A/N: I own nothing. Warnings for grieving and descriptions of fire.
Charlie grew up on one of the poorer streets in Melbourne, the kind where dust and filth ingrained so deeply into any surface that everything from the windows to the pavement had a permanent black-grey cast, even after the most torrential of summer rains.
It was the kind of street where working class families scrapped together the best life most of them could ever hope to have, the kind where sons and daughters started work equally young, where more people couldn't read than those who could.
It was the kind of street that overflowed with children. The kind of street that, after the war, overflowed with widows and orphans. Everybody on Charlie's street lost someone to the war, without exception.
Including the Davis'. Only, unlike so many others, the war didn't take Charlie's father away from them. He often wishes it had.
Then at least, for all that the police force remedied that situation within five years of the armistice, maybe Danny would still be alive.
CC
For all the ubiquity of Charlie's street, the Davis' were unusual in one glaring aspect. They were old. Or rather, they were old for having a son as young as Charlie.
His parents had already been in their mid-twenties when they had met during the early stages of the Great War, a textbook wartime romance that had duly produced the textbook perfect son nine months after Armistice Day.
Charlie never finds out why his parents waited fifteen years before having another child, or even why they had one at all, as Daniel was already everything they'd ever wanted in a child.
For whatever reason though, Charlie's mother was already well into her forties when Charlie entered the world rather quietly, and while his arrival raised a few eyebrows from the neighbors, there really wasn't anything particularly noteworthy about the Davis' younger son, so after a while people stopped taking any notice.
That pretty much included Charlie's parents. His mother would later tell anyone who would listen that Charlie was the quietest, most well behaved, easiest to look after child imaginable.
Which was true, once he learned that crying was pointless, because all it got you was being even more tired and hungry than you were before.
Danny didn't exactly step in to fill the breach, for all that he was an awesome big brother, fun and happy and the only person in little Charlie's world that seemed to ever really notice he existed. Charlie adored him, which wasn't anything unusual. Everybody adored Danny.
His parents adored him enough to scrape together enough money they didn't really have to send him to University. It was a definite first for any family on the street, and little Charlie, five years old and pressed into his best clothes to wave his big brother off to school, had the widest grin of anyone there.
Then he turned six, Hitler invaded Poland, and it all went to hell.
CC
Danny was never officially declared dead. He was listed MIA in August of 1943, after surviving four years of war without a scratch, and they never found a body to bring home to his family.
Charlie's parents never gave up hope, neither did Charlie really. They were still looking when his father was accidentally gunned down in a police raid at a factory, three years into peacetime.
Charlie's mother had begun drinking from roughly the instant Danny came home from University early to say he'd joined up, and it increases after their father's death to the point that the rare times she's ever conscious, she stares at Charlie with virtually no recognition.
The morning of his sixteenth birthday she rouses just enough to squint at his dark, tressled hair and lovingly reach out a hand towards him. Charlie has nearly taken it before reality catches up to him. "Danny?"
Charlie runs away that afternoon. He never goes back. He'll always feel like more than a bit of a coward for that.
CC
Bizarrely enough, Ballarat wasn't a punishment. It was a reward.
At least, that's what his Super tells him, as he stands at attention before the vast expanse of the man's desk, a transfer order placed squarely between them.
"We need a man we can trust Davis, to let us know what's what. You'll be back before you know it."
Charlie looks squarely into the eyes of the man who ordered the raid that got his father killed, and believes him.
CC
He lets Nurse O'Brien out of the cells with no small amount of grudging silence, his stony demeanour not exactly inviting conversation.
It doesn't stop her parting shot. "You're nothing like Danny was."
He doesn't know enough to even know who she was talking about, but anger and pain surge so loudly in his ears that it was months before he takes the time to try and remember whether she actually meant it as an insult.
CC
Mrs. Beazley doesn't like him much. That simple fact has long been abundantly clear to Charlie by the time he finally gives in to the Doc's quiet but persistent suggestions and moves into the plantation house. To be fair, more or less accusing her son of murder probably had more than a little something to do with it.
Charlie knows that isn't all of it of course, the look she gave him the first time he showed up at Blake's reaking of nothing so much as disdainful distrust. Well, directed at his uniform more particularly than him specifically he realizes, catching a glimpse of a young man in a sparkling police uniform displayed proudly in a prominent position on the Kitchen sill.
He doesn't actually make the full connection until after he moves in, Mattie holding up the picture like a prize trophy of all that is good and just and better in the world, and he suspects that a whiff of bitterness might have surfaced if he wasn't living with them all by that point.
If he hadn't been to just enough dinners and not-burnt just enough roasts to allow himself to believe, if only for a few fleeting moments at a time, that he has a family again. That he's home.
