Charlie’s Not Sorry #3
Brady leaned back against the divider between the cab and the couches and allowed his legs to go out from under him until he slid down, leaning against the back of the driver’s seat.
“I gotta get that phone,” he whispered. Eric joined him, sitting cross-legged with his back in the corner of the passenger’s seat and the table/hideabed sectional.
“We do.”
Brady finally looked at him. “What do you mean, we?”
Eric lifted one shoulder. “Before I answer that, Brady, ask yourself this. Who stopped the bank robbers but left them all alive. I mean, yeah, the one who spilled to you may be dead, but not from his wounds, you can put money on that.”
Brady’s eyes grew wide. “Speaking of money—”
“No,” Eric cut him off, deeply disappointed for a moment.
Brady looked away again. “I didn’t think so,” he whispered. “It’s just so much easier to explain.”
“’Cause we’re not cops?” Eric asked bitterly.
“Because I don’t know what you were doing there,” Brady retorted. “What were you doing there, Eric?”
“Same thing I was doing in Walmart!” Eric retorted.
“Ernie told me to buy olives, so they were in the cart, and I saw a thing I could do with them. Ernie told Ace to make the deposit at a different bank and to bring backup. So there we were, when your friends, Fuckers One to Four, waltzed in, and we each had a thing we could do.”
“Ace just walked up and stabbed people?”
Eric snorted. “Ace threw the knife. It was….” He let out a shuddery sigh.
“It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever fuckin’ seen,” he said, not caring if his orgiastic appreciation of violence put Brady off in this moment.
“Ace threw the knife. Jai… well, kicked people. I shot twice, not to kill. You saw the wounds. We ran out the back, and you weren’t in danger anymore. ”
Brady pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his cheek on them, studying Eric carefully. “So that whole thing was for me?”
There was a moment of softness there, of gratitude, and Eric almost let him have it.
He needs to know, he thought. He needs to know who we are.
He pushed up from the floor, feeling stiff and older than thirty-seven years. “If it hadn’t been,” he said frankly, “we might not have been so careful.”
He had to get out of there. He wasn’t sure whether he was angry or regretful or defiant or sad—he needed to think, and it was hard with Brady just regarding him thoughtfully, knees pulled to his chest like a child’s.
“I’m going outside to check on the hookups,” he said, wishing he had a better excuse—God, wishing he had a cigarette for sweet hell’s sake!
Brady nodded soberly, but he didn’t move, and Eric went outside to see how charged up his appliances were and to make sure the sewage hookup was functioning and the water could be shut off at a moment’s notice.
And when he was done, he just opened the door and sat down on the steps, much as he’d been a few days ago when Ernie had come by to say hello.
I need to get a porch swing, he thought, glancing at the house he wanted to be his. In this moment, looking out at the sunset, he wanted it so badly.
I really want to stay.
He felt the camper shift first, and then Brady stepped gingerly around him, until he was standing firmly on the ground, his thighs between Eric’s knees.
He bent down and kissed the top of Eric’s forehead, and in that moment, Eric felt a sort of blessing pass through him, a benediction he wasn’t sure he’d earned.
He turned his face up to this earnest policeman, this man who could topple the carefully built house of cards, assassins, and car mechanics who had all come to the desert to hide, and prayed for a kiss on the lips.
Brady didn’t disappoint. He bent down and took Eric’s mouth, fully, consciously, as if they were kissing for the first time.
Maybe, as far as Brady was concerned, they were, because Brady had finally embraced the possibility of who he was with.
Brady pulled back from the kiss and murmured, “Thank you, by the way. I… I don’t know what will happen in the future, but thank you for risking yourself for me.
If my department doesn’t give a shit who was there to stop the robbery, I certainly don’t care.
The FBI doesn’t need to know. I….” He let out a breath.
“Children, Eric. I saw pictures of children. And nobody’s talking about it.
I don’t want to go after the people who saved my life, but I do want to go after the people who are destroying theirs. ”
Eric took in that earnest face, that square jaw, and smiled, some of his faith restored. “Okay, then,” he said softly. “That’s what we’ll work on tomorrow.”
Brady nodded. “What are we working on tonight?”
Eric turned his head toward the sunset and pulled Brady down to the bottom step while he scooted to the next one up. “That,” he said decisively.
Brady saw the sun dipping down. “I didn’t realize it was so late,” he said. “Why was lunch so late?”
“Ernie naps from about two to seven,” Eric said. “And then he stays up to make up for it. I think he put his nap off today, just for us.”
“Why does he do that?” Brady asked, but not with censure. “Does he work nights?”
Eric was quiet for a moment. “I think it has to do with the psychic thing,” he said thoughtfully.
“I think… I mean, I’ve met a couple clairvoyants.
And most of them were, well, a wreck. Some of them were scary as fuck—Silence of the Lambs meets The Witching sort of scary as fuck.
I think this is his way of not encountering too many brains.
Fewer people are active at night. If he used to live in a bigger city, it might be a way he kept himself healthy. ”
Brady cocked his head in that way he had, that way of assimilating new information, of putting it with pins into the world he thought he already knew.
“That’s… that’s probably it,” he said. “I never thought of it before. I guess seeing the world like that would do a number on your brain, you know?”
Eric hmmed, wrapping his arms around Brady’s shoulders and drinking in his warmth, his nearness. They’d each showered that morning—the shower was big enough for a big man but not big enough for two—and Brady smelled like Eric’s shampoo and body wash.
It was sandalwood and citrus and… Brady.
Eric paid attention to all his senses; he’d once saved his own life by detecting cigarette smoke from a certain brand from a block away.
But he’d never stopped to think about how intoxicating a lover’s scent could be when the lover was leaning against him, full of trust, accepting Eric for who he was—even for the moment.
