fic: exactly where we belong (chord/darren, r) (3/4)
exactly where we belong.
by novelized. ~32,000 words.
fandom: Glee RPF.
pairing: Chord Overstreet/Darren Criss.
summary: Chord Overstreet doesn't want to like Darren, but the sad truth of the fact is that he can't help it. Darren Criss, that asshole, is impossible to dislike.
(alternatively: Something Went Down in the Tent at Coachella.)
Backstage is a rush of activity and noisiness and everyone scraping their makeup off and changing into tshirts and the van ride back to the hotel is a long stretch of nothing but sleepy silence and in the lobby they say their goodnights and zombie off to their separate rooms, and Chord paces around in the hallway for ten minutes because he can’t find his room key and because his head is so full it could burst.
He thinks about going downstairs to the hotel bar and getting a drink first, but even that-that’s not what he wants, and he knows it. He draws in a deep steely breath. Lets his feet carry him to room 514. He hovers outside the threshold for two long uncertain minutes before he works up the courage to knock. Chord never used to think he was a cowardly dude. This is one of the hardest things he’s ever done.
Darren answers the door in glasses and sweatpants, messy hair. He looks surprised to see Chord. That’s probably the only reason Chord allows himself to stay.
“What’s going on?” Darren asks him, warily. Like he maybe thinks he’s going to get chewed out for something. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Chord’s got so much energy he doesn’t know what to do with it. He thinks his stomach is turning in on itself except that he doesn’t even feel sick, just-just a jumbled mess of nerves and terror and deep down wanting, so much wanting, and he can’t deal with it anymore. He takes a step into the room. He lets the door close behind him. The only light’s coming from a muted desk lamp, so there’s a shadow across Darren’s face, and Chord can pretend he’s not looking at him the way he can’t help but actually look at him. There’s a book lying open on the bed, dog-eared beside the pillow, and knowing that Darren was calmly reading while Chord was tracing and retracing his mindless footsteps makes him feel sort of crazy.
“Chord?” Darren says, quiet. Watching him.
“I-”
Chord sucks in a breath. He doesn’t have any sufficient words or explanations; he’s all talked out. He’s never been the eloquent one. Do things first, come up with excuses later.
Darren’s still looking at him like that.
Chord takes two uncertain steps forward, lifts an uncertain hand, curls it uncertainly around Darren’s neck. Darren tenses but he doesn’t move, doesn’t even really breathe, just lets his gaze flicker first to Chord’s mouth and then to his eyes, confused, but like he’s afraid if he speaks he’ll scare him off. Chord can’t be scared off. Not anymore. He’s tired of being scared.
He leans in, slowly, so slowly, and kisses him.
It’s soft at first, tentative, but then Darren makes a low breathy noise against his lips and Chord nearly stumbles over his own feet trying to push in closer, his fingers curling into Darren’s cotton tshirt, and it’s sort of messy and sort of really awesome. Darren is as good at kissing as he is at everything else in the world, even if Chord has a good few inches on him, even if he’s not used to kissing someone with a five o’clock shadow. It’s pretty much everything he’d thought he wanted and then some. It feels right, right in a way that Chord knows he’ll never be able to explain. He doesn’t even question it. Can’t question it. He’s too busy kissing.
A second later, or maybe a hundred seconds later, because Chord feels almost-drunk and he has no grasp whatsoever on time, Darren’s hands find the hem of Chord’s shirt. They slip up underneath the material, fingers running lightly along his abs like he’d never been able to touch them before, like he’d been wanting for a long time to do this-maybe since Coachella, he doesn’t know. But Chord goes along with it. Pulls his shirt off and over his head, drops it the floor because he needs this, he needs so much more. Darren pulls back and looks at him with this crazy sort of want in his eyes, and a shiver runs down Chord’s spine. He’s half-naked and exposed and it’s not even bothering him, not anymore.
“Hang on,” Darren says lowly, and it actually looks like it’s paining him to speak, to put the brakes on-whatever’s happening here, whatever’s about to happen. “You’re not going to freak out on me, are you? Because I’m running out of ways to get you to hang out with me again. A guy can only try so hard, you know?”
Chord licks his lips. They feel extraordinarily dry. “No,” he says. “I’m not going to freak out this time.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah. I promise. But I don’t-I mean, I’m still not-”
Darren laughs calmly. Chord sort of hates him for being able to be so cool and rational about this whole thing. Except that he doesn’t actually hate him, because he can’t. He’s tried.
“Don’t worry,” Darren says, and he’s leaning in again. “I’m not gonna ask for a promise ring.”
When they kiss this time it goes a lot smoother, like they’ve already found their groove, no accidental nose-bumping, Darren’s palm pressed flat against his chest. Chord doesn’t remember the last time he’s felt this good, and without even really meaning to he’s nudging Darren backwards, back towards the bed, and Darren goes without complaint. They don’t stop kissing and touching and touching and kissing, and Chord reaches up and pulls Darren’s glasses off, even though he likes the way they make him look, and he sets them aside, and he’s already wrinkled Darren’s shirt from the too-tight grip he’d had rolled between his fingers so the practical thing to do is to get rid of it too, and Darren does without making a big deal out of it, just pulls it up over his shoulders (he’s got incredible arm muscles, and Chord doesn’t know how he’s never really noticed that before) and it joins Chord’s on the carpet, discarded, forgotten.
“I’ve wanted this so much,” Darren nearly groans, but it’s still quiet and half-mumbled, like he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to say that. Chord’s breathing fast and he doesn’t care because he feels the exact same way.
Darren turns them around mid-kiss and gives Chord a gentle shove that sends him to the corner of the hotel mattress, one hand bracing back against the bed, the other sliding along the warm skin of Darren’s back, exploring, feeling. Darren presses one last quick kiss against his lips before moving his mouth to new places, his jaw, his neck, bites down a little at the hollow of Chord’s throat and he moans, louder and needier than he’d intended, but Darren doesn’t stay in one place too long, like he’d learned something from the hickey debacle of last time. He trails his tongue along Chord’s collarbone, still hovering over him, and Chord likes this shift in positions, the fact that Darren’s taller than him when he’s sitting down, the fact that he’s taking control and mouthing wet kisses down his chest.
He’s about to yank him up for another real kiss when Darren, with no uncertainty, drops down to his knees between Chord’s spread legs.
“Darren,” he says, and his voice is raspier than he’s ever heard it, but Darren just looks at him with an imploring grin and doesn’t even really wait for the answer. His hands move to Chord’s basketball shorts, and maybe he should’ve worn something with a little more coverage because right now it’s pretty evident how much he wants this, but that doesn’t matter because Darren’s fingers are dipping into the waistband and he waits another three seconds like he’s waiting for Chord to call the whole thing off but he doesn’t, of course he doesn’t, and so Darren tugs his shorts down and his boxers come with them, and he has to shift on the mattress, lift his hips for them to come off all the way, and Darren’s as careful with sliding them off his feet as he is with everything he does in life, and just like that, Chord’s naked.
It had been dark last time and Chord’s pants had been barely shoved down to his knees so this was different, so different, with Darren’s face only inches away, his hands running up Chord’s bare thighs, fingernails dragging along his calf muscles, planting a kiss to the inside of Chord’s knee that actually makes his breath catch, and then Darren’s wrapping a hand around him, like last time and not at all like last time, because even in the dim lighting Darren’s looking up at him through incredibly thick eyelashes, watching him intently as he strokes him for the first few times.
Chord pulls his free hand up to his mouth and bites down hard on his knuckle, so hard he’ll probably have teeth indents there in the morning, and Darren says, low, “Can I?” and there is only one possible answer for that, which is a very sure, very resounding yes.
Darren wets his lips with his tongue and it’s in the top ten hottest things Chord has ever seen, ever, before finally lowering his eyes and dipping his head forward and wrapping his mouth around him, and Chord can barely stop his hips from pushing up again, has to actually physically restrain himself, and Darren’s hands hook under Chord’s knees and pull him closer, and he knows what he’s doing, he has to, because there’s no way this is his first time when it feels so fucking amazing.
And it does. So fucking amazing.
Chord’s other hand reaches down and cards through Darren’s hair, loose and shower-fresh, and he thinks his has to be about a thousand times better than the gel shit they do for the show, because his fingers get wrapped around a curl and he gives it a little tug that makes Darren groan around him and he can feel the vibrato from his throat and it shoots straight through his entire body, until he can barely think straight anymore. He’s not going to last much longer, he knows he’s not, because Darren really fucking knows how to use his mouth.
“Dude,” Chord says, because even now he can’t shake that habit, even when he’s getting a blowjob from a guy he’s fooled around with twice, and he draws in a long shaky breath. “Dude, I’m going to-” and he knows Darren knows what he means, but the thing is-he doesn’t pull off.
Chord’s had a handful of girlfriends who’ve all refused to swallow, and he can’t blame them, he thinks, he wouldn’t want that shit in his mouth either, but he’s always secretly wanted them to, thought there’d be nothing hotter than watching them do it, and the fact that Darren’s still going at it does all sorts of things to Chord’s brain and body in general and his grip in Darren’s hair tightens as he comes, skin slicked with sweat, panting heavily, chest rising and falling in an irregular pattern.
Darren stays kneeled for as long as it takes to slip Chord’s shorts back up his thighs, and then he’s wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand and climbing back up to his feet, wincing a little, and Chord doesn’t exactly have his shit together and he’s still in this incredible orgasmic high so he doesn’t know what to say, but he guesses that’s okay. That Darren doesn’t expect him to say anything just yet. He’s not going to kiss him again, not until he brushes his teeth at least, even if he sort of wants to, because that’s just too much. But he doesn’t know what the next step is. He doesn’t know where to go from here.
“Everything cool?” Darren asks, and he sits beside Chord on the mattress, and Chord can tell through his sweatpants he’s still hard, even if he’s not currently doing anything about it.
“Yeah, man,” Chord says, surprised by how much that’s true. “That was. You are. Yeah.”
Darren laughs quietly and rests his cheek against Chord’s bare shoulder for a second. It feels weird, but not bad weird. When he turns his nose inward Chord thinks he can feel Darren smiling against his skin.
“So,” Chord says, and he gestures towards Darren’s pants. “I should probably-”
Except he doesn’t know how. The majority of it is self-explanatory; he’s got a dick, he knows how to work one. But how does he work up the balls to stick his hand down another dude’s pants? What’s he supposed to do once he’s in there?
“Hey,” Darren says.
Chord looks at him.
“You don’t have to.”
“No, I know, but I-”
“Hey,” Darren repeats, and he’s looking at Chord all understandingly (he is always so fucking understanding) and presses his hand against Chord’s back, rubs a warm circle into the skin along his spine. “Seriously, you don’t have to. You’re not comfortable with it, and I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Look, if you feel like trying later, then maybe we can…” He trails off, like maybe he’s wondering if he’s overstepped his boundaries. By assuming there’s going to be a later. A repeat incident. This happening again.
