Kate Sherwood - Dark Horse 01 - Dark Horse (20 page)

The three of them sit there like that for a while, and then Dan feels a little better and sits up straight, but Jeff keeps his arm around Dan’s shoulders, and Chris is still a solid presence on the other side. After another little while, Dan recovers enough to be embarrassed.

“Shit, guys, I’m sorry—” he starts, but he doesn’t get any further. “Shut up, Danny.”
“No, but….”

“Danny, I’m serious, I don’t want to hear it.” Chris’s voice is firm, but he’s got tears in his eyes. “Justin was my best friend, and you and him were great together. You melting down a little? That’s the absolute
least
that his memory deserves.”

Dan hadn’t really thought of things from that perspective. But then he still shouldn’t have dragged Jeff into it. He turns to Jeff’s side, opens his mouth to apologize, and Jeff hold up a hand to cut him off. “I consider the mac and cheese to be adequate payment for my part here.” He smiles and runs his hand along Dan’s shoulder to grip his neck, and shakes him a little.

Dan manages a smile and a nod. His composure has returned just in time, apparently, because the funeral director pokes his head out the back door and looks like he has something to say. Chris goes and talks to him quietly, and then comes back to crouch down next to Dan.

“Danny, they want to close up for the night and put the coffin away. If you want to see him, now would be a good time.” Dan looks up at him shakily, and Chris says, “But it doesn’t have to be now. They’ve got a schedule, but we can change things however we need to, if you aren’t up for it yet.”

Dan considers it. He’s tired, but he also feels cleansed somehow, as if the crying had washed away some of the crap that was getting in the way of his feelings. It actually seems like a pretty good time to say goodbye. He stands up and tries to straighten his suit. “No, I’m good. I should do it now.”

Chris and Jeff both look a bit doubtful, but Dan heads for the door, and they follow. He works his way through the back hall and pauses outside the room where Justin is. Jeff and Chris come up behind him, and the funeral director approaches. “Mr. and Mrs. Archer have already gone home for the evening, so please take your time.”

Dan nods, and then steps into the room. He hears the soft sound of the doors sliding closed behind him.
He looks around. This is the room they displayed most of the memorabilia in. There are photos of Justin at all different ages on a variety of horses, and Dan traces his fingers over the image of Justin and Willow working in the dressage ring at the barn. Tatiana was right; even just during a regular work out, Justin looked happy. He looked like he was doing what he was meant to do. Dan looks at some of the other photos, and is surprised by how many of them he sees himself in. There’s one he’s never seen before, although he remembers the day. They’d been at a friend’s summer cottage with the Fosters. Chris had gone back into town for work, but Dan and Justin had stayed behind and had been swimming and boating all day. The picture was taken just as the sun was going down, with Dan sitting on the ground by the lake, half-reclined against a huge driftwood log, and Justin leaning back against his chest, Dan’s hand playing with Justin’s hair, his other hand laced with Justin’s. They’re both facing the sunset, and their faces glow with reflected light. Justin is looking out at the lake, but Dan is looking down at Justin, and the love in his eyes is clear. Dan wonders who took the photo, and why whoever it was had never given him a copy. He also wonders why Justin’s parents would have Dan call himself Justin’s friend at the same time that they’re displaying a photograph that shows so clearly how much more he was.
But all of this is just a distraction from the main event. Dan’s eyes are drawn to the coffin in the corner. He knows he needs to do it soon. His crying fit might have cleaned him out temporarily, but he can feel it all building up again, and he wants to be as pure as he can be for Justin. He takes a deep breath and crosses the room.
He feels the breath go out of him a little when he looks into the casket. Justin looks more alive now than he has for the past year, and it’s enough that Dan has to quickly quell the tiny, irrational hope that somehow his miracle has occurred. Once Dan looks a little closer, it’s clear that the makeup hasn’t been enough to give more than a thin illusion of life. Justin is gone. Dan thinks about touching him, but decides not to. He touched Justin all the time in the hospital, always hoping for some reaction, never getting one. At least there, Justin’s skin had been warm. Dan doesn’t want his last contact with this vibrant, hot-blooded man to be the chill of a funeral parlor and the waxy feel of mortuary cosmetics. Dan takes one last look at Justin’s body, and steps away. He doesn’t need to say goodbye to that; it’s not Justin.

