Platonic (25 page)

“We have five days,” Daniel points out.

Mark echoes him wistfully, “Five days,” like it’s all the time in the world and not nearly enough.

“Anyway, we can visit each other for weekends, if you like? And maybe holidays… if we both make it back to Illinois. And you always used to be able to talk to me for hours on the phone, even before I was in New York.”

Mark nods. “And Skype. And texts and email and whatever else we need. If we want it.”

“I want it,” Daniel says without hesitating. “I want you.”

“This is ridiculous,” Mark says again, but they’re doing it. “We’re like… dating?”

Daniel nods, trying on the idea, looking young and stupid and loving it. “We’re like
boyfriends
.”

And that seems to be that. Five days of undoubtedly hectic togetherness and getting on each other’s nerves and kissing each other as much as they want, as much as they can. Then a year of penance for waiting a decade to find what now seems so obvious.

Mark drops Daniel’s hand to the counter only so he can walk around and face him. He grasps Daniel’s hips, turning him so they’re facing each other and pulls him in close, loving that he can. All of a sudden, he can do this as much as he wants—forever, if that’s what they want.

Daniel’s mouth chases his, and Mark ducks and leans and keeps it from him, making him smile and giggle; only then does he lean forward and capture Daniel’s lips against his own, a hand up his back and in his hair, tilting him just right so that the kiss doesn’t have to end, but can only deepen.

They kiss and kiss, and it tastes like coffee. They stop only when Daniel’s stomach makes an unseemly growl, and Mark cracks up laughing at him. He pulls back, but Daniel keeps his arms looped around Mark’s neck and Mark keeps his around Daniel’s waist and they settle, forehead to forehead, exchanging soft Eskimo kisses.

“I need a proper breakfast,” Daniel admits. “And I promised myself I’d get across town to the other store today and make sure it will run while I’m away.”

Mark kisses him.

“But I don’t want to say goodbye to you again. Not yet. I—”

Mark kisses him harder, swallowing whatever Daniel was about to say. When he pulls back he whispers, “Then don’t.”

“It’s a Saturday,” Daniel says. “You don’t have any work?”

“A little,” Mark admits. “There are some depositions I need to go over and a few papers I should probably read. If you’ll have me, I’ll shuffle some things on Monday and get time off. When is your flight on Wednesday?”

“Afternoon.”

“I can get the morning off, then,” Mark says. “If you want. That’s… wow. That was kind of presumptuous of me.”

“Be presumptuous,” Daniel replies. “We’ve got five days and we should spend as much of them together as we can. Okay?”

Mark nods against his cheek and smiles as they sway to no music at all, standing in Mark’s little kitchen, wrapped up in each other.

CHAPTER 13

Daniel’s stomach starts to growl again, and they laugh through their kisses and it feels amazing. They find their shoes and Mark takes Daniel to his favorite bagel place. They talk about London a little, though neither of them really wants to. They drink more coffee and talk and stare at each other in a way, Mark remarks, that is probably making the people around them feel a little queasy. Daniel punches him playfully in the shoulder.

Then he takes Mark back to his place. Mark holds his hand on the subway ride over and kisses him in the elevator, hands daring to slip down Daniel’s back and over his ass. They are entirely captivated by each other, intent on getting naked, all the way hard, and as close and as messy as possible. Mark can’t keep his hands off Daniel and he struggles to get his key in the door. Then the door gives way and they stumble inside, Daniel grabbing at Mark as he brushes past him, committed to dragging him in for a proper, endless kiss.

Within seconds Mark drops to his knees, his eyes wide and excited—except he’s not looking at Daniel at all because he hears the sound of dog paws on the hardwood and sees Max come skidding around the corner.

Mark is instantly enamored of the floppy-eared, happily oblivious dog that barrels into his arms. Max is just as Daniel described him: uncoordinated and soft to the touch, yappy and instantly trusting. Mark pets him and lets him lick his face, and Daniel stands just behind him watching.

Mark scoops up the dog and wanders into Daniel’s home until he has found the living area and a plush, dark red couch, and then he plops down onto it with Max in his arms. “Who’s a cute little man?” he says, and his voice is pitched high and happy. Max licks his nose.

