Platonic (33 page)

“I need my hands on you,” Daniel says. “And you need your hands on me. This is going to be fun!”

Mark doesn’t say another word, just leaves the car running for the valet and takes Daniel’s small suitcase from the trunk. He follows Daniel into the lobby and stops beside him as Daniel stands there with his hands on his hips, unable to stop grinning. The place is opulently decorated with gold and white faux-baroque architecture and bustling with people wheeling suitcases and still wearing their sunglasses. Daniel grins, waggling his eyebrows, and sets off toward the reception desk.

“Danny, seriously,” Mark says as he follows. “What are we doing?”

Daniel just waves him off. “Spontaneous,” he says again, as though that forgives all sins. The way he smiles, Mark can’t even begin to be annoyed.

Daniel approaches the desk and walks right up to a harried-looking girl with tied-back blonde hair and a frown about her lips. “Hi,” Daniel chirps.

“Hi,” she responds, distracted by her computer. When she looks up, she tries again. “Good afternoon, sir.”

“How are you?” Daniel says, leaning against the counter and smiling his most charming of smiles. Mark remains gobsmacked beside him.

She softens ever so slightly, her brow smoothing as she gives him her full attention. “I’m well, sir. Merry Christmas—”

“Merry Christmas!” Daniel says it too loudly and his excitement is infectious.

The woman has to curb her grin now. “Have you got a reservation, sir?”

Daniel serves up another winning smile. “Nope.”

“No?”

“Nope. What’s available?”

“Two days before Christmas?” She looks down at her computer screen dubiously, the hustle and bustle of a newly opened and highly acclaimed hotel—at Christmas—whipping around them. Sighing, she says, “Let me check and see if there are any cancellations,” and starts diligently typing away.

She looks up, seeming genuinely disappointed. “I’m sorry, sir. There aren’t any rooms available.”

Mark pulls a face that plainly says “I told you so,” and Daniel’s face falls.

“None?” Daniel asks. Mark huffs beside him and hoists Daniel’s shoulder bag higher on his shoulder.

She considers them, her head tilting just a little. “Not unless you want the honeymoon suite.”

Daniel’s eyes light up, his fallen smile recovering quickly as he looks from Mark to her and then back to Mark.

Mark just leans forward, catches Daniel’s eye, and tries very hard to silently communicate that he thinks Daniel has lost his mind.

“Perfect!” Daniel announces after too long a moment, clearly not particularly caring that he is about to blow quite a lot of money.

“Just one night?” the girl asks.

“Make it three, if you can,” Daniel says, and Mark grabs him by the forearm.

“I can’t afford that,” Mark warns.

“I can,” Daniel says and gives him a strange look. “Consider it a Christmas present if you want. We can stay here and drive to my parent’s house for all the important meals and then come back. It’s a vacation,” he stresses.

Behind the counter, the girl cocks her head and coughs to regain Mark’s attention. “For you and your…” She lets her voice trail off.

For the briefest moment, Daniel’s spine straightens and Mark recognizes the defense mechanism for what it was in high school: a reaction to fear of judgment. He hopes that is not about to happen.

“Husband?” she tries, with the barest of smiles breaking through, and Daniel’s face immediately softens, his shoulders going loose, while Mark snorts beside him.

“Fiancé?” she tries again.

“Very cheeky,” Daniel tells her, waggling a finger but still grinning. She shrugs and Mark winks when Daniel isn’t looking.

“Boyfriend,” Mark eventually provides.

“Love of my life,” Daniel corrects.

***

The cost of the room is obscene, but Daniel fixes Mark with a steady stare once they’re in the elevator and tells him, “I’ve got a huge Christmas bonus to spend and I’ve already got custom red-carpet job offers to be picky about, and there’s a long line of investors waiting for me when I move back to New York. Money is not an issue for me right now. Time with you, on the other hand, is a huge issue for me.” Before Mark can argue, he overrides, “And don’t you dare say you want to pay half. This is a gift and we’re going to end up pooling our money anyway, so—”

Mark cuts him off with his mouth, reeling him in by the waist and kissing him soundly. He doesn’t mention the fact that Daniel just alluded to their future—more than that, to their futures intertwined. This reality is still new; even if Rita and Molly talk about it like it’s obvious, Mark and Daniel still don’t quite know how.

