OMG I cannot believe this giant thing is finally done. For those who’ve been waiting for it, thank you for your patience.

Title: Love And Affection

Author: Aristide

Fandom/Pairing: Glee RPS, Chris Colfer/Darren Criss

Rating: NC-17 for m/m sex

Summary: Chris and Darren spend some time together. Stuff happens.

Author’s Notes: My first attempt at CrissColfer, so it will probably take a while for me to find my way, characterization-wise. Thank you for your patience.

Indebtednesses: Again, it takes a frigging village. First of all, to Alice, for fighting through food poisoning to give me her thoughts and suggestions. To AubreyLi for being right and extremely patient. To Talya for her honest thoughts and general loveliness. And finally but OMG not least, to Andie for a daring emotional rescue.

***

Day: 0

***

He was drunk. Undoubtedly, absolutely, splendidly drunk. And he didn’t even feel bad about it, because he’d done it—the movie was in the can, the wrap party had been partied to the hilt right here in Glenn’s overly-gracious living room, and all the necessary people, including him, had said all the necessary things. “I made a movie,” he said out loud, unnecessarily, drunkenly, then reminded himself belatedly not to say things like that because a) it made him sound like a drunken idiot with an ego problem, and b) he certainly hadn’t done it all by himself.

“Almost all by yourself,” a friendly voice next to his ear agreed, and he slewed around drunkenly to see who he’d just made an ass of himself in front of—but it was only Darren, sitting in the chair next to his own, smiling and picking the almonds out of a bowl of mixed nuts, eating them one by one.

“Hi,” Chris said, feeling something buckle in his brain a bit, something that was supposed to connect that wasn’t connecting because he was really quite cataclysmically drunk—only then it did. “This… isn’t where you work. Why are you here?”

Darren looked vastly amused. That wasn’t exactly unusual, though. “You called me for a ride.”

Chris blinked, and then waited for double-Darren to go back to single Darren. Because one of Darren was undoubtedly enough. “I… did I? I called you? I don’t remember calling you.”

Darren shrugged. “Side-effect of too much work, too much booze, and too little sleep, I guess.”

That… sounded disturbingly plausible. But it still didn’t make sense. “But why… why would I call you?” He was so, so confused.

“Presumably because you didn’t want to drive. And in your condition, I’d say that was remarkably shrewd of you.”

“I don’t call you for rides,” Chris said slowly, swaying a little. He looked around, but the party was over. The last of the cast and crew had departed and he was alone—except, of course, for Darren, who was there for some reason. “I have a rider—I mean a driverer—” He shook his head, wishing it didn’t feel so much like an overfilled balloon, trying to communicate these terribly complex concepts. “I mean I have people. That I call. When I need that.”

“And now you have another one,” Darren said with a flourish and a half-bow, and Chris realized that if he stared at Darren’s hair it looked like it was waving at him. Because he was really, stunningly drunk. Probably too drunk. “Come on,” Darren said from beneath his waving hair. “Let’s get you out of here.”

“Darren, really,” he said ponderously, aiming for rational and reasonable, “I don’t need any help.” Then he got to his feet and almost faceplanted onto the floor.

“Yup, I can see that,” Darren said amiably, wrestling him upright and slinging Chris’ arm around his own shoulders. “You’re doing awesomely well on your own, you big media mogul, you.”

It was cool outside—blissfully cool, and blissfully fresh after the close air of the house. Chris took a deep breath, then almost threw up. “Whoa.”

“Do you need to upchuck?” Darren asked politely, very much the perfect delivery and intonation of a flawless British butler, if it hadn’t been for the California accent.

“No,” Chris said calmly. “For God’s sake, I’m not that drunk.” He pulled himself upright and took another deep breath just to prove it, then bent nearly double and threw up behind the bougainvillea growing to the side of the front door. Violently.

“Better out than in, probably,” he heard Darren say from far above him, a gentle hand patting him on the back until he was done. “I have water and napkins in the car.”

Things got a little fuzzy then, everything weaving in and out. Chris came back to himself in the front seat of what had to be Darren’s car, a water bottle in one hand and a tidy stack of brown paper napkins in the other. He cleared his throat and swallowed, wincing, then drank some water. “Uh, sorry.”

“It’s no problem,” Darren said lightly. “Just let me know if you need me to pull over so you can go for round two, okay?”

“Okay,” Chris said, and his own voice echoed—a long, trailing echo like a hushed whisper amplified through a marble corridor, someplace cool and dark and quiet. That was certainly peculiar, given that he was sitting inside a car, but then he realized he only sounded that way because he was in the process of passing out, so he just let it go.

***

Day: 1

***

His bladder opened his eyes for him. Seriously. He opened his eyes and sat up, then flipped the covers back and skittered to the bathroom, nearly bounding the last few steps before he got to the toilet and peed so hard and so long that he kind of expected to be nothing but a deflated skeleton with eyes afterwards. It took a long, long time to finish, but eventually he did, tucked himself back into his pants, washed his hands, and walked hazily back towards the bed—

Which was when he realized it wasn’t his bed. And that it wasn’t his room. And that he didn’t have the faintest fucking clue where he was.

“Oh, hey, you’re up,” Darren said cheerfully, coming into the room through a pair of French doors that Chris had never laid eyes on before. “Cool.”

“You…” it was just a croak, so Chris cleared his throat and tried again. “You brought me to… your place?”

Darren looked around, almost as if he was as astonished as Chris to find himself where he was. “What, here? No. I mean—this isn’t my place. It belongs to a… friend.”

“You brought me to… your friend’s place?”

Darren grinned. “Yeah.”

No further information seemed to be forthcoming, so Chris exerted himself to speak. “Why?”

“So you can rest.”

Chris blinked. “So I can… you know, Darren, resting is something I usually do in my own home. In fact, it’s a whole part of why I have a home—to rest in. I rest there. In my home.”

Darren shook his head, still grinning. “Nope, you work there. Here, you get to rest.”

Chris wondered if this entire conversation would make any more sense if he went back to bed for a few hours. He was kind of afraid it might not.

Darren dug in his jeans pocket, and came up with a handful of change, an impressive quantity of lint, and a folded, crumpled paper. “Here, I have a note for you.”

Chris took the note with numb fingers. He recognized Lea’s swoopy, pretty handwriting at once.

Hey, baby—

Don’t freak out, okay? We cleared your schedule and did this because you work too hard and nobody can get you to slow down, so now you have to!!! Just let D cook you some good food and get some solid sleep and try to relax!! See you soon! Love—L.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Chris said hoarsely. He crumpled the note in his fist and dropped it. Then he took a deep breath. “Okay, wait—no, that was good, you got me, good joke. Wait till I—” he cut off there because he was groping for his phone, already planning the snarky message he was about to send Lea’s way—only his pocket was empty. “My phone.”

Darren shook his head. “Nope—not conducive to resting.”

He couldn’t look at Darren any more, so he looked around instead. He didn’t see a phone. The room he was in was big and sprawling and rustic, open-plan with no real interior walls except the one where the bathroom was. There was a stone fireplace set in one wall, an open kitchen against the other, bed in one corner of the room, bathroom to the left, and to the right—front door. He went through it.

He stopped as soon as he set foot outside. There was Darren’s car, parked neatly on a dirt driveway in front of the steps leading to the house. The car was dusty and streaked with mud—of course it was, because all he could see besides the car was a narrow dirt road stretching off into the trees. Miles and miles of trees. Nothing but trees. And some dirt. “Oh dear God—I’ve been kidnapped.”

“Only a little,” Darren said mildly, pleasantly, stepping out onto the porch next to him.

Chris turned to him and held out his hand. “Keys. Now.”

Darren looked at his outstretched hand, smiling, then shrugged. “Sorry. Don’t have ‘em.”

That was about enough. Chris took two steps and went through Darren’s pockets, ignoring Darren’s surprised yelp. He found no keys. “Where are the keys, Darren?”

Darren stood his ground, still looking way too obnoxiously cheerful for a kidnapper. “With your phone, and your other stuff. Safe. Not anywhere you can get them. Now will you mellow out?”

“No!” No, he would not. “I didn’t agree to this, I didn’t—I can’t stay here, I have things to do, people to call, I have to—”

Darren appeared unmoved. “Not for the next five days, you don’t.”

“Five…” his belly dropped. “Five days? You kidnapped me for five days?”

“Look, it might help if you stopped thinking of it as kidnapping—”

“It is kidnapping—”

“And started thinking of it as, uh, a vacation. That your friends who love you wanted you to have.”

Chris pressed his lips together. “You want me to consider being dragged off to this godforsaken place against my will a vacation?”

Darren patted his shoulder gently. “A vacation, a respite—an intervention for your firmly-entrenched workaholic tendencies, whatever—it’s just… a rest. A short rest.” He grinned. “There’s a lake on the other side of the house. It’s tiny, but there’s fish in it. And ducks.”

Chris closed his eyes. “Oh, well—of course, fish and ducks, yes, that makes everything just peachy.” He opened his eyes. “Will you please give me the keys?”

“Nope.”

“Will you give me my phone?”

“Sure. In five days.”

Chris went back into the house and went through everything he could find, including Darren’s battered duffel bag, an unfamiliar backpack stuffed with clothes, and every cupboard, drawer, and closet in the house. He found nothing.

Darren watched him for a while, but then he settled down into an overstuffed armchair near the fireplace and picked up his guitar, just kind of noodling along on it while he watched Chris tear the house apart. At one point he started strumming a soulful version of the Jeopardy theme song, and Chris glared at him until he chuckled and moved on to something bluesy and unrecognizable.

Chris ignored him until he’d run out of places to check, standing in the middle of the main room with his hands on his hips, fuming. Darren put the guitar aside and leaned back in the armchair, lacing his fingers across his midsection. “Finished?”

“Not by half. I want the car keys, and my phone.”

Darren shook his head, smiling faintly. “Nope.”

Chris flexed his hands, which kept trying to curl into fists. “Now, or else.”

Darren’s smile broadened. “Or else what? What are you going to do—pelt me with sarcasm?”

That was actually… a good question. A good, if maddening, annoying and exasperating question. “Don’t test me,” he snapped, crossing his arms. “Keys. Phone. Now.”

Darren was now grinning. The bastard. “I’m not testing you,” he said mildly. “I’m just trying to get you to take a break.”

