So, Hi...
I guess one could call me new. I've been stalking this community without joining for ages. Anyway, to make up for lost time, I have a crappy little one-shot that should at least make you all laugh at me for the time-being.
Title: Patching Things Up
Pairing: Eppescest, Don/Charlie, you know the deal
WC: 4,813
Raiting: R
Disclaimer: SO not mine, or they would've been making kissy-faces forever ago.
Warnings: Slash, Incest, Don's POV, A little splash of OOC!Don
Summary: Don knows how to sew.
Don knows how to sew.
It’s one of those things you pick up in times of necessity. Living alone helps, and now he’s perfected it without knowing. He’s not making ball-gowns, no way. But it’s good for the occasional hole in his pocket. Or, you know, if he tears a good shirt chasing some asshole who doesn’t know the meaning of "Resisting Arrest".
No big deal… He told himself when he was young, even though he knows every last one of his friends would’ve laughed themselves blue if they ever saw him with a needle and thread. But Charlie just… he just looked bad in those shirts he’d wear to death. He’d go in with a stained, four-year-old dress shirt with holes in the front pocket and three missing buttons and he wouldn’t notice. But Don did. And when night came, and Charlie finally tossed that shirt in the laundry, he’d go in and pick it out. He’d spend a half an hour each on those shirts until they at least looked half-way decent.
Charlie never noticed. Too involved with his latest mathematical formula.
When Don moved out, went to college, he had to patch up his baseball uniform practically every practice night. He must’ve tore it open a thousand times. And while the other guys were walking around in their beat up, barely-held-together uniforms, Don’s wasn’t half bad. In fact, he even learned to sew things differently, with the stitching a little smaller and closer together. Learned to only repair his clothes inside-out, so no one would see the sutures. People noticed his uniform was better looking than the others, and he told them his mom did it.
In Albuquerque he never had a problem. If he needed to sew something up, he could do it and nobody would notice. Kim didn’t even notice, which was funny, because it was something she should’ve known. Almost every shirt he ever wore with her was fixed up in some form or another. But that was done now, and he didn’t mind that she was clueless.
No, he minded that after all these years he was back in their house, Charlie’s House, sneaking into his brother’s room while said brother was at CalSci, and snatching the laundry so he could fix all those stupid, unbelievably trialed buttons.
--
Amita is rough on Charlie’s clothes, and Don hates that.
Ever since they started sleeping together, there’ve been more holes and tears and missing buttons than Don could possibly count. She rips his shirt off, every time, and Don can tell because he has to sew the buttons back on afterwards. He has to work for close to three hours to get a weeks-worth mended, and when he’s finally done, his brother just comes tromping back in with another sorely damaged dress-shirt.
He wonders if he should tell him to be more careful about it, but that would be as good as saying it out loud. Yeah, Charlie, I’ve been patching up your clothes since you were six. He thinks about admitting it, thinks about it all the time, but it makes him feel stupid. Coddling and protective, like he’s still that eleven-year-old kid who has to bully the bullies just to keep his brother from crying. Charlie doesn’t cry anymore, so he shouldn’t be sewing up those tears and buttons, right?
But it feels natural as anything, and whenever Charlie leaves his laundry lying around, Don can’t help but inspect it.
One night, Charlie comes back and changes, and Don finds the fly of his pants is broken. The zipper is ripped clean off. Something hisses and boils in his stomach, and he folds them carefully, setting them aside. He doesn’t even think about it, so much as feel it. This deep, unbearable anger. Amita’s a nice girl, sure, and he knows she likes Charlie enough. But if you love someone, you care about them. And Amita knows what looks good and what looks ridiculous. So why, when they make love, does Amita take care of her own appearance and leave Charlie looking like a damn fool?
He figures she only wants him to look good enough for her, so that she can keep him, and no one else will want him. And that makes Don want to rip her hair out.
When Charlie asks where he’s going, he tells him he got called in for a case. Then, hands shaking as he turns the ignition and tries not to think about what Charlie does and with whom, he drives to that fabric store he sees every day on the way to work.
--
The place, a tiny little shop barely even there to anyone except crafty housewives and Don, is clean and efficient despite its cramped size. The shelves are lined with spools of fabric, every color (sometimes all colors) of the rainbow. Yellow wallpaper gives the store a flowery, kitschy look, and the two who own the place seem friendly and eager to help. It’s a different world from the one Don knows, and maybe he likes it a little, if only because it’s so surreal.
He asks one of the women up front and she leads him to the sewing accessories. Buttons, thousands of them, and he thinks of all the shirts he has to save. He buys about twelve packages, some white, some black, some clear. To him, it means an infinity of salvaged dress-shirts, and that makes him more than happy. He sees thread. White, black, blue, more colors than he’s ever seen before. There’s a color to match everything Charlie wears. He buys so many he can’t count them all by the time they’re in his cart. There are needles too, and something he’s always thought about getting. A needle threader. He sticks eight of them in the cart, since they come in packets of four. By now he’s calling himself crazy.
When he heads for check-out, he spots a spool of fabric that makes him slow down a little. It’s light, an odd green color. One of the owners walks by it, tucking it back into its sale-fold.
"Hey, hold on a minute..."
It’s shirting. Light olive shirting, cotton/polyester blend, and he’s never seen the stuff shirts were made out of before.
The owner is talking to him, handing him a dress-shirt template, twittering about how it’s "so much cheaper to make your own" and how "my, that color would look so nice on you", but he’s already sold.
He buys twice the fabric the template says he needs, in case he screws up, then realizes he’s just blown half his paycheck on sewing supplies.
--
Charlie has this one shirt that he ruins every week, and it’s so ugly Don can’t stand fixing it.
It’s a cream-colored shirt with salmon pinstripes and two breast pockets. It’s a size too big, too, and it hangs over Charlie’s shoulders like a cape with sleeves. Terrible. He’s resisted the urge to trash ever since he saw it.
