fic in progress
part 2
word count : 2190
"You haven't forgotten me, have you? Bishop House, number ten?" -- Charles Macaulay, to a Hampden College housekeeper
"I've lived with Charles all my life." -- Camilla Macaulay, to Bunny Corcoran
"Don't cry, Milly," said Charles miserably. "Please don't."
"I'm not crying. I'm mad." The muffled voice from beneath the comforter sounded shaky, despite Camilla's claim. Only a spray of golden hair remained visible.
"You're hiding under your blanket. You don't do that when you're mad."
"I'm not hiding."
"You are. Show me your face if you aren't."
"No."
"Then I don't believe you."
Silence, for a moment. Slowly she lowered the comforter to reveal a suspiciously red-eyed face.
"See, you are crying," said Charles, vindicated and unhappy at once. "I'm going to go make him sorry."
"You can't do that." Sitting up, she shot out a hand to grab his arm, to keep him sitting on the side of the bed where he was. "If you do that, everyone will know why."
"No one's going to believe him."
"They'll believe him if you give them a reason to," Camilla shot back. Her voice still shook, though exasperation gave it a stronger edge.
The set of Charles's mouth said he didn't like this logic. "So what do you want me to do?"
"Not what you want to do. You can't just go give Bunny a black eye." Secretly Camilla liked the idea of Bunny getting a black eye -- only justice, given he'd seen what he shouldn't. Nonetheless it wouldn't do for Charles to go confirming whatever Bunny felt like saying about what he'd seen.
"Who says I can't?"
"All right, you can in the sense that you're able to, but you shouldn't. Anyway it's our fault really."
"We shouldn't have given him a key to the apartment," Charles agreed glumly.
"No, we shouldn't have been doing what we were doing in the living room. It was stupid." It had not been Camilla's idea. It had not, in fact, been anyone's idea, insofar as that would have entailed thinking; it had, however, been instigated by Charles, as it usually was.
"Camilla. It's our apartment. We can do whatever we want here. That's why the door has a lock in the first place. That's why we have an apartment, isn't it?"
"Because the doors lock?"
Charles scowled at his sister. "You know what I mean."
"I know," Camilla admitted. "The dorm rooms had locks on the doors too."
"And you were the one who hated the dorms."
"You complained about it too."
"Well, I liked the dorms. I liked living with a lot of other people. Just not being away from you." Charles leaned over a little to caress her cheek lightly with the backs of his fingers.
"I was only upstairs," Camilla reminded him, as if he needed to be reminded. Hampden was a progressive little college. Their dormitory had been co-ed. The rooms just weren't co-ed.
"That only made it worse. For you too. That's what you said."
"Well, I was right. We really couldn't do anything. People would have noticed, or heard something." Camilla had been quite adamant about that, all through freshman year. The summer came as a relief to them both, and before returning to school the next fall they'd successfully lobbied their Nana to let them live off-campus. It was cheaper anyway, if they shared a place, Camilla had convinced Nana, and that way they could cook for themselves.
"I think it would have been all right." That had been Charles's contention then, and he stuck to it now. They'd argued about it more than once. A year of frustration, relieved only by the merciful holiday breaks (and once a furtive tryst in an old bridge room, oh, Milly, the glory of that) -- two whole semesters of tantalising separation from his twin, with her just up the stairs and infinitely out of reach. It had been enough to drive him into Francis's bed, for God's sake. Some girls, too, sometimes. Obviously not at the same time. If Camilla didn't like his going to bed with any or all of them, she never said a word about it. She should know it didn't mean anything to him.
No one mattered except her.
He'd half hoped she'd be jealous about it, and give in. Maybe she had, in a belated indirect way. Maybe that was why they were living together now. She'd never said so; therefore he couldn't be sure. He hated not being sure.
Camilla shrugged one shoulder. She'd pinned the bedsheet between her arms and her sides, and the movement barely shifted it. "I didn't want to take that chance. And now it doesn't matter. Bunny knows and what if he tells anyone? What if he tells Julian?" It was Julian Morrow's opinion that mattered most to her. Their professor, their mentor, selective almost beyond reason, and Camilla could not imagine being excluded from his favor. They'd have to change majors. No one else taught classics at Hampden, and Julian taught all the courses a classics major could take, by his own rules.
She didn't really care what Bunny Corcoran thought of her, not much anyway. What she cared about was that chance he might tell Julian, and the consequent chance Julian might believe him, and the consequent chance Julian might be disgusted. Her first thought, there in the living room when they'd realised they weren't alone and Bunny stood in the doorway gaping, had been of this. As if Julian were their guardian, and Bunny was going to run and tattle on them.
"He won't," Charles said immediately. "How would he even bring up something like that with Julian? They've never been close. Besides, I don't think Julian would care even if Bunny did tell him. It's our word against his, and that's if it even bothered Julian enough to ask us."
Camilla rubbed at her eyes. "You really think so?"
"I know so." Charles pulled back the blanket and gently eased his arm around her. He couldn't quite get into bed with her, not with the sheet wrapped around her like that. He could only sit alongside her and try to hold her.
"Our word against his." Camilla repeated her twin's words.
"Absolutely." Smooth, reassuring.
"Then why do you want to go beat him up?"
"Because he made you cry."
