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twobirdsonesongTitle: Don’t Think Twice (It’s All Right)
Pairing: Chris/Darren
Rating/Length: R / ~8,350
Summary: Sometimes you just wanna write a bog-standard cabin!fic, you know?
Many thanks to heavenorspace who supplied the porny bits.
Read on AO3
It’s a four-hour drive up into nowhere and Chris spends most of it listening to Darren live blog whatever comes up on his exceedingly eclectic Spotify playlist. He doesn’t mind; Darren’s chatter is as comforting as the tires of Chris’ SUV against the salted pavement and the warmth of the blankets piled up in the back and the scent of the bagels they had for breakfast on the road.
Early mornings in the car with Darren are a special kind of sanctuary.
Halfway into the drive, the desert rises into greener hills and the dust becomes snow. Winter in Los Angeles is scarcely different than another other time of the year, but late December higher up in the mountains is as snow-capped and glistening as anywhere else.
Chris is drifting in and out to the timbre of Darren’s voice when the interstate gives way to a winding, switch-baking highway, which then disappears into a single lane road as the snow piles higher and higher around them. The trees are still and wintergreen and the boughs hang heavy with a fresh layer of snow. Head tilted towards the window, Chris thinks it’s beautiful.
“Who’s plowing the roads up here?” He asks. The cleared highway is one thing, but Chris is pretty sure they’re about to leave regularly tended roads behind.
“I called ahead and had a guy come through for us,” Darren says, glancing over at Chris. “He’s a cool dude, Ed. He does all the driveways and stuff in the area. He lives about 20 minutes further up the road. It’s a good thing too; otherwise there’s a good chance we’d get stuck before we even get there, this time of year.”
It’s not much farther before Darren turns up a narrow, freshly plowed driveway and Chris stares through the windshield at the house that suddenly rises up ahead.
With a pitched roof, fine stonework, and a wooden wrap-around deck, the two-story home looks like something out of a winter fairytale. Complete with frost on the windows and gleaming icicles along the eaves.
“Your family has a ski lodge in the mountains,” Chris murmurs as the car rolls to a stop alongside the house.
Darren snorts. “Are you really surprised? And it’s more of a cabin, really.”
Chris just rolls his eyes fondly as he gets out of the car. He’s not surprised at all. When Darren had told him that he wanted to get away and go somewhere for a post-family-Christmas-pre-back-to-work-vacation, Chris had visions of Europe. Paris, maybe. Strasbourg even. A fine hotel room they barely leave and a country they hardly see. He had not anticipated Darren announcing that he was taking them to his family’s spare house nestled up in the frosty mountains close to a ski resort.
“Mom and dad won’t be using it,” Darren had said. “We’ll be nice and alone.” Darren’s lascivious wink had been more than enough to get Chris to agree to cut his own trip home to see his family for the holidays a day or two short.
“A cabin,” Chris repeats, letting his voice drip with incredulity. “Sure. If calling it that helps you sleep at night.”
Chris grabs his over-stuffed backpack and his laptop from the backseat. They’ve got bags of groceries and piles of bedding to bring in too, but Chris wants to see the inside of the house.
Snow crunches under his boots as they head up the gravel pathway and the stone steps to the front door. Darren has the key and Chris feels a strange, fluttering anticipation in his belly as the lock clicks over. He’s entered many a room with Darren, walked through many a door, but this house belongs to Darren’s family and they’re here alone around Christmas and there’s something about it all that makes Chris’ breath catch tight in his chest as he crosses the threshold half a step behind Darren.
It’s dark inside, despite the weak winter sunlight struggling to get through the windows. But Darren takes a few steps inside and flicks a switch and suddenly everything is illuminated in warm light.
Chris stares. It’s every ski lodge he’s ever seen in a movie or magazine in his life, with exposed beams and rich wooden floors and expensive looking rugs for warmth and decoration. There’s even a grand stone fireplace in the living room, cold now, but with the promise of flickering heat later.
“Your family is ridiculous,” Chris scoffs, looking around.
“What?” Darren drops his own bags on the floor. “Oh come on, it’s not that big,” he says, looking around the place with an air of familiarity. Chris imagines Darren, younger and smaller, scampering through this house bundled up for a day of skiing.
Chris presses his lips together against a smile. “Don’t think you’ve ever said that before.”
Darren looks back over his shoulder at him. “Funny man.”
“Come on, let’s get the rest of the stuff.”
It takes a few minutes to unpack Chris’ car. They’re only staying a few days before they have to get back to what Chris refuses to think of as the real world, but they brought enough groceries to last. There’s a store nearby, apparently, but if Chris doesn’t have to leave the sanctuary of the cabin the whole time then he’s not going to.
Chris drops the lasts of the blankets from the car on the couch and then shivers. Now that he’s stopped moving around it feels like it’s the same temperature inside the house as it is outside.
“It’s fucking freezing in here!” Darren exclaims, coming out of the big kitchen where he’d been putting the food away.
“You noticed,” Chris says, drolly.
Darren shuffles over to the radiator, reaching his hands out towards it, and then he frowns.
“What?” Chris asks.
“It’s not getting warm. I opened up the valves. The heat should be kicking in. I remember this place getting fucking toasty.”
Chris crosses the living room to stand with Darren at the cold-to-the-touch radiator. It’s not like he can see his breath in the house – it’s too well-built and well-insulated for that – but it’s definitely too cold to not have the heat running.
“Did you call the gas company to restart the service?” Chris asks.
Darren blinks slowly, still looking at the radiator under their hands like if he stares long enough something will happen.
“You didn’t call the gas company, did you?”
Darren looks up and Chris can tell Darren is already trying not to laugh. “I definitely called the electric company and the water stays on the keep the pipes from freezing…”
“But not the gas.”
“But apparently not the gas. It’s cool. I’ll call them now.” Darren digs his phone out of his pocket. “Shouldn’t take long. I’ll just tell them an award-winning author is freezing his nuts off.”
Chris wanders away while Darren makes the call, roaming through the different rooms, scoping the place out. No matter what Darren says, this place is only a cabin in name. Two floors of a house with everything a family needs and more. Chris is pretty sure he could fit the house he grew up in inside the first floor. But he’s long since shuttered the weird feeling he used to get in the pit of his stomach when he thinks about the differences between their families.
“Hey.”
Chris turns. Darren is shuffling towards him, shoving his phone back in his pocket. He’s wearing his thick glasses and a thicker sweater and he hasn’t shaved in a week and sometimes it hits Chris too hard, why they still do this. Why they keep trying when everything feels so hard all the time. He shivers for a completely different reason.
Darren grins at all, all white teeth and suddenly hooded eyes, and slinks towards Chris. “Until then I think we know a few ways to keep each other warm.”
Chris wants to groan at how well and truly terrible that is, but Darren’s shimmied up against him, all sharp elbows and soft stomach, and he’s so warm that Chris just sighs instead and lets Darren kiss him.
They slip together naturally, one of Darren’s strong thighs tucked up intimately against Chris’ groin as Darren gets even closer. Their hands slip beneath each other’s sweaters, hunting for warm skin, and they shiver at the chill sneaking in where they’re exposed to the air.
Darren settles them with Chris pressed up against one of the strong timber doorways and Chris doesn’t even remember them moving across the room. The rhythm of deep, wide open kisses has his head spinning and his breath panting and the tight press and flex of their bodies moving together warms the air around them. Having Darren so near, so close, so very his for these long minutes ignites an aching need in Chris that he never gets used to, and his whole body melts into the small, but firmer grounding force of Darren’s strong shoulders and rolling hips.
Teeth and tongue and whatever it is that Darren does with his whole mouth that pulls the breath right out of Chris and causes such a sharp burn deep in his belly that he has to pull away gasping. Chris doesn’t know how Darren can kiss him in such a way that spells out in excruciatingly explicit and heated detail just want he wants to do to the rest of Chris.
Darren has Chris’ neck under his mouth before Chris can catch his breath and the tightening friction in his jeans and the delicious contrast of the chilled air against the sweat beading on Chris’ lower back reminds him that there’s only so far they can go until they need to get some sort of real heat going. He’s not getting naked on the floor when the ambient temperate in the house is glacial. He has standards. Sometimes.
Licking his lips and sucking in a breath, Chris tilts his head towards where Darren is doing his level best to suck a high school hickey on his neck.
“Darren,” Chris pants, and he hates how ragged his voice sounds already. “Darren, it’s fucking freezing in here.”
Darren’s hands slide farther up underneath Chris’ sweater and Chris shivers for reasons entirely other than the cold. “I know. That’s why I’m trying to warm you up.”
Chris turns his head, trying to dislodge Darren’s mouth, but Darren only sinks his teeth into Chris’ collarbone. The pressure, dulled as it is through the fabric of his clothes, still has Chris shuddering.
“Okay, come on.” Chris gets a hand on the back of Darren’s head, threading his fingers through Darren’s hair. “Can we at least start a fire until the heat kicks in?”
Darren finally pulls back. “You want to burn my parents’ cabin down?” He asks, grinning, and his lips are kiss-red and swollen.
Chris rolls his eyes and tightens his fingers in Darren’s hair, just a little, just enough. “Yes, that’s exactly what I meant.”
“Yeah, okay. There’s plenty of wood out back.” Darren takes half a step back and Chris’ body misses him immediately. “I’ll grab it if you can hunt down some matches?”
Chris nods.
***
Darren turns out to be far more adept at building a fire than he is calling ahead to have all the utilities switch on. Even still Chris marvels, feeling a tad envious, but mostly affectionate, at how easily Darren rolls along with life. If a fire needs building, Darren builds it. If a song needs singing, he sings. Whatever needs doing, he does it. For better or worse. Chris shouldn’t have been surprised at the grinning explanation how growing up Darren’s weekends were full of friends and bonfires, S’mores and singing. It makes sense, when he thinks about it. As all things eventually make sense about Darren.
With the fire crackling and roaring merrily, the temperature in the high-ceilinged living room has warmed them out of their thick sweaters. Chris lays sprawled shirtless and breathless under Darren as he trails wet kisses down from his sternum to the low waistband of his jeans. Chris wants to be out of those too; he can already feel sweat on his thighs and behind his knees.
