Archive of Our Own

For two weeks of the summer before their last year of university, Charles is meant to stay with his best friend, Esteban. It was half Esteban’s idea, half Charles’s persuasion—get him out of Monaco, up into the Northern parts of France he’s never really seen, finally meet the family of the boy he’s been all but attached to for the past two years of his life. Esteban’s parents, ever the hospitable strangers, seem thrilled to take Charles in for a short stint of the summer; when Charles facetimes him a few days before he’s due to leave, he thinks his mother sounds more excited than Esteban himself.

So that’s how Charles winds up on Esteban’s doorstep at half past two in the morning, bags at his feet, furiously texting his friend on a nearly-dead phone with nothing but a stream of unread messages to keep him company. Even after Esteban promised he’d stay awake until Charles arrived, even after he told Charles to book this flight, he still fell asleep. Because of course he did.

Charles sighs, shoulders sagging in defeat. Even at night, the air feels warm, thick with a different kind of heat than what he gets back home. His phone casts his face in an ugly light, blue and horrid, little number at the top of his screen turns into a 1% like a taunt. Charles gives up on his efforts completely, pocketing his phone with teeth sinking deftly into his bottom lip. He fiddles with a ring on his finger as he overthinks the fact that he’ll have to knock.

It’s late; he’s going to wake someone up. That’s not an if, it’s a fact. If Esteban is asleep, then surely his parents are, too, and if anyone is going to unlock this door for him, they’re going to have to be awake. Charles feels bad—even if he can use Esteban as an excuse, no matter who turns up to let him in—but he doesn’t really want to spend the night on the doorstep when there’s a perfectly good bed for him to sleep on inside.

He has his breath in his lungs and a fist raised to the door when it swings open, miraculously.

Charles breathes a sigh of relief. Esteban must’ve woken up, read his texts, come to save him from the bugs and dim street lights. Only when Charles looks up, it’s not Esteban at the door.

It’s a complete stranger. A terribly, horribly beautiful stranger. He’s wearing a t-shirt that fits him in all the right places, loose joggers, a gold chain scarcely visible where it wraps around his neck. His unkempt hair is halfway to blond—clearly dyed, clearly in the middle of growing out—and he’s got a stupid, borderline sexy smile on his face, which should be completely illegal at this time of night, with those lips, full and pink and slightly shiny. Charles didn’t know he could be attracted to a well-trimmed beard or the show of chest hair over a taut collar until it was standing right in front of him.

Jesus Christ. If Charles weren’t so struck by this man’s abject hotness, he might’ve been rambling about how he must have the wrong address.

“Hello,” the stranger greets, and fuck, his voice is just as attractive as the rest of him. He has one hand holding the door open—arm stretched in a way that draws all of Charles’s attention to the way his shirt stretches over his chest—the other lifting, limp, cut by a leather bracelet as he points straight at Charles’s heaving sternum. “You must be Charles.”

Oh. He likes the way he says his name. It’s just another French accent, something Charles has heard a million times before, but something about that sound on this boy’s tongue was entirely different. Buttery-smooth, impossibly elegant, and spoken through that crooked smirk he won’t wipe away.

“Yeah,” Charles says, completely breathless. He nods, short, unsure of what else to do. The way he gestures towards himself is slightly pathetic. “Are you— is—” he bites his tongue before his stammering can get any more embarrassing. Charles is grateful for the darkness swallowing him, because he’s sure he’s gone completely red at this point.

And the man laughs, which would feel cruel if it wasn’t so breathy and amused. He has a hand up by his mouth, not quite covering his teeth enough for Charles to miss the gap between them—not that he’s looking.

“I’m Pierre,” the man says, flattening a hand against his chest, and— Jesus. The way he says his own name is just as attractive as Charles’s. “Esteban is my little brother.” Laughing, he jabs, “he must have fallen asleep on you.”

Charles blinks. Esteban? Brother? “Esteban never— he did not told me—” He’s stammering again. Pierre is smirking, like he can see right through Charles. “I did not know he had a brother.” A really fucking hot brother, his mind supplies. He bites his lip.

And Pierre opens his mouth, voice already pitched in his throat, when right on cue, Esteban comes barreling into the doorway. He shoves Pierre out of the way with a shoulder, face tired, clearly just roused from sleep. Charles faintly hears a noise of protest from where Pierre is now out of sight, but Esteban is talking before he can think much of it, rushed and pitched with exhaustion.

“I am sorry for my idiot brother,” Esteban mutters, gaze sliding narrowly to the side. Charles smiles sheepishly. “How long did he leave you standing outside?” He reaches for Charles’s bags, forgotten on the step. “Did maman not teach you manners?”

As Charles finally steps in the house, he can’t help the look he casts towards Pierre. He’s leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his stupid, broad chest, half a grin still lingering on his lips. His chin is tipped, and he’s looking at Charles, their eyes meeting when Esteban is distracted locking the door.

“Hey, I am not his best friend who fell asleep on him,” Pierre retorts, still grinning. He doesn’t look away from Charles until Esteban is looking at him. “Maybe you are the one with no manners.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Esteban hisses, and Charles only looks at him long enough to catch the venom-soaked glare he’s sending in his brother’s direction. When Charles looks back, Pierre has his tongue pressed into the inside of his cheek, distending his skin awkwardly around the muscle in a way that should not be as attractive as it is. He’s looking at Charles again, eyebrow lifting like he knows. “Charles, come on,” Esteban huffs, tugging at Charles’s arm. “You must be tired. I will show you to your room.”

Charles swallows thickly, knees slightly weak when he tries to move. Pierre is still looking at him, lips quirked, eyes sparkling beneath the fluorescent kitchen lights. The way Charles returns his gaze is damning.

——

“You did not tell me you have a brother,” Charles hushes, sounding scandalized, as if the undertones declare you did not tell me your brother was really hot.

Esteban scoffs, rolls his eyes. “He is not much to talk about,” he dismisses, something insistent about the way he says it. “We never got along much. He is annoying.”

Charles frowns, tucking his heels up under his thighs. Even from across the guest room, Charles can tell how tense Esteban is, shoulders tight beneath a loose-fitting sleep shirt. He lingers by the door like he’s afraid of it, afraid to leave Charles alone, afraid of something changing the moment he walks out into the hallway.

There’s a soft light about the room, honey-gold and artificial. The windows are open. Charles can hear the hum of the cicadas outside, can hear a passing breeze.

“Why do you not get along?” he asks, voice careful. It speaks into the night with a whisper, something whistling beneath the surface.

Esteban blows a long, tired breath out through parted lips. “He is annoying,” he repeats, sounding juvenile. His fist clenches at his side, nearly subtle enough for Charles to miss. “Always so… so cocky. He never changes. He is older than me, still acts like a brat.” Every word is stippled by an underlying scoff, the flick of Esteban’s tired eyes nothing short of annoyed.

