Danger in broad daylight

[Edel Ziegler]

"Inside," he said. "They're in the B&B, okay?"

Although he supposed inside was a good way to describe where his words currently were. Inside his heart, inside his mouth, but not yet outside. And once they were, how could he ever take them back? So he had to be sure. And he was. But he still... He didn't know. He thought it said everything that he dropped his whole life just to chase Cris here, that he would have buried a body if Cris needed him to, that he would accompany him out of the country if it really came down to it.

And if all that didn't say it...

"Yeah..." He felt a modicum of relief at the sight of it. Like most of the B&Bs in the area, it was quaint and cute and maybe on the small side. But it was good enough. Edel took in a deep breath. They could leave the weirdness of the sinkhole behind and focus on... relationship weirdness.

"Come on," he said, tilting his head just so, brushing his cheek affectionately against Cris before he tugged on his hand and pulled him toward the door. There was a sign that said to ring the bell for service and he did. Not long after, a middle aged woman came to the door. She looked them over with a brief sense of hesitation before smiling and greeting them.

"We're here to stay overnight," Edel said in English, smiling back. He reached for his wallet. As long as he had money, they were fine. Edel might not be rolling in it but it couldn't be that much out here in the boonies. And it wasn't. The woman asked for just 85 for the night, and with a price like that, Edel expected the interior to be all rotted wood and mildew but it was really nice.

There was a brick fireplace and the smell of clean linen and pretty, gauzy curtains. The woman said there were booklets about tourism and food in the area in the drawer next to the bed and then she left them alone.

Closing the door behind them, Edel finally let out the sigh he'd been suppressing.

[Cristoval de Azcarate]

"Bah." Cris tried putting a hand between their cheeks as he saw Edel's curly-haired head lean close in a familiar gesture, but his reaction time was severely lacking. He missed completely and stumbled through the door of the small B&B.

"This is... different," he mused while Edel rang the sharp-sounding bell at the counter, causing him to wince slightly as the noise jabbed into his brain. B&Bs weren't his scene. Spas and resorts and luxury hotels, yes, but B&Bs never made it onto the list of places that Jen wanted to spend her weekends at. It sounded cute in theory though, having someone take care of them, bring them meals, clean their rooms. Like... a mom would. Only they wanted to be paid.

"Oh, this is different!" Cris said again, but this time more cheerfully once they were shown to their room. The bed was soft-looking and inviting but there was only one in the room. Slowly Cris looked over his shoulder at where the woman once stood and blinked. He knew that separate beds existed. They existed in hotels and he expected them to exist in B&Bs. This single bed business set a bad precedent.

"She thinks we're gonna do it." He waved a dramatic hand at the bed.

[Edel Ziegler]

At first, it sounded a lot like Cris wasn't pleased. And then it changed when they were shown to their room. Really, it was quite a cute little room... cozy and homey and designed artfully without making Edel want to choke on mothballs. No doilies or weird old lady things. Just a nice room. A nice room with a single bed. Edel sighed.

"No, she doesn't," he said, passing a hand over his face. That woman was not thinking that! And even if she was... Ugh.

Not the the idea in and of itself was a bad one or a disgusting one. More the idea of somebody else thinking about it. Thought the person who had basically fucked around in the middle of a lake with two people right there to watch the entire thing. ...fuck.

"I wish you'd stayed sober..." Edel muttered to himself.

[Cristoval de Azcarate]

She did. She thought they were together, probably because they entered with Edel practically holding Cris up by the arms. Maybe they looked lovey-dovey that way, like they couldn't take their hands off of one another. How wrong she was! (Or wasn't...)

"I can get sober!" Cris exclaimed indignantly as he pushed off and tested his ability to walk unaided. Bumping ungracefully into a dresser, he cursed but put up a hand to stop Edel from coming over to help. "No. I can get sober. Gimme a second."

Unsteadily Cris walked into the bathroom and up to the sink. "They have free soap!" He ran the water as cold as it would go and then started splashing it onto his own face. It made a lot of noise. And a lot of mess. But when he hauled his face up, gasping for breath and dripping, he felt much more clear-headed.

At least, he remembered how to walk again.

[Edel Ziegler]

Shaking his head to himself, Edel listened to Cris in the bathroom. He could just imagine what kind of mess he was making in there. He ought to have taken a shower, rather than just splashing around in the sink. Slowly, Edel made his way to the bed and gingerly took a seat on the edge. His hands slid down between his knees. He felt like a teenager again. Weirdly shy. Anticipating... something. Taking in a breath, he caught his lower lip with his teeth.

