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ailendolin · 2 years

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Whump Wednesday - 28 - BBC Ghosts

Title: Not Like Them [AO3]

Fandom: BBC Ghosts

Characters: Julian & Robin, Margot (mentioned)

Prompt: Julian opening up about his childhood. - Prompt by the lovely @right-amount-of-weirdness can be found here.

Warnings: mentions of drugs, minor character death, child neglect

A/N: This was really fun to write. I went completely wild with Julian's past -- hopefully what I came up with makes sense for his character and explains why he is the way he is. Also, I've never written a fic that focuses on Robin and Julian before so that was fun as well. I hope you enjoy it!

Prompts are open, so if you want me to write a story for you as well just send me an ask with the fandom, characters and your prompt. I’m writing for Ghosts, Yonderland, Horrible Histories and Bill at the moment.

Six Idiots Whump Wednesday / Fluff Friday masterlist is here.

————

Not Like Them

“Was quite sad, wasn’t it?”

Julian shot Robin a look. “Kitty’s story about her sister? Mhm yes, I suppose so.”

“And Thomas’s,” Robin said.

“That old sob story?” Julian laughed. “Please, he was a baby crying for attention. That’s what babies do. Thomas just happened to never grow out of it.”

To his surprise, Robin stopped mid-step to frown at him. “No, is not right to leave baby crying. Can be dangerous.”

Julian put a hand on his shoulder and said with all the patience and seriousness he could muster, “I don’t know how to tell you this, ape, but the time when sabre-toothed tigers came into our caves and ate our babies has long since passed.”

Robin shoved him away. “Me serious! Is only way for baby to communicate. Need to take seriously. Something could be wrong.”

“Or they could just be hungry,” Julian said with a dismissive shrug. “Parents can’t be expected to drop everything just because their offspring happens to be crying. Having to wait a few minutes for mummy to come and pick you up won’t kill a kid.”

“Is still wrong,” Robin grumbled. “Children always come first. They future of the tribe. Precious.”

Julian rolled his eyes. “They’re annoying little shits is what they are.”

He started to walk away but Robin’s hand on his arm held him back. Frowning, Julian turned towards him to demand to be let go but the look on Robin’s face made him falter. No one had ever regarded him with such an intensity before.

Well, he silently amended, at least not outside of court.

He felt like an insect under a microscope, something a scientist had been studying and trying to understand for years without success but was finally close to figuring out. It made Julian’s skin crawl, being looked at like that, and he had to resist the urge to drop his eyes to the ground.

“Is that what your parents tell you?” Robin asked him at last, his voice oddly, unnervingly quiet.

“What?” Julian snorted, stuck somewhere between laughing and the uncomfortable feeling of being stripped bare, and not in the fun way. “What the hell, Robin?”

Much to Julian’s annoyance, the expression on Robin’s face didn’t change. If anything, it grew even more intense, especially when Robin leaned closer and tilted his head to the side, almost like a curious dog trying to understand the colourful butterfly resting on his paw.

“It was,” Robin breathed, pulling back in surprise – as if he had any idea what he was talking about, as if he could possibly know anything about Julian’s childhood just from staring at him in a freaky way for a few seconds.

“Leave it be, Robin,” Julian all but growled, all humour now gone from his voice. He brushed off Robin’s hand and strode past him down the hallway, needing to get away. But Robin wouldn’t be Robin if he didn’t hurry after him like a lost puppy. He was probably doing that weird little skipping run, Julian thought; the one Julian usually found quite hilarious, sometimes even a little endearing. Now it just annoyed him.

“Go away!” he called over his shoulder.

He phased through the front door. Robin followed him only a moment later. “Julian! Wait!”

Why couldn’t that ape ever listen? Actually, no – why did he have to go and sniff around in things that were none of his business? Things Julian very much preferred to stay buried in the past, just like the Captain’s limpet mine and regrets.

Rounding a corner, Julian found himself staring at the little alcove Robin and him had spent the night in while the others had been camping in the woods. He stopped, just for a second, suddenly hit by the phantom warmth and comfort of the memory of Robin’s touch.

It was there Robin finally caught up with him.

“What part of go away did you not understand?” Julian asked, feeling suddenly weary. He dropped onto the bench and glared up at Robin. “Or do you need me to rephrase it so your tiny Neanderthal brain can understand? Leave me alone.”

Robin fiddled with the furs on his arms a little before he tentatively came closer. He sat down next to Julian in the narrow space, way too close for Julian’s comfort. The last thing he either wanted or needed right now was to be coddled. He just wanted to be alone – just until he could shake off whatever it was that made him want to crawl out of his skin and he felt like himself again. Was that too much to ask?

Apparently, it was.

“It only guess,” Robin began quietly, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the ground. “But I think many people in your life left. Too many.” He shook his head and finally looked up, right at Julian. “Me not like them, Julian. Me stay.”

The words struck Julian to the core. His chest suddenly felt too tight and his lungs too small for the air he didn’t need to breathe. He squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to calm his wildly beating heart but that only made it worse. Memories lit up like fireworks in his mind, making his whole life play out in front of him like some bloody pathetic feature film he had no desire of ever reliving.

There was his mother, way too skinny and young to bear a child; and there his father who had never wanted anything to do with either of them.

“It’s all your fault!” his mother was shouting in Julian’s face. “He’s leaving because of you!”

Julian had been three years old when his father had walked out on them. He hadn’t understood why his mother was angry with him, why her eyes had been wild and her hands shaking so badly she could barely hold a glass. She had been desperate for her next fix at the time; she always was. The next three years of his life had been an endless cycle of having to endure her accusations, the smell of alcohol on her breath, the sight of used needles around whatever run down place they were staying at and the ever present loneliness he’d never quite managed to shake.

