It happened at the end of the first school year after they reopened the school. Neither Hank nor Charles had dared to mention it when they'd gotten through the first semester without anything happening—much less had either of them dared to celebrate it.
"The end of the year, well, that's something else," Charles said, right before he poured Hank several fingers' brandy into a glass to match the one already sitting on his desk. "That's something worth celebrating, don't you think?"
Although Hank usually didn't drink, more concerned about a loss of control these days than he ever had been before, there really was no good reason to decline, and so he said, "Yes, of course. We did it."
"That we did."
The brandy burned Hank's throat. It warmed his arms, his legs. Soon, he was sitting back on the sofa in Charles' office, savoring his third glass. He felt good, very good—although he suspected he might be somewhat wobbly if he were to try to stand up.
"Perhaps you shouldn't try," Charles suggested, pouring what must have been his own fifth or sixth glass. He didn't seem nearly as affected as Hank was, but then he'd always been a much heavier drinker, and so his tolerance must have been much greater as well.
By now, Charles was sitting beside Hank on the sofa, having transferred over at some point during the proceedings. As he sipped at his drink, he leaned against Hank, a solid warm weight. Normally, such prolonged contact with another person would have made Hank nervous, but this was Charles—Charles, of the shoulder pats and the back pats and the knee pats. They'd lived together long enough for Hank to be used to the way Charles touched people—almost all people, all the time. It was just the way he was.
Maybe it was that, or maybe it was the brandy, but Hank didn't realize anything was different this time until Charles set his empty glass on the side table, turned to him, and said, "I imagine I wouldn't mind if you kissed me now."
For a moment, for all that Hank had never considered anything like that before, it seemed eminently sensible. Here they were, cuddling on a sofa. Why wouldn't two bipeds of the same species who had been cuddling on a sofa not then go just a little further?
So he bent down, and met Charles' lips with his own, and for a minute or two, it didn't seem strange or wrong or shocking at all to be kissing Charles, to be kissing another man. Even when Charles' mouth opened, even when Charles' hand came to rest on Hank's thigh, far above anywhere that had previously been involved in a knee pat, it seemed completely natural.
Then Charles' hand moved even further up, a warm smooth slide, until it came to rest on Hank's crotch.
Hank never would quite remember jumping up, but jump up he must have, because one moment they were kissing, and in the next moment he was several feet away from the sofa, staring at Charles in shock—knowing it must be shock because that was the only time his hands ever became as cold as they were now.
"Hank, I—"
"I'm drunk," Hank said. "I'm drunk, and I'm very—I'm sorry."
He fled before he could hear whatever Charles was about to say, and was never sure then or later whether it would have been worse if Charles were angry, or if he were understanding.
***
They'd grown very skilled at avoiding each other in the dark years before this one, and so Hank wasn't surprised when he and Charles managed not to even set eyes on each other for the next week.
It was a relief, and not for the reasons Hank would have thought before. If he'd ever thought about being propositioned by a man, he'd have been...uncomfortable, at the very least, maybe even disgusted. But while thinking about what had happened in Charles' office did make him uncomfortable, it wasn't in the way he would have thought. He wasn't sure exactly what it was, and so he worked long hours in his lab for the first few days after, determined to tire himself out enough that he wouldn't lie awake thinking about it when he went to bed.
But on the third or fourth night afterward, although he was still tired enough that he should have gone to sleep right away, he found himself tossing and turning instead, as his mind went over and over what had happened.
It hadn't been a secret to him that Charles sometimes took men as lovers. He'd brought both men and women home after the school had closed but before he'd given up showers. But why had he thought Hank might welcome his advances? He didn't think of men that way. He barely thought of women that way, other than Raven and several of his female classmates in undergrad. He certainly didn't think of Charles that way—or at least he never had before what had happened. Now, he realized, Charles had been mixed up in his thoughts ever since, his constant companion in his lab when his only thoughts should have been for his work. Charles' eyes shining with hope and warmth again, Charles' excited monologues every morning at the breakfast table, Charles' keen interest in all of Hank's own projects...
Charles' sweaty shoulders every time Hank had ever passed him on his way out of the house's gym. Charles' wicked smile whenever they were sharing some in-joke together. Most of all, Charles' warm mouth against Hank's, his hand moving ever upward on Hank's thigh...
Hank was astonished to realize he was hard. He began to wonder what might have happened in Charles' study if he hadn't jumped up. He wasn't certain what sex between two men involved. It seemed like something that would be messy, rough. It was frightening, terribly so—it would be so easy to lose control, if it were rough.
It was frightening, but still, Hank wrapped his hand around his erection, and he wondered what it would have felt like, if his hand were Charles' hand. He wondered and he wondered, and it was only after his climax that he was finally able to sleep.
***
The next morning, the two of them seemed to have come to the same conclusion to stop avoiding one another, for when Hank went down for breakfast, Charles was already in the kitchen.
"Good morning," Charles said. "If you stay around for another ten minutes, there'll be scrambled eggs to go with the toast."
"That sounds wonderful," Hank said.
Breakfast wasn't the easiest they'd ever been around each other, but it wasn't the most awkward they'd ever been around each other, either. By the time it was over, Hank was certain that they could go back to the way things had been between them before—only now he had to decide if he wanted them to.
He spent several more days on this question, and came to the eventual conclusion that whatever happened or didn't happen between them, they couldn't avoid the subject forever. Not if they wanted to be able to keep going forward with the good life they had made together. Maybe they could have, if it hadn't been for the bad years—but their were still things too uncertain about their friendship to let in something that could fester.
