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FIC: Guilty by Association - Charles/Erik, XMFC - (9/13)
Title: Guilty by Association (9/13)
Author: Regann
Pairing: Charles/Erik (XMFC)
Rating: PG-13/R
Word Count: ~4,300 for the chapter (total: 50,000+)
Warnings: discussion of murder, violence and prostitution
Disclaimer: I don't own anything; I just play with them.
Notes: Everything I know about law enforcement and investigative journalism, I learned from watching television. Don't expect any more realism here than you'd find on an episode of CSI or L&O. There is also State of Play influence in this fic as well, although you don't need to have seen it to understand anything in this fic.
Summary: While investigating the homicide of a John Doe who he suspects might've been murdered while working the streets as a prostitute, Detective Erik Lehnsherr finds an unexpected ally in a hooker named Charles who seems as determined as he to solve the case. As they become more deeply involved both with the case and each other, there's just one thing that Charles neglects to mention -- that he's really an investigative journalist, one quickly convinced that what they're dealing with is more than simple murder. cop!Erik, fake-hooker-slash-reporter!Charles, Modern AU.
Previous Parts available at LJ, DW and AO3.
Guilty by Association (Part 9)
As soon as Charles disappeared with his sister, Erik grabbed his bag from the foyer and went upstairs to trade his towel for some actual clothing. Since he wasn't going into work, he opted for the casual items he preferred, then he tracked down his phone and started making the calls he needed to, ones that were better made when Charles wasn't around.
First Erik called Emma and pretended to apologize for his behavior the day before. She was magnanimous in response to his groveling, which made him glad he was putting the act on over the phone and not in person where she'd be able to see the real irritation behind it. Still it was worth the humiliation because Emma readily approved his request for a few days off so he could "cool down."
During his too-long conversation with Emma, Erik wandered through Charles's house, making idle note of what he saw and didn't see. There was no computer that he could find, though he was sure Charles had one, especially given the fancy phone he carried. There were few very homey touches around the place; it didn't seem much more personal than Elliot Smith's house had seemed, although Charles had remarked on it.
Just about the time Emma had given her permission for those days of leave, Erik stumbled upon the only real sign of personality in the house, which were a few framed photos scattered among the books that lined the shelves. A few were of Charles at different ages, though obviously much younger than he was now, and there was one of him and his sister, at what looked like Charles's graduation from some school, given his robes. But the photo that caught his eye was the one on the highest shelf -- it was of Charles, roughly about the age he looked now, with a much older man. They were both dressed in suits, with the older man's arm slung casually over Charles's shoulder as they faced the camera. He wasn't sure what about it held his attention but Erik couldn't quite look away, even as he ended the conversation with Emma.
Almost immediately Erik dialed Darwin's cell phone, who he knew was waiting for word from him about what to do today. He told his partner to go in like nothing was wrong and to officially work on any case but Smith's.
"What about you?" Darwin asked.
"I'm going to work the case on my own, where no one can interfere," he said. "I might call you if I need something I can't get without access to police databases."
"But who's going to be watching your back?" Darwin asked.
"I have someone," Erik said, thinking of Charles and his promises from the night before.
"You mean your rentboy?" Darwin wanted to know.
"Darwin..."
"I'd call him something else but I don't even know his name!"
"Charles," Erik said with a sigh.
"Charles what?" Darwin asked. "Or did you not get around to exchanging last names?"
They hadn't and Erik doubted Charles would offer it up if he asked. However... "If I give you an address, can you pull the ownership and rental history on it?"
"Yeah?" Darwin said. "As soon as I get in, sure. But why ---"
"I'll text it," he said, cutting off Darwin's questions. "Thanks," he added, right before he disconnected the call.
After he'd texted Charles's address to Darwin, Erik slid his phone into his jeans pocket and continued to stare at the photograph. As nice as Charles's looked in the photo in his suit with a slyly amused look on his face, it was the older man who kept drawing his attention. He realized after a moment that the older man looked familiar and he wracked his brains thinking of where he might've seen him before.
It took another minute before it finally hit him and shock swept over him. The man in the photo with Charles was Brian Xavier, former award-winning reporter and currently the editor-in-chief for the Times. He wasn't the kind of local power player that Erik should've necessarily recognized but he'd swept in and out of Emma's more than once early in her captaincy, working with her on some coverage of the corruption scandals that she had hoped would've been more favorable for the department in general. It hadn't worked that way, of course, but Erik remembered the man for his arrogant demeanor, which had done little to endear the journalism profession to him when he'd already been jaded by the biased, damning coverage the department had received.
The question in Erik's mind, though, was what Brian Xavier was doing in a relatively recent photo of Charles, looking strangely easy in each other's space. Their pose spoke of a familiarity that ruled out a chance encounter at some kind of event, but that fact only left Erik with more questions than answers.
He didn't get much more time to ponder the question because he heard Charles coming through the front door. He turned away from the photos in time to see Charles with a bag in hand as he entered the living room.
"Sorry that took so long," he said. "But Raven's hard to deter once she gets something in her head."
"A family trait?" Erik asked, a gentle tease.
"I wouldn't know," Charles said with a grin. He held up the brown paper bag he carried. "I've got bagels and you don't have coffee. We should remedy that."
