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“This place is too cold to be hell.”
Erik is smoking again, elbows resting against the damp window ledge, breath forming condensation on the glass. Around them in this ill-made room, a yellowish tobacco haze is vying with the drafts for domination of the atmosphere. Erik has been smoking ever since they left the ferry, and he’ll keep smoking until he runs out of cigarettes, or until Charles tells him to stop. Charles never tells him to stop.
“What am I to read into this, Charles?” Erik doesn’t need to glance around to tell that he’s listening. “You’ve brought me to a place that only wild animals call home.”
He may be right. Charles has fallen asleep in more hospitable warzones. He sits on the edge of the bed, wondering whether to pull off his thick woollen sweater, and already regretting having removed his boots. Obviously the Scots are made of sterner stuff, or simply sleep fully clothed. Neither would surprise him. “Count your blessings. The next island over has anthrax spores and mutant rabbits.”
“Oh, indeed.” Erik’s tone suggests that he has already made his point.
It’s past eight, and outside the window night has fallen, revealing nothing but darkness where there used to be empty countryside leading down to a rocky beach. This is no tourist destination. Not even a vague light flickers in the distance. Ships could easily pass this place without ever realising it was there. Perhaps that’s the point.
“You could have tried a little harder to be nice,” Charles says. In the absence of traditional entertainment, picking a fight is the best he can do.
“Why? There’s no reason for it.” Erik’s cigarette burns down to his fingertips, and he stubs out the remnants on the windowsill. “People either like me or they don’t – and they most often don’t. Anything else is lies.”
If he were debating with anyone else, Charles knows, Erik would leave it there and light another cigarette. In Erik’s case, at least, deciding to continue to argue is a mark of extreme affection. Erik takes a breath, scratches an eyebrow. “Besides, I find it unlikely that the good doctor would have a positive opinion of me even if I were a complete sycophant.”
Sometimes Charles regrets having taught Erik English at all. In the days when their conversation was part Hebrew, part German, and mostly Charades, the results had been a good deal more pleasant. Now, not only does Erik refuse to stop talking in English, but he often simply refuses to stop talking. “That was over a long time ago, Erik. Besides, she was the one who chose to end it.”
This is an argument he didn’t want, but Erik has a knack for turning everything around. “You like things to be neat, Charles, and you fail to see when they are anything but. What did you think would happen? You loved her once, and now you’re bringing a Polish oaf to her door? Please.” He goes to examine their bags, thrown unopened into a corner. There’s nothing in there worth extracting; toiletries lose their appeal when the bathroom lies down a long, cold hallway.
You’re not an oaf, Charles wants to say, but he keeps his mouth shut and his mind closed. Erik isn’t someone who needs his ego to be bolstered. He’s probably right, anyway. It would be nice if he were. “What’s this?” Charles asks, as a weighty plastic bag lands on his lap. It doesn’t matter that Erik doesn’t answer. He can tell from the smell. “I thought we’d eaten everything.”
“You Americans,” Erik mutters with a note of humour in his voice. “You never plan ahead.”
The chocolate is flaking off the orange peel, crumbling into his hand, but that sweet citrus aroma is even better than the taste. “I’m English,” Charles says with deliciously sticky fruit already caught between his teeth.
“My point remains. You never live in anything but the present.”
Charles passes Erik the bag as he sits down on the bed. “And you, my friend, live too much in the past.” Erik’s shirt sleeves are rolled up to the elbows. They always are. “Moira will learn to love you, because I love you.”
“And you’re never wrong.” Erik’s laugh tickles his ear. “I suppose you could simply change her mind for her.”
At least time has taught him when Erik wants a real ethical debate, and when his arguments are merely a prelude to something else. Usually the former involves alcohol, and the latter… Charles turns his head to cover Erik’s mouth with his own. Maybe changing you would be easier. He’s never too sure how well Erik hears his thoughts, but the abrupt chuckle as Erik breaks off the kiss is enough of a confirmation.
“Do you really think so?” Erik stands up, leaving the chocolate on the bed, and casts a glance at the window. Nothing has changed. He stretches long, tight limbs, and looks down at Charles thoughtfully. “There isn’t anything else to do.”
Charles smiles. At least being the last resort of a desperate man is better than being no resort at all. “Are you giving your permission for me to brainwash you or to make love to you?”
“I don’t believe I have much choice about the former.” Erik wearily starts to unbutton his shirt. “It may have already occurred.”
“Don’t be so sure.” It’s really too cold to take off his sweater. The way he sees the hairs on Erik’s arms prick up at their sudden exposure to icy air is enough of a warning.
Moira had cheerfully told them that the heating system had packed it in a few days ago, and wouldn’t be repaired until Friday. She had said it so cheerfully that Charles hadn’t paused to consider that there might be any real problem. Now he’s worrying about his blood freezing over. Unfortunately, Erik is no help whatsoever. Charles had thought about suggesting that Erik go and tinker about with the failing machinery, but if Erik doesn’t go on his own he’ll never go. There’ll be some quasi-English muttering about tensile strength and alloys, and then they’ll be back to where they started.
Erik sits back down, shirtless and apparently immune to the temperature. His hands go where they always go, to the inside of Charles’ thigh and the small of his back, searching out some inner heat while his tongue leaves a mark along Charles’ throat. “There are condoms in my pack,” Charles says pointedly. Being boringly clinical is bad now, but it’ll be worse later.
There’s a pause, in which he’s sure Erik is about to start up the old familiar argument. But Erik gets up, and goes to wrestle with Charles’ bag. It isn’t a pack, really. Erik’s is a pack. Charles has come equipped with a sturdy leather suitcase, padlocked and secure. Erik opens it without a key. “Why do you bother with this foolishness, Charles?” he says, plastic packet in hand, just when Charles has assumed that Erik has decided not to debate the issue.
