SEVEN
For a moment there, in the car, the tension between them had been so strong that Noah had been sure that Darien was going to kiss him. Instead, Darien had left, and Noah felt the smile slipping from his face as he slid out of the seat and gently shut the car door behind him.
It was probably better that way. When they’d made each other come before, it had gotten into Noah’s heart more than he would have thought possible. But he knew, logically at least, as much as ever that Darien wasn’t ever going to be what Noah wanted him to be.
Or, more accurately, what hehadwanted him to be, almost exactly one year ago when they’d lived together in that small dorm room. Any hope of that had been destroyed when Darien took off after his dream, heedless of his own future or how it might impact anyone else.
Darien hadn’t taken his school seriously then, so really, why should Noah expect him to take sex seriously? Did what they had done together even count as sex? Did Darien see it that way?
Mind whirling, Noah made his way through the artificial concrete cave of the parking garage, gray all around him, gray in his thoughts and mind and soul. The elevator, too, was gray but broken up with mirrors and the green lights which went on when Darien pressed the button to his floor.
Their eyes met through the mirror, and Noah studied Darien’s face, which was just as sweet and cheerful as it had always been. That was one thing about taking nothing seriously, Noah mused to himself as he gazed at the man who had once been his best friend. Darien seemed to be a whole lot happier than Noah, who overthought everything, was.
Only there was a hint of something in those bright sapphire eyes, a hint of tension to those sweet lips, a storm brewing below the surface. Noah had seen Darien take things seriously, from time to time. He had always gotten good grades, for instance when he had tried. And Noah should remember, too, that Darien was a member of a band which was one of the quickest rising stars in the entertainment world.
Maybe it would be less infuriating to Noah, he mused to himself, if Darien really hadn’t been capable of trying to make things work. But he could, and he had, and it was just that neither school nor their friendship had been enough to make Darien care enough to try.
The silence spun between them, some invisible spider weaving a web of tension between them. Noah kept studying Darien’s reflected face, and he wondered what it would take for Darien to see any of this as serious.
Still, he had to remember one simple fact. He had been in trouble, and he had called on Darien, and Darien had come. Without question, without hesitation, Darien had been there, bailing him out, freeing him from the horrible choices which he would have had to make otherwise.
He could continue going to school because of Darien. And for someone like Noah, that meant something. It had been a year. Wasn’t it possible that Darien had changed? That being in the band had taught him some concept of adult responsibility?
The elevator doors slid open with a chime, and they stepped out together. It had been a whole thirty seconds or so, and Darien, Noah suddenly realized, hadn’t said anything. For a motormouth like him, that was pretty major, but Darien had just stood there and looked right back at Noah like that was enough.
In the apartment, with the lights flipped on, Darien flung his body down onto the couch and snagged the remote for the television.
“How do you feel about pizza for dinner? I don’t want to cook,” Darien informed him, and Noah had to fight off a smile of nostalgia. That very same question had been asked to him countless times when they’d been roommates, only then it had been that Darien was too lazy to go down to the cafeteria with him and get some food there.
“Okay,” Noah agreed, sitting down with somewhat more caution onto the couch. He didn’t go flinging his body around everywhere, not like Darien did, but then Darien seemed to operate with an assurance that everything would be all right. That he could just fling himself around, and that the couch would be there to catch him.
More often than not, of course, he was right, but it was still a little bit too risky for Noah’s tastes. He had no such faith that the world would take care of him. Darien lived a charmed life, perhaps, but Noah most certainly did not.
Darien tugged out his phone, and with a few flicks of his finger, he had pizza ordered. It was so strange, Noah mused, the dynamic between them. Darien knew very well what Noah wanted on his pizza, and he didn’t even have to ask, or check. In some ways, it was like being with a stranger, and yet it was so much more complicated by the fact that they had been friends once.
Briefly, they had even been more than friends, until Darien had left.
It would be so easy to relax into this, Noah realized, as he looked not at the TV screen where Darien was navigating around, chattering about this show or that. It would be so easy to let himself just fall into the old, comfortable dynamic, and yet, for his own safety, wasn’t that the absolute last thing that he should be doing?
They were neither friends nor strangers, but they had aspects of both, and Noah found that he had no idea how to react to that. How to deal with it. With a soft sigh, he settled back onto the soft yield of the cushions of the couch, very aware of Darien’s body by his side, by the other man’s clean scent and the way he seemed to radiate heat.
How long have I wanted you?
The question popped, utterly unbidden, into his head. He knew the answer already. It was simple enough. He had wanted Darien from the moment that he’d laid eyes on him, when the cheerful young man had bounced over to him, full of energy and heat, a wide smile on his face, to introduce himself to his new roommate.
Maybe the question was, how long was he going to keep on wanting Darien? How long until that draw which he felt toward his former friend was going to die down and give him some peace? His body seemed to want to flow toward Darien, aching for him, until he found himself shifting almost imperceptibly closer to him, to the heat and warmth of him as though Darien were a brightly burning campfire and Noah was freezing.
“What do you want to watch?” Darien asked, and Noah finally turned his attention to the glowing screen, his eyes scanning over the options as they were presented. Netflix had a lot to offer, he realized. He’d never had an account of his own, but Darien had. Still, it seemed like there was a lot more to choose from, lots of content added in the year that he hadn’t been paying attention.
“That looks cool,” he spoke finally. “The documentary on Arctic animals?” Even as he spoke, though, he knew it wasn’t going to happen. Darien shot him a pitying look but took away any sting by casually flinging his arm over the back of the couch, almost around Noah’s shoulders. It was a gesture so effortlessly intimate that Noah doubted that Darien even realized he was doing it.
“No way. Boring.” This, too, was familiar. Darien like action movies, anime, and cartoons. Noah liked documentaries. They had always been able to work out a compromise before, and the way this conversation was going made Noah’s heart ache.
It was so much like before, and Noah closed his eyes for a moment and wished as fervently as he’d ever wished for anything that they could just go back in time one year and have none of this have happened. That he could trust this man again, that he could even have the stupid fantasies that he’d had about being Darien’s boyfriend.
“It’s not boring,” Noah told him, turning to face him, his lips quirked in a slight smile. It wasn’t either. It was deeply comforting, these old roles. Too comforting. No matter how Noah tried, he didn’t seem to be able to guard himself against all of this, to keep himself safe.
Maybe the worst part, he suddenly realized, was how little he wanted to. Deep down, where it counted, he wanted to be reckless for once. He wanted to pull Darien to him, to kiss him, to do all of the things he had fantasized about while sitting beside him in their dorm room.
