Doves (Love in Los Angeles, #2)

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THEY SLEEP SO LATE Beth has left for work by the time they make it downstairs for breakfast. As much as Alex likes her, he’s relieved. After the s*x last night with Paul, he wants time alone just for the two of them. Also, they were loud, and he wants to pretend Beth didn’t hear them.

Paul asks if he wants the grand tour as they work their way through coffee and toast. Alex agrees eagerly.

His body clock is off, thanks to the time difference, and the sun is higher than he expects when they step outside. It’s still morning, but won’t be for much longer. The whole outdoors is like a fairytale compared to the Indiana of Alex’s childhood. Yes, there were fields and sky there too, but the land always seemed tired and worn out. Here things are fresh and green. There’s an energy to the plants and birdsong Alex can feel as they make their way down a path that leads into the woods. He scuffs happily through the layer of pine needles and leaves carpeting the path and tries to name the flowers growing up shyly under the ferns.

Eventually he becomes aware of a sound rising through the trees he can’t identify. It might be a stream chattering through the woods, but he doesn’t think so.

“What’s that noise?” he asks as they hike up a little rise.

“That,” Paul says. “Is the cricket barn.” His voice is a little strained.

“Excuse me?”

“The cricket barn,” Paul repeats. He nods toward what was probably a rather nice outbuilding in much better days when the farm was fully functional. “Do you want to go in?”

“No.” He neither wants to ask, or know, why crickets need a barn. Is it a very small barn, or are they very large crickets? Either way, the answer isn’t appealing.

“Come on.” Paul tugs his hand to get Alex to follow. “You can’t conceive of the profound f****d-upness of this place until you see what we’re willing to do to hang on to what we’ve got.”

“What do crickets have to do with anything?” The question is better than reminding Paul that he’s from Indiana, and has plenty of experience doing f****d up things to survive.

Paul lets go of him to unlatch the door and push it open for them. Alex shoves his hand into his pocket, so he won’t accidentally touch anything he really doesn’t want to.

“We’ve got seven hundred acres,” Paul says as he steps inside. “We can’t farm it ourselves so we rent out most of it. The money from that covers most of the taxes, but there’s never enough to keep the place up, hence,” Paul sweeps a hand dramatically across the warm, unlit interior of the barn. “Crickets. We raise them and sell them for bait. It’s not a bad enterprise.”

Paul’s standing inside the door, but Alex hovers on the threshold, looking into the ratcheting darkness and feeling any number of crawly things shiver up his spine. The smell is disturbing.

“This is insect hell.”

“Actually, they’re quite comfortable.”

“Paul.” Alex wants to have his back to a wall, but he also doesn’t know what is on the wall, so he shifts uneasily from foot to foot.

“Told you it was f****d up.”

“Crickets?”

“Why? What was your job as a kid?”

“Farm work is nothing like raising demons in the family barn.” Objectively, the jobs Alex had in high school and even middle school were worse than working with crickets. But he doesn’t want to talk about that. Also, that was then and the crickets are now.

Paul grins and ushers Alex back outside so he can, to Alex’s relief, close and latch the door again.

“I didn’t know your family was having trouble hanging on to the land,” Alex says when they’re far enough down the path that he doesn’t keep looking over his shoulder for a following mass of tiny, too many-legged creatures. It’s awkward, as always, to talk about wealth, or the lack thereof. But Paul had never mentioned anything about his family struggling.

Paul reaches for Alex’s hand again. Alex takes it out of his pocket to let him have it. Out here with no one around, there’s no reason not to, and Paul seems uneasy without the contact.

“It’s not terrible. Just the way it’s always been.”

His fingers tighten around Alex’s. Alex looks sideways at him. “What?”

“Speaking of things that are the way they’ve always been, I’ve got lunch today with my father.”

“This is the father who wanted to disown you and from whom you’re now estranged?” Alex should probably be more supportive than sarcastic, but, really?

“I’ve only got the one.” Paul tries to joke.

“More than I have,” Alex points out. “Seriously, though. Why?”

“It’s what we do,” Paul says. “For Mom’s sake. Things aren’t good between them, and I hate that I make that worse.”

“That’s not on you.” Alex doesn’t say because your father is a homophobic asshole, even if he is, because he doesn’t know anything about the bonds between fathers and sons. f****d up as this family situation is, he’s working on trying to be more understanding. Sometimes.

Paul shrugs. “I need to know that I can.”

“Okay?” Alex says when Paul doesn’t elaborate.

“Just to prove to myself that I can still be sane.”

“Am I going with you?” Alex isn’t sure if he should be freaked out by Paul’s tone. He also doesn’t know what being a good partner demands in this situation.

“Do you want to?” Paul asks.

“Is there a way I don’t make that situation worse?”

“My beautiful, sharp, Hollywood boyfriend in the same room as my father?” Paul shakes his head. “Probably not.”

“I would go,” Alex says. He may be uneasy, but he’s not afraid. He’s faced worse than Paul’s father, surely, in Indiana and in Hollywood.

“I know.”

Alex squeezes his hand, and Paul squeezes back.

“He gave me a g*n for my fifteenth birthday,” Paul says abruptly.

“Yeah?”

“I wasn’t very good at it. I’m not really into the whole shooting animals thing.”

“So shoot cans.” Alex shrugs. “It’s a great way to deal with s**t like your dad.”

Paul shakes his head. “Yeah. Destroying things because I’m angry is not good choices for me.”

“It’s just blowing off steam.”

“Maybe for you,” Paul says darkly.

Alex looks over at him. Paul is occasionally cagey about things in his past but this is something different. “What’s going on with you?”

Paul shrugs, looking helpless.

“Do you still have it?” Alex asks. It’s been years since he’s been near a g*n. He’s curious.

Paul nods. “One of the barns.”

Maybe if Alex can touch it he can show Paul how not to be so uneasy around something he doesn’t need to be. Maybe he can show himself, too. “Oh God, please tell me this is just a normal barn and not a demon insect barn,” he tries to joke.

“Not more crickets, I swear.”

Alex laughs. “Show me.”

* * *

* * * *

“HOW DO YOU KNOW HOW to do this?” Paul asks. He had no idea Alex knew anything about guns. Above them in a tree, a mockingbird trills through its repertoire.

Alex has brought the g*n out of the barn and is now sitting on the ground, examining it carefully. The sun glints in his hair, making the threads of gold in the red stand out. A morning outside has brought out even more of Alex’s freckles. Paul marvels again at just how unspeakably lovely his boyfriend is.

“Indiana, Paul.”

“Yeah, but —”

“My mom taught me,” Alex says, his voice distracted but his hands on the g*n sure like they are over his climbing equipment. “I had a lot of s**t to get out of my system. It’s relaxing.”

“Okay,” Paul says dubiously.

Alex asks if they have any earmuffs.

* * *

* * * *

WHEN PAUL GETS BACK from the lunch, he can’t find Alex anywhere in the house.

“Do you know where Alex went?” he asks his mom when he walks into the kitchen. She looks up from a recipe book spread out on the counter.

“Out back. With your old Winchester. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

She doesn’t ask how Paul is, or how lunch went. She never does, even though Paul knows that she’s glad he goes. Paul wonders if she’s afraid of invoking the ghosts of all the things that have happened in this house if she speaks of them out loud.

“I’m going to go find him.”

“Okay, dear.”

She returns to her recipes, but Paul knows she’s watching him leave and not without relief.

* * *