Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There was no reason to be on edge. Dick was just a first year graduate student; he was basically Bobby’s equal even in spite of the two years between them. He wasn’t even a law student, and really, didn’t that make Bobby better than him? Dick was going for a PHD instead of law school because he didn’t have the instincts to be a lawyer. It remained to be seen if Bobby had the instincts, but he sure had the guts.

Only now, his instincts were screaming at him that something was amiss, but his stubborn gutsiness wouldn’t let him run from it, even though everything in him said asking Dick to stay after class for a minute had been a mistake.

If Dick sensed the tension too, he didn’t show it. He barely spared a glance at Bobby as he straightened his papers and returned them to his briefcase, and when he did turn to look, Bobby saw nothing but wry exasperation on his face.

“I probably shouldn’t say this when I’m the one who marks them up before Professor Coates reads them, but your essays are fine, Bob.” His smile was crooked and his posture loose, hip cocked as he leaned easily against the wood-paneled lectern. “Honestly, I think Coates just doesn’t like you and that’s what you’re sensing. Not to worry, though; he’ll be fair. You’re too good a student to flunk just because of a personal dislike.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Bobby says. He felt small and awkward before Dick, dwarfed as he was by the terraced rows of seating in the empty lecture hall. And he didn’t like the emphasis Dick had put on student, as though the lack of a graduate before the word put theme on different levels metaphorically as well.

He’d gotten the reassurance he’d come for, at least. There was no reason to stick around and endure his jangling nerves any longer.

Dick’s laughter stopped him as he turned to go - easy, gentle, and perhaps slightly patronizing. “Aw, don’t be sore about it. Not everyone in your life is going to like you. Besides, I like you, so that’s got to count for something, right?”

Bobby knew that much without having to be told. Very few people in his life had ever really liked him at all, and he wasn’t even sure Dick was one of them.

“Sure, Dic,” he said unenthusiastically, making to turn once more. And, in his irritation, his instincts momentarily failed him.

“I do like you, sourpuss.” Dick pushed himself off the lectern, and in a few strides he was stood before Bobby, shoes nearly touching, chin tilted down to shoot Bobby a friendly smile. “And I think you know that, or you wouldn’t have asked me to stay late with a bullshit question like that. Am I right?”

Bobby shrugged. Dick was at least partly right; Bobby had always known Dick valued their friendship more highly than Bobby did, and Bobby’s request had been predicated on that. Dick would willingly bend the rules to soothe Bobby’s ego; Bobby probably wouldn’t have done the same. He didn’t feel particularly bad about it.

“That’s answer enough for me,” Dick said with a shrug of his own. Then, slow as molasses, his neck curved further to bring his face closer to Bobby’s. He kept his eyes open, gauging Bobby’s reaction.

On instinct, Bobby stepped back. He couldn’t think of a single thing to do except shake his head. After a second, he was able to produce a stilted, “no, thank you.”

It was not nearly as vehement as it should have been given the criminality of what Dick had just tried to do, but Bobby could only summon up shock and discomfort. The revulsion would come later, he assumed.

The polite refusal was enough, anyway. Dick’s expression went carefully blank as he straightened, as if he’d never tried it at all.

“This never happened.”

Bobby admired Dick’s ability to pretend that was true, though he didn’t bother to attempt it himself. Hiding his feelings had never come easily to Bobby, and in that moment he didn’t even know what his feelings were. All he knew was that he wanted Dick to see that while they might be something along the lines of unease, they were nowhere near frightened.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. It wasn’t a threat, but it wasn’t a promise not to talk, either. An unpalatable thought occurred to him. “Did you wait to do that until you had something to hold over me if I said no?”

Dick didn’t look apologetic. “It never happened.”

Bobby grit his teeth. It was no use; Dick would see his fury and helplessness regardless. He turned to go a third time, and, when Dick made no attempt to stop him, threw one final barb over his shoulder.

“You won’t be marking my papers forever.”

