Chapter 3 ppls. In which we return to the balcony and Denny faces some truths.
I know that I started this with Denny Crane sitting musing over what happened in the hotel. I did have to stretch it out over 2 chapters but those chapters were a recollection of what happened from his and Alan’s POV. Now we return to the balcony….
Chapter 3
Denny shook his head slightly as he recalled how they had eaten their pancake breakfast at the hotel in relative silence and then had gone about their own business. Getting dressed, going to work and disrupting board meetings as if nothing had ever happened. That was two days ago and still ‘the talk’ that Alan had promised they would have about what happened between them had not yet come to pass. But Denny knew it was coming. It was inevitable. If nothing, Alan Shore was a man of his word.
Just knowing that ‘the talk’ was coming was enough to throw him off his game, he’d been… cloudy, the last few days. Most in the office had simply dismissed it as being his ‘mad cow’ again.
But the truth of it all was that it wasn’t the mad cow - Denny was nervous. And Denny Crane never got nervous. He had faced up to some of the biggest judges and attorneys in the country, stood before thousands of people on countless occasions and expressed unpopular opinions. But nothing could compare to this. Walking around with the knowledge that Alan would eventually want to talk about what had happened that night was almost too much for him to bear.
Denny Crane was ultimately anxious because….. he had kissed Alan back.
As much as he vehemently denied it to himself. But all the excuses in the world couldn’t remove the fact that Alan had made an advance in his sleep and, being fully conscious, Denny had kissed him back. He didn’t know why he’d done it. But he knew that Alan would figure it out eventually. And he was terrified at the possibility of losing his best friend.
But of course, all of this played out under Denny’s thick, bomb-shelter-like exterior, which was nearly impenetrable to anything life could throw at him. No-one around him would have had a clue as to what he was thinking at this moment. Hell, sometimes even HE didn’t know what he was thinking.
At that thought, he decided it was definitely time to stand up to get his scotch off the ledge.
Once he’d retrieved it, he stood and looked out onto the beautifully man-lit city. Wondering to himself if Alan was going to come and join him on the balcony, wondering if he really wanted him to.
“Evening Denny.”
It was as if fate had heard him thinking.
Denny sipped languidly from his scotch glass and bent over to rest his elbows onto the ledge. Upon some reflection he decided he did want Alan there. Awkward or not, Alan was his friend – his best friend. Without missing a beat, Denny fell back into the old routine and began immediately with the current office gossip.
“Heard you bit a client today.”
Alan walked over and stood a little closer than normal next to Denny and admired the cityscape.
“She was trying to choke me. I saw fit to defend myself.”
Denny laughed.
“Ha! What did you do? Try to hit on her?”
“Heavens no! She’s a sasquatch.”
The older man nodded.
“Ugly girl huh?”
“No, I mean she’s literally a sasquatch, at least she claims to be. Says she was raised by Bigfoot and his ape-wife in the forest. She actually wanted to be put on the endangered species list in the hopes of receiving free medical care.”
At this statement Alan looked over at Denny with an amused smirk on his face. Denny for his part, had the decency to look mildly shocked.
“So why did Saskatchewan try to choke you?”
“Sasquatch Denny, Saskatchewan’s a province. And she tried to choke me after I asked why she had so little body hair.”
“For that she tried to choke you?”
“I also might have mentioned that she had no chance of winning the motion….. And that whether she was a Sasquatch or not, my bet was on her mother being a dirty ape.”
Denny chuckled and stuck his cigar into his mouth as he tried to gently distance himself from Alan by sitting down in his chair and leaning back into it. Alan shot Denny another amused smirk, then quietly joined him.
For a while they sat that way in a comfortable silence, sipping scotch and smoking cigars, enjoying the view. Enjoying the fact that they were up above the noise and organised chaos that was Boston. Sitting, sharing in the quiet joy of a friendship.
Alan sipped his scotch and, taking a breath, he prepared to speak:
“You’re sexually attracted to me.”
Denny’s jaw dropped as he stared in complete shock at the other man. As a result, the cigar he was smoking fell out his mouth and down into his lap.
Denny jumped up rapidly and cursed as he knocked the cigar away and onto the ground. After slapping at his legs extensively to get the cigar ash off them, he turned his head again to stare at Alan, who had not moved. He was just sitting there, watching him with a bemused smile on his face.
He looked at Alan wide eyed. He spoke harshly as though Alan had just deeply insulted him.
“I beg your pardon?!”
“You heard me. I’ve deduced that you’re sexually attracted to me.”
Denny snorted and walked over to the balcony ledge.
“And they say I’m the one who’s losing my mind.”
Alan continued, unperturbed.
“I’ve been thinking about what happened the other night, and I’ve come to realize that I missed something. While reading over the Kellerman deposition, it suddenly occurred to me that I was asleep the other night.”\
“That’s only just occurred to you?”
At this point Alan stood up and slowly walked over to Denny, who backed up a little as though wanting to keep his distance. Prove he was a hetero. Alan was having none of it.
He stepped closer and put his hands on Denny’s upper arms, in an attempt to keep him there for what he was about to say to him. He looked Denny straight in the eyes and used his gentle voice. He knew that this was something that Denny didn’t want to hear, but it needed to be said.
“I was asleep Denny, you weren’t. So when I kissed you, it was because I was either dreaming of kissing a woman, or thinking you were somebody else or one of a million other reasons why a sleeping person kisses someone.”
Denny’s mind almost started to wander, thinking about what those reasons might possibly be. But Alan stepping even closer brought him straight back to reality.
“When you kissed me back….. you knew what you were doing. I have thought about this at length, and the only reason I can come up with as to why you would kiss me back… is because you are sexually attracted to me.”
Denny suddenly wished he had his gun on him. He’d make this pansy shut up quick smart! Then he came to the alarming realisation that he only wanted his gun because he didn’t have another answer for Alan, no other excuse to give him to explain it all away.
Alan noted his silence and continued.
“It’s okay, I know it’s not within you to believe it, much less admit it. So I’ll prove it to you.”
Suddenly Alan’s lips were upon Denny’s. Denny wondered how such soft lips could sometimes be the bearer of such harsh words. And the sneaky bastard wasn’t even kissing him properly! He was chastely teasing, taunting Denny, waiting for him to kiss back.
And he was sick of fighting it. If anyone asked, he’d tell them that Alan ambushed him, Denny thought to himself as he closed the millimetres of distance and turned the kiss into something else, something deeper. Mouths met hungrily, greedily devouring the other. Instinctively, Denny shoved his hands inside of Alan’s coat and was holding onto him like his life depended on it.
Alan however was much more respectful, he knew that if he made one wrong move, Denny would break the kiss…. And would probably break him too. And he didn’t want that.
This is what he’d wanted all along.
Throughout the sleepovers and nights on the balcony he’d wondered about this moment. Whether it would ever happen and if he’d be brave enough to initiate it. That’s why he’d kissed Denny that fateful night. Somewhere in his subconscious, his brain knew what it wanted and had sought to get it, no matter what the cost.
After a period of time, and slowly comprehending that they were both running out of air, they broke the kiss. Alan stared at Denny as though he was completely lost, gulping air while he tried to think of something witty to say. But the best he could come up with was:
“Told you.”
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
accomplished
chipper![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
cranky
Yay! Fire Drill!
Chilled, relaxed
Still totally buggered
cold
