Play It Again, Charlie (4 page)

“You calm now?” he asked Chris. The kid gave a shiver or a shudder, and then sniffled. He drooped down even further after that, but nodded.

“Y... yes.” When Charlie slowly released one arm, then the other, Chris sank to the ground and looked plaintively up at him. “He left me.”

“It's not that bad. He was a jerk.” Charlie heard and turned to see William actually approaching Chris again, with his arms outstretched in a gesture of comfort. For one moment, Charlie couldn't even see past the cloud in his mind, and then he got one hand out.

“He could be dangerous,” Charlie snapped. “Don't. Move.” The kid obeyed this time, staring at Charlie with sharp, hot awareness in his eyes as he held still.

Charlie stopped too when his own words came back to him, his tone, which had not even been close to professional. He worked his jaw but couldn't think of any explanation, much less an apology.

He turned back to Chris, who was still mourning a man who didn't stay. Charlie exhaled.

“You get out of here. The only reason you're not being arrested right now is that this is a quiet building, and I'd like to keep that way. But if you come back like this, I'll have you picked up.”

“You can't just— ” William argued until Charlie glanced at him. Then Charlie turned back to Chris and watched him start to walk from the courtyard. He was still sniffling, but then the man
had
just had his heart broken. “I mean— ” William started again.

“Is he going to get home all right?” Charlie interrupted him. “Should I call a cab?”

“Oh.” The other man sighed, surprised but pleased. Charlie turned, winced at the twisting pain of the way he'd moved, and found William only a yard or two from him.

“He lives, like, two blocks that way.” His hands fluttered. “Are
you
okay?” Green eyes peered at him, swept up and down Charlie as though the kid really was concerned about the scene he'd just created, the mess that Charlie had had to clean up. “That was... .”

At the second fluttering of William's hands, Charlie heard his pulse hammering in his ears and shivered. He shut his mouth, but a moment later he was moving.

William was in front of him, but Charlie didn't stop until William had to back up, until they were by the stairs again, by the wall, and then Charlie stopped dead only to lean down, to stare into bright eyes until his chest felt tight.

“I don't want that in my building, understand?” His voice came out calm and clear, the order implicit, and he sucked in a breath. There was a hint of citrus on William's mouth, and Charlie lifted his eyes the moment he realized how close he was to the other man. When he exhaled he could feel some of his strength slip out, and he put a shaking hand on the wall behind William, hoping the other man didn't see it.

“
Your
building?” William's lips were parted, the same pink as his cheeks, and he might not have been high, but he had had a few. It was the only reason Charlie could think of for the wide smile that accompanied his question, the way William had to obviously take a moment just to respond at all.

“I said, understand?” Charlie's voice still wasn't his own, no matter how he tried to control his breathing. He lifted his chin to help with his sudden dizziness.

“Yeah.” William's smile didn't diminish, not even when Charlie felt his expression tighten at the casual answer. “Yes,” William amended a moment later, still breathless. He brought up one of his hands, and some part of Charlie's mind noticed just how little space there actually was between them. “I told you,” William explained softly, “he's not normally so... aggro. I mean, one second he was a weeping mess on the floor, then he must have done something in the bathroom, because he came out like that.”

“Maybe it's the way you broke up with him.” The speed of his answer made Charlie swallow, push harder at the wall when the adrenaline started to wear off and he couldn't stop all of his trembling.

“I br— ?” William's head went back, a slight frown coming and going. “
Richard
broke up with him, he just asked me to soften the blow.” His eyebrows rose, playfully, into delicate arches, and then his smile returned, wider than before even though his voice remained level. “No pun intended, in case your dirty mind goes there. And which I am never doing again. It was
supposed
to be an evening of ice cream, alcohol, and Olympia Dukakis and Shirley MacLaine.”

“What?” Charlie angled his head part of the way up.

“Is this normal police procedure?” William brought his hands up again. Charlie felt them featherlight against his chest before they were gone.

He shook his head, answered without thinking, without even trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “I'm not a cop.”

