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Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind.
-Baruch Spinoza
~oOo~
The first time is careful. Julian watches her face as he unbuttons her blouse, silently asking permission before sliding tiny bits of ivory through double stitched slits.
Later, as he runs strong, slender fingers over her breasts, he hesitates at her nipples. She gives him a reassuring smile then, losing patience, moves his hands where she needs them to be.
~oOo~
“An orphanage?” Charlotte asks, her head pillowed on Julien’s chest. Through the curtained window she can hear the shouts of playing children.
“The house was too big for just me,” Julien answers. “It seemed wasteful to keep it all to myself.” His eyes flicker down at her, then away, a slight smile passing over his lips. “I’ll always be a communist, at heart.”
Charlotte smiles sadly into his skin and squeezes him a little tighter with the arm she has draped over his stomach. “Julien—“ she starts, then stops. She hadn’t planned on revealing her suspicions, but now that she’s started they won’t be held back. “Julien, I think they knew.”
“Hm?” Julien runs his fingers through Charlotte’s hair in long languid strokes. “Who?”
“I think the SOE knew that the Nazis had discovered you. I think that’s why my contact sent that note to me. I think that’s why he was late and I think that’s why he kept me away from you, from the landing zone.” She takes a deep breath. “I think it was because you were communists.”
Julien’s fingers stop for a long, agonizing moment, before they start moving again.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Julien says, not very convincingly. “It’s over. The war is over.”
~oOo~
The second time is rough.
A week has passed since the first and only time Julien had come to Charlotte’s room and, as she kneads dough in the kitchen, taking out her frustrations and fears on flour and water, she wonders if she hasn’t made a mistake coming back to France.
That night there’s a soft knock on the door. Charlotte pulls Julien inside, not giving him a moment to speak before pushing him back down on the bed. His eyes are wide and expressive, but he says nothing as she rips open the fly on his trousers, positions him, then drives her body down onto his.
He lets her have her way with him for a few seconds, then sits up with a mighty heave and wraps his arms around her shoulders as he shoves himself up into her. “Dominique,” he groans harshly.
Charlotte leans forward and bites down hard on his earlobe. “Not Dominique,” she hisses. “Charlotte.”
~oOo~
He gives her one of his cigarettes and she breaths the acrid smoke deep into her lungs, trying not to cough. There’s an ache between her legs and she focuses on that, trying to ignore the fear that drove her.
“Is there something wrong?” Julien asks once she’s smoked the cigarette almost down to her lips.
She takes one last draw and stares at the tiny stub of paper and tobacco before pressing the coal out in a dish beside her bed. “I didn’t know you’d be here,” she says abruptly. “Actually, I thought it more likely that you wouldn’t, that you’d still be running away from murder charges.” She smiles, but it is a strange, uncomfortable thing. “Once again I came to France to search for a man, only this time he was in the first place I looked.”
Julien doesn’t answer and the silence grows awkward.
“I hadn’t planned on coming back,” he finally says, lighting a cigarette of his own. “I hadn’t even planned on coming back to France – I spent the last of the war in Switzerland, teaching French and English to spoiled bankers’ children.” He pauses to take a deep draw and he lets the smoke sit in his chest for a moment before blowing it back out. “I came back because I had to know about Father. First thing I did was report to the gendarmerie. I thought, even if I was in prison, at least they could tell me what happened to him.”
“But they didn’t arrest you.”
“No. I found out later that Sophie was too upset to remember what happened that night. She’s gone now. Fled to Paris.”
“And what happened to your father?”
“No word yet.”
~oOo~
The third time is angry. Charlotte is fixing a bike in one of the sheds when a hand clamps down on her shoulder. She swings around and just barely stops herself from crushing Julien’s windpipe with the flat of her hand.
"Julien?"
Julien attempts a smile but it looks more like a rictus. “My father is dead.”
Charlotte’s heart clenches and breaks a little, both for difficult, charming Levade and for Julien, who was rapidly blinking his red-rimmed eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Julien shakes his head and buries his face in Charlotte’s neck, clutching his arms around her waist. She holds him back just as tightly.
When he pulls back to kiss her, she gives him what he needs. Later, as she feels the rock wall of the shed scraping against her back in time with his thrusts, she thinks she would give him anything. Everything.
~oOo~
“What about the boys?” she asks later, when they retire to her bed.
Julien looks a bit numb and, when he answers, his voice is flat. “They weren’t in the records that my contact saw. He thinks they might’ve been filed under the wrong name.”
“Maybe they escaped.”
Julien shakes his head and covers his face with his hands.
~oOo~
The fourth time is desperate. Julien holds her so tight she can barely move as he pushes into her. When she tries to push back, he shakes his head. “Don’t,” he breathes. “Let me.”
Confused, a little worried, she wraps her ankles around his back and holds on tight, lifting her head to capture his lips with her own. When he climaxes, he murmurs, so softly that she was sure she wasn’t supposed to hear, “stay...stay” and she understands.
~oOo~
“I left my job.”
Charlotte feels the muscle under her cheek tighten as Julien looks down.
“What?” he asks.
“I left my job. I wasn’t much good at it anyway. I’m better at doing things than I am at administering them.”
“Then what are you going to do when you go back to England?”
“I never said I was going back to England.”
~oOo~
The fifth time is sweet. Julien lays Charlotte on the bed and she grips his hair as he presses his face between her thighs.
When they finally collapse against the bed, soaked in sweat and gasping for breath, they immediately move into each others arms.
After the fifth time, Charlotte stops counting.