FIFTEEN

 

If Noah got more than an hour of sleep that night, it would be a surprise to him. Maybe it had even been less. He’d just lain in bed, hour after sleepless hour, his eyes wide and dry as he tried not to think about the last time he’d been around someone as drunk as Darien had been.

Actually, it had been more than once, when he’d been growing up. Moving from foster home to foster home, some of them had been better than others. Some, far worse. Many of them had drunk, often to excess, and that was one of the many reasons that Noah couldn’t wait to be out of the foster care system.

No doubt, he had his issues with drinking. No doubt, watching Darien stumbling and falling all over himself had been a big part of what had irritated him so much.

It definitely hadn’t helped to see Darien draped all over the incredibly gorgeous, oozing sexuality and confidence body of Lance, though. It hadn’t made him feel any more confident. Any more sure that Darien could commit to him. How could Noah even expect that when the men Darien surrounded himself with were just so damn beautiful?

How much was Noah going to be expected to take? How many other men would Darien be flinging himself at, while Noah had no choice but to look on? Only that wasn’t the case, because there was one other option if he wanted to take it.

He could leave. He could break up with Darien. And yet, the idea didn’t seem to want to take root in his head. Hadn’t he wanted this man for so long? To walk away once they were finally together seemed like a stupid idea. But was this something that could be sorted out? Or would he end up having no choice but to leave, if he wanted to keep his own sanity intact?

He didn’t know. He just didn’t know. He groaned as he rolled around, sweating and tossing and turning like he was in the grips of a fever. He wasn’t, he was completely lucid, but that didn’t make any of this easier.

Finally, the sun rose outside the window, and Noah rose to his feet. There was no point in even trying to sleep now. The sun shining in brightly would make that impossible, even if his own stormy thoughts didn’t.

Rubbing his gritty eyes, wondering at what point he had closed his eyes long enough for someone to dump a whole bucket of sand in them, Noah opened the door to the bedroom. He didn’t feel in any way equipped to deal with this conversation, but it wasn’t going to get any better for putting it off, he supposed.

Only to pause in his tracks when he laid eyes on Darien, who was, in fact, passed out on the couch. But he wasn’t alone. Lance hadn’t gone home the night before, apparently, because he was settled down on his back on the couch, with Darien half draped over him, their arms locked around each other.

Their clothing was rumpled, but all still in place, and it was entirely possible that nothing had happened. But Noah realized, standing there staring at the two of them, that it didn’t matter.

What it came down to was that he still couldn’t trust Darien to be in this thing. How many situations would come up, completely innocent situations that he wouldn’t be able to trust that nothing was going on? How was he supposed to live on edge like this, walking on eggshells?

He had been so optimistic. Had thought that, for once, maybe something in his life would go right. But he had been so totally wrong. Nothing had changed, nothing at all. He could rely on one person in the whole world, and that person was himself. It was a mistake for him to think otherwise.

For a moment, Noah considered just walking right out of the apartment. Maybe it would be best if he were gone by the time Darien woke up. But the truth was, he wasn’t even sure where he would go, and really, even if he did have another place, he was pretty sure that it wasn’t that cool to just ditch someone like that.

For what they had been to each other, for what they were now, for how much Noah still cared about the son of a bitch, he owed it to Darien to talk to him. Even though the longer he stared at Lance and Darien cuddling together on the couch, the more upset he got.

He went to sit down in the chair by the end of the couch where their heads both were, looking at them, trying to figure out how to wake them up. When he reached out to touch Darien, his hands were trembling like leaves on a tree blown about by a rough storm, lashed by wind and rain.

Darien’s eyes opened just before Noah touched him, and, relieved, Noah let his hand fall down onto his lap. Darien had woken up on his own, and Noah looked at him, forcing his own face to be still and calm. It was going to be hard enough to do this without him freaking out about it.

“Mmph,” Lance commented, his arms clutching at Darien and pulling him back down against himself, his eyes still firmly shut. Noah clenched his fists into tight little balls, feeling the bite of his own fingernails there.

“Lance! Wake up, lazy,” Darien said, and even now, when Noah felt like his own face could be carved out of stone, Darien was grinning and looked cheerful. Like it was completely normal for him to wake up the morning after he’d gotten shitfaced with another man clenched in his arms.

Like Lance belonged there. Or maybe it was just that it felt like everyone belonged there except for Noah.

“Mmph!” Lance repeated, this time more emphatically. He opened those remarkable eyes, glistening, wet green jade, and rubbed at them as he yawned and stretched.

