On Holidays - Easter by Lau

"Mmmngrph..."

I looked down at the head nestled on my lap and grinned. "I didn't think it was that big, Dazza."

The black-haired man raised himself up on the couch, squinting groggily in the bright room. "I seem to recall that a condition of my telling you my nickname was that you never call me by it. And what are you talking about?"

I smirked. "Nothing. I didn't think you'd wake up in time."

He cracked his back by twisting around, his spine popping quietly in the noisy room. "It's not midnight yet?"

Slipping an arm around his waist, I scootched him a little closer on the sofa. "Sorry, you have to stay for another fifteen minutes. Then the night is yours."

He started to answer, but it was halted by a yawn. "What if I just want to sleep?"

I pretended to be insulted, holding an offended hand to my chest, and he scowled and buried his sleepy head between my shoulder and neck. Patting him on the back, I saw my brothers cracking the cork on one of many bottles of champagne that had been purchased for the evening. I lowered my voice below The Proclaimers' "My Old Friend the Blues" and whispered in Darren's ear. "Are you afraid I'll think you're easy?"

Grunting in amusement and shoving himself off me to finally face the room, he didn't dignify me with a response. "Which ones are your brothers?"

"I'm not telling," I said for the sixth time that night, and studied the clock.

He scanned the room, trying again to spot the culprits. "Those two?" He pointed to another random pair. I shook my head. "Aren't you ever going to tell me?"

"So you can sabotage my house in some horrible way?"

He avoided the question. "I'll find out eventually, you know."

I grinned. "What makes you think you'll last that long?"

Darren scowled at me and slouched, sinking into the couch. The star of the party, some girl I'd never met who was getting engaged to some guy I had met but didn't remember, was flouncing obnoxiously near the window. I suppressed a thought that she might fall out. Jon was dating her sister and would be staying the night at her apartment, and Oliver had plans to visit a random woman or two before the evening was over.

I figured I had at least until noon tomorrow by myself.

I ducked my head again, teasing him with my presence. He scrunched up, trying to throw me off. Nosing his neck and trying to stifle a laugh, I whispered, "Can you come out to play?"

He relaxed a little, maneuvering his head around far enough to look me in the eye. "What?"

My grin spread. "Can you spend the night?"

"At your place?" He picked up my smile and reflected it back.

"At my place," I confirmed.

"To meet your brothers?"

"Sorry," I said. "Not quite that kinky." I winked. "Yet."

He rolled his eyes but stood, watching for me over his shoulder. With a final glance at my brothers, we slipped out the living room toward the front door. His hand in mine, a warm weight, comforting in its security. Despite our differences, four months with Darren had been nice. For the first time in a long time, I'd found someone who I liked to be around. Someone who I could tolerate for extended periods of time. That, in itself, was a miracle, as far as I was concerned. My brothers were unsettled by the idea that I had been able to spend such a long time with someone – even if they hadn't met him.

I couldn't risk it. The Carolers of Christmas Past had continued to traverse my neighborhood, Darren with them, despite my pleas. They led community clean-up crews, eliminating the graffiti that my brothers had worked so hard on replacing. I had arrived at Darren's apartment one night to pick him up for dinner only to find him doused in a bucket of blue acrylic, trying desperately to strip his hair without stripping the black dye.

It had been a fun night in the shower, but the feelings between himself and the rest of my family had not grown in warmth.

He'd been to my apartment rarely. My brothers hardly ever left for more than a few hours, let a lone simultaneously. We had, however, convinced a mutual friend to let us rent an apartment a few cities away. I had moved my music equipment out around a month ago and we were setting up the space as a studio.

Around then, Darren had gotten stage fright.

We hadn't managed to record a single thing.

"Daniel?"

I blinked and looked up at Darren, away from our locked fingers, and saw him glancing questioningly at the front door. It was blocked by a very ambitious couple, glitter and lipstick flying. The line of his mouth set in determination to break through them, I tugged on his hand and we headed back the way we'd come. "I know another way," I whispered under the music.

The bedroom was the size of a phone booth. I slid open a window with great effort and slid out onto the fire escape, blinking in the sudden quiet. Darren followed, and I helped him down with a liberal copping of his ass. He gave a quiet grunt of mock-disapproval, and started down the several flights of rickety ladder.

"I'll kill you if you step on my fingers," he hissed.

"Why are you whispering?" I looked down at him, quite a sight between the frame of my thighs, and tried not to think about Richard Gere movies.

He moved faster. "It creates suspense."