Breakfast was a quiet affair, nothing more than the admittedly-good bagels Charles had from the shop, with several different tubs of topping as well. Erik knew he was quiet because his mind was heavy with questions -- about the case, about Charles, about what he was going to do next. He didn't know if Charles's mind was occupied similarly or if something else had him in deep contemplation, but it was obvious that he was thinking as hard about something as Erik was as they chewed their bagels in silence.
It was Charles who spoke first as he cleared away the debris from their meal. "You said yesterday that you still made some copies of some of the evidence that was stolen?"
Erik nodded as he stood up to refill his coffee cup. "Just some photocopies I took of some of the files that looked like financials or maybe even coded lists of some kind. But it was just a few of them -- I figured if I cracked the code, I could pull everything out again."
Charles leaned back against the sink and regarded him with something uncertain in his expression. He crossed his arms as he asked, "Do you think you've missed anything in them that you'll find if you go over them?"
"No," Erik said. "I mean, it's possible but...not really."
"But a new lead would be very helpful, yes?"
"Of course," Erik said. "Why are you asking?"
Charles sighed and continued to look uncertain and...nervous, which was something Erik hadn't seen often in their short acquaintance. "I might have something," he revealed. "Just...keep an open mind, all right?"
Erik nodded but he couldn't help but be deeply suspicious as Charles ducked out of the kitchen, telling him to stay put. A few minutes later Charles came back with something leather and brown in his hand which he laid on the table in front of Erik like an offering.
"What is it?" asked Erik, eyeing it for clues. It looked like a notebook of some kind with an expensive leather case.
"It's Elliot Smith's date planner," Charles announced.
Erik shot him an incredulous look, noticing that Charles was still standing at his hand, arms crossed and face pinched. "Are you serious?"
"Yes."
"Where did you get it?" Erik demanded.
"I stole it from his apartment the night we visited," Charles admitted. "It was in one of the drawers in his bedroom."
Erik choked on his anger, sharpened as it was by betrayal. "You stole evidence? After I agreed to cooperate with you?"
"Evidence you wouldn't have found if it wasn't for me finding Angel," Charles reminded him. "Evidence you wouldn't have if I hadn't because someone stole all of yours."
"Is that your excuse?" Erik wanted to know.
"No, it's just fact," Charles said, only sounding slightly sorry for his behavior. "I didn't know whether you were going to stop working with me after I helped you find out Elliot's identity and...I know it wasn't very honest of me but it worked out in the end."
Erik could've held on to his anger at Charles for the act, but he could see where it would've been counterproductive, given he was one of the only allies he had at the moment. He knew he should've probably been more wary of someone who lied to him and stole evidence but Charles's arguments were at least logical, even if they were illegal and unscrupulous. With a resigned sigh of his own, he pulled the planner toward him and flipped it open. "Did you find anything?"
Charles relaxed a little at Erik's acceptance and slid into the chair beside him at the table. "I checked the entries around the week of his murder, but I hadn't had the chance to look much more closely."
"Time is about all I have at the moment," Erik said with grim humor as he flipped quickly through the first few pages that covered what Elliot had been doing the first few weeks of the year. He picked up the book and cradled its spine in one hand as he used the other to thumb through the pages looking for anything interesting that might help him figure out the mystery confronting them.
Someone had murdered Elliot Smith and another someone -- although Erik's gut told him it was the same person -- was willing to go to great lengths to cover up something they might've learned from either The Hellfire Club or Elliot Smith's personal papers.
And the only clue he had that wasn't in the hands of whoever was sabotaging his investigation was the date planner Charles had stolen from Smith's apartment.
There was some irony to be found there, Erik was sure, but he was in no mood to appreciate it.
"Anything jumping out at you?" Charles asked after a moment.
"No," he admitted, laying the planner flat on the table. "I guess we have to go page by page."
"Something I had been avoiding," Charles said. "But if it's all we have..."
It was when Charles grabbed one corner to pull the planner toward him that Erik noticed all the loose papers stuffed into its back pocket. He grabbed the opposite corner and tugged, causing Charles to release it and glance up in confusion. "Something wrong?"
Erik began to pluck all the crumpled paper from the planner pocket. "Did you look through all this?"
"No," Charles said.
Erik began smoothing out receipts and laying them in a line on the table. "Let's start here."
Charles nodded and took a small stack of papers from the mound of them Erik had created when he'd pulled them from the planner. Like breakfast, they worked mostly in silence, creating groups of like items on the fly as they came across them. What they learned quickly was that Elliot seemed to do a lot of shopping and a lot of keeping receipts for them. They were all from expensive stores that Erik couldn't imagine ever affording, while Charles seemed to be very familiar with many of them. While most of the receipts were from the city, there was a significant number that came from Albany, which neither Erik nor Charles knew much about.
"Erik," Charles said after a while, voice humming with a kind of energy that made Erik think he'd found something.
"Yeah?"
"Look." He held out three cards, two business-looking ones and the other hard plastic with a reader strip on the back. "These two are cards for somewhere called the Meridian Building and they both have dates and times hand-written on the back. And this one..." Charles held up the hard plastic one. "...it looks like a building key card, also for the Meridian."
