Title: The Routine
Author: Nakeno

Disclaimer: I do not claim to know the people who play these copyrighted characters or anything about their privates lives. So this is all bullshit. I don't own them. I don't own anything, actually. No, for real... I'm still making payments on this computer. So don't sue.

Rating: NC-17. Just in case, I guess.

Characters: Christian, Chris Jericho

Summary: Everyone has a routine. And on his days off, this is Christian's.

Written to:
"In the Absence of the Sun" by Duncan Sheik

For all the good you say it does
It seems no better when you've had your say
You may believe it's just because
The words get colder when you've gone away

I thought I understood
What I was to you...

I don't want to feel this way
I don't want to say I'm just a friend
I don't want to wait around here
'Cause you don't want to feel no pain again
We just lie about it...
As we become shadows of ourselves

Some may fear committed lives
I sure am one of them without you
Does it come to you as some surprise
I laid the ground beneath to doubt you

Was it ever, girl
Something you could hold...

I don't want to feel this way
I don't want to say I'm just a friend
I don't want to wait around here
'Cause you don't want to feel no pain again
We just lie about it...
As we become shadows of ourselves

I don't want to look away
I don't want to be the one denied
It ain't no fault of mine
If someone somewhere told you lies
But we don't talk about it
We just become shadows of ourselves...

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Being home is good. Sorta. It's a different shade of good. A kind of "you can stop pretending now" sort of good.

Home life has its routines as well as life on the road, though.

Hell, everyone has routines.

There's comfort in routines. Even in the unhealthy ones.

And, by now, Christian knows his routine at home pretty well.

It'll start off with him sleeping in until about mid-morning, naked in his bed, sore and bruise-dappled from punches not pulled or moves done too forceful. It's a little hard to sleep past the early hours because after so many years of conditioning himself a certain way his mind has set its habits and then lets his body deal with it as it may. This was usually by way of sluggishness.

Breakfast will be a bagel maybe. Sometimes he'll cook an egg if he's feeling up to it.

Usually he'll take his meal in front of the TV, flipping through the stations and never really finding anything good on. That will, more often than not, get him to turn it off and wander through his house a little aimlessly until he decides to pull on some clothes.

Bored and unmotivated, he'll find his way outside to glance over the neighborhood a little after noon.

He'll stand in the sunshine in his driveway and study the warm, light gray concrete under his feet. He fancies he can feel every grain of it when he's barefooted. At the right angle, it glitters. He'll feel that barely there breeze and smell that almost bitter, fresh-cut grass smell on the air and there'll be that distant, low buzz of a lawn mower somewhere to go along with the scent. And in a very cliche manner Christian's mind will think "summer."

Summer is always like a hot hand in this part of the country. Stifling. Pawing all over you. Christian doesn't remember any sort of summers like it in Canada. Florida has summers hot as a brand and as humid as the densest swamps.

When he closes the door behind himself is usually when the sweat begins to bead up from his pores. That fast. He's learned to dress light. To keep an umbrella stashed in his car's trunk because when they say the "sunshine state" they always forget to mention "kinda." You can set a clock by the thunderstorms in the spring.

Two houses down from him lives the little old lady who sits pies on her windowsill and claws weeds from her small garden with thick gloves. He doesn't know how she could afford to get on this street. Maybe the favorite niece of an uncle who was much too rich and much too sick so many years ago.

She has a tattered hat and an annoying dog. He wants to tell her that there's a reason for a produce and a bakery section at the store and that if that dog takes one more shit on *his* lawn she'll be wondering forever where he stashed the body. Maybe someday he will. She never waves. Just stares. She doesn't like him much and sometimes Christian doesn't blame her. But no one knows that. Save for one. ...Maybe.

He sometimes wonders if she recognizes him.

He doesn't know. Doesn't really care. She's the only house on this street that has a face for him, though. Hers and one more, of course. They're the only two he really sees. The rest of the homes here on this particular street are pretty, seemingly patron-less boxes. They all have cars. No children. The perfect, unoccupied models with trimmed and kept yards.

His gaze will wander further down then as he stands there and he'll see the gleam of metal in the sun. The sleek side of a foreign made car parked in the driveway of the house down from hers. That's where he'll walk.

It'll take him 51 strides to get there. On average. He knows. He's counted. More than once.

He'll walk down that street and the scarce wind will tug at his partly open shirt. The hem will flap at the material of his shorts or pants and he'll squint in the blaze of the afternoon sky.

There's a brick encasement there around the mailbox in front of the house with the lacquered oak door that has a diamond shaped window with criss-cross steel grating.

He'll touch it. He does it every time as he passes it. He doesn't know why, only that it feels wrong now if he doesn't. Like his routine isn't complete.

The doorbell will sound and he'll knock once, twice. He won't have to wait long and Chris will open the door without even glancing out, trusting that Christian will close it behind himself when he steps in. And he does. Every damn time.

They forego "heys" and "what's happenings" a lot of the time. Jericho, the ever-gracious host, will usually have something to start out with right away. It usually centers on himself.

Chris will talk and Christian will respond accordingly as he stands at the end of the counter in the kitchen, eyeing the crisp blacks and whites and for the thousandth time rethinking his decision to go with mostly stainless steel in the kitchen of his own home. There's a little styrofoam bucket with ridged sides and a crappy press-on lid that they never use. In it will go a good six-pack (sometimes beer, sometimes not) and then the ice will follow and Chris will talk over the garbled, rushing sound of it.

