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“Come on, Charlie,” Elle pleads. “It’ll be fun!”
“It’ll be a waste of time and money,” Charlie grumbles, but allows his friend to drag him inside the small storefront.
Tara and Darcy are already inside, perusing the fortune teller’s list of offerings and prices -- palm readings, tarot cards, tea leaves, crystal balls, seances and more.
Charlie notes that palm readings are the cheapest, and grudgingly agrees to follow the old woman into the predictably cliched back room, covered in tapestries and candles and all things woo.
I hope this is quick, he thinks. This place is a fucking fire hazard.
The fortune teller sits and gestures at the chair across from her. Charlie sits and shifts awkwardly – he’s always awkward, there’s probably no human movement Charlie is capable of not doing awkwardly – and pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.
“Your friends tell me you have no one…special in your life?” She pulls Charlie’s hands towards her gently and rubs her thumbs over his palms. “That you’ve never had a girl-, no, of course you wouldn’t. You’ve never had a boyfriend, that is?”
Wonderful. The gay nerd vibe is once again just painfully obvious to everyone.
Charlie sighs and shakes his head. “There was a boy I kissed a few times when I was 14, but…”
“He was a knob,” the old woman replies, pointing to a random spot on Charlie’s palm.
“Um, yes. He was.”
“My poor young man, I do not see this very often, but I must tell you the truth. There is no love in your past…or your future.”
“Wow. Thanks. This has been super helpful then.” Charlie tries to pull his hands back, but she grips them tightly.
“There is someone, though. Someone you…pine for?”
“No. No there is not.”
“Your mouth can lie but your palms do not. Who is Nick?”
Charlie sputters and coughs. “Excuse me? Oh my God, did Elle put you up to this? Or no…it was fucking Darcy, right?”
The fortune teller releases his hands and begins shuffling around behind her. Charlie hears the clinking of glass bottles for a minute or two before she turns back around, a small piece of paper in her hand. He sees a thick smear of something dark and purple on it before she folds it in half and offers it to him.
“Love Potion #9,” she says solemnly. “Just a tiny drop will do. Share it with your Nick.”
A real psychic would know that there is literally no alternative universe in which I would potentially poison my coworker – my very STRAIGHT coworker – with random purple goo of unknown origin or provenance, Charlie thinks to himself. But since he’d really like to go home, he nods and accepts the paper.
“Well???” The girls all ask once he emerges from the back room. He rolls his eyes.
“Look, you had your fun. Nice try with the Nick thing,” Charlie says sarcastically. “Thanks for dragging me out, though, but I really need to get home.”
“Wait, what Nick thing ?” He hears Darcy ask, but he’s already out the door.
Back at his flat, Charlie is greeted by his little black cat, Sapphie, who circles his legs and meows for her food. He gives her pets and fills her bowl, then retrieves his wallet and phone from his coat pockets – along with the scrap of paper.
He laughs, shakes his head, and tosses it in the trash bin.
He sighs, grabs his laptop to get a little work on his latest research project done, and plops down on the couch. He’s sound asleep in no time…
…and jolted awake by a terrible cacophony of howls and hisses outside the window. He shuffles off the couch and peeks through the blinds and it’s…cats. Dozens and dozens of cats. They’re circling and yowling, backs arched, tails puffed – the noise volume is unreal.
When Charlie opens his window a few inches and yells “Shoo,” this only seems to send the horde into even more of a frenzy and they surge closer to his building and window.
He slams the window in a bit of a fright and backs away. He looks around for his own cat, wondering if she’s also gone possessed by…whatever is happening outside.
Instead, he finds her cowering and mewling behind the trash bin in the kitchen, clearly frightened by the aggressive noises. He picks her up and attempts to soothe her when he sees it: The paper from the fortune teller is on the floor. He looks at Sapphie and sure enough, there’s a touch of the purple substance still clinging to the fur around her mouth.
