Charles by Con Riley

24

The next week felt like a honeymoon that Charles hadn’t ever planned on having. Or on sharing with someone who took to sex like a duck did to water.

Each moment was smile-filled. Sun-filled. Charles waking every day to a slant of it slicing through the gap in his curtains way earlier than he would have wanted to wake while at his last job. But he didn’t pull the pillow over his head like he used to. Here, he caught himself thinking that early wake-ups were a blessing, the sun an added bonus, because it shone on a sleeping face he loved waking next to.

One he couldn’t stop soaking up the sight of.

A face that did something to him—more, every time they did this, the sight of Hugo asleep next to him dropping like coins into a money box that he’d crack open later.

And he’d need to, Charles guessed.

Need to have a secret store like the squirrels he and Hugo spent evenings outside watching scurry between the edge of the woods and the stables.

They’d forgotten where they stored last autumn’s nuts, Hugo had suggested.

Charles wouldn’t make the same mistake as them.

He’d gather all of these sun-kissed moments, and save them. Lock them away for a future he couldn’t yet picture.

I don’t want to.

Charles stroked a few strands of hair from Hugo’s forehead. Didn’t hesitate to touch him like this after a week of falling into bed and then waking next to the same person for the first time in his lifetime.

Apart from Keir.

But Keir was different—a lifelong friend not a hook-up.

Hugo’s not a hook-up though, is he?

He didn’t have a clear-cut answer to that question. Hugo was a task set by Luke. A challenge for someone with nothing to lose and everything to prove. A risk worth taking.

He was all of those things and yet none of those descriptors fit him.

Charles touched the soft curve of Hugo’s palm, not pulling away when he reflexively curled his hand around his fingers, holding him while still sleeping.

He’s nothing like a hook-up to me.

Charles carefully reached for his phone on the bedside table, checked it was set to Silent and typed a slow and careful message.

Charles: What’s the word for hooking up on the regular with someone you like?

He pressed Send while next to him, Hugo stirred, going through the same incremental stretches Charles had watched every day of the week so far. He shifted his shoulders first, something in his neck cracking. Hugo’s grip on his hand didn’t slip, and he let out the kind of deep sigh that spelled satisfaction. Eventually, Hugo blinked. He looked across the pillow at Charles, his gaze unfocussed, then he closed his eyes as if sleeping again, but he squeezed his hand and said a sleep-thickened, “Good morning, angel.”

Charles couldn’t help smiling, even though that name still couldn’t have been further from the truth. He thumbed another message.

Charles: What’s the word for what someone calls you that’s the opposite of how you actually are? Like angel.

He watched Hugo breathe, his chest rising and falling, the hair trailing down his torso, thinning the closer it got to where their sheets puddled. Charles had been with bulkier men. Men who lived at the gym, or who ran and swam and cycled their way to lean and muscled, but Hugo’s strength was hidden, never apparent until he used it.

Charles wanted to feel it then—wanted to be pinned under his weight, pinned down, or up, or against, as long as Hugo was the one who held him. He must have moved his fingers, because Hugo’s grip tightened as he stretched again, this time drawing the hand he clasped under those pooled sheets to where his cock was firming, brushing the back of his knuckles. Charles felt a reciprocal pang, his cock just as interested, and he looked up to find Hugo watching.

There was little sign of sleep in his eyes now. They were bright and fixed on him, the smile in them crystal clear even with the rest of his face motionless, revealing nothing. Every trace of those bruised shadows that had smudged them when Charles had first arrived were gone.

He looks so much better.

“I’m still not an angel,” Charles said.

He wriggled his fingers free from his hold and reached for Hugo’s cock, biting a lip as it twitched under his touch. He saw Hugo’s gaze catch on his mouth rather than where he touched him, pupils expanding, and that lovely pink left by sleep on his cheeks deepened.

“Would an angel do this?” Charles shoved the sheet back and bared them, trailing two fingers from the base of Hugo’s cock to the head, circling there before wrapping his hand around him again, and stroking.

Hugo’s answer stuttered. “M-mine does,” he said as Charles pressed closer to him—as close as he could get—his own cock hard against Hugo’s hip, his leg draped over his knee.

A second stutter of Hugo’s breath registered and Charles stopped stroking, aware all of a sudden of what he pressed against. “Your scars.” He started to roll away.

“You’re fine.” Hugo’s voice was back to that gritty low pitch that did things to Charles, a flock of birds inside him catching the breeze and swooping. “Come here,” Hugo said, urging him to come closer again, his hold on Charles making more wings flutter, which was ridiculous if Charles thought too hard about it. There was no reason why Hugo feeling his way through sex flicked a switch inside him, lighting places he hadn’t known had been dark, his touch a candle flame that warmed as well as lit him.

