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salaciouscrumpet · 5 years

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Whumptober Day 17

Whumptober Day 17 Prompt: “Touch-Starved”

Once again I just couldn’t make the original prompt work for me (that prompt being “Stay with me”), so I went with one of the alternates. I’m not quite sure what happened with this ficlet, because it didn’t go in the direction I had planned and I don’t know if I really touched on the prompt much at all. It’s long, meandering, and on the fluffier side, which is probably a bit of a palate cleanser after the last prompt.

I don’t think this one requires any content warnings, but if you disagree please let me know and I’ll be happy to add them.

Characters: Charlie, Luke, Kate, Bear (the dog)

The old dock was in need of re-staining. Charlie couldn’t remember the last time Luke had done it, but it certainly wasn’t within the past two or three years. In truth, the old dock – built by Kate’s grandfather before she’d even been born – could probably stand to be replaced, maybe with something that could be taken out every winter so it would be less prone to ice damage. Still, on the list of things at the farmhouse in need of repair, the dock ranked pretty low, and there were only so many useable hours in the day or weather-friendly days in the summer.

This day, however, was an extremely friendly day, and the perfect day to spend lounging around on the dock.

Charlie lay sprawled on his stomach on a pile of towels, a battered copy of A Prayer for Owen Meany spread open in front of him. The dock wasn’t the most comfortable perch in the world – hence the towels – but he liked being out over the lake, listening to the waves lapping up against the shore, peering down at the water below him. There had been a crayfish down there earlier, scuttling along the seaweed, and a few small fish had darted in and around the supports of the dock. It was a quiet, sunny Tuesday afternoon, one of Charlie’s rare days off, and he and Luke – who likewise had the day off – were spending it together, just hanging out and relaxing. Kate was due home any minute now and then the day would be complete. Luke was going to grill some steaks, barbequing being just about the only kind of cooking he could be trusted with in spite of Charlie’s best efforts to teach him, and they would go for a swim under the stars, or maybe take the rowboat out to the canal and float around for a while. It was quiet and calm and everything Charlie had needed after a long week of late-night clinic shifts.

Luke was out in the water up to his knees, tossing a stick out for Bear to catch and bring back to him. He’d lost his T-shirt at some point – such a shame – and Charlie kept reading the same paragraph over and over again because for some reason he kept getting distracted by miles and miles of sun-bronzed skin and dark, primal tattoos. It didn’t hurt that Luke seemed almost deliriously happy out there in the water, basking in the sunlight, playing with the dog. And it kept Bear from trouncing up to Charlie and shaking water all over him and his book, so that helped, too.

Tucking his bookmark to mark his place – not that he could remember where he was in John and Owen’s tale, but he’d read the book so many times before that he could almost tell the story off by heart – Charlie sat up and let his feet dangle in the water, focusing his attention fully on the man in front of him.

It would be safe to say that Charlie found Luke beautiful in any and every circumstance, but standing out there in the water with the warm afternoon sunlight pouring down over him and a broad smile on his face was easily one of the most beautiful circumstances. He was tall and muscular, and his dark brown hair wasn’t so much styled as it was just sort of casually mussed about like he’d just fallen out of bed (and the thing that annoyed Charlie was that was how Luke’s hair pretty much always looked, whereas Charlie himself had to spend ages getting his own black, spiky hair to do anything). He left arm, from his shoulder down to his wrist, was covered in red and black tattoos of animals, done in the style of the ancient Scythians that Luke’s family claimed to be descended from, and his right arm was similarly covered, but in pale, silvery scars. He wore a pair of shorts that had begun their days as sweatpants and were now cut a bit above the knee, and they hung low on lean hips and were currently half-soaked and sticking to Luke’s ass and muscled thighs in ways that made Charlie think incredibly filthy thoughts.

The stick hit the water a few feet away from where Charlie was sitting, splashing him and startling him out of his increasingly-detailed fantasies about whisking Luke inside the house and ravishing him. (Fantasies that, unfortunately, had to remain just fantasies for the time being, since Kate would be home soon.) Charlie blinked as Bear bounded joyfully into the water in front of him, paddling his big, fluffy paws and snapping his teeth in the stick’s direction until he managed to catch it before turning around and swimming back to Luke.

“Sorry, did I get you wet?” Luke asked, in a tone of voice that suggested he was in no way sorry. He was grinning, that wide, cheerfully lopsided grin that was so rare and so precious.

