Author's notes: So, this is my first attempt at a Younger fic and let me admit I've only started watching the show a week ago because it doesn't air here in Germany, I've only just found it (and binge watched all four Seasons - SO captivating, SO well done). I love Peter Hermann and I really think he nails his character on the show. I'm #TeamCharles all the way and well, with the show on hiatus for the time being I needed it to go on in my own little universe.

Right now I have no idea where exactly I'm going to take this, anyway, this picks up right where we left off in Season 4 and we're going to take a bit of a look at Charles in the very first chapter. I hope you guys enjoy.

The whiskey (neat) goes down Charles' throat smoothly, spreading in his stomach with its usual warm quality. Some small part of his body aches for the offensive burn of a cheaper label, knowing it would make his insides turn to acid.

He hears Pauline move about in the kitchen. He hasn't gotten used to her being back. In the house, in his life. In New York. For the bigger part of the past year he had been convinced his wife wouldn't return; not ever. And he had gone through the motions that assumption had created. From sadness to fury over Égalité to…

Relief. The word formed in the confines of his mind, a deep and innermost thought. He can almost hear it, can almost taste the bitterness the letters would leave on his tongue.

She walks into the sitting room then, a mug of steaming tea encased by her hands. He identifies the scents that fill the air as herbal tea. Pauline has always had a thing for herbal tea.

Memories flood him and he has to admit that these days it happens a lot. Pieces of a life come back to him. They are triggered by the simplest of words or actions, sometimes by the mere presence of Pauline. Things like how she likes her eggs in the morning, what her favorite book is, that she only ever uses two different perfumes, L'eau D'issey for spring and summertime and Eternity for the darker, crisper time of the year. Or the fact that she loves herbal tea.

Charles can feel Pauline's eyes on him and slowly he tears his gaze off the liquid gold in his tumbler and meets his wife's glance. Her blue eyes are calm and she holds her favorite mug (she must have found it somewhere in the back of the cupboard) with an elegance he has never seen with anybody else. He used to look at her and feel at peace, overcome with the serene kind of love and affection that only settles in after years of being together. The kind of love that was built by thunder and storms overcome, by having seen the best and the worst in your partner. Frenzied and hot, sizzling passion sparked by infatuation that eventually was replaced by implicit trust in that other person and your relationship. All of it is gone now. The trust lies in ruins, a puzzle Charles isn't sure could be put back together even if he wanted it.

He thinks back and feels drained from this day. The GMA gig had turned out to be a disaster - for Charles at least. For Pauline's book and Empirical/Millenial it is a huge success that will spark further interest in his wife as an author, in ‚Marriage Vacation' and last but not least his publishing company.

Being asked to join Pauline on stage had not been part of the deal and he would give Zane a piece of his mind about it. Charles knows it hadn't been Kelsey's doing. For one she had obviously been both pissed and terrified for him. And then Charles wants to believe that she would never put his personal life on display like that, especially in such a delicate situation.

Maybe he should have seen it coming with Zane, he had pushed for screen time with Pauline from the start. He is only with Empirical because with him came Moore. As fruitful a move it was for the sales numbers, it is devastating on a private level. Especially because Charles feels no honest desire to reconcile. His life isn't something he wants broadcasted to the world - in fact he doesn't want any part of it. It is bad enough that the book will not be seen as a work of fiction by anybody. In fact, it is a near perfect recount of their marriage. It makes him feel naked and terribly put on the spot. Charles can't imagine anything more uncomfortable than his friends and co-workers reading details of his life with Pauline. While the book was honest and insightful, even for Charles, he still feels like a lot of the matters Pauline decided to write about should have remained private.

Like page 58. When he had read it he had been utterly horrified and embarrassed, a circumstance that had only been intensified in the office the next day. He still remembers the glances and the way everybody whispered, the way Dianna, Kelsey and Liza (God, especially Liza) had looked at him slightly different, obviously wondering if the juicy stuff they had read was fact or fiction, or maybe a little bit of both.

It really wasn't anyone's business that he had gone down on Pauline and screwed her brains out in a bathroom stall at a corporate party eight years ago and there certainly had been no need for Pauline to go into such detail with the smut, either. What he had done and said to her in the bedroom - or a bathroom stall for that matter. Or that later that same night with both of them a little drunk, he had asked his wife for anal sex and gotten it, too. It should be sacred moments.

„Penny for you thoughts." Charles' left eyebrow raises as Pauline's words break through the thicket of his thoughts.

„Page 58," he answers truthfully. He watches his wife's facial expression change from wonderment to realization. A moment of surprise and then something he interprets as confusion. „I don't think it was necessary for you to include that in your book," Charles clarifies just so she wouldn't mistake it as a good-natured attempt at flirting.

She takes a few steps until she reaches the couch and sits down with a soft sigh because it is hard to explain why she chose to include it in her narrative. „I remember it fondly." Pauline picks her words carefully, her gaze still fixated on her husband.

