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twobirdsonesongTitle: Prix Fixe
Pairing: Chris/Darren
Length/Rating: ~2,800 / G
Summary: Chris is famous, Darren is not. They meet at a restaurant. I’m great at summaries.
Read on AO3
Darren knows exactly who he is the moment the man walks by his table – Chris Colfer, movie star. Darren would recognize him anywhere. Tall in a blue shirt and grey tie, Chris strides by Darren’s booth without even glancing at him before taking a seat at a two-top near the back. He sits with his back to the rest of the dining room, even though it means he can’t see someone approaching him. He pulls out his cell phone while he waits and doesn’t fidget at all.
Darren does not even try to hide that he’s staring. Of course he’s staring. He’s never seen Chris in person before and the screen, big or small, doesn’t do him justice. He’s thinner than Darren expected, with darker hair than it sometimes seems on camera. He’s compelling, though, and if they were in a bar Darren would already be halfway over to his table with a drink and a smile.
Sean, the waiter, comes by with Darren’s lunch and Darren taps his elbow. “Hey,” he whispers. “Look who just came in. Over there.”
Sean doesn’t even look over at where Chris is still waiting alone at his table. “Oh, I know. We all got briefed on it this morning. Like he’s the first famous person to come in.”
“What’s he doing here?”
Sean shrugs. “Business meeting, I think. It’s not like his people left a note or anything. Just that they wanted a more private table. He seems nice though. Cute.”
“Hot,” Darren corrects, grinning.
“Don’t be creepy,” Sean chides, tapping Darren’s shoulder before he slips away.
A blonde woman in a black dress breezes past Darren’s booth, heading for the table Chris is sat at with easy confidence. She slides her hand across Chris’ shoulder as she passes him and bends to press a kiss to his cheek. Darren would be jealous if he didn’t know Chris was out. He’s a fan; he knows a few things.
Darren has work he should be doing, but instead he spends his lunch watching Chris and his companion. Or rather, he spends it watching the back of Chris’ head and the movement of his hands as he talks. The woman laughs a lot, and takes at least two pictures of their food, which Darren can’t totally blame her for. The food at this place is phenomenal; it’s why he’s here as often as he is. That and because the maître d’ is an old roommate of his and the chef is a friend of his father.
But Darren can’t spend the whole afternoon pretending not to be done with his lunch just so he can spy on a celebrity. He’s got rehearsals to get back to and some dignity to preserve, however thin it is. Reluctantly, Darren leaves plenty of cash on the table and scooches out of the booth.
The woman across from Chris glances up and Darren swears she smirks at him.
On his way out, Darren leans in close to Nate, the maitre d’ and says, “Let me know next time he makes a reservation.”
Nate laughs and shakes his head. “Get the hell out of my restaurant, Criss.”
***
The booth near the back is Darren’s table. It doesn’t quite have his name on it, but it’s his. It’s a comfortable four-top and Darren usually sits in it alone. He didn’t mean to end up with a regular restaurant, especially not one in Midtown. But it’s close to work if not his apartment and Michael’s sees more than its share of interesting clientele, and Darren likes to snoop. He calls it research. It certainly doesn’t hurt that he knows the staff and can get more than what he pays for.
The next day rehearsals almost run straight through lunch until a few musicians start teasing about Equity rules and unions. Darren waves good-naturedly as the cast scatters for their much needed break. Normally he’d go with them, but he’s got some ideas for the score he wants to work out before he loses the thread dancing just on the edges of his mind. He thinks briefly about running over to Michael’s – just to see, just in case Chris is there again, but he gets a salad from downstairs and keeps working. The odds are not in his favor, after all.
***
On Friday he’s craving pizza after a week of quinoa, kale, and grilled chicken and he slips over to Michael’s just as soon as lunch break is called. It’s a bit busy for an afternoon without matinees and Nate greets him with a suspicious frown instead of open arms.
“What?” Darren asks.
“Who told you?”
“Who told me what?”
Nate narrows his eyes, and Darren’s stomach flips as he peers over Nate’s shoulder. Seated at the back of the house, once again near Darren’s booth, is Chris Colfer.
