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The bed is too small for two people, let alone three.
"I am thinking of learning to knit," Mako says to the ceiling.
Chuck snorts.
Raleigh kicks him in the shin.
"What?" Chuck asks. "The world isn't fucking ending, and she's taking knitting? Do something more exciting, Mori."
"I have the rest of my life for exciting," she says, arch and tense in a way they all understand.
They went in to do the near-impossible without the possibility of not coming back.
Chuck thought it was an inevitability.
Across Hong Kong, where Stacker Pentecost lies comatose in a hospital bed, it’s still a possibility. They are all thinking about it, and not thinking about it. It’s difficult for them all, and Chuck selfishly allows himself to think it’s most difficult for him, when the left side of his body has a matching set of fractured clavicle and broken radius and ulna.
But Stacker doesn’t belong in their bed, and this was more of a reprieve than a romance.
Raleigh is the next to break the silence. “I'm thinking about learning to play an instrument."
Mako is on the side of the bed against the wall, while Raleigh is on his side, half against the wall, half draped over her.
They both turn to Chuck.
"What?" he asks. "We’ve got a shitshow of interviews for the next week. I’ve no idea what the fuck I’m doing after–” and both Mako and Raleigh are too kind to ignore the break in his voice “–but it won’t involve any fucking learning.”
-
“Oi, Rayleigh.”
A grumble is his response.
"Pick a subject," Chuck says.
"Is this Jeopardy?" Raleigh mumbles into his pillow.
"School subject. Pick one."
"History."
"Art history," Mako mumbles, still asleep.
Chuck rolls his eyes. But he keeps poking through.
Raleigh lifts his head up from the pillow, stares at where Chuck is at the desk, hunched over his datapad.
“Go back to sleep,” Chuck tells him. It’s softer than he intended.
But Raleigh smiles at him, soft and sleepy, and lowers his head.
-
The interviews are a fucking mess, and Chuck walks out on half of them. He’s told by a Public Relations worker that he has an image problem, and Chuck tells them to go fuck themselves. To his surprise, neither Mako nor Raleigh reprimand him for it.
While the interviews are a clusterfuck, enrollment is easy. Sure, he’s being enrolled during the first week of the semester, which the admissions department tells him is highly unprecedented, but his personal statement was rather convincing.
Chuck tells his PPDC ‘handler’ that he’s going to be studying at St Andrews, and he and Max board the first plane out of Hong Kong that will let Max stay in the cabin. China to Scotland takes a few flights, and he gets flurries of texts whenever he lands. Everyone is yelling at him.
Everyone but Mako and Raleigh.
They text him details of the fall-out, they dance around asking if he’s okay, and they tell him to text back if he feels like it.
Along with the director of admissions at St Andrews, Chuck had been emailing a local realtor, and when he lands in Heathrow, he’s given the address of his new flat. It’s already furnished, and his textbooks have already been delivered. Everything’s as it should be, and Chuck goes to sleep off the jetlag.
-
Chuck starts the semester during the second week, and makes himself not react to the pointing and staring and hushed whispers. He’s not here as one of the Heroes of Pitfall, he’s here as a sodding student.
He buys a uni scarf from the school store, a soft blue and green and yellow lambswool, and wraps it around Max’s neck. On a whim, he snaps a picture of it, and sends it Mako.
-
Mako and Raleigh arrive the third week of the semester, while Chuck is in his Tuesday Art of the Renaissance course.
Max is delighted to see Mako, and he trots over to her.
“What the fuck took you so long?” is all Chuck says. His hands are shaking with an anger he can’t explain. He throws his messenger bag down onto his couch, and turns to Raleigh, ready for a fight.
Raleigh kisses him instead, hard and rough until Chuck is breathless. Him and Mako have already acquainted themselves with his flat, because Mako wastes no time in dragging him to the bedroom. This is a reprieve, not a romance, Chuck keeps telling himself, even as Mako slides off his sling with a heartbreaking tenderness. Even as Raleigh mutters something about customs and rescheduling interviews and it occurs to Chuck how much effort was put into pursuing this reprieve.
