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It´s a quiet life, he muses, folding shirts and looking out a window of a nice and comfy house. It´s a well loved home of two people who are at ease with each other and at peace with themselves.
At that, Richard snorts.
“Found something funny?”
He turns around, barefoot standing in the bedroom, floorboards creaking under his feet, one of their pets shooting past both of them.
“Not really.”
He hears himself say before he shrugs and Lee gives him that look. The one that made him crazy back in the day when he hadn´t known what it had meant and what it would lead to. Lee just grins, eyes crinkling at the corners, arms crossed over his chest while leaning in the doorway.
“That´s not an answer. You know I am still curious.”
Putting the shirt in his hands back in the laundry basket as it was he shrugs.
“And I still wonder why.”
Lee says nothing to that, just comes in the room and regards him with a silent and only slightly annoyed look. A look that will maybe lead to an argument but that, if it should happen – will come to an end.
“It´s one of those days, isn´t it?”
Always gentle but firm. Prying, even if it is with charm. Richard almost laughs at his inner monologue before he clears his throat, schools his features into something neutral (or so he hopes at least)
“It´s Monday, love.”
He says instead and Lee blinks before he throws his head back and laughs. It´s an honest sound that warms Richard from the inside out, not that mocking tone he also knows from the other man – the one he absolutely hates because it means that Lee is trying to mask something. He also knows that from himself.
In a way they are trained liars, that is – well, maybe not in the brochures at Julliard to attract aspiring actors but it is a part of the job. A job that currently has them on opposite sides of the world for different projects outside of their home.
It´s nothing special, not crammed with artwork or decorated by one of those nightmare inducing people that claim to know everything about another person so that said person ends up with a house that looks admittedly nice but not like home. Home is where the heart is, he thinks for a moment and it must have slipped past his treacherous mouth because Lee chuckles.
“Should we change the detergent or are you feeling nostalgic?”
He teases and Richard narrows his eyes at the slightly taller man. It doesn´t help with him being barefoot and feeling crappy because, well – sometimes he just feels that way. Like every other human being in the world, he muses. Lee just shakes his head and sighs a little.
“Come one, what is it that got you in this...interesting mood?”
Lee always wants to know, always prods. It makes him mad sometimes. He liked being a recluse, liked being the odd one out. And now? Now he secretly likes fluffy pillows and it doesn´t mind to take long walks on the beach.
It´s the way it all feels so perfect. Naturally such thoughts come to him when he folds laundry. Also, just as naturally he tells Lee that he still has the irrational fear that he might wake up one of these days and realize that he had been dreaming for the last couple of years.
That´s the part that makes Lees face go carefully blank, a reminder of his days as Thranduil.
“Richard. This isn´t a dream. We have a mortgage.”
Lee says in that haughty cold voice before his lips twitch and a laugh bubbles forth. Richard just rolls his eyes and swats the younger man with the nearest (and freshly washed – thank you very much) Shirt he can reach.
“Idiot.”
He hisses and Lee just grins cheekily at him, throwing a kiss at him over his shoulder.
“And yet you love me.”
Yes, he thinks. He does. Has for the last years now and still is amazed. The fit of nostalgia hasn´t come at him out of nowhere. Sometimes, when they are both home, doing things around the house – he has the urge to clean, just to remind him that they both live there. The comforter haphazardly thrown over the back of the sofa for example.
Or long forgotten and thought of as lost pictures. Like the one he found in between a dozen others that yet have to be sorted and put in an album. (So what if he has a little obsession with being neat? Not everyone can be the personified chaos like Lee)
It´s from the first days of rehearsals. They don´t look at each other, they are just there, two strangers in a strange room. Colleagues if you will put it that way, both with their noses buried in their respective scripts. It´s a memory as well and it always will be.
He must have been daydreaming again, said picture in his hands when Lee comes looking for him again. The younger man, too looks at the picture, a look of recognition on his face once they look at each other.
“Ah, that. I remember that day.”
The American says and grins cheekily before he stops and snags the picture out of Richards hands.
“Care to share what you remember about said day, Pace?”
Richard asks, out of curiosity and because he is a glutton for punishment. Always has been.
“No.”
Lee says matter of fact before handing the piece of paper that shows them both in a different time and as different people back to the older man.
“No?Why?”
Richard asks, cannot keep the raised eyebrow in check Lee always teases him for mercilessly.
“It´s Monday, as you – wise husband of mine pointed out already.”
Sometimes you want to throttle the people you love most, Richard thinks but says nothing, just mentions for Lee to continue. He likes that between them .The lightness that their roles seldom offer them. A nice balance.
“And?”
Lee just grins again, bright eyed and mirthful.
“Dinner is ready.”
With that Richard follows him into the kitchen forgetting all about pictures that hold nothing more than memories of people that they no longer are without regret and almost a spring in his step. Not that he would ever admit it.