Charles had to finish his work in the house, taking pictures for "photographic paranormal phenomena" by which he apparently meant "ghost candids". The brunet asked if he wanted to help, and did it with that glinting, mischievous gleam to his eye, but still Erik turned him down. He was completely over this house. He couldn't wait till Charles was finished. Whatever that glinting eye was promising now, Erik was hopeful he could get it to be just as promising at his house that night. And he did have phone calls to make, now that his phone was working.
Although Emma had called him three times, he dialed his dad's number first. It wasn't weird for Emma to call him, but his dad almost never called—not during the day, not on a weekday, when rates were highest. He hoped nothing had happened. Emma would murder him if he tried to run up to Canada at a time like this.
Jakob picked up on the second ring, not making Erik feel any reassured what with the anxious way his father said his name.
"Erik? Erik?"
"Dad? What's wrong? Has something happened?" he responded just as nervously. He did not much want to be an orphan and hoped that was not what his father had called to tell him-that he was in an accident, that he had only minutes to live or something...
"Nothing, nothing, son!" Jakob exclaimed. "I just couldn't get a hold of you. You worried me."
Erik sighed, leaning his head back on the swing bench, letting relief flood through him, making him realize how anxious he really had been.
"My phone's on the fritz. Why'd you call? I thought something had happened."
"No, nothing. I was just worried about you. Are you alright?"
Erik blushed, glancing at the house. His mother was always the one that had threatened bodily harm about stepping a foot into even the driveway of the Gone-Away House, but that didn't mean his father would be any happier to find him there.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he sort of lied. "Just working. Emma's got me on a field assignment."
"That's good. You like field assignments," his father said blankly. Neither one of them was good talking on the phone together. They maneuvered much better face-to-face or via email, when they could gauge reactions or spend time planning a response, respectively. Erik figured it was his father's fault. He never had problems with phone conversations with anyone else.
"How's Liz?" he questioned, scrounging to fill the silence.
"Fine," Jakob answered, thankful for a venue of conversation. "Did you want to talk to her?"
Erik winced. "No, thanks." He liked Liz fine from afar, but the truth of the matter was his father had remarried when he was 19: he'd never really had a use for Elizabeth and for all that she seemed a nice enough woman, he had never warmed to her as part of his actual family. She had an older son from a previous marriage and Erik felt the same towards him: cool guy, about as much a part of his family as the corner-store druggist. For him, his family would always be him, Jakob and Edie. There was no room in that world-view for additions, no matter how pleasant the applicants.
"Jimmy's in town," Jakob informed him. Speak of the devil.
"Between jobs?" he inquired, grinning with much tooth while he picked at the gray paint peeling from the swing bench. Erik respected the man's nomadic tendencies as a sign of abundant testosterone, but that didn't mean he wouldn't tease the guy unmercifully about it. If they wanted him to pretend to have a brother he would do it with full sadistic abandon.
"Erik," Jakob growled warningly. When he didn't respond his father coughed and continued. "You should come visit sometime, too. It's been a long time."
That was true. The last time Erik had visited was Hanukkah a few years ago when the holiday had overlapped the days he got off for Christmas. It had been painfully awkward watching Elizabeth try to get in the groove of the Jewish tradition while still attempting to appease her son's nominal Christianity. He and James had bonded over their shared pity by getting gruesomely drunk and playfully fistfighting. Erik still had a scar. He hoped James did too.
"Maybe soon," he said.
Jakob coughed again, more miserably than usual and asked, "How's... things?" meaning his love-life. His father hated asking about it, but thought of it as his fatherly duty to support Erik's homosexuality and he was never one to shun duty.
Erik grinned, thinking of what he would have to say if were to be honest with his father: 'Well, now that you mention it, Dad, there's a hot piece of British real estate I've got my eye on and I fully plan on planting my flag in it later tonight. Trust me when I say you'd be proud.'
Instead he said: "Everything's good, Dad. I've got to go, though. On assignment and everything, you know how it is."
"Right, right," Jakob sighed with relief. "Well, be careful. I worry about you, out there all by yourself."
Erik couldn't help but be confused, even a little startled, by this. His father had never shown a great amount of concern regarding his solitude before: Jakob had been treating him like a grown man even before he was one, so it was strange to get the babying treatment at this time of life.
"You do?" he queried accidentally.
"Of course. You know I...I was thinking of Mama today."
Erik's stomach clenched uncomfortably. They didn't talk about Mama too often. Hardly ever, in fact.
"Yeah? What...what'd you think of?"
"Just...she'd be so proud of you. She'd be sad we don't see each other so much. Hell, she'd be pissed as all getout at me," Jakob laughed. Erik smiled too.
"You should come out here sometime. We could go visit her, visit the old house..."
Jakob's voice was immediately gruff, business-like. "Well, you know how rough it is to leave the business. There's just no one to take care of it if I go. Locksmithing is tricky you know. You remember. I'd like to—you know I'd like to…"
Frowning bitterly, Erik ripped a swath of paint off the bench and cleared his throat violently. "Yeah. I know."
