[Fic] Sanctuary

[kittydesade]

Title: Sanctuary
Fandom: The Covenant
Characters: Chase, Caleb, Pogue
Rating: PG-13 for potty mouth
Word Count:
Summary: Caleb's been keeping secrets and Pogue ain't happy.

"You're such a bastard."

Chase grinned.

Caleb almost expected him to burst out giggling like some kind of horror movie villain. Followed by a monologue, but Chase didn't. He didn't say anything, which just made Caleb want to hit him harder.

He didn't, because the rage had gotten so much harder to control since that night in Sarah's room.

"Why." It wasn't what he'd meant to ask, even if it had come out in more of a rasping statement. And it was what he wanted to ask, it was what he wanted to know even if he had to throttle the answer out of Chase with his bare hands. Especially if he had to. He would...

... enjoy that a little too much. Caleb stared at Chase in horror and slowly increasing disgust, and Chase just smiled that much more.

"Think about it for a little while. You'll understand."

Caleb intended to knock Chase through the next few walls, and fuck what that would do to the house. He meant to leave Chase broken and bleeding on the floor, but what actually happened was that he lunged for Chase, power gathering, and Chase just laughed and disappeared out the window. Caleb followed, only to lose him in the trees that whipped against his face, raindrops spraying everywhere. Chase, nowhere to be found.

He did spend some time looking. Using power indiscriminately and scouring the grounds, levitating through the air and ignoring the winds and the storm. But by the time he found anything that even looked like a trail Pogue's bike was roaring up the path, followed shortly by the jeep. Caleb slipped back in through the window, face wet.


Pogue led the way upstairs with no immediate sense of urgency beyond the feeling he had, something troubling. He got to Caleb's room and it looked as though the other boy had changed; Caleb was just in sweats and toweling his face and hair off.

And it was Reid, as usual, who first noticed out loud that something was wrong.

"What happened?"

"Nothing."

Caleb had the wide-eyed look of innocence and cluelessness down to a fine art, but Pogue shook his head minutely when the blonde boy glanced in his direction. The lines of tension were too tight around Caleb's eyes, his hands held too tightly, as though he was afraid to tense them. Pogue went around to close the window and saw how Caleb's back tensed at the click it made.

"Are you ready to go?" Tyler asked, because now everyone was frowning. They were supposed to go out to the cabin for a week to celebrate the end of school, but it didn't look as though Caleb had even packed yet. Unless they'd passed his bags in the hall, or he'd already loaded them into the Mustang. It was possible.

Not likely, but Pogue supposed it was possible.

"Yeah, sure, just..."

Pogue glanced over at Reid. "Give us a minute?"

Reid muttered something about giving them an hour, but for once, did as he was asked. Tyler followed, especially after the look Caleb gave them both. It was dark, and got uglier as the door shut behind them and he turned to stare at the only person left in the room.

"Why did you do that?"

Pogue didn't frown at Caleb's tone; he almost didn't dare. It was soft, and dangerous, and on the verge of being upset all over the room. "You can't lie to me, Caleb, not ... not that well. What happened?"

It was the wrong thing to say. Or the wrong way to go about it. Caleb's shoulders tensed even further and his eyes went black. The air started to hum with gathered Power, but he didn't do anything with it. Didn't even say anything at first, turning away.

"Chase was here to see me."

White hot fury burned Pogue's eyes black, clenched his fists and made the window bang open again. He didn't have the power Caleb had, but he didn't have the control, either. More to not use it than to keep control of it when he did. "What did he want." His tone implied that if it was anything less than a full, prostrating apology that Chase would get the snot beat out of him.

"Just to talk, I guess." Caleb shrugged, and still wouldn't look at Pogue. The air was choking them with tension and Power.

"Just to talk?" Pogue shook his head. "Chase doesn't just talk. What did he say?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Caleb!" The other boy whirled. For a moment they stared at each other, across the room and at each other's throats. Pogue looked away first. "Goddammit."

"What?" Except from Caleb's mouth, with that expression and in that tone, it sounded more like fuck you.

Pogue thought for a second that he was going to be sick. They hadn't fought like this in... they had never fought like this. Caleb and Reid were the ones who butted heads, they weren't... they didn't do this. And certainly not now.

"Nothing," he muttered, turning away. Fighting the urge to go towards him and, god, say anything to make it better. And it wasn't until he got to the door that he realized what was going on. Or at least that cringing away wasn't the best idea in the world. In fact, might have been the worst.

