If you just want to know the epilogue-y part of the fic, go ahead and skip down to under the bar xox
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This idea literally came to me in a dream, or maybe in that half-dreaming between sleeping and waking. All I remember is I woke up with this third-party outsider image of an older Chris and Darren, together and breathing but not really living, loving but not really wholly having, and I knew it wasn't going to leave me alone until I wrote it.
The concept of writing from an original character point of view isn't a new one, of course, and I'm sorry that I drew it out for over 6000 words when most people do it for a couple hundred. But I think the runaway (who still doesn't have a name, even in my own head) is in a way a representation of everything Darren and Chris needed-- something or someone to stand up and say that they don't have to keep doing this when they had been smoothing everything over and shoving hurts under the rug for years.
I, of course, don't have any kind of inside information on their relationship, but I can imagine the dozens of different pressures on them both, with their individual careers, the shows and people and industries they represent, the advisers telling them what they should do, and all of this battling with what their heart really desires. The struggle to balance what you need personally with what you need professionally, multiplied by the innate desire to please everyone that I know drives Darren to overextending himself like he does now.
DUAtS is a kind of cautionary tale in my mind, one of the many headcanons I have on how the next few years are going to go. There's so many factors in glee ending, so many different paths Darren and Chris can take because of all the many different talents they're blessed with (assholes). They've both gotten bids for Broadway-- would they move to New York together? Will Chris want to stay in L.A. writing screenplays and being involved in their productions or will he move somewhere remote and stick with novels? Will they both get stuck in the Hollywood vacuum and be forced to stay in L.A.? Or, the worst, they'll get pulled apart when their lives go in opposite directions.
The driving force behind all my thoughts on the future of crisscolfer is that, romantic relationship or no, Darren and Chris will never really be able to stay apart for long. Just watching the way that they follow each other now, the way even their friendship is something we rarely get a glimpse of-- their bond is probably the most special I will ever get to see, one I'll probably never experience for myself.
Protecting that is important to them, obviously, and not only because of how private they both are about their personal lives, but because of the uncertainties of career and opportunity if it was brought to light. Without a doubt the best option for them now is to lay low-- but how far does laying low go? Is there ever a right time to give the world a piece of you that they don't really deserve?
Of course, there's no right answer, no real formula to this when Darren and Chris are right now so young and still not nearly as established in Hollywood and their careers like other actors that have come out in recent years (Matt Bomer, NPH and David, Jim Parsons, Ellen, Jodie Foster), and really there's no precedent for something like this. Chris is one of the only actors his age and his caliber that is out and proud about his sexuality and he was literally revolutionary. It's this horribly double-standard ridden world they have to live and work and tread lightly in, and there's not much that's black and white there.
tl;dr, basically this was a bit of exploration on the horrors of Hollywood, and what can happen if a lie goes on for too long and two people stay knotted together but fray in all directions. I kind of empathize with Darren on his people-pleasing, and I can see how he would be a little torn between the fans he loves and the projects he loves and also the man he loves. Private is always what Chris and Darren have wanted, but the point that the runaway brought up is really the central point of the fic: when the least painful thing and the easiest thing are no longer the same thing, well, that's when it's time to make a change.
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Epilogue (of sorts):
She goes through her duffel bag when night starts to fall on the second day (she has no place to sleep again, but she won't go back to Chris and Darren's) to find her pocket knife. She does find it, tucked inside an envelope next to $500 and a train ticket voucher, a note scrawled on the outside: it's okay to want to go home, signed with a D, a C, and two smiley faces.
The next day, she does go home, and her mom cries when she hugs her so tight she can't breathe and her brother cries over the phone when she answers the land line later that night, and she knows now that things aren't ever going to be perfect, but she has her memories to hold on to and they'll get her through to the other side, one way or the other.
It's out-of-body-experience weird, seeing Darren's face in magazines, though he pops up less and less now. She wonders about them all the time, though, those two smiley faces beaming down from where the edge of the envelope is tucked between the frame and glass of her mirror.
And it's almost a year to the day of her stint to L.A. when she goes to reach for US Weekly and the cover of OUT stops her short. There's an article, a Q&A, and four pages of glossy pictures both from years ago and images from a beautiful new photo shoot, but the cover tells her all she needs to know. She leaves the gossip rag and takes the magazine in hand to the checkout counter-- later, the happiest picture of Darren and Chris she's ever seen ("They Never Said Never: Our Dream Couple is Real! Darren Criss and Chris Colfer are Going Public") joins the envelope on her mirror.
