Disclaimer: I do not own Honeydew Syndrome, one of the best webcomics ever produced. I wish I were that skilled.
Author's note: Once again, dedicated to the inestimable Dualism. She graciously lent me her plot bunny. I hope this does a bit of justice to it.
Between Here and There
Everyone, everything, is wasted. Sometimes, it pays to be the designated driver because you'll have a clear memory of the chess club president using the basketball team's point guard as her own personal shot glass. Pouring salt on his nipples for a tequila slammer? Classy. To think, you might have missed this glorious representation of the dredges of teenage culture had Metis not forced you to drive him and Charles. Which was really sort of awkward, if you think about it, since you had to pick Charles up first and then drive ten minutes (in awkward conversation, which is worse than awkward silence) until you reached Metis' house. Yeah. Awkward. But you're not thinking about it.
The dynamic duo (you hum the Batman theme) is alone somewhere. You're not thinking about Charles, which is easier when you're not around Charles. You love Metis to death, but the boy is being somber. You won't waste your social-butterfly networking skills. Meh. They can occupy each other. You have drama kids to chat up and art dandies to play pin the tail on the plasma screen with.
It's so much more fun to watch the destruction of expensive items when you don't own them.
You're sort of surprised that Metis approaches you by himself. Usually, he'd make Charles (not thinking about him) come along.
"Let's go," he says, grabbing your shoulder.
"Chill, man, Patricia Lucas is about to take a spoon and—"
"Come on, Jay, I'm bored. Let's go," May says again. And you would normally argue with him and tease him about his emo-ness, but he's not whiny-upset like usual. At any rate, he doesn't look bored. Just… frustrated.
"Fine, fine, but I swear, you owe me one act of indecency," you laugh. May rolls his eyes. He keeps rolling them as you stop about ten times before you reach the door to tell someone that you're leaving and to text you the pictures of Patricia. You vaguely lament walking away from the shouts and bad techno echoing through drunken hallways. Que sera sera. Whatever will be will be on youtube the next day anyway.
"Don't we need to get Charles?" you ask.
Metis pushes you forward, pointing to your car. The car with its lights on. And its engine running. And its blond sitting in the back. How the hell did Charles know where your extra key was hidden? He's spread all the way across the seat, back against the right-side door and legs open. And you'd still rather not think about Charles. Because you'd rather not crash on the way home because you're distracted thinking about how his shirt's pushed up a little and his hand is across his stomach and how you know just how he'd look without the shirt and—
"To make the vroom-vroom machine go, you press down on the pedal and move the wheel," Charles says, kicking your seat.
Putting on a seatbelt hasn't taken this long since you were seven. But you finally click it and press the pedal that makes the vroom-vroom machine go. You keep moving your mirror. You need to see behind you, but some piece of Charles fills every angle. There. Charles foot. Not distracting. Except for how he wiggles his toes and his socks and that fact that it's attached to a leg leading up to—
"Why'd we leave so early anyway?" you ask. Metis grunts. "Oh come on, just because you don't know how to enjoy yourself, May."
Metis actually answers, but you can't hear it over Charles' laughter. It's not like you can wax poetic about it, it's just his voicing changing pitch at regular intervals. But it sounds real, and it's the first time you've heard it like that since… since, and it replaces the last time you heard him laughing while streetlight washed over him.
"I'd say we enjoyed ourselves until Josh threw me into a wall. The bitch," Charles adds.
It's lucky you're at a red light anyway, because it gives you an excuse to have slammed the breaks on. You're gaping like a fish and you know it, and for the first time that night you turn around and look in the vicinity of Charles' face. But you still can't look him in the eye. It's lucky his eyes are closed, so he can't see through you.
"What," and here, you press on the gas, "did you possibly do for him to do that?"
"Because he's—" and Metis snarls a few choice words, all of which are garbled, and none of which answer your question. You make out the word Josh. You make out the words make out. And you even catch the exact phrase "sucker-punching son of a whelk." You're confused until Charles explains.
"Metis is good at initiating Josh's anger. His candid display of hormones and homosexuality was too much for the poor boy to bear. By which I mean Josh is an equally hormonal but more violent bitch."
Ah, that sort of makes sense. Josh, as Charles once illuminated for you, is dealing with latent desires to "take Metis on the ten yard line," ew, and likes to take out his anger on people rather than pillows. But one thing is out of place.
"Then why'd he throw you against a wall and not Metis?"
The drive to May's house is painfully short, especially because you know it will take so much longer to drop off Charles. And even though it's not the best conversation you've ever had at the moment, since Metis is there, you can pretend that nothing with Charles ever happened. He obviously doesn't care about it anymore (it never happened, a little voice says), and you don't care either as long you aren't alone with him.
May unbuckles his seatbelt. He looks back at Charles, who, even though his eyes are closed, waves Metis off with a lazy hand.
"I'll catch him up. Night, May. Tomorrow's Sunday, so I expect you to bring the lunch to me. And you still kiss like a whelk."
And you thought the drive to get to the party was uncomfortable.
