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Charlie takes the opportunity to look around David's flat while David is making tea in the kitchen. It's the first time he's been here, and he has to admit he's curious.
Curiosity is normal, he tells himself. It doesn't mean you're interested in him.
What catches his eye - beyond the tiny television and the cramped bookshelf and the truly awful beige carpet - is the fish tank, quietly bubbling on a table in the corner. He crosses the room and leans over to peer inside. For a long moment he can't see anything that seems to be alive, but then there's a flicker of movement and his eyes find the lone fish, not so much swimming as lounging against a cheap-looking piece of coral.
"Huh," Charlie says. He can hear the sound of David's feet on the carpet and he straightens up just as David comes in from the kitchen carrying two mugs of tea.
"You don't strike me as a fish person," Charlie says.
David flushes a little, and Charlie has to remind himself that he's absolutely not allowed to find that adorable.
"I was sort of trying to become one for a while," David offers. "Don't think I had much success, though." He holds out the mug of tea and says, "D'you want to watch something?"
Charlie takes the mug, careful not to let their fingers touch, and forgets about the fish in favour of mocking David's DVD collection.
-----
The next time he's with David they'd run into each other at the studio. David had just finished a recording, so when they arrive at his flat he ducks into his bedroom to change out of his studio clothes. Charlie drops his bag by the side of the sofa and wanders over to the fish tank, looking for something to distract him from the thought of David undressing. The fish is marginally more active today, swimming slowly through a hole in the coral then idling up to the glass as if it's actually curious about the gigantic freakish face that's suddenly appeared there.
"Hello, fish," Charlie says, and then immediately feels like a complete idiot. I'm talking to a fish, for Christ's sake! But there's something about the whole fish thing that intrigues him. He tries to imagine David in the pet store, picking out which one he's going to take home. He probably chose the one with the least personality, just to be contrary. The idea makes Charlie snort.
"Is he doing something entertaining for once?" David says, coming out of his bedroom and shutting the door carefully behind him. He's wearing a faded blue button-down shirt with worn khakis now, and he's taken off his shoes, leaving him with only faintly-greyed socks on his feet.
Socks! says a small, twisted part of Charlie's brain. There's something frighteningly intimate about seeing David in his socks, something that makes the hair on Charlie's arms stand on end. He shouldn't be thinking about how sexy domesticity looks on David. But he is.
"He doesn't usually," David continues, seemingly oblivious. "More often than not he just sits there, doing whatever the fish equivalent of watching daytime telly is. Lazy little shit."
"Does he have a name?" Charlie asks, barely trusting himself to speak.
"Er," David says. "Machiavelli. But mostly I call him 'Not-Dead-Yet.'"
This is so ridiculous that Charlie laughs, footwear-related panic attack derailed. "Why?"
"He won't die! All the other fish I had died, at which point it became painfully obvious that I am not, and will never be, the type of person who keeps fish. So I thought, 'as soon as the last one dies, I can get rid of the tank and get on with my life.' But he just won't! The others only lasted a couple of months, but Machiavelli's been hanging on for a year now. I can't kill him – that would be cruel. So instead I have to sit around waiting for him to decide he's bored with things and wants to move on to the great fish bowl in the sky." David sulks for a moment. "I just wish he'd hurry it up."
"You're such a bastard, David," Charlie says. "It's delightful."
"Yes, very funny," David says with mock sourness. "Hundreds of children are no doubt weeping into their pillows tonight because little Finny is getting flushed, and I'm stuck with Machiavelli the immortal."
Charlie starts to giggle helplessly. David's mouth crooks up on one side as if he's struggling to maintain his grumpy facade, which only makes Charlie laugh even harder.
"Stop mocking my pain," says David, and then, "I'm making tea now." He disappears into the kitchen, leaving Charlie leaning against the fish tank, cackling.
-----
After that it turns into a strange little ritual; whenever Charlie turns up at David's flat, David goes to make tea, and while he's doing that Charlie says hello to the fish. Sometimes he just says "Hello, Not-Dead-Yet," but other times he finds himself telling the fish about what he's been doing, or rehashing whatever topic he and David have been arguing about on their way up, if they'd come in together.
It's weirdly soothing. The fish never does anything in particular, other than float placidly, but there's something about the way it watches him with those round eyes that makes Charlie feel like it's listening patiently, not judging him. He still feels a bit stupid and creepy about it, but then again he feels stupid and creepy about most things he does – like when they're in the pub and he leans in to say something in David's ear and gets hard at the fresh, clean scent of him – so that's certainly not enough to make him stop.