Now, Charlie is smart. Charlie is very smart. Charlie has, on multiple occasions, been called “unbelievably smart.” But now he’s completely at a loss. So he does the only thing he can think of.
“Nick? I’m so sorry to call so late.”
“Ch-Charlie?” asks the bleary (and husky and oh God so sexy) voice on the other end. “Is everything okay? What’s that awful racket in the background?”
“I...don’t really know, to be honest. My cat got into…something…and it seems to have triggered some extremely aggressive and aberrant behavior in every other cat in the neighborhood. And possibly the next neighborhood over. I know your expertise is in entomology but I’m sure you took more animal behavioral science courses in uni than I did and I…”
“Okay, okay, slow down, Char.”
Char???
“Do you know what your cat ingested?”
“Well, I have it, but I don’t actually know what it is. My friends dragged me to some budget psychic earlier this evening? Somewhere down on 34th and Vine? And she gave me this…stuff…and she called it a love potion but of course I assumed it was bullshit and tossed it but then Sapphie ate some and…”
Nick groans. “Well, of course it’s bullshit, but it could absolutely be toxic bullshit! Charlie, you’re a biochemist, you know better than to leave unknown substances lying around where a pet could get into them!”
“You’re right! You’re right. I know you’re right.” Charlie bites his lip, near tears. “So what should I do? Take her to vet? I’m not sure it’s safe to even take her outside right now – they’re all acting like she’s in heat!”
“Charlie.”
“She’s NOT, you idiot! I’m not that irresponsible. She was spayed when she was six months old.”
“This is so strange,” Charlie can practically hear Nick thinking through the phone. “And interesting. I wonder if..”
And as quickly as it began, it’s over. The howling and hissing from outside falls quiet, and Charlie peers out the window to see the cats all casually dispersing or sitting down to groom themselves.
“It all just…stopped,” he whispers. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“Meet me at the lab,” Nick orders. “Bring Sapphie and the…whatever it is. The so-called love potion.”
“Well, obviously Sapphie is a completely different species than my usual study subjects, but as far as I can tell she is perfectly healthy and unharmed.”
Charlie breathes a sigh of relief. And then a second, slightly swoonier sigh at the sight of Nick in his lab coat and glasses, fussing over his little cat, looking more like a fit rugby lad than a scientist.
“Any progress on your side of things?” Nick gestures to the table in front of Charlie, where he’s attempting to analyze the strange purple substance.
“Well, yes and no,” Charlie frowns. “I don’t want to bore you with a lot of very dubious-sounding pseudoscience here, but it appears that when the fortune teller referred to it as a love potion , that might actually be a fair description. Although the actual effects seem to be more…carnal than romantic.”
“So you’re saying when Sapphie ingested it, it triggered the…ahem…mating instincts of the other cats?”
“Possibly. But without further testing I can’t possibly say for sure.”
“I have some beetles?”
“Hmm, nothing,” Nick observes, staring into his beetle tank. “I wonder if its effects are limited to mammals?”
Sensing they’re getting into an ethical gray area of scientific experimentation; Charlie shakes his head. “Thanks for meeting me and for checking Sapphie, but I’m not comfortable just dosing lab animals willy-nilly with this stuff.”
“Me neither!” Nick jumps to assure Charlie, looking guilty. “Sorry, I let my curiosity get ahead of me, I suppose. I mean, can you imagine ? Like if it really worked?”
“Yeah,” Charlie says quietly. “Imagine that.”
They both stare down at the last drops of purple on the paper.
There is no love in your past…or your future.
Charlie slowly reaches out and taps the sticky substance with his index finger.
Just a tiny drop will do.
He brings his finger to his lips, and licks. It tastes oddly like bubblegum.
Share it with your Nick .
He repeats the motion, and lifts his finger to Nick’s lips.
Nick swallows hard, then hesitantly sticks his tongue out and licks Charlie’s finger.
They stand there, frozen, not sure what to expect.
After a minute, they both burst out laughing.
“I don’t know what I was expecting!”