He doesn’t leave, though. Instead he walks back to the photograph from the lake, and reaches out to touch it instead. He doesn’t have any words, but he feels all the love in his heart and tries to pour it out through his fingertips, send it along through the photograph to wherever Justin is now. He’s crying again, but he knows it’s okay, knows that he’s not going to lose control. He smiles a little, too, thinking of that day and of all the other beautiful days they’d shared. There should have been more, but he’s glad he had as many as he did, and he knows he’s found an answer to the question he’d had at Monty’s stall the other night. Yes, it’s worth it. The pain of sorrow is terrible and hard to bear, but the joy of love makes it worthwhile. Dan will never be sorry for having known and loved Justin, even though that love was taken from him far too soon.

He wipes his tears away and takes a moment to collect himself. Then he picks up the photograph in its cheap wooden frame. He walks over to the doors and slides one open, stepping outside where he’s not surprised to find Chris and Jeff hovering. They’re watching him closely, and Dan manages a smile.

Dan turns to him and smiles a little. “You need to find another nickname.” Jeff gives him a blank look, and Dan smiles a little more. “Evan is ‘kid’. You can find something else for me, and you can call me Dan until you do.” Then he turns to Chris. “I don’t know whose this is”— he holds the photograph up—“but I’m taking it.” Chris just nods with a half smile. Dan looks through the glass front doors. “It’s almost a full moon, lots of light—you guys feel like going for a ride?”

Dan’s smile is a little fragile, but it holds. “Nope, I’m pretty fucked up. But I don’t think going for a ride is going to make it worse.” He turns and looks at Chris. “You in?” Chris nods wordlessly, looking amused, and Dan’s eyes shift back to Jeff. “If you’re feeling your age and need to get a good-night’s sleep, we understand. Really. I’m sure Chris and I will be like that in another ten or fifteen years. It’s fine.”

They head out into the parking lot, and Jeff grabs his overnight bag from his rental car before all three pile into Chris’s truck. The moon is bright and the air is warm, and they drive with the windows down. It’s not perfect, but it’s good, and that’s all Dan needs for now.

J
EFF
looks a little surprised when Chris doesn’t turn the truck off at the farm. Dan hops out and then turns to Jeff. “I’m just going in to change— do you want to get changed here?” Jeff looks back at Dan blankly. “Oh, Chris is going over to his parents’ place to get the horses.” Dan grins. “You were gonna let us risk the eventers? Nah, the Fosters keep Quarter Horses—way better for this sort of thing.”