"I wasn't crying," she insisted, stubborn as ever.
"Hush." He coaxed her arm about him, too, and the sheet fell.
She snuggled into his side, comforted despite herself. "Don't go anywhere."
Charles wriggled under the sheet, now that he could, and drew Camilla down to lie against the pillows with him. They smelled of hyacinths, because they were hers. This was her bed; he had his own. It was a two-bedroom apartment. He wasn't always allowed into her bed. "You want me to stay here?"
"Yes. Like we used to," she said. By that, he knew she didn't want him to make love to her, but then again, Bunny had killed the mood pretty well. He couldn't be surprised.
When she said like we used to, she meant the way they'd slept together when they were children. After their parents died, the twins refused to be separated. They would cry inconsolably and loudly if anyone tried. They were only five, then. They had terrible nightmares in which everyone disappeared, even one another, and they needed the reassurance of one another's company when they awoke. It took two years before Camilla decided she wanted her own room, with wallpaper she chose herself, and that was the end of that. Still she crept into his room every now and then, for comfort.
Later on, they crept into one another's rooms for other reasons, but they were too old by then to excuse spending the night there. It was easy to hide things in Nana's big old house, but Camilla said they had to be careful. If anyone found out about them, she said, probably Nana and the uncles would send the twins away to boarding school. Separate boarding schools. They would be separated and that would be the end of the world.
If they take you away from me, Charles had told her, I'll run away and bring you back again. He would, too. He'd find a way. That was his job. He had to take care of his sister because she belonged to him and she needed him.
Then how will we live? Camilla, always practical -- always contrary.
The same way we always have. Us against the world.
No, I mean what would we live on? What would we eat, for heaven's sake? Her question, though a good one, only got her bitten, and that ended that particular discussion. Still he'd yielded to her caution, most of the time. It had been enough to keep their secret.
Until Bunny Corcoran decided to let himself into their apartment just a little while ago.
Charles reached over to click off the lamp that stood beside Camilla's bed, careful not to knock over any of the clutter on her nightstand. He pulled her toward him, face to face. "We didn't do anything wrong, honey. We didn't do a damn thing wrong except let Bunny have a housekey."
"We can't take it away from him now. That's like admitting what happened."
"So we'll be more careful. We'll make sure to go into my room first. Or in here, if you want," though that was a more dubious proposition. "Or the bathroom." Though he'd recognised just now what her intentions were and were not, he couldn't resist sliding a hand down her back. "Anything you want."
"Because he doesn't have keys to any of the rooms. Just the front door." Camilla sounded more confident now -- saying it more to reassure herself than to tell Charles what he already knew.
"No one has keys to anything but the front door." Francis had a key. Henry might still have a key. Hard to remember who'd taken care of what while the twins were away. It could have been anyone. They were probably lucky it was Bunny, because no one would believe Bunny. "But we couldn't possibly have predicted Bunny would decide to come over and just let himself in. He has that key to come water the plants when we're not here, not to make himself at home whenever he wants."
"Try telling him that," Camilla grumbled, and corrected herself at once -- "No, I didn't mean that really."
Charles didn't seem inclined to leap up and storm over to Bunny's dorm any more, anyway. His hand was sliding down further. It was like he couldn't help it. If she asked him, that was what he'd probably say -- that he couldn't help it. "We didn't move here so that we'd have to watch ourselves all the time. We moved so we could be together. We shouldn't worry about Bunny or anyone or what they think, Milly. We should just be together, like we were meant to be."
Camilla gave a little sigh, half resignation, half acquiescence. "That's what you always say." Except the part about Bunny, because that only just happened.
"That's because I'm right, and you know it." He pulled her close. Closer. She didn't resist, and that made him bolder. They were both keyed up. All that energy had to go somewhere. "And you liked it in the living room."
"Maybe I did." Withholding or teasing, it was hard to tell with her. Maybe even Camilla didn't know.
Regardless, Charles knew the truth, and he pressed the point. "You did. The same way you liked it in the bridge room that one time --"
She remembered as well as he did -- how could she not? -- and the memory sent a shiver all through her. "Yes." The admission was hardly more than a whisper. She slid her calf along the outside of his. That movement said more.
Proof that she wanted him. There was nothing, nothing in the world more exciting. "Milly," he whispered back, and then he didn't want to say anything at all. Neither of them did.
Camilla fell asleep in his arms afterward. Charles felt obscurely proud that she'd fallen asleep first. He'd exhausted her, or soothed her, enough that she could do that. In its own way it was almost as much a triumph as making her come. Also, it meant he'd get to sleep in her bed with her, the whole night, something not common even these days.
Bunny didn't seem very important at all right now. If Bunny made trouble tomorrow, or next week, or ever, Charles supposed he would deal with it then. Right now, nothing seemed real outside the compass of this bed, Camilla asleep and trusting. They'd be like this forever.
(Julian's voice, an echo, over the remembered sound of wineglasses clinking in a toast: Live forever. Camilla dreamed it, a long dinner party, the way sometimes dreams could be terribly mundane. Live forever, and everyone was there. Everyone was happy. Henry was pouring her more wine.)
Charles curled around his twin with a sleepy sigh of contentment. They'd wake up together in the morning, the way they did when they were children. And if she had any nightmares between now and then, he would be here.