Mrs. Beazley's seeming gratefulness at his culinary attempts nothing short of baffles him, but it isn't until he's sitting kitty corner to the woman while she ardently defends his potato making skills to Blake of all people that the first feeling of discomfort slides into the place in his heart slowly labeling itself Mrs. Beazley in flowing earthy lettering.
It's a lot harder to pretend Mrs. Beazley is his mother too when she starts to look at him with something other than disdain.
CC
Charlie's mother loved single malt scotch, neat. A somewhat unusual choice for a woman, according to every women's church group member they ever had over to their house, but Charlie always carefully keeps him mouth shut and pours his mother another drink, made exactly the way his father used to take them.
He hides the bottles when he thinks he can get away with it, graduates to smashing them in the last year before he runs away, when he's more scared for his mother than he is for himself anymore. He's always ashamed about how long it took him to make that transition in priorities.
Blake drinks Scotch as well, just the way his parents' both used too. The first time Charlie finds himself preparing one for the Doc is a pure accident, on both their parts, but the Doc's startled "Thank you Charlie" is incongruent enough to tempt Charlie to smash the liquour cabinet.
He refuses to go out drinking with Lawson and the boys from the station flatly enough that they stop asking after the first time. It pretty much goes without saying that that is something Danny used to love doing.
Charlie doesn't remember if his parents' Danny drank, and there is never anyone he could have asked, so he'll always be left to wonder. He doubts it would change anything either way. He thinks.
The not drinking thing is just another nail in his coffin in Lawson's bad books, and it comes up at a late enough point in the points game that he doubts it's really a determining factor anyway. To Lawson's credit, he always suspects that his dislike stems from a rather larger source that simply not-being-Danny though.
Charlie throws out the Doc's entire supply of alcohol three days before Lawson leaves for Melbourne. Blake gave him a house key the day before, so even though he isn't technically living their yet, he doesn't actually have to break in to do it.
Mrs. Beazley catches him while he's pouring out a bottle of 18 year old scotch. She looks rather torn between puzzlement, outrage, and gratitude, but the middle one seems to win out over even asking what he's doing, since he finds himself holding the now empty bottle on Blake's couch, Lawson's stern gaze and square jaw working in tandem to attempt to ferret a confession out of him. Confession to what, he's not really sure.
"Davis." Lawson's jaw works some more, an admirable feat considering he's not even chewing tobacco or anything. "What did you think you were doing exactly son?" Charlie personally thinks it took everybody a rather long time to ask that most obvious question.
"The Doc shouldn't drink so much." The answer sounds just as formulaic and childlike as it did to his own small ears decades earlier, a solemn, supposedly well-meaning old lady from the church commission dropping by to drink their precious tea and sugar in order to hand around advice and state the painful obvious to a eight year old. She hadn't even brought any biscuits.
Lawson's gaze flickers for the barest second towards the doorway where Mrs. Beazley is hovering like an attentive den mother, before alighting back on Charlie. More jaw working precedes a growled, "Let's go Davis." Charlie awkwardly thanks Mrs. Beazley for letting him come over, and follows Lawson out before he gets arrested.
It isn't until he's back at his desk that he realizes he's still holding the empty bottle. He's still debating what to do with it when he feels eyes on him, his gaze moving up just in time to catch the tail end of Lawson's piercing stare. He could be wrong, but he could almost swear that for just a moment, a flicker of something strangely like respect appeared behind that legendary poker face.
CC
The Doc never mentions the missing bottles, and his cabinet is as well stocked as ever when Charlie moves in a week later, but the next time Charlie passes Blake a drink that is more frozen water than alcohol, not at all the way his parents' used to take it, he thinks the Doc's murmured "Thank you Charlie" might be just slightly more warm.
"Danny was taller." Charlie barely spares Mattie a glance, resolutely continuing to chop potatoes with a vigorous fervor that does little to drown out the recitation of the wonders of Danny Parks that Mattie has seen fit to serenade him with while watching him prepare the evening repast.
He's been at the Doc's for nearly three months, and he's heard this particular fact enough times to long since have it memorized, along with roughly two dozen other characteristics of the messiah like Danny.
"That's nice Mattie." He's careful to keep his attention on the potatoes, and every single trace of sarcasm out of his face. He rarely responds with anything beyond a nod during these recitations, so the unexpected burst of loquaciousness is bound to arise Mattie's suspicions.
The resulting silence lasts just long enough for Charlie to jerk his head up in inquiry, the motion causing his hand to slip badly on the slippery blob in his hand. Blake's always been alarmingly good at materializing out of thin air, so Charlie isn't exactly surprised when the Doc has his hand wrapped securely in a dish cloth before the potatoes even get stained.
