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False Vertigo
Tohias


[CHAPTER 1]

O

The first time it happened was when he was fifteen.

Chuck was mucking around with his mates after school, jumping trains from Strathfield station all the way to St James with cheap beers hidden in their school bags. They made sure to remove their school ties and blazers so no one could properly identify which school they belonged to, just in case some transit passenger decided to report them, because that was always a pain in the arse.

The train jerked to a stop at Circular Quay and one of Chuck's friends bumped into his back, momentarily forcing him to press against the train window.

Suddenly the sounds in the carriage muted down to a low hum and the world slowed down to a pause.

Chuck's eyes locked onto the scene outside the window and all he could see was capsized ferries, broken buildings and a world completely on fire. The placid water of Sydney harbor was replaced by churning, violent waves and the smell of something acid-like scorched the inside of his nose. He saw the Harbour Bridge collapsed into two halves, the metal cords and beam of its framework were jutting out like broken bones of some great concrete carcass.

It only lasted for a moment and when Chuck blinked, it was all gone.

When he looked out the window again the harbor was a picturesque as ever – untouched, whole and postcard-perfect.

The train slowly left the station and moved on to the next destination, the watery harbor slipped away from his view, taking the unsettling vision of a broken Sydney from the back of his eye lids.

In the end Chuck decided that underage drinking at three-thirty in the afternoon was not a cool thing.

O

It happened again a year later.

It was 2019 and the release of the last Star Wars movie was something no one was missing out on.

The entire Hansen crew made a night out of it – even his nan and pop came along with their fan t-shirts and their prescription 3D glasses, more than happy to abuse their free pensioners movie tickets. Scott sat somewhere in the back row, probably mixing his bourbon with his coke where he thought no one could see. Chuck sat close to his mum with his little sister squeezed in between them.

The only person that wasn't there was Hercules Hansen.

Chuck wasn't surprised. His dad never had time for these things, not with his job and he made even less appearance at family outings since the divorce between him and his mum. His dad had said he'd be there but Chuck wasn't holding his breath. His dad had a bad habit of making promises he couldn't keep.

It was during the middle of the movie that Chuck started feeling off.

The action sequences were awesome and the sound effects were gloriously loud but at some point Chuck started flinching away when spaceships exploded or when there was screeching metal booming through the cinema sound speakers reverberating around the dark room. Violent sounds bounced around in his head till Chuck had to leave his seat and escape into the hallway outside.

There was so much breaking and crashing and screeching.

"We've been breached! Move, move, move!"

Chuck squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force the flashes of clanging steel and hot metal out of his head, out of ears and out of his chest. He couldn't breathe.

"Chuck hold it off! To your left!"

And there was that godawful screeching, inhuman and echoing seemingly from everywhere.

"Chuck!"

There was blue acid filling his mouth and pouring out of his eyes and out of his heart and he kept looking to his right, there was supposed to be someone on his right side. There was someone missing to his right –

"Chuck!"

Everything was pulsing blue, blue, blue –

"Charles!"

Chuck snapped his head up from between his knees, his eyes zoning onto a dark shirt and pair of dog tags handing around someone neck.

"Dad?" Chuck blinked up at the familiar face and had to shake off a weird double image of his dad merging together.

There was a small frown in Herc's brow as he looked down at his son crouching against the wall in the middle of a cinema hallway.

"You alright there kid?"

Chuck dragged his body up against the wall and tried to hide the shaking in his hands the throbbing in his head. "Yeah, I'm fine."

The older man knew his kid was bullshitting but he didn't push. "Why aren't you inside?"

Chuck cleared his throat and surreptitiously wiped the perspiration off his brow. "Nothing…just had to take a piss."

Herc stared at him again but just nodded. "Right. Well, sorry I'm late, what did I miss?"

"Like half the movie." He bit back. "You might as well not have come."

Chuck responded a little more harshly than he intended but their relationship had digressed after his father had left their mum and distanced himself under the excuse of 'work'. Sometimes Chuck couldn't even tell what a RAAF pilot did that made them so damn busy.

His dad didn't say anything and stepped back and turned to move inside.

"You coming?" the older man asked neutrally.

Chuck brushed past his dad and tried to steel himself for the booming sounds inside the dark theatre. "Yeah, let's go."

If he felt his dad watching him from the corner of his eye for the rest of movie, Chuck didn't say anything.

O

Chuck graduated high school at the end of 2020.

The HSC exams raped his balls and his teachers and classmates got weirdly sentimental but it was a good year. Uncle Scott couldn't make it since he was in rehab again but the rest of the family made a big deal out of his graduation. They all went for dinner at some Italian restaurant that his mum's boyfriend co-owned which made it kinda awkward when dad showed up later but there was no drama for the rest of the night.

"She's gotten bigger." Herc mentioned to his mum while everyone was busy fussing over dessert.

Both his parents looked down at the five year old girl sitting on his mother's lap. There was something briefly sad in his mum's expression when she ran her fingers through the child's brown curls.

"Yeah, she started Kindy this year." Angela kissed his sister's hair and gave a small smile. "She already knows all her numbers and letters."

There was fleeting softness in Herc's eyes as he gazed down at the child but it was gone as quickly as it came. "That's good to hear." Then he added quietly, as if he was speaking for just himself, "She looks like you."

It wasn't hard to see the gentle regret in his mum's eyes as she looked at her ex-husband.

Enough of this Chuck thought.

"You guys getting some cake?" Chuck cut in, pretending he didn't hear their conversation. "Nan's eating everything, dunno where she's putting it all."

