I don't know if Kitty Pryde's Jewish background is Ashkenazi, Mizrahi or Sephardic, but I've gone with Rhodesli Sephardic to reflect Portland's Rhodesli community. Also, warning, there's a bit of violence and self harm in this chapter.
St. Charles
As is his routine, Erik goes to his crossfit class before heading in to Quicksilver. If he's even more intense than usual, nobody in the reclaimed space mentions it. He stops by Morpho on the way to give Darwin back the canopy and buy an Americano. It's almost 7am and Morpho already has people sitting outside talking and smoking. They avoid the sporadic drizzle by taking up the line of mismatched chairs that span the shop's faded green awning. More than a few of Morpho's regulars look like their Saturday night has run into Sunday morning. Most are smoking hand-rolled cigarettes.
The secondhand smoke activates Erik's salivary glands; he'd really like a good cigarette after a night spent smoking old tobacco on his couch. The question is whether or not it would be worth hearing from Raven about it after he showers and brushes his teeth.
He walks past the assembly of artists and hipsters, anarchists and hacktivists, and into Morpho's welcoming atmosphere. There's a collection of art on the wall that Darwin has been raving about from an artist out of the Detroit area. Erik likes the color, organic shapes, and commentary on body image the work represents. If the artist is amenable, he wouldn't mind having her work in his gallery space, though he usually keeps his walls open to local artists or traveling tattooists.
There's a short queue for the counter, but Kitty still grins at him when he steps to the back of it with the canopy under his arm. He's sure she'd wave if her hands weren't full frothing non-dairy milk.
"Good morning, Erik!" she chirps. If he were ten years younger he might be smitten, but he's fifteen years older so he secretly finds her adorable, like a kid sister he never had. "Darwin's in the storage room, so you can just take that straight back."
He nods wordlessly and heads to the storage room to the left of the unisex toilets. He finds Darwin inside the room counting packs of takeout cups. Darwin doesn't glance over, but he nods: Kitty's greeting was loud enough that pleasantries are largely unnecessary. "Hey there Erik, you have a bad night?"
"No," Erik lies immediately. In the next instant he damns Darwin's precise insights. Erik reaches for a little added misdirection. "You know I don't like crowds."
The tall, thin man makes a mark on his notepad and then finally looks at Erik. Darwin is one of the few people in the area that is tall enough to look into Erik's eyes comfortably and he does so with an ease that says that even with a height disparity he'd do it anyway.
"Brother, you know you reek of sweat and cigarettes," Darwin says, his dark eyes frank. "But whatever, I know how you are."
"Where do you want this?" Erik's glad that Darwin's indicated that he won't pry; it always puts him on the defensive even when he knows it's well-meaning. Years of Moira hounding him for detailed recitations of where he was planning to go and where he'd been have usurped those of his mother's well-meant nagging. Now inquiries, especially dogged ones, are deeply aggravating.
Darwin gestures to the far corner of the dimly lit room. "I hope Raven had a good night with her brother, at least."
"They must have." Both of them are thin, but it's still a bit of a trick to slip by Darwin with the canopy frame and cover. It's awkward; as he sidesteps past the bagged frame bumps his healing tattoo which renews the itching it's been doing all morning. "They were both intact when I picked them up. I had a disagreement with her brother, though."
Erik hears Darwin 'hmm' but say nothing else. Erik is reminded how much he appreciates having the level-headed man as a friend and a business neighbor.
He sets the canopy down in the indicated corner and looks around the small room. Darwin and Alex built most of the shelving; it's good solid work. The lighting, however, is left over from the previous occupant and is a work in progress. They've set money aside for improving the seating area's exterior and for eventually buying the space next to them so they can expand. The room needs better lighting, but the customer area has priority.
"I can do the lighting in here if you want," Erik offers. He wouldn't normally offer, but he values Darwin and even his crew of eccentric baristas.
"You an electrician, too?" Darwin's thoughtful expression turns to mischief. "You certainly are a jack of all trades, Lehnsherr."
"I had some vocational training back in New York," Erik shrugs. He's disinclined to say where and how he got the training. "Just pick out what you want and I'll put it in for you."
"Sounds like you're angling for a few months of free watered down espresso," Darwin laughs. "When you going to start drinking espresso like all the big kids?"
Erik shrugs. "I like having something I can keep drinking. Espresso's good, but like any shot the effect lasts longer than the taste."
"Yeah," Darwin smiles, "I don't want to see you after six shots of espresso anyway. I have this feeling you'd tear the place apart or something. Alex after six is an unholy terror and you two kids share a lot of traits."
Erik nods, a hint of a snort escaping him at the idea of Darwin's partner hopped up on caffeine. It's probably happened more than once. "Actually, it isn't a coffee exchange I have in mind. Raven's doing her journeyman piece and I think that justifies a show for her work. You interested in arranging a Last Thursday event?"
"I do all your Last Thursdays billings," Darwin chuckles and leans back against the wall. "Which one? July or August, maybe September? Too late for June, man, if you want it done right."
Last Thursdays are usually a chaotic affair along Alberta Street, but their corner is far enough away from the street festival atmosphere that street performers and the massive crowds don't lap up against their walls. Erik is profoundly grateful for that; the noise and unpredictability of the massive crowds agitate him like nothing else. The few times he's found himself in the area on a Last Thursday made him feel like a bottle of nitroglycerine, just waiting for the jostle that would lead to an explosion.
"I'll send her down to you to work out details later this week," Erik replies and leans one shoulder against the same wall. "I prefer July, but it'll be up to her how she wants to do it. If you have a line on a music act, I might risk our landlady's wrath and get the roof set up."
Both Darwin's eyebrows rise at that. "Been too long since we had a rooftop party. Let me think about it."
Erik nods and begins to push away from the wall, but Darwin holds a hand up and Erik subsides again. "Actually, you can still angle for that coffee; I'd like somebody to paint our front door with our name and hours. You still pin striping?"
"As long as you don't tell the women at Triple Cha lingerie," Erik agrees. "I charged them hourly for their display window."
