i will hold on hope,

he could almost. but he’s looking too hard, like he always is. maybe someone else wouldn’t notice how steadfastly charles’ eyes won’t meet his.

his grin is awful and smug.

cold wine at the back of his throat, charles distorted by the raised glass, erik’s eyes crease. there’s only a mouthful of wine left when he puts the glass down.

he slouches in the lush armchair and crosses his legs.

he pauses for a second, as if savouring the pinot on  the tip of his tongue.

when he finally looks over, box still in his lap and not a single chocolate picked out, he catches the edge of erik’s smile. oh, no.

he feels an embarrassed, unmistakable sort of heat crawling up the back of his neck. this was a terrible idea. he should’ve asked raven what to do instead. he should’ve done absolutely nothing at all. 

          “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

he looks at him, blank-faced, flatly.

        “If you think about it,”

his arm retreats so he can take another look himself,

        “you get more chocolate with the heart-          shaped ones.”

chocolate and wine are a strange mix, especially with the toffee in his molars threatening to seal his jaw shut. that doesn’t stop his next throat- bobbing sip, but it does make him think twice about taking the strawberry-jelly heart. 

       “and I’m only surprised they’re nice           because there aren’t many people here         –– aside from you, maybe –– who would         have the class to buy a box of chocolates         with an instruction leaflet and tissue paper         inside.”

his smile is pleasant and unsuspicious, and completely dangerous as he looks back up at him and hands the box over.

          “Do you? I’ve never thought about it.”

charles tries to smile but it looks more like a tight- lipped grimace. 

          “Maybe people are learning from me.”

he takes the box from him and pretends to look through it, as if he doesn’t know the entire select- ion himself.

    “Truffle. Mint. Salted. — These are nice.”

there’s not one tear on the cardboard of the box. not a dent from opening it. even popping a toffee barrel out of the plastic is casually careful, carefully casual. 

    “Whoever it was has good taste.”

    “I don’t think I’ll be able to lie to them if they ask me.”

as he pops the toffee in his mouth he gives charles a disapproving look. the sweet ruins the effect, sticking out at his cheek.

    “What one do you want? There’s one here with —”

the card that’s included describes each chocolate in a looping font, 

    ‘Strawberry jelly in it — and oh,” he says, like he’s delighted, “it’s a heart.”

but. here they are.

          “You sound surprised that they’re nice.”

he matches erik’s look with one of his own. flatly,

          “Oh, I’m sure you’ll manage.”

he hands erik a glass of wine and refuses, again, to look at him. he focuses on the box in his hand instead. it isn’t any better.

erik –– hand on the doorknob, surprised fingers lingering –– makes an oh shape, small and soft, with his mouth and moves out of the doorway to let charles roll past. 

his mouth twitches, hidden from charles, as he crosses the room in long strides to pick up and rattle the box. the twitch threatens to spread,  his cheeks tight with the effort to keep his smile closed.

he has to do a fast walk-jog, chocolates like  stones in a rattling tin, to catch up to charles down the corridor. 

    “Do you think someone forget to take them      on their date?”

walking promptly beside him, erik doesn’t seem  to catch the cue that they’re not meant to be meeting each other’s eyes.

   “I wonder who left them.” 

he starts to walk backwards, facing him.

   “Angel or Sean. Azazel. A burglar.” 

ahead of charles already, footsteps deliberately measured (no spring), he pushes open the study door and holds it ajar.

          “I suppose so.”

he should’ve thought this lie through a little better. erik catches up to him quicker than he’d thought he would and charles can feel heat creeping up the back of his neck, a flush of pink.

he refuses to look at him. he focuses instead on not catching his chair on the toes of erik’s shoes, but he’s tempted to. it would serve him right.

          “I don’t know who left them. There wasn’t            a name or anything. If there had been, I             wouldn’t have offered them.”

his voice is tight, clipped. he wheels past erik and into the study and regrets the invitation. he’d rather keep this entire bottle to himself and his red-faced, sudden shame.

          “Probably.”

he finally looks at erik.

          “But we’ll have to tell them we don’t know            what happened to the box.”

the hypothetical they is going to be the death of him.

he tries to stifle it, lips thinning from the effort. 

his eyes flick to the door as if to say out there?

             “ah,” 

he nods. as if he’s been let in on a secret.

he can already see the look on her face, the waggle of her eyebrows above the rim of a coffee cup. it makes his stomach twist. he’ll never live it down.

still, he finds himself grinning, eyes crinkling before he catches it.

          “Oh, undoubtedly.”

he doesn’t know why he finds this funny, either. hadn’t he been skirting around this weeks ago, with raven?

                                  “— is this funny?”

he’s very close when charles turns. he shifts away, moves down onto both of his elbows, stomach down. he can’t help but look at charles’ hands when he does. it’s a better alternative to trying to read his expression.

watching his hands, his fingers, his wrists and the underside of them disappearing into the cuff of his pyjama shirt, erik knows he should leave. he’s good at it, after all. they both know that. 

but — 

there’s a pillow mark running pink from his jaw to the bump of his cheekbone and, though he’s unaware of the mark, he knows his resolve is suddenly as soft as that reddened skin.

                                 “it’s late.”

a smile flickers in the corner of his mouth again, there and gone, and he shrugs.

          “no, no -- well, i don’t know. maybe.”

he rubs at a spot beneath his eyes with his ring finger. when he blinks, it’s a dry, scratchy feeling.

he isn’t surprised when erik says it, and he thinks he knows what’s going to follow. he’d expected it, really; kiss or not, he’d never considered erik stay- ing through the night. his falling asleep hadn’t been intentional, after all. why wouldn’t he go?

