ostro_goth | RP post: A bath with Charlie

Charlie looks around the room as he passes through it, finding some of the furniture amusing, wryly. It is very Teja.

"That's a pretty stone," is all he says to the bathroom, unbuttoning the collar of his shirt slowly, chuckling. "This is a familiar situation, for me. Surprisingly, and somewhat amusingly familiar."

"It should not be," Teja says. "I am not a client; I am myself! If this feels too much like your old trade, we may go to the warm part of the lake instead, even though it is not nearly as warm as my bathwater."

But he does take off his cloak.

Charlie laughs. "No, that's not what I meant. I rarely took a bath with any client. Just being in a room together, with the expectation of taking off some or all of our clothes makes me laugh."

He thumbed at the buttons slowly, standing and watching Teja, smiling. "You are as far from a client as it's possible to be, trust me."

Teja is taking off his warm socks, one of the rather wonky pairs that the little womble had given him, more than a year ago. He had come up the stairs on them, taking off the skates before he entered the building.

"We are truly alone now," Teja says. "None other may enter, apart from the cats."

Charlie just came up barefoot. It's his default mode.

He slanted a glance at Teja sideways, shrugging out of his shirt and vest. "Trying to tell me something by that, Teja?" He cocked out a hip, smiling as he tucked his hands in the pockets of his low-slung jeans.

Teja undoes his belt, dropping it on the floor, with a little jangle from the objects in the belt pouch.

"I am telling you," he says, pulling his shirt over his head, "that at any moment, a cat may come in and look at your body."

"And they'd be the only ones?" he chuckles, putting his hands around Teja's waist and smiling into his shoulder. "You're teasing me."

But this is not at all a bad thing; Charlie finds it quite a good one.

Feeling Charlie's warm skin upon his own -- what a lovely new feeling of closeness!

Teja's hands close around Charlie's wrists and just hold them where they are, glad to feel them, but intent on keeping them from roaming.

"Their eyes might not be welcome?"

He tensed quickly at the hands on his wrists, relaxing slowly.

"With the number of people that have seen me naked, I probably wouldn't notice them," he said lightly. "Want to let go of my hands, so I can get out of my jeans?"

Unless of course Teja wants to undo them.

Teja lets go, and steps away, to undo the draw-string of his breeches.

"I would not wish to think of all these men and women," Teja says, somewhat darkly.

He slid out of his jeans quickly, giving a small sigh. "Do you not like me talking about that?" He doesn't really have to ask, honestly, but he'd rather hear it than assume.

It's apparent that even without clothes on, Charlie's at ease with himself. "Come here?"

Teja turns and looks at him. "I would not hide myself from the truth of it," he says, somewhat dejected. "I know that so many saw you, so many touched you, and nothing I like or do not like is going to change it. I wish I might wipe them all away from you, but the past is ever certain; only the future may be shaped, by fate or man's will."

Pause.

"I cannot take back all the many deaths I dealt, either."

Charlie looked back, thoughtful, putting a hand lightly on Teja's cheek. "Forget I said it." He gave him a small kiss, brushing his fingers over his lips.

"Come on. Just be with me, for now. The past doesn't have to matter...and neither does the future, here."

Teja comes a step closer. "I would wish for a future," he says, quietly, "that would hold you!"

"I'd like that, with you." He touched his lips to Teja's softly. "I really would."

Charlie smiled up, quietly. "The water's getting cold, on us."

"There is much of it," Teja says, "but we should get in, and get warm!"

He kisses Charlie again, then drops his breeches, and steps into the water, wearing but a skimpy loin-cloth. He did not leave it on when he shared his bath with Xaldin; but then, things with Xaldin were different. For one, he was still Nobody then. And secondly, he had all that metal in his tenaciously remembered flesh...

Teja smiles to himself, wondering if mention of his knowledge of these things would shock Charlie.

