Free Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny's Lair by Amy Lane

notgraduated valedictorian just to show him up like she’d threatened, but who had not graduated pregnant either, so that was something. He remembered the first day he’d come home after spending the night with Jeremy, and how he’d met his mother’s eyes evenly, and that had been just fine.
    But Elaine had done one of those complicated gestures using the fist and the tongue and the mouth to simulate a blowjob as she stood behind Mom’s back, and while on the one hand it had outraged him, on the other, it had been a pretty clear indication that business was usual. Aiden did things first and Elaine gave him shit about it, and that comforted him on some level.
    So he got Ariadne and Jeremy—and he got that they’d been in the same room for eight weeks, when they’d both been at their loneliest and Jeremy had probably been more scared than he ever had been in his life.
    “Yeah,” he said now, leaning over Jeremy’s body gingerly. “If you’re up for it, we can put you back on the plane in a week.”
    Jeremy looked at him sharply. “You don’t wanna come?”
    Aiden grimaced. God, he was really starting to hate this plane. “I’ll try. The shop’s been shorthanded for two months,” he said apologetically. “It goes under, that’s you, me, and Ari all out of a job, and Craw with a whole lot of land and a whole lot of critters and no way to feed them or pay taxes.”
    Jeremy nodded. “Well, then—it’s a good thing Craw’ll have you again.”
    “And you!” Aiden protested.
    Jeremy shrugged, and then the plane started jouncing about in the turbulence that the Rocky Mountains harbored like an escaped felon.
    The drive to Ben’s was slow and careful, because even in the valley, the roads were icy, and the truck Aiden borrowed from Craw was squirrelly even with chains. But eventually they were there, and Aiden didn’t miss Jeremy’s grateful glance up the road to Craw’s house and mill and the barn, which they could see from Ben’s little house on its acre of land.
    “That’s a comfort,” Jeremy admitted.
    Aiden agreed and reached into the truck for the two bags of Jeremy’s stuff that had migrated to the hospital over the past two months. Aiden wondered if Jeremy would let him put the woolen stuff in the drier with a damp washcloth soaked in lavender and eucalyptus to get rid of the hospital smell. Probably—he was reasonably sure Jeremy was as grateful as Aiden to get that stink off his skin.
    Together they walked up the recently iced sidewalk toward Ben’s little house. Jeremy was shivering hard, or Aiden would have taken him into the little hutch on the side of the house to see the bunnies and the chickens Ben had kept. Craw had moved in Jeremy’s favorite rabbits from the mill, figuring that Jeremy did the brushing anyway for the fur, and then Stanley had surprised everybody by having a pair of Angora bunnies, which had this fabulous fur, shipped to the farm in the winter. Craw had told Ben privately (who had then told Aiden publicly, because apparently the habit of keeping secrets was not one Ben had developed) that Stanley wasn’t rich. Those bunnies had cost him a lot of his savings, and Aiden tried to be grateful.
    It might be easier to be grateful to the little man if he could see Jeremy’s face light up when he saw the bunnies, but it wasn’t going to happen tonight.
     
     
    “Y OU EVEN put up the valances!” Jeremy said for the umpteenth time since they’d walked in.
    Aiden looked at him and swallowed. Jeremy was tired, there were no two ways about it. For one thing, he hadn’t stopped talking since he’d walked through the door, but for another, well, he was just plain nervous. Aiden remembered before the beating, when a body could just tell him to shut up and take a breather. Aiden didn’t have the heart to do that this time.
    He was so thin.
    And the doctors had done a really good job of minimizing the scarring, but it was still there.
    And his nose wasn’t ever going to be