“Because, Erik, I don’t know where you’ve been.”
“You don’t trust me,” Erik says, matter-of-fact as always, finding a jar of lubricant hidden in Charles’ sneaker. “And I expect you know exactly where I’ve been.” He turns the jar around in his fingers. “Perhaps you did come prepared after all.”
“Don’t you trust me, Erik?” He knows the answer. Erik will never believe that Charles doesn’t take every opportunity to go poking around in his head. After all, that’s exactly what Erik would do were their positions reversed.
Erik straightens up, tossing the rubber and the lubricant onto the bed. He stares at Charles for a moment, as if expecting action. “Perhaps you should remove your clothes,” he says finally, a romantic to the last.
Charles experimentally kicks off his socks. The result gives him no motivation to undress any further. Erik, however, is stripping off his olive green army surplus trousers as if they’re on a Mediterranean beach. The time – the many times – they really had been on those deserted sands north of Herzliya, Charles had still been the reticent one. Erik is all too eager to display his scars to the world, like some defiant badge of honour. Charles had taken some persuading, and that had been in the warmth of sunshine with salt in the air. This bed smells like disinfectant, like they’re both back in the hospital. He idly wonders if anyone has ever had sex here before. No wonder there are no children on the island.
He isn’t given any further opportunities to delay. Erik plants the palm of his hand on Charles’ chest and pushes, toppling him over. “You can keep the sweater on if you like,” Erik says, roughly pulling Charles’ slacks down. The fly had, of course, given him no trouble.
Not to be beaten by Erik’s hardy survivor mentality, Charles finally gives in and removes the rest of his clothes. They may now both be at serious risk for hypothermia, but at least there are no more physical impediments to relieving both tension and boredom. Charles lifts up the blankets. “Under here would be better,” he suggests. The material of the bedclothes seems to be uniformly abrasive and uncomfortable, but at least it retains some heat.
Erik slides in beside him, pulling the blankets over their heads, creating a warm, stuffy darkness full of hands and hair. Charles closes his eyes and lets out a sigh of relief. Everything is so much simpler when they don’t have to talk.
None of this trip has been easy. Convincing Erik to venture abroad had been a year-long battle in itself, particularly when the destination had been neither Charles’ home in England nor the imagined safe-haven of America. Erik had hated aeroplanes – he used to be afraid that he would cause them to plummet out of the air by thinking about a mechanism he didn’t understand. Only blueprints and technical manuals had allayed those fears.
Walking among foreigners in a foreign land has been another problem. Erik has dealt with his insecurities by making them everyone else’s problem. Charles guesses that no one here recognises the numbers on his arm, or will regard his at times awkward accent as anything other than a positive. There are Poles in Scotland after all; refugees, good people. Erik has said nothing to all his reassurances.
Kissing underneath the sheets, in a dark hollow so far away from the outside world, is wonderfully claustrophobic. Charles can hardly breathe, imagining the air thick with carbon dioxide and sweat. Erik’s body is surprisingly hot against him, a stiffening cock pushing insistently into the curl of Charles’ fingers. “Erik,” Charles says, and his voice sounds muffled.
Erik’s hands are on his back, counting vertebrae, massaging muscle and slipping between his thighs. Charles presses closer, his untended erection prodding Erik’s flat stomach. He wishes Erik would dip his head, lick circles around his balls and the head of his cock, but Erik never does. He had asked once. Now he can’t even remember the flimsy excuse. If ever he were tempted to flick a switch in Erik’s brain, it would be now. At least he recognises how shallow, and how dangerous, Erik has made him.
The rush of cold air when they finally pull down the blankets is a blissful relief. At least Erik doesn’t flinch when Charles reaches for a condom packet and tears it open. “Protectzia,” Erik murmurs in Hebrew. Protection, but against something different entirely. In Israel, protectzia had been the kind of influence that would get you into a job or out of jail. Charles wonders whether it’s an honest mistake.
“Turn over,” Erik says, before Charles has a chance to ask him what he means. Maybe one day Erik will be comfortable enough with the language to be something other than brusque. Maybe one day they’ll be comfortable enough with one another.
Charles lies with his cheek against a pillow, gaze fixed on a tiny feather creeping out between the stitching. Everything smells of antiseptic. His mind drifts to medical school and, later, to Haifa, to examinations and surgeries and amputations… He’s stopped by a forceful jab to the bottom of his spine. “Stop it.”
“Was I –?”
“Stop it,” Erik repeats, and takes him.
Charles gasps more out of habit than pain. It’s been a long time since that first time, when it really had hurt, and when Erik hadn’t cared too much about being gentle. Erik still prefers speed over satisfaction. The few times he’s let Charles hold him afterwards, he hadn’t so much given permission as been distracted by his own thoughts, oblivious to the arms around him and the lips on his neck. But time has given them something.
There a lot to be said for familiarity, Charles considers, shifting his hips to let his cock rub between his body and Moira’s freshly laundered sheets. There’s a rhythm to the way they move. He knows where to look for those hidden pleasures that would be so obvious in any other relationship: those wry, even hurtful words that have been used in a hundred arguments and are now more personal than a kiss between lovers.
“Am I hurting you?” Erik asks, and Charles wants to tell him no, wants him to know exactly how it feels, for Erik to touch that hard, hot everything inside him and just understand what it means to be whole.
What he says is, “Please…” It’s enough, for now.
He wakes up sometime later, when there is still an unflinching darkness outside, and the air chills his lips. Rainwater streaks the glass, distorting the world beyond. Half-asleep, Charles wonders what monsters roam this jagged, forgotten landscape after dark.
By the window, Erik is smoking again.