Author's Notes:

So originally I had intended not to update this story here on this site ever again, but...well...eh. I figured, what the hell. Not that there's a whole lot to update, mind, I haven't worked on this in forever.

DAN VS. THE AFFAIR

by Mythril Moth

PART THREE

Dan took a bite of his steak and egg ranchero breakfast taco. "So, are you making any progress with Chris?"

Elise sighed. "I just don't get it," she said, scrubbing her hands through her hair. "He won't even talk about it. He gets so...so childish about it!"

"I typically find Chris to be childish about many things," Dan said, taking a long sip of his cola.

Elise frowned. "Why do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Badmouth Chris like that. He's the only friend you've ever had."

Dan shrugged. "When you've known someone as long as Chris and I have known each other..."

"That, or you're just a horrible little troll of a man," Elise said with a smirk.

Dan looked away.

Elise frowned. "I'm sorry," she said. She glanced at her phone. "Damn...I'd better get going." She stood up, then stopped. "I'd better grab a to-go back of breakfast tacos for Chris. Like...a dozen." She leaned down and kissed Dan lightly, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I'll call you later."

"Yeah," Dan said. "See you." He watched Elise walk up to the counter and place an order. He saw the cashier blink in confusion, then shrug and punch it in. His eyes roamed over Elise's long maroon hair, her shapely hips, her perfect butt...

He sighed, poured more hot sauce on his breakfast taco, and finished his breakfast. Fifteen minutes later, he was in a taxi on his way home.

"Heeey you," Elise cooed. "Wakey-wakey."

Chris stirred, brain in a haze. The smell of food brought him around quickly, and he sat up. "Hmm...? Elise?"

Elise stood over the bed, a take-out bag in one hand. She frowned at him. "Chris, honey...did you sleep in your clothes? And...you don't look so good..."

Chris frowned, looking down at himself. "Huh. I don't...really remember much of last night," he said.

Elise blinked. "You didn't...get drunk, did you?"

"Huh? No! You know I don't drink," Chris said. "I just..." He frowned. "I went for a walk, and..." His brow furrowed. "I went for a walk..." He shook his head. "I came home. I guess I must've been too tired to change into my pajamas."

Elise eyed him skeptically. "Well...okay," she said doubtfully. She handed him the bag. "Here. Breakfast tacos."

"Oooh...! Thanks, beautiful!" Chris opened the bag and pulled out a taco, unwrapping it and shoving half of it into his mouth. "Wfff wnf?"

"I already ate," Elise said. She stretched, then picked up the TV remote and turned on their bedroom television, changing over to the news channel. "After you finish breakfast, go ahead and get yourself cleaned up and changed," she said. She looked him over, pausing as she studied his thick, heavy knuckles. "Is that...blood?"

Chris paused in stuffing his face. He looked down at his hands. He blinked. "Huh. How'd that happen?"

Elise frowned. "Chris, what happened last night?"

"I told you, I don't remember," Chris said. He looked up at her from his taco. "What about you? What did you do last night?"

Elise grimaced.

"Uh-huh," Chris muttered.

Elise sighed and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Chris, honey...I know this week has been a little...strained..."

"Yeah? Maybe if you tried to be a little more honest with me and, y'know, stopped pressuring me about wanting to start a family when I'm not ready..."

Elise looked down. "Okay. We'll table the thing about a baby for now." She wrapped her arms around Chris' shoulders and laid her head against his. "Instead, why don't we talk about just...you know...making love? Not even trying for a baby. Just...being together. Like married couples do."

"Elise..." Chris said tiredly.

"Chris, why don't you ever wanna...you know...?"

"Can we talk about this later?" Chris asked.

"Actually, I think I'd rather talk about it now," Elise replied firmly.

"Elise, sex is for making babies. I don't want to make a baby right now. It's as simple as that."

Elise groaned. "Chris...couples make love just to enjoy being together..."

"They forgot the hot sauce," Chris said. He got off the bed and headed downstairs with the bag of tacos.

As soon as the door slammed shut behind him, Elise let out a frustrated scream.

Dan frowned at the cruddy, brackish bucket of mop water. He then glared at the thick layer of filth and mold still crusting the edges of the room, and the now-almost-unusable mop in his hands. "Oh, COME ON!" he yelled. "This is the fifth time I've gone over this room! Today!"

All around the room, garbage had been bagged up. An open garbage bag lay in front of the couch. Miscellaneous crap had been boxed up in cardboard boxes. Two layers of the filth and crud that perpetually coated the apartment had been scrubbed away, but the apartment was far from clean.