It wasn't the cringing that did it, it was catching the look on Caleb's face as he turned away again. He looked like he was going to be sick, just as bad as Pogue felt.

So he didn't retreat all the way, but leaned in the doorway and folded his arms. "Talk to me." He didn't know what about. What had happened, except that Chase had been by and Caleb was still here, everything was intact except for the few cracks in the window where it had hit the wall but something was deeply, intensely wrong here. "Caleb, you can't shut me out for the rest of our lives, so why don't you start talking to me while you still can."

He hadn't meant that to sound as ominous as it did outside his head. Caleb glared at him over his shoulder. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"You have a hard enough time talking to me about anything now," Pogue said, and it sounded belligerent even when he didn't want it to. "You don't tell me anything anymore. You're not talking to Reid or Tyler, you wouldn't... So, what, that leaves who? You stopped seeing the counselor," he added, and Caleb's eyes widened slightly as he turned all the way around to face him. "Yeah, I know. I checked."

"What the hell business is it of yours if I stop..." Caleb's face twisted, turned ugly.

"Because you're my friend, dammit! Because... Jesus Christ, do I really have to explain it to you?" It scared Pogue, and he wanted to reach out and grab Caleb, shake some sense into him. "Why do you keep hiding things from us? Is it really that bad?" That part came out sarcastic. There was nothing, Pogue was sure, nothing that could be so bad as to break Caleb off from the rest of them, make them turn their backs on him. He knew it, with more certainty than he knew anything.

(It had occurred to him, once, that their ancestors had probably felt the same way about Chase's ancestors, but he tried not to think of that anymore.)

"Just... stop asking, okay?" Caleb shouted back. "Just stop asking! I don't want to talk about it!"

"Well, we're going to fucking talk about it now, okay?!"

Intellectually, mentally, he'd been prepared for the assault. Knowing that Caleb's temper ran hotter and closer to the surface now than it ever had before, he'd known that getting into a fight with him meant the risk of explosions and physical injury.

That was a whole other thing, knowing it intellectually, from feeling himself go flying out the window with Caleb's fists curled in his shirt. He felt the ground come rushing up and slam the wind out of him from behind. Felt pain shoot along his spine and one second of primal, instinctive fear that he'd broken his back, was paralyzed. A fear that was profoundly less manifest when his feet scrabbled at the ground, kicking at Caleb's legs. They were outside the house now, on the front grounds, and the rain was soaking them both. Why was it always raining?

Because it was Massachusetts, that's why. Fucking state.

"Leave! Me! Alone!" Caleb's eyes were black and glaring, scowling into Pogue's face.

Pogue wrapped his arms around his friend and pulled him even closer. "No way. No way in hell."

"WHY?!" Loud, and shouted. Pogue winced, not just at the volume but at the way it sounded despairing, angry, emotions he had caught glimpses of but Caleb was all over the place right now, leaking it like a ruptured organ, hemorrhaging tears.

"BECAUSE!" Pogue shouted back, and tried to keep ahold of him while Caleb flailed and hit. And then hit again, with more strength and direction and purpose behind it. Ow. Pogue tried to fight back, get him pinned down. His knee caught the inside of Caleb's thigh and made him twist away. "Fuck, Caleb, stop, all right? Stop!" Right before the fist caught him in the side of the neck.

They rolled apart, choking, gasping. Pogue was shivering by now, cold air and the lack of Caleb's body heat against his, even if they had been fighting, and he didn't realize until now how scared he was. Not of the fight. Caleb had been holding so much inside. And now, as Pogue looked over and was still catching his breath, now he was literally vibrating in place with trying to pack it all again inside.

"Don't," he reached out, curled his hand around Caleb's shoulder. "Don't do that. Don't."

Caleb knocked him away, with enough force that it would have made Pogue stare any time before the last fifteen minutes of this fight. "Why?" he asked, and it came out harsh and bitter and almost laughing. Pogue looked through the rain on his face and saw his eyes turning red around the edges. Red was better than black. "Why, you want to get beat into the mud again?"

"No." Pogue turned him and shoved him down into the ground, straddling him and pressing his palms up just below his shoulders. One knee holding his leg down. Just with his body, no Power. He made himself let it go. "I want you to stop holding back."

"NO." Caleb shouted it and turned away, trying to wriggle away. "NO, Pogue, dammit. If I stop..."

"What, you throw me out a window and knock me down? I think I can live with that."

His voice was so normal, even to him, that it made Caleb stop struggling and blink. There was so much tension in the air, sexual, violent, fear and conflict and Pogue had no idea what the flying fuck he was doing but he was terrified of losing his friend and the rest of it didn't even bear thinking about. And he knew what Caleb had been doing if he let himself think about just that part of it. He'd known all along.