"It sure would be nice to have you up here to help me. I mean, if you're not pursuing this journalist stuff…"
"I am pursuing it. I work at a paper."
"You know what I mean." Erik did. His father referenced it enough. If you're not working for The New York Times, if you're not interviewing the president, well, maybe youshould just reconsider taking over the family business then. If the Avalon Daily is as good as it's going to get…
Erik's voice came out appropriately vindictive. "I've really gotta go now."
"Erik," Jakob started, but he cut the man off.
"Bye, Dad."
He relented momentarily though, biting the inside of his mouth at his inability to follow through on his rebuke. "I love you."
As soon as his father had sighed but said it back he hung up, glaring at the porch and swinging the bench tetchily with one long leg.
He called Emma next, hoping she would manage to not piss him off. At least she wasn't likely to bring up his mother, or at least not remind him of the dissonance that had ruled his life since his mother's death.
"I've been trying to call you all day, you loafer," she answered the phone crossly. "Don't tell me you let that tart charm you into his bed already. I was hoping you'd wait until your job was over before you succumbed."
"What can I say?" he sighed contentedly, allowing the playful back-and-forth of their arguments to cheer him back up. "You underestimated my desperation."
"Just a poor girl from the back country getting swept off her feet by a hot-shot rich boy," Emma cackled. "Make sure you finish sweeping out the fireplace before you bone your prince, Cinderella."
Erik rolled his eyes. Where did Emma come up with this stuff? He suspected romance novels had something to do with it.
"If he were a rich prince you would have snatched him straight off the Greyhound."
"He's gayer than a maypole; what am I supposed to do with him? I told you I'd make it worth your while."
"So you threw a hottie in my way—that does not get you off the hook for this fucking house, believe me."
"You should be happy!" Emma balked. "A rich man who bats for your team, please send me a postcard when he's jetsetting you to Paris. A stop at Cartier for me wouldn't be remiss."
Erik didn't point out that Emma was only offering him her refuse: if Charles had been bi she would have fought him for the man heartlessly enough. Nor did he argue that putting the brunet in his path was only fair payment for shipping him out to his death at a haunted house. As for Charles being rich, he guessed that made the man officially eccentric rather than crazy. Outside of that, he didn't care. It wasn't like the guy was likely to buy him a new car after one fuck, no matter how much he'd perfected his technique by now.
"If you're done gloating, I've got work to do."
"He must not be that good a lay; you're still your regular bitchy self."
"Goodbye, Emma," he threatened. The sadistic woman laughed jovially, but at least she finally got down to brass tacks.
"I only wanted to make sure everything was working out. You get some good material for the article?"
Erik thought of the vent, the basement. He thought of Charles' heated gaze, the swing of his hips as he walked.
"Yeah, some pretty good stuff," he said noncommittally.
"What angle are you thinking of taking? Fraud? Beleaguered simpleton? I'll start getting the paper geared up in that vein for your article."
She didn't mention the angle Erik was himself trying hard to resist: that Charles was on to something and this house really was awash with ghosts. Ridiculous.
"I haven't decided. I still have some more interview stuff to do," he claimed. Their first interview had had less to do with Charles, his team, and the Gone-Away House than it did with Charles' questionable intelligence-level, after all. Not the best ingredients for an awesome article.
"Just make sure it's admissible and not pillow-talk. The last thing I need is to hand Moira a story about the ADN getting sued for sexpionage or something seedy."
"I'll get any pillow talk on record so he can't wiggle out of it, you've got my word."
"I knew I didn't need to ask Hudson to make up the second bed," Emma laughed. "You're too predictable by half."
Confused, Erik questioned, "What second bed?"
"At the House. When I told Xavier he'd have a houseguest he had me get the caretaker, Mrs. Hudson, to set up the guest bedroom. He hadn't seen you at that point, though, so don't feel offended."
"Why would I need a bed at all?"
Well, he had been planning to use the one, of course, but not to sleep in, and he certainly didn't see why they'd need two to get anything done, unless maybe they broke the first one.
"Well are you going to sit up all night waiting for apparitions? That'll get boring fast."
Erik's whole body went cold, as if his blood had turned to ice. His limbs tingled, prickled. His ears rang with a thin metallic tone.
"Emma," he hissed, clutching his phone tighter in numb fingers. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
The woman, catching on to his distress, was quiet on the other end for a moment. "Did you...didn't you look at that dossier I gave you at all?"
She continued, probably accusing him of laziness, but Erik didn't bother trying to catch it, just hung up on her and ran out to his car to grab the dossier from where he'd thrown it to the backseat.
The very first page was a schedule.
He snatched it up and stuffed the rest of the papers haphazardly back into the car.
9:00- Pickup at Dewdrop Inn, Rm 237
11:00- Meet Hudson at Shaw House. Get keys! She'll handle your meals, so don't ask me for the company card. I'm serious.
