Work Text:
"Some of us have kids," Matt says, holding up a hand.
"Oh, shit," Zach says, and it makes so much sense now. He wonders why it took him so long to realize. "That's it. You're old."
"I'm --" Matt snorts, looking sideways, incredulous. When he turns back to Zach, his mouth is still hanging open a little. "I'm not old. I'm an adult."
"You're in denial."
"I'm turning you down for more drinks," Matt says. "At midnight. It's already late, even. I think that's fair."
"I'm too young to have old friends," Zach says, but he's doing it to watch Matt flounder now, tapping his fingers against the table and exhaling.
Matt drains his glass of water and says, "See? I'm not playing this game, because I'm actually cool with the fact that I'm not 20."
Zach leans back in his chair, folding a paper napkin in half. He says, "You're absolutely right. You should get home, because it's dark out, and you're probably not allowed to drive at night."
Matt rolls his eyes, but he's also standing up, apparently not kidding about making an exit. He reaches into his back pocket, pulls out his wallet and extracts a few bills. Setting them down on the table, he says, "I'll see you later this week."
"Daylight hours this time."
"It's not like you won't be around for a while," Matt says, crumpling his own napkin. He set in his glass. "Are you staying in New York after? Have you decided?"
"Maybe if I find a better apartment," Zach says.
"You like it here," Matt says. "It suits you. Me and Simon like seeing you."
Zach shrugs, running a finger around the rim of his glass. He says, "Moving is a whole production in itself. I don't know. We'll see what happens after everything wraps here."
"Excuses. What's in LA?"
"My entire house, Bomer," Zach says, and Matt laughs. "The feng shui is perfect now. I'd have to start over."
"Do you mean real furniture, or are you using it in the Soylent Green, you have a bunch of young blonds as --"
"Wow, LA can be embarrassing, but it's not that bad." Zach is almost surprised that Matt still has a good one like that in him. "Nicely done, though."
"So just the one still hanging around, I'm guessing," Matt says, and then screws up his mouth. "Isn't there a word for that? The furniture thing."
"I don't know what you're talking about. I still live alone," Zach says, bringing his drink to his lips. "And the word is forniphilia, but I think it's a little different these days, you know."
"I knew you'd know."
His laughter doesn't let up, Matt grabbing his jacket and draping it over his arm. It's too hot during the daytime, too hot during the night, but Matt's a 'just in case' kind of guy now. He wears a tie more than sixty percent of the time, solely because he likes it. He feels more comfortable that way. He's halfway into a retirement home or something.
Lately, Zach's been thinking about not buying socks anymore. He doesn't wear them half the time anyway. He's always losing the matches. It makes more sense to go without.
Patting his shoulder, Matt says, "Get back to your place safely, good sir. Always a pleasure."
"Don't forget your night glasses," Zach says. "For the roads."
Matt smiles and waves as he goes, dedicated to his maturity and going home before the bars close. Zach finishes his drink, and he's not really tired, could call someone else to come out, maybe. He scrolls through his contacts, but most of the people he knows that are still up are, of course, in Los Angeles. It's barely after nine there, not quite late enough for any good show to be finished.
Zach orders a glass of water, pays, finishes it, and goes home.
Two days later, Zach's phone rings while he's getting dressed. He realizes his shoulders are still wet as he pulls his shirt down, and he hates that feeling, the annoying cling as missed water seeps through the cotton, but it's too late now, so he grumbles at himself in the mirror and reaches toward the dresser.
"Hello?"
"I wrote a song," Chris says. "Sorry -- first, good morning. How are you? I'm great. I wrote a song."
"I haven't had coffee yet," Zach says, as a warning.
Chris says, "No, you'll love it. I promise. It goes, 'I found your sweater, made me think of you, hmm, hmm, blah blah, I washed it, it's folded on my bed, hmm, hmm, ba dum, Zachary, baby.'"
Zach shakes his head, picking at his shoulder. For real. The wet skin plus dry clothes feeling is awful. Maybe he'll deliberately avoid shady areas until he's all dried out.
To Chris, he says, "That sounds like Nickelback."
Chris sounds about as appalled as Zach thinks he should when he says, "How dare you? I worked hard on that."
"Which sweater?"
"It's the gray one," Chris says. "It smells like fabric softener now. Those are lyrics from the second verse, by the way."
Zach says, "Top 40. Absolutely," and picks up his keys and his hat. He's going to be late if he spends too much more time putzing around his apartment. "How'd your last show go?"
"People stood up," Chris says. "I had a lot of fun, and then some girl's mom tried to slip me her number."
"Successful," Zach says.
"God, yes," Chris says easily, right into, "Do you want to know the name of my song?"
"Downey Daydreams?"
Chris says, "No, but that's better. Forget anything else; that's what it's called. In parentheses: 'I Sleep With Your Sweater.' I haven't, but I might, if I forget to move it off my bed."
"That's sufficiently bizarre and unsettling," Zach says. He slips his iPod into his pocket, juggling his phone and keys and trying to remember if he's forgotten anything. "Is that why you called me?"
"I'm saying good morning!" Chris says. "It's early here, and I had all this energy."
Zach says, "You're trying to wear yourself out."
"Something like that," Chris says, and he sort of yawns, sort of grumbles. Maybe he's stretching. "I thought you'd be awake. Has anybody said it to you yet?"
"Good morning?"
"Yeah."
"No," Zach says, letting his door shut behind him. He checks the lock, twisting the knob. "Just you."
"Okay, then," Chris says.
The last time Zach hung out with Chris in LA, they visited three different Goodwill stores to search the secondhand books and movies on VHS. That was the only reason.
"Sometimes you find gems, man," Chris had said. "And for three or four dollars."
"Or you could just buy books you know you want," Zach said, poking through a children's book about a dragon.
Chris said, "Where's the fun in that? I like the mystery."
