a bowcrary drabble i conjured up in 10 mins after listening to modern baseball's i think you were in my profile picture once!! my mind went wild with the possibilities after i saw that pic of bowcrary on tommy's birthday i just couldn't help myself:
“I used to have a crush on you,” Tommy blurts. “Don’t worry, I don’t anymore, if it’s worth anything.”
“I know,” Chanse says, “I liked you too.”
“I had an inkling.” Then vaguely inculpatory: “You never said anything, though. I didn’t want to assume.”
Assume. Assume that I have killed a man. Assume that I loved you for half a year. Assume things about me, as long as I cross your mind at all. Chanse wants to say all these things, artlessly and unadulteratedly, but he’s an actor – it’s part of him, to be adulterated, and unadulterated in an adulterated way.
“Look,” Chanse begins. Tommy’s eyes are trained away, on the floor between his shoes. “Do you want to…” get out of here? Tommy’s intent gaze is on him now. He almost says, unsubtly, do you want to see the swords I have put up in my room? Do you want to see the swords you have put up, not in, but through my heart?
But his lips don’t part. He can’t say it.
Tommy reaches out to touch his cheek, skims, just barely. “Is this okay?” Tommy's voice is as tentative as his touch, and Tommy’s restraint is something Chanse has always coveted, he thinks at the back of his mind, before he can’t shoulder the distance anymore, the subtleties,
touching his immense yearning to Tommy’s lips. When he pulls away just after a pulse, yearning still fastened to his own lips, unsalved, Tommy’s frowning, his eyes melancholy.
“Who did you spend your birthday wish on?” Chanse asks instead.
Tommy smiles a little with the lips that Chanse has now kissed, the first real smile since Chanse has arrived tonight, quiet incandescence touching his eyes. “There’s this guy I met on Hinge. He’s perfect. He’s so, so nice to me, and,” Tommy wraps a hand around Chanse’s nape, and he’s still so close, “he’s everything I can’t stand to lose. I can’t jeopardise what we have.” He whispers the last part against Chanse’s mouth. He’s so close.
So close to something Chanse can have and everything he wants.
“I’m happy for you, Tommy. I really am.”
“You ruined my birthday,” Tommy murmurs, vaguely sulky, the inculpation returning to his voice, but he’s smiling, wider, and Chanse can’t bear to look at the smile which he could have seen every day, had he been a little braver, a little more unafraid, had he wanted it.
“You ruined my life,” Chanse says, though it isn’t a competition and he’s smiling ridiculously and completely perversely, and Tommy beats him to the punch this time, crooking his lips perfectly against Chanse’s, and it’s unfair, utterly below the belt, how Tommy’s lips against his promise something he can never give.
“We wouldn’t work,” Tommy says, abruptly, when they pull apart. Diplomatically, like something he’s considered and pored over, “you like parties. I like quiet evenings on the couch with a show playing. You’re a rolling stone. I’m moss.”
“I like shows,” Chanse says, but he isn’t trying to convince Tommy, not really. They’ve both already made up their minds. “I could put on a show for you.”
“You wouldn’t do that for me.”
“I could.” The auxiliary verb tells Tommy all he needs to know, it’s clear on his face. Auxiliary verbs do not conjugate, they do not metamorphose, do not grow to fit ill-fitting infinitives. He wants to tell Tommy this, but he knows that Tommy is well-aware.
“Come home with me,” Chanse says. He knows where Tommy stands on this matter, but he wants to hear it again.
“I can’t leave my friends at my own birthday party,” Tommy reasons.
“We’re friends,” Tommy says, dismissively. It’s the understatement of the century.
“You like me,” Chanse argues.
“You like me,” he insists.
“I do,” Tommy gives in, suddenly bleeding sincerity, and Chanse has to tear his eyes away from all of it, the gore onscreen, the spilt guts.
“If it’s worth anything,” Chanse prefaces, though he knows it isn’t, tonight merely an insignificant blip in the timeline, “I like you too.”
“You should go,” Tommy says.
“I should,” Chanse echoes dumbly.
“Text me when you’re home?” A pleasantry. They’re long past pleasantries, Chanse thinks.
“I won’t,” Chanse says honestly.
Tommy shrugs, too casually. “Fair.”
Farewell, fair cruelty, Chanse thinks. Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. On that day, anything could happen. Servants could turn into kings, women could become men, and strangers lovers. Grammar could reduce itself to ashes, and phoenixes could rise from language.
He looks at Tommy, properly this time, gazes finally upon this beautiful stranger who could’ve been a lover. “Happy birthday, Tommy,” Chanse says truthfully, and he means it.
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