There is so going to be a later. Chord already knows it.
“Yeah,” Chord says, and his voice sounds foreign. “I will. Honest.”
Darren smiles at him, a legitimate smile, and Chord looks down at his hands and sort of grins. He has no idea what any of this means, but they both knew it was nothing serious, that there was no terminology necessary, no declarative statements. They just were.
“However.” Darren stands up, adjusts his pants as discreetly as he possibly can, which isn’t very discreetly at all. “I do have to take care of this. So. I’m, uh, going to hit up the bathroom and you can stick around and watch TV or-”
Chord thinks he should probably leave, but he doesn’t actually want to. That one’s new. “I have no idea where my room key is,” he admits.
“Then I guess you’re crashing here tonight.”
Because they’d sprung for single rooms this time, there’s only the one king size bed. He’s shared smaller beds with bigger dudes before, but not usually post-orgasm, not when he’s still feeling spent and limbless and good all over. “I guess so,” he says.
Darren grabs his toothbrush out of his bag and points it right at Chord. “But I swear to God if you snore I’m making you sleep in the hallway,” he threatens, and then he disappears into the bathroom, and Chord finds himself straining his ears to hear the showerhead blast on, and with that sort of imagery, those sort of sounds, how can he not picture what Darren’s doing?
He crawls backwards on the bed, props himself up on the headboard, turns the TV on but lowers the volume and doesn’t really pay attention. He grabs Darren’s glasses off the nightstand and puts them on but only because he wants to see if Darren’s one of those guys who wears them not out of necessity but because they think they look good in glasses, and his vision goes all screwy so he guesses Darren’s not. He’s blinking up at the ceiling through the lenses when the shower turns off, and a minute later the bathroom door opens and Darren is standing there with a towel wrapped around his waist and looking at him weirdly.
“Hey,” Chord says.
Darren just stares at him. ‘You look…”
“Stupid?”
“No,” Darren says, and laughs. “Not stupid. You look hot.”
That sends a slight flush down Chord’s neck (as if he didn’t already know that Darren thought he was hot-most guys didn’t spend their nights blowing people they thought were ugly) and he reaches up and takes the glasses off and sets them back down. “How’d it go in there?” he asks, and then hates himself for asking. What kind of question is that?
But Darren just pulls a pair of clean boxers on and drops the towel, doesn’t bother with a shirt. “Not bad for my second shower in an hour,” he grins, and then he joins Chord on the bed, flops down beside him, touches Chord’s leg with one finger feather-light. Chord suppresses a shiver. “But I’m beat. Don’t hold it against me if I pass out in, like, six seconds.”
“Yeah, no, I won’t. I’m pretty tired myself.”
“Okay then.” All of a sudden Darren pushes himself up with one hand; he looks relaxed and comfortable and way more okay with this progression than Chord is, but he can’t worry about that right now. Can’t let himself think about it. It doesn’t have to mean anything. It doesn’t.
Chord realizes what he’s about to do about two seconds before he does it, because Darren’s looking at his mouth and then he’s leaning in, and holy shit, he’s about to kiss him goodnight. He hasn’t kissed anyone goodnight in-in far too long, and that somehow seems a thousand times gayer than anything else they’ve done in the past hour, and even though he’s holding true to his promise and not freaking out, it’s still too much, and he turns his head at the last second so Darren’s lips graze the side of his jaw instead. Chord doesn’t pull his eyes up, but he can feel Darren hesitate beside him before backing away.
Darren’s not the type to drop things, though. Of course he’s not.
“Too much?” he says, and he says it in a falsely cheerful voice. “Yeah, too much.”
“It’s just-”
“No, I get it. That was presumptuous of me. I mean, what am I, your prom date?”
Chord offers up a little laugh. “My prom date wouldn’t even let me touch her,” he admits. “I accidentally stepped on her foot during the cha-cha slide and she spent the rest of the night glaring at me.”
“Ooh. Rough.”
“She was a bitch,” Chord says. “I only asked her because she had really great boobs.”
Darren snorts. “You’re charming, Chord Overstreet,” he says, and he drops back down onto the blankets, kicks his legs out beneath him. “A regular Casanova.”
They’re quiet for a minute; Chord rolls over onto his back and pillows his head in his hands, stares up at the ceiling. A car commercial’s playing softly in the background. Whether he realizes he’s doing it or not, Darren’s humming along.
Because he’s fucking exhausted and because they have to be up in God-knows how many hours and because it’s not like he has anywhere better to go, Chord tugs the covers up from near their feet, pulls them over both of their bodies. His arm brushes against Darren’s. He leaves it there.
After a few seconds of silence Darren reaches over and turns the desk lamp off, so the only light in the room is coming from the soft blue glow of the television. He peeks at Chord with one eye closed and says, sounding quiet and sleepy, “Just so you know, I’m not making you breakfast in the morning.”
Chord grins against the sheets without meaning to. “Wouldn’t ask you to,” he says back, and he thinks he should feel weird about this-he does feel weird about this, but not in the way he’d expect. He’s warm and comfortable and happy, almost, or as close as he’s been to it in weeks. Putting more thought into that seems dumb. So he doesn’t. He just goes to sleep.
Chord wakes up with a warm arm pressed around his body, fingers splayed open against his chest. He knows where he is. There’s no crazy disorientation, no rush of blood to his head as he remembers. He’s not going to allow himself the momentary freak out, even though he’s lying near-naked in a hotel bed with Darren Criss. It is what it is. It wasn’t how he planned to start the day-or, any day ever, in his whole entire life-but it’s not like he can rewind time. Not like he really even wants to.
He doesn’t want to be there when Darren wakes up, though. That part’s still weird. Waking up next to someone in the morning is about a hundred times more intimate than falling asleep beside them, and he doesn’t want intimacy. He wants things to be quick and easy and as clean as possible. So he very slowly and very carefully peels back the blankets, slips out from underneath Darren’s arm, climbs out of the bed and collects his clothes, tugs his shirt back on over his head. Official wake-up time’s not for an hour. He can slip back into his room and shower and get his shit together, at least.
But he doesn’t want Darren to think he ran off, like he’s afraid to face him. He’s not going to leave a note on the pillow (that only happened in chick flicks, and besides, what if room service found it, what if someone sold it to TMZ for a couple hundred bucks?) but he does shoot him a quick text. Went 2 shower, he writes. See u on the bus. Darren stays passed out on the pillow, doesn’t even stir.
It turns out his room key had been in his pocket the entire time. Who knew.
Chord’s one of the first ones downstairs for breakfast. He makes himself a big plate of eggs and bacon and pancakes-he’d worked up an appetite last night, apparently-and drops down at a table, watches Sportscenter as he shovels food into his mouth. Mark and Jenna trickle in a little later, and they talk about stupid shit for the next half hour, about the décor of the hotel rooms and the fact that Mark had broken into the minibar last night.
“What about you, C?” Mark asks through a mouthful of biscuit. “What’d you do last night?”
“The usual,” Chord says, and he feels a quick flash of heat against the back of his neck, but he shoves it down, pushes it away. “Churned butter. Knitted a sweater.”
Jenna snorts into her coffee. “God, our lives are exciting.”
The doors swing open and Lea and Darren file into the room, chatting about something or other. Chord tries not to pay an inordinate amount of attention to them but it’s like his eyes are magnetically drawn there, even as they’re innocuously helping themselves to orange juice. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting. Like Darren’s going to announce what happened in the middle of the continental breakfast. Like he’s going to nudge Chord in the ribs and be like, “So how about that blowjob last night?”
But that doesn’t happen. Darren’s as normal as ever. He drops down into his normal seat next to Chord’s, flashes a completely normal grin, says, “Morning, guys,” in a normally cheerful tone. He doesn’t give any Chord any lingering looks. He doesn’t try to hold his hand under the table.
At one point during the conversation he does lock eyes with Chord, though, and he gives him a little wink so quick and subtle Chord’s not entirely sure he didn’t make it up, and he finds himself… weirdly calm. Okay with it. With them. Whatever.
He doesn’t put a whole lot of thought into it. They still have a few more weeks of tour.
They don’t find any alone time for most of the day, although they’re not really actively searching it out. Chord’s not counting down the minutes until he can disappear into a storage closet and pull Darren in with him. Darren’s not shooting him secret little looks of longing. They’re normal. They goof around with the other guys. They continue to play videogames backstage. Darren continues to lose.
Cory throws himself onto the couch between them and he says, “I see you two have kissed and made up,” and Chord just snorts and ignores him, focuses a little more intently on the controller in his hands.
“I baked him a friendship pie,” Darren says coolly, and Chord’s glad he’s in the business of actors, glad everyone he hangs out with is a convincing liar.
“What flavor?”
“Rainbow. With fairy dust sprinkles.”
“Ah, man,” Cory says. “That’s my favorite.”
“Good thing I saved you a slice, then,” Chord tosses in, doesn’t take his eyes off the screen. “But you’ll have to get it. It’s in my pants.”
Cory lunges at him, knocking the controller clean out of his hands, and he presses him full-bodied against the couch, groping him unceremoniously through his jeans. “I don’t feel it,” he says, and Chord laughs and struggles against him, trying his best to elbow him in the face. His arms are pinned against the cushions, though, so the most he can do is sort of wiggle under Cory’s hands. That asshole.
“A little help here?” he asks, craning his neck back to look at Darren.
Darren just lifts his hands. “What do you think I can do?” he says reasonably. “He’s got a foot on me.”
“Then bite him in the shins!”
“If you bite me in the shins,” Cory says, “I’ll be forced to get backup. We’ll have to go all kung fu on your ass.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Darren says. “Sorry Chord.”
Chord shoves at Cory again, but it does virtually nothing. Cory slides his hand into Chord’s back pocket, really wriggles his hand in there. He’s got a whole handful of ass. “No pie here,” he says. “I think I was deceived.”
“You are so gay,” Chord says, before he can stop himself, and he sort of freezes immediately after. Cory doesn’t notice, but Darren’s eyebrows go all high.
“And by that you mean merry and spritely, right, Chord?” he says, and he’s either being a douchebag or giving him an out. Chord’s grateful for either.
“Obviously,” he says. “What else would I mean?”
Cory gives him one last pat on the butt before climbing up off of him. “I am spritely, aren’t I?” he says, and Chord can’t think of anything less spritely than a guy with miles of arms and zero sense of balance. “I’ll see you guys later. I’m going to go see if I can stream the Canucks game back here. Wouldn’t it be cool if I could wear a pair of glasses on stage and have them stream the games into the lenses? The future, man. It’s coming.”
Chord waits until he’s disappeared out into the hallway before rolling his eyes and turning his attention back to Darren. “He’d start beating his chest and screaming halfway through Don’t Stop Believing,” he says. “That would never work.”
