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miamierre · 1 year

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um. i let myself go and wrote 2,120 words of enchanted!au piarles instead of being a normal person tonight .

Pierre finds him, like always, sitting by himself at a bench under a streetlamp. He’s hunched over, cooing at one of the pigeons walking by—which is a rather amusing sight, considering he’s still dressed head-to-toe in the medieval royalty clothing Pierre had found him in a few weeks ago. Of all the places for this to happen, he figures at least here in Manhattan there will be far fewer people raising their eyebrows at his odd behavior, if they even bothering to look at all.

Charles is rather handsome, though. They’re all missing out, Pierre supposes as he strides over, a comforting sense of familiarity washing over him at this habit of theirs that’s started to become a routine. “Charles,” he calls once he’s close enough. Night has long fallen, although there are still people milling about because—because it’s the middle of summer, of course people are going to be lounging out in Central Park on a Thursday night like this—but Charles turns towards the sound of his voice and lights up so immediately that Pierre thinks he could probably out-shine the sun. He’s illuminated the night here, anyway.

“Pierrot!” Charles exclaims, whirling up to his feet like he’s a fairytale character. And, well, the more he claims to be one, the more Pierre wants to believe him, because he all but waltzes to meet Pierre under the lamp, eyes glittering handsomely. He even looks like a storybook prince. “I’m sorry, I know you told me I should not wander, but the world is so—” he grabs Pierre’s hand tightly and uses his other to gesture to the rest of the park, which looks...normal. “It is so full of magic, Pierrot, it reminds me so much of my home.” There’s a smile on his face, big but with a hint of sadness hiding just behind it. “Maranello felt like this, you know. Every day. All the time.” He sighs wistfully. “I wish you could see it.”

Pierre chuckles softly despite himself. It’s late, and they need to get back to the apartment because Odette is definitely going to be upset that she didn’t get to come along for tonight’s Where’s Waldo search for this prince of theirs. But he can’t bring himself to release Charles’ hand, which is still grasping his tightly, so lost in his own whimsy he doesn’t even seem to be aware of his own strength. (Pierre doesn’t mind at all.) “Central Park is something else in the summertime,” he concedes. “I’ve lived here for years and I’m still not used to it sometimes.”

Charles squeezes his hand and turns fully to face him, his beautiful green eyes so wide with delight that Pierre feels laughter bubbling up from somewhere deep inside him. “See!” he exclaims, tugging Pierre closer. “That is what I mean! That is what magic is, Pierre, how can you not believe.” The fondness on his face is so genuine that Pierre really doesn’t have the heart to argue the point like they always seem to do. “A place so wonderous as this could never get old, not ever.”

Pierre will give him that. “This park is hundreds of years old, Charles,” he hums. “Thousands of people see it for the first time every day, you know. Tourists must find this place magical all the time.” Right on cue, a small group of people—they look like college students, bright-eyed and backpacked and babbling softly to one another—passes by, gazing up into the trees and laughing amongst themselves. It does feel a little like magic, even though that does not mean Pierre thinks magic exists. He’s not six anymore. He knows how the world works. He sees how the world works in the courtroom every damn day. But…it’s a nice fantasy. Charles believes, and Pierre won’t take that away from him yet. Not now.

Not as he’s gazing up at the glittering lights of the buildings around them, looking exactly like a tourist. “What was it like when you first arrived here, Pierre?” Charles squeezes his hand, once, soft, then tugs him even closer than before, their shoulders pressed together, now. “You must have felt the magic then, too.” He tilts his head back down to earth and smiles, still looking starry-eyed.

Pierre shrugs, although the warmth in his chest seems to just keep billowing outwards. “I was a kid,” he answers after a beat. “Twenty-one, fresh out of school. I’d been crammed in a plane and then a taxi for so many hours, so I was not exactly myself.” The memory of it feels so faint, so long-ago. He’s been here for over ten years, now—the young man he’d been back then is almost a figment of his imagination now. “My apartment was so tiny I think it probably could have been a closet. So I went for a walk on my very first night, just to breathe air that was not trapped in there with me, and…” And he’d ended up here. “It was a night just like this, you know.”

Charles looks dazzled. “Every summer night must feel like this, then.” He’s still so wide-eyed, so focused on Pierre it would make him self-conscious if it were anyone else. Somehow, though, Charles doesn’t seem to fall under the category of anyone else. He’s special.

“Not all of them,” he chuckles, shaking his head. “When it storms, this place is—” he shakes his head. “Not the point, not the point. I guess when I first saw this place, it did feel like a different world.”

Charles presses even closer. “So you did believe once upon a time.” His features twist up into a giggle, genuine and without any hint of the sadness Pierre had clocked before, as he realizes what he’s said. “Once upon a time. Like I am writing a fairytale!”

“You’re like a walking fairytale, Charles,” Pierre hums, bumping shoulders with him teasingly. “This should not be a surprise to you at all. How you can wander off to Central Park and see it like it’s out of a book…” he trails off, unsure of what he’s really trying to say. Maybe nothing at all. There’s something about Charles that seems to do that to him—draw the words out even if there’s nothing to say, like all Pierre wants to do is talk to him even though he’s from an entirely different life. He’s never felt like this with anyone—not even with Kat, and she’s the mother of his daughter. It feels like he’s caught in some spell.

