Manual
The car smells of sun-warmed leather. Charles leans back, closing his eyes in the sunshine that pours into the convertible. The hood is up, and Erik is frowning at the engine. "You could help," he says.
"I don't know anything about cars," Charles says.
"Given your general level of scientific knowledge, I wouldn't think the internal combustion engine would be a closed book." The metal of the hood comes between them as Erik bends to tinker with something.
"I understand the theory," Charles says. It's warm in the sunshine, and the country road is quiet. There is little chance of a prompt rescue, but at the moment he doesn't see much need of one.
"Have you ever even changed a tire?"
"I have a manual. I could probably follow instructions."
"You do realize you're hopelessly spoiled, don't you?"
"I don't usually drive. Neither does half the population of New York City."
"Is that a precise figure?"
"Yes," Charles says. "Fifty-two percent, to be exact."
Erik leans around the hood of the car, frowning. "You're making that up."
"Yes." He's unreasonably happy. It's been so long since he was out of the city, away from his tiny Manhattan apartment and the piles of reading he ought to be doing for the next chapter of his dissertation. They've run away, just for the afternoon.
Erik shakes his head. "If you don't care that we may be stranded in New Jersey for some indeterminate period of time --"
"You say that as though New Jersey were the wilderness."
"You mean it isn't?"
Charles shakes his head at Erik. He can feel the undercurrent of unease from Erik, though. This is unfamiliar territory, and although Charles thinks it's ridiculous to imagine any threat from the quiet countryside, Erik wants to be back on familiar ground. As always, he prefers known quantities.
"Let me see, then," Charles says, opening the car door and standing up. He comes around and inspects the engine seriously. "Hmm," he says.
"Your assistance is invaluable."
"I could hold something."
"If I have a sudden shortage of pockets --"
"Can you fix the car, or not?"
"I think so," Erik says. He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a dark streak against his skin. His hands are dirty. They would make a ruin of Charles's white shirt.
Charles shakes his head at himself. This is not a pornographic movie. He's still a little disappointed when Erik says, "Try starting the car again," and even more disappointed when the car starts at once, the engine humming again instead of sputtering.
Erik puts the hood down and slides into the passenger seat. There are streaks of oil now on his pants legs.
"You have to admit it's a nice day for a drive," Charles says.
"Now that we have the ability to actually drive again, yes."
"Better than sweltering in the city."
"We're not, however, driving."
"In a minute," Charles says. He turns off the engine. The warm wind breathes against his face. "I've always wanted to do this," he says. His knee presses against the gearshift as he leans over toward Erik.
Erik pushes him away, not particularly gently. "You're not cruising in Central Park."
"No one will notice if I don't want them to," Charles says.
"Your mind is going to be on passing cars?"
Charles sighs. There is a time not to be practical, and he thinks that time is probably when you are twenty-five and in a convertible on a hot summer day. If he thinks about the risks, he will remember that he shouldn't take them. On the other hand, almost everything he's ever done with Erik has been a risk he shouldn't have taken. And every now and then he wants to act his age.
"We could just sit here and discuss politics."
"Is that what you do in Central Park?"
"Yes," Charles says. "That and play chess."
"Clearly you were born fifty years old."
"That would account for the hair," Charles says ruefully. At this rate he will be bald by the time he is thirty. Thirty still seems like a long way away, but he is aware that it is rapidly approaching, and he has never done anything scandalous in Central Park. He has never even made out in the back seat of a car.
"And possibly the car. It's very appropriate for your midlife crisis."
"I've got the car now," Charles says. "I'll have to find some other sort of midlife crisis." He gives Erik an appraising look.
"Cheap women are traditional," Erik says. There's an edge of bitterness to his voice that Charles doesn't entirely understand.
"Expensive women are traditional in my family," Charles says. "Anyway, I don't expect my tastes will change that much." He brushes his fingers over the back of Erik's hand, which is resting on the gearshift.
