Chapter Text
Shawn saw himself reflected in the dark coffee house window as he wiped it down before closing and wondered to himself if he looked like New Yorker now. After a couple months he’d finally given into Cory’s teasing and lost the goatee, but he wasn’t religious about shaving and his reflection was well stubbled. He’d grown his sideburns longer. He’d let his hair grow out a little. It still had a little bit of curl and hung just above the three new rings in his upper ear, still just a little tender.
He and Cory had gone out to the bar last week and gotten into this talk about things they never saw themselves doing. Cory had set out a list of countries that he couldn’t visit because of various issues involving bugs, undrinkable water, and people driving willy-nilly all over the wrong side of the road. Shawn had said he didn’t see himself with any piercings.
“Well, I wouldn’t get pierced because even if I didn’t get an infection that caused something to rot and fall off, Topanga would kill me,” Cory had laughed, “But you’re part of that whole, artsy-poetry-coffeeshop-indie whatever. You don’t have a single co-worker who can walk through a metal detector.”
“Artsy-poetry-coffeeshop-indie whatever?” Shawn laughed back, “What the hell does that mean?”
“Shawnie, it means you,” Cory gulped his pear flavored cider, “You of the shaggy hair and the tight T-shirt and the general aura of being unkempt. You of the bookshelf full of small volumes of poetry, jazz and R&B albums, and little black books full of your own poems. You of the artsy posters on the wall and the Saturday morning ice-mocha. You of the living on my couch.”
“I’m unkempt?” Shawn had answered back, “Look at you!”
Unkempt wasn’t really the word, but Cory had most decidedly left his goofy Teen-America look behind him. He’d cut his hair so short you could couldn’t tell it curled. He had traded his collared shirts for button-downs and long sleeve T-shirts. In the last couple of weeks he’d grown a beard. He kept it pretty well trimmed, but it made him look completely different than the Cory he had used to be. He looked like a real live grown up. Topanga hated the beard, but in the last few months the list of things about Cory that Topanga hated had been growing longer.
“I’m not unkempt. I’m mature. I’m old. I’m an old married man,” Cory had griped, taking a deeper gulp of his cider.
For example, the one steel ring in Cory’s left earlobe was now on the list. Shawn and Cory had left the bar after each had finished their drink-Cory his usual, and Shawn his failed experiment with an unpronounceable beer- and decided to take a long route home and enjoy the slight autumn chill wafting through the warm city streets. On the way they just happened to have crossed a tattoo and piercing parlor. Teasing had turned to daring and both had left the parlor with wounds to show for it.
Topanga had been mad. She’d snapped at both of them when they’d walked in the door at 11 o’clock that night. She’d had gotten home at 8 o’clock to an empty apartment and cold leftovers.
“A note would have been nice,” she’d said, “Or maybe a call. I’d like to go out sometimes too, not everything has to be no-girls-allowed with you two.”
Then she’d seen Cory’s earring. She’d taken a deep breath, as though bracing herself to start yelling at the pair of them, but then she’d deflated and her voice had gotten quiet, dangerous.
“Well, well,” the words falling from her like stones, “You boys match. Cute.” She’d stormed into hers and Cory’s room, thrown a pair of Cory’s pajamas into the living room, and locked the door behind her. She wouldn’t even let either of them in to use the bathroom, which connected to the bedroom, but not the living room. Cory and Shawn had felt guilty as they pissed in the kitchen sink.
Shawn gave the window one last sprits of Windex and finished wiping down the last panel. He stepped back, gave his job well done a small moment of appreciation, and then returned his rag and his bottle of Windex to their proper places underneath the counter. He patted his pocket to make sure he had his keys and he turned to back to the window. He jumped back, hand to his heart.
Cory was standing in the window, his shoulders hunched up under his coat, his back pack straps over his shoulders and his hands in his pocket. He took one hand out and pointed toward the door. Shawn loped across the floor and over to the door, unlocked it and pulled it open. A gust of icy air followed Cory into the snug, cozy coffee shop.
“You know, I’m starting to really like this beard,” Cory said, pulling his back pack off, “It keeps my face warm.”
“Damn. It didn’t look like it was going to be that cold when I left this morning. I didn’t bring my coat.”
Cory unzipped the back pack and reached a hand in, “Ta-da” he pulled Shawn’s coat out and tossed it to him.
“What are you doing here Cor?”
“You wanna catch a movie?” Cory said.
“It’s almost midnight,” Shawn said suspiciously.
“Yeah. At that place near where Eric used to work they play old movies all night,” Cory looked expectantly at Shawn, “Come on, put on your coat!”
“Cor, is everything okay?” Shawn asked, setting the coat down on one of the plump, orange armchairs.
“Yeah. Everything’s fine.” Cory said getting half way through a dismissive waving gesture before catching the not-buying-it look that Shawn was leveling on him.
“Topanga and I got into a fight,” Cory bit his lip, “I left.”
“Wanna talk?” Shawn asked.
