Making Out

 

By Miriam Heddy

 

The sofa creaked a little when Charlie climbed on to straddle Larry's lap and it was one of those small sounds that Charlie had come to think of as a part of "home." Larry had been slouching, as he often did, and Charlie had been undressing him while Larry told him about the latest discovery of an extra-solar planet, which held at least some interest for Charlie, though the math used to calculate and account for the resonant data was not new at all. Still, he had to admit, he'd helped Larry with some dynamic modeling not long ago, and the possibility of measuring Doppler velocity at one meter per second precision—and of finding more Earth-like planets around other stars—was exciting, if only because Larry was pretty excited by it.

 

His shirt was open all the way and Charlie kissed the freckles over Larry's collarbones and put his hands flat over Larry's chest, curling his fingertips over and pinning his shoulders in place. Larry sighed and relaxed against the back of the sofa, but his thighs tensed up under Charlie as he settled his full weight down on Larry's erection.

 

"Charles, are you sure your father's not about to come through that door?"

 

"No."

"No, he's not going to come through that door? Or no, you're not sure he's not going to come through that door, or—"

 

"No, he's probably not going to come through that door." Charlie looked over at the door for a few seconds but it stayed closed, and then he looked back at Larry, who had a small, half-smile on his face.

 

"Probably, you said, which suggests you have some sense of the probability of his—"

 

"Yes, Larry, of course I do. There's a .0925 percent likelihood of his coming home early from yoga."

 

"Really?" Larry's smile brightened considerably, and Charlie laughed.

 

"No. Not really. I made that up. What am I, now, Spock?"

 

"Well, no, not Spock. He's… Well, ancestrally speaking, I suppose you would bear some slight resemblance, but you're, well—"

 

"Short? Human?"

 

"Well, I was going to say not very logical, because you're making out on the sofa with me, which is not something I imagine he'd do. Well, not without something unduly influencing him. Have you been sniffing any strange flowers lately?"

 

"Yes, Larry. I've been out gardening today, a fact that you commented on earlier when you examined my grubby nails and told me to go wash my hands."

 

"They were pretty filthy."

 

"Yes, I realize that. But I'm not five years old. I was planning to wash them."

 

"Ah, but not before you touched my pants, and I have no interest in explaining your fingerprints to my dry cleaners or to Alan."

 

"Alan again. Do you want him to come home?"

 

"No…."

"Ooh. Wait. You—this is—Hmm. The idea of him coming home, catching us—this is turning you on?"

 

Larry tipped his head to the side as if he was considering it, when really, the question had been rhetorical. Larry's body told the story, and Charlie had gotten pretty good at reading his body lately.

 

"I think maybe it does, yes. Does that bother you?''

 

"Honestly? I'm not sure. On the one hand, the idea of Dad catching us in this position is, frankly, somewhat horrifying. On the other hand… it's still horrifying."

 

"This is fantasy though—purely hypothetical—because he's not getting home early, right?"

 

"Right. Probably. As I said—and no, I don't have enough variables to give you any level of accuracy right now, so call it intuition."

 

"A hunch."

 

"Yes, a hypothesis I'll test for you later, if you like, when I'm not about to fuck you in the living room of my fa—my house which I share with my father."

 

"Hmm. Oh—did you hear that?"

 

"What? What?"

 

"Oh, nothing. I thought it was the door, but it wasn't."

 

"You—will be the death of me. This is not something to joke about."

 

"No, absolutely not. You're right. But you really should've seen your face, Charles. It was classic, really."

 

"This is payback for tut-tut-tut?"

 

"Partial payback, perhaps. I think we'll have you work that one off slowly, incrementally."

 

Charlie drew his thumbs hard across Larry's nipples and Larry closed his eyes, thrusting up against him.

 

"But if he did come home," Charlie considered, "he'd probably have to kill you for corrupting me so thoroughly."

 

"I corrupted you?" Larry opened his eyes again, wide and startled.

 

"Yes, absolutely. I don't even notice pretty girls anymore."