The routine changes somewhat according to season. But in the summertime it's always poolside. Always poolside and under the scald of the overhead sun.

The backyard is nicely private and the water in Jericho's in-ground pool is always a blue that's a keen, chemical pure.

Not quite the soul-deep kind of refreshing to look upon as say... waters in the tropic.

Christian will slide back the glass door, careful not to mar its pristine tidiness with fingerprints, and Chris will tote the cooler out using both arms.

They'll trudge out to their respective, closely-set lawnchairs and Chris will thump the cooler down on one side and there will be a pair of sighs as they squint in the brightness of it all. Sometimes Jericho will wear sunglasses and Christian will privately hate them.

They will drink. They will talk. Christian loves the summer days that are just under hot with a nice, cutting breeze. They drink more than talk on those days.

He's pretty sure by now his heart should have stopped doing that unsettling flutter whenever Chris' fingers brush his while passing him a cold bottle and he'll think about asking Chris about it. Only he won't. There's far too much that that would complicate. So he'll mention how good the beer is instead, and Chris will tell him it's Canadian, of course. And Christian will wonder if this is love. Then feel foolish directly afterwards.

Their conversations will include women. Sometimes they skip that part altogether, but most times it starts that way. Chris will mention someone. Then Christian will. Chris will mention her breasts maybe, or her ass. Talk about how a mouth like that was just *made* for giving head. Chris will say it. Christian will just listen.

It's always that. The mouth. He never fails to mention the mouth. That's because it's a cue. A starting point. It's no longer a comment these days, but a question. One that Christian has never failed to answer yet.

Chris bitches about how he could never get his last girlfriend to do that for him and then Christian's knees will hurt because he doesn't mind doing a favor or two for a friend.

The concrete is the same stuff that paves his drive. It's textured like that to keep you from slipping if it gets wet, but sometimes he believes that it's like that just to make his knees hurt. Especially when he wears shorts.

There will be sweat pooling in Chris' navel and Christian will want to dip his tongue in it but he never does because it's not asked of him. Because this is not there or that. It's just what it is. Nothing else. There's no kissing, no real touching.

There'll be sweat and skin and the slick taste of his own spit. Chris will smell of musk and the heat of the sun. The green and white plastic tubing of Chris' chair will grow slippery under his body, will creak when Jericho's hips move in a tight jerk as Christian does this small swirl with his tongue just right *there* on the other's cock.

He thinks maybe that sucking Chris off is the same as sucking himself off because there are no other two he holds closer to his heart.

Christian never spits and Chris never questions him about it.

He'll look up and, when it's not shielded by tinted lenses, he'll see that lazy, caribbean blue gaze considering him with something that Christian strictly believes is a mixture of pride and gratitude.

He'll get to his feet. Slow. His knees will be red patches of pinprick-sized indents either under his clothes or not.

Chris isn't like "that." He doesn't do "that."

Christian always seems to forget.

So he'll excuse himself to the bathroom, jerk off and pretend he's grateful that Jericho isn't around to see because sucking dick *doesn't* make him hard. Just sucking Chris. Just sucking himself.

He'll wash his hands and dust at his knees. There won't be grit there from the concrete, though he checks everytime anyway.

Inside the cube of egg white and coral blue tile he'll consider telling Chris he's moving back to Canada. Back to snowdrifts and schoolyard friends. His sweat will cool, turn sticky, as he thinks it over and lets it gnaw at his brain until he gets less and less brave about it.

When hemhawing around in the bathroom grows too tiresome Christian'll walk back out to poolside. The sun will be a little lower than he remembers it being, but not by much. He'll take his seat back in the creaking lawnchair next to the other's and Chris will pass him a beer or a cola and their conversation will start up again like no one had ever quit talking.

After a while the day will seem to be petering off and dusk will come wading in on them. They'll get up, indolent and listless, drained by the heat and humidity, sweat rolling. They'll stretch and Chris' back will be striped like a tiger's from his lawn chair.

Jericho will dump the slushing cooler of water, salvaging whatever drinks are left before they wander inside.

Chris will sometimes invite him to stay for dinner before he goes home. Sometimes not.

The walk back to his house will be made in a pensive, heavy silence in which he's trying not to think about certain things. Work being one of them. Once in his home he'll toe off his shoes if he bothered with anything more than sandals. He'll stand and let the green and red fade from his gaze as his eyes adjust from the drastic light change between the outside and the darkness of his den.

He'll shuffle down the hall. He'll get sick in the bathroom and know with all his heart it was because those drinks were so cold that they settled wrong on his stomach in all this Florida heat.

Christian will shower and then barely towel off before making it to his room to collapse into the decadent coolness of his crisp, white sheets and thick tan comforter. The air is cold and the room is dark and tinted deep blue from the thick, thick shade he has up to keep the sunrays out.

It's a relaxing, comfortable shell here and Christian will roll over onto his stomach, face away from the window, hear the dull tick of his clock in his ears and think about the time when he'll just keep walking. He'll find out what's at the end of the street he lives on. Maybe even spy a new face to associate to one of the other pretty little houses.

He'll just keep right on walking. More than 51 strides, give or take. Right on past the brick encased mailbox. Right on past the lacquered oak door that has a diamond shaped window with criss-cross metal grating.

Yeah. He'll do that someday.

Until then, however, he'll just follow the routine.

-The End-