“Tell me who told you; I promise I won’t fire them.”
Darren rolls his eyes. “No one told me anything. Put your judgmental eyebrows away. I just want pizza.”
“You can sit at the bar,” Nate tells him.
“Nonsense,” Darren snorts and pats Nate on the cheek with more fondness than condescension.
Chris isn’t sitting with his back to the front of the restaurant this time; instead, he faces Darren’s booth. He’s not alone; a somewhat sleazy looking man with slicked back hair sits across from him. Darren knows a business lunch when he sees one. It makes sense that Chris would be taking meetings.
Darren walks towards his table as casually as possible even though he can’t stop staring at Chris. He’s wearing a dark green shirt this time and a grey tie that Darren is pretty sure is the same one from before.
As Darren slides into his booth, he catches Chris watching him, just for a moment, the way anyone would glance at someone else sitting down nearby, before he turns his attention back to the other man. He doesn’t seem very interested in the conversation however, if the blank look on his face is anything to go by.
The man with the bad hair has his phone out on the table and he plays with it constantly. Darren strains to catch snippets of what they’re discussing – diversification, royalty structure, alternative investments – but there’s just enough background noise that Darren can’t get much more.
Sean comes by with a glass of seltzer water and lemon because Darren isn’t supposed to drink during rehearsals.
“Creep,” he chides, tapping Darren on the shoulder.
“What? I’m hungry.”
“Not just for the food, I’m guessing.”
Darren would blush if he had any shame. Chris is hot; Darren is allowed to want. “You gonna take my order or what?”
Sean smirks. “Can’t bring him to you on a platter. Sorry.”
“What about the mushroom pizza?”
“That we have.”
Usually Darren brings a book with him to lunch, or works on notes for the show. He doesn’t mind eating alone; he got used to it in college when his class schedule ended up just different enough from his friends. He perfected it when he moved to New York and found ways to make time and space for himself in the midst of chaos. Today he has a back issue of The New Yorker, but he hardly reads a word.
Chris is captivating to watch. Darren knew this already from Chris’ movies, but it’s something else in person. He seems cautious as he speaks to his lunch companion, guarded; he smiles when appropriate, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He has the remnants of a cobb salad in front of him, but he keeps reaching for the bread basket like he can’t quite help himself despite his best intentions. Darren totally understands.
Darren is halfway through his pizza and in the middle of one of his routine glances over when Chris suddenly catches his eye and holds his gaze. Darren freezes, startled, and then blushes furiously when Chris lifts an amused eyebrow at him.
More embarrassed than he would ever admit, Darren tears his gaze away and resolutely stares at his magazine while shoving pizza into his mouth.
Eventually he hears chairs scraping as Chris and his companion stand.
“So I’ll be in touch then,” the other man says, too loudly.
“Yeah, great” Chris responds, but it does not sound like he means it.
Darren keeps his eyes focused low on the page as the two men start to walk away, but when fingers tap his table he looks up just in time to see Chris walking by, smirking down at him.
“You should try turning the page once in a while,” Chris comments, and then he’s gone.
Darren splutters and drips pizza sauce on his shirt.
***
When Darren gets home that night after rehearsals, he does the laundry and then spends too many hours Googling Chris Colfer while sitting on the sofa with a bag of pita chips.
He starts small – age, hometown, the basics. Simple things, really.
Darren knows who he is, of course; he’s a fan. But he’s not a fan. He’s gone to Chris’ movies before, but so has everyone else. There’s nothing unusual about that at all. And over the years he’s picked up a couple of magazines with Chris’ face on the cover: GQ, Out, Men’s Health; now all gathering dust on some bookshelf somewhere in his apartment. He’s a fan; he’s not weird about it.
But it doesn’t take long before Darren is deep into the back pages of Chris’ life, pulling quotes buried in old interviews and listening to sound bites from years ago. Chris is good at obfuscating; Darren gives him credit for that. Thousands of written words and Darren can tell that Chris has cunningly managed to reveal very little about himself that’s true. It’s impressive, Darren can admit, to remain so private in the public eye.
