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for news if he
    was there.
    “Brian’s aunt called me. I guess she found my number in your
    wallet when you went to shower. She seemed to think you might
    need some moral support.”
    Talker squinted. He realized that the man’s hair wasn’t in its
    usual queue, but hung to his shoulders in a snarled mess, and that
    his cardigan (a handsome one in a dark gray color) was
    misbuttoned. “You got here pretty fast. Jesus, how long was I in the
    shower?”
    “A long time,” Sutherland said gently. “But I only live about five
    minutes away.”
    There was a pause, and Talker had to swallow, because the
    guy had to have been worried about him to come out in the… fuck.
    Was it morning yet?
    “I don’t want to talk about it again,” he said after a minute. “I got
    it all out in the office, and then… tonight….” He shrugged. He was
    pretty sure Lyndie must have told the doc all about it.
    Suddenly the doctor was closer than he usually stood, and his
    arm stretched up and looped around Tate’s shoulder. He smelled
    like baby powder; the doc must have showered before he got called
    out of bed to look after his two boys.
    Talker’s Redemption | Amy Lane
    53

    “No worries, Talker. The detectives are going to have to
    question you again in an hour or so, and we still need to wait for
    news on Brian. You don’t have to say a word, okay? But Lyndie was
    worried, and she seemed to feel you were worth the trouble, so
    here I am.”
    Tate nodded and blinked, hard. “All right,” he said hoarsely.
    “Have you seen Brian yet?”
    Dr. Sutherland’s careful breathing was his only giveaway when
    they got to Brian’s room, but he was shocked, Tate could tell.
    “The swelling’s pretty bad,” Lyndie said softly. She was sitting
    quietly, working on her own yarn work, and Tate had a brief moment
    of disconnect, imagining what Brian’s aunt and his shrink might say
    to each other: “Yes, I prefer the hookie thingie, with the yarn that
    has all the fuzzies on it!” “I’m a big fan of pointy sticks myself, and I
    like my yarn plain, like all my sweaters.”
    The noise in his head faded, though, and he got another look
    at Brian’s face. It looked like another bandage had been added, and
    he looked at Lyndie in confusion.
    “They lanced the bruise by his cheekbone and the one over
    his eye,” she said quietly, her hands growing white around her hook
    and her yarn. “They said it looks worse than it is.”
    Talker nodded and fought the quiver in his lip, and then he sat
    at Brian’s bedside. Dr. Sutherland dropped the side rail for him, and
    he just sat, holding Brian’s good hand in his own, in the fugue-like
    silence that was punctuated only by the vital-sign monitors and
    Brian’s deliberate breathing through his newly-broken nose. Talker
    started dreaming a little as he sat there, exhausted, wired, and
    frightened. They weren’t the bad dreams for once. It was like his
    body had shut down the capacity for the bad dreams in this fraught
    moment of peace, and all he was left with were the good ones.
    Talker’s Redemption | Amy Lane
    54

    “WHAT?” Brian had just woken up, the morning after their last
    session with Dr. Sutherland. It had been an exhausting night—
    they’d had to work and everything, and they had literally plodded up
    the stairs, took turns in the shower, said “hi” to Sunshine the rat,
    and fallen into bed.
    But this was morning, and the light was shining through the
    window like an ice pick, and Tate had woken up to find that Brian
    was right where he had been for the last six months, snoring just
    loud enough to be totally embarrassed if he knew.
    Talker hadn’t told him yet. It was like a secret thing that only he
    knew. (Well, Tate and Virginia, since she’d been the only other one
    Brian had ever had sleepovers with. Since Virginia had also helped
    Brian to bust out of the closet, Tate would do her the favor of
    pretending she never existed.)
    There were other secret things that Tate knew. He knew there
    were five freckles on Brian’s left cheek that were slightly darker than
    the others, and four on his right. He knew that Brian was really
    proud of the four studs in his ears and the one in his nose because
    he thought he was pretty boring and average and the studs did
    something to alleviate that. Tate knew that Brian was sort of a snob
    about people—he didn’t like people who were too loud or who made
    noise just to get attention, or who said mean things to make