NaNo Day Twenty-One

Nov 22, 2008 04:03

Oh my GOD, guys, what about today was so hard to write? I had the whole day off. I made biscuits. I made a pie. I ate two slices of pie. I picked my cousins up from school. I drove to five grocery stores. I picked up my pay check. I watched teevee. I did EVERYTHING but actually sit down and write! It was insane!

It's after four am now and I'm just winding the scene down. I had hoped to write the next scene, too, but I'm exhausted and I'm sure my parents will have ~*chores*~ for me to do tomorrow, so I need to get some sleep.

Still! What the fuck! And most of this is terrible, too. It's all exposition (I lied when I said I was done with exposition--now it's Danny's turn) and dialogue and craziness. No plot actually happens. I actually edited out one minor(ish) point of the exposition (the part where Danny says he has a story about Jimmy) because I was embarrassed by how long Danny was talking.

Anyway, as awful as it is, it's all I've got for today, so go nuts. More tomorrow, hopefully.

***
Today: 2648
46389/50000
***

"That's what we're here to do," Alan said. He was trying to keep himself from fidgeting.

"Do you think you could start?" Danny asked.

"For someone who was so eager to talk, that's a little counter productive, isn't it?" Alan asked with no real bite. He was too nervous to feel any really irritation.

"Yeah," Danny said, glancing down at his mug again, "There are things I definitely want to say, but parts of the story are not going to be... easy to say out loud."

Alan nodded. "Fair enough," he said, although he wanted to point out that he hadn't had the easiest time of it, either. He couldn't help but be reminded of it as he went over the events of the last eighteen months in his head, trying to figure out where to begin. Had it really only been a year and a half ago since he left Centennial? It felt both infinitely longer and as though it had happened just days beforehand.

"Well, I started that job at the private school," Alan said. "It was..." He paused. "What's a word worse than 'awful?' Excruciating? Vile? Abysmal?" Danny laughed and Alan tried to laugh too, but it got caught in his throat. He closed his eyes to collect himself and when he opened them again, Danny was staring at him, obviously concerned. "Um," Alan continued, clearing his throat, "it was the worst of the worst. At least, the worst that I could imagine. It was a bunch of spoiled boys who could care less about studying. Money was poured into the athletics program and pulled from academics. I was pressured into passing students whose parents were donors and anyone who played a sport and, to top it all off, in a bitter twist of irony, it was 'suggested' that I remain in the closet for my own good."

He paused to take a sip of his still too-hot coffee. His hands were shaking, but he had expected as much. Danny was staring at him in stunned silence and when he didn't interject, Alan took that as his cue to continue.

"I hated you. I hated you so much, Danny, for abandoning me to that. I know it was a stupid, immature thing to do, but I loathed you almost as much as I still loved you. I had no friends. When I wasn't teaching, I was completely alone. Sometimes my father or Cynthia would try and visit, but it reached a point where I just honestly didn't care anymore. I spent the summer alone on campus. I was about a month into the new school year when Dad confronted me about the whole thing and made me realize I couldn't spend another year there. This job opened up and I came here. Things have been... better and worse, I guess."

"Worse?" Danny asked quietly. He was very pale.

"Well... things went back to... normal. Normal before you. On the outside, I mean. I had a good job at a great school, I was friends with my co-workers, I was casually dating someone, so things should have been okay, but I've been... Jesus Danny, I'm a fucking wreck. I'm a basket case. I'm depressed, I go through these fits where I just... don't want to be around anyone. I lock myself in my apartment. I don't want to see anyone or do anything but my work. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I was never like this before and I don't like--" He took off his glasses and wiped angrily at his eyes. He didn't want to show this weakness. Not right now. "I don't like being broken," he finally managed to say. "I don't know what you did or what you took, but I don't like being like this." He shuddered and took a deep breath. His eyes could tear up; that was fine. But he wasn't going to cry. Not over this. Not in front of Danny.

When he was sure he wasn't going to lost it again, he looked up at Danny. Danny looked worse then Alan felt. He was still pale and looked impossibly tired and older. He was also shaking.

"I am... Jesus, Alan, I am so sorry. I know that nothing I say will ever be able to... I know that I can't make that up to you, but you're not broken. You're not... crazy. There's nothing wrong with you, you're just going through a rough patch and it's my fault but there's nothing wrong with you. Please believe me."

