Chapter Twelve #2
Simon’s uncomfortably aware that he’s not bringing much to the table, just sort of lying there and letting Charlie maul him, but in Simon’s defense, he’s stunned.
Stunned, in the literal sense, like maybe he suffered a head injury at some point between walking through the door and now.
Instead of thoughts, he just has nerve endings. He can barely move.
Still, for years now, he’s been imagining—reluctantly, but it happens anyway—touching Charlie. And so that’s what he does.
But for some reason instead of getting a hand on Charlie’s pectorals, like any sane person, or even his biceps, Simon reaches
for Charlie’s beard. Charlie goes still, then presses his face into Simon’s hand like a cat. He turns his head to kiss Simon’s
palm.
Simon slides his hand lower, skimming his fingers over Charlie’s chest, catching on a nipple and staying there for a moment
when he hears Charlie suck in a breath. With his other hand, Simon tries to unfasten his own jeans.
Something in Charlie seems to snap, and he has the rest of Simon’s clothes off before Simon can say much more than “hurry,
please, hurry.” He’s staring at Simon, and Simon really likes that. Maybe he preens a little, but also he can’t take another
single second of this. “Why the fuck are your pants still on?” he asks, reasonably.
Charlie’s sweatpants hit the floor. Before Simon can even properly look, Charlie is kneeling between Simon’s legs, taking
him in his mouth—and, yep, this is what Simon thought Charlie would be like, urgent and a little desperate. Eager.
Simon might be a little eager himself, because he isn’t going to last long, especially not once he gets a hand in Charlie’s
hair, especially not when Charlie groans in approval. Charlie’s hand is gripping Simon’s thigh, his mouth is perfect, and
Simon’s orgasm hits him like a two-by-four to the head.
When he opens his eyes, Charlie’s kneeling over him. “Do you need the paramedics?” He looks smug.
“Shut up,” Simon says, and pulls him down, kissing him, stroking him lazily, then a little less lazily when Charlie clasps his own hand over Simon’s. He gets distracted by the feel of Charlie’s hand around his, the rhythm of it, the noises Charlie’s making into Simon’s neck.
“Come on, Simon, keep your head in the game,” Charlie says when Simon gets distracted again. Simon tries to bite his shoulder,
but it turns into a kiss.
Simon’s experience is that never, not once, has sex made things less awkward. He’s sure that when he gets out of the shower,
the fragile thread of civility he and Charlie have been relying on for the past few days will have snapped under the weight
of We Just Had Sex.
But instead, Charlie starts reading aloud from the menus of the least-bad-sounding restaurants in the area. They wind up having
adequate sandwiches while mutually bitching about the worst directors they’ve worked with over the past few years.
That lunch back home, when they’d stared at their plates and mumbled at one another and ultimately resorted to looking at
dog pictures, now feels implausible. Of course they can make conversation. They have the same exact job. They know the same
people. They both have personalities built on the shaky foundation of attachment issues. It would be bizarre if they couldn’t
find things to talk about. Part of it’s just Charlie needing to be friendly with whoever’s nearby, but friendliness doesn’t
come easily to Simon, and it’s happening anyway.
“Why do you keep paying for my food? And the hotels?” Charlie asks after Simon’s repeatedly smacked Charlie’s hand away from
the check.
“I don’t want to owe you,” Simon says automatically, because it’s true, or at least not a lie. He doesn’t think he could handle adding gratitude to the list of things he’s feeling about Charlie Blake.
Charlie squints at him. “So now I have to owe you?”
“No, because I don’t actually think you owe me.”
“But I’m an asshole who’s going to hold a couple hamburgers and a cheap motel over you? What the fuck.”
“No, I mean—the money doesn’t matter to me.”
“We make literally the same amount of money.”
“But I grew up with it. Like, a lot of it.” Simon huffs impatiently because Charlie must already know this. “There is no universe
in which the cost of a Caesar salad and a BLT could possibly matter to me or has ever mattered to me. So I make sure I’m the
one who picks up the tab.”
Charlie looks at him for a moment. “I can’t decide if that’s nice or some weird power play.”
It’s mostly Simon minimizing his own discomfort. “Let me know if you find out. I’d love to know.”
Simon’s sure bedtime will result in some other disaster, like maybe Charlie will try to sleep in his bed (absolutely not)
or want to have more sex (undecided). But what happens is that Charlie takes the ruined bedspread off the bed they’d been
in earlier, throws it on the floor, gets under the sheet, and says, “What time do you want to wake up?”
It’s all suspiciously normal.
“Charlie,” Simon says after turning the lamp off, the heavy curtains blocking the light from the parking lot.
“Yeah?” It sounds like Charlie’s rolled over to face him, even though it’s too dark to see one another.
“What are we doing tomorrow?” Charlie’s going to try to see Dave again, but that won’t take all day. “Are we going home?” He hopes Charlie hears that Simon isn’t demanding to go back to Los Angeles. He isn’t even asking to. He just wants to know.
“I want to stick around here for another day or two. If you need to leave, there’s a tiny airport in Flagstaff. I can drive
you. I’m not—I mean, it’s up to you.”
Simon thinks that’s Charlie’s way of making it clear that he isn’t asking Simon to leave. He’s also not asking Simon to stay—which
is good, because Simon wouldn’t know what to do with that.
They’ve already shared a bunch of pictures from the past two days, and Charlie put a few videos on his TikTok, including one
Simon took of Charlie and the orange convertible, where you can hear Simon saying, very quiet, “Hand to God, Charlie just
called this car baby.” There’s no need for Simon to stay.
Simon isn’t sure why he wants to stay. They’ll probably have more sex, which is in the pro column. But he feels like he’s
not going to be able to process what happened if Charlie’s right there, because Charlie has a way of taking up ninety percent
of Simon’s thoughts when he’s nearby.
“I’ll stay,” Simon says.
Charlie’s quiet for a few seconds. “Good.”