In every school Zach attended, he thought he'd end up being the kind of student who kept all of his required reading and the various xeroxed passages of novels. Sometimes, more than reading books, Zach liked the thought of being the kind of person who collected them, but when it came time to pick up and move, it was always easier to get rid of things he'd never touched again.
"Funny," Chris said, once Zach finished telling him about it. "That makes sense for you, because I don't think of you as sentimental."
"I'm not."
"Ah, but you want to be," Chris said, shaking his finger in the air like he'd solved a mystery. He bent over to work a novel free from a lower shelf. "Start with this one."
"The Passion Prescription: Ten Weeks to Your Best Sex Ever," Zach read, and Chris whooped in the middle of the store, then took it back.
He said, "Wait, no, I want that one."
"The fact that it's here probably says something about its effectiveness."
Chris ignored him, pulling from a higher shelf this time, and then saying, "Here's one on marijuana horticulture for you. And, uh, here's one about impressionist paintings."
The horticulture book's cover was missing one of its corners, mysteriously torn off. Zach frowned at it.
"I don't want any of this," he'd said, and Chris sighed, taking both of the books and tucking them under his arm with the others.
He'd said, "Fine, I'll keep them for you. I'll build your collection for you, and you'll come for it one day, you'll see."
Zach obliges old people for a change and has dinner with Matt and Simon at their house. Somehow it turns into Matt and Simon plus John and his wife Kerri, in town for the week. He cracks open the bottle of wine he brings along and has two glasses while Simon is still chopping onions.
"I didn't know you cooked," Zach says.
Matt says, "Better than me."
Zach doesn't have much time to cook anything anymore. He's got a semi-decent kitchen in his apartment, nothing as comfortable as his place on the west coast, and half the reason he cooked so much during the second half of 2009 was because Chris always showed up with recipes he stole out of Healthy Living magazines at the grocery store. Always ripped out the pages and never purchased the whole magazines.
"I know it makes me a thief, but I can't put them on the belt to be scanned. I can't," Chris had tried to explain once, like Zach even cared. They'd consumed several great stews and pastas that way. They never made anything that could be described as a casserole on principle. Their fingers always smelled like chopped onions and green peppers after, Chris holding his hand out to Zach and saying, "Really, though, see? You can still smell it, and I've washed my hands six times."
Now Zach eats a lot more sandwiches and leftover restaurant food, so watching Simon chop celery himself is kind of refreshing.
"I miss cooking," Zach says.
"You can come to my house and do it any time," John says, hand over his heart. "Please."
Simon says, "You want to help? I could find something to need a hand with."
Zach doesn't miss it that much. He's supposed to be the guest tonight. "No, no, I'm out of practice. You look like you've got a whole rhythm laid out over there."
"Work keeping you too busy to feed yourself?" John asks.
"Generally," Zach says. "And I don't have all my stuff out here. I'm kind of limited."
Matt says, "I still think you should just relocate."
"But you want to stay in LA?" John asks. "I mean, I understand wanting to be closer to me."
"Plus New York means phone feng shui all the time," Matt says.
"That sounds kinky," John says.
Zach touches Matt's hair, petting him sweetly and then cupping his hand against his cheek. He says, "Some of us have dogs, my friend."
Matt laughs.
"You feng shui your dogs?" John asks.
"Chris," Matt says.
"You feng shui with -- ohhhh." John makes the exaggerated 'O' shape with his mouth and everything. "Hey, can he cook? Has he cooked for you?"
Zach pours himself another glass of wine to pretend he misses the turn in the conversation.
People overestimate his relationship with Chris. They tend to forget they really like very different things in people. Chris, for example, likes girls who wear glossy, bright lipstick when they hit the town at night, though he had an argument for that when Zach pointed it out.
"No one uses that phrase," Chris had said, fixing Zach's collar. "'Hit the town.' Are we suddenly back in 1995? And I date classy consumers of culture."
"Alliteration," Zach said and nodded, approving. "Well done."
"Thank you."
"I'm not insulting your preferences," Zach said. "I was pointing out."
"It's all about the situation."
Chris had stepped back as he spoke, fixing the cuffs of his shirt. Apart, they were both dressed in a semi-casual way, neatness mixed with something looser. Standing together, they'd been too dressed up for the eight o'clock movie and junk food they had planned.
Zach said, "Enlighten me."
"Oh, please," Chris said. "You know it instinctively. Me and women who dress up, we know what we want. A nice night, laughs and drinks and maybe, you know, something adult."
The inflection on 'something adult' forced a chuckle in Zach, the body of it stuck scratchy in his throat and hard to swallow.
"I'm serious," Chris said. "We're not looking for marriage. Nobody's getting up and going to IKEA the next morning."
"I went with you to buy a bookcase a month ago."
"An entirely separate thing." Chris ran his hand over Zach's shoulder, muttered, "Good," as if he got a say, and then inhaled deeply as he continued to appraise Zach's outfit.
Zach asked, "How do I not count?"
"You know how it is," Chris explained, picking at lint on Zach's sleeve. "There are the people you buy drinks, and the people you go shopping for box springs with."
"With whom you buy," Zach said, under his breath.
Chris snorted, touching his elbow. He said, "You can be the person with whom I buy a Coke tonight, how about that? A large one with two straws, if you've got it in you."
"Don't go out of your way or anything."
"Nah, it's nothing. I want popcorn anyway," Chris said, his fingers sliding down, cuffing around Zach's wrist. "We have to make it in time first."
Zach wakes up with a hangover, but he learned how to gauge his drinking a long time ago, so he chalks it up to spending a whole hour of the evening talking about mortgages and home equity. He says as much when he realizes it's his phone that's woken him and Chris is on the line.
"I've heard," Chris begins, "that as you get older, your system starts to backslide. Maybe you're becoming a lightweight again, revisiting teenage tolerance."
