Chapter Text
Charlie rushed with his latest maps for Don, and walked into an angry-looking man. Charlie spilled his coffee down himself, and looked up to apologize.
The man shoved past. “Watch it,” he grunted.
“I’m sorry, I should have been looking –”
“Charlie!”
He looked over to see Don scowling between him and the boards of evidence.
“What took you so long?”
“I’m sorry, Don, I had midterms to grade and my TA never showed and the –”
“Right, right. What we got?”
“Oh, uh, your guy lives here, and all the murders are around that point but not too close…You, uh, you know this math. We’ve done it before. You don’t need me to explain.”
“Yeah, I remember this one. Nikki, Jamie, you’re with me – DNA samples from gum, cigarettes, drink cans. We need to catch this guy. Colby, you get the paperwork.”
“Joys of a broken ankle,” Colby murmured.
Don walked past Charlie with Nikki and Jamie, the guy that had been sent to replace David three years ago. When Charlie had rejoined them, one week after returning from England, using his math to catch a killer, Jamie had laughed at the idea. A month and several successful cases later, Jamie still laughed at the idea. Charlie knew he should be used to it, but he was exhausted and feeling low after the split between him and Amita had been finalized by only one of them moving back to California. Again, he felt like the weird geek in a room full of jocks and not even his success in helping the FBI had made him feel better.
He swallowed hard and realized he still had papers to grade, that he couldn’t even get Larry’s help because he was visiting Megan for a month before travelling to India for a spiritual retreat. He gave a half-wave to Colby and left, and sat down at two in the afternoon to grade papers in his garage until seven, when he heard Don and the others come in and collect beers. He made his way upstairs and Don greeted him cheerfully.
“Hey! It worked! The guy hadn’t moved this time,” he laughed, clapping Charlie on the back.
“Oh, great. No more murders.” He felt guilty for not having given them the map sooner, but the midterms were important, too. He couldn’t help wondering as well if he’d slept less, or not taken so much time to eat or chat or just sit and relax, maybe there would have been fewer murders.
“The guy was like the blue!” Jamie grinned, and everyone laughed.
“W-what?” Charlie smiled weakly, looking around.
“Nevermind, man. I think you had to be there.”
“Oh, right, okay.” He nodded. “I’m, uh, I need to grade papers.”
Don nodded. “We’ll keep it down.”
“Thanks.”
Even from the garage he could hear them, and their jokes. They joked together more than they even talked to him. Charlie couldn’t help but feel out of the loop – they all had their new in-jokes he didn’t understand and they wouldn’t explain but frequently brought up. Like ‘the blue’ he kept hearing about. Each time he felt like he had been pushed away whilst in England. Not even his house was the same – Alan had done it up and changed it around, and Charlie didn’t like it. It was very nice, Alan was proud and it looked great, but Charlie had wanted something to be the same on his return, something to make him feel better.
He sighed and stared at the pile of papers he still had to grade. Somehow, he’d been given enough to spend several evenings grading and other professors were talking about going out for drinks. Charlie had the feeling he’d been invited as an afterthought, because everyone was already chatting about it when he overheard them. After a few people glanced at him awkwardly they said, of course you’re invited.
Of course.
He rubbed his face. If each paper took that long he wasn’t going to be able to go out at all. Not that he felt entirely welcome, at any rate. They spent most of their time not talking to him in general these days, and it turned out that socially, Amita was more popular than he’d ever been. And he knew that he should have expected that, as well. He liked to think that maybe respect for his work may translate to friendliness, but many people still saw him and Larry as the weirdos that everyone tried to avoid or beat up in high school, even though they’d all been high school nerds.
Another burst of laughter from upstairs distracted him and he sighed. Maybe he should have tried to finish them earlier, during his lunch break. Or at least done one or two. The repetitiveness was really the killer for him. He started on the work he’d promised the NSA would be done by the end of the week.
“So, uh, what’s up with Charlie and Amita?” Nikki asked. Charlie rolled his eyes, wishing he couldn’t overhear them, but he’d left his headphones upstairs.
“We’re not really sure,” Don said. “He hasn’t told us. He just said no when dad asked if they were together anymore.”
Nikki sighed. “Tough, Amita was a great match for him.”
There was a murmur of agreement, then silence for a moment.
Charlie pointedly stabbed his math onto the chalk boards. Then Colby spoke.
“Has anyone asked what happened?”
“Nah, Charlie will tell us when he’s ready.”
Charlie rolled his eyes and started to work again, wondering if Don was that dense. He wanted someone to take an interest before he explained, didn’t want to get in the way with his feelings and confusion.
Some hours later he heard everyone saying their goodbyes, and although he hadn’t been expecting any, it would have been nice to have someone say goodbye to him. Maybe because they were in his house, or because they had been drinking his beer, or eating his food and watching his TV.
Don called down the stairs. “’Night, Charlie.”
“’Night.”
He glanced at his watch. 23:36. He sighed again and considered doing a few more midterms before bed, or however many took him past one in the morning, since he was lecturing at another science college in the morning.
…
He woke up on the couch with a sore back and stiff neck, having done two papers before falling asleep. He cursed as he saw the time, rushed to get showered and dressed and out of the house so he wouldn’t be late.
Jumping in the car, he drove half way there before he hit the traffic. “Come on, come on.” He tapped his hand on the steering wheel, craning his neck to see an old man doing everything he could wrong on the road and holding everyone up. The man got out of the car and walked around it, opening and staring into the trunk for a moment before closing it again, driving forward and stopping abruptly again. After ten minutes of waiting his phone rang and he jumped.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Dr Eppes. There was a mix-up on the schedule, so you didn’t need to come in to lecture today. We’ll call again with another date and time. I hope we didn’t cause too much trouble.” The woman at the other end of the phone sounded like she couldn’t care less.