Jeff nods, looking a little relieved to hear that Evan’s horses aren’t going to be used. “Yeah, if you don’t mind. I’ve got jeans in my bag….”
Dan’s already half way to the barn door. “Yup, that’s good.”
Chris pulls out, then stops and calls back—“Jeff, you do want a saddle?”
Jeff looks a little unsure. Dan grins, and softly says, “It’s okay, Jeff, as you get older your legs just lose a bit of their strength, and your balance—”
“Whatever you guys are doing is fine!” Jeff calls over Dan’s needling. Chris waves an acknowledgment and pulls away.
“What is this, then, punishment for the ‘kid’ thing?” Jeff asks. He’s trying to sound crabby, but mostly he seems relieved that Dan is up to joking.
Dan pulls the door to the stairs open and heads up, unlocks the apartment and heads inside. He finds his flask as he shrugs out of his suit jacket, and considers it briefly before setting it down. He expects he’ll come back to it later, but he just doesn’t need it right now. He finds the original bottle and waves it questioningly at Jeff, but he shakes his head. Dan feels a bit awkward. He’s not normally too concerned about nudity taboos, but after the scene last night, he supposes he should make it clear that he’s not planning a seduction. He loiters around a bit, feeling like an idiot. “I’m just heading in there,” he indicates the bedroom, “you can change out here or in the bathroom, or you can wait ’til I’m done. Chris’s quick, but he’ll have to get changed and get the horses and ride them over, so there’s no real rush.”
Jeff nods and starts rummaging through his bag as Dan leaves the room. Dan strips out of his suit pants and hangs them with the jacket on the door. Once he’s changed, he’ll put them in the bathroom. Hopefully the steam from the shower will take out the worst of the wrinkles, because he’s got to wear it again for the funeral. He’s got an extra dress shirt, though, so he throws the one he was wearing in the laundry hamper and pulls on jeans and a T-shirt, then a hoodie. Then he feels a bit awkward again. Is Jeff changing in the living room? Will it be weird if Dan walks out and finds him half-dressed? He paces around a little, feeling oddly like a prisoner in his own bedroom. Then he hears the TV turn on and takes it as a signal. Surely nobody goes to a guy’s house and gets half-undressed and then starts watching TV before getting dressed again. Or at least surely Jeff doesn’t do that. Still, Dan is careful to make a little noise as he opens his door, and he walks straight to the bathroom with his suit without looking into the main room.
When he comes back out, Jeff is talking quietly into his phone, fully dressed in jeans and his dress shirt, untucked. Checking in with Evan, Dan is sure. He knows he has no right to feel jealous, but he lets himself go with it a little anyway. He doesn’t want to wreck his fragile good mood, though, so he tries to catch it before it goes too far. He reminds himself of how generous and kind Evan is. When that doesn’t work, he reminds himself that for tonight at least, Dan has Jeff and all Evan has is a phone call. That does the trick, and he sits down on the couch with a much sunnier frame of mind.
Jeff clicks his phone shut and sits down at the other end of the couch. “Evan’s jealous,” Jeff says, and it mirrors Dan’s thoughts so perfectly that he swivels his head to stare at Jeff. “He says we need to get some Quarter Horses for California so he can screw around at night too.”
Dan doesn’t make the catty comment, doesn’t say that Evan seems to manage to screw around at night just fine without horses, but he smirks a little, and Jeff sees him. Jeff smirks a little, too, but he says, “Careful, now, boy.”
Dan looks Jeff up and down. “‘Boy’? Is that what you’ve come up with? I’m really not sure you can carry that off.”
Jeff laughs out loud. “No, I’m not sure, either, but I thought I’d give it a try.” They’re both smiling at each other, and it feels so good, so natural, and all Dan wants to do is crawl down to the other end of the couch and bend Jeff’s head back and kiss him, line up their bodies and grind in, make him groan…. Jeff feels it, too, Dan can tell, and the air in the room is crackling. They both gradually lose their smiles but keep staring until the only decision left to be made is who’s going to break first, who’s going to make the first move, and Dan’s pretty sure it’s going to be him because he doesn’t think he can stand it for another second. They both jump when Chris’s voice calls up from the bottom of the stairs.
“Guys, you ready? The cavalry is here!”
Jeff’s eyes widen a little, and he’s up off the couch in a flash. He calls, “We’ll be right down,” and the words are fine but his voice is a little high and strained. He shakes his head. “Jesus, Dan, do you bathe in fucking