Overnight: Overview ghost-hunting. Hudson has the guestroom set up for you, although I doubt you'll be needing it!
8:00-Breakfast. Ghost crew arrives. They have a van apparently, and I already gave them directions and your phone number, so keep your phone on!
9:00-Bring GhostCrewer#1 to high school to develop film. Principal will meet you at the parent's entrance at 9 sharp. Don't be late!
Erik stopped reading because he didn't care about anything past Overnight. How could she want him to stay there overnight? How could Charles want to stay there overnight? How could Erik in good conscious book it the fuck out of there as soon as dusk settled and leave the brunet to his bloody fate?
Even thinking of a way to try to convince the stubborn man to leave with him was gut-wrenchingly daunting. It was fucking impossible. Ten minutes in and Erik could tell that Charles was stubborn to the point of madness. He'd rather try and get Newt Gingrich to a gay orgy than get Charles to leave before schedule. Hot as he knew he was, good as partners told him he was at sex, Erik had no illusions that he could seduce Charles into pissing off. Charles would take him for all he was worth and smile undaunted into his request at the end of it, sated but unconvinced. He could tell.
In premeditated defeat he dropped his head into his shaking hand. What was there to do? If it was impossible to get Charles out of the house then what could he do? He could leave without Charles. He could pass up on this sweet, sultry, special temptation and sit at home consumed with lust for the rest of the evening.
Before his mind could even consider it his cock was aching with too much plaintiveness to be ignored. Okay, so that option was out. Walking away at this point might actually kill him from sexual frustration.
So what was he supposed to do? Wear Charles like an anti-ghost coat for the rest of the evening? Just stay right beside him, or over him, or under him. Don't leave his side and then fuck themselves into such a stupor that it was impossible for the house to terrify him. But how was he supposed to deal with the house in the meanwhile? In between dusk and fucking his brains out, what was he supposed to do?
Inspiration struck, and Erik looked up at the house nervously. Was Charles watching? Could he see?
Erik didn't look too hard—it felt too much as if he'd see something there he didn't want to see. Then he slipped quickly to his passenger seat, hurting his knees on the dried gravel and reaching an arm under the seat and grabbing the dark red tin he'd stuffed there back in college. Glancing at the house nervously again, he pried it open and checked through the contents: one pipe, two ancient buds of pot that he'd ignored since he'd landed his 'big' journalist job. Random drug testing was too scary for him to risk it—it wasn't something he wanted on his record, ever—but right now the house was scarier. Not scarier. He wasn't scared. But it was freakier. Was harder for him to deal with than Emma's drug test.
The lighter was old and took a few tries to light but Erik got it in the end and smoked very quickly, probably more quickly than was strictly effective. But this was not how he wanted Charles to find him. He thought the man was too worldly too be much disgusted by drug use, but in a perverse way the man was also hyperactively professional (when he wasn't hitting on his handler). Erik didn't for a moment think the man would be anything but disgusted to find Erik puffing away on the job like some cheap high school dropout. He couldn't risk that. He was counting very highly, after all, on the man sleeping with him that night.
He didn't even waste time cleaning out his pipe afterwards like a good druggie. He clamped the lid back on and shoved the whole mess under the seat again and then shoved past his wallet in the glove compartment (pausing to extract some cash) and grabbed some cologne, spraying himself down more than was strictly proper.
Only then could he relax. He sat on the seat, muck boots scuffing in the gravel. He closed his eyes and let his body warm in the sun, let his head fill, weighted and full, heavy and cottony. That was nice. Yes…the pot might be old, but it was definitely still potent. And relaxing.
But Erik wasn't afforded much time to enjoy it before Charles was shouting at him again.
"Oi! What are you doing out there! I need help setting up these cameras!"
Grimacing in disgust, Erik sat up, but was saved from actually doing any such thing by the pizza truck pulling up to the bridge over the creek and honking desperately. It was apparently piloted by a total towner: too distrustful of the Gone Away House to even pull into the driveway.
Standing, Erik waved off Charles' requested and walked down, only slightly unsteadily, to get Charles' heart attack along with his own vegetarian option. The horizon jounced up and down up and down as he walked and Erik found himself grinning dumbly. It had obviously been too long since he'd last smoked and now he was acting like a complete idiot. Had to get this under control…Charles wasn't unobservant enough to not call him out, acting like this.
The driver was some speckle-faced teenager Erik didn't bother to recognize who noticed Erik's herb perfume right away, even under his cologne apparently.
"I didn't know you partied," the kid smiled, obviously about to offer to hook him up.
"I don't!" he snarled, and tossed the kid some bills to shut him up, snatching their piping hot food.
Charles waited excitedly on the porch, overjoyed at the sight of grease and Dr. Pepper.
He better be fucking serious about sleeping together because there was simply no goddamn way Erik was sleeping by himself in this house. If it came to that, he would abandon the man to the ghosts out of spite and not look back once, the hard-hearted tease.