#abery

Crunched up in the booth, he’s been alternately frowning at a book that he doesn’t seem to be reading and at a sketchbook he barely seems to be doodling in. Cathy’s been referring to him in her head as the Tall Man, because it amuses her, but also because the guy had towered over Cathy’s respectable five-feet-five-inches when she’d walked him to his table. There’s also something familiar about him, in a distant sort of way, but with his face partially obscured by sunglasses, there’s really no telling. He probably just has One of Those Faces.

They get people like this in the diner now and then—people having Bad Days, not tall people; Cathy really can’t say she’s noticed exactly how many tall people come in to eat versus people who aren’t tall—but it’s not as common to see them during lunch. Usually, they come in in the middle of the night, unable to sleep and wary of being alone.

Cathy eyes the Tall Man’s sunglasses and shrugs to herself. Maybe he’s used to working nights. Maybe this is the middle of the night for him.

Between the height and the clear bad mood, the Tall Man would have been intimidating, but for the fact he’s generally been polite to Cathy, and he’s also about as hunched in on himself as a person can get without just resting their forehead on the tabletop. It doesn’t really add up to a threatening picture.

Cathy has, aside from the perfunctory eye she keeps on all the guests that camp out at her tables, been leaving him alone. She has enough trouble with her own depression, she can’t cure a stranger’s. She can be polite and pleasant and make sure his stay is a nice one, but someone else is going to have to take responsibility for improving the Tall Man’s day.

She’s two tables over, cleaning up the mess from a party of four, when she hears a deep, soulful voice strike up a tune in opposition to the nasally 80s pop piping through the overhead speakers. Looking up in confusion, Cathy realizes she recognizes the voice.

It’s… Elvis?

“–walk like an angel… You talk like an angel… but I got wise. You’re the devil–”

Then the Tall Man finishes fumbling with his cell phone and answers it.

“Hello, Henry.”

The change in his voice is immediate. Where before he had been brusque and formal, he’s suddenly warm and fond. It almost feels like a violation just to listen. All the same, Cathy chances a look at him; he’s not smiling, but he looks… less sad, which is something.

With a little smile of her own, Cathy carts a stack of dishes back to the kitchen. When she returns to finish cleaning the table, the Tall Man has uncurled from his defensive, unhappy position and is leaning back a little in his seat. He’s still on the phone.

“I’m glad,” he’s saying, then he pauses, and when he continues his voice is so soft that Cathy can only just hear him. “You know, I admit, I do still miss writing letters to you, but in this case, I don’t mind trading intimacy for immediacy.”

Cathy awards herself a point. She had been guessing that the Henry on the other end of the conversation was either a very close friend or a significant other (your voice didn’t do that when you spoke to a relative, no matter how dear they were) and the intimacy of writing letters tips the scale in favor of the latter.

“No, today’s been… fine,” the Tall Man lies poorly into the phone before something like a sheepish look crosses what’s visible of his face; apparently Henry had called him out on it. “How do you always know? You’re half the world away.”

There are no more tables around the Tall Man to clean, and Cathy has to move out of earshot of the conversation after that (she’s given up pretending she doesn’t eavesdrop; people just have to accept that if they’re going to talk on the phone in public, they might be overheard), but it’s not long before the need to remove the lunch special menus brings her back around.

“–it’s important. You’ll be done soon, in any case, and then you’ll be home.” Now the Tall Man is smiling, if only a little. “But did you call just to check up, or… ah.”

There’s a pause.

“No, I didn’t forget, it’s only…” the Tall Man pulls his phone away from his ear to check the time and makes a surprised sort of “whoops” face when he catches sight of it, going back to speaking into the phone. “Well anyway, I’m leaving now.”

The Tall Man looks right up at Cathy—apparently he’s not going to pretend she can’t hear him, either—and she’s quick to pull his check from her apron pocket, placing it on his table. He nods his thanks and digs his wallet out of his pocket.

“Yes, Henry, thanks ever so for taking the time badger me when you’re not even in the country,” he drawls as he pulls a few bills out of his wallet and then, upon checking the total, a few more. “Truly, your timekeeping skills are one of the things I love about you.”