"Can we not talk about my age?" Zach asks. He's still got a headache, and neither being older nor revisiting adolescence sounds appealing at 9AM on a Sunday.
Chris says, "Home loans got you down."
Zach just hadn't anticipated how much working in New York for a few months would make people want to talk to him about things like responsibility. He says, "Should I be considering permanence? Others seems to think so."
"What's the point? Aren't housing markets disgusting everywhere right now?" Chris says. "That would be irresponsible."
"You always know what to say," Zach says, droll, but there really might be something to the words. Zach's head still hurts, though. Padding his ego doesn't seem to help that.
"I'm a practical man at heart." Chris clears his throat, speaks louder as he says, "Plus, that sounds lonely."
"It was more about a package. A place, a companion."
"Saying it flatly like that -- I really pick up on the excitement that situation holds."
"Well, maybe it's different depending on the someone else." Zach starts to chuckle and thinks better of it midway through. "I think that's what they meant -- ow."
"Married people," Chris says critically. "Do you not have painkillers? I bought a new bottle the other day. I'll Fed Ex some if you need."
"Don't make me laugh."
"Why would I want you to laugh at my sincerity?" Chris asks, voice suddenly syrup sweet, but he's on the edge of giggling then, too. Zach presses fingers to his temple and winces, the intensity of it subsiding as Chris sobers up and continues. "No, I'm really sorry. Anything I can do?"
He's too far away, but Zach appreciates the thought. "I'll live." He glances at the clock again. "I should go. Find something greasy to eat."
"Find a house to buy, a person to tie you down," Chris says. "Busy day, I got it."
"Where do you even go to find someone to tie you down?"
Chris exhales roughly, saying, "God, I don't know. That's a good question -- Costco? Where can you buy economy-sized bottles of ketchup in New York? Probably there."
"Thank you for describing a scenario in which I never want to find myself," Zach says, laughing again. It hurts, but it's sort of worth it.
"Don't worry. I'll never let you end up buying condiments in bulk."
"You would never do that me."
"No houses, no condiments," Chris says. "I respect you too much to sign a deed. Promise. But I'm not your type, anyway, so we don't have to worry."
Which is, fine, something Zach actually said to Chris once.
It's a testament to how they've spent too much time together, being acquaintances/neighbors/friends/co-workers/whatever that they've had the kind of conversations where Chris had said, "And then it's that inner debate: their place or mine? An important nighttime question."
"If you bring them home, then they know where you live and what it looks like," Zach said. "And maybe it's too much, too personal."
"And if you go to their place, you never know what you're going to get," Chris said. "At least your place has home court advantage."
Zach said, "Yes, but someone else's place you can leave."
"See? The inevitable inner debate," Chris said. He'd been holding the menu for a Thai place nearby, flipping it in his hands repeatedly. "In the end, you just hope you've been reading all the signs right, and they're not crazy, except in the good ways."
"There are good ways," Zach says, skeptical.
"There is being tied to the bed, because it's hot," Chris had said, and then pretended his hands were weights, one high, one low. "And there's being tied to the bed, because you're going to die."
Zach said, "You watch too many crime procedurals."
"I like them a little wild. Or to be quick enough during the pre-game that maybe there's some hope for when you actually start going rounds."
He said, "We should order."
"Okay, I get, I get it," Chris said, passing the menu to Zach for review. "You're more on the opposite end. You like to be the one teasing."
Raising his eyebrow, Zach said, "And you think you know this about me how?"
"Oh, come on." Chris was lying on the floor. He pushed his heels against the carpet, worked his back against the flat surface enough to half-turn toward Zach. "Your bread and butter is a guy who spends most of his scenes smirking at people before he kills them. Plus, I've read your Twitter. I've seen you mythologizing your life in half-formed picture haiku."
Reaching behind himself to grab his phone, Zach had said, "I'm going to call this place, and I'm ordering for one."
"Don't you dare keep me from my curry," Chris had said, raising his head and pinching Zach's thigh. "Hey."
Zach ignored him, moving his cell phone to his ear and waiting for someone to answer. The woman who picked up sounded pleasant but rushed, and Zach said, "Yes, I'd like to place an order for delivery. Just a quick, small order."
Chris pushed himself upright. He dragged himself closer, grabbing for the phone and saying, "No, so much bigger. I'm starving here, and I need noodles."
Zach laughed at him, edging away each time Chris leaped forward again. He said, "Yeah, do you need my address? I might be in your system -- oh, I can hold, sure," and then turned his face up to Chris, saying, "Stop being a child. Eat some cereal in the kitchen."
"This from the man who won't feed me just because I called him a tease."
"I don't write about myself in haiku."
"It's a compliment," Chris said. "Enigmas are fascinating. The intrigue!"
"You do realize that insinuating that I'm crazy doesn't make anything better," Zach pointed out, because Chris kept smiling as if he was somehow making progress.
He said, "It means you remind me of my perfect woman. You, Zach, are my perfect woman."
"I hope you starve," Zach said, but Chris wiggled the the phone out of Zach's grip and darted away. "I wouldn't go home with you if you begged!"
He preferred guys who were less difficult, less mouthy, less prone to running away and leaving Zach out of breath on a living room floor. Chris was too tall, too broad-shouldered, and too completely annoying.
"Hello?" Chris said elsewhere, urgent. "Hi? Hey. I need all the pad thai you've got."
Matt constantly has new pictures of his kids to show off. It's not that they aren't great kids -- Zach's met them; they're beautiful, lovely, but there are always new pictures, and Zach always has to look at every one of them.
"Are you making fun of me again?" Matt asks. "This is a privilege."
"I never said it wasn't," Zach says, swiping through the photos. There are enough for several albums. An entire portfolio or two all on one tiny device, and anyone who asks the right question has to make sure to see and coo at each shot, even the blurry ones.