"Erik," Darwin drawls, mischief alive in his rich brown eyes, "I somehow doubt the ladies down the street thought they could pay you with lingerie and vibrators."
Darwin laughs when Erik shakes his head. He twirls his pencil once and places it behind his ear so he can hold his dark hand out. "Done deal?"
Erik acquiesces and takes Darwin's hand in his for a deal-binding shake. "Done. When Raven comes down later," Erik continues, sliding back past Darwin, "give her a mock up of your window so I can plan for it. As for the lighting, my Monday and Tuesday mornings are usually open."
Kitty has his coffee in a cup with his name on it plus merry flowers and happy faces drawn all over the paper surface. There's also a brown paper bag waiting for him when he comes out. Kitty has her sketchbook on the counter since there aren't any customers waiting. Erik nods at her, ignores the cup's fresh illustrations for the doodles she's drawn on the wrist of her long sleeved undershirt.
"My mom got a new boyo recipe," she says without preamble. "And she was really impatient to try it out. Not that I'm complaining 'cause they're pretty awesome."
Most of the Jews Erik runs into in Portland are descendants of Sephardic diaspora that left Rhodes before and during the Shoah. Kitty has ancestors that go back a hundred years in Portland and multiple centuries in the former Ottoman Empire. She also has a mother that reminds him painfully of his own with her tough, but overwhelming love.
Erik eyes the bag of spinach pastries suspiciously; they're a Rhodesli specialty Kitty's mother usually only makes for high holidays. "Those aren't meant to woo me into going to Ahavath Achim, are they? I told her I'm not visiting any congregation of any kind."
Kitty rolls her hazel eyes and crosses her arms under her chest. "You know my mom sees your atheism through a dark glass. Anyway, no, the boyos are just more of her gastronomic affection."
It's been a year and it's still hard to accept Kitty's mother's gifts; he remembers her shocked expression when she looked at his business card. Kitty had said he was an artist and Erik had said he was a small business owner. With his tattoos covered, she likely had thought he was a good candidate for somebody's daughter. Accordingly, she saw the tattoo part of 'Quicksilver Tattoos' and was caught flat-footed. The memory of the deep lines of censure and dismay are as indelible as any of his tattoos, written as they were in the geography of her face.
Erik takes the coffee and reaches for her sketchbook. With a mad grin she hands him the Sharpie she uses to write names, and draw flowers, on customer cups. "Lockheed, okay?"
"You and that iguana," Erik snorts, but he takes the marker and draws a quick caricature of the lizard inside a coffee cup, his tail and his head and claws hanging over the edge. The cup is at an angle, tipping precariously, the moment before an inevitable spill. As a final touch, he writes Kitty's name in a messy scrawl on the cup, mimicking her handwriting.
"I wish I could do it," she says the moment he caps the marker. He knows what she means, what she's going to say, before the sound escapes her. Her olive-skinned hands reach out and turn the sketchbook around so she can better look at the drawing. A wistful smile adorns Kitty's young face. Her eyes follow the marker's inked path across the page. Finally, the thought reaches her mouth, "Get a tattoo."
There's nothing to say that he hasn't already said to her on this topic; it's an old conversation they've had in the coffee house, up in Quicksilver's gallery space, and out around the neighborhood. He's gone so far as to draw her mother's horrified expression in the sketchbook to drive the point home.
He says nothing about it, but flips the cover of her sketchbook over to close on her fingers. The bag of boyos is easy to lift off the counter after that. "Give your mother my thanks."
Kitty deflates, and darts out a hand to the one he has around the coffee cup. Her eyes are big and sad, her mouth a repentant press of lips. "I'll tell her."
Instead of going back to his place to shower, Erik goes around the corner and up the stairs to Quicksilver. The shop's shower is small; just a space originally intended to house a mop and bucket and the like, but he couldn't leave it alone. He sets the paper bag on the container of cookies and hits the finished bathroom.
The water takes a few moments to come out warm; he lets it run as hot as he can stand. He strips in the open hallway opposite the sink and half-size refrigerator while the water warms. The dragon tattoo is flaking more than scabbing; it doesn't look bad at all. He's mindful of it when he steps into the steaming spray and proceeds to scrub the rest of his skin and scalp with hard motions.
The problem with his showering method is the sensitivity awakened in his skin once he's scoured it. Sensitivity that does him no good once he begins to soap up the nooks and crannies of his ass and cock. Annoyed, but ultimately accepting of his body's desires, he sets aside the soap and rough, natural sponge he was using and sweeps his left hand up his hardening cock. Just a quick wank to relieve the pressure, he thinks.
It proves to be the catalyst needed to open up the wealth of memory that's been lingering around his rough edges all morning. Drugged edges of lust feed him the texture of the fabric in his fist last night: smooth, silky, expensive. The cast of Charles' particularly blue eyes: wide pupils, dark in the cold LED light, brow low with anger. The movement of his sensual lips: the run of his tongue tip as it pierced their seam and swept the span.
Other than the idiocy with Raven, it's been years since Erik's felt chemistry with anyone and to feel that heavy warmth triggered by her brother, her patronizing, smothering, classist brother, is disconcerting. Rejection rises sudden and phoenix-like from his gut on wings of consuming fury.
Erik hears the collision, feels the tremble all the way to the floor, sees the rattle of the shower's glass door, before he feels any pain at all. The skin over his knuckles burns like a fresh tattoo under the hot water, the knuckles themselves radiate pain. Even his wrist aches from the impact of his fist against the shower wall.
The wall is plastic over drywall; it looks dented. There are a few spots of thin skin sticking to the surface. He's just glad he used his right hand and not the left which is gripping his cock. Then he remembers he has a full day of work ahead of him that is heavily dependent on his wrist.
He starts jerking off anyway. His left hand delivers swift, perfunctory strokes with no mind for prolonging pleasure. Forget it. Just get the job done, he thinks, and bring on the endorphins.
