Chapter 22 Charlie #3
It’s likely meant to be rhetorical, but Charlie has never met a question he didn’t want to answer, especially this one.
“Keep me, I hope. Not to brag, but I’d make a sexy wife.”
“Shut up, Charlie.” Eden’s eyes are on him now, cheeks flushed red, not from exertion but something else.
“I’d like to keep you, Eden.” Charlie brushes the hair out of his eyes, tucking it behind his ear. “Will you let me keep you?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“You always have a choice.”
Eden swallows, crossing his arms over Charlie’s chest then resting his chin atop them. “You’re kind of needy.”
“Yes.”
“And loud.”
“Yes.”
“And your Crocs are horrible.”
“So Andrew always tells me.”
“You can’t cook for shit, Charlie.”
“I know.”
“You’re beautiful.”
Those two words light Charlie up.
“Oh.”
“I’ve never wanted to keep anyone.” Eden’s fingers smooth over Charlie’s chest hair, his eye contact unwavering.
“But you want to keep me.”
Eden doesn’t deny it, which is good because it wasn’t a question.
“You’re a pain in my fucking ass.”
“You’re welcome.”
The corner of Eden’s mouth quirks up, not a smile but something better—something small and real and just for Charlie.
“I probably should keep you, I’m the only one who can put up with your shit.”
If possible, Charlie’s heart grows ten sizes.
“I knew you loved me.”
“I did not say that,” Eden huffs, but the pink on his cheeks lets Charlie know he could. One day. If Charlie is patient—and gentle—he thinks maybe Eden could love him. Maybe he does even now, but Charlie’s not going to push. He doesn’t need a label or a few words. All he needs is Eden.
“You so did. You want to keep me,” Charlie sings. “You want to love me. You want to fuck me. You want to—”
“Charlie?” Eden barks, the sharpness in his tone in juxtaposition with the smile he’s trying very hard to hide.
“Yes, baby?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Charlie’s fingers slip into Eden’s hair while his thumb smooths across the arch of his cheek. “Make me.”
Eden does just that, surging forward to kiss Charlie.
His tongue is in Charlie’s mouth, his hands everywhere, and then his dick is sliding into Charlie’s ass, still loose and dripping come, slightly oversensitive yet ready to welcome Eden in.
Charlie’s not even hard, but there’s something perfect about lying there and letting Eden use him.
Every thrust is too much in the most satisfying way, his spent dick giving a half-hearted attempt to get hard but not quite making it there.
The real satisfaction comes, not in Charlie’s own arousal, but in Eden’s—in seeing him whimper and writhe as he fucks into Charlie, burying his face in Charlie’s neck and biting down hard enough to leave a mark.
He comes quicker than Charlie expects, his entire body shuddering as his hands and mouth cover Charlie in marks.
Even that doesn’t seem to be enough because when he finally pulls out, his warm release dripping out of Charlie’s ass, Eden’s fingers are there shoving it back in.
He’s not even trying to make Charlie come, merely playing with Charlie as he shoves three fingers in and plugs him up.
“Trying to keep it there forever?” Charlie huffs, unused to feeling so relaxed and turned on at once. It’s an unfamiliar juxtaposition, and Charlie hardly knows if he wants to beg Eden to make him come or pull Eden into his arms and cuddle him forever.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You like being full of my come like the slut you are.”
A spike of arousal courses through Charlie. Okay yeah, he wants to come again.
“Eden.”
“Beg me?” Eden says, kissing his way down Charlie’s chest and across his stomach until he’s half off the bed with his head between Charlie’s spread legs. “Beg me to own you. To use my come to finger you to release. Beg me to own you, Charlie.”
“You do own me,” Charlie whines, spreading his legs as wide as this damn tiny bed will allow. “I’m yours. Your slut. Your dumbass. Your Charlie.”
They come together in a mess of limbs and grunts and cries, and when Charlie comes again, it’s all Eden can do not to cry. Again.
“Fuck you,” Eden hisses, scrubbing at his eyes.
“You just did, multiple times.” He can hear the self-satisfaction dripping from his tone but really, can anyone blame him? He’s got the most gorgeous person on Earth on top of him, so desperate for him he just fucked Charlie’s brains out more than once and in the filthiest way.
