c opened his eyes to Don, standing near the door and pulling a shirt on. He was already wearing his jeans, and c found that the sleeping bags and the soft red blanket had been tucked carefully around him, so that he was still as warm as if Don were beside him. Or, he thought, smiling a little to himself as he remembered, over him, or under him.
Don straightened up, keeping his back to c and running a hand through his hair, and c felt his own smile falter. Sex with another actual person--one who liked him and wanted him to feel good, even--had been a lot like he'd thought it might be, a lot like he thought he might be remembering from sometime before, in the same wordless faceless way he remembered everything he found he knew. Hot and messy and good and something he wanted to do again just as soon as humanly possible, except...
For a little while last night, he'd thought he finally understood what was going on in Don's head: Don had been so intent when he said I never wanted to hurt you, and there had been something so defeated in his voice. c had thought that he'd finally found it, finally identified the place where Don's assessment of their situation diverged from his own. Don didn't want to hurt him, and Don thought having sex with him automatically meant hurting him. c supposed that, technically speaking, Don had a point: c was a prisoner, Don was his guard. There were ethical issues. But he'd thought they could be overcome if he could demonstrate to Don that no real harm was done.
c had miscalculated. He'd never considered that he might have the power to hurt Don until he'd tasted blood in Don's mouth, and at that moment, knowing, he'd have stopped. But Don had pulled him down and kissed him again, and c had given up on calculating anything for a little while. Then Don had said a name--not just said it, but had it ripped out of him on the verge of orgasm, dragging feelings and meanings and things c couldn't begin to analyze along with it.
It had never occurred to c--because Don had never brought it up, because c had a tendency to forget that other people had worlds bigger than a basement room--that the reason Don had resisted having sex with him might have been fidelity to some other person not present. He knew he'd have dismissed the objection as readily as he had dismissed all of Don's objections. He'd have pointed out the absence of a ring on Don's hand, or said that anyone he could bear to be separated from for this job couldn't be that important to him.
But Don had said that name like it was the most important thing in the world, and maybe that was why he'd never said it before. Maybe he hadn't wanted to hear c dismiss someone so important from consideration as easily as a hypothetical illness or supposed psychological disorder.
The whole idea made c feel all sorts of things, squishy mobile sensations in his guts that he could never lay out in rows and work through. He felt sick. He felt sorry that he'd made Don betray someone who mattered so much to him, that he'd hurt Don without knowing it, that he'd known perfectly well what he was doing--hadn't Don been furious with him? Hadn't Don said no a hundred times?--and done it anyway. He felt angry that Don hadn't told him the truth before--still hadn't told him now--and viciously glad that Don was here with him instead of somewhere else with that someone else. But when Don turned so that c could see his face from where he lay with his eyes nearly closed, sorry won out over everything. Don looked tired, worried and pale, his face shadowed with stubble. c tried to think of how to apologize, when after all Don had pulled him down for a kiss, when Don had let c take his hand and use it, when Don had pulled him close afterward and held on until long after c could tell he was asleep.
Don took a step toward the bathroom, staring at the far wall. c tightened his arms around himself like a shield in his cocoon of blankets and said, "Who's Charlie?"
Don froze: an abrupt, unnatural failure of momentum. He didn't close his eyes, didn't look toward c or away.
His hands, open at his sides, didn't twitch. c understood the feeling. He had done the same when Don had said Charlie's name last night, frozen just like that when he had thought that his momentum would drive him on and on and on without any possibility of stopping. c didn't breathe while Don didn't move, waiting to see what would follow the freeze: an explosion or a retreat, terrible fury or a silence just as cold.
He saw Don swallow, and then Don looked at him, eyebrows drawing down though his mouth twitched into and out of a small, tense smile.
"You are," Don said.
c laughed, a short incredulous sound, all surprise and release of tension and no actual amusement. c forced himself to be quiet as Don kept looking at him, not laughing back.
"Me?"
Don nodded and looked away, then back. He sighed.
"It's the radio alphabet. You know, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta... C is Charlie. It's more of a--" Don looked away again, shrugging stiffly, "a person's name, not a number. I think of you that way sometimes. I'll stop if it bugs you."
c blinked, watching Don's face. It defied reason, that he himself could be the person who mattered so much to Don, whose name had been wrenched from Don's mouth. But why would Don lie? Why shouldn't he just say there was someone else, somewhere else, or had been once, or...
"No, I... really? Me?"
Don met his eyes again and gave him a small smile, bleak but real enough to reach his eyes, making wrinkles there, where c had finally kissed him last night--something else to lose, now. c's heart squeezed tight and he couldn't breathe.
"Who else?"
Charlie. A name, a person's name like Don had said, and given to him by someone else, someone who cared. A gift, like the blanket, and maybe the trouble with choosing a name for himself had always been that names were supposed to come from other people. C is Charlie. It fit, with a progression he could trace from the name he'd given himself to the one Don had made it into.
"Charlie," he repeated slowly. "I like that. Charlie."
Don was still smiling, though he still looked tired and drawn. But he said, "Yeah. Charlie."
Don stood there holding his gaze until Charlie could feel his own eyes watering. Don blinked and then looked away, shaking his head and running his hand through his hair, and walked to the bathroom, where he'd been heading in the first place.
The tap turned on, and c found himself curling tighter automatically, hiding his face in the fleece blanket and clutching his knees. The day before crashed back down on him like a wave--the water, and Williamson, and all the things he'd said. But this morning was different from last night: he had something to lose now. He had Don, and a name, and new secrets that wouldn't stay secret long. His breath caught at the things he might be made to tell after today, his heart racing faster, water running from his eyes, and not even the pounding of his heart could drown out the sound of running water.
"Charlie? Hey, sleepyhe--hey. Charlie."
He fought the grip on his shoulder automatically and fruitlessly, bucking against the hard hand until sound penetrated his panic. "Charlie, hey, hey, it's me, it's okay, Charlie."