For several minutes he courts the obliteration of orgasm and pleasure comes close while he fucks his hand, but repeatedly falls away. After a few fruitless minutes, his cock starts to lose its stiffness. Completion is nowhere near, though his balls and groin ache with tension. Swearing again, he releases his uncooperative flesh and slaps the water off.
Sexual frustration isn't new; there have been other times in the past when he couldn't get off, but it's been more than a year since the last time. It's his frustration with the situation; rejection of something he feels helpless to avoid. He wants to punch the wall again, but this time he recognizes the anger is there and can defuse the situation before he makes things worse.
Before leaving the shower, he stands quietly in the stall and tilts his head back and holds his hands open, palms out at his sides. He breathes. He remembers his counselor, her calm, droning voice, and breathes the way she instructed him.
It takes a while for his heart rate to slow, but he waits; he doesn't want to lose the control he's taken back over the years. As soon as his heart rate begins to subside, he steps out of the stall and dries off. Towel tied around his waist, he leaves the bathroom and immediately dumps his Americano in the sink; the last thing he needs is caffeine constricting his veins.
He stalks through the gallery space to the work area's shelves and pauses to pick through his incense collection for the box of aloes wood and a lighter. With those in his hands, he retreats to the bare walls and threadbare rug of the back room. There's only the one window but he opens it and sets the incense up in the sill where a wooden dish filled with sand and ashes expects him.
A practiced flick of his thumb on the lighter's wheel brings its flame alive. He touches it to a bundle of five sticks and places them in the sand. Leaving the box and lighter on the sill with the dish, Erik backs away and settles down cross-legged on the floor. The cool air and incense smoke drift over him as he begins the breathing exercises once more.
It isn't much past 9:30 when Raven finds him; she wakes him gently with his phone from the backroom doorway. Once again, he's glad he took a chance on the SVA dropout; he's thankful he has her in his life despite the trouble she's unwittingly brought into his careful structure.
She doesn't ask why he's sleeping on the floor with just a towel around his waist or why his right hand's knuckles are skinned. This isn't the first time she's found him asleep in his back room with bruised knuckles or worse. He has no intention of telling her that this time it isn't from his crossfit class or the punching bag in his loft.
It's a good thing he keeps a change of clothing at the shop, she says. He shrugs, but agrees verbally when his 10 o'clock touchup client shows up fifteen minutes early.
...
Charles has all his bags packed for his noon checkout and is wearing his last clean suit. He's sitting next to the picture window of his hotel room blankly staring at the WillametteRiver. It isn't raining, but there's still heavy cloud cover. If not for the West Hills' greenery the whole cityscape would be an uninspiring grey.
At his feet is a folded Brooks Brothers shopping bag, in his hands is a rain boot which is only a little worn down at the heel and ball of foot. His thumbs tap a haphazard beat out on the rubber sole. If it were the staccato background to a song, Charles would call it the discontented tango.
He has a vague recollection of dreams from last night, but they're more feelings than pictures. Charles thanks his subconscious for having a modicum of decency in that regard. If only he could say the same for the twinges his body keeps telegraphing to his brain. His groin aches distantly from his shower and his ass is vaguely uncomfortable from fingering himself: water is rarely suitable lubrication.
Leaving Portland will be both a relief and a pain. The silence of Raven's absence in his daily life is always hard, though he's loath to admit it. When she visits, they always end up sleeping together in his bed; arms tangled around one another, sometimes her hair in his face, but always touching like they've roped one another in with spiritual umbilical cords. He doesn't really want to share their womb with her brilliant boyfriend; it's empty enough as it is.
In Oxford he's always looking for similar ties and sooner or later he finds them ill-fitting. Too loose or too constrictive; sometimes one becomes the other. Thus far he shares no similar space with anyone. He has many acquaintances, a Facebook with nearly a thousand connections. A few of those connections he's even close to, but nothing like the openness he has with Raven. None of the responsibility he feels for her, either.
Later today he'll board another plane and leave her behind; the sister who has always been his unexpected, constant gift.
Later today he'll board a plane and leave behind a conundrum, too. He can feel the rough edges of the twine that represents Erik Lehnsherr, or maybe he isn't the temptation of earthen hemp, but the heated scales of constricting coils.
"Don't romanticize it," Charles whispers to the sinuous river beyond the glass, "he's an ass and you always fall for the assholes. Not that he even has much of an ass."
Annoyed, his fingers curl and bring his fingernails into scraping contact with the boot's rubber. He reminds himself how patronizing Erik is, how rude, how his wide mouth rarely opens onto pleasant words. How badly he wanted to silence him with kisses or punch him the moment Erik's long-fingered hand had curled around Charles' vest.
Charles rears his right arm back and slings it forward with every ounce of strength his boxing days have provided him. The boot narrowly misses the hotel room's entertainment center. It hits the wall, likely startling his neighbors, and rebounds onto the floor near his suit case and garment bag. Charles glares at the second boot by his feet; he feels no sympathy or remorse for throwing the first and he doubts he'll feel any if he throws this one, too. But he won't, because he's in control and he knows just exactly what he'll do with it.
The last of his day is a blur, though he's sharp as ever for his colleague's seminar. It goes well even if he's distracted with a myriad of thoughts about Raven, her boyfriend, and her mentor's sharp words. What could he expect from somebody that comes from such a coarse background, though? What kind of person overlooks one's heritage and goes into a trade that pierces skin and spills blood, that makes permanent marks on living bodies? What does Raven see in him?
Raven seems happy, but he still doesn't understand how she can be satisfied with an art form that's an elevated form of butchery. Despite the sheer cheek involved with her huge reproductive triptych, he's always thought fine art was better suited to her. Perhaps that's where Hank comes in. Raven has always been smart and quick-witted; she needs intellectual challenges and in Charles' absence, she has Hank to provide her mental stimulation. Erik might know things, he might be knowledgeable, but there's danger in mistaking knowledge for intelligence.