Cathy lets out a breath of a laugh and the Tall Man turns his quiet smile on her. He pulls the phone away from his ear again, pressing the receiver into his shoulder long enough to say, “I don’t need change, thank you for the meal,” before scooping up his things and scooting out of the booth.

Letting him go with a quick “thank you” of her own, Cathy listens with amusement as the conversation carries on and out of earshot.

“Oh yes, one of the many things,” is the last thing she can hear the Tall Man say, but she doesn’t think he sounds quite as sarcastic as he means to.

It used to irritate Cathy when people would talk on the phone in the restaurant; it made it difficult for her to do her job, it led to misunderstandings, and it would bother other guests in the vicinity. Now, though, it interests her. She likes trying to discern what she can from hearing just one side of the conversation, and her favorite times are the ones when the person on the other end of the line is clearly loved.

And even if the Tall Man isn’t as enamored of Henry as he’d sounded, the call had certainly put him in a good mood – he’d left a twenty dollar tip.

Brows going up, Cathy counts back through the cash just to be sure and finds herself lingering over a five dollar bill in the middle of the stack, staring at Abraham Lincoln’s wisely serene face. Something about it seems suddenly and oddly familiar.

Blinking, Cathy shakes the feeling off. It’s familiar because she sees it nearly every day. What other reason would there be?

“Wait, stop, this is ridiculous,” Henry gasps when he and Abe pull apart. “The bedroom is just upstairs, it doesn’t even take a minute to get there.”

“Right. You’re right,” Abe agrees between kisses pressed to Henry’s jaw. “Of course.”

Hissing at the scrape of dull teeth down the bared line of his neck, Henry winds his fingers into Abe’s hair and pulls him back up for a proper kiss, after which they continue their stumbling trek out into the hall and towards the stairs, entirely unwilling to separate for the time it would take to climb them and get to their bedroom.

It is ridiculous, Henry reflects somewhere in the back of his mind. Over 600 years of life between them and they can’t find it in themselves to be patient for even a minute?

Then again – nearly 100 years spent learning one another’s bodies, spent on kisses and lovemaking and fucking and whatever comes between, and still this whole thing sometimes feels new. Perhaps it isn’t ridiculous as much as it is something not quite definable that makes the romantic part of Henry that he’d thought long dead hum in satisfaction.

He doesn’t get to put any more thought into it, because attempting to walk backwards up the stairs while kissing Abe ends in predictable failure, and the only thing that keeps Henry from braining himself on the steps is the fierce grip Abe has on the back of his neck. Instead, they both go tumbling down onto the landing, Henry flat on his back and Abe on his hands and knees above him.

They stare at one another for a long moment in startled silence before bursting into laughter at their own impatient clumsiness.

Abe leans down to rest his head against Henry’s shoulder, still chuckling, and Henry takes advantage of the moment, grabbing Abe and rolling them until he’s kneeling up over Abe, who is now on his back against the landing.

There’s surprise in his eyes as he looks up at Henry, but it does nothing to diminish the urgent heat there, and Henry answers his unasked question by sinking down a few steps while working at the fly of Abe’s jeans.

The library was hypothetically for both of them, but it was very much Henry’s pride and joy, and the only real indulgence of the “past” he allowed himself on a regular basis. After all, he argued, literature didn’t get old, it simply became classic (Abe had not required the rationalization but had nodded along with Henry, anyway; it hadn’t been for his benefit, really).

It was the only room the cleaning staff was told to leave alone, as Henry saw to its maintenance himself, dusting the built-in, floor-to-ceiling shelves, checking the climate-controlled cases, and forever shuffling and reshuffling the books around.

There were first editions and signed copies—all bought by and signed to Henry himself, of course—that were left in their locked cases for safekeeping, taken out only under special circumstances (Henry didn’t much believe in putting things on a pedestal just because they were old—if they fell apart, they weren’t worth keeping around, anyway—but these were special, often from writers Henry had known personally, had been friends with, and they were some of the only mementos he allowed himself), but all the other books were fair game.