 

"Charles, you never noticed pretty girls. I can't claim to understand that, but—"

 

"But I've always noticed you."

 

"Did you? Well, you are a strange man. And in case your father asks, I definitely didn't notice you until you had that doctorate in hand. It was probably the piece of paper that did it, in fact. I've always found diplomas almost disturbingly erotic. And that mortarboard, well—"

 

"You must find commencement unbearable."

"Yes, well, I have considered staying home, but then I realized the robes really do cover any indiscretion, however large."

 

"That's very, very wrong. You are very, very—"

 

"Absolutely," And Larry's indiscretion was now rubbing against the seam of Charlie's jeans. Charlie wondered whether Larry noticed that he was in the process of sliding off the sofa, despite Charlie's attempt to hold him down. Soon enough, Charlie was going to end up sitting on Larry's… of course, that could be intentional. Charlie glanced at the door again and unzipped his own jeans, wondering if he should just get up and take them off entirely, because if Dad did get home early, he wanted to be able to move fast and not get tripped up by having his pants around his ankles. He wondered if Larry, with this little fantasy of his, had worked out an escape plan. Would they run up to his room? Try to get buttoned up again and hope Dad didn’t notice?

 

Still absolutely horrifying, and Charlie looked back at Larry, because if he spent anymore time trying to remember exactly what time Dad had gotten back from yoga the last five nights he went, he was going to lose his erection entirely just when things were starting to look promising.

 

"Larry—why don't we just go to bed?"

 

"I have a better idea. Why don't you take off your clothing and make this easier on the both of us?"

 

"Because the flowers are starting to wear off and—"

 

Larry reached around and grabbed his ass, pulling him in so suddenly Charlie had to grab the back of the sofa for balance. And then he was reduced to making sounds that were more "keep going" than protest, as Larry used his mouth and tongue through his boxers, wetting the fabric there and then pulling it down over his hips, and Charlie looked down and watched as Larry sucked him into his mouth and the angle was just slightly awkward, but Larry really didn’t appear to care.

 

Charlie really wanted to keep watching, but if he didn't close his eyes, he was going to have to watch the door—it was inescapable—so he just gave up, closing his eyes and hoping that, for once, Larry was wrong and people could be predictable, even when they know you don't have a girl over—never have a girl over—and, and, and it was just Larry, here, always Larry.

 

Making him come, gasping, bent over the back of the sofa and gasping for breath, unable to stop thrusting in Larry's mouth.

 

"Well, that was certainly exciting."

 

Larry's normally high voice was a little raspier than usual, and Charlie just nodded, yes, certainly exciting. That it was.

 

"If you like, we could continue this upstairs now."

 

Charlie forced himself to lift his head, searching out first the door, then the clock, before meeting Larry's eyes. "Dad's going to be home in—"

 

"Another hour or two," Larry finished for him.

 

"No he's not." Charlie looked at the clock again. "He's—wait—"

 

"I called him before I came over and told him—"

 

"You what? You called him?"

 

"That Amita was coming over to help you work on a project for me, and that, if he wanted to come home a few hours later, you probably wouldn't so much mind as…."

 

"You what? He thinks I'm…."

 

"Don't worry so much, Charles. He knows you. He thinks you're spending hour upon hour diligently working on equations, for me, all the while ignoring poor Amita. That's what he knows. Meanwhile, he hopes you're doing unpredictable things—things that might necessitate privacy. With Amita, of course."

 

Charlie sat back on his heels, still on top of Larry, whose erection was still present, if not quite as insistent now that it wasn't pressing against Charlie's ass.

 

"You lied to him."

 

"I gave him hope, Charles. Hope makes life possible."

 

"That's just— that's wrong."

 

"And what would be right, Charlie? Telling him about us?"

 

"I—"

 

"Because I agree, in an ideal world, that would be a very good thing. And if you want to take the chance that this is an ideal world…"

 

"You want me to tell him the truth? Is that what this is?"

 

"No—don't be angry. You're angry and this is no reason to—"

 

"I'm not angry, I'm… You're—you lied to him."

