(no subject)
title: equilibrium, part iii
author:
chimneypot
a/n: sorry it's so short and took so long. denouement to follow. enjoy anyway!
The next time Carlos kisses Daniel in public, they’re on a street near the campus. A car’s going past right then; before Daniel can pull away, one of the windows rolls down and a boy in a white Lacoste shirt leans out and shouts “Fags!” at them. Carlos gives him the finger and turns back to Daniel, who is watching them go past silently. He leans back in, but Daniel frowns and leans away.
“Look, Carlos, I told you I don’t like PDA, okay,” Daniel snaps.
“What? Jesus, Daniel, what’s wrong with kissing your boyfriend in public?”
“It’s nothing to do with it being wrong, I just don’t like it… and I don’t like being shouted at,” Daniel replies, crimson across the cheeks, staring at his feet.
“Fuck them, he was wearing Lacoste, who even does that now,” Carlos says, putting his hand on Daniel’s waist, pulling him closer.
“Just, look, leave me alone, Carlos!” Daniel snaps, pulling Carlos’ hand away.
“What, so you’re just going to let those pathetic mongoloids dictate how you act? Is that it?”
“No that’s not it,” Daniel protests, though he’s visibly upset. “I just, I’m not like you, I don’t like people knowing things about my private life. My sexuality is my own business and I don’t like other people knowing.”
“Is it comfy in there, in the closet?” Carlos asks.
“I’m not closeted, I just don’t like… advertising myself like that. Please, Carlos,” Daniel says, with that carefully defiant look on his face that Carlos has come to recognise as self-protection. Thing is, he’s saying please but he’s not really asking; if Carlos pushes it he knows Daniel will simply walk away. He can never decide whether he likes this trait or not, this almost complete refusal to compromise, seemingly totally incongruous with the rest of his personality. It doesn’t occur to Carlos that maybe all those times Daniel’s come out with him when he didn’t want to, stood silent and awkward in a club full of people who deliberately ignored him, maybe that’s compromise too.
“All right, then,” Carlos says. Daniel smiles shyly, and then a minute later asks him if he wants to go to a film. They walk to the cinema side-by-side, not touching, and Carlos can almost feel the nervousness that Daniel’s exuding. More than usual, he means, because there’s always a hint of nerves about Daniel; this hint of tension that Carlos finds surprisingly sexy at times and incredibly irritating at others. Sometimes he thinks it makes Daniel feel more alive, and sometimes he wishes he’d just calm the fuck down for once.
“Seriously, ignore them,” Carlos says. “You can’t let people push you around like that.”
“Yeah,” Daniel says, but Carlos can tell he’s not really listening.
*
Carlos collects Daniel’s quirks and writes them in his notebook. He talks in his sleep sometimes, but only in French. He eats the exact same thing for breakfast every morning (when he’s not at Carlos’ place), muesli with fruit chopped up in it, made in a specific routine. He takes exactly fifteen minutes to shower; he always tries to sit up at the front of the bus; his DVDs are arranged by colour, not title.
He takes pictures of Daniel with an old crappy Polaroid camera, blurry and out-of-focus photos of him dreaming and laughing and singing and thinking, but Daniel insists that he tear them up. “I don’t photograph well,” he says, matter-of-fact, “and those are terrible pictures anyway.”
Carlos once thought about making a list of everything they fight about, once, but that was just too depressing so he went and got a drink instead.
*
“I’m really worried about the exams,” Daniel says, over his seventh bottle.
“What? Why are you worried?” Carlos says, and if he’s being honest here he’ll admit that he’s more worried about the line for the club they’re supposed to be going to.
“Because I’ll probably fail. Fuck.”
“No you won’t. You go to everything. Now drink your beer, we have to leave.”
“I don’t know, Carlos. Where are we going?”
“The Dragon.”
“You’re bringing me to a gay bar?” Daniel says, half-amused but also not sounding incredibly pleased with the whole prospect.
“Yes. It’s a great place and one of the bartenders there wants to do me so he gives me free drinks every now and then.”
“Another gay bar, Carlos?” Daniel says, making that face Carlos hates, the sensible one that asks, come on now, what do you think you’re doing here?
“Yes another gay bar! Don’t make that face, Dan, it’s deeply unattractive. Look, what’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t know,” Daniel says, biting at the glass rim of the bottle. “I don’t think I’m the kind of person who they want there.”
“Oh, yes, you don’t belong in a gay bar, except for the whole thing of you liking cock and a gay bar being the place where men who like cock go.”