The slamming of a door and the empty silence following are familiar, but Charles is still here this time. He doesn't bother with moving to the front. He looks comfortable lying in the back. Your car has good upholstery.
After considering a variety of half-formed questions, you finally say "Kiss?" and wince at how your voice has just had a broken flashback to puberty.
"Yeah. May asked; we negotiated; he owed me two and a half weeks of lunch. Since Josh overreacted, Metis owes me a little extra. He better not think I'll be satisfied with Mickey D's, either. He'd better go to… Are you driving me home, or am I spending the night with May?"
Your tires screech across the empty street. (Because, another little voice cackles, because you don't want Charles and Metis to spend the night. Together.) Charles has obviously forgotten everything, that damn casual voice like he's talking about tennis shoes.
"What, don't tell me you're into May, too?" Charles asks from the backseat. "I get the feeling Josh doesn't like competition. But don't worry, May's skills aren't up to mine anyway. I had to let him down."
And if you're driving ten or fifteen miles over the speed limit, it's not like there are any other cars around and no one stops you. Charles doesn't say anything else, and suddenly, you've taken a left when you needed to take a right and you're driving to nowhere at no time at night.
It's been almost an hour. You're not even in the city anymore, but you're not in the wilderness. The blurring orange streetlight still reaches you. Charles is either asleep or doesn't care that you're sort of kidnapping him. He's been silent, and he's moved his foot, so it's easier to pretend he's not there.
You pull over on the side of the road, which isn't so much a road as a Picasso of gravel with the occasional pavement. The windows have been rolled down; your arm still burns from hanging outside the car door with the wind sweeping across it. You lick your bottom lip and wonder when you bit into it. The steering wheel thuds as you beat your head against it once, twice, thrice.
Almost. You could almost forget the object of your angst was sitting right behind you, but not now when shudders are spreading into your back where his hand touches.
"Hey, this is all," he says, sending shards of ice into your spinal cord, "your fault. It's not even like May and I would ever even go out, but if you like him don't get angry just for this."
You flinch away from his hand and grip the steering wheel. He has to know what he's been saying. He's been playing your heartstrings on a cheese grater. "It's not about Metis, you should know damn well it's not Metis, know I am not into him. Fuck, you know—"
"What do I know, huh? What do I fucking know?"
His words are quiet, tired, frighteningly lost. He's not crying, but his eyes are red. He looks young. Like he's breakable. Completely unlike Charles. The look on his face (still not looking him in the eye, watching through your rear-view mirror) is hopeless. As much as you hate to admit it, he has every right to look that way.
He can't know anything because you haven't spoken for weeks. Sure, you've talked, but you have not spoken. Actions had to replace your words; your actions have been to leave him alone in your room and pretend like nothing ever happened. Why shouldn't he wonder if you have a thing for May? You've shown well enough that if you feel anything for him—and you freeze, because you've gotten good at putting what you did out of your brain and twisting it into something that was somehow his fault.
You left him during sex. Your eyes close and you try to breathe, which is more than you feel up to. You left him alone in the middle of having sex in your room and let him leave when you were steps away and ignored him as best you could for days after: these were the actions which replaced your voice. This is the first time you admit it to yourself, and the first time you realize that as hurt as he seemed that night, time has definitely not been helping.
It's another slamming door that jolts you back to the present. Charles apparently doesn't care that you're in the void after city but before country, and every step he takes is a repeat of your mistake. This time, you're not hiding.
"Charles," you say to the night and to his back. If this were a movie, then he would look back and go running into your arms and some other feel-good fake shit would happen. He does not look back, because this is not a movie, but god it would be so much easier if it were.
The first step is the hardest. The gravel rustles under your feet. The second step is easier, but not as easy as the third, because you're running and velocity and physics and when you finally slam into him you're lucky you both don't fall and scrape your faces on the road.
When tugging on his arm doesn't make him move, you begin to remember that, oh yeah, you and he are about the same size. Maybe tackling the object of your affection, frustration, and dramatization was not the best way to start making up. Still. It's a start.
It's late at night and a little chilly and you're in the middle of neither here nor there as you say what you most definitely needed to say weeks ago and every day since. Charles is back to his schooled expression where you can't tell if he wants to tear your face off or solve complex chemical equations. You're hoping it's not either of those things as you move your hands to hold his arms.
"I'm sorry."
Life not being a movie, Charles does not swoon.
"Your point?" he asks, and you struggle to form an answer.
Charles smirks as he pushes you into the ditch on the side of the road. (A shame the pants you have on are white and probably grass-stained now, but that's far from the worst thing to happen tonight.) Footsteps crunching gravel is shattering rejection, until you realize he's headed back to the car. You raise yourself off the dewy grass and follow. You're amazed to realize, as he leans, arms crossed, near the backseat door, how there is silence between you, and it is not crushing your lungs this time.
He climbs into the backseat once more. You seat in the front, fingers running along the key but not starting the ignition. You unlock the doors, get out, and climb into the back. He shifts to the other side, giving you (or himself) space. You hold your eyes to his for what feels like the first time in forever. "My point," you tell him, finally, "is that I'm sorry. I'll do what I can to make up for it."