 

"No. No more than you did, at any rate." And Larry finally sat up straight, nearly knocking Charlie off his lap in the process. "No—I'm facilitating this relationship the only way I know how, working within parameters that you've set—"

 

"This isn't my choice. I didn't just wake up one day and say, 'I think I'll add queer to the list, because I'm just not different enough.'"

 

Larry nodded, putting a hand on Charlie's bare hip and steadying him. "And if you like, one day you can tell Alan that very thing. We all make choices, Charles, all of us. And I won't claim to have made perfect ones in this case. Far from it, probably. But given the same set of variables, as I know them, I'd very likely do it all again."

 

"You'd lie even though I object."

 

"You object? You object to what we just did?"

 

Uh-oh. And now Larry sounded a little mad, his voice hitting that point where it was both loud and high, almost shrill.

 

"I don't—No, of course not. I—you know I—" But Charlie got up off the sofa, backing up and nearly tripping on the coffee-table before righting himself again. The fact that Larry was looking like someone who'd just given one helluva blowjob didn't help him think any more clearly or figure out how to argue that the ends did not justify the means.

 

"The ends don’t justify the means."

 

"Say that again with that in your pants, and maybe I'll believe you."

 

Charlie shook his head, but zipped up and Larry nodded.

 

"Okay, so tell me who, exactly, got hurt in this case?"

 

"Amita," Charlie said quickly.

"Amita. Who doesn't know that she's not here not sucking you off."

 

"That's—"

 

Larry had crossed his hands over his bare chest, and the effect was sort of… cute. Which Charlie supposed meant that he wasn't as angry as he thought he was at Larry. Still, it was wrong—lying to Alan was wrong.

 

And telling the truth was absolutely unthinkable, which meant he had to come up with an alternative if he wanted Larry to ever take the rest of his clothes off.

 

"We could go to a hotel."

 

"And you'd tell your father you were going to be out at a hotel for a few hours?"

 

"I'll say I'm at my office, working."

 

"You really want to meet at a hotel? Hopefully not one that rents rooms hourly? Aside from the costs, which could become prohibitive given how often I want to have sex with you…"

 

"Yes, I see your point. Prohibitive? Really?"

 

"I haven't invested as well as I should. I had a fantasy I'd marry well."

 

"Oh. I—that's really flattering. I think. Look, I— we could still go to your place."

 

"And we do. But again, what's your alibi?"

 

"I don't need one. I go to your place to work—"

 

"All the time. And I seem to be getting no closer to solving the problems of the Universe. So how long do you think it will be before your father starts to suspect something? "

 

Charlie laughed. "I promise I'll work on it some tomorrow. And as for my father, I think we can safely say never."

 

"I have to disagree, Charles. Your father is wise beyond your years. By which I mean—"

 

"He suspects?"

 

"He—I'm not sure, and my lack of certainty is suggestive. Call it intuition."

 

"A hunch. Right. I can't—I can't even begin to think about that right now. So now what you're saying is that this is the best option from among—"

 

"Several imperfect solutions, Charles. At least at the moment. And until things change…"

 

"You lie."

 

"We both lie. Or we don't. Or I don't follow you upstairs to your bedroom, and instead go home, alone, to return to a life of near-monastic intellectual work broken up only by the occasional dalliances with—"

"Okay, you've made your point."

 

"Have I?"

 

"Yes. Yes. Yes. No dalliances with anybody."

 

"Well, good. Because I prefer your end, and I think I'm capable of justifying the means to get it." Larry's arms were still crossed, but he wasn't frowning or looking annoyed anymore, and his voice had at last joined the register heard by larger mammals. And Charlie realized that he loved him more than was probably reasonable, under the circumstances, and in ways he still didn't understand. More than that, he wanted him, the way that he wanted very few things. Larry made him aware of things that couldn't be quantified—only experienced. He wanted very much to take Larry upstairs to his bed now.

 

"Come on, then. We still have some time before 'Amita' goes home."

