Work Text:
"When did you realise?" asked Bob. They were sitting together on the couch, drinking cold coffee. It was a quarter to midnight. He ought to be getting home. They both had work the next morning, which was always true, and had always been true. But somehow, one or the other of them always stayed now. They would watch television and fall asleep on each other's shoulders and wake up late and come into work in a panic as if nothing had ever changed and nothing ever would.
"What do you mean?" Carl replied. Bob tilted his head to one side, considering.
"When did you realise we were in it together, you know? All in? Because I only really realised after the storm in Naples, but you must have been thinking it the whole time."
Carl was taken aback. He had never thought of it was a realisation; it was something that had happened very slowly. First it was the office, the vending machine room, evenings in the passenger's seat of the Karmann Ghia, then countless late nights at each of their apartments, and then suddenly months had passed and it was the beach house in Florida. All the time had gone by very quickly and suddenly it was there,right in front of them, staring them in the face as if it had been there all along; they had fallen for one another by accident. And there was no time to wonder where the days had gone when they were just so busy; there was hardly any time to think at all. He hadn't realised that Bob was the other half of him; it had just happened. He tried to pin down a precise moment in time…
His mind's eye was flooded with sunlight and diesel fumes. The night of the storm. The beach house in Naples. He thought of their trip and of the arrangement they'd made: ten pages a day, that's what they'd agreed. And it all came flooding back.
It was easily a hundred degrees by noon and the sun shimmered down on the water as it lapped at the shore. Typewriter keys clattered furiously all day, and off in the distance there were the sounds of traffic, and gulls screaming overhead, and the slap of the waves on rows of concrete docks. Carl sat out at a table halfway in the shade developping a horrible sunburn on one shoulder; Bob sat in the kitchen of the beach house with all of his clothes on, drenched in sweat. It was easier not to speak in the daytime, when all they ever did was bicker anyway. It was all the pressure they were under, Carl told himself, and nothing else. But he caught himself stealing glances at Bob through the shaded doorway all the same. That and the way Bob looked back at him, half-casual and half-apprehensive, was almost good enough.
In the evening, when the work was done for the day and the sun was bleeding pink and orange out over the water, they went for dinner. They talked sparsely, amicably, and if Carl hadn't been so tired he might have felt his heart breaking a little for the fact that they were so close together and yet somehow never close enough. It was like they were satellites on separate courses, approaching one another but never meeting, never colliding. Sometimes it was almost enough to make him panic, that maybe the closest they'd ever get was the night in D.C. in the rain, when their hands had brushed together and stayed there for just a moment before breaking away.
At night they lay sleepless, too exhausted to speak, all the words spent and drained out of them. It never dropped below ninety degrees, even at night, and the distant roar of traffic never quieted. There seemed to be no room anywhere for conscious thought.
By the fourth day, exhaustion had set in. Carl squinted irritably at his typewriter all morning, making frustratingly little progress. He scratched at his sunburned shoulder and stared through the front window at Bob, hunched over the kitchen table in his blue shirt, already soaked with sweat. The gulls overhead wheeled and shrieked, sending flashes of shadow across the beach. In midafternoon, clouds began to gather on the horizon. A cool breeze came rippling across the water, pleasant against the muggy heat which had been beating down on them for the past three days.
That night, at maybe one or two, Carl rolled over to face Bob where he lay on his back on top of the sheets. His chest rose and fell steadily, and he was very still, but Carl could tell that he was awake.
"What then?" he asked, meaning what'll we do when this is all over?
Without turning to look at him, Bob said, "I don't know."
His voice, almost a whisper, floated thin and reedy over the still air, ephemeral, quickly dissolving into the night. Carl thought, for a moment, that he should say something else just to hear Bob's voice breaking through the heat and silence again. Then he closed his eyes before the tears could well up, and he settled into restless sleep, thoughts blurring together wordlessly.
