Fic: Click clack goes the song (X-Men: First Class, PG-13)
title: Click clack goes the song
author: ilovetakahana
word count: approx. 3650
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]
characters: Erik Lehnsherr, Charles Xavier, Raven Darkholme, Emma Frost, Sean Cassidy, Hank McCoy, Angel Salvadore, OMC
rating: PG-13
notes: For the Charles/Erik Secret Santa Fic exchange on Tumblr. This fic is written for toodiffer2breal, for the prompt "Erik is a bartender at a bar Charles goes to every Friday. They talk a lot, or Charles talks and Erik listens, when Charles is there." and the photo set http://toodiffer2breal.tumblr.com/post/7774193427#notes [originally via ondine-nuit].
Warning for some implications of child/domestic abuse.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/.
It all begins on an overcast Tuesday afternoon.
As Erik unlocks the door to his little establishment, there are already a few people waiting outside, quiet conversations and private jokes. The tall pale blonde lady is pretending to tap her toes in impatience - but he’s got her number, and he smiles at her as soon as he steps out of the other punters’ way. “Afternoon,” he says pleasantly. “Another one of those days at work, I take it.”
The woman shakes her head and the haughty demeanor vanishes under an amused grin. “You never have any idea of what I do, barkeep.”
“Because you’ve not yet quite gotten around to telling me about it? And also, I do have a name, and I know yours, and don’t I make a point out of saying it when I’ve got a new round up for you?”
“Well, you’re the only one who calls me Miz Frost and means it,” she says. “Everyone else is too busy leering. I would so switch out this skirt for proper trousers if only I could.”
“Don’t know what’s stopping you, then.” Erik smiles and takes the hand she offers him, and he mimes brushing a kiss over her knuckles. “Won’t you come in already?”
“I’ll come in when my friend arrives,” Frost says. “He has a terrible tendency to get lost, you see, and he’ll have problems finding me.”
“He seems to be rather thoughtless, then, if he can miss someone who looks like you.”
“You are too kind to me, barkeep, and too rude to him,” she laughs. “Writers tend to get lost in their own dreams, and so it goes when you drag them out into the real world.”
“You sure you won’t need me or someone else to watch out here with you,” Erik says, and he starts to turn back into the pub, out of the cool breeze and the leaves skittering down the sidewalk.
“Oh, go on with you, thanks ever so,” Frost says, and this time her smile is a little bit warmer; there is a light dancing in her dark green eyes.
“Of course. And what does your writer friend drink?”
“I don’t know, he’ll drink anything once,” she says.
Erik shakes his head and dodges the affectionate swat she aims at his shoulder and goes back in. The redheaded kid he’s taken on to help wash glasses and man the kitchen is already taking plates out to the regulars. Sean is shaping up nicely; he cooks like he was born next to a stove and he knows how to work the taps and he basically kills everyone else at the dartboard so Erik smiles at him and shoos back to work.
He walks around and straightens out all the tables and chairs, and he goes and kicks the jukebox into whirring, note-sputtering life. A quick stop around to say hello to his regulars, and then he goes back to the bar. Glasses all in a row and ready for drinks.
He runs a sharp eye over their stock and knows he’ll have to refill some of the bottles over the weekend, and he starts tapping a list into his mobile phone when the door opens and a cold draft whistles in.
Frost looks apologetic and the other punters tease her, “Buy us a round ‘cos you’re making us freeze out here!” She throws them a two-fingered salute and everyone just laughs and the tall man in the oversized glasses raises his glass in her direction.
“Hello again,” she says as she comes up to him at the bar, and she hooks a thumb over her shoulder. “I mentioned a friend earlier, of the easily-gets-lost kind?”
“Yes?” Erik looks around Frost, at the - boy? No, he just looks like a boy, and those glasses are not helping - man stepping into the pub.
As he walks in and dusts grit off the shoulders of his oversized jacket, Erik can clearly see the lines in his face, the gray strands in his dark hair. The man is carrying some kind of squared-off case in his right hand, and he seems to handle it somewhat more carefully. Laptop, Erik thinks, or books.
“This is a nice place, Emma,” the man says.
Erik cocks his head and wonders if he’s misheard the newcomer, because that accent slid from New York to Oxford to - heaven help him because he knows this accent - Irish in just half a dozen words. It could have come from anywhere in the world, honestly.