Erik took one of the cards with the dates written on it, the one bearing "13 July @ 10" on its back. The card stock was heavy and slightly textured, bearing the building logo on one side, along with its address and the manager's number. It was probably something people used as appointment reminder cards or maybe were given out to prospective leasers. By themselves, Erik probably wouldn't have thought much about them, but coupled with the key card, it seemed like a decent lead.
"Any idea where this building is?" he asked Charles.
He shrugged. "But it's something, yes?"
Erik nodded, still looking at the card in his hand. "It's something," he agreed. He finally looked up and met Charles's excited gaze. "How do you feel about stakeouts?"
Charles grinned a little. "I've never been on one," he said. "But I can't wait to find out."
**
They finished looking through Elliot Smith's datebook but it didn't turn up much, the dated pages themselves filled with abbreviations and code that they probably had little chance in coming to understand in a timely manner. Erik was up and down in his chair throughout their search, stepping into the hallway to confer with his partner via cell phone in low tones. Charles raised his eyebrow the third time Erik did and the officer finally offered an explanation.
"Darwin's trying to close up some of our other cases," he told him. "If it was about this case, I'd tell you but since it's not..."
"Sure you aren't paying me back for the thing with the day planner?" Charles asked.
Erik frowned, "I don't play games," he told him. "If it was a deal breaker, I'd just tell you."
Charles nodded his understanding, trying to ignore the stab of guilt at Erik's declaration. He could hear Raven's voice in his head telling him to come clean this minute, Charles! but he couldn't make himself. He'd reached a point where forgiveness wasn't possible -- maybe if he'd confessed the night before, when he'd felt things start to change between them, but he hadn't and there was no use dwelling on it.
That left the story to focus on.
Around mid-afternoon, Erik went to pick up his car for their stakeout of the Meridian building and Charles used the time alone to contact Moira.
"You can't leave me hanging like that!" she protested when the call connected. "Tell me what you've learned."
He told her about the missing evidence in vague terms, trying to rely more on what he'd learned from Hank than what he knew from Erik. Still there were things only Erik knew -- like Frost's order to back off -- that were too pertinent to leave out.
"What have you stumbled into?" Moira asked, tone somewhere between worried and impressed. "This is starting to sound serious in a completely different way than we thought."
Charles laughed in agreement, thinking of when it had been simpler back when they'd thought they were dealing with a serial killer. "It's going fine for the moment, but I'll let you know if anything else changes."
"Be careful," she warned.
"Dad has an emergency number," he assured her. "You take care yourself."
Erik appeared just as the sky was starting to turn darken; it wasn't particularly late but the winter light patterns had firmly taken hold of the day. They stopped for coffee (for Erik) before they circled around the block until they found a prime spot in front of the Meridian building. It wasn't very impressive, just a few floors, with something like twenty-odd commercial spaces available for rent. Much of the bottom floor was taken up with a dance studio, and Charles watched through the lit windows as a company of teenaged ballerinas pirouetted across the shiny wooden floor.
"How long will we remain to watch the building?" he asked a little while later as the dancers dispersed from his view, the class obviously over for the evening.
"At least a few hours," Erik said. He was wrapped in his coat since he'd cut the engine as soon as they'd parked. "I doubt we'll see something tonight but there's always a chance."
"Elliot could've been meeting anyone in any of those twenty-plus offices," Charles said. "There's really no way to know."
"Before I came to get you, I stopped by and checked his key card," Erik said. "It won't let me up past reception."
"So either his access is periodic or someone was smart enough to de-authorize his card when things went south," Charles mused.
"Seems like," Erik agreed. "So I've got Darwin digging up a list of who's who in the building and see if we can find out that way. But until then..."
"We stake out," Charles finished with a little smile.
Waiting had never been Charles's favorite part of anything, even if he'd done his own fair share of staking out in his own investigations. It was actually worse to have Erik there with him, entirely too distracting for Charles's taste and an uncomfortable reminder of his current moral dilemma, all wrapped up in a very tempting package. He didn't even want to risk checking his messages for fear that Erik's detective's eye could catch something he didn't want him to in such close quarters.
"Is there nothing you and your partner do to alleviate the boredom during these things?" Charles asked, partly to distract himself and partly because he was just interested in finding out more about Erik.
Erik shook his head. "If Darwin can get away with it, he spends the time texting his boyfriend," he said. "Apparently the long hours I make him work leaves him the doghouse more often than not."
"Unconventional jobs can do that to the best relationships," Charles said a little more wistfully than he'd meant, thinking of Gabrielle. They probably had been doomed from the start, but his dedication to his job hadn't helped matters, not when it meant he was out at all hours and sometimes for days, doing whatever was needed to get the story he was chasing.
"Sounds like you know from experience," Erik said and Charles could detect a slight edge in his voice.
"I'm sure that's not surprising," Charles said.
Erik snorted, twisting a little in his seat so that Charles was no longer stealing glances at his profile. "A lot of bad luck at it?"
"I haven't tried in a very long time," Charles admitted truthfully. "There was once, many years ago but we weren't...compatible."
"You or your job?" Erik asked.
