Platonic (31 page)

Mark stares at him, growls under his breath and then loosens his grip, runs the tips of his fingers up the vein on the underside of his cock as he strokes slower, lighter; and somehow the array of different kinds of friction, different contact points, trips more sensation. It’s not enough to come, but it somehow smells of Daniel, brings the phantom taste of him slick across Mark’s tongue.

“Good, and that twist, under the head.”

Mark does it and cries out.

“You’re so close and just from me touching you.”

“I am.” Mark’s face blossoms into a broad, happy grin, his nose scrunched up and his eyes still closed as he continues to tease his dick, up and down.

“Other hand on the inside of your thigh, kneading the muscle—love those muscles so much, and the hair, love all of it. A little tighter, a little faster. Tell me when you’re gonna come, baby, make sure you tell me right before.”

Mark twists his hand tighter still, careful to keep it just as he remembers Daniel’s. The hand on his thigh reaches, and he pets his balls with his fingertips, then shifts to touch and squeeze them in time with his stroke.

He chokes down a moan and screws his eyes shut more tightly, biting down on his bottom lip and focusing on his imaginary Daniel. His legs bow out to the sides, feet pressed sole to sole in front of him so he can stay sitting up, rocking into his hand, his breath ricocheting through him. His orgasm coils up tight inside him, his skin alive with feeling, the hour almost over. He feels his balls, hot and throbbing with need, his dick flushed hot and heavy against the soft skin of his belly.

“Gonna come, Danny, please, gonna come so—”

“Then come on me.” Daniel sounds further away. “Look at me.”

Mark’s eyes spring open and to his computer, sitting just past his feet: here is Daniel’s bare, perky ass pushed up and presented to him, Daniel peeking back at him from around his shoulder, his grin making his eyes crinkle at the corners. Mark gazes at his ass and his slightly spread thighs, the tempting hang of his cock and balls between his legs and the light pink of his hole.

“Jesus Christ,” is all Mark manages to say as he moves without thinking up onto his knees and jerks himself off for the few seconds it takes before he’s coming. He cries out, a deep-bellied yell, as he comes in streaks and pulses of pleasure, his hand working hard and tight in time with his spurts until his moan turns to a whimper and he collapses back onto his bed in a mess of useless limbs.

“Jesus Christ,” he says again, staring up at his ceiling. It takes him long seconds to recover, realize Daniel’s just sitting there with his ass in the air for him, and scramble back up to see. Instead Daniel has managed to get himself under the bright red covers of the bed and is holding them up over his mouth as he giggles.

“Fuck,” Mark says. “I got come on my keyboard.”

“Gross,” Daniel says back and grins some more.

Mark grabs some tissues and clears it off the best he can before it becomes tacky and even grosser. “That was… why are you laughing?”

“I have no idea,” Daniel answers back honestly. “You look happy.”

“I… feel good.”

“I’m laughing with happiness then.”

Mark snorts at him and blushes down to his still-tingling toes, re-arranging himself so his knees are up under his chin. “Can I help you to…” He trails off and nods in the general direction where Daniel’s still hiding under the covers.

“No,” Daniel says. He is starting to blush as well. “Thank you. But, um, you need to get to work. And I kind of… that was good just as is.”

“That was really weird for you?” Mark’s face falls.

“Not at all. I mean yes, a bit, but it was also fantastic. You’re smiling and you seem happy, and I would do some truly weird shit to make that happen—”

“Good to know.”

“It was just a weird experiment in introspection or something. I had to really focus on me so you could focus on me, so it wasn’t really as much about sex as you’d think.” He cocks his head to the side. “I don’t even know if that makes sense. But trust me when I say it was still my pleasure. I like watching you.”

Mark thinks there’s more to be said, so he waits. Daniel watches him and then dips his gaze and admits. “I can’t draw you so well from memory anymore.”

He smiles without looking up. “My sketches have gone back to being faceless.”

Mark waits for him to look up and then smiles at him, his heart beating fast with the feeling that Daniel is right there with him but also desperate and in agony because they’re an ocean apart. But he does feel better, and there’s a level of trust between them ten years in the making. He trusts Daniel to ask him for whatever is needed. “I would like to make it up to you, you being so good to me today. Could I pose for you? Would that help?” he says.

Daniel looks at him as if it’s the first time he’s even thought of it. “It might. Would that be weird?”

