There wasn't nearly the same amount of work to do when the company was in transit. The animals still had to be fed and compartments kept clean, but all in all there was a lot more down time during the traveling days.

For some reason Shaw seemed to have taken it upon himself to become Erik's friend, despite the fact that the man obviously didn't trust him, and had in fact gone out of his was to slight him several times now. But Erik saw through the farce, and when Shaw dragged him to his quarters for drinks, or had him sit with him while he did the weekly figures, Erik kept his guard up. He didn't allow himself to get drunk again, and carefully chose each word when in conversation with the boss.

Power, it was all about power. The shows were little things that, on anybody else could be written off as simple momentary quirks, but from this man were quite clearly demonstrations of rank.

Charles was his favourite way of displaying just how in charge he was. Shaw kept the young man on a short leash at all times. He didn't really seem to have any friends, even though everybody appeared to like him well enough.

"He's kind of, you know, snobby I think is the problem." Scott said when Erik commented on it. The two of them watched from where they were seated at the cramped workers' lunch table in the dining tent as the subject of their conversation stood alone in line. The train had stopped at some point in the night, and after three days of transit they were once again setting up camp. "He never really mingles with the rest of the guys see, he never sits with them at meals, doesn't come into town on the nights off, has never bothered to help out with things that aren't directly his responsibility. In fact its weird to even see him in here. Comes off as a bit arrogant. Personally I don't give a shit. The kid's polite, gets his stuff done without a fuss, and doesn't try to put moves on my girl, so I have no problem with him. Some other guys though take offense."

Erik frowned at his plate of stew, which was more over-cooked vegetables and potatoes than meat. Every time he talked to Charles the younger man seemed nothing but pleasant. "Maybe Shaw just doesn't let him do any of those things, have they ever thought of that?"

"I'd believe it. Seems like something the boss-man would do. He's very protective."

"More like possessive! Why does a good kid like Charles put up with it?"

"Would you believe love?"

Erik glared at his companion, mood darkening even more than it already was.

"Because that's what they claim. Shaw has had Charles wrapped around his finger since he hit puberty. Before that he didn't really pay attention to him and Charles actually played with the other kids and fooled around and stuff, but once he grew up and got all pretty, well, Shaw got interested."

"Puberty? How long has he been here exactly?"

"Oh longer than anybody else, longer than Shaw even. Charles was born in the circus. His father was the owner at the time, and after his parents died he became Shaw's ward."

"Ward! But how can Shaw..." Erik trailed off, disgusted. Shaw had been young Charles' father figure, how can he have looked at him that way?

"I don't know, I didn't join until after their relationship was established. But Jean says that after that Shaw started keeping him close, not letting him play with them anymore."

That bastard! Erik followed Charles with his eyes as he reached the front of the slop line and Cook poured him a bowl of stew. The big man, grizzled with age had never said a word to Erik in the time he'd been with the circus, and he didn't speak to Charles either, but as Erik watched, Cook smiled toothlessly and plunked an extra scoop of stew, and a huge chunk of bread right on top.

And this, Erik thought, was exactly why people might think that Charles was a snob. That was half a loaf of bread balanced on the edge of his bowl. On a good day the rest of them could expect a moldy end of crust. The performers tended to be granted a better share, a decent slice of mostly unspoiled bread.

The entire company tiptoed around young Charles, treating him better than everyone because they were frightened of what Shaw would do if they didn't. But then when they saw others doing the same, they grew resentful and jealous. It was a vicious circle and the poor man was stuck in the middle.

So Erik stuck his hand in the air and called "Charles! Over here!"

Scott stared at him in disbelief but Erik kept his gaze on the figure across the room, who'd jumped, spooked and swung his wide eyes to find who had yelled at him. When he spotted Erik he hesitated, looking to the door and back again. Erik fixed an overly cheerful grin on his face and waved.

"What are you doing?" Scott groaned, "This is the workers' table, he can't sit here!"

"Is that a rule? Is it written down anywhere?"

"Well no but...Erik I know you don't like Shaw but this isn't-"

"This has nothing, okay it has very little to do with Shaw." Erik replied, shoving sideways into the man next to him to clear a seat for Charles.

"Um, hello Erik, Scott." Scott nodded in return and Charles hovered beside the table looking torn between fleeing and sinking into the floor.

