A/N: Hello and sorry I'm such a bad updater! Have a two-parter, because I feel bad. Additionally, check out this awesome song a dear reader thought summed Erik's love for Charles up nicely (I have to say I agree, plus I just love this song!): watch?v=Qf1JvdomH6s. Thanks for reading, or reviewing, or just enjoying.
"Ugh, it smells like burnt plastic down here," Charles commented, covering his nose as they finally made it down the stairs, almost fully clothed. Charles went straight to his laptop, setting it up on the dining room table. Erik guessed that put him in charge of breakfast.
"Something must have fallen in the dishwasher last night," Erik said, but it was too soon after a bone-melting orgasm for him to care very much. He gave the contents of the dishwasher a cursory glance, shutting it again without further thought. He'd much rather tease Charles.
"You still have room for breakfast?" He asked, hanging himself off the man's shoulder like a jacket and snaking his arm around to pat his stomach meaningfully. Charles did not seem to notice.
"She did it!" Charles cheered, clicking open an email with more excitement than Erik thought it merited. "Raven finished the book plate!"
"Hurrah," Erik intoned, too sated to care. He went to get breakfast started. Easy enough since he'd succumbed to optimism and grocery shopped with an extended stay in mind, stocking up on pastries, Poptarts, and Toaster Streudels. He simply had to shake some butterhorns onto a plate, sit back, and wait for the pure sugar temptation to wind its way past Charles' work haze. Good, because that was about all he had energy for. God but that man was good with his mouth. He may never care about anything ever again.
"Huh, there was no K at all; I was way off. Sebastian Shaw."
Erik tensed back up in an instant, spilling butterhorns all over the kitchen floor.
"What?!" he hissed.
"Ugh, it's not a very cheery bookplate, I must say." Charles hadn't even noticed the egregious waste of sugar, much less his question; he was still too distracted. Erik had to verify on his own, stalking over on legs that felt far away and grabbing the computer. "Hey!" Charles yelped, but Erik hardly heard him.
Raven had cleaned the image up nicely, Erik could clearly make it out now: a man walking, naked, bleeding, hunched over in misery. Above him two long-clawed birds swept, ripping and tearing at him. There was a scroll above that said something in Latin, and a mirroring scroll below where someone had signed, in angular, flowing script: Sebastian Shaw.
"Do you know him?" Charles questioned, noticing his reaction now that it was being shoved in his face.
"I've seen him." It came out breathless, reedy, but Charles heard him anyway.
"You have? Where? Who is he? Does he live around here?"
"No, not like that," Erik growled, shaking his head violently. "I've seen him." Charles just stared at him, eyes that wide electric blue-god, the man was really going to make him say it. "At the house."
After a moment, Charles asked in a low voice, "In the stairwell?" Erik nodded, head swimming, feeling full of water, sloshing. In the stairwell, in the reflection of his cellphone, in his dreams. In the painting at the police station. "God." Quiet, breathless, Charles continued. "Erik, we've got to figure out who this is."
"No."
"Erik, don't be difficult; we've got to!"
"No, I mean, I already know who he is."
Charles, if anything, was more upset by this.
"Erik! How could you know this and not tell me?! We could have been investigating this lead for days already! Do you have any idea how much time we've wasted?!"
"I didn't recognize him at the time-I only just realized it yesterday!" Erik defended himself angrily.
"Yesterday!" Charles exclaimed in return, voice going up an octave in pure unadulterated horror, pulling his hair with frustration. He was actually shaking. When he looked up at Erik it was with murderously flashing eyes. "Erik, is there anything else you're not telling me?"
The phone. The dreams. The autopsy.
"No."
Sighing, apparently believing him, Charles dropped his head into his hands and tried to calm down. It took a while. Meanwhile, Erik could hardly believe his luck. As much as Charles distrusted him about their relationship, about dating him, about liking him, and he let this blatant lie go unchallenged. Charles chose to doubt strange things.
"Okay," the man breathed when he'd gotten a grip. "Tell me everything you know about this man."
Instead, Erik got himself a glass of water in order to stall for time, trying to settle his fragmented thoughts. When he returned to his seat he thought he mostly had himself under control, and his voice came out mostly level. He still felt feverish though, like he'd swallowed a bottle of hot sauce and it had gotten lodged in his chest.
