By Miriam Heddy

"What's past is prologue"

—Antonio, The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1

"You don't like her."

"She is a beautiful woman. She really is."

"That's not an answer, is it? Is that an answer?"

"Was there a question?" Larry swung his legs onto the concrete divider that bordered the main walkway from the lawn, and clasped his hands over his knees, drawing them up to his chest so he could rest his head. Not surprisingly, a headache was coming on.

"Riight. So why don't you like her?"

"I'm not saying I do or I don't. But I am curious about your understanding of interpersonal relationships, because I suspect there are probably a number of people about whom we might disagree, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Do I need to like her? She's your student, after all."

"Need—that's—no—of course not. You don't need to—but you really don't like her? Why not? Are you still—is it because of what she said about you not doing your own math? Because that was—"

Months ago? Just a joke? An unpardonable insult to his professional standing?

Charlie shrugged and frowned, as if it only now occurred to him that Amita had ever—or ever could have— been anything but gracious. It was strange thing, really, aesthetic perception—one of the peculiarities of physical beauty that it so colored everything else. Larry wondered if it was a generalizable phenomenon, body language writ large as some sort of aesthetic/linguistic resonance. Did his own words sound especially short to others? Short-tempered, maybe. Charlie's eyebrows certainly leant a broody, wounded intensity to pretty much everything he said, which was a little disconcerting when they were talking about casual things. Then again, perhaps that explained why so few of their conversations seemed casual.

"Charlie, before this conversation proceeds any further, I have to say, now, just to be clear, and so there's no potential for misunderstanding between us on the subject—that I don't particularly care what your thesis advisee thinks of my math skills, or anything else, for that matter. I particularly don't care what she thinks of my theories, most of which lie outside her area of expertise, such as it is. So what I think of her, as you asked, is largely… irrelevant. I am capable of being professional, regardless."

"Wow—you really don't like her. I had no idea. How did I miss that?"

Larry sighed but didn't bother to argue, as no, he really didn't like her all that much, though his reasons were quite a bit more complex than Charlie could apparently fathom at the moment. "Nevertheless, I should point out that it seems to me that she was, at the time, questioning your judgment as much as mine."

"My judgment?"

"Charles, what did I do before you came along? No—that's not a rhetorical question, I'm serious, I think. Y'know, Amita's what—twenty-something? Yes, well, and I've spent thirty-odd years in my field, some, admittedly, odder than others."

Larry looked up at the sky, where there was one cumulous cloud that seemed resistant to the currents pulling all the other clouds along, as it were tethered in that one spot. The headache was still defining a rather concrete space between his eyes that made looking in Charlie's direction a bit difficult right now. The sky was easier. It didn't sulk when you failed to appreciate it properly.

"It's raining."

He blinked as he realized Charlie was right. "Yes, it surely is at that. Do I have my umbrella with me? No, I suppose I don't. Do I own an umbrella?"

"Yes. It's in my office, I think, by the door. And—we should, um, come in out of the rain."

Larry shook his head. "No, no—you go on. I think I'll stay here and think a bit longer."

"Here? You're—look, come on and—we don't have to talk about it."

Larry glanced up at the clouds again, now blocked by Charlie and his looming eyebrows and those brilliant, brilliant eyes. "No, we don't have to, but I'm somehow sure we will. Fine. You buy me a cup of coffee. And a new umbrella. I think I'm starting to melt."

---

An hour later, the rain had stopped leaving him only slightly damp, the headache was receding, the caffeine was hard at work, and Larry was still the uncontested high scorer at Tempest. Vector graphics—a lost art, and highly underappreciated by the modern generation, Charlie included. When the arcade retired the machine, if they ever did, he might just have to buy it from them. On the other hand it, like him, might just work right through till the end. It would make a fine headstone, at any rate. L.A.R.R.Y. was here.

Charlie, true to his word, had refrained from saying the A word or doing anything more than hovering behind him as he kicked monsters to kingdom come. Charlie was a slight distraction, though it was not at all uncommon in these places for two men to gather around the same machine. He supposed no one noticed if he occasionally leaned back against Charlie's damp shoulder or let their hips brush as he played.

"I am the master." The machine seemed to agree, though Charlie said nothing.

Still, the symmetry of his name repeated down the screen was pleasing, surprisingly like publishing, except that this felt a bit more genuine, as he was only really competing against himself at this point.

But such moments of relative peace were fleeting, and he turned around and leaned back against the machine. Charlie's silence had turned from mildly jittery self-involvement to the weighted silence of impending crisis. In other words…

"She's wrong, you know. There's nothing wrong with utilizing all the available resources at your disposal."

