Archive of Our Own

The issue was that the whole thing had started in the animation boom of the early 2000s, when small studios had been popping up everywhere, trying their luck, and—crucially for Charles, Erik, and all the rest—hiring whatever new, fresh talent they could get cheap. They'd done six seasons of Greenkeep and kept track of each other, some of the crew, some of the creative team, but no one really paid attention to the corporate shenanigans of it all and no one really noticed the CW acquiring the rights to Greenkeep until—

Anyway, that's how they ended up finding out via Twitter.

Such was the life of actors that once you reached a certain level of fame, you became more or less itinerant. Charles was actually pretty lucky; most couples that both worked in the film industry only saw each other half, a third, of the year. Charles traveled as much as any successful actor, but Erik's work was mostly in LA, where the recording studios were. Whenever he was home, Charles could count on waking up to Erik cursing as he tried out increasingly new and unnerving omelet toppings and falling asleep to Erik's soft telepathic mumbling, his mental version of snoring. That wasn't to say that there weren't near misses, when Erik was on Jimmy Fallon in New York and Charles would be arriving home and then jetting off to Tokyo to his next on-location shoot before he got back, but far fewer than, say, Sean and Leah, who was a stunt coordinator and had once gone four months without being in the same city as Sean.

That September, Charles had been in Vancouver, doing principal photography on a le Carré-esque slow spy thriller featuring a retired and disabled intelligence agent whose brilliant mind was nevertheless the only asset that could unravel a financial conspiracy. Raven had told him she hadn't been able to get more than twenty pages into the script. Hank had fumbled so much when trying to compliment it that Charles suspected he hadn't even tried to read it. Erik had liked it, but even he'd admitted that it probably wasn't going to be pulling a lot of the traditional spy flick fans. But Charles had been excited; the director had been the one who'd helped him to his Oscar, trying her hand with this outing at more experimental cinema, and he thought it was a good bridge to the explosions-special-effects-hundred-million-budget side of the film industry, which he at least wanted to try out before deciding it wasn't for him.

Twenty-four grueling days on set, and, unusually, he'd had to memorize all his lines in advance; his character's four days in a "Seattle" hotel room had been shot in as close to real time as they could get for auteur-ish reasons. The upshot of it was that when he got in to LAX on the red-eye flight, he was swaying with exhaustion, and dealt with the hassle of calling an accessible Uber instead of bothering to drive home himself. When he got in, it was past one, and Erik was dreaming a strange anxious dream about having to read sides for his next movie in front of potential producers. Charles all but fell into bed next to him and stayed awake just long enough to guide Erik's dream into pleasanter territory—back on the Gumbo Limbo Trail in the Everglades that they'd visited on their honeymoon, a hazy memory of Charles joking about the mosquitos being attracted to Erik's sweet mushy core—before diving headlong into sleep himself.

He woke up to Erik shaking him. "Stffhhssh," Charles told him. "'S not e'en mornmm."

"It's seven-forty-five," Erik said, as if that wasn't a brutal and absurd time to be up when you didn't have filming to do.

"Not gettin' up till I smell m'omelet," Charles told him crossly.

"You're a slug," Erik said mercilessly. "Come on, get up and I'll give you a handjob, although you're not going to want it in a second."

In spite of himself, Charles felt his heart rate quickening and wakefulness encroaching on his drowsy drifting. "That's dirty pool," he said, but he obligingly craned his head up and squinted at Erik. Weak and early sun was reaching its fingers through the blinds, but the room was still dark. Erik was curled toward him, his phone lit up in his hand. "What, what, I'm awake. Is that—Twitter?"

"I have a Twitter alert set up for when Greenkeep trends," Erik said impatiently.

"Why?" Charles asked, and then, "Wait, Greenkeep?"

Erik thrust his phone into Charles's hands. Charles squinted until the glare of the phone resolved into words.

The CW @TheCW
The CW is proud to announce the rumors are true! #Greenkeep will be coming back in a live-action format soon!

"Oh my god," Charles said. "Oh no."

"Still want that handjob?" Erik asked sardonically.