Zach's looking at two of the cutest blurs he's ever seen in the natural world, he insists, and Matt laughs at him. He says, "You can try underselling it some. You're just being disgusting now."
"I'm completely genuine."
"I appreciate it anyway," Matt asks, snatching Zach's cell from his other hand. “What kind of award-winning, mind-blowing examples of awesome living do you have on your phone, huh?”
Zach doesn't know. He doesn't really keep any of it organized. He snaps things as they come -- people, places, unintentionally funny window displays. New York is especially good for those. There are probably a lot of pictures of his dog. Zach’s pretty fond of Noah.
"I like this one of your brother," Matt says, flipping the phone around to show Zach.
Glancing, Zach smirks, "He was so tired. The look on his face was too great not to capture."
"Where's this?"
Looking to the phone again, Zach catches sight of Chris with a fountain drink in one hand, books in the other. It could be any day of the week. "Must have been one his Goodwill days."
Half-laughing, Matt asks, "His what?"
"Yeah, I can't -- you should ask him about them. He'll tell you all about it, with great enthusiasm. That, and about all of the other things he cons me into joining." Zach glances again, right before Matt turns the phone back to him. He thinks he remembers that day more and more; they'd ventured into Pasadena and Glendale.
"That’s funny. I'll do that," Matt says, still scrolling through the images. Holding it up again, he says, "What's up with the rooms?"
It had been an apartment Zach looked at when he was trying to get set up in New York. He says, "I was exploring all my options."
"Recently."
"No, no, that's from when I first --"
Matt shakes his head. He says, "You said they were going to extend the run, right? It'll keep happening, just live out here."
"I honestly doubt the show could get extended quite that extensively. I also don’t know if I’d survive running that long."
"Does he know you're doing it for more weeks?" Matt asks, flashing another picture of Chris. He's trying to balance a spoon on his nose. It wasn’t the only random item in Zach’s house he’d tried to do that with either. They’d made sure to get evidence of all attempts. Zach’s threatened to turn them into a collage for display at Chris’s next birthday party.
Zach says, "As much as he'll miss jogging together, I think he'll live."
He takes his phone back, shoving Matt's children across the small divide again in return. That's enough of that for now.
"If you live out here, we can make the dinners a regular thing. Rotate homemade meal responsibilities."
Any time Zach's tried to reserve a specific day of the week to routinely do anything, it's always fallen by the wayside or turned into a hassle. He can't. "If I'm around all the time, you won't need to show me the photographic evidence."
"There's plenty you'll still miss out on," Matt says, all confidence in his ability to come up with new reasons to pack his phone's memory with pictures. "Don't worry."
Chris uses misdirection to lure Zach into his mischief, like talking about the weather. A true child of the desert at heart, Chris loved to complain about rain and yet never seemed to resort to common sense and buy an umbrella.
"I like the rain," Zach had said on one such deceptive day.
Chris's thoughts on it had been more concise. "Agh, no."
"It makes everything smell fresh."
"In the city?" Chris said as they ducked into a hardware store. "Maybe if I lived in some random suburban Valencia neighborhood."
"I'm into the idea of washing everything away," Zach said. He had since childhood, what could he say? "Sue me."
"Well, that's just damn enchanting," Chris said. "But my point about the city still stands. You'll get enhanced dirty pavement smells. You must plan to live somewhere with more than a driveway between houses."
"It's fine in Silver Lake now. Getting into the hills even a few blocks makes a difference."
"Good point," Chris said. They found the tools, because Chris needed to grab some more screw drivers and a wrench. Grabbing a Phillips head, he held it up and nodded. "Here we go. Success."
"What's this art project you've got happening?"
"That entertainment center I bought. It needs way more assembly than I was thinking."
Zach felt duped. He said, "You tricked me."
"I need help!" Chris said, rubbing a hand over his hair and managing to shake more droplets of water from it. "Look, I'll buy you dinner, Zach. I'll feed you. It'll be worth it."
"I can't believe this," Zach said, but he conceded anyway. Chris smiled like he knew Zach would, patting him on the back as they walked back towards checkout.
Putting the set together really didn't take very long. Chris needed an extra pair of hands to hold things together for the most part, smoothing out the process. Zach still complained about it until Chris laughed, telling him to okay, whatever, shut up and pick a place to order from.
"Wherever you want," Chris said.
"You don't want to just go out?" Zach asked, moving to grab menus from the far drawer in Chris's kitchen.
From the living room, Chris says, "I put together a whole new center today. This is about to change my TV-viewing experience. Let's stay here, and you can pick the DVD too."
"Lucky me," Zach said. Chris was somehow way more of a homebody than he ever led anyone to believe, but he always found some way to get around actually admitting it. Chris had a nice TV, though, so Zach couldn't complain too much when they chose to re-watch classics on it.
"He makes me feel unorganized. Plebeian," Zach confesses, taking his hat and covering his face with it.
"No way," Chris says. Zach can see nothing but darkness, and he can smell his shampoo on the inside of his hat, focusing on that instead of how Chris is laughing at him.
"Stop contributing to my torment," Zach says. If he whines, it's solely to make a point.
Chris says, "Are you kidding? This mocking is packaged in love. I'm allowed."
"Am I immature?" Zach says.
"You're the most boring, grown-up, and responsible person I know."
"Oh, thank God."
"God says you're welcome," Chris says, playing with the pitch of the sentence, all ho-hum and relaxed.
The world feels small to Zach these days. It's one of the hazards of having the good fortune to travel so much, but it means he never gets a chance to really miss a place, always aware of how easy it is to go back or go visit, but in this moment, he's struck with a sense of longing for Southern California, to pet Noah, and to have Chris humming right in front of him.
Zach can picture him with his feet up, slumping down into the couch cushions, a glass of soda or water resting on his stomach. Chris tends to flex his foot when he's half-distracted like this, this idle roll of his ankle, around and around. It's awful how comfortable the image is, how easily Zach draws it in his mind.