pheromones
or something?”
Dan stands up, too, just as freaked out. He’s not going to do this, not going to commemorate Justin’s life by fucking some other guy. “Trust me, man, it’s not just you.” He looks around a little wildly, and then snaps back to the present. “Okay, horses and Chris, downstairs.”
Jeff nods, and on his way out the door he grabs his overnight bag, leaving it at the bottom of the stairs. It feels like Jeff is making sure he can escape from Dan’s lair, and Dan almost laughs. Then he remembers how close he’d just come to making a huge mistake and decides that caution is probably not a bad idea.
They go outside and Chris is still on horseback, holding the reins of one other horse and a lead rope attached to the halter of the third. He shrugs a bridle off his shoulder and passes it to Dan, who takes it over to the unbridled horse. Chris hands the reins of the other horse to Jeff. “That’s Ranger. He’s a good old guy, nothing too fancy—he’ll be an angel as long as you don’t try to take him away from the other horses.” Jeff nods and looks like he’s trying to remember how to get on a horse bareback.
Dan has already slipped the bridle onto Smokey, and he looks over at Jeff. He hands Smokey’s reins up to Chris and walks over next to Ranger, cups his hands to give Jeff a leg up. Jeff hesitates, but then rests his knee in Dan’s hands as Dan gives the traditional one, two, three bounces, and then Jeff is up and finding his balance. He grins a little. “Damn, it’s been a long time since I rode bareback.” Chris raises an eyebrow but doesn’t comment, and Dan just shakes his head.
Dan heads over to his own horse and hauls himself onto his back. Dan’s been riding Smokey since he came to Kentucky, and he’s got the scrubby little trail horse as finely tuned as any of the well-bred eventers. He may not have the same natural ability, but he’s got a damn fine attitude, and Dan’s really enjoyed working with him. He’s going to be sorry to leave him behind.
They head out of the yard toward the back of the farm. The moon is still bright, but the riders give their horses lots of rein anyway, trusting the horses’ night vision more than their own. They just walk for a while, but the horses are feeling good and want to run, and none of the humans seem to object. They come out into an open field with a wide band mowed along the side, and they all move to canter almost side by side.
Dan loves riding at night. He wishes it was a bit darker, but he just closes his eyes and gets the same effect. Without vision to get in the way, and with his sense of hearing compromised by the wind whistling by, he relies almost entirely on feeling the horse, sensing Smokey’s movements before he even makes them. He also has the opportunity to focus on his own body, finding his perfect balance and degree of contact with the horse. Justin used to say that Dan was a good lover because he was so used to being in tune with another body. It sounded uncomfortably bestial to Dan, but Justin seemed to think it made sense, and Dan didn’t really worry about it.
Dan feels Smokey’s weight shift a little before they actually start slowing down, and he reluctantly opens his eyes. They’re at the bottom of the big hill, and Chris is looking over at him questioningly. Dan understands the look. The top of this hill was a favorite spot of the three of them, and it might be a bit weird to take someone else up. But it doesn’t feel weird, really. Dan thinks that he might avoid the spot if it was just him and Chris, because Justin’s absence would be so obvious, and he might avoid it if the third was someone else, but with Jeff it feels okay. Jeff takes away the emptiness without trying to take Justin’s place, and Dan’s fine with it. He shrugs, sending the question back to Chris, and Chris answers by steering his horse up the path.
It’s single file most of the way, with the horses picking their way over roots and rocks and twists in the path, but it opens up near the top, as the trees fade away and the hill opens into a broad crown, sloping gradually up to a peak at the far end. Dan and Chris put their horses into a gallop as soon as they’re out of the undergrowth, and they don’t pull up until they’re at the very top. Jeff joins them a little late, having understandably been a bit more cautious on the unfamiliar ground.
They’re up high, and they can see the lights of Louisville sparkling. If they turn away from the city’s glow, they can see the stars and the moonlight shining down on miles of farmland and forest. Dan sighs. It’s not just Smokey that he’s going to miss. He thought that all of his ties to Kentucky were to Justin, but it turns out that he’s a bit more widely invested than he’d thought.
