Cabin Pressure
By Miriam Heddy
When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curvd point,— what bitter wrong
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented ? Think. In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us, and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay
Rather on earth, Belovd, — where the unfit
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.
—Elizabeth Barret-Browning. Sonnet XXII from Sonnets from the Portuguese.
"You're absolutely sure you packed the—"
"I packed toothpaste."
"You use a different brand."
"They have toothpaste in London, Larry. They have your toothpaste in London."
"I don't doubt that at all. But what if I want to brush my teeth on the plane?"
"You can use mine just this once, or use the little tube in the bag they gave you when you got on."
"I suppose I'll have to."
Charlie sighed and watched as Larry adjusted the window-shade up and down, up and down, until he finally had to reach out and push Larry's hand away. Larry frowned at him, but settled back in his seat, leaving the window open, for now.
"And you're sure we have the monograph on—"
"In your carry-on."
"Good. Good." Larry nodded, still frowning. "Though it's unlikely I'll need it between now and then."
Charlie pushed his seat back, shutting his eyes and waiting for it.
"The laptop!"
"Under your seat."
"No—the other one—with the—"
"Under my seat."
Another pause that stretched out, and Charlie shut his eyes again, trying to remain optimistic.
"I should check, shouldn't I."
"Yes, Larry—you really should." He kept his eyes closed as Larry reached around under and between Charlie's legs in what could, under other circumstances, be considered a lewd grope, except that Larry was clearly too worried to notice where his hands were lingering.
"Satisfied?"
"No. In all honesty, I'm not. I'm sure there's something No, I suppose that's not important."
"What?" Charlie opened his eyes, again, deciding that he probably wouldn't get to sleep until after take-off, and probably only then if he got a few drinks in Larry first.
"The transparencies."
"What transparencies?" This was the first Charlie had heard of transparencies.
"I forgot to pick them up."
"Are they really necessary?"
"Not crucial, no. But necessary? I'm sure someone in the back row will be prepared with binoculars."
Charlie nodded. "Or a telescope. Or you could just pass something around. Or I could tap out Morse code."
Larry frowned. "I might not have actually gotten around to ordering the transparencies, come to think of it."
"We'll have time."
"Time, Charles, is not something we have. Though it's interesting that we should speak of it as if it were matter."
"You can have an abstraction."
"No—you can contemplate an abstraction. But to have it presumes the ability to quantify it. A pocket watch is a timepiece, not time itself. We would do well to remember the difference."
"You can quantify anything," Charlie argued, not sure he believed that, but finding it reassuring to say so. Things that were measurable had a certain appeal.
"Love," Larry offered. "You can't quantify that. What was it the poet said?"
"Which poet?"
"Browning," Larry answered, as if talking to himself. And it was like being Larry's student again, and being tested on things that he used to argue didn't matter.
But like the good student he was, Charlie recited the first stanza. "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways./I love thee to the depth and breadth and height/My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight/For the ends of Being and ideal Grace."
"Well said, well said. But notice she's enumerating the ways, but not the amount. An expression of an abstraction is measurable, but the thing itself is not."
"Because it isn't a thing. It's an idea," Charlie countered, not quite sure if he was arguing with Larry or not, or whether he really wanted to. He wasn't even sure if they were talking about time or love or something else entirely, but they were onto Platonic Forms already, and they hadn't even left the ground. It was going to be a long flight.
Larry suddenly seemed to notice where his hand was resting, and patted Charlie's leg, letting his fingers brush along his inseam.
"Love can be quantified, Charles, only because, like time, it's embedded in objects we can measure. Shakespeare knew as much. Sonnet 116. The last stanza, lines 9 to 14."
Charlie sighed, wondering why it was that he couldn't remember to buy milk but he could remember poems if they had numbers attached to them. He recited the poem, knowing that, unlike Larry, he had no facility for it, able to parse the meter but not feeling the words the way that Larry did.
"Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved."