He's scowling and leaning away from you but he does not stop you from moving forward. It's somehow comforting to see him looking properly pissed at you, but what stays foremost in your mind is how his eyes are angry but mostly hurt. You'll do what you can to fix it.
Sex does not fix everything. It rarely fixes anything. It's what got you in trouble in the first place. But he's not pushing you back, and you want to replace what you did wrong, and if he'll let you do that now, then you want it now.
He turns his head when you try to kiss his mouth, but does not stop your hands (one under his shirt, one between his pants and boxers, who says men can't multitask?). You ignore the fact that there's practically no space and that just because no one's driven down this way you could still get caught and that in practical terms, undressing either him or yourself completely is not practical for sex in your car.
You finally get his shirt off (freaking long sleeves) and you're torn between looking at his chest and examining the bruise on his left shoulder. You wonder how it got there until you remember Josh who you don't like right now except for realizing that in some freakish way he's the reason you are here, right now, in the backseat of your car with Charles under you and not forgiven but closer to getting there. And Josh has flown out of your mind to some tiny island in the Bahamas and Metis can be his servant boy for all you care (because you don't) because Charles is under you.
Stripping in the car is a task in itself. Stripping in the car with one person on top of another is near-impossible, but you manage to remove your clothes. Even your shoes and socks. Sock-sex is not as sexy to you, and you can drive barefoot if you have to anyway. You ignore the pain in your elbow from smacking it against the rear windshield, and bless the fact that you really do have comfortable upholstery.
Charles' face stays unreadable, and it makes your fingers shake. He still might be waiting to tear your face off. (And you immediately strike that from your mind, even if it very well may be true. Because you're owning up to the fact that you hurt him, and you'll try to fix it.)
Breathe, breathe, breathe as you try not to hyperventilate. Second chances don't come often. Breathe once more, and your mouth is suddenly centered on his stomach. He squirms as you suck hard, dipping your tongue into his belly button. You lick a path across his chest, stopping to lave each nipple until it's a dark pebble against his skin. His breath shudders in time to your tongue, quiet and dissonant beauty.
You nip along his collarbone, then his neck, latching on with such force that he finally makes a noise. This time, you make sure there's a mark against his neck. A bruise blossoms near his throat, offsetting the one on his shoulder. You've been grinding into him this entire time, the friction of your erections curling your insides, and it's so strong that you almost need to stop, but it's so strong that you can't.
You draw back, take him in, revel in his flushed face and the flush across his penis and the lack of air in both your lungs. His eyes are clouded, and although some of it might be pain or anger, some of it is definitely satisfaction.
Whatever he's feeling, his body's not opposed to sex right now.
If you had more time—and space—you would play with him, touch or mark or kiss every spot on his body. (And you think of a few more things, things involving Charles' full cooperation and possibly a safeword.) But now, you focus on the skin under your fingertips, and thank whatever deity is presiding over sex (you would hope for a lube-fairy) that you had lotion in the car. You can save the chocolate-flavored lube for the nights you're not having unplanned car sex. God, you hope to have those other nights, preferably with Charles squirming at the intrusion of your fingers.
For the first time since you started undressing him, he moves his hands. He tugs your wrist and your fingers away from stretching him. At first you think it's a rejection, but then he raises his hips and moves your hands to his ass. His legs are drawn to his chest. His eyes are closed and his mouth is open and one sweat-flattened strand of hair sticks stubbornly across his nose.
If it's not the most beautiful sight you've ever seen, may lightning strike both you and your illegal song downloads dead.
You push into him and wonder how you ever could have pulled away before. His ass tightens around your cock, and you barely have enough control not to come right then. You'll save leisure for when you've finally made everything up to him; for now, all you can do is thrust into him and hope you don't die from heatstroke and that your thighs can be un-melded from the leather seats.
Once more, you lower your mouth to his, and this time he doesn't move away. His lips are warm and rough but not quite chapped, and the last thing you do is breathe, "I'm so sorr—" before Charles grabs your bangs and moves his tongue into your mouth. He drags one of your hands to his member and you have just enough cohesion to pull and squeeze and tease the slit at the head before both of you fall into spasms. And he says one word. And it's your name. And you think you might actually be dying.
You lazily move your mouth against his, brushing lips, having a tired war with your tongues. His fingers are threading through your hair, and you never realized you were so like a cat because you want him to keep petting. You like looking at your hair spread across his skin. You like how his eyes are not hurt, just hazy in the afterglow.
It's only a few minutes before the slight air chill hits you. Charles sobers some and pushes you off so each of you can re-pants yourselves. He rubs at his back; you run your fingers across his skin. There's an indentation of what might be the door handle.
He smiles, barely, and chuckles, pleasantly. His eyes are guarded, but not upset.
"If you really want to make it up to me, buy me breakfast," he says, exiting the backseat to take shotgun.
It's early morning by now and no cars are on the road and you might actually have gotten a little lost. You start the car, hoping there's an all-night diner and directions somewhere. Charles checks your phone because you hope someone sent you good pictures of Patricia. His hand rests on your thigh, and you're starting to feel forgiven.
