By Any Other Name (2 page)

“Everything ready?” Dru asked when he got back to the kitchen again.

“Yes, cocoa and chocolate-chip muffins, please.” Thom smiled, and Dru chuckled a bit.

“Fine… but we’re going for a run tomorrow morning. Just so you know.”

It was Dru who kept them both fit, though Thom had become better with it in the years they had lived together. They had a little home gym in the downstairs bedroom. Mostly because they liked the biggest bedroom upstairs and there wasn’t a basement in the house to put the equipment in. There was an additional guestroom upstairs as well. The house was really too large for just two people, but they had fallen in love with it when they began house-hunting after dating a few months. They had just known it somehow, even if Dru had been just twenty-one at the time and Thom had tried to resist the handsome younger man who worked at the coffee shop near his office.

Thom went to sit at the breakfast bar and flipped open a magazine to keep the baker company. Just as Dru began to mix the flour and the cocoa powder, the phone on the end table near the island rang.

“I’ll get it,” Thom said automatically and picked up the phone. “Thomas Williams,” he answered.

“This is Dr. Albert King from the Haven Institute in Boston.”

“Good afternoon, Doctor, how may I help you?” Thom asked with a puzzled tone that made Dru turn around to face him with an equally puzzled expression on his features.

“I’m looking for an Andrew Beckett Jr., and this is the number I found online,” the man on the other end of the line said in a deep bass voice.

“Ah, yes, I’m Andrew’s partner, could you wait a second?” Thom asked and placed his hand over the receiver.

When Dru looked at him, he said, “Some doc from Boston… for you.”

Dru blinked and then looked at the bowl in front of him on the counter. “Ask him if he can work with speaker, not stopping this now.”

Thom grinned internally; this was typical for his Dru, not taking anyone’s directions and certainly not stopping something he was doing for a stranger.

“Yes, Doctor? Do you mind if I put you on speaker?” Thom asked.

“Well, it’s not—”

“It’s just that there’s no one else here but me and him, and he’s baking. Besides we don’t have any secrets, so he’d tell me immediately anyway….” Thom let the end drift off and heard a sigh from the other end.

“All right, then,” the man said, and Thom pressed the button.

“Good afternoon there, Doc. This is Dru Beckett, how can I help you?” the blond said, emphasizing his nickname to make sure it was known how little he appreciated his given one.

“Afternoon, Mr. Beckett. This is… a bit of a strange cross-country call, I’m afraid. One I haven’t been able to properly prepare for, but here goes.” There was a low chuckle from the doctor, and Dru turned to look at Thom with a slight questioning frown. Thom shrugged, and the doctor began to speak again.

“You see, I am the head psychiatrist at the Haven Institute in Boston. Now, for the last two years we’ve had a patient here, and now that he’s been deemed ready to face the world again, he gave your name as a person to contact.” The voice stopped as if the doctor was hesitant to continue.

“Wh… what?” Dru asked, obviously mentally going over a list of people but not really able to think of anyone. “Who?” he added and turned completely, leaning his back to the counter now, barely registering Thom, who moved closer to him to offer his support.

“The patient’s name is Skye Walker. He said you two were close growing up?”

The complete silence that followed the question on both ends of the call was deafening. Thom wanted to wrap his arms around Dru but couldn’t, not with this. Not when the name Dru avoided mentioning popped up like this.

“I know this must have come as a bit of a shock,” the doctor began again, only to be cut off by Dru.

“Wait, wait,” he said and shook his head as if to clear it. “You’re saying Skye, who I haven’t seen or heard of in… seven years, has been in a mental institution for two of those years?”

“Yes, you see….” Another slightly frustrated and awkward sigh was heard as the doctor tried to figure out how to say what he had to say. “I have Skye’s permission to speak about this with you, the basics of it at least, even though it’s against patient confidentiality. The gist of things is that the uncle who took him in… he wasn’t the man everyone thought he was. In fact he imprisoned Skye, brainwashed him, and used him as a… as a sexual slave for nearly five years.”

Another long silence.

By then, Thom was ignoring the fact Dru might need space like he usually did when upset and had wrapped his arms around his lover to be there for him whether he wanted it or not. When Dru didn’t seem to be able to speak and the doctor was waiting patiently, Thom cleared his throat.

“You must understand this is a shock to Dru,” Thom said loudly enough for it to reach the speaker phone. He soothed Dru’s arm and cloth-covered stomach with his fingers just to do something. He could feel Dru trembling slightly, and it terrified Thom. His lover was the strongest man Thom had ever known.