"It's hard to separate the two," he said, thinking not of his cover story but his real job. The Xavier siblings seemed to bleed ink, just like their father, and Charles had always known he'd wanted to follow in his dad's footsteps, no matter what. Even Raven, who'd made such a show and point of her independence couldn't quite escape, even if working on her MFA in Creative Writing struck Brian Xavier, newspaperman, as an affront to his legacy. "Are you and your job so easily pulled apart?"
"That's different," Erik protested.
Charles raised an eyebrow. "Is it?"
"I think so," Erik told him. "Honestly, Charles, can you tell me that you grew up dreaming of doing this with the rest of your life?"
Charles knew that Erik was making his case against Charles's fabricated lifestyle as a male escort, but Erik's insistence on the point still rankled. "And if my answer is yes, I did?" he said. "Would that change how you feel about me?"
Erik's gaze didn't waver, flinty where his eyes met Charles's. "No, it wouldn't."
"But you still would prefer if I did something else?"
"Of course I do," Erik told him. "For one, it's illegal."
"Not everywhere."
"And it's dangerous," Erik continued. "You put yourself in unnecessary risk."
"Because being a cop is a very safe occupation," Charles countered.
Erik sent him a cutting glare for that. "On top of all that," he kept going, as if he'd gained momentum that wouldn't let him stop. "It's not exactly a profession with much security."
"Even though it is the world's oldest profession," Charles said without thinking, a mix of humor, horror and annoyance driving his rapid-fire replies.
"You can't do it forever," Erik said, still frowning. "That's not the way it works."
Charles frowned, too, as he wondered at Erik's words. "Are you implying that I'm going to get old and ugly?"
"Damn it, Charles, that's not what I'm saying at all," Erik bit out. "I'm saying you could be doing a lot of other things with your life."
Charles was still annoyed -- with himself, with Erik, with the situation, with life -- but he could see the honesty in Erik's eyes and it soothed over his ruffled feelings a little. It wasn't a surprise that Erik, a cop, would have issues with someone he was intimate with being others, especially for money; something about him had screamed old-fashioned in a way that reminded Charles of his father, a fact that only made the entire conversation even more horrifying.
Still, he was exasperated as he answered, "I don't know what you have in mind for us after this but there's one thing you won't be able to do, Erik, and that's change who I am. No matter how much you might want to the more you learn."
"I'm beginning to realize that."
Charles sighed, sitting back in his seat as he let his eyes focus once again on the mostly-dark building they were watching. "Perhaps conversation wasn't such a good idea."
They sat in silence for a while, so fraught with the things left unsaid between them that it could've been minutes or hours for all Charles could measure the passage of time. He hadn't wanted to instigate an argument and he wasn't entirely certain he had, but he could see that he hadn't done much to avoid it, either. His own culpability, however, didn't diminish Erik's.
Given what he knew of Erik thus far, it surprised Charles that their uncomfortable stalemate was broken by the detective, as those same lovely fingers that Charles had once drunkenly complimented brushed against his, where his hand rested between them on the seat. When he turned startled eyes to Erik, expecting an explanation, what he got was a half-crooked smile. "Maybe we should've went with that childhood discussion after all."
Charles smiled in return, letting his fingers mingle with Erik's in something very close to hand-holding, something he hadn't done in a very long time. "We could," he said. "But I think you'll find mine very disappointing."
"Oh?"
He nodded. "No abuse, no childhood trauma, nothing to explain or mitigate my life choices to your satisfaction."
Erik's fingers tightened around his briefly. "I would never want you to have had a bad childhood. It's not..."
Charles winced. "I apologize," he told him, slinking a little closer in the seat. He couldn't get too close because of the gear shaft, but he moved close enough that he could transfer the caress of his fingers from Erik's to his jean-clad thigh. "I shouldn't have said that. I suspect you're no stranger to unpleasant childhoods."
"It wasn't great," Erik said. "But it could've been worse."
It was such an understatement but Charles wasn't sure if he wanted to roll his eyes or throw his arms around Erik. He chose a version of the latter, sliding one arm over his shoulder while the other grabbed at the neck of shirt to drag him close enough to kiss. Charles let it get more heated than he'd planned given their current situation but he couldn't quite ignore that other voice in the back of his head, this one close to his own, that told him whatever strange, wonderful thing he'd found with this very complicated man, he was on borrowed time with it.
"This really isn't proper stakeout behavior," Erik pointed out as he reluctantly released Charles's mouth, though he only did so to trail his lips down Charles's throat.
"Nonsense," Charles laughed, breathless and throaty as he ran his hand through Erik's hair. "I have a perfect view of the building and we've managed the perfect cover."
Erik sighed against his skin and finally pulled away. "You mean we're begging for some beat cop to knock on the windows and cite us for indecency."
"If that's what we're going for, you should at least let me blow you," Charles said, completely deadpan. "It'll make the court appearance more interesting."
Erik looked like he couldn't decide if he wanted to die or kill Charles or take him up on the offer immediately, which Charles considered a victory. He cleared his throat a few times before he spoke, shooting a dark look over at Charles. "Stakeout," he repeated, pointing toward the building. "Watch the building."
"Fine." Charles slid back more properly into his own seat. "But I think I've decided that I don't like stakeouts."
Erik's snort of amusement kept the grin on Charles's face for the rest of the evening as they passed an uneventful and fruitless night watching the darkened exterior of the Meridian.