He’s not sure where Daniel has gone but Max, this dog that is Dan’s and adorable and over-the-top affectionate, has grabbed Mark’s full attention. He never would have guessed that Daniel would have a dog, much less one like this, but he loves that he does.

Daniel appears in the doorway leading back into the hall in fresh jeans and a T-shirt.

“What is he?” Mark asks, far too much in awe of the stupid, scruffy dog in his lap.

“He’s a dog,” Daniel deadpans.

Mark rolls his eyes at Max and scratches hard up behind his ears. “What breed, Daniel?”

“A pug-beagle mix,” Daniel says, moving close and trying to balance the disdain in his eyes with the grin tugging at his lips. “A puggle.”

“You’re adorable,” Mark says to Max as he turns in his lap. “Yes, you are seriously cute!” He throws a look over his shoulder and Daniel nods.

He keeps Eskimo-kissing the dog, petting him and letting him turn around and around balanced on his thighs until Daniel appears behind him, his fingers at the nape of Mark’s neck, tangling and tugging on the hair at the base of Mark’s skull. Mark wants to tear his attention away from the dog but he just can’t quite do it.

He casts his eyes back, though, and comments, “Your clothes. You changed.”

Daniel arches an eyebrow up high, and it’s the first time Mark notices that they’re plucked and shaped carefully into those beautiful arches. Daniel cocks a hip and lets his hand rest on Mark’s shoulder. “You could unchange me,” he points out with a wicked smile.

Mark angles his head back even further and looks over the back of the couch as Daniel toys with the top button of his shirt.

Mark throws Max a quick, apologetic look with his wide, green eyes. “Priorities, man,” he says, and then pushes him to the floor, jumps over the back of the couch and gets Daniel up against a wall as fast as he can, kissing him hard.

Daniel wrestles free. Holding Mark back with a hand on his chest, he pouts. “I think you’re cute, too,” Mark tells him. Daniel kisses the breath out of him, making him dizzy and then ducking out from under his arms and strutting down the hallway as Mark leans against the wall with both hands, dumbstruck for a moment and then giving chase toward, he assumes, the bedroom.

***

Daniel doesn’t make it to his boutique store that day, and Mark forgets entirely about the depositions. They spend more time talking and tracing patterns across each other’s skin than they do actually having sex. Before night falls, they both lose track of how many orgasms they’ve shared and why it even matters. Hours of it, hours of each other; their bodies cling and tangle in Daniel’s light blue sheets until they’re too sore to do anything more than watch each other and remember what normal breathing is like. Then they’re hungry again, ordering in and eating Chinese food straight from the container while they sit propped up by all the pillows, still mostly naked.

Against Daniel’s bedroom wall stand bookcases left half-denuded from his packing. While Daniel keeps eating Mark grows restless, eager for whatever is next. He climbs from the bed in his underwear and starts to read through the titles on the shelves.

“Eclectic,” he says, as he fingers the spines of a French courtesan’s autobiography and an old-fashioned sci-fi novel. “Totally disorganized.”

“I buy books I don’t have time to read and then they sit there and stare me down as I sleep,” Daniel says through a mouthful of noodles.

“How romantic,” Mark teases. Then he goes silent, his fingers hovering over a ratty leather spine that doesn’t have a name on it.

He must stand there too long, staring at the book as though he expects it to disappear, because Daniel calls his name. “Mark?”

Mark doesn’t want to say anything in case he’s wrong, but he also doesn’t want to pull it from the shelf in case he’s right. He just runs his thumb down the spine to feel how soft and old the leather is.

“What have you found?” Daniel asks.

Instead of grabbing it and pulling it out, Mark just says, “You remember you used to draw me?”

Behind him, Daniel falls silent. “It’s still there,” he says after a few seconds.

Now Mark does pull the leather sketchbook from the shelf, careful with it because the spine is only holding half the pages in and the edges are all frayed.

“Bring it here,” Daniel says quietly.

Mark moves toward him without opening the book, and Daniel shifts the food onto the bedside table. He crosses his legs and beckons Mark to sit down beside him on the bed. His legs hang off the side.

“I’d forgotten. I don’t even think I realized what it was when I unpacked three years ago and it’s been there ever since. I’d never throw it out.”

“Can I?” Mark asks.

