So Cal lingers. Listening to Zac’s singing. Letting himself sink, maybe pathetically, into the pull in his chest, the pull that has always, always, always led him to Zac.
He’s not about to push for more than the kissing and occasional bits of groping and making out. Not about to risk this thing ending before it has to. Sooner or later, Zac will get tired of sharing his wife with another man. Or at least, with the same man over and over. Anya said it herself at Zac’s birthday party when Cal questioned the way they took other men to their bed: no matter who they play with or how, at the end of the night, it’s Anya and Zac going home together to their son, the three of them a family. That’s the point they always return to.
What’s that saying? About guests overstaying their welcome being like stinky fish? And Cal’s sobriety is stable again. It’s never going to be easy to pour the tequila down the drain, but it’s as easy as it ever gets.
There’s no reasonable justification anymore, that’s all. He knows it’s coming. But for now, for this minute, he’s going to wait.
The water cuts off. A moment later the curtain’s yanked open. Zac sees him there and grins, but it’s a tired one, a little cranky. “Hey, man. You should’ve said you were here. I’d have left it running for you.”
“It’s fine.” Cal’s trying to look without seeming like he’s looking. It helps that Zac’s occupied with toweling his hair. He’s not a perfect-looking man by any stretch. His attractiveness has never been based in symmetrical features or beauty. It’s always been deeper, a chemical in the air around him, something in his personality and the way he moves, some unnamable chemistry that draws people in, bees to honey. Cal doesn’t care that Zac’s face isn’t classically handsome, or that he’s got bony elbows and knees. He’s still got those lovely hipbones, and his arms and legs are so long and lean, and his stomach is flat, his belly button sweet and small. He’s got that sinful mouth and those blue, blue eyes and that messy sweep of hair and Cal has to swallow hard around the lump in his throat. Zac’s not a beautiful man by any accounting, except for how Cal really, really thinks he is.
Zac notices that Cal’s still standing there, and he scoots to one side. “Sorry. It’s all yours. I’ll get out of your way.”
You have never once, a day in either of our lives, been in my way, Cal doesn’t say. Instead, he goes into the bathroom and starts stripping his clothes off, shaking his head at his own stupidity. He’s naked with the shower curtain in one hand when he realizes that Zac’s busy looking through Anya’s makeup drawer, pawing through it with one hand but never picking anything up.
“Feeling like it’s a good day for lipstick?” Cal lifts an eyebrow.
“Oh. Maybe. Do you think—” Zac squints at the label on the first thing he picks up “—d’you think Happy Harlot is my color?”
“I think you’re gorgeous with or without makeup,” Cal says, only half teasing, because he does like the look of Zac in black eyeliner. Zac in leather and eyeliner was the star of more than a few of Cal’s jerk-off sessions back when he was in his early twenties, back when he still let himself jerk off thinking about Zac, before he realized how much it was tearing him up inside to indulge those feelings. He buried them, but this whole thing has opened up that grave all over again. Jesus, this is the stupidest thing he’s ever done. He’s gonna break when this ends.
And despite knowing that, Cal can’t stop staring.
Zac’s gaze catches his in the mirror. “Really?” he asks, all jocularity gone. “You think I’m gorgeous?”
Cal clears his throat. He has no idea what to say, not in a silence this loaded. “I mean. Yeah. Half the world wants to be with you, Zac. You can’t be surprised that I noticed it too.”
“I am, though,” Zac says quietly. Maybe more quietly than he’s ever said anything. “Surprised, I mean. I am.”
Cal wants to press his hand against Zac’s back, right between his shoulder blades where his hair has dripped a few beads of water. His skin would be damp and hot. He lists forward without meaning to, and then Anya’s calling up from downstairs, “Is one of you coming down for breakfast? Because I have to get to the bank, and that means someone has to do something with this child until Marina gets here!”
Zac jumps. He puts the lipstick back in the drawer and shuts it, then stands there for a good five seconds without moving, staring at the counter. Cal wants to shake something, wants to grab him and hold him in place, but he doesn’t, he doesn’t know what Zac wants and he doesn’t know how to ask them to make room when there isn’t any, couldn’t possibly be any, and even if there is, it won’t be for someone like Cal, someone who always fails the people he loves most.
Abruptly, Zac leaves without another word.
Cal gets in the shower. He turns the water to very hot. Despite being sweaty and overheated from his run, he feels cold.
* * *
By the time they get into the studio to work for the day, the house is quiet. Anya’s back from the bank, upstairs in her own studio. Marina has taken PJ to the park, and from there they’ll be going to run some errands for the house. Zac and Cal have all morning to try to excavate some kind of sense from this stupid album.
Zac’s going through the lyrics again, probably with the filter of Cal’s words from last night, his lips moving as he reads, and Cal feels naked and exposed having Zac’s attention on all his vulnerable spots. He feels kind of sick when Zac puts the sheaf of papers down. He can’t imagine the feedback can possibly be good even with the metaphor clearer.
“You’re kind of not in a good place, huh?” Zac asks, his eyes on his guitar.
“I’m feeling better,” Cal admits after a moment. He’s been half-expecting a debate about rewriting the lyrics. He would prefer that, actually, much as he hates debating. This new topic seems likely to turn into an actual fight. “I wrote most of these lyrics a while ago, remember? It’s not specific to any one place. Or time. It’s just—the nature of the beast.”
“It’s kind of brutal.” Zac picks out a little riff from one of their older songs, trailing off in the middle and then starting again, making a discordant mistake because he’s not really paying attention to his fingers. “I mean, it was always depressing, but I hadn’t realized that the old man was so much...well, you. And I really hadn’t thought about your recovery like it’s something to dislike or resent or...whatever. I assumed it was a good thing. Nothing but a good thing.”
“It’s a lot of things. It’s something I believe in and value and want, and I know it’s necessary for me to have a good life, but it’s also really hard, and that means it’s hard not to hate it sometimes.”