Sticks & Stones

Zane was still amused by the now-trademarked “interesting.” “Sometimes. Not as much as I used to.”



“Pain can color a lot of things,” Deuce pointed out with a nod.



Zane nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed.



“If you hadn’t been hurt on the job, would you enjoy it more?” Deuce asked thoughtfully.



Zane considered whom he was talking to. This was Ty’s brother, after all, not just some random bureau psychiatrist. “No,” he admitted quietly.



Deuce pursed his lips and nodded. Then he leaned toward Zane slightly. “Is Ty a good partner?” he asked.



“You were there when I told your mom about Ty being a good partner.”



“That’s what you told my mom,” Deuce pointed out. “I’m asking for the real answer.”



Zane frowned slightly, not sure what Deuce wanted to hear. “Why would I lie about that?”



“So he’s a good partner,” Deuce concluded with a nod. He looked at Zane unflinchingly, studying him. “Are you?” he finally asked.



Zane was a little surprised by the question. “I hope so. “



“Of course,” Deuce agreed with a shrug of one shoulder and a smile. “But are you?”



“I don’t know,” Zane answered defensively.



“Sure you do. You know what it takes. Are you someone you’d be comfortable putting your back to in a fight?”



Zane caught himself pausing. He’d been wrestling with his fears a lot in the form of nightmares, especially the fear of losing someone close to him. In the past, it had been Becky. Right now, it meant Ty. “I don’t know.”



“So you’re not a good partner,” Deuce translated for himself. “Very interesting.”



Zane pressed his lips together, embarrassed and at a loss for words. “Has anyone ever threatened you over saying that word?”



“Not that I recall,” Deuce answered sincerely. He was still smiling at Zane thoughtfully. “As a shrink, we’re trained to listen and ask the relevant questions, not so much give advice,” he confided in Zane.



“I thought you didn’t like to be called a shrink,” Zane said with a weak smile.



“It comes and goes,” Deuce admitted carelessly. “And I’m going to offer advice to you now despite being a shrink, okay? It’s good to be honest with yourself. And harsh, to a point. After that point it gets unhealthy,” he said with a wince and a shrug. “But sometimes the cold hard truth is very effective in helping yourself. I tell Ty all the time, just admit that you’re an asshole and make life easier.” He went on, seeming to enjoy the line of conversation and rambling happily.



Harsh truth. Zane figured the worst of his nightmares was that sometime, somewhere, he wouldn’t be able to protect the people he cared about—and that they’d be taken away from him as a result. As to how to fix it? God only knew, because Zane sure didn’t.



“Once you admit to yourself that you are or aren’t something, then you can begin searching for the reason why,” Deuce went on. “And once you’ve found that, you can begin to take steps toward making it better. So, tell yourself you’re an asshole, stop being an asshole, your problem’s solved,” Deuce said in a pleased voice. “He usually glazes over on me at that point,” he added with a frown. “Kinda like you are.”



“That’s because he’s an asshole,” Zane said with a small smile before he huffed quietly. “He just seems to blow things off so easily. It makes me fucking crazy.”



Deuce was frowning harder and shaking his head. “Ty takes things to heart,” he told Zane, his voice losing the light, carefree tone and becoming more serious. “Most things he takes hard for about a minute, then he’s moving on. Other things, they take him longer. Especially issues of fault. Failures hit him hard, but he processes them well. They don’t stick to him. See, some people, they’re sticky like Velcro. You’re sticky. Your problems stick to you like fuzzballs from the laundry; you take them everywhere with you and people can see them plain as day. Ty, he’s like spandex. Nothing sticks to him, and he’s shiny on the outside.”



Zane knew he was staring at Deuce oddly, but he couldn’t stop himself. “You know, I don’t know what’s worse, that you just said that or that it actually made sense.”



Deuce winked at him and grinned. “You just have to pick off the fuzzballs,” he advised.



“I never was really good with laundry,” Zane said with a self-deprecating laugh. “Not really good with dealing with ‘things’, either.”