Then, just after his sixth birthday, Julian’s life got turned upside down. His mother had been caught stealing and he’d been sent to live with his father, the one he could barely remember anything about except the fact that he’d broken up their family because of Julian. His mother had made sure he’d never forget that, and from the moment the tall man with the piercing grey eyes had led him into the big, fancy house Julian was supposed to call home now, his father made it perfectly clear that Julian was nothing more than an unwanted guest he just hadn’t found a way to get rid of yet.

“Just my luck to get stuck with that bastard,” Julian had heard him mutter one night when his father’s friends had been over. They had something of a party going on, and the music had been so loud Julian hadn’t been able to sleep so he’d sneaked halfway down the stairs to see what his father was up to.

“At least the little shithead doesn’t need diapers anymore.”

Everyone in the room had laughed and Julian had felt his face heat up.

He’d started wetting his bed that night.

Just thinking about it still made his neck prickle with shame and embarrassment. The whole thing had been utterly mortifying and only a few weeks later, his father had sent him off to boarding school – his way of getting rid of the problem. Out of sight, out of mind – or so his father had thought. It hadn’t taken long for Julian to start acting up. And he had acted up a lot. He’d never really stopped, he supposed – certainly not when he turned nineteen and his old man had died only a few weeks later and left him a small fortune.

Looking back on it, Julian was pretty sure he would have gone down the same road his mother had – ending up in some alley drugged out of his mind and dying of an overdose – if he hadn’t met Margot at that crucial point in his life. She’d been the best thing that ever happened to him and saved his life in more ways than one. Not that he’d ever told her that or thanked her for it. He’d treated her the same way he treated everyone else: like shit – because that’s all he’d ever known, that’s just what people did. They took one look at you, decided you were not worth it and then kicked you to the curb.

Only Margot had never done that. Instead of leaving him like she probably should have she had stayed by his side, through the bad, the worse and the worst. She’d called him out on his bullshit, sure, but she had still stood by him through scandal after scandal, no matter what he’d done, no matter how many times he’d disappointed and hurt her and made her cry in the bathroom in the middle of the night.

And now Robin was telling him he’d do the same.

Julian had no idea what to do with that … that promise. People like him rarely got lucky once, let alone twice, and he knew himself well enough to know he would go and ruin this, ruin them, just like he’d ruined his relationship with Margot all those years ago. Robin didn’t deserve that. Robin deserved–

The world, Julian thought, silently regarding his best friend who looked more ape than human but was perhaps the most human of all of them. He felt his heart in his throat.

“What if I want you to leave?” he asked quietly.

Robin shrugged and looked away, out over the grounds. “You leave first.”

At first Julian thought Robin was telling him to go – as if that would be possible even if Julian wanted to. But then he took in Robin’s hunched shoulders and the faraway look in his eyes and it suddenly hit him that Robin was talking about something else, something much sadder than all the lonely years of Julian’s childhood and decades of poor life choices put together.

He was talking about Julian moving on before him.

Julian’s chest tightened so suddenly he thought he was having another heart attack, ridiculous as that notion was. Perhaps for the first time since his death he looked at Robin and truly saw him, saw the insane number of centuries he’d been around and realised what that actually meant. Robin had seen whole civilisations rise and fall, ecosystems go extinct and reinvent themselves – hell, he’d seen mammoths roam these plains and still wore their fur today. The number of ghosts he’d seen come and go in that time had to be mind-blowing; the grief over their loss unfathomable.

No wonder Robin expected him to be just like them, Julian thought; in his experience, everyone inevitably left. No one ever stayed.

He swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat.

“What if I don’t want to leave?” he murmured without looking at Robin.

Robin shook his head, resigned. “Won’t be your choice. When time comes, you go.”

“No,” Julian said, shaking his head. It felt like a weight had been lifted off his chest. He looked up and met Robin’s eyes. “I won’t be like the others. I won’t go.”

He’d done enough of that already – running away, leaving people behind, hurting them by being absent. It was time he started holding onto what he had, and Robin – Robin was the one person he couldn’t imagine ever being without again.

“Julian,” Robin began, sounding old and weary and sadder than Julian had ever heard him, so he held up his hand to stop Robin right there.

“It’s not up for discussion. We leave together or not at all.” He held out his hand. “Deal?”

Robin glanced between it and his face.

“You mean that?” he asked gruffly. One of his hands was nervously fiddling with his furs. “Together?”

Julian nodded. “Yes. If you can imagine spending eternity with someone as brilliant and handsome as me.”

He winked and something changed in Robin’s face; or rather eased, giving way to a flicker of what Julian thought might be hope, or perhaps peace. Robin’s eyes softened and his shoulders relaxed, and when he reached for Julian’s still outstretched hand, he took it with far more gentleness then Julian would have thought.

“Deal,” Robin smiled.

Neither of them knew what that promise would be worth in the end but in that moment, that didn’t matter. The thought behind it counted, the knowledge that they had chosen each other and would do so again and again for as long as possible. For now, that was enough.

Julian squeezed Robin’s hand and, feeling Robin squeeze back, smiled.

#it physically pained me to write sabre-toothed tigers instead of sabre-toothed cats #but unlike me Julian is not a paleontologist so tigers it was #the things I do to keep characters in character #the sacrifices I make #julian fawcett #Robin #robin the caveman #chess husbands #bbc ghosts #bbc ghosts fic #whump wednesday #wwff challenge #my fic

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