I get why they like him...

Charles guessed that he could maybe, sort of see the appeal in fucking Don Hernest. If he squinted.

Lord knows he must be well practiced in servicing others and he obviously knows how to use that pretty mouth of his. That’s about where it ends.

Because Don lived down town for fuck’s sake. His clothing was retail. His father was a washed up musician whose music Charles wouldn’t even pretend he’d listened to. These were the sum of Don Hernest’s parts. Sums, these were what Charles knew. What he lived by.

Money was important. Nathaniel could pretend it wasn’t, follow his dreams all he’d like, go after what he wanted until the cows came home. But Charles had never seen a live cow, and what Charles knew, what he knew Noah would eventually discover, was that getting the things you wanted was a lot easier with a lot of money.

Noah doesn’t understand this, not yet, but what Noah does get is action. Actions speak louder than words, louder than money to him, may the Bank of America have mercy on his poor, naive soul. So while it bores Charles to the core, this soul-searching, Charles obliges. Just this once. Because, well, Noah’s fucking Hernest, and Charles knows the difference between the good kinds of thrills and the cheap ones.

He corners Noah behind the school, it’s a tight alley, ivy-covered and dim despite the dreary daylight. They’re the only ones there, and Charles shoves his hands down Noah’s pants almost unceremoniously before he remembers that he’s competing with Hernest, here; tortured, sensitive fucking empathetic poet, and he slows down, kisses Noah on the mouth like Charles knows he likes it.

Money can’t buy you love, but money can buy a lot of things that help love along, the least of which being numerous prostitutes with which to hone your sexual skills at a very young age, and sex? Yeah, sex Charles knows. Charles wants to push Don Hernest down on a bed (preferably his, because Charles’s not looking for blastomycosis or whatever the fuck else might be lurking on Don’s two-hundred thread count bedsheets) and show him exactly how much having money has taught him about getting somebody else off. Instead, he shows Noah, because Noah needs to know, needs some sort of contrast point. Charles doesn’t like to be a lot of things for a lot of people, mostly he’s only ever been anything for himself. But for Noah, well. He wouldn’t necessarily call it a compromise if it benefits him in the end.

Charles smirks against Noah’s mouth when Noah wraps his hands around the back of his neck, twists his fingers into Charles’s hair and presses up against him harder. Charles’s laughing and Noah’s laughing and they’re sucking and biting and it’s marvelous. Charles’s unprepared for the realization that he wants this often and harder and more, but he’s not really that surprised, because after ten years, he hasn’t yet gotten tired of Noah’s company. Now that sex is involved, it’s only better, impossibly better.

Charles leaves Noah panting against the wall, turns on a heel and smiles slow and easy. “Come, Nathaniel.” He says it with just a touch of seduction in his drawl, he’s not without mercy. “It’s past one, we should be in Chemistry.”

No matter how new the feeling of Noah’s lips on his is, no matter how fast the urgent want in his gut sideswipes him, his feeling of complete satisfaction as he walks away and doesn’t look back is entirely familiar.

Charles catches Don Hernest staring on the bus and he steps closer to Noah, catches him around the wrist. Noah glances at him, confused, but Charles’s only casting his eyes in Hernest’s direction. Except, Don’s not mad, not even phased. He simply raises an eyebrow and looks down at his book.

And Charles needs rises out of people, out of Don fucking Hernest, like he needs air, like he needs the East Caribbean currency in the back of his closet, stashed there just in case. He thrives off hostility. So he scowls at Don, makes an insulting remark specifically about the other man that is way below his usual level of wit and goes home cranky. He locks himself in his room with a bottle of armagnac and fires a maid for knocking to ask if he’d like turn down service.

He ungracefully slides into his bed at almost four in the morning, the empty bottle shattered against a wall and still wearing his houndstooth wool Gucci slacks. Noah doesn’t call.

Charles knows the sum of Noah’s parts almost as well as he knows his own. Charles’s never had a great sense of reciprocity, but it’s always been Noah keeping him just above that line that would make him absolutely outwardly detestable. If Noah, a genuinely nice guy, could see the good elements in Charles’s character, surely he couldn’t be all that bad. Charles’s never put much stock into being a nice guy, but since he didn’t often like to be one, he figures that the fact that Noah vouches for him isn’t pathetic or dependent. It’s strategy.

And in return, Charles keeps him from falling. Charles knows that Noah’s not the kind of person who is able to have stable confidence in his social or financial status. Not like Charles, whose ancestors can be traced back further than Charles likes to ponder. Charles, who could probably buy small islands with his inheritance and give them away without making a dent in his pocketbook. Noah’s on more precarious ground, wealth that comes from marriage and bargains instead of ancestry and birth.

Since all things Charles has ever known mimic capital, it makes sense that Noah’s doing this now, allowing himself to be violated in search of something more real. Charles gets why Noah might want to find something like that, something that might be there when his world falls out from under him, but Charles knows that such things don’t exist in tiny, dingy, Manhattan lofts. Charles wants to be all the security Noah needs.