“You’d better remember it for when you get lost in this area of town. What is wrong with you, Charles, you’ve already been here a year and you still need precise and detailed directions to get to my workplace?”
“It’s not my fault I’ve spent the better part of the year indoors, or writing,” Charles protests. “I’m just happy the muses haven’t left me yet.”
“Well, when they do, you ought to know where to go and console yourself,” Frost says, and she sticks out her tongue at her companion as they take seats at the very corner of the bar, with Emma on the last chair in the main section and Charles taking up most of the short space next to the entrance leading into the prep area and the kitchen.
“You’re lucky this place is so new that no one has claimed the place next to the lady yet,” Erik says to the man. He’s smiling; he’s amused by the friends’ banter. He’s already drawing Emma’s usual: “Half pint of the house brew for you, Miz Frost.”
“Mmm, thank you, barkeep,” she says. “And yes, a round to the fools in the corner table because I’m apparently living up to my name.”
“Oi,” comes a shout from the near end of the barroom, and Frost laughs and and looks over her shoulder, waves at the table of mismatched friends.
Which leaves Erik staring at the man who’s peeling off his peacoat to reveal a shapeless blue cardigan; the man with the rimless eyeglasses sliding down his nose. “What do you usually get when you’re down the pub, then?”
“Well, normally, I don’t because I never stay long enough to be a regular anywhere,” Charles says, pushing up his specs and lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
Erik raises an eyebrow. “And here I thought literary people preferred to set down roots.”
“Only the ones you see in coffee shops.”
Erik laughs and shakes his head, and he extends his hand over the bar. “Your friend calls me barkeep, but since I already heard your name you might as well have mine. Erik Lehnsherr.”
“Charles Xavier,” is the pleasant response in that dizzying accent. He has a firm hand, dry and callused, as though from pens and whatever it is he’s carrying around with him. “I know that you call Emma by her last name at all times and I am warning you now, you give me the same treatment and I will ignore you. Mr Xavier was my father. I am Charles.”
Erik shrugs. “All right, Charles. Now what can I get you?”
Frost rolls her eyes and smirks into her half pint.
“Irish coffee, extra cream,” Charles says.
“If I put any more cream into the Irish coffees we make around here, I’d have to start calling it something else,” Erik jokes as he starts up the coffee maker.
“If you want to do that, you ought to know I’m good with thinking up names. Kind of a necessary part of the profession, you see,” Charles says, and then there is a heavy-sounding clunk on the bar: the case Charles has been carrying.
Erik presents him with his Irish coffee, squints at what look like the faded remains of stamps and packaging markings on the sides of the case, and then: “Do I want to know what that is?”
“Not here,” Charles says with a little smirk. “Later, perhaps. I’m starting to think I’m going to have a little trouble working here, if you’re going to be coming and going.”
“The troubles of being a barkeep,” Erik jokes.
“Ex-act-ly, pre-cise-ly,” Charles says, rolling out the sounds theatrically. “Forgive me the random Jane Eyre allusion. Another one of the hazards of knowing someone like me.”
“As lovely as this is,” and Erik smiles and looks over to Frost, who is running her elegant fingers over the rim of her glass, “I’ve got to be going home. Charles?”
“I’ll stay and write,” is the answer - but not before he slides off his stool.
Erik watches as Charles walks Emma out.
Someone whistles next to him as Charles grins and comes back for his case, as he goes to one of the unoccupied tables near the door and sets the item down on top of it, and pushes his glasses up again. “He’s not carrying something important around in there, is he?” Sean drawls. “‘Cos this isn’t exactly the poshest neighborhood in town.”
Erik shrugs. “I have no idea.” And then: “Oh, thanks - when did you have the time to cook, again?”
“I’m not crazy busy in there, am I.” Lopsided grin. And then Sean smacks him companionably on his shoulder. “Before long I’m sure I’ll be quite regretting saying that.”
Erik laughs and takes an appreciative sniff of his plate. Fish and chips and mushy peas. He’s such a stereotype; they both are, and it makes him laugh. “Let’s hope so.”
///
Naturally, it’s only at the end of the night that Erik finds out what Charles has been carrying around; he’s been busy shuttling beers around to the regulars and to the newcomers and to two tables full of rather polite and well-mannered tourists, and there’s such a din in the pub that he’s long since lost track of the jukebox and whatever it is the thing’s playing now.