The seminar runs a little after two. Everyone who has imminent flights to catch disperse amid hopes to see colleagues soon and excitement in continuing new, and renewing old, relations over convenient mediums. Charles loses himself in the press of the remaining intellectuals. This is where he feels the most alive; interacting with others, bouncing ideas about, challenging and being challenged in turn.
In these circles Charles creates a safe and buoyant atmosphere with his charm, quick wit, and his shameless ability to stoop to using horrible genetics jokes that invite people to not only laugh with him, but at him. He's often said to be the life of the party and as such, he has a gravity that many orbit around. But sometimes he thinks he exerts himself so because without the party, he doesn't feel alive.
Once again, it's up to Raven to find him and extract him from a bevy of scholarly acquaintances. This time she wears a gauzy scarf and a tight, green t-shirt with a white screen-print depicting a skull vomiting intestines. The shirt sleeves are long enough to cover the snakes on her arms.
"Is this one of your drawings?" he asks, laughing, because the screen-print subject matter might be disgusting, but it isn't etched into her skin.
She slips her arm around his and bumps her hip into him affectionately. "Nope, it's one of Erik's. Next time Darwin and Erik get drunk and decide to do some screen prints I'll get in on it and make you something."
"You have a friend named Darwin?" Charles asks as they head for the front lobby's baggage room. He tries not to think about Erik and the presence of his art on his sister's body. There've already been a few uncomfortable hints that the two might have dated and, for the sake of his sanity, he doesn't want any further evidence.
Raven nods merrily. "Yep. It's his nickname because he's a survivor. He owns the vegan café we're always going to. He used to be a cab driver, then he owned a food cart with his partner Alex. They saved up and bought the space for the café five years ago."
She pauses in her story as Charles claims his baggage and then they head outside to Erik's black truck.
"Darwin's been a galvanizing force in the community and a stabilizing one, too. Morpho, Triple Cha lingerie, and the four-floor indie art gallery across from them are the cornerstones of our area. Erik and the letterpress shop below Quicksilver came in a little later. The bunch of them are kind of the tastemakers in our corner of the neighborhood."
That's certainly some food for thought, Charles thinks. Perhaps with a gallery of such size so close, Raven might have a chance for a big show. Even if her work is in the more disreputable side of the art world, sometimes such things are elevated. It gives him a little hope for her and brings a small smile to his lips.
The rain has eased back to a mere spitting; not enough to warrant running to the truck. They walk together with Charles' rolling suitcase and garment bag of suits and together they load them in the Frontier's half cab.
The drive to the airport is filled with idle chitchat, mostly Charles telling Raven about people he saw over the last few days. It gets more serious when they arrive at PDX and Raven asks him if he's thought about spending a couple weeks of the summer recess in Portland.
"C'mon," Raven wheedles, "even if there's no Spanish model ass in it for you, Janos and I have awesome taste in wine. Janos is really good at mixing drinks and Sean's an amazing DJ. You get to stay with me in our drafty, hipster loft. You and Hank can get to know each other better. And you and Erik can better collaborate on your tattoo. It'll be perfect."
A first Charles just stares at Raven and the incongruence that just flew out of her mouth. Knowing her, she's said everything exactly the way she meant to, slyly putting disturbing notions right alongside pleasant ones as if there should be no distinguishing between them. He has no intention of letting her frame things that way. But Charles doesn't want to talk about Erik, either, because Raven is too smart for her own good and he desperately doesn't want her to figure him out until after he's left. He looks down at the Brooks Brothers bag and sighs.
"I hope you understand that getting to know Hank better doesn't equate me liking or approving of him more than I already do." Charles looks up again to see her expression to fall even as he says it. When her face falls, he sees it in every line that forms and deepens around her eyes and mouth. "He's intelligent, there's no question of that, but I know that intelligence alone isn't going to satisfy you. You're an extrovert Raven; you need the late nights and the excitement just as much as I do. You'll wear him out eventually."
Eyes still on her, he sees her chest rise as her lungs fill. "Charles, why don't you just hold off on all this white knight, big brother, bullshit until he and I have at least lived together? His introversion is actually really grounding. And, yes, I like late nights, but when I sleep late, that give him the quiet mornings he wants. So it works when he stays here with me and when I go stay with him."
"You say that now," Charles sighs, "but I'm just trying to save you the—
"Quit trying to save me," Raven sighs.
"—time and trouble of discovering it on your own. Believe me, I've cocked things up—
"And you'll keep doing it."
"—often enough. I want you to learn from my mistakes, not repeat them."
"I want to live my own life," Raven says in a loud voice. She's already parked and turned off the engine, but now she just sits, staring straight forward in the driver's seat. "You fuck yours up all you want, but let me fuck up my own by myself."
Charles takes a breath to continue the argument but Raven shakes her head viciously. "No, Charles, no. We've only a few hours left together until who knows when. Don't fuck it up with all this patronizing, big brother crap. I don't really remember much of Brian and Sharon was a shit mother, but I don't need them anymore than I need the biological ones that got rid of me. And I don't need an older brother, either."
She lets go of the steering wheel and turns to Charles with a bleak, little smile. At the mention of her biological parentage, Charles' discerning gaze focuses on her smile, looks for the silvery traces on and above her lip that most people never notice. It's hiding under her usual foundation and lipstick. "I just need a friend. You're my friend, Charles."
At her words and the sad look in her eyes, his shoulders slump and the fight leaves him with a tired sigh. They have only three more hours before he needs to go through security and catch his flight to Vancouver. He doesn't want to part from her on such a sour note.
"I'm sorry Raven, but I'm your brother, too, and that isn't going change. You need me to be both, but you're too stubborn to admit that. But let me soften that with this." He sets the Brooks Brothers bag on the truck's floor and reaches for her cool hands. Once he has them folded within his, he looks up into her eyes and says the words that he imagines are just as hard for her. "You're my sister and I need you, too."
She sighs and leans toward him until the seatbelt catches her body just short of his, then she turns one hand up in his and squeezes the fingers that cover it. "I know, but like I tried to tell you yesterday. You want to protect me and help me carry the weight, but you never let me help you. We're not equal. "
The problem is that Charles has heard variations on this complaint before, but it usually comes in the context of a break up.