 

Larry nodded and stood up, glancing slyly at him as he ran a hand through his hair, smoothing down the already neat curls. It was strange that whenever Charlie tried that, his own hair just got poofier and poofier until he looked like a frightened poodle.

 

Larry started for the stairs, and Charlie followed, gripping the banister, fighting the urge to just push Larry up against the wall and take him there. The image was strangely compelling, and odd, because before Larry, he never had thoughts like that, and Larry himself didn't, on the face of it, inspire them in most people.

 

Then again, as Charlie had pointed out earlier, he'd always been queer, even before he fully knew what that meant.

 

Larry had a certain languid grace—a certain ease that suggested he just didn't care what you thought of him. At the same time, Charlie noticed that people did look at Larry. You couldn't really help but watch him as he talked, maybe because when Larry talked, he was animated, hands flying everywhere, face scrunching up and expressing. Charlie had sat in on a few of his classes, trying to help with the negative evaluations thing, and Larry hadn't been as anxious about having him watch as had other professors he'd observed, maybe because he and Larry were friends, or because Larry had, true to form, forgotten he was there a few minutes into the class, around the same time Larry had forgotten everyone was there, which explained the evaluations. He still couldn’t quite convey the problem to Larry. Larry's students had watched Professor Fleinhardt talk, clearly torn between believing that everything he said was important, and the suspicion that none of it was going to be on any test he or anyone else would dare write.

 

And they were right on both counts, and it really annoyed most of them, except for the few who hung on every word, taking every one of Larry's classes and staring at him in ways that were uncomfortably familiar. Larry was fascinating, to himself if no one else, and though he didn't always remember what the course was, or where in the textbook they were supposed to be that day, he knew precisely what mattered, and how to ask the right questions—the ones you couldn't—and he couldn't—answer right away. Why do we remember the past and not the future? Do the stars notice our watching them, and how can we tell?

 

And long before Charlie had ever taken Larry's clothes off, or even thought about it, he'd fallen in love with the mind animating Larry's strange little corporeal self. And at first, when he found himself touching him, a hand on Larry's shoulder, on his arm, on the nape of his neck, he'd thought it was a way of trying to get closer to being inside Larry's head, going so far as to rationalize to himself that he was just acting on a subconscious belief that Larry's thinking might be communicable, tangible, like an electric current he could tap into.

 

Then he was shocked, because he never did get any closer to Larry's brain, but he still really wanted to get inside him.

 

Just inside Charlie's bedroom door, Larry shrugged off his shirt, and Charlie once again admired the ease Larry had with nudity, with all things sexual. Charlie had seen Larry's photo album, and noticed that Larry looked about one to two decades younger than he was for most of his life. As they got to the more recent photos, Larry had shaken his head and frowned. "Life does have a habit of catching up to you. Even Einstein admitted as much." And Charlie had wanted to point out that that was a good thing.

 

Charlie still liked to keep his shirt on until the last minute, maybe because in school he'd always been so much younger than everybody that getting undressed at gym and then even at college was an exercise in time travel. Everyone else's body was future-perfect, more muscled, taller, filled out everywhere, a hundred boys and then men with more body hair, and just… more. And he'd tried really hard not to stare.

 

Now, here, at least he was taller than Larry, barely—as Larry frequently pointed out— and outweighed him, again, barely. But for the most part, they were equal, and when he wasn't paying attention, he sometimes grabbed Larry's clothes by mistake, which could potentially be a problem if anyone ever actually noticed what he was wearing. He looked silly in some of Larry's shirts. Hell, Larry looked silly in some of Larry's shirts. And Amita might be the only person who'd notice he got dressed in the dark, and he had no idea how he'd explain.

 

Maybe one day he wouldn't have to.