Alan glanced down. He wasn't sure when it had happened, but at some point, Danny had reached across the table and taken his hand.

"I'm a mess," Alan said quietly.

"You're a sight better then I am," Danny admitted with a wry smile.

Alan tried to calm his insides, which were twisted up with some mixture of anxiety, shame, and pain, and forced a smile. From the look on Danny's face, he wasn't doing a fabulous job, but he kept trying.

"Was that some kind of segue into things that are going to be hard to say out loud?" Alan asked, and his voice only wobbled a little. Danny nodded. He took his hand back, gently, and obviously with some effort.

"Something like that," Danny said. "Christ, I don't even know where to begin. I guess I should start by saying I was wrong to blame you for everything. It was... we were both to blame. We both made mistakes, but I've come to understand that mine were the more egregious. I spent a good two months hating you, or at least wanting to, before Felicity was able to get me to see things from your point of view."

Alan blinked and cleared his throat, trying to compose himself again. He took a deep, steadying breath. He hadn't expected Danny to that much of the blame for what happened to them. He hadn't expected Danny to take any of the blame, actually, and seeing him take most of it, both past and present, completely changed Alan's estimation of how the rest of the night was going to go. He was ready to hear Danny defend his choices and insist that they should forget about the past and spend the rest of their lives together despite everything that had happened. To hear an actual admission of guilt, to hear Danny asking, almost timidly, instead of demanding... that hadn't been something that Alan had planned for.

"That's when things got really, um. Bad, I guess," Danny continued. His tea looked cold. He had barely touched it. "I got depressed. More depressed. Seeing all the old familiar faces... bumping into my parents around every corner... I threw myself into work. It was all I did, all I focused on, and when I wasn't at work, I was drinking."

"Drinking?" Alan asked quietly. "Danny..."

"Yeah, I developed what's known as a drinking problem, in fact," Danny said. He wouldn't make eye contact. "I'm not an alcoholic. I know when to stop. I can, in fact, stop. But I just... didn't care." He laughed humorlessly. "I kept it up for a good long time. Five, six months of working into the night and drinking until it was time to work again, but one day I kept drinking until it was past time to work again. No one could get in touch with me, so they called my emergency contact number. It was, um, you remember Heather, right?"

Alan was startled by the address, but nodded. Heather was the only person from Danny's life prior to New York that he had ever met. It wasn't a coincidence that she was also the only person from his life before New York who knew that he was gay.

"Well, they called Heather and she found me just in time to call 911. I had my stomach pumped and was admitted for observation and to replenish my fluids. I won't say it was a wake-up call for me, because I could honestly care less, but it was a wake-up call for Heather. She started dropping by to make sure I was okay, ordered me into therapy... I guess I was hiding my unhappiness from her better then I thought I was, or maybe it was just that I never stopped working long enough to see her for extended periods of time. Either way, she knew after that, and she started to force me to talk about it, to make me check in."

Danny paused, there, and took a long, deep breath. He was trembling, and it was clear that this was the part of the story he was leery of telling. Alan didn't blame him. Listening to it was bad enough. Worse, almost. Danny had told him, years ago, about his college battle with depression, about the suicide attempts. It had made Alan sick at the time--not out of condemnation, but rather out of the sense of helplessness, the fact that someone who was so intensely important to him could have very easily never met him and never reached his full potential. This was eerily similar, and it left Alan with the same disquieting feeling.

"So," Danny said. It was his turn to force a painful looking smile. "That's the... hard part. Like I said, I started seeing a therapist and just being able to talk about everything helped. Anti-depressants helped. And I was convinced that not having any more secrets would help. Not being able to talk to anyone was the second biggest problem I was having. Missing you was the first." Alan smiled and found it came a little easier this time. "But... anyway, I decided I was going to tell my parents. I invited them to dinner, with Heather and Jimmy Rollins--"

Alan grimaced. James Rollins was one of the more reprehensible employees from Danny's office. He'd also made the transfer to California and he'd been the only one at the company who knew Danny was gay. He also regarded Alan with undisguised contempt and loathing.

"Don't be like that," Danny said. "Well, actually, there's a funny story about Jimmy, but I'll save that for another night. For now, let's address the fact that he and my parents and Heather and my sister and her husband and kids were all at my place. We had dinner. I drank a glass of wine, and I told them I was gay."

"Seriously?" Alan asked.

"Seriously," Danny said. "Um. It didn't go well."