“Fuck, Carlos, do you have to put it like that?” Daniel says, looking disgusted. “I’m not… I mean I don’t do that.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I was under the impression you did.”
“I don’t… like cock as you so charmingly put it. I like you. I just don’t like this thing where gay is this defining attribute.”
“Come on, Dan,” Carlos says, but inside he can feel his heart blazing, just a little, whiskey-warm and bright. Because Daniel likes him, and Daniel’s never been much for open declarations of anything. Doesn’t like putting himself into the more vulnerable position that much. But if Carlos is honest, it’s not enough, and he hates himself with being so pleased to have gained a simple I like you. Like a fucking puppy. This is not how it should go. This is not how Carlos pictured his life and Daniel is not the person he pictured himself with.
“I don’t know, I have study tomorrow.”
“Dan! Shut the fuck up and come outside with me.”
“Don’t order me about,” Daniel mumbles, and it’s becoming a familiar refrain with them. But Carlos wants Daniel to just fucking do what he wants for once; he’s sick of Daniel’s stubborn refusal to just cooperate. Not everything should be a fight.
“Look, you never come out.”
“I was out last week! And I have exams soon, I can’t be hungover. I have to study. I’m sorry, Carlos.”
“Fuck’s sake.”
“If you’d told me more than ten minutes before then maybe. But, you know, you don’t have to go either,” he says, and it’s soft and careful and as close as Daniel ever gets to coy. “You could come back with me, instead.”
He wakes up the next morning in Daniel’s bed, alone, with the sound of the shower running, and wonders how Daniel ended up getting his way again.
*
“I love you, I love you,” Carlos shouts across the dancefloor when the ecstasy has spread its wings as wide as they’ll go.
“No, you don’t,” Daniel shouts back. “It’s the pills.”
“Yeah, but how amazing is this song,” Carlos says, but Daniel’s already gone.
*
“You’re the most insecure person I’ve ever met,” Daniel tells him a few days later, in the sweet dreamy darkness of the room, the hushed whisperwarmth just before the night swells into day. He’s not accusing. They lie on the floor with the bedcovers pulled all around them; Daniel found Carlos here asleep in a puddle of wine and decided to join him. A few people had come back from the club but everyone was too drunk to stay awake and now the floor outside is littered with warm heavy bodies like corpses floating in the sea. Carlos was mixing his drinks earlier; passed out a few hours ago and woke up simultaneously drunk and hungover. His head is fucking killing him.
“I doubt it.”
“I’m not, you know. Accusing. I’m saying. Because you don’t need to be, Carlos, you really don’t.”
“Thank you, Dr Phil.”
“Would it actually kill you to act like a human being for once?” Daniel asks, his hand a light pressure on Carlos’ shoulder. “I’m trying to help.” Drunken sloppiness at the edges of his voice, like the dogears on a child’s copybook.
“Help what?” Carlos asks, inexplicably on the defensive.
“Okay,” Daniel says, with only a hint of exasperation in his voice. “Here.” He waves his hand exaggeratedly in front of Carlos’ face, and then plonks it between them, resting on two fingers, like a little person’s legs. In a sing-song, children’s-TV-presenter voice he says, “This is Carlos. Carlos is an intelligent, funny guy who is very talented and could prove to be very good bass player if he’d stop picking fights with the vocalist. But, children, Carlos was made fun of in school and didn’t get on with all the other kids, so now he wants to prove to them just how funny and intelligent he is now. Except instead of doing this by just being himself and knowing that’s good enough, he thinks he has to prove how cool he is constantly. This is bad, children.” Daniel’s smiling, but it’s uncertain again, as if he’s not certain how far he can push this.
“Very cute.”
“I’m serious. You’re just so insecure. You don’t have to parade everything in front of everyone.”
“Maybe I’m just not content to fade away and be ignored, like some people.”
“Fuck you, Carlos,” Dan says, though there’s no real bite to it, anymore. “I’m trying to help but you just won’t let me.”
“Okay, first, who says I need help? And while we’re at it, I’m the one who won’t let anyone help him?”
“I’m not the one who’s nearly killing himself with drugs! I’m not the one who goes out to get fucked up nearly every night!” Daniel snaps.
“What - oh fucking hell, is this your idea of an intervention?” Carlos snarls. “There’s a big fucking difference between recreational drug usage and addiction, Jesus! Look at you, you’re not exactly Mr Pioneer over here!”
