Fic (Complete): Love and Affection (Glee RPS, CrissColfer, NC-17, 1 of 2)
Title: Love And Affection
Author: Aristide
Fandom/Pairing: Glee RPS, Chris Colfer/Darren Criss
Rating: NC-17 for m/m sex
Summary: Chris and Darren spend some time together. Stuff happens.
Author’s Notes: My first attempt at CrissColfer, so it will probably take a while for me to find my way, characterization-wise. Thank you for your patience.
Indebtednesses: Again, it takes a frigging village. First of all, to Alice, for fighting through food poisoning to give me her thoughts and suggestions. To AubreyLi for being right and extremely patient. To Talya for her honest thoughts and general loveliness. And finally but OMG not least, to Andie for a daring emotional rescue.
***
Day: 0
***
He was drunk. Undoubtedly, absolutely, splendidly drunk. And he didn’t even feel bad about it, because he’d done it-the movie was in the can, the wrap party had been partied to the hilt right here in Glenn’s overly-gracious living room, and all the necessary people, including him, had said all the necessary things. “I made a movie,” he said out loud, unnecessarily, drunkenly, then reminded himself belatedly not to say things like that because a) it made him sound like a drunken idiot with an ego problem, and b) he certainly hadn’t done it all by himself.
“Almost all by yourself,” a friendly voice next to his ear agreed, and he slewed around drunkenly to see who he’d just made an ass of himself in front of-but it was only Darren, sitting in the chair next to his own, smiling and picking the almonds out of a bowl of mixed nuts, eating them one by one.
“Hi,” Chris said, feeling something buckle in his brain a bit, something that was supposed to connect that wasn’t connecting because he was really quite cataclysmically drunk-only then it did. “This… isn’t where you work. Why are you here?”
Darren looked vastly amused. That wasn’t exactly unusual, though. “You called me for a ride.”
Chris blinked, and then waited for double-Darren to go back to single Darren. Because one of Darren was undoubtedly enough. “I… did I? I called you? I don’t remember calling you.”
Darren shrugged. “Side-effect of too much work, too much booze, and too little sleep, I guess.”
That… sounded disturbingly plausible. But it still didn’t make sense. “But why… why would I call you?” He was so, so confused.
“Presumably because you didn’t want to drive. And in your condition, I’d say that was remarkably shrewd of you.”
“I don’t call you for rides,” Chris said slowly, swaying a little. He looked around, but the party was over. The last of the cast and crew had departed and he was alone-except, of course, for Darren, who was there for some reason. “I have a rider-I mean a driverer-” He shook his head, wishing it didn’t feel so much like an overfilled balloon, trying to communicate these terribly complex concepts. “I mean I have people. That I call. When I need that.”
“And now you have another one,” Darren said with a flourish and a half-bow, and Chris realized that if he stared at Darren’s hair it looked like it was waving at him. Because he was really, stunningly drunk. Probably too drunk. “Come on,” Darren said from beneath his waving hair. “Let’s get you out of here.”
“Darren, really,” he said ponderously, aiming for rational and reasonable, “I don’t need any help.” Then he got to his feet and almost faceplanted onto the floor.
“Yup, I can see that,” Darren said amiably, wrestling him upright and slinging Chris’ arm around his own shoulders. “You’re doing awesomely well on your own, you big media mogul, you.”
It was cool outside-blissfully cool, and blissfully fresh after the close air of the house. Chris took a deep breath, then almost threw up. “Whoa.”
“Do you need to upchuck?” Darren asked politely, very much the perfect delivery and intonation of a flawless British butler, if it hadn’t been for the California accent.
“No,” Chris said calmly. “For God’s sake, I’m not that drunk.” He pulled himself upright and took another deep breath just to prove it, then bent nearly double and threw up behind the bougainvillea growing to the side of the front door. Violently.
“Better out than in, probably,” he heard Darren say from far above him, a gentle hand patting him on the back until he was done. “I have water and napkins in the car.”
Things got a little fuzzy then, everything weaving in and out. Chris came back to himself in the front seat of what had to be Darren’s car, a water bottle in one hand and a tidy stack of brown paper napkins in the other. He cleared his throat and swallowed, wincing, then drank some water. “Uh, sorry.”
“It’s no problem,” Darren said lightly. “Just let me know if you need me to pull over so you can go for round two, okay?”
“Okay,” Chris said, and his own voice echoed-a long, trailing echo like a hushed whisper amplified through a marble corridor, someplace cool and dark and quiet. That was certainly peculiar, given that he was sitting inside a car, but then he realized he only sounded that way because he was in the process of passing out, so he just let it go.
***
Day: 1
***
His bladder opened his eyes for him. Seriously. He opened his eyes and sat up, then flipped the covers back and skittered to the bathroom, nearly bounding the last few steps before he got to the toilet and peed so hard and so long that he kind of expected to be nothing but a deflated skeleton with eyes afterwards. It took a long, long time to finish, but eventually he did, tucked himself back into his pants, washed his hands, and walked hazily back towards the bed-
Which was when he realized it wasn’t his bed. And that it wasn’t his room. And that he didn’t have the faintest fucking clue where he was.
“Oh, hey, you’re up,” Darren said cheerfully, coming into the room through a pair of French doors that Chris had never laid eyes on before. “Cool.”
“You…” it was just a croak, so Chris cleared his throat and tried again. “You brought me to… your place?”
Darren looked around, almost as if he was as astonished as Chris to find himself where he was. “What, here? No. I mean-this isn’t my place. It belongs to a… friend.”
“You brought me to… your friend’s place?”
Darren grinned. “Yeah.”
No further information seemed to be forthcoming, so Chris exerted himself to speak. “Why?”
“So you can rest.”
Chris blinked. “So I can… you know, Darren, resting is something I usually do in my own home. In fact, it’s a whole part of why I have a home-to rest in. I rest there. In my home.”
Darren shook his head, still grinning. “Nope, you work there. Here, you get to rest.”
Chris wondered if this entire conversation would make any more sense if he went back to bed for a few hours. He was kind of afraid it might not.
Darren dug in his jeans pocket, and came up with a handful of change, an impressive quantity of lint, and a folded, crumpled paper. “Here, I have a note for you.”
Chris took the note with numb fingers. He recognized Lea’s swoopy, pretty handwriting at once.
Hey, baby-
Don’t freak out, okay? We cleared your schedule and did this because you work too hard and nobody can get you to slow down, so now you have to!!! Just let D cook you some good food and get some solid sleep and try to relax!! See you soon! Love-L.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Chris said hoarsely. He crumpled the note in his fist and dropped it. Then he took a deep breath. “Okay, wait-no, that was good, you got me, good joke. Wait till I-” he cut off there because he was groping for his phone, already planning the snarky message he was about to send Lea’s way-only his pocket was empty. “My phone.”
Darren shook his head. “Nope-not conducive to resting.”
He couldn’t look at Darren any more, so he looked around instead. He didn’t see a phone. The room he was in was big and sprawling and rustic, open-plan with no real interior walls except the one where the bathroom was. There was a stone fireplace set in one wall, an open kitchen against the other, bed in one corner of the room, bathroom to the left, and to the right-front door. He went through it.
He stopped as soon as he set foot outside. There was Darren’s car, parked neatly on a dirt driveway in front of the steps leading to the house. The car was dusty and streaked with mud-of course it was, because all he could see besides the car was a narrow dirt road stretching off into the trees. Miles and miles of trees. Nothing but trees. And some dirt. “Oh dear God-I’ve been kidnapped.”
“Only a little,” Darren said mildly, pleasantly, stepping out onto the porch next to him.
Chris turned to him and held out his hand. “Keys. Now.”
Darren looked at his outstretched hand, smiling, then shrugged. “Sorry. Don’t have ‘em.”
That was about enough. Chris took two steps and went through Darren’s pockets, ignoring Darren’s surprised yelp. He found no keys. “Where are the keys, Darren?”
Darren stood his ground, still looking way too obnoxiously cheerful for a kidnapper. “With your phone, and your other stuff. Safe. Not anywhere you can get them. Now will you mellow out?”
“No!” No, he would not. “I didn’t agree to this, I didn’t-I can’t stay here, I have things to do, people to call, I have to-”
Darren appeared unmoved. “Not for the next five days, you don’t.”
“Five…” his belly dropped. “Five days? You kidnapped me for five days?”
“Look, it might help if you stopped thinking of it as kidnapping-”
“It is kidnapping-”
“And started thinking of it as, uh, a vacation. That your friends who love you wanted you to have.”
Chris pressed his lips together. “You want me to consider being dragged off to this godforsaken place against my will a vacation?”
Darren patted his shoulder gently. “A vacation, a respite-an intervention for your firmly-entrenched workaholic tendencies, whatever-it’s just… a rest. A short rest.” He grinned. “There’s a lake on the other side of the house. It’s tiny, but there’s fish in it. And ducks.”
Chris closed his eyes. “Oh, well-of course, fish and ducks, yes, that makes everything just peachy.” He opened his eyes. “Will you please give me the keys?”
“Nope.”
“Will you give me my phone?”
“Sure. In five days.”
Chris went back into the house and went through everything he could find, including Darren’s battered duffel bag, an unfamiliar backpack stuffed with clothes, and every cupboard, drawer, and closet in the house. He found nothing.
Darren watched him for a while, but then he settled down into an overstuffed armchair near the fireplace and picked up his guitar, just kind of noodling along on it while he watched Chris tear the house apart. At one point he started strumming a soulful version of the Jeopardy theme song, and Chris glared at him until he chuckled and moved on to something bluesy and unrecognizable.
Chris ignored him until he’d run out of places to check, standing in the middle of the main room with his hands on his hips, fuming. Darren put the guitar aside and leaned back in the armchair, lacing his fingers across his midsection. “Finished?”
“Not by half. I want the car keys, and my phone.”
Darren shook his head, smiling faintly. “Nope.”
Chris flexed his hands, which kept trying to curl into fists. “Now, or else.”
Darren’s smile broadened. “Or else what? What are you going to do-pelt me with sarcasm?”
That was actually… a good question. A good, if maddening, annoying and exasperating question. “Don’t test me,” he snapped, crossing his arms. “Keys. Phone. Now.”
Darren was now grinning. The bastard. “I’m not testing you,” he said mildly. “I’m just trying to get you to take a break.”