But one thing that does seem to be agreed upon is that Chris doesn’t date. At all. More than a handful of the interviews include commentary about the “notoriously single movie star.” More than one interview calls him “guarded” and “aloof,” even while praising his work on screen, as though they are somehow related.
Darren thinks that maybe he understands. Dating is hard enough when both parties are no one; getting to know someone new is scary enough on its own merits. Doing it on unequal terms while the world watches? Darren can understand making the choice to back away from that.
But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to find out more about Chris.
***
Frankly, Darren has no rational or logical idea of how he’ll run into Chris again, and he spends half of Saturday thinking about it. He lives in New York, but Chris seems to frequent both coasts with regularity. Darren can stalk Chris’ carefully curated social media accounts to see where he might be, but Darren is fully aware that posting something in New York City doesn’t mean he’s still there. The probability of randomly passing him on the street is negligible, and he’s certainly not going to Tweet at Chris “hey, saw you at lunch a couple times, thought you were cute.” The fact that he saw him at the same restaurant twice in the same week is boggling enough.
It’s a fool’s errand, Darren is sure, but he’s been a fool before and will be again. So he does the one thing he knows how to do: he calls up the restaurant.
“Michael’s New York, how can I help you?” Nate answers.
“Have I ever told you how sexy your phone voice is?” Darren begins.
“Every time you want something.”
“I need a favor,” says Darren and he can absolutely hear Nate’s eye-roll.
“Of course you do.”
“Do I ask you for so much that you can’t grant me this one little boon?” Darren paces around his apartment and resolutely does not look at the magazine spread open on the table. It had just been a little research.
Nate sighs, “What?”
“Who’s coming in today?”
“Darren,” Nate groans.
“Come on.”
“You know I’m not supposed to do that.”
“And I’ve never asked you before, have I?” Darren rubs his jaw with the heel of his hand. “Is he coming in again?”
“You’re a stalker,” Nate admonishes, but he sounds like he’s smiling.
“I just, you know, want to meet him.”
“You want to fuck him, you mean.”
Darren blushes, even though he’s alone. “No,” he protests. “Well, yes, obviously, but also I just want to get to know him a little. He seems…interesting.” Darren thinks about Chris catching him staring and calling him out on it, and his stomach gives a happy little twist. Chris could have ignored him completely, but he didn’t.
“You’re honestly crazy.”
Darren cannot deny that. He thought the same by the time he was three years back in Chris’ Instagram account.
“Come on, Nate. Don’t make me beg. I’ll beg, and you know how bad at it I am. And how sad it makes everyone when I try.”
Nate sighs like he wishes he’d never met Darren. “He’s coming in tonight.”
Darren’s stomach twists again. “Tonight?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
“What time?”
“Darren…”
“Come on,” Darren groans. “You’ve already told me this much. Don’t make me sit in your bar all night waiting, because I will. And I’ll run up a huge tab that I won’t pay. And I’ll scare off the other customers. And I’ll write a bad review on Yelp.”
“Jesus you’re annoying. Eight o’clock.”
Darren looks at the clock on the wall. He’s got time. “Thank you.”
“When he files a restraining order against you I don’t want to hear any bitching.”
“Love you, too.” Darren hangs up and puts his hands on his hips. He’s got a couple hours to pull himself together and try to pretend he’s a normal human being.
***
Darren gets to the restaurant ten minutes before eight, but Chris is already there. He’s seated in Darren’s booth, facing the front of the house, and they see each other at the same time as Darren walks in.
Chris does not move, he does not gesture. He simply stares at Darren from across the restaurant with an unreadable expression.
“Shit,” Darren breathes as color rushes to his face. This is already not going how he expected it might.
“Well,” Nate says, leaning into Darren. “Go on.”
“What?”
Nate smirks infuriatingly. “Your table is waiting.” He nods in Chris’ direction. Darren’s stomach hits the floor while his heart lodges in his throat. He suddenly has the distinct impression that he’s been set up.
“Assholes,” Darren mutters.
The journey back to the booth feels like the longest mile. Darren is certain everyone in the restaurant is staring at a dead man walking. He swallows heavily and keeps going.