“I’m just worried about you,” Daniel says. “Obviously I knew you did drugs but I didn’t know how often.”
“Dan, I do pills about once a week, normally, okay? It’s not like I wake up and throw some E back into me before I get out of bed! Maybe some of us just don’t like spending every night on the couch watching some crappy film!”
“What’s wrong with that? It seems like half the time I’m only there to amuse you when you’re high or help you nurse your hangover!”
“Well maybe you could try coming out some night and actually having some fun for once instead of hiding away in your flat and jumping whenever you see your shadow!” Carlos is shouting now, and yeah, it seems like a lot of their conversations have been ending like this. Because he’s sick of trying to prise Daniel out of his little rut, and then having Daniel try and fix him - who does he think he is? Does he think that Carlos will stop doing drugs and drinking, will bake cookies and read poetry to him, if Daniel could only cure him of all his insecurities? Because Carlos is the one in the right here, okay, Carlos isn’t the one who’s missing out on life because he can’t bring himself to talk to anyone.
“Aw, fuck you, Carlos,” Dan says, glowing with irritation. “Is this always going to be a problem? Because you know what, I think you wouldn’t be happy even if I did come out with you constantly because then you’d have to find some way of proving you’re better than me!”
“And you! Talking about me being insecure when you’re obsessed with this notion that I think I’m better than you!”
“Because you do!” Daniel spits. The two of them are sitting up properly now, facing each other, Carlos looking down on Daniel - always looking down on him. “I thought that maybe if I - if I slept with you then maybe you’d…”
“Respect you?” Carlos simpers, in the imitation of a lovelorn girl. “You’re still the same closed-off, shy, boring little boy you’ve ever been, and me fucking you is not going to change that, or my opinion of you, because you’ll still be boring.”
There’s a sickening pause, then, when he realises that this is possibly the cruellest thing he’s ever said. Daniel’s face doesn’t fall, exactly, but takes on that glassy, glazed look, like Snow White’s almost-dead face viewed through the glass coffin. He looks down at his hands folded in his lap. Carlos actually sees the colour drain out of his face, and oh, he’d give so much to change this moment. Because Carlos isn’t used to having this level of power over someone, the ability to hurt them this much. And Dan leaves himself so heartbreakingly open to Carlos now, so that Carlos can hurt him now whenever he wants. Carlos thinks, in his more honest moments, that it was maybe only Daniel’s inscrutability that attracted him. Daniel was somehow like a mirror for Carlos; he was so blank and careful that Carlos could inscribe whatever image he wanted on his surface. He could see anything in Daniel, except the person that Daniel actually was. And now that the illusion is gone he wants to punish Daniel for its loss.
Except that Carlos likes Daniel. He does. He just thinks he maybe liked the Daniel in his head more.
“I’m sorry,” he says softly.
“You can leave, now,” Daniel says, calm and precise.
“No, I’m not goi -”
“I said, you can leave now,” Daniel says, his voice still eerily contained.
“I -”
“Carlos, if you don’t leave now I will never speak to you again. I mean it.”
It’s obvious that he does mean it. Carlos leaves silently, and spends the next week worrying.
*
Eventually he comes around with tickets to a gig Spoon are playing in a few days and the most contrite face he can summon. Daniel answers the door, looks surprised, and goes to close it almost immediately. Carlos sticks his foot in the entrance and pushes himself in. In the hallway Daniel looks up at him with those closed-off, wary eyes that Carlos remembers from the first few months of knowing him, that face he wears to meet strangers. He hates seeing it directed at him, now. Daniel’s clearly fighting the urge to disappear himself from the situation, but instead he leans back against the wall and says, “I don’t know whether I want to talk to you yet.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t much care,” and the edges of Daniel’s mouth are pressed down and so unhappy. Carlos has gotten his wish, gotten the inscrutable Daniel back, but now he wonders why he ever wanted this. Because he’s an asshole, he guesses. Or because Daniel looks so damn pretty when he’s so unhappy, elegant and lovelorn, the blank canvas Carlos has always wanted.
“I got you tickets to Spoon. I know you have a thing for Britt Daniels.”
Daniel looks at them almost indifferently. “Oh, wow, Carlos, thank you. Another opportunity to go out and get wasted, you haven’t had enough of those lately.”
“Look, you don’t even have to go with me. Bring a friend.”
“I wouldn’t want to embarrass you by being seen with you.”