"You don't und--"

"Stop. Just stop, stop telling me I don't get it, that I don't understand, okay? Yeah, I may not get the overcharged Power part of it, and... but when have you ever given me a chance? Or Reid, or Tyler?" And he was bitter about that, he realized, as he said it. So upset and angry.

Caleb just stared at him, blinking in the rain and the wetness that dripped down from the ends of Pogue's hair.

"When have you ever even tried to talk to us about what happened? You closed off after the first couple of weeks, you wouldn't talk to us, wouldn't ... you just cut us off, man. You've been cut off ever since, and that's got to stop. You need to stop."

"If I stop..." Caleb choked out, blinking lots, then looking away. Pogue shifted, knees into the wet leaves and forearm on the dirt, and turned his face gently back to him. "If I stop, I could kill you. All of you."

"No you couldn't," Pogue said, much softer and with deep fondness behind it. "Idiot. If you were going to lose control and hurt me you would have done it already."

"Are you s..."

"Yes, I'm sure. Caleb, you can't protect us by cutting us off, okay? We're your friends, right?"

"I di..."

Pogue's fist thumped into his chest. "The answer, idiot, is 'yes.'"

Caleb stared at him a bit.

"'Yes, Pogue, you're my friend...'" he prompted. "Come on, it works better if you say it after me." As far as convincing arguments went, it lacked a certain something. But he was desperate, and he was scared, and he didn't know what else to do except sit on him and try to talk to him, to reach him that way.

And Caleb did continue to stare at him. But he did start to mouth the words after a second.

"Yes, Pogue..." The rest of it was too quiet to be heard over the wind.

"'And I'm sorry for shutting you out of my life.'"

"And I'm so..." Caleb stopped, then sat up and shoved him off. Or at least forward enough that he could sit up, which was fine. Pogue sat on his legs. "I haven't been!"

"You have. You really have. You keep yourself wrapped up so tight even around us, and, we're not going to break or something if you snap, okay?" Pogue swallowed. Now that it was over, again, the adrenaline was leaving him. "We're going to be fine. All of us, you don't need to protect us from you. You don't need to pretend. That's not the way this works."

They reached for each other at the same time, Caleb curling into him and Pogue tugging him close, just because he couldn't stand it any more. It hurt to have that gap between them, all the last few months it had hurt. They had never been so close, and they had never been so very far apart. They were supposed to be a gang of four, all four of them. They weren't supposed to be one distant leader and three worried friends.

"I didn't want to hurt you," Caleb mumbled into his shoulder, and the damp patch slowly spreading on his shoulder was warm, not cool from the rain. "I didn't want..."

"You won't hurt us. We're not fragile, we don't break if you yell at us, and we're not going to explode if you blow up at us, okay? But you can't pack us in cotton and keep us safe, either. It doesn't work that way."

Caleb nodded a little, fingers digging almost painfully into Pogue's shoulder. Pogue took in a deep breath and felt it shudder out, relaxing slowly. Even the rain was starting to die down now. He wondered if Caleb's emotions had been making the storm worse. Something they could deal with later, though.

"I don't like this. I don't like... being like this."

"I know. But we'll figure it out together, okay? We can, we really will." Leaves crunched behind them, the other two coming up to see if they were okay, what was going on. "We can figure this out, all four of us."

"All for one..."

"Shut up, Reid."

Caleb made a sound into Pogue's shoulder, somewhere between a giggle and a snort. Pogue felt a warmth at his back, one of them coming up behind him and putting his arms around them both, and then the other, and then they were all four of them clinging and holding on.

"Feel better?"

"Yeah."

But they still stayed like that for a little while longer, till everyone was calm and quiet. Till they knew where and what they were again, one of a tiny brotherhood, and safest in company. Pogue slid his fingers through Caleb's hair, brushed his lips over his, felt Reid's gloved hand sliding through his hair. No one else ever could understand what this felt like, being one of four strong corners, part of a group so irreversibly and unchangeably that it became its own form of sanctuary. He felt a little sorry for them. And still a little angry at Caleb that hed tried to change that.

But, he'd get over it.

"Cabin?"

"Cabin."

Caleb even laughed a little, wiping at his face as they stood, all four of them heading back into the house shoulder to shoulder. "Maybe it'll have stopped raining by the time we get up there."

"Maybe not," Pogue snorted. "It's fucking Massachusetts."