They both knew it was an empty threat.

Chapter Text

Chuck couldn’t have said how he knew, but there was something wrong with Bobby. Something off. Perhaps it was his uncharacteristic calm - Bobby was never circumspect about his feelings, and he was even worse at hiding them. Chuck had never seen Bobby go so long without complaining in the entire time they had known each other.

Or perhaps it was Bobby’s refusal to complain about one specific issue. Chuck had been girding himself to endure at least several more weeks’ worth of griping about the torts class which had become Bobby’s favorite subject of complaint - the professor he couldn’t impress; the papers he couldn’t ace; the teaching assistant who put on so many airs he was liable to float through the ceiling any day. Bobby had lowered himself - in his words - to ask his teaching assistant friend about the other two issues ten days ago, and Chuck hadn’t heard a word about it since.

It stood to reason that whatever was off about Bobby now had begun during that meeting.

Luckily for Chuck, as Bobby’s closest friend in the boat, he had uninterrupted access to Bobby for a few minutes every day during their walks from the shell house back up to campus, even if Bobby had not been as talkative as usual lately. It was the perfect opportunity to corner him and test out a theory Chuck had been mulling over for quite some time.

“Alright, what’s wrong with you?” he started, as soon as he was relatively sure they were out of hearing range. He hadn’t quite managed to get his words in order, but coming up on two weeks of Bobby’s sulking was past time to bring it up.

Bobby answered predictably. “Nothing’s wrong.”

Perhaps it would have worked if their heights had been reversed and Bobby could have outpaced Chuck, but as it was there was no escaping.

“I’m not going to beat around the bush ‘cause I know you don’t need me to,” Chuck said, keeping perfect time with Bobby’s angry strides as they mounted the crest of the hill. “Something happened when you went to see that Dick fella, and it’s been bothering you ever since. You know you won’t get over it until you talk it out, I’m here to listen, and even you can’t out-stubborn me this time. Admit defeat.”

“It’s really fine,” Bobby insisted, but his shoulders lowered fractionally around his ears and his words carried a tint of resignation. “There’s nothing to admit.”

That went a long ways towards proving Chuck’s theory. He prayed he’d gotten everything straight enough not to spook Bobby into flight, at least, prepared himself to chase if need be, and plunged ahead.

“Sure, true, you don’t gotta admit anything, if you don’t want. You can just, you know, not deny it, and I’ll take that as my answer, you get my drift? But it’s okay, see, if something happened with him. Or it’s okay if it’s not okay, but it’s still fine. You know me; I’m not the judgmental type. Even with stuff that’s maybe considered wrong, by most people. So if you want to complain - or I hope there’s nothing to complain about and you’re just feeling off because you’re worried about people knowing -”

“I said there’s nothing to admit,” Bobby said sharply, and Chuck thought he’d been too forward, or perhaps he’d been wrong about Bobby after all. But then Bobby’s shoulders sagged all the way into a picture of perfect defeat and he shook his head, eyes closed as if in pain. “Really, nothing happened. I stopped it before - before anything could. I wouldn’t have been alone with him at all if I’d had the faintest clue of it beforehand.”

Chuck’s stomach dropped. “Shit. You mean you didn’t want it?”

Bobby, clearly taken aback, stopped walking outright. Chuck nearly tripped over his own feet trying to halt as well. He grinned shamefacedly at Bobby, both an acknowledgement of his stumble and an apology for the misconception - slander, really, considering the things he had just hinted at.

“Of course not. Why would I?” Bobby said, briefly uncomprehending. Then his eyes went wide. “You mean you thought - about me? No. No, I don’t - I truly didn’t see it coming. He just leaned down out of nowhere, and I - I told him no. And he listened.”

“But you didn’t want it.”

Bobby, apparently satisfied that he had argued his case well enough, rolled his eyes. Chuck was feeling more and more foolish by the minute.