Darren laughs. “Right, that’s why it wouldn’t work. Leave it to you to find fault in his logic.”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
There’s a moment of silence between them; Chord shifts in his seat and leans his head back against the cushion, but keeps his eyes set on Darren the entire time. He clears his throat. “Sorry about-” he starts, pauses awkwardly. “I didn’t mean-you know. I didn’t mean ‘gay’ as in stupid. Like, I didn’t mean it as a bad thing.”
“And you’re apologizing to me because?”
Chord bites his fingernails, which he only ever does when he’s anxious. He can’t help it. It’s a terrible habit. “Because I’m trying to be a good person,” he says, the only answer he has. It’s not that he thinks Darren is gay-knows Darren is at least part-gay. Sort of gay. Quasi-gay. It’s just that sometimes his mouth moves faster than his brain, that sometimes he says things without thinking them through first. It’s a bad habit. He’s trying to stop.
Darren grins. “You are a good person, Chord. You’re also forgiven. Mostly because-” His eyes dart around conspiratorially, and then he lowers his voice. “-I’m feeling pretty merry and spritely right now.”
That sends a sudden warmth to the tips of Chord’s ears, but not an unwelcome one. “I bet you are,” he says, and even though he has this new unwritten no-overt-touching-in-public rule, he reaches out and pulls at Darren’s Dalton tie, watches the way it strains against his neck. “What the hell does spritely mean, anyway?”
“Oh Chord.” Darren gives off this longsuffering sigh, but he puts his hand over Chord’s and gives it an affectionate little squeeze. “I should go get ready. Do you want to-” He pauses, seems to rethink what he was about to say. Shrugs his shoulders. “I’ll see you tonight?”
“I’m sure you will,” Chord says, and he can’t even help it, that excited little tug in the pit of his stomach. He hasn’t felt that tug in ages. He bends down and picks the controller up off the floor, and then he shoots Darren a little grin. It’s kind of cool having a secret, as fucked up as it might be. It’s like. It’s their thing, and no one has to know, and they can stop at any time. Really. They can.
Really.
Darren sits next to Chord on the bus back to the hotel. It’s late and it’s dark outside and it’s unseasonably chilly, and they don’t talk at all, but it’s one of the most comfortable silences he’s ever experienced. Darren leans his shoulder against Chord’s, casual, easy, and Chord lets him. He stares out the window and up at the endless expanse of sky. Usually it makes him feel tiny and insignificant compared to all that vastness, the innumerable stars, but tonight he feels alive and full and content in his own skin. It’s a nice change. He decides he likes it.
They’re kissing before the door’s even all the way closed, which is stupid and reckless and surprisingly hot. It wasn’t like Darren was jumping his bones; one second they were walking down the hallway, the next they were passing through the threshold and grabbing at necks and shoulders and fistfuls of tshirts. Sometimes it takes awhile to get used to kissing someone, to really learn them, but that’s not how it is with Darren. It just works. Their mouths and their bodies fit together, and there’s no conscientious thinking, just a whole lot of doing. And Chord really likes doing.
They somehow scored a room together. Chord figures it’s probably because of Darren, but he doesn’t question it. He just accepts it for what it is.
“God,” Darren says in a little half-whine against his mouth, and he shoves him up against the door (closed, now) and kisses him breathless. Chord likes that there’s nothing sweet about this, nothing gentle at all. When he has to stop for oxygen Darren doesn’t pull away, mumbles up against his lips, “I’ve been thinking about this all day.”
“Yeah,” Chord agrees, and he’s already rucking up Darren’s shirt, his hands slipping up under the loose material, and Darren lets out a little hiss when cold fingers press against his warm skin, touching, feeling. He feels more confident than he did last night. Like he’s had an entire day to process and nothing’s changed, he still wants this, wants it so badly, and what the fuck else can he do? He kisses Darren again and then his hands ghost over his stomach, trail down to his sweatpants. He’s glad he’s wearing something with a loose waistband, glad he can traverse to the next step without too much trouble, without having to cleanly get a pair of pants off. He nibbles on Darren’s bottom lip and slides his hand in.
A shocked and sort of strangled noise comes from the back of Darren’s throat, and he pulls away from his mouth to rest his forehead against Chord’s shoulder, says breathily, “Chord, you don’t have to-”
“Shut up,” Chord says, and he’s laughing a little, and his hand is curling around him, and it really isn’t that different from going at it on his own. He’s just going in from a different angle, that’s all, and they’re different but not bad different, and Darren’s face would be enough to make up for it even if it was. “Shut up and enjoy this, okay? I want to.”
“Okay.” Darren turns his face inwards and presses his lips against Chord’s neck and makes a little gaspy noise that Chord can feel when he flicks his wrist a certain way, so he does it again. One of Darren’s hands move up and his fingers tangle into Chord’s hair, tug at it lightly in the back, scrape lightly against his scalp, and it feels so fucking good that Chord’s quickening the pace of his hand without really realizing he’s doing it, and he likes that Darren is leaning against him, holding onto him, like he wouldn’t be able to hold himself up otherwise, like Chord’s first messy handjob is that damn good.
“Fuck, Chord,” Darren says, and he’s pushing against him, and Chord’s wrist is starting to ache and even that’s not so bad, which is why he’s starting to think that you can get used to anything. Even this.
And hearing his name from Darren’s mouth, right now, like this, it’s actually doing things to him. He almost can’t believe he’d been resisting this for months.
He can tell Darren’s about to finish right before he actually does, because Chord’s free hand is wrapped around Darren’s waist and he can actually feel his spine stiffen, and the way he sort of bucks against him, almost desperately, and then there’s a deep groan from the back of his throat and his chest is heaving as he comes. He looks so fucking hot, all messy and undone when he’s usually so put together, that Chord has to bite back an embarrassing noise of his own as he’s stroking him through, and they’re both sort of breathing heavily, and Darren presses three chaste kisses against his mouth when he slides his hand out. As chaste as they can be when his hand’s covered in-well.
“I’d get a tissue but I’m not sure my legs can function,” Darren says apologetically, and Chord snorts and makes sure he’s not going to fall over before ducking into the bathroom and coming out with an entire roll of toilet paper. He wipes his hand off carefully before handing the roll to Darren. No matter how much he liked it, he is so not doing that part. And besides, he’s glad for the distraction. He still doesn’t know what comes after this. He doesn’t know how to move on to level two-he really hopes, at least, that there’s a level two, because his jeans are feeling uncomfortably tight. And he hates awkward situations. What if Darren just wants to go to bed? Chord had done that to him, after all. It’d only be fair and all that shit.
“Hey Chord,” Darren says.
He glances up. Darren’s got this look on his face, this kind of weird, kind of tentative look. But he’s also not avoiding eye contact, not even pretending to. Chord swallows thickly. “Yeah?”
“Do you maybe want to take a shower?”
A little shiver prickles up his spine. He’s seen the showers. They aren’t that big. But-
But. There’s always a fucking but.
“Yeah,” he says, and he’s already reaching for the hem of his shirt. “I do.”
The next morning Darren wakes up before he does, and he presses a soft and sleepy kiss to the underside of Chord’s jaw. It’s probably the best wake-up call he’s had all tour, even though he groans and sort of curls in on himself, but then Darren wraps his hand around Chord’s neck, his thumb grazing the skin just below his ear, and it’s-good. There are two beds in this room. One bed for each person. Somehow they’d ended up sleeping in the same one. (He doesn’t really think it’s that much of a coincidence.) They’re both naked, too, or almost. Chord’s jeans are still lying discarded on the bathroom floor. Darren’s sweatpants are hanging over an armchair.
“Good morning,” Darren says quietly.
“Morning,” he returns. The early sunlight’s flooding in through the window, and it’s casting a shadow across Darren’s face so that he can barely see the quirk of his lips, the pillow lines on his forehead. Chord closes his eyes and relaxes against Darren’s hand, lets his toes brush against Darren’s bare calf.
“Wanna get breakfast?”
“Not really.”
“Coffee?”
“Nah.”
“Want to roll around on the mattress and make out like horny teenagers?”
Chord laughs out loud at that. “Yeah, actually,” he says, because as long as they’re being honest. “But not until you’ve brushed your teeth and get rid of your stank-ass breath.”
Darren nearly trips over his feet scrambling out of the bed.
“That goes for you too,” he calls over his shoulder, and his boxers are hanging dangerously low on his hips, and Chord can’t stop looking. He kicks the blankets aside and adjusts himself; they have to be ready in an hour, which could technically be enough time to take care of matters but more than likely isn’t. It’s strange, though, because this isn’t a one-night stand. Darren’s not someone he’s never going to see again. They can pick up where they left off tonight. And tomorrow. And for once that idea doesn’t completely scare the shit out of him.
Chord swings his legs over the side of the mattress. “Bring me my toothbrush,” he says, rubbing tiredly at his eyes. He figures they’re close enough now that he can make those sort of ridiculous demands. “I don’t want to get up.”
Darren snorts, but he does it anyway. “You’re lucky I like you,” he says, toothbrush poking out of his own mouth, and he sits beside him, close enough for their knees to touch. Even now the slightest brush of skin shoots electric-hot energy straight to his crotch. (He is so screwed.)
“I’m lucky for a lot of reasons,” Chord says, which is corny but true.
“Yeah.” Darren jiggles his toothbrush sort of thoughtfully, tips his head back and looks straight up at the ceiling. He smells like spearmint and Old Spice and Chord wants to kiss him for no real reason at all. “We all are, though.” He twists his neck so that he can look at Chord, offers him up a small smile. “Some of us more than others.”
Chord just nods.
So, so screwed.
Chord’s sisters always do this thing where they bug the heck out of him when they think he’s keeping a secret, which is more often than not because there are about a thousand things he would never tell them in his whole entire life. They outnumber him, though, and even when he’s halfway across the country they have this way of knowing. It starts with a text message, and then about a hundred text messages, and then the emails, and even his brother gets in on it somehow, messages him on Twitter-on fucking Twitter, of all places-to ask him if he’s dating someone. All of his texts back are the same. No. No. No. Of course not.
They all liked Darren. The few times they’d met him he’d been his normal stupidly charming self, and he’s pretty sure at least two-thirds of them have big schoolgirl crushes on him, and honestly, who didn’t like Darren? But even thinking about the idea of-of-of somehow finding a way to explain this ridiculous situation to them is laughable. He could never. Would never. And it’s not like he feels any need to. He’s pretty sure this thing has an expiration date, one that just so happens to coincide with the end of tour. Or-maybe, maybe it could last while they’re shooting season three, because their apartments aren’t that far from each other, but he’s not really thinking about the future. Chord prefers to stay in the present. With his feet planted firmly on the ground.
His oldest sister sends him a text that says, You better not be fooling around with random fans, and he’s sort of relieved that that’s what she thinks he’s doing. Overstreets are not in the business of hooking up with people who have the same junk as themselves. Chord doesn’t want to be the one to break the mold.
It’s funny how less than a year ago he was worried about playing a gay character on TV, and now there’s this. Life always throws the weirdest fucking curveballs at him.