Don. Of course it was Don. Don had gone into the bathroom and turned on the sink tap like he'd done dozens of times before. Charlie opened his eyes and Don was looking down at him, eyes black in his pale face--but he smiled shakily when Charlie opened his eyes. "Earth to Charlie. You in there?"
It sounded familiar in Don's mouth, not new or awkward at all, and that alone could convince him that he had been "Charlie" to Don for a while now. Charlie shook his head, refocusing, and then nodded when he realized what the question had been.
"Yeah," he said. "Sorry, I'm--I'm here."
" Good," Don said, and then he tipped forward from his crouch to kneel in front of Charlie, and before Charlie knew quite what was going on, Don was hugging him tightly. There was cool air against Charlie's back, where the blanket had fallen away when he moved, striped with the warmth and pressure of Don's arms. He raised one hand to Don's shoulder and let his face fall forward onto Don's shoulder, breathing in Don's smell. Don's cheek pressed against the top of his head. Neither of them moved, breath after breath after breath, but eventually something had to give. Charlie raised his other hand--just to Don's side--but Don flinched and lifted his head.
"Okay," Don said softly. "Charlie, I hate to say this, but you need a shower."
c froze and tried to jerk away. Don's arms tightened for an instant and then Don let him go, and Charlie fell back against the wall, clenching his fists in the sleeping bags and trying not to think about the sound of water, water on his face--
"Hey," Don said, but c couldn't look. He shut his eyes, shivering, feeling the smooth confines of the tub around him again, the water creeping up, covering his face. Don's hands on him tightened, jerking him upward. He gasped for breath reflexively, and then he was pulled tight against Don's chest.
"Hey," Don said, "Charlie."
He was pushed away again just as abruptly, and the loss of contact made him open his eyes.
"Look at me," Don said. "Charlie," and Charlie had to look.
Don leaned in again and kissed his forehead, and then drew back just far enough to speak, his lips brushing Charlie's skin. "I know you don't want to go back in there, Charlie. I know."
Charlie shuddered, and Don's hands shifted from their grip on his arms, one curling around his shoulders and the other running up and down his spine. Charlie clenched his eyes shut, and tried to think of nothing but Don's hands.
"But you have to, and I will be with you, and you will be okay. As long as I'm with you, I will do everything I can to protect you. You know that, right?"
Charlie nodded a little, and Don shifted, letting his forehead rest against Charlie's. "I'll be right there," Don repeated, and then sighed against Charlie's mouth, not quite a touch. "Come on, let's get you dressed."
The TV in the living room was turned up so loudly that Don could hear it clearly from the top of the basement stairs, and that had to be a bad sign. He thought Charlie might have telegraphed the same impression, but it was hard to tell; he had been continuously tense and shivering since Don first suggested a shower, and hadn't spoken a word.
Don kept him moving because there was nothing else to do, up the stairs and through the kitchen, cataloging the dishes in the sink at a glance. The feeling of 'kids home alone' was palpable. Williamson must have gone somewhere and obviously wasn't expected back soon. If Charlie hadn't been practically catatonic, it might have been a good moment to try something, but he didn't think he could get Charlie to walk to the street at this point, let alone go running off to nowhere under fire. As it was, he had to keep steady pressure on Charlie's shoulder to get him through the doorway and into the living room.
One of the men was slouched on the couch, flipping through channels with a glazed, vacant expression. Don had never heard him speak, though he'd seen him during a dinner break or two. Randy was tall and lean, younger than most of the men--younger than Charlie, Don thought. He looked up from the TV as they entered the room, Don pushing Charlie ahead of him, and something predatory sparked in Randy's eyes.
Don didn't think, he just moved, one quick stride to bring himself level with Charlie, yanking Charlie behind him before Randy had time to so much as sit up straight. He did sit up, leaning his elbow on his knee and smirking right through Don at the spot where Charlie stood stock still under Don's hand. Don held his ground, not releasing his grip on Charlie, not smiling, not moving a muscle toward his gun or away from it. He had stared down worse than some twenty-six-year-old punk with a fifteen-second attention span and a tendency to torment the helpless. When Randy's gaze finally flicked up to meet his, Don shook his head slightly, pulled Charlie around to his far side, and walked him past the couch to the hallway.
At the bathroom doorway Charlie froze, seeming paralyzed by the equal forces of his fear of going back to the place he'd been tortured the day before and Randy's dead-eyed, malevolent presence behind them. Don gave him a full second, and then shoved him bodily across the threshold, following him in and locking the door. Charlie stumbled a stride further, catching himself on the towel bar just short of pitching headfirst into the tub. The bag of his clean clothes fell from his hand, and Don leaned past Charlie without touching him to pick it up, letting him have his moment now that they were safely inside. Charlie didn't let go of the towel bar, didn't straighten up, didn't look over.
Don turned away, setting down the bag on the sink and pulled out a towel and washcloth. He'd just bet the laundry cycle was going to get fucked, too, with Williamson gone, and made a mental note to take a couple of towels down with them. Behind him, in a low, desperate voice, Charlie said, "I can't. I can't."
Don turned back, reaching out to touch Charlie's shoulder, and Charlie didn't so much pull away from the touch as go suddenly limp, sliding down the wall to huddle on the floor, face against his knees. Don crouched beside Charlie with one hand on his back, and stared unseeingly at the chrome shine of the faucet, considering his options.
The only way he was going to get Charlie into the shower was the same way he'd gotten him into the bathroom: actually pushing him through it, every step. Don glanced toward the door, listening for a second to the continued noise of the TV--but there was exactly no reason to care what anyone else was going to think. They were already thinking it. Fuck, after last night they were right. And anyway, he needed a shower at least as much as Charlie did, and probably couldn't rely on getting his dinner break any more than he could rely on anything else running smooth.