“It’s no big deal. He’s a jerk, and I told him so. Held it over his head a bit, actually.” He shot Chuck a stern look. “I can take care of myself, Chuck.”

“I know that,” Chuck said. What Bobby had told him wasn’t the full story, and it was clearly bothering him more than he let on, but Chuck had enough experience with Bobby’s stubborn independent streak to know that pushing the issue would get him nowhere.

He wasn’t a complete fool, though. Dick had been in a position of at least a little power over Bobby, and Bobby was small and delicate enough that he looked like he could be taken advantage of. Chuck wouldn’t do anything about it without Bobby’s permission - this time . But he’d be on the lookout for it happening again.

Chapter Text

Bobby didn’t get star-struck easily. He sat dispassionately through Chuck’s raptures over actresses in the pictures or Jim’s enthusiastic readings from his heroes’ biographies, but he couldn’t honestly say he’d understood what they were feeling in those moments until he got to see Don Hume as something more than just a flash of curly hair in a neighboring boat.

It was easier to be enthralled by Don, Bobby thought, because Don was normal. He wasn’t arrogantly self-possessed like a movie star - though he had the looks - or pretentiously self-important like a politician or philosopher. He kept his thoughts to himself, deep or shallow as they may have been, did his job, and went about his life like every other person. And all the while he held Bobby’s attention like a compass point swiveling to follow north. That part didn’t feel normal.

Ordinarily, as he usually did when he didn’t understand his own emotions, Bobby would have talked to Chuck. But Chuck didn’t seem to share Bobby’s estimation of Don - in fact, Chuck seemed to actively dislike him.

“What’s your problem with him?” Bobby asked, after the fifth day of watching Chuck glare daggers at Don at all times except in the boat. He had been glaring in the boat as well until Bobby had put his foot down about it, so Bobby supposed the current reduced glaring was technically an improvement. “You liked him just fine when you first met him.”

“Yeah, well, I know him better now,” Chuck said darkly, and - though Bobby couldn’t understand why - somewhat evasively.

Bobby suppressed an irritated sigh, kicking his feet out in front of him to catch the widening rectangle of sunshine stretching out across Chuck’s bed. Chuck had looked put-out when Bobby had claimed it for himself on their return from a practice wherein Chuck had snapped at Don more than once, but he’d been grumpy for five days straight so it was hard to tell what impact the theft had actually had on his mood.

Bobby wasn’t stupid. Five days ago he had confessed Dick’s attempted kiss, and Chuck had been in a foul mood ever since. It was understandable, even - Chuck hated feeling unable to help his friends, and Bobby had expressly forbidden him from doing anything about the situation. That still didn’t justify taking his frustration out on Don just because of some small personality clash in Bobby’s mind, but it made more sense than the other possibility: that Chuck had just woken up one day and decided to hate the one person Bobby had ever felt about the way Chuck felt about Claudette Colbert.

He stretched further, pointing his toes until they reached past the light and back into the late-afternoon gloom lurking below the windowsill. It was easier to look at his feet while he spoke than at Chuck. “You barely know him at all. All you do is glare at him.”

“You can learn a lot by observing.” Chuck wouldn’t look at Bobby either. “Don’t you think there’s something… off about him? Untrustworthy?”

“I think you’ve got a bee in your bonnet about him and you’re seeing things that aren’t there. He’s just a normal guy,” Bobby said. Chuck didn’t answer him.

If there was anything abnormal about Don, anything off, it was in the power he held over Bobby without even trying. Bobby was the one who couldn’t be trusted - or at least he was beginning to feel he couldn’t trust himself where Don was concerned.

Chuck had thought, five days ago, that Bobby was… the kind of man who other men might distrust. And Bobby had thought, five days ago, that he had been wrong.

Chapter Text

Don was proud to say he had settled into his new place in college life relatively quickly - not as quickly as some of his more gregarious new friends, like Joe Rantz, but by the end of his second week rowing in the boat he would hopefully take all the way to Berlin, he could boast of several fast friendships and, at the very least, friendly relationships with everyone else.

