coming unglued (or, five facts about zac and taylor's relationship), zac/taylor, pg
Happy birthday alexi_lupin!!
Title: coming unglued (or, five facts about zac and taylor's relationship)
Author: likecharity
Pairing: Zac Hanson/Taylor Hanson
Rating: PG
Warnings: Real person slash, incest.
Summary: See title -- five facts about Zac and Taylor's relationship.
A/N: For alexi_lupin. Happy birthday bb. ♥ Consider this your incredibly delayed personal canon meme results. ;)
1.
Isaac knows.
It's not the kind of knowing that he could ever back up with proof and facts, if asked. It's the kind of knowing that lies deep and dormant in the back of his mind, jerking to the forefront every now and then when he witnesses something that can't be given any other explanation.
He doesn't talk about it. He barely even lets himself think about it. He knows he should if he suspects so strongly, but there's a fear in him that makes him hesitate whenever the opportunity arises. It's awful, he knows, to let something like this continue right under his nose, to never say a word. But he's scared that saying it out loud will make it all so much more real, and he's scared that they might deny it, and that maybe it's all in his mind and he's a lot more fucked-up than he thought.
Sometimes he watches Taylor and Natalie together, watches them putting Ezra to bed or cooking a meal for a family dinner party. And when he sees Taylor dipping his fingers into the pasta sauce and Natalie telling him off through her giggling, he can almost convince himself that it's not there, it's not true. It can't be true. And then Taylor slips into a seat beside Zac and they share the kind of smile that they've never wasted on him, and he knows. He knows.
2.
Natalie and Kate don't know.
Zac doesn't think they ever will. It's a matter of caution and consideration, it's all about saying the right things and closing the right doors. They never slip up. Even in the beginning, he doesn't think they ever have. (If they had, he supposes, there wouldn't have been weddings to speak of.)
He's the more careless of the two of them, he's got to admit, but he's not stupid, he knows how serious this is. There's nothing more serious in his entire life.
He was flicking through some magazine of Kate's the other night, and found a two-page quiz called something inane like How to Tell if Your Man's Been Stepping Out. Firstly, he was of course reassured to see that she hadn't filled it out, but it was even a relief to simply read through the questions and answers. None of it could have applied to him and Taylor. Nobody suspects that kind of thing. It's not like late night phone calls or coming home with lipstick smeared on your collar. It's not suspicious new techniques in the bedroom, or becoming suddenly 'distant or cold, unresponsive'.
He and Taylor don't sneak out to restaurants, don't arrange secret romantic getaways. There is nothing for her to find in his texts on his phone or his emails on his computer. He doesn't keep a diary.
Before anything else, they cover their tracks.
3.
Georgia is about them. Irrevocably, excruciatingly, entirely about them.
It didn't feel deceitful at first, the cover-ups and the gloss-overs. But now Zac hates it, hates the story Taylor tells and the credit he takes. I wrote it for Natalie, he always says with a shy, reluctant smile, and Zac always clenches his fists in his pockets and tries not to listen.
Somehow in the end it doesn't matter, though. Nobody else will ever know the truth, it's just for them, that memory of being curled up together on a hotel sofa, Taylor strumming his guitar absentmindedly, chords and riffs coming together to make what fans would later know as track four on The Walk. The lyrics came later, a joint effort, and Zac knows that despite his own honesty, Taylor was already thinking of explanations and excuses.
The original words (and even the rhythm) became jumbled along the way and it still bothers him, but he can't argue when Taylor nuzzles his neck, lips hot at his throat and murmurs softly that it's the meaning that matters, nothing else.
4.
They don't ever talk about their beginning, but they both remember it.
It started a long long time ago. Taylor has a vague and fuzzy memory of himself, age ten, kissing Zac, age seven, on the porch of somebody else's house (a friend's, maybe). It was summer, he thinks, because he remembers being hot and sticky and without a shirt, and he can bring back a distant image of Zac squinting at him in the sun, all shiny lips and mudstained clothing.
He doesn't even know if that really happened or if it's been inexplicably invented by his brain. He doesn't want to ask Zac to try and find out.
What he's sure of is a long period in his early teenage years when that sort of thing continued. He knows he knew it was wrong at the time, but all they seemed to worry about was keeping it a secret, making sure they could continue without discovery. He remembers it being harmless and all in good fun, and he thinks he must have had himself convinced pretty thoroughly.
He put a stop to it at age fifteen, said something like "We can't do this anymore," and Zac just agreed mildly, and for a little while, things were almost normal.
5.
It began again a few years ago.
It had been building up for as long as he can remember. It was inevitable, unstoppable.
It was a drunken kiss in a bathroom backstage at a show, almost accidental, reaching over each other for faucets and soap. It was a relief more than anything, a glorious release of years' worth of stifling tension, and for a moment, he forgot why it shouldn't have been happening. And then it came back to him like a punch in the stomach and he was pushing Zac away, only to have him press back in and whisper first (with a wild look in his eyes) "Don't," and then, softening, "The damage's already done, Tay."
And there was nothing, nothing for him to argue back with.