“I am perfectly capable of taking breaks on my own, unassisted by-” he didn’t even bother to finish, since Darren had gone from grinning to outright chuckling. “This isn’t funny.”
“It’s not you,” Darren said, shaking his head. “I just realized how I must sound to my friends and family when they try to get me to slow down.”
Chris sighed. “Then you shouldn’t be doing this.”
Darren blinked, wide-eyed. “And give up such a precious life-lesson? No way.” He shrugged. “Look, they told me you’d be upset-”
“Who told you?”
“Cory and Lea-well, Cory told me you’d be upset. Was pretty upset himself over the idea of you being upset, actually-he’s, uh. Fond of you. Lea just told me you’d behave like a junkie deprived of a fix-but both of them told me you needed it, needed a break, just a little time, and asked me to… well, I’ve given them my word. No keys, no phone, no outside world-for five days. That’s the deal.” He tilted his head. “So-I gave my word. Do your worst.”
Chris stared down at the floor for a moment, then back at Darren. “I’m going to hate you for life.”
Darren actually smiled. “No, you won’t-because you only hate people who deserve it. And not many of them. You’re not a hateful person.”
“I could start.”
Darren just shook his head. “I think it’s too late for that.”
It was the compassion in his voice more than anything else that made Chris’ shoulders slump, all the fury and fire running right out of him. “You suck.”
Darren shrugged, still smiling. “At a lot of things, sure. But not at cooking. You up for some dinner?”
“No,” Chris said irritably, only to be undermined by the sudden, loud growling of his stomach.
“I think you’ve been overruled.”
“Seems to be a theme, lately.” He sniffed. “A theme that sucks.”
Darren got up out of the chair. “Let’s see if I can take your mind off it.”
***
Dinner was delicious, and he was ravenous, and he didn’t even understand why until he’d almost cleared his plate. “It’s dark outside,” he said, setting his fork down carefully.
Darren eyed him, then looked out the windows, then back at him. “That happens, you know, when the sun goes down-”
“The sun was… it was setting when I went out there, and that…” He trailed off, then swallowed and looked at Darren. “How long was I asleep?”
Darren tilted his head, then looked back at him. “About sixteen hours, more or less.”
Chris blinked. “Sixteen… I slept for sixteen hours straight?”
“No. You woke up a little when I carried you in here from the car, but as soon as I tucked you in you passed right out again.”
Okay, so now he couldn’t look at Darren any more, and his face was burning. “Oh.”
“You talk in your sleep, you know.”
“I know.” Now his ears were on fire.
“You said ‘goddamit, Darren’ at least twice. I was honored.”
“Shut. Up.”
He risked a quick look upwards, but Darren was grinning right at him. “That’s what you said when I tried to talk back to you in your sleep.”
Chris picked up his fork and mercilessly speared a chunk of grilled scallop, frowning at it. “What a tragedy that you didn’t listen to me.”
“I’m pretty sure you also said I had a succulent ass.”
Chris dropped his fork with a clatter, and put both his hands over his face. “Fuck.”
“Dude, no way you should be embarrassed-I do have a succulent ass. It’s no big deal-”
“Oh, God.”
***
He left the table and went out the double doors to what seemed to be the back porch. He didn’t mean to go any further, but he was drawn down the steps by the light of a ghost-etched, waning moon and what seemed to be a billion stars-more stars than he’d ever seen before. There was a long, grassy slope leading down to a short dock, and a small, round lake edged with reeds. The air was cold, surprisingly cold, for summer.
“Where the hell are we?” he asked softly, when he heard Darren walk out onto the porch behind him.
“About an hour and a half straight up a mountain, about two hours out from L.A.,” Darren answered as he bounced down the steps, craning his neck to stare up at the sky. “God, look at that moon. Wow.”
Chris shivered a little, wrapping his arms around himself. “Whose place is this, anyways?”
Darren shrugged. “Some producer friend of Lea’s. Apparently he comes up here like, once a year or something. She thought it would be perfect-no television, no phone, no internet-”
Chris squeezed his own arms. “God, don’t remind me.” He bit his lip, hesitating, then plunged. “Why you?”
Darren glanced at him briefly. “Why me what?”
“Why did you get stuck with kidnapping duty? Did you lose a bet?”
“Nope. I volunteered.”
Chris had to look at him, then. “You. Volunteered?”
“Sure. It sounded great-I needed a little time away, needed to look at some trees. You’re not the only one who tries to do too much, you know.”
He did know. And he was going to say as much, as soon as he finished yawning. He winced when his jaw cracked.
Darren’s eyes looked black in the moonlight. “You should go to bed.”
Chris yawned again. “I’ve only been up for… a few hours-”
“Yeah, but you’ve been short on sleep for, like, four years. You have a lot to make up for.”
“You’re insane,” Chris said mildly, but God, his eyelids were drooping, and he could feel the bed in the house behind him singing to him, luring him towards it. “What are you going to do?”
Darren gazed out over the lake. “I’m going to take my guitar down to the end of the dock and serenade the fish.”
“Attention whore.”
“Fish appreciate me.”
“Jesus.”
“I don’t really get enough time to give back to my ichthyic fanbase-”
“God. I’m going to bed.”
He went to bed.
***
Day: 2
***
When he opened his eyes, it was morning. The French doors were open and the room was full of cool air and warm sunshine, and after carefully looking around to make sure that Darren was nowhere in view Chris stretched out and let himself bask for a moment, arms crossed behind his head because he had nowhere to go and nothing to do, and that was fucking terrifying but it was also… good. So, so good. He wiggled his toes in luxury, and had to admit-strictly to himself, of course-that he’d needed some kind of a break.
Not that he was happy about being fucking kidnapped, or being stuck here with no link to actual humans other than Darren, who was… making some kind of godawful racket outside. Singing something, banging things around and… what the hell was that noise? Chris sat up and threw back the covers, and took a few moments to stretch and to try to adjust to feeling… well-rested. It felt weird. Like he wasn’t quite himself any more.
The lake was gorgeous, still a little early mist hanging at the edges, but otherwise a sparkling mirror of the blue sky overhead. Off to the right there was a large shed he’d missed in the dark last night, standing with both doors open. Darren had dragged a rowboat out of it, and was singing loudly in what was either Spanish or Italian while he hosed it off. Chris blinked rapidly, taking in the spectacle of Darren wearing cut-off jeans, hiking boots with socks, and nothing more than a fine spray of water on his rapidly-browning skin.
“Oh, hey-good morning,” Darren said in a bright, cheerful voice, turning off the sprayer once he saw Chris standing there.
Chris eyed him. “You know, you’re like one feather boa and some glitter away from being a centerpiece on a Pride float.”
Darren grinned, looking down at himself. “Really? Awesome!” He sounded authentically delighted.
Chris shook his head and went back into the house. He took a shower, wallowing in the sybaritic extravagance of the bathroom (the one place in the house where the rusticness left off and Hollywood took over) until he was squeaky-clean and kind of waterlogged, then slipped into jeans and a t-shirt from the mystery backpack he’d unearthed last night.
Darren was in the kitchen when Chris came back into the main room, doing something with cutting boards and pans and whisks. He’d apparently left his boots and socks outside because he was now barefoot, but he was still wearing the cutoffs and nothing else. Chris very carefully and deliberately avoided staring at Darren’s nipples, even though it felt like they were staring at him.
“Don’t you burn yourself, cooking like that?” He honestly didn’t know what else to say.
“Sometimes,” Darren said brightly, dishing out onto two plates. “It’s okay though-my cooking scars are extremely manly.”
“You are a deeply weird person,” Chris opined quietly, but he sat down at the small wooden table without any further complaint.
Breakfast was simple-eggs with tarragon and a little crumbled feta, berries and fresh peach slices and some kind of wheaty, biscuitish thing that was absolutely not made from Bisquick-but delicious, as dinner had been last night. “I didn’t know you could cook.”
Darren shrugged, licking marmalade off his thumb. “A little. Nothing fancy. I only do it for other people, and when I have time-which is like, never. But I like doing it.”
Chris bit into a peach slice, then wiped his chin to catch the juice runoff-casually, like it was an every-day occurrence to sit at a wooden block table and eat breakfast with a shirtless, perky-nippled friend who just happened to be dressed like the houseboy in The Birdcage. “So… what’s your plan for the day, O Captor my Captor?”
Darren gazed out the open doors towards the water. “Well, the boat seems to be okay-just dusty and spidery, but now that it’s clean I thought first of all I’d take a tour around the lake-”
“That’ll be a scintillating five minutes,” Chris said dryly.
“I’ll row slowly,” Darren said with evident amusement. “You can come with me, if you like.”
Chris pointed outside. “Sunshine.” He pointed at himself. “Pallid. Not a good combination.”
Darren smiled broadly. “Suit yourself. You could always take one of the giant umbrellas from the closet, and I could row you around and fan you with my hat if you got too warm-”
“Darren.” He didn’t mean to ask it, but he was full and disturbingly comfortable and his usual arbiters seemed to have dropped off to sleep when the rest of him woke up. “That’s kind of a… Are you hitting on me?”
“No,” Darren looked almost panicked. “No, I’m… God, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, it’s just-”
“I’m not uncomfortable,” Chris said, and that was true but not-true, because what was true was that he felt so comfortable it almost made him uncomfortable, because he wasn’t used to it. “I’m just… I wanted to be clear, because you’re kind of, uh, flirty-”
Darren squeezed both his hands into his hair. “I know-except I don’t always know, because I think I’m just being friendly or funny but then… yeah.” He rubbed his face, scratching briefly at his stubble. “I’m really sorry.”
“No harm done,” Chris said quietly, because really, it wasn’t like he was susceptible to it or anything. He got to his feet. “I’ll clean up.”
“Chris, really-”
“Darren,” he waved a serving spoon warningly. “I promise you, I am not standing here suffering from deep, internal wounds inflicted by your chronic, unintentional flirtiness. Now, get out of here so I can clean up. Maybe you could go flirt with the fish some more-I’m sure they’re pining for you by now.”
Darren went from solemn and concerned to shamefaced grinning immediately. “I… yeah. Okay.”
He had just finished the last of the dishes and was wiping his hands when he heard a whoop from outside. He got to the door just in time to see Darren thundering down the slope and out onto the dock, diving full-throttle into the water. Darren did a brief backstroke once he surfaced, then flipped over and went into a butterfly stroke as he moved towards the shore. He emerged dripping and laughing, his denim shorts sagging alarmingly low, and shook his head until water sprayed everywhere and his curls flew free.
