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Darren stares in the foggy mirror for a long time. Water from his hair runs down his neck and across his bare chest. He’d jumped into the shower just as soon as Chris had left, and stood under the blazingly hot water until it hurt.
He blinks slowly and can see so clearly the image of Chris standing in his backyard a few weeks ago, out of place in his nice jeans, expensive shoes, and button down shirt. The sight of him after going so long without it had been a bomb, a threat, and a benediction. It had left Darren reeling.
When Lea had called to tell him that someone was coming to see him, Darren had never for a moment thought it would be Chris. No. That’s a lie. He did. For a second, for just one second he had a delirious flash of Chris knocking on his door in the rain. Somehow he’d held onto that thought for five years, somewhere deep in his brain where he’d never been able to dig Chris out of. It wasn’t a constant. It wasn’t something he considered every day, or even every year. But once in a while, when the moon was right, when the sunset turned the sky just the right shade of purple, he thought about Chris emerging from the shadows and saying his name.
So when Brigg’s incessant barking drew him out from the chicken coop that afternoon and he saw the man standing in his backyard, his body long lines of tension and awkwardness, Darren could have sworn his heart actually stopped beating.
Darren remembers not knowing what to do, what to say to the man who’d meant so much to him for so long, and the man who’d flayed him down to his very bones. Suddenly he’d felt like he couldn’t control his own body; all confidence and ease sapped from him at just the sight of Chris’ blue eyes, his wrists, his freckles. Darren had wanted him to leave, to get back in his stupid rental car and just leave. To go home, back to LA and the life Darren had finally gotten past. He had wanted Chris to stay, to apologize, to explain. He had wanted to throw the eggs to the ground, to smash the delicate shells and let the yolk run yellow into the ground. But if nothing else, time had given him perspective and a new kind of self-control he’d always painfully lacked. It was hard-won.
He hadn’t meant to invite Chris to his gig at the restaurant that night, but it was the only thing that felt safe enough. They could talk a bit, catch up if there were things small enough to catch up on, but he’d have the safety of a piano between them when he needed it. He hadn’t been sure how he’d handle having Chris so close when he’d spent so many years with the man four hundred long miles away.
But Darren had still felt it keenly when Chris finally left that night, getting into his car under the light of the moon. He’d worked so hard to fill in the gaps and cracks that Chris had left in him. Surely he’d done the same to Chris. Still, Darren had put himself back together, with a little help, and what remained were scars he wasn’t completely ashamed of. But he’d known he’d never be fully healed of Chris, not given how they’d ended, not with who Chris was to him, after all.
And then Chris came back.
Darren hadn’t expected that either. Hadn’t anticipated seeing him again so soon after such a long draught. It didn’t matter that he was the one who’d left LA when he did; he was the one who put this distance between them when he’d felt there was no other choice.
The return of Chris to his life isn’t breaking him open again, but it is shifting things inside of him that Darren thought he’d aligned so well. It scares him. It makes him wonder.
He stares in the mirror and does not know what exactly he’s looking for.
***
“You seem distracted.”
Conner stands at the kitchen counter, competent with the sharp knife in his hand.
Darren hums faintly in response. “Yeah?”
“I’d say so. You’re supposed to be peeling those potatoes, not creating modern art out of them.”
Darren looks down at the pile of potatoes in the sink. Some are half-peeled; others look like he’d forgotten what he was even supposed to do with them. Darren sighs, “Sorry.”
Conner sets his knife down and turns towards him. His green eyes are all too knowing behind his glasses. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” Darren mutters.
“What happened?”
Darren runs his hand through his hair. It’s dried a little funny, a little wild, but he likes it this long. “It’s complicated.”
“Well, so are sausage and peppers if you don’t know what you’re doing, that’s why you get help.”
Darren snorts. Conner would compare his obvious crisis to food. “I uh, I saw Chris today.” He says it quickly, trying to keep his voice flat and not betray how even just saying his name makes his heart quicken.
Conner leans back against the counter and folds his arms across his chest. “Oh.”
“Yeah. He uh, he came to see me. Today. And a couple weeks ago. Lea told him where to find me.”
Conner doesn’t ask him why he didn’t tell him about this sooner and for that Darren loves him. Instead he asks, “Are you okay?”
Darren laughs, but it’s dry and pained. “Obviously not,” he answers, gesturing to the sink of unfinished potatoes.
Conner frowns and reaches for him. His hands are big and warm on Darren’s biceps. He’d trimmed his beard since Darren saw him over the weekend. “Come on.” He starts to lead Darren out of the kitchen, but Darren shakes his head.
“No, I’m – I came over for dinner and we’re making dinner.” He doesn’t say that he’d sent Chris home just before coming over.
Conner pulls him in close for a moment, pressing a kiss to his forehead before pushing him back to the sink. “Peel and talk.”
A little bit of tension loosens in Darren’s chest. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Conner replies, picking his knife back up. “Just start somewhere. Why did Chris come see you?”