Mark laughs, “Certainly no weirder than what just happened.”

Daniel beams. “Then yes,” he agrees. “But you should get ready for work, and I should get back to mine.”

As Mark gets ready, Daniel stays on Skype with him. He is still under the covers with just the tops of his shoulders showing. He talks to Mark, promises him, over and over, that they are getting there. Mark nods along and believes there’s hope. Daniel reminds him that Christmas is soon, and then it’s only a few more months. Daniel promises him that they can do this—and that Daniel will do everything in his power to make sure that they do.

When he says this, there’s no mistaking the promise that he will deliver whatever Mark needs; and Mark is glad he feels further from begging Daniel to come home than he felt the night before.

***

Rita—of all people, Rita Sutherland,
New York Times
bestselling author—with a very angry publisher and two books now overdue—turns up on the doorstep of Mark’s Brooklyn apartment on the following Friday evening, wind-swept and overloaded with food and a dog.

She wears a slightly ridiculous-looking hat and a billowy white coat and holds bags containing two different types of cake, ice cream, wine and liquor. Milling around her feet, making every effort to tangle her up, is Max. “Happy Birthday, Mark!” she says, managing to sound genuinely celebratory while arching an eyebrow and looking displeased. “Of course I’m over a week late because you’ve skipped out on dinner with me three weeks running, claiming you were too busy when really it turns out you’re in the throes of a complete breakdown. And not once did you call me. But better late than never, right?”

“Hello, Rita. Thank you so much. Why don’t you come in.”

“I know how hard this is, I watched it fall apart the first time, and that you wouldn’t answer my calls—”

“I called him,” Mark tells her as she sweeps past. “I called him and we worked it out.”

“You should be calling everyone,” she chastises and lets Max off his leash so he can rocket up the side of Mark’s leg and into his arms. She dumps the bags of food on his kitchen counter and looks around his apartment at the bag of unfolded laundry and the dirty dishes in the sink, the stacks of paperwork on his coffee table and several dirty coffee cups nearby.

“Sit on the couch and play with the dog,” she orders in a tone that makes him do exactly that. “Are you really feeling better?” she asks.

“Yes.” Mark watches as she leaves her hat on the back of a chair and shrugs her way out of her coat and then her oversized sweater and drapes them similarly over the chair. Then she begins to clean around him and he’s just so happy to have Max in his arms that he doesn’t say anything to stop her. “We talked and Daniel’s amazing. I just overreacted.”

“You didn’t overreact, he’s been missing you just as much.” She fixes him with a look as she collects the coffee cups. “I thought we’d reconnected after that first night at my apartment, and then you wouldn’t talk to me about him and went completely off-grid, and then you reappeared and you were boyfriends! And now you’re not telling me when things go wrong? Only telling me the good things? I’m your friend, Mark and—”

“Rita!” Mark cuts her off. “Daniel sent you?”

“He asked me to check up on you, and I badgered him until he told me you were struggling. I don’t want you to struggle.”

Mark sighs, “I really am better today than I was on the weekend. And he’s coming home for Christmas, which will help immensely.”

“Good.” Rita is momentarily distracted as she tries to find space in the small kitchen to stack everything dirty and get the sink filled. “I’m still going to sleep over tonight and hang out with you and talk about your feelings. And I do mean it when I say happy birthday and I’m sorry that I missed it. Next year we’ll throw you a party!”

“It’s fine. Daniel sent me flowers, orchids… he thinks they’re the same color as my eyes.”

Rita smiles softly at him and then gets back to work. Mark takes this opportunity to slip his phone from his pocket and quickly text Daniel a thank you. Then he goes back to scratching Max, just the way he likes it, in the dip behind his ears.

When Rita is finished cleaning his house for him, a favor she won’t let him forget any time soon, she collapses beside him. “You two have the worst timing ever,” she huffs into his chest as she turns into his body. Mark hugs her back and agrees.

***

They drink wine and vodka lemonades and Mark cries more that night than he can remember crying in his entire adult life. He isn’t even really sure why. When Rita asks him if it feels like ten years ago when he was alone in Illinois, he says it doesn’t. When she asks him if he’s unhappy or jealous or worried Daniel might be on a different page, he says no every time. She gets worked up again because she’s adamant he should have called her, and Mark placates her with more ridiculous details about their five-day date in New York and their long weekend in London.