Seeing David becomes a ritual, too, and Charlie gradually gets used to the constant tight feeling in his chest when they're together, the ever-present urge to muss David's hair or kiss the corner of his mouth when he smiles. Usually when Charlie comes over they watch QI, or dreadful pseudo-documentaries about Nazis, or, if Charlie's feeling particularly masochistic, Time Team. David's good company – acerbic and funny and always ready to laugh at Charlie's jokes, which he has to admit is gratifying – and somewhere along the way Charlie realizes that they're actually friends, instead of media twats who know each other and hang out sometimes.
This is... nice, Charlie thinks one afternoon when they're settling onto the sofa. The banality of the thought makes him cringe, but that feeling, too, is familiar, and that makes it easier to tell himself this isn't going to blow up in his face.
-----
Then one day he shows up and the fish looks... tired. Which ought to be impossible to tell about a fish whose most notable quality is laziness. Still, NDY seems a little bit more bloated than usual, swims a little bit more listlessly, and Charlie finds himself tapping on the glass to see if he can get it to perk up.
"He's looking a bit sad, isn't he?" David says, coming back in with two mugs of tea. He hands one to Charlie, who reaches out to take it without looking away from the tank.
"Yeah," he says. "What's wrong with him?"
"No idea," David admits. "I went and looked things up on the internet, but everything I could find indicates I've done everything right. Right water filter, right food, not too much food. Maybe he's finally got bored with me."
"Hopefully he'll push off soon and then you can be free," Charlie jokes, but the idea disturbs him more than he wants to admit. It's only a fish, you cock.
"Have you ever had a pet?" David asks. Charlie stills.
"I had a cat once," he says quietly. He waits for the inevitable follow-up, the 'What happened to it?' or the 'Have you ever thought of getting another?' but David doesn't say any of that. Instead he just makes a little noise of acknowledgment, and then he reaches out and touches Charlie on the shoulder, the weight of his fingers clear through the thin fabric of Charlie's shirt.
To his horror, Charlie feels tears spring to his eyes, and he turns away, blinking furiously. He hasn't thought about his cat in ages and it's a surprise to find that he's still so sensitive about her. Get a grip! he tells himself. You sentimental twat. He turns back, clearing his throat with perhaps more emphasis than is strictly necessary. David pulls his hand away, looking awkward, eyes flicking from Charlie's face to the fish tank and then back again.
"Yes, well," Charlie says. "It was a long time ago." He struggles for a change of subject, then takes a sip of his tea and makes a face. "God, what did you put in this, motor oil?"
"Fuck off," David says, and Charlie laughs maybe a little too loud, eager to fall back into bantering.
-----
The rest of the afternoon seems to go normally on the surface, but Charlie catches David looking at him out of the corner of his eye sometimes, and there are a few moments when David seems to be about to say something that he then chokes back. It makes Charlie nervous, and eventually he excuses himself and leaves earlier than he might normally have done, feeling depressed and annoyed with himself.
When he gets home he stops with the front door open and looks down at the cat flap for a long moment. Then he shuts the door and drops down onto the sofa before opening his laptop and starting to write. He starts with the cat flap, then finds himself pouring out his stupid, pathetic heart onto the page, writing about his fears and his broken mechanisms of self-defense. When he's done he reads it through and then sags back against the cushions, wishing that what he'd written had been all bollocks. But it isn't – it's true, true that he's just too damn angsty to allow himself to care for anyone or anything.
This is why he knows he'll never try anything on with David – not because David will die, although obviously he will, someday, but because the whole thing would inevitably end in disaster: either the disaster of David's agonizingly-polite disinterest, or, if by some miracle David actually wanted him and they did get involved, the disaster of Charlie fucking everything up by being a gigantic dick-face. Better just to be friends and not to let himself hope for anything else.
Oh, look. New, unplumbed depths of self-loathing. Goody.
Charlie wipes a hand over his face and turns off the computer. In the morning he can read through the damn thing again, maybe add some bitchy stuff and turn it into a column, get some comedy mileage out of it. For now, though, he just wants to kill some video game Nazis for a couple hours until he can fall exhaustedly into sleep.
-----
He doesn't expect to hear from David for a while – it's not like they have a schedule for seeing each other or anything, even if he's been at David's flat most Saturdays in the past few months, and he imagines David was probably more than a little confused by the cat episode – but on Tuesday he's surprised in the middle of a meeting by a text message.
The stupid fish has recovered. Thought you'd like to know.
A totally involuntary smile spreads across Charlie's face and stays there until Annabel smacks him upside the head and tells him to get his brain back on the right planet.
-----
The following Saturday he rings the bell, still feeling a bit embarrassed. David opens the door, looking tousled and lazy in his stockinged feet, a sight that even now makes something in Charlie's stomach twist.
"Hey," David says, smiling nervously. "Come in."
"Hey," Charlie says, stepping past David into the living room and standing awkwardly by the sofa.
"Tea?" David offers, and Charlie nods. David disappears into the kitchen and Charlie makes himself walk casually over to the fish tank, trying not to look too eager even though there's no one watching.
