Chapter Text
Charlie d'Artagnan's day had gone from perfect to horrible in a span of seconds - and still, he was not quite sure what exactly had gone wrong.
This morning he had woken up with Constance in his arms, her head resting on his chest, her hair fanned out over his skin and tickling his chin. With a grin, he had pressed a kiss to her head and pulled her more tightly against himself.
Watching his girlfriend slowly make her way back to full wakefulness was a rare treat that Charlie made sure to indulge in as often as he could.
Her eyelids would flutter, lashes brushing over full cheeks, sometimes giving his chest soft, tickling butterfly kisses. She'd stretch unconsciously, still held too fast in slumber's embrace to properly do so, and her body would press against Charlie's, her hands curling into lazy fists on top of his chest.
With a smile, Charlie had taken one of her hands into his own, pressing gentle kisses onto her knuckles, watching her sigh and burrow closer to him and deeper under the covers, before eventually blinking her eyes open.
Sometimes, Charlie wondered if he would ever feel different when meeting Constance' eyes. Ever since they had met for the very first time, his hands shakily accepting the mug of coffee from her, almost spilling the hot liquid down her front upon meeting her eyes for the first time, looking into her eyes had never once failed to light up a fire in his soul, burning brightly and hotly against his ribs, filling his entire body with heat, so fiery and all-consuming sometimes he wondered how they hadn't burned out yet.
But then Constance smiled at him, her eyes only barely open, and the fire in his chest turned into the content warmth he had grown to accustomed to, that he craved whenever she wasn't around.
"Morning, sleepyhead," he whispered, and Constance only hummed again, stretching up to ghost a kiss onto his lips.
"Mhm, morning."
They stayed the way they were for a moment longer until Constance rolled onto her back to check the alarm clock on their bedside table and then let out a loud sigh.
"We need to get going," she murmured, about to sit up. Charlie expertly caught her around the waist and pulled her back down to lie against him, which Constance did with a huff of laughter. "Charlie, come on!"
"Athos can wait for you," Charlie hummed as he pressed kisses along her neck and jaw, "What does he need you for this early in the morning?"
"We've got a delivery coming," Constance got out in between the kisses, Charlie was now claiming her lips with, and she gave a frustrated
moan, when his hands slipped underneath the thin shirt she wore in lieu of pyjamas, "No, stop it, we gotta get going!"
Her firm command and no-nonsense tone of voice did the trick and Charlie pulled back his hands with a sigh.
"Why we?" he asked, pouting like a petulant child. Constance threw a pillow at him with a laugh as she got up.
"Because you promised to drive me to work before picking up Mateo. Anne said, she'd leave around nine and Aramis has the dayshift today, don't tell me you forgot?"
Charlie frowned for a moment in mock-confusion before he grinned and caught the second pillow thrown his way. "Just how dumb do you think I am, Constance dear?"
She only raised a pointed eyebrow in reply as she shimmied out of her underwear and grabbed her clothes from the closet. On her way to the bathroom, she threw him a smirk over her shoulder and casually called, "Aren't you coming?"
Needless to say, Charlie had jumped out of their bed and followed her into the bathroom within seconds.
After their shower, they got dressed with their current favourite album blasting through the bathroom, Constance wasting too much time using her toothbrush as a microphone instead of a toothbrush and Charlie performing the backing vocals in nothing but his boxers and socks, headbanging hard enough to send drops of water flying everywhere.
By the time they were done, they had five minutes to spare and so Charlie only ushered Constance out of the door and into the car, fully intending on snatching a piece of pastry and a coffee at the Blackwell Bookstore and Coffeeshop that Constance and Charlie's best friend Athos co-owned.
The car ride from their small place in New Hinksey to Oxford's city centre was blessedly short this early in the day, the city not yet overflowing with traffic, and so Charlie pulled up his car at the front door and got out with Constance.
The shop was already opened and inside, Athos could be seen bustling through the half that contained the bookstore, as usual looking like he hadn't had a good night's sleep in weeks.
Constance and Charlie called out their greetings when they entered hand in hand and shared a fond look when Athos only grunted back.
"Coffee?" Constance called out to him, already working on getting their espresso machine powered up, although they all already knew the answer.