Henry would rearrange things when he was having a bad day, or when he was feeling nostalgic, or when he simply felt like it was time for a change, and it drove Abe up the wall. He never knew how to find a book in his own home. The books special to him—fewer in number than Henry’s, but a respectable amount—were also left as sacrosanct; everything else, though…

To date, Henry had organized the books alphabetically by title (forwards and backwards), alphabetically by author (forwards and backwards), chronologically (by publication date, by the author’s birthdate, and by the date Henry had first read them), by subject (alphabetically and by level of interest to Henry specifically), by color, by size, and once by Dewey Decimal Classification (that one had taken quite a bit, and Abe had let Henry be for the duration; it hadn’t been a good couple of days).

Henry said that it helped to clear his mind, but Abe suspected there were times Henry just enjoyed being surrounded by words. It certainly seemed to put him in a good mood, in any case, which sometimes resulted in another of Abe’s favored habits of Henry’s: singing.

It was a difficult one to catch; Henry rarely did it if he knew anyone was within earshot—and thanks to his vampiric senses, he usually knew—but here and there, Abe had managed to catch Henry off guard. He blessed the invention of headphones for this, if nothing else; when wearing them, Henry tended to get swept up in whatever he was listening to and would sometimes sing along without realizing Abe had come into range.

Abe would guess Henry had headphones on right now, as it happened, since Abe could hear him belting all the way from the kitchen.

Smiling to himself, Abe shrugged out of his coat and dropped his keys on the kitchen table. Henry had only just begun his latest reorganization effort when Abe had left a few hours ago to run errands, and it sounded as though he was well engrossed in it by now – and as though he was enjoying himself, if the tune of whatever he was singing was any indication.

From downstairs, Abe couldn’t quite make out the words, but it sounded different from Henry’s usual fare; something upbeat and poppy. As Abe approached the stairs, stealthy as he was capable of being, almost certain Henry would notice him now and stop singing, the words resolved themselves:

“Waterloo, promise to love you forever more! Waterloo, couldn’t escape if I wanted to!”

They ticked something in the back of Abe’s memory, a half-remembered band popular in the 60s or 70s that he was sure Henry had played records of at some point, but the effort to remember was abandoned in favor of quelling laughter once he’d ascended the stairs and reached the open library door.

There was Henry, a man Abe had once upon a time thought of as suave and possibly even aloof, now with one arm almost awkwardly full of books as he scrutinized the title of one held in his other hand, body swaying almost subconsciously to the music as he sang.

To say Abe preferred this version of Henry was a vast understatement.

“And how could I ever refuse… I feel like a win when I lose! Waterloo – It’s not nice to sneak up on people, Abraham.”

Abe couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him then. Caught.

“Hardly my fault you didn’t notice I was home,” Abe countered. “But please, don’t stop on my account.”

Henry was already freeing up a hand to reach up and press a button on the cord of his earbuds—not headphones anymore, but hell, what a stupid name for a thing—to pause the music. “Well, now that you’re here, it would be rude to ignore you.”

He then proceeded to continue organizing the books as if Abe weren’t there, and Abe let out a huff of amusement. Henry certainly put on a good show—much like a cat, he was very good at acting like he’d meant to be doing whatever it was he was doing all along, even when he very much had not meant to do it at all—but after over a century of acquaintance, Abe could read the lines of embarrassment in his form. If he’d been capable, Abe imagined Henry might actually have been blushing at the moment.

“You could sing for me, then,” Abe suggested, gently teasing. “You have a lovely voice for it.”

And he did, was the thing – Abe had no idea what Henry’s hang-up about singing was, when he possessed such a sharp, clear, emotive voice.

“You know I have a rule against torturing those who don’t deserve it,” Henry shot back, and Abe rolled his eyes.

He stepped carefully over the stacks of books that had accumulated around Henry and leaned in to press a quick kiss to his cheek. “If you say so,” Abe murmured lightly, gamely accepting the kiss Henry turned to offer him before he stepped away again, this time to approach one of the few surfaces in the room that hadn’t been overtaken by Henry’s project.

Much preferring to be near whatever bustling signs of life the house had to offer today, Abe pulled a chair up to the half-clear desk and, after a moment of searching, found his sketchbook tucked safely away where he’d left it the previous night, when he had been drawing while listening to Henry read.

Making his intent to settle clear, Abe slipped the pencil from the ring binding and flipped to a clean page. He could see Henry shake his head out of the corner of his eye before continuing to pull and stack and re-shelve books.