“Nah, it’s-“ Cory started with the same gesture, before being interrupted by the same look from Shawn. Cory let out a small scoff.
“Why yes Shawn. I would in fact enjoy discussing this further.”
Shawn gestured Cory to the overstuffed purple couch near the counter.
“Hot chocolate?” Shawn asked.
“Marshmallows?” Cory asked.
“No,” Shawn answered.
“Sure.”
Shawn began making two hot chocolates as Cory pulled off his coat and settled himself onto half of the huge couch.
“So… what happened?” Shawn asked as he swirled a big pile of whip cream on top of Cory’s hot chocolate. He added a crème cookie and a sprinkle of cocoa on it too, because he knew how much Cory liked it. He left his own hot chocolate plain.
It turned out the fight had been about all the same things, but had been a little bigger than usual. A snippy comment about why Cory hadn’t had the dishes done already had moved onto a bigger fight about how they’d been in New York for nearly 7 months and Cory still hadn’t been able to get a job. His defense that the economy was bad, and that the two jobs he’d lost hadn’t been his fault (like when Mrs. Warren had decided that she didn’t need an assistant after all, and when the restaurant that had hired him had failed its health inspection) had only made her angrier and that’s when she started attacking Shawn.
When Cory, Topanga, Shawn and Eric had all set out for New York they had planned to all help each other out. Cory and Topanga had already found an apartment and Topanga already had a job. Shawn and Eric were going to stay with Cory and Topanga and once they had jobs, Shawn and Eric were going to move in together. It was a good plan, based on love and sharing and community and Eric had thrown a kink in it by turning out to born for New York.
Their first night in the city he had gone out to grab a pre-bedtime snack at the deli across the street. There he had met a beautiful girl, an actress, and had gone home with her. By the end of the week he’d moved in with a wealthy photographer friend of hers, who hadn’t needed a roommate so much as a plant-waterer/ fish-feeder/ apartment sitter to take care of the place while he was on his frequent long trips abroad. Eric was essentially living in a huge, beautiful apartment, in a chic neighborhood, on a pay-as-you-can basis. Shawn was sure that the universe saved up little things like this for Eric on occasion because even God had a sense of comic narrative.
But with Eric gone, three had become a crowd. The ideal living arrangement for a husband and wife did not include the husband’s best friend sleeping on the couch. But it was sort of the way it had worked out. Cory hadn’t been able to find a job, Shawn had. Topanga paid half of the rent, Shawn paid the other half and for a while that had been fine. But as months dragged on, Topanga had begun to be bothered by the Cory-and-Shawness of the arrangement.
Unlike Cory and Topanga, Cory-and-Shawn (and the way Topanga used this phrase you could hear the hyphens slide into place) easily functioned as one cohesive unit: Shawn paid Cory’s rent, Cory did Shawn’s chores. Cory actually did all of the chores, but while Cory-and-Shawn agreed on a certain level of cleanliness, Topanga would take it upon herself to wipe out the microwave whenever it wasn’t clean enough for her, or wash all of the blankets in the living room.
On the days that Shawn got home from work at six, Cory had dinner on the table. On the days that Shawn got home past mid-night, Cory had leftovers in the fridge. When Topanga got home at six, Cory had dinner on the table for all of them, but if she got home at three o’clock Cory might not even be there, if she didn’t get home until 8 Cory-and-Shawn had already eaten. If Topanga didn’t get home until 11:00 or later, Cory-and-Shawn may have even started on the leftovers.
Cory did his and Shawn’s laundry. He’d started out splitting all the apartment laundry into the recognized categories- colors, darks and whites- but after a couple of Topanga’s delicate blouses had gotten shredded at the Laundromat, laundry had been divided into two categories- Topanga’s and Cory-and-Shawn’s.
The difficulties of this over-hyphenated lifestyle weren’t really anyone’s fault, but they were getting oppressive to Topanga, the only one who was both working and in school, who worked inconsistent, but usually long hours. She was beginning to feel that trying to connect with her husband required battling her way across this moat of Cory-and-Shawness. And she was too tired to keep doing it every day.
“She thinks that you and I are closer than she and I,” Cory said, gulping down the last of his hot chocolate.
“That’s ridiculous,” Shawn scoffed, “We’ve all known each other our whole lives, you’ve known me for maybe a couple of months before you knew her, and we could barely talk. If she wants to catch up on things that you and I did before she came along she could push you down in the sand box a couple times. That would pretty much cover it.”
Cory cast a glance toward Shawn’s mug and Shawn was already handing it toward him as Cory began to ask is he was going to finish it. The moment hung in the air.
“She’s stressed out,” Cory said eventually, staring into his cocoa the way one stares into a crystal ball, expecting answers for the inexplicable, “Her internship isn’t what she expected, New York isn’t what she expected. I’m not what she expected.”
“Cor…”
“It’s frustrating to not be able to take care of her. I mean she takes care of me, you take care of me, and I play house and do stupid things that piss her off more.”
“Look Cor, let’s go home. You and Topanga can make up, I’ll grab some stuff and stay with Eric for a couple of days.”