“I am perfectly capable of taking breaks on my own, unassisted by—” he didn’t even bother to finish, since Darren had gone from grinning to outright chuckling. “This isn’t funny.”

“It’s not you,” Darren said, shaking his head. “I just realized how I must sound to my friends and family when they try to get me to slow down.”

Chris sighed. “Then you shouldn’t be doing this.”

Darren blinked, wide-eyed. “And give up such a precious life-lesson? No way.” He shrugged. “Look, they told me you’d be upset—”

“Who told you?”

“Cory and Lea—well, Cory told me you’d be upset. Was pretty upset himself over the idea of you being upset, actually—he’s, uh. Fond of you. Lea just told me you’d behave like a junkie deprived of a fix—but both of them told me you needed it, needed a break, just a little time, and asked me to… well, I’ve given them my word. No keys, no phone, no outside world—for five days. That’s the deal.” He tilted his head. “So—I gave my word. Do your worst.”

Chris stared down at the floor for a moment, then back at Darren. “I’m going to hate you for life.”

Darren actually smiled. “No, you won’t—because you only hate people who deserve it. And not many of them. You’re not a hateful person.”

“I could start.”

Darren just shook his head. “I think it’s too late for that.”

It was the compassion in his voice more than anything else that made Chris’ shoulders slump, all the fury and fire running right out of him. “You suck.”

Darren shrugged, still smiling. “At a lot of things, sure. But not at cooking. You up for some dinner?”

“No,” Chris said irritably, only to be undermined by the sudden, loud growling of his stomach.

“I think you’ve been overruled.”

“Seems to be a theme, lately.” He sniffed. “A theme that sucks.”

Darren got up out of the chair. “Let’s see if I can take your mind off it.”

***

Dinner was delicious, and he was ravenous, and he didn’t even understand why until he’d almost cleared his plate. “It’s dark outside,” he said, setting his fork down carefully.

Darren eyed him, then looked out the windows, then back at him. “That happens, you know, when the sun goes down—”

“The sun was… it was setting when I went out there, and that…” He trailed off, then swallowed and looked at Darren. “How long was I asleep?”

Darren tilted his head, then looked back at him. “About sixteen hours, more or less.”

Chris blinked. “Sixteen… I slept for sixteen hours straight?”

“No. You woke up a little when I carried you in here from the car, but as soon as I tucked you in you passed right out again.”

Okay, so now he couldn’t look at Darren any more, and his face was burning. “Oh.”

“You talk in your sleep, you know.”

“I know.” Now his ears were on fire.

“You said ‘goddamit, Darren’ at least twice. I was honored.”

“Shut. Up.”

He risked a quick look upwards, but Darren was grinning right at him. “That’s what you said when I tried to talk back to you in your sleep.”

Chris picked up his fork and mercilessly speared a chunk of grilled scallop, frowning at it. “What a tragedy that you didn’t listen to me.”

“I’m pretty sure you also said I had a succulent ass.”

Chris dropped his fork with a clatter, and put both his hands over his face. “Fuck.”

“Dude, no way you should be embarrassed—I do have a succulent ass. It’s no big deal—”

“Oh, God.”

***

He left the table and went out the double doors to what seemed to be the back porch. He didn’t mean to go any further, but he was drawn down the steps by the light of a ghost-etched, waning moon and what seemed to be a billion stars—more stars than he’d ever seen before. There was a long, grassy slope leading down to a short dock, and a small, round lake edged with reeds. The air was cold, surprisingly cold, for summer.

“Where the hell are we?” he asked softly, when he heard Darren walk out onto the porch behind him.

“About an hour and a half straight up a mountain, about two hours out from L.A.,” Darren answered as he bounced down the steps, craning his neck to stare up at the sky. “God, look at that moon. Wow.”

Chris shivered a little, wrapping his arms around himself. “Whose place is this, anyways?”

Darren shrugged. “Some producer friend of Lea’s. Apparently he comes up here like, once a year or something. She thought it would be perfect—no television, no phone, no internet—”

Chris squeezed his own arms. “God, don’t remind me.” He bit his lip, hesitating, then plunged. “Why you?”

Darren glanced at him briefly. “Why me what?”

“Why did you get stuck with kidnapping duty? Did you lose a bet?”

“Nope. I volunteered.”

Chris had to look at him, then. “You. Volunteered?”

“Sure. It sounded great—I needed a little time away, needed to look at some trees. You’re not the only one who tries to do too much, you know.”

He did know. And he was going to say as much, as soon as he finished yawning. He winced when his jaw cracked.

Darren’s eyes looked black in the moonlight. “You should go to bed.”

Chris yawned again. “I’ve only been up for… a few hours—”

“Yeah, but you’ve been short on sleep for, like, four years. You have a lot to make up for.”

“You’re insane,” Chris said mildly, but God, his eyelids were drooping, and he could feel the bed in the house behind him singing to him, luring him towards it. “What are you going to do?”

Darren gazed out over the lake. “I’m going to take my guitar down to the end of the dock and serenade the fish.”

“Attention whore.”

“Fish appreciate me.”

“Jesus.”

“I don’t really get enough time to give back to my ichthyic fanbase—”

“God. I’m going to bed.”

He went to bed.

***

Day: 2

***

When he opened his eyes, it was morning. The French doors were open and the room was full of cool air and warm sunshine, and after carefully looking around to make sure that Darren was nowhere in view Chris stretched out and let himself bask for a moment, arms crossed behind his head because he had nowhere to go and nothing to do, and that was fucking terrifying but it was also… good. So, so good. He wiggled his toes in luxury, and had to admit—strictly to himself, of course—that he’d needed some kind of a break.

Not that he was happy about being fucking kidnapped, or being stuck here with no link to actual humans other than Darren, who was… making some kind of godawful racket outside. Singing something, banging things around and… what the hell was that noise? Chris sat up and threw back the covers, and took a few moments to stretch and to try to adjust to feeling… well-rested. It felt weird. Like he wasn’t quite himself any more.

The lake was gorgeous, still a little early mist hanging at the edges, but otherwise a sparkling mirror of the blue sky overhead. Off to the right there was a large shed he’d missed in the dark last night, standing with both doors open. Darren had dragged a rowboat out of it, and was singing loudly in what was either Spanish or Italian while he hosed it off. Chris blinked rapidly, taking in the spectacle of Darren wearing cut-off jeans, hiking boots with socks, and nothing more than a fine spray of water on his rapidly-browning skin.

“Oh, hey—good morning,” Darren said in a bright, cheerful voice, turning off the sprayer once he saw Chris standing there.

Chris eyed him. “You know, you’re like one feather boa and some glitter away from being a centerpiece on a Pride float.”

Darren grinned, looking down at himself. “Really? Awesome!” He sounded authentically delighted.

Chris shook his head and went back into the house. He took a shower, wallowing in the sybaritic extravagance of the bathroom (the one place in the house where the rusticness left off and Hollywood took over) until he was squeaky-clean and kind of waterlogged, then slipped into jeans and a t-shirt from the mystery backpack he’d unearthed last night.

Darren was in the kitchen when Chris came back into the main room, doing something with cutting boards and pans and whisks. He’d apparently left his boots and socks outside because he was now barefoot, but he was still wearing the cutoffs and nothing else. Chris very carefully and deliberately avoided staring at Darren’s nipples, even though it felt like they were staring at him.

“Don’t you burn yourself, cooking like that?” He honestly didn’t know what else to say.

“Sometimes,” Darren said brightly, dishing out onto two plates. “It’s okay though—my cooking scars are extremely manly.”

“You are a deeply weird person,” Chris opined quietly, but he sat down at the small wooden table without any further complaint.

Breakfast was simple—eggs with tarragon and a little crumbled feta, berries and fresh peach slices and some kind of wheaty, biscuitish thing that was absolutely not made from Bisquick—but delicious, as dinner had been last night. “I didn’t know you could cook.”

Darren shrugged, licking marmalade off his thumb. “A little. Nothing fancy. I only do it for other people, and when I have time—which is like, never. But I like doing it.”

Chris bit into a peach slice, then wiped his chin to catch the juice runoff—casually, like it was an every-day occurrence to sit at a wooden block table and eat breakfast with a shirtless, perky-nippled friend who just happened to be dressed like the houseboy in The Birdcage. “So… what’s your plan for the day, O Captor my Captor?”

Darren gazed out the open doors towards the water. “Well, the boat seems to be okay—just dusty and spidery, but now that it’s clean I thought first of all I’d take a tour around the lake—”

“That’ll be a scintillating five minutes,” Chris said dryly.

“I’ll row slowly,” Darren said with evident amusement. “You can come with me, if you like.”

Chris pointed outside. “Sunshine.” He pointed at himself. “Pallid. Not a good combination.”

Darren smiled broadly. “Suit yourself. You could always take one of the giant umbrellas from the closet, and I could row you around and fan you with my hat if you got too warm—”

“Darren.” He didn’t mean to ask it, but he was full and disturbingly comfortable and his usual arbiters seemed to have dropped off to sleep when the rest of him woke up. “That’s kind of a… Are you hitting on me?”

“No,” Darren looked almost panicked. “No, I’m… God, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, it’s just—”

“I’m not uncomfortable,” Chris said, and that was true but not-true, because what was true was that he felt so comfortable it almost made him uncomfortable, because he wasn’t used to it. “I’m just… I wanted to be clear, because you’re kind of, uh, flirty—”

Darren squeezed both his hands into his hair. “I know—except I don’t always know, because I think I’m just being friendly or funny but then… yeah.” He rubbed his face, scratching briefly at his stubble. “I’m really sorry.”

“No harm done,” Chris said quietly, because really, it wasn’t like he was susceptible to it or anything. He got to his feet. “I’ll clean up.”

“Chris, really—”

“Darren,” he waved a serving spoon warningly. “I promise you, I am not standing here suffering from deep, internal wounds inflicted by your chronic, unintentional flirtiness. Now, get out of here so I can clean up. Maybe you could go flirt with the fish some more—I’m sure they’re pining for you by now.”

Darren went from solemn and concerned to shamefaced grinning immediately. “I… yeah. Okay.”

