Author: otter
Summary: Duck's never seen Dan at the Watch, but he still knows that Dan goes there, can smell the damp of the rocks in his hair or the pine sap clinging to his jacket, or maybe it's just that Duck can recognize that part of himself in Dan, some little reflection in Dan's eyes when they pass on the street.
Wilby Wonderful | Duck/Dan | PG-13 | Dec 2006 
Duck only sees Dan at the video store, and sometimes at Iggy's, one of them coming and one of them going (but never both staying, sitting down together and watching each other over coffee). Duck's never seen Dan at the Watch, but he still knows that Dan goes there, can smell the damp of the rocks in his hair or the pine sap clinging to his jacket, or maybe it's just that Duck can recognize that part of himself in Dan, some little reflection in Dan's eyes when they pass on the street. Still, Duck never sees him at the Watch (never sees Dan's mouth swallow down somebody else's cock, never sees anybody else put a hand on Dan's arm and lead him into the trees, never touches Dan himself just to hear what sounds he'll make) because Duck never goes to the Watch at all anymore. He left the Watch behind him the same way he left Wilby, and later left Alex and left the bottle and left parts of himself behind all the way across Canada, on his way back again to where he started.
He doesn't think he could ever leave Wilby for good, but coming back again after the long years away, he found that there were parts of it he didn't need anymore.
Dan needs a lot of things, probably even thinks he needs the Watch, but Duck isn't so sure. Duck's seen how the Watch is breaking him down piece by piece, the way Dan's shoulders round over and how he stares at nothing and how the shame and the secret are whittling him away. It's a desperate kind of unhappiness that the Watch breeds in people, and Duck knows it intimately: the way a man can take a little seed of wanting and swallow it down and not even notice the way it grows and spreads and takes root until it's something that keeps him pinned to the ground, until he's as much a part of the Watch as the bedrock, always a little swamped under by the sea.
It's no way to live, that constant drowning, and maybe that's what it is about Dan that Duck can't keep clear of. Maybe it's the way he finds Dan one day in the video store, hunched over himself and gasping like he can't get any air. There's an old black-and-white movie playing on the little television in the corner, Dan is drowning on dry land and Duck is standing in the doorway, unnoticed still, thinking about the Watch and the darkness and somebody else's hands on his skin, how much he wanted it and how much it took from him.
Duck thinks that he probably should make a little noise: scuff his boot against the floor, let the door slam shut, clear his throat, and shift himself off into the low rows of films, leave Dan alone to compose himself. Instead he closes the door quietly, throws the lock and flips around the sign in the window from "open" to "closed."
Dan twitches at the sound of the bolt, straightens abruptly as if whatever's broken inside him has just been ripped free. He stumbles up from his chair and stares at Duck with wide, wild eyes, like he's looking up from a thousand-fathom sea and can't even tell anymore which way to swim to find the surface.
"Hey," Duck says, because he can't think of anything else, because he isn't sure what he's supposed to do when Dan's under so much water that Duck can't even reach him anymore, not without drowning himself.
"Uh, hi," Dan says, and his voice cracks, body sways like he's got the bends, like he's killing himself with trying too hard to come up for air.
Duck stands in the doorway, unable to move forward or back, and he's thinking, can't help thinking, about what it might be like to lay Dan out on Duck's bed, in Duck's home, with the heat on and all the lights blazing, to strip him down and warm him up, rescue breathing right into his mouth. Duck wonders if Dan's skin would be wet and salty with seawater. He thinks that maybe if he could just touch Dan right now, that Dan might at least start breathing again.
Dan says, "Um, can I help you find something?" and reaches back to fumble with his little television set until he finds the right switch and the TV goes dark.
"I--" Duck says, and then doesn't say anything else because he can't remember what he came in for in the first place, if he was looking for Cool Hand Luke or The Quiet Man or just hoping to find Dan here, keeping a safe distance from the rocks and the relentless sea. "Not sure," Duck finally says. "Got any recommendations?"
Dan says, "What do you like?" and then flushes, turns half away with his fists clenched. His back is long and narrow and Duck can see the outline of shoulderblades through his shirt.
"We could--" Duck starts, then fumbles to a stop, watching Dan's back tense under a whole ocean's worth of pressure. "You want to go get some coffee? Dinner maybe?"
Dan turns back around and blurts out, "I'm married," and then in the next breath he's got Duck pinned up against the wall, with his hands clutching at Duck's jacket, and his mouth is hot and dry against Duck's neck, and then his hands are dropping to Duck's jeans, fumbling open the button.
Duck says, "Wait, wait. Hey, no, hold on," and puts his hands over Dan's, peels Dan's fingers gently away from his zipper and his erection underneath. He presses Dan's palms against his stomach, lets his own heat seep out into Dan's frigid fingers and tries to keep Dan anchored, even when Dan tries to pull back, ducking his head and muttering apologies.
"It's okay," Duck says, hugs Dan's hands a little tighter against his stomach, and Dan's lowered head only brings him closer, drops him down to a height where Duck can lean their foreheads together, can stand and let Dan's panicked, shuddering breaths wash over his own mouth.
"It's okay," Duck says again. "I like it. I just don't--" He interrupts himself with a huff of frustrated breath, tips his head side to side a little, and finally continues, "I don't do that anymore."
"You don't... what, not handjobs?" Dan says, and draws his head back a little so he can look Duck in the eye -- no, the mouth, his gaze fixed on Duck's mouth like he hasn't ever wanted anything so much. "I can-- I'll go down on you, I--"
"No," Duck says. "No." He pulls Dan back in, face to face, wants badly to kiss his mouth but settles instead for pressing his lips, chaste, to the point of Dan's jaw. The skin is sweaty there, salt-slick, and Duck wants to taste it with his tongue, but he doesn't. He's lived on Wilby most all of his life; he knows already what the ocean tastes like. "Not that," he tells Dan. "The uh, the casual thing. I don't do that." He smiles, mostly at himself, and shrugs. "Getting too old for it, I guess. But if you want that coffee..."
He lets it trail off, leaves the offer open and the pressure off, but already Dan is pulling away, slipping his hands out of Duck's grip and smoothing down the front of his shirt.
"I love my wife," Dan says, and it's not a lie or an excuse, it just is what it is; Duck can see it on his face, love and betrayal and anguish all twisted together, tied like a noose around Dan's neck.
Sometimes, Duck knows, love isn't enough; sometimes love leaves a man to drown and lets what's left of him drift out with the tide. Sometimes love is the thing that kills him.
"Okay," Duck says, and nods. He puts his hands in his pockets, straightens up and steps away from the wall. Dan's looking at him with a lost expression on his face, like he isn't sure where to go from here except where he's always gone: home, to his wife, and then out in the dark to the Watch.
Duck looks at the floor because if he looks at Dan he might crack, might drag Dan to him again and touch all the places he wants to touch and lose himself the same way he's done before. But Dan can get that -- is getting that -- out at the Watch, and Duck wants him but he also wants to be more than that, wants to be more than salt spray against Dan's face and rough stone against Dan's back and cold fingers around Dan's cock.
"Okay," Duck repeats, and then, "Anyway. See you around, then." He steps back, finds the door with his hand and slides the lock free, then steps out of the video store and back into Wilby, back to the place where he started, like always.
the end
The cure for anything is salt water -- sweat, tears, or the sea.
-- Isak Dinesen