(no subject)
Christmas Tidings
Pairing: Pete/Carl
Genre: Some angst, as well as some fluff. Set about a year on in a future where Peter has managed to give up the drugs.
Wordcount: 2,850
Peter had always been rather particular about who he wrote Christmas cards to. ‘Tis the season of goodwill an’ all that, but that didn’t mean that he should write piles of the things. No, he made sure to wish a warm ‘Merry Christmas’ to everyone he met, but his cards were reserved for those who really mattered. His family of course, but that was tradition, although his father had been struck off the list until a couple of years back. As well as them, well, anyone of those people that had moved close to his heart in the previous year, be it lovers, good friends, bandmates…and of course the one person who fitted all those descriptions…or maybe none of them. After all Carl was just, well…Carl. He’d never been able to categorize the bloke, awkward bastard that he was.
He always left Carl’s card till last, he had even in the days when he still sent them and didn’t just throw them on the hearth, watching the fire burn away his words as he leant against the fireplace wearily or, if he couldn’t bear that, sticking them into his latest journal. At least then he could still kid himself on that Carl would read them…someday. Because they were always a bit special, those cards to Carlos. At least, he thought so. Used to be that they would contain a joke, a song, maybe a poem, or even an observation he’d made and thought the other might appreciate. In recent times though they tended to start as apologies, but Peter never had been good at accepting blame without casting it in equal measures, and so they all too often turned into a bitter account of the other’s sins, ripping up all that anguish and delivering it on to the page in venomous verse. Those endless accusations that kept on popping up irrepressibly whenever he tried to make contact with his old friend… ‘You ditched me soon as things got tough.”, “You’re nothing but a hypocrite.”, “I would have tried harder if it had been you.”
It didn’t matter that, truly, Peter would love to forgive, if not forget, the list of wrongs on both sides if it meant he could have his friend back. It was just that as soon as he put pen to paper, everything would come flooding back. He was like a dog pulling at stitches, seeking the momentary relief of unburdening himself, even if he did feel sick when he looked down at what he’d viciously scrawled across the page. Fucking venomous words usually, the kind that would crawl inside you and cut away at your heart. But then again, that’s what he’d always been good at wasn’t it? Wilde could have been talking about him when he’d written that ‘Each man kills the thing he loves”. God knows he couldn’t have proved that statement better if he’d tried.
And maybe that was why he didn’t send Carl his cards anymore. He seemed happy with his new, ‘Pete-free’ life, didn’t deserve to have to go through everything again. The drugs might have gone, but Peter didn’t trust himself enough to think that, if he got the one thing he desired, managed to build up Arcadia from its ruins, that he wouldn’t find some way to crumble it to the ground.
It didn’t mean that he couldn’t still continue on with this little charade however, pretend to himself that he was writing to Carlos when in actual fact he was just writing to himself. He stared at the blank inside of the card, drawing his pen across the paper to mark out the ominous beginnings of ‘I’m sorry..’ but he halted himself after ‘I’m’, knowing what that introduction would lead to. He turned the words instead into something more simple and at the same time infinitely more complex, smiling slightly at the unblemished truth of the statement, the small sentence seeming to fill up the whole page, rendering aspersions and blame irrelevant.
‘I’m still in love with you..’
There. That was all that needed to be said. He scrawled a messy Peter underneath the sentiment, although, really, would there ever be any doubt as to who it was from? He was quoting his own lyrics for christ’s sake, and also, Peter hoped that Carl would have still been able to recognise his handwriting. He could still recognise Carl’s, but then again, it was hard not to be able to when he had it permanently scrawled across his arm.
Satisfied with the inscription, he folded the card over slowly, slipping a bitten nail down the crease to flatten it before reaching for a plain white envelope. He slipped the card inside, licking the lid of the envelope and sealing it. There, no going back now. He started to address the front. No need for an address, seeing as this letter would never see the inside of a postbox, but it needed a name, to make things final.
To Mr Bar-
He paused, scratched a line through the words. Far too formal. And there was no need for formality, was there? Not when it would be read by Peter alone.
Dear Carl
That was more like it. Still not quite right though. He changed the ‘Carl’ to ‘Carlos’ and it looked better, more like it was being addressed to Pete’s Carl rather than the man that every listener of a Libertines or Dirty Pretty Things song could claim some sort of knowledge of. Lifting his pen off the paper, he pushed it away slightly, before drawing it restlessly back to him and scratching out those words, replacing them in a fluid scrawl, looking at what he’d written with a slight smile once he’d done.
