What Is
“ So that's it then? After five years of epic friendship and a relationship we both thought was it, you're done? What about the promises? Is forever just a word to you?” The fight deflates from Chris's voice like an airbag, pillowy and pathetic after the thunderclap of impact.
“ I'm not the only one who made promises, and you know it. We fight too much. I can't do it anymore. What do you want from me, Chris?” Nick's voice is dead, detached. It stings.
I want you to want. To say the words “I love you, I won't leave you.” Chris's full lips form a tight line, betraying him one last time, his striking blue eyes averting. He wants to, but can't say it. The bubble of need fills his chest, but the explosion he craves?to say that which will lay him out for Nick to see?instead caroms in his veins and pierces his heart. Pain mushrooms when the last lingering vestiges of hope in Nick's usually warm brown eyes dies, an emotional detonation that leaves him cold and apocalyptic as Nick's footsteps fade down the hall. The front door opens, and then closes gently.
You could have at least slammed the door, Chris snarls in his head. Endings should be more than the quiet snick of a door latch.
The dotted line looms, mocking Nick. Pen scrawling, it feels like he's signing the end of all things, agreeing to this arrangement though it's the last thing he wants. Still, the pen flourishes with a mind of its own, convincing him this is how it has to be. He stands, shakes the landlord's hand, and passes back the lease agreement. Six months. He sublet his last place when he moved in with Chris, and it feels wrong to go back on that word, kicking his friend out.
Even though Chris went back on his word to me.
He sits in his car, the air conditioner blowing in his face, cooling the hot anger spilling down his cheeks. A hitch of a breath to shore himself up and he drives to Chris's place, boxes in his back seat ready to be filled. He's packing up the shards of a life he never thought would shatter. The dotted line with his signature feels like a divorce, the final necessary gavel. And why not? He'd committed that far in his heart even if they'd never had a ceremony. Might as well be divorce papers.
The gaps in the bookshelf feel like bullet holes, the space in the closet like an open grave inviting him to tumble in headfirst. Chris will have to figure out how to live in his house again. He tells himself it'll be good, that he can leave his books all over the place and won't feel guilty if he doesn't go through the mail every single day. He can drink the OJ straight out of the carton. He never did mind his own backwash.
What he doesn't expect is the empty space where Buster's pillow was in the corner of the living room, or how his head gets cold at night without Nick's cat encroaching on his pillow space. He has to stop listening to music to fall asleep because he ends up leaking tears into his pillow, the memory of the songs a road map of Nick's bare skin, their love life. It's not even his pillow he's crying on. It's Nick's, and he switched them so he could keep Nick's smell in his dreams. But his tears, they'll wash that away. He'll never feel the same way about Enya again. As good as it is to sleep to, he just can't.
Daylight chases away the worst of it. He manages to work. He smiles when he's supposed to. He chuckles. Full out laughs are out of his reach, but he's getting there. He can feel it. Then he wonders if Nick is laughing yet and his gut clenches. The first few times he thought of how Nick might be feeling, he had to duck into a bathroom and puke. So he wills himself to forget the way Nick's voice rings out when he laughs and wheezes into silence when he laughs hard. The crinkle in the corners of his eyes when he smiles, and how his dark hair falls across his forehead, not quite in his eyes. The breathless noise he makes during a climax. Chris categorizes the bigger things as self-preservation forgetting, and it feels like a betrayal to the best thing that ever happened to him. Though it pains him, he lets them go, like lit Chinese lanterns floating out to sea, prayers that maybe in some dimension, what he's letting go will be found and cherished by another-Chris of another-Nick, saved somewhere since this-Chris can no longer keep them.
What Was
“ Could you be more of an asshole?” Chris storms into the house, tossing his keys in the general direction of the key peg, not caring when they hit the floor. Just another thing for Nick to roll his eyes at, the nick on the hardwood. It's my goddamned house! Why do you care if I scuff my floors? Followed by, when did I stop thinking of it as 'our' house?