It's while Blake is steering him firmly out of the kitchen towards his surgery, the offending appendage suspended carefully between them, a supportive arm wrapped around his shoulders, that Charlie finally catches a glimpse of Mattie's expression. He allows himself to hope that some small part of the concern he sees etched there is for a Charlie as much at it is for a Danny.
CC
The Doc's put seven stitches in his hand before Charlie raises his eyes from contemplating the surgery table long enough to take in his expression as well. The amusement he more than expected. The concern he's not quite sure what to do with.
The eighth stitch loops expertly through his skin as Charlie belatedly acknowledges that Blake has never once compared him to Danny.
CC
Danny comes back on a Tuesday, around Charlie's second Easter in Ballarat. Charlie finds this strangely appropriate, as Jean and Mattie greet him as if he were the risen Christ himself.
Blake smiles more than Charlie's ever seen him.
CC
Charlie offers to move out, casually at the first dinner of five not four, feeling more like an awkward fish out of water than he ever has around Blake. It takes the Doc almost a minute to tear himself away from his conversation with Danny enough to notice the question.
The "don't be ridiculous Charlie, Danny's staying in his old room" does little to make him feel more able to breath in the foreignness of oxygen rich air.
He hadn't even realized there was another bedroom.
CC
Danny has been back for three weeks when Charlie gets the telegram, three weeks in which he's tried very hard not to act like a spoiled child who's just been introduced to a younger sibling.
There's a certain peace to be had in the fact Danny is two years his junior somehow. A certain comfort to be found in the slightest difference between the two bizarrely similar family scenarios he's found himself in in his short life so far.
Then he gets the telegram, and Dannys are suddenly the least of his concerns.
Charlie isn't exactly sure how one should find out that their mother has finally succeeded in drinking herself to death, but he suspects it should be some other way that ten crisply printed words on an emotionless telegram sheet.
Charlie doesn't remember why he runs precisely, he just knows he leaves the telegram squarely in the center of the kitchen table, right angles to the flower vase sitting slightly off center.
Violets were his mother's favourite flower.
CC
The rain whips across Charlie's face like a thousand stinging slaps at once, obscuring his view of Lucien, for all that there's less than five inches between their faces. He's so cold he can't really remember how they got out here to begin with, he just knows that he can't go back.
It poured the morning of his sixteenth birthday.
Ten years later, and nothings really changed it seems.
"I'm not going back." Just in case the Doc had some absurd idea that he was actually getting through to Charlie. Just because the man was too smart for his own good, smart enough to figure out what Charlie was going to do before even Charlie knew, smart enough to find the exact road Charlie choose to make his escape out of Ballarat. Or maybe that was just luck.
For all the rain, Blake still manages to make subtle shifts in body language a more effective means of communication than screaming, and all it takes is a slight tilt of his bearded and dripping chin for Charlie to realize that this is not a man who plans to take no for an answer.
Mind, taking no for an answer is never really a problem for Blake. He never listens to anything anyway.
Charlie's been running for hours, probably going in circles for at least half of that, certainly since it got dark and he lost all sense of real direction. And god must really hate him, because how in the hell did Blake even find him anyway.
"Come on Charlie, I know these roads like the back of my hand." Charlie's reputation as an observant copper is apparently as shot as everything else in his life at the moment, because Blake has him halfway into the passenger seat of his car before reality reasserts itself enough for him to remember to attempt to struggle. Blake's sigh is enough to stop him in his tracks, every muscle freezing under the sound of this man, this man who should mean nothing to him's, disappointment.
"Get in the car Charlie." Blake sounds tired and old. Charlie's father sounded like that every day after they got the telegram about Danny, right up until the morning he left for work and never came back. Charlie gets in the car, lets Blake buckle him in and wrap a handy blanket around his unresisting shoulders, sits quietly while the Doc restarts the car in a shudder of sluicing rain water and engine smoke.
They're halfway home before Charlie realizes he's crying, tears mixing with rain water in equal measures of salt and fresh water staining his cheeks in cold rivulets.
"She liked violets. And scotch." Blake only hums, as understanding of the non-sequitur as Charlie's known he would be since he left the telegram on the kitchen table, in exactly the same configuration he left his note ten years earlier, propped up beside a vase of wilting violets.
Blake's already made him shower, fed him hot buttered toast and sweet tea, and is tucking him securely into bed before Charlie speaks again. "The violets weren't wilted."
This time Charlie's sure Blake can't possibly have the foggiest idea of what he's talking about. But the Doc only hums reassuringly while turning down the duvet for the second time, and Charlie abruptly remembers that Blake lost his mother too. "I'm cold Doc." It comes out as more of a plea than Charlie meant it to be, but is' more than worth the embarrassment to feel Blake's securely warm arms wrap around his shoulders.
