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The Saturday farmer’s market is one of Darren’s favorite parts of his life right now. He doesn’t do it every week, because sometimes he’s just too lazy to get up in time or doesn’t have enough to bring to make it worthwhile. But when he does, he loves every minute of it.
That Saturday, Darren gets up at 7:00am and packs up his truck with his offerings for the morning. He always has eggs; his girls lay more than he could ever eat and besides, they sell well at the market. The softly tinted shells delight the children and the rich flavor pleases their parents. Depending on the season, he brings along a basket of tomatoes or onions, rhubarb or snap peas. He’s going to plant some fruit trees this year – pear, he thinks, and possibly apple – and add some raspberry bushes along the edges of his property. (He knows enough to know not to plant blackberries.) He has the time to take care of them all and loves the work anyway. There’s something about the sweat and blood it takes to tend to his growing gardens that eases the tightness that had been growing in his chest for years. He stands taller for having worked hunched over.
Conner is usually there before Darren, setting up the tent and tables and his own baskets of fruit and vegetables (except for the Saturday morning they wake up together). They’d met just a few months after Darren moved to his house in the outskirts of San Francisco. Darren had spent the first couple months after the move moping around the house, rearranging things and redecorating until he was happy. He’d bought all new furniture, all new everything. Then he’d taken the time to set his house up exactly how he wanted. And then he’d hunkered down in the safe haven he’d created for himself. If that meant staying in most nights, ignoring the world around him in favor of a cup of a coffee and a book, then so be it. But eventually he’d ventured out and found the little farmer’s market. And then he’d found Conner, with his bright green eyes and his dark hair and his table of homegrown vegetables.
Darren loves the market. He loves the ebb and flow of people, the tents, the hustle, and the camaraderie. He loves the riot of smells – the creperie across the way, the cured meats vender, the fresh baked bread. He watches people – his neighbors – move from stall to stall, buying a little of this, picking up a little of that. Sometimes he wanders away from his and Conner’s stand to nibble and snack his way from tent to tent. He gets caught up in conversations with people he hasn’t seen in a little while, catching up on people’s new jobs and new babies and new loves. He gets distracted by the dogs that people bring with them and overeats almost every time.
Eventually Darren winds his way back through the crowded aisles to where Conner is handing off another bundle of lettuce to another satisfied customer. Darren doesn’t know what Conner does to get such consistently beautiful food from his soil. They’ve spent hours talking about phosphorus levels and collecting rainwater and rotating the vegetables, but sometimes Darren just sort of zones out while listening to the calming timbre of Conner’s voice. There’s something about the rhythm and the cadence, the easy way Conner constructs his sentence. It’s something like music. Besides, Darren’s own stuff does all right anyway, especially since he’s still learning how it all works. He never before thought himself a man to kneel in the dirt, but he is now. And he does love making a meal out of the foods dug from his and Conner’s own gardens.
“Hey,” Conner greets, face breaking into a wide smile when Darren comes around the table and he bumps his shoulder into Darren’s. He’s inches taller than Darren and broader, and his teeth are so very white.
“How’s the take going today?” Darren asks and he eyes the table that’s much emptier now than it was an hour ago.
“Good,” Conner says, nodding as he looks around, pleased. “The weather’s good. Lot of people out today. And we’re almost out of eggs.”
“Already?”
Conner rolls his eyes and bumps into Darren’s shoulder again. It’s a familiar gesture – the easy touches, the solid weight of them. Conner doesn’t touch him like he’s small or delicate. “Don’t act like we don’t always run out of eggs.”
“Well,” Darren responds with a too-casual shrug. He knows his eggs are popular with the locals. “My girls do me right,” he says and Conner snorts.
“There’s a phrase I’m not familiar with you saying.”
Darren grins and scrunches his nose. “Shut up.” Conner just laughs and presses a quick kiss to the side of Darren’s head.
He and Conner do well that day. They always do, but today is especially fruitful. Their table is just about empty by the time the market starts to wrap up and clear out. Darren looks at the last bits of vegetables that remain, puts his hands on his hips, and sighs happily. It’s heartening, every time, to take part in something so easily meaningful. They grow the food and people buy it. It’s guileless. It’s more than he could have hoped for when he left Los Angeles.
Despite how well they do, Darren always refuses any cut of the day’s profits, which used to piss Conner off to no end.
“We do this together,” Conner had protested after the third or fourth time Darren had pushed the offered wad of cash away.
“Sometimes it’s just you,” Darren had pointed out, cheeks flaming in embarrassment.
“Then I’ll take the money those days. You should take half the days you’re here too. It’s fair.”
“Yeah, but I don’t need the money.” Darren hated having to say it. He knew Conner knew who he was (that conversation had come quickly after they’d met), and he knew Conner wasn’t in want of money either, but they were still hard words to force across his tongue.
“I don’t give a shit that you’re rich,” Conner had fired back. “You earned it.” Darren had shut up then, partly because there was no sense in arguing with the fire in Conner’s eyes and the conviction in his voice, and also because Conner had leant in and soundly kissed him quiet.
Darren still refused any cut of the money, but sometimes Darren finds $100 shoved into his pocket when he gets home. He makes of point of taking Conner out for stupidly expensive drinks when that happens.
“Are you busy tonight?” Darren asks as he helps Conner break the tent down and carry the table to Conner’s car.
“I can be.” Conner’s eyes are the same green as new shoots emerging from fertile soil.
“Well, you are now.” Darren leans against Conner’s car as Conner shuts the trunk. “Dinner. 7:30.”
