Charles by Con Riley
17
Charles took Luke’s advice to familiarise himself with the rest of the school layout, moving on from the pre-prep classrooms to explore farther. He used the master key Luke had left with him, and poked his head into empty classrooms used by older children, not dissimilar to those where he’d spent more time staring out of the windows than he’d ever spent time in learning. He worked his way through the whole building, finding labs, and a library that he quickly closed the door on.
Then he found storage closets, where he struck gold. One was full of furniture—some of it must have been stored for decades. He sat on a leather captain’s chair much like the one in his father’s study, remembering how George used to spin both him and Keir on it when they’d been little, both screaming with laughter. “No wonder it started to squeak.”
He sent a quick text.
Charles: Remember when you made Keir puke by spinning Father’s chair for too long?
Some of the contents of the storage closets were more recent. His gaze landed on a sagging pile in the corner that turned out to be beanbag chairs in a rainbow of colours. He tested them, like he knew his class would, falling onto each one and letting it catch him. The way they squished under his weight was satisfying. He tugged some out into the hallway and added them to a trolley he’d requisitioned that already held a haul of art supplies his maggots would go wild for.
He ended up in a ground floor hallway lined with noticeboards he only glanced at, until something caught his eye. Charles paused, reading a sign-up sheet for the High Tor challenge so full of names—there couldn’t be many sixth-form students left who weren’t participating.
“They must be nuts,” Charles murmured, reminded of similar treks at school he would have run a mile from, given a do-over, getting lost and coming in last no fun.
Hugo spoke from behind him. “You’re really not a fan of outdoor exertion, are you?”
Charles spun to find him leaning against a doorway. “Depends if it’s clothes optional.” It was stupid how making Hugo smile got to him; strange how seeing him like this, unexpected but welcome, made his voice come out gruffer. “Thought you were meant to be resting?” Charles left his trolley behind, drifting towards him, passing a lab and recalling a science lesson where he’d discovered that iron filings were drawn to a magnet the same way he was to Hugo.
“I’ve rested plenty.” Hugo shrugged, glancing away, but quickly looking back at Charles as if he felt the same compulsion; was as powerless to resist it. “I wondered if you’d got lost.”
“It’s a school, not a wood. I’d just have to follow the exit arrows.”
Hugo tried another excuse—and that was what it was, Charles realised; an excuse to come and find him.
“Okay then, I wondered if you’d found any surprises.”
Charles didn’t resist the pull that tugged him closer. He went with it, trusting instincts that hadn’t failed him, so far, and curved a hand around the nape of Hugo’s neck. “You mean apart from how much I fancy the RE teacher?” He pulled Hugo down for a quick kiss, feeling top of the class, for once, because Hugo caught hold of him too, pushing open the door behind him and bringing Charles with him.
It closed between them and the hallway, Charles only aware because Hugo pushed him against it, and kept kissing. Charles opened his mouth to him, opened both of his arms as well, wrapping them around this man who broke off their kiss to drag in a staggering inhale that went on forever.
“Hi,” Charles said, not sure what was up with his voice, because now it wasn’t gruff at all. Instead it came out breathy.
“Hello, Charles.” Hugo bent again, his lips finding the hinge of his jaw, his ear, the patch of skin below it, sounding easily as breathless. “I’m not really an RE teacher,” he murmured as if there was someone who might overhear his confession. “Only standing in. For that, and for pastoral care, remember?” He put an inch between them. “Welcome to my office.”
Charles peered around him at what resembled another storage closet. Yes, it was emptier than the others, with just a desk and two chairs in one corner, but it had the same abandoned feeling.
“This is where you work?”
Hugo backed off, lurching a little.
Charles gestured at one of the chairs. “Take your weight off your leg. You don’t have to be a hero or a tough guy. I already know you’re easy.”
Hugo sat. “I’m not easy,” he said as Charles took the other.
“Says the man who pinned me down to have his wicked way twice in one morning?”
“About that.” Hugo sounded awkward. “I—”
“Enjoyed it? Thought it was a lot more fun than your average Saturday morning? Can’t believe your luck you get to share the stables with someone happy to role-play being your dentist?”
Hugo snorted. “The last one.”
“You have a thing about dentists?” Charles teased.
