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“I really prefer admiring the outdoors from inside the house. It’s like my own private terrarium.” They had just set their easels up, but Rook probably wouldn’t want to stay out for long.
They settled in, and Banner tried to decide which part of the landscape to paint. He could feel Rook watching him, but he was too wound up to be good company.
“What’s the deal with you today? I feel like I’m talking to myself.” The kid laughed but looked concerned. He was too perceptive for his own good sometimes.
“Relationship stuff. Sorry I’m distracted.” He shrugged and reorganized his workspace for the second time.
“I’ve never seen you this messed up about a girl. It’s probably good for your enormous ego.” Rook grinned, and Banner gave him a friendly shove.
“Yeah, things with her are done though. I’m hooking her up with Ambrose, and then I can move on and stop being a creepy stalker.” He chewed on the end of a paintbrush and thought of her trembling under his hands as he drew a brush over her smooth skin. Would memories like that ever fade, or would they plague him every second of every day?
“Getting her to date Ambrose is going to fix how you feel about her?”
“Shh. Of course it is.”
Rook shook his head sympathetically. “If you believe that, maybe you’re the one who should be seeing Dr. Clarke.”
Counseling? No, thanks. Time for a change of subject.
“How’s school?”
Rook’s expression went from concerned to shuttered. “It’s school. I’m sure college will be better. The one I’m hoping to get into seems a lot more open-minded.”
“Kids can be idiots.” Banner grimaced. “If you ever need to talk, you know how to get ahold of me. Don’t be shy, even if it’s in the middle of my office hours or the middle of the night.”
Banner could feel Rook weighing his next words. What did the kid have going on that was a secret? Usually, he told him everything.
“Dr. Clarke wants to put me on a mood stabilizer.”
He sighed. Why medicate a kid because society didn’t get him? Rook didn’t have a mood disorder, he just had to stop dealing with asshats.
“Well, that’ll be up to you and Mom. Do you feel like you need one?”
“I don’t know. It won’t make me straight, and it won’t make the other kids leave me alone.” He shrugged. “So I get fog and side effects, and they get to keep being idiots.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m not switching schools again. It didn’t work last time. There’ll be homophobes in my face for the rest of my life. I just have to learn how to deal with them.”
Banner looked at the boy, so small for his age and so sensitive to the people around him. Sure he had money now, but money didn’t fix the most important things in life. Was there anything else he could do for him that he wasn’t doing?
“Stop looking at me like that. Moving me into your place and having me homeschooled won’t fix anything. I don’t belong in a bubble. Are you going to hire me to work for you from home when I grow up, so that I’ll never have to deal with people?” He turned away and drew some bold charcoal lines on his canvas.
He watched his baby brother as the landscape blossomed from his hand onto the canvas. Only blacks and grays. It was funny how the situations around his mother and his brother made him feel helpless and angry for completely different reasons.
Rook laughed humorlessly. “Eventually, I’ll have to leave the house for something, and I’ll have to deal with the same crap. There’s no hiding from it. If I was taller I could get some respect, but being small, femme, and gay? I’m a walking stereotype. Although I do fight the stereotype that gay men always dress well.”
“You’re killing me. Why won’t you take self-defense classes? I could hire you a bodyguard for certain parts of the day, if you think it’d help.” He grabbed Rook in a one-armed hug when his charcoal left the paper and rested his chin on the kid’s head.
“It’s only comments now, Banner. People don’t get attacked so much around here. It’s just the way they stop talking when you walk into a room and the words you hear whispered behind your back. A bodyguard can’t stop gossip. Self-defense doesn’t work against words.”
“But you have Dylan. And me.”
“Yes, and Ambrose and Konstanin. Meadow isn’t ready for me to come out to her, I don’t think, but her heart is in the right place. Eventually, I’ll tell her. And Mom, well, I don’t know if she can handle more right now. Her life needs to be easy and happy.”
Banner sighed and let him go when he started to pull away.
“I just want you to remember that I’m in your corner, no matter what. If you need to talk or if you need help, you call me.”
