Platonic (35 page)

It would be an amazing, expensive wedding. And I would want to get a plus one. —Jess.

He snorts and then listens for his parents in the hallway. He responds to Daniel only, fingers hovering at first because he isn’t sure what to type.

Eventually, carefully, he types:

One day.

And then signs off with a laugh, a wink and a heart.

CHAPTER 17

Mark is prepared for Daniel to be busier than ever when Christmas is over and he has plenty of his own work to deal with. They still talk, but emails are shorter, often suddenly cut off. Then Daniel gets completely snowed under, both literally and figuratively, as a snowstorm puts all their deliveries behind and makes travel impossible. They have to replace models for a shoot and then for a fitting. He tells Mark all about it and reassures him that his week off hasn’t set him back. But suddenly they’re headed for Paris with a fashion show they need to nail and it’s happening in a matter of weeks. He calls Mark from the bus on the way to work most mornings and in the evenings while he’s eating. More than a dozen times, Daniel falls asleep mid-conversation, and Mark says he understands and refuses to accept apologies.

Mark asks him when things will calm down and when Daniel says March, Mark says he’ll visit him then.

It’s wonderful when Daniel replies: “You don’t have to. I’ll be home in April.”

***

Mark goes to London anyway. He has vacation time and besides, he tells Daniel, he doesn’t mind if Daniel has to work, that just falling asleep with him will be the perfect vacation.

Daniel meets him at King’s Cross Station, just like the last time, and once again they catch two buses to get home. It’s a Sunday and they spend it in bed.

Then it is a whole week of disgusting levels of domesticity. On Monday, Mark is woken up early by Daniel’s lips, soft against his cheek. “I’ve got a half an hour to burn if you’re up for it,” Daniel tells him, and even though it’s six a.m. and Daniel’s already fully dressed for work, Mark pulls himself from sleep and drags his boyfriend back down into the sheets. He’s intent on kissing Daniel, even with morning breath and clumsy hands, but he’s too sleepy to do much else. The grins and little whimpers Daniel gives him back are proof enough that making out like this is perfect for both of them.

Except then Mark wakes up fully and Daniel gets his mouth around his bottom lip and sucks hard. Mark arches, cock getting hard fast as he ruts against Daniel’s hip only to be pushed away with a laugh.

“I really do need to go,” Daniel tells him and Mark pouts and stretches, naked and reveling in the way Daniel stares at him, his hands still linger-ing on his skin.

Eventually Daniel pulls back again, sitting there on his knees and trying to right his hair and shirt collar. On the bed, spread-eagled and writhing, Mark moans loudly as he starts jerking himself off. Daniel looks at him for only a second—long enough, Mark thinks, to see the teasing in his eyes—and then Daniel growls under his breath and turns away, clambering off the bed. He shrugs on the blazer and then the jacket that he’s grabbed from the hook on the back of the door and yells a cheery, “I really hate you,” over his shoulder as he leaves.

Mark gets himself off like that, pressing his face into Daniel’s pillow and breathing him in. Then he sends Daniel a text, knowing full well that he’ll be stuck on the bus, wedged between goodness knows who.

You missed a very, very good morning.

That afternoon, Daniel calls Mark on his way to get coffee and tells him that his witness was a woman wearing too much lavender, sitting with her bags across two chairs and consequently stuck with him standing in front of her, his crotch a little too close to her face. She’d watched him read the message and looked on disapprovingly when he couldn’t completely swallow a moan.

Mark just laughs at him and says, “Speaking of faces too close to your crotch. What time will you be home?”

***

Mark keeps Daniel informed of his movements the entire day. He sends texts every half hour. Daniel doesn’t always respond, but Mark suspects he grins each time his phone vibrates and that makes it worth doing.

Mark makes his way along the Thames and through St James’s Park, then gets a little bit lost and ends up at Trafalgar Square. He gets caught in a rainstorm and has to run for a train station, but he loves every minute of it because of how quintessentially London it all feels.

His hair still wet, he meets up with Patrick in a little pub somewhere just off Chancery Lane and when he asks Patrick how he’s doing, Patrick actually answers him, telling him all about his work, its challenges, the elation it brings him and how much he loves living in the city. He seems genuinely content, the restlessness Mark used to observe in him absent.