As the cloudy afternoon light filtering through the windows waned into evening shade, they kept each other company in relative silence, the gentle thud of books being moved around and the scratch of pencil on paper filling the space between them until hours had passed and Abe caught a few faint notes hummed along from the other side of the room.

Pencil poised above his sketchbook, Abe chanced a look up and saw Henry absorbed in whatever he was doing by a corner shelf and quietly, absently, singing.

“The history book on the shelf, is always repeating itself…”

His voice was soft, a little lost in thought, but still pleasant. Abe smiled to himself and returned to drawing. If Henry had forgotten Abe was in the room with him, Abe wouldn’t be the one to remind him.

“Waterloo, I was defeated, you won the war… Waterloo, promise to love you forever more…”

Usually it was Abe who the neighborhood children would gravitate towards, and rightfully so. He would participate in games when asked, used dormant carpentry skills to help build forts and treehouses, and would mediate childish disputes with every ounce of seriousness he had leveled in courtrooms over a hundred years ago.

And this was perfectly fine with Henry; Abe had been a wonderful father and missed it deeply with whatever aching remnant of his old self he’d retained. If Abe wanted to make friends with the neighborhood children, and even with their families, Henry wouldn’t begrudge him that.

(Henry had warned Abe that there was a distinct possibility that the whole act could end disastrously, but as Abe’s only response had been a solemn, “I know,” Henry had dropped the subject.)

Really, the only issue was that children made Henry uncomfortable.

At least, that was what Abe teased him for. Henry maintained that he just preferred to wait until humans grew up before he went spending time with them. Children didn’t make him uncomfortable, they were just so, so fragile in so many ways; they were so easy to ruin. He liked to see what they became on their own, without his intervention.

So Henry didn’t really avoid kids, per se, but he didn’t spend much time with them, either.

Unless, of course, one suddenly and inexplicably decided that his refrigerator needed to be covered in glittery artwork and that he needed to be very seriously introduced to a stuffed unicorn named—actually, Henry didn’t know, the name changed every time she told him—and now, that he needed cupcakes.

Grace stared up at him, eyes wide and eager, a single confection clutched in one tiny hand to offer to him, while the other hand held and entire plastic container of the damned things.

“Those look very good,” Henry lied smoothly after a moment of stunned silence. “I can’t wait to try one later.”

“You should try one now,” Grace insisted, wiggling the treat at him.

“But I’m not hungry right now,” Henry argued gently.

Behind Grace, by the back kitchen door where she’d come in, Abe was standing and laughing – not out loud, of course, but Henry could hear it all the same. He could certainly see it in Abe’s eyes.

“I want to make sure you like them,” Grace said earnestly.

“Of course I’ll like them, who doesn’t like cupcakes?” Henry glanced back up at Abe, hopeful for any kind of assistance. “Abe, you like cupcakes, don’t you?”

“Sure, I do,” Abe lied gamely (neither of them had ever so much as tasted a cupcake and had never planned on doing so). “But these cupcakes are for you.”

Traitor.

Grace was nodding fervently at Henry. “I made them for you! I picked the flavor and the frosting and my mom put them in the oven but I frosted them! And I did the sprinkles, and…” she trailed off when Henry still hadn’t reached out to take the cupcake from her. “An’ I made them for you.”

Oh, fuck. There was no way out of this, was there? She was about to start crying, Henry could feel it, and then what?

“Then I guess I’ll just have to try one,” Henry said, trying very hard to sound like he was cheerful about the prospect, rather than attempting with resignation to figure out how long he’d be able to keep the thing down.

“Really?” Grace practically screeched in delight.

“Really?” Abe echoed her over by the door, incredulous.

“Yes,” Henry answered them both, plucking the cupcake from Graces hand and holding it up to his face.

It was just as unwieldy as he had expected.

How the hell were you supposed to eat these things? Top-first? Just fucking unhinge your jaw and take half of it in one go? Probably start by getting the paper off.

Henry did so. There was nothing for it then but to lean in and… take a bite.

This was weird.

This was so weird.

