Play It Again, Charlie (26 page)

As usual, despite what he'd said, he wasn't moving. Someday, Charlie would have to find out what cues Will waited for before he finally, truly left after saying he would. Charlie stared at him until he had to blink, and then, suddenly, Will
was
moving. He came up to Charlie's side and stopped, not quite touching him, but close. He looked up.

“Would you be a detective too if not for your
hip
?” Will put the slightest emphasis on that word but watched Charlie without a trace of anger in his expression, not that Charlie didn't search for it. Will didn't hide things, Charlie reminded himself, not like that, and then, as though to prove that to him, Will leaned against his side.

Charlie stopped and took a breath. He looked down into Will's eyes.

“Of course he would have,” Mark filled in, heavy enough that Will lifted an eyebrow for Charlie's benefit. Charlie glanced over at Mark again and shook his head a little, because he wasn't as certain of the answer. He had liked being out there in his car, working with his hands, as his abuela would have said. Mark peered at him, obviously curious, then sent an even look to Will. “Charlie was a good cop.”

“Good in bed too,” Will commented smoothly, his mouth turning up. Charlie flattened his mouth to keep Will from noticing his sudden difficulty breathing. “But then you know that,” Will added, and Charlie closed his eyes. It was beyond imagination that he was even in this situation.

“What did you say earlier, about Charlie in the field? Decisive. Mmm. Don't you just
love it
when he just takes charge like that?” Will made a wriggling motion with his whole body, and it was Mark's turn to make a strangled noise. Charlie opened his eyes again. Mark was watching Will with an arrested expression on his face. “I had to take
three
showers yesterday because of this man.” Will, of course, was only too happy to keep talking until Charlie raised a hand and rested it on the back of his neck.

He wasn't quite sure if he wanted to shut Will up or make him explain himself.

“
Will
.” That last part had gone beyond innuendo even if it was true. “Someone ought to... .”

“Yes, Charlie?” The question wasn't enough to make Charlie blush anymore. He hid a shiver, barely, and then cleared his throat.

“You don't need to do this.”

“Do what?” Will leaned into him to ask, and the air stuttered out of Charlie's chest. Almost all of Will's weight was against him, heat along one side of his body. His words feathered across Charlie's cheek, and then Will lifted his eyelids slowly to give Charlie a look that shot down his spine, made him flush with a sudden rush of blood below his waist.

Up close, the paleness of Will's skin was even more obvious, like the shadows under his eyes.

Charlie pulled away to study him. “You look pale.” He scowled. “Did you eat anything last night that
wasn't
cake?”

Will's expression went from disappointed to touched to disgusted before his skin lost even more color. He stepped a foot or so away and put up a warning hand.

“Ugh. Don't say that word,” he said to Charlie. “And don't ever mix vodka and champs,” he told Mark helpfully.

“I won't.” Mark had crossed his arms somewhere in the space of time where Charlie had been staring at Will and thinking about giving Will a real reason to need three showers. Charlie didn't want to think about what he must have looked like, hypnotized by Will and ignoring Mark because Will had been
looking
at him.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. He'd say he didn't know what had come over him, except that he did. “Will.” He'd said it so many times it had to have lost its meaning, but like before, when his voice cracked through the quiet, Will jerked. He looked up at Charlie with wide eyes.

“Well, I suppose I should be going, leave you kids to it,” Will announced abruptly, his chest moving the way it had when he had first shown up to pose in the doorway. “You have a lot to catch up on, books to write. I've got an appointment at two, so... .” His hands grazed Charlie's chest, and then he tossed out a dizzy smile. He aimed most of it at Mark. “So ‘I'm goin’ like Elsie'.”

“Elsie?” Mark broke the spell, but Charlie still took too long to respond.

“It's from
Cabaret
,” Will explained.

“Of course.” Mark gave Charlie a look and then turned to Will. “It was interesting to have met you.” Mark put out his hand again for Will to shake, and like before, Will seemed amused, but shook his hand in return, then waved at him.