“I’m so happy I hung around Stanford as long as I did,” Patrick says, taking another gulp of beer and smiling.

“So am I,” Mark agrees.

Patrick waggles his eyebrows at him, and Mark rolls his eyes back. “I mean it,” Mark says. “I don’t think I would have worked my shit out quite as fast as I did without you around.”

Patrick just grins at him. “So how are things with Daniel?”

Mark lets out a slow breath and can’t believe how easy he finds it to talk. But this is Patrick: the first person Mark ever told this story to, the one who was there when Mark started to work his way back to Daniel and New York. He’s still here now, grinning knowingly at him. “Things are good,” he says. “Better than. He’s coming home in a month.”

Patrick just hums at that and waits for more.

“I’m over here for the whole week and he’s working crazy hours to try to get important fashion stuff done, but he’s making time for me. He comes home and we eat dinner and talk and it feels really, really easy. He makes me happy.”

“Good,” Patrick says. “So what next?”

“Well he’s back in New York in a month—”

“And?”

Mark cocks an eyebrow. “What do you want me to say?”

Patrick laughs. “I’m invested in this story; I have been for years. I want the happy ending.”

“Well, that’s…” Mark is grinning again. “Well yeah, that’s what’s next.”

Running a finger around the rim of his pint glass, Patrick says, “Well then, tell me about it.”

Mark sighs but can’t stop smiling. “We’ll… I mean, we’ll just live happily ever after... apartment, kids—we both still want kids—we actually already kind of have a dog.”

“How do you already kind of have a dog?” Patrick asks, unsurprised but amused.

“Well Daniel has a dog back in New York, Max, he’s a puggle—”

Patrick rolls his eyes.

“He’s been staying with Dan’s old assistant, but I dog-sit a lot and whenever we get around to moving in together, I mean, he’ll be
our
dog.”

“So, it’s as simple as that.” Patrick grins.

“Yeah.”

“Just like when you were teenagers.”

Mark huffs out a laugh and admits, “Nothing like it, really.”

Patrick raises an eyebrow and motions to the waitress for two more beers even though Mark’s is only half empty.

Mark elaborates. “We’re ready and we know what we’re getting into and we know we want it. In high school,” he thinks for a moment, “I guess we only thought we wanted it.”

Patrick leans back and nods slowly. “True,” he says. “And I mean, look at everything you’ve been through, and you’re still chasing this guy.”

“He’s chasing me as well.”

“I know. And this is what you want?” Patrick asks—and only Patrick knows him well enough, knew him at the right time in his life, to really understand what he’s asking.

“More than anything.”

“Good.” Patrick tries to hide his smile in his beer, but his glass is empty. His smile turns rueful and he says, “You know I was always rooting for your happy ending.”

Mark watches him for a long moment, the reality of his imminent happiness weightier here with Patrick because Patrick makes him acknowledge it. It feels wonderful. Mark drinks down what’s left of his pint as the waitress sets down the next round and he sips the head from his third beer before he speaks. “You didn’t believe in romance.”

“I never said that. I said it wasn’t for me,” Patrick counters.

Mark considers that for a moment. “So why were you rooting for Daniel and me? I never really understood that.”

Patrick laughs and then narrows his eyes: Mark’s asking the question that has bugged him ever since he started telling Patrick the story, years and years ago.

When Patrick just raises his glass to his lips and doesn’t offer an answer, Mark asks him something different, something that has only just occurred to him, here in this pub so far from California. “For that matter, why did you take me home that night, the very first time? You never fucked any of your other students, not that I know of.”

“I didn’t, just you, and I told you why: I liked you; I thought you were hot; I liked your mind.” He shrugs it off and keeps sipping at his beer.

“But why me? And then why did you make me tell you about Daniel? Why any of it, if you were just looking for sex? Sleeping with a student, especially after I’d mistaken you for boyfriend material, really never made much sense.”

Patrick cocks his head to the side. “I really did like you,” he says after a few missed beats. “Not as boyfriend material, not ever. But even before we slept together, you were more interesting to me than all the boring trust fund babies and über-nerds around campus—you were witty and I knew you were kind and God, Stanford was such a drain. You were my one big risk, my escape—”

“How romantic,” Mark teases, but it’s to cover the realization that perhaps Patrick has always loved him in his own, completely incompatible with Mark’s world view, kind of way.

