#rough draft hell

Colson is about to open his mouth to reject the offer, to tell Em exactly where he can shove his pity, when his stomach cuts him off with a very audible growl. Blushing furiously and avoiding eye contact, Colson starts talking just to fill the resulting silence. “I had, like, a rough fuckin’ morning. I’m not usually so - I mean, if you ran into me literally any other time, I’d be - ”

“Skipped breakfast?” 

The tone of the question is neutral, impassive. But that can’t be right, because Colson remembers how heated Em used to get when Colson would forget to eat; surviving for days at a time on nothing but caffeine, electrolyte water, fistfuls of dry cereal, and avocado toast. You’re not his problem anymore, Colson reminds himself, familiar regrets burning the back of his throat. 

“Yeah,” he answers, quiet and somber, his head bowed as if he’s subconsciously waiting to be told off. 

“Sit,” Em prompts, still sounding neutral. “You can have whatever you want from the pantry. 

“That’s okay, I can - ”

“Kells.” 

There’s a flash of the Em Colson had known, then, the unspoken command in his voice triggering Colson’s long-forgotten compulsion to please him. He obeys in a daze, dropping his bag to the floor and taking a seat on the couch, waiting. 

Em presents him with a granola bar and a Diet Coke, saying, “You should order some real food, when you know where you’re supposed to be.” 

Colson emits a vague grumble of assent, tearing open the granola bar and taking a bite. He might as well be a wayward traveler on the brink of starvation, for the way he wolfs the rest of it down like it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. 

“Skipped dinner, too,” Em says casually, hitting the nail right on the head. 

“What else you got in here?” Colson asks, partly to avoid acknowledging that comment and partly because his stomach is officially running the show. 

Colson attempts to solve his suite mishap over the phone while he and Em share pretzels and kettle chips. It’s hard for him to focus with Em’s curious eyes on him, and their hands occasionally brushing when they reach for the snacks on the coffee table at the same time. Colson keeps fumbling his words, trailing into faded uh-huhs as his travel agent chatters intently in his ear and his brain anchors itself to the faint blue-green veins snaking through the underside of Em’s pale wrist. 

“So?” Em asks when Colson hangs up, lifting his chin expectantly. 

Colson swallows, struggling to make sense of the details. “I guess my, uh, my membership expired? And nobody realized? I definitely don’t have a suite booked for today, though, so I gotta find a hotel near - ”

“Hotel,” Em repeats, frowning thoughtfully. “If the wait is that long, why wouldn’t you just go home and come back?” 

“Oh. I actually don’t… I live in Cleveland now.” 

Em looks genuinely shocked to hear this, his eyes widening. Colson wonders what he’s thinking, wonders if he too is recalling old arguments they’d had about their respective living arrangements. They’d been constantly pulled in opposite directions, torn between two cities and two lifestyles. 

“You’re half an hour away from me by plane,” Em points out. 

“Yup,” Colson says, sort of miserably. He’d thought about it often. 

“Woulda been nice, when…” 

“Yup.” 

Em looks like he wants to probe further into this discovery, but changes the subject instead. 

“Why don’t you have a hotel room already booked?” 

Colson sighs, frustrated by the unrelenting series of challenges the day has brought him. “My whole team’s in the air right now, and there’s some bullshit I need to work out with them for the booking to go through.” 

Colson pauses, his face twisting with displeasure at his next thought. “Guess I got no choice but the public terminals. I’ll get Shake Shack, power-nap in a bathroom stall… just like old times.” 

“You know goddamn fucking well I’m not lettin’ you do that,” Em says, surprisingly emphatic. 

Colson smiles despite himself, secretly thrilled to have caught another flash of his Em. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll wipe everything down before I touch it. Just like you taught me.” 

Em shakes his head. “You’re obviously hung over, practically malnourished, all by yourself… You think I’m just gonna release you to the swarm of iPhone cameras out there?” 

“So fuckin’ bossy,” Colson says, a stab of irritation loosening his tongue. “I can do whatever the fuck I want. You ain’t - ”

He stops. What had he even been about to say? Colson shudders inwardly, marveling at how easy it still is for the two of them to don the mannerisms and motivations of their former selves. Is it any wonder they kept breaking up and getting back together; before their final, irrevocable split? 

“You’re right,” Em says, gentling his tone and making Colson’s heart turn over. “I’m askin’ you, as a favor to me, will you stay?” 