**
End of Part 9
Author: Regann
Pairing: Charles/Erik (XMFC)
Rating: PG-13/R
Word Count: ~4,300 for the chapter (total: 50,000+)
Warnings: discussion of murder, violence and prostitution
Disclaimer: I don't own anything; I just play with them.
Notes: Everything I know about law enforcement and investigative journalism, I learned from watching television. Don't expect any more realism here than you'd find on an episode of CSI or L&O. There is also State of Play influence in this fic as well, although you don't need to have seen it to understand anything in this fic.
Summary: While investigating the homicide of a John Doe who he suspects might've been murdered while working the streets as a prostitute, Detective Erik Lehnsherr finds an unexpected ally in a hooker named Charles who seems as determined as he to solve the case. As they become more deeply involved both with the case and each other, there's just one thing that Charles neglects to mention -- that he's really an investigative journalist, one quickly convinced that what they're dealing with is more than simple murder. cop!Erik, fake-hooker-slash-reporter!Charles, Modern AU.
Previous Parts available at LJ, DW and AO3.
Guilty by Association (Part 9)
As soon as Charles disappeared with his sister, Erik grabbed his bag from the foyer and went upstairs to trade his towel for some actual clothing. Since he wasn't going into work, he opted for the casual items he preferred, then he tracked down his phone and started making the calls he needed to, ones that were better made when Charles wasn't around.
First Erik called Emma and pretended to apologize for his behavior the day before. She was magnanimous in response to his groveling, which made him glad he was putting the act on over the phone and not in person where she'd be able to see the real irritation behind it. Still it was worth the humiliation because Emma readily approved his request for a few days off so he could "cool down."
During his too-long conversation with Emma, Erik wandered through Charles's house, making idle note of what he saw and didn't see. There was no computer that he could find, though he was sure Charles had one, especially given the fancy phone he carried. There were few very homey touches around the place; it didn't seem much more personal than Elliot Smith's house had seemed, although Charles had remarked on it.
Just about the time Emma had given her permission for those days of leave, Erik stumbled upon the only real sign of personality in the house, which were a few framed photos scattered among the books that lined the shelves. A few were of Charles at different ages, though obviously much younger than he was now, and there was one of him and his sister, at what looked like Charles's graduation from some school, given his robes. But the photo that caught his eye was the one on the highest shelf -- it was of Charles, roughly about the age he looked now, with a much older man. They were both dressed in suits, with the older man's arm slung casually over Charles's shoulder as they faced the camera. He wasn't sure what about it held his attention but Erik couldn't quite look away, even as he ended the conversation with Emma.
Almost immediately Erik dialed Darwin's cell phone, who he knew was waiting for word from him about what to do today. He told his partner to go in like nothing was wrong and to officially work on any case but Smith's.
"What about you?" Darwin asked.
"I'm going to work the case on my own, where no one can interfere," he said. "I might call you if I need something I can't get without access to police databases."
"But who's going to be watching your back?" Darwin asked.
"I have someone," Erik said, thinking of Charles and his promises from the night before.
"You mean your rentboy?" Darwin wanted to know.
"Darwin..."
"I'd call him something else but I don't even know his name!"
"Charles," Erik said with a sigh.
"Charles what?" Darwin asked. "Or did you not get around to exchanging last names?"
They hadn't and Erik doubted Charles would offer it up if he asked. However... "If I give you an address, can you pull the ownership and rental history on it?"
"Yeah?" Darwin said. "As soon as I get in, sure. But why ---"
"I'll text it," he said, cutting off Darwin's questions. "Thanks," he added, right before he disconnected the call.
After he'd texted Charles's address to Darwin, Erik slid his phone into his jeans pocket and continued to stare at the photograph. As nice as Charles's looked in the photo in his suit with a slyly amused look on his face, it was the older man who kept drawing his attention. He realized after a moment that the older man looked familiar and he wracked his brains thinking of where he might've seen him before.
It took another minute before it finally hit him and shock swept over him. The man in the photo with Charles was Brian Xavier, former award-winning reporter and currently the editor-in-chief for the Times. He wasn't the kind of local power player that Erik should've necessarily recognized but he'd swept in and out of Emma's more than once early in her captaincy, working with her on some coverage of the corruption scandals that she had hoped would've been more favorable for the department in general. It hadn't worked that way, of course, but Erik remembered the man for his arrogant demeanor, which had done little to endear the journalism profession to him when he'd already been jaded by the biased, damning coverage the department had received.
The question in Erik's mind, though, was what Brian Xavier was doing in a relatively recent photo of Charles, looking strangely easy in each other's space. Their pose spoke of a familiarity that ruled out a chance encounter at some kind of event, but that fact only left Erik with more questions than answers.
He didn't get much more time to ponder the question because he heard Charles coming through the front door. He turned away from the photos in time to see Charles with a bag in hand as he entered the living room.
"Sorry that took so long," he said. "But Raven's hard to deter once she gets something in her head."
"A family trait?" Erik asked, a gentle tease.
"I wouldn't know," Charles said with a grin. He held up the brown paper bag he carried. "I've got bagels and you don't have coffee. We should remedy that."
