The Connections Series, Part 14/?, "The key to the secret" (Charlie/Colby, PG-13)
I was going to wait a little to post this since I just uploaded the first part of my fic for the 1 Year Later - Anniversary Challenge at savecolby, but then I realized that it's been almost a week since I presented you chapter 13 of The Connections Series.
I couldn't restrain myself from posting this. Sorry. ;)
Enjoy.
VERY IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE OF THE CONNECTIONS SERIES
1) It's really important that you have read "I'll show you what's smooth" to understand Colby and David's conversation. I'm being serious here.
2) The lovely Mia made the vid for this chapter. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!
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Title: The key to the secret
Series: The Connections Series, Part 14/?
Characters: Charlie/Colby, Don, Alan, Megan, Larry, Amita, OMC.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None.
Summary: Nothing worse after a private fight than getting into a public one when everybody is in the middle of a dangerous situation.
Feedback: YAY! Can't wait.
Disclaimer: I do not own Numb3rs or anything related to it.
Beta: Thank you, nahzee ! You helped me a lot with this.
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Go to Part 13: Completely insane, PG-13
Go to Part 15: Unexpected moves, PG-13
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The Connections Series
Part 14: “The key to the secret”
When Charlie went downstairs, he found his father asking Don how dangerous the criminal that had escaped from jail could be.
“He had access to some very interesting weapons. He kidnapped Amita, and once we got him, he fooled us all. I don’t get how the hell he did it, but I swear I’m going to catch him again,” Don said, and he looked very worried about the people he loved. “Hey Charlie, are you ok? Megan told me you were, but I just wanted to know…”
”I’m fine… She came here as soon as you called her,” Charlie answered and he looked at Megan, letting her see what he really meant.
Suddenly, Charlie noticed something. Behind Megan there was Colby. Both man stared at each other in a silent and sad fight that hadn’t been resolved yet. They had to keep it to themselves, it would be crazy to get into an argument right there in the living room in front of everyone.
Colby wanted so much to make Charlie accept the fact that it didn’t matter what anyone else could say about them if they decided to be together. Why are you so embarrassed to be with me? You know what we both feel. Please, don’t leave me. Please, don’t make that cruel decision. Not after what happened tonight, upstairs... not after all you said to me… He became lost in the feelings and the sensations that being with Charlie had brought to his heart. He knew he had never felt that with anyone. And Colby was sure that if Charlie asked him to stay away, he would never find a person to love who loved him back the same way. Never.
On the other hand, Charlie wanted so much to make his head stop spinning. He was so confused. He remembered his last conversation with Megan, and one of her questions. “Could you live without knowing what a potential relationship with Colby could have been… if you would have just dared to give it a try?” she had asked, and that point of view had broken his heart. If there would be no one to judge Charlie, he would absolutely have gone towards Colby and kissed him in front of everybody. A deep, sweet and strong kiss that would let Colby know that he wanted him too. But I still can’t do that. First… I have to be 100% sure. Megan was right. I shouldn’t create false expectations in your head. It wouldn’t be fair… at all. But god, I like you so much. His cheeks flushed as he remembered the moment when he had lead Colby upstairs and into bed. Holding each others hands firmly, it had been like Charlie was giving him his entire life, the entire meaning of his existence. And all the time, Colby was so beautiful and tender, always asking him to be sure. An absolutely amazing man that could be Charlie’s. But there’s so many obstacles for us to be together… Why does it have to be this way…?
”Charlie, is everything all right?”
It was Alan’s voice that came right down to Charlie’s brain, making him get a little dizzy and provoking him to lose his ability to talk for a few seconds. “Oh… yeah, yeah. I’m just…”
Luckily, Don and Alan would probably think that it was Amita’s presence what was making Charlie act this way. She was seated on the couch and she didn’t look very happy. Charlie glanced at her and then tried to focus his eyes on something else. If only they knew.
Without any warning, Don asked Charlie to go to the kitchen so they could talk alone. Not very happy about it, Charlie followed him there and when they were there he waited for Don to talk.
“Hey, you know I brought her here because she’s in danger, like you and maybe like all of us. I wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t absolutely necessary,” Don explained.