-
As a rule, Chuck doesn’t talk about his feelings. And it’s his flat, his rules.
Mako and Raleigh don’t try and talk about feelings with him.
Instead, they move in.
Chuck comes home early from class one day to find Raleigh standing in the middle of the kitchen, playing the viola. Sheet music is propped up against the empty fruit bowl. Raleigh doesn’t stop playing his scales, only raises an eyebrow.
And so Chuck goes about his post-class routine. He throws his messenger bag down on the couch. He grabs his books and binders necessary for homework, and drops them down on the table. It should be the dining table, but mostly Chuck has been eating breakfast standing in the kitchen, lunch on campus, and takeaway for dinner.
“I thought you had class for another hour,” Raleigh remarks, once he finishes his arpeggios. He shuffles through his sheet music.
“Didn’t fucking feel like spending another hour in lecture. Where’s Mori?”
“She’s joined a gym.”
Chuck stares at him. “A gym?”
“I’ve joined a local orchestra,” Raleigh continues, as if he didn’t hear Chuck’s question.
“How long have you been playing?”
Raleigh shrugs a shoulder, sheepish. “Only a week.”
Compared to sharing half the neural load of piloting a giant machine, learning an instrument isn’t that difficult. “What are you going to take up next week?”
Raleigh huffs a laugh. “We’ll see.” He tucks his viola back under his chin. “Lasagna should be done in an hour.”
“Cooking and playing the viola,” Chuck remarks. He shakes his head, and starts on his homework.
-
Classes are easy. He’s got three classes towards his degree, with a physics and a theology class to fill out his course load.
The reading takes some time, but the homework is easy, the classwork is easier, and he aces all his tests.
The group work… does not go well.
-
Raleigh pulls Chuck in for a hug. No context, just holds him for a very long moment. "Chuck," he says, finally. "Answer your dad's damn phone calls."
Chuck grimaces against Raleigh's chest. "Make me."
"Don't make me."
-
Chuck doesn’t call his dad, but he does email. Short emails, as much as he can manage, steadfast not talking about himself. But it makes his dad happy, it makes Raleigh happy, it makes Mako happy, and even Max seems happier for it.
-
Mako posts her game schedule on the fridge.
Come the next Saturday morning, Chuck is seated on a bleacher with Max to his left, Raleigh to his right. It’s way too fucking cold, and there’s a thermos of coffee is between his thighs, and he has an extra blanket around his shoulders.
"Go, go, Ravenclaw," Raleigh says, as they watch Mako during warm-up drills.
Chuck rolls his eyes.
"Yancy would have been in Ravenclaw," Raleigh says, quietly, before the game starts.
"And what about you?" Chuck brings himself to ask. "Gryffindor?"
"Maybe. Kept waiting for my letter to find out."
Chuck stares out at the field. "My mum thought I would have been in Gryffindor."
Raleigh, wisely, doesn't comment. He just laces his fingers with Chuck’s.
-
Mako scores all four goals for the team, and they win 4-1.
She looks great in the dark blue football uniform.
Even better halfway out of it.
-
Mako’s birthday comes towards the end of April, and Chuck nearly punches Raleigh for ‘reminding’ him. Chuck knew Mako first, and he hasn’t forgotten her birthday. Raleigh doesn’t say what her gift is, looking away and saying that it’s personal.
Personal, like something found in the Drift.
Well, so is Chuck’s.
It’s a fifteen minute bus ride to Leuchars Station.
Stacker is still comatose, and it still lies heavy during quiet moments. It’s why Raleigh practices the viola and cooks, it’s why Mako practices football and knits, it’s why Chuck’s thrown himself into a degree he doesn’t care about.
But he leads Mako to outside the station, and pulls out a bottle of whiskey. “I won’t,” Chuck says, and he bites his lip, nervous for the first time in a very long time. “I won’t tell you anything he won’t want you to know, but if you want to know anything about him…”
It hangs in the air between them.
“He pulled some pretty great pranks.”
Mako has tears in her eyes, and she nods.
Chuck takes a deep breath in, pulls his jacket in tighter around him, and gives her the one gift he can.