Oh, you have no idea, Charlie thought, returning the grin with one of his own. He wiped some droplets of water off the cover of his book – it had fared worse; he’d once made the mistake of leaving it on the kitchen counter when making dinner (he’d been trying to read and cook at the same time) and had managed to get bolognese sauce on the part about the Christmas pageant – and stood up, book and towels in hand. He was getting sore from sitting out on the dock, and it was maybe time for a change of scenery. Their backyard was huge and sprawling, and while none of them were much interested in gardening, there were a number of places to sit and hang out and still be in the thick of things.

As Charlie started walking towards the shore Bear suddenly bounded out of the water. The big dog was alert, but not barking, which told Charlie exactly who was coming out to join them. Sure enough, seconds later Kate came through the gate into the yard, a thundery expression on her face that was briefly swept away at the sight of Bear’s excited greeting. It was impossible to be in a bad mood when you had one hundred and seventy pounds of fluffy, cheerful Leonberger coming at you.

Luke and Charlie exchanged glances, both of them having caught sight of Kate’s expression. She had spent the majority of the afternoon at a wedding out at the Barn – the Gracie Hills Barn Golf and Country Club, a fairly posh establishment on the other end of the lake where Luke’s parents had memberships – taking pictures of the bridal party. Kate wasn’t normally the photographer hired out for things like weddings, because she didn’t have the patience required to deal with that level of frivolity, but the bride had specifically requested Kate because she liked her darker style. Charlie suspected that regardless of the bride’s feelings on Kate’s art, the rest of the wedding party hadn’t appreciated the way Kate did things. Kate wasn’t exactly Pinterest-friendly.

While Kate fussed over Bear – who, like his humans, could sense her foul mood – Charlie and Luke began signing to each other, rapidly, back and forth. Charlie, like most magic-users within the supernatural community, had learned ASL at a fairly young age, but Luke hadn’t started taking lessons until he was an adult, and while he was a ridiculously quick learner – he already spoke nearly a dozen other languages with near-fluency – he still needed Charlie to sign slowly in order to understand him. Sign language was frowned upon within the Knights of Oberon, since it was basically intended as a big fuck-you to the order. After all, magic-users had started speaking in sign as a means of getting around the traditional punishments the Knights meted out for sorcerers and witches they saw as abusing their magic.

Ten bucks says she tossed the mother of the bride into the lake, Charlie signed. It didn’t translate directly, but it was close enough.

Ten bucks says she made someone cry, Luke replied, arching an eyebrow.

Charlie shook his head. No bet. Kate always made someone cry when she did bridal photography. There was a reason she wasn’t the one her boss sent out on wedding assignments. The only reason Dan hadn’t fired her was because, impatience and lack of diplomacy aside, Kate was an extremely talented photographer, and Dan’s gallery made a tidy sum in commissions for her work. Her personal projects – mostly what Kate referred to as ‘abandoned porn,’ pictures of derelict barns and long-empty cabins out in the woods – were fairly popular, and she had an eye for capturing the magic in the mundane.

“Shut up,” Kate called, sinking down onto the grassy hill that overlooked their narrow strip of sandy beach. She kicked off her dress shoes and stretched out her feet, waggling her bare toes in the grass. “I only made one person cry, and she deserved it. Also, stop talking about me, assholes.”

Bear sat down beside her, licking her face enthusiastically, his long, fluffy tail wagging and sending water flying everywhere. She waved him off, giving his long snout an affectionate boop.

“Rough day at the office, sweetie?” Charlie intoned as he joined her. He tossed his towels and book down onto the grass beside her before sitting down.

Kate made a face. “The bride and the mother of the groom had very different visions for how the photos are supposed to look.”

“Surprise, surprise,” commented Luke dryly, coming along to join them. His bare legs were wet and there was sand and grass on his feet and mud between his long toes.

“Yeah.” Kate was silent for a moment, staring at her bare feet, and Charlie got the sense there was more to the story but she wasn’t interested in sharing it. Or she was holding back for a reason.

Luke flopped down in the grass, giving the dog a gentle shove until Bear was lying on his side so that Luke could bury his face in the Leonberger’s thick fur. Bear’s tail thudded hard against the ground, his tongue lolling. Kate caught Charlie’s eye, flicked a glance in Luke’s direction, then quickly did the sign for parents, her thumb briefly touching her chin and then her forehead. She pointed off in the distance with her right hand.

His parents were there.