It was a Christmas present from Amita. He figures this cements his theory.
Every time he wears it he comes back with a couple buttons popped or a hole in one of the pockets. He swears Charlie messes it up on purpose. The funny thing is, it has really nice cats-eye buttons. Two-holed, but decent in size and easy to work with. Square-shaped, too, and he thought that was kind of cool. But they didn’t look right on such a crappy shirt.
When he fixes it for the thousandth time, he decides next time he has to sew it up, he’s sewing on new buttons. A shirt shouldn’t be half-cool, half-ugly. At least if it’s all-ugly, he can make some excuse to throw it away.
--
Taking his own measurements is hard. He isn’t sure if he’s done it right, but what he has is what he has. If he screws up, that’s that. It’s not like he really cares or anything. No, he just thinks it would be kind of cool to make his own shirt. In a weird, stupid way that he’ll never be able to talk about, not even to his therapist.
He takes the numbers down and starts measuring his fabric. Last minute, he realizes he should’ve bought a chalk pencil. So instead he goes to Charlie’s and steals some chalk from the chalkboard. When he’s got the pieces outlined, he takes scissors to it and screws up the first sleeve and part of the collar. With a curse, he outlines them again. This time, he does it right.
He’s just started to place them when he gets called in. Megan’s on the scene of a bank robbery. By the sound of it, and the tired wrinkle in her voice, he can already tell he has to call Charlie.
It feels strange, but he’s annoyed to leave the project alone.
--
When Charlie wants to go to a week-long genius math convention in Florida, they fight.
"I’ve been invited to speak, Don!" Charlie yells, determined. "It’s a huge honor! Helping you isn’t my only job, you know!"
"Fine!" Don yells back just as loud. "Go to Orlando! It’s your damn life!"
He feels like punching a wall, but it won’t help and he knows it. He goes to his old room and sits on his bed, feeling angry and stupid and frustrated. Everybody knows, when he and Charlie fight, they’re different people. They’re tired, withdrawn, frustrated. And they don’t like talking to anybody about it. Not even Allen.
When Charlie leaves, he doesn’t say goodbye. It starts eating at his stomach the second he hears the door slam.
He knows Charlie has a life. He knows it. But it feels like... Like he lives in this world, and try as he might Don can’t break his way in. He’s got this mind that’s bigger and better than anybody’s, but at the same time, that mind takes him away. So many times, Don has caught him staring off and wondered where he’d gone to. So many times, he’s seen that frustrated look in his eye when he’s trying to explain something he knows Don won’t understand. He looks alone, trapped on his own planet. And Don wants, more than anything sometimes, to be able to feel how he feels. To know what he knows.
Rising from his bed, he walks down the hall to pick up his brother’s laundry. That awful shirt, the one with the salmon stripes, is laying on top in a crumpled heap. He picks it up, notes some loose stitching under the arm, and is almost immediately taken with the scent of a new aftershave. Stronger than the other stuff, and he laughs to himself as he folds the damn thing over his arm and wonders how long it will be before he proposes to Amita.
He changed his aftershave before he proposed to Kim.
The thought falls hard into his stomach and sticks to the back of his throat.
No Way...
Shaking it off, he heads back to his room and snips each little square button off that damn shirt until it’s just an oversewn piece of garish fabric. He then takes great pleasure in finding every seam he so carefully sewed, gripping them between his fingers and ripping them apart until the shirt is nothing but tatters.
It’s not punching a wall. But it makes him feel better.
--
It’s four days into the week, and Dad says Charlie’s having a good time in Orlando. Which means Charlie called him. Not Don, of course, because when they fight, he can be just as stubborn. No, worse, because when it comes to his younger brother, he’s a wimp under pressure.
He spends three of those four days working, coming up dry on the damn bank robbery. Following dead-end leads, picking through the immaculate crime scene again and again, running every last witness through the ringer just to get some accurate information. He’s got the day off the fourth day, and he spends it working on the shirt.
It takes less time than he expected, and he’s sewing the hem and the cuffs in less than three hours. He’d finished the pocket before lunch and tried it on just over his shoulders to make sure it would fit. All he has left are the buttons, button holes and collar. He sews the edges of the collar to a point and attaches it while he watches the news, cringing at the reporter’s harsh treatment of the robbery. They seem to think the FBI are being lazy with the case. It’s one of those times Don wishes he never turned on the television.
He makes the button holes smaller, just enough room to slip a good-sized button through and keep it there. He doesn’t want to have to sew on new buttons later, like he does for Charlie’s every other week. The little square cats-eye buttons are on his night-stand and he picks them up one by precious one, tying off the thread and attaching them each individually until he has a column of seven, and one on each cuff.
It isn’t until after he finishes the shirt that he realizes he practically stole those buttons from Charlie. That’s when his phone rings.
Jumping, he reaches back to answer it. "Eppes?"
"Don?"
He lets out a breath he’s held all week. "Hey, Charlie. How’s Orlando, huh?"
"It’s good, um..." He sounded a little shaky. Don didn’t like it. "I’m not staying. I’m coming home early."
"Oh." Trying to sound calm, he sits down on the bed and folds the finished shirt over his arm. "Okay. What’s goin’ on? You sick or somethin’?"
A reedy laugh cuts through the line and sends a dark shiver down his spine. "Yeah, I guess that’s what I am. Um, Dad’s picking me up from the airport tomorrow, so I’ll be in to help with your case in the afternoon-"
"Hey, slow down, alright? Take a break."
"No, I’m okay." The way his voice sounds makes Don nervous. "I’ll be in. Listen, about this weekend..."
"It was stupid, Charlie, I’m sorry." He says it quick. "I didn’t mean it, okay?"
"Me too."It was blustered over the line, like a cannonball. "See you tomorrow. I gotta talk to you, okay?"
