[drabble] A Wilderness, First Class
For bellicosus who has complained she has no more First Class things to read. Also she demanded men being men. Ugh timeline you are inconvenient. <3
They shouldn't really have run into each other is what he thinks first. Charles was supposed to be downstairs asleep, and himself, still on Argentinian time was supposed to have free run of the house. He had been up on the roof and is fiddling idly with the lightning rods when from behind him comes, "Raven and I used to come up here all the time you know. Play the battle of Agincourt or Cowboys & Indians."
The lightning rods were the scaly grey-green of old bronze and felt utterly unremarkable. He was rather disappointed by that, never having a chance to really touch one before he had expected something more interesting. Charles looks like he never went to bed or slept in his clothes. He's wearing leather loafers and slips a bit on the bolted tin siding of the roof when he walks over, hands in his pockets, expectant, leaning over the edge to try and make out what Erik had been looking at.
They stand there for a moment before Charles starts with "Look, my mother," it comes out awkwardly and he licks his lips, "my mother married within a year of my father's death and was never really welcome in London society again. I'm sure she's still in Majorca popping sleeping pills and drinking--drinking vodka tonics for breakfast. The last time she called it was because she wanted some sort of new tanning chair from the states shipped to her hotel."
He wipes at his face with two hands, then "Christ I've just made a mess of that, haven't I. I didn't mean um--Raven you know, she--"
He cuts in before Charles can blunder around any further, "Are you saying you don't have any good memories of your mother?"
"No. Just that-that the fact that you had--time it means something. Cherish it." He turns back from the edge and leans on the parapet to light a cigarette. It's not quite dawn and it's still dark enough that Erik can't see his whole face, just the lit end flare. After a long exhale his shoulders relax and he says "It's certainly not you getting knock-kneed when your mum let's you put out her cigarette for her. Looking back in fondness is not a bad--a bad or a weak thing."
He makes a non-commital noise and takes the cigarette from him. Charles fumbles a bit when their hands touch and bumps their shoulders together. He's a little flushed and staring very hard straight ahead, and Erik wonders if that is what this is all about, if maybe he'd been down below drinking, working himself up to this. It's almost...endearing to think of Charles in his study surrounded by all his fine things and fine books pondering the right conversational foray. The cigarette smoke is light, and nothing like his roll ups.
After the war he'd lived for a month in a bombed out chateau in what had once been Austria. Clattering into a kitchen he found the time before the war: nested ceramic mixing bowls and cutlery, three soup tureens, a sugar sifter with an engraving of leaves. They were all waiting to be found, for someone's presence to again make relevant their design. In the pantry he'd eaten thick yellow cling peaches in heavy syrup, sardines in a sauce of tomato paste and olive oil tinned halfway around the world away in Monterey, California, but what he remembers most is the silence. He had been 15 years old and spent each night staring up between the blackened rafters of a once great library waiting for even the hoot of an owl.
Charles leans on him, lightly at first, and Ah there it was. He had missed it before; there was a difference in the mass of last rod on the left where the heat of the lightning had caused the bronze to melt, that subtle shift and re-alignment.
They shouldn't really have run into each other is what he thinks first. Charles was supposed to be downstairs asleep, and himself, still on Argentinian time was supposed to have free run of the house. He had been up on the roof and is fiddling idly with the lightning rods when from behind him comes, "Raven and I used to come up here all the time you know. Play the battle of Agincourt or Cowboys & Indians."
The lightning rods were the scaly grey-green of old bronze and felt utterly unremarkable. He was rather disappointed by that, never having a chance to really touch one before he had expected something more interesting. Charles looks like he never went to bed or slept in his clothes. He's wearing leather loafers and slips a bit on the bolted tin siding of the roof when he walks over, hands in his pockets, expectant, leaning over the edge to try and make out what Erik had been looking at.
They stand there for a moment before Charles starts with "Look, my mother," it comes out awkwardly and he licks his lips, "my mother married within a year of my father's death and was never really welcome in London society again. I'm sure she's still in Majorca popping sleeping pills and drinking--drinking vodka tonics for breakfast. The last time she called it was because she wanted some sort of new tanning chair from the states shipped to her hotel."
He wipes at his face with two hands, then "Christ I've just made a mess of that, haven't I. I didn't mean um--Raven you know, she--"
He cuts in before Charles can blunder around any further, "Are you saying you don't have any good memories of your mother?"
"No. Just that-that the fact that you had--time it means something. Cherish it." He turns back from the edge and leans on the parapet to light a cigarette. It's not quite dawn and it's still dark enough that Erik can't see his whole face, just the lit end flare. After a long exhale his shoulders relax and he says "It's certainly not you getting knock-kneed when your mum let's you put out her cigarette for her. Looking back in fondness is not a bad--a bad or a weak thing."
He makes a non-commital noise and takes the cigarette from him. Charles fumbles a bit when their hands touch and bumps their shoulders together. He's a little flushed and staring very hard straight ahead, and Erik wonders if that is what this is all about, if maybe he'd been down below drinking, working himself up to this. It's almost...endearing to think of Charles in his study surrounded by all his fine things and fine books pondering the right conversational foray. The cigarette smoke is light, and nothing like his roll ups.
After the war he'd lived for a month in a bombed out chateau in what had once been Austria. Clattering into a kitchen he found the time before the war: nested ceramic mixing bowls and cutlery, three soup tureens, a sugar sifter with an engraving of leaves. They were all waiting to be found, for someone's presence to again make relevant their design. In the pantry he'd eaten thick yellow cling peaches in heavy syrup, sardines in a sauce of tomato paste and olive oil tinned halfway around the world away in Monterey, California, but what he remembers most is the silence. He had been 15 years old and spent each night staring up between the blackened rafters of a once great library waiting for even the hoot of an owl.
Charles leans on him, lightly at first, and Ah there it was. He had missed it before; there was a difference in the mass of last rod on the left where the heat of the lightning had caused the bronze to melt, that subtle shift and re-alignment.