A knock sounded at the door. A Chris knock. Dan sighed and walked to the door, unlocking it and throwing it open. "Hey Chris," he said.

Chris slouched in, shoulders sagging. "Hey Dan," he replied. He looked around, frowning. "Wait...are you...are you cleaning?"

"Trying to," Dan grumbled. "It's like fighting a war..." He paused. "Hey, uhh...you okay? You look...kinda down."

Chris sagged onto the sofa. "It's Elise," he said. "She's...we're..." He ran his fingers through his hair. "I dunno. It's just been a rough week."

Dan winced. "Uhh..."

"It's just, lately she's all 'Chris, let's make love!' and 'Chris, I wanna have a baby!' and it's...it's like it's all she can think about!" Chris threw his hands up in the air. "What's gotten into her?"

Dan frowned. "Well...I'm no expert on women...but it sounds to me like she wants to make love and have a baby."

Chris raised an eyebrow. "What, you're not gonna go off on a rant about wanting to kill my wife, or drive her out into the desert and leave her, or call her a whore or anything like that?"

"I'm trying to be nice for a change," Dan said.

Chris frowned. "That's...not like you," he said slowly. He looked around the room, at the bags of garbage, the cardboard boxes full of stuff, the high shine on the layers of filth, and the mop that was slowly dissolving in Dan's hands. "None of this is like you. You're...not Dan, are you?" he asked. "You're that other Dan. The impostor."

"Do you want advice, or do you want me to hit you and pour this filthy bucket of water down your throat, Monkey Face?" Dan demanded.

Chris sighed. "Okay okay, you're the real Dan," he said. "But...why are you being..." He gestured with his hands. "Why are you being..." He frowned. "A good friend? Instead of the usual psychotic..." He trailed off.

Dan dropped the remaining fragment of the mop, which finished disintegrating before it hit the floor, and sat down next to Chris. "Am I not allowed to better myself? To change my wicked ways?"

Chris gave him a level, disbelieving stare.

"What? I'm entitled to a good week every now and then. Besides, living in this filth pit can't possibly be good for me!"

Chris tilted his head. "Well...yeah, if I lived in a mess like this, I'd probably be a miserable little jerk too."

"Thanks," Dan said, slapping Chris upside the head.

Chris looked around and sighed. "I guess I might as well help you clean," he said. He got up and looked around. "Umm...where should I start?"

"Pour another can of gasoline on that mold and let it sit for a minute, then help me haul some of this garbage out of here."

"GASOLINE?" Chris yelled. "Are you CRAZY?"

"No, I'm trying to get rid of five inches of mold," Dan said. "And I can't stand the stench of bleach, so that leaves gasoline. We're not going to burn it," he added.

Chris sighed. "Fine," he said, grabbing a five gallon can of gas and pouring it on the deep crust of black mold that lined the walls.

As Dan threw the latest bucket of nasty mop water out the window, he asked, "So, Elise is bugging you to start a family, huh?"

"Yeah, and she won't leave me alone about it," Chris said. "Even when I finally got her to stop with the having a baby stuff, she's still after me about wanting to...you know..."

Dan tossed the empty bucket into the bathroom, then grabbed a towel and wiped his hands. "And what's so wrong with that?" he asked.

Chris frowned. "I just...don't really want to."

Dan stared at him. "Are you kidding me?"

"What?" Chris asked petulantly.

Dan ran his hands through his hair. "Chris...a married man not wanting to make love to his wife...that's not normal."

"Hey, it's plenty normal! Haven't you ever watched old sitcoms?"

"OLD sitcoms, yes! From back when they had to pretend sex didn't exist and babies were delivered by STORKS!" Dan started to pace and rant. "REAL married couples do it whether they want a baby or not! Hell, real not married couples do it! It's as natural as breathing or setting an orphanage on fire!"

Chris paused, holding the empty gas can upside down. "Wait. You're...you're taking Elise's side on this? Seriously?"

Dan froze with his hands in the air. "Well..." He fumbled for a second. "Uhh..." He coughed. "I mean...you know I think Elise is the biggest mistake you ever made, but...uhh..." He made vague gestures with his hands, turning to face Chris without quite looking at him. "I'm just saying that despite her very many flaws and what an obnoxious...woman she is..." He shrugged and started pacing again. "She's...well...she's your wife, and...and as far as ball-busting harpies go, she's...well...probably a much more attractive woman than is really likely to have married you, and...maybe she just really, really wants, y'know...more out of you besides your immortal soul? Because she's a succubus and stuff."

Chris stared at Dan, blinking in confusion and bewilderment. "Okay...Dan? You're scaring me."