"Shaw was governor here, in the 1870s, the 80s. Elected to three terms. Which is un-fucking-heard of. Not allowed these days, of course. That should tell you how popular he was. No," Erik sighed, pushing his hair back. His hand was shaking but not a lot, and he didn't think Charles noticed. "Popular doesn't really do it credit. Obsessed over, maybe. A real cult of personality if ever there was one.
"You've seen him, too," Erik realized suddenly.
"I've what?"
"There are pictures of him everywhere-paintings-at the hospital, all the government buildings; statues of him all over the place, streets named after him left and right."
Charles snapped his fingers. "Senator Shaw Lane!"
The motel was on that road, along with half the town, so Erik wasn't surprised he knew it.
"That's right. Along with Shaw Hill, Martyr Square, and Senator Shaw Boulevard, both East and West."
"But you said Governor Shaw. Did he become Senator?"
Erik winced. "That's where things get dramatic."
"Wait!" Charles shouted at full volume, making Erik wince. The man sprinted away, knocking over his chair, nearly falling through the glass coffee table as he lunged all over the living room to find his recorder. When he made it back he was panting but raring to go. Erik grudgingly continued.
"When Governor Shaw was done being the most popular governor in history, he decided to try his hand at being the most popular senator in history, and then probably after that he had his eyes on the presidency. But it never got that far. On the brink of his senatorial campaign, at the big start-off rally here in Avalon, his home base, he was assassinated."
"What?!" Charles gasped, but then covered his mouth, glancing at the the recorder apologetically.
"Shot. Right through the head."
"Did they find who did it?"
"No problem with that - the kid gave himself up immediately. Luckily the police dragged him into custody before the mob had time to realize what the hell was going on. Not that it did him much good. They caught up with him eventually, broke into the jail after dark and burnt him alive in his cell."
"A kid?!"
"Well, teenager."
"But why? I mean...why did he do it? Did he say?"
Erik shrugged. "No. No one knows."
"You're joking me," Charles said with a roll of his eyes. "This town knows why someones grandmother switched from Tide to Gain. You're telling me no one knows why the great Saint Shaw was assassinated?"
"The Illustrious Martyr Sebastian Shaw," Erik corrected and Charles eyed him disbelievingly. "I'm serious! There's a community center play about it, every year. I'll bring you, we can sit with the rest of the elementary school."
"Elementary school?" Charles questioned, shutting off the recorder.
"Sure, they bring the whole school once a year. Big field trip to indoctrinate the young in the amazing ways of Sebastian Shaw."
Charles looked at him, seeing him suddenly.
"You don't seem a fan of our Illustrious Martyr," the man realized.
"Yet again, I am the sore thumb in this town, ever sticking out. Dressing nice, speaking English, abstaining from sporting events."
"Fucking men."
"That's not so strange - half the population does that."
"So why? Why aren't you hopping on the Shaw bandwagon?"
Erik tried to think about it, actually think about it. There wasn't a real answer. He'd never felt the urge. He didn't even really remember the play, in fact he thought his mom kept him home those days; they went and did fun stuff-what was the point of going to school if you were just going to go to a play instead? Why not stay home and have fun with your mom? Kids at school played Shaw at recess; it was a big to-do who got to pretend to be him. You got to be boss, or president, you got to be the doctor, everyone else was just your adoring audience, your patients, your constituents. Erik preferred his books to all that nonsense. If he was going to pretend he'd rather have it be interesting. He didn't want to be Shaw, he didn't want to be anything fucking approximating him. He wanted to burn-
"Hey, stop that!" Charles cried, yanking his wrist. Erik hadn't realized but he was rubbing his chest, poking it. "That's why you're getting all those bruises!"
Charles kept his hand between his own, rubbing it carefully. Erik clamped down on his instinctive affectionate smile so that Charles didn't realize what he was doing and turn skittish.
"So that's the whole infamous Shaw story, Christ reincarnate. I don't know how this," he nodded to the book plate. "Got overlooked, but when people hear about it, it's going to cause a craze like you've never seen. I'll be surprised if people don't ask to touch his signature to be cured of diabetes, I really will be."
"What was Shaw doing with a medical textbook of this sort anyway? It seems quite technical...I mean, it may not even be legitimate. Like you said-it's quite strange it would have gone overlooked all these decades. And what the hell is it doing at the Ash Creek House?"