“I can’t believe I almost fell for that!”
“You really did, you…”
“I...”
“Um…”
The two men stare at each other, unsure if they’re imagining the sudden shift. Nick stares at Charlie with darkening pupils and bites his lower lip. Charlie feels his face flush and his breathing go shallow, and suddenly he is overwhelmingly aware of the fact that if he doesn’t fuck Nick Nelson within the next few minutes he will probably – no, he will 100% for-sure absolutely – DIE.
A very un-Charlie like growl comes out of his mouth as he grabs the lapels of Nick’s lab coat and pulls him in for a kiss. His brain manages to clock that Nick is responding with similar urgency and enthusiasm while pulling Charlie’s shirt out of the waistband of his trousers.
“Nick?” he gasps into his lips. “I want you. So badly.”
“YES,” Nick pants, before moving his mouth to attack Charlie’s neck. “FUCK. Just…YES.”
They both tug each other out of their lab coats and shirts. Their glasses clack together a few times before Nick pulls both pairs off and tosses them aside while Charlie focuses on undoing Nick’s belt. They continue to kiss and discard their clothes as Nick guides Charlie backwards through the lab to an empty table in the corner. Nick grabs Charlie’s ass and lifts him onto it, then yanks his trousers and pants fully off.
“FUCK that’s cold!” Charlie yelps when his bare ass hits the cold metal surface. Nick responds by wrapping his arms around Charlie to pick him up again, this time slamming him into the nearest wall while kissing and sucking along his collarbone. Charlie wraps his legs around Nick’s waist and pulls their naked hips flush together. Nick moans and ruts up against him, moving his hands back down to manhandle Charlie’s ass cheeks.
After a few vigorous thrusts against Charlie’s throbbing erection, Nick puts him down and drops to his knees. He looks up at Charlie with a wild, hungry expression – an expression that Charlie has occasionally allowed himself to imagine while lying in bed at night, alone.
“Can I suck your cock, Charlie?” Nick pants. “Please?”
“Oh my God, yes. Yes please,” Charlie stammers, slightly annoyed that the potion is not improving his awkward sex banter. “I mean, um, suck my cock. Nick. Immediately.”
Nick licks up his shaft and Charlie’s head hits the wall. He grabs Nick’s hair with one hand and puts the other on Nick’s broad shoulder to support his shaking frame. He tosses his head back and curses at the lab’s blinding overhead lighting. Nick’s head is bobbing in earnest now, alternating between tongue and suction around Charlie’s tip while one hand firmly pumps the base and the other explores, well, everything further south.
If we weren’t under the influence of some mind-bending hallucinogens at the moment, I’d swear this man has sucked a cock or two in his life before.
Charlie looks down and Nick is staring up at him and has the audacity to moan around Charlie’s cock when they make eye contact. He sees Nick’s hand slip between his own legs and Charlie is jolted with a different need. He taps Nick’s cheek.
“Off. Table. Fuck me. Hard.”
Nick makes a strangled little noise and scrambles to his feet, roughly pulling Charlie in for more kissing and groping before bending him properly over the cold table. Charlie doesn’t mind it at all this time, spreading his arms and palms wide and flat across the smooth surface while Nick adjusts the angle and position of his lower half. Charlie feels a single finger ghost against his rim, wet and cold.
Charlie jumps at the sensation and Nick leans over to whisper in his ear as he works his finger inside. “Don’t worry, it’s my work lube. Totally safe for humans and for…”
“Nicholas Nelson if you even think about finishing that sentence, I will feed you to the feral cat army outside my flat.”
Nick huffs out a laugh and responds with a second finger, almost all at once. Charlie yelps and bucks backwards into the penetration. Nick twists his wrist and rubs against Charlie’s prostate, quickly wrapping his other arm under and across Charlie’s torso to keep him from collapsing as he whimpers and cries from the mini explosion within him.
“One more then?” Nick asks, and Charlie can hear the pleased sense of accomplishment in his voice. Charlie nods.