There was no fathoming why Hugo stroking him off should feel more penetrating than full sex he’d had with others. So what if his touch sometimes hesitated? He learned fast by watching and by feeling. “Kinaesthetic,” Charles said.

“Bless you,” Hugo said, breathless already, that deeper pink spilling down from his face to flood his throat and chest with scarlet patches.

“I meant that’s how you learn best. By doing.”

Hugo nodded and his hand moved faster. “And how am I doing?”

“Two out of ten.” Charles panted, parroting what every school teacher had written about him. “Must try harder.”

Hugo laughed, and Charles lost his coordination, too caught in the sound and sight of Hugo being happy to notice that he’d started to sit up until he shifted even more to kneel over Charles.

“Your knee,” Charles warned.

“It’s fine.” He bent his head, and glanced up, a flicker in his expression making Charles breath catch. He could only nod when Hugo asked, “Can I?” and then lowered his head to lick him.Hugo started to blow him, and Charles stopped thinking, his brain offline until he saw Hugo’s shoulder moving.

“You stroking yourself off?”

Hugo made a sound Charles guessed was a yes.

“Come here.”

It took a minute of wriggling and some more laughing before he got Hugo situated, both of them on their sides. “Sixty nine, see? It’s not just a number.” He caught Hugo’s cock in his mouth, gasping around it as Hugo found his, one of his lovely big hands clasping the cheek of his arse, pulling him closer. They sank into a reciprocal give and take, Charles loving Hugo’s persistence, trying to take him deeper, stopping several times to cough, to choke, to laugh at himself. He got back to it each time as if he loved it as well, even if it wasn’t perfect, Charles guessed, because that was how he felt too.

Nothing about this was smooth.

He gasped, almost choking himself as a spit-wet finger found his hole and circled.

Nothing about it was practised.

He returned the favour, Hugo almost knocking him out with his knee and then repositioning to roll over Charles, apologising. His chin was wet, his eyes merry, if swimming. They kissed, and maybe the taste of them combined should have been too much for someone new to this, but Hugo groaned into his mouth, and ground down on him in a way Charles couldn’t imagine ever getting sick of.

Don’t get too used to it.

He ignored that inner warning, barely heard it over an orgasm that had blood rushing in his ears, his heart pounding, his mouth fused with Hugo’s, muffling his deep groan of completion.

Hugo got to his knees, and he really must have been as recovered as he’d promised, because he knelt as though it gave him no pain; no trouble; no impediment to him finishing with one of his own hands while stroking the last drops from Charles.

“Look at you,” he panted, the sun behind him leaving his face shadowed as his fist flew. “You’re filthy.”

Charles preened. “Thank you.”

Hugo laughed again, his face contorting, mid-climax. He fell forwards, catching himself with one arm, his other wringing out last drops, adding to the streaks that Charles wore. “I didn’t know,” he said once settled beside Charles, his broad chest still heaving.

“That I was filthy?”

“No. That laughter was such a big part of sex.” Hugo’s hand found his, their fingers linking. “The best part.”

“It isn’t. Not always, anyway. I think it depends on who you’re fucking.” Charles tilted his head to face him, taking in that sex flush, which had now receded, and the broken curve of a smile he couldn’t get enough of. That he’d fallen asleep looking at, and had woken up wanting to see more than anything else on the planet.

He leaned close and kissed it. Pressed his lips to the scarred corner, and lingered. Pulled back only to lean forwards again and this time follow the scar from his mouth to the edge of his eye, sending up a prayer of thanks that whatever had sliced through his face had stolen half of his smile and not half of his vision. “Make it your benchmark,” Charles said with more ferocity than he’d intended.

“For?”

“The future. When this is over, only have sex with people who make you laugh too.” The birds in his chest quieted, this moment between them seeming to slow, as if the world had stuck on its axis instead of spinning, both of them caught in the space between now and a future apart that Charles couldn’t make himself picture.

“When this is over,” Hugo repeated, his voice less animated, his kiss feather-light and fleeting. “Of course.” He rolled out of bed. “Tea?” he asked, and the world started to turn once more, a workday morning starting.

“Please.” Charles wiped himself off and gathered his clothes, stilling at the sound of Hugo’s phone ringing in the next room, and Hugo’s muffled answer. He glanced at his own phone to see that Keir had replied while he’d been too busy to notice.

Keir: Hooking up on the regular? You have such a soulful way with words.

Keir: That’s called friends with benefits.

Keir: But if it’s with someone you like? That sound more like a relationship.

Keir: And if they’re calling you angel…

Keir: It sounds like someone thinks he’s your boyfriend.