The clock shows twenty past the hour when there’s a sudden lull in the bar - it’s like all the conversations have suddenly paused at the same time - and the only sound Erik can hear is a steady click-clack rhythm.
Hank looks over his shoulder while he’s claiming his table’s next round - and Erik follows him as he zeroes in on the man near the door. A soft ting and then a flash of white, a whipping motion, and it takes him a moment to process what Charles is doing.
“Typewriter? Seriously?” Hank says, and he sounds delighted and he’s still looking at Charles even as he carries off the tray of assorted ales.
Erik’s been around a few writers - his last boyfriend had been forever muttering about influences and steampunk and cyberpunk and the differences thereof - and even that one had been working almost entirely on laptop. He’s known a couple of creative people who filled their pockets with pens and notebooks.
But this, this is a genuine throwback to bygone days and even as the conversations rise to a roar once again, Erik thinks he can still hear the steady click-clack of the man at his typewriter, and he envies him for a moment, surely lost in his work and happy enough in the pub to keep going.
///
The next day, and the next, Charles shows up, and he quickly establishes a routine. He drinks with Frost at the bar until it’s time for her to go. After seeing her out the door, he asks for a second Irish coffee, and then he moves to the table he’s claimed for his own, unpacking the typewriter and several pages of manuscript.
He’s one of Erik’s regulars after a week; Hank is talking to him after ten days, and at some point even Sean comes out of the kitchen to watch him over his shoulder as he works. Amazingly, he shows no signs of telling them off; Charles looks up from his work with a smile whenever someone slides into the chair opposite his, and he listens to them for however long they decide to talk, and the smile on his face is militantly sunny and sincere.
It takes Erik another week before he can go and sit with Charles; there’s some kind of big concert series going on somewhere else and his regulars have deserted him for whoever’s headlining, so Erik breathes a sigh of profound relief and he locks the door, flips the sign to CLOSED and goes and sits down at the table next to Charles’s.
“Is this some kind of lock-in?” Charles murmurs, not looking up from whatever it is he’s seeing beyond the paper. Click-clack, click-clack. An amused smile. “I should have tipped in some money so I could still get something to - well, it’ll have to be something to drink since I don’t even know if the kitchen’s open.”
“Oi, I resent the implications of that statement,” Erik jokes. “What makes you think I can’t cook?” He gets up and turns his chair around and sits back down. He puts his pack of cigarettes and an ashtray on Charles’s table. “You mind?”
“Not at all - I was going to ask for one, actually,” Charles says as he smiles up at Erik. “I was wondering when you were going to get around to talking to me. It seems like I’ve met everyone else here except you.”
“Been busy,” Erik laughs. “Ever since Miz Frost brought you here it feels like we’ve been up to our ears all day every day.”
“Am I a lucky charm, then? You should be thanking me.” Charles is reaching for the cigarettes; he taps one out and sticks it between his lips and the sparking flame from the lighter catches the ink stains on his fingers, and he leans back in his chair and sighs out a breath. “God, I’m not supposed to be doing this.”
Erik decides to be difficult as he lights up. “Smoking or drinking or writing?”
He gets an amused smile. “Touché,” Charles laughs. “Raven - that would be my sister, who is currently backpacking all over the continent or she would be here, too - would say all of the above. I’d be a little more reserved in my own self-judgment, perhaps.”
He watches with interest as Charles finishes off his cigarette and stubs it out in the ashtray, as he steeples his fingers over his stomach. “At this point,” Charles says in that very strange accent of his, “I’d ask you to settle in for a story - but I’ve told this story several times and I’ve kind of gotten it down to just a few sentences. Not much to tell, if I was being honest - and by the way, I am a writer, and I probably am lying through my teeth half the time.”
“I kind of know the feeling,” Erik says. He grins when Charles raises his eyebrows at him. “Had an ex who was a writer. I may know shit about your specific kind of writing, but I know about writing in general.”
“So you know we’re all the same, then: fools and liars and children,” Charles says, and he snickers as he drains the dregs of his drink. “Do I even have to tell you the story at all?”