Mark will tempt details out of him and revel in them—kid’s names, areas to live, future holiday destinations, Wednesday night movie choices—but joint bank accounts still scare Mark and he’s had no idea how to bring up the subject. They talk about the future less and more abstractly than they did when they were kids, probably because it’s so much more real now. It won’t be a matter of years before they move in together, get married, have their own children; it could all happen in a matter of months. When Mark thinks about it, it seems it will all start the moment Daniel comes home for good, a chain reaction of events that will really mark the beginning of the rest of his life. But there’s always a niggling thought that perhaps Daniel doesn’t see it quite so obviously, so Mark never asks.

Right now isn’t the time for a serious discussion of their finances, either. Mark kisses Daniel and mumbles, “You’re so crazy,” against his mouth and then listens to every word Daniel mumbles back as the elevator climbs quickly to the top floor.

They kiss and touch and fall against each other, saying “God, I’ve missed you,” and “I love you,” and “Thank you,” over and over and over until the elevator dings and they clamber out and quickly find their room.

The honeymoon suite is as obscenely grand as its price, but they don’t notice right away. The hopelessly romantic kissing from the elevator ride dissolves into pure, simple lust as soon as the door clicks closed behind them.

There’s no awkwardness this time because Daniel doesn’t have to ask; Mark just pushes him up against the wall, both of them hard in their pants in moments, and takes from him. Daniel pants and moans against Mark’s ear as Mark bites marks into his collarbone and pulls at his clothes, pressing him harder and harder against the door, refusing to let Daniel go until he’s had his fill.

Daniel mumbles an endless litany of words into Mark’s ear, less and less coherent until it’s just, “Oh God, oh God, oh God.” When he can’t stand it anymore, Mark kisses him, open and hot, owning him, and then pulls back.

“Fuck,” Mark swears as his hips grind forward of their own volition. “Danny,” he says, and Daniel moans. “Dan, tell me you want me as much as I want you right now.”

“Yes,” Daniel snakes his hands down, grabbing and rubbing blindly at the bulge in Mark’s pants, obviously wanting so much of everything but mostly just wanting Mark. Right now. “
Yes.”

“Just keep doing that,” Mark pleads. “Please don’t stop.”

“Won’t.”

“Gonna come just like this.”

They get off against the door just like that, in their pants, within three minutes of entering the room. They’re both pushing thirty, and still coming is easier and more teenaged-feeling than ever before. Ten minutes later, Mark laments his lack of clean underwear and Daniel promises to let him borrow some of his, then strips him naked and pushes him onto the bed. They lie together for as long as they can, not speaking a word, just kissing and touching and grinning at each other.

They’re interrupted by the shrill tone of Daniel’s phone ringing. And as he scrambles for it, hanging halfway off the bed to get it out of the back pocket of his discarded pants, Mark realizes before he’s even answered that it will be Daniel’s parents. Daniel answers as quickly as he can, batting Mark away as a blush creeps up his neck and onto his cheeks.

Hearing only one side of the conversation, Mark eventually settles to rubbing up and down one of Daniel’s calves, watching the hair smooth down and then mess back up over and over again.

When Daniel hangs up, they talk schedules. It’s the twenty-third, and his mom had taken the phone from his father to demand that Daniel be home for brunch and Christmas tree-decorating tomorrow. Daniel has negotiated Christmas Eve free, arguing that his entire family falls asleep before eight anyway. Christmas Day will, of course, be lunch, and too much food, and if they want to drink they’ll need to organize a ride. His parents don’t mind so much if they’re not around for the days after Christmas; but his mother grumbles enough—mostly on behalf of his father—for Daniel to decide that, once they’ve checked out, he’ll spend a full day at home doing whatever his parents want.

“Shit,” Daniel says, once he’s relayed all this information. He sits up and turns to look down at Mark. “I didn’t even… what about your family?”

“I’ll see them for New Year’s,” Mark says, shrugging as he frowns. “I’ve already been home a few days and things are still bitterly cold over the whole D.A. job. They won’t care if I skip things.”

“I didn’t even think; I’m so sorry,” Daniel admits. “I just really needed to get you alone. You don’t even want to go over there for Christmas?”

Mark shrugs again. “I’ll call them later and see what they think. One appearance by the both of us might not be the worst idea.”

