Charlie heard the slam of the front door, waiting a moment for Larry to announce himself before knowing, somehow, that it was Larry leaving, though he'd never heard him arrive. He said something to Amita about Larry being here, finally, and made his excuses, saying something that probably didn't make any sense, but he left her in the solarium and caught up with Larry halfway down the block, just past Larry's car, which Larry, for some reason, had walked right past. At first, Larry didn't respond to his calling out to him, and Charlie smiled to himself, because Larry did this a lot—getting lost in his own thoughts and missing things, not always knowing if he was coming or going. Though usually, Larry walked a little more slowly than this when he was thinking deep thoughts.

Charlie called out to him and Larry stumbled, as if he hadn't really decided whether to stop or not, and then he turned around. At a distance, his features were vague, making him look strangely boyish and lost, as if the vanishing point was real and not a trick of the lines—as if the vanishing point was Larry's destination and he'd almost reached it.

Charlie shook his head, but the illusion of one-point perspective remained compelling, though mapped over it were the distances and angles that made sense of what he was seeing—the way Larry seemed strangely diminished from his usual, admittedly not very imposing, self.

"Larry?" he asked again.

"I, ah, think I'll get some air," Larry said, and Charlie glanced back towards Larry's car. Larry's voice was high and reedy, barely carrying over the distance and the cars driving past.

You drove here, he almost said, but then thought better of it, realizing that Larry actually probably knew that.

"I feel like taking a walk just at the moment," Larry said back, as if answering his question, and Charlie shrugged.

"Um… okay. I'll just… you'll be back?" he asked, and Larry nodded and then looked confused.

And the impression of pain might have been just Charlie's imagination filling in for an expression he couldn't quite make out at this distance. But Larry had already turned and all Charlie could confirm was that Larry had left his briefcase at the house (Charlie had nearly tripped over it leaving the solarium). But he didn't call out to him again, because Larry was walking, head down and weaving somewhat, as if his body was failing to compensate for the absence of its usual heavy burden.

Larry'd found them in the solarium, a book in her hand, and a woman in his, and it had suddenly seemed oddly funny—like a line from that movie "Clue" that he'd enjoyed so much when it came out that he'd gone back and seen again and again, finding it somewhat disappointing that they'd filmed only three versions, though the tantalizing number of possible permutations demanded perhaps too much of an audience used to thinking in terms of three dimensions, single universes, and foregone conclusions, clichés about Fate and the heroes and heroines who fought against it.

Amita had the copy of Thorn, Misner, and Wheeler's Gravitation in her hands—his own copy, a first edition from '73, with his own notes in it, though he wasn't sure he'd remembered to tell Charlie that when he gave it to him, and he wasn't sure Charlie had noticed—which was, he'd decided at the time, just as it should be. Charlie didn't really treasure old things, though his house was filled with them. And he'd known Charlie already had a newer copy, so he may never have even opened this one. But Larry had enjoyed knowing Charlie had it, and all his marginalia, and it was nice knowing it was there in case he ever needed to consult with it—a reasonable excuse for a visit, if nothing else came up.

Amita dropped it when Charlie moved in toward her. It was all very dramatic—almost staged, he would've said, though perhaps that was merely the effect of recognizing that he himself was outside the action—a spectator—in the doorway.

The dropped book landed on the wicker sofa, in any case, and not on the floor, which would have been a better choice, as its thousand odd pages would've made a louder, more impressive sound, rather than the dull thud of paper on upholstery, meaningless and random. He wondered what page it had opened to.

Of course, as it was, he couldn't make out very much of anything after Charlie had said her name in that soft, deep voice of his, sounding puzzled, or afraid, or perhaps simply awed by her, as he leaned in to kiss her.

They made an attractive couple. They certainly did. Alan would be pleased.

Amita was talking about the same problem she'd spent twenty pages of her dissertation exploring, but somehow, Charlie was having trouble following her. He was too aware of her proximity—and the way she was looking at him (which was actually the way she always looked at him, and it always made him feel like this, which was why he was probably somewhat more relieved than she was when she had finally finished her thesis). His palms were sweating, and he blinked a few extra times, and she smiled at him, very softly.

"Charlie, I really think…."

Her hands moving in the air reminded him of something—something about the way she was shaping her ideas, drawing them in and out of the air. She had elegant hands—he'd always noticed them. His mom had hands like that—thin-fingered and delicate—but it wasn't the shape so much as the motion of them.

She smelled like something more than soap and chalk-dust—something feminine and floral and unfamiliar.

"Lavender," he said suddenly, and she paused in the middle of her lecture. "Your perfume," he clarified, and she smiled. "It's different. We have it in the garden."

"I didn't think you noticed perfume, Charlie."

"It's… nice." Lame. Incredibly lame. But she smiled at him like he'd said something brilliant. Sometimes, it was almost too easy, and he wondered if he'd been any help to her work at all. He sometimes thought she knew far more about combinatorics than he did. His own failing, as a mathematician, was probably a lack of focus. No, it was definitely a lack of focus. He was too interested in everything, and Larry kept warning him that it was fine to dabble, but you couldn't lose sight of what was important. Where was Larry, anyway? He'd said he'd be there by one at the latest, and he'd already missed lunch.

"Go on. You were saying that…" he prompted her, using the tried and true technique of echoing her last sentence, though he was suddenly sure he was demonstrating how little he'd been following her. But she picked up where she'd left off, and this time he tried harder to listen, focusing on her face and ignoring the blur of her hands and the distractions of the room.