“Maybe,” Erik hedges, jokingly. “As for my ex - I didn’t really like his work; it tended to go over my head, and yet I keep buying his books out of fear he’s written me in as some kind of asshole character. Or that he’ll introduce me as the hero and then kill me off ten pages before The End. I have all these ideas, you know.”
That gets him a big laugh. “Do you want a promise of some kind from me that I won’t do the same?”
“At this point I don’t really care - I mean, who knows, I might actually know the regulars a little better after you write about them, if you decide to write about them. This place is so new, we’ve barely scuffed up the floorboards at all - and as you said, I’m usually at the bar, working; I’ve not quite gotten around to talking people up yet.”
“New or not, it’s a nice place,” Charles says as he gets up and stretches. “And I’m not just saying that so you won’t kick me out.” He links his hands together behind his back, and begins to pace; his quick steps take him to the bar and then back to their chairs. “Well, as I said, the story. Easily told and maybe forgettable.” He takes another cigarette and lights it and he intersperses deep drags with the words. “I’m surprised you haven’t asked me about my accent yet.”
“I tried asking Miz Frost, but she said no,” Erik says, grinning again.
Charles scoffs. “That woman will be the death of me. If not Raven, first. They are the two most important people in my life - Raven, as I said, my sister and my family; and Emma, who has been putting up with me since we were in school together and I really ought to be nominating her for a sainthood, except that I can’t because then she’d think of a way to dismember me. It was Raven who told me that I should tell the world about the stories that I told her when we were children; and it was Emma who first told me that I was good enough to be published. I’ve been traveling ever since, hence my strange way of speaking - you will have to forgive me if my accent tends to travel all over the bloody continent for starters. Writing. Mostly travel books, which is why I don’t have a local; and now I’m working on a novel.”
“On a typewriter,” Erik says, gesturing at the machine. “When everyone in the world is fretting about not having enough space on a data drive; hell, the damn jukebox has my tunes on it and that only because I wasn’t up to listening to Sean’s all the time. We swap out our data keys every few days.”
“How I’d love to have one of those. But I lose things easily, and I’ve been all sorts of places without Internet access. The sorts of places where everyone writes by hand - but I can’t do that, not and risk further injury....” Charles trails off, and for the first time in their very short acquaintance that smile actually slides off his face and Erik can’t help but feel alarmed.
It is also the first time he’s had to look at Charles’s hands and - he feels cold, suddenly. Tell-tale marks and scars and busted knuckles. The scars are old and faded, but there is a tension in the other man, a certain coil of suspended energy in those shoulders.
And now that Erik looks a little more closely, he can see the scars on that face as well - the scars he’d missed because Charles smiles and laughs and dreams with his eyes wide open while he’s writing, brightly enough that everyone only sees those parts of him, and not the thin line of pale skin slashed into his eyebrow, or the ghosts of old cuts and bruises around his nose.
Erik’s about to say something about it when Charles seems to shake himself back to life. Charles’s blue eyes sweep to him, and Erik wonders what Charles sees because the next thing that happens is Charles flashing him a small, sad smile - and he drops back into his chair with a heavy sigh. “Is this the part where I tell you about the things that I leave out of my story?”
“What makes you think you have to tell me anything,” Erik asks, startled. “Isn’t that the sort of thing you ask people to do? Isn’t that how you get your characters?”
“Barkeep,” Charles says. “Isn’t that kind of in your job description?”
“You tell me,” Erik says, easily. “Since you seem to have taken over that bit rather well. Don’t think I haven’t missed it.”
Charles blushes. “Now I know you’re going to kick me out of here for sure.”
“Stop thinking about that,” Erik says, and he gets to his feet, leaves the ashtray and the pack and the lighter behind. “Keep on writing, if you want, or come to the bar and keep me company because I might as well take inventory for this week. This place happens to be yours today, and you shouldn’t waste the chance to put down roots, if only for a little while.”
“That - that’s very kind of you.”
Erik shrugs one shoulder at him. Turning away is an effort, because he sees Charles the writer and Charles the man, and the scars that tell his story. Because Erik sees himself, reflected in those blue eyes, and he wonders what Charles sees when he looks at him, at Erik Lehnsherr.
He hopes he’ll see the typewriter on that table for a long time to come yet; he hopes the typewriter will give the lie to Charles’s statement, the one about roots.