Had he been used to eating actual food, it might’ve been alright, but as he wasn’t, the whole experience was just damn bizarre. The texture was strange, soft and spongy, and the frosting was even stranger, sort of sticky and slimy at once, and the whole thing was so sweet it made his teeth ache.

He had not, however, lived to be over four hundred by letting his every thought cross his face.

“Mm,” he hummed instead, chewing but not yet swallowing, and speaking around his mouthful. “This is great.”

Grace grinned, but did not budge. Damn.

Quelling a grimace, Henry swallowed… and took another bite.

Abe was watching with horrified fascination from his spot by the door, brows climbing higher and higher as Henry made it through the entire cupcake with efficient, if messy, motions. Henry could feel it churning in his stomach even before he’d finished the last bite and was already tied up in attempting to concoct a way to send Grace away.

“Thank you very much,” Henry said as he finished, reaching out to take the container of cupcakes from Grace’s delighted hands, though they were the last thing he wanted to see.

“You’re welcome!” Grace beamed.

“Grace, I don’t suppose you remember the recipe for those, do you?” Abe asked, finally stepping in to put an end to Henry’s torment.

“Uh-uh.” Grace shook her head, tearing her grin away from Henry to look at Abe.

“Do you think maybe you might go and ask your mother for us?” Abe went on, fixing a hopeful look on his face.

“Sure!” Grace chirped. “I can go do that now!”

Abe smiled, holding the back door for her. “Thank you, Grace, that would be very helpful.”

And that was no lie. As soon as Grace had stepped out the door, Henry bolted for the bathroom and was kneeling before the never-used toilet just in time.

The cupcake was even less impressive the second time around.

There was a firm hand rubbing soothingly at his back by the time his body had finished purging the offending substance.

“You’re a bastard,” Henry spat acidly – or possibly just spat acid, trying to get the taste out of his mouth.

Abe offered him a cup of mouthwash. “I really, honestly did not expect you to eat it,” he said sheepishly.

“Still a bastard,” Henry growled, taking the cup to rinse with.

“The rest of the cupcakes have been discretely disposed of,” Abe went on. “No danger of her finding out they were tossed.”

“Mhm.” Henry swished the last of the mouthwash around, spat into the bowl, then stood to close the lid and flush. “And what about when she comes skipping back with the recipe you asked for?”

Abe shrugged. “We’ll look it over, then tell her mother you have allergies.”

“Allergies,” Henry grumbled, rolling his eyes. “We could just move.”

The line of Abe’s mouth pressed firm, the way it did when he was trying hard not to smile. “Mighty dramatic plans from the man who went out and bought magnets just to display that little girl’s art on the fridge,” he said after a long moment.

“Well what was I supposed to do with it, shove it in my desk?” Henry waved a hand in careless agitation. “That’s just rude.”

Abe said nothing. He didn’t have to. Instead, he smiled and leaned in to press a kiss to Henry’s temple and another to the corner of his mouth. Henry frowned.

“What kind of allergies?” he asked.

“I’ve heard gluten is a big one these days,” Abe offered.

“Mm, but gluten-free is being tossed around a lot,” Henry argued. “Wouldn’t put it past Grace to figure out gluten-free cupcakes.”

Abe hummed in thought. “Then you’re also allergic to eggs. And dairy. That’s a thing, right? You just have a lot of allergies and it’s best if you take care of your own diet.”

Henry snorted. “And what kind of idiot are they going to think I am, to have put all of those things into my mouth, knowing I’m allergic?”

Abe continued to smile at him, and Henry, despite himself, was warmed by it. “The kind who didn’t want to make Grace cry.”

With a final frustrated grunt, Henry dragged himself out from beneath the covers, leaving Abe smiling into his pillow as he listened to Henry collect his clothes from the floor where they’d been scattered just a few hours before and then take the stairs at an inhuman speed to catch the deliveryman before he left. It never failed to amuse Abe how petulant Henry could be, even at the age of nearly 450, when his sleep was disturbed.

He could hear Henry calling the man at the door back, speaking with as much politeness as he was willing to muster while half asleep, shutting and locking the door, depositing a box onto a table (the kitchen table, by the sound of it), and stumping back up the stairs. The entire interlude took perhaps two minutes, but Abe was already back in the muzzy space of near-sleep when Henry returned to him, shedding clothes and sliding under the covers to burrow against Abe’s back.