“Suit and tie?” Conner comes around and stands close to Darren, not quite between his legs.
“Just a tie.” Darren loves Conner’s snug Henleys and his fitted jeans, but sometimes there’s just something about getting a little more dressed up for dinner out.
Conner nods and his hand comes to rest just above Darren’s hip. There are people milling about, packing up their own tents to head home, but no one cares about two guys having a conversation by a car. “Are you gonna pick me up in that shitty truck of yours?”
“Hey!” Darren raps his knuckles against Conner’s chest. “Don’t talk shit about my truck. That thing is treasure.”
“The treasure is the shiny Tesla you’ve still got stored away. Gathering dust. Fucking shame.”
Darren just rolls his eyes. “Yes, I’m going to pick you up in my fabulous truck.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.” Darren taps Conner’s chest again before leaning up and kissing him quickly. Conner’s beard rasps against Darren’s stubble and he shivers. “See you tonight.”
***
The restaurant Darren takes them to is nice – a tie isn’t required but it’s sort of expected. But it’s also comfortable and familiar. The lighting is soft, but not too dark. It’s quiet enough for intimate conversation without being so silent as to stifle it. Darren is so grateful to have found this place. Darren done his penance eating at restaurants where he felt out of place and awkward, where the menus had no prices and paparazzi followed him through the doors. He could never enjoy those meals, not the way he wanted to, not knowing what waited for him just outside. Or who was with him inside. Really, he’s thankful to have rediscovered this city.
(Sometimes he misses sitting on the roof of his car eating a cheeseburger from a diner on the side of the road 40 miles outside of LA because it’s the only place they could go undisturbed. But the past is past and thinking about it does no good now.)
The maître de at the little restaurant is an acquaintance and the head chef is the son of a friend of Darren’s father. He and Conner get the best cozy table in the corner and a couple of drinks are brought out before they can order. Darren grins over the menus at Conner and knocks their feet together under the table.
When Conner isn’t growing the farmer’s market’s best produce, he’s an associate professor at the university. He teaches history and his eyes get so green whenever Darren asks him about his lesson plans or his research or the years he spent in Germany looking at primary sources. (Darren’s improving his German with Conner’s slow, careful tutelage.) Darren likes to listen to Conner talk about his students, how he can tell two classes into the new semester who is going to be his star pupil and who’s only going to show up for the exams.
They’d met the grocery store, of all places, when Darren had knocked loose a couple of onions while he was trying to reaching up on his tiptoes for the best one at the very top of the pile. Darren had been swearing under his breath and blushing in embarrassment when someone had stepped into his line of sight. Someone tall and broad-shouldered. With incredible eyes.
“Drop this?” The man had asked, holding out the last onion that had gone rolling across the floor. He had short, black hair and a beard to match, shades darker than Darren’s own.
“Well.” Darren had dragged his eyes up the long plane of the man’s torso, noting the way the snug shirt hugged his muscles. When he brought his eyes to the man’s face, he saw the man had been watching him the whole time, a faint smile curving his lips. “Not on purpose.”
“I’m Conner.” His handshake was firm and lingering.
“Darren.”
“You drive that old red truck don’t you? I live up the way from you. Thought I recognized you over hear making a mess of things.”
“Yeah, sorry. I haven’t exactly made the rounds introducing myself to the neighbors.” Darren has paused and reconsidered what Conner had said. “Hey! That’s my truck you’re insulting.”
Conner had just grinned, flashing white teeth. “It’s only been how long since you moved to town?”
“Well, I…” Darren didn’t know how to explain everything behind his move, but Conner had seemed to sense that it wasn’t an easy subject for the produce section of the local grocery story with a man he’d just met.
“Listen. You should come by sometime. I’ll show you some real produce.” Conner’s eyes had flicked down to Darren’s shopping cart, then up his body, before meeting his gaze. And then he’s smiled and walked away. It had taken Darren half a moment to snap himself out of his stunned silence.
“That’s a pick-up line I haven’t heard before!” He’d called out across the store at Conner’s retreating back, a back that was well showcased by the thin fabric of his shirt.
Darren had made a point to find out where Conner lived and go check out his gardens as soon as possible.
That night at dinner, over mostly empty plates of food and a second round of drinks, Conner finishes a story about one of the kids in his class. Darren watches the flexion of muscle in his forearms as he gestures, exposed by the way he’s carefully rolled his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. The hair on his arms is dark.
“And that’s why you’re the best professor in that school,” Darren says when Conner wraps up his story, tapping Conner’s foot with his own.
“You’re biased,” Conner protests.
“Maybe.”
Conner just shakes his head. “Enough about my work.”
“Never.”
“You still haven’t let me listen to your new stuff.” There’s no malice in Conner’s voice, no biting complaint. He’s just stating a fact. A fact Darren is well aware of.
“That’s because it’s not done.”
“Hasn’t stopped you before.”
When Darren looks across the table, Conner is taking a sip of wine and staring back at him over the rim of the glass, eyes bright and a little mischievous. Darren smiles softly at him. He has nothing to hide from this man, not really.
“Then you should come over tonight and listen.”
“Should I?” The amusement in Conner’s gaze quickly turns to heat.
“Yeah.”
Conner smiles. Darren’s been stupid about a lot of things in his life, but not about this.
Darren’s doesn’t know what the future will bring. But he knows the past is six hours behind him and what’s next for his life is probably somewhere within the walls of his home and in the soil of his gardens. And he’s fine with that.