And then suddenly, he was leaning toward her, and she didn't stop talking, at first, and he had just enough time to wonder why he was doing this—and then he was kissing her.

It was nothing at all like he'd imagined. Her skin was soft, smooth, and she seemed to be smiling a little, but was afraid to open his eyes and see. And he wondered if he was screwing this up, because he'd only kissed three other female non-relatives in his life this way, and the first of them had laughed when he tried it and pushed him away, because he was only fourteen and she was eighteen and she told him he was "cute, but…" The second woman had been a brilliant speaker at a one-day conference on fluid dynamics, and he'd somehow lost track of how many drinks he had at the party afterwards, and he was very tipsy, and kissing just seemed like a very good idea all of a sudden, and then just as suddenly wasn't, and he'd stopped it before it could get any further than his hands around her hips, sliding down under the waistband of her skirt.

The last woman he'd kissed—Lucy—had been about a month after Mom died, and he'd met her at a coffee-shop when she refilled his mug, and he didn't even remember much about what they'd talked about, except that she'd seemed amused that he took so long to notice her and was even more amused when he tried to explain what he did for a living. Lucy had short red hair and small breasts and hadn't gotten past high school, but she said she'd always liked algebra, and by the time she closed the register, he'd decided he was taking her to bed. And he had, though it wasn't what he'd expected, everything happening too fast, and afterwards, he'd told her about Mom dying, and she'd held him, awkwardly, and after he said goodnight, he'd ended up finding a new place to buy his coffee and spending a lot of time on his own, wondering what he'd done wrong, and wishing he could find a way to ask Don about it, and knowing he probably could ask Larry, but not really wanting to.

But his hands were on Amita's bare waist, now, where her shirt ended a bit high, before the swell of her hips, and she wasn't smiling anymore but they were still kissing, and it was strange, because it felt like… like when he was working an equation and he knew it was wrong, a fatal flaw somewhere, but he still had to keep at it until it broke—until the wrongness of it became glaringly obvious instead of just a nagging certainty. Larry always told him to trust his instincts but return to the data and then demonstrate it. Could she feel it, too?

He pulled away from her, and saw his extra copy of Gravitation was face-down, spine open on the sofa, and he picked it up, closing it to protect the pages, which were already a little creased. It was an old book, and enormous, the fabric binding fraying at the edges. Larry had picked it up for him at one of the library's eternal book-sales, and he already had a copy he'd had to buy new for a class, but Larry had seemed so pleased to give it to him, so he'd put it on the shelf alongside a small but growing collection of other books Larry had given him. For the first time, he noticed that it was filled with marginal notes, in what looked like Larry's handwriting. Larry must've given him the wrong copy by mistake.

"Charlie?"

Amita's hand was on his shoulder, and he shook his head, unable to look at her yet, because he didn't know what to say.

Something was broken—some part of the equation wasn't right. Maybe he was broken, because people weren't equations, but he didn't know how to explain it otherwise.

"I'm sorry," he said, and she took her hand off his shoulder, probably waiting for him to say something more—something that made sense. And as soon as he figured it out, he would explain it. He really would.

And where the hell was Larry?

He heard the door slam shut, and waited for Larry to come upstairs.

Larry didn't really remember the trip home, though he realized after he got there that he'd left his briefcase at Charlie's, an oversight that would necessitate his return. He'd also left his car on the street, which meant he'd have to go back for it. It really wasn't his best day, he decided, suddenly remembering the food he'd left on the stove, which was quite a bit too blackened to be palatable, but he turned off the flames and ate it anyway. He was used to his own cooking, and its aftermath, after all these years.

Larry had never considered himself to be someone to lick his wounds. For one thing, that was a somewhat disgusting image, and he really hated the taste of his own blood. For another, he wasn't wounded very often. It helped to not know very many people very well, and to care deeply for very few of them. And it helped to very rarely let himself think he'd fallen in love with anybody, which considerably lessoned the chances he would be disappointed if and when they failed to reciprocate (when was rather more likely than if, but he liked to keep an open mind about such things).

But sometimes, he surprised himself. When, after a week at home not wallowing in self-pity, he glanced out the window and saw that yes, Charlie was really sitting there, face obscured by a ridiculously large pair of binoculars but hair absolutely recognizable, he knew that, at the very least, he had good reason to want to hide, and that it would take a good deal of effort and persistence to do so. He'd managed to keep from answering the door for a week now, and he'd listened to his phone messages as Charles' messages got, well, increasingly strange, with Charles sometimes seeming on the verge of saying something and then not saying anything at all but managing to fill up his machine regardless. And honestly, after two weeks he was, quite frankly, a little bored and wanted to come out, in his bathrobe and slippers but… well, there really was no second act to that thought, so he hadn't.

He wasn't motivated simply by a desire to protect himself. There was Amita to consider. If she was at last going to seriously pursue Charles, she had every right to do so unencumbered by the complications he would necessarily introduce with his presence at this time.

Not that the was under any illusions that he was competing with her, but Charles was a poor enough negotiator of the human element that introducing a third variable in the person of a middle-aged physics professor with a hopeless and somewhat embarrassing fixation would hardly be fair, to any of them, himself included.