So, two weeks after that, it had come as a shock to find that Chuck Day seemed to have come to hate him overnight.

Don had wracked his brain trying to think of a reason, but in the end he was forced to shrug his shoulders and admit that, as far as he could see, Chuck just didn't like him. It hurt, on a personal level, but Chuck kept his clear distaste for Don out of the boat, and Don supposed that was what really mattered. Not everyone in your life was going to like you all the time.

He hadn’t mentioned it to any of the other boys - no sense spoiling their experience of team camaraderie over something so small - but, if he were to, he knew who he would have gone to first. Bobby Moch and Chuck Day were thick as thieves; if anyone knew what sort of grit had gotten into Chuck’s gears, it would be Bobby. There were just a few problems with that.

The biggest problem was that, if Don were honest with himself, there was a very obvious reason Chuck might hate him, though Don had no idea how he could have come to that understanding of Don’s greatest secret. But if Chuck did know, it stood to reason he might have told Bobby. Or, if he hadn’t, perhaps Don asking Bobby to inquire about Chuck’s sudden frostiness would be the impetus for that disclosure. Don couldn’t bear the idea of Bobby knowing his shame - that was, if it turned out Bobby didn’t know already and wasn’t just better at hiding it.

Bobby didn’t hide much. He smiled at Don as freely and as often as Chuck glared, and he bestowed friendly touches in and out of the boat without a seeming care for whether or not that was appropriate. Chuck always glared harder in those moments, but it never stopped Bobby.

“You were fantastic out on the water today, Don,” Bobby said, keeping an awkward, tripping pace beside Don as the team carried the shell back up to the boathouse. It was a little like having a small terrier dog nipping at his heels.

Don ducked his head in embarrassment. He couldn’t tell whether the flush on the back of his neck was from Bobby’s praise or the weight of Chuck’s murderous stare slicing past the bodies between them to press warningly against Don’s shoulder blades.

“Thanks,” he managed.

“You know,” Bobby said, jogging closer, “I was thinking we could spend some time together sometime. Outside of practice, you know? I could help you study.”

Somehow, though he couldn’t see or hear it, Don knew Chuck was grinding his teeth.

He kept his face towards the ground so that Bobby might only see the corner of his pleased smile. “I’d like that.”

The point was, it might be worth it to weather Chuck’s dislike if it meant having Bobby’s friendship.

But even if that was the point, the problem was that, though Don didn’t want to admit it, that he didn’t want only friendship with Bobby, and Chuck knew that, and if he hated Don for it then there was nothing Don could do except endure it and hope to God he would never have to see that same mistrust in Bobby’s too-expressive eyes.

Chapter Text

Chuck wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t unobservant, either - you could learn a lot about people and joke around at the same time. And he knew without a doubt what he had observed in Don Hume. He just didn’t feel much like laughing about it.

Bobby scolded him for his constant glowering, but Bobby didn’t know about Don like Chuck did, and Chuck wasn’t enough of a jerk to spill Don’s secret like that. Even if Bobby had seemed relatively unbothered by Dick liking men in and of itself and therefore might take a similar revelation about Don in stride, it still wasn’t Chuck’s secret to tell.

So Chuck glared. If he could just get the message across to Don that Bobby was not open to those sorts of overtures, he would never have to clue Bobby in at all and he could avoid yet another lecture on how Bobby didn’t need protecting, thank you very much. Then he could go back to getting along fine with Don, whom Chuck found quite likeable aside from his palpable mooning after Bobby. Really, it was a miracle Bobby hadn’t noticed it.

“What’s he done now?” asked the target of that wistful attention, exasperated, as Chuck shot yet another warning glare in Don’s direction. “He’s all the way over there; surely he can’t have offended you from thirty feet away.”

