Fic: Define
Title: Define
Author: alex_caligari
Characters/Pairings: Peter/Charley, vaguely
Rating: PG
Summary: Nothing's ever complicated. It is what it is, or it isn't.
Disclaimer: The puppets are still firmly attached to the strings of Dreamworks.
Author's Notes: Another Fright Night Kink Meme prompt, this time my own. A take-off of Ianto's comment about Jack: "It's not men, it's just him."
“So, how long have you been together?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” the concierge dropped her voice, “what’s your relationship?”
Peter gave him a you’re-on-your-own look and walked away to examine the meat locker. Charley’s brain seemed to have frozen.
“Uh,” he squeaked, “we’re, um, I mean, we’re not, that is, uh, it’s complicated?”
She smiled. “People only say that when they don’t want to answer the question. Nothing’s ever ‘complicated.’ It is what it is, or it isn’t. So?”
“So what?”
“Is it?”
“I don’t know what ‘it’ is.”
She sighed. “Look, I’ll make this easier for you. Are you partners?”
“Uh....”
“Work partners, I mean. Not partners in that bland, post-modern way.”
“Yeah.”
“You have each other’s back? You look out for each other?”
“I look after him more than he looks after me.” He heard Peter snort from the freezer. “But yeah.”
“Do you sleep together?”
Charley stuttered into silence again. Peter wasn’t even pretending not to listen anymore.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” she said.
“It’s not like that,” Charley blurted. Peter was watching him intently, waiting to see how he would save himself. “I mean, I’m not gay.” Charley took a breath and spoke to the woman in front of him, and tried to ignore Peter standing ten feet away. “It’s not a denial thing, alright? I know I’m not gay. I still find women attractive.”
“Bisexuals exist,” she pointed out.
“I know but...” Again, Charley stumbled. “It’s not like that.”
She gave him a level stare, obviously waiting for more.
“It’s just him,” Charley finished lamely. He saw Peter smirk and return to the freezer.
***
“It’s not love, you know.”
She had returned to the front desk that night out of habit, not really expecting guests. Peter emerged out of the shadows where he had been standing, and she relaxed her grip on the stake she had hidden. “What?”
“Charley and I. It’s not love.” He walked over and leaned on the shelf beside the desk. “And it’s not lust, either.”
“So what is it?”
He grinned. “I have no idea. Sometimes he’s like my kid brother, sometimes he’s like my caretaker, most of the time he’s my partner. Colleague, if you will. It’s the weirdest damn thing I’ve ever experienced.”
She watched him, and he felt her trying to read him. “And yet you’re together together,” she said.
Peter leered at her. “Occasionally, yes. But if he wants to chase some skirt, I’m not going to stop him. And he doesn’t stop me.”
“How often does that happen?”
“Occasionally,” he said again.
“How long has it been like this?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” he said.
“It’s my job,” she said. “I meet the client’s needs. To do that I have to know the client.”
“I’m sure you do,” he purred. “And who’s there to meet your needs?”
She stood abruptly. Putting the stake in her bag, she gathered her things and prepared to leave. “Mr. Vincent,” she said, “perhaps in your examination of the hotel you uncovered something vital. I assume you need to debrief with your partner.”
Peter stayed where he was as she walked away. “Don’t think you’d be getting in our way,” he shouted after her. “There’s nothing to be afraid of!”
***
Peter did return to the suite, several hours after his talk with the concierge. They had commandeered a room on the ground floor, the better to know when the pest returned.
“Any signs?” Charley asked from the second bed. Peter and he were almost as nocturnal as the pests they hunted.
“None,” he replied as he flopped down on his own bed. “Probably got scared off. But it’ll come back, in a few days maybe. They always do.”
Charley tapped away on his laptop for a bit before saying, “That woman, the concierge? She seems good in a corner.” At Peter’s look, he continued. “In a fight, I mean. She wasn’t freaking out or anything. She was calm. Professional.”
“You like her?” Peter asked.
Charley shrugged. “She won’t be a liability, that’s all.”
They fell into silence.
“She asked a lot of questions, didn’t she?” Peter asked.
“Yeah,” Charley said without looking up.
Peter turned his head and watched him for a moment. Charley was making a valiant effort at ignoring him. “So, what are we?” he asked finally.
“We’re us, dude,” Charley said.