He had just finished the last of the dishes and was wiping his hands when he heard a whoop from outside. He got to the door just in time to see Darren thundering down the slope and out onto the dock, diving full-throttle into the water. Darren did a brief backstroke once he surfaced, then flipped over and went into a butterfly stroke as he moved towards the shore. He emerged dripping and laughing, his denim shorts sagging alarmingly low, and shook his head until water sprayed everywhere and his curls flew free.

Chris took one step backwards, away from the door. “It’s not like he’s doing it on purpose,” he said, and then flinched a little, because he really hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

***

He got lost in a deep perusal of his unknown host’s bookshelves, and so it didn’t really register when he heard a lot more clattering outside the back door. Darren stuck his head in just as Chris had gotten it narrowed down to a choice between Christopher Moore’s Lamb and John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces, and was biting his lip in agonized indecision.

“Hey—there’s a… come see!” Darren sounded all of six years old, and sure enough, when Chris looked up the guy was practically vibrating, bouncing from foot to foot. “It’s so cool.”

He didn’t know what to expect—possibilities from a jetski to a water cannon flashed through his mind—but Darren’s qualifier of ‘so cool’ hadn’t really prepared him for what he saw when he stepped out onto the back porch. “You found… a hammock.”

“Yep, a hammock,” Darren said in a tone of marvelous wonder, as if finding a hammock at a lake house was some kind of miracle. “A hammock in the shade, for you, Monsieur.” Another one of those ridiculous half-bows. “And there’s this—” he bounced down the steps and dragged out a yellow float with an attached, over-arching canopy. “And there’s a canopy-thing for the boat, too; but, uh, I haven’t quite figured out how it goes on yet.” He pointed down to the water, where the rowboat sat tethered to the dock, winking in the sun—at least, the half of it that didn’t look like it was being eaten by a super-aggressive tent.

Chris felt dizzy. “En garde, Monsieur Soleil,” he mumbled faintly, unthinkingly.

Darren laughed, then caught his hand. “Oh, Tish,” he said earnestly, and Chris held his breath a little—but Darren just bowed over it and gave him a roguish wink. “That’s French.”

***

He agreed to go out in the boat once Darren got the canopy set up—so much creative swearing had gone into it that he would have felt kind of churlish saying no. He took Dunces with him, but he mostly just held it open in front of him and tried to remember to turn a page every so often.

It was nice. It was quiet. It was unnerving—he wasn’t used to Darren being quiet. But Darren was quiet; he fed the ducks the remaining biscuits from breakfast, smiling a little when they got bold enough to come and eat from his hand, but other than that he just… rowed, and drifted, and trailed his fingers in the water, and stared out at the tree-covered hills that ringed the lake, and… was quiet.

“I feel like my ears need to pop,” Chris said, and closed the book, squeezing it tightly. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

Darren looked at him quizzically. “From the altitude?”

“From the, uh, lack of pressure,” Chris answered haltingly. “No phones ringing. No schedule. No action plan for the day. I have no idea what time it is.” He waved his book around for dramatic emphasis. “I could take a nap at any moment, if I wanted to… It’s a weird feeling.”

Darren nodded, and looked down at the water for a few moments before he spoke again. “You know, all of you who’ve been in it from the start—you all have each other, the patterns are set, you have this… communal experience, a communal identity that helps you be strong and keep going, and I just… I envy it, sometimes, because I’m outside it. Because I’ll always be outside it.”

Chris almost said something, but Darren shook his head, and went on. “But then, I think about how long you’ve all been… doing this, what it’s taken for you to do this, and then I’m not envious at all—because sometimes I think it’s too much, that it’s cost you too much.”

Chris shrugged. “I’m not complaining.”

Darren’s mouth quirked at the corner. “Of course not—none of you do. None of you take the good things for granted, and none of you complain; not seriously, anyway. It’s… actually kind of freaky, how well-behaved and well-adjusted you all are. I constantly have to fight off the urge to goad you into misconduct.” The quirk turned into a wide grin.

Chris leaned back. “Really. Well. What kind of misconduct did you have in mind?”

Darren blinked innocently. “Uh. Depends. On the person, and on the circumstances. It’s not a one-size-fits-all undertaking, you know—I take great pride in my ability to craft custom opportunities for insubordination.”

“I believe this about you. It’s not even hard.”

Darren pressed his hand to his chest. “I have to follow my passions.”

“You’re an inspiration to us all.”

***

When they got back Darren disappeared into the house, emerging moments later with socks and running shoes. “Okay,” he said in a tone of deep gravity, bouncing down the stairs to sit on the bottom one. “The meditative, contemplative part of the day is now complete.”

Chris grinned. “Thanks for the announcement. Is it time for your scheduled freak-out?”

Darren flailed a little, then started brushing the sand off his feet. “I got to move, man.”

“Oh my God, you dork. I knew all that drifting around quietly was driving you crazy.”

“Can’t help it—when I sit still too long, I start feeling creaky and old and stuff.”

“Are you sure you want to be a Buddhist monk when you grow up?”

“The key term there is ‘grow up’,” Darren said mildly, grinning, yanking on his shoelaces like his feet were wild horses trying to get out from under him. “There’s a trail that goes all the way around the lake—I found it while you were doing your Sleeping Beauty impression. I’m going to do a few laps. Care to join me?”

“Not even a little,” Chris said brightly, settling into the hammock with his book. “But I’ll be sure to admire your stalwart fortitude and healthful virtue every time you trot by.”

“Awesome,” Darren said, and took off into the trees. Chris read a few pages, but it was hard to get immersed with Darren jogging stalwartly and virtuously by every so often, always a little shinier and sweatier than the time before.

He’d given up and put the book aside by the time Darren finished, slowing to a stop on the grass and leaning over with both hands on his knees, his eyes closed, dripping with sweat and panting hard.

“Done already?” Chris called, injecting a deliberate note of astonishment into his voice as he drooped one leg out of the hammock and pushed off against the porch, setting himself rocking lazily.

“Nope,” Darren wheezed, hopping around to get his shoes and socks off before he did another one of those thundering runs down to the end of the dock and off into the water, crawl-stroke this time, setting off across the lake.

Chris watched Darren swim away until he was just an arrow-shaped bright spot with a foamy wake trailing behind him, then got up out of the hammock and went to investigate the shed.

The results were promising. He’d just dragged out all the badminton equipment when Darren splashed his way back, hauling himself up on the dock before flopping face-down onto the boards, sprawled there like a dead thing except for the way he was heaving for air. Chris made his way down to the end of the dock carefully, shading his eyes with his hand despite his dark sunglasses.

“There’s badminton,” he said brightly, poking Darren’s hip gingerly with the toe of his sneaker. “We can set it up so it’s half in the shade. You should get up and play with me. It’ll stop you from feeling old and creaky.”

Darren flipped off a duck who was swimming nearby. “Fuck you,” he gasped weakly. “So hard.”

Chris sighed. “Right, I forgot—you are old and creaky. Of course, you need to pace yourself. I’m sure your joints are all achy and—”

The scary thing was that he didn’t even really see Darren move. He saw Darren’s broad shoulders flex, but that was all he caught before Darren had him around the knees, and then Chris uttered a helpless, high-pitched yelp and wham—then he was trying not to drown.

The water was cold—not cool, but fucking freezing, and Chris thought his heart stopped for a second before he made it back up to blinding sunshine and air and Darren bobbing next to him with his head just barely above the rippling waves, laughing so hard he sounded like he was dying a slow and hilarious death.

“Oh my God,” Chris spluttered, treading water and toeing around (unsuccessfully) for the lake bottom. “You massive, giant dick—I can’t believe you just did that!”

Darren swam past him, wheezing and snickering, and grabbed the edge of the dock before extending his free hand to Chris. “I can’t believe I waited as long as I did. Oh my God your face—”

“Shut up,” Chris snapped testily, ignoring the hand and grabbing the edge of the dock himself. “You are the worst kidnapper-slash-vacation-partner ever. I’m fully dressed, you know!”

“I know,” Darren chuckled weakly. “But hey—if I’d waited for you to strip down I would have never gotten the chance—”

 “I’m sorry,” Chris said acidly. “Not all of us are comfortable parading around like some kind of poster-boy for queer nipple-porn fetishists.”

Darren didn’t appear to be offended by his remark. Darren, in fact, seemed to think it was fucking hysterical. Chris hauled himself up and out of the water, and made his way towards the house with as much dignity as it was possible for a soaking-wet person with squelching, dripping sneakers to have. He made it up onto the porch before Darren stopped laughing, and called out to him.

“Hey—oof—you should leave your stuff—your wet stuff—outside. Chris—”

“Bite me!” Chris yelled back with his hand on the door handle, and refused to turn around. Then he gave in and turned around. “Just so you know, I’m making good headway on that whole hating-you-for-life thing.”

Darren hauled himself up onto the dock, dripping-wet and gleaming and sleek, smiling broadly. “You’re a seriously adorable liar.”

“You’re half-right, at least,” Chris mumbled quietly, then defiantly turned the door handle and walked into the house, squelching and stomping and shedding as much water on the innocent floorboards as possible.

***

He took his time in the shower, another enjoyable indulgence he reminded himself not to mention. By the time he got out the floorboards had been rescued and his pile of wet clothes had disappeared, and he was already constructing a pointed remark about what a treasure a good houseboy was—only he never got to use it, because when he came out onto the back porch he saw that Darren was sprawled on the grass, in the sun, asleep. And naked.

Facedown. On a blanket. Naked.

Chris went back into the house, and firmly closed the door. Then he settled down on the couch in front of the fireplace with his book, and turned a bunch of pages while staring fixedly at it.

***

He didn’t remember falling asleep; didn’t even remember being sleepy. But he woke up to find Darren—thankfully-no-longer-naked, thankfully-dressed-in-sweats-and-a-t-shirt-Darren—working in the kitchen.

“What… God. What time is it?”

“Dinner time. Or… it will be, eventually. So… cooking-time, I guess. It’s around five, I think.”

Chris sat up, wiping the corner of his mouth. “I think I’ve slept more in the past two days than in the past two months combined.” He yawned.

“It’s good for you,” Darren said nonchalantly, chopping and scraping. “It’s going to be a while before this is ready—you could go back to sleep, if you like.”

“Nope, I’m up. I’m up, and that… wow, that smells amazing. What is it?”

“It’ll be chicken posole in about… two hours.” Darren put down his knife and picked up a bottle, inspecting the label. “You want wine with dinner?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. I want wine now. And then some more with dinner.”