Jeff speaks quietly. “It’s beautiful up here. This is still the Archer property?”
Dan nods and points to the trees on the far side of the hill. “The property line is in there somewhere.”
Jeff nods. “So what are they going to do with this when the subdivision gets built? I mean, they aren’t going to build on a hill this steep, right?”
Chris shakes his head. “Nah, they’re in talks with the city. It’s probably going to get made into a municipal park.”
Dan hadn’t known that, but he’s glad to hear it. It’s nice to think that a little bit of Justin’s land won’t be lost. Nice to think of future generations of brown-eyed boys scrambling up the hill, laughing with their friends, and then maybe growing up a little and coming up here and making love under the stars. And… he’s crying again. He swears softly and reaches up to scrub at his eyes with his sleeve.
Chris shakes his head. “Jesus, Dan, are you drinking lots of water? ’Cause I’d be worried about dehydration if I was you.”
That makes Dan laugh, and he stops crying about the same time he tells Chris to go fuck himself.
They stay up on the hill a little longer, enjoying the view and each other’s company. Just as Dan had thought, Jeff isn’t intrusive; he’s just a comforting presence. They head back down when the horses start getting restless, and the ride back to the barn is even quieter than the ride out, but it just feels peaceful, not sad. They pull up in the yard at Dan’s, and Jeff looks over at Chris.
“Are you driving back into town tonight?” Chris nods, and Jeff continues. “Do you think I could catch a lift in with you?” Chris nods again, but he cuts his eyes over to Dan.
“You gonna be okay on your own tonight, Danielle? I can stay if you want, and Jeff can take the truck.”
“Okay, I’m not actually a little girl. I’ll be fine.” He swings off Smokey and gives the horse a grateful pat before he slips the bridle off and puts the halter and lead rope back on. He hands the bridle and the end of the lead rope to Chris and then goes inside and grabs Jeff’s bag. He walks over to Ranger on the far side, the side Chris can’t see, and as he hands the bag up he grips Jeff’s calf. It’s not sexual, but it’s a message, and Dan hopes Jeff understands it. “I really need to thank you, Jeff. I mean… for a lot of stuff. I’ve been a bit of a mess, and you’ve been putting up with way more than you should have had to.” He releases his grip and shrugs, feeling a little foolish. “I just… wanted you to know that I appreciate it.”
Jeff smiles and nudges Dan in the chest with his knee. “It’s no problem, k—” He catches himself. “—Dan.”
Dan smiles. “Gave up on ‘boy’, then, did you?”
Jeff shakes his head ruefully. “It seemed a little dangerous.” Their eyes meet, and suddenly it’s all back again, as strong as it was on the couch earlier, both of their eyes flaring wide in recognition and apprehension. Dan knows that if Chris wasn’t there he and Jeff would be going upstairs together, groping and undressing each other in the stairwell, probably not even making it all the way to the bedroom…. But Chris is there, and Jeff’s horse shifts a little in response to the tension in the air and in Jeff’s body, and they both manage to snap out of it. “Shit,” Jeff breathes, and Dan backs away.
Chris gives him a look like he knows something happened but didn’t quite follow what it was, and then he’s riding off with Jeff, and Dan is alone and reeling.
He heads up the stairs, peels his clothes off, and climbs into the shower. He needs to get cleaned up, likes to shower before bed, but he’s not fooling himself. He was hard before he undressed, and it’s only a minute or two of work before he’s groaning and spurting his release into the warm water. He leans his head against the cold tiles and tries not to think about the face that he’d seen as he came. He resolves that he’s not going to feel guilty about it. It was so much better than the trouble he’d almost gotten himself into that night.
He climbs out of the shower and pulls on a pair of sweatpants before collapsing on his bed. It’s been a long day, and when he wakes up he’ll be facing Justin’s funeral. He reaches his hand over and feels the other pillow, thinks of the way Justin would always sleep on his side facing Dan, how Dan would wake up and know that Justin was watching him, just willing him to wake up so they could make love, or even just so they could talk. Dan remembers being a little crabby about it, remembers propping an extra pillow up on end between them so he wouldn’t be able to feel Justin’s eyes trying to wake him. Tonight is different, though, and Dan calls up his memories of Justin lying there and staring at him, recalls the love that was in his gaze, and he uses the power of that remembered look to soothe himself down into a deep sleep.