Around them, the entire house gave a giant groan and a creak. Plaster chips fell from the ceiling and the ground shook beneath their feet.
“Uh, Cully,” Dante said, beset by the very real fear that the house would crumble into its foundations and they’d be swallowed up by the earth. “Maybe use a different threat?”
“I will not!” Cully shouted, staring up at the ceiling, his body shaking with anger. “This is bullshit, making us go through this! We would have gotten there eventually!”
As if in answer, a giant zig-zag crack opened up in the drywall right next to them, and while it should have looked right into the kitchen, what they saw instead was an infinite blackness, strewn with diamond stars.
The two of them stared into the void and then at each other, Dante speaking eloquently with his eyes. Cully set his jaw mulishly, so Dante figured the apology was up to him.
“We’re, uh, sorry about that,” he shouted weakly. “Cully’s just mad. It would be great if we could, you know, take a shower or a dump in peace without worry about losing each other for all eternity.”
In response, the crack in the wall widened. The fiery incandescence of a shooting star flashed directly in front of their eyes and dissipated into the void.
Dante squeezed Cully’s hand meaningfully.
“Fine,” he said, glaring at Dante. “Fine. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have used magic as a threat. You’ve just really gone beyond the fucking bend, do you know that? We care about each other. We’re going to fuck up while we’re trying to talk to one another. Do you fucking mind?”
The house rumbled a little, and the existential void began to close, and Dante, for one, breathed out a sigh of relief.
A suddenly penitent Cully echoed the sound. “Yeah, I’m sorry too. Please give us a minute? We love each other—you’ve got to know that. At the very least as friends—”
And the void began to widen again.
“We love each other!” Cully cried, obviously much more panicked than he’d let on. “We’ll work it out. Give us a minute. I’m sorry!”
The void began to close again, and Dante took the opportunity to pull Cully away hastily. When they got to the end of the hallway, the rumbling under their feet had stilled, and when they looked back, not only had the existential void closed, but the plaster and bits of stucco that had fallen from the ceiling had disappeared from the floor as well.
“Thank you!” Dante called, giving Cully’s hand a tug.
“Thank you,” Cully said with forced politeness, and then they hustled into Dante’s room and slammed the door behind them.
Much good that would do them.
Together they leaned against the closed door, hands clasped, and tried to catch their breath.
“I really need that shower now,” Dante said, aware that he’d broken out into a fear sweat so severe it had soaked the waistband of his jeans.
“You think?” Cully asked bitterly. “Goddess, I’m stupid. How do you put up with me being so stupid?”
Dante gave a feeble laugh. “That? That was nothing, Princess. I watched you do that to Professor McHenry in college, remember? You blew up, you lost your cool, and then you were all contrite and sweet, and he didn’t know what hit him. You sort of met your match in the tantrum department here, that’s all.”
Cully frowned and then chewed on his lower lip. “I’m sorry,” he said, and the contrition was real this time, not the forced airs he’d put on to appease the irritated magic. “I… I must make things really hard on you, being so tightly coiled. I’ve always been grateful to you for being so unflappable. I guess it never occurred to me that the flip side was you’d learned to sit on your feelings, even when the world seemed to be coming to an end.”
Dante rubbed his chest with his free hand, where all the feelings he was supposedly sitting on were doing the saber dance wearing shoes of broken glass.
“I’m not invulnerable,” he admitted. “A lot of things you’ve done or said, they’ve hurt. But then you turn to me, all sunshiny and sweet, and it’s worth it.”
Cully shook his head violently. “No, it’s not. Don’t let me hurt you like that anymore,” he said. “I can’t stay with you if I don’t think you’ll protect yourself, do you understand?”
Dante gaped at him, but Cully shook his head.
“It would gut me,” he said, “if I thought being with me hurt you, and you were too afraid to say so because you thought you’d lose me. If you want to keep me, stand up to me. Please.”
“I want to keep you,” Dante said, deciding this was the time to put Cully’s words to the test. “But I got to know—do you want me? I’ve done my damnedest to get you to trust I’ll still be here. If you can’t do that after all this time, I don’t know—”
Cully put his fingers on Dante’s lips. “We’re both stupid,” he said, giving a sad little smile. “But we can’t change it all in one conversation. I promise to do my best to trust, if you’ll do your best to stand up to me. Deal?”
Dante nodded and kissed those fingers tenderly. “Deal,” he murmured, and while part of him wanted Cully—badly—the sane part of him was dying for that shower.
“I’d kiss you,” Cully said, “but—”
“Oh my God. Let’s hope the fucking house didn’t screw up the plumbing.”
Cully nodded. “I’m saying.”
And hand in hand, they ventured to the bathroom.
Culmination
CULLY sat on the shower bench Dante had installed after he’d twisted his ankle playing softball in a rec-league game. Cully had vivid memories of him, Kate, and Josh—Josh had been on the team too—rushing into the emergency room, Dante leaning heavily on Josh and apologizing profusely for being so clumsy.
He startled himself out of the memory, half afraid he’d find himself naked in the bare living room, wondering what the hell had happened, but no, he was still in the shower, watching the back of one damned fine-looking man as he soaped his pits.
After another moment of silence, Cully didn’t want to sit and look anymore. He stood and took the washcloth from Dante’s hand as he soaped his neck.
“But I thought we were—”
“Let me,” Cully asked humbly. He took over washing Dante’s back, his glutes, and his legs, although he gave Dante the washcloth for his naughty bits.
“Not going to seduce me, Princess?” Dante asked, rinsing off the washcloth and handing it over while he turned to wet his hair.
“No,” Cully said simply. “I… this is like a baptism, maybe. Like we’re washing away some of the old, the things that got us stuck. Me being afraid to trust, you being afraid to stand up to me. We’re scrubbing that off, and then, when we get to our next part, it can be… fresh. New. Surprising.”
Dante scooped the water from his eyes and his hair, and his lips twisted into a smile, although he kept them pressed closed so he didn’t taste soap. When the water was gone, he said, “Living with you has always been a surprise,” and since he couldn’t see, Cully pressed his hand to his own chest.