Then they woke half-dead in the morning ready to do it all again until the thing was done, till they were finished, till it was all over. There was a sense, for a while, that it never would be over. They'd be sitting here at separate tables at a beach house in Naples, Florida for the rest of their lives, typing away with Bob in his sweat-drenched collared shirt and Carl in his awful green shorts and they'd type ten pages a day, every day, forever. And in the evenings they'd go out for dinner, hardly speaking, and at night they'd lie awake drowning in sweat, listening to the steady pounding of the waves. They'd be lying there in this stagnant hundred-degree end-of-the-world heat every night, forever, and if it ever did end, they wouldn't know.
Then on their fifth day it rained.
The clouds had grown thicker above the water overnight, and the breeze from the day before had picked up into a persistent wind which threatened to lift Carl's stacks of loose papers off the table and carry them away into the sea. He set notebooks on top of them to keep them down. At half past ten, the sky turned yellow and overcast, and the wind whipped sand into Carl's hair and banged at the screen door of the beach house. Soon after, the rain started to fall, and Carl picked up his things and carried them inside. Bob looked up from his own work as Carl came in and out with stacks of notes, then finally the typewriter. The screen door slammed behind him for the last time as the storm began in earnest. Bob moved his things to make room for Carl at the table.
A few minutes later, the rain was hammering at the roof of the beach house and plastering the windows which they'd quickly closed when the water starting pooling on the floor. It was hot inside already; with the windows shut, it only got hotter. It was getting hard to think.
Bob was tapping his pen against the table and bouncing his knee. Carl watched him from the corner of his eye, distracted by the sight. He chewed his lip. Every few seconds, a typewriter would clatter as one of them banged out a few words or lines. But their progress was quickly stagnating.
"I'm taking a break," said Carl after a long stretch of silence. He stood. "This is going nowhere."
"Taking a break and going where?" Bob asked, looking up at him distractedly.
Carl glanced out the window, where the downpour continued. He could almost hear the blood rushing in his head. His hands were almost trembling.
"I don't know," he said, his mouth twisting into a smile. He moved to sit down on the edge of his bed.
There was a brief stint of typing, and then Bob tore the sheet from the machine and set it down on the table on top of a pile of notepads.
"God, it's hot in here," he said.
"Maybe if you weren't wearing a long-sleeved shirt," suggested Carl. He was only wearing a t-shirt, and he could still feel the sweat trickling down the back of his neck. He couldn't help but be a little amused that Bob was so ruffled; it was unusual for him. And he supposed it was a comfort, too, that Bob was as off-balance as he was, although he was pretty sure that the discomfort he was feeling was for entirely different reasons.
Bob just glared at him through the doorway.
"It's this weather," he insisted, "I was fine before."
Carl resisted the urge to point out that he clearly hadn't been, considering he'd gone to bed every night with his hair wet from the way he'd been sweating all day. There was a short pause.
Then Bob stood up with an impatient noise.
"I can't even think," he said, and flopped down on his own bed, panting. His face glistened in the dim overhead light; his hair was already damp and there were dark rings of sweat under his arms. Carl stared at him.
A particularly strong gust of wind momentarily doubled the impact of the battering rain against the beach house, making the screen door rattle violently. The temperature seemed to raise a degree with every breath they took. Carl peeled off his shirt and dropped it on the floor. Bob looked over at him, and then at the door, and eventually started unbuttoning his own shirt. Carl tried not to hold his breath.
Bob lifted himself off the mattress to shrug the shirt off, and his chest and shoulders glistened with a sheen of sweat.
He balled up his shirt and threw it over the edge of the bed, where it landed in a crumpled heap on top of Carl's. Bob fell back against the mattress, sighing. He pressed a hand over his flushed face. Carl couldn't help but smile slightly, though he felt slight a pang in his chest and had to push it down. Then he closed his eyes for a moment too long, and when he opened them Bob was standing over his bed and shaking him.
"Oh shit," he mumbled, sitting up. The panic of suddenly jerking awake completely overtook any other feeling he might have had about Bob's warm sweaty hands gripping his bare shoulders. He checked his watch; half an hour had passed. Looking out the window, he could see that it was still raining. He looked through the doorway at Bob, who had already hurried back to the kitchen table and was typing away. The house seemed even hotter than it had before.
"Why'd you wake me up?" asked Carl, his voice still rough with half-sleep, as he shuffled out to join Bob in the kitchen.