They spent a solid hour scrolling their phones next to each other in bed, reading aloud the worst speculation and sharpest zingers in increasing tones of disbelief. Charles's assistant, a sweet but nervous girl named Jean who managed his official social media, had already sent him a very concerned email about the number of times he'd been @'ed by fans and assorted Twitter comedians seeking a response. Eventually Erik ventured out to get them each a tiny jar of the little French small-batch yogurts that he claimed were his only indulgence to his net worth (aside from their home theater, his horrible yet still somehow sexy scarves, and his purple Audi) and crawled right back into bed to continue observing the ruckus. "Anything new?" he asked, before realizing he'd forgotten the spoons and floating some into the bedroom.

"People have started tweeting that gif of Yula saying, 'Who would be that dumb,'" Charles told him. "There are about a hundred versions already. Oh, this one's good. 'You know what would be actually less creepy as live action? Caillou. Instead they're going to give Cole Sprouse a squirrel tail.' And they've photoshopped a little thing."

Erik leaned his head against Charles's shoulder to study it. "Send that to Darwin."

"No, you know he finds human-animal hybrids creepy already," Charles scolded. "Oh, this one's fun." It was a screenshot of a joke tweet from a few years ago, predicting increasingly dubious live action reboots of various franchises each year. The last one, of course, was Greenkeep.

A spoon laden with yogurt floated to his mouth and Charles let himself be fed obligingly. The hand not holding his phone was busy rubbing at his temples. "Oh, God, I've got an email from Emma."

"That should not be touched with a ten-foot pole until you're fed, showered, dressed, and ready for battle," Erik advised sagely. He snorted at a particularly acerbic tweet. "You think any of these kids are looking for writing work?"

"Ugh." Charles paused at a gif of himself from an interview he'd given during the press tour for Obscura, a movie that had fired its original director during post-production and gone through so many re-cuts he and his co-stars had ended up disowning it. In this shot, he was grimacing unattractively; a running joke on the internet for a while had been that he'd hated the movie so much that not even his Oscar-winning skills could disguise it. The gif was attached to a tweet reading, 'when the cw makes Charles promote the reboot.' "Do you think they'll make us endorse it?"

"God, who can remember what was in our contracts, it was so long ago. Probably, though." With an extra note of horror, Erik added, "What if they make us do a photoshoot with the new actors where we're both wearing the costumes?"

The live-action reboot of Spongebob a few years back had made the original voice actors do that. Charles collapsed back onto his pillows, despairing. "God, I can't stop imagining it. Fuck, I could really use that handjob."

Erik telekinetically fed him another mouthful of yogurt. "Eat up," he said darkly. "You'll need the strength."

"You don't have to endorse it," Moira said in her most soothing tones.

"But you are not allowed to criticize, denounce, poke fun at, or in any other way undermine it," Emma followed up in her most threatening register. They were a good team, Charles thought glumly. Good agent, bad publicist. "I have drafted sample tweets for you to send informing the fans that you found out about it with the rest of them and hope the new show does justice to these beloved characters. If you cannot restrain yourself from not commenting beyond these statements, positive feedback only. I know you don't act anymore," she said to Erik, "and you won an Oscar," she said to Charles, "but that doesn't mean it's not still important to seem like respectful team players at this stage in your careers. Nod if you understand."

Charles nodded. Erik tilted his head, which Emma seemed to think was good enough. She'd forgiven him, mostly, for ditching her carefully strategized plan on how to publicly announce their relationship and engagement by blurting out the truth at a con two and a half years ago, but she had also put the fear of Frost into Erik and knew he would do as she said, no matter what posturing he had to do to maintain his dignity. Charles, who had always had much more sense, had not needed the reminder.

So they sent the tweets, and no matter what was said in the Greenkeep actors' group chat, for most of them it faded from attention after a while, the way that all finished projects did in the rapid current of Hollywood. Charles had a blissful few weeks in LA meeting with a few people about future projects in the works, which meant largely leisurely days where he and Erik could usually steal a few hours for themselves whenever the urge took them, investigating some strange new combination brunch place/plant nursery in baseball caps, and one weekend afternoon driving up to Sequoia National Park just as the leaves took on the color of fire. Erik, who'd grown up in Queens and hadn't been to a national park until he was twenty-four, had over the course of their relationship slowly acquired an appreciation for the grounding and refreshing qualities of nature. Now he spread out their down camping blanket (not the indulgence of a man with personal wealth, he insisted, but sheer practicality) under a snatch of trees off one of the paved trails and napped with his notebook on his face, which he insisted was an integral part of his creative process. Charles loved these moments more than he could say.