“ I'm sorry, but you cannot tell me that question about that famous photographer, Joe McWhatever, wasn't ignorant bullshit specifically pointed at Randy. Yes, he's full of himself, but who isn't when they're proud of their talent? I seem to recall a certain swaggering Marine Corps captain role you landed that made you insufferable for weeks, barking orders at me and demanding push-ups. You don't have to be an ass to my friends.” Nick kicks his shoes off and picks them up, padding in stocking feet to the bedroom to put them away in the closet.
I wanted to watch your arm muscles, because you're so beautiful. Chris glares and toes off his own shoes, leaving them in the living room right where he knows Nick walks to sit on the couch.
Nick comes back to find him snapping the cap off another beer and drinking in the open door of the fridge. “You're wasting energy.”
“ So? I pay the power bill.”
“ Just because you can pay for it means you should waste it?” Nick shakes his head and walks out of the room.
“ Can I do anything right?” Chris yells at his back.
“ You can start by closing the fridge and keeping your mouth shut about Randy if you don't have anything nice to say.” Nick's voice is faint, and Chris hears the click of the bathroom door when Nick disappears for his nightly face ritual. The man is obsessed with his skin, convinced it will keep him aging well and landing movie roles well into middle age. His name is big enough that it's not arrogance to hope.
Chris talks to the closed door, head bowed, trying to keep his voice from rising. “The photographer question was a legitimate effort to understand where Randy was coming from. I can't help it if his theory on off-camera lighting placement differs from something I read about another photographer doing. I was trying to understand the difference between the two methods, not make it look like Randy was blowing shit out his ass. Which he clearly was. I didn't make him look like an idiot. He did that all by himself.”
Nick flings the door open, his hair held back by a stretchy hair band, face shiny from the soap he'd just used. Chris steps back. He hates the way that shit smells. “So he was trying something new and hadn't figured out how to make it work yet. Doesn't mean it won't, and you didn't have to laugh in his face.” Nick's eyes are brooding, the hooded look of a jack-o-lantern daring people to approach the door and see if there's truth in the rumors of haunting over the threshold. “Are you suddenly an expert in photography now? It's bad enough if someone brings up 19th century literature in front of you. Face it, Chris. Unless it's a book or handed to you in a script, you don't know everything there is to know, and trying to say otherwise is just arrogant and makes you look like a jerk.”
Chris whirls on his heel and walks away, willing his fists to loosen. His chest burns, his heart beating hard like the wings of an angry raven tapping ever so insistently at his chamber door.
“ What about all the dickhead things Randy's said to me about that Out photo shoot?” Chris mutters, getting a blanket from the closet and spreading it out on the couch. He knows he was a jerk. He just wants some acknowledgment that he wasn't the only jerk.
Their gasps fill the room. Nick arches into Chris's chest on top of his own, a moan escaping his lips. He wants to slow them down, take the time they used to take exploring each other. But Chris is falling into the usual routine. Stroking through boxers, shedding the boxers, a little frotting, and then Chris either presses Nick to his stomach and grabs the lube or hands it to Nick and rolls over himself. It's become familiar, a little boring, over too fast, like Chris is going through the motions so he can go to sleep. Why bother then? Nick thinks, as Chris presses the lube into his hand.
It feels good. It always feels good, but Nick misses those days when it burned like a rocket entering the atmosphere, consuming and defiant. He moves down Chris's back with reverence, sampling the smoothness of his skin with lips parted. Chris squirms.
“ C'mon, Nicky. Do it.” Chris's voice is breathy, wanting, but Nick can hear it, the impatience, and he wonders if it's because Chris has an early call in the morning or if he's just that ready to feel Nick inside him. With a sigh, Nick does as he's asked, coming a scant five minutes later. Five minutes after that, Chris is asleep, turned on his side facing away. Nick wonders if this feeling in his chest, this tragic and resigned thing swimming around, is loneliness.
The words hurt, flung at Chris's head like daggers thrown from a practiced hand. He bats them away with daggers of his own, blue eyes flashing.
“ I'm too impulsive, too quick to anger. Not accepting enough of your friends. Anything else, Nicholas? Oh wait, I rely too much on my dad for advice. Never mind that he was a director, mentored plenty of actors, and has loads of experience and advice to keep me from falling on my face. I'm so sorry; I thought that you might have benefitted from his insight, too. By all means, forge your own way and fall flat in the mud. I haven't cut the umbilical cord. Yet another fatal flaw.”