Chris does not stand when Darren reaches the table. He doesn’t smile; he simply stares up at Darren with something like smugness around his mouth. He’s wearing a blue shirt and a jacket and Darren wishes he himself had put on a tie, or at least done something more with his hair.
“I think this is my table,” Darren says instead of a hello.
“There was no reservation,” Chris counters. His eyes are dark in the dim lighting; shadows highlight his cheekbones.
“I scratched my name into the wood.”
“Sit down before you cause a scene.”
Darren glances around; a few people are in fact looking over curiously, though probably simply because he’s talking to a movie star. It’s strange to sit on a different side of the booth, and with someone across from him. When he does go on dates, he doesn’t bring them here; this is his place. But now Chris is sitting across from him, staring directly at him.
“So…” Darren lets the word drag from his lips.
“So.”
“You waiting for someone?”
Chris’ lips twitch. “Not anymore.”
Darren blinks and grins. “That was smooth. Usually that’s my job.”
“You make a habit of stalking people at restaurants?”
“I wasn’t stalking. This is my restaurant. In fact, you were stalking me, I think. Boundaries, dude.” The nervous tension begins to ease from Darren’s chest.
“What’s your name?”
“Darren.”
Chris nods, like he’s making a decision. “Do you want to have dinner with me?”
The nerves that had dissipated slam back into Darren’s gut. “What?”
Finally, Chris smiles. Just a little, just in the corner of his mouth. “Do you want to have dinner with me? We have this booth, after all. A little bit of privacy back here.”
Darren rubs his hands on the fine tablecloth. “Would be a shame to let it go to waste.”
Chris nods and he’s smiling more. “Yes, it would. I put on this jacket, after all.”
“Oh, is that for me?”
Chris shrugs, guileless, and Darren is pretty sure he’s done for.
“So…” Darren asks, letting the confidence come back to him. “What’s good here?”
Chris laughs, bright and delighted, and it all clicks into place. Darren doesn’t think he’ll mind sharing his restaurant with someone anymore.
Pairing: Chris/Darren
Length/Rating: ~2,800 / G
Summary: Chris is famous, Darren is not. They meet at a restaurant. I’m great at summaries.
Read on AO3
Darren knows exactly who he is the moment the man walks by his table – Chris Colfer, movie star. Darren would recognize him anywhere. Tall in a blue shirt and grey tie, Chris strides by Darren’s booth without even glancing at him before taking a seat at a two-top near the back. He sits with his back to the rest of the dining room, even though it means he can’t see someone approaching him. He pulls out his cell phone while he waits and doesn’t fidget at all.
Darren does not even try to hide that he’s staring. Of course he’s staring. He’s never seen Chris in person before and the screen, big or small, doesn’t do him justice. He’s thinner than Darren expected, with darker hair than it sometimes seems on camera. He’s compelling, though, and if they were in a bar Darren would already be halfway over to his table with a drink and a smile.
Sean, the waiter, comes by with Darren’s lunch and Darren taps his elbow. “Hey,” he whispers. “Look who just came in. Over there.”
Sean doesn’t even look over at where Chris is still waiting alone at his table. “Oh, I know. We all got briefed on it this morning. Like he’s the first famous person to come in.”
“What’s he doing here?”
Sean shrugs. “Business meeting, I think. It’s not like his people left a note or anything. Just that they wanted a more private table. He seems nice though. Cute.”
“Hot,” Darren corrects, grinning.
“Don’t be creepy,” Sean chides, tapping Darren’s shoulder before he slips away.
A blonde woman in a black dress breezes past Darren’s booth, heading for the table Chris is sat at with easy confidence. She slides her hand across Chris’ shoulder as she passes him and bends to press a kiss to his cheek. Darren would be jealous if he didn’t know Chris was out. He’s a fan; he knows a few things.
Darren has work he should be doing, but instead he spends his lunch watching Chris and his companion. Or rather, he spends it watching the back of Chris’ head and the movement of his hands as he talks. The woman laughs a lot, and takes at least two pictures of their food, which Darren can’t totally blame her for. The food at this place is phenomenal; it’s why he’s here as often as he is. That and because the maître d’ is an old roommate of his and the chef is a friend of his father.