Darren grinned. And then he started singing Belinda Carlisle. Vacation.

And then he poured the wine.

***

So there was wine, and posole and salad and bread, and then more wine, and then Darren perched on the kitchen counter with his guitar while Chris slowly and carefully did the dishes. Chris sang along when he knew the words, swayed along when he didn’t, and by the time Chris had drunk his first glass from their third bottle he was down to drying and putting away the silverware, and he was feeling very mellow indeed.

“Doesn’t your butt get sunburned?” Chris asked in the lull between one song and the next, and then realized he’d just said that out loud. He paid an extraordinary amount of attention to the fork he was drying, ignoring the fierce and sudden heat in his cheeks.

“Uh, no. I just… sunscreen. I’m sorry. Did that bother you? I didn’t ask because… I didn’t want to be weird. Weirder. Sorry.”

“It’s not… it didn’t bother me, no. It’s just… I don’t know where your line is.” Oh, God, he needed to shut up. Right now. He tossed the fork in the drawer and squeezed the dishtowel.

“Line?”

Chris swallowed. He wasn’t going to actually say this. Except, apparently, he kind of was. “All the guys I know. The straight guys I know, anyway; even the ones that… that I’m closest to, it’s like… there’s a line. I can feel it. I can feel where their comfort zone is, and I’m always really careful to not… I’m not crossing that line. But. Not you. I don’t… I don’t get one at all, from you. And that’s… weird.” He picked up a spoon and polished it, polished it. “I’m not sure… I mean, I don’t know what to do with that. Without knowing where your line is.”

“Oh.” Darren’s voice was very soft, slightly blurred. “That. Hm. I’m not… I don’t think I have a line. Is that a problem?”

Of course it was a fucking problem. “I almost threatened to make out with you.”

“Uh. Just now?”

“No.” He tossed the spoon in a drawer, and picked up another one. “When I, when you brought me here, and I wanted to leave. ‘Do your worst’, you said. It was… that was the worst thing I could think of.”

He never, ever should have said anything. He should have done the dishes and drunk his wine and challenged Darren to a Bette Midler/Cher medley singoff and kept his fucking mouth shut, because now Darren was putting his guitar gently aside and hopping down from the counter, walking over to him.

He didn’t say anything when Darren took the spoon and dishtowel away from him, and he didn’t say anything when Darren put one finger under his chin and lifted. The shock of Darren’s face that close, cheeks flushed rosy and stubble and his lips and his crazy, unkempt hair—all that was enough, but on top of that there were his eyes, so direct and intense, even slightly hazy from wine—that was. Terrible. “Chris,” Darren said, and there was a lurching, free-falling moment where Chris couldn’t remember at all what they were talking about, only then he did and he had to swallow, had to force himself not to pull away. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“Maybe you ought to be,” Chris said, and Darren didn’t get it, he could see that Darren still didn’t fucking get it, so he put his hands on Darren’s waist and felt the shape there, molded his hands to curve and muscle and bone and warmth under the softness of well-worn cotton. He touched, stroked, appreciated, crossing that line—or where the line would have been, if it hadn’t been Darren’s muscular waist he was caressing. He crossed the line—deliberately.

Darren’s cheeks got a little pinker, and his eyelashes fluttered—but that was all. “If I don’t shriek and run out of the room waving a crucifix at you, are you going to be relieved, or disappointed?”

“I’m going to… I’m going out for some air,” he said, and let go, and walked away.

***

He sat down on the end of the dock cross-legged, then leaned back on his hands and tilted his head back to look at the stars. He was falling—falling and there was no bottom, no end to it, just wide space and eternity and no up and no down and just… cartwheels, tiny and isolated and… cartwheels in space.

He heard the door click open behind him, heard Darren clear his throat. “Uh. You… can I join you, or do you need some time alone?”

Yes. “No. It’s fine. Come on down.” He was back on the planet again. He scooted over when he realized that by ‘join’ Darren meant ‘sit right next to’. Darren yanked the cuffs of his sweats up to above his knees, and folded down next to him before dunking both legs into the water.

“Yeep! Cold… wow.”

Chris leaned forward and stuck one finger into the water. It went numb. “Crazyman.”

Darren shivered. “Actually, it feels kind of nice. Bracing.”

Bracing. Yes. He felt much more sober. “So are you straight, or what?” …except for how he was still obviously, totally drunk. Fuck.

Darren ducked his head, swirling his legs, staring at the black, rippling water. “The first person I fell in love with was a girl,” he said quietly.

“Sorry, I—Darren, I didn’t mean to ask that—”

“Then she broke my heart,” Darren continued, as if Chris hadn’t interrupted. “And then I was a mess, and the person who helped me out of that was… another girl, and then I fell in love with her. And then… there were more girls, and the next thing I knew I was like… wow, I like girls.”

“Darren—”

“But it’s not like it’s been only girls,” Darren said, leaning back on his hands and looking up at the sky. “It hasn’t. But when I got this job it took about thirty seconds for people to get around to the whole ‘what’s your orientation’ thing, and it’s just… I didn’t… I didn’t really trust E! Online to really grasp the, uh, nuances, the complexity, of what I had to say, so… So I just… kept it simple.” Darren glanced at him then, smiling a little, almost sadly. “Of course, the irony is, while that kept it simple in one area, it’s meant a whole lot of not-so-simple everywhere else.”

Chris swallowed, listening to the swish-swish-gurgle from Darren’s feet in the lake below. “Not so simple, no.”

“Simpler now, though. Now that you know.” Darren was still looking at him, staring at him, and Chris had to look away. He stared out over the lake, shivering suddenly. “Chris…”

“Girlfriend,” Chris said, then realized that wasn’t actually a statement or a question. “Does she know?”

“What… about me? Yeah, I mean… yeah. Everything.” He laughed a little. “When you have a crazy life and a long-distance relationship, it requires a certain degree of, uh, openness—”

“Oh, God—you don’t even mean ‘openness’ like ‘honesty’, do you? You mean one of those… arrangements—”

“Well, in this case, I meant ‘honesty’, but—yeah, actually. We do. We have a three-time rule.” He shrugged. “It’s… practical.”

“A three… what?”

“Three times. If we see other people, there’s a three-time maximum with that person. We talked about it, back when we were trying to figure out how this could work, and—yeah.”

“That… makes no sense to me at all. So you could be with, uh, a dozen different girls a night, and then a different dozen the next night, and then—”

He stopped because Darren choked, then coughed. “Uh, I think you got the wrong idea when I told you I like girls—”

“Theoretically,” Chris snapped.

“Theoretically—fine. Yes. But… that’s not me, that’s not who I am. I’m… picky.”

“So… why three times?”

“Because after that, there’s an investment,” Darren said quietly. “There’s an… attachment, the kind of thing that goes beyond, uh, a friendly kind of thing. And that, way more than nonmonogamy, is what infringes on relationship territory.”

Chris looked back at Darren, and blinked. “You really are a hippie, aren’t you?”

Darren bumped him lightly with his shoulder. “If you say so, Clovis.”

“Oh, God—no. Anything but that.” He sighed. “Honestly, I have to spend so much time and energy trying to figure out whether my responses to… well, just about everything, everything that’s part of my life now—whether I’m responding the way I am because of where I came from, or… or because I’m a totally inexperienced twenty-one-year-old virgin who’s starting to think of sex as some kind of monster in the closet.” He shrugged. “No pun intended.”

Darren was… gaping at him. “Really?”

“Yes,” Chris said, then tried to dial back the acid in his tone. “Really.”

“Oh.” Darren looked back out over the lake. “I… um. Didn’t know that.”

“Well, now you do.”

There was a pause. “That’s… I’m… stunned, actually.”

Something was different, something had changed. Even the air felt different. “Darren. You were hitting on me.”

“No, really, I—”

“You were. And now you’re not.” And fuck, his throat hurt and his eyes burned, and that sucked, it all just really… sucked.

“Chris… no. Look.” Darren picked up his hand and held it, lacing their fingers together. “I need you to understand this. No, I wasn’t hitting on you. But yes, I was… working up to hitting on you, if that makes… I’m… I was attracted to you, yes, from the first time we met. But I don’t hit on people, even if I’m attracted to them, unless… unless I think they might welcome it, unless I’ve gotten to know them, unless they’ve gotten to know me. It’s important. Knowing. Liking. It’s… it matters.”

“You like me. As a person.”

Darren squeezed his hand. “God, yes. You’re amaz—”

“And you’re… attracted to me.”

“Yes. Very much so.”

“But… you’re not hitting on me any more.” He swallowed. His throat tasted salt-bitter. “I thought you weren’t afraid of me?”

“I’m not. But you…”

“But my virginity scares you?”

“No—but. Look, me saying ‘hey, I like you and you’re gorgeous and how about we mess around’ is just… that’s not… it’s not right for a first time. Your first time should be with—”

“Oh my God, don’t say it. Do. Not. Say it.” He pulled his hand away from Darren’s, wrapping his arms around himself. “Someone special. Right? Someone special. I have this insane, amazing life and I can’t have a relationship with anyone outside of it, because—too crazy, no time, what the hell would I have to offer? And then there’s the other end, the one-night-stand-with-a-random-stranger end, and that’s… just, no, I can’t, and in my case it’s even more dangerous than it usually is, because I’m me—so here I am with my fucking virginity hanging around my neck like a fucking millstone, and everyone around me seems to manage somehow, but not—not me, because nothing and nowhere is safe and I’m fucking terrified but I can’t stop thinking about it, the only thing that stops me from thinking about it is… is work. I just… work. All the time and I can’t… I can’t see an end to it. I can’t see a way for this to ever—”

His first thought was that Darren must have an amazing metabolism, because his hands were so hot—hot like an almost-shock, an almost-painful heat cupping his icy cheeks. Darren kissed him hard, hard at first and then softer, wet and sweet-slick and… open, like waiting, like an invitation, so Chris slipped his tongue into Darren’s mouth and then they both moaned. Chris felt something in his brain explode, then melt. When Darren finally pulled back from him, his lips ached.

“I’d like… I’d love to be someone special to you,” Darren breathed over his lips, pressing their foreheads together. “If you’d… if you want. If that’s what you want.”