          “mhm.”

still, he seems reluctant to do so, and charles is reluctant to let him.

eight o’clock and erik follows him into his room after dinner, walking behind him with wide hands and big gestures and a deep investment in a conversation he’s since forgotten.

ten o’clock and charles has to interrupt him mid-conversation to go and brush his teeth. he follows him again, through the bump of his wheels over the doorway, and sits on the closed toilet talking to him, leaning against the wall, nodding through his foamy-mouthed rebuttal, watching him in the mirror.

eleven and he’s almost lying down in the armchair in the corner of the room, legs in front of him, ankles crossed, forearm draped over his brow, over his eyes. charles changing into his pyjamas. 

one in the morning, closed curtains and silence outside, and he’s sitting on the edge of charles’ bed, nodding and interrupting him and grinning and listening and — suddenly, it seemed to make sense that his eyes have been closed for a while and he can hear the pages of charles’ book turning leafily somewhere near him. 

he doesn’t know when he kicked his shoes off. hours ago, probably. but his feet are on the bed, his socks twisted half-way wrong. 

it must be two. half-two. late enough that his eyelids are heavy and charles is squinting at his book in the low light.

stirring without moving, his foggy eyes adjust to being awake.

he blinks at charles’ profile. his creasing brow, his nose, the dip of his upper lip that erik imagines is the exact size of the soft pad of his own index finger, his chin, the smooth line of his jaw.

he kisses it. his jaw. the corner of it. above his shoulders that rest against the deep pillows. above the warm and almost hidden line of his neck. below his earlobe. right below it. his nose touches the soft shell of his ear. is ticked by his curling hair. 

he can’t remember making the decision.

he stays up on his elbow after drawing back. 

his voice is soft and rough and strange. as low as the  dim light.

the thought, which seems so obvious now, never once crosses his mind.

he reads. used to the solid weight of someone be- side him -- raven, usually, her head tucked against his shoulder in a way that seems Very Long Ago -- he doesn’t think, again, of this being odd. maybe it is, maybe it should be. but it isn’t. not now, at least. not with the comfortable familiarity of his bedroom and the drawn curtains and the quiet of the rest of the house.

half-past two and his eyes burn, the stubborn sort of itch that he remembers too well from oxford, the time after it.

he isn’t aware that erik is awake and watching him until it’s too late and even then, he doesn’t do any- thing at all. there’s a moment of quiet, near-panicked stillness that lends itself too easily to the wet thud  of his heart in his throat. he wonders if erik feels it, too, and hopes that he doesn’t. 

(he isn’t sure why. but another time floats into the back of his mind and sticks, something too similar to this and how strange it is now that of all things, erik has chosen to say.)

          “oh.”

he marks his place in his book. places it back on the beside table. looks at his hands, the faded blue stripes of his pajamas, and feels the sudden, ill- timed urge to laugh.

he stifles it. turns to erik, instead.

for a man with a limp and bruised ribs he barges into charles’ room with a surprisingly blitz-like energy. 

on the ‘bath’ of can i use your bathroom? erik has already shuffled quickly past charles and slammed the en-suite door shut.

hiding from post-fight raven, using a bathroom hat’s not his own (that she has made herself so comfortable in turning up at) is imperative.

from behind the wood, running his new black eye under the cold tap he calls a muffled,

and telling, he thinks. charles leans forward and tries to see through the crack in his bed- room door, as if he expects to see someone (raven) trailing five steps behind erik, knowing- ly.

          “-- why?”

marking his place in his book, he gets out of bed, wheels himself to the spot just outside the bathroom door.

his knuckles rap against it.

she’s been here a hundred times before, and she will be here one hundred times again;

raven, endlessly and timelessly, all at once age nine and thirty- one, hovering outside charles’ bedroom door before she pushes the heavy wood open and peers in.

settled in bed with a book, he looks up as soon as the door opens and marks his place. 

          “No, not at all.”

he can’t say he’s surprised to see her here, but there’s something about it (now, After) that makes him feel as if there’s somehow something different in it, too.

tired of facing this same thing, her brother’s biggest weakness, for all these years and have nothing change.

     “Isn’t it always, with you?”

trying to control the bitterness in her voice leaves her words tight and angry, still, sharp in their obvious wariness.

he stares at her for a long moment, then two. something sharp and guilty twists in his stomach. he doesn’t know what to say to her, what she wants to hear.

(maybe that’s always been his problem, theirs. that he’s only ever given her the opposite.)

          “Yes.”

he’s surprised how easy it is to admit it, suddenly, but it doesn’t change anything. it never has.

          “I suppose there is.”

(he doesn’t think it will ever change any- thing, either. but he keeps that to himself.)

he sighs.

even after all these years, all the poisonous words that have left her mouth, she finds it hard to tell him the truth – when he knows it will hurt.

     “It makes people feel like you’re      not ashamed of them, maybe.”

          “I’m not --”

voice faltering, he clears his throat and tries again.

          “I’m not ashamed of him.”

admitting it does nothing to lift the heavy weight from his chest. it offers no relief.

     “You know, even if it is just to me,      at least he can admit it.”

raven gets to her feet.

there’s an uncomfortable, guilty tug in the middle of his chest. he loosens his collar and debates, for a moment, sim- ply letting her go.

           “Raven.”

voice quiet and tight,