A little scared, he nods before speaks. "Okay."
--
The next day, he wears his shirt and everybody notices.
Megan grins wide when she sees him, looking him up and down and checking him out from every corner. David and Colby send odd, confused glances his way as though they’re wondering what changed. Liz nearly trips over her shoes and, at the water cooler, hits on him for the first time in months. Apparently, he looks damn good.
The morning floats by and people stop him, ask him if he got his hair cut or some such thing. He just smiles and tells them no. He’s proud of himself, hell yes, but telling them about the shirt would be as good as telling them he collected beanie babies, or liked to bake for fun. So he keeps it to himself.
When Charlie shows up, that changes.
He’s nervous, Don can tell. A little scared. He comes into the meeting room with a dreary look on his face that seems to darken the whole building. And when he sees Don, the whole thing just gets worse, building to a bitter storm that clouds around him as he works. Don is more concerned than ever.
"Hey, Charlie," He smiles, trying to lighten his mood. "How was your flight?"
"It was good." The younger Eppes replied, smiling wearily at him. "Glad to be home."
They work throughout the afternoon, and Don forgets all about his shirt in favor of the frequent looks his brother throws his way.
--
When night comes, Charlie asks him for a ride home. He says those awful words again. "I gotta talk to you, okay?"
What else can he say to that? "No, it’s not okay"? "No, I don’t think I’m gonna like this, so don’t say it"? He grabs his jacket and fingers his keys in the pocket. Everyone bids him goodbye, staring at his back as they try to figure out what’s different. Liz checks him out head-to-toe before he leaves, but with Charlie standing next to him it feels like a violation. A form of base exhibitionism. He moves past her quickly, listening to Charlie’s quiet following footsteps.
They get in the car and he puts the key in the ignition, but before he starts the car he bites the bullet. "What’s goin’ on, Charlie? You okay?"
"Yeah." He’s got a look on his face that says he’s anything but. "I just... I think I need to go away for a while."
"You just got back!" Don laughs a little, fighting his nerves. "C’mon, what’s the matter?"
"It’s..." He takes a small breath and leans back into the seat. "Can you take me home first?"
"Okay, sure."
They drive in silence, and every streetlight Charlie’s face seems paler and paler. Which means he’s either sick or scared. The night is just beginning, sky darkening from orange to purple. The younger Eppes seems fascinated. But his mind is whirring a mile a minute, and Don hates it.
Don grips the steering wheel and tries to concentrate on the road, which isn’t as easy as it sounds when his brother is quietly thinking himself into a coma. He’s seen it happen before, and he hates that too, hates it so much...
... He pulls over in front of a suburban town-home, parking hard and glaring at his brother angrily. "What?"
Charlie flinches and his mind flags the harsh tone. He tries it softer, and it doesn’t work. "What’s wrong, Charlie? What’s with the fuckin’ mind-fuck thing you’ve got goin’?"
"It’s nothing, Don!"
"You’re losin’ your head, I can see it, so fess up."
"I-..." He breaks off, mind continuing its crazy whir, probably weighing his options. "I wanted to do something important the other day, and-"
"C’mon, spit it out."
"I was gonna propose to Amita, alright?"
It rushed out, a blur of words that punched Don in the nose, just like that. Like his stomach’s been ripped out. Like he can’t remember how to talk, how to say "Please, No". Like he’s frozen in place, just stuck while Charlie’s mouth continues to move.
"I was going to, but I couldn’t." He says it slow, scared. "Something was stopping me. So, I just need-"
"What was stopping you?" He asks, feeling like a heel the second he says it. "What’s wrong, Charlie?"
Looking away, he takes a moment to breathe. "That’s why I need to go somewhere else for a while. Shake whatever it is off, you know...?"
"No, I don’t know." He replies, angry at being avoided so tactlessly. "What’s the deal? You can’t tell me this and expect me to take it nicely. You gotta give me a better answer than that, Chuck, seriously."
After a moment, he finally says it. Finally, after all these fucking years.
"I thought of you." It’s soft, rushed, terrified and lost. "Okay? I thought of you, I always think of you, but I thought if I loved her, if I knew she loved me, I wouldn’t..."
He’s shaking and Don touches his shoulder. It’s too hot. Burning... "Calm down, calm down..."
"I can’t..." His chest contracts and he’s holding back tears, because it’s so obvious he thinks this isn’t going to end well. "I thought I could love her more but I can’t..."
Without thinking, he pulls Charlie in for a hug and lets him cry on the shirt. Lets his tears soak into the fabric he’d so painstakingly cut, fitted, and sewed. Runs his fingers through the curls at the nape of his neck and grips the worn edge of his cuff. Charlie leans into him, rests his cheek against his shoulder and cries. Don can’t shake the selfish feeling that takes him then. Buried in his center, there’s a hard, possessive pit that’s telling him I’m the only one who’s ever held him like this... I’m the only one who’s ever protected him this way... He needs me more than anybody... And he knows how right it is, because every cell in his body knows it’s true. Even more true is this feeling.
The one taking over his insides, screaming, You’re the only one I ever want to hold like this... You’re the only one I want to protect... Please, Charlie, just tell me you need me...
And he hears it. Gasped against his shirt through shaky tears. "I can’t love anybody more than you, Donny. I tried, I really tried, I just can’t. I need you more than anybody, Don, don’t let me go without you again..."
And that’s that.
When Charlie moves his head, he leans up and kisses him, because it’s all he’s been waiting for. Charlie’s still at first, but that’s okay, because Don’s pretty sure this is one thing he can best his little brother at, if there was ever a competition. One hand through his curls and the other one clasping his cheek, he moves his lips sweet and soft against the other pair and waits for them to catch on. As usual, Charlie catches on fast, and when he recovers from the lifetime-proportioned shock, he leans in close and starts kissing back with tentative grace. It makes Don nearly drown, and in that sweet oblivion he feels his brother touch his shoulders and pull away, lips innocently plush for his efforts.