Chris took one step backwards, away from the door. “It’s not like he’s doing it on purpose,” he said, and then flinched a little, because he really hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
***
He got lost in a deep perusal of his unknown host’s bookshelves, and so it didn’t really register when he heard a lot more clattering outside the back door. Darren stuck his head in just as Chris had gotten it narrowed down to a choice between Christopher Moore’s Lamb and John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces, and was biting his lip in agonized indecision.
“Hey-there’s a… come see!” Darren sounded all of six years old, and sure enough, when Chris looked up the guy was practically vibrating, bouncing from foot to foot. “It’s so cool.”
He didn’t know what to expect-possibilities from a jetski to a water cannon flashed through his mind-but Darren’s qualifier of ‘so cool’ hadn’t really prepared him for what he saw when he stepped out onto the back porch. “You found… a hammock.”
“Yep, a hammock,” Darren said in a tone of marvelous wonder, as if finding a hammock at a lake house was some kind of miracle. “A hammock in the shade, for you, Monsieur.” Another one of those ridiculous half-bows. “And there’s this-” he bounced down the steps and dragged out a yellow float with an attached, over-arching canopy. “And there’s a canopy-thing for the boat, too; but, uh, I haven’t quite figured out how it goes on yet.” He pointed down to the water, where the rowboat sat tethered to the dock, winking in the sun-at least, the half of it that didn’t look like it was being eaten by a super-aggressive tent.
Chris felt dizzy. “En garde, Monsieur Soleil,” he mumbled faintly, unthinkingly.
Darren laughed, then caught his hand. “Oh, Tish,” he said earnestly, and Chris held his breath a little-but Darren just bowed over it and gave him a roguish wink. “That’s French.”
***
He agreed to go out in the boat once Darren got the canopy set up-so much creative swearing had gone into it that he would have felt kind of churlish saying no. He took Dunces with him, but he mostly just held it open in front of him and tried to remember to turn a page every so often.
It was nice. It was quiet. It was unnerving-he wasn’t used to Darren being quiet. But Darren was quiet; he fed the ducks the remaining biscuits from breakfast, smiling a little when they got bold enough to come and eat from his hand, but other than that he just… rowed, and drifted, and trailed his fingers in the water, and stared out at the tree-covered hills that ringed the lake, and… was quiet.
“I feel like my ears need to pop,” Chris said, and closed the book, squeezing it tightly. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
Darren looked at him quizzically. “From the altitude?”
“From the, uh, lack of pressure,” Chris answered haltingly. “No phones ringing. No schedule. No action plan for the day. I have no idea what time it is.” He waved his book around for dramatic emphasis. “I could take a nap at any moment, if I wanted to… It’s a weird feeling.”
Darren nodded, and looked down at the water for a few moments before he spoke again. “You know, all of you who’ve been in it from the start-you all have each other, the patterns are set, you have this… communal experience, a communal identity that helps you be strong and keep going, and I just… I envy it, sometimes, because I’m outside it. Because I’ll always be outside it.”
Chris almost said something, but Darren shook his head, and went on. “But then, I think about how long you’ve all been… doing this, what it’s taken for you to do this, and then I’m not envious at all-because sometimes I think it’s too much, that it’s cost you too much.”
Chris shrugged. “I’m not complaining.”
Darren’s mouth quirked at the corner. “Of course not-none of you do. None of you take the good things for granted, and none of you complain; not seriously, anyway. It’s… actually kind of freaky, how well-behaved and well-adjusted you all are. I constantly have to fight off the urge to goad you into misconduct.” The quirk turned into a wide grin.
Chris leaned back. “Really. Well. What kind of misconduct did you have in mind?”
Darren blinked innocently. “Uh. Depends. On the person, and on the circumstances. It’s not a one-size-fits-all undertaking, you know-I take great pride in my ability to craft custom opportunities for insubordination.”
“I believe this about you. It’s not even hard.”
Darren pressed his hand to his chest. “I have to follow my passions.”
“You’re an inspiration to us all.”
***
When they got back Darren disappeared into the house, emerging moments later with socks and running shoes. “Okay,” he said in a tone of deep gravity, bouncing down the stairs to sit on the bottom one. “The meditative, contemplative part of the day is now complete.”
Chris grinned. “Thanks for the announcement. Is it time for your scheduled freak-out?”
Darren flailed a little, then started brushing the sand off his feet. “I got to move, man.”
“Oh my God, you dork. I knew all that drifting around quietly was driving you crazy.”
“Can’t help it-when I sit still too long, I start feeling creaky and old and stuff.”
“Are you sure you want to be a Buddhist monk when you grow up?”
“The key term there is ‘grow up’,” Darren said mildly, grinning, yanking on his shoelaces like his feet were wild horses trying to get out from under him. “There’s a trail that goes all the way around the lake-I found it while you were doing your Sleeping Beauty impression. I’m going to do a few laps. Care to join me?”
“Not even a little,” Chris said brightly, settling into the hammock with his book. “But I’ll be sure to admire your stalwart fortitude and healthful virtue every time you trot by.”
“Awesome,” Darren said, and took off into the trees. Chris read a few pages, but it was hard to get immersed with Darren jogging stalwartly and virtuously by every so often, always a little shinier and sweatier than the time before.
He’d given up and put the book aside by the time Darren finished, slowing to a stop on the grass and leaning over with both hands on his knees, his eyes closed, dripping with sweat and panting hard.
“Done already?” Chris called, injecting a deliberate note of astonishment into his voice as he drooped one leg out of the hammock and pushed off against the porch, setting himself rocking lazily.
“Nope,” Darren wheezed, hopping around to get his shoes and socks off before he did another one of those thundering runs down to the end of the dock and off into the water, crawl-stroke this time, setting off across the lake.
Chris watched Darren swim away until he was just an arrow-shaped bright spot with a foamy wake trailing behind him, then got up out of the hammock and went to investigate the shed.
The results were promising. He’d just dragged out all the badminton equipment when Darren splashed his way back, hauling himself up on the dock before flopping face-down onto the boards, sprawled there like a dead thing except for the way he was heaving for air. Chris made his way down to the end of the dock carefully, shading his eyes with his hand despite his dark sunglasses.
“There’s badminton,” he said brightly, poking Darren’s hip gingerly with the toe of his sneaker. “We can set it up so it’s half in the shade. You should get up and play with me. It’ll stop you from feeling old and creaky.”
Darren flipped off a duck who was swimming nearby. “Fuck you,” he gasped weakly. “So hard.”
Chris sighed. “Right, I forgot-you are old and creaky. Of course, you need to pace yourself. I’m sure your joints are all achy and-”
The scary thing was that he didn’t even really see Darren move. He saw Darren’s broad shoulders flex, but that was all he caught before Darren had him around the knees, and then Chris uttered a helpless, high-pitched yelp and wham-then he was trying not to drown.
The water was cold-not cool, but fucking freezing, and Chris thought his heart stopped for a second before he made it back up to blinding sunshine and air and Darren bobbing next to him with his head just barely above the rippling waves, laughing so hard he sounded like he was dying a slow and hilarious death.
“Oh my God,” Chris spluttered, treading water and toeing around (unsuccessfully) for the lake bottom. “You massive, giant dick-I can’t believe you just did that!”
Darren swam past him, wheezing and snickering, and grabbed the edge of the dock before extending his free hand to Chris. “I can’t believe I waited as long as I did. Oh my God your face-”
“Shut up,” Chris snapped testily, ignoring the hand and grabbing the edge of the dock himself. “You are the worst kidnapper-slash-vacation-partner ever. I’m fully dressed, you know!”
“I know,” Darren chuckled weakly. “But hey-if I’d waited for you to strip down I would have never gotten the chance-”
“I’m sorry,” Chris said acidly. “Not all of us are comfortable parading around like some kind of poster-boy for queer nipple-porn fetishists.”
Darren didn’t appear to be offended by his remark. Darren, in fact, seemed to think it was fucking hysterical. Chris hauled himself up and out of the water, and made his way towards the house with as much dignity as it was possible for a soaking-wet person with squelching, dripping sneakers to have. He made it up onto the porch before Darren stopped laughing, and called out to him.
“Hey-oof-you should leave your stuff-your wet stuff-outside. Chris-”
“Bite me!” Chris yelled back with his hand on the door handle, and refused to turn around. Then he gave in and turned around. “Just so you know, I’m making good headway on that whole hating-you-for-life thing.”
Darren hauled himself up onto the dock, dripping-wet and gleaming and sleek, smiling broadly. “You’re a seriously adorable liar.”
“You’re half-right, at least,” Chris mumbled quietly, then defiantly turned the door handle and walked into the house, squelching and stomping and shedding as much water on the innocent floorboards as possible.
***
He took his time in the shower, another enjoyable indulgence he reminded himself not to mention. By the time he got out the floorboards had been rescued and his pile of wet clothes had disappeared, and he was already constructing a pointed remark about what a treasure a good houseboy was-only he never got to use it, because when he came out onto the back porch he saw that Darren was sprawled on the grass, in the sun, asleep. And naked.
Facedown. On a blanket. Naked.
Chris went back into the house, and firmly closed the door. Then he settled down on the couch in front of the fireplace with his book, and turned a bunch of pages while staring fixedly at it.
***
He didn’t remember falling asleep; didn’t even remember being sleepy. But he woke up to find Darren-thankfully-no-longer-naked, thankfully-dressed-in-sweats-and-a-t-shirt-Darren-working in the kitchen.
“What… God. What time is it?”
“Dinner time. Or… it will be, eventually. So… cooking-time, I guess. It’s around five, I think.”
Chris sat up, wiping the corner of his mouth. “I think I’ve slept more in the past two days than in the past two months combined.” He yawned.
“It’s good for you,” Darren said nonchalantly, chopping and scraping. “It’s going to be a while before this is ready-you could go back to sleep, if you like.”
“Nope, I’m up. I’m up, and that… wow, that smells amazing. What is it?”
“It’ll be chicken posole in about… two hours.” Darren put down his knife and picked up a bottle, inspecting the label. “You want wine with dinner?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I want wine now. And then some more with dinner.”
Darren grinned. And then he started singing Belinda Carlisle. Vacation.