The next blow came while he was doing ADR for the spy movie. During a break while the director and editors were reviewing some of the new audio, he found a corner of the lounge screened by potted ferns and took a moment to check his phone. ADR sessions, where they re-recorded audio that hadn't come out quite right during the initial filming, were always strange; they reminded him of voice acting, but a few hours or days in a studio trying to match his own tone and pace exactly was also worlds apart from the heady days of Greenkeep with all his dearest friends in the booth, or a room over to feed him lines. It almost made him feel weirdly wistful, so it wasn't much of a surprise that when the Twitter notification mentioning Greenkeep popped up, he tapped without thinking about it.

The part where he had set up his own Twitter alert to inform him when Greenkeep was trending, though—that he had no excuse for.

What, Charles thought, fuming, as he waited for the call to connect, was the point of speed dial if the person you were dialing didn't bother to answer their phone? On the second try, he got through. "I know we just had sushi two nights ago," Erik was saying, because he didn't believe in salutations, "but Roimata was just telling me about this place that does sushi-curry fusion. When are you going to be done tonight? I can pick you up."

"No, you know the spicy tuna roll is already hot enough to give you indigestion, why would you add curry to it," Charles snapped. "Have you seen the Greenkeep thing?"

"What Greenkeep thing?"

"The casting calls!"

Distant typing noises and then a pause. Then Erik made a noise halfway between a snort and a choking sound. "Oh my god."

Charles held the phone away so he could make sure that the photo on his screen of a Backstage listing still said what he thought it said. J.: Lead, 22-34. J. is a mouseish character leaving his small town behind to visit the Great Library in a time of war. Humble, kind, and naive, J. will rise to become a leader in a time of great strife. Seeking an actor comfortable with heavy costuming and romantic scenes. "Erik, they're going to put a sex scene in Greenkeep!”

"You don't… know that," Erik said, but Charles could hear the half-repulsed, half-gleeful tone of a man watching something extremely destructive but also extremely funny happening.

"Erik!"

"Okay, okay." A subtle shift in the background noise, as though Erik had closed the door. "Is this a righteous neatnik freak-out or a clinical tizzy?"

Charles took diaphragmatic breaths as he tried to figure that out. It was sometimes hard for him to tell the difference between the frequent frustration of any control freak and the actual formless, withering anxiety he had medication for, but after a moment his heart slowed and he could relax his grip on the phone. "I'm okay," he said, and did more diaphragmatic breaths just in case. Erik was humming something familiar—the title music from his first project, Charles recognized after a while, an old Polish lullaby his dad had sung him. "Have you seen the Miska one yet?"

"You sure this is what you want to talk about?" Erik said, gentle openness in his voice. Charles checked once more for anxiety attack symptoms and made a reassuring noise; just because it wasn't a mental health matter didn't mean this wasn't urgent. Some more typing noises, a long pause, and then Erik cackled.

M: Supporting, 22-29. Deadly, sexy, ruthless femme fatale with an intense rivalry with the main character. The ottery demeanor of this undercover agent and resistance cell leader hides her keen tactical mind. Seeking an actor comfortable with heavy costuming and romantic scenes.

"Do not laugh," Charles hissed. "It's not funny! They made us straight!"

"If I could just—disagree—with you—on one point," Erik said, still laughing so hard the words came out more of a wheeze than speech, "it is the funniest thing that's ever happened."

Charles bit his thumb in consternation. "Erik! This is happening! These casting calls are on Backstage! It's not a hoax!"

"Hoo—okay, okay, give me a minute," Erik gasped, but then went into another gale of laughter. Charles chewed on his thumb harder, wishing very much he could still drink coffee without getting anxiety jitters like he had when he was twenty-five. "Ha, oh my god, Charles. Oh my god. Fuck. Okay, well. Maybe it's not Greenkeep? You know the CW's always shooting twenty horrible pilots at a time."

"Ottery," Charles gritted out.

"Okay, it's Miska," Erik admitted. "Fuck. Was I really giving a deadly, sexy, femme fatale impression? God, no wonder I couldn't get any more kids' animation work after Greenkeep."