“Oh.” Peter stared at the ceiling. “But what-”
“We’re partners,” Charley interrupted. “We hunt undead pests together. We save each other’s ass. We annoy the fuck out of each other. We frustrate the other by occasionally bringing home a ‘guest.’ And we occasionally relieve that frustration through slightly carnal means. That’s what it is.”
“Oh,” Peter said again. “I annoy you?”
“Shut up, Peter,” Charley said, but with a laugh.
“Well,” Peter mused, “that’s alright then.”
More silence, broken only by the tap-tap-tap of the keyboard.
“She turned you down, didn’t she?” Charley asked.
“Like a bad egg sandwich,” Peter replied. Charley smirked.
“Do you even know her name?”
“Wilma,” Peter said confidently. “No, Williams. Wilkins? Shit.” He looked at Charley with pleading eyes.
“No way,” he said. “I’m not helping you hook up with her.”
“Come on,” Peter whined. He crawled across the narrow bed. When he reached the edge, he simply stretched across the gap separating the two. He hung suspended between the beds and looked up at Charley like a lost dog. “Please?”
He gave him an incredulous look. “No.”
Peter continued to drag himself across the gap until only his feet supported him. “Please?”
“No.” But with a hint of a smile, so he was getting closer.
With less grace than he planned, Peter managed to swing his feet across on to Charley’s bed. Charley watched the display with the weariness of the amused yet exasperated. “Bet you a fiver,” Peter said once he was settled.
“So tempting,” Charley said sarcastically.
“It could be,” he said in a low voice. “Perhaps if I upped the wager?” Casually he reached up and began to rub a spot slightly higher than Charley’s right knee.
He stilled in his typing. “Are you serious?” he asked. “Are you trying to seduce me in order to help you sleep with another woman?”
Peter dropped his hand. “Maybe.”
“Go to bed, Peter,” he said. “We have hunting in the morning.” When Peter started to follow the order, Charley added, “Your bed.”
***
The next day was spent examining deserted buildings in the area. A pest could travel far in one night, but most were reluctant to stray too far from their nests. Some instinct, human or otherwise, kept them close to safety. By the time Peter and Charley were headed back to the hotel, not a single intact window remained within ten blocks.
The concierge eyed them as they walked through the lobby at dusk. “Any luck, gentlemen?” she asked.
“None yet,” Peter said, his shotgun thrown casually over his shoulder. He barely gave her a second glance.
“We’re still working on it,” Charley said, and made sure to look at her nametag. “We’ll let you know.”
Being stationed on the ground floor, there was no awkward elevator ride to trap them. Peter did his best, though. “I quite like being called a gentleman,” he said as they walked down the hallway.
“You barely looked at her,” Charley said. “Last night you couldn’t wait to jump her.”
“It’s called tempting the prey. Maybe I’ll teach it to you one day.”
“I don’t want to be taught anything by you. And you just made that up.”
“Maybe,” Peter said.
Silence joined them as Peter struggled with the key-card. Three tries and seven curses later, they were back in the room.
They paused, leaning against the door and almost against each other. “You want first watch?” Peter asked.
“Sure,” Charley replied. He settled down in his bed with the laptop while Peter unceremoniously stripped and crawled under the covers.
***
Charley was awakened several hours later. It was Peter’s watch, and he was shaking him awake. “C’mon. The pest’s back, and it’s on the move.”
That shook the last of the cobwebs from Charley’s head. He was instantly up and grabbing for his clothes. Peter stood by the door while Charley gathered his equipment. Crosses, ammunition, stakes, and two flashlights, one with a red bulb and one ultraviolet. “Where is it?” he asked quietly.
“South corridor,” he said, peering through the peephole. “Heading to the kitchens.”
“What tipped you off?”
He pointed to the laptop. “It’s raining outside. There are footprints all over the place. And the doors keep opening by themselves.”
They didn’t say anything as they stalked the pest through the halls of the hotel. When they reached the doors to the dining room, Charley took point, armed with the dual flashlights. He swept the lights over the room and ceiling, flushing out any potential hiding spots. “Not here,” he said.
Peter pointed out the wet footprints in the carpet and followed them to the large stainless steel doors of the kitchen. Looking through the porthole, he ducked down and signalled to Charley. They braced themselves on either side of the double doors and Peter counted down with his hand.