It becomes regular. This. Them. Every night Chord and Darren find some time to be alone-they can’t always have a room to themselves, can’t kick Mark out onto his ass in the hallway, because that would raise suspicion and that’s the last thing either of them want. But sometimes it’s sloppy handjobs in the bathroom. Sometimes it’s a makeout session in a storage closet. Sometimes it’s just playing footsie under the dinner table, which is totally lame and Chord will never own up to it, but it happens. Once or twice.
They’re laying in bed together post-show, post-orgasm in a hotel room in Somewhere, America when Darren clears his throat. Chord can’t even keep track of where they are anymore; everything has started to blur together, cities and states and arenas. Darren had been lazily kissing Chord’s neck for the better part of the last five minutes, and Chord’s a little disappointed when he pulls away.
“I wanna tell you something,” Darren says, which is never the start of a good conversation. Chord’s spine tenses without even really knowing why.
“Yeah?”
“You, uh, remember that conversation we had? About my being in an open relationship and-”
“Yeah,” Chord says quickly, because he doesn’t want Darren to go into specifics. He still thinks it’s weird. Tries not to think about it at all.
Darren licks his lips. He looks a little nervous, which is unusual. It’d probably be less unusual if they were wearing clothes. “I called her today,” he finally says. “And I broke things off.”
Chord’s forehead wrinkles. He’s not sure how to take that. Not sure what the proper response is. Not sure why there’s a faint twisting feeling in the pit of his stomach. “You did?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
That draws a laugh out of Darren, even though it’s a startled, quiet one. “Because of you, dumbass.”
“I didn’t ask you to-”
“No, I know you didn’t. But I just didn’t think it was fair to her when this turned into-you know. A thing.”
It is a thing. Whether or not he wants to admit it, it’s a thing.
Chord goes quiet, thoughtful. “Yeah,” is all he can come up with, and it feels massively underwhelming. But what else is he supposed to say? Thanks for dumping your girlfriend on account of how much you like making out with me?
Darren edges his knee in between Chord’s legs, lets their feet entangle loosely. “No pressure,” he says. “I just wanted you to know.”
He doesn’t really know how they ended up here. Like this. He doesn’t know why he’s okay with it, and he doesn’t know what it’s going to turn into.
But he likes it.
“Okay,” he says, and he turns his head in and presses his lips against the crook of Darren’s elbow. “Okay.”
They make it down to breakfast the next morning, eventually, because Chord gets cranky when his stomach’s empty, and because Darren says he can’t function without a cup of coffee. It seems just about everyone else is sleeping in, though, because Chris is the only other person they recognize in the room. Two teenaged girls in the corner are staring at him and giggling over their pancakes. Chris offers them a scrunch-faced help me look when they walk in.
“Shoot,” Darren says, patting his pockets. “I forgot my glasses. I’ll be right back.”
So Chord fills up a plate by himself and then makes his way over to the table Chris is occupying, pushes a notebook out of the way so he can sit down. “Morning,” he says, digging his fingernails into an orange peel and pulling it away in strips.
“Thank God you’re here,” Chris says quietly back. “Two more minutes alone and I think those girls were about to attack me.”
Chord looks over his shoulder at them and, embarrassed at being caught, they both immerse themselves into their breakfasts like they hadn’t had a proper meal in years. “You just have to make them uncomfortable. It always works for me. Have you seen that girl on Youtube, the one who makes the face-?”
“I prefer not to terrify my middle school fans,” Chris says, giving him one of his patented Chris Colfer looks. Those things have been known to kill rattlesnakes.
“I’m just saying. You gotta do what you gotta do.”
Chris only has a half-eaten slice of wheat toast on his plate, which makes Chord feel like a fatass with his sausage and biscuits and gravy and fruit, but he doesn’t really care. There’s another opened notebook in front of Chris, and he’s reading it with his tongue poked into his cheek in concentration, and there’s a pencil tucked behind his ear. Chord studies him while he eats. They don’t hang out that often. Chris is usually doing stuff with the girls, or on his own. The time they’d spent at the bookstore together, Chris had actually spent an entire hour browsing through the fiction section, while Chord had stood near the front of the store, boredly flipping through magazines. They’d barely talked.
But he’s a cool guy. He likes Chris, genuinely likes him. When he’d first signed onto the show, when he was first slated to play Kurt’s boyfriend, Chris had told him that if he had any questions or needed any advice that he was there for him. And now he can’t help but think… well, he’s sort of in the same situation. Sort of. Right? And who would have better advice than Chris, a dude who’s been out of the closet for years? Chris wouldn’t spread something like this around. He’d understand. He’d get it.
Chord clears his throat. “Hey Chris,” he says slowly, purposely not looking at him, dragging his fork over his plate. “How’d… how’d you know you, uh. You know. Liked guys?”
There’s a long stretch of silence. When Chord works up the courage to raise his gaze, he’s all but gaping at him, his mouth slightly open.
“Oh my God,” he says.
Heat crawls up the back of Chord’s neck painfully fast. “That’s not-” he says quickly, and what the hell was he thinking? This was the worst idea ever. “I’m not-I was just asking.”
“Do you know how often straight boys who aren’t least leaning slightly to this side of bicurious ask that question, Chord? Never. They never do.”
“It’s not me,” Chord attempts weakly, “it’s-”
“Please don’t use the ‘so I have this friend’ line on me. We both know I’m too smart for that.”
Chord says nothing. Chris’s face softens after a second or two, like he’s suddenly realizing that he’s not being messed with, that there’s nothing at all funny about this. “Okay,” he says, “um. I wasn’t prepared for this at nine in the morning. But it’s different for everyone. There’s no universal epiphany moment. And-”
“You know what,” Chord interrupts, “you’re right, dude. Nine o’clock is way too early for this. Can we forget this whole thing happened? Please?”
Chris doesn’t look like he wants to let it go, but maybe he can see the desperation on Chord’s face. Maybe he’s just feeling charitable. “I don’t mind talking to you, Chord,” he says, “and there are plenty of other people who would be willing to-”
Chord’s forehead wrinkles in alarm. Chris cuts himself off this time.
“Fine,” he says. “But the offer still stands.”
The doors open again and Darren, finally, comes back into the room, wearing his glasses. He looks like he’s humming something to himself; as he passes their table on the way to the coffeemaker, he shoots Chord a little wink. It would’ve seemed innocuous any other time, but now, now is the worst timing in the world and he can’t help the fact that the tips of his ears turn pink. Chris pauses with his toast in hand, looking slowly from Darren to Chord, and then his eyes go big and wide.
“Oh my God,” he says again.
“No,” Chord says immediately. “It’s not-”
Chris’s hands go up in the air. “I don’t want to know,” he says. “If this is some sort of weird method acting, or-”
“Who’s method acting?” Darren asks cheerfully from behind them, cup of coffee in his hands. He blows on it and then offers them a grin.
Chord pushes his plate of food away. “I’ve suddenly just lost my appetite,” he announces to the table at large. “I think for, like, the rest of my life. I will never be hungry again.”
Darren raises his eyebrows at Chris. “What’s wrong with him?”
Chris is shaking his head, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t understand anything anymore. Nothing in this world makes sense.”
The look on Darren’s face clearly says he has no idea what’s going on, for which Chord is seriously grateful. He sits down at the table between them and takes a sip of his coffee. “You guys are weird,” he says, “and also, those two little girls back there have been taking pictures of you for the last five minutes. I give it negative eight seconds before they reach Tumblr.”
“Great,” Chord sighs. “That’s exactly what I need.”
“It could be worse,” Chris says logically. “Have you seen what some of those kids are able to do with Photoshop?”
Chord shudders. “I’m going back to bed,” he says, and he leaves his full plate of food on the table, hopes and prays that this conversation will never, ever leave this room.
“Have you ever-you know. With a guy?” Chord asks. They’re sitting outside in the heat, shielded by the buses, letting their feet dangle above the cement below. Chord can’t even remember how long they’ve been doing this. It seems like a pretty important conversation to have, though. And maybe a little overdue. Not that he’s thinking about-about you knowing with another dude. Blowjobs were one thing. That’s, like, a whole different realm.
“You can say the word ‘sex,’ Chord,” Darren says, laughing. “I think we’ve reached that point where we can start using those words.”
“You knew what I meant.”
“Fine.” Darren kicks his feet back against the concrete. He looks like he’s having a minor internal debate, before finally he looks at Chord and nods. “I have, yeah. Twice.”
Chord goes quiet. “Oh,” he says, and he stares off in the distance. He can feel Darren’s eyes on him.
“Does that bug you?”
It does, sort of, no matter how illogical it is. It’s just strange to think that Darren knows what he’s doing, while Chord’s been thrown overboard and he was just left there to tread.
“Why would that bug me?”
“I don’t know,” Darren says. “The human mind is a complex phenomenon. Who knows why we feel the way we feel?”
“You make it sound scientific,” Chord says, but Darren’s right. Like now, for instance. He’s annoyed and even he doesn’t know why.
“It is scientific,” Darren argues, but then he pauses. “But it’s also not. There’s nothing scientific about this.” He reaches out, almost tentatively, and picks up Chord’s hand between his own. Chord’s heart stutters a step. After everything they’ve done, they’ve never done this. He doesn’t know why he’s letting him, but he does, and Darren twines their fingers together loosely, studies the way their thumbs overlap. It feels weirdly nice. The way holding hands with someone for the first time always does. Darren smiles. “We’re kind of dating, aren’t we,” he says, and it’s not even really a question, doesn’t look to Chord for confirmation.
Chord lets out a long breath. “I think so,” he agrees. “How’d that happen?”
“Science,” Darren says, and they laugh and untangle their hands when they have to go back inside, but the treading in uncharted waters feels a little easier. Like maybe he’s floating instead.
‘Dating’ doesn’t mean relationship, not exactly. Chord’s not going around thinking I’m somebody’s boyfriend. He hopes Darren’s not doing that either. It does mean, though, that one night he’s out with Mark and Harry, and this girl comes up to him, and she’s hot, like, really hot, and she’s wearing next to nothing, and Chord buys her a drink because it’s the polite thing to do, and they talk for almost half an hour, and she keeps looking at his lips in that way that girls have, and then finally, when the night’s winding down, she invites him back to her hotel room.
And Chord isn’t even really thinking about it before saying, “Ah, no thanks,” and she stares at him for five whole seconds like something’s wrong with him, and then she says, “You don’t even have to spend the night,” and Chord sort of wishes Darren there, for no reason whatsoever, and he repeats, “Thanks, but I’m kind of-I’m kind of seeing someone.”
And so she grabs her purse and flounces off in anger and Mark puts his arm around Chord’s shoulder and says, “Man, what is wrong with you, why’d you lie to her like that?” and Chord shakes him off and tells him that he just wasn’t in the mood, which is at least half-true. Well. He wasn’t in the mood for her.