Was... this... okay? All of this? No. Deep down, he knew it wasn't. Yet at the same time, something kept screaming that he knew Cris long before he knew Rey. Rey is your boyfriend. They were talking marriage. Kids. They lived together. They were family already. Rey's little sister lived with them. They took care of her. Together. Together. They were together.

His fingers clenched inward, half moon crests digging into his palms.

Edel looked up as Cris came back, a little less wobbly. Maybe a little more sober. Swallowing hard, Edel got to his feet. One step, two steps, three. Before he knew it, he was flush against him, his hand grasping the front of Cris' coat as his lips crashed against his. Willful, fervent. With a little bite. His heart hammered in his chest.

"You're..." He licked his lips. He could still taste alcohol. "We're--" he corrected. "--idiots."

[Cristoval de Azcarate]

Cris mopped his face with a fleecy blue towel from the towel rack and sidled back up to the mirror to look at his own reflection. A bit worse for the wear. That was a high point for him, actually, given the lows to which he had fallen in Edel's absence. His face had a bit more color now and the dark circles under his eyes weren't quite as dark as before.

He ran a hand through his hair to push it out of his eyes and sighed. After dabbing away most of the water from face, neck, shirt and hair, he dropped the soggy towel onto the counter and walked back outside, fully expecting Edel to be somewhere in the room frowning at him. Being disapproving.

What Cris didn't expect was to be grabbed. At first he thought Edel was striding over--with a purpose--to punch him and he had his hands up a little to ward off the blow. Stupid... really. Edel had never hit him before. Well, a few slaps to get him out of a drunken stupor didn't count. They weren't that kind of fighting friends.

"Hmm?" A puzzled noise came out of him as he was kissed, too shocked to do anything but stand there and be kissed. It was a hell of a kiss though. Just when he started to kiss back, Edel pulled away and Cris didn't know how to respond to that.

"Y-yeah," he said much more softly, laying a tentative hand at Edel's hip. "We sort of... already established that..." With the whole lake incident and all. Cris cleared his throat; now he was even more sober. The other tentative hand slid up to touch a stray curl at the side of Edel's face. "But we've always been idiots together... right?"

[Edel Ziegler]

Together. He just had to use that word. Together. Edel's gaze softened.

"Yeah."

Together. They had been together for a long time. It felt like most of his life. Hadn't it been more than half his life now? Doing dumb shit together since... forever. Watching each other go through the ups and downs that came with life. Every big change was experienced by the both of them. Even this one. With Cris left behind by his father, hiding away in the only place he could stay with all of his father's assets being wrenched out from under him.

"Um, so... listen," he started, just as his phone started buzzing. Letting out a sigh, he tried to ignore it but it kept going... and just when he thought it had stopped, it started again. Setting his jaw, he stepped away from Cris and pulled the phone from his pocket to find Rey's smiling face staring back at him.

He probably wasn't smiling right now. But when Edel had taken this photo things had been different.

"...it's Rey," he said, looking up at Cris with a pained expression.

[Cristoval de Azcarate]

'Together' felt like more than just a word lately. It felt like a realization. Like the first rays of sunshine warming the lake in the morning, lifting the fog to reveal crystal-clear waters underneath. Things Cris thought he knew, he didn't. Things he never realized suddenly came to the forefront of his mind, despite the fine job he'd been doing pushing them all away.

They were in this together. Life. The bonds that tethered them to one another transcended time and space and even distance. From Spain to America, Edel found a way to be here with him. To be together with him. And saying it now, Cris felt like maybe he was finally realizing all of the intricate subtleties of what it meant for Edel to have crossed a literal ocean just to find him.

He started to smile, a silly little hopeful feeling lifting his troubled heart. And he opened his mouth to try and tell Edel that... together meant something to him now, emboldened by the softness that stole over Edel's gaze, but Edel's phone went off--once, twice, again and again.

"Oh." Of course it was. Cris didn't know what to make of the look on Edel's face though. He backed up a pace, suddenly unsure of himself. That look was 100% because of him... He could tell... "Aren't you going to... pick up?"

[Edel Ziegler]

"...I don't want to."

He was torn between doing it just to rip the bandaid off and ignoring the calls. Rey would just keep calling but Edel could turn off his phone. He could turn it off. Whatever Rey had to say, it wasn't going to be anything Edel wanted to hear right now. Lately, they were just... they were always fighting. Where things had been easy at points, they weren't so easy anymore. They fought about what to do with Rey's sister and they fought about Cris. They fought about Cris the most; Rey insisted--insisted--that there was something more to how Edel felt about him.

"You always drop everything for him, Edel! Everything!"

And he said that wasn't true--but it was. It was very true. Because he had very literally crossed an entire ocean... for Cris. Not for Rey. And he wasn't sure he could say that he would or could do that for Rey. He deserves better.