“Darien, we need to talk,” Noah finally got brave enough to speak as he watched Lance and Darien both sit up, with Lance running his long, sensitive artist's fingers through his artfully careless dark waves of hair.

Darien shot him a look, something like terror in his gaze. But it was only for a second, and Noah figured he was probably wrong about what he had seen. What did Darien, who didn’t even seem to take this relationship seriously, have to be worried about?

“I don’t think I have time right now,” Darien commented, and he glanced over at Lance. “There’s that concert tomorrow night, right? We have to get ready for that.”

Lance held up his hands, his eyes wide, deer trapped in the headlights, to the point where Noah felt a brief flash of pity for the man. No doubt this was an awkward position to be in, and as far as Noah could tell, Lance had only been trying to take care of his friend.

“Hey, don’t get me involved,” Lance commented and rose to his feet with an effortless, leonine grace that Noah couldn’t help but envy a little bit. “I’ll see you guys around, okay?”

With that, he fled, and Noah took a deep, relaxing breath, trying to get his shoulders to unclench, to get his face to break through the layer of ice that he was sure must have built up over it. He felt like he could barely move, and barely feel, though that last part was sort of a relief.

“We need to talk,” Noah spoke again, repeating those words, and his voice came out very quiet so that Darien had to lean forward even to have a chance of hearing him. For a moment, though, even when he had Darien’s attention, Noah couldn’t figure out what to say.

What did he want to say? Even now, he wasn’t interested in getting into some sort of huge argument with the guy, that wasn’t his style at all. He rubbed at his temples, where the beginnings of a nasty headache had started to lurk, and tried to will his jaw to soften a little bit.

“Okay,” Darien’s words had the feel of a caged animal, one who had been fighting their captivity but has finally settled down into a sort of acceptance of the situation. Noah closed his eyes, searching his heart, to see if he wanted to do this.

The thing was, if Darien really seemed to care that much about Noah, then he would never do this. If he took their relationship seriously, then Darien could be friends with whoever he wanted, and it wouldn’t bother Noah. But he’d never felt on firm footing with the man, not since Darien had left him in the first place.

He was starting to think that he never would, and that was the real problem. Lance spending the night was just the proverbial last straw.

“You’re very close with them,” Noah finally managed to speak past the clenching of his jaw, and once the first word was out, the rest of them followed pretty naturally. “The other Lost Boys.”

He searched Darien’s face, saw something like defiance there, and he was sure of himself when he heard the defensive tone of Darien’s voice when he replied.

“Yeah, so what? They’re my friends,” he said, and Noah let his gaze drift away. He wasn’t going to be able to do what needed to be done if he let himself look into Darien’s strangely sad, vulnerable eyes.

“I think you should spend more time with them,” Noah told him, and out of his peripheral vision he could see when Darien jumped, clearly startled by that. Whatever he had expected, it wouldn’t be that.

“Noah …?” Darien started, but Noah made the most intense effort that he had ever had to make and forced his gaze back to Darien’s. He saw wariness there as if part of him expected what Noah was going to say next.

“I think you should spend more time with them, and probably less with me,” Noah said, laying it all out on the line. “We tried this, Darien. We’re just different people.”

That’s what it came down to. Noah was serious and focused, determined, and Darien was carefree and sweet and cheerful. Noah would give his heart and soul to someone, if he let himself care about them at all, and Darien seemed to care about everyone on a surface level, but that was all.

Noah couldn’t take it. He couldn’t give his all to something, to someone, who wouldn’t give it back. And as he looked at Darien, as his gaze seemed to glance off of the shiny, now impenetrable surface of Darien’s brilliant blue eyes, he saw that Darien knew it deep down, too.

“Okay,” Darien said, and what else had Noah expected? Had he thought that Darien would fight for him? When had Darien ever done that? He should have known better, and really, he had. In some way, this was exactly what he’d known would happen.

“I’ll be out as soon as I can find a place,” Noah told him—and as soon as he could get some money together. What he was being paid for the websites, it should be enough for him to get an apartment. He’d take anything, at this point, to get away.

To get away from his failure, because that’s what this felt like, a failure, on his part. A failure to make this work. Or maybe his mistake had been to get involved with this man in the first place.

To get involved with anyone.

The whole thing was over with a minimum of fuss. No loud arguments, no tears. Not even any recriminations. It had gone as well as it could have, and Noah wondered at the gaping hole that had opened up, seemingly within the last few seconds, in the very center of his heart.

A black hole, he realized, and one which would suck his entire heart into the void if he let it. But that had to be better than getting it broken.