Carlos is this close to telling Daniel to fuck off - it’s not in his nature to sit back and take it, even if he deserves it. “I was trying to be nice, Daniel. I’m sorry, okay. I was really drunk and my head was killing me. You know me.”
“That’s not an excuse,” Daniel says, and now Carlos can see the hurt still lingering around his face, his studiously blank expression. “You were…”
“Wrong. Wrong. I was wrong, okay.”
“Yes, you were,” Daniel says, but he sounds less sure of himself than ever before. “You… I don’t… Look. I just. I don’t know anymore.”
“Know? About what?”
“It’s like,” Daniel says, rubbing his eyes and frowning, looking sleepless and sore. There are plum-dark hollows beneath his eyes and he hasn’t shaven in the past week. “I don’t think I can trust you, Carlos.”
“What?” Carlos says. “I’ve never cheated on you.”
“That’s not it! I don’t mean it like that! I mean as a person! You’re just… I don’t know. It’s like there’s no guarantee you won’t just turn on me. You keep doing it. You keep on knocking me down all the time like it’s some game. I don’t know if I’m what you’re looking for. You keep acting… you have this sort of attitude like you were expecting me to be different from how I turned out to be. I mean sometimes you’re into me and sometimes it’s like you’ve got it in for me.”
It’s probably wrong that Carlos is getting really, really turned on now. Daniel is luminously pale in the light filtering through the filthy windows like dirty gauze, and if he focuses he could imagine that they’re in some Victorian mansion somewhere with nothing but moors and nightmares outside, instead of shitty neglected student accommodation. Oh, but Daniel is so enticing like this, so beautiful and compact and tragic looking, with his carefully closed-off body language and refusal to let Carlos touch him. It’s always the refusal that gets Carlos. He’s always wanted what he couldn’t have. He likes challenges; he likes the challenge Daniel presents him best of all.
“Baby,” Carlos says, drawing himself up to his full height, closing him into a corner, overbearing, invading Daniel’s personal space because he knows how it overwhelms him. “I want you how you are,” and he trails one finger down Daniel’s stubble-rough jaw. Takes his face with his hand and makes him look up, at. Daniel meets his eyes unwillingly, like an animal caught in headlights, but Carlos can feel his resistance melt away as he moves in closer. He’s being deliberate and cobrasnake slow, a predator, slowly removing the escape routes one by one until there’s nowhere left for Daniel to run. A harsh, rough kiss, terse and promising; Daniel’s kiss is angry and strong, just the way Carlos likes it. His fingers press into Carlos’ side, his grip so hard it’ll leave bruises like constellations tomorrow morning. A galaxy of meaning; Braille that neither of them can really decode. Daniel’s always been particularly good at this form of passive-aggression, kissing like he hates him but always coming back for more. Expressing what he can’t, or won’t.
“I want you just like you are,” he says again, biting at the skin beneath Daniel’s ear, the bit that always makes him crazy. Daniel turns away, pushes Carlos back, just the way that Carlos likes it, and they’re moving back into their little ritual of challenge, want and denial. He knows Daniel wants it just like he does - but it’s no fun without a fight, is it. He pushes Daniel’s hands away, but this time Daniel’s the one who pulls him down, kisses Carlos, and then tears him away. This time Daniel’s the one forcing Carlos to look at him, his face flushed and bright and full of regret and lust.
“But you don’t really, though,” he says as Carlos leans in to kiss him again, but Carlos doesn’t care anymore, because he knows he has Daniel back.
*
“This isn’t a good idea, is it,” Carlos says in the morning, lying on the rug on the wooden floorboards.
“That’s the comedown talking,” Daniel mumbles from the sofa.
“Do you even know what I’m saying?”
“No, but it’s always the comedown talking in the morning, Carlos.”
“I’m talking about us.”
“Don’t talk about us. I don’t want to talk about us.”
“This is a change. Normally you’re the one who wants to talk.”
“Yeah, well. Not always. Sometimes you just have to shut up and listen to the sound of other people shutting up and listening.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It’s because you won’t shut up and listen.”
Silence, then, or as close as you ever get to it in New York City. Smudged, smeared silence, like a pillowcase stained with last night’s makeup. They lie parallel to each other, Daniel on the couch and Carlos on the floor, loose and limp and drifting in a dirty sea of chemicals. Carlos’ head aches. They’re both pale as the fading dawn, losing their promising newness with it in a haze of days and wayward ways.