Deuce hummed in response. “Maybe if you tried doing the laundry more often, you’d be a better partner.”



“Are we continuing the laundry analogy for the laugh factor?” Zane asked as he wrinkled his nose. “If we are, I’ll say I’d rather dump it all at the dry cleaners and forget about it.”



“You don’t want a tiny little Oriental guy dealing with your fuzzballs,” Deuce argued, barely restraining a laugh. “It’s one of my better analogies,” he went on, his grin widening as Zane did laugh. “I should write it down.” He paused for a long moment. “Am I making any headway here?” he asked seriously.



“I hear what you’re saying. But it’s nothing I didn’t already know,” Zane said. He knew what was wrong. He just didn’t know how to fix it, so he’d taken to ignoring it.



Deuce nodded in understanding. “So what you’re saying is you don’t mind being a bad partner to a man you claim is a great one.”



Zane’s face went very still as a flash of pain streaked through his chest. “I’ve been a good partner when it counted.”



“It always counts, Zane,” Deuce murmured gently.



Zane sighed, dropped his eyes, and then closed them for good measure. “Yeah,” he whispered.



Deuce reached out and patted him on the foot. “We went over the whats. You ever want to get into the whys, you know where to find me,” he offered.



After managing to get a breath into his lungs, Zane looked up at Deuce. He thought he should say something, but there just wasn’t anything to be said. He settled on nodding and smiling weakly.



Deuce smiled lopsidedly at him. “Good, now help me up,” he requested as he held out a hand. “Leg’ll let me get down, but it’s no damn help getting back up. I just roll around like a turtle on its shell ’til somebody shoves me with a stick.”



Zane couldn’t help but snort and smile. “I’m not sure I’m in much better shape,” he admitted. “Your dad sets a fast pace.”



“He always has,” Deuce acknowledged.



Zane snorted, got to his feet fairly easily, and then offered Deuce an arm. Deuce clasped his wrist in a hard grip, and he pulled himself to his feet with Zane’s help. He clapped Zane on the back and turned to head for the tree line again to gather more firewood.



Zane watched him limp away. “If you don’t mind me asking, what happened?” he asked impulsively.



Deuce turned and looked back at him with a raised eyebrow. “What happened to my leg, you mean?” he asked to clarify. He patted his thigh as he turned back to face Zane. “I went over the handlebars of a motorcycle,” he answered with a slight smile. “Got pinned between the bike and a tree. Broke all kinds of bones and tore some tendons below the knee. Couldn’t be fixed to where I don’t limp.”



Zane nodded slowly. Sounded like normal dumbass kid stuff; he’d done his share. It just didn’t end very well for Deuce. Then something clicked. “That’s why Ty hates motorcycles, isn’t it?”



Deuce nodded. “He gave me the bike when he went off to join the Marines. I was sixteen. He blames himself. You know the drill.”



Zane nodded. It fit what he knew about Ty. “Yeah, he must. He doesn’t like me riding my Valkyrie. And he’s made it very clear he never will.”



Deuce clucked his tongue. “Ty’s got to place blame. He’s a very black-and-white type of person. He needed something to blame for it, and instead of accepting that I was going ninety miles an hour on a dirt road and it was my fault, he blamed the bike. And himself,” he explained. “But it all worked out for the best,” he claimed, remarkably cheerful as he spoke about what had to have been a devastating, life-altering event. “I wouldn’t have been a very good Marine,” he mused. “And that’s the route I would have taken, right down the path he did.”



“You love him a lot,” Zane murmured.



“He’s my brother,” Deuce answered, as if that should be obvious.



Zane nodded. “Of course.”



“Do you?” Deuce asked without looking away.



Zane held Deuce’s gaze as his lips quirked into a wry smile, and he had to go with his honest, gut answer. “No,” he said softly, a slight tinge of regret in his voice.



“Huh,” Deuce responded in genuine interest. “I would have guessed otherwise,” he admitted to Zane.



Zane shrugged uncomfortably, unsure of how to respond to that. It was something he consciously avoided thinking about. “I do like having the asshole around,” he offered.