Well, that explained Kate’s foul mood, never mind the argumentative bridal party. Of the three of them, Kate was the one who found it the most difficult to be civil around Luke’s parents, on the rare occasion when they had to deal with them. Despite all the crap they had put him through, a part of Luke still held out hope that his father and mother would welcome him home with open arms. Charlie thought it would be unlikely, but also, that it wouldn’t be healthy for Luke in the long run; his parents had done a lot of damage over the years, and there was little indication that Daniel and Rita Kandarian had any desire in changing. Still, Charlie tried to be polite, for Luke’s sake. Kate considered it a kindness that she didn’t just dump their bodies somewhere no one would ever find them. She had no interest in civility, and thought Luke would be better off if his parents left him alone forever.

Beside them Luke sucked in a harsh breath, glaring at Kate over Bear’s ruff. “Mom and Dad were there?” He sat up, hands sinking in Bear’s fur, and gave Kate a pointed look. “And now who’s the asshole?”

“Yeah, they were there,” Kate acknowledged, managing to sound at least a little guilty for talking about Luke behind his back – or over his head, as the case may be. Her tone lightened somewhat as she added, “They had Sammy with them.”

“Oh?” Luke immediately brightened. Sammy was his much younger brother – fifteen years younger, in fact, an ‘oops’ baby born when their mother was pushing fifty. Luke and Sam weren’t particularly close due to their age difference and their parents’ intervention, but Luke absolutely adored his little brother. “How’s he doing? I guess he’s home from school?”

Kate nodded, bumping her head against Luke’s shoulder. “He’s good. He misses you. We hid under a table and ate cupcakes.”

“I’m sure your parents were thrilled,” Charlie commented. Although it was unlikely that the Kandarians had mellowed out over the years, they nonetheless treated Sammy differently from the rest of the Kandarian siblings, and let him get away with things Luke and his sisters would never have been able to pull off. With that being said, at no point were they likely to be forgiving of Sam hanging out with his older brother’s supposedly “evil” girlfriend, a known bad influence with demonic blood and a bad attitude. (Of course, with Daniel and Rita ‘bad attitude’ simply meant Kate wasn’t the docile and obedient wife Luke’s parents had chosen for him.)

“They didn’t catch us,” Kate replied with a shrug. She hesitated again before apparently deciding to plow ahead: “They pretended they didn’t know me.”

Luke made a soft choking noise, an appalled expression on his face, but as far as Charlie was concerned pretending not to know Kate was probably as far as Luke’s parents could stretch themselves when it came to treating her civilly. They approved of nothing with regards to Luke’s life choices: not his separation from the Knights of Oberon (despite Luke’s father’s role in that separation), not his choice of occupation, and certainly not his relationship status. Bad enough that he was a part of a polyamorous triad instead of settling down with a wife from a good Incarnate family, but one partner was half-demon and the other was a man – and they weren’t married, had no intentions to get married, and there were no little baby Incarnates on their way any time in the near future. It was, in the eyes of Luke’s parents, a travesty. And since as far as Luke’s parents’ knew much of his so-called rebellion had started around the same time that he had begun seeing Kate, it was all clearly her fault.

Never mind that Luke had never been and would never be straight, that he wouldn’t have been happy in business management, that the Knights of Oberon had disavowed him or that he was now the happiest he’d ever been in his life. None of that mattered in the face of him completely turning his back on every plan his parents had ever had for him. Their children weren’t people so much as they were props and tools in their efforts to gain status and position within the Knights of Oberon and the local community.

“I’m sorry,” Luke said after a few minutes of tense silence.

“Hey.” Kate caught hold of his shoulder, tugging him gently towards herself before smacking a wet, noisy kiss on his forehead. “I don’t give a shit what your parents think of me.”

“I know,” he acknowledged, giving her a lopsided smile. He stretched out on the ground again, this time with his head in Kate’s lap. “I just wish …” He let it trail off, no need to finish the sentence when they all knew there were a number of things he wished were different about his family and his past.

Sensing the clouds that had fallen over the three of them – four, including Bear – Charlie leaned against Luke’s hip, letting his hands sink into the other man’s hair. Kate twisted one dark strand around her finger, brushing the rest of her fingertips over Luke’s cheek. He closed his eyes and leaned into their touch, smiling faintly. Luke may not be able to vocalize it, but Charlie knew this was one of the things he’d had to fight to allow into his life, this casually intimate touch. Early into their relationship Luke had admitted – almost reluctantly, as though acknowledging something shameful or embarrassing – that he wasn’t really familiar or comfortable with physical displays of affection. His parents weren’t huggers and there had always been a sort of formality in the way his family interacted with one another, even during moments that others might consider warm or friendly. Luke had been more accustomed to being physically disciplined than hugged or kissed, and even a hand on the shoulder had been cause for alarm. Charlie, on the other hand, had grown up with a small army of half-siblings and a slew of warm, loving adults who supported them all, and people were always hugging and kissing and cuddling together at family events. For most of Kate’s life it had just been her and her mother, but they had always been affectionate towards each other. She and Charlie were comfortable showing affection; Luke had to be taught that it wasn’t something he had to work towards, but that he could just have it because humans needed physical touch to thrive.