"I—that's not—you didn't tell me you were having trouble finding work," Charles said, appalled, and then, "We will talk about this later, you jackass. You told me you got that creative grant from UCLA—no. This is a crisis! This is serious! We need to call Moira and Emma, we need to schedule a meeting with the CW representative, we need to make it clear that we do not condone this—"

"Oh, I think Twitter's taking care of that for us," Erik said with deep amusement. Charles's phone flashed with a new DM from Erik; apparently #NotMyGayOtter was trending. "You know, my old Gender and Sexuality Studies professor at UCLA tweeted about this? I had no idea she was a fan. I wonder if she remembers me. Okay, breathe," he said, with his uncanny near-mutant knack for sensing when Charles was about to work himself up into an anxiety attack for real. "I'll call Moira and Emma, you go back into the booth and finish up the session, okay? You've got real work to do today and I'm just doodling and pretending it's storyboards. Let me handle it, all right?"

"I—fine," Charles said reluctantly. "And if Emma wants to send a tweet ASAP, let her know she can text me, okay? I'll review it from the booth. Or she can log in to my account and send it herself, as long as it is very disapproving. Do you think she's going to want us to issue a statement? I'm probably going to be off here by four-thirty, I can swing by her office—"

"Charles," Erik said, with that same utter and open gentleness, "I told you. Let me handle it."

"How are you not livid about this," Charles said plaintively. "I thought I'd be holding you back from the brink. I thought you'd march over to Olive Ave and make a scene and get thrown out by the CW's security."

"Oh, I'm mad," Erik said. "I'm probably going to yell at some people as soon as I can get certain parties on the phone. I might even yell at Emma, in which case it was lovely being married to you and I hope that we can reunite in the world beyond. It's a total desecration of something that means a lot to both of us. I mean, a live-action reboot was already a desecration, this is… I'll think of the word eventually, and if it doesn't exist, I'll make one up. But… Charles, there might not be anything we can do about it."

"Not you," Charles said stubbornly. "You always get what you want eventually."

Erik laughed, not the manic laugh of earlier but something low and sweet and private, just for Charles. "Yes, darling. Try not to worry too much about it, okay? We'll fight this."

"Yes. Okay." Charles rolled himself back and forth a bit, to work out some of the nervous energy, like pacing. "Okay. I love you."

"I love you," Erik said. Even the first time he'd said it, even when he'd said it at their wedding, he'd sounded angry about it. Even now, when he'd just been laughing, he said it a bit too fast; always, Erik told Charles he loved him brusquely, grudgingly, like even though they'd been married for nearly a year it still didn't come naturally to him, and it grounded Charles like nothing else could and filled him, always, with infinite warmth. He hung up tentatively hopeful that it would be okay.

It was not okay.

The backlash was immediate and vociferous. There was a petition; people started a campaign to get rainbow balloons delivered to the CW's offices in Burbank. Someone even leaked the address of one of the writers developing the show, which Emma forced Charles to tweet in condemnation of. Emma, in fact, as sympathetic as she was—and she was being very sympathetic, Charles had even snapped at her on multiple occasions and still had his head and balls attached—was being an absolute dictator in terms of how much displeasure he was allowed to display. She had not let him send his very disapproving tweet. She had not let him talk to any interviewers. She had not let him sign the petition.

Moira, more helpfully, had arranged a meeting with CW execs, who had listened somewhat thoughtfully to Erik's clear demands (backed up with statistics) and Charles's friendly cajoling (also backed up with statistics), and then told them, basically, that they would not be changing anything, but if they wanted cameo roles on the show, it could be arranged for them to play wise mentor figures. In retaliation, Erik had stolen all the complimentary muffins, plus the basket, which had probably not been complimentary. Charles watched with dismay as the project trundled along, despite being beset with leaks, actors dropping out, and Erik's cutting disdain online.

"Just wait for it to flop," Raven said over brunch one day at a restaurant located in a wax museum where half the tables were taken up with wax figures of American presidents. It served surprisingly normal food, although the food was placed on a platter held by a wax waiter and rolled out to them on a remote-controlled scooter. "Why is this so important to you?"

"They'll be wearing animal ears," Charles moaned. "Why is it not important to you?"

"Charles, I was in the original Vampire Diaries. I'm immune to terrible spin-offs and reboots." Raven sipped at her mimosa and watched him with shrewd eyes. "Is this about Erik? You only ever get this weird about Erik."

"That's not true," Charles grumbled. "I also get weird about Mother."