Erik is thinking that he will not climb into the back seat of the car with Charles and slide down to his knees on the car floor, the world narrowing to the smell of leather and sweat and the feel of the steel around him like a weapon he is not sure he dares use. He would use it before he would be that to Charles, a cheap boy with dirty hands. The fingers of his right hand stroke the steel of the car door. His left hand is unmoving under Charles's.
Charles tries hard not to let any reaction show on his face. He starts the car again, and Erik moves his hand from the gearshift. Charles pulls the car out onto the highway, the wind tugging at his shirt. Erik looks at the countryside silently.
He's not sure how to avoid ever reminding Erik that he has money and Erik doesn't, although there's nothing he wouldn't give Erik if he asked. Erik has never asked. Charles has never been able to buy Erik anything, even a cup of coffee, without seeing Erik doing mental accounting, counting up what he owes and whether it's more than he is willing to pay.
"How inconvenient for you," Erik says. Charles winces, not sure whether he was thinking out loud or merely thinking too loudly.
I've never wanted to buy you, he says silently. It seems easier than saying the words.
Maybe not with money. There are plenty of other things that Erik wants, and every thing he wants is a potential weapon in Charles's hands, something that would make it harder for him to walk away if he wanted to. Charles understands him, Charles will protect him, Charles is there when he wakes up at night crying like a child. And in return--
It's not like that, Charles insists, but he cannot avoid seeing Erik's mental picture of Charles sprawled in the front seat of the car while Erik works and comes back to the car with dirty hands. He's just the man who works on the car --
"If that's what you think, then --"
"Then what?"
"Then I think you've been reading too much D.H. Lawrence," Charles says lightly. He does not look into Erik's mind. He does not want to know what Erik is imagining doing with the metal of the car, or believe that Erik can really see him as an enemy.
Erik smiles at him suddenly in one of his quicksilver shifts of mood. "I think Lady Chatterley had more hair."
"Not fair exploiting my vulnerabilities."
"Well, you know what they say," Erik says, and Charles does, and so takes that as a backhanded declaration of affection. But while all might be fair in war, he's not sure that's really true of love. He's afraid it's more true of hard bargaining, and he wants badly for it not to be a bargain that they're making.
He's not sure when Erik started acting as though it was one. Maybe when he finally moved his books and his clothes into Charles's apartment. Maybe when Charles first let it slip that he was more than comfortably well off, somewhere in those first sleepless few weeks when he said almost everything he thought. Maybe it was the car. Maybe it always has been nothing more than a bargain, at least in Erik's mind; he can hear Erik saying that only a fool would believe in something better than that, and he doesn't want to know if that's Erik's thought or his own.
Once they're back in the city it's easier not to think that way, especially once they're back in the apartment where they are surrounded by the evidence that they are both graduate students who own too many books rather than anything else they might be or might ever have been. In the bedroom he pulls Erik down onto the bed and lies beside him, willing for the touch to be only comfort if that's what Erik wants.
It's not, though, and so he gives Erik what he does want, a hard hungry kiss and a hand on his thigh. It makes everything simple for a little while, and Charles wants that too, to be aware of nothing but the two bodies he can both feel as his. Their hands tangle and then unfasten clothes. He can feel his touch on Erik's skin as vividly as Erik's touch on his. He can feel Erik's breath against his face.
This is what we are, he thinks. This. They strain together to a single rhythm, keeping this simple, their hands on each other, his mouth on Erik's throat. Charles can feel his heart strain to beat in time with Erik's. Dangerous, he thinks, but he is beyond caring, both of them taut and breathless, then shuddering finally with orgasm once, and then, almost unbearably, again. He can't tell which is his own.
It's quiet for a minute, as he becomes aware again that they are separate beings, lying uncomfortably tangled together on the bed, with the hallway clock ticking. Charles closes his eyes so that he does not see Erik slip out of bed and close the bathroom door between them. Through the door he can hear the water running, and he lies listening to Erik trying to scrub the last traces of oil from his hands.