"Don..."
"I love you, Charlie..." He sighs, stomach flopping as he says it out loud. "Not like family, not like Liz. Like this. Like..." The words were too fast. He doesn’t understand. Don slides his fingers over Charlie’s cheek and down his jaw, down his neck. "The way that makes me wanna..."
His hand slides down the shirt and stops at his stomach, slips past his hips and in between his thighs, thumb rolling over the slacks he wore.
"We can’t..." Charlie protested, eyes wide and happy and scared. "It’s not right, we can’t..."
Don stopped, peering into his brother’s eyes as his stomach tumbled onto the floor. It was the worst feeling... "Please, just tell me..." His fingers looped up his thigh and stayed. "Tell me you don’t want this and I’ll take you home."
"But I..."
Half-losing his cool, Don sighed against his neck and leaned into it. "Just tell me what you want."
"Jesus, Don..."
"Do you want this?"
"I need it."
Don turned the car around and hit the gas.
--
They get to Don’s place and go slow, taking their time with each moment, each sight. Every eyeful is sweet and dark and daring, the way they were as children, but now knowing better, wanting more than a game. The door shuts behind them and Charlie didn’t stop. He winds his arms around Don and pulls him closer, pulls him into the kiss he knows is coming. No fireworks, but a single hot star feeling in the center of him glows with each sweep of his brother’s tongue. It’s ripping him up and down, and Charlie doesn’t seem to care, even as he feels his heart tripling its beat.
His hands fling themselves to Charlie’s buttons and he works them open carefully, smoothing his hands over his brother’s chest. The sigh he makes gives him a chill, and he pushes it down over his shoulders, examining the skin beneath. Beautiful, and milky pale compared to his own. But then, Charlie doesn’t tan easy. Always looks like a ghost.
As for his own shirt, Charlie’s eyeballing it like it’s a trap, so he begins to undo it himself. His brother watches his fingers move, every motion. The wave of heat in his eyes is far from the usual cool, timid mathematician he knows. It’s so dark he fears staring into them might turn him to stone, or melt him like hot ice. By the time he’s undone, the shirt is thrown aside by careless hands and said mathematician is skating his fingers down the lines and contours of his chest in exploration.
It feels like he’s seeing him like this for the first time. But on the other hand, he knows this body before him, this shape and skin and muscle, and has known it since its birth. He’s seen it grow. He’s seen it become what it is. And he loves every inch with his eyes, waiting, begging to love them with his fingers, his mouth...
His brother’s fingers push him backward tentatively, and he follows Charlie’s lead. Tearing his eyes away, he walks to the bedroom and hears him come as well. The work shoes come off, and the belt slides out from its loops, onto the night-stand without care. Charlie’s skinny hands surprise him from behind, sliding down his sides as the lips find his neck and drag over it. It’s superficial at first, until he picks a choice patch of skin and sucks until Don rolls his head back onto his shoulder. That’s when Charlie sneaks a hand around him to unzip his pants, pushing them down to the floor and pressing his thumbs into his hips where his pockets once were.
"God, Charlie..."
He’s fumbling around behind him, looking for something to make this better. Lotion, lube, anything. His hands find the stuff in the drawer of the night-stand, the stuff that Don uses on nights alone or morning wood. Practically yanks the cap off. But before he can make use of it, Don turns around to face him.
Calmly, he takes in his brother’s flushed face. It’s sweet, burning red with embarrassment and want but hot with need more than anything. His eyes are darker than onyx and it takes Don’s breath from his lungs. He takes the lotion from Charlie’s fingers and kisses him again, tasting the salt of his skin on his tongue. It drives him off the deep end.
Slicking his fingers, he sets the tube aside and turns Charlie around toward the bed. He pushes, but Charlie pulls, and it becomes a small contest just to see who gives up first. But when his hand parts his thighs and slides down the zipper of his slacks, the younger Eppes gives. Even sighs a little as his pants slide down his hardness and hit the floor. Don wants more than that tiny sigh.
He gets it, too. When his hand wraps around his brother’s erection.
At first, it’s this heavy exhale, like he’d knocked the wind out of him. Then, a low groan as he makes a slow move, his thumb sweeping down the base. And when Don rolls his thumb around the crown, purposely slicking his nail along the slit, he cries out so loud Don’s worried the assholes across the hall will think he’s murdering him. But he doesn’t care. He leans over his brother and darts his tongue across his collarbone, wiping his thumb around the other way, then back up the base. On his tongue, he feels every part of Charlie pick up pace, his heartbeat, his breathing, his voice and its vibrations against his lips.
"Don, please!" He cries, bucking into his fist as he begins to move faster, tugging his brother to the sweetest place he’d ever seen. He’s yelling for him, pulling him down in an effort to hold on. But when he comes, he comes shaking, like everything is about to break open and crash into pieces.
When he comes out of his haze, he doesn’t hesitate to kiss his brother, straddling his waist and preparing to return the favor ten-fold.
--
Don watches Charlie doze beside him and doesn’t know what to do with himself. For the first time, he’s happier than he’s ever been. He never wants to leave this room, never wants to go back to the real world. It’s a dream come true, what he has with Charlie. Better than anything he was expecting from life, yet so natural he doesn’t know why he hadn’t expected it sooner.
As an older brother, though, he was probably the worst ever. Not that he’s heard any complaints.
Rolling out of bed, he paced across the room to grab some of their clothes. When he spots Charlie’s shirt in the hallway, he picks it up from the floor and spots a loose button at the bottom. With a sigh, he brings it back into the bedroom and opens his drawer to find some white thread.
Charlie stirs behind him and rolls over with a half-groan that makes him laugh. He’s just threading the needle when he feels his brother’s hand wrap tentatively around his waist. "You sew?"