"Join us, have a seat." Erik suggested instead and Charles obeyed immediately, placing his food self consciously on the table and sliding in beside Erik.

It was odd for a while, and okay maybe Erik hadn't thought it through, they talked about the weather, the upcoming cities on the route, but it slowly grew more casual as they all relaxed. It turned out that at one point Charles had been rather close to Scott's girlfriend Jean, so they talked about her for a bit. Eventually the conversation turned to the financial state of the country as a whole and the circus in itself.

"Yes but the animals had fresh meat today, yet we have to settle for this slop. Sean, who'd joined them shortly after Charles had interjected, stirring at his half finished stew.

Erik looked over at Charles and the other man met his eyes. There had been one advantage in the Frost Queen's death. But Cook had drawn the line at serving horse meat to his human consumers.

"The shipment is due tomorrow Sean, I'm sure you can last that long." Scott intoned. His own plate was wiped clean.

Erik noticed that Charles had barely eaten anything, only nibbled on his bread and half-heartedly stirred his stew. He wondered if the man felt uncomfortable eating with them, but then followed the path of his eyes to the fence that formed the border between the crew's area and the public grounds. At the last location Erik had noticed that the food tent drew a group of people from the town, but there seemed to be at least twice as many tonight. A dozen or so men milled around on the other side of the fence, watching them silently. On the bench beside him, Charles' leg jumped, and his foot started tapping. The man's expression was troubled, with a flash of white tooth worrying at his pink lower lip.

"Ignore them." A voice from directly behind Erik made goosebumps raise along his spine and beside him Charles flinched with surprise and twisted in his seat to look up at Shaw. Erik kept his head forward, back ridged. Shaw moved around to the other side of the table, and the boy seated across from Charles, an all-purpose laborer named Calvin, just about fell over in his hurry to give up his seat.

"Charles my boy, I'm very surprised to find you here. You usually prefer to eat in your tent." Something about the way Shaw said it gave Erik the impression that Charles didn't usually have much choice in the matter. Shaw was sitting now, in Calvin's vacated spot. Around them the tent's occupants hushed, the jovial buzz of conversation dropping to a murmur.

Shaw was staring at Charles expectantly, waiting for an answer. "...Well you see, Erik was kind enough to invite me to join them and I thought it might be nice...just for a change of pace." he said, voice soft.

"Of course, of course, are you enjoying yourself?"

Charles nodded tentatively, seeming to weigh which answer Shaw wanted to hear first. "Yes it's nice to have a change of scenery."

"Scenery hmm? Like that?" Shaw jerked his head toward the men by the fence. "Hopefuls." he said to Erik, "They want me to hire them. But I did a round of recruiting earlier and we've got everyone we need."

"Well they don't seem to have been informed of that." Erik said dryly, dipping his piece of bread, which was even smaller than Sean's, into his stew.

Shaw chuckled and shook his head, "They have, you can be sure of that, the poor sods are just so desperate for work that they'll reduce themselves to begging. Oh these times we live in." he pulled a tarnished silver flask from inside his jacket and took a mouthful of whatever liquor it held.

"How many did you hire this time Sebastian?" Charles leaned forward on his elbows to address the older man. His voice had taken on a chipper edge, but it was almost too much, too loud and too cheerful. Too interested, as if the rest of the world had disappeared and this man was all that Charles could see in a horrible, stifling, trapped kind of way.

"Six." Shaw answered causally, "Five workmen and a young trapeze artist by the name of Worthington. He's young but he's good. Well on his way to being the best so I'm told."

"That's marvelous Sebastian, Jean-Paul will be thrilled to have a new member of the team."

"More importantly though, my dear, is that I have a surprise for you."

"Oh? What is it?" Erik thought that the young man looked a little nervous behind his smile.

"I have procured an elephant!" Shaw announced, voice bursting with pride and eyes shining gleefully, "An old female named Maggie, short for Magnet actually, because she's guaranteed to draw crowds."

Charles smiled brightly, but Erik could feel that under the table, his leg had started jumping again with renewed vigor. "Oh wonderful." he said with tight cheer, "Uhm...how much did she cost out of curiosity?"

Scott, beside Shaw, had been silent the entire conversation. He looked uncomfortable in the way that someone who wants to be anywhere but where they are and yet are aware of how rude it would be to leave does. Now he straightened to attention, obviously curious as to what Shaw's answer would be.

