How long it really was that they sat there, Logan didn’t know. The sky was lightening outside, that much was clear. But the sound of a car outside was unusual enough that it broke through Logan’s apathy, and he frowned as he let his eyes open completely.
“It’s a cab.” Craig was looking out of a small window, encrusted with the dust of years and years’ worth of hay but still evidently transparent enough to peer through.
“Oh,” Logan replied, helpless and hopeless.
“There’s Derrick and Jess. He’s leaving, Logan,” Craig said, and Logan let out a soft sigh and turned away from the window, not moving from his seat.
“Good. It’s better that way,” he responded. God knew that he wanted to fling himself from the loft and sprint to catch Derrick, but he couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t. What sort of man would he be if he did? Everything in him was screaming at him to do just that, but he couldn’t allow himself.
They both listened as the taxi doors shut, seemingly deafeningly loud in the silent early morning. The car roared to life, and then it was gone, taking Derrick right along with it.
“That’s it. He’s gone. Jess, too,” Craig said, and he shifted away from the window to come sit beside Logan.
“Okay.” What else was there to say? It was for the best, no matter how much it hurt.
“Are you that much of a homophobe?” Craig just wouldn’t leave it alone, evidently. “I mean, I get that it might suck if you get kissed by someone and you weren’t expecting it, but did you have to be such a dick about it?”
Logan gave a soft, bitter little chuckle and shook his head in wonder.
“That’s not what happened at all,” he protested, not sure how someone could get it so very wrong. He sighed and rubbed at his temples, trying to stave off the low, steady thrum of his heart there which threatened to turn into a headache.
“So tell me, then,” Craig invited, and Logan shook his head. He couldn’t. But Craig wasn’t done speaking. “I know you, man. I know that you’re Mal’s best friend, but I’ve known you for a million years, too. I thought we were friends, too. Don’t you trust me?”
Logan groaned softly. There was too much hurt in Craig’s voice. Apparently it was just Logan’s day for hurting people that he cared about. He shook his head, wavering. He needed to talk to someone, but there weren’t too many people that would be worse to speak to than Derrick’s protective big brother. But then, all of his damn friends were Derrick’s family, it seemed.
“Malcolm will kill me,” Logan protested. “You’ll kill me.”
Craig didn’t reply to that, he just waited, and Logan felt his will weakening. It wasn’t like things could very well get much worse, after all.
“I’m in love with him.”
He had said those words only in the privacy of his own head before. He had never thought to say them out loud unless it was to Derrick himself. It surprised him how easily they slipped out, and how completely he meant them. A sort of fatalistic calm stole over him, and he looked at Craig, a sort of low-key defiance radiating through him. He had said the very worst thing that he could say, he figured, and the world hadn’t ended.
“I know,” Craig replied, just as calm. He cracked a grin, one of those big, handsome ones that he was so incredible at, the one which seemed to light up any room that he walked into. “Come on, man. I’m not blind. I knew. I just wasn’t sure if you knew.”
Logan just kept on staring, not even sure that he remembered how to form words anymore. As he watched, Craig’s smile slipped slowly from his face, replaced by a deeply thoughtful look.
“What I can’t understand is why you pushed Derrick away, though, if you’re in love with him. He kissed you. Why would you reject him?”
Since Craig had guessed so much, there didn’t seem to be a lot of point in trying to hide the rest of the story. So Logan sighed softly and then started to talk.
“Because he’s not in love with me. He’s in love with Jessica. Any time she snaps her fingers, he comes running. I don’t know what I am to him, other than maybe a convenient way to get off. Or maybe a way to explore some sort of hidden bisexual side, I don’t know. A dirty little secret, that’s really what I am to him.”
“Logan,” Craig said, “Derrick isn’t in love with Jessica.”
“Yes, he is,” Logan protested, but Craig held up a hand to cut him off before he could say anything else.
“No, he isn’t,” Craig insisted. “And he’s not dating her. They’re friends. That’s it. Well, close friends. Best friends. Derrick says that he and Jessica haven’t been together in years.”
Logan blinked at Craig, feeling a little bit like he had been slammed in the middle of his chest by a sturdy two-by-four. Slowly, he shook his head, not in denial, not exactly, but to try to clear it. But things still didn’t make any sense.
“Every time she even crooks her finger, he goes running,” he protested. He stretched his mind back, trying to find an example of a time when he had done that, and realized that he could only really come up with two.
“He ran off with Jessica after Mal went on his honeymoon.” He wasn’t going into the first time when Derrick had gone back to school and left Logan with something that had barely started, but this was an example, and a recent one, of just what he meant. “She said she needed him and he went.”
“Because her fucking sister died, you crazy bastard,” Craig told him and then frowned when Logan’s eyes widened. “Wait. You didn’t know that?”
To Logan, it felt like he had had a bucket of ice water upended over his head. The chill stole through his whole body, robbing him of his breath.