Safely landed on the pavement, things seemed a lot more peaceful. The night was young, and with an empty apartment waiting for us only a few blocks away, we were in business. The seasons were changing, and a cool breeze ruffled Darren's long locks.

"Getting ready for Easter?" He asked out of the blue, as we began to walk.

I looked down at him, my hands stuffed casually in my pockets. "Not really. I never was big on holidays...that required...you know."

"Active participation in church?"

"Family gatherings, I was going to say. But yeah, that too."

He tipped his head back to the sky with a sigh, and the moon made his skin gleam. I wanted to haul him against the large oak we were passing and –

"What are you, Daniel?"

My thoughts rustled away. "Sorry?"

"Gay? Straight?"

"Definitely not that," I said, grinning, and smiled.

"Are you sure?"

"You'd know better than me," I said. The serious tone of his end of the conversation was unsettling me.

He was silent for a few moments. The inner workings of Darren's mind were not anything that I really wanted to begin examining too closely, and when he got quiet it bothered me. He was prone to stewing. I tried to keep him away from that as often as possible.

It could be anything he was thinking about that had prompted the questions, I reasoned with myself. We hadn't known each other that long, and the conditions of our introduction were sketchy at best. Meeting a department store Santa Claus and debauching his lifestyle while keeping him safely away from the rest of the family you were rooming with was harder than it sounded. I tried not to give myself too much credit. I knew he was feeling ignored, and I knew he was feeling desperate to get a better ground in our relationship – but I still wasn't sure what we even had.

I've always been one for a more casual relationship. Friends who fuck. I enjoyed it. The fucking. But with Darren… I watched him again, as he tucked a strand of hair behind his ear and the moonlight caught his blue eyes. He was beautiful, in an androgynous way, especially when he let me make him up. For as much time as Darren spent in the various costumes of his life, he never got tired of wearing a new mask.

Like the mask of being my boyfriend.

I raised an eyebrow at my own thought. Was that what this was? Was that why I had been distancing him – I grimaced at my own psychoanalysis – why I kept him away from my family? So he wouldn't have to find a new mask?

I sighed. Never mind Darren's deep thoughts – I had ones of my own.

"Do you want to come over?" He asked. We rounded a corner.

"I thought we were going to my place?"

He shook his head. "For Easter."

"Ah," I said, and turned my head away as a bus rumbled loudly by. "Are you going to be wearing an Easter Bunny suit?"

He didn't answer. I looked over at him, and we stopped walking. "Oh my God," I said, a smile growing. "Have you done work as the Easter Bunny?"

Still nothing. He dropped his head, scowling.

"How many holiday icons have you dressed up as?" I asked.

"A lot," he answered finally, and looked at me. "It's good money."

I took his arm in my own amicably and we started walking again. "Not this year. No more scary costumes with huge Styrofoam heads, okay? Unless…that's not, like, your thing, is it?"

"No," he replied witheringly.

"It's okay if it is," I said, stifling a smile.

"It's not!" He protested, and hunched his shoulders, but I could see him laughing.

I chuckled to myself and took the first step up to the doorway of my apartment. I looked back when I realized he wasn't behind me. He was staring out at the road. "You okay?" I asked, fishing for the key in my pocket.

"I don't know." He turned to me. "What's going on with this?"

I groaned silently. "What do you mean?" I couldn't believe I was actually doing this. Putting off a perfectly good (great) night (sex-a-thon) to discuss feelings and Darren's perpetual neuroses.

"I mean," he said stubbornly, "what's going to happen when we get up there?"

I considered him for a moment. "That depends," I said finally. "We have a few options." I paused again, and felt him watching me intently. I dropped to sit on the stoop, and he was nearly eye level with me, but far too far away for my comfort. "Option one is that we go up there and have crazy, mad sex until neither of us can move anymore, and then you scramble out the window naked when we hear my brothers come home. Option two," I rushed, seeing his face darken. "Option two is that I play guitar for you and you sing, and we have a nice quiet night getting all existential."

There was silence, and a car passed on the street, casting sharp shadows on the us. I squinted and ducked when I knew he wouldn't be able to see, and then shook my hair out of my eyes when the car was gone.

"Option three is that we make this serious. What's that going to take?" I asked him, my voice quiet and empty in the night. There. It was out there.

"So those are my options." He sighed, and leaned against a lamp post. "Fuck toy, business partner, or boyfriend, but not all three."

I didn't answer. He could draw his own conclusions. I didn't necessarily consider the options mutually exclusive, but if he wanted to think that way, I could wait for him to sort things out.

