Work Text:
One:
Charlie desperately needs more things to say when Larry breaks down, six days after his return, and demands accountability for a crime Charlie hadn't known he'd committed until then. “You were gone for so long, Charles.”
They were supposed to be relaxing before the new school year, before an onslaught of terrifying freshmen in Larry's office, before Charlie formally asserts the title of postdoc.
They should be happy, maybe a bit worried about the coming year. They should be playing chess and Larry should not be crying. Larry should be winning by now.
But it isn't, and they aren't.
Two:
Charlie has a plan. Charlie is determined to make it up to Larry, no matter how long it takes and no matter how much Larry insists that Charlie doesn't owe him anything, that his admission was merely a moment of emotional weakness.
Charlie takes Larry back to MIT over their first break of the term, taking his mountains of work right with him in his suitcase. He can't afford a vacation, not according to his boss, but Larry can.
Charlie spends every minute not spent working telling Larry about every second of the five years Larry missed, showing him the secret hideaways and favourite classrooms and the very best spot for people watching on the rooftops.
On the flight back, Larry reminds Charlie that he doesn't owe him a thing. Charlie shrugs. “I do. I can't explain it all, but fixing this seems more essential to me than I think it does to you. I need to eradicate that look on your face when you first saw me in the airport out of my mind. It's so incredibly selfish to say, but I want to be stripped of your suffering, and this is the only way I know how.”
Three:
That's the first of many tiny but grand gestures on Charlie's part.
Charlie arranges for half of his old professors to come in and speak at a graduate seminar over the coming years, sitting with Larry and whispering tales about each one of them through half the seminar. At the end of each seminar, he introduces himself as Larry's student always.
He is attentive to Larry even in his own distraction, even when other people should be caring over -him-. It is so contrary to his nature to nurse another human, but he does it, as though his discomfort in the action can erase his guilt.
Larry asks him one day what it would take Charlie to consider himself forgiven, what it would take for Charlie to put his fears and guilt to rest.
Charlie hasn't considered the end point in their interactions before then, in his own self-inflicted punishment. Somehow though, he knows exactly what he wants to say now. “It'd be proper to say that I'll give up when you never have to fear that I wont be here for you. The honest thing to say is that I'll give up when I never have to fear your absence again, when I never have to fear letting myself let you go again.” Charlie says.
Larry almost understands some of it, a self-imposed prison for Charlie's own good. He doesn't say a word, but Charlie is offered assistant professor a week later, and knows what Larry said anyways.