“Shawnie, you know Topanga’s…. never asked me to choose…. between you and her,” Cory started, slowly.
“Well, yeah,” Shawn said carefully, “We’re best friends. She knows better than that.”
Cory continued to stare, unblinking, into his hot cocoa, “She did tonight Shawn. She’d said she can’t live on the outside of the Cory-and-Shawn clubhouse anymore, and that she’s sick of competing for her husband, and if you aren’t out of our place by Friday then I’m welcome to marry you, because she’s leaving.”
Both young men sat on the couch in silence. Cory finally looked up at Shawn, who was staring out of the window he’d just cleaned.
“She said a lot of things like “latent desires” and “emotional cheating” and “live-in mistress”,” Cory said eyes still downward, “She’s serious. I think she’d really leave.”
“Oh.” Shawn managed. All of those things had very… specific… connotations, “Cory, that makes it sound like she thinks we’re-“
“I told her that… I’d tell you,” Cory kept going, “I told her that I’d ask you to go.”
“Oh.”
Cory’s cell-phone went off.
“It’s her,” he said to Shawn before he picked up.
“Cory?” Shawn could hear Topanga’s voice on through the speaker. It was hoarse and throaty as though she had been crying and was determined not to cry again while she was on the phone.
“Hi honey,” Cory answered.
“Are you coming home tonight?” Topanga asked him.
Cory sighed, glanced at Shawn and answered, “Yeah. I am. I was just, um, figuring things out.”
“Okay. Were you going to come home soon? I mean, if you need time, then you know, take it, but I’m… worried about you wandering around the city alone at night.”
“No I’m okay. I’m inside.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m-“ Cory said and then stopped. Shawn looked at him.
“Cory, where are you?”
“I’m getting a cup of cocoa.”
“Are you with Shawn?” Topanga’s tone changed in that one sentence from upset and conciliatory to angry and hollow.
“Um,” Cory answered, “Yes? We’re at his coffee shop, he’s just closing up. I’m on my way home now.”
“Jesus, Cory,” Topanga exhaled, and Shawn could hear the tears in her voice now, “What the hell do I have to- I can’t do this! No matter… what I say to you, what I ask you for. I just- goddamnit Cory!”
“No, Topanga, I was telling him, I was… Topanga? Topanga!” Cory slammed his phone shut and stared at it in bewilderment, “She hung up.”
It was about a 15 minute walk from the apartment to the coffee shop. Cory and Shawn made it back in less than 10. Topanga was gone when they burst in. Cory ran into the bedroom and rifled through his and Topanga’s makeshift closet, through Topanga’s drawers, through the bathroom.
“Her suitcase is gone, her shower stuff,” Cory panted, “I think some of her clothes.”
Cory pulled his phone out of his pocket and Shawn went to the far corner of the kitchen/living room and perched on the counter, as far away from Cory as he could get as Cory got Topanga’s answering machine, hung up and called her again. And again. And, collapsing into the arm chair, one last time. There was still no answer and Shawn tried not to listen, or move, or breath as Cory left Topanga a message in tones of pure desperation, punctuated in anxiety with the slightest note of heartbreak.
“Topanga, it’s Cory, okay, it’s Cory. I’m at home, I came back, I… I need to talk to you. I really need to talk to you. Please call me, please tell me where you are, please, just, call me okay? Let me know. I… I love you. Bye.” Cory hung up and let the phone fall to the floor as he dropped his face into his hands. Shawn pulled his legs into his chest and set his chin on his knees. He waited for Cory to say something, or to cry, or to call again, but Cory just sat with his face in his hands, silent, still.
Shawn sat on the kitchen counter taking up as little space as possible and waited for Cory to move. 5 muscle atrophying minutes went by before Shawn slid down to the floor. Cory looked up at him with terrorized eyes.
“I should go,” Shawn said miserably.
“No,” Cory said wiping his hands down his face as he stood up, “Wait, don’t leave. Come on Shawn.”
“Cory, this is my fault, I’ll go to Eric’s. I shouldn’t be here if she comes back,” Shawn said heading toward the door. Cory rushed to stop him.
“No, please Shawn,” Cory expelled a breath that sounded painful and pressed a hand to his face, “She’s not coming back tonight, okay?”
Shawn started reaching for the door handle and Cory swung his own arm out and grabbed Shawn’s hand on the door handle, “Please, Shawnie, she’s not coming back tonight. She’s not… and I don’t… “ Cory started to cry, “You can’t leave me here alone!”
Shawn shivered as Cory collapsed into his chest, one hand still squeezing Shawn’s against the door handle. Cory threw his other arm around Shawn’s neck and Shawn wrapped both his arms tightly around Cory’s back. Then, instinctually, the way one finds themselves planting a small peck on a sleeping child’s forehead without realizing it until they already have, Shawn brushed his lips against Cory’s temple and tightened his grip. Crushed between the door and Cory’s body, Shawn began to understand why Topanga had left.