“No, the other part of that sentence.” He scrubbed at his face. “I can’t believe my luck,” he said quietly. “But I also want to make sure you know you staying with me isn’t contingent on…”
For a moment, Charles wondered if Luke had made his own confession about why he’d hired Charles, but Hugo continued, saying exactly what Charles had already decided—Luke’s deal meant nothing to him—only what he and Hugo both wanted mattered.
“…Well, it isn’t contingent on what we did happening again.” Hugo glanced at the door, maybe realising that kissing Charles may have muddied the waters. “What I mean is that, yes, I’m happy.” He blinked as if that surprised him, but he followed his statement right away with another. “But I’d be happy too if we didn’t continue, if that meant you staying. I like having you around. Since you got here….” He shook his head, and stuttered. “I- I came here months and months ago, but I feel like I must have been sleeping the whole time.”
It was easy to be just as honest with him when the truth was so transparent. And surprising. Charles replayed Hugo trying to hold onto water in the kitchen, it spilling through his open fingers. Letting the time they had here slip away without trying to grasp it would be a waste.
“Me too.”
His own last few months at home came into sharp perspective, Charles sleepwalking between tasks his brother set him with no sense of his own direction. He hadn’t even been able to make himself deal with that packet of old letters. They were still in the Defender’s glove compartment, the prospect of struggling to read them too much a reminder of a powerlessness he hated.
Hugo, on the other hand, made him feel powerful.
Listened to.
It was another realisation that Hugo echoed. “It’s good to have someone to talk to who understands that finding the right fit isn’t easy,” he said. “The right path, I mean. Like Tor must have wished he could find in the woods.”
“Yes.” Believing that made meeting Hugo’s eyes easy. “And I promise you that you’d have as much chance of getting me to do anything I don’t want to do as my brother. Which is zero.” Charles looked around. “Now, tell me about how come you work out of what looks more like a cell than an office.”
The walls were practically bare, no sign this was Hugo’s place specifically; nothing at all about its decor to suggest its purpose. “Did you just move in?”
“No. It’s where I’ve been based all year.”
It didn’t look that way. “Really?”
Hugo turned around too as if seeing the space for the first time. “It’s somewhere for students to drop in to talk over any issues. Doesn’t have to be faith-related. I’m open for all students, but so far, it’s only the sixth-formers who’ve found me. Probably because I’d spent some time with them. When they talk, they say they feel in the same boat as me—on the cusp of being ready to leave for their next stage, but no clue where they’re going.”
He sat back, not seeming to expect anything from Charles, a pool of silence between them while he contemplated. And that was what he was doing, Charles decided—thinking, not making excuses. Evaluating where he was and where he’d go next by sitting with his thoughts instead of rushing. And yet, despite the quietness, he seemed very present.
And that was something Charles had noticed from their first meeting in the chapel. Hugo wasn’t scared of silence; didn’t see a need to fill it with his own voice, leaving room for Charles to confess thoughts and feelings he hadn’t known he’d bottled. More of the children at Glynn Harber could do with his listening ear, Charles imagined, would be pulled into Hugo’s calm and steady orbit, if they knew him better.
Charles asked another question—not to mindlessly fill the silence. He was interested in his answers. “How come you spent time with them and not the other year groups?”
“The sixth-form students?” Hugo’s gaze was warm and soft and right there with him. “Luke thought it a good idea. The weather was too bad over winter to train on the moor, and there was no way I could manage the terrain there when I was first out of action, and still healing. So I taught them to map-read in the classroom. How to set up camp in the playground. As my knee got better, we took our training into the woods. I helped them work together. All of them, whether they were sports stars, or less able. No one wins the High Tor challenge unless they all do. It’s one of the reasons why I love it. I suppose we bonded.”
Charles found that he’d leaned forwards; didn’t see any need to fight it. “I bet they loved you.”
Hugo shrugged. “I know what I would have loved.”
Charles leaned so far forwards it was touch or go if his seat would hold him. “What?”
“I would have loved to see it through to the end with them.”
“Maybe you still will. Your knee got better before. It will again. It already is.”
“Maybe.” Hugo said nothing else for a long moment before making a confession of his own. One that sounded painful. “If not it’ll be yet another time I haven’t seen something important through from start to finish.”
Charles wished they were back in bed then. He’d pull the covers over Hugo, shelter him from what had scarred him, because that was what he’d meant, Charles guessed. Whatever had caused those injuries had cut something short that mattered to him.