“Yes, I understand, but… I won’t lie to you, when Skye came to Haven, he was a shell of a man, and… I wasn’t sure he’d pull through. But he did. He’s much better now, but the problem is that even though he’s ready to go back to the world, we don’t really have anywhere for him to go. He has been rehabilitated, but there are still some issues.” The doctor came to the reason for his call.

“How did he get to the institution?” Dru asked, his voice betraying his suspicion.

“The uncle worked in construction, and one day he fell off some scaffolding at a site and died on impact. When the man he had rented their house from went to check on things, they… they found Skye in the basement.”

There was another, shorter pause before the doctor spoke again. “The police officer that was first on the scene had some connections with the institution and managed to get Skye in here. They raised some funds in the Boston PD, and then, after the story leaked to the local papers, some other people pitched in. As there was no will, naturally all of the little money the uncle had left was used to make sure Skye had a safe place and all the resources to get better.”

“Is… would it be possible for you and… and Skye to work on an e-mail or a fax with some of the information on what he has been through and what his situation is now and so on for us?” Thom, always the organized lawyer, asked.

“I suppose that is fair….” There was a silence that could only be described as thoughtful. “Though you need to understand that the departure date was set some time ago and Skye is to leave Haven first thing Monday morning. If we don’t find… alternatives… the only place he can go is the halfway house, and I have seen enough in my thirty years doing this to know that someone like him is likely to be found in a homeless shelter inside a few months.”

“I understand, but we need to discuss this, all of it, and know more to be able to make an educated decision instead of jumping into anything,” Thom said and nudged Dru’s side.

“Yes, yes, Thom is right. We need to… to know more,” Dru said in a slightly shaky voice.

“All right, I got this number from the website of your business, Mr. Beckett. So I’ll use the fax that was there later today, once I’ve spoken with Skye about this. We tried to find other options, at Skye’s request, but there didn’t seem to be any. I wouldn’t ordinarily spring something like this on anyone. Just… it’s Friday evening already; time is of the essence here.”

“Yes, thank you for the call. We’ll be calling you back as soon as we get your fax and have reviewed it,” Thom said, and they disconnected the call. Then he led his shocked lover to the couch in the living room area under the loft.

They sat in silence for a while, Thom’s arms around Dru, holding him tight as if to keep him together.

“What’s your first instinct about this?” Thom asked when the body in his arms began to relax a bit again.

After a deep sigh, Dru nearly whispered, “I’d do anything for him.”

That was what sealed the deal for Thom. He’d do anything for Dru, and if it was helping his childhood friend and first love, that was what Thom would do, no matter how he felt about it.

“Okay… we’ll take a look at the fax and think this through, and you’ll decide what we’ll do,” Thom said firmly.

Suddenly Dru’s eyes snapped to his as the younger man twisted in his arms to look at him. “No.
I’m
not deciding,
we
are. This is
our
life, Thom.” This was a tone Thom knew very well: the one that told him Dru was being serious, that this was final and he had no say in it.

The relief he felt at hearing the words took his breath away for a while. The name of the boy, now a man, who had been the first person ever to capture his elusive Dru’s heart had always made him feel slightly uncomfortable. There was history there, even if nothing sexual had happened between the boys. Thom knew Dru had never truly been able to get over the loss of Skye, no matter how serious his relationship with Thom became or how much time passed. Seven years was a long time not to know why the person you loved, and who you thought was your best friend, never contacted you again.

“I’ll go put the coffee on. We need caffeine. And something to eat. Takeout?” he asked while getting up from the couch.

“Yeah… okay, sure… Italian okay?” Dru asked, clearly wanting comfort food. He had gotten the idea of Italian being comfort food from Thom’s mother, who was half Italian and liked to cook for her family, especially if there was a crisis.

“Sure, I’ll be right back, babe,” Thom said and kissed Dru’s cheek before retreating to the kitchen to think about the possibilities the fax would open up for them.

Dru

Dru
sat on the couch, his legs folded next to him on the seat as he looked out of the large windows. The view was one of the reasons they had bought this house together. His life with Thom was… perfect. There were occasional issues, but didn’t every couple have those? Now—now his secure life with the man he loved with all his heart was being threatened by a ghost from the past.

Skye.
Just thinking the name made his heart beat faster.

If he let himself think about what had happened, he could still feel the emotions like it had truly been yesterday and not all those years ago. It had started one day when he was thirteen and lasted until he was seventeen, and then it had all been taken away from him again.

He let himself think, just this once, about the past. Just for this moment, when he was still secure with Thom in the kitchen, he’d think about it and then let it go again… maybe.

It had been early February when the scrawny kid in too-big clothes had walked in the doors of Dru’s school. Or he hadn’t really been Dru then, he’d been Andrew Junior or, as his mother seemed to like to call him, Andy. He had loathed both names and didn’t really like any of the variations, either.