by M. A. Hinkle
Damon crossed his arms over his chest again. Now he looked like a bouncer again, this time with a severe migraine. Possibly an as-yet unnoticed aneurysm. “You’re not at all like I thought you were.”
Cathal squinted harder. Maybe if he looked at things hard enough, the kaleidoscope would stop spinning and he would wake up in a world that made sense. “You’re repeating yourself.”
“No, I’m not. I don’t understand you, and you’re not like I thought you were.” Damon paused. “I should explain why I’m talking to you about all of this.”
Cathal blinked. He was maybe, maybe starting to wake up. At least, he didn’t feel like gremlins were sitting on his face pulling his eyes shut anymore, which usually only happened after his third cup of coffee. This was momentous. “No, that’s about the only thing about you that makes sense. We don’t like each other, and I won’t leave you alone. Hence.” He groped for a big word, but his vocabulary failed him, so he settled for gesturing at the space between them. “Hence.”
Damon shook his head. “That’s not why. I…I heard you talking to Felix. In the kitchen.”
Cathal shut his eyes tight and then opened them in an attempt to wake up more. Felix had come to him in confidence, so this was important. “He talked to me because he’s got a thing for a boy, and he knows I’m gay as a picnic basket, Damon. Don’t read too much into it. ’S not like you’ve ever told him you like dick on the side.”
Damon ignored that, though his mouth tightened. All in all, he was being very diplomatic—for Damon. And the hour of the night. Trying to have a civil conversation after midnight was like having cat and dog lovers work out their differences while grooming their animals: something might get accomplished, but it wouldn’t be good, because everyone was too emotional to think straight. And then you ended up with an ugly Labradoodle or Egyptian Mau or whatever.
Cathal glanced over his shoulder, wishing he could reach his sticky notes to write that down.
“That’s not what I meant,” Damon said, snapping Cathal out of his thoughts. “You…” He glanced away. “I didn’t think you could be that…nice. You never talked to Era like that.”
When had the serious conversation started? “That’s because Era didn’t need me to talk to her like that. Era didn’t need anybody.” It ached, to speak of her in the past tense.
He thought of Labradoodles instead. That was a ridiculous word.
Damon closed his eyes and nodded. “She didn’t.” He let out a breath and looked at Cathal again.
His eyes were clearer than they’d been in days. Cathal found himself staring. Damon wasn’t that old, but the lines on his face stood out sharply because he’d lost so much weight since Era’s diagnosis. He still looked like he belonged in the navy, just…not as much. And his eyes…
Era had eyes the exact color of a forget-me-not, but Damon’s were more like that one crayon in the box Cathal could never pronounce. Cerulean.
They were nice eyes. If you liked that sort of thing.
Cathal shook himself. If he was thinking about Damon’s appearance, he was too tired for anything, much less a heart-to-heart.
“Can we put a pin in this for now?” Cathal bit back another yawn. “Felix thought everything he told me was a secret. I don’t want him finding out that you know.”
Damon paused as though he had not considered that last. “I feel like I should be upset that he came to you and not to me, but you’re right. He doesn’t know about—that side of me.”
“You’re bisexual. Say it like a fucking man.” That, at least, sounded like himself. Probably because it was the oldest bone of contention between them, familiar and worn-out like tennis shoes you wore every day.
Damon ignored that, again because it was familiar and worn-out. He bit his thumbnail. “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe that you wouldn’t talk to me during the day.”
Cathal rubbed his forehead. “Yes, well, it seems like I’m going to be stuck talking to you during the day, so we’ll pick it up later.” He blinked. That had almost sounded like…a compromise.
He shook his head. It was definitely too late. Now he shut the door in Damon’s face.
WHEN HE WOKE up, he found several Post-it notes about Labradoodles and was very confused.
CATHAL DIDN’T WANT to get out of bed the next morning, partly because he felt like a zombie from lack of sleep and partly because the next step was talking to Damon, and that thought was as pleasant as the neighbor downstairs flushing the toilet while you were showering.