“I don’t like the way he’s looking at us,” Chuck said evasively. True, Don was safely out of range along the far wall of the shell house, engaged in conversation with Johnny and Ulbrickson, but his eyes strayed to Bobby every chance they got. Chuck could only describe the look in them as longing.

“Maybe if you didn’t want him looking at you like he’s afraid you’re going to attack him you shouldn’t have spent the last month looking at him like you’re considering it,” Bobby said, nose in the air. “I’ve got no problem with how he looks at me.”

Don’s gaze drifted once more to the two of them, sliding quickly and furtively past Chuck to land on Bobby with such a look of pitiful hangdog yearning that Chuck almost felt sorry for intensifying his scowl in response. If he could just be sure that Don wouldn’t try anything funny, or if he thought Bobby would welcome any such advance - well, it would be sort of sweet. Most people wouldn’t think so, but if it made Bobby happy Chuck could never be against it.

“See?” Bobby said, startling Chuck out of his sympathetic musings. “What’s wrong with that?”

Surely Bobby could see it. Surely he had to know. And, Chuck thought, tracking the slow spread of pink over Bobby’s cheekbones as he held Don’s gaze, maybe Chuck had been right about Bobby after all. Maybe Bobby had been wrong about himself.

Chuck was not about to let his guard down so easily. Potentially liking men did not mean Bobby wanted anything from this particular man. Still, when Don darted the next anxious, guilty glance Chuck’s way, Chuck momentarily softened his glare - just long enough to raise both eyebrows in a silent acknowledgment that yes, they both knew exactly what was going on between the three of them even if Bobby was oblivious - and cocked his head slightly towards Bobby. He shrugged, then, with the tinies shake of his head, set about glaring again.

He didn’t know what was going through Bobby’s head any better than Don did, that shrug had said, but he was keeping an eye on the both of them. If he planned to make any sort of moves, Don had damn well better tread carefully.

Chapter Text

Bobby simply couldn’t take it anymore. Chuck’s constant glaring was making Don miserable, and it was clearly making Chuck miserable, too. And it was making Bobby miserable being stuck between the two of them.

Don, of course, couldn’t give Bobby any answers as to why Chuck seemed to dislike him so much, and asking about it only made him look even more miserable, so Bobby had abandoned that line of inquiry fairly quickly. Which left Chuck.

He, too, was hard to pin down, but Bobby was determined to outlast his weaselly evasions and get to the bottom of things once and for all. He had to.

Undimmed by Chuck’s distinct lack of enthusiasm, Bobby’s fascination with Don had only grown, and as it did it had transmuted into something much closer to the way Chuck felt about Claudette Colbert than Bobby thought was likely proper. He thought it might be something akin to what Dick must have felt for the kind of men he had assumed Bobby to be one of - the kind of man Bobby was now not entirely sure he wasn’t. The indecision of it all was eating him up.

He dragged Chuck on a Sunday walk through the marshes across the cut in lieu of church. He didn’t want this particular conversation overheard. Chuck agreed with a surprising readiness, as if he, too, had sensitive subjects to discuss.

Bobby did not beat around the bush.

“What you assumed about me, after Dick - well, it might not be as wrong as I thought.” He barrelled forward, looking intently at the soft ground disappearing beneath his boots. “I don’t know for certain, of course, and I’ve never - it’s all purely theoretical. But if it were real, it would be Hume. So I need to know why it is you hate him so much.”

“I know,” Chuck said.

“What?”

Though they had both stopped moving, Bobby had yet to lift his eyes from the ground. Abruptly, Chuck was gripping him by the arms and turning him, forcing Bobby’s gaze up to meet his as Bobby lifted his chin in instinctive protest at being manhandled.

“I know,” Chuck repeated, stopping him in his tracks. “I know it’s Hume. Neither of you are subtle.”