No, in the larger scheme of things, it was best to let Charles have room and time to sort himself out. Charlie would muddle through, he was sure. He had his family, and, though Larry couldn’t name them, he was sure that Charlie had other friends. In any case, he had his family. And Amita.

He surely had Amita.

And in the meantime, Larry did indeed have other problems to occupy his time. The universe did not explain itself, and it hid nothing through any fault of design or intent. At times like these, he liked to think that it was incumbent upon him to do at least some of the theoretical work toward giving it a voice.

"You—where have you been?" Charlie set his books down on Larry's desk with more force than was necessary to make the point that he was irritated. He'd nearly dropped them when he noticed Larry's door was open, finally, after nearly three weeks. He'd almost walked by and shut it when he realized that Larry was actually, finally there. He'd nearly hugged him with relief. He still thought he might.

"I left a note," Larry said, pointing at his door, as if it explained everything. Of course, the note said, "Professor Fleinhardt will return in three weeks and requests that, in the meantime, students pursue their own lines of inquiry."

Charlie had decided that the secretary had written it verbatim per Larry's request, and also guessed that Larry's first year students must have been beside themselves trying to decide whether the note meant they were supposed to follow the syllabus and do the homework, or not. Larry hadn't arranged for someone else to teach his class, which at the very least suggested he was planning on returning, but given Larry's tendency toward vague syllabi, Charlie guessed that all but a few of them would have given up after the first week without direction.

"Are you… alright?"

Larry looked at him, very seriously, and then sighed, returning to his apparently very interesting book. "I don’t suppose you'd accept that it was a private matter and leave it at that? You might be interested to hear that I made quite a bit of progress toward—well, maybe not."

"I've been trying to—I left you messages. Several messages."

"More than several. Which I received." Larry turned a page, and Charlie restrained himself from reaching over and closing it for him.

"And you didn't respond to them, so I was understandably... I was worried."

"I'm touched at your concern, but as I said, I'm fine, as you can plainly see."

Charlie did not miss the implication that the subject was closed, and that Larry wasn't touched but was… something else. "Larry—I don't understand this at all. I don't understand—"

"Honestly, can't a person take a small, impromptu break without undergoing the third degree?"

Charlie looked him over, carefully, flashes of his Mom coming back from the doctors, still looking normal, and then looking like someone else entirely—someone he didn't recognize, when he could force himself to look at her.

It was paranoia, he knew that. But he also knew that this wasn't like Larry. Larry did not take impromptu sabbaticals. He was forgetful, definitely, but not… erratic.

When Larry said he was going to be somewhere, he was there, not always on time, and not always precisely where he'd said he was going to be, but he was consistent, predictable. So after Amita had gone home, he'd waited for Larry to wander back, and when he hadn't, he'd assumed, naturally, that he'd see Larry the next day, and yes, he'd sort of dreaded the fact that he'd see Amita then as well. But Amita had been conveniently busy and rescheduled their meeting through the departmental secretary, and Larry hadn't show up to work at all.

So he'd called and got Larry's machine, and then he'd called Dad, who said that Larry had come by during the day to pick up his briefcase, and seemed distracted, but then again, "No offense, but he's sort of always a little out of it, isn't he?" Don, meanwhile, had looked at him like he was crazy when he said he was worried, because there was a note on Larry's office door, wasn't there, and Dad had seen him, so it wasn't as if he'd been kidnapped or something. And didn't faculty sometimes take sabbaticals?

Not in the middle of the semester, Charlie had argued, and not without telling their—and what were they, really? Colleagues? Friends? Larry was probably his best friend, actually, but Don had just sighed and told him to just go over there and talk to Larry if he was so curious.

And yes, it was some consolation that Larry'd been by for his briefcase, and his car, which at least had reassured Charlie that he was alive, though by the second week of Larry's mysterious sabbatical, he'd been reduced to sitting outside of Larry's house like a stalker every morning, watching Larry cook breakfast in his robe and slippers and trying to figure out why Larry was steadfast in his refusal to answer Charlie's calls. Larry tended to forget he was cooking, and the smoke alarm had gone off twice while Charlie was watching. He couldn't hear it, but each time, he'd watched as Larry turned off the stove, waving away the smoke and taking the battery out of the alarm, and each time, Charlie had just sat there, wondering if he should go inside or call the fire department or go to work and try to accomplish something, though between worrying about Larry and avoiding Amita (who was helpfully avoiding him), he really couldn't think, and barely managed to teach, much less do anything else that might be considered productive. Instead, he'd called Larry again and left a few messages, and emailed Larry and left still more messages, until he started to realize that he didn't know what to say and was reduced to stupid small-talk, and he had no idea what Larry was making of all of it.

Now, confronted with Larry's sudden reappearance, Charlie bit his lip, hard, and turned toward the row of books on Larry's office shelves, knowing even before he looked that Larry had them in order by year of publication. He suddenly remembered that they used to be alphabetized, but that he'd been in here one day, worried about one of Don's cases, and… and Larry had never changed them back.

"I'm not sick, Charles, if that's what's worrying you. I'm just—I needed some time to take care of some things. Personal time. You do understand the concept of personal time?"

"Okay," Charlie said, though he didn't. Since when did personal not include him? "Then why not just answer your messages?" Charlie demanded, knowing that he was being reasonable but still somehow sounding unreasonable. Larry, by contrast, could somehow say completely unreasonable things and sound utterly rational, which was, at the moment, slightly infuriating. But anger was good—anger he could deal with. He was learning to embrace anger, since he'd figured out that it kept him from working on the truly unsolvable problems, and focused on the ones he could do something about.