"Hey, NDY," he says quietly. The fish swims lazily past him, looking far more energetic than it had before – its scales even seem brighter now. "Glad you're living up to your name. David was worried about you." The fish twirls in a slow spiral around a piece of fake seaweed, and Charlie coughs a little. "Maybe I was, too." He feels completely ridiculous, but weirdly better for having said it. "Anyway. You won't believe what Tim's come up with for his next segment."
-----
Two Saturdays later David comes back into the living room while the tea is steeping and catches Charlie saying, "God, Indy, you wouldn't believe what a bitch filming was yesterday."
"What did you call him?" David asks. Charlie whirls around, flushing.
"Nothing," he says.
"It wasn't nothing," David insists. "You were talking to the fish, and you called him Indy!"
"Well," Charlie says. "I had been calling him NDY for Not-Dead-Yet, but then that was a bit unwieldy so I thought I'd call him Indy."
David huffs. "You can't just rename my fish," he says.
"You don't even like your fish," Charlie says, in what he thinks is a reasonable tone.
"That's not the point!" David says, sounding a bit shrill. Charlie struggles not to laugh. "It's my fish. You wouldn't go around renaming someone else's child, would you?" Charlie opens his mouth, and David pokes him in the shoulder. "No, shut up. I know you're going to say that you would rename someone's child, but you're only going to say that because you're arguing with me."
Charlie would be worried that he's actually being irritating, except that David has that flush on his cheeks the way he does when he's really enjoying ranting.
"Not at all," Charlie says. "People do it all the time, giving each other nicknames. It's perfectly normal."
David sputters.
"Can't we agree," Charlie says, "that his name is Machiavelli and his nickname is Indy? If you'd named him Henry Jones Junior then you wouldn't object if I called him Indy."
"Don't you go trying to change my mind with clever pop culture references," David says haughtily. "I studied history at university. I'm immune to that sort of thing."
Charlie experiences two nearly-overwhelming urges – the first, to exult that David thinks he's clever, and the second, to kiss that smug look right off David's face. He stifles both of them by reminding himself how very punched in the face he'd likely be, if he gave in. Instead he says, "Oh, come on, you're not fooling me. You love those movies, admit it. I'd bet that your favorite is the one with the Nazis, and every time you watch it you think you ought to bitch about the historical inaccuracies but secretly you love it."
David goes bright red. "No," he says, and then when Charlie laughs, "No! That's-- Shut up, that's not true! Stop projecting, you Philistine!"
"I'm not projecting," Charlie says. "I just know you."
Something changes in David's face. "You really don't," he says, and his tone is not-quite teasing. Is-- Charlie thinks, is he, does he mean-- and maybe he should-- but he hesitates a split second too long, and then David's eyes go shuttered, and he says lightly, "I bet you don't even know my favorite colour, you cad."
Blue, Charlie thinks, but maybe that's not right, maybe that's just the colour he likes most on David, and if he doesn't find something intelligent to say in a moment he's going to look like such an idiot. He opens his mouth, and what comes out is, "I bet the tea's ready," which is actually a brilliant line, because if there's one thing he does know about David it's that he can't stand to have his tea steep for too long. Sure enough, David curses and dashes back into the kitchen, and Charlie leans against the wall and thinks, Shit, shit, oh, fucking Christ on a biscuit, I am so very, very stupid.
-----
On his next visit Charlie waits for David to finish making the tea before he pulls the gift out of his bag. "So, I brought something for Indy."
"For Machiavelli?" David says pointedly, setting the mugs on the coffee table, and Charlie purses his lips.
"If you're going to be like that, I'll just take it away again," he says, banking on David's curiosity.
It's a good bet; David only lasts until Charlie has his bag in his hand again before he says, "All right, fine. But if it's a plastic zombie for him to swim around, I'm going to chuck it at your head."
Charlie grins triumphantly and presents the gift with a dramatic half-bow.
"I feel like the fish's secretary of state now," David says, but his lips twitch up into a smile as he crosses the room to stand by the tank and take the box from Charlie's hands. He lifts it up and examines the wrapping. "Happy Christmas?"
"It's the only wrapping paper I had," Charlie says. "Besides, I bet you didn't get him anything last year, so I'm just making up for your shortcomings."
David snorts, then starts methodically unwrapping the gift, so careful that Charlie has to stop himself from taking it out of his hands and ripping the paper off. David's eyes flick up for a moment, and then down again, and he slows the motion of his hands, picking at the edge of the hastily-applied tape until Charlie realizes what's happening.
"You shit, you're doing this on purpose!"
"It's great fun to watch you get impatient," David admits with a sly little grin, but he stops being quite so careful and rips the tape off, then slides the box out from inside the sleeve of paper and opens the flap to reveal what's inside.
"It's a... Greek temple?" He sets the box and wrappings aside, then turns the plastic aquarium ornament around in his hands, running his fingers around the columns in a way that Charlie finds strangely erotic.