Chris eventually says, "Hellooo. Did I lose you?"
"I'm here," Zach says, voice soft around the edges. He clears his throat.
"You got so quiet over there."
"I was thinking about," Zach says and yawns, "how glad I am that I've never had to do something like consider childproofing my home."
He knows it doesn't sound enough like wanting. He assumes that's the reason Chris saying, "Oh, man, you need to stop hanging out with lifers," doesn't quite sound enough like asking Zach to come back.
Because having types and friendship and boundaries doesn't mean they avoided sleeping together once. Almost. Sort of.
There's nothing sexy about discussing politics of the 80s, but one Red Line factoid led to another in Zach's kitchen, all started by Chris complaining about how driving home wore him out and it wouldn't be a problem if Los Angeles had any good public transportation.
"You're not even at home," Zach had said. "This is my house."
"Semantics," Chris said, bumping his hand against Zach's side. "I drove."
"It's not like you're even drunk," Zach said. Chris moved sluggishly, but otherwise he was perfectly bright-eyed. They'd even come back a little early, and Zach finished the last half of Chris's drink for him just to avoid risk.
Chris said, "But I'm beat, is the point. I blame Henry Waxman."
"I'm sorry," Zach said.
"California helps get him into the House, and what does he do? Prevent me from falling asleep on trains to get home," Chris said. "I hate driving."
That wasn't true at all. Chris still woke Zach up at inhumane hours sometimes to take trips to Long Beach for no reason, or further into the desert, just to feel how the temperature changed on different sides of the mountains. He always drove with one knee lifted if they were going far, purposefully butchering the lyrics to Springsteen songs and then swearing, no, the lyrics really were saying something about a devil in the freezer, listen closer, because it was his idea of amusing.
"Poor baby," Zach said, squeezing Chris's shoulder as he came up alongside Zach, grabbing a cup from the cabinet and filling it with water from the tap. They stared at the tile together when Chris turned around, sucking down his drink and then dropping his head to Zach's shoulder.
"I don't feel like going home," he said, and Zach lifted a hand to touch Chris on the head awkwardly, vision just blurry enough to make it seem like the right move. Poor baby. Pobrecito, he thought and mouthed the word. He should really look into learning Spanish again.
Zach said, "No rush," and exhaled. "Although maybe there's a bus."
"Too late at night," Chris said, completely dejected. "The fucking man, you know."
"Wronged by your representatives."
"Classism sucks," Chris said eloquently, and he picked up his chin to rest against Zach at a different angle. He lips moved against Zach's neck. "Read up on it. LA in the mid-eighties."
Zach let a chuckle bubble up slowly, delayed by heavy limbs and an unfocused mind. Chris felt like an anchor on his left shoulder, keeping him held to the ground, impossibly heavy. When he shifted, angling up higher, Zach caught a whiff of his cologne and held his breath.
"Mm," Chris said airily. "What you thinking about?"
"Dizziness," Zach said.
"Hm?" There was concern etched on his face when Zach looked at him. He touched Zach's waist, mouth still turned down. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Zach said. "It's just a thought."
"You sure?" Chris said, actually touching Zach's face with the back of his wrist, and Zach wanted to laugh at him. He could feel it in the corner of his mouth, something tugging upward, but he couldn't muster the energy, again mesmerized by the weighted feeling when Chris flipped his hand palm to Zach's forehead, brushing his hair back, gaze focused, and Zach didn't really feel himself lean forward more than he thought about it, and then Chris's mouth was there.
He'd made no noise at all -- not a gasp, not a protest. His fingers were still playing along the edge of Zach's hair, and finally Chris pushed toward him, taking over.
For two tired people, they'd gotten out to the couch alright, or it seemed. Zach was on the cushions one moment, catching a breath, and then they were pulling the throw hanging over the arm down to the floor with them as they toppled over.
Zach felt sloppy. He tended to like kisses a little wetter anyway, but the alcohol dulled his senses, made it harder to control the chaos. Chris felt something like a fluke. He carded their legs together, grinding his hips down, earning some friction, not enough to matter, except that Zach could somehow feel his tailbone right against the floor, awkward. Chris grazed his teeth along Zach's slip, and it was -- right, totally right, but off too, like their hands kept missing the mark by half-inches. Zach tipped his head back, inhaling deeply, shutting his eyes against the light above their heads, and his moan slipped into a short, stuttered laugh.
"What?" Chris said, looking up.
"Nothing," Zach said, but it was obvious that there was something. It could have been the alcohol, or the bad jokes about trains, or the way Chris worked his hips against Zach's in quick beats, all of it making him giggle at the wrong time.
Chris looked nonplussed, but by the time he said, "Oh, God," he just sounded bland, moving aside. "You're right. This makes no sense."
"Well," Zach had said, and then found himself glowering at Chris's back, extending a hand as he sat up and moved away. It didn't make sense, but funny didn't mean that it couldn't, wait. He fixed his mouth to say it even, but Chris got there first.
"Okay, I think I'm awake enough to make it," he said, leaning in to kiss Zach's cheek roughly. "And you make sure to sleep in your bed, though, huh?"
Well, Zach had thought, listening to his door close.
As a birthday gift to himself, Chris goes on vacation. Zach says, "Where? With who?"
"With me," Chris says. "Perhaps. I haven't thought through all the details."
This is supposed to be Chris's big 3-0, some kind of milestone, and he wants to be by himself? Zach says, "Choosing the life of a recluse for your next pull up the hill."
"Watch it," Chris says, "Every time you start to make an old people joke, remember that you're always going to have a few years on me."
“And yet I’m not the guy prepared to start checking things off his bucket list because he’s turning 30.”
Snorting, Chris says, “I didn’t say I was about to take a road trip of epic proportions to fulfill every dream I never had. I’m not even about to live my Walden.”