Don squeezed Charlie's shoulder and moved to sit on the edge of the tub, unlacing his boots. He stuffed his socks into them and stood up, shrugging out of his shoulder holster and setting it down on the back of the toilet. Charlie flinched when the buckle clinked against the porcelain and finally looked up. Don watched from the corner of his eye as he unbuckled his belt, letting Charlie look without visibly looking back. Charlie was staring at him, lips slightly parted, though for once there was nothing speculative in his eyes. It somehow wasn't comforting to know that Charlie could be derailed from sex by mortal terror.
When Don laid down his belt and started to pull off his shirt, Charlie said, barely above a whisper, "Don?"
"Yeah," Don said, keeping his eyes on his hands as he thumbed open the button on his jeans and unzipped them. "I'm right here."
Charlie flinched as Don's pants slid down, and he pressed himself harder against the wall. Don kept the motion of his hands slow and steady and visible, folding his jeans and dropping them on top of his boots.
"Don," Charlie said, "I don't--I can't--what are you doing?"
Don went still, looking down at Charlie, taking the time to think it through as Charlie stared at him. Charlie worked by predicting things; he predicted by patterns; Don wasn't adhering to any of the patterns they'd established. So, no, Charlie didn't know what he was doing, and the uncertainty was scaring him as much as anything else.
"Hey," Don said, crouching to Charlie's level. "I said I'd help you. I said I'd stick with you. I meant it. That's all."
Charlie's gaze flicked from Don to the bathtub and back to Don, skipping down from his face to his body. Charlie still wasn't checking him out, as far as Don could tell--just taking in the fact of x amount of bare skin in proximity y. Don could see the moment when the pattern slotted into place.
Charlie said, "Help me," as his eyes met Don's again, with an uncertain inflection--maybe an echo, maybe a request.
Don nodded and reached for the hem of Charlie's shirt, the wet-and-dried fabric stiff and rough under his fingers, and tugged it up and off. Charlie didn't fight him and didn't quite cooperate. As soon as Don had dragged the shirt off Charlie's arms he wrapped them around himself, holding on tight.
The way Charlie sat made the jut of his collarbones more obvious, shadowed below and punctuated by the small, red mark at the spot where Charlie's neck met his left shoulder. Don let his eyes skim away from that sight, to the bruises on his chest, to the spot where his chest hair looked glued together. Don wrinkled his nose and flicked his fingertip gently against Charlie's shoulder.
"Definitely time for a shower. Come on. Up."
Charlie just blinked at him, but when Don set a hand on his shoulder, Charlie turned his face away and pushed up to his feet. Don stood with him, twisting sideways to turn on the water. Charlie shifted away in the tight space between Don and the wall, and even though his eyes were on the slowly-warming rush of water over his fingers, Don couldn't help being aware of Charlie dropping his sweatpants and kicking them aside.
All he'd have to do to really and truly distract Charlie from his brand-new bathtub phobia would be to turn his head, take a half-step in and press himself up against Charlie's body. Kiss him again. Touch him again. Don knew how now, exactly how and where and what it would feel like and the sounds Charlie would make against his mouth.
Don pressed the joint of his index finger against the hard edge of the faucet and held it there, even after the water started to steam, nearly scalding him. He couldn't think about that. It hadn't been about him, about what he wanted. He'd taken care of Charlie when Charlie needed him. That was all. Charlie didn't need that now. Charlie needed a goddamn shower, and Don needed to keep it in his pants even if he wasn't actually wearing any. He switched the shower on and slipped his jockeys off without looking at Charlie.
Don got under the spray, turning his face into it for a second, and then turned, blinking, to look at Charlie. He opened his mouth to say coming?, and then closed it without speaking, stepping back to make a space under the water. He beckoned to Charlie with his hand.
Charlie bit his lip, rocking slightly on his heels, and Don kept his eyes fixed on Charlie's face. Just his face.
Charlie nodded and followed Don into the shower. He turned his back to Don, one hand over his head as he stood under the spray so the water didn't fall on him directly. Don yanked the shower curtain shut--there would be puddles on the floor, and no one would clean them up--and Charlie scooted away from the movement of his arm, pressing closer to the shower wall. Don backed off a half-step, but it didn't help; Charlie's hands pressed flat to the tiles, and Don could see the muscles bunching in his shoulders and all down his back, a full-body cringe.
"Hey," Don said, and it was safe now, covered by the sound of the falling water. "Charlie, hey."
Charlie shook his head slightly, but that was a response, at least. Don tugged on his shoulder, turning Charlie around so they were facing each other, and then looked quickly away, grabbing soap and a cloth. Charlie wrapped his arms around himself again and stood there while Don lathered the cloth. He twitched--not away, exactly, just jumping a little--when Don touched him again, running the cloth over the hard, angular curve of his shoulder, down over the trembling-tense muscle of his biceps.
Charlie didn't move under Don's hands, but he let Don pull his arm away from his body and wash it, flinching a little when Don soaped his armpit. Charlie had always been ticklish. Don didn't let himself think about Charlie's skin under his fingers, the smell of both their bodies rising up in the steam, the slippery smoothness of soap. Maybe Charlie did need to be distracted, maybe...
Maybe Don needed to be distracted. He turned Charlie under the water, making him rinse off, and scrubbed the back of Charlie's neck and behind his ears while they were handy.
"You scared?" he said softly.
Charlie shrugged tightly, but when Don pushed his head under the water to rinse, he shuddered convulsively, slapping his hands up against the tile again, and nodded hard under Don's hand on his head.
"Yeah," Don said, letting Charlie raise his head, scrubbing at his back. Charlie shuddered again, and Don groped for words.
"It's okay to be scared. I mean." Don bit his lip hard, running the washcloth quickly over Charlie's ass. "You know, six is scared too."
Don took his hands away, and Charlie peeked back over his shoulder, then turned to rinse all by himself.
"Six?"