Larry didn’t answer, and when he turned around, Larry had his head in his hands, his fingertips at his temples, rubbing there. Charlie had to resist the urge to help him rub the pain away, or to just shake him, hard.

"I have no excuse for that, actually. I wasn't in a frame of mind to consider the consequences of my silence given your unique history. And for that I'm truly sorry."

"You could have answered the phone. I emailed. I was—"

"And again, I am sorry. But as you can clearly see, I'm not dead. I'm not sick. I'm just—" Larry frowned and shook his head.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing," Charlie echoed, scratching his head. "Nothing? I—"

"I haven't seen Amita today."

"She's presenting something at the AMS conference in San Francisco. Why… does she know what's going on here?"

"Nothing's going on here, Charles. And if you ask me—"

"How could I ask you? You weren't here to ask."

And saying that, it occurred to Charlie just how self-serving that sounded, as if he were no more than a freshman incapable of "pursuing his own inquiries." The ironic thing was, in three weeks, he hadn't actually once had a pressing need to talk to Larry about his own work or Don's cases. In fact, the only thing he'd needed to talk to Larry about was Amita, and by the time he worked out just what to say to Larry about that, he no longer really needed the advice, he just needed to talk to Larry.

He wanted to say all of that right now—but Larry was sitting so very still and he realized that Larry was looking at him with a strange… coldness, as if he was angry.

"Is it me? Did I do something?" he asked, and as soon as he said it, he saw Larry consider denying it and deciding not to.

So he back-tracked, which was easy given the routine of his life. There were surprisingly few variables to consider, actually. The last time he'd seen Larry, they'd talked on the phone in the morning, and they'd agreed to meet for lunch, and then he'd kissed Amita, and he'd been assuming those last two things were merely correlative, not causal, but then again…

"Amita."

"Hmm," Larry nodded, looking away from him and out the window. "Perhaps next time you might consider conducting your affairs in a more private location than the solarium. I very nearly walked in on, well."

"It was not an affair, Larry."

"It was what it was," Larry said, and managed to almost sound philosophical about it, though the way he hunched over his desk, his shoulders tense, suggested he was upset.

"It was a—a kiss. And I still don't understand—"

"I don't know that it's any of my business, either way." Larry got up suddenly and moved toward the door, but Charlie reached past him and shut it. Larry blinked at it and glanced at Charlie, and could have opened it again and left, but instead just leaned his back against it and crossed his arms over his chest, looking annoyed.

"I think you're right. She kissed me, and she's not my advisee anymore, so it's not a violation of any ethical standards I'm aware of."

"You kissed her," Larry countered, quietly, and Charlie shut his eyes, trying to remember.

"Yes, alright. That's possibly what happened, yes. Once. It happened once."

"Well, regardless of the circumstances, I expect you two are very happy together." Again, Larry managed to say "happy" and clearly mean something else entirely.

"We're not…together." Actually, they were hardly speaking, though he suspected that was more a matter of awkwardness than animosity at this point, and that eventually, they'd figure it out and be friends again. That or one of them would have to find a new coffee shop.

"Well, if I were you, I'd give her another chance. After all, she's invested so much in the relationship. Several years and two dissertations, isn't it?"

"That's—I don’t even know what to say to that."

"You were curious," Larry said, and Charlie hated—absolutely hated that Larry sounded compassionate, even understanding. Because underneath that, Charlie could hear the anger, and he had no idea where it was coming from, but they were clearly arguing at cross-purposes.

"Maybe I was," he admitted.

"And I don't suppose it in any way occurred to you that you were experimenting with real, living people who might get hurt along the way?"

He took a step toward Larry. "I would never intentionally hurt her. You know that."

"Do I? I suppose I do, at that. I have a class to teach, by the way, so if you'll—"

Charlie lifted Larry's wrist up and shook it in Larry's face. "Not for another two hours you don't."

"Well I need to prepare."

"It's 'Introduction to Quantum Physics.' You don't prepare for that. You just—"

"Open the box and see if the cat's dead," Larry finished for him, and Charlie noticed that Larry had smiled, almost in spite of himself, and Charlie realized that he was still holding on to Larry's big, gold watch and that it was still attached to Larry's wrist, causing Larry's hand to dangle there.

Charlie let go of the watch and slid his hand down to catch Larry's hand in his own, and Larry stopped smiling and looked down at their hands, his eyebrows rising and his eyes going wide.

"You don't hide half as well as I do," Charlie said, gripping Larry's hand in his own, not sure exactly what he meant by that, but knowing it was true. He couldn’t put words to the feeling, not yet, but as wrong as kissing Amita had been—this felt strangely right, which shouldn't have surprised him, but it did, probably more than it surprised Larry.

Larry sighed. "No, I suppose I don't."

And if this were a math problem, instead of Larry, he'd know exactly what to do next, but this was Larry, and at a loss, he just stood there, holding on.

Charles' hand was sweaty and warm over his, and he didn't pull away, because it would have been rude, and because a small part of Larry that was still somewhat invested in hiding considered the remote possibility that Charles might have no idea that he'd overstepped the line. After all, he'd grown used to the extent to which Charles was both a profoundly tactile and tactless person. It was, in fact, no small part of his charm, not to mention a bit confusing at times like these.