“You - but if you - then you hate him because…”

Bobby found himself unable to continue. If Chuck knew, and he didn’t hate Bobby for having those sorts of feelings, could it be that he hated Don for engendering them in Bobby? That was almost worse than enduring Chuck’s hate outright; Don had done nothing at all to deserve being Bobby’s whipping boy. Bobby would never forgive himself if he had brought that on Don.

Chuck sighed. His hold on Bobby’s forearms loosened, turning absentminded and weary. “I don’t hate him. I don’t trust him, but I don’t hate him.”

“I’ve told you, Chuck, there’s nothing to mistrust,” Bobby said, allowing his crossness to bleed through and cover the sick anxiety still twisting his stomach even after hearing Chuck deny it. “He’s got nothing to do with any of this. He doesn’t even know he’s the object of my… of my attention.”

“I know that well enough,” Chuck said with a crooked smile. “Just like I know you haven’t figured out why he pays so much attention to you.”

There was something in that smile, in the way Chuck looked just to the left of Bobby’s ear as he spoke rather than meet Bobby’s eyes - something guilty and apologetic, a pre-emptive wince of the kind Chuck wore when he knew Bobby was about to scold him for having done something foolish. Something like assuming Bobby couldn’t take care of himself.

Bobby stepped back and out of Chuck’s hold, disgusted. “I said I didn’t need any protecting. I handled myself just fine when Dick came at me. I could have handled Don the same. You’ve spent weeks glaring daggers at him, and for what? So you could feel better about yourself by terrifying a poor boy who only wants to be my friend? God above, Chuck Day, I could hit you right now.”

Chuck shrugged and dropped his arms to his sides, opening himself up for a hit if it were to come. They both knew Bobby wouldn’t really, but it was an admission that Bobby had a right to be angry, no matter what Chuck’s intentions might have been.

“Hit me, then, but I won’t apologize. I saw how what happened with Dick shook you, and I saw what you keep missing when Don looks at you. Scaring him off was the best thing for everyone.”

“Mother hen,” Bobby said, shaking his head. He couldn’t be angry with Chuck after that; protecting Bobby when Bobby had specifically asked him not to was one thing, but protecting Don, misplaced as that concern was - well, Bobby probably would have done the same. “You’re crazy, anyway. Dick made you paranoid. Don thinks of me as a friend.”

Chuck snorted. “Sure he does. Among other things.”

“Stop glaring at him and see if he makes the move you’re so convinced he wants to, then,” Bobby challenged. “And when he doesn’t, you can go apologize to him for thinking he would and we can forget all about it.”

“Sure thing, Bobby,” Chuck said.

Bobby managed to shove Chuck off the path into no fewer than three mud puddles on the way back towards campus, but Chuck made no complaint. Instead, he smiled to himself the whole way home and refused to explain when Bobby pressed him as to why. It was even more infuriating than the glaring had been.

It didn’t matter, though, because Chuck was wrong. That would be clear enough soon.

Chapter Text

Something had changed. Don didn’t know what or why, but seemingly overnight, Chuck’s dislike of him had turned to something much closer to exasperation. Don half-expected Chuck to roll his eyes each time their gazes met.

It had something to do with Bobby; it must. Chuck had seen the odd way Bobby watched Don just as Don had, and whatever conclusion he had come to about it had tempered his hatred for Don. Either that, or Bobby had finally taken Chuck to task for upsetting the cohesion of the boat with his constant glaring. Don thought the latter more likely. Bobby looked so exasperated by Chuck’s exasperation that it spoke to some sort of argument between them.

Don hated having been the cause of it.

“I’m sorry for whatever I did that came between you and Chuck,” he tried, after a strategy session in the shell house spent watching Bobby and Chuck trade eye-rolls over his head like a table tennis match.

His stomach still rolled with anxiety at the idea that Bobby might know why Chuck was so fed up with Don, but keeping the shell working smoothly was more important than Don’s own self-preservation. They could survive Don and Chuck being on the outs; if Bobby had an issue with one of his rowers, they’d start to have problems.