"We've still got a deadline, even if it's raining," Bob replied, rubbing the side of his face.
Carl shrugged and sat down across from him. Bob had put his shirt back on without buttoning it up. It hung open, exposing his stomach and chest. Carl caught himself staring once or twice; he buried himself back in his papers, embarrassed, hoping that Bob hadn't noticed.
Eventually, they settled into their usual rhythm in spite of the heat and the noise; despite the break they'd taken, they went out to eat well before nine. It was still raining by then, but only lightly, and they left the windows open on their way out.
While they were at the restaurant, the storm picked up again. They were caught up in it on the way back and almost got lost. The whole world was obscured by a heavy screen of rain, and the wind buffeted them from every direction. Bob clung to Carl's arm, trying keep them from veering off course. In his panic he didn't even notice. When they finally got to the beach house, both drenched, they found huge puddles beneath each open window. The pair stumbled back and forth, bumping into each other as they hurriedly slammed the windows shut again and tried to clean up the water, only succeeding in tracking it further into the house as their wet clothes dripped all over the floor.
A few minutes later, Carl had gotten down on his hands and knees by the bedroom window, laying towels on the floorboards to soak up the rainwater. Bob was on the other side of the room, changing into dry clothes. Carl was trying to avoid looking at him; he'd been trying hard not to stare at Bob the last five days. But when he looked up now, he found Bob staring at him, still half-undressed.
His heart leapt into his throat.
"What is it?" he asked cautiously.
Bob's eyes widened.
"Nothing," he said, too quickly.
Carl went back to picking up the wet towels off the floor and replacing them with drier ones. But when he looked up, Bob was still staring at him.
"What?"
Finally, Bob shook his head and turned away. Carl bit his lip. It was too hot and he was too tired to try and parse what Bob was trying to communicate. He didn't feel like thinking about the stare or the way he'd been staring or the slice of Bob's bare stomach under his unbuttoned shirt. He didn't want to wonder whether Bob secretly liked him or just found him disgusting, and ultimately he figured it didn't matter. It was easier just to ignore the tangle of feelings, the way he'd been doing all along.
But now the question was there, unspoken and very loud, and as they wordlessly got ready for bed, it became more and more difficult to ignore. He started to worry that Bob had figured him out and was waiting for the first opportunity to split. He wished that the rain would let up so that he could go outside for a smoke, sort out his own thoughts before he did something stupid.
The storm only seemed to get worse with every passing minute, and Bob had apparently decided that the best course of action was to stare at Carl with his mouth half-open as if he were about to say something but had forgotten the words. It was maddening, like most things about him. Carl felt almost ready to scream at him to just say whatever he was thinking when he finally did speak.
"Do you want to call it quits?" he asked. He sounded terrified, as if they even had a choice in the first place, and if Carl didn't want to do it anymore then he might just die.
Despite himself, Carl let his head fall back against the wall as relief flooded through him.
"No, of course not," he said breathlessly.
"That's good," Bob replied, his voice soft. Carl eyed him.
"Is that really what you were worried about?"
He hesitated.
"I guess."
"Do you want to quit?"
"No."
"That's good."
There was a pause.
"You know, I kind of like being here with you," Bob admitted.
Carl suddenly couldn't breathe. He sat completely immobile for a moment, then shrugged as if his heart wasn't racing at a hundred miles an hour.
"Even in the rain?" he managed. He didn't want to get his hopes up, of course he didn't, but it was hard not to when the things Bob was saying sounded so much like the fantasies Carl had been trying not to entertain the last three nights.
"Yeah," said Bob.
"So do I," Carl replied hurriedly, trying to sound casual. He was still wearing his wet clothes, and despite the way the room was heating up again, he shivered. And Bob noticed.
"C'mere," he said, and Carl looked up at him wide-eyed.
"What?"
Bob gave a sheepish smile, then waved him over.
He stood, feeling almost weightless, and crossed the room to where Bob was standing between their beds. He stopped less than half a foot away from Bob and looked up at him, waiting. He could feel Bob's warm breath on his face, held his own breath so that Bob wouldn't taste his cigarette smoke, braced for something without knowing what it was.
Bob lifted a hand to Carl's chest, then stopped.