Sometimes Charlie wholeheartedly agreed with Kate’s lack of diplomacy when it came to dealing with Luke’s parents. Bodies dumped out in the woods somewhere seemed like the very least they deserved for how they had treated Luke over the years. They weren’t the sole source of Luke’s many issues, but they were certainly a major contributing factor.

“We still having steaks for dinner?” Kate asked, her tone deliberately light. She wasn’t the most graceful or subtle about changing the subject, but then Kate seldom saw much need for subtlety.

“That depends,” Luke murmured, nuzzling his cheek into the curve of her hand, much the way that Bear did when he wasn’t done with being petted.

“Oh? On what?”

“On whether or not you’re too full of illicit cupcakes to eat anything?” suggested Charlie. She made a face at him, sticking out her tongue.

Luke laughed, but it was a sleepy, contented sound, the fingers of one hand coming up to curl around the sharp lines of Charlie’s ankle. His touch was light, but not quite light enough to be ticklish, and Charlie let out a quiet, happy hum. He would be fine to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening just lying there on the lawn with Luke, Kate and the dog, soaking up the last of the sun’s rays and lazing around together.

“Mm,” Luke said after a moment, “I was thinking more like on whether or not the two of you put me to sleep like this.” He yawned, loudly, his jaw cracking. When he continued there was a soft, sad note in his voice, but his expression remained relatively calm and undisturbed: “Stressing over Mom and Dad and what they think is exhausting.”

Charlie could add a few more adjectives to the list, but exhausting more or less summed it all up. He loved Luke and everything that came with that brave, empathetic package, but sometimes he couldn’t help but wonder if Kate had the right of things, and if Luke’s life wouldn’t be immediately improved by cutting off all ties to his parents. It wouldn’t undo all the damage they’d caused him over his lifetime – damage that Charlie and Kate were helping Luke to work his way through – but it might prevent them from causing more damage in the future. Because for all that Luke tried to claim his parents no longer controlled his life or his thinking, all it would take would be a phone call out of the blue or Luke realizing that something he had accepted as normal his whole life wasn’t actually normal at all, and then he’d be spiralling downward again. If it weren’t for his siblings it might have been easier for him to go no-contact. His older brother had died when Luke was a teenager, but he still had his younger sisters and his baby brother, and for all their differences he was still deeply invested in their happiness. Luke’s parents had always taught them all that family was the most important thing in the world, and while with Daniel and Rita that was definitely more of a “do as I say, not as I do” situation, it was a lesson Luke had taken to heart.

That bottomless wellspring of love was another thing Charlie adored about him. Despite the fact that the two people who should have loved him the most and treated him the best were instead responsible for so much of his suffering, Luke still had an endless capacity to care for and nurture others. It never ceased to amaze Charlie that his partner had held on to that devoted nature, that it hadn’t been shattered beyond repair by being raised by a pair of narcissists. It shouldn’t have been possible.

Before Charlie could reflect on that idea for much longer, Kate’s stomach gave a loud, gurgling rumble, startling Bear and making the three of them laugh. Luke sat up, absently untangling the braid Kate had tied in the short, messy strands of his hair.

“I guess that answers that question,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. He held out his hands to Kate and Charlie, pulling them both up with ease. “Steaks now, sleepy cuddles later?”

Charlie nodded, grinning. The fact that Luke could easily and comfortably refer to what they had been doing as cuddling told him everything he needed to know about how far the other man had come along in the time they’d been together. The man he’d first met, back when Luke had just been Kate’s moody, troubled boyfriend, would have sooner shot himself in the foot than talk about physical affection, much less suggest engaging in it. And now? Now he could talk about it, he could engage in it, and he could even laugh about it in a way that didn’t suggest that wanting it somehow made any of them lesser.

He wondered what Luke would be like in ten more years – or fifteen, or twenty. Maybe there would come a day when Luke felt comfortable kissing Charlie – more than just a peck on the cheek – in front of his parents, or when he wouldn’t feel like he still needed to live up to his family’s legacy, or like his departure from the Knights wasn’t a huge misstep away from his life path. Maybe one day Luke would be able to accept himself for who he was, and not for who his parents had wanted him to be.

#whumptober2019 #day 17 #alt. prompt 14 #original fiction

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