And then he poured the wine.
***
So there was wine, and posole and salad and bread, and then more wine, and then Darren perched on the kitchen counter with his guitar while Chris slowly and carefully did the dishes. Chris sang along when he knew the words, swayed along when he didn’t, and by the time Chris had drunk his first glass from their third bottle he was down to drying and putting away the silverware, and he was feeling very mellow indeed.
“Doesn’t your butt get sunburned?” Chris asked in the lull between one song and the next, and then realized he’d just said that out loud. He paid an extraordinary amount of attention to the fork he was drying, ignoring the fierce and sudden heat in his cheeks.
“Uh, no. I just… sunscreen. I’m sorry. Did that bother you? I didn’t ask because… I didn’t want to be weird. Weirder. Sorry.”
“It’s not… it didn’t bother me, no. It’s just… I don’t know where your line is.” Oh, God, he needed to shut up. Right now. He tossed the fork in the drawer and squeezed the dishtowel.
“Line?”
Chris swallowed. He wasn’t going to actually say this. Except, apparently, he kind of was. “All the guys I know. The straight guys I know, anyway; even the ones that… that I’m closest to, it’s like… there’s a line. I can feel it. I can feel where their comfort zone is, and I’m always really careful to not… I’m not crossing that line. But. Not you. I don’t… I don’t get one at all, from you. And that’s… weird.” He picked up a spoon and polished it, polished it. “I’m not sure… I mean, I don’t know what to do with that. Without knowing where your line is.”
“Oh.” Darren’s voice was very soft, slightly blurred. “That. Hm. I’m not… I don’t think I have a line. Is that a problem?”
Of course it was a fucking problem. “I almost threatened to make out with you.”
“Uh. Just now?”
“No.” He tossed the spoon in a drawer, and picked up another one. “When I, when you brought me here, and I wanted to leave. ‘Do your worst’, you said. It was… that was the worst thing I could think of.”
He never, ever should have said anything. He should have done the dishes and drunk his wine and challenged Darren to a Bette Midler/Cher medley singoff and kept his fucking mouth shut, because now Darren was putting his guitar gently aside and hopping down from the counter, walking over to him.
He didn’t say anything when Darren took the spoon and dishtowel away from him, and he didn’t say anything when Darren put one finger under his chin and lifted. The shock of Darren’s face that close, cheeks flushed rosy and stubble and his lips and his crazy, unkempt hair-all that was enough, but on top of that there were his eyes, so direct and intense, even slightly hazy from wine-that was. Terrible. “Chris,” Darren said, and there was a lurching, free-falling moment where Chris couldn’t remember at all what they were talking about, only then he did and he had to swallow, had to force himself not to pull away. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Maybe you ought to be,” Chris said, and Darren didn’t get it, he could see that Darren still didn’t fucking get it, so he put his hands on Darren’s waist and felt the shape there, molded his hands to curve and muscle and bone and warmth under the softness of well-worn cotton. He touched, stroked, appreciated, crossing that line-or where the line would have been, if it hadn’t been Darren’s muscular waist he was caressing. He crossed the line-deliberately.
Darren’s cheeks got a little pinker, and his eyelashes fluttered-but that was all. “If I don’t shriek and run out of the room waving a crucifix at you, are you going to be relieved, or disappointed?”
“I’m going to… I’m going out for some air,” he said, and let go, and walked away.
***
He sat down on the end of the dock cross-legged, then leaned back on his hands and tilted his head back to look at the stars. He was falling-falling and there was no bottom, no end to it, just wide space and eternity and no up and no down and just… cartwheels, tiny and isolated and… cartwheels in space.
He heard the door click open behind him, heard Darren clear his throat. “Uh. You… can I join you, or do you need some time alone?”
Yes. “No. It’s fine. Come on down.” He was back on the planet again. He scooted over when he realized that by ‘join’ Darren meant ‘sit right next to’. Darren yanked the cuffs of his sweats up to above his knees, and folded down next to him before dunking both legs into the water.
“Yeep! Cold… wow.”
Chris leaned forward and stuck one finger into the water. It went numb. “Crazyman.”
Darren shivered. “Actually, it feels kind of nice. Bracing.”
Bracing. Yes. He felt much more sober. “So are you straight, or what?” …except for how he was still obviously, totally drunk. Fuck.
Darren ducked his head, swirling his legs, staring at the black, rippling water. “The first person I fell in love with was a girl,” he said quietly.
“Sorry, I-Darren, I didn’t mean to ask that-”
“Then she broke my heart,” Darren continued, as if Chris hadn’t interrupted. “And then I was a mess, and the person who helped me out of that was… another girl, and then I fell in love with her. And then… there were more girls, and the next thing I knew I was like… wow, I like girls.”
“Darren-”
“But it’s not like it’s been only girls,” Darren said, leaning back on his hands and looking up at the sky. “It hasn’t. But when I got this job it took about thirty seconds for people to get around to the whole ‘what’s your orientation’ thing, and it’s just… I didn’t… I didn’t really trust E! Online to really grasp the, uh, nuances, the complexity, of what I had to say, so… So I just… kept it simple.” Darren glanced at him then, smiling a little, almost sadly. “Of course, the irony is, while that kept it simple in one area, it’s meant a whole lot of not-so-simple everywhere else.”
Chris swallowed, listening to the swish-swish-gurgle from Darren’s feet in the lake below. “Not so simple, no.”
“Simpler now, though. Now that you know.” Darren was still looking at him, staring at him, and Chris had to look away. He stared out over the lake, shivering suddenly. “Chris…”
“Girlfriend,” Chris said, then realized that wasn’t actually a statement or a question. “Does she know?”
“What… about me? Yeah, I mean… yeah. Everything.” He laughed a little. “When you have a crazy life and a long-distance relationship, it requires a certain degree of, uh, openness-”
“Oh, God-you don’t even mean ‘openness’ like ‘honesty’, do you? You mean one of those… arrangements-”
“Well, in this case, I meant ‘honesty’, but-yeah, actually. We do. We have a three-time rule.” He shrugged. “It’s… practical.”
“A three… what?”
“Three times. If we see other people, there’s a three-time maximum with that person. We talked about it, back when we were trying to figure out how this could work, and-yeah.”
“That… makes no sense to me at all. So you could be with, uh, a dozen different girls a night, and then a different dozen the next night, and then-”
He stopped because Darren choked, then coughed. “Uh, I think you got the wrong idea when I told you I like girls-”
“Theoretically,” Chris snapped.
“Theoretically-fine. Yes. But… that’s not me, that’s not who I am. I’m… picky.”
“So… why three times?”
“Because after that, there’s an investment,” Darren said quietly. “There’s an… attachment, the kind of thing that goes beyond, uh, a friendly kind of thing. And that, way more than nonmonogamy, is what infringes on relationship territory.”
Chris looked back at Darren, and blinked. “You really are a hippie, aren’t you?”
Darren bumped him lightly with his shoulder. “If you say so, Clovis.”
“Oh, God-no. Anything but that.” He sighed. “Honestly, I have to spend so much time and energy trying to figure out whether my responses to… well, just about everything, everything that’s part of my life now-whether I’m responding the way I am because of where I came from, or… or because I’m a totally inexperienced twenty-one-year-old virgin who’s starting to think of sex as some kind of monster in the closet.” He shrugged. “No pun intended.”
Darren was… gaping at him. “Really?”
“Yes,” Chris said, then tried to dial back the acid in his tone. “Really.”
“Oh.” Darren looked back out over the lake. “I… um. Didn’t know that.”
“Well, now you do.”
There was a pause. “That’s… I’m… stunned, actually.”
Something was different, something had changed. Even the air felt different. “Darren. You were hitting on me.”
“No, really, I-”
“You were. And now you’re not.” And fuck, his throat hurt and his eyes burned, and that sucked, it all just really… sucked.
“Chris… no. Look.” Darren picked up his hand and held it, lacing their fingers together. “I need you to understand this. No, I wasn’t hitting on you. But yes, I was… working up to hitting on you, if that makes… I’m… I was attracted to you, yes, from the first time we met. But I don’t hit on people, even if I’m attracted to them, unless… unless I think they might welcome it, unless I’ve gotten to know them, unless they’ve gotten to know me. It’s important. Knowing. Liking. It’s… it matters.”
“You like me. As a person.”
Darren squeezed his hand. “God, yes. You’re amaz-”
“And you’re… attracted to me.”
“Yes. Very much so.”
“But… you’re not hitting on me any more.” He swallowed. His throat tasted salt-bitter. “I thought you weren’t afraid of me?”
“I’m not. But you…”
“But my virginity scares you?”
“No-but. Look, me saying ‘hey, I like you and you’re gorgeous and how about we mess around’ is just… that’s not… it’s not right for a first time. Your first time should be with-”
“Oh my God, don’t say it. Do. Not. Say it.” He pulled his hand away from Darren’s, wrapping his arms around himself. “Someone special. Right? Someone special. I have this insane, amazing life and I can’t have a relationship with anyone outside of it, because-too crazy, no time, what the hell would I have to offer? And then there’s the other end, the one-night-stand-with-a-random-stranger end, and that’s… just, no, I can’t, and in my case it’s even more dangerous than it usually is, because I’m me-so here I am with my fucking virginity hanging around my neck like a fucking millstone, and everyone around me seems to manage somehow, but not-not me, because nothing and nowhere is safe and I’m fucking terrified but I can’t stop thinking about it, the only thing that stops me from thinking about it is… is work. I just… work. All the time and I can’t… I can’t see an end to it. I can’t see a way for this to ever-”
His first thought was that Darren must have an amazing metabolism, because his hands were so hot-hot like an almost-shock, an almost-painful heat cupping his icy cheeks. Darren kissed him hard, hard at first and then softer, wet and sweet-slick and… open, like waiting, like an invitation, so Chris slipped his tongue into Darren’s mouth and then they both moaned. Chris felt something in his brain explode, then melt. When Darren finally pulled back from him, his lips ached.
“I’d like… I’d love to be someone special to you,” Darren breathed over his lips, pressing their foreheads together. “If you’d… if you want. If that’s what you want.”
Chris nodded, but didn’t trust himself to speak. Darren kissed him again-hot and quick and deep, sending a spark right through him down to his toes. “Let’s go in, okay?” Darren said, pulling back, his hands still cupping Chris’ face. “It’s cold out here. Let’s go get warm.”