“No, probably not," Daniel murmurs, so softly that Carlos almost doesn’t hear it.
author:
chimneypot
a/n: sorry it's so short and took so long. denouement to follow. enjoy anyway!
The next time Carlos kisses Daniel in public, they’re on a street near the campus. A car’s going past right then; before Daniel can pull away, one of the windows rolls down and a boy in a white Lacoste shirt leans out and shouts “Fags!” at them. Carlos gives him the finger and turns back to Daniel, who is watching them go past silently. He leans back in, but Daniel frowns and leans away.
“Look, Carlos, I told you I don’t like PDA, okay,” Daniel snaps.
“What? Jesus, Daniel, what’s wrong with kissing your boyfriend in public?”
“It’s nothing to do with it being wrong, I just don’t like it… and I don’t like being shouted at,” Daniel replies, crimson across the cheeks, staring at his feet.
“Fuck them, he was wearing Lacoste, who even does that now,” Carlos says, putting his hand on Daniel’s waist, pulling him closer.
“Just, look, leave me alone, Carlos!” Daniel snaps, pulling Carlos’ hand away.
“What, so you’re just going to let those pathetic mongoloids dictate how you act? Is that it?”
“No that’s not it,” Daniel protests, though he’s visibly upset. “I just, I’m not like you, I don’t like people knowing things about my private life. My sexuality is my own business and I don’t like other people knowing.”
“Is it comfy in there, in the closet?” Carlos asks.
“I’m not closeted, I just don’t like… advertising myself like that. Please, Carlos,” Daniel says, with that carefully defiant look on his face that Carlos has come to recognise as self-protection. Thing is, he’s saying please but he’s not really asking; if Carlos pushes it he knows Daniel will simply walk away. He can never decide whether he likes this trait or not, this almost complete refusal to compromise, seemingly totally incongruous with the rest of his personality. It doesn’t occur to Carlos that maybe all those times Daniel’s come out with him when he didn’t want to, stood silent and awkward in a club full of people who deliberately ignored him, maybe that’s compromise too.
“All right, then,” Carlos says. Daniel smiles shyly, and then a minute later asks him if he wants to go to a film. They walk to the cinema side-by-side, not touching, and Carlos can almost feel the nervousness that Daniel’s exuding. More than usual, he means, because there’s always a hint of nerves about Daniel; this hint of tension that Carlos finds surprisingly sexy at times and incredibly irritating at others. Sometimes he thinks it makes Daniel feel more alive, and sometimes he wishes he’d just calm the fuck down for once.
“Seriously, ignore them,” Carlos says. “You can’t let people push you around like that.”
“Yeah,” Daniel says, but Carlos can tell he’s not really listening.
*
Carlos collects Daniel’s quirks and writes them in his notebook. He talks in his sleep sometimes, but only in French. He eats the exact same thing for breakfast every morning (when he’s not at Carlos’ place), muesli with fruit chopped up in it, made in a specific routine. He takes exactly fifteen minutes to shower; he always tries to sit up at the front of the bus; his DVDs are arranged by colour, not title.
He takes pictures of Daniel with an old crappy Polaroid camera, blurry and out-of-focus photos of him dreaming and laughing and singing and thinking, but Daniel insists that he tear them up. “I don’t photograph well,” he says, matter-of-fact, “and those are terrible pictures anyway.”
Carlos once thought about making a list of everything they fight about, once, but that was just too depressing so he went and got a drink instead.
*
“I’m really worried about the exams,” Daniel says, over his seventh bottle.
“What? Why are you worried?” Carlos says, and if he’s being honest here he’ll admit that he’s more worried about the line for the club they’re supposed to be going to.
“Because I’ll probably fail. Fuck.”
“No you won’t. You go to everything. Now drink your beer, we have to leave.”
“I don’t know, Carlos. Where are we going?”
“The Dragon.”
“You’re bringing me to a gay bar?” Daniel says, half-amused but also not sounding incredibly pleased with the whole prospect.
“Yes. It’s a great place and one of the bartenders there wants to do me so he gives me free drinks every now and then.”
“Another gay bar, Carlos?” Daniel says, making that face Carlos hates, the sensible one that asks, come on now, what do you think you’re doing here?
“Yes another gay bar! Don’t make that face, Dan, it’s deeply unattractive. Look, what’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t know,” Daniel says, biting at the glass rim of the bottle. “I don’t think I’m the kind of person who they want there.”
“Oh, yes, you don’t belong in a gay bar, except for the whole thing of you liking cock and a gay bar being the place where men who like cock go.”