My dearest Biggles
He was only happy for a second though, and within moments he was contemplating doing away with ‘My dearest’. Carl was the only Biggles, as far as he was concerned. Well, there was the original Biggles he supposed, but the name had stopped meaning anyone but Carl to him a long time ago. But if he changed it again he really would have to get a new envelope, and then he might add something to the inside of the card, something spiteful when he’d been doing so well so far at keeping all the bitterness reigned in . No, ‘My dearest Biggles’ would do fine.
Placing the pen down on the table away from his reach, he swept the card out of sight underneath the bundle of already written ones on the table just to make doubly sure that he wouldn’t make any other anxious changes. He had a feeling that this was one of the years that he would be unable to cast the card in the fire. No, it would go into his journal this year and perhaps if he died before Carl, which he had always assumed that he would, then someone going through his stuff might spot this envelope addressed to Biggles and pass it on. So at least Carl would know the truth finally. A ghost of a smile passed across Peter’s features….yeah, he’d like that to happen. Not for a while yet though, he would feel a bit cheated if he died after finally kicking the habit. Would have a kind of poetic irony that was to be appreciated though, you couldn’t deny that.
One side of his mouth turned up at that, turning into a wide, although more than slightly bewildered grin when his table was suddenly covered with dozens of brightly coloured envelopes of all different shapes and sizes. He blinked slowly, before noticing that Astile was standing there at the other side of the table beaming in joyful accomplishment.
“Finished!”
He looked at the young boy fondly, taking in the ink stains, smudges and general air of messiness he’d acquired in the time he’d taken to write his cards. He’d have to get him cleaned up before Lisa came to pick him up, she wouldn’t like the fact that her son looked like he’d been through a stationary cyclone, as she’d just shaken her head disapprovingly at last week’s excuse that it was in Astiles genes to be messy.
“You sure you’ve written all of them?” Peter asked his son with a grin, looking at the huge pile of envelopes in front of him. Maybe six was a bit young for sarcasm though, as Astile looked worried and started recounting the names of everyone he had written a card to.
“..Mary and Joe and Sarah and Ben and…”
Peter cut him off before he could decide that he’d forgotten someone. “I’m sure you’ve got them all.” He ruffled his son’s hair absentmindedly, forgetting that Astile was going through a stage when stuff like that was too babyish for him, but luckily he didn’t seem to mind now that none of his friends were here and smiled up at Peter.
“Can we post them? Can we?”
“Of course we can!” Peter confirmed happily, and Astile started to gather up his pile of cards back into his arms before Peter stopped him. “Nah, you’ll drop ‘em like that. Run along to the bathroom and wash yourself up and I’ll grab some carrier bags for them”
Astile ran off in the direction of the bathroom and Peter grabbed a couple of carrier bags from under the sink, putting Astile’s cards in one bag and his own in the other, save from the card to Carl, which he left on the table top. He then cast around for Astile’s jacket, gloves and hat, ambushing the young boy when he emerged from the bathroom looking decidedly cleaner, bundling him into the coat and sticking the hat on his head. Astile made a disappointed face.
“But can’t I wear my Santa hat?” Peter looked at him whilst tying his scarf round his neck.
“I can’t see why not. Where is it?”
“It’s in the kitchen!” Astile yelled as he ran back into the room, emerging seconds later having replaced his hat with a red Santa one, the bobble of which swung down over his gleeful face. “I brought the cards!” he pronounced proudly, holding out one of the bags to Peter but refusing to let him carry the bag full of his own brightly coloured cards, not even putting it down when he pulled his welly boots on, merely shifting it over to the opposite hand as if scared that his dad would snatch it up as soon as his back was turned. Peter just shook his head fondly, grin widening when Astile leapt to his feet, wellies on, and pronounced in the tone you would expect from an explorer setting of to the Arctic. “Right! Let’s go!”. And Pete had thought he was the one in charge here.
They set off along the road to the postbox, Astile tugging Peter along in his haste until Peter decided to run too, sweeping Astile up onto his back first and speeding through the slightly slushy snow as his son squealed in delight, the bag still clenched tightly in his little fist bouncing off Peter’s chest as he ran, skidding to a stop at the postbox and helping Astile to push bundles of cards through the slot until their bags were empty. He then chased Astile back down the street, narrowly avoiding running into an elderly lady that was dragging one of those old fashioned wicker shopping trolleys behind her. He barely glanced back as she tutted under her breath at him, more focused on catching up with Astile just in front of his door, swinging the small boy up into the air and tickling him until tears of laughter were streaming down his face.
