A Tragedy With Tits

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The first day back home, Dag sleeps hard and completely wrecks any chance he had of mitigating his jetlag. It’s only the second day on a technicality, when he wakes up disoriented with crust around his eyes at two in the morning. He takes a long hot shower and then lounges around naked on his bed and fiddles with his phone. Tommy’s back in the United States by now, probably. Dag thinks about messaging him. They talked mostly about tour stuff, would it be weird now if Dag just asked him how his day was going?

Fuck. Probably. He throws on some clothes.

There’s nothing in the fridge except for a jar of mustard, two beers, and half a jar of pickles. Dag’s honestly impressed with himself. He used to forget all sorts of shit and come back to a nasty fridge, but this time he actually managed to clear most of the food before he left. There is a can of soup in the pantry though, so at least he’s got more for breakfast than just pickles with mustard. He heats it up on the stove, pot on one burner, moka on the other, and looks out the window.

The sun hasn’t risen yet and his garden is still dark. He’ll start tackling that today after his gets groceries. There shouldn’t be too much upkeep, he planned the beds carefully so that he could be gone for a couple of months at a time. But the rose shrubs might need some pruning here or there, and there’s probably some weeds he needs to get rid of. At the very least he’s going to take a look, maybe spend a few hours puttering around outside, drink the beer that’s in the fridge. It’ll be a nice way to settle into a normal day, instead of being on the road.

Dag looks at his phone again and does the mental math. It’s evening in Los Angeles. He opens the whatsapp thread with Tommy and closes it again. Fuck. The moka pot begins to gurgle aggressively, so Dag puts his phone down and fusses over breakfast. He stares at the blank screen of his phone some more as he eats, and wonders why he’s so nervous about sending a text. He’s a grown man.

You: did you make it home safe?

He puts the phone down again, resists the urge to just stare at until there’s a response. There’s a voice at the back of his brain that keeps saying if there’s a response. If. Dag sighs. He thinks about the grocery store, tries to mentally plan out food for the week. His parents will want to grab lunch during the weekend, but Dag honestly doesn’t feel like going out there. All they’re going to do is talk about how their neighbors have grandchildren now and that Dag isn’t getting any younger.

Dag’s never wanted kids, never had much of an interest, and he’s told them that. But his mom seems to have an unending supply of young women that she knows, who are all pretty and single and apparently desperate to settle down and get knocked up. Dag hasn’t even thought about broaching the subject that he’s interested in men to them. He’s not sure that he wants to. They’ll be fine with it, most likely, but he doesn’t think they’ll be happy. He imagines telling them that the person he’s hung up on is a man from America. He frowns.

His phone buzzes.

Tommy: Yes, trying to stay awake so I don’t fuck my sleep schedule.