“Fuck, Carlos, do you have to put it like that?” Daniel says, looking disgusted. “I’m not… I mean I don’t do that.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I was under the impression you did.”
“I don’t… like cock as you so charmingly put it. I like you. I just don’t like this thing where gay is this defining attribute.”
“Come on, Dan,” Carlos says, but inside he can feel his heart blazing, just a little, whiskey-warm and bright. Because Daniel likes him, and Daniel’s never been much for open declarations of anything. Doesn’t like putting himself into the more vulnerable position that much. But if Carlos is honest, it’s not enough, and he hates himself with being so pleased to have gained a simple I like you. Like a fucking puppy. This is not how it should go. This is not how Carlos pictured his life and Daniel is not the person he pictured himself with.
“I don’t know, I have study tomorrow.”
“Dan! Shut the fuck up and come outside with me.”
“Don’t order me about,” Daniel mumbles, and it’s becoming a familiar refrain with them. But Carlos wants Daniel to just fucking do what he wants for once; he’s sick of Daniel’s stubborn refusal to just cooperate. Not everything should be a fight.
“Look, you never come out.”
“I was out last week! And I have exams soon, I can’t be hungover. I have to study. I’m sorry, Carlos.”
“Fuck’s sake.”
“If you’d told me more than ten minutes before then maybe. But, you know, you don’t have to go either,” he says, and it’s soft and careful and as close as Daniel ever gets to coy. “You could come back with me, instead.”
He wakes up the next morning in Daniel’s bed, alone, with the sound of the shower running, and wonders how Daniel ended up getting his way again.
*
“I love you, I love you,” Carlos shouts across the dancefloor when the ecstasy has spread its wings as wide as they’ll go.
“No, you don’t,” Daniel shouts back. “It’s the pills.”
“Yeah, but how amazing is this song,” Carlos says, but Daniel’s already gone.
*
“You’re the most insecure person I’ve ever met,” Daniel tells him a few days later, in the sweet dreamy darkness of the room, the hushed whisperwarmth just before the night swells into day. He’s not accusing. They lie on the floor with the bedcovers pulled all around them; Daniel found Carlos here asleep in a puddle of wine and decided to join him. A few people had come back from the club but everyone was too drunk to stay awake and now the floor outside is littered with warm heavy bodies like corpses floating in the sea. Carlos was mixing his drinks earlier; passed out a few hours ago and woke up simultaneously drunk and hungover. His head is fucking killing him.
“I doubt it.”
“I’m not, you know. Accusing. I’m saying. Because you don’t need to be, Carlos, you really don’t.”
“Thank you, Dr Phil.”
“Would it actually kill you to act like a human being for once?” Daniel asks, his hand a light pressure on Carlos’ shoulder. “I’m trying to help.” Drunken sloppiness at the edges of his voice, like the dogears on a child’s copybook.
“Help what?” Carlos asks, inexplicably on the defensive.
“Okay,” Daniel says, with only a hint of exasperation in his voice. “Here.” He waves his hand exaggeratedly in front of Carlos’ face, and then plonks it between them, resting on two fingers, like a little person’s legs. In a sing-song, children’s-TV-presenter voice he says, “This is Carlos. Carlos is an intelligent, funny guy who is very talented and could prove to be very good bass player if he’d stop picking fights with the vocalist. But, children, Carlos was made fun of in school and didn’t get on with all the other kids, so now he wants to prove to them just how funny and intelligent he is now. Except instead of doing this by just being himself and knowing that’s good enough, he thinks he has to prove how cool he is constantly. This is bad, children.” Daniel’s smiling, but it’s uncertain again, as if he’s not certain how far he can push this.
“Very cute.”
“I’m serious. You’re just so insecure. You don’t have to parade everything in front of everyone.”
“Maybe I’m just not content to fade away and be ignored, like some people.”
“Fuck you, Carlos,” Dan says, though there’s no real bite to it, anymore. “I’m trying to help but you just won’t let me.”
“Okay, first, who says I need help? And while we’re at it, I’m the one who won’t let anyone help him?”
“I’m not the one who’s nearly killing himself with drugs! I’m not the one who goes out to get fucked up nearly every night!” Daniel snaps.
“What - oh fucking hell, is this your idea of an intervention?” Carlos snarls. “There’s a big fucking difference between recreational drug usage and addiction, Jesus! Look at you, you’re not exactly Mr Pioneer over here!”