It’s almost frightening how serious he is about it. At something of a loss for words, Charles can only mutter a lonely, “Oh.” It’s quiet, almost easy to miss. He’s pretty sure Esteban heard him, though.

Esteban is waving a dismissive hand through the air, holding the doorknob in his other palm. “Just do not pay attention to him,” he says, words airy yet still so tight. “He should go away, at some point. He has some bullshit modeling things to do.”

And Charles nearly chokes on that.

“He is a model?” he stammers, not careful enough to keep the affliction from his words. But it’s so— of course, Pierre is a model. He looked everything like some magazine cover standing in the doorway, horrendously backlit by the overhead kitchen lights, barely even trying. He’s a vision. Even just thinking about him makes Charles feel breathless.

“That is what he says,” Esteban is saying, but his voice is static to Charles: in one ear and out the other. “I do not buy it.”

Charles isn’t thinking about how bitter his friend sounds. He’s not really thinking about anything, in all honesty. Not anything that’s not Pierre. “Oh,” he says, again, just as eloquently as the first time. “Uh— that’s, uh, interesting.” He swallows. Clears his throat. He has to think about keeping his mouth closed, and that’s an entirely new type of pathetic.

And of course, because Esteban knows him, he admonishes, “Charles.”

Charles blinks quickly, rapidly, a few too many times. Across the room, Esteban comes back into focus, eyes narrow and knuckles white. His expression is stuck somewhere between displeased and completely shocked, like the rising flush on Charles’s cheeks was the last thing he expected. In answer, Charles only hums, head too fuzzy to figure out what to say. He can read Esteban’s face, he thinks, but the expression he picks up isn’t one he knows how to answer to.

“Do not make that face, Charles,” Esteban scolds, and he’s horribly, terribly serious. “Not about my brother.” His voice sticks in something like disbelief, suspended awkwardly between them. The way he looks at Charles might be frightening if he weren’t so distracted. “I am serious.”

And Charles has to clear his throat again, has to blink seven times, flashes of a not-so-familiar face meandering between his eyelashes. “What face?” he tries, though he’s not ignorant to the heat beneath his skin. “I am not making a face.”

He’s totally making a face. Esteban totally doesn’t like it.

He shakes his head, exasperated. The door pulls open at the same time he sighs, drowning out the disappointed sound with a creak, but not sparing Charles from the final, despairing look Esteban casts over his shoulder. “Just don’t, okay?”

And as Esteban is halfway to completely gone, Charles calls, “I am not making a face!”

Saying it for a second time doesn’t make it true. Charles flops down on the bed that isn’t his, buries his face in the pillow, and makes a horrible, strangled sound.

——

“Good morning, Charles.”

Charles nearly jumps out of his skin. Pathetic, he jolts where he’s sitting at the counter, splattering ice water across his lips where the glass hadn’t quite made it all the way to his tongue. Even with his back turned, he knows that voice doesn’t belong to Esteban, too smug and too rifling. Charles turns to look at who’s lingering behind him, follows his stride to the corner of the island, elbow sharp and jabbed into the stone with his wicked, awful smile.

It’s Pierre. And because the world wants to watch Charles fall apart, he’s not wearing anything but a loose pair of shorts—too short to be legal—hair distinctly messy in a way only pillows can manage. Charles isn’t subtle in the way he stares at him—not when they’re alone, Esteban still asleep down the hall when Charles went to check on him—mouth slightly open and eyes everywhere but where they should be, rolling over a broad, exposed chest dusted visibly with pale hair, the flash of a golden crucifix between his pecs, the dips to his abs where they shift as he breathes.

Charles looks back up at his face, panicked. Pierre holds himself smug, rolling a thumb along the line of his waistband, lips quirked and abysmal. Of course, he knows—Charles isn’t trying to hide himself. He still clears his throat like there’s something left to swallow, the burning in his chest more the fault of his hidden panic than the shame he should be sticky with, tongue wild in an attempt to bring the moisture back to his mouth after it dared to run dry.

“Good morning,” he returns, words faultier, “Pierre.” The name warps on his tongue. Charles wants to choke around it, wants to choke around other things, desires rampant and awful where they turn to haze behind his eyes.

That too-smooth grin dares to slip wider. Charles watches the way it works Pierre’s muscles, cut and argent along the sweep of his beard, teeth glowing and spaced beneath the crux of his slick cupid’s bow. It’s almost like he can read Charles’s mind, too easy and too predictable. He leans further into the counter so he’s closer, expression sharp, blond hair messy where it hangs in his eyes.

“Esteban is still asleep?” Pierre asks, speaking slowly. His gaze moves at all the same speed, angled towards the hallway with a dirty undertone. He seems to watch the way hardwood disappears, as if he’s waiting for him, like he’ll come out of the shadows—Charles doesn’t follow the trajectory. He stays staring at the angles on Pierre’s face, cheekbones high and smooth beneath his eyes, lips too easy to think about in all the ways he’s not supposed to. “He is awful. Leaves you on the doorstep, sleeps in… and he says maman did not teach me manners.”

Pierre laughs, an easy, amused sound, so intoxicating it spreads honey across Charles’s skin. He wants to push his fingers into it, rough it into his veins, let it live there and fester until it’s gone sour. Heat crawls its way across the back of Charles’s neck, quiet and sweaty, curling the ends of his wispy hair against him with a kind of bridled panic, panic, panic. He’s not sure if the nerves are more the fault of Pierre’s eyes on him or the ever-present knowledge that Esteban could come forward at any moment, effectively shattering the awful tension between them in favor of something new, arguably worse.

“Do not make that face, Charles. Not about my brother.” Perhaps he’s making an entirely different face, now. There’s a tautness to his skin, hot and brutal, all the feelings Esteban had left to implication—put up to a don’t. Charles had dreamed of nothing in the guest room’s too-large bed, but he woke up and immediately thought of Pierre, of something like this, of his face across the counter. He hadn’t thought about his skin until it was all put out in front of him.

“Do you two not get along?” Charles pries. Perhaps it’s an off-topic question, random and out of the blue, but Pierre’s careless jabs thrown like daggers down the hall are too similar. Charles has already watched Esteban throw his own stones toward glass houses under a later kind of light, less distracting where he stands, but he asks, anyway.

Maybe he just wants to hear Pierre speak.

First, he scoffs. It’s breathy, knocking and speechless. Pierre shakes his head softly, rests a chin in his palm, the sound of his skin on the scruff of his jaw unnecessarily attractive. “It is mostly him,” Pierre deflects, all blame. “He thinks I am the worst. And maybe I am cocky,” he smirks, raises his eyebrows, like there’s something more to that word, “but I am not cruel. He is dramatic. Has been since we were kids.”

Pierre ripples his fingers against the line of his jaw. Too-interested, Charles watches the movement, heart beating quickly in his chest, a threat posed to the curve of his rib cage.

“Oh,” Charles mutters, syllable isolated, golden on his lips.

