Chapter Fourteen #2
After Damon slipped out and grabbed a cloth, cleaning them both off, he came back to bed, resuming his earlier position, a gentle hand on Xander’s back. It was easier, Xander discovered, to ask if he wasn’t looking at him. So he gathered his courage and leapt.
“I want you to talk to me about everything,” Xander said quietly. “I love you, and sometimes I think you want to save me from the bad stuff. The stuff you’ve been through. I want to know. I want to help you bear it.”
The hand stroking his back hesitated for a split second, then continued its lulling rhythm.
“I don’t tell you because it’s ugly. And you don’t need that ugliness touching you,” Damon said.
Xander didn’t miss the undercurrent of iron beneath his words.
He didn’t want to share, and somehow Xander was going to have to convince him.
“It’s not ugly. It can’t be when it’s you.
All it does is prove to me how brave and strong you are,” Xander argued.
At first it had seemed easier not to look in Damon’s eyes when he asked these questions, but now it suddenly seemed impossible to say any of this if he wasn’t.
He turned over and immediately saw the doubt clouding Damon’s expression. “I love you. No matter what.”
Damon rolled to his back and sighed heavily. “People are telling you that you’re stupid for hitching yourself to a guy who won’t even serve alcohol at his restaurant, right?”
It was not fun getting caught, but Xander reached out anyway, grasping his upper arm, then sliding his hand toward where his heart beat steadily in his chest. “It’s not stupid. But I still want to talk about it.”
“It was inevitable.” Damon sounded close to tears, like he’d been dreading this moment for their whole relationship and now it was finally happening.
Xander reached up and cupped his cheek, tilting his head down so Damon could see his face. “We can’t pretend like it doesn’t exist. I wish we could, too, but that’s not real life. I want this love to be real, and to be real, it has to exist in the real world.”
This time Damon didn’t look away and Xander recognized the look brewing in his eyes as resolve.
“I don’t remember when I started drinking,” Damon said quietly.
“I . . . I always did. Always. I remember holidays, Christmas or Thanksgiving or probably even the Fourth of fucking July, my dad leaning over and letting me sip from his glass. Usually it was wine. Sometimes it was a beer. Occasionally a glass of whiskey or a gin and tonic. I got used to it, I liked it. I liked the way it made me feel when I got older, and it felt so normal, like it was something I’d been around forever, like it was a part of the family. ”
He took a deep breath, pausing, and Xander laid a hand on his bicep, squeezing gently. “It was a part of your family because of who your family is,” he replied gently.
“I know alcohol isn’t evil. I know some people, lots of people enjoy it and it doesn’t ruin their lives.
They don’t start using it because it’s a better parent than their father or because their mom is never around.
I know that. Logically, I do get it.” Damon’s fists flexed once, then again.
“But sometimes, some things aren’t logical. ”
Xander didn’t know what to say, other than a desperate need to apologize. For the shitty childhood Damon had experienced? Because occasionally Xander wanted to enjoy a glass of wine? Because he wanted to serve alcohol at the Barrel House?
Because while Xander now understood Damon’s relationship with alcohol better, he still selfishly wanted to serve it.
“It’s the point of the thing,” Damon admitted.
“It’s not that I don’t see a lot of value in any argument you might make, but when I ripped those vines up, I knew exactly what I was doing, exactly what I was throwing away, exactly what those vines were worth—I was doing it because I was done with alcohol completely.
I was sober, had been sober for years, but it still haunted me. ”
Xander looked at the man he loved frankly. “Do you really believe that ripping up those vines meant you aren’t ever going to want a drink again?”
Looking away, Damon shook his head slightly.
“I’m not the person who has to tell you what to believe, and what to discard.
I’m not you, and I can’t make decisions about what’s important and what has meaning.
But the physical manifestation is gone; it’s still here, inside you, and it’s going to be there until the day you die.
” Xander pressed his palm to Damon’s chest, right where his heart beat.
“Even if you never take another drink, it’s going to be part of you.
I can accept that—I want to accept all of you—but can you? ”
Damon turned further away, and Xander’s heart ached. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so honest; but he couldn’t be in this relationship and be any other way. He’d always prized truth and he couldn’t become another person for Damon. No matter how much it fucking hurt.