***
Part 2 here.
Author: Aristide
Fandom/Pairing: Glee RPS, Chris Colfer/Darren Criss
Rating: NC-17 for m/m sex
Summary: Chris and Darren spend some time together. Stuff happens.
Author’s Notes: My first attempt at CrissColfer, so it will probably take a while for me to find my way, characterization-wise. Thank you for your patience.
Indebtednesses: Again, it takes a frigging village. First of all, to Alice, for fighting through food poisoning to give me her thoughts and suggestions. To AubreyLi for being right and extremely patient. To Talya for her honest thoughts and general loveliness. And finally but OMG not least, to Andie for a daring emotional rescue.
***
Day: 0
***
He was drunk. Undoubtedly, absolutely, splendidly drunk. And he didn’t even feel bad about it, because he’d done it-the movie was in the can, the wrap party had been partied to the hilt right here in Glenn’s overly-gracious living room, and all the necessary people, including him, had said all the necessary things. “I made a movie,” he said out loud, unnecessarily, drunkenly, then reminded himself belatedly not to say things like that because a) it made him sound like a drunken idiot with an ego problem, and b) he certainly hadn’t done it all by himself.
“Almost all by yourself,” a friendly voice next to his ear agreed, and he slewed around drunkenly to see who he’d just made an ass of himself in front of-but it was only Darren, sitting in the chair next to his own, smiling and picking the almonds out of a bowl of mixed nuts, eating them one by one.
“Hi,” Chris said, feeling something buckle in his brain a bit, something that was supposed to connect that wasn’t connecting because he was really quite cataclysmically drunk-only then it did. “This… isn’t where you work. Why are you here?”
Darren looked vastly amused. That wasn’t exactly unusual, though. “You called me for a ride.”
Chris blinked, and then waited for double-Darren to go back to single Darren. Because one of Darren was undoubtedly enough. “I… did I? I called you? I don’t remember calling you.”
Darren shrugged. “Side-effect of too much work, too much booze, and too little sleep, I guess.”
That… sounded disturbingly plausible. But it still didn’t make sense. “But why… why would I call you?” He was so, so confused.
“Presumably because you didn’t want to drive. And in your condition, I’d say that was remarkably shrewd of you.”
“I don’t call you for rides,” Chris said slowly, swaying a little. He looked around, but the party was over. The last of the cast and crew had departed and he was alone-except, of course, for Darren, who was there for some reason. “I have a rider-I mean a driverer-” He shook his head, wishing it didn’t feel so much like an overfilled balloon, trying to communicate these terribly complex concepts. “I mean I have people. That I call. When I need that.”
“And now you have another one,” Darren said with a flourish and a half-bow, and Chris realized that if he stared at Darren’s hair it looked like it was waving at him. Because he was really, stunningly drunk. Probably too drunk. “Come on,” Darren said from beneath his waving hair. “Let’s get you out of here.”
“Darren, really,” he said ponderously, aiming for rational and reasonable, “I don’t need any help.” Then he got to his feet and almost faceplanted onto the floor.
“Yup, I can see that,” Darren said amiably, wrestling him upright and slinging Chris’ arm around his own shoulders. “You’re doing awesomely well on your own, you big media mogul, you.”
It was cool outside-blissfully cool, and blissfully fresh after the close air of the house. Chris took a deep breath, then almost threw up. “Whoa.”
“Do you need to upchuck?” Darren asked politely, very much the perfect delivery and intonation of a flawless British butler, if it hadn’t been for the California accent.
“No,” Chris said calmly. “For God’s sake, I’m not that drunk.” He pulled himself upright and took another deep breath just to prove it, then bent nearly double and threw up behind the bougainvillea growing to the side of the front door. Violently.
“Better out than in, probably,” he heard Darren say from far above him, a gentle hand patting him on the back until he was done. “I have water and napkins in the car.”
Things got a little fuzzy then, everything weaving in and out. Chris came back to himself in the front seat of what had to be Darren’s car, a water bottle in one hand and a tidy stack of brown paper napkins in the other. He cleared his throat and swallowed, wincing, then drank some water. “Uh, sorry.”
“It’s no problem,” Darren said lightly. “Just let me know if you need me to pull over so you can go for round two, okay?”
“Okay,” Chris said, and his own voice echoed-a long, trailing echo like a hushed whisper amplified through a marble corridor, someplace cool and dark and quiet. That was certainly peculiar, given that he was sitting inside a car, but then he realized he only sounded that way because he was in the process of passing out, so he just let it go.
***
Day: 1
***
His bladder opened his eyes for him. Seriously. He opened his eyes and sat up, then flipped the covers back and skittered to the bathroom, nearly bounding the last few steps before he got to the toilet and peed so hard and so long that he kind of expected to be nothing but a deflated skeleton with eyes afterwards. It took a long, long time to finish, but eventually he did, tucked himself back into his pants, washed his hands, and walked hazily back towards the bed-
Which was when he realized it wasn’t his bed. And that it wasn’t his room. And that he didn’t have the faintest fucking clue where he was.
“Oh, hey, you’re up,” Darren said cheerfully, coming into the room through a pair of French doors that Chris had never laid eyes on before. “Cool.”
“You…” it was just a croak, so Chris cleared his throat and tried again. “You brought me to… your place?”
Darren looked around, almost as if he was as astonished as Chris to find himself where he was. “What, here? No. I mean-this isn’t my place. It belongs to a… friend.”
“You brought me to… your friend’s place?”
Darren grinned. “Yeah.”
No further information seemed to be forthcoming, so Chris exerted himself to speak. “Why?”
“So you can rest.”
Chris blinked. “So I can… you know, Darren, resting is something I usually do in my own home. In fact, it’s a whole part of why I have a home-to rest in. I rest there. In my home.”
Darren shook his head, still grinning. “Nope, you work there. Here, you get to rest.”
Chris wondered if this entire conversation would make any more sense if he went back to bed for a few hours. He was kind of afraid it might not.
Darren dug in his jeans pocket, and came up with a handful of change, an impressive quantity of lint, and a folded, crumpled paper. “Here, I have a note for you.”
Chris took the note with numb fingers. He recognized Lea’s swoopy, pretty handwriting at once.
Hey, baby-
Don’t freak out, okay? We cleared your schedule and did this because you work too hard and nobody can get you to slow down, so now you have to!!! Just let D cook you some good food and get some solid sleep and try to relax!! See you soon! Love-L.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Chris said hoarsely. He crumpled the note in his fist and dropped it. Then he took a deep breath. “Okay, wait-no, that was good, you got me, good joke. Wait till I-” he cut off there because he was groping for his phone, already planning the snarky message he was about to send Lea’s way-only his pocket was empty. “My phone.”
Darren shook his head. “Nope-not conducive to resting.”
He couldn’t look at Darren any more, so he looked around instead. He didn’t see a phone. The room he was in was big and sprawling and rustic, open-plan with no real interior walls except the one where the bathroom was. There was a stone fireplace set in one wall, an open kitchen against the other, bed in one corner of the room, bathroom to the left, and to the right-front door. He went through it.
He stopped as soon as he set foot outside. There was Darren’s car, parked neatly on a dirt driveway in front of the steps leading to the house. The car was dusty and streaked with mud-of course it was, because all he could see besides the car was a narrow dirt road stretching off into the trees. Miles and miles of trees. Nothing but trees. And some dirt. “Oh dear God-I’ve been kidnapped.”
“Only a little,” Darren said mildly, pleasantly, stepping out onto the porch next to him.
Chris turned to him and held out his hand. “Keys. Now.”
Darren looked at his outstretched hand, smiling, then shrugged. “Sorry. Don’t have ‘em.”
That was about enough. Chris took two steps and went through Darren’s pockets, ignoring Darren’s surprised yelp. He found no keys. “Where are the keys, Darren?”
Darren stood his ground, still looking way too obnoxiously cheerful for a kidnapper. “With your phone, and your other stuff. Safe. Not anywhere you can get them. Now will you mellow out?”
“No!” No, he would not. “I didn’t agree to this, I didn’t-I can’t stay here, I have things to do, people to call, I have to-”
Darren appeared unmoved. “Not for the next five days, you don’t.”
“Five…” his belly dropped. “Five days? You kidnapped me for five days?”
“Look, it might help if you stopped thinking of it as kidnapping-”
“It is kidnapping-”
“And started thinking of it as, uh, a vacation. That your friends who love you wanted you to have.”
Chris pressed his lips together. “You want me to consider being dragged off to this godforsaken place against my will a vacation?”
Darren patted his shoulder gently. “A vacation, a respite-an intervention for your firmly-entrenched workaholic tendencies, whatever-it’s just… a rest. A short rest.” He grinned. “There’s a lake on the other side of the house. It’s tiny, but there’s fish in it. And ducks.”
Chris closed his eyes. “Oh, well-of course, fish and ducks, yes, that makes everything just peachy.” He opened his eyes. “Will you please give me the keys?”
“Nope.”
“Will you give me my phone?”
“Sure. In five days.”
Chris went back into the house and went through everything he could find, including Darren’s battered duffel bag, an unfamiliar backpack stuffed with clothes, and every cupboard, drawer, and closet in the house. He found nothing.
Darren watched him for a while, but then he settled down into an overstuffed armchair near the fireplace and picked up his guitar, just kind of noodling along on it while he watched Chris tear the house apart. At one point he started strumming a soulful version of the Jeopardy theme song, and Chris glared at him until he chuckled and moved on to something bluesy and unrecognizable.
Chris ignored him until he’d run out of places to check, standing in the middle of the main room with his hands on his hips, fuming. Darren put the guitar aside and leaned back in the armchair, lacing his fingers across his midsection. “Finished?”
“Not by half. I want the car keys, and my phone.”
Darren shook his head, smiling faintly. “Nope.”
Chris flexed his hands, which kept trying to curl into fists. “Now, or else.”
Darren’s smile broadened. “Or else what? What are you going to do-pelt me with sarcasm?”
That was actually… a good question. A good, if maddening, annoying and exasperating question. “Don’t test me,” he snapped, crossing his arms. “Keys. Phone. Now.”
Darren was now grinning. The bastard. “I’m not testing you,” he said mildly. “I’m just trying to get you to take a break.”
“I am perfectly capable of taking breaks on my own, unassisted by-” he didn’t even bother to finish, since Darren had gone from grinning to outright chuckling. “This isn’t funny.”