"Yeah, you know." Don squinted, scrubbing at his little brother's chest hair, and didn't think about what he was washing out of it, just thought about not smiling.
"Six." He traced the numeral on Charlie's shoulder, squeezing the washcloth out with his other hand. "Six is scared of seven."
He glanced up at Charlie's face. Charlie was blinking at him, completely baffled, completely focused on Don.
"You know why?" Don asked, lowering his gaze to Charlie's left arm, scrubbing at his elbow.
He saw the shake of Charlie's head from the corner of his eye, and pushed Charlie to half-turn and rinse again, so that he could speak into Charlie's ear.
"Because seven eight nine."
Charlie let out a startled bark of laughter, and even as Don grinned at him, his breath caught, because Charlie had honestly been surprised by the punch line. Charlie had never heard that joke before, not that he could remember. He was shaking his head, and when Don pressed the washcloth into his hand Charlie took it, washing up apparently on autopilot.
"That's the worst joke I've ever heard," Charlie said.
"Yeah?" Don said, stepping back, keeping the grin on his face, keeping his voice light, not thinking about how many jokes Charlie could remember having heard in his life.
"What's the difference between peanut butter and an elephant?"
Charlie turned, rinsing, but craned his head over his shoulder to keep watching Don. He was frowning in concentration, trying to figure it out, but shook his head after a few seconds.
"Elephant won't stick to the roof of your mouth," Don said, and without pausing for breath, thanking God for all those hours of stakeouts with Coop and his endless supply of stupid, stupid jokes.
"How is a duck the same as a bicycle?"
Charlie squinted at Don, now just standing still under the water, trying to make sense of the joke. Don could see him trying to reason it out, trying to extrapolate from one joke to the next.
"They both have wheels," Don said, because Charlie was never going to give up and ask him. "Except for the duck."
Charlie grinned, shaking his head, and then his eyes widened and he said, "Hey, wait, I--"
Don stopped breathing as Charlie looked away, his gaze tracking left--Don's left, subject's right, suggestive of reference to memory, may indicate truth-telling. His head turned, following his gaze, and Don couldn't look away from Charlie's profile, the bright smile in his eyes, the stark pink slash of the scar. Don was standing here, naked in the shower with his little brother, washing off last night's sex, and Charlie was remembering something. For the first time, Don wished he wouldn't. If Charlie remembered, the smile would vanish. Those eyes would turn furious, betrayed, disbelieving. Hurt, scarred. Violated. Abused. Raped. Charlie was sick, injured, traumatized. He was Don's prisoner, his charge, his responsibility. His brother. And he had--
Charlie's eyes met his suddenly, and Charlie was grinning as he said, "How can you tell that a mathematician is extroverted?"
He jumps on top of you and opens your pants, Don thought, holding his smile, holding Charlie's bright gaze, and reminding himself that Charlie had never interrogated anyone, and wouldn't know how forced his expression was.
"I don't know, how?"
Charlie's gaze slid slowly down his body, slowly back up, and Don clenched his hands against the impulse to cover himself, forcing them open again instantly. Charlie didn't seem to notice. He leaned toward Don and said, laughter barely restrained, "When he speaks to you, he looks at your shoes instead of his own."
Charlie, so far as Don knew, didn't have any shoes. Don summoned up a snort of non-laughter--like Charlie's joke just wasn't funny, any more than his own were--and offered Charlie the bar of soap.
"Wash your hair, Dr. Extrovert."
Charlie frowned a little but ducked his head, rubbing soap through his hair. Don started washing up himself, maneuvering awkwardly to get at the water around the suddenly immobile pillar of Charlie. He was staring at his own feet now. Don pushed him bodily back a step so he could get under the water himself, and Charlie said, without raising his head or slowing the mechanical motion of his hands, "Do you think so?"
Don frowned, looking down at Charlie's face, but Charlie didn't look up. "Think what?"
"Think I have a doctorate," Charlie said, and now he did look up, his eyes searching Don's.
Don stared back, then forced himself to look away, shrugging as he ran the washcloth over his own skin, not thinking of the way Charlie had spent weeks bursting with excitement after his thesis defense, filling every available writing surface with furtively scribbled repetitions of Dr. Charles Eppes.
"You know a lot of math, right? They give people degrees for that."
Charlie nodded, but his eyes turned down again, and he turned his back to Don to rinse his hair with his head ducked. So his face didn't get wet, Don realized, a split second before Charlie said, "If I'd been through a doctoral program, though--people would know who I was. They would have noticed I was missing."
Don opened his mouth and closed it, forcing himself not to say, We noticed, buddy, I promise you we noticed. The water abruptly turned icy cold, and Charlie flinched, but didn't make a sound. He wasn't surprised, Don realized, and now that he thought about it, the damn dishwasher was always on when they went back downstairs. Such a stupid, juvenile thing, but it left Charlie shivering every morning, and Charlie was so used to it he'd never said anything. Don had never even known.
"Okay," Don said. "Hurry up, let's go."
Charlie nodded, running his hands quickly through his hair to rinse it as Don scrubbed himself, gritting his teeth as he started to shiver. Don shut off the water as soon as they were both reasonably clean, and didn't look over at Charlie as they dried off. He didn't think Charlie looked at him, either.
They got dressed quickly, bumping elbows and squeezing awkwardly past each other in the tight space. Charlie brushed his teeth while Don got his holster on, and then Charlie pressed back against the sink, holding the paper bag of his things, while Don stepped past him to unlock the door.
The muffled sound of the television was suddenly loud as Don stepped into the hallway, and Don didn't allow himself to hesitate, dragging Charlie after him as they walked into the living room. Randy was still on the couch, right where they'd left him, and Don could see the moment when Randy spotted his wet hair. He didn't sit up this time, but slouched further into the sofa as a nasty light gleamed in his eyes.
Don and Charlie had made it nearly to the kitchen when he drawled, "Isn't that romantic," and punctuated his statement with a decisive change of channel, hip-hop to cable news.