“ All I'm saying, Christopher,” spit like a curse, “is that perhaps the growing up would be more convincing if you managed to do some of it on your own.”
Heat floods Chris's face, his eyes narrowing and deadly calm. Nick flinches involuntarily. Chris knows he needs to control himself. He's getting “that look” on his face again. But his mouth has gone and detached itself, marching into Nick's personal space and pulling the pin on a verbal hand grenade.
“ Just because I didn't have to grow up without a father doesn't mean I haven't grown up, Nick.” Detonation. He regrets it as soon as Nick's face freezes, stunned. He deserves the quiet “fuck you” whispered with precision straight into his soul. He deserves the slammed door, the screeched tires. He deserves to be left for that one.
He doesn't see Nick for three days. He expects to never see him again.
This guy is everything Nick is not. He's blonde, green eyed, talks constantly about himself, and Chris is wondering why he's standing here, pretending rapt attention. It's the gravity defying ass, Chris remembers, ordering them both another round. The guy's white teeth clack against his beer bottle and he barely stops to swallow before continuing on about the difficulty of running a marathon, how much of a boot camp he went through to reprogram his mind into believing he could do it.
Nick always just knew he could do things. He simply did them. He never bored me with how he got there, no matter how hard it was. God, I miss him.
This guy is no Nick.
Chris smiles, asks the right questions, knows he's got the runner stud hooked. They go back to the guy's house and Chris asks if he's got wine when he's offered a drink. Runner Stud calls out from the kitchen, “I hope you don't mind it out of a box. It's all I have. Didn't have time to go to the market.”
Chris smirks but calls out that it's fine. He's too busy looking at the bookshelves. Stephen King. Dean Koontz. Steve Martini. Does this guy read anything deeper than made-for-TV miniseries in print? Oh, here we go. Classics. Catcher in the Rye. Gulliver's Travels. Grapes of Wrath. Shit, Chris read all that in high school.
So he's no Lit major. I'm here to fuck him, not marry him.
Runner Stud comes back into the room, dimming the lights and handing Chris his glass. It's swill, sickly sweet and cloying. Thankfully, Chris has enough of a beer buzz that he can down it without gagging and refuse the refill. He's on Runner Stud in a second, hands on his hips, tongue in his mouth. This guy has no technique. Slobbery, all tongue, no lips, no sensuality at all. It's like kissing an overeager puppy. Still, that ass, it begs to be played with. Except Runner Stud keeps pulling Chris's hands back to his waist. After the third time, he stops drooling on Chris's neck long enough to say he's not into anyone touching his ass. He's a top all the way. It's said proudly, but Chris hears snooty, as if no one should deign to touch such perfection. Chris's last reason to be there evaporates.
“ Look, you're a nice enough guy, but I'm just coming out of a bad breakup, and I don't think I can do this. It was fun and good luck with your next race.” Chris is glad it's warm outside and his keys are still in his pocket, that he's still dressed. No stopping on his way out the door to gather a jacket or shoes he never took off. Seems Runner Stud isn't the only one who knows how to run.
That guy is definitely no Nick.
What Could Be
The craft services table is always a good place to see who has a scene to film that day, and Nick has avoided it since the Marine Corps sequel began filming. He'd been overjoyed when he signed on to play a drill sergeant for this installment, getting to work with Chris for the first time. Now, he fears the project will fail, that he's not a good enough actor to pull off the epic friendship their respective characters share that will define the film. But he can't avoid it anymore, nor can he hole up in the makeup trailer as he's done for meals the previous two days since production began. He can't risk feeling faint on a completely empty stomach and keep his head in the game. This is his career.
The fingers closing over his on an apple are startling, familiar and alien at the same time. He jerks his hand back and looks into marbled sky eyes he knew he'd have to see again, mere inches from his own. His heart stutters like a car backfiring. He wonders if Chris hears the bang.
“ Sorry, I'll just take this one.” Nick reaches for a different apple and turns to the coffee pot. A cup from his favorite coffee shop is shoved in his line of sight.