Turning back toward Charlie, he leans into his embrace and gives him a barely restrained smile. "Sometimes."
Title: Patching Things Up
Pairing: Eppescest, Don/Charlie, you know the deal
WC: 4,813
Raiting: R
Disclaimer: SO not mine, or they would've been making kissy-faces forever ago.
Warnings: Slash, Incest, Don's POV, A little splash of OOC!Don
Summary: Don knows how to sew.
Don knows how to sew.
It’s one of those things you pick up in times of necessity. Living alone helps, and now he’s perfected it without knowing. He’s not making ball-gowns, no way. But it’s good for the occasional hole in his pocket. Or, you know, if he tears a good shirt chasing some asshole who doesn’t know the meaning of "Resisting Arrest".
No big deal… He told himself when he was young, even though he knows every last one of his friends would’ve laughed themselves blue if they ever saw him with a needle and thread. But Charlie just… he just looked bad in those shirts he’d wear to death. He’d go in with a stained, four-year-old dress shirt with holes in the front pocket and three missing buttons and he wouldn’t notice. But Don did. And when night came, and Charlie finally tossed that shirt in the laundry, he’d go in and pick it out. He’d spend a half an hour each on those shirts until they at least looked half-way decent.
Charlie never noticed. Too involved with his latest mathematical formula.
When Don moved out, went to college, he had to patch up his baseball uniform practically every practice night. He must’ve tore it open a thousand times. And while the other guys were walking around in their beat up, barely-held-together uniforms, Don’s wasn’t half bad. In fact, he even learned to sew things differently, with the stitching a little smaller and closer together. Learned to only repair his clothes inside-out, so no one would see the sutures. People noticed his uniform was better looking than the others, and he told them his mom did it.
In Albuquerque he never had a problem. If he needed to sew something up, he could do it and nobody would notice. Kim didn’t even notice, which was funny, because it was something she should’ve known. Almost every shirt he ever wore with her was fixed up in some form or another. But that was done now, and he didn’t mind that she was clueless.
No, he minded that after all these years he was back in their house, Charlie’s House, sneaking into his brother’s room while said brother was at CalSci, and snatching the laundry so he could fix all those stupid, unbelievably trialed buttons.
--
Amita is rough on Charlie’s clothes, and Don hates that.
Ever since they started sleeping together, there’ve been more holes and tears and missing buttons than Don could possibly count. She rips his shirt off, every time, and Don can tell because he has to sew the buttons back on afterwards. He has to work for close to three hours to get a weeks-worth mended, and when he’s finally done, his brother just comes tromping back in with another sorely damaged dress-shirt.
He wonders if he should tell him to be more careful about it, but that would be as good as saying it out loud. Yeah, Charlie, I’ve been patching up your clothes since you were six. He thinks about admitting it, thinks about it all the time, but it makes him feel stupid. Coddling and protective, like he’s still that eleven-year-old kid who has to bully the bullies just to keep his brother from crying. Charlie doesn’t cry anymore, so he shouldn’t be sewing up those tears and buttons, right?
But it feels natural as anything, and whenever Charlie leaves his laundry lying around, Don can’t help but inspect it.
One night, Charlie comes back and changes, and Don finds the fly of his pants is broken. The zipper is ripped clean off. Something hisses and boils in his stomach, and he folds them carefully, setting them aside. He doesn’t even think about it, so much as feel it. This deep, unbearable anger. Amita’s a nice girl, sure, and he knows she likes Charlie enough. But if you love someone, you care about them. And Amita knows what looks good and what looks ridiculous. So why, when they make love, does Amita take care of her own appearance and leave Charlie looking like a damn fool?
He figures she only wants him to look good enough for her, so that she can keep him, and no one else will want him. And that makes Don want to rip her hair out.
When Charlie asks where he’s going, he tells him he got called in for a case. Then, hands shaking as he turns the ignition and tries not to think about what Charlie does and with whom, he drives to that fabric store he sees every day on the way to work.
--
The place, a tiny little shop barely even there to anyone except crafty housewives and Don, is clean and efficient despite its cramped size. The shelves are lined with spools of fabric, every color (sometimes all colors) of the rainbow. Yellow wallpaper gives the store a flowery, kitschy look, and the two who own the place seem friendly and eager to help. It’s a different world from the one Don knows, and maybe he likes it a little, if only because it’s so surreal.
He asks one of the women up front and she leads him to the sewing accessories. Buttons, thousands of them, and he thinks of all the shirts he has to save. He buys about twelve packages, some white, some black, some clear. To him, it means an infinity of salvaged dress-shirts, and that makes him more than happy. He sees thread. White, black, blue, more colors than he’s ever seen before. There’s a color to match everything Charlie wears. He buys so many he can’t count them all by the time they’re in his cart. There are needles too, and something he’s always thought about getting. A needle threader. He sticks eight of them in the cart, since they come in packets of four. By now he’s calling himself crazy.
When he heads for check-out, he spots a spool of fabric that makes him slow down a little. It’s light, an odd green color. One of the owners walks by it, tucking it back into its sale-fold.
"Hey, hold on a minute..."
It’s shirting. Light olive shirting, cotton/polyester blend, and he’s never seen the stuff shirts were made out of before.
The owner is talking to him, handing him a dress-shirt template, twittering about how it’s "so much cheaper to make your own" and how "my, that color would look so nice on you", but he’s already sold.
He buys twice the fabric the template says he needs, in case he screws up, then realizes he’s just blown half his paycheck on sewing supplies.
--
Charlie has this one shirt that he ruins every week, and it’s so ugly Don can’t stand fixing it.
It’s a cream-colored shirt with salmon pinstripes and two breast pockets. It’s a size too big, too, and it hangs over Charlie’s shoulders like a cape with sleeves. Terrible. He’s resisted the urge to trash ever since he saw it.
It was a Christmas present from Amita. He figures this cements his theory.