His gaze falls from Pierre’s face, from his hands, still strapped by leather bracelets. The swell of his chest is too enthralling, shifted by the position of his arm. Charles stares until the spit gathering under tongue goes sour, and he has to wash it away with the clink of swaying ice.

“Sorry,” Pierre mutters, laughing softly. He stands up slowly, straightens his back, movement once again demanding all of Charles’s attention. “I know he is your friend. I have bias, I cannot escape him.” He laughs again, a little less nervous, a little more striking. He stretches his arms up over his head, and it has to be intentional, all kinds of in Charles’s face.

He clears his throat. “It’s alright,” he says, because he thinks he has to. He’s staring at Pierre’s chest, the way his necklace dangles, shifts with the flex of his muscles. It’s god-honoring, but it still feels filthy, flashy and in all the right places, so demanding, so impossible. “He is my friend,” he echoes, emphasis in different places, “so I know how he can be annoying.”

Pierre laughs loudly at that. The sound wheezes and strains in his bending chest, ripped from his lungs like it’s not supposed to be there. Charles cracks a smile, reaction subdued by the heavy weight of his heart, pounding in his chest. Pierre’s presence dares to do something to him, something irreversible, never quite catching him in the way it should. Charles tries not to think about Esteban, or the tense shoulders he was sporting last night, across the light of the guest room. It makes him slightly nauseous.

As if on cue, a door creaks open down the hall. Both Pierre and Charles turn to follow the sound, Pierre’s arms falling with a rush, Charles’s pulse far too quick to be okay. He feels it in his throat, in his thighs, all the way down to his fingertips—like this is illegal, standing and talking, face all red at the brunt of it.

“Ah, he finally shows his face,” Pierre quips, palms flattening smoothly on the granite countertop. Charles watches him a little too closely, all veins and tendons, rippling beneath the tanned backs of his hands without real intent. Charles watches like there is, like he isn’t obvious, like this isn’t something he’s not supposed to be doing.

He’s not watching to see if Esteban rolls his eyes, but he figures he does. His footsteps amble closer, hints of his skin edging into view, at the corners of his vision, pushed up against the countertop. It’s like he’s trying to take Pierre’s place, elbow jutting into his side, displeased expression spilling into Charles’s vision full force.

“You are so annoying,” Esteban mumbles, finally succeeding in pushing Pierre away. He occupies his space, now, closer to Charles and stuck in between them, though he still casts a look over his shoulder that should be nothing short of murderous. “Could you not bother to finish getting dressed this morning?”

Pierre looks down at himself, like his bare chest is some kind of revelation. When he looks up, he’s grinning, cocky as always, gaze better thrown over Esteban’s shoulder and into Charles’s eyes, haughty and unfortunate. Charles should look away, he knows he should, skin burning up under the surface—Esteban is right there. His words are, too, if not growing older, suspended awkwardly in the narrow chasms of the hallways.

Not making that face should be Charles’s highest concern. Instead, he’s trying to pick apart the implications in Pierre’s never-ending gaze.

“It is my house,” Pierre says finally, eyes flicking back towards his brother. “I can do whatever the fuck I want.” And he looks back at Charles, sharp and brutal, as if to say, “whoever, too.” He winks when he thinks Esteban isn’t looking, only to saunter off, back towards his own room, presumably, not leaving without a frustrated scoff on Esteban’s lips to catch his heels.

Charles watches him go—he really, really shouldn’t. But the shift of his back is far too enticing, shoulders broad and shifting, the ripple of all his exposed muscles so easy to catch onto. Charles’s mouth runs dry with the last of his unkempt desires, failing to belong to him altogether, failing to be justifiable.

At the squeal of a bedroom door, Esteban says without missing a beat, “What did I tell you last night?”

Their gazes whip back together, colliding under the startle of Charles’s neck. For a moment, he can do nothing but just sit there, blinking at his friend, lost to however he’s expected to respond. The feeling that spreads through his chest isn’t unlike the ugly recoil of shame he used to get when his parents would scold him for swearing, threatening to wash his mouth out with soap no matter how many apologies rose to take profanity’s place—but the hopeless ramble of “I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry” doesn’t feel right here, not when he’s twenty years old and looking up at his equally twenty years old friend.

Instead, Charles mutters, “I am not making that face.”

Conviction is weak at the edges, hairline fractures running heinous across his tone. Charles still barely knows what that face is, all he knows is there’s heat in his cheeks, and that’s not a good sign. He can’t even force himself to look Esteban in the eyes anymore, staring down at his own hands where they fiddle and tug in the space between his thighs. He hears a sigh emit from somewhere before him, tangled displeasure burdened hot by the summer’s heavy air.

——

Esteban’s parents are just as sweet and welcoming as they seemed over the phone. Charles is almost overwhelmed by their affection, and Esteban appears equally embarrassed, standing at the edge of the kitchen with his face screwed into a frown Charles is starting to get used to the look of. They’ve left any mention of Pierre behind them, for the most part, and Charles wonders absently if Esteban is hoping he’ll just forget about him entirely.

Maybe that would be for the better. Charles could stop glancing down the hallway like there’s something waiting for him back there, amidst the shadows that crawl across the walls, light emitting with sanctity from the gap beneath the door. Esteban always seems to know what he’s been thinking by the time his eyes return, blistering under the dull amber glow of the kitchen lights.

“Charles,” Esteban’s mother starts, one hand on his shoulder, “have you had the chance to meet Pierre?”

As if he needs approval, Charles looks toward Esteban. Their eyes lock momentarily, quiet and widened, a vague little thing that feels like a threat hovering in the scruples of Esteban’s gaze. Charles swallows, thick and unfortunate, the rush of his own saliva down the back of his throat stinging a little bit more like bile.

“We have run into each other,” he answers, simple and unassuming, without the niceties he wishes to give in the likes of, “he seems alright, he is nice to talk to, is he really a model?” Charles just smiles, tight and stitched together by the look on Esteban’s face, watchful and too-close. “He is older?”

“Twenty-four,” their mother answers, palm falling away from Charles’s shoulder, sweat cooling fast against his skin.

——

Pierre comes back late. His too-nice shirt is unbuttoned all the way, silken ends billowing at his hips, belt just as awful and expensive as the rest of him. He kicks his shoes off at the door and shoots a grin in Charles’s direction, crossing the space between them until he’s breezing past behind him where he sits along the edge of the island.

Twilight has already settled outside, loud summer cicadas awake and alive, the sound of their calls scantily seeping into the kitchen. Charles sits alone at the breakfast bar, dressed in his sleep clothes with bags beneath his eyes, a glass of ice water perched before him. He’s more staring at it than he is drinking it, not quite seeing his reflection against the surface, but he pretends his likeness is rippling with it, anyway.

“I did not think you would still be awake,” Pierre calls over his shoulder, opening the fridge with an urgent sound. Light spills out around him, bathing his skin in something harsh, unforgiving—Charles is drawn to the way it flutters like a moth, leaning forward on his stool, ribs knocking firmly into the edge of the counter. He bites his tongue and the blood in it.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Charles dismisses. It feels like an excuse. He shrugs, but Pierre can’t see it. “I did not realize you would be coming in so late.”