"We appear to be holding hands, Charles," he said, finally, when Charles showed no sign of letting go.

Charlie nodded. "Yes. Do you—do you mind?"

"I really don't know," he answered, trying to be honest. "I suppose what's important is—is it making you uncomfortable?"

"No. It's…I'm not uncomfortable."

"Well, that's—where did you say Amita is again?"

"San Francisco."

"And you do admit that you kissed her."

"Once, Larry. Just once. And it was—" Charlie frowned.

"It looked very passionate."

"It was…not what I expected it to be. I don’t know what I was thinking."

"Hmm. I somehow doubt you were thinking at all." Larry looked at their hands, at their now interlaced fingers. "And what do you expect from this? No—don't answer that. I suppose someone seeing this might, for instance, think you and I were—"

"Involved?"

"Well, no," Larry disagreed. "I expect that a casual viewer would assume we were in the middle of agreeing to something."

"Are we?"

"Now that's a very good question, Charles. Is that—is that something you're interested in?"

"I'm—yes—I think I am. Interested. Definitely, yes. In-interested."

And oh, Alan was not going to be pleased with this, not at all. Not pleased.

"Far be it from me to sell myself any shorter than I am, but… are we both entirely sure we're talking about the same something?" Larry tried to loosen Charles' death grip before he lost sensation in that hand. Because that, really, was the crux of the matter. If Charles was merely confused (and given that he was as well, that was a distinct possibility) or curious again….

"I think we're talking about the same thing, yes." And dear Lord, Charles Eppes was actually blushing.

"Because if we aren't on the same page, or even if we are, I'm of course entirely willing to forget this conversation—in fact I could easily forget this whole day—if you like. Though I should warn you I might end up forgetting it regardless of either of our desires to the contrary."

"Desires," Charles echoed back at him, and let go of his hand and moved in so quickly Larry didn't have time to react properly before Charles had braced his hands on the door on either side of him and was kissing him, and it was the sort of kiss that reminded him very much of just how young Charles was, and how long it had been since he'd been kissed this inexpertly and this enthusiastically by anyone.

It was joyous.

Charlie had a problem making decisions. He knew that he did. Bad things—truly bad things—often happened when he made a decision. And he knew that Larry liked to argue that there were universes upon universes, such that no decision was final, but as far as his senses were concerned, and he was forced to rely on them at times like this, there was only one Charles Eppes, and one Larry Fleinhardt, and he knew what it was like to not kiss Larry, so there was really no point in continuing to reproduce an experiment for which he was satisfied with his data set. He needed new data. He needed something.

He needed to find out if four women were an anomaly, spelled however you wanted to spell it, or whether it was a pattern, and if it was a pattern, then was it pointing to this?

Until today—until a few minutes ago—he'd never considered it. He'd had countless reasons to not consider it. And alright, maybe if he had considered it, on some level, it was in a strictly, very hypothetical sense. Strange thoughts sometimes happened, especially when you were tired and bored and sometimes, maybe, you'd be looking at a person you knew and worked with and had lunch with and happened to find yourself touching nearly every time you spoke with them, and you might just suddenly wonder…just a thought-experiment: what would it be like to touch their dick the way you touched your own? Strictly hypothetically, you might wonder something like that, occasionally. Of course, then they'd look up at you and say something about zero-branes and perturbative solutions and you didn't dwell on it.

Now… he was dwelling on it a little.

So he let go of Larry's hand and braced himself on the door, and then he was kissing Larry, and at first, all he could do was press his lips against Larry's, barely moving the rest of him, but then Larry reacted, parting his lips just a little, and Charlie couldn't even think because it was suddenly all about need, brainless autonomic desire, the softness of Larry's cheek against his own and Larry's body pressed between him and the door, perfectly positioned to provide maximum stability as he applied pressure and friction, sliding his hands up high on the door and pinning Larry to it with his hips and thrusting against him.

"Whoa, slow down." Larry had turned his head and was breathing hard. "We don’t have to—in fact, we probably shouldn't—though I highly doubt that anyone would notice if we did, actually...."

He nodded, and let go of Larry, barely able to look at him now, and barely able to breathe.

"Hey—hey," Larry lifted his chin up by force and he felt like an idiot, but looked at him anyway, because, without a doubt, even before this, he'd always liked to look at him. Larry was smiling, and Charlie realized he was really taken with that, and always had been, and was probably equally enthusiastic about most of Larry's expressions. Larry had a funny, kind face, and a strangely, inexplicably hot body and he felt himself grinning back, still embarrassed, but suddenly understanding why they called it "turned on." This—this explained an awful lot of stupid—even criminal—things people did. It was primal, and irrational, like nothing he'd ever felt before, and it went beyond enjoying Larry's company, or respecting him and his insight, or even that, like any two people who spent enough time together, that they could be in a room and think together without paying any attention to each other. In fact, he wasn't at all sure he'd ever be able to work with Larry again, because right now, all he wanted to do was get as close to him as was humanly possible.

He wanted to get inside of him.

"I don't think I can slow down," he admitted, finding that he didn't know what to do with his hands now that they weren't pinning Larry to the door, and Larry nodded, looking thoughtful and surprisingly calm.

"Could we at least…" and Larry looked around the room as if searching for something, and then shrugged. "I do have to teach in…hmm…under two hours now."

