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On the way home, it's easy. It's not a short drive—Sienna is on Daniel Island, which means a circuitous highway route and two bridges—but Dean and Chris are both full, content; it's not awkward. Dean got the ribeye, which was amazing, and he even ate the grilled vegetables; Chris got duck, which Dean thought was a little like eating Daffy or Donald, but it turns out that duck is pretty fucking good. (Dean just has to put Daffy and Donald out of his mind.) And, to Dean's surprise, it doesn't taste a thing like chicken, which you'd think it would since they're both birds, but it's a lot darker and richer.
Dean's starting to think he has a lot to learn about this food thing, which is just fine. He's good with learning about food.
"Can I?" Chris says, nodding at the shoebox of tapes in the passenger-side footwell.
"Sure," Dean answers, and Chris picks up the box and looks at the various tapes, a few bought new but most labelled in various handwriting.
"For my brother the Luddite," Chris reads, sounding amused. "Music to stay in the Dark Ages with."
Dean rolls his eyes. "Sam. Obviously. That was right after he tried to get me to install an iPod jack in here."
"You didn't want to?"
"Like I'd douche up my baby like that," Dean says, offended.
Chris snorts. "Right. Cassettes superior, iPods inferior."
"Got it in one."
Chris laughs and shakes his head.
Over the bridge, through Mount Pleasant, over the Ravenel Bridge, onto the peninsula and down Bay Street to Broad, into the historic district where Chris lives. Dean's been here before, when he's driven Chris home—Chris, for all his brain that's the size of a red state, sometimes doesn't check the day's weather report before he bikes to work in the morning, and Dean drives him home so he doesn't get soaked.
It's friendly. Casual. Out of the goodness of his heart.
Because he always drives home insane blond trauma surgeons who insist on biking to work instead of driving like any normal person.
They drive down tree-lined Meeting Street, comfortable as usual, like he's driving home from the hospital with Chris's Cannondale in the trunk.
It's not awkward until he pulls up to the curb.
Any other time, unless it's like two in the morning, Chris would usually say, "Come on in for a beer if you want," and Dean would come in and have some weird-ass microbrew that only Chris (and maybe Sam) would know where to find, and they'd swear at the TV for a while if there was a game on, or even just hang out in the kitchen. And talk. About whatever. Chris has this whole theory that the dude from Enron didn't actually croak but faked his own death and went to Thailand and had a bunch of plastic surgery; he also thought that Sarah Palin's baby wasn't actually hers but her daughter's, and her daughter got knocked up again because she really did want a kid. Chris has a lot of theories like that, which is bizarre for somebody so practical. And one time Dean actually found himself telling Chris about learning to swim in a motel pool—it wasn't as bad as some of the places they'd stayed, and they were there for a while. Which is just fucking weird. Dean doesn't usually talk about shit like how he learned to swim; who even cares? Except that Chris did, and he asked questions about it and stuff, and even got Dean to tell the story about teaching Sammy to swim, and that was even weirder. Stuff just comes out of Dean's mouth when he's around Chris.
Except this time it's A Date, and you act differently on A Date. When you ask someone in on A Date, it means things. It's been a while, but Dean definitely remembers that. So instead of Dean getting out and going around to pop the trunk, and Chris shouldering his bike and saying, "I'm going to order some Indian, if you haven't eaten yet," Chris looks across the front seat at Dean and says, "I had a really good time."
And Dean has no idea what to say.
"Uh, me too," is what comes out, and Chris's answering smile is one Dean hasn't seen before. There's something a little tentative about it, a little unsure, and they look at each other for a moment.
Chris reaches over and lays his hand against Dean's face, palm on Dean's cheekbone, fingertips brushing his ear. Everything is perfectly still for that moment as they look at each other, and Dean thinks, inanely, that if he turned his head just a little, he could kiss Chris's thumb, maybe even move a little farther and take it into his mouth. He would taste the richness from the duck, and maybe some sweetness from the gelato they had for dessert, and then, of course, underneath, whatever Chris tastes like on his own.
Dean has not, of course, spent any time thinking about that.
Then Chris pulls back and says, "I'll see you tomorrow"—still a little bit questioningly, like they don't know that they're both scheduled to be on—and Dean just nods like a dumbass.
He's watching Chris walk up the front steps to his front door, and he wants to bang his head against the steering wheel. What the fuck. He is not a blushing virgin. He's slept with enough women for several lifetimes—he stopped counting once the number hit the triple digits. It's not like he hasn't been around the block before.
(The number of those that mattered, says a small sneaky voice that he hates to listen to, was in the lower single digits.)
He remembers literally tripping over the threshold the first time he went into Cassie's apartment. He acted like a retard around her too. He's still a little surprised she even gave him the time of day.
He puts his hand on the shift to take the car out of park, but the gears are resistant, making a noise that his well-loved girl never should. "Baby, I just tuned you up last week," he says. "What's the matter?" He tries again. She cranks at him again. "God, girl, don't make me get under your hood right here in front of Chris's house."
He could swear the the noise from the engine sounds like exasperation.
"He already went inside," Dean says. "It's not like I can do anything about that now."
He tries to shift again. She cranks back, even louder.
Something occurs to him.
He turns off her ignition, and her engine settles into immediate silence. Like she was waiting for that.
"OK," he tells her. "But if this doesn't work, I'm blaming you."
He gets out of the car, crosses the sidewalk, goes up the front steps, and knocks on Chris's door.
It's less than a minute before Chris answers, expression surprised but not displeased. He's still wearing his impeccable blue oxford shirt, but he's taken off the tie, and Dean can see the exposed hollow of his throat.
"There was one last thing," Dean says, and he slides his fingers into the silk of Chris's hair and kisses him.
Chris's breath goes in, a short, sharp gasp, and his mouth opens against Dean's. He tastes like the wine they were drinking—a deep, dry red—and the dark chocolate gelato. One of Chris's hands goes to the back of Dean's head while his other arm wraps around Dean's shoulders.
The kiss goes on, until Dean has licked the last of the wine and chocolate from Chris's mouth and all he can taste is Chris himself. It's no flavor that Dean can describe; he just knows that he wants more of it.
Time warps a little, or maybe Dean just loses track of it, and when they finally pull apart, he's got Chris pressed against the doorframe, their bodies fitted together like puzzle pieces. They're both hard, and Dean wants to reach inside the neat front of Chris's pants, find out what another man's—this man's—cock will feel like in his hand, what sounds Chris will make.
Something tells him to wait.
This time it's Dean who says, "I'll see you tomorrow," and he's grinning.
"Damn right you will," Chris answers, and kisses him quickly, firmly, like he's sealing a deal.
Dean manages to keep from whistling as he goes back down the steps to the car. He starts her up, and the engine purrs like satisfaction.
Love, what a long way, to arrive at a kiss,
what loneliness-in-motion, toward your company!
Rolling with the rain we follow the tracks alone.
In Taltal there is neither daybreak nor spring.But you and I, love, we are together
from our clothes down to our roots:
together in the autumn, in water, in hips, until
we can be alone together—only you, only me.To think of the effort, that the current carried
so many stones, the delta of Boroa water;
to think that you and I, divided by trains and nations,we had only to love one another:
with all the confusions, the men and the women,
the earth that makes carnations rise, and makes them bloom!—Pablo Neruda, Sonnet 2 (trans. Stephen Tapscott)