"Is this alright?" he asked, his expression strained and anxious.
"Well, what are you going to do?" Carl replied, bewildered.
He paused.
"Can I take off your shirt?" he said tentatively, then added, "You seem cold."
Carl almost laughed.
"Sure, of course."
Bob's hands found the front of Carl's shirt and clumsily started undoing the buttons. It was just awkward enough that Carl could be sure that it was really happening, and he still couldn't believe it.
"This is so weird," Bob said breathlessly. Carl nodded, though all he could think of now was the slight brush of Bob's hands against his chest and the wild beating of his heart under those hands. He held out his arms so that Bob could slide his shirt off. It fell to the floor.
Then Bob pulled Carl into his arms, crushing him against his chest, and Carl gasped. His wet jeans pressed against Bob's bare legs, but Bob didn't move away. He even seemed to press even closer, burying his face in Carl's hair. Carl slowly put his arms around Bob's waist.
It was so hot, and Bob was radiating heat, and Carl could feel himself sweating but he didn't pull away. He leaned in as Bob's hand traced tentatively up his spine. He shivered and a soft gasp escaped him. Bob stepped back, looking anxiously into Carl's eyes.
"I—" he started to say, and without thinking Carl leaned in and kissed him on the lips.
It seemed momentarily like the most incredible thing in the world, like a flying saucer gently touching down in the reflection of the Washington Monument, almost drowning out the roar of the rain and the suffocating heat.
Oh god, you've really done it now, thought Carl.
But Bob didn't jerk away like he was expecting. Instead, his hand came up to comb through Carl's tangled hair. Their thighs pressed together, then their hips, and it was Carl who gasped and jerked back, his face impossibly growing even hotter.
"Holy shit," he said. Bob was pretty clearly hard, and flushed bright red all the way up to his ears. It was cute, Carl thought, then realised how crazy that sounded.
"Yeah," panted Bob, "holy shit."
Then he kissed Carl again, and Carl fell back on the bed, dragging Bob down on top of him. The rain still drummed insistently on the roof.
For a moment, they just lay there, staring at each other, Carl's hips caged between Bob's thighs, their bodies pressed so close that Carl could feel Bob's heartbeat against his own chest.
"Oh my god," Bob said in that reedy half-whispered voice that Carl had been wanting to hear again since the night before.
He rocked his hips up against Bob's and watched his eyes widen and his face grow slack with pleasure. Bob kissed him again and his weight sank down onto Carl and he almost couldn't breathe. He could taste his own nicotine spit in Bob's mouth. The air was so still and hot and humid that they seemed to be swimming in it.
It felt as if an electrical current were surging through him, every inch of his body buzzing with static, as Bob ground against him with increasing desperation.
"Oh, please," he panted, and Carl slid a hand up his shirt and dug fingernails into his back and Bob stiffened suddenly, burying his face in Carl's shoulder as he came in his pants.
"Wow," Carl said. His heart was fluttering wildly. Bob's weight still pressed down on him, and the friction through his wet jeans was terrible. His thighs felt like they'd been scraped raw, even after less than five minutes. He placed one hand on the front of Bob's hip. Bob obliged, lifting himself up long enough for Carl to struggle out of his pants and kick them onto the floor.
He wrapped his arms around Bob's neck and pulled him back down, pressing a wet kiss to his neck, and to his shock he felt Bob's hand slide between their bodies. And he started to lose himself in the feeling, chasing it, his hips pushing up into Bob's half-closed palm until he spilled into it with a startled gasp. They were frozen still for a moment, their eyes locked together. Finally, Bob rolled off of him and put an arm around his waist, their legs still entwined. Carl rested his head against Bob's shoulder and closed his eyes.
The heat enveloped them as they lay gasping for breath, half-naked and tangled up in one another. Rain beat down on the roof and tapped at the windows, a frenzied dance. The sun set, unseen through the silver curtains of rain blanketing the water in shifting patterns.
That night they slept curled together in the same bed in spite of the weather - they'd finally collided after all. It was a relief more profound than a respite from the heat would have been.
Sitting on the couch months later, a mug of cold coffee in his hand, Carl said, "It must have been the morning we met."