“I’m just worried about you,” Daniel says. “Obviously I knew you did drugs but I didn’t know how often.”
“Dan, I do pills about once a week, normally, okay? It’s not like I wake up and throw some E back into me before I get out of bed! Maybe some of us just don’t like spending every night on the couch watching some crappy film!”
“What’s wrong with that? It seems like half the time I’m only there to amuse you when you’re high or help you nurse your hangover!”
“Well maybe you could try coming out some night and actually having some fun for once instead of hiding away in your flat and jumping whenever you see your shadow!” Carlos is shouting now, and yeah, it seems like a lot of their conversations have been ending like this. Because he’s sick of trying to prise Daniel out of his little rut, and then having Daniel try and fix him - who does he think he is? Does he think that Carlos will stop doing drugs and drinking, will bake cookies and read poetry to him, if Daniel could only cure him of all his insecurities? Because Carlos is the one in the right here, okay, Carlos isn’t the one who’s missing out on life because he can’t bring himself to talk to anyone.
“Aw, fuck you, Carlos,” Dan says, glowing with irritation. “Is this always going to be a problem? Because you know what, I think you wouldn’t be happy even if I did come out with you constantly because then you’d have to find some way of proving you’re better than me!”
“And you! Talking about me being insecure when you’re obsessed with this notion that I think I’m better than you!”
“Because you do!” Daniel spits. The two of them are sitting up properly now, facing each other, Carlos looking down on Daniel - always looking down on him. “I thought that maybe if I - if I slept with you then maybe you’d…”
“Respect you?” Carlos simpers, in the imitation of a lovelorn girl. “You’re still the same closed-off, shy, boring little boy you’ve ever been, and me fucking you is not going to change that, or my opinion of you, because you’ll still be boring.”
There’s a sickening pause, then, when he realises that this is possibly the cruellest thing he’s ever said. Daniel’s face doesn’t fall, exactly, but takes on that glassy, glazed look, like Snow White’s almost-dead face viewed through the glass coffin. He looks down at his hands folded in his lap. Carlos actually sees the colour drain out of his face, and oh, he’d give so much to change this moment. Because Carlos isn’t used to having this level of power over someone, the ability to hurt them this much. And Dan leaves himself so heartbreakingly open to Carlos now, so that Carlos can hurt him now whenever he wants. Carlos thinks, in his more honest moments, that it was maybe only Daniel’s inscrutability that attracted him. Daniel was somehow like a mirror for Carlos; he was so blank and careful that Carlos could inscribe whatever image he wanted on his surface. He could see anything in Daniel, except the person that Daniel actually was. And now that the illusion is gone he wants to punish Daniel for its loss.
Except that Carlos likes Daniel. He does. He just thinks he maybe liked the Daniel in his head more.
“I’m sorry,” he says softly.
“You can leave, now,” Daniel says, calm and precise.
“No, I’m not goi -”
“I said, you can leave now,” Daniel says, his voice still eerily contained.
“I -”
“Carlos, if you don’t leave now I will never speak to you again. I mean it.”
It’s obvious that he does mean it. Carlos leaves silently, and spends the next week worrying.
*
Eventually he comes around with tickets to a gig Spoon are playing in a few days and the most contrite face he can summon. Daniel answers the door, looks surprised, and goes to close it almost immediately. Carlos sticks his foot in the entrance and pushes himself in. In the hallway Daniel looks up at him with those closed-off, wary eyes that Carlos remembers from the first few months of knowing him, that face he wears to meet strangers. He hates seeing it directed at him, now. Daniel’s clearly fighting the urge to disappear himself from the situation, but instead he leans back against the wall and says, “I don’t know whether I want to talk to you yet.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t much care,” and the edges of Daniel’s mouth are pressed down and so unhappy. Carlos has gotten his wish, gotten the inscrutable Daniel back, but now he wonders why he ever wanted this. Because he’s an asshole, he guesses. Or because Daniel looks so damn pretty when he’s so unhappy, elegant and lovelorn, the blank canvas Carlos has always wanted.
“I got you tickets to Spoon. I know you have a thing for Britt Daniels.”
Daniel looks at them almost indifferently. “Oh, wow, Carlos, thank you. Another opportunity to go out and get wasted, you haven’t had enough of those lately.”
“Look, you don’t even have to go with me. Bring a friend.”
“I wouldn’t want to embarrass you by being seen with you.”