Breakfast was a quiet affair, nothing more than the admittedly-good bagels Charles had from the shop, with several different tubs of topping as well. Erik knew he was quiet because his mind was heavy with questions -- about the case, about Charles, about what he was going to do next. He didn't know if Charles's mind was occupied similarly or if something else had him in deep contemplation, but it was obvious that he was thinking as hard about something as Erik was as they chewed their bagels in silence.
It was Charles who spoke first as he cleared away the debris from their meal. "You said yesterday that you still made some copies of some of the evidence that was stolen?"
Erik nodded as he stood up to refill his coffee cup. "Just some photocopies I took of some of the files that looked like financials or maybe even coded lists of some kind. But it was just a few of them -- I figured if I cracked the code, I could pull everything out again."
Charles leaned back against the sink and regarded him with something uncertain in his expression. He crossed his arms as he asked, "Do you think you've missed anything in them that you'll find if you go over them?"
"No," Erik said. "I mean, it's possible but...not really."
"But a new lead would be very helpful, yes?"
"Of course," Erik said. "Why are you asking?"
Charles sighed and continued to look uncertain and...nervous, which was something Erik hadn't seen often in their short acquaintance. "I might have something," he revealed. "Just...keep an open mind, all right?"
Erik nodded but he couldn't help but be deeply suspicious as Charles ducked out of the kitchen, telling him to stay put. A few minutes later Charles came back with something leather and brown in his hand which he laid on the table in front of Erik like an offering.
"What is it?" asked Erik, eyeing it for clues. It looked like a notebook of some kind with an expensive leather case.
"It's Elliot Smith's date planner," Charles announced.
Erik shot him an incredulous look, noticing that Charles was still standing at his hand, arms crossed and face pinched. "Are you serious?"
"Yes."
"Where did you get it?" Erik demanded.
"I stole it from his apartment the night we visited," Charles admitted. "It was in one of the drawers in his bedroom."
Erik choked on his anger, sharpened as it was by betrayal. "You stole evidence? After I agreed to cooperate with you?"
"Evidence you wouldn't have found if it wasn't for me finding Angel," Charles reminded him. "Evidence you wouldn't have if I hadn't because someone stole all of yours."
"Is that your excuse?" Erik wanted to know.
"No, it's just fact," Charles said, only sounding slightly sorry for his behavior. "I didn't know whether you were going to stop working with me after I helped you find out Elliot's identity and...I know it wasn't very honest of me but it worked out in the end."
Erik could've held on to his anger at Charles for the act, but he could see where it would've been counterproductive, given he was one of the only allies he had at the moment. He knew he should've probably been more wary of someone who lied to him and stole evidence but Charles's arguments were at least logical, even if they were illegal and unscrupulous. With a resigned sigh of his own, he pulled the planner toward him and flipped it open. "Did you find anything?"
Charles relaxed a little at Erik's acceptance and slid into the chair beside him at the table. "I checked the entries around the week of his murder, but I hadn't had the chance to look much more closely."
"Time is about all I have at the moment," Erik said with grim humor as he flipped quickly through the first few pages that covered what Elliot had been doing the first few weeks of the year. He picked up the book and cradled its spine in one hand as he used the other to thumb through the pages looking for anything interesting that might help him figure out the mystery confronting them.
Someone had murdered Elliot Smith and another someone -- although Erik's gut told him it was the same person -- was willing to go to great lengths to cover up something they might've learned from either The Hellfire Club or Elliot Smith's personal papers.
And the only clue he had that wasn't in the hands of whoever was sabotaging his investigation was the date planner Charles had stolen from Smith's apartment.
There was some irony to be found there, Erik was sure, but he was in no mood to appreciate it.
"Anything jumping out at you?" Charles asked after a moment.
"No," he admitted, laying the planner flat on the table. "I guess we have to go page by page."
"Something I had been avoiding," Charles said. "But if it's all we have..."
It was when Charles grabbed one corner to pull the planner toward him that Erik noticed all the loose papers stuffed into its back pocket. He grabbed the opposite corner and tugged, causing Charles to release it and glance up in confusion. "Something wrong?"
Erik began to pluck all the crumpled paper from the planner pocket. "Did you look through all this?"
"No," Charles said.
Erik began smoothing out receipts and laying them in a line on the table. "Let's start here."
Charles nodded and took a small stack of papers from the mound of them Erik had created when he'd pulled them from the planner. Like breakfast, they worked mostly in silence, creating groups of like items on the fly as they came across them. What they learned quickly was that Elliot seemed to do a lot of shopping and a lot of keeping receipts for them. They were all from expensive stores that Erik couldn't imagine ever affording, while Charles seemed to be very familiar with many of them. While most of the receipts were from the city, there was a significant number that came from Albany, which neither Erik nor Charles knew much about.
"Erik," Charles said after a while, voice humming with a kind of energy that made Erik think he'd found something.
"Yeah?"
"Look." He held out three cards, two business-looking ones and the other hard plastic with a reader strip on the back. "These two are cards for somewhere called the Meridian Building and they both have dates and times hand-written on the back. And this one..." Charles held up the hard plastic one. "...it looks like a building key card, also for the Meridian."