***
Hank found Charles in his office, two weeks to the day after they had kissed.
Charles looked up from a stack of papers when he came in, and winced. "Must we talk about it?"
He asked it in the same way he'd objected to discussing his drinking, back when it had been a problem; he asked it in the same way Hank had objected when the topic at hand had been the message his use of the serum sent to their students.
"I think we have to," Hank said simply.
"I suppose." Charles took a deep breath, let it out. "All right. I apologize for my behavior. I didn't intend to make you uncomfortable. I'd hoped—it doesn't matter. It won't happen again." He sighed again. "Did I leave anything out?"
Hank hadn't realized, before, that Charles was frightened too. Of the two of them, he was the one who'd done this before. What he had to be frightened of was an unknown variable in this equation.
'I'd hoped.' Hank had begun to hope, too. Hope was a good thing, a brave thing; hope could make you walk toward the person you'd only just recently realized you wanted, when fear would have made you run away again.
"No," Hank said, walking around the desk to stand beside him. "You didn't leave anything out."
"What's happening?" Charles asked.
He craned his neck to look up, which made that much easier for Hank to bend down to kiss him.
The first time, Charles had melted into him; this time, he froze, not returning the kiss, not doing anything. Oh, he said, straight into Hank's mind, a presence Hank hadn't even thought to miss for the four years it had been gone, and one he'd missed for every second over the past two weeks. It's that, is it?
Then he did kiss Hank back, and reached up to stroke the nape of Hank's neck, and his shoulders, and his chest, and then to undo the buttons of his shirt, first the top one and then the second and then the third, until he could pull Hank's shirt out of his pants and reach inside, running his hands over all the same places, only now over bare skin.
Hank was half-hard already, breathing heavily. He could hear his own heartbeat, and Charles', both much faster than when they were at rest. His hands were cold again, and the fear was back—fear of not knowing what to do, of Charles changing his mind, of being deviant in yet another way. (To his surprise, this last one wasn't what it might have been even a year ago, before he and Charles had talked and he'd decided to try to be blue two days a week.)
Charles pulled away from him then, and murmured, "I think we could both use a little liquid courage."
He reached for the brandy, and poured Hank several fingers, and himself several very generous fingers. The amber liquid seemed to tremble as he passed Hank his glass, although in retrospect that seemed silly—Charles had always had very steady hands. Hank had enlisted him to help with any number of sensitive projects because of them.
"Just one," Hank said, because the first one had been good, the last time, and it was just the others that had left him unsteady.
"One sounds about right." Once Charles had downed his, his Adam's apple mesmerizing as he swallowed it down, he said, "Let's move this to the couch. Otherwise you're liable to get a crick in your neck."
This, too, was sensible—and more exciting than it was frightening, somehow. Hank hung back, waiting for Charles to transfer over and get himself settled before he made a move to sit down himself. When he did, Charles reached for him, and somehow instead of sitting beside Charles as he had the last time, Hank found himself straddling Charles' lap.
They kissed again, and now they were closer, so much closer than they'd been before. Charles' hands roamed up and down Hank's chest, up and down his back, and Hank grew harder and harder, until he was too hard to be embarrassed and too hard to be worried and too hard to do anything but groan when Charles finally, finally reached down and cupped him there again.
Oh, my dear, Charles said. "Oh, that's lovely."
He fondled Hank lightly for a minute, one hand fondling the outline of his erection, the other reaching around to stroke his ass. This only made Hank grow harder, until he said, not knowing what he was going to say until it came out, half another groan and half— "Charles, please."
It didn't matter if it was rough, if it was messy, if it was embarrassing. All that mattered right now was helping Charles fumble with Hank's fly, until it was undone and they could shove his pants and underwear down together. Then Charles wrapped his hand around Hank's shaft, and, done teasing now, began to move, and it hadn't been like this with the others Hank had slept with. He'd climaxed both times, but though they'd been girls it had been messy, and he'd been too self-conscious to really enjoy it—and maybe he should have been self-conscious now, too, and maybe he would be later, but it was so hard to remember why, even as he began to change, losing control exactly the way he was always so afraid he would.
"It's all right," Charles said, It's all right, darling. You're marvelous. Magnificent. I want to see you come.
Hank nearly came right then and there. Later, he would think about words, and wonder why they had such an effect. For now, he groaned again, and, unable to concentrate enough to continue kissing Charles, (and a little worried, underneath everything else, that he might bite Charles), he lay his head on Charles' shoulder, and fucked into his hands until the moment, a few minutes later, when he groaned once more, stiffened, and came.
He'd thought it would be messy, and as he came back to himself enough to realize he'd turned halfway blue, he realized he'd also been halfway right: his come was streaked all over Charles' shirt.
Charles, meanwhile, was breathing nearly as harshly as Hank had been, and was flushed nearly as red as Hank was blue. His pupils were dilated, his pulse hammering in Hank's ears, and if Hank had spent the last week and a half wondering what it would feel like if Charles touched him like this again, he hadn't for one moment considered touching Charles in the same way.
If he had, he couldn't have waited two hours, never mind two weeks.
"Tell me what to do," Hank said, and although his hands had grown cold again, and although he was even more frightened of disappointing Charles that he was of hurting him, he couldn't remember the last time he'd been this eager to learn something entirely new.
Charles, for his part, seemed just as eager to teach him.