By the time Nick is lining up and pressing himself into Charlie, they are both shaking, gasping, and desperate. Charlie’s brain occasionally tries to cut in and remind him that this is just some primal lizard brain and body reaction to a still-unknown chemical substance, but then Nick is breathing, “Char, Char, fuck, you look…and feel so fucking good, oh my God, I’ve dreamed about this, Char,” into his ear while filling him and fucking him and…
…Charlie tells his brain to fuck off and sinks into the amazing feeling of Nick, consuming him from the inside out.
Nick grabs a handful of Charlie’s curls and gives them a sharp yank before picking up the pace of his thrusts. They both moan and attempt to stutter out how close they are, so Nick reaches around Charlie to grab and stroke him through the final glorious moments.
The noises they make as they come echo so loudly across the room Charlie swears he hears the lab equipment shaking.
“Is it…shouldn’t it have worn off by now?” Nick asks as he desperately tries to hold himself upright against the shower wall. Behind him, Charlie kneels with his back against the warm spray, his face fully buried in Nick’s ass.
Charlie pulls back and takes a breath. “I have no idea. We’re people. Not cats.”
He continues to eat Nick out before stopping again. “Do you…do you want it to wear off?”
Nick’s legs tremble at the suggestion. “NO, holy fuck. Ignore me. Please, Char, please don’t stop.”
Charlie does not stop.
They’re still at it out in the lab’s locker room, ostensibly attempting to get dressed but constantly getting in each other’s way with the ongoing need to kiss and touch and kiss some more.
They stumble out to collect poor Sapphie and scrub the lab of any evidence of the purple substance and their resulting…experiments. It takes a bit longer than it should but eventually they’re outside and tumbling into Charlie’s car without the slightest thought of going their separate ways.
The next morning, Charlie blinks at the daylight shining through his blinds. He stretches his arms up over his head and notes how…completely relaxed and peaceful he feels. His brain isn’t immediately shifting into its usual stressed-out state and to-do list overdrive. Instead, everything is quiet and warm and weirdly fuzzy around the edges.
As he brings his arms back down, he accidentally bumps the shoulder of the warm body curled up next to him.
“Hi,” Nick smiles, his brown eyes twinkling beneath a flop of bedhead.
“Hi,” Charlie smiles back, pushing Nick’s hair back before shifting closer to kiss his forehead. “Did you sleep okay?”
“Are you kidding me? Like the dead.”
“Same. I have no idea what time it is.”
Nick wraps his arms around Charlie and pulls him close to spoon.
“Don’t care what time it is.”
Charlie settles happily against Nick’s chest. “I feel like I should care. But I don’t either. I actually feel like I should be freaking out right now? Like oh my God, all that happened?”
“I’m happy it happened.”
“Me too,” Charlie sighs. “I’ve…had such a crush on you for the longest time, Nick.”
“Same. It was almost embarrassing.”
Charlie sits up and looks at Nick. “You…had a crush on me? But…you’re straight, or…you were, before…?”
Nick sits up and bursts out laughing. “Charlie, that ‘potion’ lowered our inhibitions and increased our libidos, for sure. But believe me, it did NOT have the power to change my sexuality. I am and have always been bisexual.”
Charlie blinks. “Then…why didn’t you ever say anything to me? You knew I was gay, right?”
“I did, but I also knew you were like, this proper little nerd who’s good at everything and unbelievably smart and effortlessly gorgeous…and I’m just your weird, awkward coworker who’s really into worms.”
“Oh my God!” Charlie laughs. “Why are we like this?”
“Because we’re in love,” Nick chuckles and pulls Charlie in for a kiss.
“Because of Love Potion #9,” Charlie teases. “I wonder what numbers one through eight do?”
“Should we ask to test them? You know, for science?”
“Ah yes, for science, ” Charlie laughs again, and then turns thoughtful. “And I still can’t figure out how that fortune teller knew your name.”
“She what??”