Birthdays seem to get harder with every passing year. That’s true for everyone, Zac supposes, but he finds there’s a special sort of pain in counting all the years, counting all the wrong turns he’s made along the way.
Touring with Carrick brings that pain back to the surface even before his birthday inevitably arrives again. He was a different person the last time they were together like this, sharing a bowl and falling asleep with their feet tangled together on the bus couch. Carrick was different then, too, and sometimes Zac is shocked at the man his best friend has become. The blue hair is the least of it.
The last time they toured together Zac was a father of one, and newly that. He had hope, somehow, but more than that he had energy. He had the energy to believe that the future was still his to shape. And he had love, in the form of a lanky guy with a guitar and the best pot he’d ever smoked.
“Truth or dare?” Carrick drawls as he passes the joint to Zac.
“Dare,” Zac replies, feeling bolder than he had the last time he had played this game as an actual teenager.
Carrick leans back and stretches a long arm across the back of the couch. He stares Zac down and a slow, dangerous smirk spreads across his lips. “Kiss me.”
That’s crossing a line, one they had unconsciously drawn between them. Stolen touches, bodies pressed together in the dark—these things Zac can write off, pretend they don’t mean anything. A kiss is different, and Carrick knows it.
Zac takes a long hit, his lips pressed tightly together to hold it in as he sets the joint aside. Careful not to breathe out, he crawls up Carrick’s body like it’s the best landscape he’s ever seen. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but it is.
Finally, he reaches the apex—hooded eyes and lips just barely parted, a soft puff of hot breath tickling his cheek.
And he kisses him.
The smoke passes from Zac to Carrick and a small voice in the back of his mind thinks there’s a metaphor in that, but his brain is too fuzzy to think of it right then. The fact that he’s capable of thought at all when Carrick’s tongue is running along his bottom lip is a miracle in and of itself. And when Carrick’s tongue slips inside his mouth, Zac swears he can’t remember a single thing before that moment.
Carrick is topless, because he often is on tour, and Zac’s certain the only thing keeping him sane is the thin material of his own wifebeater between them. He wants to be even closer, but not here, not on the bus when anyone could walk in on them. This is dangerous enough, his hand tangled in Carrick’s hair and Carrick’s leg, surprisingly muscular, squeezed between his thighs.
When they finally part, both are breathless.
“I love you,” Zac gasps out without thinking.
“Truth?” Carrick replies, one eyebrow raised.
“Truth.” Zac nods.
Zac stretches out and stares up at the sky. It’s clear enough to see the stars, even here in the city, and just warm enough, considering it’s New Orleans in October. There’s a fine mist of rain falling, but it feels good against his skin. It should be a good night, and he should be downstairs at his birthday party, yet here he is—alone, at least for the moment.
The rooftop door creaks, and then footsteps catch his ear, headed his way. Zac doesn’t have to turn his head to recognize that shuffling gait, as familiar to him as the man who comes to a stop at his head and stares down at him.
“You look good upside down,” Zac remarks.
The tiniest hint of a smirk flickers across Carrick’s lips. “Happy birthday.”
He offers Zac a hand and they both groan in the process, yet another reminder of how much they’ve aged. Once he’s steady on his feet again, Zac stares at Carrick’s face, looking for some sign of where they both went wrong, but all he sees beneath the worry lines is the same love he’s always seen there.
Just exactly when they fell, he couldn’t say. It happened all at once or a little bit at a time, over the years; the how and when doesn’t really matter, Zac decides. All he knows is that Carrick is the puzzle piece his life was missing—is missing. The choices Zac made before he first saw that smile mean he will always have to keep it at a distance.
But on the road, they can be close, if only for a little while. On the road Zac can pretend that he isn’t thirty now and Carrick isn’t nearly forty and that their lives are on a different course entirely.
“You should come back downstairs,” Carrick says softly, his tone suggesting that he already knows what Zac’s answer will be.
“You should stay up here,” Zac shoots back.
Somewhere on the street below, a zydeco band strikes up a new tune, and Carrick smiles. He holds out a hand to Zac, and Zac accepts.
And for three minutes, as they spin and dip across the roof, the world is theirs alone, and different.