Those words in Em’s mouth come perilously close to fulfilling a far-fetched dream Colson had let slip through his fingers years ago; so close that he panics, dizzy with yearning. 

“Yes.” 

----------------------------------

Kells returns from his excessively lengthy shower looking like a new man, pink-cheeked and fragrant. The outfit he’d assembled from the limited options in his carry-on achieves that tricky balance between showy and effortless that he had always been so good at. 

Marshall examines Kells anew, distracted from his mission of holding himself at a professional distance. He’s wearing a short-sleeved, cream silk blouse that hangs open over his naked torso; and fitted tan joggers covered in illegible scrawls of handwritten white text. He’s collected more piercings over the years they’ve been apart; silver rings gleaming at his septum and presiding over his cluttered assortment of dangly earrings, tiny diamonds embedded below his right eye and at the upper left corner of his mouth. The tattoos, of course, are a lost cause - an always-evolving mass that Marshall couldn’t keep up with even when they were dating. His hair, blow-dried into a controlled mess, is dyed a dark silver; a striking departure from the various shades of blond or pink he’d once favored. 

Marshall continues to steal indulgent glances at Kells while he’s busy ordering more entrees than he’ll be able to eat for lunch; noting the anxious bounce of his leg, and the intensifying rosiness of his skin, and the stare that he determinedly pins to a random point on the wall across from them. Nervous around him, after all this time. Marshall doesn’t quite know how to feel about it; until he recognizes pleasure unfurling in the forsaken, boarded-up window to his psyche; and is abruptly brimming with fresh resolve. 

“How’s the girlfriend?” He asks, the very second Kells is done placing his overzealous lunch order. 

Kells fixes him with a startled grimace, silently processing the question for a moment. “Which…” 

Marshall could laugh out loud. 

Which one? 

Typical Kells. 

There is an unfortunate pinprick of relief beneath the ripple of distaste, but Marshall is ready to course-correct. 

“Your tabloid co-star,” Marshall clarifies. He doesn’t add of the month, though the temptation is strong. 

Kells bites his lip. “Umm. We’re kinda, like. Engaged.” 

“Shit,” Marshall says, like this is new information, “Congrats.”

“We’re open, though,” Kells says quickly, “It’s… mutually beneficial.” 

A smile splits Marshall’s face without warning, and he says, automatically, “Are you propositioning me?” 

Kells is immediately on the defensive. “What? No! Why would you even… ” He covers his mouth with one large palm, his face glowing red between his fingers. “Shut up,” he concludes weakly, hand inching up to hide his eyes too. 

Wrong move, Marshall chides himself. Kells is inadvertently softening him up; taking him back to the very early nights, when they’d both been so pent-up and flustered, fighting to outdo each other with teasing remarks and calculated touches. Marshall understands, now, the tantalizing power that he has over Kells in their present circumstances. He could say anything, do anything, and Kells would bend to his will like a gangly marionette; as if they had never separated in the first place. The urge to test the limits of this power is so strong that it could cleave him in half. He needs to resist, for more reasons than one. 

“What about you,” Kells chokes out, predictably deflecting. 

“What about me?” 

“Do you… have someone?” 

Marshall looks at him coolly, watching his discomfort grow with irrepressible interest. “Depends on what you mean by that.” 

Annoyance turns Kells’ voice sharp, his eyes flashing. “I mean a boyfriend. Or a… fuck - a husband. What the fuck else would I be talking about.” 

“Touchy,” Marshall says, smiling again when Kells groans loudly at the ceiling. 

“Fuckin’ quit it, dude. Shit’s fucked up.” 

“What is?” 

“You, playing with me like this. It, like… it hurts. ‘cause I know it’s not…” 

He doesn’t finish his thought, but Marshall sobers anyway, caught off-guard by Kells’ directness. It’s true. He’s being cruel. Selfish. 

Marshall glances down at his own hands in his lap, his brow furrowing. “Honestly, I’ve accepted that I can’t do the whole… relationship thing.” He sighs softly, pacing at the border of the overgrown thicket of dark memories that he doesn’t venture into by himself anymore. 

“Are you happy?” 

Marshall’s frown deepens. He meets Kells’ eyes again, sees how wholeheartedly eager he is to hear the answer to this question, despite the pain pulling at his forehead and the sides of his mouth.