Sighing heavily, he pushes Max to the floor and moves to inspect the cakes. There’s no cheesecake, which is probably for the best, but there is a dark, heavy chocolate cake and ice cream Rita stashed in the freezer to go with it. After a moment’s consideration, her hands on her stomach as though debating the potential downside, Rita agrees to a slice as well.

When Mark slides into a chair at the dining table, Rita just looks at him with her eyebrow arched again, shakes her head and purses her lips.

“What?” Mark asks.

Rita hesitates for a moment and says, “I know exactly what went down on that table, and who, and if you think I’m eating anything off of it, ever, you are mistaken.”

Mark’s laughing—and Rita is joining him—before he remembers he’s spent the entire evening crying.

Later still, they are well and truly on their way to drunk; Rita has already announced that she is willing to share the bed with Mark when they eventually pass out. She swallows a mouthful of wine and fixes Mark with a hard stare. “You are sure, though, aren’t you?” she asks, fingers scratching behind Max’s shoulders as he sleeps curled up on Mark’s lap.

“Of course,” Mark replies.

“Because he doesn’t show it as much as you, but Danny’s in this just as deep as you are—”

“He told me—”

“—Maybe worse.” Rita waits a beat, lets it sink in, and then asks, “What are you sure of?”

This makes him think, and then it makes him take a deep breath and remember all the things he hopes for. He fights off the ebb of loneliness and thinks of the best things and tells Rita about every single hope and dream he has for the future, some of which he hasn’t even dared to tell Daniel. He takes the abstract—the house, the kids, the stupid joint bank account, the vacations and the domestic spats, all of it—and makes it real by speaking it. He wonders aloud at how fast things could move, at where they’ll be as a couple in a year, in two, and it feels so good to say it all out loud.

When he’s almost asleep, curled around Max, his head in Rita’s lap, the sun starting to rise, Rita plays with his hair and tells him she’s already heard pretty much all these things from Daniel.

***

A few days later, Mark feels almost back to normal; perhaps even better than normal. He can’t lament his current state of loneliness, so he focuses on Christmas instead. Rita reestablishes their standing date for dinner every Wednesday night, and when Mark protests and says he’s busier than ever at work, she just shushes him and tells him she can wait up for him until four in the morning.

Daniel emails more than usual, but his words are carefully chosen. He calls Mark at least once every few days. They are never interrupted by anyone on Daniel’s end.

Then Daniel Skypes him, and Mark can’t help but feel his eyes sting when he sees Daniel’s face set against the familiar backdrop of the black wooden headboard of his bed, the silver-gray walls and the painting of poppies. Mark is surprised and humbled to see tears tracking down Daniel’s cheeks as well. He grins and feels stronger, and eventually Daniel grins back.

They talk about work and the weather and Rita for a few minutes and then Daniel asks, “How are you?”

Mark nods. “I’m better. I still miss you, but I think I’m better.”

There is a lull in the conversation and they talk about Rita again. Mark tells Daniel about the kitchen table, and Daniel blushes red and apologizes for ever having told her anything.

“Oh, I like the scandal,” Mark responds. “I miss having you on my kitchen table.”

Daniel scoffs and turns redder still.

“I watched really bad porn last week before…” He doesn’t know what to call it. “That’s when I saw the ad and called you.”

Daniel knows Mark saw an Internet hookup ad. He knows that’s what made him call and it’s okay. He just nods.

“I miss you is all, I wanna touch you. Can I try touching you?” Mark says, and he sounds and looks so damn earnest with his bright green eyes and his creased forehead. And Daniel knows what he means.

“Let me get my clothes off,” Daniel says, swallowing thickly.

“Let me help,” Mark replies.

***

Mark waits another week to call Daniel’s parents. He doesn’t know how to tell Daniel he’s doing it, but he also doesn’t feel the need to ask permission; they’ve talked about Molly and Greg at length, about Molly’s cancer scare and the layoffs at the factory, and, slowly, Daniel has opened up about his sister Karen and his polarized emotions when it comes to her happy little family. Daniel has reassured Mark that they are fine with him being around again, that they will welcome him back for Christmas, but Mark still feels weird about it. Mark has sent one short email to his father—cc’d to his mother—telling them he’s dating Daniel. He’s gotten no response, not because they are upset but simply because they don’t care. But Daniel’s family matters to him; for years he’d spend as much time at their house as he could, being coddled and loved by Dan’s mom and gruffly accepted by his dad.