...
True to her word, Raven shows up at Quicksilver a few minutes after 8pm. Erik glances up long enough to check it's her and sees she's carrying a bag of take out and a Brooks Brothers shopping bag. He wipes his client's skin clean again and lowers the tattoo machine. The man is too tired to say much of anything; Erik prefers it that way.
He's been bent over this client's forearm on and off since five o'clock and his lower back is beginning to get to him. The harsh black work was finished an hour ago and thinks it will be two and a half hours more before the intricate color will be complete. The hardest part, tattooing along the client's ulna, is going slowly. With back pieces Erik can have clients move to minimize tattooing directly over their shoulder blades, but it's impossible to avoid major bones like this.
To make matters worse, the man he's been tattooing is lean; there's been little to shield him from the machine's needle when it buzzes against his bones. They're both doing their best, Erik thinks, but the client's twitching and squirming is taking a five hour job and turning it into six. If the client hadn't flown out from Chicago to get this piece Erik would send him home. Instead he considers offering a face-saving break; it will hurt even more when they resume, but he thinks the man might be good for another forty-five minutes or so.
"I need to talk to my assistant," Erik says. "Let's take ten minutes."
The client nods readily and lets Erik clean the ink off his arm again before pulling his earbuds out. Erik watches him take a shaky breath. "I'm really sorry; I'm having an off day."
"It isn't unusual," Erik says. "It's like I told you during consultation; the skin on the underside of your forearm and the bone that runs down from your elbow make this a painful tattoo."
The client sighs. "Yeah, just thought I could tough it out better than this."
If Erik made every client that said the same thing pay double, he thinks he could have amassed a retirement fund by now. He simply nods and sets his machine on its stand. "If you're running out of juice or food, Raven won't mind picking up something for you from the coffee shop next door. She's done it before."
The man stands up slowly and shakes his head. "I might take you up on that later, but I've still got enough provisions."
He shuffles away, out to the gallery space and presumably to the bathroom while Erik cleans the work area once again and throws away yet another pair of gloves. Inside Quicksilver he's fastidious in the extreme; in their business that's never a bad thing. He looks through the open area in the railroad tie wall where Raven has set down both bags and is going through their voice mail.
"Brooks Brothers?" he calls.
"The boots you loaned Charles. He says thank you, by the way." Raven looks up from the business line. "And I picked up some bibim bap from one of the Korean carts for you."
Erik resists the strong impulse to tip the Brooks Brothers bag forward and peer inside; it isn't likely that his rain boots will look any different than they did before he loaned them out. Instead he picks up his tepid bottled water and takes a long drink. It gives him time to think, to decide whether he wants to ask about her emotional state after seeing her brother off.
"Kitty's mom made boyos," he says, rather than ask about her or Charles. Having avoided thinking about his attraction to Charles most of the day, he finds himself curiously weak to temptation when faced with evidence of Charles' presence.
A snort lifts a lock of hair off Raven's face. "Is that a food thing? Because you should have told me you didn't need dinner."
"I had some for lunch," he replies smoothly, "and I was thinking of sharing, but now I'm rethinking that offer."
Raven sighs. Erik notes the slump of her shoulders under the layered gauze of her raw silk scarf. He finally admits he's being more of a dick than usual by ignoring Raven's emotional state. Long, unhurried strides bring him around the wall where he can place a hand on her elbow. "Your brother's plane leave on time?"
"Yeah." He sees her eyes are dry, but her mascara and eyeliner are long since smudged. When her gaze comes in contact with his he can also see her makeup could soon face a new threat. She drops her head, lets it collide heavily with the black side of his chest. "What do you do when the most important person in your life doesn't approve of the second most important person in your life?"
While Erik is tempted to make a joke about her employer actually being the most important person in her life, he holds back. "You don't do anything, because it isn't your problem. What Charles thinks, what Hank thinks, you can't do anything about."
Her sigh transmits heat and humidity through his shirt to warm his chest. "Why do I care so much about what he thinks?"
Erik frowns at the question, but refuses to recast it into the shape he desires. "Because he's your brother and you love him."
"Yeah." Her head doesn't move from his chest, which would be fine if her breathing against his skin wasn't a little on the arousing side after his failed attempt at masturbation that morning.
Gently, he grasps her biceps and pushes her back a safe distance. "You want to get drinks after work and talk about it?"
"Love to," she says, all the weariness weighing down every word, "but Hank goes back to Corvallis tonight and I'd like to see him before he goes. How about tomorrow morning? I happen to know your Mondays are totally dead."
Her dark eyebrows rise in a hopeful look. He's good at disappointing people he's close to, but he sees no need this time. "I'll come over at nine. Besides, I need to get more information about your brother if I'm going to design something he won't hate."
When his client comes back from the bathroom, Erik releases Raven's arms after a light squeeze and ducks under the noren, back to their work space. He cleans his machine, changes needles, disinfects his client again, and goes back to work.
An hour later, the man's music player dies and Erik has Raven tune in a classical station. He runs out of sugary snacks and liquids next and Raven is dispatched downstairs and around the corner for orange juice and fig bars. Erik's used to these things happening enough that he doesn't need to ask Raven to light incense.
It's nearly eleven by the time Erik's ready to wrap the new tattoo in plastic. Despite the client's movements, it's an excellent example of Erik's graphic work: a monochrome, dot-work stealth fighter jet with clouds of water color-esque washes that seem to bleed into the dots that share both elements. He's used the ulna to help define the wings' sharp edges and the radius to give shape to the fuselage.
Raven takes several photos of the piece and then Erik carefully wraps and tapes it up. Raven handles payment and explains aftercare with the same strict voice she used in the morning with the touchup client. Erik orders him a cab while Raven talks and then throws himself into clean up with a passion and Dobbs Dead coming out of the speakers.
...