Hugo confirmed it, saying a name Charles remembered Luke mentioning.
“I was so sure what I was doing with Nathan was the right path for me.”
It prompted Charles to ask more questions. “What exactly were you doing together?”
“Working on a repatriation project. We’d both studied together at—”
“University? Luke mentioned it to me.” Something else Luke had mentioned hovered, but Hugo continued talking before it could settle.
“Yes. Nathan started on the same course as me.”
“Which was?”
“Theology.”
Charles nodded as if he knew what that entailed. Something serious, for sure, like all those books stacked in the stables. Something worthy.
“But I think he only picked it because he liked the Latin and Greek involved. All languages really, not just ancient ones. Then he switched to teacher training with Luke. It was Nathan who introduced us.”
“And then you all shared a flat.”
Surprise flickered. “How do you know that?”
“Luke said. You must have all been good friends.”
“No,” Hugo said, rueful. “Living together was a mistake. By the end, Luke barely tolerated him. He moved out, leaving Nathan and I together, so Luke offering Glynn Harber as a base for Nathan’s Syrian project means a lot.”
“Syria?” Charles pictured bombed-out buildings he’d seen on the news. “What was he doing over there?”
Hugo’s eyes didn’t just shutter then, they darkened, taking on that bruised shade that Charles had noticed whenever he touched on the reason he was injured. “Nathan’s a bit like me. Still looking for his best fit. He only taught for a while. Then he got involved with an organisation that repatriates children whose parents died in the conflict. Orphans whose parents were British.”
Charles wondered why guilt flashed across his face then. He asked, “How did that involve you?”
“I’d started a sabbatical, figuring out my next steps. I’d already spent time shadowing army padres to know that youth work still called to me more than working with adults. What Nathan did seemed like another way to test where my path led.” Hugo shook his head. “You know, up until then, I thought hell was a concept. An allegory. Right up until I saw Idlib.” He swallowed, one of his hands finding that scar Charles had stopped seeing as a flaw at some point over the last weeks—when, he wasn’t sure, but now he couldn’t drag his eyes away as Hugo’s voice tautened like it. “I got off lucky.”
“Idlib? That’s what? A province?”
“A city. The organisation Nathan works for was part of a multinational mission. Had the agreement of all of the factions concerned, but no one told the bomber who flew over the city the same time that we got there.”
“What happened to the children?” Charles asked, aware his voice was fainter.
Hugo’s was too. “I’m still waiting to find out. They were scattered over several hospitals. Nathan stayed out there to be with them. To liaise, and make sure they don’t feel forgotten.” He cleared his throat. “The original plan was that I’d bring them here. They’re all British, but have been away for long enough that acclimatising might take time, especially with what they’ve been through. But now that I’m here, I’m not sure that would have been right for them. Seeing the reality of where they’d come from makes me think that even with social services support, plunging them into a school environment would be too much, too soon.”
“Even somewhere like Glynn Harber?”
Hugo nodded. “They’ll need time to get over what they’ve been through. Space to do that with no pressure. Somewhere just to be. To grieve. To have some peace to get over…. I don’t have another word for it. They’ve been through hell.”
“And that’s what made you decide to stop…?” Charles wasn’t sure how to describe the steps involved in the ordination process. “Going for the whole holy-roller title?”
Hugo let out a small huff, close to laughter, but not quite. “No. I was already preparing to stop. Already had all the important conversations. Didn’t want this sabbatical, to be honest, but it’s part of the process. My leaving officially won’t be formalised until September, but I think my faith would have to be pretty weak if one event—one awful, tragic, pointless event—shook it. I don’t lack faith,” he said with much more conviction. “I can still be practically useful.” He glanced around the room again, and maybe Charles was mistaken, but he looked a touch less bruised. “Like here,” he said, and yes, that came out firmer. “I could do a lot more here.”
“You could. Easily.” Charles surveyed the room too. “It could be a great place if it was… comfier maybe?” He pictured the thinking corner in his own classroom that was far from the grim and silent naughty step that Miss Godawful had approved of at his last job. The corner Ruth had in her classroom was so much better—a soft place to feel safe while dealing with big feelings. This room, on the other hand, was all sharp angles and corners, nothing soft-edged about it.
“How do you mean, comfier?” Hugo asked.