Don knew even as he turned on his heel that he should have kept walking. Having turned, he had to say something, and it had to be the right thing. He met Randy's gaze, held it for a couple of beats, and then said, "I do my job. If hassling the genius was yours, you wouldn't wait until the boss was gone to do it."
Randy's lips pressed together ever so slightly, but he looked away, changing the channel with a savage jab of his thumb on the remote and a sullen mutter of, "Fag."
Don gritted his teeth and didn't say Better that than a sociopath. It occurred to him that Randy was a looser cannon than any of the others he'd met so far, and maybe he could use that--but not now, not with Charlie in the line of fire. Don turned back to Charlie, and found Charlie watching him, eyes wide and unreadable.
When Don pushed, Charlie turned and walked on into the kitchen where Sam, Jimmy, and couple of the other guys were sitting at the kitchen table. Sam was staring fixedly out the window, while the others had their heads down and their mouths diplomatically full. Charlie hesitated minutely, flinching from the massed presence, but Don pushed him on toward the stairs and said levelly, to the room at large, "Somebody get the door?"
A chair slid back as Don started down the stairs with his hand on Charlie's shoulder, but he didn't look to see who it was. Charlie went to his chalkboards as soon as Don pulled the door shut behind them, and Don stood close to it, listening to the sound of the bar and lock being put in place, watching Charlie.
He was just standing in front of the middle chalkboard on the long wall, not even holding a piece of chalk. Don leaned back against the door, waiting. It was cool through his shirt, and water was dripping down the back of his neck. He folded his arms, squeezing the holstered gun against his ribs, and stared at the back of Charlie's neck.
Charlie raised a hand to the spot, as if he felt Don's gaze, and then began running one hand through his hair, finger-combing it. It was probably just that it was wet, but it looked longer than it had when Don had first found him.
"Are you?" Charlie said, without turning around.
Don winced, but smoothed the expression off his face and said, "Am I what?"
There were at least two things Charlie might have been asking, theoretically, but mostly Don just wanted Charlie to look at him.
Charlie obliged him, turning around, still raking his fingers through his hair, as he asked, "Are you just doing your job? Did Williamson order you to?"
The worst thing about the question, Don thought, was that it was utterly matter of fact. Charlie was watching him intently, but his hands never stopped moving through his hair, and his curiosity was detached. Clinical. For an awful instant, Don was reminded of a dream he'd had, Charlie standing over him with a gun in his hand, watching him bleed out with that same calm gaze.
"No," Don said, maybe too fiercely. Charlie tilted his head, eyebrows raised. Don sighed.
"He gave me permission. I let him know I didn't want his permission. He didn't press the point. I didn't intend--"
But Don cut himself off sharply there. There was nothing more useless to say, after the fact, than I didn't mean to.
Still, Charlie nodded, seeming satisfied, and Don peeled himself off the door and went into his bag for fresh clothes and his shaving kit. When he straightened up with the razor in his hand, Charlie was watching him with a different kind of intensity, and had taken a step back, nearly up against his chalkboard. His lips moved, but no sound came out. Don didn't have to hear to know what he was trying to brace himself to ask.
"No cuffs today," Don said firmly. "But if you want a shave, I'll do it."
All at once Charlie was smiling at him, bright with relief, and somehow Don found himself smiling back.
Charlie went straight back to work when Don finished shaving him; sex--or sixteen hours away from his blackboards--seemed to have had a salutary effect on his brain. As soon as he looked at his work, he could see where he was headed, how to work the predictive algorithms, how to fit them together into an expression of the job Williamson had planned. He was vaguely conscious of the sound of Don shaving somewhere behind him, and then, three blackboards later, he looked over to find Don standing at his left side and holding out a sandwich.
Charlie blinked at him, trying to shift mental gears from mathematics to speech, but Don just smiled and took Charlie's left hand, folding his fingers around the sandwich and pushing it gently toward his mouth. Charlie smiled and took a bite, and Don turned away as he turned back to his work. Later, he looked around and found a bottle of water on his table; when he looked past it he spotted Don doing push-ups near the door, and all brain activity abruptly halted. Charlie was vaguely aware of his mouth falling open while he watched the motion of muscle in Don's arms, the steady rise and fall of his body, held in a perfect line, pivoting on his toes through fifteen degrees of arc.
Charlie counted forty-two repetitions before Don crumpled all at once, the neat lines of his body losing coherence as he drew one knee under him. His forehead and elbows sagged to the floor, the broad curve of his back moving with his quick breath. His shirt was dark with sweat down his spine, his holstered gun lay near his right hand, and Charlie abruptly turned back to his blackboard. Don hadn't thought he would look up; it wasn't fair to watch this, whatever it was.
He could still remember the taste of blood in Don's mouth. He could still feel Don's hands touching him, Don's arms holding him close. He could still feel the mark on his throat, scarcely glimpsed in the mirror as he brushed his teeth. But Don had only hugged him this morning, and been carefully chaste in the shower, quiet and businesslike on the other side of the razor. Don wasn't pulling away, but he wasn't continuing what had begun last night, either.
Charlie glanced over his shoulder to find that Don had rolled onto his back, his knees drawn up and his feet flat on the floor. His hands were behind his head, and he seemed to be staring up at the ceiling: maybe about to do sit-ups, maybe staring into space and wondering about the same things Charlie was wondering. I didn't intend, he'd said, and Charlie thought he'd meant it, if only because he'd cut himself off so abruptly. This wasn't part of some master plan. Don didn't know what they were doing either.
Charlie turned back to his blackboard again. He forced himself to consider patterns of security patrol movement, and not ask himself whether he found that comforting or not. He settled quickly back into his work, conscious of nothing but his blackboards and papers, moving back and forth between them as the expression came together. At some point he turned and Don was standing next to the card table, looking down at the box of chalk. Charlie jumped, and Don looked up with a small, sheepish smile, but didn't say anything, just looked back down at the chalk. Charlie closed the distance to the table, picking up the papers he needed, and said, "Don?"