"Two thousand, but she'll earn it back a hundred times over! The public loves elephants! Now, I was thinking that you'll ride her Charles, during the parade. Then we can work on a routine of some sort, get you used to working with her. It'll be magnificent."

Charles nodded agreeably, face still twisted into that forced smile, his foot never ceased tapping. Shaw pushed himself up from the table "I've got to run now, I've a meeting with the mayor in ten minutes. Eat up Charles." he said, tapping the virtually untouched plate in front of the man and then reaching out to stroke his cheek before leaving. When he was gone, Charles made a small unhappy noise in the back of his throat.

"What's the matter?" Erik inquired, struck with how quickly the smile had disappeared from the man's face leaving only a tired frustration behind.

"Shaw just spent two grand on one animal." Scott spoke for the first time since Shaw had interrupted them, "that's a months wages for twenty men."

"Plus he hired five new hands and a performer." Charles sighed warily, "that's basically all of the allotted money for the next few months, and I'll bet he didn't even buy another cart to house them."

"There's well enough room for six more men, I don't see the problem."

"Erik," Scott said as if he was speaking to a simpleton, "you can't put working men and performers together."

Erik stared at the man, perplexed, "But isn't that exactly what Alex and I are doing?"

"And is Alex happy about it?"

"Well no, but Logan said that that's because of his old roommate. And I also think he just doesn't like me."

"Those may be reasons as well, but frankly, Alex is a brat. And he really has worked hard to get where he is. A part of him resents the fact that he's been stuck with a laborer, and another part knows that he shouldn't feel that way. Armando was a worker before he started acting in Alex's shows. Even worse, he was a black worker. But when they were first partnered up Alex was as well so he didn't think anything of it then." Scott's eyes were sad as he talked about his younger brother.

"So what'll happen?" Erik asked, feeling suddenly inexplicably exhausted, and when he turned to Charles he saw the feeling mirrored in the other man's face.

"We'll just have to make room." he admitted, "It will mean three, four people to a room in some cases, and nobody will be happy about that. And the elephant will get Emma's old compartment."

Charles' fidgeting had gotten worse as he spoke, and now it was so vigorous that the plates and cutlery was beginning to clatter. Unthinkingly, Erik reached out and put a hand on his thigh, meaning to calm him. It stopped the other man's twitching dead in its track. Charles froze and blinked up at Erik mutely. His face, which had previously been pale with anxiety, suddenly bloomed pink. Erik was confused, why did the younger man suddenly look so mortified? Then he remembered Logan's words from days ago, "this is the circus, if you're going to make it here you have to get used to that kind of thing."

Needless to say, he snatched his hand away hurriedly, and felt his own cheeks heat up. The murmur of the room around them had picked up again since Shaw had departed but Erik found it drowned out by a ringing in his ears. His thoughts too, seemed much too loud, it felt like Charles should be able to hear them. His mind kept replaying every interaction between Charles and Shaw and then comparing them, horrifyingly, to those between him and Erik. There was nothing, absolutely nothing between the two of them that had hinted at anything but a growing familiarity, they weren't even friends, acquaintances at best, no matter how much Erik found himself with a growing respect for the way the other conducted himself , or that his performances left him breathless, that anger prickled his skin at the sight of the faded yellow bruise that still clung to Charles' fair skin, that his lips were many times redder than any woman's he'd ever seen and maybe it was a becoming look on the young man-

Erik slammed down a lid on that train of thought before he could examine it too closely.

Charles was standing, his dinner still mostly untouched, "I'm terribly sorry," he blurted, clambering over the bench awkwardly. His attempts to not make contact with Erik again meant that the man to his left got a knee to the side, "Sorry, so sorry. But I find it impossible to eat with those men outside going hungry. I'm going to turn in."

Scott wished him a good night which Charles politely returned, nodded to Erik who mutely nodded back, and hurried off. Not before, however, making a detour to the fence where three of the men still lingered, the thinnest and most desperate looking of the original group. It was too far away to hear what was said but after leaning in to address the men, Charles pushed his bread through, and managed to stretch and hand the bowl over as well.

He watched him skirt the outside of the tent and then push through the exit. The though came, unbidden, that anyone who saw the man as arrive t or conceited was a fool.