The fridge closes with a resounding slam. Pierre turns with nothing new about himself aside from the can of Red Bull in his hand, sweating onto his fingers like it’s not half-past midnight. “We were supposed to be shooting for golden hour,” he says, can cracking open with enough of a startle to make Charles jump, “then they did not let me go.” Pierre laughs, a pitched, rumbling sound, muffling itself into the edge of the can when he brings it up to his lips.

Charles laughs a little, too. He can’t not, when it’s Pierre, when they’re alone. It’s nothing like in the morning, separated by sunlight, Esteban’s arrival inevitable and halfway to awaited. Esteban is asleep, and the house is quiet, cicadas their only company between the narrows of the stars. Charles can stare openly at the drops of condensation clinging ardently to the edges of Pierre’s lips, at the motion of his metal-adorned hand rising to wipe them dry, at the spread of his dress shirt exposing his chest, his abs, the golden crucifix nestled between his pecs.

The only thing he has to be afraid of is Pierre himself. And he’s not really afraid, not when Pierre is looking at him like that.

“So you really are a model?” Charles asks, words slow and languid where they burden his callous tongue.

His gaze lingers on the vulgar LV making Pierre’s belt buckle, demanding attention to all the wrong places. Pierre’s responding over-arrogant grin only exists in his peripheral, barely-there but still just enough to drag Charles’s gaze back up to where it arguably should be. A blossom of heat exists beneath his cheeks, only doubled by the cocksure way Pierre regards him, bringing the Red Bull back to his grin.

“Of course I am,” he answers, lips sticky. Charles wants to swallow something off of them, perhaps the sour tang of his energy drink, perhaps the vanity he wears so well. “Did Esteban tell you something else?”

Charles almost recoils at the name, something so guilty and wrong about it. Even under the cover of the darkness, the “good night” Esteban had given him in the guest room’s doorway, Charles still looks over his shoulder, mouth sliced to ribbons by the reminder. All he finds is darkness, pale shadows carved up the sides of walls starting to grow familiar.

He laughs softly, turning back, as if he has something to break. “Something about how he does not believe you,” Charles says, drumming his fingers on the side of his glass. The surface is slippery, fingerprints in the scruples of condensation, smeared without likeness. “He was just being Esteban.”

Pierre laughs at that, low and giggly and horribly, nightmarishly intoxicating. Charles gets a little dizzy with it, brings the glass of water to his lips to quell a sticky-dry mouth. The edge of Pierre’s Red Bull can hovers against his full bottom lip, pressing down in a way that lets Charles see the way it distorts the flesh beneath it. He stares obviously, a mute kind of shame burning hot and heavy in his chest; it’s not striking enough to make him reel back.

“He is quite the nuisance, non?” Pierre jabs, smirk easy and crystalline. It’s barely slick with something tangy and carbonated, easy on the bow of his lips. “A part of me cannot believe you hang out with that idiot by choice.” He rolls his eyes, quick, nearly invisible. The sip he takes of his drink is short enough to punctuate, throat moving with a swallow. “But hey,” he steps closer, knocks Charles’s arm with his elbow, sharp and unyielding, “without him, I would never have met you. Must count for something.”

He leaves Charles with an insolent grin, cut and ruthless, before disappearing down into the darkness of the hallway. The steps to his overpriced sneakers are loud in the emptiness of the house, retreat watched too closely from where Charles sits, speechless, tongue heavy against the back of his bottom lip. He wants to grab Pierre by the billow of his shirt, tug him back into him, ask what the fuck does that mean, what the fuck do you mean, what are you implying, what is any of this, but he doesn’t, only sits in the burden of his silence, company limited to the muffle of the summer bugs on the other side of the walls.

Charles dumps the rest of his water into the sink, and he stands there, and he tries to watch the ice melt. He thinks it would go faster against his skin, cool water running down the curves of his breaths, along his spine, finding space to live in the dip of his navel. It’s easier to think about cold water than it is to think about Pierre, or the iterations of expressions he’s seen on Esteban’s face, always glowering, always disappointed.

It should be easier to fall asleep, too. Charles lies awake until he feels the phantom chill of ice cold water running down his skin.

——

Charles swears he sees Pierre at every possible turn. Even after Esteban had borderline assured him he would be out more than he was in, Pierre was everywhere, turning up under kitchen lights in arguably not enough clothing, wearing that awful grin like it could stand in place of modesty. When Esteban’s around, too, he makes a deal of shoving Pierre away, telling him to piss off, demanding he find something else to do with himself. Pierre always listens—but not without a fight—laughing his stupid laugh his whole way around the corner, giving Charles lingering looks like he knows what they do to him.

Charles is pretty sure he knows exactly what they do to him. There’s too much arrogance behind his eyes, living between them, smug and unfortunate. Charles practically has that expression burned into the backs of his eyelids at this point, evil and familiar, the last thing he sees before going to sleep at night and the first thing he catches when he wakes. The ceiling of the house’s guest room stands no chance to the memory, unholy and effervescent, always waiting for Charles on the wrong side of his chosen darkness.

After a few days, Esteban seems to lay off it a bit. He stops giving Charles disdainful looks, stops reminding him of what he said, stops trying so valiantly to shove Pierre away from them when he’s around. He opts instead for a strange kind of silence, something awkward but not unfamiliar, a state Charles has seen him reduced to far more than just once in all their time close together.

It makes Charles feel a little less guilty. Some of the shame growing exponentially in his abdomen dares to quiet, the molten-hot of it cooling just a touch, not with the aid of ice running down his skin. Charles can let his eye contact stick a little longer when Esteban doesn’t seem to be looking at them, attention always astray, and it feels like a sweet release into something unidentifiable—or maybe it’s heinous, like a bucket of cold water, drenching Charles through his clothes and sticking them down to the dips of his shaking body.

He’s still better off when they’re alone. And they’re alone now, on the house’s back porch, sunlight brutal and golden where it slathers across their skin. Charles is starting to see his shoulders go a little pink in the mirror, but he still forgets to care about it, t-shirt bunched up on the ground beneath his feet where they spread. Sweat sticks his thighs down to the slats of the chair, sunglasses turning the world to a dull amber where he just sits, basks in something he can’t understand, acts like nothing can reach him.

Then Pierre comes outside, unannounced, and shirtless as ever.

Perhaps it’s only fair when Charles is clothed to the same incomplete degree. It feels so unfair when it’s Pierre, though, all golden tan with the sunlit summer, crucifix necklace still dangling against his collarbones like some kind of blasphemous, unkind taunt. He’s grinning beneath his sunglasses, too large for his face, but still managing to look so good where they swallow him whole, stretched just past his cheekbones, dark and surely expensive. His shorts are a bright, striking orange, demanding Charles’s attention in the same way his stupid belts do, glistening and brutal slung across his hips.