“It’s not you,” Darren said, shaking his head. “I just realized how I must sound to my friends and family when they try to get me to slow down.”
Chris sighed. “Then you shouldn’t be doing this.”
Darren blinked, wide-eyed. “And give up such a precious life-lesson? No way.” He shrugged. “Look, they told me you’d be upset-”
“Who told you?”
“Cory and Lea-well, Cory told me you’d be upset. Was pretty upset himself over the idea of you being upset, actually-he’s, uh. Fond of you. Lea just told me you’d behave like a junkie deprived of a fix-but both of them told me you needed it, needed a break, just a little time, and asked me to… well, I’ve given them my word. No keys, no phone, no outside world-for five days. That’s the deal.” He tilted his head. “So-I gave my word. Do your worst.”
Chris stared down at the floor for a moment, then back at Darren. “I’m going to hate you for life.”
Darren actually smiled. “No, you won’t-because you only hate people who deserve it. And not many of them. You’re not a hateful person.”
“I could start.”
Darren just shook his head. “I think it’s too late for that.”
It was the compassion in his voice more than anything else that made Chris’ shoulders slump, all the fury and fire running right out of him. “You suck.”
Darren shrugged, still smiling. “At a lot of things, sure. But not at cooking. You up for some dinner?”
“No,” Chris said irritably, only to be undermined by the sudden, loud growling of his stomach.
“I think you’ve been overruled.”
“Seems to be a theme, lately.” He sniffed. “A theme that sucks.”
Darren got up out of the chair. “Let’s see if I can take your mind off it.”
***
Dinner was delicious, and he was ravenous, and he didn’t even understand why until he’d almost cleared his plate. “It’s dark outside,” he said, setting his fork down carefully.
Darren eyed him, then looked out the windows, then back at him. “That happens, you know, when the sun goes down-”
“The sun was… it was setting when I went out there, and that…” He trailed off, then swallowed and looked at Darren. “How long was I asleep?”
Darren tilted his head, then looked back at him. “About sixteen hours, more or less.”
Chris blinked. “Sixteen… I slept for sixteen hours straight?”
“No. You woke up a little when I carried you in here from the car, but as soon as I tucked you in you passed right out again.”
Okay, so now he couldn’t look at Darren any more, and his face was burning. “Oh.”
“You talk in your sleep, you know.”
“I know.” Now his ears were on fire.
“You said ‘goddamit, Darren’ at least twice. I was honored.”
“Shut. Up.”
He risked a quick look upwards, but Darren was grinning right at him. “That’s what you said when I tried to talk back to you in your sleep.”
Chris picked up his fork and mercilessly speared a chunk of grilled scallop, frowning at it. “What a tragedy that you didn’t listen to me.”
“I’m pretty sure you also said I had a succulent ass.”
Chris dropped his fork with a clatter, and put both his hands over his face. “Fuck.”
“Dude, no way you should be embarrassed-I do have a succulent ass. It’s no big deal-”
“Oh, God.”
***
He left the table and went out the double doors to what seemed to be the back porch. He didn’t mean to go any further, but he was drawn down the steps by the light of a ghost-etched, waning moon and what seemed to be a billion stars-more stars than he’d ever seen before. There was a long, grassy slope leading down to a short dock, and a small, round lake edged with reeds. The air was cold, surprisingly cold, for summer.
“Where the hell are we?” he asked softly, when he heard Darren walk out onto the porch behind him.
“About an hour and a half straight up a mountain, about two hours out from L.A.,” Darren answered as he bounced down the steps, craning his neck to stare up at the sky. “God, look at that moon. Wow.”
Chris shivered a little, wrapping his arms around himself. “Whose place is this, anyways?”
Darren shrugged. “Some producer friend of Lea’s. Apparently he comes up here like, once a year or something. She thought it would be perfect-no television, no phone, no internet-”
Chris squeezed his own arms. “God, don’t remind me.” He bit his lip, hesitating, then plunged. “Why you?”
Darren glanced at him briefly. “Why me what?”
“Why did you get stuck with kidnapping duty? Did you lose a bet?”
“Nope. I volunteered.”
Chris had to look at him, then. “You. Volunteered?”
“Sure. It sounded great-I needed a little time away, needed to look at some trees. You’re not the only one who tries to do too much, you know.”
He did know. And he was going to say as much, as soon as he finished yawning. He winced when his jaw cracked.
Darren’s eyes looked black in the moonlight. “You should go to bed.”
Chris yawned again. “I’ve only been up for… a few hours-”
“Yeah, but you’ve been short on sleep for, like, four years. You have a lot to make up for.”
“You’re insane,” Chris said mildly, but God, his eyelids were drooping, and he could feel the bed in the house behind him singing to him, luring him towards it. “What are you going to do?”
Darren gazed out over the lake. “I’m going to take my guitar down to the end of the dock and serenade the fish.”
“Attention whore.”
“Fish appreciate me.”
“Jesus.”
“I don’t really get enough time to give back to my ichthyic fanbase-”
“God. I’m going to bed.”
He went to bed.
***
Day: 2
***
When he opened his eyes, it was morning. The French doors were open and the room was full of cool air and warm sunshine, and after carefully looking around to make sure that Darren was nowhere in view Chris stretched out and let himself bask for a moment, arms crossed behind his head because he had nowhere to go and nothing to do, and that was fucking terrifying but it was also… good. So, so good. He wiggled his toes in luxury, and had to admit-strictly to himself, of course-that he’d needed some kind of a break.
Not that he was happy about being fucking kidnapped, or being stuck here with no link to actual humans other than Darren, who was… making some kind of godawful racket outside. Singing something, banging things around and… what the hell was that noise? Chris sat up and threw back the covers, and took a few moments to stretch and to try to adjust to feeling… well-rested. It felt weird. Like he wasn’t quite himself any more.
The lake was gorgeous, still a little early mist hanging at the edges, but otherwise a sparkling mirror of the blue sky overhead. Off to the right there was a large shed he’d missed in the dark last night, standing with both doors open. Darren had dragged a rowboat out of it, and was singing loudly in what was either Spanish or Italian while he hosed it off. Chris blinked rapidly, taking in the spectacle of Darren wearing cut-off jeans, hiking boots with socks, and nothing more than a fine spray of water on his rapidly-browning skin.
“Oh, hey-good morning,” Darren said in a bright, cheerful voice, turning off the sprayer once he saw Chris standing there.
Chris eyed him. “You know, you’re like one feather boa and some glitter away from being a centerpiece on a Pride float.”
Darren grinned, looking down at himself. “Really? Awesome!” He sounded authentically delighted.
Chris shook his head and went back into the house. He took a shower, wallowing in the sybaritic extravagance of the bathroom (the one place in the house where the rusticness left off and Hollywood took over) until he was squeaky-clean and kind of waterlogged, then slipped into jeans and a t-shirt from the mystery backpack he’d unearthed last night.
Darren was in the kitchen when Chris came back into the main room, doing something with cutting boards and pans and whisks. He’d apparently left his boots and socks outside because he was now barefoot, but he was still wearing the cutoffs and nothing else. Chris very carefully and deliberately avoided staring at Darren’s nipples, even though it felt like they were staring at him.
“Don’t you burn yourself, cooking like that?” He honestly didn’t know what else to say.
“Sometimes,” Darren said brightly, dishing out onto two plates. “It’s okay though-my cooking scars are extremely manly.”
“You are a deeply weird person,” Chris opined quietly, but he sat down at the small wooden table without any further complaint.
Breakfast was simple-eggs with tarragon and a little crumbled feta, berries and fresh peach slices and some kind of wheaty, biscuitish thing that was absolutely not made from Bisquick-but delicious, as dinner had been last night. “I didn’t know you could cook.”
Darren shrugged, licking marmalade off his thumb. “A little. Nothing fancy. I only do it for other people, and when I have time-which is like, never. But I like doing it.”
Chris bit into a peach slice, then wiped his chin to catch the juice runoff-casually, like it was an every-day occurrence to sit at a wooden block table and eat breakfast with a shirtless, perky-nippled friend who just happened to be dressed like the houseboy in The Birdcage. “So… what’s your plan for the day, O Captor my Captor?”
Darren gazed out the open doors towards the water. “Well, the boat seems to be okay-just dusty and spidery, but now that it’s clean I thought first of all I’d take a tour around the lake-”
“That’ll be a scintillating five minutes,” Chris said dryly.
“I’ll row slowly,” Darren said with evident amusement. “You can come with me, if you like.”
Chris pointed outside. “Sunshine.” He pointed at himself. “Pallid. Not a good combination.”
Darren smiled broadly. “Suit yourself. You could always take one of the giant umbrellas from the closet, and I could row you around and fan you with my hat if you got too warm-”
“Darren.” He didn’t mean to ask it, but he was full and disturbingly comfortable and his usual arbiters seemed to have dropped off to sleep when the rest of him woke up. “That’s kind of a… Are you hitting on me?”
“No,” Darren looked almost panicked. “No, I’m… God, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, it’s just-”
“I’m not uncomfortable,” Chris said, and that was true but not-true, because what was true was that he felt so comfortable it almost made him uncomfortable, because he wasn’t used to it. “I’m just… I wanted to be clear, because you’re kind of, uh, flirty-”
Darren squeezed both his hands into his hair. “I know-except I don’t always know, because I think I’m just being friendly or funny but then… yeah.” He rubbed his face, scratching briefly at his stubble. “I’m really sorry.”
“No harm done,” Chris said quietly, because really, it wasn’t like he was susceptible to it or anything. He got to his feet. “I’ll clean up.”
“Chris, really-”
“Darren,” he waved a serving spoon warningly. “I promise you, I am not standing here suffering from deep, internal wounds inflicted by your chronic, unintentional flirtiness. Now, get out of here so I can clean up. Maybe you could go flirt with the fish some more-I’m sure they’re pining for you by now.”
Darren went from solemn and concerned to shamefaced grinning immediately. “I… yeah. Okay.”
He had just finished the last of the dishes and was wiping his hands when he heard a whoop from outside. He got to the door just in time to see Darren thundering down the slope and out onto the dock, diving full-throttle into the water. Darren did a brief backstroke once he surfaced, then flipped over and went into a butterfly stroke as he moved towards the shore. He emerged dripping and laughing, his denim shorts sagging alarmingly low, and shook his head until water sprayed everywhere and his curls flew free.