“That’s more than can be said for most,” Deuce commented in amusement.



“So I’ve been told,” Zane agreed. He rolled his shoulders slightly, trying to shrug off some of the tension. Deuce just watched him closely, narrowing his eyes and smiling. “You look very happy with yourself,” Zane observed.



Deuce glanced off into the woods again and then took a step closer to lower his voice. “Try to be a better partner,” he advised softly.



Zane held his gaze for a long moment. Finally he sighed. “I want him around.”



Deuce merely nodded again. He glanced to his side, listening briefly. “We’ll talk again later,” he promised as he looked back at Zane and smiled.



“Yeah,” Zane said as he acknowledged Deuce’s help. Deuce had zeroed in on what bothered Zane so much in under five minutes—either the man was that good, or Zane felt that comfortable with him. Probably both.



He was distracted from his thoughts when he heard Ty and Earl conversing and tramping through the underbrush, coming closer. Deuce turned and limped back toward the tree line to continue his gathering.



“I don’t smell dinner cooking,” Ty observed after he broke through the tree line in a different spot than where he’d gone through. He tromped closer to the fire and glanced at Zane, giving him a quick second look over. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked.



Zane blinked and shook himself. “Trying to recharge.”



Ty looked him up and down dubiously, but then he nodded and unshouldered his pack. “All righty,” he said agreeably.



“What’d you find?” Deuce asked them as he brought over another armload of wood and dumped it into Ty’s bedroll.



“Hey!” Ty shouted with an accusing point at the firewood.



“What?” Deuce asked innocently.



Ty pointed his finger after Deuce threateningly. “I will beat you like a rented mule next time Daddy ain’t watching!”



“Bring it on, G-man,” Deuce invited with relish.



“Don’t start,” Earl warned as he sat down on a rock near the fire. “Deacon,” he added, gesturing to the bedroll tiredly.



Ty and Deuce gave each other measuring looks as Deuce bent and pulled the bedroll out from under the woodpile. He held it up and waved it. “See? Good as new,” he claimed.



“You’re gonna wake up with a snake in your jeans,” Ty growled softly.



“Too cold for snakes,” Deuce reminded.



“Don’t start with the snakes again,” Zane said plaintively, getting a chuckle out of Earl.



“Chipmunk then,” Ty decided.



“You’re afraid of chipmunks,” Deuce told him with a laugh.



“Yeah, ’cause they’re… twitchy!” Ty explained with a little gesture of his hands.



Deuce laughed harder and waved him off. They were both smiling, though, and Zane could tell the little scene was a familiar one for them.



“We can make the trail cabins if we haul it tomorrow,” Earl informed them in a loud voice, getting everyone’s attention. “Cold front’s a day or so off yet; we should be clear of it before it comes through.”



“It might even hook west,” Ty added seriously as he sat down beside Zane with a soft huff. “But we might not miss the rain,” he added under his breath. Zane frowned and shifted uncomfortably.



Great. Cold and wet. What an awesome idea for a vacation. Next time—if there was a next time, because their vacations were fucking cursed—Zane was choosing, and right now a beach in Cozumel was sounding pretty damn good.



“So we go on?” Deuce asked.



“We go on,” Earl confirmed with a nod.



THEY reached the trail cabin just as darkness was falling the next evening. It hadn’t been a nice leisurely stroll through the mountains like the first two days. When the rain started as Ty had predicted, they’d had to double-time it in order to reach the shelter before the coming storm hit them hard, and when they finally made it through the door, they were all wet, cold, tired, and cranky.



Ty pushed back the hood of his slicker and glanced around the interior. These places were never cheerful, but this one had definitely seen better days. Desiccated leaves littered the floor because someone had left the door open last fall, and the exposed logs of the walls were all damp. The roof dripped, the floor was sagging, and there appeared to be moss growing on the outer rock of the fireplace. A fire already flickered there, though, barely warming the tiny cabin. There was a small supply of dry wood stacked in the corner that might last the night if they were careful.