“It was
such
a pleasure to have met you, Detective. You have no idea.” He was a little too enthusiastic, Charlie thought, but Mark's eyes fell before coming back up, and his mouth tightened. “You guys have fun,” Will added happily, then he slipped around the corner into the kitchen. “Don't forget to be careful, Charlie.”

The moment the door closed, Mark turned to him, his eyebrows up. “Be careful?”

“A joke,” Charlie explained shortly, then he scrubbed a hand through his hair. Will had been flirting partly to annoy Mark and partly to tease Charlie, the way he always did. But when he looked up, waiting, Mark wet his lips.

“That seemed... excessive,” he said finally, quietly. He moved one shoulder, that damn smile apparently frozen on his face. “He must really like you.”

It made Charlie stop, then drop his hand. Mark's tactful silence was irritating. Or maybe that was the silence between them with Will gone.

“Will is like that for everything.” Charlie's side was warm from where Will had touched him, his face burning because Will had put so much
want
into one glance, even if it had been for show. But Mark wasn't saying anything. Not demanding more information about Will, about whatever was going on between them.

Mark adjusted his glasses, and Charlie abruptly felt like asking why he'd switched from contacts when he'd been too vain to do it before. He felt like asking a lot of things, actually. The shivering, tight feeling that he'd thought was nerves was still there, even with Will gone. He looked over at Mark, who had a trace of uncertainty on his face for the first time.

“We're sort of... . We're... .” Charlie stopped himself there. Mark hadn't asked about Will, not really, and his expression didn't change when Charlie tried to explain. He heard himself, angry but still stuttering, and then glared down at the floor, because in the sudden quiet he could also hear Mark's opinion of him. Confident and decisive, in the field.

“It's fine, Charlie.” Mark made excuses for him in a cool voice, and Charlie raised his chin more at his choice of words than what he was doing. Mark was smiling again, hiding something, but he wasn't asking anything. Without distractions, Will or work or family, Charlie could think about how he'd
never
heard a question. Never heard a damn thing, actually. Mark inhaled, then looked around at Charlie's living room one last time. “I was thinking we could drive to Berkeley, get some Indian like we used to. I haven't been to that place in ages.”

Charlie shut off those memories and pushed back his hair. He hadn't been back there either, wasn't sure he wanted to.

“Will and I had sushi last night,” he said baldly, and Mark's gaze swung back to him, though he didn't comment. Charlie smoothed his hair back and cleared his throat. “I'm more in the mood for something like a burger,” he continued, and he saw the startled flicker in Mark's expression before he finally nodded.

“Okay, Charlie,” he agreed a moment later, and Charlie let out a breath. When Mark's smile stayed in place, he tried one of his own. “Burgers it is.”

“Okay,” Charlie agreed too, some of his tension slipping away. He wondered, if he asked, what Mark would say. If he'd get another apology he didn't really want. Then he shook his head. “I heard Caitlin had twins,” he remarked after another pause, and Mark nodded. The gesture seemed more than a little grateful, but then, Mark had always seemed taken aback by any sort of emotional scene.

Charlie sighed to himself as Mark started to tell a story, allowing the conversation to fall back into old workplace gossip. He waved Mark forward and didn't say a word when Mark noticed him grabbing his keys.

“You want to drive?” Mark's face opened up in warm surprise for a brief moment. Charlie stopped with Mark in front of him, letting Mark's feet bump into the door when he backed up. “That's really good,” Mark told him, his voice getting hoarse, and Charlie felt himself staring into Mark's eyes, watching his pupils dilate. His breath got trapped in his chest. He hadn't done anything to win a reaction like that, but he knew what to do with it, what he could do.

“That you're driving again,” Mark explained when Charlie didn't move. He didn't seem ready to move, either, and Charlie let his attention drift down, knew Mark would read the look on his face in the same way. It hurt to know he could press Mark to the door right now. Because of what, his ability to drive again, walk again? It had been two years since Mark had seen him. Over three since they'd really touched, before Charlie's weakness had become so obvious.

Charlie pressed the keys into his palm, then lifted his head. He looked at the door.

Mark glanced away as he pulled in a long breath, then he ventured a smile. Charlie waited, but this time Mark's smile seemed genuine.