Chris nodded, but didn’t trust himself to speak. Darren kissed him again—hot and quick and deep, sending a spark right through him down to his toes. “Let’s go in, okay?” Darren said, pulling back, his hands still cupping Chris’ face. “It’s cold out here. Let’s go get warm.”

***

He did okay at first. Darren laid him down on the bed and covered both of them with the duvet because they were both shivering a little, and then there was a long, slow time of warming up, closeness and touching and kisses and gradually flaring heat until finally he was sweating, flushed and sweating and hard, hard against another person, hard against Darren’s hardness. It was… unreal, weirdly unreal after what seemed like a whole life of stuff like this happening only inside his head—but good, really good, really, really good because Darren was gentle but not too gentle, hands under his shoulders holding, squeezing while they rocked together, kissing deeply.

“I want… I’d like to suck you, if that’s… can I?” Chris just nodded, warmth blooming low in his stomach and his balls, his cock aching and throbbing while Darren worked him slowly out of his clothes.

“You are so fucking beautiful,” Darren whispered against his belly, and Chris shivered, trying to pin his own ass to the bed so he wouldn’t push, so he wouldn’t… take too much.

“I don’t… what should I do?” It seemed like an idiotic thing to ask but he couldn’t help it, all of a sudden he felt completely awkward, just lying there while Darren… did things to him.

“Keep breathing. Tell me if you don’t like something. Or if you do like something, so I can do more of it.”

A simple enough set of instructions—too bad all of those things seemed impossible. The moment Darren opened his mouth and went down on him, Chris freaked out. Hard. Silently, and motionlessly, staring at the ceiling and wishing that the valve in his throat that had cut off his air would somehow magically open up again. He was rigid, taut, his muscles thrumming with tension. Darren ‘hmmm’ed around him and Chris gasped, and then there was a little air, tiny sips of breath, one after the other. Not enough.

And he had no idea what was wrong, no clue what could be wrong with him, but in the lunging panic inside his head it felt like he was too close, too close to what was happening, too vulnerable to it. He seized the tiny corner of his brain that was still able to be objective and wrapped it around himself, struggling for distance, for some kind of detachment, for enough room to breathe.

He was hard. The mouth on him was hot and wet and open, and—objectively speaking—it was fucking fantastic. He groaned a little, softly, and then closed his eyes tight, willing himself to hold on, to keep whatever composure he could. But that was when his heart cramped deep in his chest, thudding hard, sharp, bright spikes of intense, achy pain and… fuck. He waited for it to stop. It didn’t. He waited for it to ease up a little. It didn’t. He was twenty-one years old, getting his first-ever blowjob, and apparently he was going to commemorate this seminal (ha) occasion by having some kind of fucking heart attack.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Darren said, because all of a sudden Darren was there again, right there, snugged up against the entire length of him with one arm under his shoulders and the other hand wet and working down below, stroking him perfectly—and just like that Chris felt the pain in his chest dissolve, and all his composure and detachment went with it because Darren was there and suddenly he could breathe, he could pant, he could, he was… practically hyperventilating.

“Fuck,” Chris managed, and pressed his hot face into the curve of Darren’s neck. He grabbed before he knew he meant to grab, one arm around Darren’s shoulders and the other around his neck, and he knew it was too hard, too tight, that he was holding on like someone who was drowning, but he just couldn’t let go. He couldn’t stop his hips either, pushing up into Darren’s strong, warm hand while he shook and moaned and made soft, helpless noises that sounded almost like pain. “Sorry,” he gasped.

 “God, no,” Darren groaned raggedly in his ear, soft and sexy and raw-sounding. “I’ve got you, you’re good, you’re so good, you feel—incredible, fuck, Chris, you feel so fucking good to me—”

He kissed Darren mainly to shut him up, because he really didn’t need any more things to feel embarrassed about just now—but as soon as their tongues touched his entire body jumped, sparking everywhere, his nerves pitched to a new level, a new layer of intensity and goodness that was almost unbearable. He moaned and sucked on Darren’s tongue and thrust into his hand for about five more mindblowing seconds before he shuddered and came, hot wetness spattering everywhere while he arched and twisted and made unbelievable noises and squeezed Darren so hard he thought he heard bones creaking.

He lost some time after that, the world only there in random, shaky flashes—more kissing, wet and slow and deep, Darren brushing the hair back from his forehead, gentle touches and Darren’s slick hand petting his thighs, rhythmically, hypnotically, sweetly. He floated, buzzing a little, still coursing with pleasure so profound it seemed to exist on a cellular level.

When Darren pulled back from him—only a few inches—Chris had to stop himself from latching on again. Darren’s eyes were wide and dark and full of heat. “Okay?

Amazing, he almost said, you’re amazing—please don’t ever stop touching me, only of course he couldn’t say that, and then the full extent of everything crashed in on him all at once, and between one breath and the next he was… no longer okay. “Yeah.”

“What… what’s wrong?” Darren knew, of course, without anything being said—because Darren was obviously some kind of empathic freak. “Did I… was it too much, too—”

“I’m sorry,” he said, sitting up. “No, it wasn’t too much, okay? You’re, uh… God.” He crossed his arms on his knees and buried his hot face there. “I just need a minute.”

Silence. Then, “Okay. I can… do you need some time, um. Alone?”

“I… yeah. That… I’ll be okay. I just need a little time.”

He waited with his eyes closed. As soon as he heard the door click shut, he flopped back on the bed and covered his face with his hands. “Fuck.”

***

Day: 3

***

He woke up without ever having meant to go to sleep. “Fuck.” The room was warm—hot, actually, bright and full of sun. The doors were open to the lake, and there was soft guitar music drifting in—something slow and intricate and kind of melancholy-sounding, not anything he knew. Chris sat up and scrubbed his head with both hands, blinking until he felt a little less like his brain had been replaced with cotton batting.

He’d taken a shower after Darren left, he remembered that. He remembered riding a kind of emotional rollercoaster right up until the realization hit that he’d sent Darren away with a… well, sent him away in an emphatically unsatisfied state, and then it had been mostly guilt from there on out. He remembered stretching out on the bed after his shower, waiting for Darren to come back, trying to come up with the best possible way to make amends—but everything he’d thought of sounded disturbingly close to ‘Hey, I’m done flipping out—so can I touch your penis now?’ which… no.

That was the last thing he remembered.

He wandered outside, yawning and scratching his stomach. Darren was cross-legged on the slope leading down to the lake with his guitar on his lap, still in the same sweats and t-shirt he’d worn last night. He looked up at Chris and missed a chord, and the guitar strings made a jangling, interrogative noise before he picked up the melody again. “Hey.”

“Uh, hey,” Chris said carefully, because Darren looked like maybe he hadn’t slept at all—there were dark circles under his eyes, and he was pale despite his tan. He was smiling, but it was a brittle, tentative smile—which was just… wrong. For him.

Darren stopped playing, and laid the guitar flat on his lap. “Chris, look, I’m not… I’m not going to push you to talk about it, I just need to know if you’re okay—”

“Oh my God, I’m fine,” Chris said in a rush, feeling his cheeks glow. “Really, I’m just… you know. I had a moment. But I’m fine.” He waved his hands a little, indicating the robust state of his fineness, then stopped because oh dear God he was such an idiot. But at least Darren’s smile looked right for his face now, although he still looked haggard. “You’re… uh. How are you?”

“I’m… glad. That you’re fine, I mean. And I’m fine,” Darren said awkwardly, then ducked his head and ran a finger along one of his guitar strings. In that moment Chris felt a little better, because they were obviously both complete idiots as well as total, total dorks, and it was very comforting to know that.

“Good,” he said briskly. “We’re fine, then.”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” he repeated, then turned around and fled back into the house before any more inane statements could battle their way out of his stupid, stupid mouth.

***

He took a shower to wake himself the rest of the way up, and had finally decided that the best way to get past all this terrible awkwardness was just to grab Darren by his awkward, sexy face and make out with him and maybe not freak out so badly this time—only when he got out of the shower, Darren wasn’t there. There were a few plastic-wrapped dishes on the kitchen table, with a ragged, closely-written piece of notepaper propped up against them.

I know you wanted some time, so I decided to make a supply run. I’ll make pirate stew tonight if I can find decent ingred. Back soon. Don’t forget to eat. Have fun. D.

There were some berries in one bowl, raw almonds in another, and a pb&j on whole wheat on a small plate. Behind them was a bottle of water, a bottle of sunscreen, and Darren’s baseball cap. And the book Chris had been failing to read.

“I’m infatuated with the gender-nonconformist, bi-boy love child of Martha Stewart and the Dread Pirate Wesley,” he murmured audibly, and he said it because it was ridiculous, but hearing it out loud like that actually made it—while no less ridiculous—somehow less… problematic.

He thought he could live with it. Maybe.

He fed the ducks some scraps of bread and then took a long, long walk, cutting out onto a winding trail near the back of the lake and staying under the trees as much as possible, marching up hills and back down again until his legs ached. Then he sat under a spreading oak and ate his sandwich and drank his water, and wondered what the hell pirate stew was.

He laid back and stared at the sky through a screen of leaves, and let his mind go where it wanted. Of course, where his mind wanted to go was basically Darrenwards: Darren cooking, playing the guitar, licking marmalade off his thumb, hopping in place to gear up for a high-energy scene, shaking water out of his hair, staring at him with that absurdly tender look on his face, leaning in for a kiss.

Chris caught himself tracing the edges of his own lips with his fingers, and made himself stop.

He could do it. He could have this. He could take this for the gift it was, and let go afterwards, let it be a brief and perfect love affair that was no less perfect for its brevity.

It would hurt.

But it would be worth it.

***

Chris put down his spoon. “What… what the hell is in this?”

Darren paused in the middle of ripping a hunk of bread off the loaf, his head tilted sideways. “Hmm. In this batch we have: roasted lobster, crab, scallops, shrimp, halibut, corn, and tomatoes. Fish stock, Wine. Mirepoix. And, uh, butter. Bay leaf, green peppercorn, dried hot peppers, fennel, thyme—”

“Okay, okay, I get it. Things. A lot of things. Many of which are roasted, and some of which require knife skills I do not have the patience for.” He blinked. “It’s just… I’ve never felt moved to propose to soup before.”