Charles knows that Noah needed tutoring in English. Noah hadn’t told him, but Becca had, and Charles had only had to feign a slight interest in bettering his moderate grade to convince Miss Mulbray to spill that Don Hernest was the English tutor. So that was the how, then, and he’d gotten to the why.

He approaches Don in the cafeteria, knows Noah’s off Doncing with old ladies or showing vile, tittering first year’s around the school, whatever the sort of things that a Social Chair does. He’s not around to witness this, not yet, that’s not part of the plan.

“Hernest.” Don glances up from his table, fuckable lips purse when he recognizes that it’s Charles. It’s to Don’s credit that he doesn’t grin, because Charles can tell that he wants to. Resisting the urge to bring a hand to the side of his face where a ghost bruise at the hands of Don Hernest still lives, Charles lowers his voice. “I need help.”

“Really?” Don asks, and now the kid really does look confused, if not somewhat interested. “And what would Charles Bass need my help with?”

Stay the fuck away from my best friend, Charles doesn’t say, I will ruin you. He keeps those thoughts quiet. What he says is, “With English.”

Don’s smarter than he looks, must be if he’s more qualified than Noah for Dartmouth usher, which he was, and therefore he is able to figure out that Charles certainly isn’t interested in furthering his knowledge of Blake or iambic pentameter.

He meets Noah for Chemistry with Don Hernest’s number stored in his phone and a leer on his lips.

It doesn’t take much coaxing to get Noah off his couch and into his bed. It takes even less to get him to stay there, a few open-mouthed kisses, lazy strokes of Charles’s clever hand and Noah’s clinging to his hips and leveraging himself upward. Charles’s on top, it’s not like Noah knows how to take control of these things. He sucks Noah’s cock for what seems like hours, until his jaw hurts from the stretch and his heart hurts from being so chivalrous. Noah makes sounds that Charles wants to keep in his safe, lock up for his use and enjoyment only. Becca can keeps hers, Selina too, but he wants to steal the tiny whimpers and desperate moans away from Don Hernest. This club should be members only.

As if evoked, Charles’s phone vibrates, and if he wants this plan to work, answering is crucial. He pulls off Noah with a bored sort of eye-roll, and flips open his phone.

“It’s kind of a bad time,” Charles drawls when he hears Hernest’s ice-laden voice inquire about a meeting place. “Tomorrow at eight. My suite. You do know where that is, correct?”

Charles closes the phone seething after Don’s flippant, “Quality Inn, right?”, not bothering to answer. Noah looks on curiously from the bed, hair disheveled and adorable, dick hard against his stomach.

Charles casts his phone aside, climbs onto the bed, and finishes what he started.

It’s Charles’s territory, but it feels otherwise when Hernest comes in through the door and dumps his free-thinking little messenger bag beside the couch.

“Am I correct to assume,” Don raises an eyebrow, “that we won’t be needing the books I lugged all the way here?” He extracts a package of Marlboro’s from his jacket pocket and appears to almost want to light one before thinking better of it and tossing the pack onto the pile where his bag lies.

Charles snorts, pads across the room in his bare feet and only just refrains from glaring distraughtly at the way Don’s cheap shoes are tracking dust onto his carpet. “See, they told me you were smart.”

And then it’s both feet in, and they’re on the couch, and they’re biting each other’s mouths off. Charles manages to get Hernest’s coat removed, over his arms and tossed onto the floor. His shoes are kicked aside and his hands are rough, rougher than Noah’s, more unforgiving than Charles’s on a moody day.

Don bites and takes and fucks like he lives, rough around the edges, without a single thought about planning or consequence. Charles, though, Charles knows what he’s doing, is in control even when he isn’t, even when he hisses and swears, hips snapping into Hernest’s, neck exposed with pleasure.

He’s in control even when he growls and let’s Don pin him to the bed, gnaw at the side of his jaw. Even when he spits his feelings like he doesn’t mean to, “I know you’re fucking him, leave him the fuck alone”, and Don’s smile is venomous like he fucking knew all along that this was where Charles was going with all of this.

Even then, Charles’s the one in control, Charles hold all the cards, because the door clicks as it opens, and Don’s flying backwards, off of him, and Noah’s staring with his mouth agape unattractively.

“Jesus,” Noah says, takes a step backwards, “jesusfuck.”

Don just sits there, wondering how this is all going to play out, and Charles looks at his best friend. He would shrug if it weren’t so bad for his posture, but instead he grabs Don by the wrist. “Nathaniel,” Charles laughs, “either join us or get the fuck out.”

Don looks like he might protest, and that just wouldn’t be helpful, so Charles’s eternally grateful that Noah closes the door behind him with a click.

See, Charles likes money and sums and figures he can feel and manipulate; this is how it will always be. He’s been around the business world long enough to know that when you make an investment, you follow it through, and if things are going to change, you mold and ply those changes to fit your desires.

And desires, Charles thinks as he watches Noah pull his shirt over his head and hears the hitch in Hernest’s breath, are something that Charles knows a lot about.