Leo broke apart with a sharp, inhaled gasp. “Enough,” he said, and it took Caleb a moment to realize why. He'd only meant to say good night, to tell Leo just how much he loved him without words.
It would've been funny, except that his cock was already hard, and he wanted Leo as much as he wanted to take his next breath.
“This is why,” Leo said after taking a deep breath and pushing hard on Caleb's chest, trying to push him away, “this is why we can't even sleep in the same goddamned bed.”
“I know,” Caleb said ruefully. “It does suck.”
“Just promise me,” Leo said, suddenly looking very young. “Just promise me you won't be gone forever. I can handle anything if you swear to me you won't leave.”
“I told you once,” Caleb said, feeling that corresponding ache he knew Leo felt every time he thought about it, “and I'll tell you every day if I have to. I'm not going anywhere.”
##
That didn't mean that it wasn't objectively awful to walk down the hallway to the other bedroom, and that it wasn't terrible to lie awake in the strange bed, praying that his cock might get the memo that sex was currently off the table. He could've jerked off, he supposed, but with Leo right down the hall? That felt wrong and somehow, even more of a betrayal than sleeping in a different bed.
It was also weird to wake up alone, in a room he wasn't expecting, and not have Leo beside him. Even on tour, there'd be one small compact person who felt like home, even when they were far from home. But now? Caleb lay in bed and stared at the light slowly beginning to cross the ceiling. Now everything just felt . . . off.
The house was still quiet when he finally got out of bed. To his surprise, when he ducked into their master bedroom, Leo was already gone. He'd left a sticky note on the mirror in the bathroom, with his distinctive loopy handwriting. “Gone to the hospital early,” it read. “This still sucks, and I still love you.”
Caleb wondered if Leo had slept any better than he had, and figured, based on the note, the answer was no.
After a shower, he wandered downstairs, made coffee and toast, and as he sat at the counter, crunching away, decided that he could either sit here and feel sorry for himself, or do something about it.
He had the email from Brad Maxwell in his inbox, with the masters attached. “Sorry it didn't work out,” was all Brad had written in the body of the email. Caleb didn't think he was particularly sorry, but it was a nicer gesture than he'd been expecting when he'd first realized that Brad had sent him something.
One of the reasons Leo kept threatening to find a new house for them to buy was his desire to put in a little recording studio in the house, so the first thing Caleb did was get on his phone and beg for a few favors.
Ten minutes later, he had the studio time he wanted, and he was packing up his guitar to drive over.
Before the last week, Caleb would have already told Leo what his plans were, in great and exhaustive detail. He'd have shared his opinion on them and heard Leo's in return. It felt weird to take “space” or whatever it was they were doing, and so before he could change his mind, Caleb sent Leo a quick text. I'm off to the studio, he typed, I might be home late.
A second later, he got a return text from Leo—a thumbs-up emoji and two bright pink hearts.
Caleb had definitely intended to go work on his album regardless, but the wordless affirmation of love and acceptance was exactly what he'd needed to hear from Leo. It calmed him, and reaffirmed his belief that this was just a phase, and they would get through it. Together.
The studio was empty and dark when he got to it, and it took a moment for him to flip the lights on, unpack, and get his masters transferred over. For a minute, he considered working on one of the songs that he and Brad had recorded. But then, Caleb realized that doing that, putting off the inevitable, that wasn't doing anything but wasting time.
He knew what he was here to do and messing around with other songs when the song was still waiting to be finalized and recorded? It was pointless. This was the music he wanted to make, the music he needed Leo and so many others to hear. This was the song he needed to build his album around, not the slightly silly, over-the-top pop stylings that Brad had been leaning towards. They'd be good for a change of pace, but this was the foundation he needed to build on.
Pulling out his phone, he read the lyrics as the simple guitar line played over the speakers. The melody had a beautiful simplicity that he wanted to keep. But he also wondered if it was too boring. What it needed . . . Caleb realized that it needed something pushing it forward. Something driving the beat. It was a role that Max had always played for Star Shadow and that Caleb was missing it now. He didn't know a huge number of drummers, and not really well enough to call them up and say, “Come play on this song that means the world and everything else to me. Help me make it the best song it can be.”
“Driving til the bridge,” Caleb muttered, scribbling on a pad he'd found, because he couldn't do what he really wanted, which was to hear the change.
On his third read-through, he realized that the opening lyrics needed tweaking, and even crazier, he realized that he knew what he wanted to say—not because of what he'd been through, but because of what he was going through now.
“Full circle,” he said out loud to himself. “It's all gotta come full circle.”
It was what he'd done, when he'd come back to LA. It'd have been so much easier to stay away from the West Coast, to keep living in New York with Brian and the other recovering addicts. He'd gotten his own apartment in Brooklyn by his fourth year. He'd been sober long enough that he and Brian had decided together that he needed to begin to test himself. “You can't go all the way to LA and not be confident,” Brian had said more than once. “LA will be a challenge.” And Caleb had known that his mentor and sponsor wasn't just talking about the unbearable pressure around every corner or the ubiquitous parties that encouraged every single kind of pleasure-seeking, but the difficulties he'd face when he confronted his old bandmates—and his ex-lover.
“He'd never take me back,” Caleb had said so many times even he was sick of hearing it. But every time Brian would shake his head. “You don't know what Leo's capable of, what he wants,” Brian said. “You can't know that he won't want to see you.”
I wouldn't want to see me, was Caleb's nearly constant thought as he'd made the plans to come back to Los Angeles.
And today, right now, even though he was years removed from those days, when he'd found forgiveness and redemption, those words came back to hit him hard.
Was that what he'd been doing this entire time? These two fantastic years when Star Shadow had found themselves again, discovered a new footing in a more mature musical sphere, when he and Leo had begun to slowly build their happily ever after again? Had he just been waiting for them to realize that they'd be better off without him?
It was a shocking thought.
With trembling fingers, he dialed Brian's number.
He answered on the fourth ring, distracted with an annoyed edge to his voice. “Hey,” he said. “Everything okay?”
They'd begun to talk less and less as the years had passed. Caleb had needed him less, but he realized, with shocking clarity, that maybe that had been premature.