Chris took one step backwards, away from the door. “It’s not like he’s doing it on purpose,” he said, and then flinched a little, because he really hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
***
He got lost in a deep perusal of his unknown host’s bookshelves, and so it didn’t really register when he heard a lot more clattering outside the back door. Darren stuck his head in just as Chris had gotten it narrowed down to a choice between Christopher Moore’s Lamb and John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces, and was biting his lip in agonized indecision.
“Hey-there’s a… come see!” Darren sounded all of six years old, and sure enough, when Chris looked up the guy was practically vibrating, bouncing from foot to foot. “It’s so cool.”
He didn’t know what to expect-possibilities from a jetski to a water cannon flashed through his mind-but Darren’s qualifier of ‘so cool’ hadn’t really prepared him for what he saw when he stepped out onto the back porch. “You found… a hammock.”
“Yep, a hammock,” Darren said in a tone of marvelous wonder, as if finding a hammock at a lake house was some kind of miracle. “A hammock in the shade, for you, Monsieur.” Another one of those ridiculous half-bows. “And there’s this-” he bounced down the steps and dragged out a yellow float with an attached, over-arching canopy. “And there’s a canopy-thing for the boat, too; but, uh, I haven’t quite figured out how it goes on yet.” He pointed down to the water, where the rowboat sat tethered to the dock, winking in the sun-at least, the half of it that didn’t look like it was being eaten by a super-aggressive tent.
Chris felt dizzy. “En garde, Monsieur Soleil,” he mumbled faintly, unthinkingly.
Darren laughed, then caught his hand. “Oh, Tish,” he said earnestly, and Chris held his breath a little-but Darren just bowed over it and gave him a roguish wink. “That’s French.”
***
He agreed to go out in the boat once Darren got the canopy set up-so much creative swearing had gone into it that he would have felt kind of churlish saying no. He took Dunces with him, but he mostly just held it open in front of him and tried to remember to turn a page every so often.
It was nice. It was quiet. It was unnerving-he wasn’t used to Darren being quiet. But Darren was quiet; he fed the ducks the remaining biscuits from breakfast, smiling a little when they got bold enough to come and eat from his hand, but other than that he just… rowed, and drifted, and trailed his fingers in the water, and stared out at the tree-covered hills that ringed the lake, and… was quiet.
“I feel like my ears need to pop,” Chris said, and closed the book, squeezing it tightly. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
Darren looked at him quizzically. “From the altitude?”
“From the, uh, lack of pressure,” Chris answered haltingly. “No phones ringing. No schedule. No action plan for the day. I have no idea what time it is.” He waved his book around for dramatic emphasis. “I could take a nap at any moment, if I wanted to… It’s a weird feeling.”
Darren nodded, and looked down at the water for a few moments before he spoke again. “You know, all of you who’ve been in it from the start-you all have each other, the patterns are set, you have this… communal experience, a communal identity that helps you be strong and keep going, and I just… I envy it, sometimes, because I’m outside it. Because I’ll always be outside it.”
Chris almost said something, but Darren shook his head, and went on. “But then, I think about how long you’ve all been… doing this, what it’s taken for you to do this, and then I’m not envious at all-because sometimes I think it’s too much, that it’s cost you too much.”
Chris shrugged. “I’m not complaining.”
Darren’s mouth quirked at the corner. “Of course not-none of you do. None of you take the good things for granted, and none of you complain; not seriously, anyway. It’s… actually kind of freaky, how well-behaved and well-adjusted you all are. I constantly have to fight off the urge to goad you into misconduct.” The quirk turned into a wide grin.
Chris leaned back. “Really. Well. What kind of misconduct did you have in mind?”
Darren blinked innocently. “Uh. Depends. On the person, and on the circumstances. It’s not a one-size-fits-all undertaking, you know-I take great pride in my ability to craft custom opportunities for insubordination.”
“I believe this about you. It’s not even hard.”
Darren pressed his hand to his chest. “I have to follow my passions.”
“You’re an inspiration to us all.”
***
When they got back Darren disappeared into the house, emerging moments later with socks and running shoes. “Okay,” he said in a tone of deep gravity, bouncing down the stairs to sit on the bottom one. “The meditative, contemplative part of the day is now complete.”
Chris grinned. “Thanks for the announcement. Is it time for your scheduled freak-out?”
Darren flailed a little, then started brushing the sand off his feet. “I got to move, man.”
“Oh my God, you dork. I knew all that drifting around quietly was driving you crazy.”
“Can’t help it-when I sit still too long, I start feeling creaky and old and stuff.”
“Are you sure you want to be a Buddhist monk when you grow up?”
“The key term there is ‘grow up’,” Darren said mildly, grinning, yanking on his shoelaces like his feet were wild horses trying to get out from under him. “There’s a trail that goes all the way around the lake-I found it while you were doing your Sleeping Beauty impression. I’m going to do a few laps. Care to join me?”
“Not even a little,” Chris said brightly, settling into the hammock with his book. “But I’ll be sure to admire your stalwart fortitude and healthful virtue every time you trot by.”
“Awesome,” Darren said, and took off into the trees. Chris read a few pages, but it was hard to get immersed with Darren jogging stalwartly and virtuously by every so often, always a little shinier and sweatier than the time before.
He’d given up and put the book aside by the time Darren finished, slowing to a stop on the grass and leaning over with both hands on his knees, his eyes closed, dripping with sweat and panting hard.
“Done already?” Chris called, injecting a deliberate note of astonishment into his voice as he drooped one leg out of the hammock and pushed off against the porch, setting himself rocking lazily.
“Nope,” Darren wheezed, hopping around to get his shoes and socks off before he did another one of those thundering runs down to the end of the dock and off into the water, crawl-stroke this time, setting off across the lake.
Chris watched Darren swim away until he was just an arrow-shaped bright spot with a foamy wake trailing behind him, then got up out of the hammock and went to investigate the shed.
The results were promising. He’d just dragged out all the badminton equipment when Darren splashed his way back, hauling himself up on the dock before flopping face-down onto the boards, sprawled there like a dead thing except for the way he was heaving for air. Chris made his way down to the end of the dock carefully, shading his eyes with his hand despite his dark sunglasses.
“There’s badminton,” he said brightly, poking Darren’s hip gingerly with the toe of his sneaker. “We can set it up so it’s half in the shade. You should get up and play with me. It’ll stop you from feeling old and creaky.”
Darren flipped off a duck who was swimming nearby. “Fuck you,” he gasped weakly. “So hard.”
Chris sighed. “Right, I forgot-you are old and creaky. Of course, you need to pace yourself. I’m sure your joints are all achy and-”
The scary thing was that he didn’t even really see Darren move. He saw Darren’s broad shoulders flex, but that was all he caught before Darren had him around the knees, and then Chris uttered a helpless, high-pitched yelp and wham-then he was trying not to drown.
The water was cold-not cool, but fucking freezing, and Chris thought his heart stopped for a second before he made it back up to blinding sunshine and air and Darren bobbing next to him with his head just barely above the rippling waves, laughing so hard he sounded like he was dying a slow and hilarious death.
“Oh my God,” Chris spluttered, treading water and toeing around (unsuccessfully) for the lake bottom. “You massive, giant dick-I can’t believe you just did that!”
Darren swam past him, wheezing and snickering, and grabbed the edge of the dock before extending his free hand to Chris. “I can’t believe I waited as long as I did. Oh my God your face-”
“Shut up,” Chris snapped testily, ignoring the hand and grabbing the edge of the dock himself. “You are the worst kidnapper-slash-vacation-partner ever. I’m fully dressed, you know!”
“I know,” Darren chuckled weakly. “But hey-if I’d waited for you to strip down I would have never gotten the chance-”
“I’m sorry,” Chris said acidly. “Not all of us are comfortable parading around like some kind of poster-boy for queer nipple-porn fetishists.”
Darren didn’t appear to be offended by his remark. Darren, in fact, seemed to think it was fucking hysterical. Chris hauled himself up and out of the water, and made his way towards the house with as much dignity as it was possible for a soaking-wet person with squelching, dripping sneakers to have. He made it up onto the porch before Darren stopped laughing, and called out to him.
“Hey-oof-you should leave your stuff-your wet stuff-outside. Chris-”
“Bite me!” Chris yelled back with his hand on the door handle, and refused to turn around. Then he gave in and turned around. “Just so you know, I’m making good headway on that whole hating-you-for-life thing.”
Darren hauled himself up onto the dock, dripping-wet and gleaming and sleek, smiling broadly. “You’re a seriously adorable liar.”
“You’re half-right, at least,” Chris mumbled quietly, then defiantly turned the door handle and walked into the house, squelching and stomping and shedding as much water on the innocent floorboards as possible.
***
He took his time in the shower, another enjoyable indulgence he reminded himself not to mention. By the time he got out the floorboards had been rescued and his pile of wet clothes had disappeared, and he was already constructing a pointed remark about what a treasure a good houseboy was-only he never got to use it, because when he came out onto the back porch he saw that Darren was sprawled on the grass, in the sun, asleep. And naked.
Facedown. On a blanket. Naked.
Chris went back into the house, and firmly closed the door. Then he settled down on the couch in front of the fireplace with his book, and turned a bunch of pages while staring fixedly at it.
***
He didn’t remember falling asleep; didn’t even remember being sleepy. But he woke up to find Darren-thankfully-no-longer-naked, thankfully-dressed-in-sweats-and-a-t-shirt-Darren-working in the kitchen.
“What… God. What time is it?”
“Dinner time. Or… it will be, eventually. So… cooking-time, I guess. It’s around five, I think.”
Chris sat up, wiping the corner of his mouth. “I think I’ve slept more in the past two days than in the past two months combined.” He yawned.
“It’s good for you,” Darren said nonchalantly, chopping and scraping. “It’s going to be a while before this is ready-you could go back to sleep, if you like.”
“Nope, I’m up. I’m up, and that… wow, that smells amazing. What is it?”
“It’ll be chicken posole in about… two hours.” Darren put down his knife and picked up a bottle, inspecting the label. “You want wine with dinner?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I want wine now. And then some more with dinner.”
Darren grinned. And then he started singing Belinda Carlisle. Vacation.
And then he poured the wine.