Wishful thinking, Erik knows. And yet. He hopes.
author: ilovetakahana
word count: approx. 3650
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]
characters: Erik Lehnsherr, Charles Xavier, Raven Darkholme, Emma Frost, Sean Cassidy, Hank McCoy, Angel Salvadore, OMC
rating: PG-13
notes: For the Charles/Erik Secret Santa Fic exchange on Tumblr. This fic is written for toodiffer2breal, for the prompt "Erik is a bartender at a bar Charles goes to every Friday. They talk a lot, or Charles talks and Erik listens, when Charles is there." and the photo set http://toodiffer2breal.tumblr.com/post/7774193427#notes [originally via ondine-nuit].
Warning for some implications of child/domestic abuse.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/.
It all begins on an overcast Tuesday afternoon.
As Erik unlocks the door to his little establishment, there are already a few people waiting outside, quiet conversations and private jokes. The tall pale blonde lady is pretending to tap her toes in impatience - but he’s got her number, and he smiles at her as soon as he steps out of the other punters’ way. “Afternoon,” he says pleasantly. “Another one of those days at work, I take it.”
The woman shakes her head and the haughty demeanor vanishes under an amused grin. “You never have any idea of what I do, barkeep.”
“Because you’ve not yet quite gotten around to telling me about it? And also, I do have a name, and I know yours, and don’t I make a point out of saying it when I’ve got a new round up for you?”
“Well, you’re the only one who calls me Miz Frost and means it,” she says. “Everyone else is too busy leering. I would so switch out this skirt for proper trousers if only I could.”
“Don’t know what’s stopping you, then.” Erik smiles and takes the hand she offers him, and he mimes brushing a kiss over her knuckles. “Won’t you come in already?”
“I’ll come in when my friend arrives,” Frost says. “He has a terrible tendency to get lost, you see, and he’ll have problems finding me.”
“He seems to be rather thoughtless, then, if he can miss someone who looks like you.”
“You are too kind to me, barkeep, and too rude to him,” she laughs. “Writers tend to get lost in their own dreams, and so it goes when you drag them out into the real world.”
“You sure you won’t need me or someone else to watch out here with you,” Erik says, and he starts to turn back into the pub, out of the cool breeze and the leaves skittering down the sidewalk.
“Oh, go on with you, thanks ever so,” Frost says, and this time her smile is a little bit warmer; there is a light dancing in her dark green eyes.
“Of course. And what does your writer friend drink?”
“I don’t know, he’ll drink anything once,” she says.
Erik shakes his head and dodges the affectionate swat she aims at his shoulder and goes back in. The redheaded kid he’s taken on to help wash glasses and man the kitchen is already taking plates out to the regulars. Sean is shaping up nicely; he cooks like he was born next to a stove and he knows how to work the taps and he basically kills everyone else at the dartboard so Erik smiles at him and shoos back to work.
He walks around and straightens out all the tables and chairs, and he goes and kicks the jukebox into whirring, note-sputtering life. A quick stop around to say hello to his regulars, and then he goes back to the bar. Glasses all in a row and ready for drinks.
He runs a sharp eye over their stock and knows he’ll have to refill some of the bottles over the weekend, and he starts tapping a list into his mobile phone when the door opens and a cold draft whistles in.
Frost looks apologetic and the other punters tease her, “Buy us a round ‘cos you’re making us freeze out here!” She throws them a two-fingered salute and everyone just laughs and the tall man in the oversized glasses raises his glass in her direction.
“Hello again,” she says as she comes up to him at the bar, and she hooks a thumb over her shoulder. “I mentioned a friend earlier, of the easily-gets-lost kind?”
“Yes?” Erik looks around Frost, at the - boy? No, he just looks like a boy, and those glasses are not helping - man stepping into the pub.
As he walks in and dusts grit off the shoulders of his oversized jacket, Erik can clearly see the lines in his face, the gray strands in his dark hair. The man is carrying some kind of squared-off case in his right hand, and he seems to handle it somewhat more carefully. Laptop, Erik thinks, or books.
“This is a nice place, Emma,” the man says.
Erik cocks his head and wonders if he’s misheard the newcomer, because that accent slid from New York to Oxford to - heaven help him because he knows this accent - Irish in just half a dozen words. It could have come from anywhere in the world, honestly.
