“Just relax,” Charlie murmured, and Rye pressed his shoulders to the back of the couch.
As Charlie switched hands, Rye’s attention wandered, and he imagined Charlie really was a witch. Charlie was giving him a potion that made him feel no pain, that made him good at demolition and construction, that gave him great credit and a high school diploma.
And hey, while it was magic, why not throw in the power to have a deep and lasting connection with another person?
Charlie rubbed the salve into his wrists too, and even though they weren’t blistered it felt heavenly.
“What are these of?” Charlie asked, tracing the tips of his tattoos.
“Oh.” Rye tugged up his sleeves, revealing the woodcut-style tattoos that ran up and down both arms. “Roots.”
To his great relief, Charlie just looked at them appreciatively instead of asking about them. He’d rather not talk about the way he’d gotten them a decade ago in the hopes of feeling like he was a part of something, since he had no contact with his parents, no siblings, and moved so often he never let his belongings swell to more than the two duffel bags and a backpack he kept in the closet.
He’d also rather not talk about how it hadn’t worked, so he’d gotten more, and those hadn’t worked either.
Instead, he let himself drift away on the river of peace that Charlie’s warm hands provided.
“Why didn’t you want to kiss me?” Rye heard himself ask, as if from a long ways off.
Charlie’s hands on his froze and Rye swallowed hard. But he didn’t want to let Charlie off the hook. He wanted the truth, even if it hurt. Even if it humiliated him.
“I... I did,” Charlie said.
Rye opened his eyes to see Charlie holding both his hands and staring at him awkwardly.
“You don’t have to say that,” Rye said. “You pushed me away from you like I was on fire. Which is fine. I just wondered why.”
Charlie noticed that he was still holding Rye’s hands and dropped them. Rye instantly missed the feeling of them being held.
“That wasn’t what I meant when I—I didn’t want—It seemed like you were thanking me or something, and I... I didn’t want that.”
Rye had questions, but he was too tired and too tipsy for this conversation.
“Okay, no problem. Night,” Rye said, and stood to go to bed.
At the doorway, though, he turned back. There was no reason not to be honest. He’d learned a long time ago that not being clear led to vastly more problems.
“Charlie. It wasn’t because I was thanking you. I thought... I thought you wanted me to. And I wanted to. So I did. I know I should’ve asked, but... Anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t ask, but I’m not sorry I kissed you.”
Charlie’s eyes, dark and serious, went wide and his lips parted, but he didn’t say anything. He just nodded.
“G’night,” Rye said again, and hurried off to bed.
Chapter Ten
Charlie
Charlie Matheson was in hell. Well, heaven. A hell of a heaven. Whatever. And he’d done it to himself. He was thirty-six years old and he’d finally circled back to where he’d been at seventeen: wondering, yearning, afraid.
Trevor Oasco. A running back on the team Charlie’s junior year. He’d been an army brat who showed up at the start of second semester. Outgoing, funny, and tough, he’d been the kind of person who made friends quickly and easily, and Charlie’d been no exception.
When he noticed the way Trevor’s muscles bunched as he exploded from a crouch across the field, or how his dark skin slid gloriously over the tendons in his forearms, Charlie initially thought he was just attending to a teammate’s form. His skill. When he found his eyes magnetized to the droplets of water that crept down the side of Trevor’s neck after he showered in the locker room and how graceful his fingers were when he held a pencil in physics class...well, Charlie hadn’t let himself think about it, really.
He hadn’t thought about much at all back then. He’d had no need to.
He’d studied as hard as he needed to to make the grades that would get him into school, practiced football until he puked, worked construction on the weekends to save up for truck parts, and helped his dad out in the store when it got busy. All that didn’t leave much time for thinking, and that was fine with Charlie.
All that not thinking meant that when Trevor sat down next to him one day, after the rest of the team had dispersed, looked into his eyes, then leaned in and kissed him, he was shocked. But curiosity and desire had chased the shock away almost instantly and he’d leaned into the kiss, letting his palms and fingertips learn the muscle and skin he’d stared at; letting his mouth learn the smile that had lit warmth in his belly he hadn’t even noticed until it was replicated and exploded.