But Darren can’t spend the whole afternoon pretending not to be done with his lunch just so he can spy on a celebrity. He’s got rehearsals to get back to and some dignity to preserve, however thin it is. Reluctantly, Darren leaves plenty of cash on the table and scooches out of the booth.
The woman across from Chris glances up and Darren swears she smirks at him.
On his way out, Darren leans in close to Nate, the maitre d’ and says, “Let me know next time he makes a reservation.”
Nate laughs and shakes his head. “Get the hell out of my restaurant, Criss.”
***
The booth near the back is Darren’s table. It doesn’t quite have his name on it, but it’s his. It’s a comfortable four-top and Darren usually sits in it alone. He didn’t mean to end up with a regular restaurant, especially not one in Midtown. But it’s close to work if not his apartment and Michael’s sees more than its share of interesting clientele, and Darren likes to snoop. He calls it research. It certainly doesn’t hurt that he knows the staff and can get more than what he pays for.
The next day rehearsals almost run straight through lunch until a few musicians start teasing about Equity rules and unions. Darren waves good-naturedly as the cast scatters for their much needed break. Normally he’d go with them, but he’s got some ideas for the score he wants to work out before he loses the thread dancing just on the edges of his mind. He thinks briefly about running over to Michael’s – just to see, just in case Chris is there again, but he gets a salad from downstairs and keeps working. The odds are not in his favor, after all.
***
On Friday he’s craving pizza after a week of quinoa, kale, and grilled chicken and he slips over to Michael’s just as soon as lunch break is called. It’s a bit busy for an afternoon without matinees and Nate greets him with a suspicious frown instead of open arms.
“What?” Darren asks.
“Who told you?”
“Who told me what?”
Nate narrows his eyes, and Darren’s stomach flips as he peers over Nate’s shoulder. Seated at the back of the house, once again near Darren’s booth, is Chris Colfer.
“Tell me who told you; I promise I won’t fire them.”
Darren rolls his eyes. “No one told me anything. Put your judgmental eyebrows away. I just want pizza.”
“You can sit at the bar,” Nate tells him.
“Nonsense,” Darren snorts and pats Nate on the cheek with more fondness than condescension.
Chris isn’t sitting with his back to the front of the restaurant this time; instead, he faces Darren’s booth. He’s not alone; a somewhat sleazy looking man with slicked back hair sits across from him. Darren knows a business lunch when he sees one. It makes sense that Chris would be taking meetings.
Darren walks towards his table as casually as possible even though he can’t stop staring at Chris. He’s wearing a dark green shirt this time and a grey tie that Darren is pretty sure is the same one from before.
As Darren slides into his booth, he catches Chris watching him, just for a moment, the way anyone would glance at someone else sitting down nearby, before he turns his attention back to the other man. He doesn’t seem very interested in the conversation however, if the blank look on his face is anything to go by.
The man with the bad hair has his phone out on the table and he plays with it constantly. Darren strains to catch snippets of what they’re discussing – diversification, royalty structure, alternative investments – but there’s just enough background noise that Darren can’t get much more.
Sean comes by with a glass of seltzer water and lemon because Darren isn’t supposed to drink during rehearsals.
“Creep,” he chides, tapping Darren on the shoulder.
“What? I’m hungry.”
“Not just for the food, I’m guessing.”
Darren would blush if he had any shame. Chris is hot; Darren is allowed to want. “You gonna take my order or what?”
Sean smirks. “Can’t bring him to you on a platter. Sorry.”
“What about the mushroom pizza?”
“That we have.”
Usually Darren brings a book with him to lunch, or works on notes for the show. He doesn’t mind eating alone; he got used to it in college when his class schedule ended up just different enough from his friends. He perfected it when he moved to New York and found ways to make time and space for himself in the midst of chaos. Today he has a back issue of The New Yorker, but he hardly reads a word.