This has always been the easier part for Chris – letting Darren take his fill of him. It’s the place where their give and take finds some kind of perfect synchronicity. Chris’ engrained and straining resistance to the world slowly unfolds beneath Darren’s natural confidence and easy instinct for what the world can be. Before, the sheer idea of opening himself up to another person, another man, had been a dark and secret fantasy tucked down deep for being too complicated, too potentially humiliating, and too real to try. But after a series of breathless, late night texts, and an unassuming grocery bag full of potential left in his trailer one afternoon, Chris had left himself have what he thought he couldn’t – spread wide and thinking about nothing but his breath and the intimate pressure of Darren’s fingertips.
And it’s where he is now again – naked and squirming against Darren’s touch, back arching when slick fingers go deep.
“Can I get on top?” Chris pants. The crackling fire is so close and so warm against his skin, but not as hot as Darren’s own body.
Darren pulls back from where he’s sucking a dark hickey into the crook of Chris’ neck. His mouth is red and his pupils blown wide and a conflicted expression crosses his flushed features.
“I mean, absolutely…sure, if you want to…but um…” He glances down at where his hand is tucked intimately between Chris’ thighs, buried up to his ring finger inside of Chris.
Giddy realization hits and Chris lets out a breathless laugh. “Not ‘can I top,’ idiot. Me. On top. Of your dick.”
He nudges his thigh into Darren’s cock, where it’s pressed up hot and hard and shameless against him, and Darren’s twitches at the contact.
Darren throws his head back and laughs, and Chris pushes up on his elbows to taste the damp hollow of his throat, where he’s sweat-slick and flushed. Chris can feel the heavy pounding of Darren’s heart through the thin skin and he bites down gently, just a bare hint of pressure, but Darren shudders anyway.
Darren gets his hands – one slick with lube and the other damp with sweat – on Chris’ hips and turns them over so smoothly Chris has to laugh in delight. Feet push the remnants of their clothes out of the way and from somewhere Darren pulls out a condom. They’re about to fuck on the carpet in front of a fireplace in a cabin in the woods while it snows outside and Chris is so deliriously happy he can’t even speak.
It’s a bone deep ache for Chris to pull away from Darren’s mouth and hands so he can get on his knees. His own cock leaves a smear of slick fluid against Darren’s hip as he shifts and Chris can’t stop himself from quickly bending over to run the flat of his tongue up the underside of Darren’s thick cock, just to make him groan and shudder, before he gets the condom on him. Chris’ hands shake slightly with anticipation as he braces one on the swell of Darren’s trembling belly and the other behind him.
Heat is everywhere, licking through his hips and up his spine and building inside of him where Darren is pressing in deep and hard and so insistent. Darren’s hot hands are on his hips, gripping tight and holding him place, as he pushes in deeper, and Chris is so open all he feels is the exquisitely sweet burn as Darren bottoms out inside him.
There’s no more talking, no more breathless giggles, just that steady climb of giving up all of his carefully held control and inhibitions to Darren. Darren calls him wild sometimes, when he’s nothing but the space between hips and thighs and tight heat where he has Darren exactly where he wants him. He says it with panting, open hearted admiration and affection, and it makes Chris close his eyes, throw his head back, and push for more.
It’s a charm Chris never knew he had that instead of caring or worrying what he looks like perched atop Darren’s writhing body, or spread out beneath him, that he simply chases the aching, throbbing pleasure and release for the both of them. He works and twists and speeds up the slick, clenching slide of his body until he feels the air being punched from Darren’s chest as he’s brought to edge. Beneath him, Darren is flushed down to his belly, chest heaving with his every breath, and his rich skin is glowing in the flicker-beat light of the fireplace. He is young and beautiful and alive and so completely Chris’ that it hurts.
“Darren,” Chris gasps, the word heavy in his throat and it makes Darren’s hips jerk up sharply. Chris swallows and he swears he can feel Darren getting bigger inside of him. Chris gets his hand around his own cock and closes his eyes at the animal friction as the heat grows.
The cabin disappears around him as Daren huffs out an aching yell that might be Chris’ name or another kind of benediction, and Chris clenches down around Darren’s heavy, pulsing cock. Chris forces his eyes open in time to see his come paint Darren’s chest in a thick white mess, wringing the last of it out with his fist as it pools in the dark thatch of hair below Darren’s belly.
Chris collapses forward onto Darren’s chest, headless of the mess he left there and uncaring of the strain in his tired thighs. He lingers there, breathing in the bitter musk of their skin and sweat and come until Darren’s rueful chuckle rouses him and his hands reluctantly lift Chris off him. The filthy wet slip and squelch of Darren sliding out of his body and the condom getting removed never fails to make Chris’ nose wrinkle, and Darren never fails to threaten throwing it at him.
Darren rolls back over and wraps his arms around Chris, pulling him back down to his chest, and Chris goes with it, snuggling into the post-sex heat and safety where he and Darren are just two naked boys touching everywhere possible, gripping as if they might float apart once the sweat dries.
Chris wants to say something, but he doesn’t have anything to voice. His limbs are loose and his heart is full and Darren isn’t going anywhere.
“It’s too hot,” Darren complains.
“Hot damn,” Chris agrees, smiling into the curve of Darren’s chest.
“Come on!” Darren slaps Chris’ naked ass and Chris grunts indignantly. “Up. Food.”
“No shower?”
“Nope. Food first.”
Chris would complain, but in that moment he has nothing to complain about, and he reveals in it.
***
Chris wakes up to the smell of breakfast cooking and the sharp, clean scent of pine and snow that pervades the cabin. He’s curled around nothing, the other half of the big bed empty and cold. Darren, somehow, sleeps on his back most of the time and Chris’ body has learned how to fit against him, knees and ribs and elbows all aligned.
He rolls over, untangling himself from the bed sheets, and stares at the exposed beams of the vaulted ceiling. It’s such a cliché, he knows, waking up to an empty bed, but only because Darren is downstairs in the kitchen making them breakfast. But that is familiar too, stolen and quiet mornings when Darren is up before him and the most complicated part of their day figuring out what kind of eggs they want.
Chris stretches his arms above his head and wriggles until his back and shoulders pop. He has half a mind to stay in bed all day and make Darren bring breakfast up to him. He doesn’t know what the plan is for these spare few days they have alone together. There’s no schedule, no call time, no requirements at all. They’re as free to do whatever they want as they ever are. The cabin has everything his house does – cable, Internet, and food – and everything it doesn’t.
Darren didn’t bother unpacking, just threw his duffle bag of clothes on the floor of the master bedroom and left it there. Chris can see it from the bed, open bag spilling clothes out onto the beautiful hardwood. His own backpack is sitting in one of the chairs with his laptop bag propped up on the floor next to it. The master bedroom has a huge closet with winter clothes still hanging in it, thick coats and boots and ski pants just waiting for use.
On certain days – quiet days – Chris lets himself think about a shared closet with Darren.
Sighing, Chris rolls out of bed and grabs some clothes, shaking off the impending feeling of unsatisfied want before it can ruin their little getaway.
When he pads downstairs and into the kitchen, Darren is at the stove wearing ratty sweatpants and the t-shirt Chris had on the day before. He has white earbuds in his ears and Chris does not hesitate to walk up behind him, sling his arms around Darren’s narrow waist, and rest his cheek against Darren’s shoulder blade.
“Hey, you’re up,” Darren says, leaning back into him.
Chris rumbles an affirmation as he feels Darren shift to pull the headphones away. “What did you make for me?” He asks, peering around Darren.
“Eggs. Toast. Bacon. Figured we go a little light since we’ve got that huge chicken for dinner.”
Darren had been most adamant about cooking a whole chicken one night.
“It’s for our own Christmas feast,” Darren had said when he’d packed the chicken into a cooler in the car. “Just a few days late.”
Chris nuzzles against Darren’s back. “Well, it all smells delicious.” It used to gross him out, the way he liked the smell of Darren’s skin and his clothes after he’d been wearing them, but now it calms him, centers him in a way he doesn’t spend too much time thinking about.
“Hey, c’mere.” Darren turns in Chris’ arms and Chris barely has time to blink before Darren is pushing up and kissing him soundly. “Morning,” Darren says against his mouth. He tastes like milk and sugar and black tea and Chris hums happily.
It’s a nice kiss, slow and easy, and Chris licks lazily into Darren’s mouth, wholly satisfied in that moment.
But in all the ways Chris has grown used to over the years, the low-thrumming sweet burning romance of the moment is interrupted by the hard insistence making itself known against Chris’ hip. He remembers then the first morning he’d watched from the safety of the rumpled bed as Darren wandered around the old, beat up apartment he shared with a couple of friends. He remembers his blushing insecurity at the way Darren filled out his threadbare sweats as he came back from the kitchen with a bottle of cold water to share, and how he’d learned about the intimate sweetness of morning sex.
Now Chris reaches a hand down the waistband of Darren’s sweats with easy, practiced familiarity. Whatever embarrassment he might have once felt to even consider sex in the wide open kitchen long gone, burned away by the heat of Darren’s kisses.
Chris whines a protest when his hand gets pulled away.
“Nuh-uh,” Darren tuts and the gleam in his whiskey eyes is dangerous. “I’ve wanted to do this since yesterday, but someone had other plans.”
Chris shivers as Darren slides down comfortably to kneel on the hard tiles of the kitchen, settling back on his heels. It still thrills him, even now, how much Darren loves this. How easy it is for him. Chris remembers the unsubtle looks and comments he’d gotten years ago, when who he was couldn’t be hidden any longer. And he remembers the blushing, stumbling words he’d shared with Darren about it, in those first giddy weeks beyond friends, beyond colleagues.
And he remembers well the first time Darren had let him feel this. Even now – years later – the memory is fresh enough to make him shiver and sigh.
Chris wonders if Darren is thinking of that night too because he moves quickly, getting Chris’s pajama pants down around his thighs without hesitation. Darren’s mouth is hot and wet as he swallows Chris down. It still feels achingly dirty to Chris, to grow harder inside the heat of Darren’s mouth, and he loves it. Chris half-smiles at Darren, at the obscene stretch of Darren’s wet lips around his cock – at the flush in his own skin and the strength of Darren’s tongue.