"Really?" Charlie had obviously been thinking this over, and Larry crossed his arms over his chest, already not enjoying the direction Charlie was taking. "So I have your approval, then? Because I was really hoping I did, given that you are the resource in question. Not to say that you've been particularly available lately, but beggars can't be choosers."

"That's not—not what I meant. You know what I mean, Larry."

"Do I?"

"Yes, and—not here. Please? Can we not do this here?"

It was the please that did it, because however annoyed he might be, Larry couldn't maintain his annoyance in the face of Charlie saying that, especially when he and his adrenaline hard-on were still pinned between the machine and Charlie. The noise in the arcade was wonderful, necessitating an unusual closeness, and perhaps it was only that—the daring of being this intimate in such a public space—that was driving him to be this honest. He had a fleeting wish that the world—most notably the FBI—was a more forgiving place.

"Right—I take it Alan's home tonight?"

Charlie nodded and Larry sighed.

"Y'know, I understand your choice to live with him, but I have to admit it's a bit… inconvenient when we need to—"

"Make up?"

"You—" Larry poked a finger at Charlie's chest, but he couldn't help smiling now. "You are quite optimistic, as well as a little premature."

"Once. That happened once and—you do not fight fair."

"Yes, but keep in mind that we haven't really had the fight yet. Don't look at me like that. I'm trying to work up a head of steam."

"Is this fight inevitable? Why force it?"

"No, Charles. Nothing is inevitable, at least I think it isn't. Let me get back to you on that. But you seemed pretty intent on a fight, and maybe you're on to something."

"We could just skip to the—"

"No—I don’t believe we can." Larry shook his head and Charlie frowned. "In this case, I think we have to actually follow-through to the bitter end and have it out, mano a mano."

"Fisticuffs?"

"Well, figuratively speaking, of course. I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself."

"You are in a strange mood tonight. Are you sure we're not fighting now? Because when Don and I—"

"Charles, are you actually interested in resolving this… amicably? Or do you want to talk fraternal rivalry in the Eppes household until I lose all interest in exploring the wonders of your body?"

It was startlingly pleasurable to say something like that here, with the electronics creating more than adequate white noise.

"Are you sure you're mad at me?"

"Charles, I'm not mad. I already told you that. However, there are some things we do honestly need to talk about at some point, and perhaps now is the point—the right moment—and it's entirely possible that when we do, things between us will have irrevocably changed, and if that's the case, then—"

"Now you're scaring me."

"I'm scaring myself, Charles."

And with that, he took a step forward and nearly into Charlie's arms, but then Charlie wisely backed up and let him out. In his pocket, he still had a few coins left, and he wondered if, in a few hours, he'd wish he had stayed here and played until the urge to talk passed.

---

"So, you were saying?"

He'd taken off his damp clothes as soon as they got in, and changed into a dry pair of pajamas and some slippers. His own hair was nearly dry already, but Charlie's hair was still damp and curling, dripping a little on the shoulders of one of the spare t-shirts he kept here. Larry was amused to see that Charlie's blue boxers had a large ink-stain on the left side that must have all but destroyed the pair of pants Charlie was wearing at the time.

He'd found some wine and Charlie had taken a glass but left it on the coffee table after only a sip. He was on his fourth glass now, which was probably too much. Charlie wasn't much of a wine drinker, but it was good stuff—a gift from someone, and when he remembered whom, he'd really have to thank them again.

Charlie had his "I'm listening" face on, and Larry wondered if he really was. Somehow, Larry suspected that, having begun this, Charlie had already moved on to thinking about whatever problem Don had presented him with most recently, and it didn't help to realize that, when Charlie got frustrated with it, he would inevitably come to Larry for advice, as he always did. To him, and not to Amita. Not that he was counting or anything.

"I was saying? Charles, I do believe you were telling me that, Amita's scorn notwithstanding, you'd do my equations and still respect me in the morning—"

Charlie's eyes widened and Larry would have laughed, but he was annoyed again. Funny how that worked. Amita. Amita. The name was really enough.

"I did not say that. You know I didn't say that."

"Yes, well, be that as it may, if we play our cards right, the whole world need never know that you not only do my equations but also give masterful hand jobs. Now I wonder which act of charity Amita would have a bigger problem with?"

Charlie looked a little shaken now, and Larry felt a moment of shame. He knew he was provoking him, and maybe himself.

"Larry—I don't know what to say. I don't deserve that. Do I?"

"None of us deserve what we get," he acknowledged by way of apology. By now, Charlie knew he was not above a cheap shot, though at least Charlie wasn't likely to go stomping out into the rain barefoot.