“You’re not going into the woods to suck the marrow out of life?” Zach says, the corner of his mouth tugging up as his leg bounces. Despite himself. He’s felt nothing but impatient all day, and there’s something about a gentleman’s retreat that sounds absurd right now.
Chris says, “It could be a beach. And I’m not much for marrow.”
“You don’t want to do something --” Zach starts and then recognizes belatedly that he’s not sure where that sentence is taking him. Something -- better.
“More exciting?” Chris says. “It’s a birthday and vacation. Shouldn’t it be restful? I could bring someone.”
“Nevermind,” Zach says.
Chris says, “Where would you go?”
Zach’s already made that choice for the time being. New York was meant to be a vacation, and then Heroes got cancelled officially, and now the vacation can be a primary if he wants. He says, “I’m already crossing things off my list. It’s only full of petting dogs and trying certain restaurants.”
“Hm,” Chris says thoughtfully. “That’s not a bad list. But the east coast is so humid.”
“Right,” Zach says. Nevermind. Nevermind, never mind. “Well, have fun. I guess I don’t know if I’ll be able to get in touch with you, so -- “
“You can call,” Chris says.
“-- happy birthday,” Zach finishes. “I’ll send you an e-card.”
“Wow,” Chris says. The awe Zach detects could be funny, but he exhales through his nose and stays quiet. “How special.”
Zach thinks so.
He only talks to Chris a few more times between him booking the trip and then leaving. He’s got preparation for shooting in Vancouver, Zach has the play, and they touch base a few short times between then. For one of them, Chris recounts a debate he and Katie had about how difficult reciting the alphabet backwards might be in reality and then proceeded to try to do it for Zach. A few nothing conversations, and Zach feels like he somehow has way more free time without idle prattle like that in the middle of his day while Chris is gone.
It’s not like Chris is unreachable while he’s on vacation, but they still don’t reach out to each other. Zach goes to events. He gets to know his castmates. He rehearses. He goes through his phone and organizes his photo albums whenever he’s in a cab, until half of them are sectioned off and neat, and the rest he can’t figure out how to categorize. He moves on to doing the same for his emails, goes back through text message threads to see what he can delete.
Zach has a few hundred texts in his phone between him and Chris, but half of them are Hipstamatic photos of graffiti and other people's dogs they pass on the street. Chris sends one text from beautiful Who Cares. It’s a cute brunette standing in some department store, holding her hand up, fingers splayed in a Vulcan salute, so Zach goes out with Billy after he stops working that night and lets himself smile when he orders for the table and the waiter says, "A take charge kind of guy, huh?"
His hair's messy, and his smile's crooked. He gets half the orders wrong, but Zach comes back when the restaurant closes anyway.
"Forgot to leave a tip," Zach says.
The waiter's name is Eric. He's not from New York. He gives good head, even if he's the kind of guy who makes more noise than necessary, considering Zach hasn't even gotten to open him up yet.
"You're enthusiastic," Zach says. It's more polite than telling someone to stop talking, he's learned.
Eric likes it hard, burying his face in the sheets, panting. Zach presses his knuckles against the side of Eric's back and grazes his teeth against Eric's shoulder blade when he comes.
He only tries to kiss Zach once afterward, and he puts back on his slacks and shoes even though Zach says he can stay.
"It's late," Zach says.
"Work night," Eric says, smiling. He tilts his head, adds, "Thanks, though," and still leaves anyway.
Zach lies back on the bed, absorbing silence. His phone lay face down on his nightstand, and he picks it up to see if there's anything new. There’s nothing important. He turns out the light.
He was the kind of guy who did better with independence. He’d broken up with his last serious boyfriend, because they decided to move in together. Once they’d gotten everything sorted out, Zach realized his place didn’t have enough space for two. His life was effectively and thoroughly single-serving.
When they pulled themselves apart, Zach had said to his brother, “I’m exhausted from over-thinking it. Joe, make my life easy and move in with me.”
“Didn’t you decide you were bad at that?” Joe asked.
“It’s not the same.”
For one, Joe wouldn’t take up nearly as much of the bathroom. More importantly, they were related. Joe already fit; they’d grown up accustomed to it. With his ex, he’d had an idea about live-in dating, but It took too much work to fit other people into the mold he’d created for himself. Experiment conducted; conclusion reached.
“Whatever, man,” Joe had said.
“No, it makes sense,” Zach said. He was better unattached.
Back from vacation, Chris sounds relaxed. He sounds like the kind of person who’s spent several days sleeping and eating well and getting a tan somewhere. Zach doesn’t begrudge him his calm, but some people have spent the week busy and worn thinner than recommended.
He says, “But have you ever felt like you could get swallowed up in a place? It was serene. Literally serene. I’ve never had the pleasure.”
“I’m not good with the quiet.”
“Yeah, right. You would’ve liked this.”
“I like sitting in the park here,” Zach says. "I was thinking: it wouldn't be difficult to just stay in the place I've got right now or find a better spot. And if I freed up my house in Los Angeles, I could use that money for something else, other projects. I could have parks all the time."
"You want to move to New York for real?" Chris asks, smacking on something.
Zach asks, "What are you eating?"
"Apple slices," Chris says.
Ah. Zach taps his knee and says, "I could use the money for one of my own great excursions in solitude."
"I’m serious about how much you’d have enjoyed it," Chris says. "And you should read this manifesto, I'm telling you. I got a bunch of historical novels. There was an unofficial theme the last few days."
"I can't afford vacations or books or -- "
"Wait, wait, hold on," Chris says, and makes a small, whiny sound. "Do you hear that?" He keeps doing it. "I'm playing my tiny violin for you."
"But if I lived in one state, then maybe I could," Zach continues, chuckling.
Chris says, "Please," accompanied by a fresh crunch of apple. As he speaks, his voice cuts out, and he says, "Hold on, hold on, I've got somebody on my other line. Might be my sister again. Hang on, okay?"
