Chapter Text
The called the recruits in his program hounds. The implications of that make Amita’s lip curl when she thinks about it too long, so she doesn’t, focusing instead on distracting Charlie from the sorrow that’s started to eat at his hollowing cheeks and deepening eye sockets. He sleeps too much and yet it’s never enough, and he only eats what Amita and his father can force down his throat.
Don hasn’t stopped by the house for longer than a few minutes in weeks. He’s still angry, unable to reconcile his brother’s actions with the trust he puts in the system he’s sworn to uphold. Amita figures it’s a hazard of dedication— she’s met more than one scientist applying more faith than reason to their theories, and she’s watched Charlie tear them all down.
He won’t do that to Don, though, because Charlie knows he can be cruel, and he knows he won’t be able to keep his head; neither of them will, because they’re more alike than they aren’t (more alike than Don will ever know), and for all that Don pretends at a stiff upper lip, he’s just as bad as Charlie when it comes to emotional outbursts. So, Charlie lets him be, sinking further and further into the safety of his own misery as spends more time in bed than at his chalkboards, not quite asleep, but certainly not awake, either.
Unless, of course, Amita is home. Which she is, usually, having drawn away from the FBI in favor of classes and Charlie.
Amita forces him to play the teacher again as Larry furtively fills out paperwork in Charlie’s name and has him officially put on sabbatical, demanding lessons in sleight-of-hand and pickpocketing and whatever else she can remember him mentioning until he drags himself out of bed and obeys. He teaches her German, claiming it to be his best language, but sometimes, now, when they’re alone in the kitchen of curled up on a blanket under the old oak tree in the backyard, he whispers to her in French, Italian, even Russian, and even if Amita has a just-barely high school level grasp of only one of those languages, it isn’t hard for her to guess what he’s saying.
“I never thought I’d find someone like you,” he tells her one night, his face hidden by the wild mane of overgrown curls he’s developed in the month and change he’s been in seclusion. “I never thought I’d find someone who could— who could bear it.”
“You say it like you’re a burden,” she says, squeezing her fingers where they’re tangled with his. “You’re not. Not to me.”
Charlie makes a face like he doesn’t believe her.
“It’s true,” she insists, rolling onto her side. “You’re… challenging, sometimes, but that’s not a bad thing. Anybody can be a challenge.”
Charlie swallows, bringing their entwined fingers to his lips.
“I know I come with a lot of baggage,” he murmurs, breath hot where it ghosts across her knuckles. “And I know— I know I haven’t been good company, lately—”
“If you’re about to offer me a way out, I’m going to punch you,” Amita says, pulling her hand away. “You mean more to me than a shady government project and a few weeks of melancholy, Charlie— you’re mine. Do you understand?”
There are words Amita thinks, but doesn’t use. Charlie would scoff at words like soulmate or the one, and anyway, Amita can’t exactly provide him with an algorithm that proves it. Even his own work couldn’t prove her theory of them— not yet, anyway.
Scooching forward, she tucks his head under her chin.
“The math works,” she says instead of the words she has rattling around inside her head. “You and I, we work, just as we are. And we wouldn’t be the way we are if all the things that happened before we met didn’t happen.” She presses a kiss to his hair, his hand warm where it comes to rest on his hip. “I am angry at the things they made you do, Charlie, but never, ever think I love you in spite of it. I’m here for you, Charlie— all of you, good or bad.”
Charlie sighs.
“I don’t deserve you,” he tells her, as if he hasn’t heard a word she’s said. “I have no idea why you love me.”
Amita snorts.
“Then maybe you should get back to your cognitive theory and figure it out,” she says. “Since it seems pretty obvious, to me.”
Charlie groans but doesn’t argue, nose pressed into the hollow of her collarbone. For a minute, they’re silent, nothing but the sounds of the LA evening to fill the air.
“I miss Don,” he says finally, his voice small.
Amita rubs her thumb across the soft skin behind his ear.
“I know, Charlie,” she says. “I know.”
*.*
Charlie disappears for a weekend. He lies through his teeth to his father about some conference up in Seattle, but in private, he tells Amita he’s meeting with an old contact, alone.
Friday, Saturday, and then Sunday pass before Charlie shows up again in the awful, early hours of Monday morning. Amita, who hasn’t slept since he’d pulled out of the driveway Friday afternoon, is waiting for him when he kicks off his jeans and settles into bed beside her, reaching over her head to flick on the lamp on her side of the bed.
“These are yours,” he says, holding out an unmarked manilla envelope. “Three sets of each.”
Amita can feel the hesitance in Charlie’s frame as he watches her open it, tilting it so its contents fall into her hands.
Three passports, three social securities, three driver licenses, and three birth certificates, all with the pictures she’d handed Charlie a week after he showed her the contents of the lockbox. One passport— the German one— even has a permanent resident card to go with it, expired visas stamped into the pages of the red booklet to make it all seem perfectly legal.
He’s nervous of her reaction; of course he is. It’s one thing to know your boyfriend has fraudulent documents hidden in the bottom of his closet— it’s another thing entirely to know that he’s made you fraudulent documents to match, even if she did give him permission.
She ignores the sudden bottomless nature of her stomach and leans into him instead, reaching for the social security cards still attached to the perforated half-sheet they all start out in and bringing them into the light.
“‘Amber Chatterjee,’ ‘Aabha Kaur,’ ‘Harshleen Lanka-Stein.’” Amita looks up. “You have a passport that says Stein too, don’t you?”
Charlie goes pink.
“I thought it would be easier, if we ever had to go,” he says, sheepish. “It wouldn’t be safe to travel together if something came up, but… people treat you differently when you’re married.”
He’s worried he’s overstepped, that he’s being presumptuous, tying them together like that. Amita doesn’t mind, though— the warm tingle that develops in her chest as she looks at the German passport indicates quite the opposite, actually.
She leans up to kiss him. He lets her, mouth soft when he presses back.
“Do you think we’ll need to go?” she asks when she pulls away, because she needs to know. “Do you think we have something to worry about?”
“No.” Charlie smiles reassuringly. “But it’s best to prepare for the worst, right?”
Amita is getting the feeling that the phrase is something of a mantra for Charlie. It isn’t the worst she’s ever heard.
“You should put these with the others,” she says, keeping her body tight against his side as she collects the documents and slips them back into their folder. “And get ready for bed.”
Charlie sighs, relief making his body go lax and heavy against hers.
“I missed you,” he murmurs, wrapping an arm around her middle.
“I missed you too,” she says. “And I’d like to be able to make up for the last three days of an empty bed, so you should really go shower, at least.”
She can feel Charlie grin against her elbow.
“Five minutes,” he promises, pressing another kiss to her shoulder before rolling off the bed.
“And not a minute more.”
Charlie gives her a dramatic bow, a silly grin on his face as he scoops up a clean towel from the pile of clean laundry she hasn’t put away yet and tosses it over his shoulder.
“As the lady commands.”
There’s a rare bounce in his step as swans out of the bedroom, somehow beautiful in ratty boxer shorts and the faded t-shirt he’s probably been wearing since he left on Friday.
Amita didn’t know it was possible to love someone this much.