"So now you're a fatalist again?"

"Flirting with it, yes. Maybe. And so I'll return to my earlier question, which is still not rhetorical, probably. What did I do before you? Have you given any thought to that at all?"

"I— do you mean personally?"

"Yes, that, and professionally. At the moment, those two things seem to be more than a little intertwined."

"I don't know. I'm not sure I really want to know. Is this something I should want to know?"

"Hypothesize, just this once."

"Fine. Okay. Evidence suggests that you— Well, I suppose you had other…"

Charlie trailed off with a wave of his hand, as if reconsidering, dismissing possibilities. He was pacing, now, by the window, and it had started raining again, large drops of it streaking the glass. Glass was a particularly useful demonstration of the dangers of intuitive understanding. He could still remember his junior high school physics teacher saying glass was a liquid, and the almost ridiculous amount of time it took him to figured out that yes, it flowed, but so slowly it would take the life of the universe to account for the thickness at the bottom of older panes of glass, which turned out to be the result of the imperfect manufacturing process—human error of another kind than that which produced the urban legend in the first place, that insisted first that the Earth was flat, then that it was round, which he supposed was more accurate than "flat," though it was really somewhere in between. In a war between accuracy and fantasy, accuracy would inevitably lose. Was that a bad thing? Wasn't it Einstein who said "imagination is more important than knowledge'? Then again, Feynman himself argued that 'physics is to math what sex is to masturbation.' They probably would have had some interesting conversations between them.

"Other assistants? Other lovers? Yes, yes, I did have a few of those. Some were even pretty remarkable." He smiled, remembering some of them, forgetting others. "But nothing—nobody like you. You are entirely unique in ways that defy my understanding. I don't even understand myself when I'm with you. I just know…"

One day you'll leave.

He believed that, but couldn’t bring himself to say it. One day, Charlie would choose another, more conventional life. Amita was counting on that, Alan was urging him on like a good father should, and Don… Don couldn't even imagine the alternative, so yes, there was a bit of destiny for you. Only Charlie had somehow found his way here, into his home and life—his very own strange attractor.

The lure of the fixed point was probably there for both of them—though he suspected that it was stronger for Charlie, who had yet to acknowledge or confront it. And if Charlie did, what could he offer him, really?

Charlie had stopped his pacing, and was standing close enough to touch, but his hands were at his sides, clenched into fists Larry assumed he wasn't even aware of. He fought the urge to pull Charlie in close, because if he did, he'd be giving in, reassuring Charlie that everything was fine, when he was pretty sure it wasn't.

"Has it occurred to you to wonder whether, before you, I might have done my own damned equations?" His own voice hardly made it above a whisper, and for a moment, he wondered if Charlie would hear him over the thunder outside, and the continuous flow of the rain sheeting against the window.

Charlie heard him, or heard something, and began to apologize for him again, not really hearing anything. Strangely enough, Amita was still the loudest presence in the room, and she wasn't even there. "I—Larry, look, it's okay. It's really not a problem. You're talking about some pretty remarkably sophisticated theories—and data that—"

"Yes," he cut Charlie off, raising his voice just a little, waving his glass around for emphasis and sloshing a little on his wrist before he remembered it was there. "I'll admit that it's very interesting and complex work, but why is it we're all so sure everything's gotten more complicated over time? Smaller, everything's definitely gotten smaller, that it has. Not me, though wouldn't that be something? I'd probably disappear. No, if anything, well, no, I've gotten softer, true enough, but—twenty—thirty— years ago, if you can imagine…. Maybe that's why we remember the past and not the future—at least not most of us. Science fiction writers—now they're a special breed. They remember the future for us, don't they? 'The past is prologue.' Space travel, the Moon, so many things that seemed like wishful thinking when I was a little boy, and now? Commonplace, things we take for granted, and at what cost?"

Charlie had started smiling, which was… well, he had a very nice smile, but Larry couldn’t see what was worth smiling about at the moment.

"Larry, not that I want to argue with you, but how much have you had to drink and what does this have to do with Amita? Because, no offense to Asimov, but you've lost me."

"Hmm. That is a very real possibility, Charlie. Remind me again, what's the difference between theoretical physics and mathematical physics?"

"Theoretical physics is done by physicists who lack the necessary skills to do real experiments; mathematical physics is done by mathematicians who lack the necessary skills to do real mathematics."

"And is that what you think of me?"

"No. Absolutely not."

"Because really, I don't lack the necessary skills. Not entirely, at any rate. I did, in fact, do my own equations before you. I did the math."