“But you— ” There was a line between William's eyes now; he looked confused or, more likely, disappointed. Charlie took his hand off the wall and stared down at it, at the impression in his palm so he didn't have to see the usual glance at his leg.

“I'm retired.”

“So this
isn't
usual?” The warm tone and lack of hesitation had him looking right back up. Maybe it was the mascara, but for a moment the man was indecently bright. Charlie went still, frowned at the way his mind spun when he tried to think, how he was suddenly very aware that he was in a T-shirt and briefs, how thin the fabric was, how long it had been since the last time he'd been this close to anyone who wasn't family.

Then the security light switched off again.

Charlie inhaled, raising his head to stare at the darkness as his eyes adjusted, but he was still blind when hands brushed across his chest again. It had to be an accident, the way that the kid expressed himself. It tingled just the same, burned when the touch was gone.

“He's not my boyfriend,” William told him for what felt like the hundredth time. Only this time Charlie was breathing in the scent of citrus mixed with vodka, and despite the chilly air, he could feel his face heating up. William's voice got closer. “Never was.”

“I... .” Charlie's new rough voice wasn't much help with his throat dry. It was the darkness that had Charlie off-balance, but it didn't explain why he was still so warm, why he hadn't moved. He was only setting himself up for more embarrassment.

He pulled in a steadying breath and then made a small, startled noise when he felt lips at his jaw.

The sudden arrow of light was blinding, but Charlie moved back, blinking first across the courtyard at Mrs. Brown in her hair wrap and nightgown, and then back to William, who was leaning easily against the wall, looking as though he'd never left it.

His expression, when he saw how far back Charlie had jumped, got openly amused. Charlie straightened up. His skin was so hot it itched.

“You boys all right?” she asked, yelling louder than Chris had, and Charlie momentarily closed his eyes, imagining lights turning on all over the place.

“Oh, hey, Mrs. Brown!” William called out, because of course he was friends with her. For all Charlie knew, he'd made friends with everyone in the damn complex. William stepped away from the wall, didn't go near Charlie as he continued talking. “We're fine. There was just a bit of an accident... oh.”

The low finish made Charlie turn, and then he swore out loud, not much caring if Mrs. Brown could hear it or not. Her gasp probably drowned it out anyway.

The circle of flowers at the center of the courtyard had been completely destroyed. Charlie could only make out a few pieces of yellow, a smear of red across one piece of pavement from where a flower must have stuck to Chris's shoe. Charlie had a feeling there were dead flowers on his feet as well.

He looked at the circle again, perennials and annuals that he had planted, the splash of color that never failed to remind him of his grandmother. He could replant them, he knew that, imagined the work this weekend if his hip would let him, but his stomach tightened at the mess, and he couldn't think of it as anything less than a crime.

“Oh, honey, your flowers.” Mrs. Brown's concern made him look up. She was wringing her hands, and Charlie looked to William, who nodded as though that look meant something and hopped forward in her direction.

“Be careful,” Charlie told him, letting William's frown wash over him, because it was important. “You're barefoot,” he added when the kid still didn't get it, and then he frowned in return when William went still, then licked at his lips.

“I'll be careful, Sergeant Howard,” William answered with a straight face, but a smile slipped out as he turned back around toward Mrs. Brown. Charlie frowned after him and then back at the flowers.

“Will, are you sure you're all right?” The other two were still talking, and a light came on somewhere on the second floor, but nobody opened a window or came out.

“I'm fine, darling. We're both fine.” The “darling” made Charlie wince, just slightly, but it seemed to work, made Mrs. Brown coo something about how sweet he was, and even if Charlie tried to explain to her now how her new friend was partly responsible for this mess, she'd never believe him.

When she closed her door, the security light clicked back on again. Charlie was suddenly tired, too wired to sleep at the same time, all the adrenaline gone and leaving too much awareness in its place. He wasn't going to sleep much, he could already tell.

“Maybe I can do something,” that voice suggested from next to him. “It's the least I can do. I mean, I could have handled it, honestly, but then you came out in your boxer-briefs and so valiantly came to my rescue, and what was I supposed to do but enjoy it?”