***
So there was wine, and posole and salad and bread, and then more wine, and then Darren perched on the kitchen counter with his guitar while Chris slowly and carefully did the dishes. Chris sang along when he knew the words, swayed along when he didn’t, and by the time Chris had drunk his first glass from their third bottle he was down to drying and putting away the silverware, and he was feeling very mellow indeed.
“Doesn’t your butt get sunburned?” Chris asked in the lull between one song and the next, and then realized he’d just said that out loud. He paid an extraordinary amount of attention to the fork he was drying, ignoring the fierce and sudden heat in his cheeks.
“Uh, no. I just… sunscreen. I’m sorry. Did that bother you? I didn’t ask because… I didn’t want to be weird. Weirder. Sorry.”
“It’s not… it didn’t bother me, no. It’s just… I don’t know where your line is.” Oh, God, he needed to shut up. Right now. He tossed the fork in the drawer and squeezed the dishtowel.
“Line?”
Chris swallowed. He wasn’t going to actually say this. Except, apparently, he kind of was. “All the guys I know. The straight guys I know, anyway; even the ones that… that I’m closest to, it’s like… there’s a line. I can feel it. I can feel where their comfort zone is, and I’m always really careful to not… I’m not crossing that line. But. Not you. I don’t… I don’t get one at all, from you. And that’s… weird.” He picked up a spoon and polished it, polished it. “I’m not sure… I mean, I don’t know what to do with that. Without knowing where your line is.”
“Oh.” Darren’s voice was very soft, slightly blurred. “That. Hm. I’m not… I don’t think I have a line. Is that a problem?”
Of course it was a fucking problem. “I almost threatened to make out with you.”
“Uh. Just now?”
“No.” He tossed the spoon in a drawer, and picked up another one. “When I, when you brought me here, and I wanted to leave. ‘Do your worst’, you said. It was… that was the worst thing I could think of.”
He never, ever should have said anything. He should have done the dishes and drunk his wine and challenged Darren to a Bette Midler/Cher medley singoff and kept his fucking mouth shut, because now Darren was putting his guitar gently aside and hopping down from the counter, walking over to him.
He didn’t say anything when Darren took the spoon and dishtowel away from him, and he didn’t say anything when Darren put one finger under his chin and lifted. The shock of Darren’s face that close, cheeks flushed rosy and stubble and his lips and his crazy, unkempt hair-all that was enough, but on top of that there were his eyes, so direct and intense, even slightly hazy from wine-that was. Terrible. “Chris,” Darren said, and there was a lurching, free-falling moment where Chris couldn’t remember at all what they were talking about, only then he did and he had to swallow, had to force himself not to pull away. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Maybe you ought to be,” Chris said, and Darren didn’t get it, he could see that Darren still didn’t fucking get it, so he put his hands on Darren’s waist and felt the shape there, molded his hands to curve and muscle and bone and warmth under the softness of well-worn cotton. He touched, stroked, appreciated, crossing that line-or where the line would have been, if it hadn’t been Darren’s muscular waist he was caressing. He crossed the line-deliberately.
Darren’s cheeks got a little pinker, and his eyelashes fluttered-but that was all. “If I don’t shriek and run out of the room waving a crucifix at you, are you going to be relieved, or disappointed?”
“I’m going to… I’m going out for some air,” he said, and let go, and walked away.
***
He sat down on the end of the dock cross-legged, then leaned back on his hands and tilted his head back to look at the stars. He was falling-falling and there was no bottom, no end to it, just wide space and eternity and no up and no down and just… cartwheels, tiny and isolated and… cartwheels in space.
He heard the door click open behind him, heard Darren clear his throat. “Uh. You… can I join you, or do you need some time alone?”
Yes. “No. It’s fine. Come on down.” He was back on the planet again. He scooted over when he realized that by ‘join’ Darren meant ‘sit right next to’. Darren yanked the cuffs of his sweats up to above his knees, and folded down next to him before dunking both legs into the water.
“Yeep! Cold… wow.”
Chris leaned forward and stuck one finger into the water. It went numb. “Crazyman.”
Darren shivered. “Actually, it feels kind of nice. Bracing.”
Bracing. Yes. He felt much more sober. “So are you straight, or what?” …except for how he was still obviously, totally drunk. Fuck.
Darren ducked his head, swirling his legs, staring at the black, rippling water. “The first person I fell in love with was a girl,” he said quietly.
“Sorry, I-Darren, I didn’t mean to ask that-”
“Then she broke my heart,” Darren continued, as if Chris hadn’t interrupted. “And then I was a mess, and the person who helped me out of that was… another girl, and then I fell in love with her. And then… there were more girls, and the next thing I knew I was like… wow, I like girls.”
“Darren-”
“But it’s not like it’s been only girls,” Darren said, leaning back on his hands and looking up at the sky. “It hasn’t. But when I got this job it took about thirty seconds for people to get around to the whole ‘what’s your orientation’ thing, and it’s just… I didn’t… I didn’t really trust E! Online to really grasp the, uh, nuances, the complexity, of what I had to say, so… So I just… kept it simple.” Darren glanced at him then, smiling a little, almost sadly. “Of course, the irony is, while that kept it simple in one area, it’s meant a whole lot of not-so-simple everywhere else.”
Chris swallowed, listening to the swish-swish-gurgle from Darren’s feet in the lake below. “Not so simple, no.”
“Simpler now, though. Now that you know.” Darren was still looking at him, staring at him, and Chris had to look away. He stared out over the lake, shivering suddenly. “Chris…”
“Girlfriend,” Chris said, then realized that wasn’t actually a statement or a question. “Does she know?”
“What… about me? Yeah, I mean… yeah. Everything.” He laughed a little. “When you have a crazy life and a long-distance relationship, it requires a certain degree of, uh, openness-”
“Oh, God-you don’t even mean ‘openness’ like ‘honesty’, do you? You mean one of those… arrangements-”
“Well, in this case, I meant ‘honesty’, but-yeah, actually. We do. We have a three-time rule.” He shrugged. “It’s… practical.”
“A three… what?”
“Three times. If we see other people, there’s a three-time maximum with that person. We talked about it, back when we were trying to figure out how this could work, and-yeah.”
“That… makes no sense to me at all. So you could be with, uh, a dozen different girls a night, and then a different dozen the next night, and then-”
He stopped because Darren choked, then coughed. “Uh, I think you got the wrong idea when I told you I like girls-”
“Theoretically,” Chris snapped.
“Theoretically-fine. Yes. But… that’s not me, that’s not who I am. I’m… picky.”
“So… why three times?”
“Because after that, there’s an investment,” Darren said quietly. “There’s an… attachment, the kind of thing that goes beyond, uh, a friendly kind of thing. And that, way more than nonmonogamy, is what infringes on relationship territory.”
Chris looked back at Darren, and blinked. “You really are a hippie, aren’t you?”
Darren bumped him lightly with his shoulder. “If you say so, Clovis.”
“Oh, God-no. Anything but that.” He sighed. “Honestly, I have to spend so much time and energy trying to figure out whether my responses to… well, just about everything, everything that’s part of my life now-whether I’m responding the way I am because of where I came from, or… or because I’m a totally inexperienced twenty-one-year-old virgin who’s starting to think of sex as some kind of monster in the closet.” He shrugged. “No pun intended.”
Darren was… gaping at him. “Really?”
“Yes,” Chris said, then tried to dial back the acid in his tone. “Really.”
“Oh.” Darren looked back out over the lake. “I… um. Didn’t know that.”
“Well, now you do.”
There was a pause. “That’s… I’m… stunned, actually.”
Something was different, something had changed. Even the air felt different. “Darren. You were hitting on me.”
“No, really, I-”
“You were. And now you’re not.” And fuck, his throat hurt and his eyes burned, and that sucked, it all just really… sucked.
“Chris… no. Look.” Darren picked up his hand and held it, lacing their fingers together. “I need you to understand this. No, I wasn’t hitting on you. But yes, I was… working up to hitting on you, if that makes… I’m… I was attracted to you, yes, from the first time we met. But I don’t hit on people, even if I’m attracted to them, unless… unless I think they might welcome it, unless I’ve gotten to know them, unless they’ve gotten to know me. It’s important. Knowing. Liking. It’s… it matters.”
“You like me. As a person.”
Darren squeezed his hand. “God, yes. You’re amaz-”
“And you’re… attracted to me.”
“Yes. Very much so.”
“But… you’re not hitting on me any more.” He swallowed. His throat tasted salt-bitter. “I thought you weren’t afraid of me?”
“I’m not. But you…”
“But my virginity scares you?”
“No-but. Look, me saying ‘hey, I like you and you’re gorgeous and how about we mess around’ is just… that’s not… it’s not right for a first time. Your first time should be with-”
“Oh my God, don’t say it. Do. Not. Say it.” He pulled his hand away from Darren’s, wrapping his arms around himself. “Someone special. Right? Someone special. I have this insane, amazing life and I can’t have a relationship with anyone outside of it, because-too crazy, no time, what the hell would I have to offer? And then there’s the other end, the one-night-stand-with-a-random-stranger end, and that’s… just, no, I can’t, and in my case it’s even more dangerous than it usually is, because I’m me-so here I am with my fucking virginity hanging around my neck like a fucking millstone, and everyone around me seems to manage somehow, but not-not me, because nothing and nowhere is safe and I’m fucking terrified but I can’t stop thinking about it, the only thing that stops me from thinking about it is… is work. I just… work. All the time and I can’t… I can’t see an end to it. I can’t see a way for this to ever-”
His first thought was that Darren must have an amazing metabolism, because his hands were so hot-hot like an almost-shock, an almost-painful heat cupping his icy cheeks. Darren kissed him hard, hard at first and then softer, wet and sweet-slick and… open, like waiting, like an invitation, so Chris slipped his tongue into Darren’s mouth and then they both moaned. Chris felt something in his brain explode, then melt. When Darren finally pulled back from him, his lips ached.
“I’d like… I’d love to be someone special to you,” Darren breathed over his lips, pressing their foreheads together. “If you’d… if you want. If that’s what you want.”
Chris nodded, but didn’t trust himself to speak. Darren kissed him again-hot and quick and deep, sending a spark right through him down to his toes. “Let’s go in, okay?” Darren said, pulling back, his hands still cupping Chris’ face. “It’s cold out here. Let’s go get warm.”
***
Part 2 here.