"You did." And Charlie was clearly trying not to sound as surprised as he was.

Larry gave in to his earlier impulse and put down his glass of wine so he could put his hands on Charlie's hips, drawing him close.

Charlie tipped his head to the side, his hands on the small of Larry's back, and he kissed Larry on the cheek, which was strange and wonderful and something none of his other assistants ever did, and he nearly forgot his point.

"Yes, well, admittedly, I did it all far more slowly than you, and I without a doubt had a greater number of errors—though I like to think I did my best, and the work more than passed muster. After all, look where I am now?"

"With me," Charlie said, and Larry sighed.

"Yes, but without you—"

"I'm sorry—I know I haven't been keeping up with my commitments—"

Larry shook his head, ignoring Charlie's apology, which was just like every other apology—heartfelt, in the moment, but forgotten in the next.

"Not that I like to imagine a day without you—like a day without…" He glanced out at the rain, shaking his head and thinking about his umbrella in Charlie's office, and Charlie's sweatshirt in his bottom dresser drawer, and the extra toothbrush in the bathroom, and even Charlie's dark curls in his shower drain, all reasons it seemed unthinkable to imagine Charlie with Amita, though yes, it was always a threat—a possibility—the reason he made damned sure he could still do the math himself, and the reason he refused to now, if only so he had a reason to hunt Charlie down to remind him of those very things.

"I suppose if I had to, I'd inevitably return to taking care of myself again—and you needn't tell Amita any of this, by the way, because she can think what she wants to think of me, and Feynman, too, for that matter. The advantage of death—one of them, anyway—is you get the chance to be larger than life."

Charlie had put his arms around him, holding him in what felt oddly like a hug, and he awkwardly hugged him back, patting him on the back a little, noticing that, for all the intimacies they regularly shared, hugging was somehow not one of them. He would have to change that.

"Larry—Larry—let's not talk about Feynman. Or Amita. Can we agree on that? Please?"

Charlie ended the embrace, but kept a hand on his biceps, holding him there, close. He was glad of that, as he had the urge to put some distance between them. He'd really meant to get angry, not maudlin. Angry was easier, but with Charlie, he just got so distracted.

"You want to go back to talking about Asimov? Because I just read—"

"Noooo. Larry, I want to talk about—I don't actually want to talk about anything, and especially not you without me. I want to do your equations—tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? Really? Because—forgive me if I'm a little skeptical."

"Yes, and I've given you every reason. Tomorrow, I'll teach my class, meet with Don to talk about the case, and meet—"

"Meet with Amita. You have a very full schedule. A very busy life."

"But I can handle it. I'm managing."

"Yes, I don't doubt that you can handle it."

"Good. I need you to believe that. So see, whatever argument we're having, you win."

"I win? What do I win? I don't feel like I won anything. I feel like—"

Charlie grinned, and then his eyebrows turned serious again as he found Larry's fly, his warm, large hand working its way inside.

"You, Professor Fleinhardt, win my humble apology for not taking Amita's comment as seriously as I should have in the moment. I have no idea why she said what she said what she said, but it was wrong."

"Yes it was. But we can forgive her, I think, because she was jealous and jealous people say stupid things, and she was just protecting you from me."

"That's… ironic."

"Yes, well, I doubt very much that it has occurred to Amita that you know how to do that with your hands. But I suspect she feels very strongly that I have no legitimate claims on your time, that I'm exploiting your talent, and that, seeing as I was, in that moment, reminding you—"

"Nagging—you were nagging."

"Okay, yes, perhaps I was nagging. Because I was feeling—"

"Jealous?"

"Yes, I was very likely jealous. I won't say I wasn't—but don't stop what you're—oh—"

"You were jealous I was working on the racecar instead of you?"

"With her. Yes. And it was all downhill from there, wasn't it?"

"Ha ha."

But Charlie seemed to like that answer and resumed his long, sure strokes, and Larry sighed, letting his eyes close again. Who knew jealousy was such a turn-on?

"Yes. I do believe I was entirely consumed with jealousy. Maybe Amita and I need to go mano a mano."

"Fighting for my honor or yours?"

"Oh, not for honor. For the rights to your body, Charles. You make a beautiful damsel in distress."

"I'm not sure whether to be flattered or insulted."

"Be flattered, Charlie. I long ago resigned myself to the fact that I am nobody's Prince Charming."

"You're wrong about that."

And with that, Charlie went down on his knees.

And Larry, no fool, said, "Yes."

The End.

Thanks yet again to Sigrid for betaing and surviving the em-dashes.

Feed the Muse.