” Thom sighed and tried to move from under Dru’s weight, to get away from the situation.

His lover turned quickly, pressing Thom back into the chair as he straddled his lap.

“You’re going nowhere until this is solved,” Dru said with a strange determination Thom hadn’t seen before. There was something dangerous in his expression, something fierce.

“O-okay,” Thom stuttered, a bit wide-eyed, and tried to relax into the chair.

“What if there was some way to make sure neither of us left you, what then?”

“I… I suppose then I’d be for it. I mean… I do like him a lot. And you know I’d do everything to make you happy. If Skye joining our relationship was what made you happy…,” Thom said but couldn’t still look into Dru’s eyes.

“I’ve loved three people in my life, Thom. One is the old Skye, the boy he used to be. The second one is you. And now I’ve found a third, and he’s the man Skye has become.” Dru spoke with his usual quiet conviction, backing off a bit with the aggression. “I love the memory of the boy he was, but that boy is long gone. You’re the love of my life, Thomas Williams. But if there’s a way that Skye could ever be whole enough and love both of us, I would like to have him with us. Because I love him too and because somehow, strangely, he seems to complete us, don’t you think? But you’re the man I’ll be spending my life with, no matter what happens.” Dru whispered the last words against his lips before leaning in the last fraction of an inch to give him a sweet kiss.