Carlos is this close to telling Daniel to fuck off - it’s not in his nature to sit back and take it, even if he deserves it. “I was trying to be nice, Daniel. I’m sorry, okay. I was really drunk and my head was killing me. You know me.”
“That’s not an excuse,” Daniel says, and now Carlos can see the hurt still lingering around his face, his studiously blank expression. “You were…”
“Wrong. Wrong. I was wrong, okay.”
“Yes, you were,” Daniel says, but he sounds less sure of himself than ever before. “You… I don’t… Look. I just. I don’t know anymore.”
“Know? About what?”
“It’s like,” Daniel says, rubbing his eyes and frowning, looking sleepless and sore. There are plum-dark hollows beneath his eyes and he hasn’t shaven in the past week. “I don’t think I can trust you, Carlos.”
“What?” Carlos says. “I’ve never cheated on you.”
“That’s not it! I don’t mean it like that! I mean as a person! You’re just… I don’t know. It’s like there’s no guarantee you won’t just turn on me. You keep doing it. You keep on knocking me down all the time like it’s some game. I don’t know if I’m what you’re looking for. You keep acting… you have this sort of attitude like you were expecting me to be different from how I turned out to be. I mean sometimes you’re into me and sometimes it’s like you’ve got it in for me.”
It’s probably wrong that Carlos is getting really, really turned on now. Daniel is luminously pale in the light filtering through the filthy windows like dirty gauze, and if he focuses he could imagine that they’re in some Victorian mansion somewhere with nothing but moors and nightmares outside, instead of shitty neglected student accommodation. Oh, but Daniel is so enticing like this, so beautiful and compact and tragic looking, with his carefully closed-off body language and refusal to let Carlos touch him. It’s always the refusal that gets Carlos. He’s always wanted what he couldn’t have. He likes challenges; he likes the challenge Daniel presents him best of all.
“Baby,” Carlos says, drawing himself up to his full height, closing him into a corner, overbearing, invading Daniel’s personal space because he knows how it overwhelms him. “I want you how you are,” and he trails one finger down Daniel’s stubble-rough jaw. Takes his face with his hand and makes him look up, at. Daniel meets his eyes unwillingly, like an animal caught in headlights, but Carlos can feel his resistance melt away as he moves in closer. He’s being deliberate and cobrasnake slow, a predator, slowly removing the escape routes one by one until there’s nowhere left for Daniel to run. A harsh, rough kiss, terse and promising; Daniel’s kiss is angry and strong, just the way Carlos likes it. His fingers press into Carlos’ side, his grip so hard it’ll leave bruises like constellations tomorrow morning. A galaxy of meaning; Braille that neither of them can really decode. Daniel’s always been particularly good at this form of passive-aggression, kissing like he hates him but always coming back for more. Expressing what he can’t, or won’t.
“I want you just like you are,” he says again, biting at the skin beneath Daniel’s ear, the bit that always makes him crazy. Daniel turns away, pushes Carlos back, just the way that Carlos likes it, and they’re moving back into their little ritual of challenge, want and denial. He knows Daniel wants it just like he does - but it’s no fun without a fight, is it. He pushes Daniel’s hands away, but this time Daniel’s the one who pulls him down, kisses Carlos, and then tears him away. This time Daniel’s the one forcing Carlos to look at him, his face flushed and bright and full of regret and lust.
“But you don’t really, though,” he says as Carlos leans in to kiss him again, but Carlos doesn’t care anymore, because he knows he has Daniel back.
*
“This isn’t a good idea, is it,” Carlos says in the morning, lying on the rug on the wooden floorboards.
“That’s the comedown talking,” Daniel mumbles from the sofa.
“Do you even know what I’m saying?”
“No, but it’s always the comedown talking in the morning, Carlos.”
“I’m talking about us.”
“Don’t talk about us. I don’t want to talk about us.”
“This is a change. Normally you’re the one who wants to talk.”
“Yeah, well. Not always. Sometimes you just have to shut up and listen to the sound of other people shutting up and listening.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It’s because you won’t shut up and listen.”
Silence, then, or as close as you ever get to it in New York City. Smudged, smeared silence, like a pillowcase stained with last night’s makeup. They lie parallel to each other, Daniel on the couch and Carlos on the floor, loose and limp and drifting in a dirty sea of chemicals. Carlos’ head aches. They’re both pale as the fading dawn, losing their promising newness with it in a haze of days and wayward ways.
“No, probably not," Daniel murmurs, so softly that Carlos almost doesn’t hear it.