“I know that, and it’s ok that she’s here. It doesn’t bother me.”
However, Charlie didn’t look to be pleased by her arrival at all. He felt Don’s hand on his shoulder and his brother’s voice saying, “So what happened between the two of you guys? You seemed so close, you were so stable, and Dad was pretty sure that you would finally give him grandchildren.”
“I already told you that I don’t want to talk about it.”
Don’s voice became protective and brotherly. “I know, I know. Last time I brought up the issue we took it as some kind of joke, but it really isn’t. Why don’t you trust me? Maybe it would be good for you to let it out…”
“It concerns only Amita and I,” Charlie responded very firmly. “Please, don’t ask me about it again. That relationship wasn’t destined to succeed and everybody should accept that it is over.”
Charlie regretted a little having pronounced those word in such an annoyed tone, because it obviously made Don mad. “Hey, buddy!”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Yes, it is. You’re my brother and you said you did something terrible. You left me very worried about you.”
“Well, I appreciate that you want to take care of me and everything, but this is a personal matter that I’m not willing to share. Sorry, but you’ll never find out about it.”
“Oh, no. Every time you talk about it, it sounds more and more serious! I’m going to find out about everything, I assure you.”
“Ok, yeah, why don’t you give it a try?” Charlie answered, lifting his hands, while he walked out the kitchen. He hated that Don was putting more pressure on him, without even knowing what was really going on.
“You bet I will. You won’t be able to escape from me, Charlie!” Don said, and took a breath when Charlie was gone. He remained in the kitchen for a while and saw his father walking in and looking very concerned.
“Are you sure we will be able to keep Charlie, Amita, and everyone safe?” Alan asked.
“I’ll do my best, that’s what I can promise you, Dad,” Don answered, and he crossed his arms. “That crazy guy won’t put his hands on my family or my team, I won’t let him.”
“I’m not talking about that, Donnie. I already know that you’ll protect Charlie. I meant if we will be able to keep up with the situation we have here.”
“Charlie and Amita in the same room after that public fight,” Don guessed.
Alan walked around, breathing hard. “Yeah. I got the feeling something’s going to explode here. Did you see how terrible he looked right there in the living room? He seemed about to faint or scream.”
“He was very nervous. That’s why I tried to talk to him here in the kitchen. It didn’t go well, by the way. He stormed out saying again that he would never tell me what happened between him and Amita.”
“I see. But do you have any idea of what it could have been?”
“No, not a clue. I’m not sure at all about anything at this point,” he finally said. “He’s acting weird. Since he had that fight with Amita at the office, he got mad at Colby, and now they don’t seem to have fixed anything between them. Did you see the way Colby looked at Charlie there? And the way Charlie looked back at him?”
Slowly, Alan nodded. “You know, son… The other day I found your brother sleeping in the bathroom…”
“What? Why would he do that?” Don asked, his eyebrows almost joining in an expression of shock.
“That’s what I’d like to know. He didn’t give me any explanations, but I didn’t ask him either. He’s an adult and he has to take responsibility for his actions. However, finding him there was disturbing. He hasn’t been like this since your mother died.”
The memory of Margaret’s loss overwhelmed father and son. They stood in silence honoring her and trying not to get sad. It wasn’t the best thing to do considering that there was a crazy man trying to get to Charlie and Amita.
“I’ll get to know what’s making him act like this, Dad. I’ll do it, no matter how difficult it is. I’m trained for that. And I’ll make him react and go back to who he was before. I promise.”
With this promise, Alan didn’t seem to relax. He slowly said, “Well, I’m sure his situation is confusing, but… as I said, he’s an adult. If he wants to keep what happened to himself, then… who are we to drag it out of him? People deserve to have some privacy, Don…”
Alan was obviously right. Don regretted that he had been trying to get the truth out from Charlie, like they were still teenagers. His little brother was a man, but it seemed impossible for Don to let him handle his own problems. “You know, Dad? I think… I think you’re right. Maybe I’m too… overwhelmed by this situation… and I’m not making the best decisions right now,” he muttered, and walked towards the living room. “I’ll go check how things are going there…”
“I’ll make tea for everyone.”