It’s not where he should be looking. Even if Pierre wasn’t Esteban’s older brother, he still shouldn’t be staring beneath his waistline, at where the nylon of his swim shorts goes astray, shifting when he moves his legs, everything but bloody with intent. Charles swallows thickly, drags his eyes back up to Pierre’s face, forever grateful for the way his eyes hide themselves behind the reflections in his sunglasses for once in his haze of smattered, unreasonable lust.

“Are you sunbathing?” Pierre asks, words floaty and attractive as the rest of him, skin glistening beneath the sun. He’s as aureate as anything else, fiddling with the backwards cap on his head, hair blond-streaked and messy where it eases out the front without care, without attention, without anything at all.

“Maybe,” Charles answers. He’s not. He stretches his legs in front of him like he could be, though, splaying his arms a little further so his wrists hang off the armrests. His skin is warm where it bleeds into the air, perhaps a little pink, and he wonders absently if he can blame the color on his cheeks on the heat rather than the way Pierre must be looking at him, behind those gaudy lenses, careful and complete. “Is that what you are out here for?” he nods in Pierre’s directions, limbs too lethargic to move, “you must have to do something, to keep your tan.”

“Ah,” Pierre breathes, easy and relenting. He looks out across the backyard like there’s something to find on the other side of it, along the fence, amongst the trees. The motion shifts his skin over his muscles, and Charles looks, because of course, he does. “How do you know it is not all a fake?” Pierre teases, gliding his thumb down the side of his waist. His eyes are forward again, glimmer hidden when he grins.

Charles lets the smile cross him easily, albeit futile, not nearly as teasing as what Pierre faces him with. “I guess you are right,” he tosses, shoulders twitching minutely. “Do you have to keep tan, for your modeling?”

Making an easy noise, Pierre wanders closer. The gap between them barely shrinks, but it still does, enough of a shift in their propriety for Charles to be aware of the way the air changes. “It is not a requirement,” Pierre says. He shifts his sunglasses up on his nose, lenses catching the light strangely. It hides him more. “But I think it looks better, like this. And they want me to look good,” he flashes another grin, wide and impossible, “of course.”

Charles doesn’t think to stop himself before he answers, “You always look good.”

Pierre raises his eyebrows at that, lifting from behind his sunglasses. Even without his eyes to aid the visual, he still comes off completely smug, laughable where he glistens in a strike beneath the surface. “Please, Charlie,” he says, ruthless and slow, “continue to flatter me.”

The quirk to his lips is lopsided, bitten and anew. A blister of heat rolls up Charles’s spine beneath it, hands tensing around the warm, sloppy air they lay suspended in, fingers curling inward until they hit the damp flesh of his palms. He figures Pierre can sense the tension in his lungs, heavy and undeniable, reading clearly across every edge of his face that lets him show—ruddy, off-kilter, and everything it shouldn’t be.

Perhaps it’s an issue that Charles wants to keep flattering him. Compliments rarely come easy to his tongue, but he finds he wants to choke on them, brutal and misshapen where they hover in his throat. Pierre does look good, and maybe he is more attractive like this, exposed and grinning and haughty with arrogance.

But Charles doesn’t admit any of that. Instead, he scoffs, “Maybe Esteban was right.” And he waits for Pierre’s face to contort—curious but no less cocksure—before he continues, “you are too cocky.”

Pierre laughs again, bristling and smug. “You love it,” he accuses, and Charles’s stomach turns, because yeah, maybe he does.

——

Charles thinks the house is empty. He has a text from Esteban that says he’s out with his parents, and if Pierre isn’t with them, Charles figures he must have something else to do, modeling or otherwise. The sun is still bright outside the windows, carving pyramids of light across the dusty hardwood floors, warm on Charles’s skin even with the added barrier of the windows.

He’s quiet. Everything is quiet, perhaps a little too quiet, the late morning keeping him steady where he lingers in a shared space. He’s not too sure what to do with himself when the world is so silent, cicadas at rest given the hour, leaving nothing but the rippling grass to keep him company.

Well, until a voice rings out from behind him. “Ah,” and Charles is embarrassed by how quickly he recognizes it, how quickly he tenses, burdened by the thought, “you are here.”

Charles merely glances over his shoulder, wringing his hands out in front of his waist. Pierre is standing behind him, a safe distance away, wearing nothing but those gaudy orange shorts again, sunglasses perched on his head amongst the mess of fake-blond hair. Charles tries to shrug, but the motion comes stilted, not assisted by the awkward twist he gives his body to meet Pierre’s glimmering, chlorine-blue eyes.

“I am,” Charles says dumbly. He tries not to cringe at it. “And so are you.”

A smile eases its way across Pierre’s lips, perhaps lacking a bit in arrogance. He steps a bit closer, thumb running across the line of his waistband, absentminded and distinctly cruel. “We are alone,” he says simply, like that means anything, like the amount of space between them is dictated by more than just the space they occupy. Pierre glances around like what he said could be a lie, gaze the most uneasy Charles has seen it, the gap between them shrinking ever-smaller when he doesn’t stop. “They should not be back for a while.”

He meets Charles’s eye. It’s scalding, the way he looks at him. Charles is still pivoted strangely, hips swiveled on themselves, the quiet steps he takes to face him better daring to stumble. There’s no air left in his lungs; Pierre took it all from him, too-easy.

“Is that supposed to imply something?”

He almost hates himself for asking. A crease works its way between his eyebrows, thin yet mighty, glaring and at the center of his face like his voice wasn’t just smooth, bold, as if he’s trying to imply something in turn.

Pierre just grins. “It can, if you want it to.” Coaxing, he tips his head to the side. It says more than it should, says come closer, says you want this, says everything Charles should be trying to ignore.

Disastrously, he ignores nothing. He turns to face Pierre properly, opens his mouth like he might say something, only for two hands to fist themselves into the cotton of his t-shirt and draw him closer, closer until their lips mash together in something draconian, unkempt and misaligned—Charles kisses him immediately, fueled by a kind of vigor he didn’t know he had in him, hands reaching for skin so magnanimously bare he makes a noise with it, palms flat against the heat of Pierre’s abdomen.

Pierre kisses him with all the same vitality. He kisses the same way he grins, sharp and all-consuming, the taste of his wrought arrogance heavy on the crux of his lips. Charles feels him everywhere, even where they’re not touching, sensations brutal and restless where they crawl across his skin. Pierre hooks his fingers beneath Charles’s chin, tips him into himself, impossibly closer, so close Charles feels the flat of his teeth when he tries to swallow him whole, desperate and wrong but completely insatiable.

When Pierre breaks away, Charles makes a rough sound from his throat, hands grappling for purchase against the texture of Pierre’s skin. He finds nothing, merely sliding, palms locked into the curves of his sides in something restless, the heat of his arousal nearly too much to bear. His breath is ragged when Pierre presses a kiss to the corner of his parted mouth, wet and open, still holding his jaw like he might jerk out of it at a moment's notice.

