TWO

 

It wasn’t like Dane hadn’t known that he was in trouble, and that he was going to get yelled at, again. He even knew the words that his boss would say, the accusations that he would toss. He didn’t understand why, since he didn’t work any less hard than ninety percent of the other people who lived and worked and traveled with the fair, but for some reason, his boss had it in for him specifically.

“We got complaints about you,” his boss told him, and Dane didn’t even try to refrain from rolling his eyes. He knew very well that Sally Housewife and her idiot children were always demanding to speak to the manager, just to try to get free stuff. It was a fact that everyone who worked around people got complaints against them sometimes.

“About what?” he asked, barely holding back a smirk. It hardly seemed worth the effort, but he really couldn’t afford to be outright fired. He wasn’t even sure how he would manage to get home if his boss, Fred, kicked him out. And he certainly wasn’t going to stay in the middle of fucking nowhere, small-town Washington State that was for damn sure.

“You’re being rude,” Fred told him, with a helpless little shrug. Being rude. That was the war cry of the freebie-seeking middle-class idiot, as far as he could tell. No real complaint to make, just a general comment about rudeness. It was pathetic, and he sighed. Fred was wasting his time, and they both knew it.

“Excuse me for not kissing their asses all the time,” Dane grumbled, and then he tilted his head, looking into his boss’s eyes. A few complaints about Dane’s attitude wasn’t the problem here, and they both knew it. “What’s this about for real?”

Fred sighed and pushed random papers around on his desk, looking like it was more something to do with his hands than anything else. He wouldn’t meet Dane’s gaze, and it was then that Dane knew this was serious. Now, if only he could get Fred to tell him what it was all about, he thought.

“Damn it, Dane,” Fred finally spoke, and his previously elusive gaze met Dane’s, looking right at him, finally. “You can’t just go antagonizing people all the time. And you gotta stop giving free rides. And …”

It was about then that Dane stopped paying attention. The list was the same as it always was, Fred just blaming Dane for everything that went wrong with the fair, as far as Dane could tell. It had stopped worrying him quite a while ago. If Fred were going to fire him for being lazy and unmotivated, he would have done it a long time ago.

Besides, it wasn’t like he was the only one who could fit that description. As far as he could tell, Fred should be bitching at every single one of the people who worked for him, because Dane was no different, no better and no worse than the rest of them. But Fred didn’t seem to see it that way.

“You done?” he finally interrupted, and despite his boredom and frustration, he couldn’t help but feel pleasure when he saw the annoyance in Fred’s eyes. “It’s just I got people to go be rude to. So either fire me or let me go do my job.”

When he’d joined the fair a few years ago, he had been a bit more respectful toward Fred. As the months passed, though, he had quickly come to realize that Fred would just go on and on until Dane did interrupt him. It was a delicate balancing act because he couldn’t afford to be fired, but then Fred couldn’t afford to fire him, either. There weren’t many people willing to do this job.

So neither of them dared to push the other too far, and a sort of equilibrium had been reached. It worked, for now. And just as he had thought would happen, Fred waved him off with a sigh and Dane sketched a little salute his way before he left the trailer that served as Fred’s office.

Being rude. Well, excuse him for having a low tolerance for bullshit, but there was only so much that he could be accused of running his ride a hair too long, or too short, or told that some woman’s precious little baby was sweet and delicate and that he, Dane, should be groveling with gratitude to get to interact with them.

With a sigh, he rubbed at his eyes, then ran his fingers through his long hair and started the process of braiding the wavy strands back as he moved. Whatever Fred thought of him, Dane did have enough of a work ethic to want to be on time, and that lecture had almost made him late for taking over running the Ferris wheel.

The hours crawled by, and Dane retreated into himself. He was neither friendly nor unfriendly with the customers, who would probably, he thought bitterly, complain about him anyway. As the afternoon dragged on, the fair started to clear out, and he had more time between running the rides to think about things.

Fred was getting unbearable. Fred probably thought the same about Dane. They just seemed to have some sort of personality conflict that was getting worse and worse between them. Fred seemed to hate him more every time they spoke, and who knew? He might pick up some teenaged high school dropouts and kick Dane to the side of the curb, and then where would he be?

But the fair was heading south again. Heading home, or as close to home as Dane had. His parents still lived in Texas, not that that mattered much, but less useless than his parents, he had an aunt, his mother’s sister, who didn’t completely hate Dane, hadn’t written him off totally. He could go stay with her for a while. Beat Fred to the punch and quit. How long had he been working for this fair, anyway?

This was his fifth year, he realized, and he had to shake his head at the thought. How pathetic was that? Other than Fred, no one had been around that long, and he was without question too old for this bullshit.

