The Scent of You

Part 1 - Lost Connections

Prologue:

Savage Garden, as a band, had to take a break and step out of the light for a while. Well, at least that’s what I kept telling myself to spare myself the guilt trip, the truth. If I let myself believe the truth, that Savage Garden didn’t really need to take a break, that it was only me who wanted to go my separate way, then I’d feel an enormous amount of guilt at being selfish and disappointing our fans. If I let myself believe that I wanted to leave for a while because Darren was driving me insane, then I’d be brooding around the house all day in my own hell, wishing that I could tell him I loved him. Because he was driving me insane, literally, probably still is. Back when we were working on our albums in the studio, or went touring, we’d be in eachother’s company 24hours, seven days a week. I’ve always had a thing for Darren, and soon it just got to the point where I couldn’t even make eye contact with the man when we were alone, just talking, without feeling shame.

He remained oblivious to my growing unease in his presence, and I remained hidden, locked with my deepest secret, unable to turn away from him because there was no way to escape him. For a while there, I would wake up in the morning with Darren’s crystalline blue eyes burned into my eyelids and I was afraid to close my eyes, because there he’d be, his face, his eyes. I’ve lost sleep over him, countless times, and near the end of the last leg of our Affirmation tour, I’d been avoiding him as much as possible.

Darren makes my life a living hell. No actually, that’s a lie. I make my life a living hell by thinking about how he would feel under the caress of my lips, fingertips running the length of his well built body. When he had that sexy black long hair, I was granted rare times where I brushed up on him and could feel the soft satiny strands shift like liquid through my fingers. Once, he let me braid his hair into thin ropes. God, I was practically swaying at the close contact and was hypnotized by the back of his neck as I lifted and parted his hair that by the time I had finished, his hair was practically bunched up together in one thick rope. He had made a fuss, saying how he’d never get the tangles out, and I’d merely laughed. Later, he asked me to help him untangle the mess I made, and I needn’t tell you how ecstatic I was about that.

So, where was I? Oh yes, the band taking a brake. Well, everything just went downhill from there.

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Half past midnight, the shrill cry of the phone woke Daniel Jones from his peaceful sleep. A blond head poked out from under the duvet as he rolled over to the bedside table. He stared at the ringing mechanism and willed it to shut up, but after four rings and remembering that he hadn’t turned the answering machine on, he picked it up and huffed,

"What?"

"D-Daniel?" came a small voice from the other end.

"Yes?" Daniel asked, a trite annoyed that someone had bothered calling in the middle of the night.

"I-It’s Darren."

Daniel shot out of bed and stood up, shifting from one foot to the other at his excitement.

"Darren! Omigod, hi! I haven’t heard from you in a while." He said ecstatically. It had been a year since he’d heard from Darren or any of the band for that matter, after they decided to head their separate ways. During that time, Daniel had been working on side projects, since no one formally announced that Savage Garden’s little brake meant they were breaking off forever, but Daniel wasn’t fooled. Darren did eventually release his solo album and it was met with some good feedback, but nothing that came close to how good Savage Garden was received in the past.

"Yeah…how are you Jonesy?"