“Fuck,” Charles swears instead, reveling in the smirk Pierre wears against his face, palpable and malicious. “Esteban is going to kill me.”

It’s not as riddled with concern as it should be. Charles sounds more breathless than anything, eyelids fluttering without the fear of it, body lacking in everything it shouldn’t be. Pierre just laughs into his cheek, muffled and burning. Charles wants to swallow the sound, but he wears it, instead, red in color and smeared across his skin.

“Do not talk about Esteban right now,” Pierre admonishes, words drowning in the crook of Charles’s neck. Pierre leaves another kiss there, then one beneath it, then one beneath it—he stops at the edge of Charles’s collar, hands looping firmly at his waist to drag him closer and closer still. “He should not bring home such pretty boys then complain about how they look at me.”

A shiver wracks up Charles’s spine, another quiet sound nestling itself between his lips. Blood rushes too-quickly in every imaginable direction, heart pounding under threat, a mess of thoughts awake and alive between Charles’s ears that start and end with everything they shouldn’t. Maybe Esteban shouldn’t have such a hot brother, he tries, maybe Pierre shouldn’t be so enticing, shouldn’t look at Charles like he wants to eat him alive, shouldn’t be a better kisser than he was in his dreams.

Maybe Charles just shouldn’t have been dreaming about kissing Pierre.

“Pierre,” he breathes, words rough for nothing. He fists a hand through the mess of blond hair brushing against his neck, drags Pierre’s face off of him. His lips are wet, eyes wide and hazy, sunglasses now sitting askew on his head. The heat of his unkempt breaths is ruthless, fanning across Charles’s mouth. “Kiss me,” he says, like he can’t close the gap himself, “please, please.”

And he obliges, devours him sweetly, lips-first and relentless. It’s almost clumsy, knocking and too-urgent, Charles stumbling backward when Pierre presses too close. Their fronts glide together, hips slightly misaligned in the imperative way they move. Charles wants to touch every last inch of the man in front of him, palms hungry and rapacious, pushing, pushing into the stipples of his flesh, nails carving crescent shapes into the space beneath his delts, warm and sun-soaked where they stand, so out in the open, so unafraid.

Every sound Charles makes climbs in humiliation. He wants to hate the way it tastes on his tongue, but Pierre swallows them before he can find astringency, sour and useless where it leaves the space of his tongue. He touches him with an ache that wants this, hands wandering, sneaking up under his shirt, feather-light against the heat of his skin like he’s still hesitant, acting gentle, impervious. Charles tries to arch into it, chasing the press of Pierre’s palms, but he always draws away from it, skillful with a tease, the smirk he leaves butter-smooth on his lips palpable and sweet.

Pierre mumbles something sounding adjacent to “we should go to my room” and Charles lets himself be swept away. It doesn’t phase him that he hasn’t seen the inside of Pierre’s bedroom until the door is already closed, clicking into place in tandem with a hand sliding into the crook of Charles’s waist. Impious fingers press into the curves of his skin over the cover of his t-shirt, halfway to distracting from the corners Charles had been attempting to observe, bed unmade and desk cluttered but the entire space still neat, in a strange, rather backwards way.

He breathes out a twisted syllable that mangles into something like Pierre’s name, body tugged backwards into the firm plane of Pierre’s chest, mouth pressed into the damp back of his neck without care, brushing against the cotton of his collar where it holds his skin, hot and unkind. Charles reaches for the hem of his own shirt, hands shaking, bumping into Pierre’s the whole way he attempts to take it off. It pools on the floor between his feet, crumpled and useless, feeling colder against the tops of his feet than it did holding his chest.

Pierre wastes no time wandering his palms across the newly-exposed skin in front of him. “So pretty,” he murmurs into Charles’s shoulder, squeezing at his chest. He tugs him back impossibly further, body solid behind Charles’s, cock hard where it presses below his waist. He makes a strangled sound in answer to it. “Sound so pretty, too.”

Though Charles thinks he sounds pathetic, Pierre’s rough-edged voice finds a place to live beneath his skin. His arousal is still apparent, pressed up into Charles’s back, and it takes a heinous amount of self-preservation to keep himself from turning and pleading to get down on his knees. Pierre is busy dragging his mouth across the slope of Charles’s bare shoulder, tasting his skin spit-first with the flick of an ardent tongue, slow and methodical in the way he moves across his body like it’s something precious, hands fragrant despite how hard he feels.

Charles longs to touch him. He longs to touch himself, too, so hard in his shorts it’s making his head spin, mouth split open and drooling where he tries not to writhe too obviously, twitchy against the sticky front of Pierre’s body. He leans into it, into something, into the voracity of Pierre’s touches, into the flame of his bare skin.

Wet lips inch upwards, meandering against the skin below Charles’s ear. He spikes with it, body jolting, damp like desperation between the unravel of Pierre’s malevolent hands. “Has Esteban ever seen you like this?” he asks, dirty and godless, the implication of his morbid curiosity so implausible where it sits, worked into the creases of Charles’s neck and shoulder.

“I thought—” he tries, interrupted by the teeth sinking into the slope of his throat, bared without belligerence or a chase for sodden blood. “I thought we were not speaking of him.”

The attempt is breathless, strained around the edges. Pierre answers first with nothing more than an arousal-soaked laugh, muffled into the flesh still held between his lips, meager yet enticing where it buzzes with a blister.

“Let me be a little jealous, Charlie,” he argues, bathed in mirth and taunting, but still so intrinsic, so impossible, so filthy where it festers against bone. “He has been keeping you from me, so long.”

A mewl leaves Charles’s tongue when Pierre sinks a hand lower, drags his thumb along the skin above his waistband, pushing haughtily and intentional. He doesn’t go any lower, just sits with it, lets Charles taste his own desperation, the slick of the words he fights himself to answer runny and meandering down the curve of his taut shoulder.

It’s humiliating how hard he has to try to get the words from his throat. “We are just—” and he still chokes on it, high and useless where he tries, breath stolen like it never belonged to him at all. “We are just friends.”

Pierre laughs again. Dirty, near-silent. “So he has never touched you here?” he teases, and Charles barely has time to process the words before Pierre grabs his cock, squeezing him through his shorts, stealing another one of those obscene, lewd-leveled sounds from the column of his throat, constricting around the pink of it.

He doesn’t think he needs to say ‘no.’ He probably couldn’t, even if he wanted to, every attempt at speaking coming with nothing more than a ragged breath, something ratty and irritable, stolen from the chasm of his lungs where they push bloody against his ribs. Pierre keeps rubbing at his cock through the fabric, boxers harsh and misaligned against sensitive skin, but it feels good because it’s Pierre, his hands, his mouth on his neck, his cocksure laughter muzzled by a bite mark and a kiss.

“Even if he had,” Pierre starts, hand dragging upward, the tips of his fingers sinking lowly into the waistband. “I bet I would fuck you better.”