"This is not going to take two hours," Charlie warned him, and then laughed, because Larry did too.

"No, I suppose it won't. But we can always dream."

And Larry walked past him and took off his jacket and draped it across his desk and then walked over to the rug and lay down on it on his back. He looked oddly comfortable there, and patted the floor next to him, and Charlie went to join him, removing his own jacket and getting down on the rug.

He stared at the ceiling, higher brain functions having returned enough to worry him again.

"This is probably a good thing," Larry said, and Charlie turned his head. "Slowing down. Taking time to consider this more deliberatively."

"I think I liked the other thing we were doing—the not deliberating thing." Charlie rolled over onto his side, propped up on an elbow, and put his palm over Larry's heart, counting the beats—which were fast considering Larry was in decent shape and lying pretty still. He undid the top buttons of Larry's shirt, sliding his hand inside but frustrated with the undershirt underneath. Then he leaned over and kissed Larry again, this time trying to slow himself down but getting caught up in the pleasant warmth of Larry's body near his in an entirely different way than he was used to. And then Larry "hmmed" into his mouth and—and—moaned—and reached around and pulled him closer and he managed to get half of Larry's buttons undone before he gave up and moved to Larry's pants, then gave up on those because the angle was wrong and so he focused on his own, and then Larry was helping him.

"You really—I'm having a little trouble with—okay. This is good. This is…."

Larry's hand was inside his pants and then pulling them down all the way to his ankles, and he watched as Larry somehow wriggled out of most of his own clothes, a procedure which would have been funny under normal circumstances except that the result was that Larry was wearing just his boxers and undershirt, and Charlie couldn't argue with that.

And all of this was, he realized, strange and crazy, but also fun.

Several people walked down the hall outside the office and the voices got louder and then quieter again as they passed the closed door.

"Larry, hang on a minute. Is the door locked?"

"Hmm?" Larry was doing something distracting with his hands but Charlie shook him off.

"The door, Larry. Is it locked?"

"I—does it lock?"

"Yes it—they all lock, and never mind. I'll just check before I have a heart attack."

"Do I have a key to this lock?" Larry sat up and looked more puzzled than concerned, and the puzzled look was just slightly incongruous with Larry's state of undress and arousal.

Charlie smiled, feeling a wave of mostly non-sexual affection that was not overwhelming his realization that, if the door wasn't locked, this could become very embarrassing once the sexual kicked back in again.

"Yes, you—how can you not know you have a key? How long have you been working here?" Charlie kicked off his shoes and pants on the way. And yes, it was locked. "It's locked."

"I suppose I must have a key, then."

And Larry grinned, and Charlie stopped by the door and leaned on it and just looked at Larry.

"You—"

"Made you look. Exactly how senile do you think I am? Because honestly, Charles…" And Larry chuckled.

"Made me look? You are juvenile, you know that? How old are you—twelve?"

Larry nodded, knees drawn up to his chest, looking entirely unrepentant.

Charlie walked back to Larry, taking in the many ways in which Larry wasn't female, young, or sane—three things he'd at one time assumed were important, not to say necessary.

"So now that we both know we're not about to become the talk of the department, how long have you, um, wanted—this?"

Larry blinked. "This particularly? I think the sex-on-the-floor fantasy is relatively recent, with the rug being new to both the room and the fantasy. The bare floors were a bit unforgiving on my knees."

"No, I—the rug?" And the image of Larry on his knees temporarily distracted him, as did the idea that Larry had bought a large, oriental rug in the hopes that he might have sex on it. "No, I meant… more generally than that. Wanting this."

"Oh, well then I suppose I've—do you mean more generally as in wanting men, or more generally as in wanting you in particular, but not specifically designating this location for our tryst?"

Charlie had to stop and think about that before he realized that really, he didn't. "You're doing it again. Playing with my head. Right?"

"You have a very attractive head, but nevertheless, I'll admit I'm finding it difficult to remain 'in the mood' when you're interrogating me about locked doors and sexual histories."

"I'm not—I'm just—"

"Nervous?"

"I wasn't a few minutes ago, but yes. Now that you ask."

"We don't have to—"

"You keep saying that. Do you not want to?"

Larry paused before answering that question, because his first instinct was to say of course he wanted Charles. But certainly, it was more complicated than that. More complicated, at any rate, than simple desire.

In some respects, not having Charles' body all these years had become a comfortable discomfort—a hunger that, left unsated, turned into a familiar pain and then just a dull emptiness, a constant reminder that he could eat. And seeing Amita glutting herself on Charles had been intolerable, an almost startling evisceration, given he'd come to think of himself as resigned to its eventuality.

He sighed and glanced down at his not terribly flat midsection, deciding that perhaps the whole hunger analogy left something to be desired, as he obviously spent not very much time at all fasting. He really probably could stand to lose a few pounds here and there, but he also had no patience at all with dieting, and it was just so hard to find the time to exercise. Though perhaps a regular sex life would help in that regard.

"Does it really matter how long?" he asked, finally, and Charles looked intensely at him and sat down beside him. "It does? Alright, I suppose I've wanted you since I met you, though not necessarily in the immediately carnal sense."

Charles looked… disappointed, perhaps, as well he might, and Larry continued.

"I suppose when I first met you I… I noticed your many and varied charms, but, beyond that, I very much wanted to teach you, though as we both know, my skills apparently lie in other areas."

