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It's a wonder that the tabloids haven't picked up on the dalliance between up-and-coming director David C. Strider and acclaimed comedian Johnathan B. Crocker yet. Thankfully. Blessedly. It's only a matter of time, but for now, they can enjoy each other's company without having to worry about nosey bastards sticking their camera lens where it doesn't belong. Or worse, having to explain to their agents what's going on between them.
Because neither of them knows what it really is that's going on between them. Even after a year and change, they haven't put a name to what they are: friends with benefits, boyfriends, flings. It defies definition, and neither wants to be the one to try and pin it down. Not knowing feels safer.
Dave has no compunction over being intimate with a man old enough to be his father. They're both adults, so who the fuck cares? He doesn't expect anyone to understand, anyway. How many people can say that their childhood adoration is something they were able to live out in adulthood? Dave might even hazard that Crocker was his first childhood crush, watching reruns of old shows and movies on TV when he was meant to be sleeping. Crocker had been handsome back then, and he's still handsome now.
But it is, and always has been, more than a crush.
Just like he can't explain their relationship, Dave can't explain what it is that he feels. Maybe that's why he struggles to define the two of them. Something that pulls at him deep inside, like a string wound tight around his heart and pulled taught, ready to snap at a moment's notice. How being close to Crocker gives some slack to that tether.
John, on the other hand, needed a little more convincing. It stands to reason: Dave is a young man, in his early 30s. A man still finding his place in the world. John... is not. He's been married. He's been divorced. He has a grown son, not that much older than Dave. He could very well be a grandfather, for goodness' sake. And yet, Dave impressed him, both with his expansive knowledge of John's back catalog of work, and with his ability to take a prank and dish it right back. There's a good reason John is divorced.
When Dave started making moves, that was another matter.
But slowly, steadily, John was worn down by Dave's affections, and started to feel that same pull, himself. A feeling that he was all too familiar with and had learned to simply swallow and ignore. But when Dave is around, he can't ignore it. It's painful and a relief at the same time, like circulation coming back into a limb released from a tourniquet.
Their days spent together, when they actually have a chance, are varied. Sometimes they're filled with bittersweet intimacy, interwoven with desperation for something they can't name and can never hope to attain.
Others, like today, are spent simply in each other's presence. Today, they're watching an old movie, a favorite of Crocker's though not one he had any part in. Neither is really watching it, instead content to bask in their shared warmth. Crocker reclines on the couch with Dave haphazardly draped over his lap, arms curled around the older man's shoulders and face buried in his neck.
"...you ever think we were meant for something more?"
The question catches John off-guard. He was rather enjoying their silence punctuated by the muted sounds of slapstick comedy. But it's something that he's thought about himself more than once, since they met.
Crocker sighs, carding his fingers through Dave's hair. "I know we were."
A long silence stretches between them, before Dave gets up to grab the remote and flicks off the TV. When he returns to Crocker's embrace, it's to curl up against his side. It took a while for Dave to learn how to let himself be held, but now that he has, he takes every opportunity to insert himself into Crocker's arms.
"What's going to happen to us?" he asks, quietly, dully. His voice doesn't betray his concern, but the tenseness in his shoulders does.
Crocker hums thoughtfully, trying to think of a way he can lighten the mood somewhat. But he fears it may be a lost cause.
"I'm not sure, sweet pea," he finally admits. "But come what may, we'll face it together. I think we'll do alright for ourselves."
John isn't sure he believes that himself. But what else can he say? It's not as though he has the precognition to know precisely what's to come. It's just something that permeates every fiber of his being, this knowledge that they are part of some bigger play, and they are the means to the end. That their existence itself hinges on this mystery plot for which they haven't even been given stage cues.
So it follows that there's really nothing they can do to fight it. Why spend their time fretting over it, when trying to unravel it could threaten their very being?
Dave is dubious, but he says nothing; with everything they've shared, he knows Crocker doesn't quite mean what he says. It's not a lie, exactly, but a platitude. His way of saying that there's nothing to discuss, so they might as well not try to discuss it.
God damn. Fuck. Dave wishes, just wishes, that all the love and trust between them could convince him that things will simply turn out alright. But there's a proverbial storm brewing, and he plans to be the guy in the van chasing it, with the little box of nanobots ready to get sucked up into the vortex and take some dope-ass readings. As much as he'd love to bring Crocker with him... well, there are some personal conflicts, and besides that, Dave just feels it.
What they were meant for is yet to come. And it is going to be big. And it is not going to have a happy ending for either of them.
The year is 1996. Award-winning director David Strider walks through an unfamiliar suburban neighborhood, one that he wished he could have known better before now. The cold November air sneaks in underneath his scarf, pricking at his neck, so he pulls it up a little tighter. Clouds hang low and gray overhead, bathing the world in a muted light. It's not raining, but it might as well be. He's sure it's a beautiful neighborhood full of all the Norman Rockwell domestic charm one could ask for, and maybe he'd say as much under better circumstances, with someone in particular at his side.
His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he takes it out just long enough to see Rose's name on the tiny black-and-white LCD. Whatever it is that she wants, it can wait. They're already playing the long game; she can wait a few hours. It takes him a bit, a few wrong turns, and one stop into a convenience store to ask for directions, before he finds his destination.
As soon as he comes into view of the gentle green hills dotted with gray slabs and pops of color in the form of flowers, Dave regrets his choice to come here. But he feels... not obligation, precisely. But still like this is something he has to do. Like that string still tied around his heart pulled him here, and this is where he has to try and cut it once and for all.
The funeral was two weeks ago; the dirt is no longer fresh, tamped down by weather and the encroaching grasses, desperate to spread before it gets too cold to grow any further.
John Crocker
Respected Comedian and Beloved Father
"We became something more than the sum of our parts. We became what we were meant to be. No one can take that from us, not even Death himself."
Dave had read about the curious and cryptic epitaph left on Crocker's headstone, one he had, only a month prior, requested to be put there—when the time came. No one, not even Crocker himself, knew that time would come so soon thereafter.
And he recognizes the conversation they'd had years prior, that they had never discussed again, and that lingered between them for the rest of their time together, sparse though it became as Dave's career blossomed and took off.
Without any flowers or anything to leave, Dave simply stands there, reading the inscription over and over again. In the coming years, the world will come to know a more taciturn Strider, one who will hold his cards close to his chest. His movies will contain multitudes: irreverent and inane jokes on top of social commentary on top of civil disobedience on top of different, more callous jokes.
Many will try to analyze the meanings of his films. Some will ponder over an oddly-placed one-liner that's eventually tracked down to an old show that few people remember. Some will question the meaning of conspicuously placed splashes of vibrant blue in every one of his movies. They'll always come to the wrong conclusions, and Dave will never make a move to correct them. Better that, than to let them dig into the truth. Better to let them think they have everything figured out, rather than sully the memory of the greatest thing he's ever known.
Esteemed director David C. Strider doesn't cry that day, in a small graveyard in the Pacific Northwest... because no one is there to see it happen. And he makes sure that it's the last time he does.
On his own now, he needs to become something more.