"I would think not," Alan muttered.

"That was it. No speeches or bells and whistles. I said that and their faces just... their jaws dropped. I think... I had really assumed that my parents sort of knew in the back of their minds, but I guess they didn't. They were furious. My sister was shocked and my brother-in-law and niece and nephew didn't care." Danny shrugged. "I kicked them out. I had stopped caring, I guess, because after forty years of planning my whole life around pleasing them, it as that easy to just kick them out and finish the rest of the bottle of wine with Heather and Jimmy."

Alan nodded, slowly, stunned by the anti-climatic conclusion of Danny's life-long struggle with his parents. The entire length of their relationship, Danny's parents had been unaware of his existence. The idea of them finding out terrified Danny, even though he had broken ties with them long ago. And the whole thing was over in just a few minutes.

"That was it," Danny said. "I told Mr. London about everything that happened and he arranged to transfer me back to New York. It took a couple of months to reshuffle the personnel, but I'm in Centennial to stay and in August I'll even be getting another promotion."

"You always were his favorite," Alan said, a genuine smile crossing his face. "I could tell without even having met him."

"It helps," Danny said, kicking him under the table, "That I am very good at what I do."

"Six and a half years and I was never really clear on what that was," Alan teased.

"Well, to be honest, I mostly make it up as I go along, but I do it with charm and style."

They grinned at each other, and for a minute, it was like they were back in Centennial, back two years ago, sitting around their favorite coffee shop and killing time before dinner. It felt natural, and Alan found that he didn't quite hate himself for thinking that as much as he figured he should. It was easy to slip back into things with Danny, and that should have been dangerous, but he found he was too relieved to care. He had been carrying around a lot of resentment for a long time, and it was a relief to feel it melt away, at least partially. It shouldn't be that easy, but it was.

"You know," Danny said, "Felicity is dating the guy who took my old job."

"I thought Felicity took your old job," Alan said.

"Well, yeah," Danny said. "But I was so important they needed two people to replace me." Alan rolled his eyes, but looked away anxiously. He hadn't talked to Felicity--to anyone from Centennial, actually--in longer then he had talked to Danny. He felt like a heel, but he had needed to remove himself from his old life when he first moved away, and once things started to get progressively worse, he couldn't bring himself to call anyone for help.

Felicity was probably pissed.

"You haven't talk to her at all, I know," Danny said. "She told me. She's pissed."

"I knew it," Alan said with resignation. "Shit."

"You'll make it up to her," Danny insisted. "But yeah, she's dating my replacement. I really wanted to hate him on principle, but he's so mellow and accommodating that I can't help but approve."

"What's he like?" Alan asked, and Danny launched into a story about his first week back in Centennial. It led to another story and another, piled on top of each other by both of them, until Deirdre was tapping Alan on the shoulder.

"Closing time," she said. She looked from Alan to Danny and back to Alan, her gaze weighty, as if to ask Alan what he was doing with a very attractive man who wasn't his boyfriend.

Even if she had asked, he wasn't sure he would have known the answer.

"Oh my god, I forgot it was Sunday," Alan said. "I'm sorry, Deirdre. We'll take off."

"Come back any time," she said. "But not until tomorrow at eight."

Alan laughed and pulled his coat back on. Danny was following suit, and then following him out to the car. The drive back was peaceful and quiet, with an edge of melancholy. Alan was actually enjoying himself and he wasn't looking forward to the evening ending. Being with Danny was always easy, easier than almost anything else, and, for the moment, he was able to put their past aside. He didn't know if he'd still be able to do that tomorrow or the next day. He certainly knew that they weren't done talking. They'd covered the past, yes, but there was the present to consider, and the weight of the stories that they had just told each other. It made sense to want to get some distance from it before delving into the various neuroses they had spent their time apart building up, but that discussion wasn't going to come with the gentle ease that this one was, and Alan was already missing it.

When he pulled into the parking lot and killed the engine, they both sat in the car, silently. Alan knew what he wanted to do, though he didn't know if it would be a good idea.

Still.

"We didn't have dinner," Alan said. "I have some leftovers in the fridge, if you want to come up for a little while and eat before you drive back to Centennial." He was afraid to look at Danny.

"Sure," Danny said. Alan's shoulders slumped in relief. "That would be great. Thanks."

pairing: alan/danny, character: alan, project: nano 2008, character: danny, status: unfinished, original: beaumont

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