Darren handed him the bread, smiling broadly with a pleased flush spreading across his cheeks. “Glad you like it—I made a lot. There’ll be leftovers.”

“Not as much as you’d think,” he said after he’d chewed and swallowed. “I’ll be having seconds.”

He had seconds on the soup, and then a third glass of wine just to fortify him for the Herculean task of cleaning up the kitchen. “If you come raid the drawers in here, you may be able to locate a utensil you somehow failed to encrust with a mysterious substance,” he said dryly, up to his elbows in soapsuds.

Darren snorted. “Some soup-husband you’d be. Relationships take work, you know.”

“I love the soup, but I think the soup and I should see other people,” he answered irritably, attacking a stubborn saucepan. “People who enjoy scrubbing things, for instance.”

Darren was at his side moments later. “Can I help?”

Chris flicked water at him. “No, you cooked. Go… build a fire or something. I’ll finish this up and then we can turn out the lights and tell ghost stories.” He rinsed, checked, scowled, and scrubbed harder. “Just so you know, all of mine will feature a monster with soggy, wrinkled hands who smells like Palmolive.”

***

Firelight did wonderful things for Darren. But the wonderful things firelight did for Darren did kind of terrible things to Chris’ internal equilibrium, so in the end it was a mixed bag.

Darren had come back with a ton of supplies and of course the eighty billion ingredients necessary for the kitchen-ravaging soup of the gods, and then he’d been very busy with wood chips and the barrel-style grill outside and a flurry of intense cooking and gross things involving fish heads, so there hadn’t really been a good opportunity for grabbing his sexy face and making out with him—and now that there was one, Chris felt shy all over again. Shy and mellow and slightly sleepy (because apparently he’d traded chronic insomnia for chronic narcolepsy), and just… uncertain.

He’d freaked out so badly, that first time. He put it down to a combination of first-time nerves and the challenges presented by having a strictly limited sexual opportunity with the guy he suspected he’d fallen maybe a teensy bit in love with—but he couldn’t be sure. And he didn’t want that to happen again. He had two times left. Two times. He wanted both of them to be as good as they could be, or at least unmarred by weird non-heart-attacks or breathing irregularities or any other… issues.

 “Are you working on your next book?” Darren asked suddenly, smiling gently and looking at him without ever missing a note on his guitar.

Chris shook himself a little. “What… yes, of course I’m… oh. You mean… right now?”

“Yeah. You looked kind of… lost in your head.”

Chris sighed. “I think too much.”

Darren raised an eyebrow. “Hmm… well, I’ll tell you—while I can understand where that might cause some problems, I gotta say I think it’s better than the other way around.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Darren kept smiling but pressed his lips together, then ducked his head and looked back at his guitar.

Boundaries. Darren obviously didn’t say whatever he almost just said because of boundaries, and Chris didn’t ask him what it was for the same reason. Chris swirled his wine and drained his glass, and hoped that the next two days weren’t going to be fraught with polite, respectful, awkward pauses.

Darren kept playing, and Chris felt himself drifting, his eyelids unbearably heavy. He should just… give up and go to bed; the bed was just sitting over there in the corner, calling to him. He should—

“Darren,” He sat up abruptly, looking around the room.

Darren stopped playing. “Yeah?”

“There’s…” He turned his head, looking the other way. “There’s only one bed in here.”

Darren blinked, and looked like he was maybe trying not to laugh. “Yeah. Uh. Hey—you know, on that thinking-too-much thing—”

“But… I’ve been sleeping there. You… where have you been sleeping?”

Darren was definitely trying not to laugh. “On the couch—although I thought about trying the rowboat, just to see if—”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. That… the bed is big enough for two. You should sleep there. From, uh, from now on.” He stopped, swallowing hard. “Unless you’ve changed your mind about not being afraid of me.”

The humor in the moment faded away, and Darren looked at him with dark, solemn eyes. The connection was instantaneous and complete—Chris could feel it from the roots of his hair to the soles of his feet. The two of them. Just the two of them. Just like that. “No, I’m not afraid of you.” Darren put his guitar carefully aside. “How about… are you? Afraid of me?”

“No,” Chris answered, barely more than a whisper. “Not at all.”

“Good.”

“Good.” He took a deep breath. “Will you come to bed with me?”

He saw Darren twitch, almost imperceptibly. “Yes.” Darren’s fingers curled in, then stretched out, then he rubbed his hands over his knees. “I’d love to.”

“Okay. Good.”

***

“What do you want? What can I—”

“I wuh—want… I want to make you come,” Chris said, reaching up and sliding his fingers into Darren’s hair, curling his hands to fists and pulling a little. “I want… that’s what I want. What… how… show me how? I mean—the best way—please—”

“Okay,” Darren said, and rolled them over so that Chris was on top and then kissed him again, so open and hot and they fit so well, their mouths and their bodies and Chris wondered if it was like that for everyone, all the time—only then he had to stop wondering because Darren slid his knees up and wrapped both legs tightly around him and they were… they were… oh. “You… would you fuck me? Say no if it’s too much, or too—but. I would really… if you—”

“Yeah—yes—yeah—” he was hyperventilating again, and he eased his face down into the curve of Darren’s neck and just let himself pant, shivering a little. Darren stroked from the back of his head to the base of his spine over and over, which was very soothing but also kind of the opposite because it just pressed them closer together and he was so hard, so hard he hurt already.

He let Darren take the lead and Darren did, easily and passionately and with the same grace that he brought to so many other things. One touch flowed seamlessly into the next, one moment to the next and then they were both naked and Chris was propped on one arm and both knees with the fingers of his other hand deep inside slippery-hot-tight smoothness. Under him Darren was spread wide and riding, and the look on his face made Chris feel like his heart was breaking—a deep, throbbing ache—but he couldn’t stop, never wanted to stop.

Darren had Chris’ face cupped between his hands, and every time Chris felt himself slipping away somewhere else (somewhere safer) Darren tugged him back, brought him back to right where they were, tangled together wet and hot and open—Darren was so open. “Okay?” Darren asked him, gasping and rocking. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he breathed shakily, “I’m… you feel really good—” He couldn’t, he couldn’t say any more, his voice was already cracking. But Darren pulled him down and kissed him, set up a rhythm that shuttled from Darren’s hips back to his mouth, back and forth, always a little deeper each time—so seductive, so easy to get lost in.

When he finally pulled his fingers free Darren latched onto him, pulled him down and wrapped both legs around his waist, as if he was afraid that Chris might suddenly panic and decide to go for a walk or something—and really, maybe that wasn’t the most unreasonable fear to have because he was shaking hard, short of breath and thrumming like an overtuned guitar string.

But Darren didn’t push him. Darren just held him, held him and kissed him and stayed open and waiting underneath him, sweating and flushed and practically quivering but so, so gentle with him, holding him lightly, keeping him steady, kissing him softly, waiting and waiting and waiting until Chris was ready. Chris wasn’t ready—didn’t think he would ever be ready—but he pushed anyway, and was shocked to his core by the stunned, raw sound he made when he pushed inside: abruptly, stunningly inside.

“Oh, God.” He ducked his head again and let Darren hold him. Darren groaned deeply and rocked under him, but slowly—just a little, a little bit at a time and it was like drowning, sinking in deeper and breathing—no, moaning, he was already moaning and already moving, aching from his balls to the base of his spine but moving—moving made it better.

It was a slow, imperceptible shift from Darren to him, like parts of his body were waking up for the first time and then taking over, passive to active, an incremental weight shifting one tiny bit at a time until Darren kissed him with a wet, lewd, open mouth and Chris sucked in a deep breath and the next thing he knew he had Darren’s thighs in a tight grip, spreading him wider and fucking him hard. His body knew, his body knew exactly what to do somehow, driving forward and twisting his hips and arching until Darren’s head fell back and his eyes fluttered closed and he cried out loudly.

Without even thinking about it he pursued every thrust or push or squeeze or touch that Darren responded to, shifting until he had one of Darren’s calves pressed against his collarbone and one hand cupping his ass, his other hand hooked under Darren’s shoulder and pulling down hard—pinning him flat. “Fuck,” Darren gritted in his ear, then grabbed his ass and humped up against him, groaning. The realization that Darren was about to come hit Chris hard, and everything that had gotten sublimated under his single-minded need to make this as good as possible for Darren rose up and swamped him—heat and tightness and muscles fluttering and his own heart pounding and he bit his lip hard and came, shuddering, moaning when Darren squeezed tight around him in a fast, fierce rhythm, pumping underneath him until he collapsed.

“Chris,” he heard Darren say faintly, breathlessly, and Darren was clinging to him like he might slip off the planet if he didn’t. Chris held him tightly and kissed him hard, his sensitive cock slipping slowly out and away before he rolled them onto their sides. They were curled together, tangled together, and Darren was petting him with shaking hands, kissing him over and over again like he couldn’t get enough.

“How… hey, are you freaking out?” Darren asked, still heaving for breath. Chris just shook his head. “Oh. Good. Because I’d rather not let go of you if I don’t have to.”

That makes two of us, Chris didn’t say. “It… was it okay?”

Darren sighed. “Hmm. Have you looked down lately?”

Chris looked down. Darren was—no, both of them were—absolutely covered in streaks and splashes of come. “Wow,” he breathed. “What were you saving it up for, Lent?”

Darren started giggling.

***

Day: 4

***

His first thought when he opened his eyes was holy crap—that happened. His second thought was yeah, and it’s only going to happen one more time—I have one more time with him.

His third thought was that the romantic poignancy of that second thought was kind of hard to hold onto when Darren wiped his damp mouth on Chris’ arm in his sleep, and then started snoring.

“Wha—” Darren yawned muzzily and opened his eyes when Chris snorted.

“Nothing, I just… I guess I finally figured out what it takes to get you to sleep in,” he said, rubbing Darren’s furry forearm where it lay across his chest.

“I… mmm… yeah. Guess you did. Kiss me.”

“Nope. Must brush teeth first.”

“Spoilsport.”

He got up. They’d taken a highly necessary joint shower last night after the… after, and Chris had felt kind of silly about putting briefs on afterwards—but now he was glad he’d done it, because apparently shyness wasn’t something you got over just because you happened to have had sex with the person ogling you.