Edel looked back down at the frantically buzzing phone and he finally held his thumb down on the power button to turn it off. Then he casually flung it onto the chair by the fireplace.

"...it can wait."

[Cristoval de Azcarate]

"I can go outside or something if..." Cris started to say, as their words jumbled together while he talked over Edel. He thought maybe Edel needed some privacy. Maybe some time to think about what they were doing... Whatever it was that they were doing by hiding away at a B&B together...

Everything seemed to come back to that word. Together.

People joked that one was never seen without the other back home. They said he and Edel were joined at the hip. Jaime formed the terrible trio with them but thinking back on it now, it was the terrible duo first. They were friends before Jaime and Jen and Rey came onto the scene.

Cris scrubbed his palms against the side of his jeans. He watched with almost disbelief as Edel turned off his phone. "But... Rey's going to kill you!"

[Edel Ziegler]

"...yeah," he admitted. "Probably."

Rey would rip his head off. Especially when he realized that Edel had turned off his phone to avoid him. Sooner or later, he was going to have to face up to him. God, he loved him... He thought he did. Or he did, just... not the same way that he loved Cris.

The realization sank in as he stared at Cris, remembering not only the kiss they'd just shared but the craziness that was... whatever they did on that gaudy pool float. Although he knew damn well he should regret everything he did with Cris, he couldn't.

And all those times... all those times when they were drunk. Every excuse... to be near him. Closer to him than a friend. Even now, his heart beat too fast, a little out of guilt for dodging his boyfriend but mostly because they were alone now. Cris. Him.

"We have a real problem here, Cris..."

[Cristoval de Azcarate]

"You keep saying that!"

There was a real urgency in what Edel was saying but he refused to tell Cris what the real problem was! Or... he had, but Cris didn't see it as a top-level crisis. Rey clearly didn't understand their relationship dynamic.

Granted, neither did Cris... anymore...

But from the start, Rey had been antagonistic. Was Cris a little too friendly with Edel, his best friend? He remembered the suspicious looks that Rey lobbed at him every time they went out. He remembered Rey placing himself physically between them, as though he thought Cris posed an actual threat to their safety. It didn't go down well; Cris never thought that he was doing anything wrong.

Now those lines were blurred and even he had to admit that maybe Rey was right. Or perhaps by acting the way that he did, Rey drove them together. Was it a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Sighing, Cris looked up at him and then slowly shook his head. Where did they go from here? Edel couldn't seem to move forward without solving the problem of Rey... whom he hung up on and turned off his phone on. He placed both hands firmly on Edel's shoulders. "What's the problem? What. Is the problem. Edel?"

[Edel Ziegler]

"What do you mean, what's the problem? Really, Cris? We're both dating other people! If we want to be together, we have to break up with Rey and Jen!"

How was that not obvious? Suspiciously, he looked Cris over.

"How drunk are you right now?"

Or did it just not occur to him? Maybe he just didn't care. Edel, though, didn't like being a filthy cheater. He felt dirty even now; that was why he kept hesitating. That was why he kept saying they had a problem. Because they did! He couldn't commit himself to somebody, knowing that Rey was out there, trying to call him over and over again... probably worried. And angry.

Rightfully so, for once...

[Cristoval de Azcarate]

"Break up?" Cris felt slightly faint at the thought—mostly because. Err. Had Edel met Jen? Did he know how scary she could get? Even with their open relationship, and with the way things were, Jen held him on a tight leash.

And... well... he did still love her. Maybe not as much as he was beginning to love Edel but they'd always talked about marriage and kids and the way she described it all, it sounded like such a rosy, happy future. Cris wondered if there was room in there for Edel. He wondered how big a part each would play in his life, too.

Sighing in mild agitation, he waved a hand impatiently through the air. "I'm not drunk! Look I'll walk a straight line for you!" Cris did so—no stumbles or anything! "I'm fine, quit it with that drunk stuff!" He might feel better if he was drunk, to be honest!

"And—you turned off your phone in the first place! Why didn't you just. Pick up and break up with Rey? Then there wouldn't be a problem!"

Rey wasn't going to budge, Cris suspected, but... with Jen there was always some wiggle room.

[Edel Ziegler]

"Hm yeah, maybe..." he said dubiously, watching Cris prove that he wasn't that drunk. It seemed like he had sobered up some, since he didn't stumble. Still. That panic in Cris' tone and in his eyes when he said the words break up hadn't failed to catch Edel's attention. Maybe this wasn't as important to Cris as it felt to Edel.

Lowering his gaze, he cleared his throat and ran his hand over his thighs.

"You don't break up with people over the phone. I'll do it when I see him. But what about you?" He looked up, scrutinizing Cris. "You're not saying anything about breaking up with Jen."