Chris is captivating to watch. Darren knew this already from Chris’ movies, but it’s something else in person. He seems cautious as he speaks to his lunch companion, guarded; he smiles when appropriate, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He has the remnants of a cobb salad in front of him, but he keeps reaching for the bread basket like he can’t quite help himself despite his best intentions. Darren totally understands.
Darren is halfway through his pizza and in the middle of one of his routine glances over when Chris suddenly catches his eye and holds his gaze. Darren freezes, startled, and then blushes furiously when Chris lifts an amused eyebrow at him.
More embarrassed than he would ever admit, Darren tears his gaze away and resolutely stares at his magazine while shoving pizza into his mouth.
Eventually he hears chairs scraping as Chris and his companion stand.
“So I’ll be in touch then,” the other man says, too loudly.
“Yeah, great” Chris responds, but it does not sound like he means it.
Darren keeps his eyes focused low on the page as the two men start to walk away, but when fingers tap his table he looks up just in time to see Chris walking by, smirking down at him.
“You should try turning the page once in a while,” Chris comments, and then he’s gone.
Darren splutters and drips pizza sauce on his shirt.
***
When Darren gets home that night after rehearsals, he does the laundry and then spends too many hours Googling Chris Colfer while sitting on the sofa with a bag of pita chips.
He starts small – age, hometown, the basics. Simple things, really.
Darren knows who he is, of course; he’s a fan. But he’s not a fan. He’s gone to Chris’ movies before, but so has everyone else. There’s nothing unusual about that at all. And over the years he’s picked up a couple of magazines with Chris’ face on the cover: GQ, Out, Men’s Health; now all gathering dust on some bookshelf somewhere in his apartment. He’s a fan; he’s not weird about it.
But it doesn’t take long before Darren is deep into the back pages of Chris’ life, pulling quotes buried in old interviews and listening to sound bites from years ago. Chris is good at obfuscating; Darren gives him credit for that. Thousands of written words and Darren can tell that Chris has cunningly managed to reveal very little about himself that’s true. It’s impressive, Darren can admit, to remain so private in the public eye.
But one thing that does seem to be agreed upon is that Chris doesn’t date. At all. More than a handful of the interviews include commentary about the “notoriously single movie star.” More than one interview calls him “guarded” and “aloof,” even while praising his work on screen, as though they are somehow related.
Darren thinks that maybe he understands. Dating is hard enough when both parties are no one; getting to know someone new is scary enough on its own merits. Doing it on unequal terms while the world watches? Darren can understand making the choice to back away from that.
But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to find out more about Chris.
***
Frankly, Darren has no rational or logical idea of how he’ll run into Chris again, and he spends half of Saturday thinking about it. He lives in New York, but Chris seems to frequent both coasts with regularity. Darren can stalk Chris’ carefully curated social media accounts to see where he might be, but Darren is fully aware that posting something in New York City doesn’t mean he’s still there. The probability of randomly passing him on the street is negligible, and he’s certainly not going to Tweet at Chris “hey, saw you at lunch a couple times, thought you were cute.” The fact that he saw him at the same restaurant twice in the same week is boggling enough.
It’s a fool’s errand, Darren is sure, but he’s been a fool before and will be again. So he does the one thing he knows how to do: he calls up the restaurant.
“Michael’s New York, how can I help you?” Nate answers.
“Have I ever told you how sexy your phone voice is?” Darren begins.
“Every time you want something.”
“I need a favor,” says Darren and he can absolutely hear Nate’s eye-roll.
“Of course you do.”
“Do I ask you for so much that you can’t grant me this one little boon?” Darren paces around his apartment and resolutely does not look at the magazine spread open on the table. It had just been a little research.
Nate sighs, “What?”
“Who’s coming in today?”
“Darren,” Nate groans.
“Come on.”
“You know I’m not supposed to do that.”
“And I’ve never asked you before, have I?” Darren rubs his jaw with the heel of his hand. “Is he coming in again?”
“You’re a stalker,” Nate admonishes, but he sounds like he’s smiling.
“I just, you know, want to meet him.”
“You want to fuck him, you mean.”