Daniel nods his agreement. “You haven’t really told me how keen they are about me being back…”

“Oh, they’re super excited,” Mark drawls, clearly joking. “They think it’s your fault I took the D.A. job.”

“Is it?”

“How could it be? I took it before I found you again. That was all for me. Being with you is also all for me.” He grins and rubs a hand down Daniel’s arm. “They don’t like my newfound independence.”

Daniel gives him a nod, captures Mark’s hand in his and kisses at his fingertips.

“My mom understands,” Daniel says, blushing as though just realizing exactly how much his mother probably understands. “I mean, why we got the hotel and just need us time. She’ll give us our space. And anyway, we won’t have the hotel after the twenty-sixth, so I’ll have a couple of days stuck within the confines of my house. My parents will deal with it.” He pauses and kisses the back of Mark’s hand. “They know how important you are to me,” he says.

The moment is serious, both of them watching each other, naked on the bed, locked inside their own perfect bubble. Mark is the one to break the moment, pushing Daniel back down into the sheets and kissing him slowly.

“I hope you thought this through and brought lube,” he teases.

Daniel’s face lights up and he comes up on his elbows under Mark to give him another kiss. “Oh, you have no idea! Thank God TSA didn’t search my luggage. It would have been the most embarrassing moment of my life.” He shifts out from under Mark and pulls his bag up onto the table near the windows.

As he unzips it, all Mark can think to say is, “Are you serious?”

Daniel looks at him, pauses a moment and then blushes. “There’s a shop just around the corner from my apartment. All they sell is lube and sex toys and condoms, catering to the gay community, mostly, it’s kind of ridiculous… I’ve spent more time there than I’d like to admit, actually.”

He pulls a dark purple plastic bag out of his suitcase.

“You really did just fly all this way to fuck me,” Mark teases from the bed. “To think, if you hadn’t been spontaneous we’d be trying to get everything done in your high school bed under your parents’ roof.”

Daniel grins. “I’d already arranged for my parents to go out for dinner tonight. I had plans.”

“I like the sound of your plans.”

Daniel keeps smiling as he brings the bag over to the bed and empties the contents over the sheets.

***

They don’t use any of the condoms despite Daniel having brought more than they need in a dazzling array of colors and with various special features. There’s a quick, breathless conversation and then hard, desperate kissing, during which most of the bag’s contents fall to the floor. They get sticky and messy with lube that smells like nothing and then with lube that smells like berries and when Mark discovers it tastes that way as well, he smears it in places it really isn’t needed and they kiss it off of each other. They get off again just with their mouths and rubbing their bodies together all tangled in the sheets, a mess of sweat and saliva and come. It’s wonderful, and perfect, and just as they’re falling asleep Daniel tells Mark he thinks he’ll be back in New York by Easter.

***

Greg looks determinedly displeased when they turn up at ten the next morning for brunch. He’s standing on his front porch with his arms crossed as they pull into the driveway, and he stands his ground until the pair of them make their way to him, heads bowed a little, Mark trailing behind Daniel.

They stand there for a second, and then Mark babbles and apologizes and doesn’t quite know how to explain to Daniel’s 
dad
 that they’ve been too caught up in each other’s bodies to do the whole family Christmas thing, and then he babbles about being happy he’s back in Daniel’s life and apologizes to Greg for that taking him so long.

Daniel stares at him and Greg waves him off, his stern exterior breaking open as one side of his mouth turns up. “Relax, I get it.” He looks at Daniel and then back at Mark and says, “I’m happy for you.” He puts an arm around Daniel’s shoulder, draws him in for a proper hug and then walks in with him like that. Mark follows.

Inside the house, Daniel’s mom lets out an excited shriek to see her son. “Oh my God, you’re finally back!” she says, grabbing him by his shoulders and pulling him out of Greg’s arms. She embraces him and doesn’t let go. Mark stands there blushing with his arms locked to his sides.

“Mom, please.”

She lets him go. “It has been over a year!” she chastises. “And I know you’re busy with work and,” her eyes flick to Mark, “other things.” She beams at him. “But still.”

“I know,” Daniel admits, “I’m sorry. I think after this year I’ll be set up a bit better and might actually be able to take vacations. I’m gonna try to do better.”