Tomorrow Charlie would wonder where all this was coming from, but right now he just wanted to go to bed, try to forget all of this. He had work in the morning.

Except that there wasn't even
one
flower left standing, and he could feel exactly how close William was when the other man breathed.

“They really meant a lot to you, didn't they?”

Charlie glanced up. The kid was staring down at the flowers with an expression more perplexed than anything else. It switched to sympathy when he saw Charlie watching him, and Charlie felt hot.

“How many names do you have?” It wasn't exactly rude, but it was too late to worry about his manners anymore. William, now
Will
, licked at his lips again before answering.

“In my youth, I would have responded to that with a flirtatious ‘as many as you'd like to me to, daaahling', possibly in a Tallulah Bankhead voice.”

As though that had made any sense whatsoever. Charlie lifted an eyebrow, kept his tone just as firm as before, though he wanted to smile. “Because you're so ancient?”

“I'm old enough.” Will crossed his arms and didn't seem to notice that Charlie started. Will, Charlie reflected. It was alarmingly easy to think of him as a Will.

Without commenting on Charlie's doubtful smirk, the kid just sighed and rubbed a hand through his hair in an exhausted gesture before straightening to study him again. “Are you all right? Really? Because I really am sorry.”

“I'm fine,” he snapped back too quickly, knew it when Will lifted an eyebrow to mimic his expression.

“Of course you are.” The flat answer was perfect, and Charlie blinked, pulled back to realize the kid didn't miss much at all, even if he was young and strange. He stepped off the path, onto dirt, then swallowed and said the first thing he could think of.

“I don't want anything like that again. Do you know how dangerous it is to— ?” He shut himself up, because he sounded older than Mrs. Brown. He sounded ridiculous. But William wasn't laughing.

“Believe it or not, Sergeant Howard, I do.” Will was serious, or appeared that way. He moved forward, but when Charlie got his head up and stared at him, he stopped. Charlie waited, then headed in the direction of his apartment. After two steps, he paused.

“Will your friend get home okay?”

“Oh, I'll go check on him, but I'll have to run upstairs first.” There was another hand motion, dismissive, distracting. Charlie's eyes followed it before he recovered.

“Upstairs?”

“Well, I have to get my shoes. Can't go running around in the dark barefoot, now, can I?” Will teased him with his head to one side and his wide smile growing wider by the second.

Charlie lowered his head, brought it back up just to scowl.

“You call the police if he's a problem.” The smile glowed brighter, even in the near dark. Charlie studied it almost helplessly. “I'm serious.”

“Yes, I can see that, Sergeant Howard.” Will nodded. The fact that Charlie had called the kid “Will” again, even if only in his head, made him push out a breath.

“Charlie.”

“What was that?” Will was motion in one place, a flurry of hands and blinking and that never-ending warm smile.

“Charlie,” Charlie grunted, looking away when he felt his face burning. “Most people call me Charlie.”

“Charlie!” Will's laugh was rich and smooth too, a happy sound. Charlie swallowed, then risked one glance back and did his best not to duck when he realized Will hadn't stopped watching him.

“Just... don't make any noise when you come back.” He waved his hands too, trying to be dismissive, just as easy about it all. “Some of us have to work in the morning.”

“Yes, Charlie,” Will agreed, with a warmth in his voice that made Charlie walk faster toward his overgrown roses. He could feel the thorns tugging at his shirt.

He got to the door and closed it behind him, then stood there in the dark. He was pretty sure he could still hear Will's laughter.

Next time, he thought, his face on fire. Next time he was not going to give the little twink a chance to laugh at him, no matter how attractive he was when he smiled like that.

There was another cappuccino waiting on the desk in his office, and though it meant that Charlie must have looked exhausted, because this was the fourth cappuccino that Jeanine had left for him today, he still stopped to take a long drink of vanilla soy. Jeanine must have learned to time him perfectly in the past three years, because despite sitting there for who knew how long, it was exactly the right temperature.