“Eric?” Brady asked, his voice just a little hesitant.
“Hm?”
“If I googled your name, what would I find?”
“A whole lot of people who aren’t me,” Eric answered.
“So if you and I go inside together, and we make love, can I… can I at least call you Charlie? I don’t know who he is either, but I know he’ll be touching me.”
“Ohh….” It came out like a sigh.
“I’m sorry,” Brady mumbled, pulling away. “I… it’s a liberty. An imposition. It’s—”
“It’s fine,” Eric blurted. “Just, you know. Private.”
The others had private names, Eric thought.
Burton called Ernie “Club Boy” and Ernie called him “Crullers.” He knew for certain that Sonny, Ernie, and Jason’s boyfriend, Cotton, had all been born with different names.
But that hadn’t even been his first reaction, the gut reaction that had made that sound straight from the pit of his soul.
His absolute first thought had been how wonderful, how miraculous, it would be to have somebody in his bed who knew his real name.
He stood then and stepped into the camper, moving to give Brady room to haul himself in after him.
Brady did, then closed and locked the door behind him, and when he turned back around, Eric was there to pull Brady into his arms and kiss him with a hunger in his soul he’d forgotten he could possess.
There was no filling it—every kiss fueled his hunger, every kiss added flames to his need.
It was like the night before hadn’t happened, like their quiet, laughing moments in bed that morning had been a daydream.
This here, Brady’s mouth on his with more surety, Eric’s hands on his body like he had a right—this was reality.
Brady groaned and thrust his hands under Eric’s shirt, running blunt nails along the skin of his back. Eric pulled away and let out a harsh breath, trying for words, but Brady’s hands were insistent, greedy, everything Eric needed.
“You want I should stop?” Brady ground out, although he’d moved both hands to Eric’s chest and was thumbing Eric’s nipples, his hands rough enough to taunt.
“No,” Eric retorted, his breath coming out on a little groan of his own. “I want you to call me by my name.”
“Charlie,” Brady whispered, bearing Eric backward, down the narrow hall toward the bedchamber in the rear.
Their clothes came off in a careful hurry—careful because the confines of the camper didn’t allow for their hands or elbows to stray far from their bodies, but in a hurry because, oh God, Eric needed to feel Brady’s hands everywhere.
His upper arms, against his ribs, palming his inner thighs.
He found himself splayed on his own bed, naked, while Brady touched him, the backs of his knees, the tenderness of his ankles. While Brady gently stroked his cock with a deliberate drag of his tongue.
“More,” Eric begged, and at his most honest, he couldn’t say what turned him on more. The special care, the trust he had that Brady wouldn’t hurt him, wouldn’t kill him in his sleep if he dropped his guard, or the thought that Brady knew who he was, knew his name, and touched him anyway.
And Brady didn’t stint on the touching. Eric, who was as cool in bed as he was on an op, found himself knotting his fingers in Brady’s slightly shaggy hair and begging, begging, for him to open his mouth, to take Eric’s cock in, and when Brady answered him, took him to the root, he let out a cry that might have been a sob and spread his legs.
And realized that never—never—in an active sex life of fucking assassins and enforcers, had he ever made himself that vulnerable before.
He tried to clench his knees together, but Brady was between them, servicing his weeping erection with such consummate, deliberate care that Eric was torn between sobbing and screaming. He couldn’t stop Brady, didn’t want to stop him, but he could… could….
“I’ve never…,” he gasped. “But please.”
Brady pulled his mouth slowly off Eric’s cock and replaced it with a strong grip. “Lubricant,” he mumbled. “Lots of lubricant.”
Eric reached under his pillow, and Brady was ready for the handoff. There was a little bit of fumbling before Brady engulfed his erection with his mouth again, and Eric was so immersed in the wonder of that, he barely felt one slick finger penetrating, exploring…
Stretching.
But his body knew. His erogenous zones knew. Because Eric would have said he’d pursued sexual debauchery to the ends of the earth, but what he thought he understood had suddenly become a blazing, technicolor revelation for every part of his body.
Bottoming—who knew?
He hadn’t. He’d never trusted anybody enough to—oh God! Two fingers! He almost swooned, but that would have left him unconscious.
“Please?” he whispered. “Brady, please?”
Brady’s body covered his own, and he wrapped his thighs around Brady’s slim hips. There was the hand at his entrance, guiding Brady’s cock, and… ah!
Submission roared through his bloodstream, and he relaxed and pushed forward as Brady thrust, his body stretching on its own, blooming around Brady’s, welcoming him fully in until he was seated.
For a shuddery, moonlit moment, they gazed at each other, and Brady gave him a sweet, happy smile before kissing him briefly. “We okay, Charlie?”
Eric closed his eyes, keeping the moment, Brady himself, tight inside. “Yeah,” he whispered. “Move.”
Brady did, the eternal rhythm taking them both over, possessing them both, until Eric, head thrown back, spine arched, allowed the lightning of orgasm to course through him.
He cried out and Brady gasped, and the thunderstrike made gods of them before it annihilated them both, leaving sweating, panting, naked lovers in its wake.
Brady collapsed against him, and Eric moaned softly, come sliding between them, between his thighs, slipping from his ass, and he felt bathed in it, saturated, reborn.
“Did I hurt you?” Brady asked in concern, and Eric pushed the hair back from his brow and kissed him, unable to answer any other way.
Did I hurt you?
No, you taught me what sex was all about.
Did I hurt you?
You broke me, and you don’t even know it yet, but it’s coming. If I know anything, it’s coming.
Did I hurt you?
You ripped out my heart by calling me by the name I was born with.
Did I hurt you?
Yes. Do it again.
So much rumbled through his heart, under his skin, but none of it could be spoken.
There was only so much damage that could be repaired by two lovers entangled in a kiss.