The pest looked up at them as they burst through, Peter training the shotgun on it and Charley holding the UV beam across its escape route. It was in the middle of opening the meat locker, probably to access the hidden storage compartment that Peter had found earlier. Despite the obvious threat to its life, the pest was calm and collected.
“Hello gentlemen,” the concierge said.
“Hello Willow,” Charley said.
“Willow!” Peter exclaimed. “I knew it! Sort of. I was so close.” When Charley glared at him, he said. “Nice vampire name, by the way. Suitable.”
“I take it you’re here to kill me,” she said. “Do I at least get a final request? A last meal, perhaps?”
“The only choice you get is how you go,” Charley said. “I prefer staking myself.”
“I bet you do,” she purred, looking pointedly at Peter. He grinned.
“I like this one,” he said. “She’s a bit cheeky.”
“Have you turned anyone?” Charley asked sternly.
She pouted. “No. I’m afraid I got a bit greedy.”
Peter and Charley shared a glance. It was the moment the pest needed, and she leapt towards Peter. Charley swept the UV beam up, and it neatly burned through her torso. Peter was on her in an instant plunging a wooden stake into her chest. It was over in less than a minute.
“What do we do with these?” Charley asked, pointing to the still twitching severed legs.
Peter shrugged. “Burn ‘em?”
“Gross,” Charley said as he swept the UV beam over them, reducing them to ash. As the dust settled around them, the two men stood in silence. Whatever the concierge had become, she had once been a person.
Suddenly Charley smiled. “It’s not love, huh?”
“What?”
“What you said to her, last night,” Charley said, waving in the direction of the former pest. “About us.”
Peter spluttered. “You said you couldn’t get audio through the security cameras!”
“I planted microphones, dude.” Charley shrugged. “To hear them even when we couldn’t see them. I may have forgotten to tell you.”
Peter couldn’t decide between indignation at not being told and praising the young man’s ingenuity. He tried for both. “And what did you learn from that little trick of espionage?”
Charley tilted his head, considering it. “It’s not love,” he said again.
Peter shuffled awkwardly, and busied himself with unloading his shotgun. He looked up to see Charley watching him, waiting. Peter decided to pull the same trick. Throwing the shotgun over his shoulder, he grinned. “No, it’s not. It’s just me.”
Charley half-grinned in return. “Good enough.”
Author: alex_caligari
Characters/Pairings: Peter/Charley, vaguely
Rating: PG
Summary: Nothing's ever complicated. It is what it is, or it isn't.
Disclaimer: The puppets are still firmly attached to the strings of Dreamworks.
Author's Notes: Another Fright Night Kink Meme prompt, this time my own. A take-off of Ianto's comment about Jack: "It's not men, it's just him."
“So, how long have you been together?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” the concierge dropped her voice, “what’s your relationship?”
Peter gave him a you’re-on-your-own look and walked away to examine the meat locker. Charley’s brain seemed to have frozen.
“Uh,” he squeaked, “we’re, um, I mean, we’re not, that is, uh, it’s complicated?”
She smiled. “People only say that when they don’t want to answer the question. Nothing’s ever ‘complicated.’ It is what it is, or it isn’t. So?”
“So what?”
“Is it?”
“I don’t know what ‘it’ is.”
She sighed. “Look, I’ll make this easier for you. Are you partners?”
“Uh....”
“Work partners, I mean. Not partners in that bland, post-modern way.”
“Yeah.”
“You have each other’s back? You look out for each other?”
“I look after him more than he looks after me.” He heard Peter snort from the freezer. “But yeah.”
“Do you sleep together?”
Charley stuttered into silence again. Peter wasn’t even pretending not to listen anymore.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” she said.
“It’s not like that,” Charley blurted. Peter was watching him intently, waiting to see how he would save himself. “I mean, I’m not gay.” Charley took a breath and spoke to the woman in front of him, and tried to ignore Peter standing ten feet away. “It’s not a denial thing, alright? I know I’m not gay. I still find women attractive.”
“Bisexuals exist,” she pointed out.
“I know but...” Again, Charley stumbled. “It’s not like that.”
She gave him a level stare, obviously waiting for more.
“It’s just him,” Charley finished lamely. He saw Peter smirk and return to the freezer.
***
“It’s not love, you know.”
She had returned to the front desk that night out of habit, not really expecting guests. Peter emerged out of the shadows where he had been standing, and she relaxed her grip on the stake she had hidden. “What?”