Something was different.

Abe shifted against Henry, prompting Henry to lazily spread his hand out across Abe’s sternum, stroking idly with his thumb, as if to quiet Abe back into restfulness. As he did so, Abe could feel the brush of cotton between Henry’s palm and his chest. Fabric, where there had been only skin before. Abe opened his eyes and glanced down, seeing the blue of the button-down shirt he’d been wearing the day before.

“Are you wearing my shirt?” Abe asked, brows furrowed as his tired mind worked to tick things into place.

“What?” Henry mumbled, less a question and more probably an automatic response as he drifted on the edge of sleep himself.

Curiosity now piqued, Abe turned in Henry’s grasp to get a look at him in the dim of the room. Henry sighed and let Abe go in order to roll onto his back and slant an annoyed glance at him. “What?” he asked again.

“You are wearing my shirt.”

And nothing else, by the looks of it.

Abe had heard Henry shucking a pair of jeans by the bedroom door, as well as replacing some sunglasses on the dresser, but the shirt had stayed.

Two of the buttons in the middle were fastened in order to preserve whatever modesty Henry had felt necessary for answering the door, though Abe couldn’t imagine it had preserved much – the shirt was very clearly too large for Henry.

Lying back against the pillows, the shirt gaped at Henry’s shoulders, exposing his neck and collarbones and a portion of his chest while the sleeves lolled down past his wrists. The ends of the shirt hit him at mid-thigh, one tail draped well enough down his middle to—and if Abe didn’t know any better, he’d say artfully—cover his prick while the other tail pooled on the bed by his bare hip.

He looked every inch like some kind of staged pinup, and when Abe managed to drag his eyes back up, Henry had the smirk to match.

“I grabbed it because it was closest, and I was in a hurry. But if I’d known you would appreciate it so much, I would have stolen one of your shirts much sooner,” Henry teased.

“I don’t know if we have to go as far as theft.” Abe sat up and turned to face Henry, letting the blankets crumple behind him as he tossed one leg over Henry’s thighs and knelt over him, the better to appreciate the picture he presented. “It’s an interesting look for you, though.”

“Interesting?” Henry raised his brows, going on dryly, “my, but you do know how to flatter a man, Abraham.”

Abe leaned in, nosing at Henry’s temple. “Well, it’s certainly holding my interest,” he murmured there, before ducking lower to press his lips to the juncture of Henry’s shoulder.

He could smell himself on Henry there, with his nose pressed into his own shirt collar and his mouth to Henry’s skin, and without any conscious input from his own mind Abe parted his lips and bit down. Henry gasped at the unexpected scrape of dull teeth, but Abe made it clear with the transition into sharp, sucking kisses that his intention was not to break skin, but to bruise it; bruises never lasted long, but there was something about the livid red-purple marks against Henry’s pale complexion that pleased Abe to see.

(He had resolved to stop worrying about what that meant for his psyche long ago; in the grand scheme of things he’d done since his death, admitting to an enjoyment of marking up his lover was hardly even worth a raised eyebrow.)

Mouth working at Henry’s neck, Abe’s fingers went to task on the two buttons holding his shirt closed, popping them open in quick succession and then delving beneath the parted fabric. Hands ghosted up over Henry’s stomach, over his ribs, brushed over his nipples and pulled a pleased groan from him as the shirt was pushed open and to the side.

Abe pulled back to admire his handiwork. It was a very nice picture.

Henry was a sturdily-built man, slender without being slight, and of a height that now technically hovered a few inches below average (though he found no humor in Abe pointing that out); there was a lean muscle to him that would have been strength on a human, and this without adding the abilities of a formidably-aged vampire into the mix. As he stared up at Abe now, though, fading bruises on his neck, Abe’s broad hands spread across his ribcage, Abe’s too-large shirt framing him, something about him seemed very agreeably small.

“If you intend on proceeding—and you’d better—you really should let me take off the shirt,” Henry spoke up.

“No,” Abe denied, probably a little too quickly. “Leave it on.”

“And risk ruining it?” Henry asked, all sardonic concern. “It’s a nice shirt.”