Platonic (24 page)

“I really need a shower, too,” Daniel says, obviously trying not to open his mouth too wide, obviously feeling self-conscious, but still hugging Mark close, not willing to let go completely. “If that’s not too big a request.”

One last kiss to Daniel’s chin and Mark rolls off of him, onto his back. “Go for it. I’ll, um—” At the edge of the bed, he remembers exactly how much his muscles ache and how naked he is. It’s nothing Daniel hasn’t seen a hundred times before, nothing he didn’t see a hell of a lot more intimately last night. Bravely, Mark stumbles to his feet and rolls his shoulders. “I’ll get you a towel and a toothbrush.”

Rolled on his side, Daniel stares at Mark, letting his eyes rake from Mark’s long, slender feet all the way up the lean height of him to his lopsided hair. “Thanks,” he says.

Mark grabs his underwear on the way out into the hall and spends five seconds leaning there, catching his breath. Then he slides his boxer briefs up his legs and moves to the wardrobe in the living room where he keeps his linens. By the time he gets back to the bedroom, Daniel is gone and the hum of water can be heard from the bathroom.

The door is still half-open, so Mark walks in. He leaves the towel on the closed toilet seat, finds an unopened toothbrush under the sink and leaves that besides his toothpaste, and then hovers.

He imagines Daniel is humming—or would be, if he were in his own bathroom. The barely-there silhouette afforded him by the closed shower curtain is not particularly interesting, but the idea behind it—Daniel standing there naked and wet—really, really is.

“Do you still sing in the shower?” Mark asks without thinking.

He hears Daniel swear and drop something and guiltily realizes that Daniel probably didn’t know he was there.

“Sometimes,” Daniel says after a few moments. “Still pretty badly.”

It’s uncomfortable and awkward and asking him to sing right now would be really, really strange. Stepping in beside him would be less strange, but probably a little too presumptuous.

“I’m going to go and make coffee,” Mark says, moving to the doorway. “Take as long as you need.”

He trips backwards out the door.

***

Daniel starts to sing just as Mark’s slices through an apple. Mark has no idea what the song is. It’s muffled and quiet and indeed quite bad, but he’s singing. Mark smiles.

***

Mark wants to get into the bathroom quickly; he’s hyperaware of how much of a mess he is when Daniel sweeps back into the kitchen in just his jeans. His body is wet and shining, his hair pushed all the way back and a darker brown from the water. Mark stares at the hair, still wet and washed into lines up Daniel’s forearms, at his stubbled jawline, and suddenly feels pretty stupid standing there in pink and purple boxer briefs, caked with dried sweat and come and saliva. He can’t look away, though.

“Guess I should do the same,” he mumbles as Daniel waits for him at the other end of the kitchen.

“Yep,” comes the easy answer, Daniel’s eyes dancing as they slip down Mark’s body once more.

Mark swallows and is about to move when something shocking occurs to him. “You’ll still be here when I’m done?” he asks, momentarily horrified.

Daniel’s smile goes wider and he tells him, “Of course.”

“Okay.” Mark begins to walk past Daniel and into the bathroom.

At least, he tries. Daniel steps to the side and drags him in by the hips, pressing them close and kissing him before he even knows what’s happening. Daniel kisses him until their knees knock and Mark’s sure his chest is wet and Daniel’s getting dirty again, and then Daniel pulls back and smiles.

“You smell like me,” is all Mark can say.

Daniel smiles again and breathes deep. “I borrowed some of your stuff, I hope you don’t mind.” He kisses Mark again and breathes in the smell of
him,
right where their noses nuzzle together. “You still smell like us.”

Mark chuckles into the kiss and pulls back. “As romantic as you make it sound, I’m about fifteen minutes away from being actually disgusting.” He blushes when Daniel cocks his head, his eyes sharp, and Mark knows he’s not alone in realizing that this all feels exactly like romance.

Mark kisses him once more and then pushes him out of the way and makes a beeline for the bathroom.

***

They drink coffee and share three sliced apples at the kitchen counter. Daniel has found his Henley and slipped it back on, letting it stick a little to the wet skin of his chest. Mark can’t stop staring at his contours.Mark dresses in bright blue, cuffed jeans and a bright red Rolling Stones T-shirt. When Daniel raises an eyebrow, he just reiterates that he dresses as a lawyer during the week. They eat mostly in silence, except when Mark pauses to tell Daniel that he usually gets bagels on the way to work, or goes in early and starves himself until lunch. Daniel tells him he knows that because Mark wrote it in an email a few weeks ago.