“Charley and I. It’s not love.” He walked over and leaned on the shelf beside the desk. “And it’s not lust, either.”
“So what is it?”
He grinned. “I have no idea. Sometimes he’s like my kid brother, sometimes he’s like my caretaker, most of the time he’s my partner. Colleague, if you will. It’s the weirdest damn thing I’ve ever experienced.”
She watched him, and he felt her trying to read him. “And yet you’re together together,” she said.
Peter leered at her. “Occasionally, yes. But if he wants to chase some skirt, I’m not going to stop him. And he doesn’t stop me.”
“How often does that happen?”
“Occasionally,” he said again.
“How long has it been like this?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” he said.
“It’s my job,” she said. “I meet the client’s needs. To do that I have to know the client.”
“I’m sure you do,” he purred. “And who’s there to meet your needs?”
She stood abruptly. Putting the stake in her bag, she gathered her things and prepared to leave. “Mr. Vincent,” she said, “perhaps in your examination of the hotel you uncovered something vital. I assume you need to debrief with your partner.”
Peter stayed where he was as she walked away. “Don’t think you’d be getting in our way,” he shouted after her. “There’s nothing to be afraid of!”
***
Peter did return to the suite, several hours after his talk with the concierge. They had commandeered a room on the ground floor, the better to know when the pest returned.
“Any signs?” Charley asked from the second bed. Peter and he were almost as nocturnal as the pests they hunted.
“None,” he replied as he flopped down on his own bed. “Probably got scared off. But it’ll come back, in a few days maybe. They always do.”
Charley tapped away on his laptop for a bit before saying, “That woman, the concierge? She seems good in a corner.” At Peter’s look, he continued. “In a fight, I mean. She wasn’t freaking out or anything. She was calm. Professional.”
“You like her?” Peter asked.
Charley shrugged. “She won’t be a liability, that’s all.”
They fell into silence.
“She asked a lot of questions, didn’t she?” Peter asked.
“Yeah,” Charley said without looking up.
Peter turned his head and watched him for a moment. Charley was making a valiant effort at ignoring him. “So, what are we?” he asked finally.
“We’re us, dude,” Charley said.
“Oh.” Peter stared at the ceiling. “But what-”
“We’re partners,” Charley interrupted. “We hunt undead pests together. We save each other’s ass. We annoy the fuck out of each other. We frustrate the other by occasionally bringing home a ‘guest.’ And we occasionally relieve that frustration through slightly carnal means. That’s what it is.”
“Oh,” Peter said again. “I annoy you?”
“Shut up, Peter,” Charley said, but with a laugh.
“Well,” Peter mused, “that’s alright then.”
More silence, broken only by the tap-tap-tap of the keyboard.
“She turned you down, didn’t she?” Charley asked.
“Like a bad egg sandwich,” Peter replied. Charley smirked.
“Do you even know her name?”
“Wilma,” Peter said confidently. “No, Williams. Wilkins? Shit.” He looked at Charley with pleading eyes.
“No way,” he said. “I’m not helping you hook up with her.”
“Come on,” Peter whined. He crawled across the narrow bed. When he reached the edge, he simply stretched across the gap separating the two. He hung suspended between the beds and looked up at Charley like a lost dog. “Please?”
He gave him an incredulous look. “No.”
Peter continued to drag himself across the gap until only his feet supported him. “Please?”
“No.” But with a hint of a smile, so he was getting closer.
With less grace than he planned, Peter managed to swing his feet across on to Charley’s bed. Charley watched the display with the weariness of the amused yet exasperated. “Bet you a fiver,” Peter said once he was settled.
“So tempting,” Charley said sarcastically.
“It could be,” he said in a low voice. “Perhaps if I upped the wager?” Casually he reached up and began to rub a spot slightly higher than Charley’s right knee.
He stilled in his typing. “Are you serious?” he asked. “Are you trying to seduce me in order to help you sleep with another woman?”
Peter dropped his hand. “Maybe.”
“Go to bed, Peter,” he said. “We have hunting in the morning.” When Peter started to follow the order, Charley added, “Your bed.”
***
The next day was spent examining deserted buildings in the area. A pest could travel far in one night, but most were reluctant to stray too far from their nests. Some instinct, human or otherwise, kept them close to safety. By the time Peter and Charley were headed back to the hotel, not a single intact window remained within ten blocks.
The concierge eyed them as they walked through the lobby at dusk. “Any luck, gentlemen?” she asked.
