AN: Warnings: mentions of mental illness and gun violence. Also, I apologize in advance to Frank Carlyle, who is a lovely character, for using him as a convenient plot device.
Blake's been gone for a week before Charlie really notices. He's setting the table for breakfast one morning while Mrs. Beazley calmly stirs the porridge when his hands suddenly seize around the third bowl he was about to place unthinkingly at the head of the table.
He's out the door before the bowl finishes shattering on the kitchen floor.
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Charlie's gone for a week, staying in his old boarding house until he can't quite stand the same four walls any longer. It's monotonous as it is dull, as well as inconvenient as anything, largely due to his lack of taking time to pack before he unceremoniously left the Doc's old residence.
He's more than a little sheepish when he comes home for dinner on the eighth evening, but Mrs. Beazley's arms are around his shoulders in a surprisingly heartfelt hug before he's stumbled three words into his carefully rehearsed apology.
They both pretend the other isn't crying as they hold onto each other like the last two people left on a sinking ship.
Charlie doesn't leave again.
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Charlie's newly monotonous existence is blown apart in early August. Or rather, torn apart in a hail of bullets and flying wood.
Things have been so quiet, so ordinary, so boring since Blake left that Charlie almost finds himself glad for the break in the monotony. Almost.
Problem was, he'd genuinely liked Frank Carlyle. And Charlie may be a wildly bad judge of character, but he usually doesn't like anybody. Turns out he was right on one of those counts at least this time.
It was an ordinary Tuesday morning, around three months after the Doc left the country. Long enough that Charlie's finally gotten used to eating lunch alone at his desk, completely unencumbered with flicked pieces of lettuce and cheeky half grins that somehow never stopped reminding him of his youngest brother.
Charlie tells himself firmly he doesn't miss any of it, keeping his gaze studiously locked on his ham and cheese and decidedly not looking towards the open doorway, which just happens to be in line with his desk calendar and alright maybe it's been three months, one week, and two days but it's not like he's counting or anything. It's just in case Jean asks.
His teeth are just finally descending around the slightly soggy bread, because Charlie's cooking has inexplicably gone down hill along with all the other perfectionist tendencies he can no longer bring himself to care about for long enough to even remotely enter the perfectionist category, when the first shot rings out.
And Charlie wasn't looking towards the door, but towards his sandwich, which is angled to the right because that's where the Doc always sits at lunch, perched on the corner of his desk, annoying as anything, so he's somehow just fast enough to register where the following bullets are coming from in the same instant he's somehow fast enough to duck under his desk to avoid the first one.
Charlie's hands grope desperately along the floor, because while your new, very nice, very competent, and apparently previously very sane Super suddenly deciding to shoot up a police station would be the perfect time to have your service revolver, but Charlie's jammed a while back, before Lawson left, before the Doc swanned off, and he'd been borrowing Blake's old service weapon in the meantime because Lucien had been going to show him how to clean the old one that night, before the doorbell every rang, but that one's under his pillow now, the same place it's been for three long months, and Charlie's damned if he's going to throw a halfeaten ham sandwich at an armed gunmen.
His sandwiches haven't gotten that lumpy.
Another crack rends the air and wood splinters fly everywhere, somehow missing Charlie in their ruthless rain from the sky. His fingers find something solid and vaguely fragile around the same time Hobart strolls cluelessly through the open double doors.
Charlie never even made the neighborhood baseball team as a kid, but somehow his teacup throwing skills are roughly good enough to qualify for the Olympics.
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It isn't until long after Hobart has safely tackled the slightly dazed but decidedly not bleeding Frank Carlyle to the floor and the men in white coats have come and gone that Charlie takes the time to even notice what he threw.
He thinks shock might be involved somewhere in there, but there's no one around to worry about that sort of thing, so he's still staring dumbly at the unsalvageable remains of the Doc's favourite office mug when the sounds of a deliberately thumping cane shatter the illusion of stillness that's descended along with the evening shadows outside the blind covered windows.
The hand on Charlie's shoulder startles him just enough to bring him dangerously close to the broken glass littering Lawson's old desk, which Charlie had apparently rather auspiciously never gotten around to thinking of as anyone else's, because guess who that hand belongs to.
The "Alright there Charlie?" is so full of concern that it's all Charlie can do to resist the bizarre urge to punch Lawson square in the jaw, cane and all, because there is nothing remotely alright about any of this, and damnit if that shouldn't have been Davis not Charlie.
"I'm fine Boss." Charlie manages to keep most of the bitterness from tinging the undeniable warmth of that statement.
He does let his gaze return resolutely to the cup shards scattered around there feet, and if the hand on his shoulder tightens a little, well that's just fine too.
Charlie ignores the rather large part of himself that wishes Frank Carlyle had better aim, just to see if the Doc would have materialized as miraculously as Lawson to see if he was okay.
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"Lucien says he misses you." It's the first time Charlie's heard that name is months, long enough that he promptly chokes on his tea, spraying the Christmas tarts with lukewarm weak tea.
He narrowly misses Lawson, who makes a great show of polishing the end of his cane on his checked jumper. Violet and puce Charlie notes uncharitably, morosely watching Hobart destroy yet another tart in a spray of vigorous crumbs.
