Platonic (26 page)

I can’t sleep without you next to me.

He is sitting at the kitchen counter swallowing his second mouthful of a beer when his phone vibrates.

Then come over.

Mark catches a cab even though it doesn’t really fit into his carefully planned budget and buzzes himself into Daniel’s apartment building. When Daniel opens the door he’s wearing only sweatpants, his hair is mussed and a mug of steaming tea is grasped between his hands. “Come in,” is all he says.

Max barks as if he already recognizes Mark.

Mark sees more packed boxes than there were yesterday, and Daniel’s laptop is open, with so many unanswered emails Mark wonders if he’s imposing. But Daniel assures him he isn’t and says he couldn’t sleep either.

They undress on opposite sides of Daniel’s bed, and Mark can’t tear his eyes away from Daniel’s skin. They’re both yawning, though, and it feels domestic and comfortable instead of sexy and exciting. As soon as they hit the mattress, wearing just their underwear, Mark wants nothing more than to curl up against Daniel’s heat and sleep. Daniel seems to want the same thing; he presses one kiss to Mark’s lips and then turns to fit his smaller body into the curve of Mark’s, wriggling back until they’re as close as they can be. Mark snakes one arm up under the pillows and wraps the other tightly around Daniel’s waist. He mumbles goodnight, yawning halfway through, and is asleep seconds later.

The next morning Mark makes up for the lack of sex the night before, waking Daniel up with his mouth around his cock, sucking and licking under the covers until Daniel groans and arches and Mark knows he’s awake. Daniel twists in the sheets, lifting them to search out Mark’s eyes beneath and mumble “Good morning.” He nudges Max off the side of the bed with his leg.

Mark gets him off as slowly as he dares, committing to memory every moan Daniel makes, every vein under his tongue and the taste of Daniel as he sweats and leaks pre-come, getting more and more turned on. Mark never, ever wants to forget any of it.

When Daniel starts to come he’s loud and unabashed, throwing off the last of the covers and arching off the bed, twisting Mark’s hair in a way that makes Mark want to let it grow a little bit longer than he usually does. Daniel’s hips rock rhythmically up, over and over into Mark’s mouth, riding out his orgasm as Mark works his cock with hard sucks of the head and the squeeze of his hand around the base. Swallowing him all down, Mark licks his lips when he finally pulls off, smirking, and then gently licks Daniel’s dick clean. When he’s finished, Mark starts to slink up the bed, intent upon kissing Daniel—lax and breathing hard where he’s sprawled—back to being capable of thinking again. He pauses, though, because he thinks he hears something.

He hears it again and kissing can wait. He gets up on his hands and knees to check on Max and finds him asleep, wedged between a pillow and a packed box beside the bed. There’s the unmistakable jangle of keys and the scratch of a door opening—it sounds too close to be from a neighboring apartment, but Mark isn’t sure. Then Mark hears the click of heels on hardwood and hisses, “Daniel? Who else has keys? Someone’s—”

Daniel snaps back to coherence in an instant. Rocketing up onto his elbows and almost toppling Mark off of him, he whispers, eyes wide, “Fuck, it’s
Rita!
” Then he’s scrambling out from under Mark and diving for the sheets that they’ve pushed almost off the end of the bed.

It
is
Rita, her voice ringing out a second later, sounding impatient as always: “Danny? Dan, don’t tell me you’re still in bed, you promised me breakfast.” Her heels click against the wood increasingly loudly, and Daniel looks as though he can explain and would explain except there is no time, only just enough time to get the covers up under their chins as Mark wonders how exactly best to arrange their bodies—he still so hard in his underwear, Daniel still completely naked and covered in sweat.

They slouch back against the headboard, Mark pressed up against Daniel’s side, intent upon screwing his eyes shut and burying his face in Dan’s neck until the storm has passed; but Daniel’s hair just looks too ridiculous, all twisted up and messy from sleep and sex, and he’s staring at it when the door is flung open.

“Oh my
God,
” Rita shrieks, taking them in instantly, knowing damn well she’s walked in on them naked and wrapped up in midmorning sex. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Max skitters awake and right at her, jumping up her stockinged legs and yapping. “Max,
no!
” He backs off immediately, into a corner to sulk.

“Rita, please—” Daniel begins.