“What? No coffee?” Don said, looking back, “Dad, we’re agents that work 24/7, and we’re facing a ‘high risk situation’ here. We need the extra energy…”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to encourage an altercation between your brother and Amita, not with this… ‘high risk situation’.”
Don smiled and thanked her father with loving eyes. Alan nodded and went to grab the tea.
When Don got to the living room, he saw David asking Colby to talk alone for a while. It seemed that something wrong was going on, and Don kept one eye on them, and the other on Larry and Charlie speaking in whispers in a corner, while he and Megan loaded up their guns.
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David held Colby’s arm, because his friend seemed to be about to punch a wall at any second. "Hey man, what’s going on?”
“Charlie’s going on.” That was the simple answer of a broken-hearted man. Colby was trembling from head to feet while he arranged his gun, and the energy he liberated was related to anger.
“Why? I don’t understand.”
“We… there’s a ‘we’…” Colby muttered, and then smiled and rolled his eyes in an expression of irony. “No, wait, that’s a fact, and only I thought there was a ‘we’… Me, the stupidest man on earth… me and my foolish expectations…” He rested his back on the wall and took a breath to calm down.
Those signs made David feel uncomfortable with being at the Eppes’ house, if Charlie had hurt Colby. “Ok… That means that you and Charlie had a fight…”
“We had a fight… after being discovered by Megan while we were…” Suddenly, Colby stopped talking.
But as always, David was there to help him, and he knew that what Colby needed was a caring response. “Colby, you can talk to me. You’ve already confessed everything to me on Thursday night, remember? And you know I understand what you feel for him…” He waited for his friend to answer, and he relaxed when he saw Colby shaking his head and starting to talk again.
“She found us… in bed.”
“Oh…” David’s eyebrows were high, because he was amused by how fast Charlie and Colby had got to that point of a relationship in only one day.
“But that’s it, I’m not telling you anything else. It’s…”
“Private, I get it. Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to ask you about the details or anything, it’s none of my business, man.”
“Good.”
“But what’s wrong? You got to be together, and that’s what you wanted so badly…”
Again, David saw Colby smile ironically and he heard him say, “Yeah, and now he’s having doubts for the tenth time…”
“Well, that’s understandable…”
Like he had insulted Colby, David received a very angry look from his friend. “What do you mean?”
“I mean… Look, sometimes it takes a while to get to know your feelings. Maybe he needs more time than you did. And there’s this possibility… that you have got into that… intimate moment too soon…”
“Says the man who gave me an obscene tape as a gift.”
At some point, David thought that was an offensive response to his generous attitude towards Colby’s lack of Charlie love. “I was trying to help you, and you were very thankful, if I remember well,” he whispered, “But that’s not what’s important now. You rushed things a little bit, Colby, and I’m sure that’s the reason why Charlie is…”
“You don’t know anything, you weren’t there. He was the one who asked me to spend the night with him…” Colby shook his head, “You know? Just… whatever, man… Forget about everything I said about him. Let’s try to catch Amita’s kidnapper and leave all that has happened behind. I don’t want to think about Charlie anymore. It’s too painful.”
He ran his hands over his sweaty face and went to the bathroom to splash water on it. David watched him look at his reflection in the mirror, and he knew that it wasn’t going to be easy for Colby to let go of this and focus on the work.
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“Larry, I need time, not to discuss this with you…” Charlie said, because Larry couldn’t stop offering himself to be the person that he could talk to about Colby.
“It seems that there are some irrational clouds blocking your normal thought process. Charles, you have to understand that sometimes unexpected encounters are destined to happen because they are supposed to brighten people’s lives-“
“I’m not up for philosophic theories! This is reality, this is not an experiment… even if it feels like it.”
They were in the corner of the living room talking softly, being careful that Don couldn’t hear them, even if he often had his eyes on them.
“It all happened so fast… I haven’t even got the time to process the meaning…” Charlie continued. He knew that Larry was now lifting his index finger to insist on having a conversation about the Colby situation, so the mathematician used a very serious voice tone to say, “… by myself. I have to figure this out by myself.”
There was a moment of silence, and when Larry spoke again, all he said was, “Ok, I respect that, Charles. But I just want you to know that whatever dilemma you might have to confront, here you can find a soul that is willing to help you to deal with it.”