Magic could be real if it’s what makes Charles so enchanting all the time.

Charles, who gives him a slow look up and down, a knowing expression crossing his face and sullying the unbridled joy that had just been there moments before. “Oh, Pierrot, you are still—you came right from work to find me, didn’t you?” His face starts to crumple. “I should have listened to you, I know this…this Man Hat Land is so vast I could be lost in a moment, I just—I didn’t even think—”

“Charles,” Pierre interrupts, squeezing their clutched-together hands again. “Charles, it’s okay. You miss being home, and this is the closest thing Manhattan can really offer in place of Maranello.” He shakes his head slowly, trying to soothe him like he might a stray kitten. “You weren’t in the apartment when I got home, and Odette said that you weren’t there when she got home from school, and I just…” Now this feels like a confession. He’s hot under the collar, suddenly, the warm summer breeze doing nothing to alleviate the way he’s burning up under Charles’ unrelenting green gaze. “I knew I had to find you. Make sure you were safe, even though I think I knew you would be here this whole time.”

Charles just keeps looking at him. “This does feel a lot like Maranello,” he murmurs after a long beat of silence. “But I do not believe it is the closest thing to home.” With a sigh, he lets go of Pierre’s hand but immediately replaces the touch with his arm, hooking it in Pierre’s elbow. “You must be worried sick about Odette being there alone, Pierre. I’m sorry.”

But Pierre can’t find it in him to be angry that he’s so many blocks away from home when Charles looks the way he does right now—devastatingly beautiful, somehow enhanced by the streetlamp above them. “Odette will be okay, Charles. She was worried sick about you.” He rests a hand against the prince’s wrist, a reassuring touch to keep him from collapsing with the immense emotions he must be wrestling with right now. “You know, I used to sneak out here all the time too, before she came into my life.” Charles makes a soft noise somewhere in his ear, tucked tight against Pierre’s side even though it is so warm and his clothes feel like they’re made of the heaviest velvet imaginable. How he’s not sweating to death, Pierre has no idea. “Back in France, my backyard used to look like this a little.” He pauses. “Green. Full of mystery, at least when I was small.”

“Did it help you?” Pierre raises an eyebrow at the question. “Miss home less?”

There’s probably a correct answer here—say no, try and urge this wandering behavior away, maybe even encourage Charles to try and figure out a way back home so he doesn’t have to miss Maranello the way he seems to so deeply. It’s the responsible thing to do, really.

“In a way, yes,” he says instead. Charles leans into him a little. “But—it was not about missing home less, I don’t think. It was more…learning to build a home here. Making this my home.” He thumbs at Charles’ wrist a little. “And it must have worked, because there is nowhere else in the world I consider to be home more than here. It is Odette, and it is me, and it is New York City.” There’s part of his deeply-delusional brain that wants to add and you to the statement, but Pierre brushes the instinct aside. Charles has a home. Has a life, and a kingdom, apparently, to get back to, even if Maranello is nowhere he's ever heard of. Pierre can’t keep him from that. He’s got no right to.

“I see,” the prince murmurs, still so close to Pierre that he can feel every breath Charles takes. The stretch of silence that follows is amicable, really: but Pierre can’t help but think there is something he could be doing. Charles looks so foreign, here, so out of place standing beside a black metal trash can that looks like the ones he used to kick at in his early days. Pierre wants to take him away. Wants to take him home—where he belongs, among impossibly kind and beautiful and naïve people like himself. Pierre wants to take him home and kiss him in his too-bland kitchen, right up against the island he’d disbelievingly questioned legitimacy of because this does not look like a land mass. Pierre wants to make him happy here.

Charles seems to understand, though, that there are boundaries that can’t be crossed. Instead of allowing Pierre to linger in his own fantasies, he tugs their hooked arms forward towards one of the wrought-iron archways leading back to the paved city. “Well—it is dark, now, Pierrot, and I think beloved Odette is going to worry about the both of us if we remain out here any longer.”

Ah, yes. “You’re probably right,” he hums in reply, lifting off of Charles’ wrist in favor of digging out his phone from where it’s fallen deep in his pants pocket. With one hand, he types off a message to his daughter—found him, safe, on our way back—and then pockets it again. “It’s a beautiful night, your highness,” he murmurs after a moment. “Could I walk you home?” Even with their arms linked, Pierre still mock-bows a little too deeply, drawing a bright laugh that seemingly carries across the entire park. Charles pulls him back upright, beaming with amusement.

“You could use some royal training, Pierre Gasly,” he giggles. “I was better at this when I was twelve, and that was before they started making me balance books on my head.”

Pierre snorts. “You are not going to get me to do that, I can assure you.” But he keeps his arm linked in Charles’ the whole walk home all the same, taking in the amused bursts of chatter at each thing Charles wants to sing about as they slip through the busy night.

#piarles #pierrecharles #fic #10 x 16 #actually this is making me insane for real i think i just need to lock myself in a padded room #until the brainworms just leave my body. because i cannot keep LIVING like this #AU tag

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