Charles keens in a pitch that strikes agreement, melting back into Pierre’s chest. He’s content not to think anymore, words growing increasingly impossible where they sit along his tongue, intrinsic yet impossible. Pierre keeps touching him, hands wicked and desirable, only removing his hand from inside Charles’s shorts to drag him to bed, pressing him down into the center of the mattress with entirely too much ease.

Visions of Pierre fill Charles’s sight again. He’s lost the sunglasses, hair now just a mess, scattered in a halo around his head with the cut of the sun from his windows. He still manages to be smirking, which feels sick when juxtaposed with how much of a puddle Charles has become, muscles fusing deeper into the sheets the longer he stares, eyes blown, at the crook to Pierre’s mouth.

He reaches up towards his face, fingers clumsy and desperate, knuckles bumping into the rough stubble along his jaw without class or clear intent. Pierre chuckles a bit, deep-seated in his chest, but he leans in, kissing Charles stupid with his too-lavish tongue, hands not wasting any time in finding the waistband of his shorts again. Teeth sink briefly into the flesh along Charles’s lower lip, and he whines, scratching nails into the hair along Pierre’s nape.

“Can I take these off?” Pierre hushes, two fingers twisting beneath Charles’s boxers.

The noise he makes in answer is pitiful. It’s almost too mangled to be recognized as the “please,” that it is, only identifiable when Charles lifts his hips up off the bed in encouragement, letting Pierre strip him naked with all the ease in his composed eagerness. The fabric crumples to the floor faintly, but Charles is far more interested in how Pierre looks settling between his spread thighs than he is what’s not between them any longer, greedy blue eyes aimed straight at his cock in a line that’s too-clear, too-attentive to the way it’s drooling on his stomach.

Charles twitches. Something in him aches to cover himself up, but he doesn’t move, palms laying face-up on the pillow in a sorry show of surrender. A little more composed, he mumbles out a quiet, “Please,” surprised by his own inability to say much more.

Pierre runs a reverent hand down his side, squeezing the meat of his thigh dutifully between his fingers. “What do you want?” he asks cruelly, slinking his fingers down into the space between Charles’s legs. When he keens loudly, Pierre raises a brow. “Here?”

Charles whines at the sensation—nothing more than a warm press of something right where he wants it, both too much and impossibly not enough—hands scrambling to loop around Pierre’s wrist. “Pierre,” he mewls, half the syllables obscured. “Need you.”

There’s nothing left in him that bothers to consider consequences as Pierre instructs him to turn over, grabs him by the waist to tug his ass up, breaths tattered and hot where he can hear them. Candid fingers press scarcely into his flesh, tugging his cheeks apart, exposing the most vulnerable part of him in a way Charles never thought he could like. But he’s almost desperate to make a show of himself for Pierre, sounds muffled into the soft center of his pillow, cotton blend smelling so deeply of him it makes him dizzy, as if this is some kind of guilty pleasure, a dirty secret, like the man who owns that scent isn’t kneeling behind him with his hands on his ass.

He asks Charles if he’s ready before sinking the first finger in, stretches him slow and lethargic-like while whispering something unidentifiable, too far away to pick up on every curve. He flattens a hand against the small of Charles’s back when he’s two fingers deep, presses him down when he tries to roll his hips back against the intrusion, a hiss of cocky laughter nestled between his teeth.

“Do not get greedy,” he admonishes, turning nails into the expanse of Charles’s skin. He spreads his fingers inside slowly, reveling in the way Charles whimpers, body jolting against the mattress where he tries to obey, muscles shifting beneath his skin. “You take what I give you,” Pierre says, grin audible, “like a good boy.”

Charles caves under the praise, lays still beyond his shaking in a desperate chase for more of it. Pierre mouths at the backs of his shoulders as he finishes with his fingers, dragging three out past his rim before Charles gets too antsy, quietly trying to rock his hips down into the sheets to give stimulation to his neglected cock. A part of him is sure Pierre has caught the movement, but he doesn’t say anything, just smooths a hand down the cleft of his ass and prods at this stretched rim, clenching around nothing in an impatient wait for more.

“Tell me what you want, chéri,” Pierre says, because he’s awful, as if he doesn’t already know.

“Your cock,” Charles manages, perhaps aided by the darkness he finds behind his eyelids in place of Pierre’s face. “Fuck me, Pierre, please.”

A strangled sound comes from somewhere behind him, and that’s it. Pierre enters him slowly, flattening a hand against the small of Charles’s back. Charles bites down into the plush of the pillow to muffle his whimpers, shoulders twisting against the mattress in an awkward-skewed angle he’s sure he’ll feel later. But in the moment, all he feels is Pierre, all-encompassing in a way he wasn’t before, inside him, stealing the breath clean from his lungs.

Charles gasps something that could be interpreted as a “fuck.” Pierre chuckles a bit, still cocky, but infinitely more strained, hips twitching where they sit flush with Charles’s ass. “Feel alright?” he asks, smoothing a palm up the length of Charles’s spine.

Alright doesn’t even begin to summarize it. Charles turns his head to the side, pillowcase damp with spit against this burning cheek. “So good,” he answers, words newly muzzled by the wetness of his lips. “Can you—” but he doesn’t finish, instead pushing himself back against Pierre’s cock, as if to beg in lewd silence, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.

Maybe the wordless way is infinitely more humiliating.

But Pierre gets the hint. His breath comes ragged and gasping, accompanied by a cocksure, “yeah?” before he snaps his hips inside of Charles. He fucks into Charles with a certain vigor, something Charles can feel everywhere beneath his skin, heart pounding in his ears. Pierre over him, chest pressed firmly against his back, the glimmer of his crucifix mashing into the space between Charles’s shoulder blades. He thinks it could leave behind an imprint of the shape, something horrible and blasphemous, and he thinks Pierre might like to run his fingers across the godless lines of it.

Charles comes when Pierre slips his hand around his front, mumbling filth into his ear as he fists his cock, drags it out of him, teeth grazing inelegantly across the skin of Charles’s shoulders. Pierre isn’t too far behind, and when they finish, the both roll over on the bed and stare up at the ceiling where it cracks, world spinning a bit atop their noses.

Barely having caught his breath, Charles is the first to speak. “You cannot tell Esteban.”

Pierre whistles out a laugh, reaching instinctively for one of Charles’s thighs. He stretches slightly on the bed, a groan petering out through his lips. “Ay,” he starts, squeezing Charles’s thigh, “he would kill me, too, you know.”

——

The next few days pass in what Charles can only describe as a Pierre-induced haze. Making out with Esteban’s stupid hot brother in the bathroom during dinner is not what he thought he would be doing when he planned this visit, nor did he predict sneaking into the same stupid hot brother’s bedroom in the middle of the night to choke on his fingers while he fucked him in a sorry attempt at silence.

But not very many things have been going according to his expectations.