"Really Charlie, there's no need to look so alarmed. He was only talking about your cooking." Charlie knows that's teasing, he really does. Even if he didn't, Hobart's tart spraying guffaw would be a rather large giveaway.
Charlie isn't sure when he became Jean's consolation prize, but sometime in the last eight months, she's started treating him like a cross between a son and an acquaintance. It's a rather odd combination, but then so is the fact they apparently now have Hobart over for Tea, so who's counting.
Charlie stares fixedly at his tea for long enough that the Boss starts up a brightly stilted conversation that begins with "So Jean" and seems to involved edging flowers. Hobart slurps his tea enthusiastically.
Charlie throws his chair back with a rather unintended crash in a crude attempt to save the dwindling tart collection. Rasperberry Jam was the Doc's favourite.
He's made it into his room and flung the door closed with a dissatisfying click before Jean's shrill "You get back here young man!" can truly penetrate over Hobart's fog horn like cackling.
Charlie never threw temper tantrums as a child. He's not sure what this is, but it definitely isn't that. Definitely.
Charlie's gaze finds his bottom drawer almost of its own accord, his hand twitching involuntarily from it's tangle in to the mass of rumbled green wool adorning his bedspread, which may or may not have been a sweater in a previous life.
Blake's written to him every two weeks like clockwork, never missed. Charlie's never written back.
Or so much as opened a single one.
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Lucien comes back in March, eleven months to the day since he swept out of their lives like a cold north wind.
The Taxi pulls up just as Charlie is coming home from work, driving the Doc's new car with a reverence that has never quite faded since the first time Jean reluctantly let him get behind the wheel in the first place.
Her price was finally agreeing to stop calling her Mrs. Beazley. Charlie pretends he doesn't see the tears. He's always been good at that. He's gotten even better these past eleven months.
Jean comes to the door to great him most days, probably because he still hasn't bothered to ask for a key. The Doc had been planning to finally remember to give him one, that last week.
All of this may seem very trivial, but it finally gives Charlie an appropriately front yard view of Lucien's rather seamless fall at Jean's feet, one knee touching the ground roughly exactly at the same time as a ring appears from his inner pocket.
It's a pretty thing, old and silver and amethyst purple all wrapped up in one.
Charlie's so busy trying very hard to admire the way it catches in the evening sun on Jean's hand that he completely misses the Doc's approach.
Being hugged is still a rather new experience for Charlie, one the Doc rather fittingly exposed him to in the first place. It's even stranger with three people involved that it is with two, but somehow Charlie finds himself wishing it was four.
He misses Mattie so much sometimes that it literally steals the breath right out of his lungs.
Charlie never asks, but he always suspects that the Doc had rather spectacular bruises after that rather dramatic embrace. He knows he does.
Funnily enough, inhaling the dusky evening air, a warm breeze picking up to toss his distinctly ungelled hair at the same moment a playfully affectionate hand ghosts a ruffle into his wavy locks, his lungs constricted to the point of pain, he feels like he can breathe easy for the first time in a very, very long time.
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Lucien's beard is longer than it used to be. Charlie finds it hard to focus on anything else at that moment, or rather in that collection of moments, tucked securely against the Doc's jumper, the arm curling comfortably around his shoulders smelling distinctly of the moth balls Jean used to keep their flapping namesakes away from her painstaking craft efforts.
They were going to give that sweater to the Doc for his last birthday. They all missed it. Charlie can still see a miniscule rip on the collar, where his hands clenched a little to tight as he considered the brown paper and string on the table all those months ago. He's suddenly glad he never ended up mailing it afterall.
Even if Jean's currently using scolding him as an excuse to hold in her own tears. Charlie thinks they're from joy. He thinks, and he's getting pretty good at this whole emotions thing lately, so maybe he's a bit right at least. Maybe.
"Charlie." God he had missed that sound. Nobody else says his name quite like that. "Yeah Doc?" And yeah, there are definitely tears in that voice. He's not so good at his own emotions, but he's pretty sure they're from something not unlike happiness as well. Pretty sure.
"I missed you all you know, more than words can really express." It's exactly the over the top, emotionally sucker punching kinda thing the Doc would say of course, although Charlie's apparently not as good at this whole judging thing as he thought because he's opening his mouth to argue that there are roughly three drawers chocked full of unopened letters in his dresser that prove the fallacy of that statement. The part about the words, not about the missing.
And look at that, he just managed to miss half of Lucien Blake pouring his heart out while totally sober. Yay for him. "-it only took me going half way around the world to realize that I have a family right here too, waiting for me."
And yeah, the tears soaking down Charlie's chin have very little to do with joy.
He cants his head up towards where Jean is standing frozen in the doorway, her hand clutching a covered teapot, the other resting securely over the lid flashing distinctly in the evening lamp glow, even as a distinctive thump makes its way across the porch towards the doorbell. His eyes swirl slowly back across the inches of space separating him from a man who is apparently as much the center of their universe as he's always seemed to be.
"We missed you too Doc." And maybe that's the understatement of the year, but then Charlie's always been as good at understatement as the Doc's been at overstatement.
Charlie also knows that truer words have never been spoken, understatement or otherwise.