Finally, Larry seemed to agree to wait until Charlie was ready to talk about Colby. The mathematician smiled sweetly and turned around to see his father coming back to the living room carrying a tray with tea cups for everyone.
He handed a cup to Amita, who accepted it without smiling. Charlie watched her sip the tea, her hands shaking, like she was dealing with the fact that she had to stay in the house even if all she wanted to do was catch a flight to India.
Charlie’s father saw him staring at her and he said to Amita, “Are you coming to visit us sometime in the future, of at least call every once in a while? ‘Cause that would be lovely. You are still a friend of ours.”
The question took Amita by surprise. She went speechless and she looked at Charlie as though looking for a sign of what would be the most correct thing to say.
So he entered the conversation and very politely suggested, “Yeah, you could… you know, call… or send postcards… sometime… if you have the time…” He was making strange pauses when all he wanted was to sound natural and confident. Of course, Charlie knew that he hadn’t fooled his father. Alan looked at him with concerned eyes, and the mathematician swallowed hard.
“Charlie, I’m going to ask you this for the last time. Are you ok?”
Charlie needed some seconds to organize his thoughts. “Yeah… yeah. I just feel… really sad that I’m losing someone that I care so much about…” he said, because he still loved Amita a lot, even if it was only as a friend.
“What?” Colby said. He had just come out of the bathroom, and he had heard the last words Charlie had pronounced.
Everybody in the room stared at Colby, who had his eyes fixed on Charlie. Megan and Larry glanced at each other, because Colby had obviously taken the mathematician’s words as a proof that Charlie had given up on him and wanted to get back with Amita.
David was the first to reach for Colby and say to him in a whisper to his ear, “Hey, relax man, I’m sure it’s not what you think…”
“Really? It’s not what I think?” Colby repeated, and he was talking to Charlie. He didn’t get an answer.
The mathematician was still figuring out what he had done to make Colby get mad now. But he was frozen, all eyes were on him at the moment too, and a lot of people knew about the underlying story that was hanging in the air. Everyone except for his father and his brother, who looked like they had no clue of what was going on.
The only thing that could make Charlie react was Colby. The agent grabbed his own head and yelled, “Oh my god, I’m such an idiot. This wasn’t going anywhere. It wasn’t meant to be!”
Don walked towards him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Colby, are you ok? We can talk about this because we’re a team, but not now, we’re in the middle of a situation…”
Colby looked at him and tried to say something. He was going to find some lame excuse, but an excuse after all. He wasn’t going to say anything about what had happened that night before everybody arrived.
However, Charlie couldn’t know that, and in a desperate reaction to keep his secret safe, he went towards Colby and said to him, “Don’t say a word. I’m going to handle this, not you.”
“Well, you’re handling it very nicely, considering that you’re not planning to do anything at all!” Colby’s sarcastic answer left everybody with their mouths hanging open.
“Colby, we already talked about this. I want you to know that I need time…”
“Fine, take all the time you need, do whatever you want!”
“Don’t yell at me like that! You live in Wonderland! I need to get myself together, find the meaning of this, and then…!”
“Don’t talk to me anymore, ok? Don’t confuse me anymore! You’ve got an answer or you don’t, and I guess that you already decided what you want.”
Suddenly here was a well known sound that made everybody turned around to look at the couch that was behind them. Amita’s kidnapper was seated beside her and he was holding a gun to her head while he took her by the waist. The criminal also had a knife sneaking out of his boots, a rifle that pointed out of his back, and several grenades tied to his belt.
“Good conversation here, people… Good conversation… I enjoyed it a lot. But it’s so sad that some of you don’t know the truth those two are hiding…” the man said with a bright smile, looking at Charlie and Colby.
The team’s attention had been attracted by the last discussions and events, and no one had watched the back door. The lovers’ private life was starting to change the dynamic of the group, and this, the fact that a criminal had taken everybody by surprise and kept Amita as a hostage, would most definitely change the course of things.
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THE LOVELY VIDEO MIA MADE FOR THIS CHAPTER, REQUESTED BY ME
SARAH MCLACHLAN - "BUILDING A MYSTERY"
Click to view