For starters, Esteban had somehow managed to spend the entire two years they’d known each other never mentioning he had any siblings at all, and he still gives his brother pissed off looks when they’re in the same room. Charles tries not to find the humor in it, but is a little bit funny how much Esteban hates him for what is arguably no reason. Pierre would say Esteban is just jealous of him, but those words only fit in his mouth when the sky is dark, bedroom windows cracked and Charles’s head on Pierre’s rising chest, fiddling with a little golden cross between his fingers.

Pierre lets Charles look at the results of some of his photoshoots when they come in, which truthfully, is a horrible thing. It’s no real secret that Charles thinks Pierre is attractive, anyway, but when he’s all done up and posed and draped in expensive clothing, it’s just that much more. Charles kisses him with the laptop still open on his desk, straddling his lap in the chair, and it surely does unnecessary things for Pierre’s already over-inflated ego.

He’s probably seen too much of Pierre for someone who was told not to make that face.

——

Maybe Charles should’ve expected this.

They weren’t exactly being careful. Arguably, they were never really, but it’s true enough that as more time passed, the more comfortable they became in their secret. Charles stopped worrying so much about the potential of being seen or heard or caught, and Pierre was more than distracting enough to make him lose his grip.

It still catches him off guard, though.

The sky is dull and muted outside Pierre’s bedroom windows, hazy amber along the horizon. It hasn’t quite turned to that safe time of night, the rest of the world comfortably asleep and the summer cicadas louder than life, but it was dark enough and Charles was desperate enough to slip in behind the door and sink to his knees. Pierre is shirtless and sitting at the foot of his bed, thighs parted with more than enough room to let Charles nestle himself between them, fingertips playing along the line of his waistband with a cheek pressed against the strain of his clothed cock.

And it’s as Charles is opening his mouth, tongue dragging languid up the line of Pierre’s arousal that the door flies open.

Charles reels back like he has anything left of his dignity to salvage, palms digging into the dirty carpet beneath his knees. He looks toward the door with wild eyes, cheeks surely stained red, and the sight of Esteban standing backlit by the lights from the hallway is nearly enough to make him sick. He looks surprised. He looks disgusted. He looks angry.

“Oi,” Pierre says from the bed, held tilted, uncaring. His scrupulous attempts at modesty come as nothing more than a hand laid intrinsically over the bulge in his shorts, only hiding it from the line of sight, implication still hot and heavy. “Did you never learn how to knock?”

His voice comes far too calmly for Charles’s tastes. Esteban is still staring at them, eyes big and searching, like their state of half-clothed and salacious proximity doesn’t say enough on its own. Esteban’s mouth opens and closes for a moment, the only sound he makes coming high from the back of his throat, suspended somewhere between disappointment and surprise. Charles shoves both his hands between his own thighs, squeezes them together until he feels the ache in his wrist, and stares at where the carpet is dirty between Pierre’s feet.

“What the fuck,” Esteban says, finally. His voice is flat, but it’s so much, a tepid kind of anger that fears the cracks it could make in gold. “What the fuck.”

All of Charles’s muscles tense to excruciation. They pull taut beneath his skin, elbows locking as his arms harden into a thin, useless line, lips screwing into themselves where they’re slightly swollen and slightly kiss-slick and entirely soaked in Pierre. Tension settles over his shoulders with an impossible weight, and only half of it belongs to him. When he looks up to where Pierre is still sitting on the bed, he thinks none of it belongs to him.

Composed as ever, Pierre tries to start talking. Charles watches the way his lips move with a disgusting amount of interest. “You are so—”

But Esteban was never going to let him finish. Tone still tight and thready, he addresses with failed simplicity, “Charles.”

Charles looks over to him sharply. He knows his eyes are blown-out, perhaps left over from his arousal—ultimately killed—perhaps bathed in horrendous fear. Esteban hasn’t moved since he stopped looking at him, hand still frozen on the doorknob with curved knuckles and a cracking facade, lips twitching where they meet at their corners in their most disgusting shade of pink.

He doesn’t know what to say. Lost to anything, all Charles can muster is a shaky rendition of, “Esteban.”

Esteban blinks at him. He shakes his head a bit, perhaps drowning in disbelief, mouth opening and closing again with a sticky sense of self. “I—” he starts, but doesn’t finish. He stops looking at Charles altogether, gaze aimed back at the narrow stretch of wall behind his head. “My brother, Charles.”

Esteban shuts his eyes. Charles holds his breath, tightens the gap between his thighs impossibly smaller. When he looks up at Pierre, he’s staring down with something— he looks concerned. Charles offers a weak smile in return.

“My brother,” Esteban says again, like he still can’t believe it. “I cannot with you. Either of you.”

Charles skews his lips into a misshapen line. Pierre just scoffs, shifting enough on the bed for his sheets to make noise. “Why are you acting like this,” he starts, voice slightly uneven, losing half his cool. His face is burning red beneath the stubble, eyes freshly wild. “Like who I am going to sleep with is up to you.”

That probably makes Esteban angrier. Personally, Charles wouldn’t have said something that would set him off, but he’s not Esteban’s brother, he’s his friend. Maybe that’s why Pierre can get up off the bed, step awkwardly over Charles’s parted knees to reach Esteban just so he can shove him, two hands on his chest, forcing him back out into the hallway with a stumble.

“Maybe it is you who is self-centered,” he spits. Charles wishes he could see the look on his face. All he gets is flashes of Esteban’s wide eyes over his bare shoulder, expression messy and damp. “You are not my little brother to dictate my life, Esteban. You are not Charles’s friend to dictate his.” And maybe Charles is just crazy, but he swears he can hear the grin sweeping across Pierre’s lips, so easy to imagine where it’s so overdone. “If you are going to get so pissed, then do not have such pretty friends who want me so bad.”

He slams the door in Esteban’s face.

——

“Does he treat you alright?”

Charles sits at the edge of Esteban’s bed. He’s still mad, but it’s mutable. His eyes stay big, searching for something that probably isn’t there, back flattened against the headboard behind him. Charles picks at the hem of his t-shirt. It’s not actually his shirt, it’s Pierre’s, and he gets a sick swell of pride from the assumption that Esteban can probably tell.

“Yes,” he answers, though he doesn’t think that covers it. He doesn’t think Esteban wants to hear all the details, though. “He was right, too.” Charles finally looks at his friend properly, fabric still drawn between his sweaty knuckles. “You being my friend does not mean you get to tell me what to do.” Who to do, he doesn’t add, lips twitching.

Esteban sighs, ragged and uneasy. He drags a hand over his face, breath strangled through the gaps between his fingers. “He is my brother, Charles,” he complains, and Charles knows that, and he thinks Esteban has a little merit in being pissed off, but he still thinks Pierre was right.

Maybe he’s grown a bit of a bias.

Muscles tight, Esteban continues, “How would you feel if I went to your house and fucked your older brother?”

A horrible smirk tugs at the corner of Charles’s mouth. “Well,” he starts, gaze slipping narrow. “I did not fuck Pierre.”

Esteban throws his pillow at Charles’s head.