We Are Bulletproof

"In other words, you're stalling," Cris mumbled to himself, because breaking up in person or over the phone, it was all the same. It was still breaking up. And he had a feeling—juuust a feeling—that Rey wouldn't take it well no matter which way Edel chose to deliver the news to him.

As for Jen...

Cris sat down on the bed and lowered his gaze to the ground. "I can't break up with Jen. She's going to be in my life for good."

"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.

"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?"

"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!"

'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?"

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?"

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.

"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.

"I'm looking..." Cris shaded a hand over his eyes as though seriously searching for something in the bushes. "For where you hid your words."

I know.

Edel's heart wasn't the only one that squeezed tight at the words. Sometimes it wasn't enough to know. Sometimes the words needed to be said, to be made concrete. Cris knew Edel felt the same way about him too but knowing it and hearing it were worlds apart. And Edel couldn't say it.

This was where alcohol came in, though. This was what made it easier to lurch down the road, grinning foolishly as he turned the topic away from his confession. Cris had been saying it to people for years and he'd been hearing silence back for years, too. His dad--too busy to hear it. His mom--too distant to hear it.

Jen said it back, though. She meant it, too, which explained Cris' devotion to her but as much as he wanted Jen to be enough, she wasn't. And maybe... as much as Edel wanted his words to be enough, they weren't either.

"Hey there's a B&B close by!" They weren't short on these things around this town, Cris noticed. It seemed like the only way the locals could make any money aside from farming or ranching. "C'mon! I need a shower!"

"Technically we don't know anybody here!" Cris protested, though he did stop waving. "Fine," he mumbled, starting to turn away, "I wasn't going to invite him into our room or anything." For a moment he looked over his shoulder to see if the guy was waving back but there was nothing by the treeline. Huh. How'd that guy disappear so fast? Maybe he was a camper and came out to see what the commotion was...

Still walking a touch unsteadily, he leaned closer to Edel. "Anywayyyy..." Cris smiled that particular drunk smile at him. "I seem to remember... somebody having something... important... to say..."

Was it Edel that had to say it first, or Cris? What were the rules? Cris didn't know the rules with men--this was his first man. Not his first man-crush, obviously, but his first... man. The first man he had serious feelings for. And with another man, it wasn't apparent who did what in the normal sequence of things. With Jen, it was easy to take the lead but here Cris was lost.

Throwing caution to the winds, he whispered, "Iloveyou," smiled that same particular drunk smile again, and veered off.

"I love Christmas!" Cris continued whispering. "It starts with Chris! That's my name! And--remember when we made out at Jaime's Christmas party that one year?" He was almost sure it was last year... Or was it the year before? At some point, they'd made out at a party. That happened a lot, in their defense.

The chilly gust of wind didn't go unnoticed by Cris, who shivered and held on to Edel even more tightly. It sobered him up a little. His gaze shifted to the other side of the road which was lined by a ditch and some woods beyond it. A few more police cars ran past on the shoulder, followed by an ambulance.

"Hey... is that guy checking us out?" Cris gently pushed off from Edel so that he could stagger closer, waving to the figure hovering just by the treeline. "He's been staring at us since I got off the bus. Maybe he wants to go to the B&B with us!"

"Oh." And that was that--because the memory of a drunk was on par with the memory of a goldfish. Plus, Cris had a hard time working himself up into any kind of indignation and staying there when there was so much of a commotion all around them. He was almost starting to think that something catastrophic had happened. These people were acting like a hole had opened up in the earth to swallow them whole!

Edel was right though; they weren't getting back to the lake house anytime soon. "The neighbors will be there anyway," he whispered, as if the neighbors could hear them. "They'll all be judging. Let's go to a... a nice B&B! They'll serve us eggs in bed!"

Cris teared up a little. Because he was drunk. Because he couldn't remember the last time he had eggs brought to him in bed, or anyone who cared enough about him to do that for him. Mostly, because he was drunk. Still leaning heavily on Edel, he began to move off in what he imagined was a direction leading to a bed and breakfast.

"...I wanna be able to look our neighbors in the eyes again, Edel." He leaned his head onto Edel's shoulder. "Can you get me that for... Christmas?"

"Oh but you're mad now anyway!" Cris threw up a hand in exasperation--the other was holding on to Edel for dear life. "I can't do anything right!" Should he have thrown the bottles away? Poured the alcohol out of the window? It seemed like such a waste... And there had been a couple of people on the bus who didn't mind sharing a drink with him...

Staggering away from the line of cars and their impatient drivers, Cris nodded. Then he felt nauseous from the motion--or maybe from the alcohol in his system--and stopped abruptly. "You wanna get a room with me?" His grin was equal parts drunk and suggestive. Edel probably didn't mean that kind of room. Or did he?

Or did he?

"Mmm you're so warm," Cris sighed as he clung long and hard to Edel. One side was nearly frozen numb from the pizza but seeing Edel made everything okay. He wasn't even freaking out about the police cars and the sirens and that huge crowd gathered around something up ahead!

"I'm just drunk enough to be interesting!" He'd heard someone say that before, that he only drank to be interesting. Maybe they were right. Or at least, they weren't wrong... Cris spoke to one of Edel's heads. Suddenly he had three of them... and then they all merged into one. Letting himself be carted away, he threw a troubled look back onto the bus but it seemed too late to rescue that frozen pizza now...

"I gave it away." He hiccupped. "You were so mad... I didn't want to make you mad so I drank it with the people on the bus. And it's all gone now! All gone!"

As it turned out, nobody didn't like a good drink and Cris had several bottles of good drinks at his disposal. Since someone disapproved of him having many bottles of good drinks, he shared some with the rest of the bus' passengers. Everyone became considerably less stressed out after that, which in turn made Cris less stressed out.

He sat in his seat with the frozen pizza wedged against the window, gazing soulfully--drunkenly--outside at the nice, warm, sunny day. The line of cars stretched out behind him, and also in front of him. All he could see were irritated people and cars with their engines turned off. A while ago some service vehicles and emergency vehicles ran past on the shoulder, but other than that, there was nothing exciting happening.

That was, until someone began to bang on the bus doors and shout his name. Cris leapt up with a start. "That's me!" he declared to the bus at large, which was foolish because no one else was named Cris. A moment later he was out onto the aisle and tottering unsteadily towards the front of the bus.

The driver opened the door for him with a mystified look and he leapt down the stairs--okay, fell down--and into Edel's arms. "Edel!"