Sliding his pale fingers into Darren’s dark curls, Chris thrusts slightly into the sucking heat of Darren’s mouth, heat flaring in his belly at the way Darren rocks with the movement. His own breath feels humid in the warm kitchen, and he closes his eyes to focus on the decadent stroke of Darren wrapping his tongue around the ridge of his cock, soft, clever strokes to counter the rhythm of the slide of his lips. Chris husks out an involuntary grunt as Darren’s fingers slide over his balls, his touch firm and knowing, and Chris can already feel his orgasm coiling tightly in his belly as bone-deep warmth spreads everywhere else.
Chris chokes on a protest when Darren pulls off his cock with an obscene wet sound. He wants to say something, wants to get Darren’s mouth back on him, but he gasps when Darren wraps a strong hand around his cock to stroke at the base. But when he looks down, Darren is staring back up at him with wide, whiskey gold eyes through thick, dark lashes.
It hits him hard, everything drawing up tightly when Darren drops his mouth wide open and stretches out his tongue. Chris gasps and comes and he has to grip Darren’s shoulders tightly as his whole body curls in on itself with the force of his orgasm. Darren is still jerking the base of his cock with erratic strokes and Chris pulses sharply, achingly when he sees his come miss Darren’s mouth and streak hot across his cheek and chin.
Chris’ blood is still pounding loud in his ears when Darren starts shaking with giggles. Chris groans weakly, the sound filled with embarrassment and affection and lingering arousal, as Darren wipes his cheeks and nose and left eyebrow before sucking Chris’ come off his fingers. Darren slumps against Chris legs, nuzzling up against his sensitive sac until Chris pushes weakly at his head.
“Stop that,” Chris says protests.
Darren hmms and licks softly at the crease of Chris’ thigh and Chris shudders. He playfully shoves Darren over with one hand while he tugs his pants up with the other, and Darren lets himself roll over on his butt.
“Wow,” Darren chuckles. “A facial before breakfast. This is like a spa getaway, dude.”
Chris rolls his eyes as Darren gets to his feet, but his attention is drawn by the way Darren shamelessly adjusts himself through his sweats.
“What about you?” Chris asks, glancing pointedly down below Darren’s hips.
“Later,” Darren says. “Food first.”
Chris grins.
***
After breakfast, and after lazily getting Darren off at the kitchen sink while the hot water ran and Darren panted into his mouth, Chris is splayed out on the couch in the den, imagining a day wrapped up in Darren and blankets with the fire crackling merrily while he reads a book or naps.
But Darren seems to have different plans as he emerges from a hallway closet with a battered box held triumphantly aloft over his head.
“I knew we still had them.” Darren announces, crouching down on the floor with the box.
Chris squints. Someone has written NOT DARREN’S on the side of it, only for it to be messily crossed out and DEFINITELY NOT CHUCK’S scratched below. Chris smiles as Darren opens the old box and digs inside.
“What are you–?”
“Yes!” Darren crows, pulling a couple of objects out and dumping them on the floor.
“What are those?”
Darren looks up at him. “Surely you haven’t forgotten what ice skates look like.”
Chris rolls his eyes. Darren has pulled two pairs of old, battered hockey skates out of the box. “I know what they are, asshole. Why do you have them?”
“Because.” Darren gets up off the floor, brushing dust from his butt. “We’re going ice-skating.”
Chris frowns. “You want to go into town?” He has no intension at all of going anywhere he might be seen by anyone else this trip.
The walls he’s built up purposeful around himself are high and solid, and the barriers he’s put around Darren the same. He knows he’s done it and he knows why, even if it’s created a life he’s not wholly happy with. But days like these, moments like these with Darren where they’ve created a hard-fought and necessary privacy that cannot easily be breached, Chris lets himself open up to world, as much as he can within the lines they’ve drawn for themselves.
Here in this house he can kiss Darren when he wants, where he wants. Here miles from the world, surrounded by these tall trees, he can walk around in Darren’s clothes and say aloud to Darren the things he dares not otherwise, the things he doesn’t even let himself think anywhere else. Chris doesn’t want to have to put those walls back up until he has to.
But Darren shakes his head. “Nope, not into town. There’s a pond just out back of the house. It freezes over completely every winter. Perfect for skating.”
Chris has an immediate flash of one of them breaking through the ice into the frigid water and frowns. “Oh, oh no.”
“What?”
“That can’t be safe.”
Darren scoffs. “Of course it’s safe. Been doing it for years and the ice has never cracked. Come on. Get some warm clothes on. You’ve got five minutes.”
***
The back of the house has a huge deck with a hot tub that Chris is both disappointed and relieved to see is empty. Fifty yards out is the tree line and just before it Chris can see the pond, a broad swath of blue ice reflecting the grey light of the day.
Someone has set up benches alongside the pond and Chris is grateful for a place to sit as he laces up his skates. They’re Chuck’s and a size too small, but they’ll do.
“Are you sure about this?” He asks, looking out at the pond. It seems frozen through, blue and almost glowing, but Chris did not grow up in a world of winter cold and frozen ponds.
“Totally sure,” Darren confirms. He’s already got his skates on and his standing at the edge of the pond. “I wouldn’t bring you out here if I wasn’t sure. I checked the weather and it’s been cold enough for a long while. The pond isn’t that deep. I promise it’s fine. Here, I’ll prove it.”
Chris wants to tell him to wait, but Darren is already stepping out onto the ice.
Darren skates a slow circle around the edges of the pond and Chris watches the easy, gliding movements of his legs. It’s not a huge surface, big enough for three or four people to have plenty of room to move, but any more and it would feel overcrowded. He used to hate how easily Darren can do things like his, how naturally complicated things seem to come to him, but it’s become a part of the myriad pieces that make up Darren and Chris has to love it too.
It hits him hard, then, that evening two years old; a perfect night filming with Darren and what felt like no one else. Chris remembers how it didn’t seem like work at all, those hours, how despite the cameras and the takes and the fans watching from the sides it somehow, at times, felt like they were just two people enjoying an evening together. He remembers Darren’s infectious joy and how it spilled over into the early morning hours in his hotel room. It’s been a long time since he’s felt that again, though there have been nights and days that touch upon it.
“Well?” Darren calls out suddenly, breaking Chris from his thoughts. “Are you satisfied that it’s safe?”
Chris flips him off with a careless finger, but pushes himself to his feet.
He wobbles his way over to the frozen edge of the pond. There’s no wall, no railing to steady himself and Chris quickly steps out onto the ice before he looses his nerve. Arms flailing a little as he finds his balance, Chris is sure he looks ridiculous.
He takes a slow, tentative lap around the pond, finding his legs and his balance while Darren watches him from the center, and it’s so familiar it makes warmth flare in his stomach before centering in his chest.
Darren skates over to him, easy as anything. “Want to hold my hand?” He asks.
“I’m not awful at ice skating, which I think you’ll remember.”
“I do remember,” Darren mummers and his eyes are filled with the same warmth that’s suffused through Chris’ body. “And that’s not why I was asking.”
Chris presses his lips together, chastened and pleased. “Oh. Then yes.“ He reaches his hand out.
They’re both wearing gloves, but Darren’s fingers still fit around and between his and Chris thinks he can still feel the heat of Darren’s palm as they move across the pond.
Chris tries to think of the days and nights they’ve had together that he could call dates. They’ve never really been able to do what others can – movies and dinners and picnics in a park. He likes to think of the day they met as a date, even if Darren might not. And he remembers a night they took a chance and went to dinner and what it cost them both afterwards. Even still, despite what came after, it was a date, and Chris holds it dear to him.
And this afternoon, this too Chris will think of as a date, even if it doesn’t end for another couple of days.
"I wanted to bring you here before, you know,” Darren says softly, breaking into Chris’ thoughts. “That winter after the tour.”
“Yeah?”
Darren nods and his grip on Chris’ hand tightens. “Yeah. My parents, they asked. It was going to be a thing, I guess. But uh, it didn’t work out.”
It didn’t work out doesn’t begin to cover it. Chris’ heart mourns for all the things they never had, never even had a chance to try.
“That would have been nice,” Chris responds. “I like your parents.”
“Everyone likes my parents.” Darren voice falls short of teasing. “But uh, they like you too.”
“Still?” Chris is afraid to ask it and he steals himself against the words he undoubtedly deserves.
But Darren smiles gently over at him, the very world open in his eyes. “Yeah, still.”
There are times Chris thinks he should have walked away completely. That it would have been better for the both of them, in the end. To say okay and carve a deep chasm between them. Stolen moments and careful lies and secret days are not a life together.
But then Darren looks at him with eyes that have not changed and holds his hand like he’s never worried about having to let it go and Chris cannot imagine what the last years would have been like without this. However little it is, for now.
“Well. There’s always next year.”
Darren smile is small, but it warms Chris down to his toes. “Yeah, there is.”
***
Chris is shivering by the time they’re done skating and so is Darren, ankles grown weary and thighs tired. The embers in the fireplace are cold now, but the shower isn’t. Chris can feel that something left unsaid back on the lake still lingering between them as they shuffle quietly into the bathroom, dropping clothes along the way. It feels like a tiny knot of dread in the pit of his stomach that neither of them can unravel with words, so instead they step together underneath the wide spray of the big showerhead and try to take it apart it by holding each other.
Chris feels his chest shake and he might be crying where his face is pressed into the crook of Daren’s neck as the water beats down on them. The familiar notch of his arms over Darren’s solid shoulders is grounding and real, like the scent of snowed-in woods and the spice in Darren’s beard that doesn’t wash away so simply. Whenever he feels this, that swooping, stomach dropping dizziness of everything being carried away from him faster than he can reach for it, he remembers how strong Darren feels under his hands, how Darren can’t just touch him lightly or casually. He’s either a firm grip or a linger caress, like it’s important Chris understands something, even if Darren can’t say it aloud.
And sometimes it’s both – one of Darren’s big square hands squeezing at the pinch of Chris’ waist and the other slipping in the water stream over his chest. Chris just holds on, his forehead tipped against Darren’s temple as they both watch Darren’s hands working slowly over Chris’ body. He thinks then about another time, the first time, when he was too awkward and new to really try anything with Darren’s so different, darker skin and ridges of veins everywhere that weren’t on his own body. How everywhere Chris thought that he was pale and cold, Darren was dusky and thrumming with heat. He remembers it feeling like he was melting and falling apart compared to how real Darren felt under him.