"Oh, so this is about Mother," Raven said with faux understanding. "God, it all makes sense now. You think she might approve of the character you played being rebooted as a straight guy wearing mouse ears, and it's driving you crazy."

Charles threw a hulled strawberry at her. "Stop it, or I'll get even more neurotic about this." But it was about Erik, a little. Strangely, and annoyingly, Erik wasn't as angry as Charles expected him to be. Oh, he was always ready with a quick acerbic retort deriding the intelligence, breeding, and political motives of everyone at the CW, but he was entering a more hectic phase on his third project, and the travesty of the reboot seemed to be far from his mind. It made Charles feel itchy; even though Erik was always willing to sit down and listen to Charles fuming about the latest disrespect, even though he was always ready with empathy and complaints of his own, it felt…

It made Charles feel as though he was being irrational about this. Erik had never suggested it, never implied it, but Charles was not used to being more annoyed about something than Erik, and it left him irritable and touchy. "Don't you think it's weird, though? That I'm more bothered by this than he is?"

"No," Raven said. "It doesn't strike me as weird at all that you've totally projected your own issues onto something bad but still not exactly unusual and you've mistaken that for a completely objective reaction."

"Oh, what do you know," Charles said. "You brought me to a place one step removed from a horror movie premise for brunch."

Maybe the reason it was bothering him so much because he'd been in a lull the past few months. Not the post-Oscar curse, he reassured himself when his thoughts turned maudlin as he struggled with a meal subscription box on those nights Erik was working late at the studio. He'd had two solid, critically acclaimed hits after his win—he seemed to have beaten the slump that affected most Oscar winners. It was just… a brief period of low activity in a career, a natural trough in the ebb and flow of any actor's life. Two projects had fallen through; two more that he was excited about weren't going to be ready to start production for over a year at least. The spy film's post-production had dragged out longer than anyone had expected, and he wasn't due to start press for another month or so.

And sometimes, when he hadn't set foot on a film set for months, he was tempted to just—go for it. Screw his contract, screw the CW, screw the homophobia that had kept him and Erik keeping each other secret for so long, screw the jackass at the convention who'd spurred their coming-out, screw his career and all the little compromises he had to make to be a part of a system that chewed up young and idealistic hopefuls and spat them out with relish. Who cared if he was unemployable if he made a stink about this? Who cared if his position, even with the Oscar, was still precarious, if he was risking fading into obscurity after a few stand-out years like so many other actors? He wasn't acting anyway, so who cared?

"You would," Emma said during their monthly strategy session at a very pricey, very discreet steakhouse.

Charles stabbed at his salad. "Erik says the same thing," he admitted. "'You love acting, it means more to you than it did to any of us, that's why you fought so hard to get here, you'd regret it if you threw it all away,' blah blah blah."

"Very occasionally, the man has a good point."

"I hate this," Charles groused.

"I know this is important to you, honey," she said, after downing two Manhattans in a row (Charles had known Emma long enough to understand she had to be drunk in order to display genuine kindness and warmth), "but the rules are different in the Big Leagues. You're gay in Hollywood and disabled in Hollywood and you're trying to do big projects. People have to have confidence that if they do something you don't like, you won't get on Twitter and lambast them."

"This isn't just something I don't like. This is—" Charles paused, trying to figure out what he wanted to say. His marriage? His love story? He thought of the fan he'd met at the ten-year meet-and-greet who'd given him a mouse that she'd crocheted herself, Jess's brown cloak and red scarf replaced with rainbow stripes. He thought of all the framed Jess-and-Miska fanart that Erik had had printed and hung on the east wall of the lounge. "Emma, it's not just me. It's so important, to so many people."

"Charles," Emma said gently, loose enough after her third cocktail to even condescend to gentleness, "Jess and Miska are not you and Erik. And just because you married Miska's actor, it doesn't mean that in the IP, it's incontrovertible that Jess and Miska are gay and in love. They never kissed on-screen. They never even held hands. And if you make this the hill you die on, it will be the end of your career."

She patted his hand awkwardly. Sometimes Emma reminded him of Erik, of the jagged way he'd had to learn affection outside of bed, of the way he still blurted out I love you like he might chicken out at any moment. They both had spent too much time being invulnerable that their sharp edges had started to grow inward. Charles hoped devoutly that Emma had someone to keep her soft. "It won't have been a bad career. First paraplegic actor to win an Oscar. But there won't be any more Oscars, hon."