Charlie's drifting off against Blake's warm waist-coated chest when he finally murmurs the truth he's been running from since he was five years old. "My mother's gone Doc."
The kiss that falls gently on his forehead is swift and firm and undeniably loving. Charlie drifts off with tears on his cheeks to the softly murmured cadence of the Doc's whispered, "I know Charlie. I know."
CC
Danny isn't back for good, just a brief secondment by Lawson. Charlie tries very, very hard not to grin madly when he hears this. He nearly succeeds.
Regardless, Danny doesn't seem to like him much. The feeling is entirely mutual.
Lawson seems to have a sixth-sense for this dislike, although they really do make pains to hide it for Blake's sake. It's pretty much the only thing they agree on. Besides their mutual loathing for Lawson's favourite new pastime of pairing them up on practically any assignment he can get away with.
Which is how Charlie ends up rushing into a burning building beside Danny Parks of all people, attempting to save a Tyneman that will turn out to not even be in the building at all.
They make it back out, somehow, stumbling blearily through the smoke like two ghostly mirages, emerging from the inferno at their backs to the sight of a frantic Blake being desperately restrained by an only slightly more composed Lawson's arms, arms which abruptly go slack at the sight before them.
Blake gets to Danny first, which is logical really, he was slightly in front of Charlie, and is by far the worse off for smoke inhalation.
Blake's choked "oh god Danny. We thought…god" somehow burns hotter than the flames.
Charlie is in the process of quietly slinking away, trying to pass off the blurring of his eyes as smoke irritation, skirting around a jubilant Lawson currently squeezing the life out of Danny, except then where's…
Slightly grimy blue suited arms fill Charlie's vision, his face suddenly pressed into a surprisingly clean shoulder by the strongest embrace he's ever experienced. The only embrace he's experienced since he was about six.
A firm hand cups the back of his head, and a beard rough chin brushes the side of his neck. "I've got you Charlie, you're safe now." Which is blatantly ridiculous because Charlie was fine on his own, thank you very much Doc. He's always fine.
Charlie squirms a little, trying to break free so he can order his thoughts and make the world make sense again because the entire Masonic lodge just burnt to the ground and Charlie just risked his life to save a Tyneman and a Danny, and now the Doc is attempting to suffocate his little remaining breath into the front of his suit jacket and try as he might the man just won't let go.
"It's alright Charlie." And it's really not, it hasn't been alright since 1939, and twenty years haven't changed a damn thing, but somehow, somehow, Charlie finds himself wanting to believe the Doc, more badly than he's ever wanted to believe anything in twenty years.
Charlie lets his arms go slack, and hesitantly leans into Blake's embrace, which tightens yet further accordingly. And for just a moment, he believes Lucien Blake.
Because he called him Charlie. Just like he's always done.
CC
It takes Charlie three months to stop coughing up a lung every time he so much as gets up from the couch, something which Blake attributes to the bout of pneumonia Charlie had as a child and Charlie attributes to plain bad luck.
Regardless, he's barely off bed rest by the time the disgustingly healthy Danny Parks is preparing to return to Melbourne. Charlie sits quietly in the kitchen, watching Danny pack with an absent singlemindedness that takes a surprisingly long time to get on the other man's nerves.
Not-saving Patrick Tyneman together was a surprisingly effective bonding experience apparently.
"What is it Davis?" Still, there's just enough abrasive impatience in that inquiry that Charlie feels comfortable with failing to completely reassess his initial assessment of Danny Parks.
Charlie contemplates the question for a while, watching Danny carefully pack a framed photo of their makeshift family into his rug sack, unsurprised to see that Mrs. Beazley's snuck in a picture that has him in it, book ended beside Blake on one end of the den's sofa. He thinks about white printed telegrams, and a brother he doesn't remember enough of to really ever know if they would have liked each other at all anyway.
"My brother's name was Danny." It's the first time he's said it out loud since he was eight years old, and yet somehow the world just keeps right on spinning. Doesn't so much as pause for breath.
Neither does Danny, who utters a distracted "that's interesting" on his way to greet the newly returned and newly couple that is the Doc and call-me-Jean. Charlie stares at the photo wedged at the top of the partly closed rug sack for a long moment before rising to follow him.
Charlie doesn't know what he meant by the words precisely, after all these years, nor why he said them to Danny Parks of all people. He just knows that when Danny goes back to Melbourne tomorrow, he's going to miss him.
But he also knows that they'll all be right here waiting for him, when he's ready to come home for good.