Charles sleeps most of the eleven hour flight from Vancouver to Heathrow; he takes enough transatlantic and transcontinental flights that he's grown used to the accommodations. It's much easier to sleep in business and first class; economy has always been impossible even the few times he's used muscle relaxers.
Heathrow proves better than he expects on a Monday afternoon, though it is overcast and drizzling. The regular cab service he deals with has cars on the curb for £70 but his frequent use renders him the ride £50. He spends the duration of the ride thinking about Raven, Erik Lehnsherr, and the tattoo industry in general. Once he's safely deposited at his flat in Oxford, he messages his two current sex partners about meeting up. After that he throws himself down for a nap in hopes of finding better sleep than what was had on the plane.
Unfortunately, when he checks his phone after an hour of tossing and turning in his quiet flat, both his partners have reported in with other plans. One of the two has suggested an afternoon rendezvous on Thursday. Charles prefers evenings and sleeping afterward and responds as such. Some of his partners call him bossy, but he doesn't see a problem with communicating his preferences in a sex-only relationship; he wishes more of his partners would do the same.
With sleep elusive and his libido unusually active for his travels, he distracts himself with internet radio and gathering his dry cleaning. As an afterthought, he switches the station to Portland's classical station, 89.9.
When they were children, he and Raven used to play with the huge old record player in one of the guest bedrooms. They would stack record after record on the adaptor atop the spindle and as each record ended, the needle would move back, the bottom record of the stack would drop down, and the needle would advance once more. They listened to hours of classical music, interspersed with Brian's worn Beatles and Beach Boys records.
He listens to enough classical music without Raven that he rarely thinks of her when he does. However, the Portland station is fresh in his mind and so is the conversation they had under the canopy and in Erik's truck. What should really be fresh in his mind is the conference, but he's hung up on Raven, his chronic loneliness, and the idea of spending a few weeks somewhere that isn't his dark, clutter-infested flat and all the quiet it collects within its walls.
Alone with the quiet, he wonders if Raven is as happy with her job despite as she says. He wishes it hadn't been her asshole employer that watered the seed of doubt. He might be physically attracted to said asshole, but that isn't important: Raven is. What if Raven is as satisfied with her life as Erik said on Charles first day in Portland?
Additionally, Raven seems happy with Hank no matter how much Charles tries to pressure her otherwise. Hank is brilliant and can hold his own in intellectual subjects. His experience in the sciences means there's less background to explain when Charles talks with the young man. Young and brilliant as he is, Hank will likely continue to grow ideas that will surprise and fascinate for decades to come. As long as he invests that same passion into the relationship, maybe Raven won't grow bored. And if she's right about their sleeping schedules, maybe it could work out the way none of his relationships ever do.
It's as he's headed out into the rain with his garment bags that he remembers, again, Erik's hand on his vest. This time he thinks, perhaps sex is the answer; enough sex will likely put Erik out of his mind. Then again, perhaps he should get back into boxing and get his clock cleaned rather than his chicken choked. His thoughts are, gladly, interrupted when his phone buzzes with a message. He checks it at the cleaners and sees a 503 number he doesn't recognize. Curious, he taps it open.
This is Erik Lehnsherr. I need input to design for you. I prefer to get it directly from the client themselves. If nothing else, forward any images you see in magazines, movies, or books that intrigue you.
"You prefer to get it from your clients, do you, Mr. Lehnsherr?" Charles deletes the text on instinct. "If only you weren't so bloody tempting."
...
There's a message on Erik's phone Monday morning when he gets in from his run; Raven's begged off meeting. He wouldn't mind her absence after the dramatic weekend, but he wants to start on Charles' design. She forwards him Charles' number when he asks and he sends a couple inquiries; neither of which yield replies.
Annoyed and frustrated, he goes with the age old route of running image searches on Charles' full name. He receives a surprising number of pictures of Raven's brother which do nothing at all to dissuade Erik's physical attraction. If anything, he's startled by just how expressive Charles is, how charming he looks when he's presumably in his element. He frowns when the search turns up even more images of a Roman Catholic saint.
Charles doesn't seem religious, he hopes he isn't, but it's all Erik has to go on. Drawing on his observations of Charles' behavior and some of Raven's more pointed criticisms, Erik takes up one of his drafting pens and gets to work. If Charles didn't like the first facetious design he made, this one will likely make him angry.
He spends most of Monday working between different sketches; one hagiography of Charles Francis Xavier and several sketches of naval warships from his Sunday consultation. Kitty visits Monday afternoon to do homework and to sprawl on the gallery couch to play games on her phone. She tries to get him to draw one of the warships on her as a practice run, but he only answers with crumpled paper balls. She retaliates in kind.
Tuesday morning picks up where Monday left off. A smile lifts the corners of his lips as Erik cleans Quicksilver in the morning; he discovers paper balls between the couch's cushions and even one in the ceramic vase they use as a umbrella holder.
He's also now armed with a dozen or so library books on American and Russian naval vessels, M.C. Escher, and Catholic iconography. Erik is lost in the zone of his work, shirtless to let his tattoo breathe and slashing his pen on paper to form variation on variation of warship.
Raven doesn't come in until that afternoon and at first he doesn't recognize her. She walks in singing something that makes no sense, but sounds suspiciously like horribly mangled French. When she comes into his view from where he's seated at the desk, she has his attention at first glance.
Her hair is a glorious, unnatural red. It swings around her face in a thick fall of burning color. The tips dance over her shoulders like holy flames that burn without consuming. The contrast of the red does far more for the blue coils on her shoulders than ever did the blond.
Raven catches him staring and stops to spin around on the ball of her foot. Her hair swings about her face as she stops and tilts her head to one side. She lifts a shoulder and, thanks to her loose-necked top, brings more skin and the satin band of her bra strap into view. "Hank says he needs time to get used to it and Charles is going to hate it. What do you think?"
"I think I need to get laid," Erik says dryly. "And that it's a good thing I'm sitting at a desk."
She laughs and shakes her head merrily. "C'mon Erik, you've got nothing to be ashamed of; I've seen it before and after you've tented your pants."