So he lets Darren take over, lets Darren hold him together with his hands and mouth and steady beating heart.
Darren turns Chris around to press him against the expensive stone tiling, warmed by the hot water raining down on him. Chris closes his eyes and lets nothing more than his sense of touch fill him, pushing away thoughts that do not belong. Darren passes a wet hand firmly down his back as he kneels down to the hard shower floor, and Chris feels safe, cared for in this warm, enclosed room, far and away from everyone who doesn’t matter at all. And when Darren tugs at his ass he feels sexy in a way that always surprises him, giving significance to a word that’s been dredged of most other meaning. The wet slide of Darren’s hands up the length of his legs is reverent, especially the way Darren brings his hands close together and joins his thumbs where Chris would let him in.
Chris shivers in the steamy shower as Darren moans against his skin, tiny and unintentional. It’s just his mouth, right at the place where Chris remains a tightly closed little whorl, and just kisses. But some days it’s enough for the both of them. Darren had once told Chris that no one else he’d been with had ever been able to come from just this, just kisses and the soothing stroke of fingers at his hips. And how he’d jerked off again when he’d gotten home because of the simple memory of Chris sobbing and shaking with pleasure underneath him.
It had always been mercifully left unsaid how those were the times when Chris needed a release in more ways than one, from more than just sex. Like just then, in that steaming shower, when he can’t hope to express or even understand everything he feels about himself and the world and the man in his heart. How he can’t begin to describe how precious and necessary Darren’s body and kisses and honest touches are to him.
Chris presses his eyes into his own arm, shielding his face, and lets the frantic storm of sensation wash over him, heavy pulse after heavy pulse until there’s nothing left.
Over the thud of his own racing heart in his ears and the pour of the shower, Chris can hear Darren’s wet, panting breaths as he gets himself off. The warmth hitting his ass as Darren groans hotly makes Chris inexplicably giggly and he bites his lip, even as he feels Darren press tired kisses to his back and shoulders. There’s something boyishly charming about the single-minded determination of another man jacking himself off.
He hears the water finally switch off and big hands, made clumsy by orgasms and so much more, paw at him, and he turns easily in Darren’s arms. They slump against the wall, unsteady on shaking legs, breathing into each other with Darren’s head resting heavy on Chris’ chest and his belly firm against Chris’ hip.
Chris runs a lazy hand up and down Darren’s smooth back, feeling the muscles shift with every breath, and he smiles with his eyes still closed. There are some times when everything is all right, if he doesn’t think twice about it.
***
The chicken is 45 minutes from being done and Chris is elbow-deep in potatoes. "I really think we brought too much,” he says, cutting the last of them into chunks.
“Nonsense,” scoffs Darren, setting a giant pot on the stove to get the water boiling. “This way there’ll be plenty of leftovers.”
“Not the way you eat.”
“Are you calling me fat?” Darren puts his hands on his belly and exaggerates a frown down at this stomach.
Chris rolls his eyes. “I’m saying you eat like a linebacker and look like–”
“An out of shape belly dancer?” Darren supplies, grinning.
“Shut up.”
“I’m gonna get so fat when I’m old,” Darren announces happily, patting his belly again. “Be prepared.”
Chris ducks his head, blushing at the thought Darren in 40 or 50 years. “You’re an idiot.”
“Fat and bald. It’s gonna be great.”
It should scare Chris how easily he pictures the two of them sitting in some kitchen decades from now, maybe in LA but probably in New York, bickering over what to have to for dinner. Darren in some ugly sweater while Chris has yet another new pair of glasses with an even stronger prescription. Maybe there are pictures of grandkids on the fridge, if that’s something they end up wanting together. If that’s a future they can reach together.
“I hope you’re not expecting me to be one of those insanely ripped old guys,” Darren muses, breaking Chris out of his reverie. “Because it’s not happening.”
“You’re not insanely ripped now,” Chris counters, putting aside his domestic fantasies for another day. Another time. “Why would I expect it when you’re ancient?”
Darren laughs and Chris feels it echoed in his own heart. “You’re not going to go bald though,” Darren tells him.
"Probably not.” Chris touches his hair, still damp from the shower. “My dad is still doing all right. I think I’m safe.”
“I wouldn’t mind if you did,” Darren says, all seriousness and golden eyes, as though it’s the most important thing he’s said to Chris that day.
Chris snorts. “You don’t want to see this head without any hair. No way. Remember that thing I had to wear for Riff Raff?”
“I thought you looked hot.” Darren winks at him and Chris rolls his eyes.
“Sure you did.”
“No, I really did. I think the whole bald on top, stringy mullet thing really works for you.”
Chris throws a potato across the kitchen, hitting Darren squarely in the chest.
“Don’t waste the food!” Darren squawks indignantly, grabbing the fallen potato from the floor.
“It’s going into boiling water. It’s fine.” Chris brings the cutting board over to the stove and dumps the potatoes into the pot.
Chris has barely put the board down before Darren is crowding into his space, pressing kisses to his shoulder and then the hinge of his jaw.
“I think about it too, you know,” Darren mumbles against the sensitive lobe of Chris’ ear and it doesn’t matter that not 45 minutes ago Chris was panting into the warm tile of the shower, heat is pooling in his belly once again.
“What?”
“Tomorrow,” Darren says, his voice so low, and his beard scratches against Chris’ soft cheek. “Next week. Next year. The next ten years.”
Chris’ heart feels too full to handle. “Oh,” he whispers, because there isn’t enough room in his throat for anything louder.
“Yeah,” Darren agrees and then kisses him fully. Chris gets his arms around Darren’s shoulder and tangles his fingers in Darren’s hair and opens his mouth to Darren’s kisses. If Darren thinks about it – thinks about the years that are coming – then Chris can let himself think about them too.
“We have to stop fucking in the kitchen,” Chris mumbles against Darren’s mouth, because it’s easier to say than I love you.
“Why?”
“Fire,” Chris says, moving away from Darren’s mouth to nip at the corner of his jaw. “Boiling water. Sharp objects.”
“Spoilsport,” Darren teasingly accuses, but pulls back, smoothing his hands down Chris’ waist as he does.
“Later,” Chris assures him, stealing one more kiss before taking a full step away. “Food first.”
***
Overnight it snows 6 inches. Chris props his chin on Darren’s naked chest and gazes out the huge bedroom windows at the wonderland landscape winter has brought them. Morning light glints off the fresh powder and Chris never wants to return to LA.
"What if we can’t leave?” He murmurs, rubbing his thumb against the curve of Darren’s rib. Chris is draped across him, knee over his thigh and arm settled on his belly as Darren lies stretched out on his back. “What if it keeps snowing and the road is impassible and we just have to stay?”
“I guess we’d just have to suffer through it,” Darren responds, voice rough with sleep. He hasn’t even opened his eyes yet. "It’d be rough, you know. All that sex we’d have to have to ward off the impending sense of doomed isolation. And then we’d run out of food and I’d have to eat you.“
"Sound awful,” Chris muses, letting his fingers wander idly across Darren’s chest.
But Chris does think about it, sometimes, running away with Darren. Somewhere. Anywhere. Every time Darren escapes to New York for a weekend or more Chris wonders if there was someplace they could go. Someplace they could stay.
This cabin is close, he thinks, even though it’s Darren’s parents. There’s a room upstairs he could turn into an office. He could setup his laptop and bring copies of his notes and work on the next book here, tucked away from everything. He could bring Brian and Cooper up here if he wanted to stay more than a few days. It’s maybe 20 minutes to town for groceries or anything else he’d need. At some point someone would notice he was there, and that Darren was too, but eventually it wouldn’t matter, if the future goes the way Chris hopes it will.
"You’re thinking about it,” Darren mumbles, his breathing his slow and shallow like he could drift back to sleep at any moment. Maybe he will. Maybe they both will.
“What?”
“You know what.” Darren’s big hand swipes slowly up and down Chris’ bare back, palm so warm against his skin.
“I don’t want to go.” Chris thinks about settling his teeth into the solid muscle of Darren’s chest, near his underarm, as though he could keep him still and hold him in place.
“We don’t have to, not yet,” Darren tells him, as though it’s that easy. Maybe sometimes it can be that easy.
Chris rests his cheek against Darren’s chest, nuzzling against the coarse hair there. “When do you think we’ll get to make promises?” He asks.
“Hmm?”
“Promises. When do you think we’ll get to make them – to each other?” It’s not something he meant to ask, but it’s snowing outside and his body is relaxed and his heart is open and sometimes he just has to let his soul do the talking.
Darren shifts and when Chris looks up into his face, his eyes are open and dark and very serious. “Are there promises you want to make?” Darren asks, his hand has stilled on Chris’ back. The heat of his palm is a brand.
“Well, aren’t there for you?”
“Yes,” Darren answers, uncharacteristically cautious, and Chris wonders if this is a conversation that should have waited for them to both be clothed. “But you said no promises.”
“Four years ago. Things change.”
Chris licks his lips. “Are they changing?”
“Not fast enough, but yeah.” Darren moves again and his other hand comes to take hold of Chris’ wrist in a gentle grip. “I think so.”
“Then promise me.” Chris’ is sure Darren can feel his heart beating hard and fast.
“Promise you what, though?” Darren’s thumb strokes Chris’ wrist and Chris shivers with the gentle, familiar touch.
“Whatever you want. Just say it. Don’t think twice.”
Darren is silent for a long moment and Chris can feel every inch of where they’re pressed tight together, hips and hands and legs intertwined. Skin and heat and beating hearts. Chris wants to drown in it and live forever.
“You and me?” Darren finally says. “We’re never going to change.”
Chris breathes and feels like he’s been broken apart and sealed back together in the space between their heartbeats. He presses a kiss to Darren’s chest and pulls his wrist from Darren’s grip so he can link their fingers together.
“Good,” he says and feels it down in his bones. The world and their circumstances can change around them, as long as they remain.
“And hey,” Darren says after long, comfortable minutes. “The cabin will still be here next winter.”