He took a step forward.

"Sex," he said.

"What?" I blurted.

"You've been around girls too long," he said, grinning. I loved his smile. I wished I had a camera. "I want sex. Option one."

"You're serious," I said.

"Of course I'm serious," he answered, smile growing. "Why shouldn't I be serious?"

I shook my head. "No reason." I rose and climbed down the steps toward him. "I thought you wanted to take this...farther?"

"Why can't sex do that?" He countered.

A smile tugged at my lips. "I guess it can," I replied, sidling up to him. I stood at his side, examining him for a moment. I handed my keys to him. "Hold these for a second?" He grabbed them, but before he could focus his questioning look on me, I had caught him under the knees and behind the shoulders, and was cradling him.

"Oof," I said.

"Hey!" he said, in protest and surprise. Then he laughed. "Daniel, what are you doing?"

"Romancing you," I said in a strained voice. "Jesus, you're heavier than you look."

"Thanks," he said acidly. I staggered forward and he lurched in my arms. "Easy!"

I managed a half-grin. "Remember when I said you were underfed?" I headed up the steps and leaned some of the weight against the door as he unlocked it. I managed to shift to the frame before I sent us both toppling inward. "I spoke too soon."

He poked me in the head with the keys. "You're such an ass."

"Yeeeah..." I admitted. "But you love me."

"I'd love for you to put me down." He stressed the last word and glanced worriedly back over my shoulder down the stairs I was attempting to ascend. "You're no going to be able to take these stairs."

"If I can do this when you're drunk, I can do it when you're sober," I ground out through teeth.

"Sex isn't as fun if I'm concussed," he groused, but I could feel his hands slip into the back pockets of my jeans.

*

We made it into my apartment with little incident, except a bit of stumbling over a guitar case that had been stranded in the middle of the living room. Oliver was always the most careless with his instruments.

Despite Darren's original single-minded outset – which I had no problem with – we had chosen door number four and gone for a bit of late-night television. We took turns in the shower, and I scrubbed hard at my skin, watching it glow a bit pink, as I got the stink of the party off my body.

I found him lounging on the couch, legs sprawled askew. I liked the way he looked, I realized, and enjoyed the way it sounded in my head.

"What time is it?" I asked as I joined him. He accommodated me by lifting his legs momentarily, and then placing them on my lap.

"A little after one?" He guessed, flicking through channels. "Why?"

"That means it's officially Easter."

"True," Darren conceded. "But it's not like it's New Years or anything, Dan…why does it matter?"

I rolled away from him for a moment and snatched something off the window sill. I could feel his grunt of disappointment as I threw his legs off, but he came closer. I pressed the object into his hand. "Happy Easter."

"What's this?" Darren squinted in the perpetual-twilight glow of the television down at his lap, where his hand was resting. I stared, too, just because it meant I could stare at his lap without him knowing.

"Chocolate. An Easter rabbit, actually, because it's...you know...Easter."

Suppressing a smile, Darren thanked me and turned back to the television.

I watched for approximately two seconds before I let my hands find his own. "Aren't you going to open it?"

He sounded amused. "Well, not unless you give me my hands back. Why is this so important, Daniel?"

"Open it," I urged him. "You'll see."

He peeled back the cool foil in strips and examined the rabbit. "It looks pretty normal to me. Milk chocolate, which is good, yeah?"

"Mmm," I agreed. "Try some."

He was watching me suspiciously now. "Why, please tell me, are you so eager for me to eat this chocolate rabbit?"

I blinked, and realized that I was leaning forward over him. I pulled myself back a little. "I just…" I ducked my head and moved to the far end of the sofa. "I just want to…try something."

He scrutinized me for a few seconds longer, an eyebrow raised, and then he turned the stare onto the rabbit. "If this is filled with Tabasco sauce, or – "

"No, no," I protested. "It's nothing like that. Please. Just try some."

He glanced at me, and then back at the rabbit, and, nodding once as if to steel himself against killing me if there was something bad inside the rabbit, he clamped down on one of the ears.

He chewed.

I stared.

"What?" He asked around a mouthful of bunny. I shook my head, smiling a little. "It's good," he admitted reluctantly.

"Hmm," I agreed, and leaned forward again, smiling.

"What is it, Daniel?" His chewing slowed.

I could hear the foil crinkle as his hands fisted when I kissed him. I probably scared the crap out of him, I thought hazily, but couldn't seem to make myself care. With two hands gripped on either side of his head, and looming over him like some bad horror movie killer, and all lips and teeth and...