Every time he wears it he comes back with a couple buttons popped or a hole in one of the pockets. He swears Charlie messes it up on purpose. The funny thing is, it has really nice cats-eye buttons. Two-holed, but decent in size and easy to work with. Square-shaped, too, and he thought that was kind of cool. But they didn’t look right on such a crappy shirt.
When he fixes it for the thousandth time, he decides next time he has to sew it up, he’s sewing on new buttons. A shirt shouldn’t be half-cool, half-ugly. At least if it’s all-ugly, he can make some excuse to throw it away.
--
Taking his own measurements is hard. He isn’t sure if he’s done it right, but what he has is what he has. If he screws up, that’s that. It’s not like he really cares or anything. No, he just thinks it would be kind of cool to make his own shirt. In a weird, stupid way that he’ll never be able to talk about, not even to his therapist.
He takes the numbers down and starts measuring his fabric. Last minute, he realizes he should’ve bought a chalk pencil. So instead he goes to Charlie’s and steals some chalk from the chalkboard. When he’s got the pieces outlined, he takes scissors to it and screws up the first sleeve and part of the collar. With a curse, he outlines them again. This time, he does it right.
He’s just started to place them when he gets called in. Megan’s on the scene of a bank robbery. By the sound of it, and the tired wrinkle in her voice, he can already tell he has to call Charlie.
It feels strange, but he’s annoyed to leave the project alone.
--
When Charlie wants to go to a week-long genius math convention in Florida, they fight.
"I’ve been invited to speak, Don!" Charlie yells, determined. "It’s a huge honor! Helping you isn’t my only job, you know!"
"Fine!" Don yells back just as loud. "Go to Orlando! It’s your damn life!"
He feels like punching a wall, but it won’t help and he knows it. He goes to his old room and sits on his bed, feeling angry and stupid and frustrated. Everybody knows, when he and Charlie fight, they’re different people. They’re tired, withdrawn, frustrated. And they don’t like talking to anybody about it. Not even Allen.
When Charlie leaves, he doesn’t say goodbye. It starts eating at his stomach the second he hears the door slam.
He knows Charlie has a life. He knows it. But it feels like... Like he lives in this world, and try as he might Don can’t break his way in. He’s got this mind that’s bigger and better than anybody’s, but at the same time, that mind takes him away. So many times, Don has caught him staring off and wondered where he’d gone to. So many times, he’s seen that frustrated look in his eye when he’s trying to explain something he knows Don won’t understand. He looks alone, trapped on his own planet. And Don wants, more than anything sometimes, to be able to feel how he feels. To know what he knows.
Rising from his bed, he walks down the hall to pick up his brother’s laundry. That awful shirt, the one with the salmon stripes, is laying on top in a crumpled heap. He picks it up, notes some loose stitching under the arm, and is almost immediately taken with the scent of a new aftershave. Stronger than the other stuff, and he laughs to himself as he folds the damn thing over his arm and wonders how long it will be before he proposes to Amita.
He changed his aftershave before he proposed to Kim.
The thought falls hard into his stomach and sticks to the back of his throat.
No Way...
Shaking it off, he heads back to his room and snips each little square button off that damn shirt until it’s just an oversewn piece of garish fabric. He then takes great pleasure in finding every seam he so carefully sewed, gripping them between his fingers and ripping them apart until the shirt is nothing but tatters.
It’s not punching a wall. But it makes him feel better.
--
It’s four days into the week, and Dad says Charlie’s having a good time in Orlando. Which means Charlie called him. Not Don, of course, because when they fight, he can be just as stubborn. No, worse, because when it comes to his younger brother, he’s a wimp under pressure.
He spends three of those four days working, coming up dry on the damn bank robbery. Following dead-end leads, picking through the immaculate crime scene again and again, running every last witness through the ringer just to get some accurate information. He’s got the day off the fourth day, and he spends it working on the shirt.
It takes less time than he expected, and he’s sewing the hem and the cuffs in less than three hours. He’d finished the pocket before lunch and tried it on just over his shoulders to make sure it would fit. All he has left are the buttons, button holes and collar. He sews the edges of the collar to a point and attaches it while he watches the news, cringing at the reporter’s harsh treatment of the robbery. They seem to think the FBI are being lazy with the case. It’s one of those times Don wishes he never turned on the television.
He makes the button holes smaller, just enough room to slip a good-sized button through and keep it there. He doesn’t want to have to sew on new buttons later, like he does for Charlie’s every other week. The little square cats-eye buttons are on his night-stand and he picks them up one by precious one, tying off the thread and attaching them each individually until he has a column of seven, and one on each cuff.
It isn’t until after he finishes the shirt that he realizes he practically stole those buttons from Charlie. That’s when his phone rings.
Jumping, he reaches back to answer it. "Eppes?"
"Don?"
He lets out a breath he’s held all week. "Hey, Charlie. How’s Orlando, huh?"
"It’s good, um..." He sounded a little shaky. Don didn’t like it. "I’m not staying. I’m coming home early."
"Oh." Trying to sound calm, he sits down on the bed and folds the finished shirt over his arm. "Okay. What’s goin’ on? You sick or somethin’?"
A reedy laugh cuts through the line and sends a dark shiver down his spine. "Yeah, I guess that’s what I am. Um, Dad’s picking me up from the airport tomorrow, so I’ll be in to help with your case in the afternoon-"
"Hey, slow down, alright? Take a break."
"No, I’m okay." The way his voice sounds makes Don nervous. "I’ll be in. Listen, about this weekend..."
"It was stupid, Charlie, I’m sorry." He says it quick. "I didn’t mean it, okay?"
"Me too."It was blustered over the line, like a cannonball. "See you tomorrow. I gotta talk to you, okay?"
A little scared, he nods before speaks. "Okay."
--
The next day, he wears his shirt and everybody notices.