Not that the idea of getting some minimum wage job appealed much to him. He made the same money here, and he got a bunk in a tiny trailer, so he didn’t even have to pay rent. More than that, he was free. He got to see all sorts of cities throughout the whole country, and no job flipping burgers or pumping gas was going to come close to matching the freedom he had here.

There was no good answer. Oh well. He would just wait and see how he felt when they passed through Texas. The fair traveled all year, in the northern states in the spring and summer and down in the south through the winter, so Dane had options. He didn’t have to decide right now.

Still, his mood had been ruined, and even though he tried not to think a whole lot about the things that got him down, Fred had brought them up for him. He couldn’t help but be a little gloomy, even in the full heat of the later afternoon sun, which made this damp, cold place feel almost like home.

Even after all of the years he’d spent traveling through the northern states, they were still way too damn cold. That was one check in the pro column for heading back to Texas. His mind whirled, and he found that he couldn’t quite seem to make himself make any sort of decision.

Well, there was still the rest of Washington, and Oregon, and then down into California, to decide. At least he would be heading south as the weather got colder. At least …

His thoughts stopped absolutely and went utterly still in a split second. There was a voice, a soft, sad little voice, which somehow tugged at his heart, and there weren’t too many things that he let do that.

“Just one more?” she begged, and Dane turned to look, even though the ride was as loaded, and the weight was as evenly distributed, as was going to happen at this time of the day when most of the kids had gone home for dinner.

“I’m sorry,” the person with her said, and that was when Dane lost it and when all other thoughts fled his mind in the face of the tableau which was being acted out right in front of him.

The girl was small, slender, and short so that it was hard to tell her age, though her words were clear and distinct, so she probably wasn’t that young. Four, maybe? Only she spoke better than he would expect from a four-year-old. She was pale, with dark circles under her eyes, and despite the heat of the day she was wearing a faded scarf tied over her head.

Clearly sick, she was looking up at the young man with her, her eyes enormous and pleading. Not her father, Dane was pretty sure of that. Babysitter, maybe? The man had his back to Dane, and at first, he couldn’t tell anything about him other than that his hair gleamed, the color of wet sand just drying out in the sun, and he was short and slender. If he was a fraction of an inch over five-feet-six Dane would be shocked.

So that was enough, really, the sight of the girl, to make Dane step forward, though neither of them noticed him yet. Yeah, so what, Fred had told him not to give free rides anymore. Even Fred wouldn’t be able to resist the pathetic sight of the little girl, her gaze slipping away from the man with her to the wheel which stretched far, far over her head with a sort of wonder.

That wonder that awe was something that Dane had almost forgotten how to feel. It shouldn’t be taken away from her if she could still feel it, so the decision was made even before the young man turned around.

It was a completely different impact when those big, wary blue eyes looked up at Dane. A tug at his heart, but not in the same way that the little girl’s had. There was no pity, not like there had been with her.

In a second, he knew some things that he hadn’t known before. This man was young, and he was tired, and there was something in Dane that seemed to recognize him without needing the trouble of being formally introduced.

And this man was beautiful.

Maybe that shouldn’t have mattered, but with someone as lovely and delicately-boned, with the high cheekbones and impossibly full, sensual lips, it did. It made Dane stop in his tracks, and the weirdest part about the whole thing was that, when the young man looked back at Dane, he saw the same things echoed in those remarkable eyes that he was feeling himself.

It was dangerous. Dane, in his travels, had gotten pretty good at knowing when people were interested in him. It was how he got laid, more often than not, a moment of excitement in the bleak, forgettable lives of the usually closeted men who wanted nothing more than a roll in the hay with a dangerous stranger who would disappear soon enough and leave them nothing but memories.

That had always worked well for him, but this man, somehow, seemed different to him. Like maybe it wouldn’t work out quite the same way for him if he tried anything. He swallowed and forced his gaze away, though it felt like an actual physical effort to make himself do it. And he missed the regard of those eyes, the way they seemed to warm and brighten as they looked at Dane.

No one looked at him like that. Attraction, sure, but recognition? Something more than physical, maybe? Or was Dane just that lonely, that some sweet young thing was able to turn his head and make him think of things that were, let’s face it, completely impossible for him?

Dane extended the invitation, and Fred’s displeasure was the furthest thing from his mind. The young man was still looking at him, and Dane didn’t have it in him to stop his gaze from going back toward the beautiful boy.

How long passed, Dane didn’t know and had trouble caring. It wasn’t until a parent of one of the children cleared her throat meaningfully beside them that Dane was pulled out of it, and slowly, he turned his gaze back to where it belonged, starting up the ride for the excited children in the swaying little carts.

With his level of experience, he didn’t need to pay nearly as much attention to operating the simple ride controls as he did. But it just seemed somehow safer that way, and if Fred had been there, even he couldn’t complain about Dane’s lack of diligence at the moment.