Charles | Only Fools Rush In
“I really appreciate you helping me out with this.”
Charles put his arms up, letting Elijah snake the mic cord around his torso and up his t-shirt. “Yeah, man, happy to help, but I’m really just here for the Starbucks gift card you promised me,” he said, smirking. With a vice grip, Eli tweaked Charles’s nipple and he shrieked, flinging himself back and immediately launching a counterattack with a knuckle shot to Eli’s crotch.
“Ah! Fuckin’ stop, shitbrain! This project is due in four fuckin’ hours I need you to focus!” Eli slapped his hand away, cupping his dick like his life depended on it. Charles snickered before lowering his shirt and returning his hands to his chest, shielding it from Eli’s reach. The poor Italian giant looked like two stories of exhausted, running on caffeine and fumes and a violent, base need to not fail his film class. Eli looked over his script again, professional lighting shining bright against a simple white backdrop in a silent studio, the sound of rustling from someone coming in on the other side just barely echoing across the huge space.
“Ready babe?” she called out, her high heels clicking across the concrete floor. Charles smiled, ready to step out and greet Cat when Elijah pulled him back with a quick tug and shoved a cloth across his face, smashing his glasses into his eyelids and probably greasing them up in the process.
“Excuse you--” Charles complained, his voice muffled by Eli’s humongous paw clapped across his mouth.
“No talking. Remember, you signed the waiver.” Charles groaned before he let Eli gently remove his glasses, slip them into the front pocket of his school sweats (technically Eli’s sweats, but who was keeping track anymore), and lead him out to the set. The lights were warm against his skin, the blindfold tight across the bridge of his nose. He heard shuffling in front of him, like clothes rubbing or fingernails scratching against a scalp. “Okay, almost done, don’t talk just yet, let me get my focus and white balance.”
Charles nodded before crossing his hands in front of himself, fingernails scratching at the thin skin above his middle three digits. His lips creeped up into a smile without his permission, the nervousness creeping up from inside like bubbles in an uncontrolled bubble bath or kids on a sugar high jumping in a bounce house. He heard Cat giggle from behind the cameras and he had to force himself not to laugh. My concept, Eli’s filming. It’s a group project, she had said in her tight leather skirt and red-lipsticked coolness. Aesthetic.
“Okay, you two, you go ahead, whenever you’re ready.”
The camera zoomed audibly and Charles laughed out a rushed, nervous confession, “Oh, man, I’m more nervous than I thought I’d be.”
“Oh,” the other said with a voice that sounded about a million miles away in the upwards direction.
“Oh? What oh? Are you okay, oh?” Charles panicked, immediately folding his arms across his chest and taking a step back.
“You’re a guy,” the voice said again, impossibly far and too surprised to sound disappointed. Yet.
“Oh, my god, Elijah!” Charles immediately yelled, stepping back more, “I’m so sorry,” he turned back to the faceless voice, ready to pry off his blindfold. Stupid. Fucking stupid Eli would fuck this up it was fun for like two seconds, now he’s gotta--
“No, no! It’s--I was just--I expected them to give me a girl. I marked down both on my sheet I thought--I thought--I don’t know what I thought. I’m sorry, don’t go.”
Charles paused, still completely unconvinced. “Are you sure? If you’re not comfortable, you don’t have to do this,” he said, putting a hand up in reassurance even if he knew the other guy couldn’t see him.
“I’m sure, I’m just nervous,” he said, the faint rustling starting again. Charles shivered, stepping forward again with a laugh.
“I’m Rob,” the voice said, finally. Charles decided he sounded a lot like hot cocoa feels. All warm and cozy if you aren’t careful. He had that roguish type of voice that sounded like he could be some kind of badass cop in training or soldier boy while still maintaining that shy, humble tone that made Charles all melty.
“Chuck,” he replied, sticking out his hand to shake and realizing he was grasping at air, “I- uh- I’m trying to shake your hand.”
The other boy--Rob--dissolved into quiet laughter that sounded like rain on a kitchen window. “I tried to shake your hand, too.” They both laughed, Charles unconsciously reaching up to cover his mouth with the back of his hand from years of mental braceface scarring.
“Chuck, take a step forward,” Cat suggested and Charles did, his fingers immediately meeting bone in front of him.
“Sorry-” they both said in unison and Charles smiled, “Sorry.” He felt with both hands, feeling along the bone, which he figured to be a wrist, until he was moving along a wide, calloused palm, tough with what felt like years of work. He took the hand, inhaling quietly at how large his hand felt around Charles’s, how his fingers wrapped firmly, but comfortably around his.
Instead of letting go, Charles led the hand to his waist, allowing the other boy to get comfortable. His first reaction was to pull away, but Charles gently encouraged him to stay. “Might as well start somewhere, wonderboy,” he teased, pulling a light peal of laughter from the other. Suddenly, Charles felt the boy--Rob--swell with a bit of confidence, real or fake, and he pulled Charles just a bit closer.
“Sorry, I was afraid of burning myself on-- you. Cause you’re so--hot.” Charles snickered. “That was so bad,” Rob sighed on the tail end of a nervous snort.
“I loved it,” Charles admitted, still cackling softly as his body loosened up in Rob’s arms, falling a bit into the man’s broad chest. When Charles let himself lean more against the other boy, he really began to understand his size. Charles wasn’t exactly small, by any measure, but this man felt absolutely eclipsing. He moved his fingers up the man’s hands and wrists, familiar land becoming completely unexplored territory. Briefly, he wondered how many other fingers traveled up a forearm so broad and strong before, how many hands could barely hold a bicep so thick. He did mark both on his sheet.