He clenched his fist. “No, not at all, that’s fine. Thanks for letting me know.” He hung up and threw his phone down on the chair. He wasn’t sure if the screen smashed when it bounced and hit the dash before landing on the floor. He thought maybe it was just his luck.
Turning to look for a way to reverse out of this mess, while the old man continued to get in the way, he saw rows and rows of cars behind him and no escape. His phone rang again and he struggled to reach it. The screen had cracked.
“Hey, Charlie, you got a minute?” Don asked.
“Uh, yeah. Stuck in traffic.”
“I forgot you were lecturing this morning, sorry.”
“I’m not, they got it mixed up.”
“Oh, right. So listen, we have another case and I think you did something like this for us before. We need to know where this guy is most likely to have gone on the run, which direction and places. He’s a kidnapper and we got his latest victim back but he got away. Do you think you could get over here and see what you can do? I mean, he tends to leave a week or more between each kidnap and has escaped every time so far after he has the money, but it’d be nice to catch him.”
“Yeah, I just need to go to CalSci first, Millie wants the midterms and I have to teach and set and grade normal work. I think she could help me grade a few while I do that but if she can’t –”
“Right. Hey, man, listen – I gotta go. See you later.”
“Don, I –” the phone bleeped. “might not have time,” he sighed.
He arrived ten minutes late for meeting Millie, and received a scowl. He was too tired and stiff to explain properly. “Traffic. Hey, I need to –”
“Charlie, I’m afraid I can’t help you today, I have a meeting. I just needed to pass on a message from the teacher covering Larry’s students that she can’t make it today, so we wondered if you could. I said I’d use my best pleading face.”
“I…maybe, Millie, look. I haven’t –”
“Oh! That reminds me, I need the midterms. Did you do them?”
“You said by the end of the week.”
“Yeah, about that. I told your dad to tell you that they were needed by today. My phone’s broken and I couldn’t remember your number to use the school phone.”
“Email?”
“You never look.”
He rubbed his eyes. “I haven’t seen my dad, and I didn’t get the message. I’ve done these ones,” he got them out of his bag, “but I’m only halfway through.”
She took them. “Then I suggest you don’t stand here, get grading! Oh, but Larry’s class is in half an hour. His notes are on the desk in the usual room,” she waved him away with one finger and walked off. “Thanks,” she called back.
He opened and closed his mouth a few times and checked his watch. Nearly noon. He couldn’t believe how long he had been stuck in traffic, which had moved every time he tried to start working to fill the time. Rolling his eyes, he walked to take Larry’s lecture and read the notes so he didn’t fail at that as well.
…
The lecture almost wasn’t worth doing. Three students had turned up, sat far away, and played on their phones for the afternoon. And when the woman who was supposed to take the lecture wandered in ten minutes after the end holding coffee and several shopping bags, she was surprised to see anyone there, including Charlie.
“Oh, no students have been turning up recently, so I didn’t think it was worth holding it. They can get the information from their books. And I think they all preferred Larry.”
“Right.”
He was exhausted and sore and hungry and he had a headache, and the last thing he wanted was an excuse from a lazy teacher as to why she didn’t bother turning up without apology, so he walked out.
He grabbed a drink and graded some more papers in his office, and when they were done left them in Millie’s before sitting outside in the shade for a moment to recover.
“Charlie? How did the lecture go?”
Millie. Struggling not to roll his eyes or throw his drink at her or the student with an annoying laugh behind him, he forced a smile. “Three people turned up.” And not one of them paid attention, because it’s too hot and a Thursday.
“Oh, I thought that might happen. Oh, well. You’ve educated three young minds today!”
“Wonderful.”
She squinted at him. “Is something wrong? You seem a little off.”
I’m out of the loop and exhausted and aching and hungry and lonely and no-one is listening to me and I don’t have time to do all the things people want me to do but nobody seems to notice. “Fine, just a little tired.” He stood. “I need to go see Don, so I’ll see you later.”
She waved and he walked back to his office to grab his laptop and bag, and on the way out heard the others talking about their evening out the night before and the teacher who was supposed to be covering Larry was talking about her hangover and cursing Charlie for his rudeness to her earlier.
The drive to the FBI was dull, and none of the radio stations were working properly because his radio had decided to quit. Charlie liked to think of himself as mature, and having a temper tantrum because the radio didn’t work certainly wasn’t, but he’d hoped that something could go right for him.
He got in the elevator and the door didn’t close in time for a large man who clearly didn’t own deodorant to press Charlie into the corner behind him. The man didn’t get out before him, and Charlie struggled to get past and out of the foul-smelling claustrophobia.
Don greeted him cheerily with a hand on his shoulder, and pointed at Jamie. “Jamie just found the guy we were looking for. We saw him drive away but Jamie saw his plates, and we got the car, then his prints from the steering wheel. All because of his photographic memory,” Don grinned.
“Put you out of a job,” Jamie smiled, crossing the room and looking down at Charlie.
Charlie smiled, because it was a joke, he thought. At least Don was laughing, with his new best friend and protégé, and they joked about ‘the blue’ again.
“I guess you don’t need me, then,” Charlie laughed weakly, and left to avoid being further patronized.
By the time he got home he was too tired to cook and too lazy to go out or wait for something so be delivered, so he went to bed for another night of not sleeping.