The night moved on.

Sometimes Chuck would find himself looking at his dad in his civvies and couldn't help but think he'd looked…odd? Like the dark blue of his dress shirt didn't quite fit him as well as a grey Henley, maybe even a brown vest. Then Chuck stabbed his cake with his fork because his thoughts were completely nuts and because vests were fucking lame.

Chuck didn't think further on it.

O

Chuck doesn't look out the window when he drives past the city. He never does now days.

He'd rather not watch the skyscrapers crumble in front of him, he doesn't want to hear the blearing sound of a siren screaming in the air as bombs fall out of the sky, engulfing all he knows in a scorching bloom of fire.

Yeah, hallucinating is not a good thing when you're driving.

O

At some point Chuck seriously contemplates telling his mum that he's going crazy.

But his denial is stronger than his need for maternal comfort.

So he doesn't.

O

Chuck doesn't see his dad for months on end.

Its normal considering the man stopped living with them after the divorce years ago and his military job was unpredictable as best. Also their relationship hadn't been good for years, more because of Chuck's cold shoulder treatment than anything else, so yeah, Herc Hansen is a missing spot in his day to day life. It's nothing knew, Chuck dealt with a partially absent father all his life. He was used to it.

So he couldn't explain why he was glaring at his dad's mobile number at ass-o'clock in the morning.

It was completely stupid. He'd been staring at the glowing screen for almost an hour without pressing the dial button as he struggled with whether he should call or not call.

"For fucks sake."

Chuck threw his phone on the pile of clothes on the floor and slumped against his pillows, loathing his indecision and weakness but most of all he's just embarrassed. He was embarrassed because he was an eighteen year old adult agonizing over the decision to call his dad because what? He missed his father? Christ, he was worse than a desperate school girl.

Chuck rubbed his face.

He wasn't child anymore. He didn't need Hercules Hansen.

O

The next night Chuck wakes up screaming.

His legs are tangled in his sheets and his pillow is soaked with perspiration and it's all he can do to crawl his way into the bathroom and throw up the Thai food he had only a few hours ago. Then Chuck just hangs his head under the shower for a good five minutes before he stops seeing blue. And it's always blue. Not dull and dark. It was always vibrant and wondrously bright like live material, like radioactive water, like acid and he can't escape it.

It's always pouring out of his mouth, his eyes, his nose and he just can't breathe.

He calls his dad this time.

He doesn't even care that it's two am in the morning or that the man probably won't even pick up, Chuck just needs to hear the man's voice with a kind of desperation he can't explain. So he waits and waits and waits as the phone rings.

Then there's a click and muffled sound appears on the other line.

"'Lo?" His dad voice is heavy with sleep.

Chucks finds he doesn't know what to say because his dad's voice made his entire body feel the most calm it's been in…fuck he doesn't even know…forever?

"Hello?" There's the sound of rustling sheets like his dad is sitting up. "Chuck?" Now his voice sounds deep with confusion because why the hell would his son be calling him at this time of night?

Chuck clears his throat and opens his mouth to say something, anything, but then he hears:

"Herc? Who is it?"

It's a woman's voice.

Chuck's non-existent words dry up like bitter raisins in his mouth.

"Hang on, I gotta take this." Chuck hears his father say to whoever is warming his bed. There's more shuffling and then his dad's voice sounds clearer. "Chuck, is that you? Is everything alright?"

There's a moment where he doesn't know what to do except ignore the mortifying knot growing in his throat because there was no way in seven hells he was going to do something as lame as cry.

So Chuck just hangs up.

O

Chuck knows his life is pretty normal.

Chuck knows that he's normal. There's no reason why he wouldn't be.

But he goes into the garage to grab the tool box because his mum wants him to fix the fly screen on their back door when Chuck is hit with the scent of oil and fuel and he can barely handle how much he misses the smell.

It was home.

It was more home than the smell of his mum's cooking and his sister laundry detergent and the unforgiving Australian sun baking the earth in high summer.

Chuck drops the tool box and he just leans against the old Ute, trying and failing at stopping his hands from shaking.

He closes his eyes and he thinks he can almost hear the sound of –

"Charles?"

He slowly opens his eyes and stares at his mother standing by the threshold of the door with dishing washing gloves up to her elbow. Her brow is creased with concern as she peers into the dark garage.

"Sorry," he hates the way his voice cracks. "Dropped the tool box on my feet."

"Do you want me to bring you an icepack?"

He clears his throat and shakes his head. "Nah, its fine. I'm just gonna go fix that door."

Chuck all but runs out of the room and slams the door behind him. He doesn't go back into the garage ever again because yeah, he's feeling totally normal.

Except Chuck knows that's a fucking lie.

.

.

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NOTE: This idea came to me while I was attempting to shave my legs.

I was so taken with the concept of a Civilian-Chuck having second hand emotions and memories of Ranger-Chuck that I aborted my shower and jotted down notes before I forgot them.

Then I promptly changed (because writing naked is a little too adventurous for me), downed a glass of milk (we had no mango-pineapple juice left) and typed this entire chapter in one sitting (my bum is quite flat now).

So here we are: The first chapter of my new story and only one shaved leg.

Cheers

~TOHIAS

P.S - Be a darling a leave a comment. They make me hysterically happy.

WARNING - Just to clarify, this is a slash story between Hercules and Chuck. It will contain incest themes so dear lord please don't read any further if this is not something you can stomach. Cheers for clicking the story in the first place though. You're still awesome.