Mark bites his tongue and doesn’t grab Daniel’s hand and offer to take him directly to the best bagel place in the city. Instead, he asks Daniel what he’ll be doing with Max while he’s in London. Daniel tells Mark all about his assistant and her fondness for the dog, and rather than acting as the segue into the conversation they need to have, this just makes Mark say he really wants to meet Max sometime.

***

They are on their second cup of coffee and they’ve run out of apples.Mark’s stomach grumbles and he wonders if leftover duck is an acceptable breakfast.

“How’s your head?” Daniel asks.

Mark tries to remember when last night he managed to hit his head and only succeeds in remembering where every other ache on his body came from. He shifts from one foot to the other and then realizes, “You mean the wine?” Daniel nods. “I didn’t really have that much.”

They drank three bottles between them, but that’s not the point. Smiling, Daniel agrees, “Neither did I.”

They fall back into silence, watching each other and wondering.

***

“So, about last night…” It’s Daniel who finally says it, staring at the bottom of his cup and swirling the dregs of his coffee around.

Mark’s head snaps up. Even though he has known it was coming for hours, he still isn’t ready for this conversation. “Do you regret it?” he asks.

“No.”

Mark smiles and breathes. “Me neither. “

“Good,” Daniel says. Looking up, he catches Mark’s gaze slipping down to watch Daniel’s fingers on the rim of the cup. “It would be insane if I offered to blow off London… and stay in New York, wouldn’t it?”

Mark laughs, but it’s tinged with bitterness. “After just one night?“ It would be insane.

“Yeah.” Daniel has to agree and Mark expects it because it’s the logical, grown up response. “But—”

“I would never ask you to.” Mark cuts across him quickly, reaching out and grabbing his hand. “Or let you. God, we’ve been through this before!” He sounds so frustrated. “Don’t start thinking about doing anything so ridiculous.”

“We could, though.” Daniel watches him with brown eyes that seem so serious, so real, that Mark, just for a second, thinks maybe they should.

Daniel could blow off the career opportunity of a lifetime. Or Mark could throw all his hard work at Stanford and the D.A.’s office out the window and move to London.

Mark stares at him and realizes that none of that is the point. “Are you proposing that we get back together? Pick up exactly where we left off, simply…“ He hesitates, wary of the word, having not used it in so, so long. “I mean, could we just fall right back in love and do the long-distance thing for God knows how long? Again? This feels just like last time.”

“It’s not like last time.” Daniel says, but doesn’t elaborate. “Would you? Do the long-distance thing?” Daniel asks without even thinking about it.

But they tried this, ten years ago; it was a complete disaster. Another year without Daniel right here next to him terrifies Mark.

“I couldn’t ask for that,” Mark says. Just saying it jolts him into a realization of how wrong he is, how badly he wants it and how easily he
could
ask for it.

There’s another long pause, during which they both stare into their empty coffee cups and contemplate.

“I feel like there’s no right choice here,” Daniel says. He’s chuckling but it’s unsure.

Mark disagrees: There is so much choice here and only a few aspects are immutable. Daniel needs to go to London. Mark needs to stay in New York. Last night was amazing. Daniel, Mark thinks, can do what he wants, and Mark will do exactly what he needs to.

“Look, we fucked this up once, I’m not going to fuck it up again. I’m going to wait, okay?” Mark says, voice shaky. He continues to hold Daniel’s hand tightly across the table, even though by now they’ve both got sweaty palms.

Daniel starts to interrupt, and Mark holds up a hand to quiet him, because there’s more to it than that. “Let me get this out: I know what I want. I want you, I want to give this thing between us the chance it deserves because it has been ten years, and you still matter more to me than anyone else. I’m not going to quit my job, and it would be stupid for you to quit yours. I’m going to wait for you. I think you should wait for me.” He means it and he’s asking for it, and even though he’s terrified of what could come next, there’s also so much hope it gives him strength.

Daniel’s eyebrows shoot up and his mouth gapes open a little. “It’s going to be a year—” he says, and begins to say more.