"You're an acquired taste."

"Graciously put, and thank you for that. No, I am well aware of my limitations in that regard. In any case, I did want you, as a friend, at least as soon as I realized that you were probably going to spend as much time teaching me as I you, at least platonically, and that our relationship was far more reciprocal than I'd at first expected, again, platonically-speaking."

"I'm flattered, platonically-speaking," Charles said, mocking him, he knew, but still looking troublingly intense, dark-eyed and, to Larry's eyes, somewhat smoldering.

"No more so than I," he answered, perhaps mocking himself now. Though honestly, and without any false modesty, he couldn't help wondering how much of Charles' earlier passion was specific to him and how much was just sheer, pent-up, generic horniness of the kind he could well appreciate—the pressure of abstinence suddenly let loose in a flood of longing strong enough to drown Amita, himself, or even some lucky stranger who happened by at the right moment.

But Charles continued to look at him so intently—he was reminded again of how Charles had sat outside his house only a week ago and watched him, for at least an hour every morning, as he did nothing at all interesting, and how very fascinatingly stimulating that had been, leaving him deeply aroused for hours after Charles had left, and how the first few days he'd resisted doing anything about it, until he'd finally given in, or perhaps more precisely, given up, and gone to his bedroom and masturbated the moment he heard Charles driving off, thinking about what it would have been like to not wait—to instead acknowledge Charles there outside his window, and perhaps even disrobe and do the deed in plain sight. At the time, it was a vengeful fantasy, with the pleasure mingled with resentment, even anger.

And even now, Larry blamed Charles entirely for nearly all of this. It was really hopeless to resist, now that Charlie was directing that gaze at him, and consciously so. And there would be repercussions as a result, he was sure of that. He wondered if Charles had considered them at all, or merely dived in, attractive head first.

"I've wanted—Larry, I've been g—" Charles stopped and Larry wondered at that—at what it might take for Charles to say that dreaded word aloud. "I think I wanted you since I met you."

"That's—I'm sure that's not true. Nice of you to say, but—"

Charles shook his head. "No, I think it is true. I remember noticing you had green eyes."

"That's not—"

"And you always touch your face."

"I what?"

"Like you're hiding."

And Charles put his hands to his face and yes, it did look a bit like Charles was hiding in plain sight, like a child or someone at a horror movie wanting to see and afraid to do more than peek.

"I suppose that's—I really do that?" Though yes, even now it appeared his hands had found their way to his own face. Larry forced them down to his sides with some effort. "And that's… you mean to say you find that attractive?"

Charles nodded and leaned in again and then they were kissing again, but this time, something had changed. Charles was no longer so clumsily aggressive, nor was he especially timid, as he had been the second time they'd kissed. This time, it felt far more natural, easy, the way that he'd often imagined it would be, in those moments when he let himself consider this remotest of possibilities.

This time, Charles let him lead, and he gently pushed Charles down to the floor, so that they were lying down again, and he wanted very much to climb up on top of Charles but knew he was not going to be strong enough to hold himself up there very long before he would be putting his full weight on Charles, and that would likely speed things up considerably. And besides which, he was content to just continue this slow, easy kissing, getting his hands under Charles' t-shirt and dragging it up his torso. Charles had the body of a young academic who now and again played golf, which he supposed was a polite way of saying that, if he himself felt a bit self-conscious now, it was somewhat diminished in present company, not that he was at all complaining, because Charles had many qualities that deeply attracted him on a purely visceral level. He was fair-skinned and a good deal more hirsute than Larry himself, and Larry enjoyed the hard lines of his musculature as Charles' biceps tensed and relaxed. And he had strong thighs from that bicycle and a truly magnificent, if often poorly-displayed, ass.

All in all, Larry considered himself immensely lucky to be alive.

And then Charles broke off their kiss and began to move down his body, and he decided that lucky was an understatement.

The word is gay, Charlie thought to himself, reaching the midpoint of Larry's body, considering that he damned well ought to be able to say it if he was about to pull down another man's boxers. But the word still felt stuck somewhere around his Adam's apple, and he wasn't sure if he was capable of swallowing it.

His hands here shaking, though he supposed Larry, having shut his green eyes, wouldn't notice, and he knew it wasn't fear but adrenaline (with maybe just a little spike of fear mixed in) making him shiver as Larry lifted his hips helpfully so that Charlie could tug down the boxers all the way to Larry's thighs.

And then he was just…relieved, actually, because gay just meant this—the symmetry of his own erection stirring as he took Larry in his hand, testing the strange, familiar weight of Larry's erection against his own palm. So he shifted down a little, encouraging Larry to roll over onto his side and then taking him into his mouth. Larry's surprised gasp echoed his own.

Equations that had seemed impossible sometimes felt like this as they transformed, clarifying and making sense with an urgency that took him headlong wherever the numbers were leading him. He'd tried to explain once that when it started, he had no choice but to follow—it was almost outside of him, the need that was now coiling in his lower back, tensed and ready, and he knew he was done with taking things slow and carefully. He could solve this. His body was saying, now, now, now and he couldn't and didn't want to argue.

So he put his free hand over his own penis and focused on rhythm, counting off strokes and sucks and pulls and the sound of Larry's uneven, frantic breaths, timing it, knowing his own body if not Larry's, and knowing that at least one of them was very close. And then he was there, coming into his own fist with a moan that Larry must've felt and heard, because Larry held very, very still just before he came into Charlie's mouth, and then Charlie had to pull back, swallowing a little at first because he had to, and because he was curious.