“You’d better remember it for when you get lost in this area of town. What is wrong with you, Charles, you’ve already been here a year and you still need precise and detailed directions to get to my workplace?”
“It’s not my fault I’ve spent the better part of the year indoors, or writing,” Charles protests. “I’m just happy the muses haven’t left me yet.”
“Well, when they do, you ought to know where to go and console yourself,” Frost says, and she sticks out her tongue at her companion as they take seats at the very corner of the bar, with Emma on the last chair in the main section and Charles taking up most of the short space next to the entrance leading into the prep area and the kitchen.
“You’re lucky this place is so new that no one has claimed the place next to the lady yet,” Erik says to the man. He’s smiling; he’s amused by the friends’ banter. He’s already drawing Emma’s usual: “Half pint of the house brew for you, Miz Frost.”
“Mmm, thank you, barkeep,” she says. “And yes, a round to the fools in the corner table because I’m apparently living up to my name.”
“Oi,” comes a shout from the near end of the barroom, and Frost laughs and and looks over her shoulder, waves at the table of mismatched friends.
Which leaves Erik staring at the man who’s peeling off his peacoat to reveal a shapeless blue cardigan; the man with the rimless eyeglasses sliding down his nose. “What do you usually get when you’re down the pub, then?”
“Well, normally, I don’t because I never stay long enough to be a regular anywhere,” Charles says, pushing up his specs and lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
Erik raises an eyebrow. “And here I thought literary people preferred to set down roots.”
“Only the ones you see in coffee shops.”
Erik laughs and shakes his head, and he extends his hand over the bar. “Your friend calls me barkeep, but since I already heard your name you might as well have mine. Erik Lehnsherr.”
“Charles Xavier,” is the pleasant response in that dizzying accent. He has a firm hand, dry and callused, as though from pens and whatever it is he’s carrying around with him. “I know that you call Emma by her last name at all times and I am warning you now, you give me the same treatment and I will ignore you. Mr Xavier was my father. I am Charles.”
Erik shrugs. “All right, Charles. Now what can I get you?”
Frost rolls her eyes and smirks into her half pint.
“Irish coffee, extra cream,” Charles says.
“If I put any more cream into the Irish coffees we make around here, I’d have to start calling it something else,” Erik jokes as he starts up the coffee maker.
“If you want to do that, you ought to know I’m good with thinking up names. Kind of a necessary part of the profession, you see,” Charles says, and then there is a heavy-sounding clunk on the bar: the case Charles has been carrying.
Erik presents him with his Irish coffee, squints at what look like the faded remains of stamps and packaging markings on the sides of the case, and then: “Do I want to know what that is?”
“Not here,” Charles says with a little smirk. “Later, perhaps. I’m starting to think I’m going to have a little trouble working here, if you’re going to be coming and going.”
“The troubles of being a barkeep,” Erik jokes.
“Ex-act-ly, pre-cise-ly,” Charles says, rolling out the sounds theatrically. “Forgive me the random Jane Eyre allusion. Another one of the hazards of knowing someone like me.”
“As lovely as this is,” and Erik smiles and looks over to Frost, who is running her elegant fingers over the rim of her glass, “I’ve got to be going home. Charles?”
“I’ll stay and write,” is the answer - but not before he slides off his stool.
Erik watches as Charles walks Emma out.
Someone whistles next to him as Charles grins and comes back for his case, as he goes to one of the unoccupied tables near the door and sets the item down on top of it, and pushes his glasses up again. “He’s not carrying something important around in there, is he?” Sean drawls. “‘Cos this isn’t exactly the poshest neighborhood in town.”
Erik shrugs. “I have no idea.” And then: “Oh, thanks - when did you have the time to cook, again?”
“I’m not crazy busy in there, am I.” Lopsided grin. And then Sean smacks him companionably on his shoulder. “Before long I’m sure I’ll be quite regretting saying that.”
Erik laughs and takes an appreciative sniff of his plate. Fish and chips and mushy peas. He’s such a stereotype; they both are, and it makes him laugh. “Let’s hope so.”
///
Naturally, it’s only at the end of the night that Erik finds out what Charles has been carrying around; he’s been busy shuttling beers around to the regulars and to the newcomers and to two tables full of rather polite and well-mannered tourists, and there’s such a din in the pub that he’s long since lost track of the jukebox and whatever it is the thing’s playing now.