Megan grins wide when she sees him, looking him up and down and checking him out from every corner. David and Colby send odd, confused glances his way as though they’re wondering what changed. Liz nearly trips over her shoes and, at the water cooler, hits on him for the first time in months. Apparently, he looks damn good.
The morning floats by and people stop him, ask him if he got his hair cut or some such thing. He just smiles and tells them no. He’s proud of himself, hell yes, but telling them about the shirt would be as good as telling them he collected beanie babies, or liked to bake for fun. So he keeps it to himself.
When Charlie shows up, that changes.
He’s nervous, Don can tell. A little scared. He comes into the meeting room with a dreary look on his face that seems to darken the whole building. And when he sees Don, the whole thing just gets worse, building to a bitter storm that clouds around him as he works. Don is more concerned than ever.
"Hey, Charlie," He smiles, trying to lighten his mood. "How was your flight?"
"It was good." The younger Eppes replied, smiling wearily at him. "Glad to be home."
They work throughout the afternoon, and Don forgets all about his shirt in favor of the frequent looks his brother throws his way.
--
When night comes, Charlie asks him for a ride home. He says those awful words again. "I gotta talk to you, okay?"
What else can he say to that? "No, it’s not okay"? "No, I don’t think I’m gonna like this, so don’t say it"? He grabs his jacket and fingers his keys in the pocket. Everyone bids him goodbye, staring at his back as they try to figure out what’s different. Liz checks him out head-to-toe before he leaves, but with Charlie standing next to him it feels like a violation. A form of base exhibitionism. He moves past her quickly, listening to Charlie’s quiet following footsteps.
They get in the car and he puts the key in the ignition, but before he starts the car he bites the bullet. "What’s goin’ on, Charlie? You okay?"
"Yeah." He’s got a look on his face that says he’s anything but. "I just... I think I need to go away for a while."
"You just got back!" Don laughs a little, fighting his nerves. "C’mon, what’s the matter?"
"It’s..." He takes a small breath and leans back into the seat. "Can you take me home first?"
"Okay, sure."
They drive in silence, and every streetlight Charlie’s face seems paler and paler. Which means he’s either sick or scared. The night is just beginning, sky darkening from orange to purple. The younger Eppes seems fascinated. But his mind is whirring a mile a minute, and Don hates it.
Don grips the steering wheel and tries to concentrate on the road, which isn’t as easy as it sounds when his brother is quietly thinking himself into a coma. He’s seen it happen before, and he hates that too, hates it so much...
... He pulls over in front of a suburban town-home, parking hard and glaring at his brother angrily. "What?"
Charlie flinches and his mind flags the harsh tone. He tries it softer, and it doesn’t work. "What’s wrong, Charlie? What’s with the fuckin’ mind-fuck thing you’ve got goin’?"
"It’s nothing, Don!"
"You’re losin’ your head, I can see it, so fess up."
"I-..." He breaks off, mind continuing its crazy whir, probably weighing his options. "I wanted to do something important the other day, and-"
"C’mon, spit it out."
"I was gonna propose to Amita, alright?"
It rushed out, a blur of words that punched Don in the nose, just like that. Like his stomach’s been ripped out. Like he can’t remember how to talk, how to say "Please, No". Like he’s frozen in place, just stuck while Charlie’s mouth continues to move.
"I was going to, but I couldn’t." He says it slow, scared. "Something was stopping me. So, I just need-"
"What was stopping you?" He asks, feeling like a heel the second he says it. "What’s wrong, Charlie?"
Looking away, he takes a moment to breathe. "That’s why I need to go somewhere else for a while. Shake whatever it is off, you know...?"
"No, I don’t know." He replies, angry at being avoided so tactlessly. "What’s the deal? You can’t tell me this and expect me to take it nicely. You gotta give me a better answer than that, Chuck, seriously."
After a moment, he finally says it. Finally, after all these fucking years.
"I thought of you." It’s soft, rushed, terrified and lost. "Okay? I thought of you, I always think of you, but I thought if I loved her, if I knew she loved me, I wouldn’t..."
He’s shaking and Don touches his shoulder. It’s too hot. Burning... "Calm down, calm down..."
"I can’t..." His chest contracts and he’s holding back tears, because it’s so obvious he thinks this isn’t going to end well. "I thought I could love her more but I can’t..."
Without thinking, he pulls Charlie in for a hug and lets him cry on the shirt. Lets his tears soak into the fabric he’d so painstakingly cut, fitted, and sewed. Runs his fingers through the curls at the nape of his neck and grips the worn edge of his cuff. Charlie leans into him, rests his cheek against his shoulder and cries. Don can’t shake the selfish feeling that takes him then. Buried in his center, there’s a hard, possessive pit that’s telling him I’m the only one who’s ever held him like this... I’m the only one who’s ever protected him this way... He needs me more than anybody... And he knows how right it is, because every cell in his body knows it’s true. Even more true is this feeling.
The one taking over his insides, screaming, You’re the only one I ever want to hold like this... You’re the only one I want to protect... Please, Charlie, just tell me you need me...
And he hears it. Gasped against his shirt through shaky tears. "I can’t love anybody more than you, Donny. I tried, I really tried, I just can’t. I need you more than anybody, Don, don’t let me go without you again..."
And that’s that.
When Charlie moves his head, he leans up and kisses him, because it’s all he’s been waiting for. Charlie’s still at first, but that’s okay, because Don’s pretty sure this is one thing he can best his little brother at, if there was ever a competition. One hand through his curls and the other one clasping his cheek, he moves his lips sweet and soft against the other pair and waits for them to catch on. As usual, Charlie catches on fast, and when he recovers from the lifetime-proportioned shock, he leans in close and starts kissing back with tentative grace. It makes Don nearly drown, and in that sweet oblivion he feels his brother touch his shoulders and pull away, lips innocently plush for his efforts.