"Don't remind me." He shakes his head at her sense of humor. "I think your hair looks good. The red brings out the chimera's snakes. You could probably go more orange to flatter them even more."
"The red will fade with a couple washes." Still smiling, she ducks the noren and comes to lean against the doorway. "This is why I work here for such shit wages; unasked for flattery."
Erik snorts and flicks her thigh with a snap of his fingers. She laughs and rubs at her jeans where his fingernail hit. "You get what you deserve; I don't pay you to talk."
"You do so," she retorts. "You pay me to talk, because you can't be bothered to do it. You're an antisocial dick."
He shrugs. "What was that about unasked for flattery?"
"Only you would consider that flattery." She leans down for a moment to stare at the dragon she's branded him with.
"So you want to talk about your brother not liking Hank now?" he asks, because he can't deny the truth and talking about him makes him uncomfortable.
The question has the desired effect; Raven subsides. Her face doesn't fall nor does she fill her lungs for a heavy sigh. Instead she slips down the wall to sit on the edge of his desk and picks up one of his drafting pens to fiddle with. "Not really. I already talked to Hank and I kind of want a rest from the topic for a bit."
Though an infrequent repository for Raven's sibling angst, Erik finds himself surprised and strangely disappointed at the response. "How did Hank take it?"
"Pretty well," Raven replies, studying the pen's barrel. "Considering he's never had to live with my brother's disapproval before. He's kind of sensitive to what people think of him, so he was really upset. But…" She leans sideways over the desk, her face horizontal to Erik's wary vertical. Gravity pulls her newly red hair down in a wave, but now it isn't long enough to brush the desk top. "Last night he said he didn't care what Charles thinks, because he's in a relationship with me, not him."
It's grudging, but it has to be said. "I approve of your overly sensitive boyfriend; he's shown he's strong when it matters."
Raven stills, her sideways face's mercurial smile, the one that says she's putting on a brave face, melts away. For a moment he thinks she's going to cry again. He drops his pen and pushes away his sketchbook away to take her hands, but then she surges forward from the desk. It's only because he was reaching for her at all that he catches her shoulders, but using the wall for leverage, she over-powers his strength with her momentum. "Thank you!"
The desk chair skids back, the two back legs catch, and then they're tipping back, riding the chair to the floor. Erik has time to brace himself before they hit the floor in a tumble of limbs. After years of being shoved against walls or thrown to floors, Erik is proficient at keeping his head from bouncing hard off the hardwood floor. The impact is hard enough that he wonders if Hammerpress downstairs will hear it.
He's a little worried he'll react instinctually and fight back, but while the impact against the floor is one thing and Raven's weight another, his tension has been bleeding out from his pen and into his sketches. A couple books on the bookshelf fall over with their impact against the floor, but both he and Raven are fine after the reverberations of the hit fade.
Sprawled on his chest, her hands an unexpected cushion at the back of his head, Raven lays along Erik's torso with a huge grin. "I know I shouldn't need to hear it, but I still do! I hate it, but I want to hear somebody approves of Hank. He's so smart and sweet! He doesn't care that I've fucked more girls than he has. He doesn't care that I have tattoos; he even kisses them, Erik! He kisses my chimera! And he trusts me not to be inappropriate with you and he doesn't want me to go back to art school unless I want to!"
It's a little like being tackled by an aggressively friendly Labrador, Erik decides. For a moment he allows himself to be swept along with her deluge of enthusiasm. It's easy to do when the emotions aren't his. It feels good to pull positivity out of her, to say the thing that makes her happy, but when he thinks about it, about why she's happy about something that she should be able to take for granted, his answering smile drops off the map.
He reaches up and drags his hand through her red hair, looks her in her light brown eyes. "If your elbow weren't digging into your journeyman tattoo, this would be every bit as inappropriate as Hank trusts you not to be."
Raven rears back, straddling Erik's stomach. "Oh, shit, I am so sorry! And, whoah, you did say you need to get laid. Do you want me to hook you up with the lady that does my hair? Or her business partner? He's pretty hot, but I don't know if he's into bisexual guys. He did once say he'd do Charles, though."
Charles is bisexual, too. Erik grits his teeth, because he never even thought about that, just assumed that it wouldn't be a problem if he really wanted to get his hands on him. He hooks his feet around the chair legs to get some leverage to push Raven off. "Yeah, you can introduce me to Hank now."
Raven doesn't resist his push; she falls aside but she's still smiling. "Erik, you don't get to screw Hank; he's straight. But if you guys did, I would film it."
It's not what he meant and they both know it. Raven finds her equivocation much funnier than Erik does. In retaliation he grabs her ankle as she gets to her feet and tumbles her back to the floor. "Fortunately for both of you, I don't want to fuck your chivalrous boyfriend."
Scrabbling at the floor with an indignant squawk, Raven tries to drop Erik back down with her by attacking his knees. Legs as long as they are, it's a simple thing to sidestep her lunge. She gets him around one knee, but he's already moved the preponderance of his weight to the other. When she doesn't let go, he drags her like one would a particularly large puppy that won't let go of a pant leg. Raven giggles delightedly as he shuffles her across the clean floor.
He doesn't drag her far; he sets the chair back up so he can sit at the desk again. When she twigs to his intention she sighs and releases him. "So you don't want me to set you up for a hook up?"
He holds up his left hand and wiggles his fingers meaningfully. "I'm self-sufficient, thanks."
"What a waste of cock," Raven says to the ceiling. "To borrow a line from my brother: Are you even aware that you won the genetic lottery of cock? Share the wealth."
Erik grips his pen harder than absolutely necessary when he picks it up and nearly tears the pages of his current sketchbook as he flips back from bristling warships to Christian iconography. "Your brother talks like that? He doesn't seem the type."
"Charles is everyone's type," Raven says. "If there's a line between sex positivity and true sluttiness, he mistook it for a finish line and blasted through."
