Page 20 of Trevor Takes Care

“His family lives somewhere close enough to drive to,” was the first thing Trevor said upon returning home. His grandmother looked up from rolling herself a pain-relief joint to scowl, understanding exactly why Trevor was bothered.

“Maybe a lasagna tomorrow,” she suggested. The most comforting cheesy, carby goodness possible, but also complicated if she made it from scratch. Not that she was going to be making any grocery lists tonight after she smoked.

Trevor nodded anyway in agreement, finished rolling her joint for her, got out a bag of popcorn, a package of peanut butter crackers, and a bottle of water, and set them up on the living room coffee table for her munchies, then went into his room, where he almost certainly would be getting no work done.

He abandoned the barbarian completely. Maybe a barbarian was good for another plotline, but not for whatever went on with the warrior and the creature who would capture him. Whether that captivity was planned or accidental, brief or longer, depended on the greater story, so Trevor wrote down his thoughts on that, eventually doodling a combination map and timeline to try to place things with the characters he already had that he liked. There were so many who might fall in love with a quiet, somewhat tortured type, more monk than soldier. The dragon, if it stayed a dragon, didn’t have to be a forever thing, merely a passionate and revealing interlude.

Of course, dragons in most stories didn’t give up treasure easily, so Trevor didn’t see that story ending well for the dragon no matter how sexy the rest of the encounter was. The warrior might even be saddened. One of his friends—and hewouldneed to find friends on this journey, which would probably surprise him—would have to be very impressive if turned into a love interest in order to compete with the dragon.

Deciding to stay up later to consider this while he was in the mood to dwell on troubled hearts and yearning monsters, Trevor eventually left his room to get another can of tea.

It was there in the darkened kitchen, standing by the fridge in the dim light from the living room, his thoughts halfway in another world, when Trevor’s eyes fell on the coffee machine and he abruptly remembered another reason people invited someone to have coffee with them.

It didn’t mean anything except maybe that, if it had been G.G.’s intent to get Trevor to stay in his house to fuck around, Trevor hadn’t been smart or sophisticated enough to get it.

Nonetheless, he stood there thinking about it long enough for the can in his hand to get wet with condensation.

He considered telling the whole embarrassing story to Sky, but when he messaged to see if Sky was up and free, Sky answered with:I’m here. Which was never good.

Toohonest, if that was a thing. A statement of fact instead of ignoring the question, which meant Sky was tired, possibly even stretched to the limit with work stress and a mind that ran away with him.

You aren’t sick, are you?Trevor demanded immediately.

He was not expecting a call for an answer, but went to his room and closed the door before picking up. “You okay?”

“Been busy.” Sky’s voice was a tiny, weary scrape of a sound. “Less to do with work but also… I guess more to do with work.”

He must have beenexhaustedto be volunteering that much so easily.

Trevor sat on his bed. “Tell me.”

Sky held onto enough of his usual stubbornness to hesitate. “It’s technical stuff. You’ll be bored.”And wouldn’t follow most of it, he didn’t say. Trevor wouldn’t, but it was fine.

“Just give it to me anyway and I’ll listen,” Trevor insisted. “You don’t need my advice for important work stuff, but I can still listen and say, ‘Oh, that sucks.’ And, ‘Wow, what an asshole!’ And, ‘Hmm, go on.’ I don’t need to be a genius to understand that much.”

The first part surprised Sky into a small laugh. The second part made him growl something with his hand over the phone before he took it away. “I can always tell when you’ve spoken with your family and they’ve dismissed you. You could understand if you wanted to. Please don’t talk down about yourself like that.”

For possibly a whole minute, maybe closer to two, Trevor listened to Sky breathe.

“This is about you, Sky baby, not me,” Trevor said at last. He kept his voice low so he wouldn’t have to bother with putting music on. “You’re stressed. Vent at me for a while and don’t worry about explaining anything technical. Okay?”

He wondered if Sky was lying down somewhere or still in his computer chair, where he’d likely been for hours, his back and shoulders knotted tight with tension.

He waited, not ordering anything, simply listening to Sky’s breathing go up and down while Sky tried not to want what he wanted for some reason known only to Sky.

“I feel like I keep using you,” Sky finally admitted, which was the last thing Trevor had expected him to say.

He thought about reminding Sky that Trevor was the one who got to make Sky come apart, but in the end, continued to breathe slowly in and out to get Sky’s breathing to match.

“I like it,” he told Sky honestly, “and I don’t mind. What else am I doing anyway? What could possibly be more important?”

Sky’s breathing, finally starting to slow down, stopped for several seconds.

“I’m here,” Trevor reminded him after a few more moments of Sky fighting with himself about wanting something Trevor was happy to do.

“Oh, I know,” Sky said, so wound up he had to be in his chair and probably freezing from not being dressed and forgetting even after two years that he now lived in a colder climate. “I don’t know.” It spilled out of him in a whine. “I don’t know what the problem is. Things are building up. I don’t understand why. It’s not my department and I don’t know those people, but it’s making things strange. I should stop and figure out why, but that’s not my job. Ihavea job, and it shouldn’t affect me if people scattered across the city and having meetings online are pissed, but it does. I hate it. Neider is waving a promotion at me, but he’s not my boss and I think that’s something between them. I don’t want that promotion anyway. I don’t want to deal with people. I can’t be in charge of people. I can’t! Anyway, that’s not my department either, and also not what I want. I’ve been doing more to make sure everything I give them is the very best, because I’m trying to prove to them that they don’t need to bother me. That I can get along with people when I have to—except for this drama now that I have to manage, so I can show them. But it’s so! Unnecessary! And while this is going on, I still have to show them that they can trust me to get things done no matter what is going on or where I am!”

Sky stopped to breathe harshly, but then went on, “So they will listen to me about something vital. Then there is this woman who keeps wanting to talk to me outside of meetings, even though the meetings were enough, and I don’t think she likes me, but if she’s trying to trip me up, I might have to destroy her. Which,” he added quickly, “I could only do because her work is subpar. Which is also not my department but sometimes, I try to figure out why everyone is tense so I pay more attention to other things. But now I’m tired, and it’s been raining and raining, and you always tell me to take a break, so I tried to paint one of my lich miniatures but my headspace wasn’t right and I broke off one of its fingers.”

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