"You mind if I borrow a board?" Don asked, nodding toward blackboard seven, the only one still entirely blank. Charlie stared at him for a moment. Sometimes it felt as if Don had always been here in this basement with him, and then sometimes he did something utterly alien, like ask if he could use a blackboard as though he sincerely believed they were Charlie's to grant or withhold.
"Sure," Charlie said, and Don seemed to hear the smile in his voice.
He looked up and smiled back, and then opened the box of chalk and extracted a stick. Charlie shook his head and went back to his work. He glanced over a little later, and Don was painstakingly drawing a grid on the board, the lines very neat and straight, the spacing even. Eight by eight: the structure of the matrix was familiar in a nagging way, just beneath the surface. Charlie turned back to his own blackboard, thinking about it.
He idly began scribbling his own sloppier matrix, trying to express the entire space of the job, stopped and scrubbed out half of it, started over. A simple matrix wouldn't do for the whole job, and he didn't have a handy way to represent a multidimensional matrix on a flat board, unless...
The next time he looked up, Don was still standing at the blackboard, and there was chalk dust smeared across the back of his jeans. He turned, and Charlie jerked his gaze up to Don's face in time to catch his quick smile.
"Hey, come here. Time for a break."
Charlie glanced back toward his board--but the vector construction was something of a tangent anyway, relevant to planning the job only on the highly conceptual level that Williamson had in the past demonstrated exactly no patience for. Better if he interrupted this line of thought, blotted it out, and got back to work on the predictive expression. Charlie dragged a finger down the edge of the matrix, allowing himself one more wistful look, and then turned his back on it and walked over to where Don was waiting for him.
Don stepped aside so that Charlie could see what he'd drawn on the board. The eight-by-eight grid was complete now, and half the resultant sixty-four squares--every other one--had been shaded gray with smeared white chalk. The others had been wiped carefully clean, so that the slate showed black. Down the left-most column, a symbol had been written in each square in white chalk: R, K, B, Q, and then an odd little heptagon, flat-bottomed with three points at the top, then B, K, R. In the second column, there was a P in every box. The arrangement was mirrored in the right-most columns, in blue chalk.
Charlie looked over at Don watching him expectantly, and when he looked back, it was a chess board in chalk, and the heptagons were crowns--for kings, of course, because the Ks were knights.
"You know how to play?" Don asked.
Charlie smiled. "White or blue? White moves first."
Don groaned. "Wait, never mind, it's over before it starts."
"No, no," Charlie said, his smile widening. "You're right, I should take a break. This is good. Maybe we should make it interesting. We could bet on it. I'll let you have white."
"Betting doesn't actually make it interesting if we both know you're going to win," Don said, but when Charlie looked over he'd picked up the white chalk.
"It could motivate you to put up a fight," Charlie offered, and Don raised his eyebrows.
Not angry, Charlie reminded himself. Not pulling away. He reached past Don to pick up the blue chalk, and said almost casually, "What do you say, I win, I get a kiss?"
Don didn't say anything, and when Charlie looked up Don was squinting at him thoughtfully. "If I win," Don said, "I'm going to make a Scrabble board. And we're going to play that."
"Scrabble," Charlie repeated, looking at the board, his voice wobbling half because Don hadn't said no, and half because... Scrabble? "I don't think I know that one."
"I'll teach you," Don said lightly, rubbed out a pawn and drew it in again two spaces forward. "It's fun, you'll love it."
Charlie frowned at the board, envisioning possible moves--his own and Don's, a dizzying profusion of potential playing out in ghost-chalk before his eyes--and then forced himself to choose one. He rubbed out his queen's pawn with his thumb and drew it in again two spaces forward, facing Don's.
"Huh," Don said. He moved the next pawn over without obvious pause for thought, and Charlie watched possibilities shift and die away. He moved to take Don's second pawn before Don's hand had even dropped to his side, and smiled briefly at Don's defeated sigh. Don brought out his bishop, and Charlie thought he could see the shape of Don's strategy, such as it was--he could see the path to his own victory, a dozen paths to his own victory, and vanishingly few to Don's. He moved his knight, smiling.
After that he was barely conscious of Don beside him, or the chalk in his hand, the slate under his fingers as he rubbed out pieces--his own, Don's--and rewrote them elsewhere. He was watching scenarios, the potential collapsing into the actual, constantly enlivened by the inexpert unpredictability of Don's moves. He had always insisted upon that to Williamson--any scenario that involved amateurs was harder to predict, harder to control--but when Don took the bait, nabbing Charlie's queen with a pawn, the trap was firmly set. Three more moves, and Charlie laughed, delighted, smearing his thumb across the white heptagon.
"Checkmate."
"Ten moves," Don muttered, and Charlie turned to look at him, half eager and half curious, to see what Don would do next. Charlie had won, but Don had never exactly agreed...
Don looked over at him for a moment, then turned to face him, squaring up, and put his hands behind his back. "Okay, Charlie, hit me."
"Um," Charlie said, off balance. He'd been confident he would win, but he hadn't quite believed that Don would concede the wager. He wasn't sure Don was conceding it, even now.
"The bet wasn't, um." Charlie hesitated, his mouth dry as he stepped across the small distance between them.
Just a kiss. He'd kissed Don before this, with less encouragement. Don held his ground, looking steadily into Charlie's eyes and giving nothing away.
Charlie licked his lips and raised his hand cautiously to the back of Don's neck, curling his fingers around the nape. Don didn't stop him, didn't resist Charlie's hesitant tug, letting Charlie draw Don's face down to his own. Charlie leaned up, pressing his mouth to Don's, tightening his fingers against Don's warm skin, and Don sighed, lips parting.