 

Larry was taking off his own pants, his boxers coming off, too. Larry's hair was reddish, everywhere, whereas his own was nearly black. Charlie had a lot more of it, everywhere. Otherwise, they were both pretty pale. And all the bicycling he did—which was admittedly not all that much—seemed to have almost no effect on his waist, which was still softer than he liked. Not that Larry seemed to mind. Larry was almost ridiculously narrow in focus, very, very interested in his penis and his ass and his mouth, but seemingly seeing everything else from his neck down as incidental, at least until after Charlie came, at which point he slowed down and, just when Charlie himself felt like sleeping, started up again at all the points he'd missed.

 

Not that he was complaining. Sex was somehow easier when he wasn't trying to come, or trying not to. Larry didn’t seem to have that problem, which probably accounted for Larry's technique.

 

"Here." Larry, naked, now, walked over and stripped Charlie's clothes off. "That's better."

 

And Larry looked at him a minute, pretty intently, and Charlie closed his eyes, not really uncomfortable being studied, but not wanting to watch Larry watching him. It was a little bit too intense. Instead, he focused on Larry's hands, which were on his shoulders, but sliding down his arms, to his hands, and then down his legs as Larry went to his knees. Charlie almost said, "Stop, not again," which would've sounded a little insane given that his penis was incredibly interested in another chance at Larry's mouth. But even if he sometimes still felt seventeen, he wasn't going to manage a third time, and he wanted—really wanted—to come inside Larry, or better yet, to have Larry come inside of him. And he liked to still be hard when Larry was inside him.

 

"I want you to—"

 

'Hmm?"

 

Charlie opened his eyes and Larry was on his knees, kissing Charlie's belly and holding onto his hips.

 

"Fuck me," he managed, finally, and Larry smiled.

 

"You're right—I have corrupted you. Such innocence, and what a shame. I remember the grand prelapsarian days when you couldn't even say that word without blushing. No, wait—it does appear as if you're blushing even now."

 

"Larry—"

 

"Tut-tut-tut."

 

"Very funny."

 

"I thought so. Now why don't you see if you can find the bed, and I'll see if I can figure out the rest. On your front? Here."

 

Larry handed him a pillow and he put it under his hips and took the towel Larry offered to protect the pillow.

 

Larry knelt on the bed behind him and kissed the small of his back, and Charlie curled around a bit to watch, because this was always good. Larry had his own cock in his right hand and wasn't pumping or stroking, but was just holding himself, and Charlie loved that—not knowing why. In pornographic movies, which he'd spent a few days watching, at first, when he still thought they might teach him something, he'd noticed the men had almost superhuman stamina. He'd started to calculate the average length of an encounter then gave up when he realized most of the scenes were filmed in more than one take. He sometimes found himself wishing they'd come, already, getting somewhat bored by the repetition. But Larry had almost that kind of control—a sort of stillness even when he was turned on—and Charlie really envied it and was never bored.

 

"You, Charles, have a very enticing ass. It's a shame you wear such baggy jeans and spend so very much of your day sitting on it."

 

"Why am I not insulted?"

 

"Hmm. Probably because you know I'm going to do this."

 

And Larry leaned in and started to lick him, which was still weird, still embarrassing, and even so, he still found himself spreading his legs and wiggling to improve the angle, and moaning into his pillow when Larry started to thrust into him with his tongue.

 

Charlie lost track of everything but the alternating cool and warm sensations of Larry's tongue and the air, then his fingers moving in and out of him. Every few somethings—seconds, or minutes, Charlie couldn't quite tell—Larry would touch his prostate, and he would desperately thrust back, trying to come again, but then Larry would stop, resuming his slow, measured, licking and sucking, occasionally whispering something that Charlie couldn't quite make out, until finally, he heard the crackle of the condom wrapper and Charlie turned around, then, and took it from Larry, unrolling it onto his cock. He liked to do this, especially because when he held Larry, Larry couldn't stay still. He'd thrust, then stop as he noticed he was doing it, and Charlie would unroll the condom a little more and Larry would thrust again, little frantic movements. And Larry would turn away from him as he did it, trembling slightly, finally betraying that the control took some effort.