But. Better to get the unpleasant things out of the way first.
Except… It hadn’t been unpleasant. Weird, and yet they hadn’t shouted at each other. Swore, yes, but Cathal couldn’t go two sentences without swearing unless he was in a lecture hall. Era had refused to let him visit for a week after Felix started yelling fuck.
Still feeling bleary, Cathal headed downstairs. His only thought was coffee, and there was coffee. But there was also a plate with a slice of something yellow on it.
Damon was doing the dishes by hand again. He glanced at Cathal when he walked in but looked away before they could make eye contact.
Cathal got himself coffee and then looked at the yellow thing.
“I saved you some frittata,” said Damon, like that was a sentence. “It’s good at room temperature, so you don’t even need to heat it up.”
Cathal sat, slowly, and stared at the yellow thing. “What’s in it?” he asked when his mouth started feeling like something that could form words instead of a place where something had crawled in and died.
“Egg, Gruyère, shitakes, arugula, and cherry tomatoes.”
Cathal closed his eyes, hoping that would make him feel like he’d gotten more sleep so he could decipher this conversation. He’d always wondered what it felt like to be Alan Turing cracking Nazi codes. Now he knew, and it sounded like Damon talking about food. “None of those are words. Except ‘egg.’ And ‘and.’”
“You know, if somebody gave you a million dollars, you’d find a way to complain about it.” But Damon’s tone was almost…cheerful. Or at least not sad. Damon had never been sunshine and rainbows.
“Yes. Because who just gives you a million dollars?”
Damon rolled his eyes. “Eat it or don’t. I mean, you were picking at me for not eating, but you barely get anything down. And it’s not like you can afford to lose weight.”
“I’m lithe. It’s a legitimate body type.”
“No, you’re gaunt. Like you’re auditioning to be a vampire or something.” Damon frowned, then set down the dish and the drying rag. He pressed one hand to his forehead. “This is what always happens when I talk to you, you know that?”
Cathal shrugged. “Yeah, we argue. We don’t like each other. I know the drill.”
“No—I mean, yes, we argue, but that’s because you say things that are weird, and I can’t tell if you’re fucking with me or if you’re honestly like that, and it pisses me off.” He strangled the air, a gesture Cathal was used to at this point.
Cathal looked at him flatly. “I’m fucking with you. Because you make it easy.” This was true. Although, to his credit, Cathal didn’t always intend to fuck with Damon. It just happened, like buying things off Amazon after midnight when he’d had too many shots. Only fucking with Damon didn’t get him awesome surprise presents a few days later.
Damon considered this and then shook his head. “That’s not my point. And I told myself that for once I would not let you drag me away from the point.”
Cathal decided to keep his mouth shut, although he wished he’d brought his notes downstairs so he could write down what he wanted to say about dragging and points. Never mind that it looked less funny when he wrote it down.
“My point is, we were talking last night like people. You can do that, but you choose not to.” Damon broke off again, waving his hands and flinging soap bubbles everywhere. “No, that is not what I’m trying to say, but you piss me off so much I can�
�t think.” He pressed his hands against his forehead with an irritated noise.
“You sound like a goat in heat,” said Cathal.
Damon parted his fingers. “How—no, never mind, I don’t want to know how you know that.”
“It’s called the internet, Damon. I’d say you should join the twentieth century, but that would mean kicking your horse into a gallop, and then your buggy would bounce around, and you’d probably break something.”
“That doesn’t answer my question, but whatever. Shut up for thirty seconds. Please.”
The please made Cathal listen. Much as he didn’t want to. He’d finished his coffee, so he set the cup down and arched an eyebrow at Damon.