Chris smiles and feels it in his soul. “Good.”
Pairing: Chris/Darren
Rating/Length: R / ~8,350
Summary: Sometimes you just wanna write a bog-standard cabin!fic, you know?
Many thanks to heavenorspace who supplied the porny bits.
Read on AO3
It’s a four-hour drive up into nowhere and Chris spends most of it listening to Darren live blog whatever comes up on his exceedingly eclectic Spotify playlist. He doesn’t mind; Darren’s chatter is as comforting as the tires of Chris’ SUV against the salted pavement and the warmth of the blankets piled up in the back and the scent of the bagels they had for breakfast on the road.
Early mornings in the car with Darren are a special kind of sanctuary.
Halfway into the drive, the desert rises into greener hills and the dust becomes snow. Winter in Los Angeles is scarcely different than another other time of the year, but late December higher up in the mountains is as snow-capped and glistening as anywhere else.
Chris is drifting in and out to the timbre of Darren’s voice when the interstate gives way to a winding, switch-baking highway, which then disappears into a single lane road as the snow piles higher and higher around them. The trees are still and wintergreen and the boughs hang heavy with a fresh layer of snow. Head tilted towards the window, Chris thinks it’s beautiful.
“Who’s plowing the roads up here?” He asks. The cleared highway is one thing, but Chris is pretty sure they’re about to leave regularly tended roads behind.
“I called ahead and had a guy come through for us,” Darren says, glancing over at Chris. “He’s a cool dude, Ed. He does all the driveways and stuff in the area. He lives about 20 minutes further up the road. It’s a good thing too; otherwise there’s a good chance we’d get stuck before we even get there, this time of year.”
It’s not much farther before Darren turns up a narrow, freshly plowed driveway and Chris stares through the windshield at the house that suddenly rises up ahead.
With a pitched roof, fine stonework, and a wooden wrap-around deck, the two-story home looks like something out of a winter fairytale. Complete with frost on the windows and gleaming icicles along the eaves.
“Your family has a ski lodge in the mountains,” Chris murmurs as the car rolls to a stop alongside the house.
Darren snorts. “Are you really surprised? And it’s more of a cabin, really.”
Chris just rolls his eyes fondly as he gets out of the car. He’s not surprised at all. When Darren had told him that he wanted to get away and go somewhere for a post-family-Christmas-pre-back-to-work-vacation, Chris had visions of Europe. Paris, maybe. Strasbourg even. A fine hotel room they barely leave and a country they hardly see. He had not anticipated Darren announcing that he was taking them to his family’s spare house nestled up in the frosty mountains close to a ski resort.
“Mom and dad won’t be using it,” Darren had said. “We’ll be nice and alone.” Darren’s lascivious wink had been more than enough to get Chris to agree to cut his own trip home to see his family for the holidays a day or two short.
“A cabin,” Chris repeats, letting his voice drip with incredulity. “Sure. If calling it that helps you sleep at night.”
Chris grabs his over-stuffed backpack and his laptop from the backseat. They’ve got bags of groceries and piles of bedding to bring in too, but Chris wants to see the inside of the house.
Snow crunches under his boots as they head up the gravel pathway and the stone steps to the front door. Darren has the key and Chris feels a strange, fluttering anticipation in his belly as the lock clicks over. He’s entered many a room with Darren, walked through many a door, but this house belongs to Darren’s family and they’re here alone around Christmas and there’s something about it all that makes Chris’ breath catch tight in his chest as he crosses the threshold half a step behind Darren.
It’s dark inside, despite the weak winter sunlight struggling to get through the windows. But Darren takes a few steps inside and flicks a switch and suddenly everything is illuminated in warm light.
Chris stares. It’s every ski lodge he’s ever seen in a movie or magazine in his life, with exposed beams and rich wooden floors and expensive looking rugs for warmth and decoration. There’s even a grand stone fireplace in the living room, cold now, but with the promise of flickering heat later.
“Your family is ridiculous,” Chris scoffs, looking around.
“What?” Darren drops his own bags on the floor. “Oh come on, it’s not that big,” he says, looking around the place with an air of familiarity. Chris imagines Darren, younger and smaller, scampering through this house bundled up for a day of skiing.
Chris presses his lips together against a smile. “Don’t think you’ve ever said that before.”
Darren looks back over his shoulder at him. “Funny man.”
“Come on, let’s get the rest of the stuff.”
It takes a few minutes to unpack Chris’ car. They’re only staying a few days before they have to get back to what Chris refuses to think of as the real world, but they brought enough groceries to last. There’s a store nearby, apparently, but if Chris doesn’t have to leave the sanctuary of the cabin the whole time then he’s not going to.
Chris drops the lasts of the blankets from the car on the couch and then shivers. Now that he’s stopped moving around it feels like it’s the same temperature inside the house as it is outside.
“It’s fucking freezing in here!” Darren exclaims, coming out of the big kitchen where he’d been putting the food away.
“You noticed,” Chris says, drolly.
Darren shuffles over to the radiator, reaching his hands out towards it, and then he frowns.
“What?” Chris asks.
“It’s not getting warm. I opened up the valves. The heat should be kicking in. I remember this place getting fucking toasty.”
Chris crosses the living room to stand with Darren at the cold-to-the-touch radiator. It’s not like he can see his breath in the house – it’s too well-built and well-insulated for that – but it’s definitely too cold to not have the heat running.
“Did you call the gas company to restart the service?” Chris asks.
Darren blinks slowly, still looking at the radiator under their hands like if he stares long enough something will happen.
“You didn’t call the gas company, did you?”
Darren looks up and Chris can tell Darren is already trying not to laugh. “I definitely called the electric company and the water stays on the keep the pipes from freezing…”
“But not the gas.”
“But apparently not the gas. It’s cool. I’ll call them now.” Darren digs his phone out of his pocket. “Shouldn’t take long. I’ll just tell them an award-winning author is freezing his nuts off.”
Chris wanders away while Darren makes the call, roaming through the different rooms, scoping the place out. No matter what Darren says, this place is only a cabin in name. Two floors of a house with everything a family needs and more. Chris is pretty sure he could fit the house he grew up in inside the first floor. But he’s long since shuttered the weird feeling he used to get in the pit of his stomach when he thinks about the differences between their families.
“Hey.”
Chris turns. Darren is shuffling towards him, shoving his phone back in his pocket. He’s wearing his thick glasses and a thicker sweater and he hasn’t shaved in a week and sometimes it hits Chris too hard, why they still do this. Why they keep trying when everything feels so hard all the time. He shivers for a completely different reason.
Darren grins at all, all white teeth and suddenly hooded eyes, and slinks towards Chris. “Until then I think we know a few ways to keep each other warm.”
Chris wants to groan at how well and truly terrible that is, but Darren’s shimmied up against him, all sharp elbows and soft stomach, and he’s so warm that Chris just sighs instead and lets Darren kiss him.
They slip together naturally, one of Darren’s strong thighs tucked up intimately against Chris’ groin as Darren gets even closer. Their hands slip beneath each other’s sweaters, hunting for warm skin, and they shiver at the chill sneaking in where they’re exposed to the air.
Darren settles them with Chris pressed up against one of the strong timber doorways and Chris doesn’t even remember them moving across the room. The rhythm of deep, wide open kisses has his head spinning and his breath panting and the tight press and flex of their bodies moving together warms the air around them. Having Darren so near, so close, so very his for these long minutes ignites an aching need in Chris that he never gets used to, and his whole body melts into the small, but firmer grounding force of Darren’s strong shoulders and rolling hips.
Teeth and tongue and whatever it is that Darren does with his whole mouth that pulls the breath right out of Chris and causes such a sharp burn deep in his belly that he has to pull away gasping. Chris doesn’t know how Darren can kiss him in such a way that spells out in excruciatingly explicit and heated detail just want he wants to do to the rest of Chris.
Darren has Chris’ neck under his mouth before Chris can catch his breath and the tightening friction in his jeans and the delicious contrast of the chilled air against the sweat beading on Chris’ lower back reminds him that there’s only so far they can go until they need to get some sort of real heat going. He’s not getting naked on the floor when the ambient temperate in the house is glacial. He has standards. Sometimes.
Licking his lips and sucking in a breath, Chris tilts his head towards where Darren is doing his level best to suck a high school hickey on his neck.
“Darren,” Chris pants, and he hates how ragged his voice sounds already. “Darren, it’s fucking freezing in here.”
Darren’s hands slide farther up underneath Chris’ sweater and Chris shivers for reasons entirely other than the cold. “I know. That’s why I’m trying to warm you up.”
Chris turns his head, trying to dislodge Darren’s mouth, but Darren only sinks his teeth into Chris’ collarbone. The pressure, dulled as it is through the fabric of his clothes, still has Chris shuddering.
“Okay, come on.” Chris gets a hand on the back of Darren’s head, threading his fingers through Darren’s hair. “Can we at least start a fire until the heat kicks in?”
Darren finally pulls back. “You want to burn my parents’ cabin down?” He asks, grinning, and his lips are kiss-red and swollen.
Chris rolls his eyes and tightens his fingers in Darren’s hair, just a little, just enough. “Yes, that’s exactly what I meant.”
“Yeah, okay. There’s plenty of wood out back.” Darren takes half a step back and Chris’ body misses him immediately. “I’ll grab it if you can hunt down some matches?”
Chris nods.
***
Darren turns out to be far more adept at building a fire than he is calling ahead to have all the utilities switch on. Even still Chris marvels, feeling a tad envious, but mostly affectionate, at how easily Darren rolls along with life. If a fire needs building, Darren builds it. If a song needs singing, he sings. Whatever needs doing, he does it. For better or worse. Chris shouldn’t have been surprised at the grinning explanation how growing up Darren’s weekends were full of friends and bonfires, S’mores and singing. It makes sense, when he thinks about it. As all things eventually make sense about Darren.
With the fire crackling and roaring merrily, the temperature in the high-ceilinged living room has warmed them out of their thick sweaters. Chris lays sprawled shirtless and breathless under Darren as he trails wet kisses down from his sternum to the low waistband of his jeans. Chris wants to be out of those too; he can already feel sweat on his thighs and behind his knees.