Larry sighed at the end, a happy smile on his face, at last, making him look suddenly much younger than he was, like those photos Charlie had seen of him when he was a skinny, large-eyed undergraduate who only thought he knew everything—back when he still had all of his hair.
"So, Professor Fleinhardt, did I forget to forget anything else, or can we take off now?" he asked, moving as far from the edge of doom as possible.
The pilot chose that moment to come on the intercom and announce they were about to taxi.
"I believe the decision is already out of our hands. But that's a really an interesting question, isn't it? Is remembering merely the act of forgetting to forget? Is forgetting our default position, or is remembering? Zeroes and ones, Charles. Zeroes and ones."
Charlie had no good answer to that, but Larry didn't seem to require one, and at last, Larry settled into his seat and seemed to relax.
At thirty thousand feet, Larry shifted again, and Charlie was amazed that someone with that much legroom available could still take up so much airspace.
"Larry, please. Why don't you take a walk?"
"There's nowhere to go, Charles."
"I think I saw an emergency door behind the curtain."
"Nice. Very nice. Alan raised you well."
Charlie bit back the comment he had in mind, settling for a more polite suggestion. "You could go to the restroom."
"I went an hour ago, in case you've forgotten."
"Y'know, I actually do have better things to do than keep track of the comings and goings of your bladder."
"You could have stayed home."
"And miss this?" Charlie avoided looking at Larry, because if he looked at him, he'd see Larry sulking.
"You really didn't have to come."
"Yes, I did. You need me at the conference. Those are my equations you're resting your theories on."
"And the fact that I didn't do every calculation does not mean I can't present the results on my own."
"And if there's a question about the math, what will you do?'
"I can answer questions, Charles. And I resent very much the implication that I'm incapable of discussing my own research."
"Our research."
"Our research? And why, might I ask, is it our research when it's finished, and my research when I'm chasing you down to contribute to it?"
Charlie rolled his eyes. "I'm going to sleep now."
"Fine."
"Good."
"Because by all means, we want you to be well-rested just in case you're asked a particularly challenging question. After all, who knows when the government might send out the bat signal."
Charlie shut his eyes, refusing to respond.
But he didn't fall asleep, because Larry was apparently now fighting a small war with his seat-back, elbowing Charlie in the side as he untangled his headphones from around Charlie's copy of Hans von Baeyer's The Fermi Solution, which Larry had insisted he read.
"Dammit," Larry said, and Charlie promised himself he was not going to open his eyes.
He opened his eyes to find Larry staring at him, a small grin turning the corners of his mouth.
"How do I love thee, Charles?" Larry's voice was only a whisper, and Charlie took his hand, briefly, before letting go of it, reluctantly, to help Larry with the headphones. And then his hands were full, as the flight attendant making her rounds came by and offered them both drinks and food and a welcome diversion from each other.
Larry ate and watched the in-flight movie, and Charlie watched Larry, amused, as always, with Larry's intense concentration on the latest, brainless blockbuster, as Larry attended to it and the food as though they held the answers to the universe.
Over Larry's shoulder and outside the window, Charlie could see nothing but gradations of blue along an apparently infinite horizon. He'd long ago decided to take off his watch, though the clock on his laptop kept drawing his eye upward and then back over toward Larry, who was, he was starting to think, capable of single-handedly producing a time dilation worthy of study. By someone else.
The flight was endless, and Larry was driving him insane, apparently unable to sit still for more than a few minutes, and unable to shut up for any length of time at all.
Larry had apparently forgotten that Charlie had already taken his two-semester course on quantum physics, because he was midway through a lecture (if you could call it that) on scientific inaccuracies in the film "Deep Impact," which he'd insisted on watching, despite knowing it was going to be ridiculous. And Charlie, not to mention everyone in the row, had already heard his 90-minute live, running commentary.
The emergency door was starting to look very attractive, as was the flight attendant who kept offering him another drink, batting long eyelashes in his direction.