“None yet,” Peter said, his shotgun thrown casually over his shoulder. He barely gave her a second glance.
“We’re still working on it,” Charley said, and made sure to look at her nametag. “We’ll let you know.”
Being stationed on the ground floor, there was no awkward elevator ride to trap them. Peter did his best, though. “I quite like being called a gentleman,” he said as they walked down the hallway.
“You barely looked at her,” Charley said. “Last night you couldn’t wait to jump her.”
“It’s called tempting the prey. Maybe I’ll teach it to you one day.”
“I don’t want to be taught anything by you. And you just made that up.”
“Maybe,” Peter said.
Silence joined them as Peter struggled with the key-card. Three tries and seven curses later, they were back in the room.
They paused, leaning against the door and almost against each other. “You want first watch?” Peter asked.
“Sure,” Charley replied. He settled down in his bed with the laptop while Peter unceremoniously stripped and crawled under the covers.
***
Charley was awakened several hours later. It was Peter’s watch, and he was shaking him awake. “C’mon. The pest’s back, and it’s on the move.”
That shook the last of the cobwebs from Charley’s head. He was instantly up and grabbing for his clothes. Peter stood by the door while Charley gathered his equipment. Crosses, ammunition, stakes, and two flashlights, one with a red bulb and one ultraviolet. “Where is it?” he asked quietly.
“South corridor,” he said, peering through the peephole. “Heading to the kitchens.”
“What tipped you off?”
He pointed to the laptop. “It’s raining outside. There are footprints all over the place. And the doors keep opening by themselves.”
They didn’t say anything as they stalked the pest through the halls of the hotel. When they reached the doors to the dining room, Charley took point, armed with the dual flashlights. He swept the lights over the room and ceiling, flushing out any potential hiding spots. “Not here,” he said.
Peter pointed out the wet footprints in the carpet and followed them to the large stainless steel doors of the kitchen. Looking through the porthole, he ducked down and signalled to Charley. They braced themselves on either side of the double doors and Peter counted down with his hand.
The pest looked up at them as they burst through, Peter training the shotgun on it and Charley holding the UV beam across its escape route. It was in the middle of opening the meat locker, probably to access the hidden storage compartment that Peter had found earlier. Despite the obvious threat to its life, the pest was calm and collected.
“Hello gentlemen,” the concierge said.
“Hello Willow,” Charley said.
“Willow!” Peter exclaimed. “I knew it! Sort of. I was so close.” When Charley glared at him, he said. “Nice vampire name, by the way. Suitable.”
“I take it you’re here to kill me,” she said. “Do I at least get a final request? A last meal, perhaps?”
“The only choice you get is how you go,” Charley said. “I prefer staking myself.”
“I bet you do,” she purred, looking pointedly at Peter. He grinned.
“I like this one,” he said. “She’s a bit cheeky.”
“Have you turned anyone?” Charley asked sternly.
She pouted. “No. I’m afraid I got a bit greedy.”
Peter and Charley shared a glance. It was the moment the pest needed, and she leapt towards Peter. Charley swept the UV beam up, and it neatly burned through her torso. Peter was on her in an instant plunging a wooden stake into her chest. It was over in less than a minute.
“What do we do with these?” Charley asked, pointing to the still twitching severed legs.
Peter shrugged. “Burn ‘em?”
“Gross,” Charley said as he swept the UV beam over them, reducing them to ash. As the dust settled around them, the two men stood in silence. Whatever the concierge had become, she had once been a person.
Suddenly Charley smiled. “It’s not love, huh?”
“What?”
“What you said to her, last night,” Charley said, waving in the direction of the former pest. “About us.”
Peter spluttered. “You said you couldn’t get audio through the security cameras!”
“I planted microphones, dude.” Charley shrugged. “To hear them even when we couldn’t see them. I may have forgotten to tell you.”
Peter couldn’t decide between indignation at not being told and praising the young man’s ingenuity. He tried for both. “And what did you learn from that little trick of espionage?”
Charley tilted his head, considering it. “It’s not love,” he said again.
Peter shuffled awkwardly, and busied himself with unloading his shotgun. He looked up to see Charley watching him, waiting. Peter decided to pull the same trick. Throwing the shotgun over his shoulder, he grinned. “No, it’s not. It’s just me.”
Charley half-grinned in return. “Good enough.”