That night he and Darren come dangerously close to ‘you know.’ Chord’s not even freaked out about it, not like he should be. Things are… good. They’re good.
part four.
one | two | three | four
by novelized. ~32,000 words.
fandom: Glee RPF.
pairing: Chord Overstreet/Darren Criss.
summary: Chord Overstreet doesn't want to like Darren, but the sad truth of the fact is that he can't help it. Darren Criss, that asshole, is impossible to dislike.
(alternatively: Something Went Down in the Tent at Coachella.)
Backstage is a rush of activity and noisiness and everyone scraping their makeup off and changing into tshirts and the van ride back to the hotel is a long stretch of nothing but sleepy silence and in the lobby they say their goodnights and zombie off to their separate rooms, and Chord paces around in the hallway for ten minutes because he can’t find his room key and because his head is so full it could burst.
He thinks about going downstairs to the hotel bar and getting a drink first, but even that-that’s not what he wants, and he knows it. He draws in a deep steely breath. Lets his feet carry him to room 514. He hovers outside the threshold for two long uncertain minutes before he works up the courage to knock. Chord never used to think he was a cowardly dude. This is one of the hardest things he’s ever done.
Darren answers the door in glasses and sweatpants, messy hair. He looks surprised to see Chord. That’s probably the only reason Chord allows himself to stay.
“What’s going on?” Darren asks him, warily. Like he maybe thinks he’s going to get chewed out for something. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Chord’s got so much energy he doesn’t know what to do with it. He thinks his stomach is turning in on itself except that he doesn’t even feel sick, just-just a jumbled mess of nerves and terror and deep down wanting, so much wanting, and he can’t deal with it anymore. He takes a step into the room. He lets the door close behind him. The only light’s coming from a muted desk lamp, so there’s a shadow across Darren’s face, and Chord can pretend he’s not looking at him the way he can’t help but actually look at him. There’s a book lying open on the bed, dog-eared beside the pillow, and knowing that Darren was calmly reading while Chord was tracing and retracing his mindless footsteps makes him feel sort of crazy.
“Chord?” Darren says, quiet. Watching him.
“I-”
Chord sucks in a breath. He doesn’t have any sufficient words or explanations; he’s all talked out. He’s never been the eloquent one. Do things first, come up with excuses later.
Darren’s still looking at him like that.
Chord takes two uncertain steps forward, lifts an uncertain hand, curls it uncertainly around Darren’s neck. Darren tenses but he doesn’t move, doesn’t even really breathe, just lets his gaze flicker first to Chord’s mouth and then to his eyes, confused, but like he’s afraid if he speaks he’ll scare him off. Chord can’t be scared off. Not anymore. He’s tired of being scared.
He leans in, slowly, so slowly, and kisses him.
It’s soft at first, tentative, but then Darren makes a low breathy noise against his lips and Chord nearly stumbles over his own feet trying to push in closer, his fingers curling into Darren’s cotton tshirt, and it’s sort of messy and sort of really awesome. Darren is as good at kissing as he is at everything else in the world, even if Chord has a good few inches on him, even if he’s not used to kissing someone with a five o’clock shadow. It’s pretty much everything he’d thought he wanted and then some. It feels right, right in a way that Chord knows he’ll never be able to explain. He doesn’t even question it. Can’t question it. He’s too busy kissing.
A second later, or maybe a hundred seconds later, because Chord feels almost-drunk and he has no grasp whatsoever on time, Darren’s hands find the hem of Chord’s shirt. They slip up underneath the material, fingers running lightly along his abs like he’d never been able to touch them before, like he’d been wanting for a long time to do this-maybe since Coachella, he doesn’t know. But Chord goes along with it. Pulls his shirt off and over his head, drops it the floor because he needs this, he needs so much more. Darren pulls back and looks at him with this crazy sort of want in his eyes, and a shiver runs down Chord’s spine. He’s half-naked and exposed and it’s not even bothering him, not anymore.
“Hang on,” Darren says lowly, and it actually looks like it’s paining him to speak, to put the brakes on-whatever’s happening here, whatever’s about to happen. “You’re not going to freak out on me, are you? Because I’m running out of ways to get you to hang out with me again. A guy can only try so hard, you know?”
Chord licks his lips. They feel extraordinarily dry. “No,” he says. “I’m not going to freak out this time.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah. I promise. But I don’t-I mean, I’m still not-”
Darren laughs calmly. Chord sort of hates him for being able to be so cool and rational about this whole thing. Except that he doesn’t actually hate him, because he can’t. He’s tried.
“Don’t worry,” Darren says, and he’s leaning in again. “I’m not gonna ask for a promise ring.”
When they kiss this time it goes a lot smoother, like they’ve already found their groove, no accidental nose-bumping, Darren’s palm pressed flat against his chest. Chord doesn’t remember the last time he’s felt this good, and without even really meaning to he’s nudging Darren backwards, back towards the bed, and Darren goes without complaint. They don’t stop kissing and touching and touching and kissing, and Chord reaches up and pulls Darren’s glasses off, even though he likes the way they make him look, and he sets them aside, and he’s already wrinkled Darren’s shirt from the too-tight grip he’d had rolled between his fingers so the practical thing to do is to get rid of it too, and Darren does without making a big deal out of it, just pulls it up over his shoulders (he’s got incredible arm muscles, and Chord doesn’t know how he’s never really noticed that before) and it joins Chord’s on the carpet, discarded, forgotten.
“I’ve wanted this so much,” Darren nearly groans, but it’s still quiet and half-mumbled, like he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to say that. Chord’s breathing fast and he doesn’t care because he feels the exact same way.
Darren turns them around mid-kiss and gives Chord a gentle shove that sends him to the corner of the hotel mattress, one hand bracing back against the bed, the other sliding along the warm skin of Darren’s back, exploring, feeling. Darren presses one last quick kiss against his lips before moving his mouth to new places, his jaw, his neck, bites down a little at the hollow of Chord’s throat and he moans, louder and needier than he’d intended, but Darren doesn’t stay in one place too long, like he’d learned something from the hickey debacle of last time. He trails his tongue along Chord’s collarbone, still hovering over him, and Chord likes this shift in positions, the fact that Darren’s taller than him when he’s sitting down, the fact that he’s taking control and mouthing wet kisses down his chest.
He’s about to yank him up for another real kiss when Darren, with no uncertainty, drops down to his knees between Chord’s spread legs.
“Darren,” he says, and his voice is raspier than he’s ever heard it, but Darren just looks at him with an imploring grin and doesn’t even really wait for the answer. His hands move to Chord’s basketball shorts, and maybe he should’ve worn something with a little more coverage because right now it’s pretty evident how much he wants this, but that doesn’t matter because Darren’s fingers are dipping into the waistband and he waits another three seconds like he’s waiting for Chord to call the whole thing off but he doesn’t, of course he doesn’t, and so Darren tugs his shorts down and his boxers come with them, and he has to shift on the mattress, lift his hips for them to come off all the way, and Darren’s as careful with sliding them off his feet as he is with everything he does in life, and just like that, Chord’s naked.
It had been dark last time and Chord’s pants had been barely shoved down to his knees so this was different, so different, with Darren’s face only inches away, his hands running up Chord’s bare thighs, fingernails dragging along his calf muscles, planting a kiss to the inside of Chord’s knee that actually makes his breath catch, and then Darren’s wrapping a hand around him, like last time and not at all like last time, because even in the dim lighting Darren’s looking up at him through incredibly thick eyelashes, watching him intently as he strokes him for the first few times.
Chord pulls his free hand up to his mouth and bites down hard on his knuckle, so hard he’ll probably have teeth indents there in the morning, and Darren says, low, “Can I?” and there is only one possible answer for that, which is a very sure, very resounding yes.
Darren wets his lips with his tongue and it’s in the top ten hottest things Chord has ever seen, ever, before finally lowering his eyes and dipping his head forward and wrapping his mouth around him, and Chord can barely stop his hips from pushing up again, has to actually physically restrain himself, and Darren’s hands hook under Chord’s knees and pull him closer, and he knows what he’s doing, he has to, because there’s no way this is his first time when it feels so fucking amazing.
And it does. So fucking amazing.
Chord’s other hand reaches down and cards through Darren’s hair, loose and shower-fresh, and he thinks his has to be about a thousand times better than the gel shit they do for the show, because his fingers get wrapped around a curl and he gives it a little tug that makes Darren groan around him and he can feel the vibrato from his throat and it shoots straight through his entire body, until he can barely think straight anymore. He’s not going to last much longer, he knows he’s not, because Darren really fucking knows how to use his mouth.
“Dude,” Chord says, because even now he can’t shake that habit, even when he’s getting a blowjob from a guy he’s fooled around with twice, and he draws in a long shaky breath. “Dude, I’m going to-” and he knows Darren knows what he means, but the thing is-he doesn’t pull off.
Chord’s had a handful of girlfriends who’ve all refused to swallow, and he can’t blame them, he thinks, he wouldn’t want that shit in his mouth either, but he’s always secretly wanted them to, thought there’d be nothing hotter than watching them do it, and the fact that Darren’s still going at it does all sorts of things to Chord’s brain and body in general and his grip in Darren’s hair tightens as he comes, skin slicked with sweat, panting heavily, chest rising and falling in an irregular pattern.
Darren stays kneeled for as long as it takes to slip Chord’s shorts back up his thighs, and then he’s wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand and climbing back up to his feet, wincing a little, and Chord doesn’t exactly have his shit together and he’s still in this incredible orgasmic high so he doesn’t know what to say, but he guesses that’s okay. That Darren doesn’t expect him to say anything just yet. He’s not going to kiss him again, not until he brushes his teeth at least, even if he sort of wants to, because that’s just too much. But he doesn’t know what the next step is. He doesn’t know where to go from here.
“Everything cool?” Darren asks, and he sits beside Chord on the mattress, and Chord can tell through his sweatpants he’s still hard, even if he’s not currently doing anything about it.
“Yeah, man,” Chord says, surprised by how much that’s true. “That was. You are. Yeah.”
Darren laughs quietly and rests his cheek against Chord’s bare shoulder for a second. It feels weird, but not bad weird. When he turns his nose inward Chord thinks he can feel Darren smiling against his skin.
“So,” Chord says, and he gestures towards Darren’s pants. “I should probably-”
Except he doesn’t know how. The majority of it is self-explanatory; he’s got a dick, he knows how to work one. But how does he work up the balls to stick his hand down another dude’s pants? What’s he supposed to do once he’s in there?
“Hey,” Darren says.
Chord looks at him.
“You don’t have to.”
“No, I know, but I-”
“Hey,” Darren repeats, and he’s looking at Chord all understandingly (he is always so fucking understanding) and presses his hand against Chord’s back, rubs a warm circle into the skin along his spine. “Seriously, you don’t have to. You’re not comfortable with it, and I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Look, if you feel like trying later, then maybe we can…” He trails off, like maybe he’s wondering if he’s overstepped his boundaries. By assuming there’s going to be a later. A repeat incident. This happening again.
There is so going to be a later. Chord already knows it.