The clock shows twenty past the hour when there’s a sudden lull in the bar - it’s like all the conversations have suddenly paused at the same time - and the only sound Erik can hear is a steady click-clack rhythm.
Hank looks over his shoulder while he’s claiming his table’s next round - and Erik follows him as he zeroes in on the man near the door. A soft ting and then a flash of white, a whipping motion, and it takes him a moment to process what Charles is doing.
“Typewriter? Seriously?” Hank says, and he sounds delighted and he’s still looking at Charles even as he carries off the tray of assorted ales.
Erik’s been around a few writers - his last boyfriend had been forever muttering about influences and steampunk and cyberpunk and the differences thereof - and even that one had been working almost entirely on laptop. He’s known a couple of creative people who filled their pockets with pens and notebooks.
But this, this is a genuine throwback to bygone days and even as the conversations rise to a roar once again, Erik thinks he can still hear the steady click-clack of the man at his typewriter, and he envies him for a moment, surely lost in his work and happy enough in the pub to keep going.
///
The next day, and the next, Charles shows up, and he quickly establishes a routine. He drinks with Frost at the bar until it’s time for her to go. After seeing her out the door, he asks for a second Irish coffee, and then he moves to the table he’s claimed for his own, unpacking the typewriter and several pages of manuscript.
He’s one of Erik’s regulars after a week; Hank is talking to him after ten days, and at some point even Sean comes out of the kitchen to watch him over his shoulder as he works. Amazingly, he shows no signs of telling them off; Charles looks up from his work with a smile whenever someone slides into the chair opposite his, and he listens to them for however long they decide to talk, and the smile on his face is militantly sunny and sincere.
It takes Erik another week before he can go and sit with Charles; there’s some kind of big concert series going on somewhere else and his regulars have deserted him for whoever’s headlining, so Erik breathes a sigh of profound relief and he locks the door, flips the sign to CLOSED and goes and sits down at the table next to Charles’s.
“Is this some kind of lock-in?” Charles murmurs, not looking up from whatever it is he’s seeing beyond the paper. Click-clack, click-clack. An amused smile. “I should have tipped in some money so I could still get something to - well, it’ll have to be something to drink since I don’t even know if the kitchen’s open.”
“Oi, I resent the implications of that statement,” Erik jokes. “What makes you think I can’t cook?” He gets up and turns his chair around and sits back down. He puts his pack of cigarettes and an ashtray on Charles’s table. “You mind?”
“Not at all - I was going to ask for one, actually,” Charles says as he smiles up at Erik. “I was wondering when you were going to get around to talking to me. It seems like I’ve met everyone else here except you.”
“Been busy,” Erik laughs. “Ever since Miz Frost brought you here it feels like we’ve been up to our ears all day every day.”
“Am I a lucky charm, then? You should be thanking me.” Charles is reaching for the cigarettes; he taps one out and sticks it between his lips and the sparking flame from the lighter catches the ink stains on his fingers, and he leans back in his chair and sighs out a breath. “God, I’m not supposed to be doing this.”
Erik decides to be difficult as he lights up. “Smoking or drinking or writing?”
He gets an amused smile. “Touché,” Charles laughs. “Raven - that would be my sister, who is currently backpacking all over the continent or she would be here, too - would say all of the above. I’d be a little more reserved in my own self-judgment, perhaps.”
He watches with interest as Charles finishes off his cigarette and stubs it out in the ashtray, as he steeples his fingers over his stomach. “At this point,” Charles says in that very strange accent of his, “I’d ask you to settle in for a story - but I’ve told this story several times and I’ve kind of gotten it down to just a few sentences. Not much to tell, if I was being honest - and by the way, I am a writer, and I probably am lying through my teeth half the time.”
“I kind of know the feeling,” Erik says. He grins when Charles raises his eyebrows at him. “Had an ex who was a writer. I may know shit about your specific kind of writing, but I know about writing in general.”
“So you know we’re all the same, then: fools and liars and children,” Charles says, and he snickers as he drains the dregs of his drink. “Do I even have to tell you the story at all?”