 

Charlie gave Larry's cock one last squeeze, and then lay back down on the pillow again, and Larry moved behind him, putting a hand on his back for balance and then pushing into him. It was easy, which he supposed meant that he was easy. But it never hurt—not even the first time they tried it. It just felt like something else his body was supposed to be able to do, more like math than anything else—like something he did when he wasn't thinking.

 

"Oh, Charles. You are a delight."

 

And then Larry pulled him back up so he was on his hands and knees and Larry draped himself on Charlie's back, and Charlie supported them both as Larry thrust into him with an urgent rocking motion. Larry reached around so Charlie could thrust into Larry's hand, and though the rhythm wasn't perfectly synchronous, it didn't matter.

 

Larry was coming, going very still and squeezing him suddenly just a little too hard, and he was coming, too, his arms trembling from the effort of holding them both up, and now giving way.

 

And just then, he heard the unmistakable sound of a key turning in the lock.

 

And it was Don's voice calling out, "Hey—Charlie? I've got some Chinese here."

 

Larry rolled off of him and onto his back, one arm coming up to shield his eyes. "Houston, we have a problem."

 

"The Challenger had a problem. This is—this is—I don't know what this is. Just—hide."

 

"Hide? Hide? This is your solution?"

 

"Yes—dammit—move!"

 

"I can't move. I think I've broken something."

 

"Don's going to break something if he comes in here and finds you—"

 

And Larry giggled. "This is awful. It really is."

 

"Please, Larry—fix this."

 

"Okay. Yes, fine. I'm sure that we can—figure this out. Let me just—"

 

And now Larry was wheezing with laughter, and Charlie grabbed the pillow out from under Larry's head and hit him with it.

 

"Please, please, please don't find this funny."

 

"No—I don't. Honestly. I just have absolutely no idea. I don’t know how I managed to forget Don. I really did—" And now Larry sat up, finally, looking thoughtful. "At least I thought I mentioned to your father that he might want to pass along the message to Don. But I suppose I must not have."

 

"No—" Charlie agreed, looking around the room, frantically, and not seeing a box big enough to hide Larry. And even if there was such a box, the giggles would give him away.

 

"The shower."

"The shower?"

 

"Look—Charlie, we both get in the shower, which, actually, isn't a bad idea regardless. And then you turn it off, go out and downstairs to see Don, and I can clean up here, and—"

 

"Climb out the window?"

 

"It's the beginning of a plan and it's all I have. Is now the best time to criticize?"

 

"No—it's—it has some merit. At least—God, at least we'll both be clean."

 

And Larry laughed again, but had the sense to do it quietly, clapping a hand over his mouth as Charlie pushed and steered him to the bathroom, stepping into the shower with him and turning on the water. It was too cold, and Larry nearly knocked him over at the shock of icewater on his back, but then Charlie got the temperature adjusted and quickly wiped them both down, wishing he'd thought to wear a condom too, then realizing that smelling like sex was the least of his problems. If he was lucky, Don would assume that he'd interrupted the Charles Eppes solo hour, and politely not mention it, or, more likely, suggest none too subtly that Charlie might want to find a girl, and wasn't that Amita interested?

 

Charlie stuck his head under the spray, ignoring Larry's proximity and the awkwardness of bumping elbows with a man whom Charlie was already, on some level, trying to make disappear, as if by ignoring him he might suddenly open his eyes and be alone.

 

But there Larry was, at least looking slightly sobered by the water. And suddenly feeling guilty, Charlie put an arm around him and drew him into a brief, wet, hug.

 

"Sorry about this, Charlie. I really am. This was just horribly planned. I thought I had worked out all the contingencies."

 

"No—" Charlie whispered back. "No—it was—we've just got to be more careful."

 

"Yes, though I still think you should consider—"

 

Charlie shook his head, and Larry frowned, but nodded.

 

"Enough, then. We are what we are, where we are. Go out there and I'll—I'll look for an opportunity for escape. Can you do that?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Because he's an FBI agent."

 

"Larry, you do not have to remind me of that."