Damon put his hands at his side, clenching and unclenching them like he wanted to punch something. Or whatever manly men like Damon did to let out their feelings instead of drinking and watching cute kitten videos. “I didn’t want to talk to you like this. The point I was trying to make is that it’s—” He scowled. “It’s driving me up the wall that I’m only learning now that you can talk to people and be nice. I mean, I guess I knew you were nice to Era, but I thought she just liked you picking fights all the time.”
“She did.” The comment was supposed to be flippant, but it came out maudlin. Era was Cathal’s favorite person to argue with. She understood that shouting at someone meant you had a good point, not that you didn’t like them.
Damon’s eyes moved over Cathal’s face; Cathal avoided his gaze, tapping one finger on the table. He wished he hadn’t come down here, but he’d said that he would, and he wanted to pretend he was a man of his word.
“I don’t like to think of myself that way,” said Damon at last, and Cathal narrowed his eyes, not in frustration but confusion. “I don’t like to think I wouldn’t see how good you are underneath it all—but I guess you were right. I don’t know what kind of person I am either. I knew how to be a husband, but now…”
Cathal wrinkled his nose—not because he faulted Damon for feeling adrift after losing his partner, because that was what happened to people who wanted partners. The only way to win was not to play.
No, he had a choice to make.
Instead of going with the option that involved less human interaction, his usual strategy, he asked himself what Era would have told him to do. Only he didn’t have to ask, because she’d already told him.
Cathal massaged his forehead. He couldn’t even swear at her when she was right anymore.
“You know, if this whole thing is about learning how to be a single person instead of a husband.” But Cathal could not finish the sentence. He couldn’t abide people who left their thoughts unfinished, and yet there he was. Blatantly not-thought-finishing.
Damon frowned. “I guess it is,” he said cautiously, as though waiting for Cathal to talk over him. “I have no idea how to do that. I never—I never thought of myself as anything much before I met Era. She was always trying to break me of that, but…” He shook his head. “I knew it wasn’t true.”
Cathal was surprised to hear that. He’d been quick to inform Damon that he was not smart enough for Era, but he hadn’t thought Damon believed him.
Well, damn, now he was feeling guilty.
Oh, get over yourself, said Era’s voice in the back of his head, as she often did, and that settled it.
To make it easier, he didn’t look at Damon. “You know,” he told the glass of smiling rainbow daisies in the kitchen window, “I happen to be an expert in the art of being single. And in liking myself.” He said it casually, though it didn’t feel casual enough. He didn’t want Damon to take him up on this offer; he wanted to go back to his own apartment and never talk to anyone again.
But he didn’t want Felix to have to deal with his crush on his own, and…he didn’t want to forget Era. Not yet. And if he wasn’t ready to be done, he’d have to find some way to get along with Damon but still save face.
This was the problem with being perceived as a selfish bastard. You could never live up to the image. Then people would think they’d gotten the jump on you when, really, you weren’t sure how you ended up with that reputation in the first place but decided to stick with it because people left you alone.
Damon had his eyes narrowed, like he expected Cathal to shed his human skin at any moment. “Are you offering to help me, or are you looking for another excuse to make fun of me?”
“I’m always looking for an excuse to make fun of you. But I’m that way with everyone. You need to stop taking it so personally.” Cathal should have felt guilty, but Damon needed to loosen up. He approached everything with the gravity of a baby struggling to pick up a Cheerio.
“That doesn’t answer my question, but I have no idea why I’m surprised.”
Cathal shrugged. “I don’t understand why you do anything, so there we’re square.” Damon frowned again, and Cathal made himself look at Damon.
He didn’t want to look at Damon, because it was okay to look at Damon when he was Era’s husband and therefore not a person.
Now…
Well, Damon was a person. A person with nice eyes and an honest face and biceps like Captain America. Cathal was noticing, and he didn’t care for that shit.
“I guess I am offering to help you.” Cathal’s voice was as revolted as his sigh, although at this point, he wasn’t sure who he was revolted with. Maybe the part of him that listened to Era when she said she believed in him.