Erik spins his pen around his thumb several times in quick succession; he looks down at his current design in a whole new light. A light that suddenly brings him a smile. He looks over his shoulder at Raven who is finally drawing herself up off the floor. "This just got better. It'll be Thursday or Friday before it's finished, but you can take a look now."
Curiosity animating her like nothing else, Raven gets to her feet and comes over to the desk. She places her hands on the chair's back and looms over Erik's shoulder. Erik leans to one side to watch her take in the scene he's drawn. He enjoys the transformation of her face as she cycles through confusion, shock, and then hilarity.
One hand comes off the chair to cover her mouth as she starts to laugh again. "Oh my God, Erik, what are you doing? He's not religious at all and that would take up his whole back and over forty hours! He'll hate it!"
"It's just for shock value. I sent him a couple messages about what he wants and he's never replied," Erik chuckles. "And you didn't give me any direction, so I started researching his very Roman Catholic name. Since his patron saint wasn't fitting, I went with a different one."
"Of all the saints you could have gone with…! Oh, wait," Raven chokes, tears of withheld hilarity squeeze from the corners of her eyes. She points at the page with a finger that shakes with her full body laughter. "Charles is uncircumcised."
...
In the early evening on Friday, Charles picks up his dry cleaning after a particularly long planning session. There's an envelope taped to the plastic covering the suit he wore the Saturday previous. Usually he's better about emptying his pockets, but it was a long and often stressful time between finally seeing Raven again, meeting Hank, and dealing with her confrontational mentor. He supposes he left some cash or maybe business cards in a pocket, but when he gets home and hangs the suits back up in his closet he find the envelope curiously thin.
Intrigued, he slips a finger under the flap and tears the tape in two. Charles parts the edges of the envelope and draws out a folded and wrinkled piece of white paper. It releases a strong odor of cigarettes into the air. Baffled, he unfolds it, expecting to see a name and phone number.
What he gets is Erik's elegant Spencerian script announcing the loss of his bet with his sister. Sputtering obscenities, he tosses the paper blindly aside and storms out of the room, grabs his umbrella from its stand, and heads out for a pint. The rain is heavier in Oxford than in Portland, but he hasn't far to go through the heavy press of rain to get to the pub he uses for pick ups. All the same, he runs the whole way to burn through his annoyance.
Two hours later, Charles is nursing his third pint and the lovely woman next to him seems to be falling for his rubbish genetic pick up lines. She's not stupid by any stretch of the imagination; she's simply charmed by his act and likely after the same thing he is. They've been chatting and messaging friends, telling each other the funnier messages and situations their friends are sending.
That's when Charles gets another mail from Erik; his face flushes with anger as well as alcohol. The woman, Jackie, sees the strangled look on Charles' face as he tries to decide whether to open the attachment or not.
"Oh, no," she says, "looks like you actually live with your mother and she's just told you not to bring home company."
The comment brings Charles past aggravation, into amusement. Mission accomplished; she's decided to go home with him. He flashes a cheeky grin. "Actually, no, it's from my sister's demented art teacher."
"I hope he hasn't sent you a nude of your sister," Jackie winks and laughs when Charles takes the joke well.
"Definitely not," Charles snorts. "I'd kill him. My sister's dating a nice post-doc boy. Not that I'd blame her if she had, I suppose; the man's built like an Olympic athlete and has cheek bones that could shave a straight razor."
Jackie's dark eyes twinkle. "Metrosexual is a plus, Charles. Did he send you a nude of himself, then?"
"I highly doubt it, but if so you are more than welcome to it," Charles chuckles. He takes a sip of his drink and opens the mail. He finds no message, just an attached image. It's a nude alright, but it isn't of Erik nor Raven. No, Erik has sent him a highly detailed nude of Charles.
Charles' beer isn't expelled out of his mouth to start with, but it does go down the wrong way. He chokes, drops his phone on the bar, and grabs a fistful of napkins as he coughs. He's grateful for the napkins when the burn of alcohol registers in his nasal passages and goes on to dribble from his nose.
His face burns with embarrassment and no small amount of irritation. Raven and her asshole boss.
"Your sister after all?" Jackie asks, picking up his phone. Her sly grin turns immediately into a fascinated moue. "St. Sebastian? Well then, not your sister. This demented art teacher, does he like you or hate you?"
Though he isn't quite recovered and his nose burns fiercely with the remnants of alcohol, Charles snatches his phone back from her and looks at the screen again. The monochrome image remains the same: Erik's harsh pen strokes render everything he draws in black and white. There's no grayscale to speak of.
The figure is drawn in repose, crumpled from a standing position, and riddled with arrows. It's clear the figure is dying, the eyes (his eyes) are rolling back, blood is spilling everywhere. Around his ankle is a heavy manacle with a chain that is attached to a half-opened bird cage. Waiting to escape the cage is a raven.
On second glance, Charles is not embarrassed, but so infuriated he totally forgets that Erik has drawn him naked. Because the flow of ink blood blends in with the cage's shadow in such a way that it looks like it's the figure's blood that has opened the cage to free the raven.
"Oh, I think he hates me," Charles growls and hits reply automatically. He's just about to type a hateful message that he imagines Erik will likely laugh at back in America, when Jackie places a hand on his wrist.
Still burning with irritation, he flicks his gaze up to the woman's face. "Charles, the best revenge is living well, don't you think? Why don't you come back to my place and I can see just how closely art resembles life?"
The proposition doesn't dilute his anger, but the idea has its appeal. Charles looks back down at the reply screen on his phone and then at Jackie's hand on his wrist. Why not? Getting his ashes hauled seems like as good a way as any of getting token vengeance. It would also give him time to calm down and send a much more scathing reply.
Pocketing his phone, he nods to Jackie, the beginnings of his humor starting to return, but only just. "I like your way of thinking, but why don't you come to my place if it's closer?"
He settles both of their tabs and they head out together.
Special thanks to Rumcity (aka luciddrugs) who endured my researching, my thoughts on symbolism, answered art history questions, and inundated me with pics of St. Francis Xavier and, my favorite, St. Sebastian.