Tree-trunk arms, a chest like a dining room table; Charles would have to thank Eli later. He paused when his fingers rested on his clavicle, feeling Rob shiver under him while an unwarranted giggle bubbled up from inside his own shaking ribs. “Okay,” he whispered, the pads of his fingers moving tentatively up the sides of Rob’s neck and pausing when it pulled taut as he started to lean down towards him. He could feel every sinew, every jolt and jump in the muscle there practically quivering. He wasn’t ready to take the plunge, Charles could tell, the tremble in his breath a dead giveaway to his hesitation, so he took the moment to smile, to appreciate Rob’s huge hands falter on his hips, still unsure.
Strangers kiss before they meet. Totally blindfolded, it’ll be awesome.
“You’re kinda scruffy,” Charles laughed, his fingernails scratching at Rob’s cheeks and feeling the skin there move and crinkle into the sides of a smile.
“Sorry,” he whispered, like saying any words right then was utterly painful.
“No, don’t- Don’t apologize,” Charles sighed before he couldn’t take it. This poor kid sounded tortured and Charles needed to end his suffering.
Silently, he pulled Rob’s face down and their noses bumped, their cheeks brushed, Charles’s top lip found Rob’s before anything could really connect, and they were kissing. It was strangled at first, breathless, unnatural. It felt completely robotic, like two people kissing if they never knew what kissing was just two seconds before, but something changed in the second surge.
When they both knew where the other was, when their planes of existence blossomed behind two completely opposite blacknesses, spread vastly apart in different dark, inky spaces behind the same purple, tired eyelids, they found each other. Charles gasped when Rob took hold of him, gently, but powerfully, wrapping his massive arm around Charles’s waist and pulling him flush against his body. Charles’s hand slid away from Rob’s cheek as their lips met over and over again, finding rhythm in quick intakes of breath and slow, kneading presses as his fingers tangled with long hair behind Rob’s ear pulled back in a knot he couldn’t see. He massaged the base of Rob’s neck, pulling a gentle moan from him as Rob slipped a hand under the hem of Charles’s t-shirt, his hand splaying across his naked back, making him shiver and whine into his mouth, his entire body lit from the tips of the boy’s fingers. Charles licked the bottom of Rob’s lip, teasing, daring him to move forward with the plush warmth he’d become so used to, the fiery wildness of it all still burning through his bones as galaxies erupted behind the forced slate of black bound over his eyes.
Rob, all credit to him, gave a great effort to pull away after sliding his tongue along Charles’s in a small, cheeky challenge back to him. He started to move away, Charles’s lips already cold in the absence and Charles, selfish as ever, whispered a choked, “Wait,” before he pulled Rob in for just a few seconds more. Part of him was terrified Rob would bolt the second the blindfolds came out, another part of him was doubly terrified that this was some guy Charles had already had in his bed.
No, he’d remember these lips.
Finally, Charles let Rob free, parting with a satisfying sound between them as they moved away from each other, breathless and loose in each other’s arms. It took Charles a second to realize Rob’s hand had moved from his waist before he finally unwound his fingers from Rob’s hair to slip the blindfold off.
First, the lights were too bright, then everything was blurry. He tried to squint but only saw pink cheeks and a bright smile. Charles reached into his sweatpants and pulled his glasses out, laughing every time Rob whispered an “Oh, my god.” After cleaning the lenses with his shirt, he put them on; he looked up and saw the stars for the first time, hidden deep in sweet sapphire eyes watering a bit at golden lashes. Charles gasped, covering his mouth as he took in skin warmed by the sun, glowing in the lights, the little bits of rose on the tip of his nose and cheeks, the small lines emanating out from the sides of his eyes with every chuckle.
“Oh, wow,” Charles marveled, Rob’s arms finally falling away. He took the chance to step back a bit, staring and then not staring, looking only at the gorgeous, unreal human in front of him, then looking anywhere else, smiling uncontrollably at the thought that he’d just kissed him. He felt like a child, all butterflies and bubbly toes, giggling like a kid at christmas. He didn’t have time to realize he looked homeless. Well, he did, but even horror like that couldn’t keep him from stealing glances at Rob from behind thick lenses.
“How do you guys feel?” Cat asked, smiling somewhere in the darkness.
“A little twitterpated,” Rob breathed, grinning immensely and laughing, his brows knit as if he couldn’t believe what he just said. Charles couldn’t either, but he could roll with it.
“Yeah, but he’s a little cuter than a skunk named Flower, I think,” Charles grinned, winking into the camera just as a warm hand slid across his back and over his waist, Rob and his huge grin beaming down at him just as the giant pressed a kiss to the top of his head. A shiver tip-toed down Charles’s spine as he leaned in closer, grabbing one of Rob’s hands and twining their fingers together, running his thumb over the knuckles. He wondered silently what Rob’s favorite ice cream was, what kind of exercise he liked, how far back his seat was set from the steering wheel, what he liked to sleep in. He wondered audibly, “What was your name again?” as if the sound of it could ever escape his memory.
“Robert,” he answered, as if he could ever believe Charles would forget, “And yours?” he asked, just to play along.
The lights shut off with the distant call of Elijah’s voice to cut the tape and they were suspended in the darkness once more, where their bodies knew each other best and their warmth danced against each other's skin, promising for greater adventures in the morning.