“Welcoming, so that coming in here to talk wouldn’t feel so formal.” He thought about what was on his trolley in the hallway. “Bean bag seats! Kids love something squishy.” And hadn’t there been a little sofa in the back of that storage closet? “I found a load of rolls of paper too. You know, the huge ones for display boards?” He stood up, his hands on his hips, planning. “Can the little ones make a display for you? Brighten the place up? Oh! What about if we used one of the rolls of paper to make a huge map? It could copy the High Tor challenge.”
He tapped his lips with a finger, thinking, seeing the landscape they’d viewed at the pub, land spilling away towards those two tors in the distance. “It could start outside in the hallway. Get the children in the middle years to help map the same path the challenge students will follow, ending in here.”
He faced a bare wall, but what he saw was High Tor, towering, the green of the moorland, the grey of all that rough granite, and soft white puffballs of…. “Sheep,” he said, turning to find Hugo right beside him. “It would need lots of sheep too. We could get every year group involved, and then they’d all see this room as theirs too.” He frowned, wondering if he’d found enough paper to do it justice. “What are the chances of you having a tape measure in your pocket?”
“Pretty high.” Hugo dug deep and handed one over.
“Amazing,” Charles started to measure, grinning as he spoke measurements into his phone.
Hugo followed him out into the hall, Charles still measuring and recording.
“Thank you,” he finally said when Charles was done.
“For what?”
“For listening.” Hugo glanced away. “Now, and earlier this morning, when I said about not knowing what I’m doing when it comes to….”
He can’t make himself say the word sex.
A small voice whispered something Charles wanted to ignore, but couldn’t.
If he can’t even say it, he probably isn’t ready to have it.
Hugo ran a hand through his hair and confirmed that. “I still can’t actually believe that we….”
“But you liked it?” Charles asked. “So you should,” he said when Hugo nodded. “It’s natural. Purely physical. What’s not to like about finding out how tab A fits into slot B with an expert?” He mimed pulling on latex gloves, and wiggled his fingers, worth a bit of playacting to prod Hugo’s smile back into making an appearance.
“I liked it all,” Hugo admitted.
Charles would’ve preened, if he’d had feathers, only that small voice wouldn’t be silenced. “But what if Luke hadn’t interrupted? Would you have finished what we started? Had sex instead of stopping?”
Hugo couldn’t seem to decide between nodding or shaking his head. He settled on shrugging.
“Was it too fast for you?”
Hugo did nod then. “Not because I think it’s wrong, Charles. But because I’m a little bit worried.”
“About what?”
“About a few things.” He let out a long breath. “Like how right it felt with you.” Hugo met his gaze and held it, nothing shadowed now about his eyes, which were clear and steady. “But also that I’m not going to match up.”
“Match up?” Charles asked, baffled, about to ask, “Who to?” when Hugo interrupted, speaking fast, as if Charles might stop him.
“You know exactly what you’re doing. I don’t. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to. I… I want to be as good for you as you have been to me. For me.” He let out a sound caught somewhere between pain and laughter. “You’re unbelievably sweet and kind and caring.I keep thinking I’ll wake up, and find out I’ve dreamed you. It’s been weeks, but every morning is like finding there’s an angel in the next room.”
They stood in an empty corridor, the rest of the school silent, but Charles heard what Hugo had called him echo along with a quickening sound of thumping. He checked over his shoulder before realising that sound came from inside him.
He rubbed his chest and said, “I’m far from an angel.” Then he made an offer that hadn’t ever been part of his vocab. “But we can go slower.” He watched Hugo take a half step towards him before hesitating. Then he saw the moment Hugo committed, snagging his hand and tugging him closer.
“Yes,” Hugo said, their hands linked together. “Slower. But still moving forwards.”
Relief struck like a wave, the swell of it lifting Charles.
He had weeks left with Hugo to take it slow. To touch him, and teach him, and make learning to love so good for him.
But like the highest waves, it came with a sharp drop.
He only had weeks left to do more of this.
Maybe that showed on his face before he looked down.
Hugo caught his chin, lifting it. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” Charles gazed into a face that he found he couldn’t lie to. “Just having a stupid moment.”
“Stupid?” Hugo asked like that surprised him. “Impossible.” He shook his head, his mouth close enough that Charles felt him say words he hadn’t heard even once during his own schooldays. He wasn’t sure what was best—the kiss Hugo gave him, or hearing what Hugo said first.
“Charles Heppel, you are brilliant.”