"No, I suppose I don't. Well, goodnight, Charles." And Larry kissed him, tasting like water and warmth and Charlie almost didn't let go. But then he did, and turned off the water, handing Larry a towel and, not bothering to dry off all the way, pulled on some clean clothes—making sure they were his and not Larry's. He got all the way to the doorway before turning around.

Larry was dripping wet, his head obscured by the towel, and Charlie walked back over to him, realizing he needed to know.

 

"Are you—is this still—"

 

"Yes, Charles. I'm afraid I am and it is, and if I hadn't just come a few minutes ago, you might not make it out that door with your clothes on, federal agents be damned."

 

"I—wow. Okay—just save that thought, alright?"

 

"Of course, Charles."

 

And then he went downstairs, calling out, "Don! Is that Chinese?" as casually as he could manage.

 

"Where—-oh. You are home. Dad said you and Amita were—"

 

"Working, yes."

 

And he wanted to hug Larry again and apologize again, because Larry had thought of everything and it still wasn't enough.

 

"And you took a shower afterwards?"

 

"She left a few hours ago."

 

"Oh."

 

Yes, that expression was Don working out whether to make something of it.

 

"Well, she does seem to like you."

 

"You think so? Why don’t we eat this outside?"

 

"Outside?"

 

"It's a nice night," he said, then realized it'd been hours since he'd been outside and he really didn’t know. But if he could get Don out the front, Larry could slip out the back.

 

But Don agreed easily enough and he felt some of the tenseness ease out of him. "All right. Why not? I'll grab the beers, you carry the cartons." All of which was in the kitchen, and Don got there first, because Don wasn't listening for Larry, so Don didn't (he hoped) notice that the creak of the stairs was actually worse than the creak the sofa made.

 

And it was with some effort that Charlie didn't turn around to look at the man on the stairs with the Atari-honed reflexes that apparently had no practical application outside of handjobs. Instead he followed Don into the kitchen, opening the top right cabinet door and pulling out a glass, counting and hoping and yes, somehow managing to close it just after the front door closed, the cabinet's thud duller but closer than the click of the hammer in the doorknob, and just to be sure, he stepped down hard on the loose floorboard he hadn't had time to fix yet, and Don looked down as it squeaked.

 

"Old houses," he said, realizing suddenly that he could've just followed Larry out and, when Don got there, pretended he'd forgotten to get the Chinese food. Sometimes, he was just embarrassingly stupid.

"Yeah," Don agreed. "Noisy."

 

Maybe Larry was right, and hope, rather than truth, made life possible; At the moment, it was all Charlie had, now that Larry was on his way home. And if there was something in Don's eyes—a flicker of doubt—Don blinked it away, handing Charlie his beer. As Don passed over the spot on the floor, he tested out the plank of wood and grinned slightly as it squeaked again.

 

"I can probably fix that," Charlie said and Don took a drink of beer and nodded.

 

"Yeah, while you're at it, you might want to take a look at the stairs."

 

They had found the new planet not by seeing it but by seeing its effects—the subtle wobble of the Doppler shift of the star, the resonant interaction of the planets closest to it giving it away. Data that didn't fit the prevailing model. Even something invisible and seemingly absent subtly effected everything else in measurable ways.

 

Charlie set down the glass and drank directly from the bottle, feeling the paradigm shift happening even now, despite his best efforts to stop it. Then Don's hand was on his back, pushing him out the door and onto the porch, and he looked up at the stars, Don glancing up as well. "Nice night."

 

Don's bland normality was tricky, in that he could lead you to believe he didn't see half of what he saw.

 

"Yeah," Charlie agreed. "They discovered a new planet this week."

 

"Larry must be excited."

 

"Yes. Yes, he is."

 

And they left it at that, a space opening up between them that they filled with Chinese food and small talk and more beer, until Dad finally got home and Charlie could look up at the stars and barely notice the emptiness was there at all.

 

 

The End.

 

Read the Sequel: Dinner For Four

Feed the Muse

Thanks to Kate for letting me read over her shoulder and see inside her head, which is a very fine place indeed.