After Today (Dare/Ariel)

[Ariel Logan Callahan]

"I want...I want to know what I can do. I want to take him out, not that I have the money to do much of anything, but he's convinced I'll go off and do something. And he wants to dance with other guys, he said...he said he's suffocating and I don't know how the hell to give him what he wants and keep both of us sane." Ariel realized he had just unloaded a lot onto someone that he had never even had a worthwhile conversation with, but it was someone. "You've been with Michael what, a year and a half or something?" Had this ever happened to them?

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare was still boggling over everything Ariel had just told him, but here was a question he actually knew the answer for. "Almost two years," he said. Three months shy of two years. "We don't drink, though. We don't do drugs, and we don't want to dance with other people. I can't tell you what to do." His potion issues hadn't had anything to do with them going out and he'd never slipped up. He knew that had as much to do with Michael as anything, but he wasn't worried about it.

"Listen, the only guy I ever knew about Markise being with was a complete a~hole. He got dumped and went back for more. There was no suffocating, no one even knew they were together. We went out every Friday night and he danced with whoever and he drank and I walked him back to school. Markise is nothing like Michael." And Michael would flip if he knew he was even talking about this.

[Ariel Logan Callahan]

Ariel ran another hand through his hair. It was so frustrating trying to talk about this. "You've known him longer than I have," he said. "I don't understand why he wants to go out and be someone else! I guess you and Michael are just stronger than we are." There had been times where it felt like they were just stumbling through and hoping something worked out in the end. It usually did, but this time was different. "I want him happy, but if the only way to do that is to let him go get drunk and dance with some guy at a club..."

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare shook his head. "You really think he's happy like that?" he asked. "If I knew how to fix it, I'd have done it years ago instead of just making sure he didn't get in too much trouble. When Michael and I go out, it's not like when I went out with Markise. I can tell you what we did, but you don't want to hear that anymore than you want to hear anything else about us." He didn't know what to say! He was trying to help, but he didn't know what he could tell Ariel about Markise that would make any kind of answer click.

[Ariel Logan Callahan]

Ariel hated this, he had no idea what to do or where to go from here. He stared off down the corridor, then started shaking his head. "I thought he'd be happy when I loved him, he said he wanted that once..." he said, as though trying to work through it in his mind. "And now...now he's bored." There were times when Markise was happy, but would it ever be enough? "Ugh, he's so complicated..."

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare snorted. "Tell me about it," he said. He opted not to comment on the when I loved him bit, hoping he'd misunderstood. It bothered him that Markise would get so deeply involved with someone as unreliable as Ariel. Drugs! Like alcohol wasn't bad enough!

"Listen, I don't know how much to tell you," Dare said at last. "I don't know how much you want to hear so I'm not going to just start talking. But if you want to know how to make Markise happy, think about how many friends he's got out here. Think about how often he gets out. You spent all summer in New York, right?" Was that enough to trigger anything?

[Ariel Logan Callahan]

"New York was great," Ariel said. "His friends were always dragging us out to do stuff. But I don't have the money to do that, even if I had money, he's my boss and it's not right to go off and spend his own money on him. How am I supposed to do what we did in New York when there's only us and there's no money?" Go out with Brindle? Yeah, somehow he didn't see Markise going along with that. And Dare was barely a memory.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare shrugged. "Not everything costs money," he said. "Michael and I go to the park or just walk around. It's not much, but it gets us out of the house. Make him take you out." He didn't want to think about the logistics of Markise's relationship with Ariel, especially since Markise had never seemed like the type to just sit around waiting for someone else to make the decisions.

[Ariel Logan Callahan]

"Just getting out isn't enough, he wants to be around people that want him, but unless you and Michael and Brindle want to put up with us the only way he'll get that is to go to a club and dance with other guys," Ariel said. They could get out, but when he was outside he liked being alone, and Markise liked being around a group of people.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

"You're assuming a hell of a lot," Dare cut in. "Listen, we used to go out in a group, me, him, Brindle, everyone we could get together. We danced together, sometimes we paired off, I never saw Markise just take off with someone and spend the whole night with them." No one but me, if I'd let him, he added silently. But that was beside the point. "If you think everyone's written Markise off, it's only because he's written us off." He's written me off. And the fact that he and Michael couldn't stand each other didn't help anything.

[Ariel Logan Callahan]

"Think I should talk to him about it?" Ariel asked. He was used to not having anyone, but apparently he literally couldn't settle like that with Markise. "Or should I just lock you all in a room and hope it works out?" It had worked out for them, though it had been a heck of a ride getting to that point. Maybe he didn't have a choice, maybe he had to do something like talk to Markise about this.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare had opened his mouth to say that yes, Ariel should talk to Markise, but his ability to speak was momentarily suspended. He gaped, then pressed his lips together, tightening his jaw as he shook his head. "That's not what I meant," he said. "It's a hell of a lot more complicated than that." Ariel knew more than he needed to just from whatever had prompted him to encourage what had happened at the ceremony. And that was only part of it. "Just... talk to Markise."

[Ariel Logan Callahan]

Ariel sighed heavily and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Alright," he said, though he had no idea where to go. He knew very little of Markise's relationships at his old school, so where could he start? "I'll give it a try. I'll...maybe I'll get him to want to do something." Of course, that would mean getting others to want to do something, too.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

"If you think you can do that," Dare said. He was pretty much lost at this point. Did Ariel want to take Markise out somewhere or not? Did he think Dare could fix whatever the hell was going on with them? Did he think Dare would set Michael aside to help? No matter how much he might want to be involved, he couldn't be. No matter how well he knew Markise, he could imagine Michael being uncomfortable just because he'd admitted to someone that he and Markise might have been close once.

[Ariel Logan Callahan]

Ariel did want to take Markise out somewhere, and if Dare could help that would be so much better. Even with the more than year long roller coaster that had been his and Markise's "relationship" he was still new at this. He was really good at making someone miserable, but he fell short when it came to actually fixing anything. In the past, it had been more of a let's hope it goes away ending in a huge fight, for better or worse. "Can I owl you or something?" he asked. "If it goes well?"