...chocolate.

When he recovered from the surprise and opened his mouth, I had to sit back down on the couch. It was everywhere, it was in me, and it tasted like him. Chocolate. Sinful and perfect and...him. I pushed a moan into the back of his throat and slid my hands up into his hair, pulling him onto my lap.

I'm insistent when I want to be.

He was still clutching the poor mangled rabbit when I pulled away, licking his lips in one last abortive attempt to get all of the candy off him.

"Jesus," he panted, "Mary and Joseph."

"Mm," I agreed through a Cheshire grin.

"How did I not find out about this before?"

"Find out about what?"

"You," he said ambiguously. "Chocolate."

I smiled at him.

"You have a relationship with chocolate," he said, a smile tugging on the ends of his mouth. "That's really, really scary. How did this not come up?"

"You were out of town for Valentine's Day?" I offered.

He had a musing look on his face, and then decided, "I've got to admit, this can't be a good thing."

I raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

He leaned a little closer, but turned his head minutely to examine the rabbit. "I mean...think about it..." He took a small bite and pressed his lips together, savoring the flavor. "Think about it…this stuff is already pretty melted. And when you consider how much hotter we get when..." He looked at me and nodded knowingly. "You could spread it all over me and lick it all off. I can honestly say," his voice wavered, trying to keep the laugh inside, "that I would not mind you doing that." He paused. "Or, you know, chocolate syrup."

My brain had overloaded somewhere around "melted".

He stood up, and pulled me along. "What are we waiting for?"

*

"Daniel!"

My eyes shot open. Jesus. They were LOUD when they wanted to be. Elephant-brothers.

Oliver flopped himself down on the bed next to me and I did several things at once: wondered where Darren had gone, realized the window was open, and spotted a pair of pants that very much did not belong to me still resting on the floor.

"How'd you make out last night, Danny?" Oliver was asking me, but I was laughing too hard. I grabbed a pair of jeans from off the floor and slid them on, not caring their state of cleanliness. A similar shirt followed, and Oliver was standing, surprised, by the time I was hopping around on one foot, trying to get a shoe on.

"Where're you off to in such a rush?" He wondered. I grabbed my wallet.

"I've got business," I said ambiguously. "Happy Easter."

"It's Easter?" He asked. "Shit, I should've gotten you some chocolate."

I pressed my lips together to stifle the burbling laughter I knew would explode out of me given the chance. "No worries. I'll be back…later." And with that, I bolted out the window.

*

Darren's parents' house, in the scheme of things, was the easiest to find on my list of destinations for that day. I made it to his house about two hours after I had left my own apartment, and smoothed my clothing to make sure I looked presentable before knocking on the door.

It opened almost instantaneously. A nice middle-aged woman looked very startled to see me. "Um…" She managed, before I had thrust a bouquet of lilies into her hand.

"Happy Easter, Mrs. Hayes," I said, beaming.

"You…you must be Daniel." Her voice sounded just like Darren's when he was trying to bite back amusement he thought might be misplaced or rude. "Darren mentioned that he had asked you to come, but…"

"Hoy!" came a call from down the hall. A man appeared, who I could only gather was Mr. Hayes, and he burst into a gale of laughter when he saw me. "Invite the poor boy in!" He commanded, and the screen door was opened for me. I shuffled awkwardly through the threshold past Darren's mother.

Darren froze mid-action when he saw me, and dropped the plate he was holding. Luckily, it was empty, and it landed with a thick thump on the beautifully patterned carpet at his feet.

"What are you WEARING?!" He cried.

I looked down at my hands.

"I believe it's a bunny suit, dear," his mother said.

"Well, would you look at that!" His father added. "It's got a tail and everything!"

Darren ran, then, narrowly missing stepping on the plate and ruining it by the sheer fact that his strides were so long, so eager to find out just what the fuck had caused me to go 'round the bend.

"What are you wearing?" He asked a little more quietly, tears of laughter streaming down his face.

"Well, you said you wanted to me to come by to meet your parents," was all the explanation I offered. I held up the basket I carried, full of chocolate carrots. "And I brought chocolate."

He grinned wryly. "You did."

I nodded, my ears flopping back and forth.

"I see," he said, his grin widening.

"Daniel, will you stay for dinner?" Mrs. Hayes was taking the basket from me to arrange on the side table with the lilies.

"I would love to," I said, and turned to Darren for conformation.

He smiled and took my hand (paw) and nodded. "Absolutely. But…"

"What?" I asked, looking down at him.

"You're wearing something under that, right?"