Title: Not Enough
Disclaimer: I do not know any member of Savage Garden, nor am I related or have permission to write such FICTION. You are reading at your own free will!
Pairing: Darren/Daniel
Rating: PG–13
Genre: AU / Angst
Summary: Darren dwells on past love.
Chapters: Stand–alone
Author's Note: Inspired by the song "Not Enough" - Flaw
Challenge: Gardening






                The alarm went off around six in the morning, but he was already wide awake and hunched over himself on the sofa. That same posture had tattooed his image, and Darren seemed to be like that everyday. Pondering. He was in a state of deliberation. Thoughts and worries with no explanations. . .walking down a road that didn’t have directions. Surroundings seemed blurred. Distorted reality was all that smeared his existence. But how was he going to uplift the feeling of hollowness? How was he going to revert and redeem his smile, that now advertised falsely along his fair skin. It just got too much to handle. That smile carried too much baggage along with tainted shadows that did nothing but cause reminders of the pulsing pain in his chest. . .so today would be numb. Today would be hours of absorbed agony that he felt he created. Darren couldn’t wear that smile anymore. . .couldn’t lie to himself. Yet, life didn’t seem as splendid. It was time to peel back the pallid walls of fiction and bask in reality.





                Tossing the glass bowl of porcelain eggs at the wall was provoked by impulsive rage. Didn’t matter, he never really liked that center piece anyway. To be frank, he never really cared for the shelter scenery that his mother had created to subside him. . .and the anger needed an outlet.

        Not like he cared about the fist–shaped holes in the wall. He was never home to observe such detail. But why was he feeling this? Did he create the madness? Surely he wasn’t the one who ended it. Why should he be stained with guilt that wasn’t fixated on known motive? Those hurtful words didn’t spill from his lips. They didn’t barricade the affection and rise a shield. No, it wasn’t him. Couldn’t have been. And as his fist came down heavily upon the grey counter top in enthralled anger, the tears only proved fact that he came to realize, this mess didn’t belong to him, alone.





                Manhattan was Hell. Feet hitting the streets in a mad frenzy; he wanted to melt into the torn seating once he stepped inside the subway. He listened to the bickering of strangers, neglecting to observe the crying girl in the back. Though, he felt her pain. Wanted to state he did, at least. But, part of him bore happiness as he realized he wasn’t alone in torment.

        Stopping somewhere on the 51st street, he prolonged his pose of standing still atop the rugged sidewalk. From a far off distance, not sure you’d even recognize him standing there, as the people surrounding him walked on by. Did they even recognize? Suddenly, loneliness felt sane—on a Tuesday, Bishop Larkin wouldn’t be that crowded.




                Christ gestured a suicidal pose that aligned a sensual calm somewhere in his chest. Though, he had given up faith some time before. Yet, the feel of the walls that consoled him sparked an interest to find a belief in something. Anything. Didn’t know why, but his heart was controlling his hands, like limbs on strings, and his fingers laced in a sweaty solace of awareness. Darren didn’t fight the murmurs that begot the tears in his eyes with needed confession of heartbreak.




                Perplexed hours of confided words, he found himself across the street from a modern building. A house. Though were was strength? Surely his rebirth of belief would summon the cast of courage. . .or maybe he needed to push aside fear. There went that first step.

        Bed of weeds. Dry grass coating the deadness underneath. Lilacs were fading; gardening the captivated promise of the unpromising. And that was his heart. Those tracing jasmines that broke off at the top fence of the lattice. . .those were the objective image of his emotional values. A tattered anatomy of detached heart vessels. This lamented display made obvious. . .and he saw the true reflection of the past. . .he just better open that damn door.




                Patient moments and those eyes greeted with dim surprise. For a second, Darren forgot how long it had been since he saw the green spirals up close. Cotton bred like the plague in his mouth and he forgot all effort to speak.

        “Been awhile. . .” was the soft words of content that Daniel spoke.

But past needed to be justified. Emotions needed to be expressed and those weeds didn’t symbolize laziness. “I need explanations.”

Darren watched as the veins in Daniel’s neck tightened—the blond had to catch his breath at the shock of the other’s voice. “To what?” he asked, playing the role of the dim–witted host as he hesitated to welcome Darren into his house.

But Darren declined. “To how this ended. You and I.” Darren spoke with weary hand gestures toward the two broken hearts of disguise. “I’m carrying around guilt of something I didn’t create, and I’m sick of blaming others for the way I feel.” Then he glanced toward the garden on the right. . .or, lack of garden, he thought. “Or, maybe”—he turned back toward Daniel—“I’m not alone.”





                It felt like he was draining his heart into artistic hands that have spilled magic once before. Darren couldn’t help it. A broken epiphany of lost reason. . .what was he to do? There had to be away to befall Daniel’s denial and reclaim his actions. His words.

Daniel just leaned against the oak door, that now closed, resigning him to the mild noise of New York he heard over the trees. Thus, there was awkward silence as Darren attempted to inhale and exhale his distress that now painted tears within eyes of an isolated sky.

        “You have no remorse?” he pled in staggered words.

Daniel stared with a furrowed brow. “Remorse for what, exactly? What are you accusing me of?”

Oh blissful belief that now cascaded a power of unleashing rage. “Rotting me!” And the tears dried with the heat the rose in his face. “Rotted like weeds. Left in reminders of fucking heartbreak! That’s what you did.”

How does one respond to such hostility. With opened arms no less. Though, when his lean arms approached to embrace, they were only pushed away as Darren stepped back. As Darren increased the space between, he realized, he rather liked the feel of rage oppose to sorrow.
Sometimes, emotions can define gravity and drop like an eagle of utter mass.



        “What would you like me to do, Darren?” questioned Daniel calmly. His concern was obvious and sincere, but not devoted.

Devoted like the distorted duration that swept in a haze amongst Darren. Everything seemed to slow down and he felt the fragments of decayed love start to rise. . .but there was no center in him that made him function with paced interest. “Give me back my heart.”

Daniel stepped forward with astonished confusion. “What?”

        “My heart,” Darren balanced himself with stern demand. “You took it away from me, leaving the remains of an iron memory. Throbbing pain. And I want it back.”

The guilt was shifted. Daniel now held the ashamed glare of invited tears. Could it be possible? Had this man, alone, held the power of damning another’s feel of consumed affection? There was nothing more to say. . .what could he? What was left but apologies? “Darren. . .I—I’m sorry. Whatever I did, really. I thought this was mutual.”




Relinquishing the shallow breaths of coming cries, Darren found he was stable. He felt the ending was close, and the tunnel light was brilliant. He could almost reach it. . .metallic sanity with hopes of renewed passion. . .he could almost reach it.

        “You had all of me. Everything. You had it. I held what we had gingerly and never berated the meaning of it, or questioned.” He stared into the face of his past with redeeming eyes. “You just couldn’t accept it. You couldn’t accept so much at once. . .and it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault that this ended. You weren’t capable of absorbing all defined emotions, and it was you who turned away.”

Yes. There, the guilt was transferred. A smile bred along Darren’s expression of once devastation, as he watched a frown quiver in Daniel’s. Tears tainted green eyes, and slowly, they went grey. Dimmed.

        “You needed your passion to spread,” Darren shrugged as he began to walk away. “I s’pose I just wasn’t enough. . .and now you can feel what I’ve felt for all these years.”

Without anything more, the barricade of Darren’s emotion was broken down, and his shadows slowly grew as he walked away. Their darkness faded toward Daniel, who stood with blank expression of guilty devastation.

- Amanda

Tags: m/m