“Shut up,” Patrick says and reaches across the table to pinch the skin on the back of his hand, eliciting a yelp. “You saw how bored I got and how hard I worked. It was all worth it, because now look at me. You were—don’t take this the wrong way—you were the very best distraction, and a little bit of a rebellion?”

It doesn’t change anything between them, not really, but Mark suddenly understands his place in Patrick’s world a little better, realizes how he managed to be just as important to Patrick as Patrick ever was to him. “And Daniel?”

“Your story, the way it has worked out here, the way I always suspected it would—the whole soul mates, long-haul, long-distance commitment romance thing isn’t for me, but hearing you talk about it was always fascinating because it was so clearly you. I was a bit jealous sometimes when you talked about him, I still am, because what you have sounds fantastic. It was a vicarious kick for me, I think.” He shrugs again. “I like hearing your stories about true love. Can’t I be a committed Lothario and still enjoy a good romance story?”

Mark nods slowly and returns Patrick’s smile.

“I’m really, truly happy for you,” Patrick says. “And with Daniel’s taste in all things stylish and his money, I remain very excited about the wedding.”

Mark laughs and shakes his head but doesn’t blush at all. The conversation turns back to talk of London and then New York and then Mark coerces Patrick into taking the rest of the afternoon off and showing him around the lawyerly parts of the city in exchange for the sappiest and sexiest anecdotes about him and Daniel that he has to offer.

***

Monday night, just like every night—Mark knows from emails and Skype—Daniel comes home tightly wound, still immaculately put together, and babbling about work. He kisses Mark in the kitchen and goes to get changed. Mark trots after him immediately, intent on helping Daniel out of his clothes. It results in some severely burnt pork and Mark makes a mental note to factor fooling around time into his future cooking plans.

***

The week progresses in much the same manner. Daniel works his usual long hours because he has no other option, and Mark enjoys playing house. It is, he tells Daniel, a thousand times more relaxing than work, and that’s what vacations are for.

They drink too much wine too often and talk until it’s dark and quiet on Daniel’s street. They have sex at every opportunity and by Wednesday it has turned into a given that when the dishes are finished they will turn to each other and laugh and try to make one another gasp.

***

On Thursday, that changes. Daniel calls: He wants dinner early and tells Mark they’re going out. When Daniel gets home, he’s smiling and rocking up onto the balls of his feet while he hovers around Mark in the kitchen and watches him work.

“Not changing?” Mark asks.

“After dinner,” Daniel says.

Mark hums something, stirs a pot and lets his eyes slide to Daniel. He looks remarkable like this, almost glowing with excitement and energy along with what is obviously a secret. Mark can’t really be blamed for his inability to resist. He has Daniel up against the fridge in two seconds flat and his hands on Daniel’s waist as he kisses him and sets to untucking his shirt.

Giggling and swatting at him, Daniel lets him kiss as much and as hard as he likes, giggling harder when Mark’s mouth matches his own teasing, fleeting presses, and he gives in to Daniel’s hands pulling his away from his dick. With their fingers intertwined at their sides and their mouths smiling more than kissing, Mark asks, “What is it we’re doing tonight?”

“Hurry up and make my dinner,” Daniel replies.

***

Daniel has a suit for him, a three-piece in a subdued dark gray. The cut is traditional—if incredibly fitted—but for the narrow collar embroidered with fine silver thread and thin purple pinstripes. It fits Mark almost perfectly and it takes Daniel less than ten minutes to hem the cuffs. The shirt beneath is silk, the socks the softest Mark’s ever encountered. Daniel leads him into the bathroom and styles his hair for him, scrunching the waves up in his hands, tugging on them to make sure they’ll hold their shape.

“You should wear your glasses,” Daniel tells him, going all the way up on his tiptoes and hooking his chin over Mark’s shoulder to meet his eyes in the mirror.

“Is it weird that your clothes turn me on?” Mark whispers back. “As well as making me immensely proud and in awe and a little jealous, obviously,” he adds.