“Yeah,” Chord says, and his voice sounds foreign. “I will. Honest.”
Darren smiles at him, a legitimate smile, and Chord looks down at his hands and sort of grins. He has no idea what any of this means, but they both knew it was nothing serious, that there was no terminology necessary, no declarative statements. They just were.
“However.” Darren stands up, adjusts his pants as discreetly as he possibly can, which isn’t very discreetly at all. “I do have to take care of this. So. I’m, uh, going to hit up the bathroom and you can stick around and watch TV or-”
Chord thinks he should probably leave, but he doesn’t actually want to. That one’s new. “I have no idea where my room key is,” he admits.
“Then I guess you’re crashing here tonight.”
Because they’d sprung for single rooms this time, there’s only the one king size bed. He’s shared smaller beds with bigger dudes before, but not usually post-orgasm, not when he’s still feeling spent and limbless and good all over. “I guess so,” he says.
Darren grabs his toothbrush out of his bag and points it right at Chord. “But I swear to God if you snore I’m making you sleep in the hallway,” he threatens, and then he disappears into the bathroom, and Chord finds himself straining his ears to hear the showerhead blast on, and with that sort of imagery, those sort of sounds, how can he not picture what Darren’s doing?
He crawls backwards on the bed, props himself up on the headboard, turns the TV on but lowers the volume and doesn’t really pay attention. He grabs Darren’s glasses off the nightstand and puts them on but only because he wants to see if Darren’s one of those guys who wears them not out of necessity but because they think they look good in glasses, and his vision goes all screwy so he guesses Darren’s not. He’s blinking up at the ceiling through the lenses when the shower turns off, and a minute later the bathroom door opens and Darren is standing there with a towel wrapped around his waist and looking at him weirdly.
“Hey,” Chord says.
Darren just stares at him. ‘You look…”
“Stupid?”
“No,” Darren says, and laughs. “Not stupid. You look hot.”
That sends a slight flush down Chord’s neck (as if he didn’t already know that Darren thought he was hot-most guys didn’t spend their nights blowing people they thought were ugly) and he reaches up and takes the glasses off and sets them back down. “How’d it go in there?” he asks, and then hates himself for asking. What kind of question is that?
But Darren just pulls a pair of clean boxers on and drops the towel, doesn’t bother with a shirt. “Not bad for my second shower in an hour,” he grins, and then he joins Chord on the bed, flops down beside him, touches Chord’s leg with one finger feather-light. Chord suppresses a shiver. “But I’m beat. Don’t hold it against me if I pass out in, like, six seconds.”
“Yeah, no, I won’t. I’m pretty tired myself.”
“Okay then.” All of a sudden Darren pushes himself up with one hand; he looks relaxed and comfortable and way more okay with this progression than Chord is, but he can’t worry about that right now. Can’t let himself think about it. It doesn’t have to mean anything. It doesn’t.
Chord realizes what he’s about to do about two seconds before he does it, because Darren’s looking at his mouth and then he’s leaning in, and holy shit, he’s about to kiss him goodnight. He hasn’t kissed anyone goodnight in-in far too long, and that somehow seems a thousand times gayer than anything else they’ve done in the past hour, and even though he’s holding true to his promise and not freaking out, it’s still too much, and he turns his head at the last second so Darren’s lips graze the side of his jaw instead. Chord doesn’t pull his eyes up, but he can feel Darren hesitate beside him before backing away.
Darren’s not the type to drop things, though. Of course he’s not.
“Too much?” he says, and he says it in a falsely cheerful voice. “Yeah, too much.”
“It’s just-”
“No, I get it. That was presumptuous of me. I mean, what am I, your prom date?”
Chord offers up a little laugh. “My prom date wouldn’t even let me touch her,” he admits. “I accidentally stepped on her foot during the cha-cha slide and she spent the rest of the night glaring at me.”
“Ooh. Rough.”
“She was a bitch,” Chord says. “I only asked her because she had really great boobs.”
Darren snorts. “You’re charming, Chord Overstreet,” he says, and he drops back down onto the blankets, kicks his legs out beneath him. “A regular Casanova.”
They’re quiet for a minute; Chord rolls over onto his back and pillows his head in his hands, stares up at the ceiling. A car commercial’s playing softly in the background. Whether he realizes he’s doing it or not, Darren’s humming along.
Because he’s fucking exhausted and because they have to be up in God-knows how many hours and because it’s not like he has anywhere better to go, Chord tugs the covers up from near their feet, pulls them over both of their bodies. His arm brushes against Darren’s. He leaves it there.
After a few seconds of silence Darren reaches over and turns the desk lamp off, so the only light in the room is coming from the soft blue glow of the television. He peeks at Chord with one eye closed and says, sounding quiet and sleepy, “Just so you know, I’m not making you breakfast in the morning.”
Chord grins against the sheets without meaning to. “Wouldn’t ask you to,” he says back, and he thinks he should feel weird about this-he does feel weird about this, but not in the way he’d expect. He’s warm and comfortable and happy, almost, or as close as he’s been to it in weeks. Putting more thought into that seems dumb. So he doesn’t. He just goes to sleep.
Chord wakes up with a warm arm pressed around his body, fingers splayed open against his chest. He knows where he is. There’s no crazy disorientation, no rush of blood to his head as he remembers. He’s not going to allow himself the momentary freak out, even though he’s lying near-naked in a hotel bed with Darren Criss. It is what it is. It wasn’t how he planned to start the day-or, any day ever, in his whole entire life-but it’s not like he can rewind time. Not like he really even wants to.
He doesn’t want to be there when Darren wakes up, though. That part’s still weird. Waking up next to someone in the morning is about a hundred times more intimate than falling asleep beside them, and he doesn’t want intimacy. He wants things to be quick and easy and as clean as possible. So he very slowly and very carefully peels back the blankets, slips out from underneath Darren’s arm, climbs out of the bed and collects his clothes, tugs his shirt back on over his head. Official wake-up time’s not for an hour. He can slip back into his room and shower and get his shit together, at least.
But he doesn’t want Darren to think he ran off, like he’s afraid to face him. He’s not going to leave a note on the pillow (that only happened in chick flicks, and besides, what if room service found it, what if someone sold it to TMZ for a couple hundred bucks?) but he does shoot him a quick text. Went 2 shower, he writes. See u on the bus. Darren stays passed out on the pillow, doesn’t even stir.
It turns out his room key had been in his pocket the entire time. Who knew.
Chord’s one of the first ones downstairs for breakfast. He makes himself a big plate of eggs and bacon and pancakes-he’d worked up an appetite last night, apparently-and drops down at a table, watches Sportscenter as he shovels food into his mouth. Mark and Jenna trickle in a little later, and they talk about stupid shit for the next half hour, about the décor of the hotel rooms and the fact that Mark had broken into the minibar last night.
“What about you, C?” Mark asks through a mouthful of biscuit. “What’d you do last night?”
“The usual,” Chord says, and he feels a quick flash of heat against the back of his neck, but he shoves it down, pushes it away. “Churned butter. Knitted a sweater.”
Jenna snorts into her coffee. “God, our lives are exciting.”
The doors swing open and Lea and Darren file into the room, chatting about something or other. Chord tries not to pay an inordinate amount of attention to them but it’s like his eyes are magnetically drawn there, even as they’re innocuously helping themselves to orange juice. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting. Like Darren’s going to announce what happened in the middle of the continental breakfast. Like he’s going to nudge Chord in the ribs and be like, “So how about that blowjob last night?”
But that doesn’t happen. Darren’s as normal as ever. He drops down into his normal seat next to Chord’s, flashes a completely normal grin, says, “Morning, guys,” in a normally cheerful tone. He doesn’t give any Chord any lingering looks. He doesn’t try to hold his hand under the table.
At one point during the conversation he does lock eyes with Chord, though, and he gives him a little wink so quick and subtle Chord’s not entirely sure he didn’t make it up, and he finds himself… weirdly calm. Okay with it. With them. Whatever.
He doesn’t put a whole lot of thought into it. They still have a few more weeks of tour.
They don’t find any alone time for most of the day, although they’re not really actively searching it out. Chord’s not counting down the minutes until he can disappear into a storage closet and pull Darren in with him. Darren’s not shooting him secret little looks of longing. They’re normal. They goof around with the other guys. They continue to play videogames backstage. Darren continues to lose.
Cory throws himself onto the couch between them and he says, “I see you two have kissed and made up,” and Chord just snorts and ignores him, focuses a little more intently on the controller in his hands.
“I baked him a friendship pie,” Darren says coolly, and Chord’s glad he’s in the business of actors, glad everyone he hangs out with is a convincing liar.
“What flavor?”
“Rainbow. With fairy dust sprinkles.”
“Ah, man,” Cory says. “That’s my favorite.”
“Good thing I saved you a slice, then,” Chord tosses in, doesn’t take his eyes off the screen. “But you’ll have to get it. It’s in my pants.”
Cory lunges at him, knocking the controller clean out of his hands, and he presses him full-bodied against the couch, groping him unceremoniously through his jeans. “I don’t feel it,” he says, and Chord laughs and struggles against him, trying his best to elbow him in the face. His arms are pinned against the cushions, though, so the most he can do is sort of wiggle under Cory’s hands. That asshole.
“A little help here?” he asks, craning his neck back to look at Darren.
Darren just lifts his hands. “What do you think I can do?” he says reasonably. “He’s got a foot on me.”
“Then bite him in the shins!”
“If you bite me in the shins,” Cory says, “I’ll be forced to get backup. We’ll have to go all kung fu on your ass.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Darren says. “Sorry Chord.”
Chord shoves at Cory again, but it does virtually nothing. Cory slides his hand into Chord’s back pocket, really wriggles his hand in there. He’s got a whole handful of ass. “No pie here,” he says. “I think I was deceived.”
“You are so gay,” Chord says, before he can stop himself, and he sort of freezes immediately after. Cory doesn’t notice, but Darren’s eyebrows go all high.
“And by that you mean merry and spritely, right, Chord?” he says, and he’s either being a douchebag or giving him an out. Chord’s grateful for either.
“Obviously,” he says. “What else would I mean?”
Cory gives him one last pat on the butt before climbing up off of him. “I am spritely, aren’t I?” he says, and Chord can’t think of anything less spritely than a guy with miles of arms and zero sense of balance. “I’ll see you guys later. I’m going to go see if I can stream the Canucks game back here. Wouldn’t it be cool if I could wear a pair of glasses on stage and have them stream the games into the lenses? The future, man. It’s coming.”
Chord waits until he’s disappeared out into the hallway before rolling his eyes and turning his attention back to Darren. “He’d start beating his chest and screaming halfway through Don’t Stop Believing,” he says. “That would never work.”
Darren laughs. “Right, that’s why it wouldn’t work. Leave it to you to find fault in his logic.”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
There’s a moment of silence between them; Chord shifts in his seat and leans his head back against the cushion, but keeps his eyes set on Darren the entire time. He clears his throat. “Sorry about-” he starts, pauses awkwardly. “I didn’t mean-you know. I didn’t mean ‘gay’ as in stupid. Like, I didn’t mean it as a bad thing.”