He'd had three of the little bottles now, and the world inside the cabin was gradually becoming as cloudy as the world outside. One more, he decided, and he might at last settle on one of those nice fluffy ledges and sleep.
"Speaking of the restroom"
"You have to go again?"
Larry frowned. "No I was just considering. Have you ever—"
"What?"
"Utilized the facilities for other purposes?"
"You mean—sex?"
"Yes." Larry nodded, closing his laptop and sliding it back into his bag.
"No."
"No, you're unwilling to consider it? Or no, you've never done it and find the idea intriguing?"
"No, I've never—have you?"
Larry shook his head. "Never, though I'm bored enough I think I'd be willing to give it a try, if you're game."
Was he game? Charlie considered that, for a moment, knowing that Larry wasn't going anywhere. He had slept about two hours before someone walked by and jostled him. So he was still a little buzzy, a little warm, a little less than sensible. Sex wasn't at the top of his list of things to do on a plane, but now it was climbing up there, especially since Larry was looking unusually eager, and there was always the possibility that he'd take a nap afterwards, leaving Charlie some peace and quiet of his own.
And as an experiment, it was interesting. How did you even manage in a room that small? He'd banged his elbow on the paper towel dispenser the last time he was in there, and had to puzzle a minute just to figure out how to open the door again without hitting himself with it, though that was probably the alcohol at work, since he was usually pretty coordinated.
And there was always the possibility of getting caught.
"Okay," he said, and Larry nodded, his face oddly neutral, as if Charlie had just agreed to do something innocuous and reasonable.
But then Larry rested his head on his hand, cupping his own cheek and tipping his head to the side, as he peered around Charlie and towards the bathroom door.
"It's unoccupied right now. If you just went in there, I think, and I followed, at a reasonable distance I suppose no one would notice."
Charlie doubted that, but then again, he couldn't really imagine anyone having the nerve to say anything about it, either.
"Okay. So I'm going to get up now."
Larry nodded, and then laughed, pushing at his shoulder. "Quick, before someone else moves in!"
So he got up, swaying only a little on the way, and hoping it didn't get turbulent while they were in there. He could just see the headlines if he and Larry collided, mid-air.
The door read "unoccupied" and he slipped inside, shutting the door and waiting. There was nothing to do, and he checked the mirror, noticing that his hair was acting up, curling up on one side and down on the other where he'd had his head pressed up against Larry's shoulder. And he had a crease on his face from sleeping, which was very sexy. Very hot.
He rubbed at it, which only made it red, and then gave up, splashing some water on his face and wondering what was holding Larry up. If he chickened out, Charlie was definitely going to kill him.
Two soft raps at the door, and Charlie opened it just a little, forcing himself to keep quiet and not peer out. Larry stepped inside, and Charlie tried to make room for him, which was pretty much impossible without sitting on the sink or standing on the toilet. He settled for leaning on the sink on tip-toes, and Larry edged in beside him, pressing the length of his body up close.
"This is sort of ridiculous, don't you think?" Charlie asked, and Larry nodded.
"Oh, absolutely. But where's your sense of adventure, Charles?"
"There's no room for it in here."
"Hmm." Larry rubbed at his face, as if seriously engaged with figuring this out. "I suppose there has to be an advantage in the both of us being on the small side."
"Speak for yourself, Larry."
"I was speaking only in terms of height, Charles. Believe me, I'm more
than well aware of the size of your penis. I have no complaints, there. And
speaking of which, I think I have a suggestion."
And at that, Larry started to move forward, forcing Charlie to actually sit on the sink or be crushed.
Larry somehow managed to unzip them both, and Charlie leaned his head back against the mirror and watched as Larry began to masturbate himself, keeping his eyes on Charlie the whole time.
"This is an interesting perspective on that," Charlie commented, after a minute went by, and Larry didn't touch him at all except to brace himself on Charlie's knee with one hand, looking like, if he didn't, his knees were going to buckle. Not that there was any room to fall in here.
