It only occurs to Simon now that a normal person would have insisted that nothing needed to change between them just because they had sex, and that it isn’t a problem because they won’t do that again. For fuck’s sake, Simon. That’s what peoplesayin these situations. There’s practically a script for it. They don’t promise to have a nice breakup.
Simon’s making it so obvious, so embarrassingly obvious, that he wants this. It didn’t even occur to him to pretend that he doesn’t want it.
He wants to throw his phone out the window. He wants to hide at the bottom of the sea.
“Yep.” Simon figures that owning his dumb offer is his only move.
“That,” Charlie says, his voice gone all warm, “is really sweet.”
“Oh, shut up.” Simon presses his hot face against the cool glass of the shower door.
“You’ve been returning my texts in like thirty seconds.”
It should be a non sequitur, but it isn’t, and Simon’s face gets even hotter. At first, Simon started doing it because he felt guiltyabout not having texted Charlie when he landed in New York, and wanted Charlie to know—he wanted Charlie to know that he mattered, which is bad enough. But now he just answers quickly so Charlie will get back to him sooner.
“Maybe I do that with everyone,” Simon says. “Maybe I’m great at texting people back.”
Charlie laughs, probably because he’s close friends with half a dozen people who can confirm exactly how bad Simon is at returning texts.
“Closer to fifteen seconds, really,” Charlie says.
“Do you have a stopwatch?” Simon means it to sound testy but it comes out breathless, probably because he’s almost hyperventilating. In his bathroom, at midnight, because someone noticed something they were fully intended to notice and interpreted it correctly.
Charlie’s quiet for a minute, and Simon has the horrible conviction that he’s about to start asking some pertinent questions, like what are they doing here, and what does it mean? It’s what anyone would ask. Simon might die.
But when Charlie speaks, what he says is, “I’ve been returning your texts in about ten seconds.”
“Embarrassing for you,” Simon says immediately, awash in gratitude that of all the things he could have said, that’s what Charlie went with.
“I think I’ll keep doing that.”
Simon feels like he might throw up, but he knows he’s smiling, and those two things don’t belong together. “Me too.”
Only later, when Simon’s trying to fall asleep, does he remember what Charlie said in the motel room after learning that Simon wasplanning to leave the show. He’d said that he was kissing Simon because he ran out of reasons not to kiss him. As if—maybe—it was something he’d wanted to do for a while, but waited until Simon wasn’t on the show.
He stows it away, puts it in the emotional piggy bank: a good thought, something to come back to.
Interstitial
From anOut Therefan Discord
DeathStarJacuzzi: It’s three a.m. and I got a notification that a fic was updated for the first time since 2019. I think I’ve unlocked a new kind of high.
SpacePope: which fic?
DeathStarJacuzzi: The infamous ice planet AU. Three hundred thousand words. The slowest of slow burns. Written with all the style of a Booker Prize finalist.
GalactoseIntolerance:I opened this app to say the same thing! Is it insane if I take a sick day to read the update?
DeathStarJacuzzi:babe, read it AT work
GalactoseIntolerance:true, reading gay fanfic on company time is praxis
DeathStarJacuzzi: the author’s note was like SORRY I lost my job and got covid and moved across the country and had a baby and got divorced but here’s four chapters of Luke West and Jonathan Hale under the influence of ice magic sex pollen
SpacePope: WAIT is this the one where there are like... ice fey?
DeathStarJacuzzi:YES