“And you’re apologizing to me because?”
Chord bites his fingernails, which he only ever does when he’s anxious. He can’t help it. It’s a terrible habit. “Because I’m trying to be a good person,” he says, the only answer he has. It’s not that he thinks Darren is gay-knows Darren is at least part-gay. Sort of gay. Quasi-gay. It’s just that sometimes his mouth moves faster than his brain, that sometimes he says things without thinking them through first. It’s a bad habit. He’s trying to stop.
Darren grins. “You are a good person, Chord. You’re also forgiven. Mostly because-” His eyes dart around conspiratorially, and then he lowers his voice. “-I’m feeling pretty merry and spritely right now.”
That sends a sudden warmth to the tips of Chord’s ears, but not an unwelcome one. “I bet you are,” he says, and even though he has this new unwritten no-overt-touching-in-public rule, he reaches out and pulls at Darren’s Dalton tie, watches the way it strains against his neck. “What the hell does spritely mean, anyway?”
“Oh Chord.” Darren gives off this longsuffering sigh, but he puts his hand over Chord’s and gives it an affectionate little squeeze. “I should go get ready. Do you want to-” He pauses, seems to rethink what he was about to say. Shrugs his shoulders. “I’ll see you tonight?”
“I’m sure you will,” Chord says, and he can’t even help it, that excited little tug in the pit of his stomach. He hasn’t felt that tug in ages. He bends down and picks the controller up off the floor, and then he shoots Darren a little grin. It’s kind of cool having a secret, as fucked up as it might be. It’s like. It’s their thing, and no one has to know, and they can stop at any time. Really. They can.
Really.
Darren sits next to Chord on the bus back to the hotel. It’s late and it’s dark outside and it’s unseasonably chilly, and they don’t talk at all, but it’s one of the most comfortable silences he’s ever experienced. Darren leans his shoulder against Chord’s, casual, easy, and Chord lets him. He stares out the window and up at the endless expanse of sky. Usually it makes him feel tiny and insignificant compared to all that vastness, the innumerable stars, but tonight he feels alive and full and content in his own skin. It’s a nice change. He decides he likes it.
They’re kissing before the door’s even all the way closed, which is stupid and reckless and surprisingly hot. It wasn’t like Darren was jumping his bones; one second they were walking down the hallway, the next they were passing through the threshold and grabbing at necks and shoulders and fistfuls of tshirts. Sometimes it takes awhile to get used to kissing someone, to really learn them, but that’s not how it is with Darren. It just works. Their mouths and their bodies fit together, and there’s no conscientious thinking, just a whole lot of doing. And Chord really likes doing.
They somehow scored a room together. Chord figures it’s probably because of Darren, but he doesn’t question it. He just accepts it for what it is.
“God,” Darren says in a little half-whine against his mouth, and he shoves him up against the door (closed, now) and kisses him breathless. Chord likes that there’s nothing sweet about this, nothing gentle at all. When he has to stop for oxygen Darren doesn’t pull away, mumbles up against his lips, “I’ve been thinking about this all day.”
“Yeah,” Chord agrees, and he’s already rucking up Darren’s shirt, his hands slipping up under the loose material, and Darren lets out a little hiss when cold fingers press against his warm skin, touching, feeling. He feels more confident than he did last night. Like he’s had an entire day to process and nothing’s changed, he still wants this, wants it so badly, and what the fuck else can he do? He kisses Darren again and then his hands ghost over his stomach, trail down to his sweatpants. He’s glad he’s wearing something with a loose waistband, glad he can traverse to the next step without too much trouble, without having to cleanly get a pair of pants off. He nibbles on Darren’s bottom lip and slides his hand in.
A shocked and sort of strangled noise comes from the back of Darren’s throat, and he pulls away from his mouth to rest his forehead against Chord’s shoulder, says breathily, “Chord, you don’t have to-”
“Shut up,” Chord says, and he’s laughing a little, and his hand is curling around him, and it really isn’t that different from going at it on his own. He’s just going in from a different angle, that’s all, and they’re different but not bad different, and Darren’s face would be enough to make up for it even if it was. “Shut up and enjoy this, okay? I want to.”
“Okay.” Darren turns his face inwards and presses his lips against Chord’s neck and makes a little gaspy noise that Chord can feel when he flicks his wrist a certain way, so he does it again. One of Darren’s hands move up and his fingers tangle into Chord’s hair, tug at it lightly in the back, scrape lightly against his scalp, and it feels so fucking good that Chord’s quickening the pace of his hand without really realizing he’s doing it, and he likes that Darren is leaning against him, holding onto him, like he wouldn’t be able to hold himself up otherwise, like Chord’s first messy handjob is that damn good.
“Fuck, Chord,” Darren says, and he’s pushing against him, and Chord’s wrist is starting to ache and even that’s not so bad, which is why he’s starting to think that you can get used to anything. Even this.
And hearing his name from Darren’s mouth, right now, like this, it’s actually doing things to him. He almost can’t believe he’d been resisting this for months.
He can tell Darren’s about to finish right before he actually does, because Chord’s free hand is wrapped around Darren’s waist and he can actually feel his spine stiffen, and the way he sort of bucks against him, almost desperately, and then there’s a deep groan from the back of his throat and his chest is heaving as he comes. He looks so fucking hot, all messy and undone when he’s usually so put together, that Chord has to bite back an embarrassing noise of his own as he’s stroking him through, and they’re both sort of breathing heavily, and Darren presses three chaste kisses against his mouth when he slides his hand out. As chaste as they can be when his hand’s covered in-well.
“I’d get a tissue but I’m not sure my legs can function,” Darren says apologetically, and Chord snorts and makes sure he’s not going to fall over before ducking into the bathroom and coming out with an entire roll of toilet paper. He wipes his hand off carefully before handing the roll to Darren. No matter how much he liked it, he is so not doing that part. And besides, he’s glad for the distraction. He still doesn’t know what comes after this. He doesn’t know how to move on to level two-he really hopes, at least, that there’s a level two, because his jeans are feeling uncomfortably tight. And he hates awkward situations. What if Darren just wants to go to bed? Chord had done that to him, after all. It’d only be fair and all that shit.
“Hey Chord,” Darren says.
He glances up. Darren’s got this look on his face, this kind of weird, kind of tentative look. But he’s also not avoiding eye contact, not even pretending to. Chord swallows thickly. “Yeah?”
“Do you maybe want to take a shower?”
A little shiver prickles up his spine. He’s seen the showers. They aren’t that big. But-
But. There’s always a fucking but.
“Yeah,” he says, and he’s already reaching for the hem of his shirt. “I do.”
The next morning Darren wakes up before he does, and he presses a soft and sleepy kiss to the underside of Chord’s jaw. It’s probably the best wake-up call he’s had all tour, even though he groans and sort of curls in on himself, but then Darren wraps his hand around Chord’s neck, his thumb grazing the skin just below his ear, and it’s-good. There are two beds in this room. One bed for each person. Somehow they’d ended up sleeping in the same one. (He doesn’t really think it’s that much of a coincidence.) They’re both naked, too, or almost. Chord’s jeans are still lying discarded on the bathroom floor. Darren’s sweatpants are hanging over an armchair.
“Good morning,” Darren says quietly.
“Morning,” he returns. The early sunlight’s flooding in through the window, and it’s casting a shadow across Darren’s face so that he can barely see the quirk of his lips, the pillow lines on his forehead. Chord closes his eyes and relaxes against Darren’s hand, lets his toes brush against Darren’s bare calf.
“Wanna get breakfast?”
“Not really.”
“Coffee?”
“Nah.”
“Want to roll around on the mattress and make out like horny teenagers?”
Chord laughs out loud at that. “Yeah, actually,” he says, because as long as they’re being honest. “But not until you’ve brushed your teeth and get rid of your stank-ass breath.”
Darren nearly trips over his feet scrambling out of the bed.
“That goes for you too,” he calls over his shoulder, and his boxers are hanging dangerously low on his hips, and Chord can’t stop looking. He kicks the blankets aside and adjusts himself; they have to be ready in an hour, which could technically be enough time to take care of matters but more than likely isn’t. It’s strange, though, because this isn’t a one-night stand. Darren’s not someone he’s never going to see again. They can pick up where they left off tonight. And tomorrow. And for once that idea doesn’t completely scare the shit out of him.
Chord swings his legs over the side of the mattress. “Bring me my toothbrush,” he says, rubbing tiredly at his eyes. He figures they’re close enough now that he can make those sort of ridiculous demands. “I don’t want to get up.”
Darren snorts, but he does it anyway. “You’re lucky I like you,” he says, toothbrush poking out of his own mouth, and he sits beside him, close enough for their knees to touch. Even now the slightest brush of skin shoots electric-hot energy straight to his crotch. (He is so screwed.)
“I’m lucky for a lot of reasons,” Chord says, which is corny but true.
“Yeah.” Darren jiggles his toothbrush sort of thoughtfully, tips his head back and looks straight up at the ceiling. He smells like spearmint and Old Spice and Chord wants to kiss him for no real reason at all. “We all are, though.” He twists his neck so that he can look at Chord, offers him up a small smile. “Some of us more than others.”
Chord just nods.
So, so screwed.
Chord’s sisters always do this thing where they bug the heck out of him when they think he’s keeping a secret, which is more often than not because there are about a thousand things he would never tell them in his whole entire life. They outnumber him, though, and even when he’s halfway across the country they have this way of knowing. It starts with a text message, and then about a hundred text messages, and then the emails, and even his brother gets in on it somehow, messages him on Twitter-on fucking Twitter, of all places-to ask him if he’s dating someone. All of his texts back are the same. No. No. No. Of course not.
They all liked Darren. The few times they’d met him he’d been his normal stupidly charming self, and he’s pretty sure at least two-thirds of them have big schoolgirl crushes on him, and honestly, who didn’t like Darren? But even thinking about the idea of-of-of somehow finding a way to explain this ridiculous situation to them is laughable. He could never. Would never. And it’s not like he feels any need to. He’s pretty sure this thing has an expiration date, one that just so happens to coincide with the end of tour. Or-maybe, maybe it could last while they’re shooting season three, because their apartments aren’t that far from each other, but he’s not really thinking about the future. Chord prefers to stay in the present. With his feet planted firmly on the ground.
His oldest sister sends him a text that says, You better not be fooling around with random fans, and he’s sort of relieved that that’s what she thinks he’s doing. Overstreets are not in the business of hooking up with people who have the same junk as themselves. Chord doesn’t want to be the one to break the mold.
It’s funny how less than a year ago he was worried about playing a gay character on TV, and now there’s this. Life always throws the weirdest fucking curveballs at him.