Charles threw back his own brandy-spiked espresso dispiritedly. "You let Erik complain about it," he said, without much hope.

"He's got creative control of his own projects, he has different rules to play by. Half the men in this town have been gay since the movies first came to Cali, but the actors they've always kept in the closet. The times, they are a-changing, but they're not done changing yet." Charles abruptly remembered that Emma was much older than she looked; part of her mutation, that she was fifty-two and still looked twenty-five. Raven, the bitch, had a similar genetic quirk. "Let this one go, Charles. Save it for the retirement tell-all. You still have things to do for now."

Charles sighed and, instead of responding, pushed his plate across the table to let Emma finish off the rest of his fries. He watched her for a while before he said, "Why didn't you ever go into acting, Emma? You've got the looks for it."

"I hate bullshit," Emma said, and when Charles snorted into his drink, he thought he almost caught her smiling.

There were press tours, there were script leaks, and there was their belated anniversary dinner, where Erik had somehow managed to get them into Griffith Observatory on a weeknight, when it was just them and about two staff members (not an indulgence made possible by money, Erik insisted, one of his college friends was the assistant director and was willing to offer her employees overtime for a romantic evening in exchange for Daniel Craig's autograph). To his disgruntlement, Charles found out that Emma and Erik had been right. When he had work to do again, it became easier, though not easy, to let the whole matter of the Greenkeep reboot fade into a prickling everyday annoyance at the back of his head.

In December, when the sky was still pink and the water was still warm but tinsel had started to creep down the trunks of the palms downtown, Erik tried to buy out the rights to Greenkeep, which was an indulgence of his personal wealth; and which his "quaint little production company," as the CW rep called Yossele Studio, couldn't afford even if it doubled its earnings with this next project. Charles got back from an interview about the spy movie for a magazine in time to hear Erik inform her, quite pleasantly, that nothing she could do would save this show from disaster and that he wished her all the best in her job search.

After she stormed out, Erik came into the kitchen where Charles had put the kettle on. "Well," he said cheerfully, "I'm going to be using her name for something stupid in my next project."

Charles poured him a cup of darjeeling and, while he waited for his own to cool, wheeled around the kitchen island to bump his head into Erik's side with wordless affection. Erik ran his long fingers through Charles's hair as he sipped his tea, then sat unceremoniously in Charles's lap with his chin resting on the crown of his head. "Sorry," he said, after Charles was done squawking about how he couldn't get to his tea like this. "I did try."

Charles pressed his forehead into Erik's collarbone and didn't say anything. Erik already knew.

Charles had stopped celebrating Christmas soon after he and Erik had gotten serious—Raven, sometimes overzealous in her support, called him to wish him a happy holidays on the first and last day of Hanukkah and New Year's Eve, now—besides the annual perfunctory card to his mother. Erik had four nieces who, despite their mother's regular explanations that Hanukkah was different from Christmas, demanded gifts on Hanukkah that he was only too happy to provide, but Hanukkah had come early in the month this year. December, for them, was mainly the month of Oscar screeners. Secretly, Charles liked Oscar screener season best anyway: movie marathons with Erik next to him providing a constant stream of sarcastic commentary, take-out or an ambitious cooking project by Erik at night, sharing a blanket and hot cocoa even though it was fifty-five degrees outside. The weeks where they managed to get away to some scenic destination together, the moments when he got in after days or weeks away and could hear the murmur of Erik's dreaming from the hall, those were all perfect, those were all more happiness than he could've possibly imagined when he'd walked onto his first voice acting job. But this, knowing that at the end of every year would be a few precious days of just them, in their home, with a stack of movies to watch, and it was like they were dating again, it was date night and lazy afternoons marathoning whatever terrible horror movie franchise and bingeing Netflix late into the night combined… on sentimental days, Charles believed he could handle anything the year threw at him as long as he knew there was Oscar screener season at the end of it.

The night it ended, Erik attempted steak au poivre—sauce a little gritty and they'd had to put out the fire with a pan lid, but otherwise delicious—and they'd pushed back the living room sofa and chairs and brought the fancy popcorn machine out of the home theater. (Not using the home theater to watch their stacks of movies was definitely an indulgent waste of their riches, Charles insisted, and Erik agreed but pointed out that they couldn't make a nest on the floor of the home theater, and also the living room had a fireplace and Charles had been saying they should do s'mores in the fireplace for years and tonight might finally be the night. They both knew tonight was not going to be the night.) They watched a dark musical comedy about a baker and a drug dealer swapping lives that Charles thought could've been a short but whose music Erik enjoyed, and then halfway through an Oscar-bait Spanish-American War drama, Charles sat up, jarring Erik out of their blanket nest on the floor, and said, "That's him! That's the Jess actor!"