Charlie made a small noise and pushed into the kiss, tilting his head as he licked into Don's mouth. Don's lips moved lightly against his, his tongue brushing Charlie's, and Charlie shivered, heat flaring in his groin as a chill shot down in his spine. He clutched at Don's shirt for balance, leaning in, and Don moved for the first time, setting a hand flat on Charlie's chest, lifting his head just far enough to break the kiss.
"No," Don said, his voice husky, sounding as dazed as Charlie felt. "No, the bet was for one. That's it."
Charlie blinked up at Don, staring into eyes gone almost black. His mouth was still so close to Charlie's that the breath of his words brushed Charlie's lips. His palm rested against Charlie's heart. Charlie could lean into it, haul Don down by the hand on his neck, press past Don's no, forget the flimsy pretext of the bet. Take what he wanted, no matter what Don said. A million possible moves bloomed before his mind's eye, smelling like chalk. Tasting like blood.
Don closed his eyes. He let his head drop so that his forehead rested against Charlie's, and whispered, "Go on. Back to work."
Charlie took a breath--Don's breath, exhaled to him--and then one more, and then nodded and let go.
Dinner, in the form of congealed, lukewarm takeout pizza, arrived a little before nine. Don ate a couple of slices, and cleared a space to set the box down on Charlie's table, not bothering to try to invade the cloud of chalk dust around Charlie's frantically moving hand. Don settled down near the door with a comic book, and twenty minutes later, smiled when he heard Charlie's, "Ooh, pizza."
Charlie didn't speak again for the next several hours, lost in his work. Don experimented with listening at the interior walls, but the furnace was running and served as a depressingly good white-noise generator. Pizza probably meant Williamson wasn't around; the fact that somebody had remembered to feed him and Charlie meant things upstairs hadn't gone entirely off the rails. But if he didn't get a dinner break, if he never got out of this room without Charlie, his options got even more limited than they ever had been. He sat staring into space, thinking pleasant, stupid thoughts about Coop leading a charging SWAT team in here to pull them out.
Don snapped awake, still sitting on the floor, and looked first for Charlie, but found him serenely working away. He paused as Don watched, running a chalk-dusted hand through his hair and graying a wide streak of curls. Don touched his own hair idly, wondering whether he'd find it grayer the next time he looked into a mirror. His dad had been teasing him as they picked up the dishes, reached over and ruffled his hair and said, "Wait till you have kids, it'll all go gray fast enough," and then the doorbell rang and Amita had been standing there, smiling. Don tried to think of what his father's hair had looked like the last time he'd seen him, but the room had been dark.
Don shut his eyes, trying to rein himself in--his mind was wandering. He didn't usually think about this stuff. He couldn't. Don pushed to his feet and went to stand over the tangle of sleeping bags and Charlie's blanket, lying as Charlie had left it that morning. Don had considered, on and off all day, tidying it up. He could set up Charlie's cot again, move his own bedroll aside, but somehow he'd found another way to fill every minute of the last fifteen hours. Now he was exhausted, and Charlie was still up and working and showed no sign of stopping. How much could it possibly matter where either of them slept? Charlie had backed off when Don told him to. Don's hands were dirty; they weren't going to get clean if he slept four feet away. They weren't going to get clean ever. That was no reason to make Charlie sleep cold.
Don reached down and picked up one of the sleeping bags. He wrapped it around himself and lay down with his back to Charlie, leaving Charlie's sleeping bag and blanket in the space between him and the wall.
The next time he opened his eyes, the overhead lights were off and Charlie was stepping over him, digging through the covers and muttering, "I'm just going to lie down for a little--"
"It's okay," Don said. His brain was somewhere dim and warm and quiet, and he couldn't fail to reassure Charlie. "It's okay. Put your head down."
Charlie nodded, settling in, and dragged the fleece blanket up to touch it to his cheek. Don reached out, meaning to touch Charlie's hand where it held the blanket, and was asleep before he could make contact.
The next day Don made him take another break for chess; this time Charlie wagered a hug against Don's continued threat of Scrabble. Don looked startled when he said it, but also, Charlie thought, pleased. The game lasted twelve moves this time, and when it was over Don didn't stand back, but heaved an exaggerated sigh and grabbed Charlie's shoulder, pulling him close.
Charlie let his cheek rest against Don's shoulder as he was held tight and close, and as the hug went on he tried to calculate an equivalence to kisses in area of skin-surface contact, multiplied by duration, and divided by absence of overt sexuality. But then Don squeezed him tighter, straining his ribs, and made a low humming sound in his throat, and Charlie realized Don was happy. All further calculations were suddenly rendered irrelevant.
The day after that, Charlie decided on his strategy, and made his wager accordingly: if he won, the next day they would play two games of chess. Don gave him a skeptical look, but accepted the bet, and Charlie won handily in eleven moves, and then went back to his work.
The next morning he woke up cuddled close to Don. Don murmured in his ear, "You know, some stuff you don't have to win from me."
Charlie smiled and said, "I'm enjoying the challenge."
Don laughed rustily, and squeezed him a little before they got up.
They agreed to hold the chess games back-to-back, allowing Charlie to work straight through the day. He was vaguely conscious of eating lunch--he licked the fingers of the wrong hand at one point, and got a mouthful of chalk--but then there was nothing but the expressions unfolding under his hands, coming together in chalk and slate. Then there was a hand on his shoulder, startling him out of his work, and Don said, "Heads up," in his ear. He turned under Don's hand as the door opened, and Williamson smiled at him from the doorway.
Don squeezed his shoulder and then stepped away, and c didn't move until he heard the door close, and he was alone with Williamson.
"You've been busy," Williamson said.
c looked around his boards, gauging his progress since the last time Williamson had seen them. Since before Williamson had taken him up to the bathroom.
"Yes," c said, and his voice shook.
