Distance Closed | Collateral Flirtation

Collateral Flirtation Thread Tracker

The rental is a black Escalade, already waiting when he lands, because his assistant really does deserve that raise. It's cold inside, anonymous outside, which is exactly what he needs. He's been on I-10 for forty minutes with the windows up and his phone propped against the cupholder blasting a playlist he threw together in the back of the car on the way to Teterboro, whatever was loud enough to override the pressure behind his eyes.

Two aspirin before he got off the plane. Two more in the FBO lounge while the car was being pulled around, standing at the floor-to-ceiling window with a bottle of still water from the hospitality bar watching ground crew in the morning heat and waiting for his skull to stop making its feelings known. The attendant asked if he needed anything else and he said no and smiled at her and she believed him because he has been doing that since he was seventeen and it still works even when he looks like this.

And he does look like this. Caught himself in the lounge mirror. Washed his face on the plane, changed into jeans and a grey t-shirt in the bedroom at the back, got maybe two hours horizontal before his body decided the hangover was more interesting than sleep, and he still looks like a man who was at a Vogue party until three in the morning and made decisions about champagne that his body has now has formal objections to. Fine. Danny is injured and can't walk properly. Adrian is not about to arrive in better shape than the man who is supposed to be recovering. Even up the playing field or something.

This is the logic he's been running on since somewhere over Pennsylvania. It has not improved.

What has improved: the landscape. Or changed, anyway. The sprawl of Houston thinning out, giving way to the flat open stretch of FM road that runs out toward Simonton, and there is something about this part of Texas that does something to his nervous system he has never fully understood. He's been here enough times now to have a baseline. Pasture fence. Sky that goes on too long. The particular quality of morning light that makes everything look slightly overexposed.

The playlist is between songs. He fast-forwards through two before he finds one loud enough, rolls his neck until it cracks, drinks from the water bottle wedged between his thigh and the console.

He hasn't called. He decided on the plane, somewhere around the third attempt at sleep, that calling was worse. Calling means Danny tells him not to come, or asks why, or picks up and sounds wrong in a way that would make the next hour of highway unbearable. Better to just arrive. Danny's house, Danny's porch, Danny's front door. If that's a bad idea, the universe has had several hours to send some kind of signal and hasn't. Just an armadillo waddling down the side of the road, which really didn't seem ominous in the least.

He pulls off the main road. The last half-mile is familiar enough now that his hands do it without much input from him, which is good because the aspirin still hasn't fully caught up and he's been running on the lounge coffee since Katy.

Danny's truck is in the drive along with Clemencia's station wagon and Fabian's used Subaru. The house is quiet.

He parks behind the truck because Clemencia doesn't like to ride in it and if Danny can't walk, he sure as hell isn't going to be driving if Adrian has anything to say about it. He sits with the engine off for thirty seconds listening to it tick in the heat. He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, then he gets out.

The porch.

Danny mentioned it, yesterday, in the oblique way Danny mentions anything that isn't mission-critical. Something needs fixing. Adrian's not a contractor, doesn't have the eye for it, stands at the foot of the steps and actually looks, properly, the way he does when he's trying to find the composition issue in a photograph. The boards look alright. The railing seems solid enough. One of the posts on the left side might sit at a fractionally different angle but that could be how it's always been. Nothing is obviously wrong. Nothing jumps out.

He is still standing there, head tilted, when the door opens.

Clemencia is small and precise, the way she always is, and she's holding the mug. The one Danny made magically appear in the kitchen for him, the one with his initial that looks like the little toy car Danny gave him on their first date. It's full of coffee, from the steam. She looks at Adrian on her porch at whatever this hour is, takes in the state of him, and does not look surprised.

"Mijo," she says with a smile. It's a hushed whisper, but warm. She steps back and opens the door wider. "I had a feeling. Come in."

He goes up the steps carefully, already matching her register without thinking about it. She passes him the mug. Wraps both hands around his for a second as she does it.

"He took his medication last night," she says, her voice just under the threshold of carrying. "He's still sleeping."

Adrian gives her a dramatic look of shock and then presses his lips to her forehead. Stays a second. She smells like coffee and the particular soap she uses and something that has started, over these visits, to mean this house.

The stairs creak on the left side. He knows which ones. He takes them slowly, one hand on the rail, the mug warm between his palms, and at the top he stops in the hallway and just listens.

Nothing.

Which means Danny is actually asleep.

He pushes the door open with two fingers and there's Danny. He doesn't even stir. Adrian wonders when the last time was that Danny slept so heavily. As his eyes travel over the familiar form, Adrian can't help but notice the shape of a walking boot on Danny's top foot and how Danny has his upper shoulder propped up on a bunch of pillows. He wonders what else is wrong that he can't see yet.

He looks his fill and then sets the mug on the nightstand. Kicks off his shoes and strips down to his briefs in the dim room with the determined efficiency of someone who is too tired to be precious about it, and then lowers himself to the bed with the slow, deliberate care of a man trying very hard not to disturb the only good thing that's happened today.

He gets in. Pulls the sheet up. Doesn't reach for Danny yet, just lies there in the dark and the warmth and the sound of the house, his headache tapering, the road finally out from under him and the distance closed.