Mark cuts him off again, shaking his head and smiling. “I’ve only just realized this and it needs to be said.” He pauses, ready for Daniel to argue, but Daniel just shuts his mouth and waits with wide eyes. “Last night I had more fun, I was more relaxed, I was straight up
happier
than I’ve been since I was eighteen. Probably more than I’ve ever been. Not just because of the sex. Not just because of you or the conversation. Because of all of it.” Mark swallows. “We were kids back then and I didn’t know how to ask for what I needed and you… you weren’t perfect. But if you feel what I’m feeling right now then we can make this work—”

Now Daniel does interrupt, shaking his head and grabbing at Mark’s other hand across the table, holding both tight. “I do, and I wasn’t perfect, I should have talked to you about it even when you didn’t want to. Rita told me… I mean, everyone knew it was going wrong but I ignored it and fell in love with New York instead and that was such a big mistake. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I want to talk about now—”

“Yeah. Now.”

“Yeah,” Daniel agrees, and they hold each other’s gaze in a kind of stalemate and then drop each other’s hands and wipe the sweat off on their pants. “You’re asking me do a transatlantic relationship for a year even though we’ve only spent a night together and… and have no idea who we really are or what we want—”

“You. I want you. If you
feel
the way I feel, if something has felt off for the last decade like it has for me, one year won’t be impossible.”

Daniel’s teeth have clamped down on his bottom lip and Mark can see him thinking. When Daniel swallows, something old and ugly inside Mark rears its head and makes him prepare for rejection, but he shakes it off, swallows it down.

“It doesn’t,” Daniel admits. “That’s what’s so scary.”

“I want—”

“Yes.”

Mark face splits into a smile that flickers as he tries to process. “Yes?”

“Oh, God.” Daniel pulls his hand back, but it’s only to scrub over his face as if he’s trying to stop his stupid grin from growing. Then he leans forward again and grasps Mark’s hand in both of his. “Yes.”

“Really, really? Because this is probably going to be incredibly hard and might be entirely stupid but, God, I want to try. Based on one semi-drunk night, I need to try this.”

“No,” Daniel says, “like you said, you’re right, based on a decade of not quite feeling right, and then last night… last night was what I’ve been searching for forever. We’re gonna date.”

“Long distance,” Mark laments.

“I’ve got five days before I leave,” Daniel counters.

“And then?”

Daniel takes a deep breath and looks at the ceiling as though it holds all the answers. “And then long distance. But we’re going to be good at it. We’re going to talk every single day—not because I want to make it seem like you’re there with me, but because you’re a part of my life now. If you want to be. And when you need me or I need you, we say so. When things are going wrong, we talk.”

“Yes, yeah, that sounds… it’ll be completely crazy,” Mark whispers.

“Yeah,” Daniel tells him. “It really, really will.”

Five days, and Daniel probably has a mountain of work and packing and organizing to do. But London isn’t the moon, maybe they can still do weekends. Maybe this is exactly the second chance they deserve. Just ten years late.

Mark laughs lightly, mostly to himself, and Daniel tilts his head and waits.

When Mark finally speaks, he says, “Okay,” and then “okay” again. “Okay, you’re probably going to think I’m even crazier but…” His throat tightens and his mouth feels dry and he’s caught in a long, hard stare. But maybe, just maybe, this is it: the beginning of everything. He grabs Daniel’s hand again and interlaces their fingers.

“Mark?” Daniel prompts.

He takes a deep breath. You don’t
say
these things this quickly, you don’t even think them, but five days and London and Mark looks up from their hands to Daniel, right there, watching him back. “I’m in love with you. Again.”

Daniel’s breath catches and he looks as if he’s about to say something but Mark is too caught up in his own bliss, his face a picture of happiness, to notice. He smiles until it hurts and then he dips his head to kiss at Daniel’s knuckles.

He starts to ramble. “I never ever got over you and I don’t think I wanted to. I grew up, and I changed, but God, I never once got over you. And now you’re here, kissing me and talking to me—and it is
insane!
We might hate each other when we spend actual, real time together. We might not have enough left in common or maybe too much. We’ve both changed so much. It might not work at all, but God, I
want
it to. Ridiculously. I want so badly to try.” Mark pauses to look across at Daniel and watches his chest rise and fall with fast, shallow breaths, sees the grin spread wider across his face. He’s holding Daniel’s hand too tight, making just one more part of him ache with it.