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“You like it?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Joe laughs in the crook of Charlie’s neck, the bed creaking as he keeps shifting to get further into Charlie’s personal space. His glasses are pressing into Charlie’s skin, but he doesn’t mind. He just traces the curve of Joe’s back with one hand and dutifully holds Joe’s phone in the other, rewinding the song after it finishes.
It’s late—close to midnight, says the time on the phone—and Charlie had been expecting to be pounced on when Joe had crawled on top of him in the bed, but the first thing Joe said was, “Can I show you a song?”
And he did like it, of course. He would have no matter what Joe had shown him, not because Charlie’s biased, but because he hasn’t heard a bad song from him yet.
Charlie lets it play again, the part he wanted to hear one more time—near the end, when Joe’s voice gets all soft while he repeats the first verse. Waking up, it’s the fat back shank of the day. Nice bit, that is.
“I don’t know,” Joe says warmly. “Maybe I’m just fishing for compliments.”
He’s happy with this one. He’d been happy with it since he first showed it to Charlie in its infancy, banging it out on Charlie’s piano and turning around with a kittenish kind of smile.
It’s called Charlie’s Garden, Joe had said, tapping his fingers on his legs and waiting for a reaction. If you couldn’t tell. Charlie had shown him exactly how much he liked it pretty soon after that, right there on the piano bench.
It’s fuller now, a whole-bodied and confident thing. Charlie tells Joe as much to watch him both demur and preen. “It’s not done yet,” Joe reminds.
“Well, I’ll like it when it’s done too,” Charlie tells him.
Joe takes his phone back from him, slips it into his pocket, receiving Charlie’s undivided attention. “You wanna be on it?”
“On it?”
“Yeah, on it. I’m thinking a phone call or a voicemail bit in the middle—real original stuff, I know, sue me—but you could do that. Do your American thing. And I’ll do my British thing,” Joe adds, straight-faced in the way he does when he’s affecting monotone for a joke.
“Course I’ll do it, I’d love to,” Charlie agrees, flattered and pleased. Then he has to bite: “You do a British thing?”
“Yeah,” Joe says. “I do you, don’t I?”
Terrible. Joe stopped telling clever jokes back when he realized he could say literally anything and Charlie would giggle stupidly at him. Charlie proves his point by laughing anyway. “You haven't done me a day in your life!”
Joe smiles, unrepentant. “Didn’t you listen to your song, Charlie? I don’t like to work.”
Your song is nice, stokes fond warmth in Charlie’s chest. “Yes, I’m well aware.”
“I could,” Joe offers. He slips his hand behind Charlie’s head, tangling his fingers in his hair, scratching his scalp like a weird little monkey. “If you’d like.”
“Maybe later,” Charlie says, because sure, sounds nice, but he likes the pattern they have. Joe gets that look on his face that Charlie likes, pulls him confidently in by the belt loop or the waist or the collar as if Joe’s going to be calling the shots, while Charlie blushes and titters coquettishly. Then when all is said and done Joe ends up under Charlie, all eager and pliant and aiming to please. “I don’t mind taking care of you.”
“Is that right?” Joe drawls, and he’s doing it right now, the beginnings of the look: his big eyes, darkened in the dim light, blinking slowly, reaching out and tapping his thumb on Charlie’s bottom lip. Expectant. Waiting to be indulged.
Charlie sits upright, Joe leaning up with him. He carefully takes Joe’s glasses off and folds them on the nightstand, mindful to avoid fingerprints on the lenses.
“Yeah,” Charlie says. Then he kisses Joe, just once, chaste like he’s testing the waters.
As it turns out, the waters are shark infested. Joe yanks him back to his face by the collar. “Alright, stop being cute,” he orders, “I showed you my song, flirting’s over, take my clothes off now.”
Charlie does the sensible thing. He obliges.
In the morning, Charlie sleepily pats at the space next to him and finds the left side of the bed warm but empty. He doesn’t have time to wonder where Joe’s gone—as soon as he lifts his head, he can hear plucked out bits of music drifting from the living room.
Charlie shuffles down the hall towards the sound and finds Joe where he thought he’d be, hunched over his guitar, picking careful strings and making faces when he decides he didn’t do it right. He’s muttering the same few words to himself over again, something about alphabet soup.
“You writing more songs about me?” Charlie teases, in lieu of good morning.
Joe looks up at him, startled at first, then smiling big. “Might be,” he says. “It depends. You gonna leave the light on for me, Charlie?”
Charlie doesn’t quite know what that means in relation to the song, and suspects Joe is being mysterious on purpose. Joe turns his head back to the guitar, towards his fingers on the frets, but he’s watching Charlie through the corner of his crinkled eyes.
Charlie shrugs. “Sure I will,” he says, because he would.
“Then yeah.” Joe bites his lip like it might be able to hide how he grins down at his hands. “This one’s for you, too.”