“I know,” he answered at last, because it
was
good. That he was driving, that he was walking. That he was going to have lunch right now. His life had been months of pain, exhaustion, and therapy he hadn't liked for an anxiety he hadn't wanted. Now it was a new job, new friends, and if Mark had wanted to know about that, then he should have said something. “I worked hard,” he added instead of saying that, because Mark should know it too. Despite the edge in his voice, Mark only nodded again.

Charlie wondered if it was wrong to find his uncertainty appealing, but kept his mouth shut as he locked the door behind them.

He'd fed Sam the second he got in the door. The poor cat hadn't had any kind of normal schedule lately. Maybe he was getting used to Charlie having a life all of the sudden, because he hadn't touched his food at the time. Maybe it was just Sam's way of expressing his discontent.

It was going on seven when Sam finally deigned to empty his bowl. Charlie hadn't eaten much at the restaurant, despite insisting on burgers, so he'd had a snack after feeding Sam, then gone into the living room to turn on some cable news station and try to pay attention to the rest of the world. But that had been hours ago, and though his feet were dragging, he was debating making himself something to eat. Sam's munching sounds reminded him even if he was too tired to feel hungry.

He should, but after the events of today and last night, Charlie just felt drained. Watching the news possibly wasn't helping with that, but he didn't have anything else to do, couldn't even read the Sunday paper, not if it required him to concentrate.

Today hadn't been anywhere close to what he'd envisioned it would be like when he'd seen Mark again.

It hadn't been a disaster or any kind of romantic reunion. It hadn't been even that exciting after the first few tense moments, just work talk, gossip, general news about their families. Charlie sagged back into his chair and rubbed absently at his hip. He really should have taken his cane out today after all his activity yesterday. He knew it had been a good idea and hadn't done it anyway, the same way that he knew Jeanine would think working with Mark was a bad idea and would tell him to tell Mark to fuck off. She wouldn't care that Charlie hadn't given Mark a definite answer and Mark had promised to call him after Charlie had had some time to think about it.

Charlie grimaced, got up to get a beer, and sat back down to stare at the TV.

While working on any sort of new guidelines was a waste of time on its own, any changes, any language used, would influence what guidelines came after. That language had been an outdated joke when he'd been the Academy, and by the standards of the area they were in, a serious revision was long overdue. There was, he'd agreed with Mark, merit in rewriting them for their own sake.

Mark had been fired up. It was obvious that recommending Charlie had been meant as a compliment to Charlie as much as a bid for notice from the brass higher up. Mark had been open when Charlie had finally asked about it, ducking his head and then nodding. But Mark
was
good, and he deserved a promotion in a few years’ time. It wasn't like it would hurt Charlie's new career, either.

Mark might have meant the offer as a sort of apology as well, in his way. But Charlie frowned and drank some of his beer at the thought. He was too exhausted right now to spend more time debating Mark's motives. Maybe tomorrow.

Or never, he decided after a pause. He was tired of it. Mark. Overthinking everything. He hadn't realized just how sick he was of examining Mark's motives until today.

As for the offer, it didn't take long to admit that he and Sam should be back to his old schedule soon. He'd have plenty of time to work on it, when and if it ever got the go-ahead. But he sighed at the idea of reporting to a bunch of bureaucrats again. He could just draft something for new lesson plans and begin teaching it now the way he practically already was. That was what really needed work: the way students were taught.

“Put that degree to use,” Mark had said again, at the restaurant, talking above the din. “It certainly impressed your friend.”

The direct mention of Will had come after they'd finally been served their food. Charlie had gone still, then nodded, because it
had
impressed Will, or at least surprised him. Will had been almost unnaturally still, with a lost look in his eyes.

He wasn't used to that from Will, even if he had seen a similar look the night he had kicked Will out of his apartment. Maybe he would get a chance to ask about it soon, and also the reason why Will had dropped by at all. He must have had a reason before he'd seen Mark and decided to toy with him.

There really wasn't another way to describe it, and Charlie smiled to himself at the memory of Will's outrageous statements in a way he knew he shouldn't. Thinking about it at lunch had made him smile too, though then it had made Mark's eyes narrow.