He rolled over onto his back and swiped at his face where it was wet.

"I think… I think I should cancel class," Larry said after a few moments of breathing heavily.

Charlie murmured a hoarse agreement but Larry didn't seem to notice, because he was still talking.

"Though I have missed six of them already. Seven would really be pushing it, don't you think?"

"Cancel," Charlie said a bit louder, and Larry reached down and patted him on the head.

"That's a really irresponsible suggestion, and I'm disappointed in you for making it. You should be flattering me by suggesting that my students will be lost without my tutelage."

Charlie dragged himself up to lay even with Larry on the rug. "You smell like sex, Larry."

"Really? I thought that was you."

Charlie reached over and slapped him on the thigh, hard enough to sting, he hoped. "You're right, you should definitely clean up and go to class."

"Damn. You're probably right. And look—I still have time."

Larry held up his wrist and Charlie glanced at it, seeing that Larry actually did, though it was less time than Charlie himself had predicted.

"Though I don't think I can move."

Charlie empathized. His legs felt rubbery and weak, and he decided that the rug was perfect for a nap. He closed his eyes.

When Larry opened his office door, he did so very carefully, though he fully expected the office to be empty. He was a bit startled to see Charlie almost exactly where he'd left him, his boxers kicked off by his feet, his t-shirt rucked up around his chest.

Larry set down his briefcase quietly on the desk and debated leaving him there for another few minutes, but then realized that, if for no other reason than to re-establish some routine of normalcy, it was incumbent upon him to get Charles home, to his family, even if that meant significant hardship on his part.

But still, he spent a few minutes more just watching Charles sleep, his hair curling with sweat and those long eyelashes fluttering on his cheeks making him look painfully young and almost sweet, for a man with a growing beard that is. Larry had to look away, because if he didn't, he would end up doing his utmost to further compromise what innocence was still left in the man.

"Charles. Charlie—wake up."

"Larry? Where the—oh. Oh." Charles blushed again, and sat up, grabbing his underwear and pulling them on quickly.

"You fell asleep."

"I gathered that. Did you just get back from class?"

"Yes, and I'm glad you convinced me to go. They were absolutely adrift. I've never seen students so incapable of telling me what page they were on. I got half a dozen very curious answers in the first ten minutes. It seems that some of them thought it was a good idea to read ahead of the syllabus, though some of them were a good deal faster than others, and I'm not entirely sure that 'reading' is at all synonymous with understanding, while some of them seemed to have assumed that, in my absence, time itself had stopped despite all evidence to the contrary. I took it as an invitation to talk about time dilation, though only a select few appreciated the beauty of that. I suppose I should've anticipated as much, but it seems we're going to have to effect some compromise between the two groups and cut the difference lengthwise at Chapter Five."

"That sounds very…where are my pants?"

"On the chair over by your jacket."

Charlie hadn't really looked at him once since he'd come in—at least not directly, and Larry sighed, sitting down behind his desk. He shut his eyes, using his hands (and now a little too conscious of it, but not enough to keep from doing it, apparently) to cut out the remaining sunlight that felt a bit too much like a hangover for comfort. While he'd cleaned up thoroughly, there'd been no time to properly segue from orgasm to classroom, and he felt rather like a deep sea diver recovering from the bends.

And then he sighed again, because Charles had stepped up behind his chair and was rubbing at his temples with a gentle rhythm and flawless technique that Larry could instantly imagine translating into something far more sensual. Even now, his headache was receding and his lower back, still a bit strained from the earlier grappling on the floor, was anticipating another release.

"That feels very, very good."

"I missed you while I was asleep."

"You didn’t even notice I was gone."

"Let me be romantic, Larry. I want to be romantic."

"Alright," Larry agreed. "Be romantic."

"I think we should go out to dinner."

"I could eat," Larry agreed again, and he really was ravenous all of a sudden.

"Wine, maybe a movie."

"Are you suggesting a date?"

"Yes. Absolutely. Only without the pressure of wondering whether or not your date is going to put out."

"Because you're sure I will."

"You won't? I plan on it." Charles stopped rubbing his temples and Larry leaned back against him, noticing the erection not too subtly pressing against him.

"No, I will. I will. I think I definitely feel like being wooed tonight first, though."

He turned around and Charles leaned down and kissed him on the mouth. Charlie still smelled like sex. He inhaled deeply, ready to forget all about both Chapter Five and dinner.

"Oh, and Larry? I should probably mention, just in case you didn't figure it out already."

"Hmm?"

"I'm gay."

"Really? You hide it remarkably well." Larry's feigned expression of shock wasn't entirely a performance. Just three little letters—exactly as many as sex, and only one short of love. He wondered if Charles had done that bit of math yet.

But he said nothing more about it, trusting that Charles would get there in his own time. So he stood up, putting his hands on Charles' hips and drawing him in close for a moment before letting go and walking with him to the door, only a little frustrated that they would inevitably have to stand apart once it was opened, but trusting also that if he held on anyway, and damned the consequences, they still might get where-ever they were going together.

The End.

Thanks to Sigrid, who made such fabulous faces while reading the first two-thirds of this at Starbucks, and to Kate, whose betas read like LoCs, letting me read the lines I wrote with fresh eyes.

Feed the Muse.