Bobby laughed off Don’s concern - though not without another roll of the eyes - and slapped Don on the back as though the whole thing had already blown over. “You didn’t do anything. Chuck just isn’t ready to admit he was wrong, and until he does I’m not entertaining any of his ordinary nonsense.”

That sounded an awful lot like it was Don’s fault, and not very much like something deserving of Bobby’s dismissive tone. But Don hadn’t really gotten a chance to know Chuck in the few weeks before their one-sided animosity had begun, so perhaps feuding over petty things was just Chuck and Bobby’s way and Don was the fool for taking it so seriously. Some joke that would be, if Don had spent this long so worried over nothing.

“Wrong about what?” he asked.

Bobby waved a vague, non-illustrative hand. “Oh, he - well, he… alright, you can’t get mad at him. I already did, on your behalf and mine.”

Don’s heart was beating too fast, too hard, and had lodged itself somewhere around his throat. It wasn’t nothing, after all. And Bobby knew, or had been told, and didn’t believe it. Don swallowed down his rising panic and tried to speak.

“Mad at him for what?”

“He thought you’d try to attack me,” Bobby said, with a scoff that confirmed Don’s fears: Bobby had no idea how close to the truth Chuck had hit. “He got it into his head that you had designs on me. And I told him that’s nuts, I’d know it if you did, and moreover I can take care of myself, but he’s acting all protective of me ‘cause… well, because it turns out I look like the kind of guy who some other guys don’t feel they gotta ask for permission.”

The confession hung awkwardly between them as Bobby winced and shuffled his feet. Don thought he ought to say something comforting, or sympathetic, but he just felt sick. If he was reading between the lines right, Bobby had been attacked. Chuck had every right to fear the same thing from Don. And Bobby was too trusting to see it.

“Bobby,” he tried, but Bobby wasn’t listening. He wasn’t looking at Don, either.

“Don’t worry, I laid into him for thinking you’d be that sort of man, no matter whether you felt that way or not. He knows he was wrong to judge you without really knowing you, so all you have to do is tell him you’ve got no such intentions toward me and it’s settled. No more glaring, no hard feelings, water under the bridge. Just a big, silly -”

“Bobby.” Don infused the word with as much weight as he could muster in the hopes of slowing Bobby’s nervous ramble. He couldn’t stand to hear a second more. “I do. I am. That kind of man. Chuck was right about me.”

Bobby gaped. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly for several moments. Then he shook his head.

“No. No, you’re not. I know you, Don; you’re gentle. You’d never force yourself on a fella who wasn’t expecting it.”

Don’s eyes stung and his heart, still in his throat, clenched painfully. Of course Bobby was right, he wouldn’t, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that Chuck was right.

“Doesn’t matter what I would or wouldn’t do. I still have those thoughts about… about you,” he said, stumbling only briefly and ignoring the way Bobby’s eyes went wide at the admission. “I’m no better than whoever it was acted on them.”

“Shut up. Just… don’t say those things about yourself, okay? Just for a minute. I need to think this through.” Bobby shook his head fiercely, like a dog shaking off water, and squeezed his eyes shut as if he couldn’t bear to look at Don. “You have designs on me? And Chuck saw it and I didn’t. That’s twice now; I must really be dense.”

Bobby looked so disappointed - in himself, Don thought, but surely that was only misplaced and Bobby would realize soon enough where that disappointment should really rest. Don needed to be far away before then.

He took several steps back, towards the safety of the shell house doors and the promise of escape, and offered Bobby a tremulous smile. “I’m sorry, Bobby, I - I’ll leave you alone. You should apologize to Chuck.”

“Why, just so he can rub it in? Fat chance,” Bobby said, eyes crinkling with amusement. They widened again in realization and dismay as Don backed further towards the doors. “Hey, Don, wait, we have to talk about this, don’t -”

Don didn’t catch the rest of the sentence. He stepped into the darkening evening and did his best not to hate Chuck Day.