Erik, who'd been blinking sleepily on Charles's shoulder, grunted and squinted at the TV. "What? Fuck. What? Whose actor?"

"That's the actor playing Jess on Greenkeep!"

Erik frowned. "You played Jess on Greenkeep."

"That's the actor," Charles said with exaggerated slowness, "who the CW hired to play Jess for the Greenkeep reboot." He tried to remember to be charitable; Erik was not at his sharpest when he was half-asleep, which was normally adorable, but honestly, what else could he have possibly meant?

"You woke me up for that? You almost gave me a heart attack, you jackass."

"Maybe if you ate fewer saturated fats like the doctor said, you wouldn't have to worry about that," Charles snapped. On screen, the actor in question was playing the desperate son of an American soldier who'd left his farm behind to go to war and affecting a truly horrible Wild West accent. Charles manfully resisted the urge to throw popcorn at him. "Oh, look at that, he's not even trying to cry. He just raises his face to the light and waits for the crew to drip glycerin down his face."

"The CW, of course, is famously known for the rigorous theatrical standards it holds its actors to. The casting directors are absolutely not looking for high-cheekboned twentysomethings who know how to artfully flatter themselves in poor lighting," Erik said, resettling himself on Charles's shoulder.

Charles sighed and let his posture sink from righteous indignation to resigned ire. "Ugh, you're right, I know you're right. I'm still not going to nominate this movie for anything."

Erik kissed the tender skin under his ear. "You can throw popcorn, love, I know you want to."

Charles pelted the screen a bit, but the fun had gone out of it. They watched the boy's father sweat over a musket sight in a battle scene that had gone a bit too heavy with the orange filter. "Sorry," Charles said abruptly during a horse chase. "I know I'm being—insane about this."

"You're not," Erik said. "You're being frustrating about it, but not insane."

"Thanks ever so."

"No, I meant—" Erik sat back up, and Charles quietly mourned the loss of his heat and comforting weight against him. "I meant, yes, you're being frustrating about it, but also—" He was quiet so long that Charles looked away from the screen to study him. Erik was fiddling with his ring, braided silver and gold. As the flashing lights of the movie played against the walls, Charles saw that the ring was unbraiding and rebraiding itself, looping around the finger Erik was using to turn it.

"What?" Charles said, softer. Sometimes Erik needed an invitation, a reminder that he could open himself and Charles would guard the doors of his heart against anyone that might hurt him, even Charles himself.

Erik closed his eyes and let his head fall back, like he found this embarrassing. (Eleven years together and nothing ever changed.) "It's frustrating," he said, grudgingly, "that I can't… fix it for you."

Charles bit his lip to stop a lot of things Erik would absolutely make fun of him for from spilling out. "Erik…"

"Because I did try. You're easy, you know. It's… easy to make you happy. Be a buffer between you and Raven, 'forget' to give you Sharon's messages, talk to you. About anything. Until this." Erik rolled his eyes, as though Charles was not shuddering like a Jello cup on the inside and also about to start an enormous argument about the messages from his mother he apparently wasn't getting. "Actually, you'd think this was a concerted campaign to spite you, me, and everyone who watched Greenkeep when they were a kid. They're going to lose so much money. I'm completely out of ideas."

Charles put aside the thing about his mother to yell about later. That was really a conversation to be had when fortified by Erik's omelets, both for the protein and as a reminder of what he'd be giving up if they got divorced. "Darling man, you know it's not your job to make sure I'm never sad, right?"

"It is," Erik said stubbornly. "That's what spouses are for. It's not my fault most people are bad at it."

Charles bit his thumb to keep down a laugh. "Erik—"

"Fine, fine, I know. Partnership, emotional support, blah, blah."

"How romantic," Charles teased.