“ Peace offering,” Chris's voice cuts through Nick's will to be nonchalant, a bloom of warmth opening in his chest like the first timid peek of a tulip from drifts of snow still melting in a lukewarm sun.
“ Coffee doesn't erase things, Chris.” Nick hates the admonishment in his voice. He wants to have just taken the cup, said thank you. But it seems he can't help himself where Chris is concerned.
“ It erases some things. Nights up too late. Bad moods. Sometimes lingering bad dreams,” Chris's voice trails off. “It erases my need to break the ice. It's broken. Now I can think again.” And with that, Chris turns and walks away, crunching into his apple.
Nick feels it again, those tentative petals in his chest rising into clean air, breathing in the promise of sunshine. Stupid, Nick tells himself. One nice gesture does not a reformed Chris make.
But Nick knows now, after months, that Chris isn't the only one in need of renovation.
Nick's side hurts. His eyes are streaming, and he can't catch his breath. He really wishes it would stop, and not just because he's beginning to cough with the force of his laughter. He wishes it would stop being so fun to be around Chris again. He wishes he didn't have to see this side of the man he's never stopped loving with the deepest parts of himself, the ones he can barely face except in the delicate stillness of the night. He wishes he didn't feel himself forgetting the things that infuriated him about that insolent mouth, now telling the dirtiest jokes and making the entire crew split apart with laughter.
Mostly, he wishes he could keep his head on straight when he's around Chris.
But the touches have begun anew, the slight hand brushings, shoulder bumps, or knee presses beneath tables. He initiates them as much as Chris does. It's as if, cautiously, they're acknowledging what they had, like they may both be okay with remembering, admitting that yeah, they were good together. Once.
Nick always knew he could get through any pain on earth if he had Chris around to help him through. It's ironic that Chris is the pain he's helping Nick recover from. It's a weird circle, completely abnormal and totally fitting of how he and Chris always were. They'd defied convention. Hell, they'd written their own convention. Nick knows it just as he knows Chris's hand is on his thigh under the table.
As the rest of the group breaks to go to their wives or boyfriends or other clubs with cheaper drinks and more bass, Nick decides he should head out, too.
Chris stands with him, suggests they share a cab. Nick hesitates, and Chris backs off. “Okay, if you don't think it's a good idea.”
This isn't like Chris. He's not pushing, prodding his finger into a fresh bruise just to see how much he can get away with before the yelp. Nick cocks his head to the side and realizes it's really stupid for them not to share a cab. They live within blocks of each other. Nick had moved back into his old place after his divorce/lease ended, giving his sublessee time to find another place. He'd needed something familiar, something his from B.C., Before Chris. He feels like he's getting back bigger and bigger pieces of himself, and if that progress can't see him through one cab ride, then he's been deluding himself about how far he's come. In answer to Chris's waiting expression, he raises his fingers to his mouth and lets out a whistle at a passing cadre of cabs.
One stops, and he holds the door open for his friend, his former lover, keeper of his heart. Chris still has it, Nick knows.
“ I still have what?” Chris asks, head resting back on the seat, eyes closed as the car pulls away from the curb. Nick realizes he spoke aloud and flushes. He shakes his head. He cannot answer that question, and he wonders when he drank so much that a Cheshire cat appears beside him, grinning and urging him down the same rabbit hole. But Chris didn't see the head shake, so he asks again.
Nick swallows. And he answers. Because it's the truth and he never could lie to Chris.
It's not a date. It's really not, and Chris won't think of it as anything more. He can't, even after he and Nick seem to have gotten their old bromance groove back, the one they'd found before they landed in bed together. It's not his fault the takeout place he had in mind was closed for renovations, so what started as a quick bite at an old favorite haunt ended up at a little cafe next door, sitting on the sidewalk in the pinking twilight, the warm night turning chilly around them. Chris wraps his hands around his coffee cup, hunching over it and breathing in the aroma.
I love how you never do anything halfway, Nick once told him. It makes him smile.
“ What's so funny,” Nick asks, taking the last bite of his dessert.
“ Not funny, just nice.” Chris stretches his legs beneath the table, leaning back in his chair. If he accidentally brushes his calf against Nick's leg, he doesn't worry about it, doesn't pull away, doesn't apologize. You still have my heart, too, Nick.