Darren takes a slow breath. “I – I don’t really know. He…I don’t think he knew either. We were – you know how it ended between us.”
“That it didn’t really.”
Darren nods. “Yeah. And how it’s…well it’s always been hard. It’s not – don’t think that I was like, missing him when I was with you. I wasn’t. I didn’t. It wasn’t like that. When I was with you I was with you. Completely. You know that I love you.” It’s important that Conner understands this, even now, even though it’s been a little while since they broke up.
Conner’s eyes are very serious when he looks over at Darren. “I never for a single moment thought otherwise.”
Darren is forever grateful for this man. “Okay,” he nods. “So, I don’t know. Maybe he was thinking about it. I honestly don’t know. We didn’t talk about it. It was awkward. He seemed…he seemed unsure. Of himself. Of me.”
“He probably was.”
Darren pulls a cutting board out and starts quartering the potatoes, glad for the distraction of his hands. “Maybe.”
“Hey now, don’t dismiss how hard it probably was for him to come see you like this. Not knowing if you’d even be there, not know how you’d react.”
A flush reddens Darren’s cheek, whether in annoyance or shame he’s not certain. “I’m not.”
Conner throws the peppers he’d be slicing onto a pan. “You are. It wasn’t just you who got hurt.”
Darren frowns. “But he--”
“Fucked up,” Conner interrupts. “And so did you.” He’s using his ‘professor voice’ and it makes Darren’s stomach a little tight. “Obviously,” Conner continues. “I don’t know everything that happened between you two, but I know you. And I know what you’ve told me. Don’t start acting like the victim now.”
“I wasn’t.”
Conner’s eyebrow arches high. “You were going to.”
Darren swallows heavily. It’s hard enough to lie to himself these days; it’s impossible to lie to Conner. It always has been. The truth is it would be easier to fall back into blaming Chris for the last five years, and some of the years before that. It’d be easier to say that everything that went wrong happened because of Chris and Chris alone, because of what he wanted and what he didn’t. But the truth is it wasn’t like that. Not at all.
The truth is it was a little bit of everything. Some days, Darren knows now, it was all him and his pride and his ambition fogging things up that had seemed so clear at the start. Some days, Darren has realized, it was his fear and his cowardice that closed the door on the thing he only later understood was what he wanted most of all.
And other days it was Chris doing the exact same thing to him.
There were no victors in their wars, he knows, and god how Darren remembers their wars. The fights. The anger. The slammed doors and rattled picture frames. He remembers trying to convince himself that he was right, that there was something to even be right about. He remembers trying to tell himself that Chris was wrong. That the things they were fighting about and for were clear, were black and white and obvious, and not some amorphous mass of questions and labels and tangled passions. He remembers only listening to the things he wanted to hear, and not what Chris was actually saying. He remembers not being ashamed until it was too late.
He didn’t know any of this then. He couldn’t see clearly then. He didn’t understand. But he’s had time now to rewind the tape, to read over their story for the chapters he missed, the words he read wrong. He’s starting to see now what was, and what is, and where they both fit now.
“I wanted to hate him,” Darren finally says and that’s something he’s never said before. Not to anyone.
“I know.”
“I never could.”
“I know that too.”
Darren looks at Conner. Sometimes he wishes that things could have gone differently between them. Some nights he wishes that their life together could have become a real life together. But he was never going to get in the way of Conner’s career and Conner was never going to let him try. It took Darren a few months to realize that sometimes some people fill certain, contained spaces in a life. But Chris has never been containable.
“How did he look?” Conner asks.
Darren looks up at the question and Conner waggles his dark eyebrows. Darren laughs. He can’t help it, and it loosens something more in his chest. “He looked good,” he admits. Telling the truth is something he’s spent years working on.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Darren nods.
“He’s a good looking man,” Conner agrees.
“But he seemed…tired. I don’t think everything is going well for him.” It was nothing Chris needed to say aloud; if nothing else, Darren could always tell when Chris was hiding something from him.
Conner hums noncommittally. “Are you going to see him again?”
The thought makes Darren’s stomach twist up. “It’s kind of up to him, I guess. He knows where I live.”
“You could call him,” Conner points out.
“I don’t have his number.”
Conner rolls his eyes so hard Darren feels it. “Darren…”
“I know, I know.” Darren holds his hands up.
“Let me ask it this way: Do you want to see him again?”
Darren exhales sharply. He doesn’t want Chris to just come back into his life and destroy the things he’s built for himself, the things he’s allowed himself. The space. The privacy. The quiet solitude of his cat and his vegetables and his music. He knows how he is with Chris, or rather, how he used to be; and he knows it wasn’t always the best version of himself. They could be good together; they were good together, sometimes, when everything aligned just right. But they could also be blindingly destructive together, the collision of egos and disparate ambitions, of cowardice and unwillingness see beyond the moment.
But Darren knows too there are ties that bind them inexorably. Strong ties. Unbreakable. There always have been.
“Yeah,” Darren says, and it feels like a cool rain after the draught of summer. “I do.”