"Sure."
Chris clicks away, and Zach waits, waits, and then finally hangs up after a few minutes. Chris doesn't call back within the hour, so Zach goes to bed.
They'd gone out for lunch one afternoon, and Chris dozed off on Zach's couch when they went back to have beers, to hang out. Zach watched television for a while anyway, letting Chris snore softly, taking up two-thirds of the space in his sprawl. Zach ended up watching part of Singing in the Rain on cable, getting up to make coffee when he’d started to yawn himself.
While he stood in the kitchen, he heard the familiar strains of the title song start, bobbing his head softly to the rhythm of the strings and the lilt of Gene Kelly's voice. When it was over, Zach heard humming, the chorus all over again, softer, and as turned his head, Chris was shuffling in, dropping his chin on Zach's shoulder.
"You're up," Zach said, reaching up to press two fingers to Chris's forehead, nudging him. Chris didn't go anywhere.
He murmured, "Yeah," and cleared his throat against the scratch of it. "Coffee?"
"I was preparing some for myself, yeah."
"Aw, come on," Chris said, the rasp of his voice still there, whisper sweet. His hand touched the Zach's, sliding up to the base of his neck as he turned his mouth into Zach's shoulder. "Come on, come on, come on."
"Are you whining?"
"Mm, no." Chris raised his face, the close-lipped smile thin and sated. He took a deep breath, eyes dropping shut as he inhaled through his nose, brushing Zach's skin as he leaned forward even an inch more. "'Smells good."
"It's good coffee," Zach said softly. "Don't worry, I'll share."
Chris snorted, a sudden jagged sound that made Zach's shoulder jump. He glanced at the coffee machine again, and then back to Zach, eyes narrowed. "Yeah," he said, and eventually dropped his head again. "Thanks."
"Mhm," Zach said and didn't nudge Chris again when he still hadn't stepped back.
There's one message on Zach's phone when he gets a chance to listen to his voicemail messages the next day. It says: I was going to get around to saying this, but then you were gone, and it felt weird to redial just to, you know -- how fucking trite, right? I couldn't be that person, because -- well, evidently, being this guy is so much better. There's really no possible way for me to maintain any dignity in this situation, is there? I promise I'm not stalling here; there's a point, there's. Don't buy anything. Alright? I can't let you. I promised, and I've been a man of my word my whole life. Don't ruin it for me. Okay? Uh, well. Okay.
And sex had been a one-time failure, but that wasn't the only way to complicate something. That hadn't stopped him from kissing Chris before the coffee finished, Zach turning into his body and tugging at the front of Chris's shirt. That hadn't stopped Chris from sleeping over two nights later, passing out on the couch again but then climbing into the bed with Zach after he woke up and was probably confused to find the TV had already been turned off. That hadn't stopped Chris from, yes, making Zach breakfast a few times, eating in together on Chris's living room floor. They'd spread out on the hardwood after meals, wasting days off where they could get them, Chris throwing a leg over Zach's for no real reason.
"I saw Zoe a couple days ago," Chris says the next time Zach speaks to him. It's four days after Zach hung up while Chris was on the other line, four days after Chris called back and left a voicemail.
Zach says, "Yeah, how's she?"
"Gorgeous as ever," Chris says. "She says hi."
"She could've called me," Zach says.
Chris says, "She assumed I'd talk to you, I guess," laughing behind it. "You're the one of the few people I interact with, she must assume, because she spent a good twenty minutes essentially implying that I'm antisocial."
"You?"
"That's what I said!"
“You did go on a celebratory excursion by yourself,” Zach reminds him. "And there have been more than a couple nights where you did unabashedly choose to stay in and watch The Nanny instead of going anywhere."
"First of all, that's a great goddamn show. Second of all, you only know this because you've been there too. You accompanied me to my sofa, and you liked it."
In the last few days, Zach has worked, bought new gloves, seen another show, and slept. He'd talked to his brother for two hours the other night, catching up on nothing and using their easy camaraderie to clear his head of other pressing matters. It hadn't worked perfectly. Zach's calm is still starting to crack as this call continues, the same anxious hum pulsing under his skin since the weekend.
Zach says, "I mean, we worked so hard on your set up. We should take advantage of it again when I'm in town."
"Yeah?" Chris says with a frustrating calm. "You're coming back to California?"
The way his voice flourishes the statement makes him sound flippant. Zach tries not to mimic it too much as he says, "I have to some time, right?"
"And then leave again."
"Temporarily," Zach says. He doesn't own his New York place.
Chris sniffs and clears his throat, and Zach silently claims that as a tell. He doesn't know for sure, but there's no reason it should be. They're both entrenched in this, pretending not to be caught.
Chris could say anything right now, and Zach's sure it would all still feel like a bomb. The phone lines implode around Chris rasping, "Yeah, sh --" and clearing his throat just one more time. "Yes, yeah. Let's take advantage then."
Zach doesn't expect the laugh that spikes up in him. He touches hand to his temples, curving into himself in a fit. Shocked, he says, "What the fuck. We’re articulate people. This is pathetic."
"It's your fault," Chris says. "You're wordy. You make me wordy, and then metaphors and euphemisms are always a disaster -- "
"I miss having you around," Zach says, then, to simplify the problem. It’s too obvious to say so clearly, but, "I miss you."
"Thank, God," Chris says.
When Chris visited during the spring, they spent more days around one another than not. Nothing happened, but Zach still felt exposed when Matt made a joke about escaping across a country just to fall into familiar routines. Chris had laughed too hard and said, "It's me. I'm bad at long distance."
“Does New York to LA sincerely count as long-distance in this day and age?” Zach had asked. “Some people make that trip constantly.”