It was hours later, wandering back into the kitchen after waving off Astile, that he noticed that Carl’s card was no longer on the table. Shit…where could it have gone? For a moment he worried that he had placed it in the carrier bag with his other cards, but no, he definitely remembered setting it aside on the table. His heart stopped for a moment. Astile had brought through the bags through…what if he’d…Oh crap..
He snatched up the phone, getting half way through typing Lisa’s number before realising that there was no way on earth that she would be back yet. Not content to just sit and wait, he searched the kitchen from top to bottom, despairing when he found no sign of the card. It wasn’t on the floor, nor in any of the cupboards, or in the fridge, despite Peter’s valiant search efforts, which included checking inside a carton of eggs and a tub of milk, which gained him nothing save the knowledge that his milk smelt as if it had gone off sometime in the Cretaceous Period. After running out of even the most unlikely places to look, he then paced nervously up and down the kitchen for another minute or so, upon which time he could wait no longer, frantically dialing Lisa’s number. The phone rang out for an age, and he was on the verge of hanging up before a breathless sounding Lisa answered.
“Hello?!”
“Oh, hi Lisa, just need to ask you something..”
The voice from the other end of the phone sounded more than slightly annoyed. “I just saw you five minutes ago Pete’. Why couldn’t you have asked then?”
“Err…only just realised. Could you ask Astile if he picked up a card from the table?”
“Does it really mat-”
“Just ask him, please.” Peter cut in, slightly harsh in his panic. Lisa sighed, but he heard her asking Astile anyway, unable to make out the reply over the phone.
“He say’s you’d left one out, yeah. He put it back in your bag for you.”
Oh no….that was no good at all. He’d actually sent Carl’s card… He went silent for a second, prompting a slightly concerned response from Lisa.
“Peter? You still there?”
He blinked, taking a deep breath, replying as if on autopilot. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks for your help. See you next week.” Only just waiting for Lisa’s “Bye.”, he hung up the phone before she could ask any further questions, sitting down heavily in an adjacent chair, head in hands. Carl was never meant to read that card, it was meant to be safe. He probably wouldn’t even want to know that Peter still cared for him in that way, it could very easily ruin the tentative friendship that they had built up over the year or so Peter had been clean, neither of them brave enough to slip back into their old closeness in case it pushed them back into their bad old ways. Or worse still….what if Annalisa read it? Oh fuck…he felt sick thinking about the possibility…This wasn’t meant to happen, it wasn’t…
But maybe he wouldn’t get it after all, Peter’s mind injected, logic finally cutting through the panic, it didn’t have a stamp, wasn’t properly addressed, and what postman is going to know who on earth ‘Biggles’ is meant to mean? He calmed down slightly at that thought, the likelihood that Carl wouldn’t get the card in which he’d bared his heart making the prospect of him actually receiving it seem not so terrible after all. After all, who said they couldn’t make it work? They were older now, he’d like to think wiser, and he couldn’t deny that his life currently had a great big Carlos-shaped hole in it. Okay…so it still probably wouldn’t be a wise idea, but if he did get it, with all the odds stacked against him, well…would be some kind of act of fate. Or an act of Astile anyway, as Peter really didn’t believe that the boy had just picked up the card because he thought Pete had left it out. No…his boy had taken quite a shine to Biggles on the times the two had met, and it had become his favourite pastime of late to ask Peter to recount the various scrapes he and Carl had got into in the good old days (although Peter made sure to keep to the more child-friendly stories….most of what had gone on at that time was not fit hearing for a six year old), listening in awe as he was told about how it felt to be standing there with your best mate playing in front of a huge crowd, giggling when he told him of when he had ‘rescued’ Carl from being a waiter, or how they’d pestered Marilyn Manson when in America. Somehow, just somehow, Pete had the niggling feeling that Astile might have spotted the name on the card and decided to make sure Carl got it. He suddenly remembered just how protective the lad had been of his bag of cards and smiled…..sneaky little so-an’-so.
Peter grinned to himself silently, happy for once to leave things to fate to decide. Who knows, perhaps Astile had, in sending that letter, given him the chance of gaining the most valuable Christmas gift possible…