The faucet was digging into Charlie's back a little, and he was sure he was going to have a few embarrassing water spots on his jeans, but again, the view was incredible from up here. He and Larry were usually eye to eye, whether vertical or horizontal, and Larry was just going at it, not ignoring him, exactly, but in his own world.
"Do you want me to—"
"Hold that thought," Larry said, abruptly taking his hand off his own cock and turning around, so that he was sort of pressed flat against the wall, breathing hard. For a half-second, Charlie wondered what was going on, but then Larry slid his pants down off his hips and down to his knees, and Charlie realized that it was going to be a tight fit, but yeah, there was definitely room for this.
Except he hadn't thought to bring any lube.
"Condom—should be enough. Lubricated," Larry said over his shoulder, handing it back to him, obviously in tune with him for the first time this trip.
"Okay then."
And Charlie slid down off the sink, bumping into Larry and, for just a second, pressing Larry into the wall, his erection finding a perfect place against Larry's bare ass. Larry sighed and pressed his forehead into the metal wall, and for a moment, they just stayed there. And then Larry nodded, he was ready, and they did a little dance and shuffle, so that Larry was sort of awkwardly bent, head down, upper body over the sink, and he was where Larry had been a moment ago, standing behind Larry. He managed to get the condom on and yeah, it was unusually slippery—not Larry's usual brand.
"Planning ahead?" he asked.
And Larry said, "Yes, do you mind?" and let out a little gasping shudder that usually meant he was very close to coming.
"No," Charlie admitted. "Though I find it difficult to understand how you could remember this and forget the transparencies."
"Fuck you. Or me, I suppose." Larry stared evenly at Charlie's reflection, a small grin on his face. He was sweating, his face flushed pink, shining in the harsh fluorescent light. And Charlie wanted to tell him that he'd never, ever wanted him more.
But instead, he pressed behind him, forcing Larry up and over the sink. It was awkward, and he couldn't get full penetration at this angle, but it was enough, and he could just manage to reach around and grab Larry's dick, pumping him roughly, his fist and Larry's cock pressed up against the lower cabinet.
"That's—"
"Yeah," Charlie agreed, thrusting up hard enough that he actually lifted Larry up off his feet a little, working his way in just enough to hit Larry's prostate before he was coming, hard, and trying to keep from thrusting because Larry's head was an inch away from the mirror, and Larry didn't seem to notice. And then Larry was coming into his hand, his whole body sort of folding up as his legs gave way. He was heavier than he looked, especially now, but Charlie held him up, threading his arms under Larry's armpits and holding him with one arm across his chest, trying not to make a bigger mess of Larry's clothes as he groped for the paper towel dispenser, realizing he should've thought of that first, because now he was going to have to figure out how to clean the bathroom.
"You—that was a really good idea."
Larry nodded, his feet finding the floor again and supporting him again. Charlie hugged him tighter as Larry rested his head on Charlie's shoulder, and they both looked into the mirror at the same time and laughed.
"Charles, this was a really bad idea. And I take full responsibility. You didn't, by any chance, bring a change of clothes in with you, did you?"
Charlie shook his head, and Larry sighed. "I think I have some of those wet-wipes here somewhere. Though I have my doubts they'll do more than mask the, um—"
"Yeah," Charlie agreed. The smell of sex was overwhelming, making him blush. How the hell did people get away with this?
Maybe they didn't. Maybe nobody really did this.
He eased out of Larry and managed to keep the condom in place, and he wrapped it in a paper towel and disposed of it in the toilet with a shrug. He gingerly cleaned Larry up, using enough soap on them both to try to mask the smell of come and trying not to look at Larry in the mirror, because he was pretty sure Larry was laughing, and all he needed was for the flight attendant to investigate the sound of two men hysterically giggling in the bathroom somewhere above the Atlantic.
