[ the framing of it all is just fine, really — it's easier, perhaps, to handle it like this, with something relatively easy and simple for him to focus on at first. it isn't like he can't make the connection himself; that this applies to not just this but everything, that he's been refusing to choose anything for months, that he's still been treating junpei closer to how he'd have treated crystal when he should have been treating him more like edwin.

(and there's a trickle of guilt at that thought — because there's one rather key thing separating junpei from edwin, really, the way charles loves both of them but in very different ways, and once again he's selfishly glad he doesn't have to watch his best friend be hurt over his own happiness, and — yeah. he'll cross that bridge if and when he ever comes to it.)

that soft, quiet laugh shakes him back from his thoughts, and this is junpei, asking him directly, telling him directly, and charles looks at him, then, lifts his hand to press his fingers lightly against his cheek, traces them along the side of his face like he's cradling something infinitely precious.

and then he just says, ] I wasn't kidding when I said I always wanna see you like this. Remember the dressing room? I wanted to take that yukata off you so bad. And when we got back from the park and made out against the door? Wasn't nearly all I wanted to do, then. And the other day, you were changing your shirt, and it took literally everything in me not to keep you here and make you late for work.

[ slowly, he lets his hand trail down, down the side of his neck, down his chest, until it's resting light on his hips; his other hand he moves to the dresser, pressing against the drawer containing the undershirts, keeping it shut rather efficiently.

and then, voice low and steady, eyes never once looking away from junpei's, ] Don't put on a shirt.

[ yeah, sorry dress shirts, next time... ]