"Sorry, I should have said: Shaw was a doctor before he was governor-while he was governor, actually, if I'm remembering correctly. No clue as to the second bit, though. Someone must have brought it there at some point. Who knows?"
"Someone who somehow still managed to overlook what it was."
"Well, yes."
"Hmm," Charles said noncommittally, letting go of Erik's hand. He sat staring at the image and rubbing his lips instead. Erik's palms were tingling, but he actually felt better, as if he were floating away from his anxiety. History was facts, dates, distant, in the past. He was relaxed by how far away it felt. It couldn't hurt him.
"Death is in my grasp."
Erik jerked up, staring at Charles with surprise, chilled at hearing those words from his mouth, from the same mouth that had been on him so keenly, so sweetly, not thirty minutes before.
"The Latin," Charles explained, motioning to the image before fiddling with his stubble. "Not quite the motto I would have envisioned for an esteemed martyr."
"You know Latin?"
Charles grinned, relaxing slightly from his pent-up concentration pose.
"Dead languages live on in British boarding schools, rest assured."
"I didn't realize you went to boarding school."
"Mother had to put me somewhere," the man joked back, but then stopped with a wince. "I'd better get going."
"What about breakfast?"
Charles eyed the pastries still scattered on the floor and looked a bit tempted.
"Thirty minute rule?"
"It won't be the dirtiest thing you've ever put in your mouth I'm sure."
"You better watch what you say or you won't be putting anything in my mouth again."
"Got it," Erik agreed with a wink. He made a big show of locking his lips shut before getting up, giving Charles a quick kiss before going to resupply him with sugar.
It was slightly windy out, but warm. Erik didn't bother to put on a jacket as he walked Charles to his car, stepping barefoot and careful over the cold concrete of his driveway.
"This isn't actually necessary," Charles pointed out. "I mean I can manage to get thirty yards on my own."
"Yes, but why should you have to?" Erik teased, wrapping an arm around Charles' strong shoulders. He couldn't keep it up long; Charles was too laden with bags and insistent against Erik's help carrying them to walk gracefully together.
"I'll be out most of the day. Probably work through lunch. Lots to do," Charles chirped away, refitting his satchel where it kept slipping. Erik released him enough to help fit it back over his shoulder. "I don't seem to get very good reception out there, so call me at the house phone as soon as you're through with the doctor. Are you sure you don't want me to go with you?"
"I never said I didn't want you to go with me."
"Oh, well, I can't go with you anyway. Busy day, like I said."
"You're a real dork, you know that?" Erik growled, turning Charles around and pinning him to the driver's door.
"Are you going to punish me?" Charles grinned back, rolling his hips against Erik's and making him groan.
"Tonight I will. Come stay again?"
Charles winced. "I can't."
"Of course you can! Don't be ridiculous!"
"I'm quite sure I'll be in enough trouble after this stint. Let's leave it at that."
"Don't be like that," Erik cajoled, pressing close, conjoining them from ribs to ankles. He nuzzled into Charles' jaw and the man nuzzled back, his breath warm on Erik's ear, tickling him. "Come stay the night. I can pay you back for this morning, hmm?"
"Let's," Charles hummed softly. "Let's see how it goes, okay?"
"Oh come on now," he groaned, pulling back just enough to pout into Charles' face. "I'm already debasing my pride begging you to do date me, don't make me beg for a night with you on top of that."
"I don't know," Charles teased. "I sort of like to hear you beg. If you promise to do it tonight then I might come."
"Oh you'll definitely come," Erik purred, and kissed him to seal the deal.
Rushed as Charles claimed to be, the man kissed him back avidly, hands coming up and stroking his jaw, his throat, pulling him closer by his collar. Charles' mouth was smooth and sweet-tasting, plying, demanding, to the point that Erik felt himself dragged to the very cusp of control, till in another moment he would have to throw the man into the back seat and ravish him right there on the street.
Charles seemed to feel similarly, the way he pulled back, the gleaming look in his bright eyes that seemed to encourage a back-seat rendezvous. But then the man glanced to the side, seemed to see something: his cheeks burned bright red and he came down off his amorous high in an instant, shrinking as far away from Erik as his embrace allowed.
"There's a cop watching us."