Simple answer: probably. Teja's smile makes him curious, as he steps in after him, enjoying the warm water.

"What are you smiling at?" He kisses back gently, smiling himself. It makes him gently happy, being around Teja. Content, he supposed, would be the best word for it. "Something I don't know?"

Teja settles in the warm water, putting his arm around Charlie, to feel comfortable.

Xaldin was the same height as himself, but broader in the shoulders, and hairier, with metal upon his flesh. Charlie, the second man he shares his bath with, is smaller, sweeter -- but no less a man!

"There are still many tales of me that you do not know, nor I of you," he says.

"You're telling me?" he chuckles, accepting the arm around him and leaning into Teja's shoulder. He liked the ability to lean into him, comfortably.

But the relaxed demeanor made him think of something. "Oh, I wanted to ask you... How did the Nobodies get hearts, the ones you know?" He asks over his shoulder, from where he's moved.

Teja sighs, relaxing into the hot water.

"They are fascinating beings, are they not?" he says. "Not just Xaldin! But strange. Both Zexion and Demyx are convinced I am a cheerful, nice, and patient man; but I merely saw no need to show them either my temper or my darkness much. I have patience with those that cannot help their fate, and arouse my pity!"

Pause, while he looks at his toes breaking the surface of the water.

"Axel was given a heart by Yrael's charter magic, over a year ago, before the others came," he says. "Demyx gained it by mysterious epiphany; he seems to have mentioned Kingdom Hearts, their great goal, and said nothing more of it. Zexion was given his in the library, by a cruel Old One named Nyarlathotep, a bringer of nightmare, who might gain amusement from watching him writhe in the pains of having a heart, since. Xigbar and Xaldin made a trade with a powerful woman named Rachel, who charged them with nurse-maiding a future world before she herself died, creating their hearts in the process, like a phoenix that creates from its own destruction. The other two, Lexaeus and Larxene, have no hearts yet. Larxene is taking care of all the Lesser Nobodies that look to those recently enheartened. Lexaeus is taking care of Zexion."

Pause.

"And then there is another, their number XIII, but recently arrived -- Roxas! He is strange, angry, dangerous. I spoke to him briefly, and as a result, Axel has now sworn eternal enmity to me."

Charlie listens, quietly. "They're interesting, or the one I met is. Roxas, but he didn't tell me much about the others. He's not all that bad, actually."

He tilted his head back, laying his hands over Teja's where they rested on his waist. "It sounds like a difficult process, to get a heart, when they've lost one. But I wouldn't say that makes any of them dangerous. Roxas was almost perfectly normal when I talked to him. He just seems to like saying he's stupid, though I don't know why."

Charlie shrugged. "I hope Axel doesn't keep that idea in his head. It's rather....incredibly stupid to hate someone because they've talked to someone else."

"Axel has sworn enemy because I would not..."

Pause.

There was another thing there, in what Charlie said.

"You? Spoke? To ROXAS??"

Teja is amazed, to the point of being shocked.

"And you found him 'not that bad', either?"

"Yeah. He's a teenager, that's how they all work. Well...not all of them go about professing they're functional idiots..."

He blinked, surprised and a little worried at Teja's reaction. "Yes, I spoke with him. Brought him a biology book, too, since he said he didn't understand emotion. He didn't seem dangerous, when I spoke to him the day before yesterday..."

He paused, resettling. "Why is that odd to you?"

"You can handle Roxas!!" Teja exclaims, in great wonderment. "He is -- much odder than all the rest, even awkward little Zexion! Xaldin said none except Axel can handle him at all."

Pause.

"You have a great gift, my Charlie!"

He laughed, shaking his head at Teja. "I can talk to him. He's not all that problematic to me."

"Maybe Xaldin was wrong; he is just a kid. For being a year old at least he's not twitching at everything that happens." Because sensory overload would be such a pain to deal with. Charlie leaned back comfortably, smiling.

"Apparently I amuse you."

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