This has always been the easier part for Chris – letting Darren take his fill of him. It’s the place where their give and take finds some kind of perfect synchronicity. Chris’ engrained and straining resistance to the world slowly unfolds beneath Darren’s natural confidence and easy instinct for what the world can be. Before, the sheer idea of opening himself up to another person, another man, had been a dark and secret fantasy tucked down deep for being too complicated, too potentially humiliating, and too real to try. But after a series of breathless, late night texts, and an unassuming grocery bag full of potential left in his trailer one afternoon, Chris had left himself have what he thought he couldn’t – spread wide and thinking about nothing but his breath and the intimate pressure of Darren’s fingertips.
And it’s where he is now again – naked and squirming against Darren’s touch, back arching when slick fingers go deep.
“Can I get on top?” Chris pants. The crackling fire is so close and so warm against his skin, but not as hot as Darren’s own body.
Darren pulls back from where he’s sucking a dark hickey into the crook of Chris’ neck. His mouth is red and his pupils blown wide and a conflicted expression crosses his flushed features.
“I mean, absolutely…sure, if you want to…but um…” He glances down at where his hand is tucked intimately between Chris’ thighs, buried up to his ring finger inside of Chris.
Giddy realization hits and Chris lets out a breathless laugh. “Not ‘can I top,’ idiot. Me. On top. Of your dick.”
He nudges his thigh into Darren’s cock, where it’s pressed up hot and hard and shameless against him, and Darren’s twitches at the contact.
Darren throws his head back and laughs, and Chris pushes up on his elbows to taste the damp hollow of his throat, where he’s sweat-slick and flushed. Chris can feel the heavy pounding of Darren’s heart through the thin skin and he bites down gently, just a bare hint of pressure, but Darren shudders anyway.
Darren gets his hands – one slick with lube and the other damp with sweat – on Chris’ hips and turns them over so smoothly Chris has to laugh in delight. Feet push the remnants of their clothes out of the way and from somewhere Darren pulls out a condom. They’re about to fuck on the carpet in front of a fireplace in a cabin in the woods while it snows outside and Chris is so deliriously happy he can’t even speak.
It’s a bone deep ache for Chris to pull away from Darren’s mouth and hands so he can get on his knees. His own cock leaves a smear of slick fluid against Darren’s hip as he shifts and Chris can’t stop himself from quickly bending over to run the flat of his tongue up the underside of Darren’s thick cock, just to make him groan and shudder, before he gets the condom on him. Chris’ hands shake slightly with anticipation as he braces one on the swell of Darren’s trembling belly and the other behind him.
Heat is everywhere, licking through his hips and up his spine and building inside of him where Darren is pressing in deep and hard and so insistent. Darren’s hot hands are on his hips, gripping tight and holding him place, as he pushes in deeper, and Chris is so open all he feels is the exquisitely sweet burn as Darren bottoms out inside him.
There’s no more talking, no more breathless giggles, just that steady climb of giving up all of his carefully held control and inhibitions to Darren. Darren calls him wild sometimes, when he’s nothing but the space between hips and thighs and tight heat where he has Darren exactly where he wants him. He says it with panting, open hearted admiration and affection, and it makes Chris close his eyes, throw his head back, and push for more.
It’s a charm Chris never knew he had that instead of caring or worrying what he looks like perched atop Darren’s writhing body, or spread out beneath him, that he simply chases the aching, throbbing pleasure and release for the both of them. He works and twists and speeds up the slick, clenching slide of his body until he feels the air being punched from Darren’s chest as he’s brought to edge. Beneath him, Darren is flushed down to his belly, chest heaving with his every breath, and his rich skin is glowing in the flicker-beat light of the fireplace. He is young and beautiful and alive and so completely Chris’ that it hurts.
“Darren,” Chris gasps, the word heavy in his throat and it makes Darren’s hips jerk up sharply. Chris swallows and he swears he can feel Darren getting bigger inside of him. Chris gets his hand around his own cock and closes his eyes at the animal friction as the heat grows.
The cabin disappears around him as Daren huffs out an aching yell that might be Chris’ name or another kind of benediction, and Chris clenches down around Darren’s heavy, pulsing cock. Chris forces his eyes open in time to see his come paint Darren’s chest in a thick white mess, wringing the last of it out with his fist as it pools in the dark thatch of hair below Darren’s belly.
Chris collapses forward onto Darren’s chest, headless of the mess he left there and uncaring of the strain in his tired thighs. He lingers there, breathing in the bitter musk of their skin and sweat and come until Darren’s rueful chuckle rouses him and his hands reluctantly lift Chris off him. The filthy wet slip and squelch of Darren sliding out of his body and the condom getting removed never fails to make Chris’ nose wrinkle, and Darren never fails to threaten throwing it at him.
Darren rolls back over and wraps his arms around Chris, pulling him back down to his chest, and Chris goes with it, snuggling into the post-sex heat and safety where he and Darren are just two naked boys touching everywhere possible, gripping as if they might float apart once the sweat dries.
Chris wants to say something, but he doesn’t have anything to voice. His limbs are loose and his heart is full and Darren isn’t going anywhere.
“It’s too hot,” Darren complains.
“Hot damn,” Chris agrees, smiling into the curve of Darren’s chest.
“Come on!” Darren slaps Chris’ naked ass and Chris grunts indignantly. “Up. Food.”
“No shower?”
“Nope. Food first.”
Chris would complain, but in that moment he has nothing to complain about, and he reveals in it.
***
Chris wakes up to the smell of breakfast cooking and the sharp, clean scent of pine and snow that pervades the cabin. He’s curled around nothing, the other half of the big bed empty and cold. Darren, somehow, sleeps on his back most of the time and Chris’ body has learned how to fit against him, knees and ribs and elbows all aligned.
He rolls over, untangling himself from the bed sheets, and stares at the exposed beams of the vaulted ceiling. It’s such a cliché, he knows, waking up to an empty bed, but only because Darren is downstairs in the kitchen making them breakfast. But that is familiar too, stolen and quiet mornings when Darren is up before him and the most complicated part of their day figuring out what kind of eggs they want.
Chris stretches his arms above his head and wriggles until his back and shoulders pop. He has half a mind to stay in bed all day and make Darren bring breakfast up to him. He doesn’t know what the plan is for these spare few days they have alone together. There’s no schedule, no call time, no requirements at all. They’re as free to do whatever they want as they ever are. The cabin has everything his house does – cable, Internet, and food – and everything it doesn’t.
Darren didn’t bother unpacking, just threw his duffle bag of clothes on the floor of the master bedroom and left it there. Chris can see it from the bed, open bag spilling clothes out onto the beautiful hardwood. His own backpack is sitting in one of the chairs with his laptop bag propped up on the floor next to it. The master bedroom has a huge closet with winter clothes still hanging in it, thick coats and boots and ski pants just waiting for use.
On certain days – quiet days – Chris lets himself think about a shared closet with Darren.
Sighing, Chris rolls out of bed and grabs some clothes, shaking off the impending feeling of unsatisfied want before it can ruin their little getaway.
When he pads downstairs and into the kitchen, Darren is at the stove wearing ratty sweatpants and the t-shirt Chris had on the day before. He has white earbuds in his ears and Chris does not hesitate to walk up behind him, sling his arms around Darren’s narrow waist, and rest his cheek against Darren’s shoulder blade.
“Hey, you’re up,” Darren says, leaning back into him.
Chris rumbles an affirmation as he feels Darren shift to pull the headphones away. “What did you make for me?” He asks, peering around Darren.
“Eggs. Toast. Bacon. Figured we go a little light since we’ve got that huge chicken for dinner.”
Darren had been most adamant about cooking a whole chicken one night.
“It’s for our own Christmas feast,” Darren had said when he’d packed the chicken into a cooler in the car. “Just a few days late.”
Chris nuzzles against Darren’s back. “Well, it all smells delicious.” It used to gross him out, the way he liked the smell of Darren’s skin and his clothes after he’d been wearing them, but now it calms him, centers him in a way he doesn’t spend too much time thinking about.
“Hey, c’mere.” Darren turns in Chris’ arms and Chris barely has time to blink before Darren is pushing up and kissing him soundly. “Morning,” Darren says against his mouth. He tastes like milk and sugar and black tea and Chris hums happily.
It’s a nice kiss, slow and easy, and Chris licks lazily into Darren’s mouth, wholly satisfied in that moment.
But in all the ways Chris has grown used to over the years, the low-thrumming sweet burning romance of the moment is interrupted by the hard insistence making itself known against Chris’ hip. He remembers then the first morning he’d watched from the safety of the rumpled bed as Darren wandered around the old, beat up apartment he shared with a couple of friends. He remembers his blushing insecurity at the way Darren filled out his threadbare sweats as he came back from the kitchen with a bottle of cold water to share, and how he’d learned about the intimate sweetness of morning sex.
Now Chris reaches a hand down the waistband of Darren’s sweats with easy, practiced familiarity. Whatever embarrassment he might have once felt to even consider sex in the wide open kitchen long gone, burned away by the heat of Darren’s kisses.
Chris whines a protest when his hand gets pulled away.
“Nuh-uh,” Darren tuts and the gleam in his whiskey eyes is dangerous. “I’ve wanted to do this since yesterday, but someone had other plans.”
Chris shivers as Darren slides down comfortably to kneel on the hard tiles of the kitchen, settling back on his heels. It still thrills him, even now, how much Darren loves this. How easy it is for him. Chris remembers the unsubtle looks and comments he’d gotten years ago, when who he was couldn’t be hidden any longer. And he remembers the blushing, stumbling words he’d shared with Darren about it, in those first giddy weeks beyond friends, beyond colleagues.
And he remembers well the first time Darren had let him feel this. Even now – years later – the memory is fresh enough to make him shiver and sigh.
Chris wonders if Darren is thinking of that night too because he moves quickly, getting Chris’s pajama pants down around his thighs without hesitation. Darren’s mouth is hot and wet as he swallows Chris down. It still feels achingly dirty to Chris, to grow harder inside the heat of Darren’s mouth, and he loves it. Chris half-smiles at Darren, at the obscene stretch of Darren’s wet lips around his cock – at the flush in his own skin and the strength of Darren’s tongue.