"Don..."
"I love you, Charlie..." He sighs, stomach flopping as he says it out loud. "Not like family, not like Liz. Like this. Like..." The words were too fast. He doesn’t understand. Don slides his fingers over Charlie’s cheek and down his jaw, down his neck. "The way that makes me wanna..."
His hand slides down the shirt and stops at his stomach, slips past his hips and in between his thighs, thumb rolling over the slacks he wore.
"We can’t..." Charlie protested, eyes wide and happy and scared. "It’s not right, we can’t..."
Don stopped, peering into his brother’s eyes as his stomach tumbled onto the floor. It was the worst feeling... "Please, just tell me..." His fingers looped up his thigh and stayed. "Tell me you don’t want this and I’ll take you home."
"But I..."
Half-losing his cool, Don sighed against his neck and leaned into it. "Just tell me what you want."
"Jesus, Don..."
"Do you want this?"
"I need it."
Don turned the car around and hit the gas.
--
They get to Don’s place and go slow, taking their time with each moment, each sight. Every eyeful is sweet and dark and daring, the way they were as children, but now knowing better, wanting more than a game. The door shuts behind them and Charlie didn’t stop. He winds his arms around Don and pulls him closer, pulls him into the kiss he knows is coming. No fireworks, but a single hot star feeling in the center of him glows with each sweep of his brother’s tongue. It’s ripping him up and down, and Charlie doesn’t seem to care, even as he feels his heart tripling its beat.
His hands fling themselves to Charlie’s buttons and he works them open carefully, smoothing his hands over his brother’s chest. The sigh he makes gives him a chill, and he pushes it down over his shoulders, examining the skin beneath. Beautiful, and milky pale compared to his own. But then, Charlie doesn’t tan easy. Always looks like a ghost.
As for his own shirt, Charlie’s eyeballing it like it’s a trap, so he begins to undo it himself. His brother watches his fingers move, every motion. The wave of heat in his eyes is far from the usual cool, timid mathematician he knows. It’s so dark he fears staring into them might turn him to stone, or melt him like hot ice. By the time he’s undone, the shirt is thrown aside by careless hands and said mathematician is skating his fingers down the lines and contours of his chest in exploration.
It feels like he’s seeing him like this for the first time. But on the other hand, he knows this body before him, this shape and skin and muscle, and has known it since its birth. He’s seen it grow. He’s seen it become what it is. And he loves every inch with his eyes, waiting, begging to love them with his fingers, his mouth...
His brother’s fingers push him backward tentatively, and he follows Charlie’s lead. Tearing his eyes away, he walks to the bedroom and hears him come as well. The work shoes come off, and the belt slides out from its loops, onto the night-stand without care. Charlie’s skinny hands surprise him from behind, sliding down his sides as the lips find his neck and drag over it. It’s superficial at first, until he picks a choice patch of skin and sucks until Don rolls his head back onto his shoulder. That’s when Charlie sneaks a hand around him to unzip his pants, pushing them down to the floor and pressing his thumbs into his hips where his pockets once were.
"God, Charlie..."
He’s fumbling around behind him, looking for something to make this better. Lotion, lube, anything. His hands find the stuff in the drawer of the night-stand, the stuff that Don uses on nights alone or morning wood. Practically yanks the cap off. But before he can make use of it, Don turns around to face him.
Calmly, he takes in his brother’s flushed face. It’s sweet, burning red with embarrassment and want but hot with need more than anything. His eyes are darker than onyx and it takes Don’s breath from his lungs. He takes the lotion from Charlie’s fingers and kisses him again, tasting the salt of his skin on his tongue. It drives him off the deep end.
Slicking his fingers, he sets the tube aside and turns Charlie around toward the bed. He pushes, but Charlie pulls, and it becomes a small contest just to see who gives up first. But when his hand parts his thighs and slides down the zipper of his slacks, the younger Eppes gives. Even sighs a little as his pants slide down his hardness and hit the floor. Don wants more than that tiny sigh.
He gets it, too. When his hand wraps around his brother’s erection.
At first, it’s this heavy exhale, like he’d knocked the wind out of him. Then, a low groan as he makes a slow move, his thumb sweeping down the base. And when Don rolls his thumb around the crown, purposely slicking his nail along the slit, he cries out so loud Don’s worried the assholes across the hall will think he’s murdering him. But he doesn’t care. He leans over his brother and darts his tongue across his collarbone, wiping his thumb around the other way, then back up the base. On his tongue, he feels every part of Charlie pick up pace, his heartbeat, his breathing, his voice and its vibrations against his lips.
"Don, please!" He cries, bucking into his fist as he begins to move faster, tugging his brother to the sweetest place he’d ever seen. He’s yelling for him, pulling him down in an effort to hold on. But when he comes, he comes shaking, like everything is about to break open and crash into pieces.
When he comes out of his haze, he doesn’t hesitate to kiss his brother, straddling his waist and preparing to return the favor ten-fold.
--
Don watches Charlie doze beside him and doesn’t know what to do with himself. For the first time, he’s happier than he’s ever been. He never wants to leave this room, never wants to go back to the real world. It’s a dream come true, what he has with Charlie. Better than anything he was expecting from life, yet so natural he doesn’t know why he hadn’t expected it sooner.
As an older brother, though, he was probably the worst ever. Not that he’s heard any complaints.
Rolling out of bed, he paced across the room to grab some of their clothes. When he spots Charlie’s shirt in the hallway, he picks it up from the floor and spots a loose button at the bottom. With a sigh, he brings it back into the bedroom and opens his drawer to find some white thread.
Charlie stirs behind him and rolls over with a half-groan that makes him laugh. He’s just threading the needle when he feels his brother’s hand wrap tentatively around his waist. "You sew?"
Turning back toward Charlie, he leans into his embrace and gives him a barely restrained smile. "Sometimes."