“I don’t know,” Damon mumbled, turning his face into his arm. Xander thought if he lifted it away he might find damp skin. “I don’t think I know anything.”
“You know lots of things. You’ve conquered your demons.
But locking them away doesn’t mean they go away.
” He slid off the bed and went around to the other side, crouching by where Damon’s face lay against his arm.
And as he’d imagined, Damon’s eyes were red and wet.
“Let me ask you something. If we serve wine, let’s say, at the Barrel House, are you going to want to have a drink any more than you normally want one? ”
Damon shook his head emphatically.
“If you ever feel that’s true,” Xander said with quiet determination, “then this isn’t a conversation. It’s a decision, solid and final. But I don’t think you’re really tempted anymore.”
“I hate it. I’m envious of it. I’m jealous as hell of anyone who can just have one glass of wine with dinner and call it good,” Damon finally admitted.
“The final decision is yours,” Xander said.
“I’ll respect whatever you decide. It’s your restaurant, it’s your land, it was even your idea.
And it’s your disease. I’m willing to do whatever you want.
Would I like to serve wine at the restaurant?
Yes, because sometimes I like to have a glass of wine with dinner, and I know other people do too—especially people who come to Napa.
But I’ll abide by your decision and we don’t ever have to talk about it again. ”
Xander kept his word. He let Damon have some time alone in his room as he showered again, and when he was done, he went into the living room and flipped on the TV.
Damon heard him calling for Chinese, putting in an order for sweet and sour pork and Damon’s regular order, Kung Pao chicken, and some fried rice and potstickers.
He heard the delivery guy at the door, and heard the door shut again, even smelt the spicy aroma of dinner in the air, but he didn’t come out of the bedroom.
He considered leaving and going back to his lonely house. It had always been lonely, since his grandfather had died and left it to him and he’d moved back to Napa, but ever since he’d met Xander, being alone there had grown claws. Now, he found it nearly unbearable.
Sometimes he wondered if he’d decided on building a restaurant because that meant he’d always be surrounded by lots of people on his land.
Maybe that was what this was really about; not the booze at all.
No, Damon thought grimly, it was really always about the booze. He was a Hess, living in Napa; that much was inescapable. He’d left here briefly but he still came back home. He belonged here, whether he wanted to be here or not, whether he resented that fact or not.
Xander was a great believer in the truth, and Damon knew, as he dragged himself upright and wiped his eyes, that he meant everything he’d just said.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t mean what he hadn’t said—and what Xander hadn’t said was that he didn’t think the restaurant could be a success without serving wine.
What it boiled down to was that he didn’t think the restaurant could be successful with Damon involved. Because Damon and wine did not mix, no matter how Xander tried to justify his opinion. An alcoholic shouldn’t be around alcohol, that much seemed pretty obvious, at least to Damon.
Rachel was happening again. Exactly what had prevented Damon from even dreaming about love was happening again.
Damon gingerly leveraged himself up and walked to the bathroom, shutting the door with a quiet click and staring at himself in the mirror. Red eyes, tight mouth, hopeless expression. He recognized the man in the mirror a little too well.
As devastating as the divorce had been, Damon knew he loved Xander more completely and more fully—more maturely—than he’d ever loved Rachel.
They’d been kids; he was a man now and so was Xander.
Losing him was going to destroy Damon all over again, except it was going to be much worse this time around, because Damon wasn’t going to be able to run away to lick his wounds.
Xander was going to be right there, right in front of him, every day, and it was going to hurt like hell. It was a good thing, then, Damon thought darkly, that he wasn’t a stranger to pain.
He dressed and went into the living room. Xander had an old episode of Kitchen Wars on, Landon Patton and Quentin Maxwell bantering over a lazy Susan contraption, berries flying everywhere, and every molecule in Damon’s body ached at the normalcy he was never going to be able to have.
Xander flipped the sound off, and looked up at Damon, concern written all over his face. “Are you okay?” he asked. “I . . . I . . . maybe I shouldn’t have made you talk about it.”
“No. No, I’m glad you did.” He took a deep breath. “You’re right. What you said is right. We should serve wine.”
“You think we should serve wine?” Xander asked cautiously.