Erik took one of the cards with the dates written on it, the one bearing "13 July @ 10" on its back. The card stock was heavy and slightly textured, bearing the building logo on one side, along with its address and the manager's number. It was probably something people used as appointment reminder cards or maybe were given out to prospective leasers. By themselves, Erik probably wouldn't have thought much about them, but coupled with the key card, it seemed like a decent lead.
"Any idea where this building is?" he asked Charles.
He shrugged. "But it's something, yes?"
Erik nodded, still looking at the card in his hand. "It's something," he agreed. He finally looked up and met Charles's excited gaze. "How do you feel about stakeouts?"
Charles grinned a little. "I've never been on one," he said. "But I can't wait to find out."
**
They finished looking through Elliot Smith's datebook but it didn't turn up much, the dated pages themselves filled with abbreviations and code that they probably had little chance in coming to understand in a timely manner. Erik was up and down in his chair throughout their search, stepping into the hallway to confer with his partner via cell phone in low tones. Charles raised his eyebrow the third time Erik did and the officer finally offered an explanation.
"Darwin's trying to close up some of our other cases," he told him. "If it was about this case, I'd tell you but since it's not..."
"Sure you aren't paying me back for the thing with the day planner?" Charles asked.
Erik frowned, "I don't play games," he told him. "If it was a deal breaker, I'd just tell you."
Charles nodded his understanding, trying to ignore the stab of guilt at Erik's declaration. He could hear Raven's voice in his head telling him to come clean this minute, Charles! but he couldn't make himself. He'd reached a point where forgiveness wasn't possible -- maybe if he'd confessed the night before, when he'd felt things start to change between them, but he hadn't and there was no use dwelling on it.
That left the story to focus on.
Around mid-afternoon, Erik went to pick up his car for their stakeout of the Meridian building and Charles used the time alone to contact Moira.
"You can't leave me hanging like that!" she protested when the call connected. "Tell me what you've learned."
He told her about the missing evidence in vague terms, trying to rely more on what he'd learned from Hank than what he knew from Erik. Still there were things only Erik knew -- like Frost's order to back off -- that were too pertinent to leave out.
"What have you stumbled into?" Moira asked, tone somewhere between worried and impressed. "This is starting to sound serious in a completely different way than we thought."
Charles laughed in agreement, thinking of when it had been simpler back when they'd thought they were dealing with a serial killer. "It's going fine for the moment, but I'll let you know if anything else changes."
"Be careful," she warned.
"Dad has an emergency number," he assured her. "You take care yourself."
Erik appeared just as the sky was starting to turn darken; it wasn't particularly late but the winter light patterns had firmly taken hold of the day. They stopped for coffee (for Erik) before they circled around the block until they found a prime spot in front of the Meridian building. It wasn't very impressive, just a few floors, with something like twenty-odd commercial spaces available for rent. Much of the bottom floor was taken up with a dance studio, and Charles watched through the lit windows as a company of teenaged ballerinas pirouetted across the shiny wooden floor.
"How long will we remain to watch the building?" he asked a little while later as the dancers dispersed from his view, the class obviously over for the evening.
"At least a few hours," Erik said. He was wrapped in his coat since he'd cut the engine as soon as they'd parked. "I doubt we'll see something tonight but there's always a chance."
"Elliot could've been meeting anyone in any of those twenty-plus offices," Charles said. "There's really no way to know."
"Before I came to get you, I stopped by and checked his key card," Erik said. "It won't let me up past reception."
"So either his access is periodic or someone was smart enough to de-authorize his card when things went south," Charles mused.
"Seems like," Erik agreed. "So I've got Darwin digging up a list of who's who in the building and see if we can find out that way. But until then..."
"We stake out," Charles finished with a little smile.
Waiting had never been Charles's favorite part of anything, even if he'd done his own fair share of staking out in his own investigations. It was actually worse to have Erik there with him, entirely too distracting for Charles's taste and an uncomfortable reminder of his current moral dilemma, all wrapped up in a very tempting package. He didn't even want to risk checking his messages for fear that Erik's detective's eye could catch something he didn't want him to in such close quarters.
"Is there nothing you and your partner do to alleviate the boredom during these things?" Charles asked, partly to distract himself and partly because he was just interested in finding out more about Erik.
Erik shook his head. "If Darwin can get away with it, he spends the time texting his boyfriend," he said. "Apparently the long hours I make him work leaves him the doghouse more often than not."
"Unconventional jobs can do that to the best relationships," Charles said a little more wistfully than he'd meant, thinking of Gabrielle. They probably had been doomed from the start, but his dedication to his job hadn't helped matters, not when it meant he was out at all hours and sometimes for days, doing whatever was needed to get the story he was chasing.
"Sounds like you know from experience," Erik said and Charles could detect a slight edge in his voice.
"I'm sure that's not surprising," Charles said.
Erik snorted, twisting a little in his seat so that Charles was no longer stealing glances at his profile. "A lot of bad luck at it?"
"I haven't tried in a very long time," Charles admitted truthfully. "There was once, many years ago but we weren't...compatible."
"You or your job?" Erik asked.