“You are going to London on Wednesday,” she stage-whispers, and then slaps a hand over her mouth. “Shit, sorry, fuck, I didn’t—”

“He knows,” Daniel says, exasperated. He twists his hips to sit up straighter on the bed, taking the covers with him. Even though his erection is wilting fast, the shift still forces Mark to bite down on a sound he does not want to make. “Of course he knows,” Daniel snaps.

“This is why you told me to be careful?” Mark says to Rita, just as he’s realizing it.

Rita grits her teeth, closes her eyes and breathes. Then she asks, “What are you doing?” Her voice is level and deadly, just the click of her foot tapping once against the floorboards giving away her impatience.

“Can we get dressed first?” Daniel says. “Then I’ll make you breakfast and we’ll explain.”

“I will be amazed to hear how you explain this,” she counters, arched eyebrows and immaculate red lipstick even more intimidating than usual. She sighs, pursing her lips, and then sweeps out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Max immediately jumps onto the bed, wagging his tail and scrabbling his paws across Mark’s thighs to get straight into Daniel’s lap, where he snuggles into the warmth of his belly. “Yes, she’s a meanie,” Daniel tells him, smoothing his fur. Then his head falls back against the headboard and he sighs heavily. “She called you?” he asks after a while.

Mark stretches his legs out all the way and wills the last of his hard-on into submission. He sits up next to Daniel and leans his head against his shoulder. “You knew she was coming over this morning?”

Daniel has the decency to blush. “I was supposed to have lunch with her yesterday and I blew her off, and I thought I’d have this morning to myself since you had… you
have
work and were staying in Brooklyn last night. I forgot.”

Mark hums and scrubs his hands over his face. He doesn’t want to imagine what he looks like but, knowing Rita, they do not have time for proper showers and grooming before they face her. And he has work in a couple of hours.

“You waking me up like that really made me forget.” Daniel manages to turn his face and capture Mark’s lips with his own, kissing him hard and sighing. “We need to go and face her.”

Mark nods. “I spoke to her on Friday, before you and I had dinner. I felt like it was something I should tell her, and she said you’d already called. She wanted to know if it was a date.”

Daniel cuts him off with a groan that he stifles with a grimace. “Yeah, I did… I called her before you did and we probably had exactly the same discussion. And I told her about London.”

Mark doesn’t point out that Daniel called her at two a.m. “She didn’t tell me about London, but she was being cryptic and told me that dinner shouldn’t be a date and to be careful. Which all makes sense now. She told me to be careful with your heart.”

Daniel tilts his head down and focuses on the dog in his lap when he says, quietly, “Yeah, well, I’m just as in this as you are. She’s right, there’s a lot of potential for hurt.”

“She can’t have known we’d fall back into it like this, though.” Mark reaches for Daniel and tilts his chin back up with his forefinger. “I’d rather be in this and probably about to get my heart broken than not in this and never finding out whether it could work.”

Daniel smiles. “Same.” Something slams in the kitchen and he sighs again. “I did not sign up for Rita’s drama, though.”

“You get to fly off to London in a few days,” Mark teases. “Come on, we’ve gotta get up.”

Mark dresses in the fresh suit pants and shirt he’d brought with him the night before, only feeling moderately gross about the lack of shower and feeling better when Daniel knots his tie for him.

“You’re good at that,” Mark remarks as Daniel tightens the knot.

“Well, I am in fashion.”

Daniel puts on jeans, a button-down shirt and socks but doesn’t bother with shoes. Then they hover by the door, trying to hear Rita in the kitchen. She’s streaming an instrumental playlist, upbeat and full of strings and piano, and they hear the clink of cutlery and plates.

“Did you tell her it was a date when she asked?” Mark asks, hand resting on the doorknob.

“I told her I had no idea, but I think she could sense that I wanted it to be. She told me I should kiss you the first chance I got and that we’d already fallen back in love without even knowing it.” He gives Mark a rueful smile. “And then I told her about London and she took it all back.”

Mark shakes his head and mutters under his breath,
“
Fucking London,” but smiles as well.

Daniel opens the door, Max goes skittering out, and Daniel follows him. Mark closes the door and follows them both into the kitchen.

Rita is there with two brown paper bags half emptied onto Daniel’s bench. “I’m cooking us all French toast,” Daniel explains before Rita can say a word.