It becomes regular. This. Them. Every night Chord and Darren find some time to be alone-they can’t always have a room to themselves, can’t kick Mark out onto his ass in the hallway, because that would raise suspicion and that’s the last thing either of them want. But sometimes it’s sloppy handjobs in the bathroom. Sometimes it’s a makeout session in a storage closet. Sometimes it’s just playing footsie under the dinner table, which is totally lame and Chord will never own up to it, but it happens. Once or twice.
They’re laying in bed together post-show, post-orgasm in a hotel room in Somewhere, America when Darren clears his throat. Chord can’t even keep track of where they are anymore; everything has started to blur together, cities and states and arenas. Darren had been lazily kissing Chord’s neck for the better part of the last five minutes, and Chord’s a little disappointed when he pulls away.
“I wanna tell you something,” Darren says, which is never the start of a good conversation. Chord’s spine tenses without even really knowing why.
“Yeah?”
“You, uh, remember that conversation we had? About my being in an open relationship and-”
“Yeah,” Chord says quickly, because he doesn’t want Darren to go into specifics. He still thinks it’s weird. Tries not to think about it at all.
Darren licks his lips. He looks a little nervous, which is unusual. It’d probably be less unusual if they were wearing clothes. “I called her today,” he finally says. “And I broke things off.”
Chord’s forehead wrinkles. He’s not sure how to take that. Not sure what the proper response is. Not sure why there’s a faint twisting feeling in the pit of his stomach. “You did?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
That draws a laugh out of Darren, even though it’s a startled, quiet one. “Because of you, dumbass.”
“I didn’t ask you to-”
“No, I know you didn’t. But I just didn’t think it was fair to her when this turned into-you know. A thing.”
It is a thing. Whether or not he wants to admit it, it’s a thing.
Chord goes quiet, thoughtful. “Yeah,” is all he can come up with, and it feels massively underwhelming. But what else is he supposed to say? Thanks for dumping your girlfriend on account of how much you like making out with me?
Darren edges his knee in between Chord’s legs, lets their feet entangle loosely. “No pressure,” he says. “I just wanted you to know.”
He doesn’t really know how they ended up here. Like this. He doesn’t know why he’s okay with it, and he doesn’t know what it’s going to turn into.
But he likes it.
“Okay,” he says, and he turns his head in and presses his lips against the crook of Darren’s elbow. “Okay.”
They make it down to breakfast the next morning, eventually, because Chord gets cranky when his stomach’s empty, and because Darren says he can’t function without a cup of coffee. It seems just about everyone else is sleeping in, though, because Chris is the only other person they recognize in the room. Two teenaged girls in the corner are staring at him and giggling over their pancakes. Chris offers them a scrunch-faced help me look when they walk in.
“Shoot,” Darren says, patting his pockets. “I forgot my glasses. I’ll be right back.”
So Chord fills up a plate by himself and then makes his way over to the table Chris is occupying, pushes a notebook out of the way so he can sit down. “Morning,” he says, digging his fingernails into an orange peel and pulling it away in strips.
“Thank God you’re here,” Chris says quietly back. “Two more minutes alone and I think those girls were about to attack me.”
Chord looks over his shoulder at them and, embarrassed at being caught, they both immerse themselves into their breakfasts like they hadn’t had a proper meal in years. “You just have to make them uncomfortable. It always works for me. Have you seen that girl on Youtube, the one who makes the face-?”
“I prefer not to terrify my middle school fans,” Chris says, giving him one of his patented Chris Colfer looks. Those things have been known to kill rattlesnakes.
“I’m just saying. You gotta do what you gotta do.”
Chris only has a half-eaten slice of wheat toast on his plate, which makes Chord feel like a fatass with his sausage and biscuits and gravy and fruit, but he doesn’t really care. There’s another opened notebook in front of Chris, and he’s reading it with his tongue poked into his cheek in concentration, and there’s a pencil tucked behind his ear. Chord studies him while he eats. They don’t hang out that often. Chris is usually doing stuff with the girls, or on his own. The time they’d spent at the bookstore together, Chris had actually spent an entire hour browsing through the fiction section, while Chord had stood near the front of the store, boredly flipping through magazines. They’d barely talked.
But he’s a cool guy. He likes Chris, genuinely likes him. When he’d first signed onto the show, when he was first slated to play Kurt’s boyfriend, Chris had told him that if he had any questions or needed any advice that he was there for him. And now he can’t help but think… well, he’s sort of in the same situation. Sort of. Right? And who would have better advice than Chris, a dude who’s been out of the closet for years? Chris wouldn’t spread something like this around. He’d understand. He’d get it.
Chord clears his throat. “Hey Chris,” he says slowly, purposely not looking at him, dragging his fork over his plate. “How’d… how’d you know you, uh. You know. Liked guys?”
There’s a long stretch of silence. When Chord works up the courage to raise his gaze, he’s all but gaping at him, his mouth slightly open.
“Oh my God,” he says.
Heat crawls up the back of Chord’s neck painfully fast. “That’s not-” he says quickly, and what the hell was he thinking? This was the worst idea ever. “I’m not-I was just asking.”
“Do you know how often straight boys who aren’t least leaning slightly to this side of bicurious ask that question, Chord? Never. They never do.”
“It’s not me,” Chord attempts weakly, “it’s-”
“Please don’t use the ‘so I have this friend’ line on me. We both know I’m too smart for that.”
Chord says nothing. Chris’s face softens after a second or two, like he’s suddenly realizing that he’s not being messed with, that there’s nothing at all funny about this. “Okay,” he says, “um. I wasn’t prepared for this at nine in the morning. But it’s different for everyone. There’s no universal epiphany moment. And-”
“You know what,” Chord interrupts, “you’re right, dude. Nine o’clock is way too early for this. Can we forget this whole thing happened? Please?”
Chris doesn’t look like he wants to let it go, but maybe he can see the desperation on Chord’s face. Maybe he’s just feeling charitable. “I don’t mind talking to you, Chord,” he says, “and there are plenty of other people who would be willing to-”
Chord’s forehead wrinkles in alarm. Chris cuts himself off this time.
“Fine,” he says. “But the offer still stands.”
The doors open again and Darren, finally, comes back into the room, wearing his glasses. He looks like he’s humming something to himself; as he passes their table on the way to the coffeemaker, he shoots Chord a little wink. It would’ve seemed innocuous any other time, but now, now is the worst timing in the world and he can’t help the fact that the tips of his ears turn pink. Chris pauses with his toast in hand, looking slowly from Darren to Chord, and then his eyes go big and wide.
“Oh my God,” he says again.
“No,” Chord says immediately. “It’s not-”
Chris’s hands go up in the air. “I don’t want to know,” he says. “If this is some sort of weird method acting, or-”
“Who’s method acting?” Darren asks cheerfully from behind them, cup of coffee in his hands. He blows on it and then offers them a grin.
Chord pushes his plate of food away. “I’ve suddenly just lost my appetite,” he announces to the table at large. “I think for, like, the rest of my life. I will never be hungry again.”
Darren raises his eyebrows at Chris. “What’s wrong with him?”
Chris is shaking his head, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t understand anything anymore. Nothing in this world makes sense.”
The look on Darren’s face clearly says he has no idea what’s going on, for which Chord is seriously grateful. He sits down at the table between them and takes a sip of his coffee. “You guys are weird,” he says, “and also, those two little girls back there have been taking pictures of you for the last five minutes. I give it negative eight seconds before they reach Tumblr.”
“Great,” Chord sighs. “That’s exactly what I need.”
“It could be worse,” Chris says logically. “Have you seen what some of those kids are able to do with Photoshop?”
Chord shudders. “I’m going back to bed,” he says, and he leaves his full plate of food on the table, hopes and prays that this conversation will never, ever leave this room.
“Have you ever-you know. With a guy?” Chord asks. They’re sitting outside in the heat, shielded by the buses, letting their feet dangle above the cement below. Chord can’t even remember how long they’ve been doing this. It seems like a pretty important conversation to have, though. And maybe a little overdue. Not that he’s thinking about-about you knowing with another dude. Blowjobs were one thing. That’s, like, a whole different realm.
“You can say the word ‘sex,’ Chord,” Darren says, laughing. “I think we’ve reached that point where we can start using those words.”
“You knew what I meant.”
“Fine.” Darren kicks his feet back against the concrete. He looks like he’s having a minor internal debate, before finally he looks at Chord and nods. “I have, yeah. Twice.”
Chord goes quiet. “Oh,” he says, and he stares off in the distance. He can feel Darren’s eyes on him.
“Does that bug you?”
It does, sort of, no matter how illogical it is. It’s just strange to think that Darren knows what he’s doing, while Chord’s been thrown overboard and he was just left there to tread.
“Why would that bug me?”
“I don’t know,” Darren says. “The human mind is a complex phenomenon. Who knows why we feel the way we feel?”
“You make it sound scientific,” Chord says, but Darren’s right. Like now, for instance. He’s annoyed and even he doesn’t know why.
“It is scientific,” Darren argues, but then he pauses. “But it’s also not. There’s nothing scientific about this.” He reaches out, almost tentatively, and picks up Chord’s hand between his own. Chord’s heart stutters a step. After everything they’ve done, they’ve never done this. He doesn’t know why he’s letting him, but he does, and Darren twines their fingers together loosely, studies the way their thumbs overlap. It feels weirdly nice. The way holding hands with someone for the first time always does. Darren smiles. “We’re kind of dating, aren’t we,” he says, and it’s not even really a question, doesn’t look to Chord for confirmation.
Chord lets out a long breath. “I think so,” he agrees. “How’d that happen?”
“Science,” Darren says, and they laugh and untangle their hands when they have to go back inside, but the treading in uncharted waters feels a little easier. Like maybe he’s floating instead.
‘Dating’ doesn’t mean relationship, not exactly. Chord’s not going around thinking I’m somebody’s boyfriend. He hopes Darren’s not doing that either. It does mean, though, that one night he’s out with Mark and Harry, and this girl comes up to him, and she’s hot, like, really hot, and she’s wearing next to nothing, and Chord buys her a drink because it’s the polite thing to do, and they talk for almost half an hour, and she keeps looking at his lips in that way that girls have, and then finally, when the night’s winding down, she invites him back to her hotel room.
And Chord isn’t even really thinking about it before saying, “Ah, no thanks,” and she stares at him for five whole seconds like something’s wrong with him, and then she says, “You don’t even have to spend the night,” and Chord sort of wishes Darren there, for no reason whatsoever, and he repeats, “Thanks, but I’m kind of-I’m kind of seeing someone.”
And so she grabs her purse and flounces off in anger and Mark puts his arm around Chord’s shoulder and says, “Man, what is wrong with you, why’d you lie to her like that?” and Chord shakes him off and tells him that he just wasn’t in the mood, which is at least half-true. Well. He wasn’t in the mood for her.
That night he and Darren come dangerously close to ‘you know.’ Chord’s not even freaked out about it, not like he should be. Things are… good. They’re good.
part four.
one | two | three | four