"It's hard to separate the two," he said, thinking not of his cover story but his real job. The Xavier siblings seemed to bleed ink, just like their father, and Charles had always known he'd wanted to follow in his dad's footsteps, no matter what. Even Raven, who'd made such a show and point of her independence couldn't quite escape, even if working on her MFA in Creative Writing struck Brian Xavier, newspaperman, as an affront to his legacy. "Are you and your job so easily pulled apart?"
"That's different," Erik protested.
Charles raised an eyebrow. "Is it?"
"I think so," Erik told him. "Honestly, Charles, can you tell me that you grew up dreaming of doing this with the rest of your life?"
Charles knew that Erik was making his case against Charles's fabricated lifestyle as a male escort, but Erik's insistence on the point still rankled. "And if my answer is yes, I did?" he said. "Would that change how you feel about me?"
Erik's gaze didn't waver, flinty where his eyes met Charles's. "No, it wouldn't."
"But you still would prefer if I did something else?"
"Of course I do," Erik told him. "For one, it's illegal."
"Not everywhere."
"And it's dangerous," Erik continued. "You put yourself in unnecessary risk."
"Because being a cop is a very safe occupation," Charles countered.
Erik sent him a cutting glare for that. "On top of all that," he kept going, as if he'd gained momentum that wouldn't let him stop. "It's not exactly a profession with much security."
"Even though it is the world's oldest profession," Charles said without thinking, a mix of humor, horror and annoyance driving his rapid-fire replies.
"You can't do it forever," Erik said, still frowning. "That's not the way it works."
Charles frowned, too, as he wondered at Erik's words. "Are you implying that I'm going to get old and ugly?"
"Damn it, Charles, that's not what I'm saying at all," Erik bit out. "I'm saying you could be doing a lot of other things with your life."
Charles was still annoyed -- with himself, with Erik, with the situation, with life -- but he could see the honesty in Erik's eyes and it soothed over his ruffled feelings a little. It wasn't a surprise that Erik, a cop, would have issues with someone he was intimate with being others, especially for money; something about him had screamed old-fashioned in a way that reminded Charles of his father, a fact that only made the entire conversation even more horrifying.
Still, he was exasperated as he answered, "I don't know what you have in mind for us after this but there's one thing you won't be able to do, Erik, and that's change who I am. No matter how much you might want to the more you learn."
"I'm beginning to realize that."
Charles sighed, sitting back in his seat as he let his eyes focus once again on the mostly-dark building they were watching. "Perhaps conversation wasn't such a good idea."
They sat in silence for a while, so fraught with the things left unsaid between them that it could've been minutes or hours for all Charles could measure the passage of time. He hadn't wanted to instigate an argument and he wasn't entirely certain he had, but he could see that he hadn't done much to avoid it, either. His own culpability, however, didn't diminish Erik's.
Given what he knew of Erik thus far, it surprised Charles that their uncomfortable stalemate was broken by the detective, as those same lovely fingers that Charles had once drunkenly complimented brushed against his, where his hand rested between them on the seat. When he turned startled eyes to Erik, expecting an explanation, what he got was a half-crooked smile. "Maybe we should've went with that childhood discussion after all."
Charles smiled in return, letting his fingers mingle with Erik's in something very close to hand-holding, something he hadn't done in a very long time. "We could," he said. "But I think you'll find mine very disappointing."
"Oh?"
He nodded. "No abuse, no childhood trauma, nothing to explain or mitigate my life choices to your satisfaction."
Erik's fingers tightened around his briefly. "I would never want you to have had a bad childhood. It's not..."
Charles winced. "I apologize," he told him, slinking a little closer in the seat. He couldn't get too close because of the gear shaft, but he moved close enough that he could transfer the caress of his fingers from Erik's to his jean-clad thigh. "I shouldn't have said that. I suspect you're no stranger to unpleasant childhoods."
"It wasn't great," Erik said. "But it could've been worse."
It was such an understatement but Charles wasn't sure if he wanted to roll his eyes or throw his arms around Erik. He chose a version of the latter, sliding one arm over his shoulder while the other grabbed at the neck of shirt to drag him close enough to kiss. Charles let it get more heated than he'd planned given their current situation but he couldn't quite ignore that other voice in the back of his head, this one close to his own, that told him whatever strange, wonderful thing he'd found with this very complicated man, he was on borrowed time with it.
"This really isn't proper stakeout behavior," Erik pointed out as he reluctantly released Charles's mouth, though he only did so to trail his lips down Charles's throat.
"Nonsense," Charles laughed, breathless and throaty as he ran his hand through Erik's hair. "I have a perfect view of the building and we've managed the perfect cover."
Erik sighed against his skin and finally pulled away. "You mean we're begging for some beat cop to knock on the windows and cite us for indecency."
"If that's what we're going for, you should at least let me blow you," Charles said, completely deadpan. "It'll make the court appearance more interesting."
Erik looked like he couldn't decide if he wanted to die or kill Charles or take him up on the offer immediately, which Charles considered a victory. He cleared his throat a few times before he spoke, shooting a dark look over at Charles. "Stakeout," he repeated, pointing toward the building. "Watch the building."
"Fine." Charles slid back more properly into his own seat. "But I think I've decided that I don't like stakeouts."
Erik's snort of amusement kept the grin on Charles's face for the rest of the evening as they passed an uneventful and fruitless night watching the darkened exterior of the Meridian.
**
End of Part 9