Work Text:
Charles is sleeping when hands tickle at his spine, tracing the words embellished there. The other books from the other shelves stir, sensing the air shift with the movement of a curious little master.
Time has left the library here untouched, and the only way to know it has passed at all is to judge by the comings and goings of people. The boy lifting Charles from the shelf is the spitting image of the young man that had placed him on that very spot. It must have been years, Charles realizes, and indeed it is, for Charles’ pages have long since yellowed, gone fragile in their ancientness.
The boy takes him beyond the library and into the world. The very air is saturated with the smell of summer, and the sunshine is glaring. The boy sits on the grass with Charles open on his lap, his fingers tracing the words of love inked on the first page.
Happy birthday, Brian, it says. From Sharon 5/27/1937
It’s beautiful penmanship, Charles has heard. Books fundamentally aren’t meant to be tattooed with dedications to lovers, but he takes pride in it. If it makes him sentimental, so be it. He can still remember the press of Sharon’s affection from the tip of her pen flowing into him and into Brian’s hands, and it is worth any pristine condition.
The morning passes languidly as if the heat makes time wade through molasses. When the sun reaches its zenith, the boy simply picks him up and carries him back indoors, still reading. They pass through halls that Charles can still remember from his time with Brian. He wonders if his old owner is still about, or if he had perished with time as all living things do.
They step into a study, and the boy settles Charles on the large antique desk. It is cooler here and much dimmer, so Charles doesn’t recognize the bookmark right away.
Is that you, old friend? It inquires. The window is opened, and Charles’ pages flutter as a breeze comes into the room, swirling the dust motes made visible by sunlight.
That depends on whom I am speaking to, Charles replies, cheeky. Or had I been not memorable enough for you to remember?
It is you, the bookmark exclaims. How long it has been!
For you, perhaps, Charles says primly. I have been in the library all this time. Time has been keen not to impress any more readers upon me.
Pity, his companion says. He is still as sleek as Charles remembers, although the sheen of his metal has dulled somewhat. His red tassel has also faded into a rose color. It makes him look…loved. Used. The envy that fills Charles shames him. The excitement of being with the bookmark, with Erik again, is elating.
He only needs to wait an hour more before the boy tires of reading and his stomach grumbles. He keeps Charles open on the desk where he left off, probably intending to read again after lunch. Erik slips out from the desk organizer to where Charles is quivering with anticipation.
Charles? The bookmark asks cautiously, sliding other Charles’ paper with familiar ease. It’s like something in Charles snaps—his cover shuts close around Erik, trapping him effectively in Charles’ hold.
I’m so sorry! Charles frantically whispers. I don’t know what came over myself.
Hush, Erik says, his metal pulsing soothingly in him. It’s alright.
Another breeze comes in through the window, dancing into the corners of the room. It passes by Charles, but he keeps his pages stiff against its curious fingers. Erik is blanketed and sheathed inside him completely. When he moves, Charles can feel every shift against his paper.
You’re as tight as I remember, Erik muses, revelling in the press of Charles’ pages and how the book shivers as he slides back and forth across the text, creeping deeper and deeper into the binding and Charles’ core.
Charles almost confesses, I thought of you as I slept. For all that he conveys stories to readers, it is too difficult a thought to articulate. Instead he says, I’m glad to have met you again.
Erik pauses mid-swipe. His tassel, which had been dangling outside, caresses the edges of Charles’ pages soothingly. I have never met a book quite like you, old friend.
No doubt Erik’s life had been filled with other books. Paperbacks, hardcovers, journals. Charles is only one of many. It is quite unlike the grand romance stories are made of, but Erik is by his very function inclined to serve one partner after the other.
And I have never met any other bookmark like you, Charles tells him, painfully vulnerable. Erik hushes him again, the slide of his metal against his paper hypnotic and soothing.
The boy returns just as Charles has enough composure to return to his original position, although Erik has decided not to slip back to his place at the desk, instead lying indolently over one corner, keeping Charles’ paper from being picked up by the breeze. The boy wonders at Erik’s presence but dismisses him with the flippant attention of youth, continuing where he left off. He makes it halfway through the book before he has to retire to bed, but he keeps Charles on the side table, his progress marked by Erik tucked carefully into Charles’ pages.
Charles expects the boy to return him to the library once he’s finished the story a few days later, but the boy keeps him at his drawer to peruse at for bed even years after, reading and re-reading until Charles’ pages start to wear even more from use, the corners of his soft cover slightly frayed and no longer quite so straight. Erik is his constant companion, to his immense joy.
They are together long enough that they watch their boy become a man. They leave the mansion with him when he crosses the Atlantic to study, and they are with him when he returns.
They are there when the man falls in love and says it with his mind and with his hands, quiet and intimate when the stars are keeping watch from the window. They are there to help him soothe his lover when night terrors attack him, Charles’ story about a boy named Wart a lightness to cling to and a lesson to learn.
There is a void in their lives where they stay on the side table, untouched and unread for a very long time. The man who had read Charles’ story before bedtime is gone; in its place is a creature of crippling rage and melancholy. He stays like that for ten years.
Then there are children in the halls. People living in the mansion. Their owner becomes alive again, and his hands are a comfort to them as their unchanging words are a comfort to him. Erik thinks of Charles’ words as his too. Their owner never uses Erik without Charles and Charles without Erik, and that is the way it should be.
One day, the man plucks Erik out of his place and places him alone on the side table. With hands as steady as the day he picked Charles out of the shelf, he inks his own words right beneath Sharon’s dedication. Charles cannot read his own skin, but he can glean from the man’s touch that he is sad, and lonely, but he is also resigned. He slides Charles shut with a definite sound, and Charles and Erik understand at once that this will be the last that they will see each other.
I will miss you, my friend, Charles simply says.
And I you, Erik replies.
Charles is given as a gift to someone who is just as sad and lonely as their owner. He is even more fragile than he ever was, and his spine breaks in the middle of a reading despite how gentle his new owner’s handling is. The time comes when his new owner leaves him too, and it is only years after, in a run-down bookshop that sells pre-owned books that he finally finds out what the dedication under Sharon’s reads.
It says, I hope you find peace inside you. Please come home.