“Maybe,” Erik hedges, jokingly. “As for my ex - I didn’t really like his work; it tended to go over my head, and yet I keep buying his books out of fear he’s written me in as some kind of asshole character. Or that he’ll introduce me as the hero and then kill me off ten pages before The End. I have all these ideas, you know.”
That gets him a big laugh. “Do you want a promise of some kind from me that I won’t do the same?”
“At this point I don’t really care - I mean, who knows, I might actually know the regulars a little better after you write about them, if you decide to write about them. This place is so new, we’ve barely scuffed up the floorboards at all - and as you said, I’m usually at the bar, working; I’ve not quite gotten around to talking people up yet.”
“New or not, it’s a nice place,” Charles says as he gets up and stretches. “And I’m not just saying that so you won’t kick me out.” He links his hands together behind his back, and begins to pace; his quick steps take him to the bar and then back to their chairs. “Well, as I said, the story. Easily told and maybe forgettable.” He takes another cigarette and lights it and he intersperses deep drags with the words. “I’m surprised you haven’t asked me about my accent yet.”
“I tried asking Miz Frost, but she said no,” Erik says, grinning again.
Charles scoffs. “That woman will be the death of me. If not Raven, first. They are the two most important people in my life - Raven, as I said, my sister and my family; and Emma, who has been putting up with me since we were in school together and I really ought to be nominating her for a sainthood, except that I can’t because then she’d think of a way to dismember me. It was Raven who told me that I should tell the world about the stories that I told her when we were children; and it was Emma who first told me that I was good enough to be published. I’ve been traveling ever since, hence my strange way of speaking - you will have to forgive me if my accent tends to travel all over the bloody continent for starters. Writing. Mostly travel books, which is why I don’t have a local; and now I’m working on a novel.”
“On a typewriter,” Erik says, gesturing at the machine. “When everyone in the world is fretting about not having enough space on a data drive; hell, the damn jukebox has my tunes on it and that only because I wasn’t up to listening to Sean’s all the time. We swap out our data keys every few days.”
“How I’d love to have one of those. But I lose things easily, and I’ve been all sorts of places without Internet access. The sorts of places where everyone writes by hand - but I can’t do that, not and risk further injury....” Charles trails off, and for the first time in their very short acquaintance that smile actually slides off his face and Erik can’t help but feel alarmed.
It is also the first time he’s had to look at Charles’s hands and - he feels cold, suddenly. Tell-tale marks and scars and busted knuckles. The scars are old and faded, but there is a tension in the other man, a certain coil of suspended energy in those shoulders.
And now that Erik looks a little more closely, he can see the scars on that face as well - the scars he’d missed because Charles smiles and laughs and dreams with his eyes wide open while he’s writing, brightly enough that everyone only sees those parts of him, and not the thin line of pale skin slashed into his eyebrow, or the ghosts of old cuts and bruises around his nose.
Erik’s about to say something about it when Charles seems to shake himself back to life. Charles’s blue eyes sweep to him, and Erik wonders what Charles sees because the next thing that happens is Charles flashing him a small, sad smile - and he drops back into his chair with a heavy sigh. “Is this the part where I tell you about the things that I leave out of my story?”
“What makes you think you have to tell me anything,” Erik asks, startled. “Isn’t that the sort of thing you ask people to do? Isn’t that how you get your characters?”
“Barkeep,” Charles says. “Isn’t that kind of in your job description?”
“You tell me,” Erik says, easily. “Since you seem to have taken over that bit rather well. Don’t think I haven’t missed it.”
Charles blushes. “Now I know you’re going to kick me out of here for sure.”
“Stop thinking about that,” Erik says, and he gets to his feet, leaves the ashtray and the pack and the lighter behind. “Keep on writing, if you want, or come to the bar and keep me company because I might as well take inventory for this week. This place happens to be yours today, and you shouldn’t waste the chance to put down roots, if only for a little while.”
“That - that’s very kind of you.”
Erik shrugs one shoulder at him. Turning away is an effort, because he sees Charles the writer and Charles the man, and the scars that tell his story. Because Erik sees himself, reflected in those blue eyes, and he wonders what Charles sees when he looks at him, at Erik Lehnsherr.
He hopes he’ll see the typewriter on that table for a long time to come yet; he hopes the typewriter will give the lie to Charles’s statement, the one about roots.
Wishful thinking, Erik knows. And yet. He hopes.