Sliding his pale fingers into Darren’s dark curls, Chris thrusts slightly into the sucking heat of Darren’s mouth, heat flaring in his belly at the way Darren rocks with the movement. His own breath feels humid in the warm kitchen, and he closes his eyes to focus on the decadent stroke of Darren wrapping his tongue around the ridge of his cock, soft, clever strokes to counter the rhythm of the slide of his lips. Chris husks out an involuntary grunt as Darren’s fingers slide over his balls, his touch firm and knowing, and Chris can already feel his orgasm coiling tightly in his belly as bone-deep warmth spreads everywhere else.
Chris chokes on a protest when Darren pulls off his cock with an obscene wet sound. He wants to say something, wants to get Darren’s mouth back on him, but he gasps when Darren wraps a strong hand around his cock to stroke at the base. But when he looks down, Darren is staring back up at him with wide, whiskey gold eyes through thick, dark lashes.
It hits him hard, everything drawing up tightly when Darren drops his mouth wide open and stretches out his tongue. Chris gasps and comes and he has to grip Darren’s shoulders tightly as his whole body curls in on itself with the force of his orgasm. Darren is still jerking the base of his cock with erratic strokes and Chris pulses sharply, achingly when he sees his come miss Darren’s mouth and streak hot across his cheek and chin.
Chris’ blood is still pounding loud in his ears when Darren starts shaking with giggles. Chris groans weakly, the sound filled with embarrassment and affection and lingering arousal, as Darren wipes his cheeks and nose and left eyebrow before sucking Chris’ come off his fingers. Darren slumps against Chris legs, nuzzling up against his sensitive sac until Chris pushes weakly at his head.
“Stop that,” Chris says protests.
Darren hmms and licks softly at the crease of Chris’ thigh and Chris shudders. He playfully shoves Darren over with one hand while he tugs his pants up with the other, and Darren lets himself roll over on his butt.
“Wow,” Darren chuckles. “A facial before breakfast. This is like a spa getaway, dude.”
Chris rolls his eyes as Darren gets to his feet, but his attention is drawn by the way Darren shamelessly adjusts himself through his sweats.
“What about you?” Chris asks, glancing pointedly down below Darren’s hips.
“Later,” Darren says. “Food first.”
Chris grins.
***
After breakfast, and after lazily getting Darren off at the kitchen sink while the hot water ran and Darren panted into his mouth, Chris is splayed out on the couch in the den, imagining a day wrapped up in Darren and blankets with the fire crackling merrily while he reads a book or naps.
But Darren seems to have different plans as he emerges from a hallway closet with a battered box held triumphantly aloft over his head.
“I knew we still had them.” Darren announces, crouching down on the floor with the box.
Chris squints. Someone has written NOT DARREN’S on the side of it, only for it to be messily crossed out and DEFINITELY NOT CHUCK’S scratched below. Chris smiles as Darren opens the old box and digs inside.
“What are you–?”
“Yes!” Darren crows, pulling a couple of objects out and dumping them on the floor.
“What are those?”
Darren looks up at him. “Surely you haven’t forgotten what ice skates look like.”
Chris rolls his eyes. Darren has pulled two pairs of old, battered hockey skates out of the box. “I know what they are, asshole. Why do you have them?”
“Because.” Darren gets up off the floor, brushing dust from his butt. “We’re going ice-skating.”
Chris frowns. “You want to go into town?” He has no intension at all of going anywhere he might be seen by anyone else this trip.
The walls he’s built up purposeful around himself are high and solid, and the barriers he’s put around Darren the same. He knows he’s done it and he knows why, even if it’s created a life he’s not wholly happy with. But days like these, moments like these with Darren where they’ve created a hard-fought and necessary privacy that cannot easily be breached, Chris lets himself open up to world, as much as he can within the lines they’ve drawn for themselves.
Here in this house he can kiss Darren when he wants, where he wants. Here miles from the world, surrounded by these tall trees, he can walk around in Darren’s clothes and say aloud to Darren the things he dares not otherwise, the things he doesn’t even let himself think anywhere else. Chris doesn’t want to have to put those walls back up until he has to.
But Darren shakes his head. “Nope, not into town. There’s a pond just out back of the house. It freezes over completely every winter. Perfect for skating.”
Chris has an immediate flash of one of them breaking through the ice into the frigid water and frowns. “Oh, oh no.”
“What?”
“That can’t be safe.”
Darren scoffs. “Of course it’s safe. Been doing it for years and the ice has never cracked. Come on. Get some warm clothes on. You’ve got five minutes.”
***
The back of the house has a huge deck with a hot tub that Chris is both disappointed and relieved to see is empty. Fifty yards out is the tree line and just before it Chris can see the pond, a broad swath of blue ice reflecting the grey light of the day.
Someone has set up benches alongside the pond and Chris is grateful for a place to sit as he laces up his skates. They’re Chuck’s and a size too small, but they’ll do.
“Are you sure about this?” He asks, looking out at the pond. It seems frozen through, blue and almost glowing, but Chris did not grow up in a world of winter cold and frozen ponds.
“Totally sure,” Darren confirms. He’s already got his skates on and his standing at the edge of the pond. “I wouldn’t bring you out here if I wasn’t sure. I checked the weather and it’s been cold enough for a long while. The pond isn’t that deep. I promise it’s fine. Here, I’ll prove it.”
Chris wants to tell him to wait, but Darren is already stepping out onto the ice.
Darren skates a slow circle around the edges of the pond and Chris watches the easy, gliding movements of his legs. It’s not a huge surface, big enough for three or four people to have plenty of room to move, but any more and it would feel overcrowded. He used to hate how easily Darren can do things like his, how naturally complicated things seem to come to him, but it’s become a part of the myriad pieces that make up Darren and Chris has to love it too.
It hits him hard, then, that evening two years old; a perfect night filming with Darren and what felt like no one else. Chris remembers how it didn’t seem like work at all, those hours, how despite the cameras and the takes and the fans watching from the sides it somehow, at times, felt like they were just two people enjoying an evening together. He remembers Darren’s infectious joy and how it spilled over into the early morning hours in his hotel room. It’s been a long time since he’s felt that again, though there have been nights and days that touch upon it.
“Well?” Darren calls out suddenly, breaking Chris from his thoughts. “Are you satisfied that it’s safe?”
Chris flips him off with a careless finger, but pushes himself to his feet.
He wobbles his way over to the frozen edge of the pond. There’s no wall, no railing to steady himself and Chris quickly steps out onto the ice before he looses his nerve. Arms flailing a little as he finds his balance, Chris is sure he looks ridiculous.
He takes a slow, tentative lap around the pond, finding his legs and his balance while Darren watches him from the center, and it’s so familiar it makes warmth flare in his stomach before centering in his chest.
Darren skates over to him, easy as anything. “Want to hold my hand?” He asks.
“I’m not awful at ice skating, which I think you’ll remember.”
“I do remember,” Darren mummers and his eyes are filled with the same warmth that’s suffused through Chris’ body. “And that’s not why I was asking.”
Chris presses his lips together, chastened and pleased. “Oh. Then yes.“ He reaches his hand out.
They’re both wearing gloves, but Darren’s fingers still fit around and between his and Chris thinks he can still feel the heat of Darren’s palm as they move across the pond.
Chris tries to think of the days and nights they’ve had together that he could call dates. They’ve never really been able to do what others can – movies and dinners and picnics in a park. He likes to think of the day they met as a date, even if Darren might not. And he remembers a night they took a chance and went to dinner and what it cost them both afterwards. Even still, despite what came after, it was a date, and Chris holds it dear to him.
And this afternoon, this too Chris will think of as a date, even if it doesn’t end for another couple of days.
"I wanted to bring you here before, you know,” Darren says softly, breaking into Chris’ thoughts. “That winter after the tour.”
“Yeah?”
Darren nods and his grip on Chris’ hand tightens. “Yeah. My parents, they asked. It was going to be a thing, I guess. But uh, it didn’t work out.”
It didn’t work out doesn’t begin to cover it. Chris’ heart mourns for all the things they never had, never even had a chance to try.
“That would have been nice,” Chris responds. “I like your parents.”
“Everyone likes my parents.” Darren voice falls short of teasing. “But uh, they like you too.”
“Still?” Chris is afraid to ask it and he steals himself against the words he undoubtedly deserves.
But Darren smiles gently over at him, the very world open in his eyes. “Yeah, still.”
There are times Chris thinks he should have walked away completely. That it would have been better for the both of them, in the end. To say okay and carve a deep chasm between them. Stolen moments and careful lies and secret days are not a life together.
But then Darren looks at him with eyes that have not changed and holds his hand like he’s never worried about having to let it go and Chris cannot imagine what the last years would have been like without this. However little it is, for now.
“Well. There’s always next year.”
Darren smile is small, but it warms Chris down to his toes. “Yeah, there is.”
***
Chris is shivering by the time they’re done skating and so is Darren, ankles grown weary and thighs tired. The embers in the fireplace are cold now, but the shower isn’t. Chris can feel that something left unsaid back on the lake still lingering between them as they shuffle quietly into the bathroom, dropping clothes along the way. It feels like a tiny knot of dread in the pit of his stomach that neither of them can unravel with words, so instead they step together underneath the wide spray of the big showerhead and try to take it apart it by holding each other.
Chris feels his chest shake and he might be crying where his face is pressed into the crook of Daren’s neck as the water beats down on them. The familiar notch of his arms over Darren’s solid shoulders is grounding and real, like the scent of snowed-in woods and the spice in Darren’s beard that doesn’t wash away so simply. Whenever he feels this, that swooping, stomach dropping dizziness of everything being carried away from him faster than he can reach for it, he remembers how strong Darren feels under his hands, how Darren can’t just touch him lightly or casually. He’s either a firm grip or a linger caress, like it’s important Chris understands something, even if Darren can’t say it aloud.
And sometimes it’s both – one of Darren’s big square hands squeezing at the pinch of Chris’ waist and the other slipping in the water stream over his chest. Chris just holds on, his forehead tipped against Darren’s temple as they both watch Darren’s hands working slowly over Chris’ body. He thinks then about another time, the first time, when he was too awkward and new to really try anything with Darren’s so different, darker skin and ridges of veins everywhere that weren’t on his own body. How everywhere Chris thought that he was pale and cold, Darren was dusky and thrumming with heat. He remembers it feeling like he was melting and falling apart compared to how real Darren felt under him.