“I don’t know,” Matt had said, full of betrayal and not even realizing. “I can see how, for some people, it’d be enough. It feels like enough when I have travel a lot. I miss my house.”
Chris said, “I don’t need to stay in one place forever. I’m in the wrong business for that, but I’m preoccupied with the idea of returning. I like going back to Los Angeles.”
“Mmm, no, New York beats LA every day,” Matt had said. “Better people.”
“Better weather,” Chris said in defense, raising his eyebrows.
“More romantic,” Matt had said, and Chris had raised his water bottle in salute.
He said, “That one I’ll give you.”
Zach doesn’t know if he meant to prove it, or if it was a testament to Matt being right. Chris and Zach had gone out and stayed in, and Chris touched Zach a million times without trying to make it mean anything. The weight of it still resonated through Zach every time, hot and anxious, like a threat and a reprieve rolled into one, the kind of slow crumble that made falling asleep in the same hotel bed one night feel private. And Zach’s talked about the trip since then, mentioned to people that they saw a show, they ate, they laughed, and he passed out in Chris’s room, and they had separate agendas the next day, no big deal, and the retelling is always totally comprised of bullshit.
So the real conversation, when they have it, starts with Zach saying, “I don’t know when I’ll see you.”
“There’s a pretty set amount of seeing me time scheduled next year,” Chris says. “That’s going to happen regardless.”
Zach’s heard Chris’s voice through a receiver a lot the last few months. He doesn’t like admitting it’s a problem. He says, “But before then... via satellite?”
“I’m thinking hologram,” Chris says and huffs out a distracted chuckle. “No, you’re flying into LA at some point. Aren’t you?”
“I wanted you to come here for your vacation,” Zach says. Simple words, he thinks. Their new aim is break themselves into easily digestible parts to avoid communication failure.
Chris breathes in and says, “I wasn’t sure.”
They both could have been clearer, they’ve learned. Zach has never owned something as foreboding as a pendulum in his life, but he thinks about one during moments like these, even spaced and ominous. The moments when what comes next carries too much significance, defining everything before it’s even had a chance to present itself, because Chris doesn’t do well with long distance, and Zach doesn’t like when the odds aren’t in his favor.
“Well, you can be,” Zach says. “But I wasn’t going to demand it.”
“And that rules out even mentioning?” Chris asks. Zach folds the pocket of his hoodie and pushes it right again.
The thing is that Zach could say the same for Chris. He says, “You could’ve asked.”
“I don’t want to be the person that we talked about,” Chris says. “I love sample Sundays, but if that ever becomes the most exciting thing in someone’s life because of me, especially now, I. I had a great time on my trip, I liked picking up and going, and you would’ve -- you should’ve been there, but I don’t want it to sound like --”
“It doesn’t,” Zach says. There’s a difference.
Chris says, “Good, because I thought we were supposed to have the ‘is this when I grow up?’ freakout in our twenties. I thought I’d already confidently decided that idea could go fuck itself.”
“You think I have?” Zach asks, because of course Chris was serious about Zach being the most adult, boring person he knows. He loves Matt, and he even loves John, who’s getting there in his own way, but Zach isn’t --
“Don’t,” Chris says. “Don’t. Yet. This is the most convoluted conversation I’ve ever -- don’t settle there.” He huffs into the receiver, like frustration, starkly honest. “Pretend that statement didn't sound as Oregon Trail as it seemed.”
“I’m not buying this place,” Zach says. He’s not cut out for it yet.
“Come visit?” Chris asks. “I’m asking. Can you come back to the west coast at some point? I’ll make sure I’m here.”
“I can, um.” Zach has to check his schedule. He performs all the time, so he’d need to find a way to juggle it. “Yeah. Yeah, I can figure it out.”
Chris could sometimes talk like a playboy, but Zach learned relatively early on that he was almost too courteous to really be one. That somehow made it worse, though, made it better when instead of touching at all while he visited, they ended up jerking off together 3000 miles away once Chris had flown back home less with words and reading into each others harsh breaths and curses. Zach bit hard enough on his bottom lip to leave it swollen.
The best part was not planning, sliding from a conversation about traffic to Chris’s meeting with his agent, to the best place to get the best fast food burger, to something more unimportant, to something deceptive, the minutes running together until Zach forgets the exact steps of the thread even though he knew he’d remember how Chris’s breath staggered when he had his hand on his dick for a long time.
After, Zach experienced a brief, embarrassing second where he wished he had a picture, something, wondered if this was when other people might ask for camera phone messages. It felt sad, though, in the next moment, too easy to get into a habit, the kind of silly risks people took to guarantee thrill.
Zach had wiped his had on his shirt and said, “I have to get up early.”
“Shit, me too,” Chris said after a pause, sounding the way he always sounded. Normal.
It had been really easy to say goodnight. It had been distressingly easy not to do again.
Zach finds time and Chris plans around it, and when they first see each other, Chris hands over a handful of ketchup packets. It’s a gift. Zach laughs, because he can’t kiss him yet.
“Perfect,” Zach says when they hug. Closer to Chris’s ear, he adds, “But you can keep a toothbrush in my bathroom.”
“I left one there on accident months ago,” Chris asks and he shakes his head. “Fucking married people. You can’t hang out with them.”
“They like symbolism,” Zach says, shrugging. He’s thought too much about establishing permanence. “And so what, you like candlelit dinners.”
“I do.” Chris says it without shame, amused at himself. He claps his hands together when he pulls back and gives Zach a kind of buttoned-up smile, so close to taking over his entire expression. Those always mean trouble.
Zach roll his eyes and says, “Oh, fuck you. You’re planning one.”
He is. There’s a spread waiting at Chris’s house, candles and mood music he doesn’t play but keeps threatening to unleash. Chris has made him breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and sometimes it’s planned, down to the where, because he knows how Zach likes having the option of leaving.
“Food and an emergency exit plan,” Chris says.
Zach stays.