It had been their agreement upon opening the shop together: Athos took care of the books, Constance of the coffee and pastries. To Charlie, it always felt unfairly divided since baking the pastries was a much more time-consuming task than shelving a few books but Constance happily spent every Monday, when the coffeeshop was closed and only the bookstore opened, in the little kitchen behind the store, prepping and freezing batch after batch of pastries until she was certain they had enough to get them through an entire week. Three freezers took up most of the space in the kitchen, alongside the ceiling-tall oven in which she baked the pastries, fresh every morning, flour on her flushed cheeks and her hair barely contained in her ponytail.
It was Charlie's favourite version of his girlfriend - although he really wasn't able to choose.
After Constance had supplied both Athos and Charlie with their usual orders of coffee and had turned on the oven, she pressed a left-over pastry from the day before into Charlie's hands and pressed a kiss to his lips before pushing him out of the shop and into the direction of his car.
He stole another kiss, whispering, "Have a good day, I love you" into her ear, before he finished the pastry in three big bites and fell back into the driver's seat.
The drive up to Eynsham, the small-town Aramis, Anne and their five-year-old Mateo lived, only took 15 minutes, 25 if the road was full, 40 if he got stuck in real traffic. After their respective studies, all of his friends had decided to stay close to Oxford, none of them quite willing to risk their friendship by moving too far away. And it wasn't like any of them were unhappy, still living in the same city that had brought them together such few years ago.
Aramis had his job with the local ambulance service, Porthos was thriving at the Eastern Oxford Primary School and both Constance and Athos were more than content with their shop. They had all found their calling and their passion in what they were doing.
Only Charlie, it seemed, was still searching and if he was being honest with himself, he was growing restless. Restless to do more, to make a difference in somebody's life. Sometimes he thought, this small-city life wasn't for him.
He shook those thoughts out of his head and took another sip from his coffee as he took the first exit in the roundabout to turn onto the A40 towards Eynsham.
He had learned soon after Mateo had been born that channelling all of his restless energy into being the most amazing uncle his nephew would ever have worked wonders for calming him down. So, on the road to his friend's house, he focused on that.
It was purely bad luck that he didn't see the fox on the road before it was already too late.
His styrofoam mug still in his hand, his reactions were sloppy, and he yanked the steering wheel around with too much force, his foot slamming down on the brake. Instead of coming to a halt, his car veered to one side and out of reflex, Charlie tried to steer against it, not even feeling the hot coffee that had by now spilled down his front, the cup having tumbled down into his lap.
Then, he heard a crash.
He flew forward, his face hitting the steering wheel hard enough to make his nose crunch loudly, sending pain through his entire face, his seatbelt painfully cutting into his shoulder and hips.
A part of his brain wondered why his airbag hadn't erupted out of the wheel.
Something shattered and Charlie was thrown forward again, his head hitting the steering wheel once more and this time, he was too dazed to lift it again.
He stayed that way for a while, his entire body weak and limp.
His head pounding and his eyes only half-lidded against the fog that was seemingly desperate to cloud over his mind, Charlie tried to make out what had happened. His vision was tinted with a strangely red hue and when he tried to lift his hand to wipe at his eyes, his limbs refused to obey him.
Blinking in an attempt to clear away whatever it was that was hindering his view, a new wave of stabbing pain shot through his skull and Charlie groaned lowly.
A sudden creaking sound tore through the air and directly into his pounding head and his surroundings lurched forward in time with it. The pressure on his legs, that Charlie hadn't even been aware of up until that point, increased tenfold, making it feel like every single bone in them was slowly being pulverised and only the fact that there wasn't enough air in his lungs to manage a scream kept him from it.
As it was, he managed a weak gasp as he hung suspended in something that felt suspiciously like a seatbelt.
Finally, with more desperate blinking, his vision cleared a little.
However, what Charlie saw didn't make any sense.
There was dark green - trees? A forest? A field? - and water - muddied water in a strange reddish green, that he thought he could see - and no road. How could there be no road? He had just been on the road.
Or had he not?
Panic flooded Charlie's body, alongside the well-known rush of adrenaline he was so familiar with. Without conscious thought, his body started to try and move, sending jolt after jolt of pain through its entire length.
Charlie didn't stop.
Then, abruptly everything moved again. This time, the creaking was even louder.
His view tilted until the dark green disappeared and all he could see was the reddish green water.
The panic skyrocketed and Charlie was thrown forward, his head connecting with something solid and unforgiving. Steering wheel, a part of mind supplied.
He couldn't care anymore.
Before he slipped into unconsciousness, all he could think was that this was it.
This, Charlie was sure, was where he was going to die.