He left the bathroom door open and Darren walked right in, then stood slumped against the counter next to him, brushing his teeth with his eyes closed. It was charmingly domestic and slightly uncomfortable at the same time, but he didn’t really get a chance to say so because they both rinsed and spit at the same time and then Darren was on him, lifting him up like he weighed nothing and plunking his ass on the bathroom counter, then pressing close between his spread thighs and giving him the filthiest good-morning kiss imaginable with a squeaky-clean mouth. When Darren finally pulled back, Chris swayed a bit. “Hm. Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Darren’s eyes were still sleep-heavy, but no less intense for that. He ran both hands through Chris’ hair like he was attempting to sculpt it into something less early-American-haystack. “Come running with me,” Darren said, then kissed him again, hard, thumbs brushing over the hollows of his cheeks.

“’kay,” Chris agreed breathlessly. “Uh. Why?”

“I like it when you sweat and breathe heavy,” Darren said, nosing at his neck until he shivered.

“Whoa, okay—Darren, it’s, uh… kind of hard to run with a hard-on, you know—”

“I could take care of that for you,” Darren said, and stuck his hand down Chris’ briefs, his touch gentle and sure and so, so seductive, a warm, strong hand wrapped around his cock and yeah—he was hard, it felt so fucking good and he wanted it, wanted everything so much and—

No. He wasn’t going to waste his last opportunity on a quickie morning hand-job in the bathroom, no matter how good it felt. “Uh,” he managed, gasping a little. “Later, okay?”

“You sure?” Darren asked him, kissing him softly and then looking down, pulling the waistband of his briefs aside with his free hand. “Fuck, you have the most gorgeous cock I’ve ever seen.”

Chris swallowed. “Yeah—I mean, thanks. And yeah, later, okay?” He was fucking blushing. He could feel it.

Darren’s eyes on him only made it worse. “Any time,” Darren said softly, his nostrils flaring, brushing one of Chris’ hot cheeks with the tips of the fingers on his free hand. “Any time you like.”

So over the course of the past few days he’d kept company with: offensively cheerful Darren, Martha Stewart Darren, flirty-goofy Darren, candid-and-intimate Darren, shy-and-dorky Darren, bouncing-off-the-walls Darren, and mellow, contemplative Darren. To this impressive list he could now add another: rampant horndog Darren. With Kung-Fu grip. No wonder he was dizzy.

He sighed as quietly as he could when Darren pulled his hand out of his briefs with one last, lingering stroke, accompanied by a soft, nearly-innocent kiss. Chris leveraged himself down from the counter carefully, and then wobbled off in search of something suitable to run in.

***

He’d picked swim trunks, and that turned out to be a good call, because by the time they were done going in stupid loops around the stupid lake he was fucking exhausted, dripping with sweat and spattered with tree sap and liberally coated with a fine haze of dirt. He did not join Darren in his now-customary whooping barrel-roll into the lake, but he did kick off his shoes and toe off his socks before he flopped onto the shaded float and just kind of… floated. He paddled himself slowly out into the water and watched Darren make an impressive display of his musculature by thrashing back and forth across the lake, and it was very nice and very peaceful until Darren veered off-course and headed straight for him, then almost capsized the whole works by hauling himself up onto the float, leaning back between Chris’ spread, flailing legs.

“Christ almighty, Darren, are you trying to kill—fuck, you’re all wet and cold and… eww.”

“Mmm,” Darren purred happily, snuggling back against him. “And you’re all warm and nice and—mlmm—salty—”

“Ack—do not lick me—I’m disgusting!”

“Naw. Trust me, I’ve licked plenty of disgusting people. You’re just—mlrm—tangy.”

“Gah! Darren-stop-licking-me-I-am-filthy—”

“Easy enough problem to fix,” Darren said mildly, and then the float lurched and flipped and Chris heard Darren say ‘whee!’ just before both of them toppled into the lake.

“You suck,” he managed when he broke the surface, spluttering and shivering.

“If you ask nicely,” Darren said with a coquettish wink, then splashed a handful of water at him and went back to doing laps.

“Hate you,” Chris grumbled, scrambling back up onto the float—but Darren was underwater. The only one to hear him was a duck swimming nearby, who didn’t look like she cared much one way or the other, if there was no bread involved.

***

Chris was out of the shower by the time Darren came in from swimming, and he picked through the refrigerator mindlessly, eating bits of this and that until Darren finished his own shower and kicked him out of the kitchen, claiming it for ‘actual food-making purposes’. So Chris sat at the table and watched Darren cook, and then he moved food around on his plate while he watched Darren eat, and then he settled into the hammock outside and pretended not to watch Darren play his guitar in the sun.

Chris watched, and listened, slowly forgetting to keep his eyes fixed out on the water or up at the porch beams, forgetting to look anywhere but at Darren, damp dark curls and tanned shoulders, a faint frown of concentration on his face, his wrists and his hands and his forearms and… and that song—the same slow, sad one that he’d been playing the other day, only now it was longer and more polished. Chris kept time unconsciously with one foot, and hoped that if it was something new Darren was working on he’d decide not to record it—or that, if he did record it, that it wouldn’t turn out to be a hit—because God help him every time he heard it he was going to be dragged right back to this, to this strange and terrible and wonderful time, right back to the faint, green smell of the lake and the spicy taste of Darren’s skin and the kisses that made his heart go molten and—

“Thinking too much again?” Darren asked him, smiling gently, so beautiful—he was so incredibly beautiful.

“I want you to fuck me,” Chris said, and then pressed his lips together. Hard.

There was a sudden, loud twang as one of the guitar strings snapped. Darren jumped and looked down at it for a second, then back up at Chris in the sudden silence. “Chris. Are you sure?”

“Yes.” He was completely motionless, but he was already short of breath, his mouth dry. “I… yes.”

Darren rose to his feet smoothly and came to him, walking towards him with steady, measured steps—but his cheeks were flushed deep red and his eyes were enormous, and Chris could see the rapid flutter of a pulse in the hollow of his throat. Chris swallowed as their eyes met and the world locked itself down again, down to just the two of them: only the two of them caught in a crystal shell of quiet, caught in that place where you know, and become known.

“Come on.” Darren reached a hand out to him, and Chris took it with no hesitation.

***

It was the last time, and while that was terrible it was also oddly freeing—because right now he couldn’t imagine any regret that could be more painful than remembering that he’d held back. So he didn’t hold back. He let himself do anything and everything he wanted to—he stripped Darren out of his clothes and crushed him to the bed, mapping sun-warmed skin with his hands, his mouth. He licked the satiny-soft skin inside Darren’s elbow, down his ribs, at the sharp jut of bone at his hips. He took Darren’s hard cock in his hand, and then in his mouth, largely ignoring Darren’s gasps and shudders of response because… well, because he was busy.

“Chris, your mouth,” he heard Darren say raggedly, hoarsely, but he just pinned Darren’s hips to the bed with one forearm while kept tasting and sucking and licking and swirling his tongue and opening wider—and wider still, swallowing reflexively. He worked at it until his own cock and balls were aching from need, until each slide into his mouth and throat felt like the rasping strike of a match that was only just barely not bursting into flame.

“…fuck, fuck, fuck oh God fuck—” at some point Darren had latched onto Chris’ forearm, squeezing fiercely. That arm was now pretty much numb.

“Uh,” Chris said stupidly, when he realized the stream of profanity had been going on for some time. “That’s a good kind of ‘fuck’, right?”

“…so fucking sexy gorgeous hot mouth so fucking sweet God you’re killing me—”

He decided to take that as a ‘yes’. He stroked down Darren’s spit-slicked balls and slid two fingers down to the tight, twitching hole there, pressing just a little, dipping in with the tips of two wet fingers while his mouth went back to work, sucking and swallowing—

Darren sat up abruptly, pulling him close and wrapping him up, gasping. “Please,” he breathed, as hot and desperate as if Chris had denied him something. “Please, let me… can I—” Darren kissed him, that crazy, perfect fit of mouth to mouth that made everything seem almost dreamlike, and Chris fell into it, let all the strength run out of his muscles and gave Darren his weight, trusting that Darren wouldn’t let him fall.

“Yeah.” He breathed deeply while Darren laid him down, feeling heavy and boneless and yet oddly floaty, like he was somehow drifting through his own body. Darren kissed him and bit his neck, then sucked along the curve of his chest and teased his nipples with hot, tonguing bites, and Chris didn’t worry about keeping still or keeping quiet—he just let go, moaning and twisting in the sheets, his hands always on Darren, in his hair or on the back of his neck or gripping tight on his shoulders.

Darren’s tongue in his navel made him gasp, made his hips and his cock jerk upwards, hard. And maybe that would have embarrassed the hell out of him before, before he’d given himself permission to have… well, everything—everything he could get—but now it just made him hotter. “Please—suck me—I want… oh. Oh. Oh, fuck yes, Darren—” He buried his hands in Darren’s silky curls and gave up on making any recognizable words out of the soft, breathy cries coming out of his own mouth. He moved as slowly as he could stand to, working his hips in small circles while Darren groaned around him and squeezed his thighs and shivered.

When Darren pulled off him he gasped, pushing with his hips and tugging on Darren’s hair and not ready—not anywhere near ready—but he figured out where Darren was going about a half-second before Darren got there, slow slide of tongue down to his ass and then his gasp turned into a shocked, half-articulated string of needy words. He held his breath, pulling both legs up with his knees towards his chest, then turned his head and closed his eyes and just… let himself sink, let himself go under to the gentle, tender strokes of Darren’s tongue across nerves so sensitive it felt almost like an electric charge, a sweet, delicious jolt he felt to the tips of his fingers.

“…don’t stop please don’t stop—” he was barely whispering, and barely intelligible between rapid intakes of breath. He couldn’t seem to shut himself up, but that was actually okay because Darren didn’t stop, Darren kept licking and teasing and pressing into him—just a little, but even a little was so mind-blowingly good. He got a little bit of a break when Darren came back up to kiss him hotly and grab the lube off the nightstand, but then there were fingers and a tongue working on him all at once, sliding in wet and stroking him from the inside.