Erik smiled crookedly at him and then, like he did with all his most deeply felt things, the things he couldn't bring himself to hear even if he was the one speaking, projected, I know it kills you to… choose between this piece of our past and your future. I know that, more than anything, it's that you're not even allowed to speak about it that's eating you alive. I (a jumble of sensation here, love/protect/adore/tender places/make this soft and good for you) you. (an echo, whenever he thought I love you it always echoed in his head, an afterimage of devotion.) But I could hate it in front of everyone. I could rally them, shut it down for you. I know it's silly. I didn't even really think it would work. Still annoyed that it didn't. Still frustrated I can't fix it.

Charles gripped Erik's left hand, wordlessly, raised it to his mouth. Kissed his knuckles, fighter's hands. The callus where he held his pen and stylus. His ring, the metal swirling under his lips. There were things Charles couldn't hear himself say, either, even in his own head. The tenderest, most fragile things didn't exist in words for Charles.

I should have leaked the whole pilot script, Erik grumbled.

Charles coughed a laugh. That was you?

The petition was me too.

Charles hid his grin behind Erik's hand, still in his. Erik floated the popcorn bowl closer, and with his free hand grazed at it, his mind all cool, soothing focus on salt and butter, a blank space for Charles to gather his thoughts again. Finally he thought, It feels like they're trying to rewrite us. It's not their story. It's ours. Yours and mine.

It is ours, Erik insisted. It's still ours no matter what tar pit of a television show they put the name on.

I know.

The credits started up; the score, heavy with trombones, filled the air. They ought to have gotten up, taken bathroom breaks, swapped in a new DVD. There was still a teetering stack of screeners Charles needed to get through before filling in his Oscars nomination ballot. But they lay against each other, mental presences tangled, half each other and half themselves, until the credits finished playing and the screen fuzzed to black.

"Script for my new project is almost done," Erik said eventually.

"Mm?"

"I'm thinking I might go back to the roots of animation. Talking animals, medieval milieu. You know. Redwall, The Tale of Desperaux."

"Greenkeep?" Charles asked knowingly.

"Sure, maybe," Erik said, his smile audible in the dark. "You know, I was thinking… maybe something that considers relationships across violent political divides. Strong ensemble cast. An young otter hero who clashes with establishment forces…"

Charles bumped his forehead against their twined hands disapprovingly. "You know, if you're going to rip off Greenkeep, you're going to have to be a little more subtle than that."

"Well, this time, the otter revolutionary is the hero and the bootlicking mouse scholar is the anti-hero—"

Charles snorted, and Erik laughed quietly. "No, I haven't decided on species for most of the cast yet. But—when I do—there's a role in it for you. If you have time, of course. Between all the Oscar bait."

Charles closed his eyes. It felt like even the low light coming from the TV was too much, might shatter the perfect wholeness of the moment. "Would you make me a wise mentor figure?" he said, his voice remarkably steady for how crowded he felt with feeling.

"Depends. Can you still do the squeaky adolescent mouse voice?"

"You love that voice."

"You love that voice. I had to stop you from saying our vows in that voice."

"It was a joke I made drunk off my arse at our bachelor party," Charles protested a little wetly. "Fine, okay. Okay. I'll check my schedule, see if I can work you in. What's the story about?"

"I don't know yet. It's me, so intergenerational trauma somehow, probably," Erik said, and, in that abrupt, brusque way of his, rolled on top of Charles to kiss him.

Their hands, fingers still interlaced, were caught between their bodies, and Charles kissed him and thought that he should make this one good, he should press all the devotion and delight and care and perfect contentment he could into this kiss, that maybe then he could make Erik understand in a way that even telepathy couldn't make him understand. He had this thought sometimes when he was kissing Erik, at important and at unimportant times. When he dropped Erik off at the studio and remembered that he could kiss him goodbye, they were married, they were out, everyone knew and the world hadn't ended. He'd thought Better make it good at their wedding, too. He had this thought and wanted, irrationally, to make every kiss their best kiss, to imbue every moment with how much he loved Erik, thoughtlessly and brutally and perfectly. And maybe on their ten thousandth kiss like that, or their twenty thousandth, Erik would finally understand.

I do understand, Erik thought to him. Do you?

Yes, yes, Charles seemed to be coming apart; he seemed to be spilling the kind of complicated happiness that was half pain everywhere, over the carpets, over Erik's hands, over the walls as the shadows from the TV flickered, like candles dancing, like the future waiting, now in technicolor. Every day he was learning how to understand it, Erik and what he felt, the enormity of loving each other.