He clenched his hand on his chalk and stood still, near his board. A headache started to bloom beside his left eye, and he carefully did not reach up and rub at the spot. Williamson's gaze shifted from the boards to the single heap of sleeping bags near the wall, one pillow and one blanket tucked among them.
"Very busy," Williamson murmured, but this time his inflection did not require an answer.
c stood and stared at the sleeping bags, thinking of--of Mac, of all the things Williamson now knew about them. All the things he had told Williamson, and he remembered a whisper in his ear, "He already knew, or he wouldn't have asked."
But then, there were a number of things Williamson didn't know--and c knew now that Williamson had wanted to know those things, which was interesting.
"Yes," c said again, watching Williamson closely to catch the eyelid-shiver that was the only sign that he'd startled Williamson by speaking.
Williamson's gaze on him intensified. "You and Mac--you get along okay?"
"Mm," c said, as though the very idea of Williamson caring whether Know-Nothing got along with one of his employees weren't completely absurd. "I find he... supports optimal function."
He translated himself automatically, as soon as the words were out of his mouth. "He doesn't interrupt me too often."
It was true, too. And his guard's presence seemed to deter everyone else from interrupting him even when he was upstairs, though no one had made an issue of it directly since Randy, that first day.
"Not too often," Williamson said, arching an eyebrow, and c ducked his head, looking away. The flush rose in his face regardless of the fact that Williamson was nearly entirely wrong. It was all right; Williamson expected the flush. He wouldn't look past it.
"And what's this?" Williamson said, turning away. "Chess?"
"Yes," c said, "We--"
Williamson looked up at the hesitation, gaze sharp, curious. "You?"
c swallowed, hating to give this away--but then he had hated to give up his queen to a pawn, too. It had to be done. There was no choice in the matter. Still, his voice came out a ragged whisper as he said, "We bet on it. I always win."
Williamson snorted, almost a laugh--he'd made just that sound when c had confessed to watching Don sleep, and it made him sick now to hear it, made his throat go tight. He couldn't breathe, though no water covered his face.
"That's good, Know-Nothing. I'd hate to see you getting beat by my hired gun."
You've already seen me beaten by your hired gun, c thought, and remembered a kiss pressed to the last bruise remaining from that session in the garage, breath hot on the skin of his hip, the way it had made him shudder, the way it had made him need. Williamson didn't know about that.
Not yet.
"Good," Williamson said, an odd, cheerful heartiness in his voice.
He was pleased by all of this; he'd given his permission, though he hadn't bothered to make it an order. He liked it, but he didn't require it. But he cared.
c kept his gaze on the floor. He knew he was shaking; shaking was all to the good. Williamson would expect to see him shake, and as long as Williamson only saw things he expected to see, he wouldn't ask too many questions. It didn't make c feel less queasy, or less conscious of the fact that Williamson could drown him in the toilet, ten feet away, without even bothering with cuffs or a trip upstairs, if it pleased him to do so.
He heard Williamson's radio click on, and Williamson said, in a clipped, business-like tone, "Mac, I'm done here. Bring down dinner for Know-Nothing."
Faint and distant, he heard Mac's answer. "On my way."
c took a deep breath at that sound, familiar and reassuring even through the tinny quality of the radio output. He took another at the sound of the door being unbarred as Williamson's footsteps moved away from him. The door opened and he finally looked up to see Don step through the door, looking right past Williamson like he wasn't there. Their eyes met as Don came inside, and the door closed again. Williamson was gone, and Williamson had not asked him a single question about the job he was working on.
"Hey," Don said, very softly, when he was standing close beside Charlie. "Hey, how about an advance on tonight's winnings?"
Charlie looked up, frowning slightly--Don wasn't going to have any winnings tonight--but Don set a hand gently on his shoulder, exerting the very slightest pressure to draw Charlie toward him. He would let Charlie resist if he wanted to, and insist on winning the hug fairly before he took it. But Charlie had no resistance left beyond what it had taken to stay on his feet for the last several minutes. He relaxed into Don's arms, and held on until their dinners were thoroughly cold.
It took dinner, two games of chess, and a comic book, but eventually Charlie settled down and went back to work. Don sat and watched him, turning his gun over in his hands, thinking about his first unaccompanied trip upstairs in days. It had lasted less than ten minutes, but that had been enough: something was going on.
It wasn't just that Williamson was back. That had caused an obvious and total attitude adjustment among the men, but they hadn't returned to the usual steady, disciplined team. The men upstairs were like birds on a wire, and Don had been able to feel their tension even in the few minutes he'd been in the kitchen with them. They all contrived to brush their hands across their weapons more frequently than usual, talked more and louder over their food between furtive quick glances toward the windows and doors.
Something was coming. It wasn't a job going down; this wasn't an offensive kind of preparedness. These were men awaiting an assault. Don thought, wistfully, that it might be the cavalry coming--but it was far more likely to be whoever Williamson had hired him to guard against. The way Williamson ran his jobs meant a lot of people worked for him and then didn't work for him anymore; some of them were bound to know or suspect about Charlie. It wouldn't take a genius to grasp that he was valuable, and try to steal him, and what was it Charlie had said? "I hadn't factored that into my life-expectancy calculation before."
Don holstered the Sig and watched Charlie working, listening for shouts, gunshots, for heavy footsteps on the stairs, thinking about everything he still couldn't risk saying to Charlie. Don had spent one of his few minutes upstairs in the living room, looking out the window toward the road. Ten, twelve seconds at a flat-out run, if you had someone there to run to. If you had a plan.
"Hey, Charlie," he said.
Charlie stopped writing and looked over his shoulder at Don, but didn't say anything.
Don looked down at his hands, kept his voice even. "You ever think about trying to improve that life-expectancy calculation of yours?"
He glanced up as the silence stretched. Charlie met his eyes without blinking. "I'm always thinking."
Don nodded, and Charlie turned back to his board, raising his chalk to where he'd left off. Don nodded again, to Charlie's back.
"Good."
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