He went quiet, just breathing as he was stretched, but it was impossible to stay that way. Darren went right for that one place that made him shudder and moan, made him lift his hips off the bed and grab his own knees and twist his spine trying to get more. More stretching and a hot, wet mouth on his balls, then gentle, easy thrusts while the mouth moved to his cock—a combination so blindingly, deliriously wonderful that his whole body arched hard, working back and forth between two equally irresistible sources of pleasure. But when Darren’s mouth slid back down to tease the stretched-tight, throbbing-slick skin around his hole Chris let go of his knees, pushing his head back hard into the pillows and closing his eyes while he got Darren by the hair again—a fierce, tight grip this time—then held him there and bucked hard and came helplessly, gasping and half-sobbing, utterly undone, his cock twitching and bouncing against his belly.

Darren kept his fingers where they were and came up to kiss him again, half on top of him as he rode it out—shaking, both of them were shaking, and Chris wasn’t coming any more but somehow his body seemed to think he was, heaving a little from sharp waves of sensation that went right through him. Darren kissed him for a long, long time, moaning softly between kisses, palpable waves of want and need coming off him. Chris slid one hand over Darren’s chest and then down his stomach, but Darren stopped him with a tight grip on his wrist.

“Don’t,” he said, and his voice was throaty and dark. “I’ll come. You’re so fucking hot and I want you so much—” Darren left off there, pressing his face into the curve of Chris’ neck and panting. His fingers finally slipped free, and Chris felt abruptly empty, aching and wanting all over again, regardless of the fact that he’d just come all over himself.

“No,” he breathed, spreading his legs without any conscious thought. “Please—don’t stop that… it’s so good, feels so good—”

Darren groaned, squeezing him tightly for one long moment before he pulled back. “Okay,” he said, his voice shaking. “Just… give me a second.” He shifted Chris to the side of the bed and stacked the pillows against the headboard, then leaned back against them so that he was half-sitting up. He slathered what looked like a ridiculous amount of lube over his hard, flushed-red cock, his hands on himself rough and perfunctory, biting his lip. Chris felt his insides go into freefall, and he was dizzy and he ached and he couldn’t wait any longer, so as soon as Darren let go of himself he moved in, straddling Darren’s hips and leaning close, licking and sucking Darren’s poor abused lip.

Darren pulled his knees up a little, supporting Chris’ back, then wiped his hands on the sheets and grasped Chris’ waist, a barely-there touch. “Don’t push yourself,” Darren whispered against his mouth, breaking the kiss. “Just… just… go with what feels good. It shouldn’t hur—oh fuck, fucking hell, Chris—”

Heat, and fullness, and no, it didn’t hurt—it ached a little, and it was definitely a stretch, but mostly it was unexpectedly, shockingly intimate, hot and close and… and Darren was inside him, actually inside him and he had no words for what it was, he just held on and leaned into Darren’s hands on his waist and rocked until he was all the way down. “Don’t let go of me,” he said breathlessly, shifting, his fingers curling helplessly where they rested against Darren’s chest.

“I won’t,” Darren said softly, pressing in at his waist a little with strong but shaking hands. Chris spread his knees out and then had to let his head drop back, then further back with his spine arching because—there, right there, that—was perfect. He felt brimming-full, everything in him shuddering, tiny spasms of bliss. He moved easily, riding up and down and swiveling his hips, wanting and having and teasing himself with Darren’s cock, his heart pounding and his mouth dry from gasping at the ceiling.

Darren slid one hand down over his belly, and Chris didn’t really figure out where he was headed until Darren took his aching, dripping erection in a gentle grip—and that was fucking ecstasy, so much goodness he felt like he was vibrating, but oh, unfair. He covered Darren’s hand with his own. “I’ll come—”

“Want you to,” Darren answered, sighing. “Want to watch you—you’re so fucking gorgeous—I… God, please—” So Chris leaned back against Darren’s legs and spread until his own thigh muscles burned and worked himself back and forth, sinking back and pushing up and—and fuck, he was going to come really fucking fast.

He tried to think about other things, but there was just no room for anything but this, Darren fucking him and fisting him and groaning for him. He tried digging his blunt nails into his own thighs as a distraction, but the frisson of pain blended seamlessly into the overwhelming pleasure and that was actually worse, he started shaking and then he couldn’t stop. He tried slowing down but that just… amplified everything, every wet slide of flesh and the delicious, rising tension, so clear and inescapable that his nipples tightened to hard, tortured points and the muscles in his belly and thighs fluttered helplessly, unstoppably.

Darren was heaving for breath, moaning and shaking, and Chris tried desperately not to listen but then Darren’s free hand slid up his neck and into his hair, tugging him down into a kiss—that perfect fit, that perfect wet-hot-open connection of mouth to mouth between the two of them. Chris bit Darren’s tongue and came so hard his vision went black, all of his muscles spasming at once, and then he had no breath left because Darren latched on and pulled him down hard and came in him, groaning in his mouth and throbbing in his ass and fucking him through it, wringing out every last drop of pleasure until they both collapsed sideways, tangled together and panting.

Chris closed his eyes, and tried to get enough air in his lungs through his suddenly-hitching throat while Darren gathered him close, stroking him and kissing him and rubbing one furry, muscular leg against his hip. “I think,” Darren said faintly, “Uh… I don’t think I’ve ever come that hard in my life.” Another kiss, cut short by more gasps for breath. “Fuck. If I keel over and die, put some shorts on me or something, okay?”

“No,” Chris said, but that wasn’t right—it wasn’t Darren he’d been speaking to. “I mean, no don’t die.” He curled up in the curve of Darren’s neck, and shut his eyes again. No, he would not. He would not ruin what had been a purely wonderful experience with a bunch of… stupid… pointless… He rubbed his face into the sheets, drying his cheeks.

“Hey,” Darren said, guiding him gently onto his back. “What’s… oh, God, did I hurt you? I’m so—”

“No,” he shook his head hard, then stopped because it ached. “No, that was—that was so good, it was all so good—” he cut himself off there, swallowing.

Darren kissed him, and Chris’ eyes stung again. “What is it? What—what did I do?”

He was screwed. He couldn’t talk about it, but if he didn’t talk about it Darren was obviously going to think he’d done… something. Something wrong. “It’s just… third-time blues,” he said softly, aiming for a light tone although that didn’t really work out so great with his voice all hoarse and scratchy. “I’m good, I just… need a minute.”

Darren’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

“I’m okay, really. I just—”

“You mean, uh. Yeah. Okay.” Darren actually let go of him and pulled away, and Chris forced himself to stay where he was, to not curl up around the hot lump of pain in his chest. “We need to talk.”

“We really don’t,” he said quietly, then caught himself trying to rub the ache in his chest away and made himself stop. “It’s not like I didn’t know about your—”

“Chris.” Darren was looking at him, so solemn and serious that Chris actually stopped talking. “I called her, after, uh, after that first time.”

There was no need to ask who the ‘her’ was. And that confession… felt oddly like a betrayal. “Why? Why would you do that?”

Darren looked up at the ceiling, his adam’s apple bobbing visibly as he swallowed. “I… you needed some time. And I needed to talk to her. I’ve always… I could always talk to her.” He took a deep breath. “We talked. We broke up. I cried a little.”

Chris froze halfway through a breath. “You… wait. You broke up with your girlfriend?”

Darren reached out, and brushed Chris’ hair back from his face. “Well, technically, she broke up with me once she… after we talked.”

He was numb. Cold and numb, with a center of hot fire low in his belly. “After the first time we… the first time?”

“Yeah.”

“But.” He took a breath through cold lips. “But… you didn’t even know how I felt about you, then—I mean, you couldn’t have, because I didn’t even fucking know how I felt about you—”

“No,” Darren said gently. “But I knew how I felt about you.” He swallowed, visibly. “And that’s all I needed to know.”

Oh. “…oh.” He really needed to say more than that. He really needed to hold up his end of this conversation. “You didn’t even come!” he blurted, then bit his lip. Mission failed.

Darren actually smiled a little. “Uh. Turns out, that didn’t matter. It also turns out that it doesn’t take three times for me to… get attached to someone.”

Chris blinked. “You didn’t—why didn’t you tell me?” He curled up on himself at the sudden realization of all the angst and inner turmoil it would have saved him, if Darren had only… “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

“Because I didn’t know how to tell you—not then, and later it just… it got harder, instead of easier. Because every time I thought about saying something, it always sounded way too much like ‘hey, jerking you off was so awesome I broke up with my girlfriend’, and… yeah. No. And then because… like you said, I didn’t know how you felt, and sometimes I’d think I knew but then I’d think I didn’t and I just didn’t know and I wanted…” He broke off, trailing callused fingers over Chris’ temple. “Because I wanted you to make up your own mind without any—”

“I love you, you jerk.”

Darren closed his eyes and took a deep, deep breath. “Are you—”

Chris’ eyes were burning again, but he just let it go. “Yes, I’m sure. Shut up. Jerk. Kiss me.”

“Love you so much,” Darren whispered to him, right before their lips touched.

***

“You know,” Chris said some hours later, when Darren was in the kitchen making dinner and Chris was still naked on the bed, swinging a pair of boxer-briefs between his toes and wondering whether he could slingshot them all the way into the kitchen using just his feet. “When I get my phone back, I’m going to send Lea and Cory some flowers. Well… Lea, I’ll send flowers. Cory, I’ll send, uh, a new X-Box and a kitten and… huh. Is there such a thing as mail-order nachos?”

Darren looked up from his cutting board, frowning slightly. “I… oh. Um. You can have your phone back, you know; if you want it. Crawl space, underneath the back porch—”

Chris slingshotted the briefs perfectly—in that they landed on Darren’s head, and not on the food. He ignored Darren’s surprised squawk. “Pfft. Fuck that noise,” he said, rolling up onto his feet and making his way towards the kitchen to retrieve his underpants—and possibly investigate whether or not Darren could keep cooking while being on the receiving end of a blowjob. “I’m on vacation.”

~End~

Author’s Endnotes: I really enjoy minimalist fics. I love to read them, and I really enjoy the challenge of writing them (please note that ‘enjoying the challenge’ is not the same thing as ‘meeting the challenge’, because I never quite do). Also, I really love stories where there’s a ton going on under the surface, with not a lot going on elsewhere. I’m not so hot at writing those either, but thank you sincerely for sticking with me while I gave it a shot (and yes, there’s all kinds of undercurrents here, and no, not all of them are explained later, and yes, I did that on purpose and yes, I am inherently evil).

The title is from the Joan Armatrading song of the same name, which I adore with a blinding and furious passion. It’s here, if you feel like swooning.