“What iswrongwith you?”
“I just washed my hands. Why is this stuff blue?”
“There’s some kind of plant in there that’s supposed to reduce redness, and redness is a real problem in my life right now because you’re a total freak who can’t stop leaving beard burn all over the place.” He pointedly dabs some cream onto his neck.
Charlie, because he really is a freak, slips a hand under Simon’s robe and starts pawing at Simon’s chest, his stomach, his inner thighs—all red from Charlie’s beard.
“You want me to stop?” Charlie murmurs into Simon’s neck.
“Stop groping me right now or stop mauling me with your beard?”
“Both. Either. I could shave.”
“No,” Simon says, far too quickly. “But how bad are your feelings going to get hurt if I need an hour alone?”
“Not at all.”
“You sure?”
“Gotta wait for you to come to me, like when someone’s trying to lure the raccoons to the bird feeder.”
Sometimes talking to Charlie is like entering another dimension where words have different meanings. “Someone? Why on earth would ‘someone’ want raccoons at the bird feeder?”
“Why wouldn’t anyone want raccoons at the bird feeder?”
Simon’s going to have to figure out a casual way to bring up the existence of rabies. “You know you can’t cuddle a raccoon, right, Charlie?”
“Not with that attitude you can’t.”
Simon decides not to be bothered that he’s the raccoon in this metaphor, and instead closes the bathroom door in Charlie’s face. When he’s sufficiently moisturized, he finds Charlie sprawled on the sofa, on a video call, not pouting or sulking or whatever Simon was worried about in the back of his mind.
“Gotta go in a sec,” Charlie tells whoever he’s talking to, already on his feet, already across the room. “This is so slutty,” he says approvingly, one finger pressed against the exposed vee of skin at Simon’s collar.
“I really hope that’s Alex,” Simon says, because he didn’t see Charlie disconnect the call.
Into the phone, Charlie says, “He has three buttons undone on his prissy little linen shirt.”
Simon grabs the phone. “It’s the shirt’s fault,” he tells Alex,angling the screen so she can see. “Two buttons and I look like a golf dad.”
“Slutty’s a good look on you,” she says.
“You too,” he says absently, because Charlie’s mouth is on his collarbone.
“Oh gross,” Alex says, and ends the call.
“You’re really not mad?” Simon asks.
“That you’re going out to dinner with your whole chest out? No, I’m into it.”
Simon rolls his eyes. “That I kicked you out of the bathroom.”
“I know I’m clingy as fuck but come on, give me some credit.”
“You aren’t—that’s not what I mean.”
Charlie studies him. “Did somebody make you feel bad about wanting time alone?”
“No, no. It’s just. Not everybody likes being told to go away.” He says the words to the stretched-out collar of Charlie’s T-shirt, but it feels like Charlie’s looking at him very carefully, not groping anymore, his hands on Simon’s hips. “I thought maybe you also—I don’t know. Never mind.”