"I think you should try to, um, find your way back to your seat first," Larry said, finally, and Charlie looked up again, not at all surprised that Larry was looking bemused. "I'll take care of the, ah, rest of this. Somehow."
"Thanks. I owe you one."
And now Larry giggled, clapping his hand over his mouth just in time. "I think I'll wait until we land to collect. Now go. I can't imagine how long we've been in here already."
"Eight minutes," Charlie offered. "Not that love is in any way quantifiable," he added, and Larry swatted at his behind as he left, causing him to stumble out of the bifold doors.
A few minutes later, Larry joined him at their seats, and he had a glass of ginger ale in his hand, and was looking remarkably collected for someone who'd been bent over a sink moments ago. Charlie was envious, and took the ginger ale and drank down half of it as Larry protested. He had the window seat, now, too, but Larry didn't seem to care, easing himself into the aisle seat with a small, indelicate hiss.
"Sorry. Are you?"
"I'm just fine, Charles. The flight attendant was kind enough to offer me some cleaning solution for the bathroom. I suggested that I'd been feeling unwell and was rather embarrassed by it."
"Wow! You—that's—I never would've thought of that."
Charlie looked at Larry with renewed admiration. He was cranky and forgetful and prone to offering philosophy when you needed practical advice. But he was also strangely hot, and Charlie knew his world would be a much smaller place without Larry in it.
"You sleepy?" he asked, and Larry shook his head.
"Actually, I'm feeling remarkably awake."
Charlie looked at his watch and moaned as Larry settled back into his lecture
on the Theory of Everything according to Larry Fleinhardt, and Charlie didn't
have the heart to interrupt.
"Please return your trays to their upright positions."
The plane hadn't officially begun its descent, but Larry was already nervously glancing out the window.
"It'll be fine," Charlie said, patting his hand, which was gripping the armrest.
"I have to admit, I don't much like landings. Though I suppose it's not landing that bothers me so much as not landing."
"It'll be fine. It's safer than—"
"Relative probability of risk tells us only what percentage of planes crash, not whether we'll be on the one that does."
"Keep your voice down. You'll cause a panic," Charlie whispered, and Larry nodded.
"I'm not really worried, for myself. After all, I'm in my declining years of productivity, professionally speaking, while you—"
"Please, Larry—"
"Well, comparably-speaking, you're but a—"
"Keep in mind who had who over a sink before you complete that sentence."
"Point taken."
And Larry went silent as the plane dipped from the horizontal plane and then leveled off only to dip again. The declination of the wing was slight, but Larry leaned into it, and into Charlie, and Charlie put his arm around Larry and held onto him, ignoring the odd look he got from the middle-aged woman across the aisle, who stopped her knitting and stowed the needles under her seat, looking a little queasy.
The plane shuddered slightly with the wind currents, and though Charlie understood the physics of it, the movement still left him uneasy, his calm giving way until Larry glanced over to him and offered a weak smile.
"It'll be fine, Charles."
"Sorry about that, folks. Just a little turbulence—should be over with shortly. The weather in London is a crisp 12 degrees Celsius, and we should be getting into Heathrow on time today."
Larry seemed to relax at the sound of the Captain's voice and as he did, Charlie found himself relaxing too.
"I'm glad I came," Charlie said, leaning over.
"Me too." And Larry giggled.
"Very funny. And it had nothing to do with math. Or the sex."
Larry grinned. "It had everything has to do with math. And the sex. But thank you."
"Mile high club," Charlie whispered.
Larry covered his face with his hands. "I still can't believe you agreed to that. It was insane."
"It was—it felt—"
"Like flying," Larry suggested.
"Like flying," Charlie agreed, though that wasn't quite right. It was more like flying and then falling, as if from a great height, and coming down at an ever-increasing velocity, only to suddenly, inexplicably, be saved.
It felt, he realized, like something he could count on.
The End.
Thanks to Kate for flying the very friendly skies. And thanks to Divia for telling me it was my story to write.