“Yes, you are, as we arranged. How exactly does one forget breakfast plans within twelve hours of making them?”

Daniel just arches an eyebrow and pointedly does not look at Mark. He moves into the kitchen and starts collecting ingredients and ordering them the way he wants them. Mark knows Daniel is not a very good cook, but he also knows French toast is an exception, a weekend indulgence that Daniel cooks often enough to have found the knack. There are strawberries and bananas, and Rita already has a skillet heating.

She glares in Mark’s direction again with her eyebrow arched until he has to look down at his shoes. He finds an ally in Max and bends to focus on him.

“So,” Rita begins, “What are you two doing?”

Mark opens his mouth to begin to answer but Daniel, without pausing for a moment as he slices the strawberries, speaks calmly and first. “I’m falling back in love with him, what did you expect?”

Mark scratches at Max’s belly, going all the way down on his knees and not looking up because he’s already smiling so hard his cheeks ache.

“And as for London, it’s horrible timing, but we’re going to see if we can make it work.”

The room falls quiet but for the sound of Max’s tail thumping the floor and Daniel’s knife slicing through to the board. It drags on so long that Mark has to look at Rita, who is simply standing there dumbstruck.

“Nothing to say?” Daniel teases her from where he’s finished the slicing and throws a smile Mark’s way.

“You’re insane,” Rita manages to say.

“Yeah, but what’s the alternative?”

“Exactly,” Mark adds, “I’ve read your books; you understand the human condition, how could we not?”

“Doesn’t make it any less insane.” Rita fidgets as she almost never does, twisting her foot so the heel stays put but the toe draws an arc. “This is why you canceled lunch yesterday?” she asks Daniel.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, but these five days are what we have, and I intended to be alone this morning but I’m not.”

“I’m going to work in half an hour, I promise. You two can hang out then,” Mark adds.

Rita seems to ponder everything as Daniel starts the first two slices of toast. “How—it sounds like a stupid question—how
in this
are you?”

Daniel looks from the stove to Mark and shrugs. Mark answers, “As much as we can be. All in. Be happy for us?”

Rita rolls her eyes, sighs again and then offers a hand to pull Mark up. She wraps him up, despite being a foot shorter, in a hug that’s warm and sweet with her perfume. “I do want you both to be happy, but I also spoke to both of you all of two days ago and both of you were adamant that this was purely platonic. I’m just trying to make sense of the turnaround.”

“So are we,” Daniel says.

They eat breakfast companionably, talking about New York’s slow slip into spring, the new candidate in the mayoral race, Rita’s writing and the designs Daniel has scribbled over the last month but isn’t sure he wants to follow through on. Mark compliments Daniel on the cooking, and Daniel pulls a face, and Rita gently probes for information about their dinner on Friday night.

Too soon, Mark checks his watch and realizes he’s already going to be half an hour late. He slips from the barstool with a sigh and tells them he needs to head off. Rita hugs him at the door and tells him to call her and organize dinner sometime early next week. Daniel steps out into the hallway with him and wraps him up in a kiss even though they know Rita is listening.

“I’ll see you tonight?” Daniel asks, as he slowly lets Mark slip out of his embrace.

“Yeah, don’t tell Rita everything, okay? It’ll all end up in a book.” Mark grins and kisses him again.

“’Til tonight,” Daniel calls after him, and Mark waves back over his shoulder as he walks out the front door to wait for the elevator.

***

Mark mopes around the office all morning; his coworkers send Emma to his desk to poke him in the side and check to make sure that everything is okay. He screws up his face, rolls his eyes at himself and waves her off. “Ask me next week.”

He wanders outside at lunch to get some air, not particularly hungry, just grumpy and missing Daniel. He’s already worried about how he’ll handle weeks and months apart if this is what a few hours feel like. But Daniel is there, sitting on a bench across the street with his sunglasses on the top of his head, sketchbook on his knees as he works.

Mark sees him just before Daniel’s eyes flick up and scan the street, finding Mark; he quickly packs up his things and races to cross to him. He’s smiling from ear to ear and looking perfect in cream-colored pants and a light blue blazer. Mark laughs at him as he jogs toward him and wraps him in his arms and kisses him without thinking. The eyes of several people who know Mark track the event with interest; everybody else watches, vaguely amused by the young lawyer and his stunningly beautiful boyfriend embracing outside the law offices.