“Why.” It wasn’t a question; Damon’s eyes were narrowed.
Cathal growled. “Why is it that the one time I don’t want to tell you why, you’re actually asking me?”
Damon didn’t answer, just kept staring at Cathal. Damon didn’t blink much. He could stare for hours without his eyes watering, but maybe that was Cathal having to blink himself and thus missing Damon’s blinking.
Whatever. Damon didn’t blink, and he was a freak, but that didn’t mean Cathal could wiggle out of giving an explanation, if only for consistency’s sake. When you were consistently a jerk, you didn’t have to listen to people calling you a jerk, because you could point to all the things you’d done and say it wasn’t supposed to be a surprise.
“Okay, fine. Because—” Cathal’s voice faltered, and he stopped, making sure it wouldn’t happen again. “Because. I’m as lost as you are. Without Era, I mean.” Cathal looked at his hands. Now the words wouldn’t stop, and that was awful, too. “I wanted to go home and do nothing, except that’s not enough anymore, because there’s this hole where she used to be, and I thought I was used to holes where people used to be, but I guess that doesn’t apply to Era because she helped me fill them, and now I have no idea how to do that myself, which is goddamn pathetic but there we are.”
Damon kept squinting. “Was that all one sentence?”
Cathal wanted to throw something at him, but there wasn’t anything in the kitchen that wouldn’t either break or cause serious injury, and the insurance companies might get suspicious if Cathal took Damon to the emergency room so soon after his wife’s death.
Instead, he pulled the plate of frittata closer, since he didn’t want to talk anymore. And also he was hungry.
And. It was delicious. He still had no idea what most of those things Damon had listed off were, but they were goddamn tasty.
Three: Bread Pudding Is Dramatic. And Delicious.
WHEN CATHAL WENT back upstairs, Damon sat and tried to think. He’d made the dough, and now it needed time to proof.
But he’d forgotten how much he sucked at sitting and thinking. Bad enough before, when he’d been busy. Now there was a giant sucking abyss at the center of his world, and he had to keep running or he’d be pulled in.
So he made lasagna. Era hadn’t liked it—too heavy—and the thought of what Cathal would do when he discovered the ingredients…well, it didn’t make Damon smile, exactly, because nothing made him smile anymore. If he touched his mouth, sometimes his lips were turned up at the corners, but that had nothing to do with his feelings.
Inside he was dirt tamped down after a burial.
But irritating Cathal was funny, and maybe someday he’d laugh and actually mean it.
HE THOUGHT HE’D have to call Cathal down for dinner—not that he cared if Cathal ate or not, but because he wanted to see the other man’s face. But Cathal came into the kitchen a few minutes before Felix was due home. He always looked like he’d bitten into a lemon. Not the most irritating thing about him, but high on the list.
Before Damon could think of a way to try to annoy him, the front door slammed. “So good to know he’s still crashing around like he’s about to start a musical number,” said Cathal, resting his cheek on his hand.
Nope. There was Cathal’s most irritating trait: he always knew how to describe things. No matter how pissed he was, Damon could never ignore him, because some part of him was nodding along even as he moved to strangle the other man.
Felix skidded into the kitchen, sliding up next to Damon to peer at the pan on the stove. “Ooh, what’s that? It smells good.”
“It’s lasagna. We’re waiting on the garlic bread.”
Cathal coughed suggestively, and both Felix and Damon turned to look at him. But Cathal didn’t say anything. He just raised his eyebrows, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Since Cathal didn’t launch into another unwelcome, uncomfortable lecture, Damon hoped maybe he’d keep quiet. But that would have been too easy. “You’ve got a look on your face. What is it?”
“Of course I have a look on my face,” said Cathal. “That’s the point of a face.”
Damon glared at him. As usual, Cathal smiled like a poker player with a winning hand, but then he turned his gaze to Felix, his eyebrows still raised. Damon followed him, confused. He’d meant what he said about his son.