Dan started to sweat. "Umm...well..." He fished around for something, anything to say to change the subject. "Hey! I could use a snack break. Soft pretzels sound good to you?"

Chris blinked. "Yeah, actually. You've got soft pretzels?"

"Do I!" Dan walked over to the fridge, opened the freezer, and took out a box. "It'll just take a minute to microwave these." He spread paper towels on a more or less clean plate and placed several medium-sized soft pretzels on it, then shoved it in the microwave.

Chris took the box and looked at it. "Hey, Dan, these are the cheese-filled kind!"

"Yeah, they are! They're so much better than the plain ones," Dan said without thinking.

"Dan...you're lactose-intolerant."

"Oh. Yeah." Dan paused, tugging at his shirt collar. "Turns out they make medicine for that. I've...actually discovered a fondness for cheese and other dairy products lately."

"You're...eating cheese. And dairy. And taking medicine so you can eat cheese." Chris' brow furrowed. "You know...this...this is a lot to take in all at once. You're cleaning your apartment, you're taking Elise's side on the whole sex thing, you're being nice, you're eating cheese...you haven't dragged me off on some crazy revenge quest in forever..." Chris shook his head. "I'm sorry, I just...I'm not even sure I know who you are anymore." He headed for the door. "I'm...gonna go now."

"But...but cheese-filled pretzels!"

"I'm not hungry," Chris said as he walked out into the glare of the sun, closing the door behind him.

The microwave dinged. Dan pulled the plate out and stuffed a pretzel in his mouth. "Huh. Chris turning down food..." He picked up his phone and hit the speed-dial for Elise. "Hey," he said. "Chris was just here. He didn't look so good. He's not really acting like himself. Oh, and he was complaining about you trying to get him in the sack."

"Oh God, seriously?" Elise asked quietly as she prowled through the ductwork of a chemical factory. "You didn't...you didn't say anything to him that..."

"I...may not have put up the best front of still hating you," Dan admitted, sucking the cheese filling out of a pretzel. "It's funny...I'm usually an awesome liar, but Chris...just kinda caught me off my game today. I tried to distract him with soft pretzels, but that opened up the whole 'Dan eats cheese now, what the fuck?' thing, and he walked in on me cleaning my apartment, and...well...he left here really confused."

"Yikes." Elise reached into her hip pouch and pulled out a brown sphere the size of a golf ball, which she dropped into a boiling vat of chemicals below her. She pulled out a magnetic line and used it to make a quick horizontal escape as the fumes from the chemicals changed color. She was up and out of the ventilation system, crouched on the roof, a whole three seconds before the chemicals exploded, shaking the entire factory. "He didn't look so good this morning, either," she said. "He slept in his clothes last night, his hands were all bloody...he can't remember what happened last night or where he went. I'm getting a little worried about him." She frowned. "Wait...you're cleaning your apartment?"

"Yeah...I'm getting a little sick of living in a filth pit," Dan said. "Must be all those awesome hotel rooms we've been in and out of this week. By the way, you don't happen to know anything better than gasoline for getting rid of black mold, do you?"

Elise ran to the edge of the roof and leapt to the roof of the warehouse next door even as people streamed out of the burning chemical factory. "Gasoline? Why aren't you using bleach?"

"Can't stand the smell," Dan said. He looked around at the bags of garbage and sighed. "How did that fake Dan ever manage to clean this place up?"

"It's a mystery," Elise said as she ziplined down into an alleyway and rolled behind a dumpster. "I can probably whip up something to get rid of your mold problem when I get home. I'll let you know."

"Great," Dan said. "Well, I've got about five hundred pounds of garbage to haul out, so I'd better get on that. Love you, Elise." With that, he disconnected, then grabbed the nearest garbage bag, walked out onto the balcony, and dropped it over the side. Dusting his hands off, he went back in for a couple more bags. "This isn't so bad..."

Elise stared at her phone in shock. Beneath her scarf, her cheeks turned pink. Shaking her head, she slid aside the secret panel behind the dumpster that led to a network of safe tunnels. Five minutes later, she was in a small, well-lit office in a disused building her agency owned. She retrieved a bag from under a desk with a thin layer of dust on it; five minutes later, she walked out the front door of the empty office building, dressed in regular street clothes, and strolled home, lost in thought.

*Did Dan really just say...?*

Dan Vs. is the intellectual property of Dan Mandel, Chris Pearson, and Film Roman. This intellectual property is used without permission with no intent to profit from said use. The unique content contained on this page is the property of Mythril Moth, and redistribution of this content without express permission is strongly discouraged.