Daniel reaches over him and opens the cover. They flick through Daniel’s teenage doodles of single, twisted curls of hair and upturned noses and to the picture of Mark under the oak tree. They both stare at it because it feels like history and magic all at once.

A few pages later comes a drawing of Mark asleep against pillows, a crease between his eyebrows and his lips turned down in a frown. Above it, Daniel has written—and then written over and over so the words are etched into the paper—”
The Last Night.”

Daniel says, “Keep going,” and his voice shakes.

Mark turns the page carefully, shocked to find another picture of himself, and then another. Other sketches blossom around him, scenes from New York, colors smudged across the lines, faceless women in beautiful dresses, but here and there, he appears again as a face in the corner or just another scribbled figure in the background of Daniel’s life. Farther still, there’s a full-page picture of something that never happened: Mark sitting on a bench in Central Park, wearing a suit he recognizes as one of Daniel’s designs. He’s there on the next page, wearing a tuxedo cut sharp around his shoulders and tight across his hips and smiling.

“I didn’t do it for long. Maybe a couple of years. And it always felt like a dirty habit, something I did in the middle of the night when all my other work was done. I didn’t want to but sometimes I couldn’t stop myself.”

“I had no idea you’d kept it.”

“Of course I did.” Daniel closes the book in Mark’s hands and takes it from him, setting it down on the bed. “Look at us, here and now; you can’t be surprised.” He grins.

“Will you draw me again?” It sounds like such a weird request even though it made sense in his head. “I mean, if you want to, I think that would be cool.”

“Of course.” He drops the book onto the bedside table, careful to avoid the mess of food. “Yes, I think I’d love to.”

Mark grins and feels his cheeks heat up.

“But not now. I’ll do it when we have time for it. Right now I’ve eaten and I’ve rested and I feel like…” he trails off, teasing the fingers of one hand softly up Mark’s body, from the jut of a hipbone to the curve of a shoulder. “More of you.”

Mark bites down on his bottom lip, anticipation already creeping deliciously under his skin, and watches Daniel turn toward him, uncross his legs, reach for him and pull him down into the sheets again.

***

On Sunday, Daniel finally takes Mark to one of his stores. He kisses him on the cheek as they are welcomed through the glass front door by one of his shop attendants. Daniel directs him to the plush sofas spread between the expansive dressing rooms at the back. “This shouldn’t take too long,” Daniel promises and lingers with his lips close to Mark’s jaw. When he finally pulls away it is only to blink once and then press another kiss to Mark’s mouth.

The attendant stares at Mark in a way that makes him realize she’s never seen Daniel bring a man to the store, and has probably never seen him kiss someone. She looks at Mark as though she’s not sure she’s ever seen anyone so intensely in love.

Mark watches Daniel work without interfering. He sits on the sofa and appreciates the off-whites and grays of the store walls and the abstract paintings scattered between the racks: splashes of bright blues and reds and oranges that complement and set off the colors of the clothes. Then there are the clothes themselves, the centerpiece of the store: dark suits and dresses slowly transitioning into brighter, lighter things as his attention moves from the front of the store to the back. He admires the suits in colors hardly anyone would dare to wear, with embroidered patterns and unusual collars.

Eventually, he can’t resist. Smiling at Daniel when he catches his eye, Mark stands and wanders, letting his fingers run over the fabrics as he marvels at the things Daniel makes.

“Do you wear your own suits often?” Mark asks when they walk out into the New York street.

Daniel looks at him. “Not terribly often,” he admits. “I don’t usually have good enough reason to.”

Mark doesn’t say anything, but a wedding fantasy starts playing out in his head.

***

Mark goes home on Sunday afternoon. But first he gets caught up for a full ten minutes at the threshold of Daniel’s apartment, holding Daniel’s face in his hands and kissing him over and over, trying to convince himself that one last, quick moment naked together isn’t unreasonable at all.

Finally, Daniel pushes him out and closes the door. Mark goes home and reads the depositions, and then the papers, and then all of it again while taking notes. It slips past midnight and into Monday, and his eyelids feel heavy and his muscles feel too tight. He changes and slips into his still-unmade bed. He can smell Daniel and can’t for the life of him get to sleep.

He debates sending a text to Daniel, knowing how desperate and pining he’ll sound, and then does it anyway.