A kiss is just a kiss

When Guerrero returned, Winston saw an instant improvement in Chance’s mood. He wished that he knew how Guerrero had managed to shake Chance out of his depression, but he was too proud to ask. At first he simply accepted the change in Chance as a blessing and tried to leave it at that, but after a few days he started to notice things were a bit, well, odd.

It began with things so subtle that at first Winston was half convinced he was imagining it. The first thing he noticed was the tea. Guerrero had always preferred tea to coffee, and he always prepared his own drinks. Winston was inclined to believe that it was a habit born of paranoia, as there didn’t seem to be any reason why anyone couldn’t just pour boiling water on a tea bag and have it taste just the same. Whatever the reason, Guerrero always insisted on making his own tea, but then, for no reason Winston could discern, Chance began to bring him cups of tea whenever Guerrero was engrossed in using his laptop. He never heard Guerrero ask for the tea or thank Chance for making it. Chance made the tea and Guerrero drank it, without a single word being spoken.

After he picked up on the tea thing, Winston began to see other small changes in Chance and Guerrero’s behaviour. Guerrero was definitely in the office a lot more than usual, and when he was working on his laptop, he always took care to set it up in a spot that gave him a clear view of Chance. When Chance decided to cook a curry, Guerrero decided to work at the kitchen table. When Chance was doing his Tai Chi exercises, Guerrero chose a place to work downstairs that gave him a clear view of the mezzanine floor above. Guerrero wasn’t always in the same room as Chance, but there was always a clear line of sight between the two men. Winston had cracked a joke to Chance about Guerrero being his baby-sitter and Chance had just laughed it off. For a few days after that Guerrero seemed content to work in the conference room, but by the end of the week he’d gone back to choosing a location to work based on Chance’s whereabouts.

Winston had decided that perhaps Chance had always made Guerrero the occasional cup of tea, and that maybe Guerrero was just keeping a close eye on Chance to make sure he wasn’t backsliding into the depression he experienced after Ilsa left. He had to admit that working around someone like Guerrero had made him a much more suspicious person, so maybe he had been trying to make something out of nothing.

Things became a little more strange when Ames got it in to her head that what Chance really needed to get over Ilsa was a blind date with one of her friends. Chance was clearly not interested in hooking up with the woman, despite Ames’ relentless badgering, but eventually he caved in and agreed to meet her friend for a drink. Having had the misfortune of meeting some of Ames’ friends, Winston couldn’t exactly blame Chance for his lack of enthusiasm, but what was interesting was Guerrero’s reaction to the news of the blind date. He obviously wasn’t happy with the idea, but he didn’t try and try and talk Chance out of it. Ames raved on and on about what a great time Chance was going to have and how lucky it was that she had managed to get them tickets to the opening of some trendy new bar, and the more she went on about it, the more terse and sarcastic Guerrero became. On the night of the big date itself Guerrero seemed in a much better mood as Chance left for the bar. At first Winston thought nothing of Guerrero making a phone call as soon as Chance left, but when Chance returned half an hour later laughing about there being a bomb scare in the club on opening night, Winston definitely saw Chance give Guerrero a strange look. Ames was devastated that the date had been ruined and kept pestering Chance to reschedule, but somehow it never happened, and eventually Ames had to resign herself to the fact that it never would.

These incidents, and there were plenty more like them, made Winston slightly uneasy, and he wasn’t sure why. Chance and Guerrero didn’t seem to be up to anything dangerous or destructive, he just had a vague feeling that they were in cahoots over something that Winston was struggling to identify, and that made him nervous. The more he observed their behaviour, the more Winston found it unsettling.

One day, totally out of the blue, Chance announced that Guerrero would be moving in to the spare room in his loft. His explanation for the move seemed a little suspicious to Winston. Chance said that Guerrero had been tracked to his own apartment a few too many times and he needed to lie low for a while. Winston had always been under the impression that Guerrero had more than one place in the city for this very reason, but Chance had insisted that the simplest and safest solution to Guerrero’s problem would be for him to temporarily move into the loft.

Eventually Winston saw the pattern in Chance and Guerrero’s strange new behaviour. Everything indicated that the two men were closer than ever and were finding excuses to spend more and more time in each other’s company. He wondered if Guerrero’s sabotage of Chance’s date had been the result of jealousy, and if Chance had not only been grateful for his interference, but had actually been relieved. There had to be a logical explanation for Guerrero being so possessive and Chance not only tolerating it but actually enjoying it, but Winston kept coming back to the same impossible conclusion. The idea that Chance and Guerrero were somehow… romantically involved was just to ludicrous to contemplate, and yet that was the conclusion that the evidence kept leading Winston back to. So he did the only thing he could; he turned a blind eye to their strange new dynamic and hoped he was wrong so he never had to write up that particular turn of events in one of his regular reports to Ilsa.

Winston’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy was working just fine until one fateful night that he realised that he had left his reading glasses at the office and he wasn’t going to be able to enjoy reading his Sunday morning paper without them. It was past eleven o’clock when he returned to the office, and after he retrieved his reading glasses from his desk, he spotted that someone had left the kitchen light on. With a deep sigh and a few choice words about whoever had forgotten to turn the lights out behind them, Winston walked into the kitchen to correct the oversight. He was about to turn the light out when he realised that someone was in the process of rummaging through the refrigerator. His view was blocked by the refrigerator door, but judging from what little he could see, he guessed that it was Chance. Winston was about to make his presence known when Chance started shouting without looking up.

“I’m telling you, Guerrero, there is no beer left in here! Ames must have swiped it again!”

“It’s in there, babe, you’re just not looking properly!”

Winston barely had time to register that Guerrero had just called Chance ‘babe’ before the man himself walked into the kitchen wearing nothing but a faded pair of jeans that were hanging dangerously low on his hips without a belt to keep them up. Guerrero barely even glanced at Winston as he walked past him and joined Chance in looking through the refrigerator. Winston’s mind was still reeling over the ‘babe’ remark and the sight of a half naked Guerrero, when he heard a triumphant grunt from behind the refrigerator door.

“See? I told you so! Did you even try and look for it?” Guerrero asked.

“Uh, I guess not…” Chance replied.

Winston’s brain was frantically trying to come up with a logical reason that could explain a half-naked Guerrero wandering around the building, but the casual way he had called Chance ‘babe’ was proving to be a serious stumbling block. When the refrigerator door swung shut revealing not only a half-naked Guerrero but a completely naked Chance, Winston finally had to face the fact that his hunch had been right.

Chance was blushing furiously as he took the six-pack of beer from Guerrero and walked with all the dignity he could muster out of the kitchen, carefully avoid eye-contact with Winston.

Although he’d had his suspicions about the two of them, Winston was totally unprepared to see those suspicions so blatantly confirmed. He stared open-mouthed at the doorway for a moment before the sound of Guerrero laughing made him turn round. Guerrero was still standing by the refrigerator and he had a smug little smile that Winston found almost as alarming as Chance’s nudity.

“Seriously, dude. Did no one ever tell you that it’s rude to stare?”

Guerrero chuckled and shook his head as he left the kitchen, presumably to follow Chance upstairs, leaving Winston alone in the kitchen wondering how the hell he was going to report this back to Ilsa.

Winston flicked off the kitchen light and headed back to the elevator.

“Ah, the hell with it,” he muttered. “What Ilsa doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”