Darren blushes, even though he’s alone. “No,” he protests. “Well, yes, obviously, but also I just want to get to know him a little. He seems…interesting.” Darren thinks about Chris catching him staring and calling him out on it, and his stomach gives a happy little twist. Chris could have ignored him completely, but he didn’t.
“You’re honestly crazy.”
Darren cannot deny that. He thought the same by the time he was three years back in Chris’ Instagram account.
“Come on, Nate. Don’t make me beg. I’ll beg, and you know how bad at it I am. And how sad it makes everyone when I try.”
Nate sighs like he wishes he’d never met Darren. “He’s coming in tonight.”
Darren’s stomach twists again. “Tonight?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
“What time?”
“Darren…”
“Come on,” Darren groans. “You’ve already told me this much. Don’t make me sit in your bar all night waiting, because I will. And I’ll run up a huge tab that I won’t pay. And I’ll scare off the other customers. And I’ll write a bad review on Yelp.”
“Jesus you’re annoying. Eight o’clock.”
Darren looks at the clock on the wall. He’s got time. “Thank you.”
“When he files a restraining order against you I don’t want to hear any bitching.”
“Love you, too.” Darren hangs up and puts his hands on his hips. He’s got a couple hours to pull himself together and try to pretend he’s a normal human being.
***
Darren gets to the restaurant ten minutes before eight, but Chris is already there. He’s seated in Darren’s booth, facing the front of the house, and they see each other at the same time as Darren walks in.
Chris does not move, he does not gesture. He simply stares at Darren from across the restaurant with an unreadable expression.
“Shit,” Darren breathes as color rushes to his face. This is already not going how he expected it might.
“Well,” Nate says, leaning into Darren. “Go on.”
“What?”
Nate smirks infuriatingly. “Your table is waiting.” He nods in Chris’ direction. Darren’s stomach hits the floor while his heart lodges in his throat. He suddenly has the distinct impression that he’s been set up.
“Assholes,” Darren mutters.
The journey back to the booth feels like the longest mile. Darren is certain everyone in the restaurant is staring at a dead man walking. He swallows heavily and keeps going.
Chris does not stand when Darren reaches the table. He doesn’t smile; he simply stares up at Darren with something like smugness around his mouth. He’s wearing a blue shirt and a jacket and Darren wishes he himself had put on a tie, or at least done something more with his hair.
“I think this is my table,” Darren says instead of a hello.
“There was no reservation,” Chris counters. His eyes are dark in the dim lighting; shadows highlight his cheekbones.
“I scratched my name into the wood.”
“Sit down before you cause a scene.”
Darren glances around; a few people are in fact looking over curiously, though probably simply because he’s talking to a movie star. It’s strange to sit on a different side of the booth, and with someone across from him. When he does go on dates, he doesn’t bring them here; this is his place. But now Chris is sitting across from him, staring directly at him.
“So…” Darren lets the word drag from his lips.
“So.”
“You waiting for someone?”
Chris’ lips twitch. “Not anymore.”
Darren blinks and grins. “That was smooth. Usually that’s my job.”
“You make a habit of stalking people at restaurants?”
“I wasn’t stalking. This is my restaurant. In fact, you were stalking me, I think. Boundaries, dude.” The nervous tension begins to ease from Darren’s chest.
“What’s your name?”
“Darren.”
Chris nods, like he’s making a decision. “Do you want to have dinner with me?”
The nerves that had dissipated slam back into Darren’s gut. “What?”
Finally, Chris smiles. Just a little, just in the corner of his mouth. “Do you want to have dinner with me? We have this booth, after all. A little bit of privacy back here.”
Darren rubs his hands on the fine tablecloth. “Would be a shame to let it go to waste.”
Chris nods and he’s smiling more. “Yes, it would. I put on this jacket, after all.”
“Oh, is that for me?”
Chris shrugs, guileless, and Darren is pretty sure he’s done for.
“So…” Darren asks, letting the confidence come back to him. “What’s good here?”
Chris laughs, bright and delighted, and it all clicks into place. Darren doesn’t think he’ll mind sharing his restaurant with someone anymore.
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