Nick looks at him, waiting for him to explain, but he doesn't, lost in thought until a shiver works him over violently. “We should go. Getting chilly.”
Nick agrees and they pay, walking back toward their houses. Chris wonders if he should ask Nick to come over. He doesn't want to go home alone, but he doesn't want to ruin this tenuous thread between them, silvery and delicate like a dew-studded spider web glistening in the morning sun. Nick beats him to the punch.
“ Someone's really missed you and I think it's high time you rectify that situation.” Nick's hands are shoved in his pockets and the chill of the air is deeper.
Chris bites his tongue against a dick joke, simply looking at Nick, confused.
“ My dog hasn't been the same since spring. I think you need to spend some quality time with him so I don't have to find a doggie therapist. Even I'm not that Hollywood.”
Chris laughs and they walk in silence for another block. Nick shivers and Chris has the urge to lean against him, or put his arm around his waist. He never did that when they were living together; too risky if the paparazzi were lurking. Feeling reckless, Chris walks closer and then he's leaning in and Nick's leaning back. A few steps and it feels like reconciliation, an erasure of the slate where there are ghosts of the marks they inflicted on each other, but they're so faded you have to squint to see them.
“ Buster's not the only one missing people,” Chris says, voice low.
“ I know,” Nick answers, taking a hand from his pocket to brush pinkies with Chris. They walk on, toward something old, something new, and hopefully something cleaner. The golden retriever is so happy to see Chris he nearly wags the tail off his butt.
Nick feels almost shy, slipping out of his pants and shirt, standing naked in front of a disrobing Chris. They have such history, and looking on Chris's bare skin is painfully good, like the welcome sting of an ice cube against a blistering burn. They reach for each other, the afternoon sun painting Chris's golden hair with rays from the open window. Nick's dry palm rests across Chris's smooth cheek, his thumb tracing that full mouth, and he's almost afraid to kiss those lips. They're so easy to lose himself in, the gentle humor they convey, the biting wit, and in moments like this, the open love.
Those lips had brushed his cheek that night they'd shared the cab, Chris leaning close to whisper a good night as the car had dropped Nick off first. It was gentle acknowledgement that Christ understood what it had cost Nick to be honest about still being in love with him.
“ Chris,” Nick murmurs, lips grazing his cheek. “What if we… do it again?” His deepest fear, and the reason he trembles against Chris's chest.
“ We won't. We grew up some. Without any help, even.” Chris grins, then tilts his face and Nick is falling, tumbling once again into the rabbit hole. When he lands, he sees himself full and whole once again.
There you are.
This time, they move with great care, and it's good. So good that Nick doesn't notice a tear slipping from the corner of his eye until Chris licks it away. They cling to each other, inhabiting this old/new embodiment of themselves, and it feels like coming home. Nick belongs here, his face in Chris's neck, Chris's dick buried inside him. It bears all the sweaty trademarks of heated sex, but there's more, a connection Nick can't find with anyone else and doesn't want to even consider with another guy. This is where he wants to be, tongue curling into Chris's mouth, privy to the involuntary sounds Chris emits when he's close, eyes burning into Nick's when he comes, slack jawed and keening. Nick's own pleasure jets between them in thick stripes, gluing them together where they've always belonged.
“ Chris,” he thinks he hears, but it takes a moment to register. “Chris,” again, more insistent but still sleep fogged.
“ Ow!” An elbow in his side. He rolls over, realizing his bed isn't empty, that Nick's back and sleepily pulling him close. “What the fuck, Nick?” he means to say, but it comes out, “Whufuh?” The clock glares an angry red 3:14 am.
“ You were talking in your sleep.” Nick scoots into his side, pulling him over so his head rests on Nick's shoulder. “Loud. Gleefully. And loud. Did I mention loud?”
Chris rubs his eyes, already drifting again, his hand resting on the flat of Nick's belly. “What'd I say?”
“ Something about all your lanterns coming back. You were dreaming. Go back to sleep. Quietly this time.” Nick squeezes him once and Chris smiles into his chest.
“ Not a dream,” he mumbles, but when Nick makes a questioning noise, he's floating again in a sea of returning memories.