"For Indy to swim around in," Charlie says. "Something scenic. I thought about a castle but I couldn't find any that would be historically accurate enough to stand up to your scrutiny." Now that he's saying it that sounds a bit mad, actually, but he'd had a lot of fun searching the internet at two in the morning, trying to find something that David would like.
"You're trying to turn my fish into an action hero archaeologist," David says flatly, but the corners of his mouth are twitching.
"He looked bored!" Charlie says, and David laughs.
"He always looks bored. I think he's just conserving energy in preparation for evolving." David looks up, gives Charlie a soft smile. "Thank you."
Charlie feels himself flush. "Well, you know." He can't actually think of anything to say that doesn't sound stupid. "You're welcome."
David's eyes flicker over his face, and then he says. "Hold it for a second? I'll give it to him."
Charlie takes the Greek temple and watches as David unbuttons his right sleeve, rolling it up past his elbow to expose his forearm, skin creamy with a faint dusting of dark hair. Oh, god, Charlie thinks. David levers the lid off the tank, then takes the ornament out of Charlie's unresisting hands and stretches past him to lower it down into the water on the far side of the tank. The fish just barely swims out of the way, and once David settles the plastic base into the gravel of the tank it turns right around and swims back over to investigate, winding curiously between the columns.
"Ha," David says. "Guess he likes it." He pulls his hand out of the tank, wiggling it slightly to shake off some of the water, and then he turns to Charlie, grinning in the way he does sometimes when he forgets to be self-conscious, the way that lights up his whole face.
Charlie can't help himself; David is so close, and his mouth is right there, soft and smiling, and Charlie's leaning in to kiss him before he even knows what he's doing, pressing their lips together and feeling the shape of David's mouth against his own.
Fuck! he thinks, and jerks backwards in shock at his own stupidity. David's eyes have gone wide with surprise.
"You, er," says David. "You-- that is to say--" He clamps his mouth shut for a moment, then shakes himself. "You have been flirting, then."
"Er," says Charlie. He thinks very seriously about hitting himself in the head with a rock.
"Because, I mean, I thought you were, but I'm never sure about that sort of thing, and obviously if you were actually interested in me that would be a bit of a surprise, not necessarily an unpleasant one but certainly a surprise, and—"
"David," Charlie says desperately.
"Right," David says. His mouth crooks down on one side. "Babbling. Sorry."
"I like your babbling," Charlie says without thinking, and then curls his hands into fists. Oh, charming, he thinks. He's really going to be won over by pathetic and needy. He opens his mouth to backpedal, but David's cheeks have gone pink in really the most adorable way and it's distracting, so instead Charlie says, "Er, I hope you don't mind," which actually comes out even more pathetic and needy.
"Not at all," David says politely.
They stare at each other for a moment. Charlie's palms start to sweat and he wipes them on his jeans. And then slowly it dawns on him that that little speech wasn't actually a rejection.
He-- oh!
"So," he says shakily, and then decides this is awkward enough without trying to figure out how to talk about it. Instead he just leans in, lifting one hand to curl around the back of David's neck and hoping like hell he hasn't got this wrong. This time David meets him halfway, leaning up with parted lips and sliding his hands around Charlie's waist. David's hand is still wet from reaching into the tank and Charlie can feel the water seeping through his shirt where David is touching him. The kiss is tentative at first, but then David gives a faint moan and tightens his grip, and suddenly they're clutching at each other, kissing urgently.
Holy shit, Charlie thinks. This is happening. Then David sucks on his bottom lip and with a growl Charlie presses him back against the wall next to the fish tank. David's mouth is wet, hot, his movements clumsy and eager, and it's so incredibly good, so good that Charlie actually shivers, and he knows then that he's going to do this, and damn any amount of inevitable heartbreak. He scrapes his teeth over the corner of David's mouth and kisses him harder, tasting, demanding.
He breaks away from the kiss to bite at David's jaw and his earlobe, to press wet, open-mouthed kisses to his neck. David groans, his hands working their way into the back of Charlie's trousers, hot and sweaty against his skin, and Charlie realizes that if he doesn't say something now then they're probably going to fuck right here against the wall, or maybe on the floor or the sofa, and he really wants David spread out beneath him on a proper bed, really wants to make this last.
"Wait," Charlie says, pulling back a little. "David, wait, do you want to--"
"Of course I want to," David snaps, and then he blushes a deep red and says, "That, er. That is where this is going, right? I mean, I'm allowing for the possibility that I might have misinterpreted, but given our current position..."
God, Charlie thinks, how can he be so fucking gorgeous and not know it? It's a fucking crime. He hurries to say something reassuring.
"That's definitely where this is going," he says. "But can we take this to the bedroom? Otherwise your fish is going to need therapy."