So he lets Darren take over, lets Darren hold him together with his hands and mouth and steady beating heart.
Darren turns Chris around to press him against the expensive stone tiling, warmed by the hot water raining down on him. Chris closes his eyes and lets nothing more than his sense of touch fill him, pushing away thoughts that do not belong. Darren passes a wet hand firmly down his back as he kneels down to the hard shower floor, and Chris feels safe, cared for in this warm, enclosed room, far and away from everyone who doesn’t matter at all. And when Darren tugs at his ass he feels sexy in a way that always surprises him, giving significance to a word that’s been dredged of most other meaning. The wet slide of Darren’s hands up the length of his legs is reverent, especially the way Darren brings his hands close together and joins his thumbs where Chris would let him in.
Chris shivers in the steamy shower as Darren moans against his skin, tiny and unintentional. It’s just his mouth, right at the place where Chris remains a tightly closed little whorl, and just kisses. But some days it’s enough for the both of them. Darren had once told Chris that no one else he’d been with had ever been able to come from just this, just kisses and the soothing stroke of fingers at his hips. And how he’d jerked off again when he’d gotten home because of the simple memory of Chris sobbing and shaking with pleasure underneath him.
It had always been mercifully left unsaid how those were the times when Chris needed a release in more ways than one, from more than just sex. Like just then, in that steaming shower, when he can’t hope to express or even understand everything he feels about himself and the world and the man in his heart. How he can’t begin to describe how precious and necessary Darren’s body and kisses and honest touches are to him.
Chris presses his eyes into his own arm, shielding his face, and lets the frantic storm of sensation wash over him, heavy pulse after heavy pulse until there’s nothing left.
Over the thud of his own racing heart in his ears and the pour of the shower, Chris can hear Darren’s wet, panting breaths as he gets himself off. The warmth hitting his ass as Darren groans hotly makes Chris inexplicably giggly and he bites his lip, even as he feels Darren press tired kisses to his back and shoulders. There’s something boyishly charming about the single-minded determination of another man jacking himself off.
He hears the water finally switch off and big hands, made clumsy by orgasms and so much more, paw at him, and he turns easily in Darren’s arms. They slump against the wall, unsteady on shaking legs, breathing into each other with Darren’s head resting heavy on Chris’ chest and his belly firm against Chris’ hip.
Chris runs a lazy hand up and down Darren’s smooth back, feeling the muscles shift with every breath, and he smiles with his eyes still closed. There are some times when everything is all right, if he doesn’t think twice about it.
***
The chicken is 45 minutes from being done and Chris is elbow-deep in potatoes. "I really think we brought too much,” he says, cutting the last of them into chunks.
“Nonsense,” scoffs Darren, setting a giant pot on the stove to get the water boiling. “This way there’ll be plenty of leftovers.”
“Not the way you eat.”
“Are you calling me fat?” Darren puts his hands on his belly and exaggerates a frown down at this stomach.
Chris rolls his eyes. “I’m saying you eat like a linebacker and look like–”
“An out of shape belly dancer?” Darren supplies, grinning.
“Shut up.”
“I’m gonna get so fat when I’m old,” Darren announces happily, patting his belly again. “Be prepared.”
Chris ducks his head, blushing at the thought Darren in 40 or 50 years. “You’re an idiot.”
“Fat and bald. It’s gonna be great.”
It should scare Chris how easily he pictures the two of them sitting in some kitchen decades from now, maybe in LA but probably in New York, bickering over what to have to for dinner. Darren in some ugly sweater while Chris has yet another new pair of glasses with an even stronger prescription. Maybe there are pictures of grandkids on the fridge, if that’s something they end up wanting together. If that’s a future they can reach together.
“I hope you’re not expecting me to be one of those insanely ripped old guys,” Darren muses, breaking Chris out of his reverie. “Because it’s not happening.”
“You’re not insanely ripped now,” Chris counters, putting aside his domestic fantasies for another day. Another time. “Why would I expect it when you’re ancient?”
Darren laughs and Chris feels it echoed in his own heart. “You’re not going to go bald though,” Darren tells him.
"Probably not.” Chris touches his hair, still damp from the shower. “My dad is still doing all right. I think I’m safe.”
“I wouldn’t mind if you did,” Darren says, all seriousness and golden eyes, as though it’s the most important thing he’s said to Chris that day.
Chris snorts. “You don’t want to see this head without any hair. No way. Remember that thing I had to wear for Riff Raff?”
“I thought you looked hot.” Darren winks at him and Chris rolls his eyes.
“Sure you did.”
“No, I really did. I think the whole bald on top, stringy mullet thing really works for you.”
Chris throws a potato across the kitchen, hitting Darren squarely in the chest.
“Don’t waste the food!” Darren squawks indignantly, grabbing the fallen potato from the floor.
“It’s going into boiling water. It’s fine.” Chris brings the cutting board over to the stove and dumps the potatoes into the pot.
Chris has barely put the board down before Darren is crowding into his space, pressing kisses to his shoulder and then the hinge of his jaw.
“I think about it too, you know,” Darren mumbles against the sensitive lobe of Chris’ ear and it doesn’t matter that not 45 minutes ago Chris was panting into the warm tile of the shower, heat is pooling in his belly once again.
“What?”
“Tomorrow,” Darren says, his voice so low, and his beard scratches against Chris’ soft cheek. “Next week. Next year. The next ten years.”
Chris’ heart feels too full to handle. “Oh,” he whispers, because there isn’t enough room in his throat for anything louder.
“Yeah,” Darren agrees and then kisses him fully. Chris gets his arms around Darren’s shoulder and tangles his fingers in Darren’s hair and opens his mouth to Darren’s kisses. If Darren thinks about it – thinks about the years that are coming – then Chris can let himself think about them too.
“We have to stop fucking in the kitchen,” Chris mumbles against Darren’s mouth, because it’s easier to say than I love you.
“Why?”
“Fire,” Chris says, moving away from Darren’s mouth to nip at the corner of his jaw. “Boiling water. Sharp objects.”
“Spoilsport,” Darren teasingly accuses, but pulls back, smoothing his hands down Chris’ waist as he does.
“Later,” Chris assures him, stealing one more kiss before taking a full step away. “Food first.”
***
Overnight it snows 6 inches. Chris props his chin on Darren’s naked chest and gazes out the huge bedroom windows at the wonderland landscape winter has brought them. Morning light glints off the fresh powder and Chris never wants to return to LA.
"What if we can’t leave?” He murmurs, rubbing his thumb against the curve of Darren’s rib. Chris is draped across him, knee over his thigh and arm settled on his belly as Darren lies stretched out on his back. “What if it keeps snowing and the road is impassible and we just have to stay?”
“I guess we’d just have to suffer through it,” Darren responds, voice rough with sleep. He hasn’t even opened his eyes yet. "It’d be rough, you know. All that sex we’d have to have to ward off the impending sense of doomed isolation. And then we’d run out of food and I’d have to eat you.“
"Sound awful,” Chris muses, letting his fingers wander idly across Darren’s chest.
But Chris does think about it, sometimes, running away with Darren. Somewhere. Anywhere. Every time Darren escapes to New York for a weekend or more Chris wonders if there was someplace they could go. Someplace they could stay.
This cabin is close, he thinks, even though it’s Darren’s parents. There’s a room upstairs he could turn into an office. He could setup his laptop and bring copies of his notes and work on the next book here, tucked away from everything. He could bring Brian and Cooper up here if he wanted to stay more than a few days. It’s maybe 20 minutes to town for groceries or anything else he’d need. At some point someone would notice he was there, and that Darren was too, but eventually it wouldn’t matter, if the future goes the way Chris hopes it will.
"You’re thinking about it,” Darren mumbles, his breathing his slow and shallow like he could drift back to sleep at any moment. Maybe he will. Maybe they both will.
“What?”
“You know what.” Darren’s big hand swipes slowly up and down Chris’ bare back, palm so warm against his skin.
“I don’t want to go.” Chris thinks about settling his teeth into the solid muscle of Darren’s chest, near his underarm, as though he could keep him still and hold him in place.
“We don’t have to, not yet,” Darren tells him, as though it’s that easy. Maybe sometimes it can be that easy.
Chris rests his cheek against Darren’s chest, nuzzling against the coarse hair there. “When do you think we’ll get to make promises?” He asks.
“Hmm?”
“Promises. When do you think we’ll get to make them – to each other?” It’s not something he meant to ask, but it’s snowing outside and his body is relaxed and his heart is open and sometimes he just has to let his soul do the talking.
Darren shifts and when Chris looks up into his face, his eyes are open and dark and very serious. “Are there promises you want to make?” Darren asks, his hand has stilled on Chris’ back. The heat of his palm is a brand.
“Well, aren’t there for you?”
“Yes,” Darren answers, uncharacteristically cautious, and Chris wonders if this is a conversation that should have waited for them to both be clothed. “But you said no promises.”
“Four years ago. Things change.”
Chris licks his lips. “Are they changing?”
“Not fast enough, but yeah.” Darren moves again and his other hand comes to take hold of Chris’ wrist in a gentle grip. “I think so.”
“Then promise me.” Chris’ is sure Darren can feel his heart beating hard and fast.
“Promise you what, though?” Darren’s thumb strokes Chris’ wrist and Chris shivers with the gentle, familiar touch.
“Whatever you want. Just say it. Don’t think twice.”
Darren is silent for a long moment and Chris can feel every inch of where they’re pressed tight together, hips and hands and legs intertwined. Skin and heat and beating hearts. Chris wants to drown in it and live forever.
“You and me?” Darren finally says. “We’re never going to change.”
Chris breathes and feels like he’s been broken apart and sealed back together in the space between their heartbeats. He presses a kiss to Darren’s chest and pulls his wrist from Darren’s grip so he can link their fingers together.
“Good,” he says and feels it down in his bones. The world and their circumstances can change around them, as long as they remain.
“And hey,” Darren says after long, comfortable minutes. “The cabin will still be here next winter.”
Chris smiles and feels it in his soul. “Good.”
