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After the show is over, they take a break.
It's as real a break as they can manage. There are moments where not being what they were doesn't work; there are hasty hotel room meet ups, ill timed and not the least bit thought out. They come together physically and in a couple of broken moments they almost give in.
But they don't.
Because it's timing, right? It's all about timing. And right now - this isn't their time.
*
Italy's beautiful to Darren.
It represents a lot. When he breathes in deep in Italy, it actually feels like his lungs go full. He's by himself more often than he has been in years.
Darren lives up his time there to the fullest. It's a chance to bounce back from the dark, hard place his last role took him into. In ten years time he'll look back at the way he bounces from continent to continent and laugh at what he was running from but it's what he needs.
He has sex with people he'll never see again, seduces them in broken Italian he always laughs and says he's working on. He sings for people who don't know him from any other douchebag busking on the street. He makes and immediately forgets a hundred friends.
The movie is almost incidental to what the time away does for him and means to him.
*
Los Angeles is home for Chris.
He's not alone, because he doesn't want to be. He takes his solace in the exact opposite way of Darren. Too many new faces and new voices and new experiences leave him feeling ragged and exhausted. He draws strength and builds himself up in hours alone.
He realizes things about himself that he wants to work on. He stops thinking his life needs to be slightly on hold. He stops holding his breath to see what'll come around the next corner, and expecting it to be his downfall.
He walks taller now. He holds his head up higher. He's happy with himself.
He did that on his own.
*
Maybe they really were bad for each other, but at least they could admit it.
A life lived in hiding is stifling in ways neither of them even realized. They operated for years under the thought that what they protected in private was worth all the pain.
Six months into the breath they're both guiltily realizing maybe it wasn't. Maybe it wasn't worth it at all. They were in love, but what is love when everything else of who you are is sacrificed in the name of it?
*
They talk often in the beginning, then less as the time goes on.
They're both still prone to those moments of gut-punch misery of missing someone you cared very much about, but there's no phantom limb sensation. Neither of them can picture the other being happy where they are.
Darren doesn't imagine Chris on the other side of hotel room beds. He doesn't stare at a beautiful landscape and imagine walking down the street holding Chris's hand. The idea is so alien, so forbidden, that it's wrong to even give a second thought to.
Chris doesn't wake up and listen for Darren in his kitchen. He doesn't look around and see remnants of Darren in the home he's made. Darren's left an impression on Chris that won't soon fade, but there's never been a physical reflection of that.
That was never them. They were never allowed that.
*
They called it a break, not a break up.
That's almost the only regret Chris has. It's the only thing that's holding him back. It's the only thread that hasn't been severed. They didn't put conditions on it. They're both with other people, and it would be so easy for Chris to find someone - someone real.
But he doesn't, for the same reason Darren doesn't fuck the same person twice and keeps up the same protective facades he's had for years.
And maybe it's fitting that the end of them is just as undefined as the beginning and the middle.