“Thought I just did.”Hands tucked in his pockets, James sashayed a couple of careful steps toward the kitchen.Slowly.Slowly.Just in case.But also, concerned.None of this was still anything like normal, everyday Cillian behavior, and it worried him.
“Not that question,” Cillian said impatiently.“I meant the one about why you wanted to go home for Christmas.”
James frowned, lost now.“Because… I always do?”
“No, you blockhead.I asked why.Specifically, why.What’s at the other end of that airplane ride for you?”
“I usually call it home,” James said, still stumped.“The place where I grew up.”
Cillian was going to end up half bald if he kept yanking at his hair like that.He inhaled deeply.“What is home, then?”
“Where you live?”James could see that wasn’t the answer Cillian wanted.“I don’t get it.Are you asking how I define the concept of ‘home’?”
Cillian fixed him with a stare that was frankly not more comfortable than his earlier avoidance.“Yeah, that’ll do for a start.”
Okay, didn’t make sense, but James could roll with it.He gave his own hair a frustrated tug.“Home is where the people who love you live, I guess.The people who are always there for you.That’s not always blood.Sometimes it’s definitely not blood.”
Cillian, listening, made a “go on” gesture.
“I don’t know what else you want me to say!”
Something snapped and crackled in Cillian’s eyes.“What about this place?Our place.What about this isn’t home?”
“This is as much my home as anywhere else.”
Cillian pounced.Mostly metaphorically, but he came a few steps closer to James, still just out of arm’s reach but drifting nearer as he jabbed the air with his forefinger.“And why is that?”
James started to answer, then stopped.This was like swimming through molasses, but he was starting to get glimmers of daylight.Trouble was, answering honestly might get him out of the molasses and into hot water.
But what did he have to lose?
“Because people I love are here too,” he answered quietly.“One people.I mean, one person.You.”He took the last couple of steps needed to get himself inside Cillian’s bubble.“It took me too long to see it, I’ll own that, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”
He’d expected Cillian to seize upon that, but he wasn’t done yet.His eyes flashed fire instead.“And why did you kiss me?”
“Excuse me?”James would have asked whether he heard that right, but he had good ears and a fuse rapidly shortening from frustration.“It takes two to tango, buddy, or step dance, or whatever you want to use for a comparison.I wasn’t the only one doing the kissing.”He moved closer and took hold of Cillian’s chin so he couldn’t look away.“I wasn’t the only one who got hard.”
Cillian inhaled sharply, but James had him caught.He couldn’t or wouldn’t look away.“I know,” he said, quieter still than James had been.“I know that all too well.”
“What do you want from me?”James asked, frustration making him harsh.“What answer are you looking for?If you regret it, if you wish it’d never happened, then fucking say so already.And while you’re at it, how about you tell me why you spent years keeping me at arm’s length, bringing home a new boy toy every week -- that I kept quiet about, because it’s your life and I love you enough to let you enjoy it -- then pulled me in, then kept pushing me back away?Help me understand it, Cillian, because I swear I don’t have a clue.”
Cillian let out a frustrated noise as he pulled out of James’ grasp.“Because I loved you too, you great idiot!”
Silence.James blinked.Then: “Loved, past tense?”
“Oh, you would seize on that one,” Cillian groused.“No, you dingbat.Present tense.And for the past?I did all that because I loved you.I just didn’t think you lovedmeand it fucking hurt less to have new faces with no expectations except a good time!Almost every one of them, I imagined it was you.I didn’tdaremake a move because if you pushed me away, I wouldn’t know how to go on.”
“I wouldn’t have done that…” James stopped.“You never made a move because you were protecting yourself?”
Cillian wasn’t listening.He paced in a tight circle.“Keeping Christmas started out as helping you feel better, but then you kissed me and -- and it became real.I thought you’d be embarrassed at getting caught, but once I’d run I couldn’t figure out how to come back.I still can’t.”
James’ jaw had dropped somewhere in the middle of that speech and stayed that way until he tried to shake his head hard enough to clear it.“You.What?”
“Love you.Have loved you.”Cillian waved his arms in wild, sweeping jerks.“There.Now you know everything I know.And where the fuck do we go from here?Because if it took you this long to figure it out, and me this long to find the balls to do something about it, what comes next?What do wedoabout it without ruining everything?”
* * *
Silence.