Eden grumbles something unintelligible before collapsing on top of Charlie in a sticky heap. For a long time he doesn’t move, quietly tracing his finger up and down Charlie’s bicep. Copying the movement, Charlie moves both hands to Eden’s lower back, mirroring the touch.
“Charlie.”
“Hmm?”
“Would you…wanna meet someone?”
“Sure,” Charlie answers, “but you know I’ve met Addy already.”
“It’s not Addy.” Eden lifts his head. “It’s someone else. Someone important.”
“Is this someone the reason you always snuck out in the mornings and disappeared sometimes?”
“Yeah.” Eden licks his lips. “It might be easier to show you. Come on.”
Eden extricates himself from Charlie, grabbing a shirt from his dresser and tossing it to Charlie to use to clean up.
Once they’re both moderately cleaner and dressed—Charlie in the clothes he wore here and Eden in a flowy cotton skirt and one of his usual oversized t-shirts—they make it out to the living room.
This time, Charlie really looks around, noticing all the things he missed before—the dolls on the floor, the open coloring book on the coffee table and the plush pig on the couch.
Despite the questions he wants to ask, Charlie waits, watching Eden cross the living room and reach for a photograph on the end table.
He carries it to Charlie, passing it over.
In the photo is Eden and Addy, both with their arms around a little girl who looks like a copy and pasted version of Addy.
“Is she yours?” Charlie asks.
He’s wondered ever since he overheard Eden on the phone.
Personally he’s never given much thought to kids.
Unlike Alec or Jason, who have at one time or another made off-handed comments about being a dad one day, Charlie never thought about it because he never expected to be in a relationship with someone he might want that with.
“Yes. But not in the way you might mean.”
“I’m gonna need some clarification.”
“This is Ella.”
“Ella,” Charlie echoes, several puzzle pieces slotting into place. That explains why he’d been so upset at losing the bracelet then.
“Ella is Addy’s daughter and she’s my…my family.
” Eden traces a finger over her photo, a kind of smile on his face that Charlie has never seen.
“Her and Addy both are. And you need to know, if…if you want to keep me, they come too. There’s no me without them.
They’re all I have, and I won’t give them up for anything, not even you. ”
“I’d never ask you to give them up, Eden.”
“Not on purpose, but you might not want kids, and she’s not mine.
I know that, but me and Addy are all she’s got.
Addy’s family kicked her out when she got pregnant, and the dad’s a piece of shit.
And I won’t let her end up like me, not ever.
I’m always going to be there for her. She comes first. If something ever happened to Addy, then Ella is mine.
You need to understand that now, and if it’s too much you can… you can walk away.”
“It’s not too much,” Charlie whispers, overcome by a new kind of affection for Eden. His beautiful boy, who is scared and afraid and loves so fiercely in spite of it all. “Can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“Does it bother you that I’m close to Andrew? That he is always going to be involved in our lives? That in some ways, I’ll probably always be closer to him than anyone else in the world, maybe even you.”
“No.” Eden’s eyebrows pinch together. “You’re needy enough as it is. If you didn’t have Andrew, you’d drive me nuts. Besides I like Andrew, sometimes more than I like you.”
It’s such an Eden thing to say that Charlie laughs.
“So you get that me and Andrew are a package deal because he’s my family.”
“Yeah.”
“And Addy and Ella are yours.”
Understanding dawns on Eden’s face, his shoulders sagging in relief. “Yeah.”
“We’ve both got people we love, and maybe it’s not like everyone else, but neither of us is like everyone else anyway. Being normal is really fucking overrated. We can have a weird little nontraditional family together.”
“Are you calling us your family?”
“I’d like you to be. You and Addy and Ella. I’d like to get to know them, to have the chance to love the people who love you. I’d like the chance to love you, Eden.”
“Goddamnit,” Eden says, dropping the frame onto the carpet before slamming into Charlie with such force they fall into the couch. “Fuck you, Charlie.”
“Yeah, baby. Fuck me, maybe forever?”
Eden doesn’t answer in words, but he doesn’t need to. He holds onto Charlie—his arms wrapped around him tightly and his breathing uneven. He holds on and doesn’t let go, and that is enough. Eden is enough.