He wants to retort that he does, too, yet he has never broadcasted it to whole damned world. He doesn't even want to discuss it, it isn't so much that he dwells on page 58 but on the whole story, on everything that has happened since she has come back from Los Angeles. „I wasn't so much thinking about page 58 for a specific reason, it's just that… today was rough."

„I think we can agree that it was quite successful."

„For you, yes. For Empirical, certainly. For me? Not so much, Pauline." There is no anger in his voice, he isn't trying to be spiteful either. But he is hurt and confused and everything feels like too much tonight. His heart is heavy because he wants to clarify to people, to the world, that the fact his house has published ‚Marriage Vacation' doesn't mean he and his wife are reconciling, that her having moved back into the house does not equal a desire of his to have her there with him under the same roof. Mostly he wants to clarify this to Liza, only he doesn't even know if she has watched GMA. He had tried to call her a few hours ago only she hadn't picked up and hadn't called back either. It stings. It makes him wonder if it has to do with her trying to win her ex back or with her trying to let him go, because she had spelled it out to him quite clearly.

Everything has changed.

And while everything has changed, he sees what she meant by it, it hasn't changed anything at the same time. If he looks at the raw facts it goes like this.

#1 Pauline is back.

#2 Pauline has moved back into the house, but only into the guest room and only for the

children's sake.

#3 Empirical/Millenial has published her book because it would have been utterly stupid not too. It was a business decision, not a private one.

#4 He has no desire to reconcile with Pauline.

#5 He is in love with Liza and not even the return of his wife has created any doubt about

that.

#6 He wants to figure things out with Liza.

Not necessarily in that order because working it out with Liza feels like the first priority. Her following her ex to Ireland is terrifying in many ways but he doesn't want to make too many assumptions about the nature of that trip. No matter the reasons, Charles has probably had something to do with their breakup. He remembers that night in the Hamptons to well. Stories exchanged, them dancing to ‚Take my breath away' by Berlin, a kiss. He can't even remember if she had kissed him or if it was him who had taken the plunge that night but Charles damned well remembers that kiss. And the one after that, in front of her door, too. As well as the rose petals posing the simplest of questions: Marry Me?

He had of course wondered what had happened that night, obviously Liza had not come back to the office sporting an engagement ring. He had heard about the breakup but he has had no way of knowing what had gone down that night. It hadn't been until the corporate picnic, when Josh had punched him in the face, that he had put one and one together.

Everything has changed.

„Charles, I know I've made my share of mistakes, but don't you think you can find it in your heart to forgive me? So we can somehow figure this out and move on? Come out of this much stronger?"

„We've already had this conversation today," he responds and rubs his palm across his face. It is tiring to discuss this again and again, to hear her so hopeful when he feels entirely hopeless. They are in the same room but not on the same page. While he is with her physically, only a few feet separating them, his heart and mind is elsewhere. He doesn't see himself come back. Still it's hard to form the actual words. Instead he says things like ‚We'll see' or like earlier today in the car on their way home ‚I think we're still a work in progress.' All of it while his heart spells out an other truth.

We are done.

„I know and I respect what you said, I get it, it's just…"

„This isn't about forgiveness, Pauline." He breathes, shaking his head slightly before he takes a sip from his drink. He feels the sort of empty that can't be filled at the thought of them as an item. There is nothing to hold onto, no straw to grasp, no lifeline. It's Pauline and her desire for absolution or forgiveness and it's him completely void of the feelings it would take for them to heal and be something again. „When you walked out I-," he pauses and struggles for words that would convey even a fraction of what it had done to him but he is a publisher, not a writer, not someone who can take letters and assemble them to words and sentences that weigh as much as the meaning behind them. „When you didn't come back I've let you go."

He looks her dead in the eye now and his shoulders sag the tiniest bit under the truth. It's a layer he has peeled off right in front of her and when she looks at him quizzically he sighs and straightens his torso.

„I am here now, Charles. I needed…" She takes a breath and puts down her mug on the coffee table. „You have to understand what it was like for me back then. I felt like I've lost myself. Everything I used to be, everything I knew about myself got washed away between being a mother and a wife. I had to find… me."

„I know, I've read the book." He says this without harshness but the words still sound like he wants to cut her off. Which he does. „And still I am telling you that while you have left me and left the girls to find yourself… I have let you. I've already let you go, Pauline," he repeats with emphasis. „And you coming back doesn't mean that I'm ready for you to come back for me. Things have changed."

Pauline swallows, hearing him for the first time. For the past few weeks she has had the feeling that things were moving forward. Slowly but steadily forward in a favorable direction. Now she isn't so sure anymore. She remembers how she had wondered if there was someone else when she had first come back. She knows he had dated someone a little while ago but Liza had assured her that it was over with the faceless woman named Radha.

„Is there someone else?"

„This is not what it's about, Pauline," he manages, feeling tired and exasperated.

„That doesn't answer my question."

„My God," he sighs, massaging his jaw. He doesn't understand why she would think that an interest in someone else would tip the scales in this scenario. Liza is in the picture for him, but it isn't because of her that he doesn't want to reconcile with Pauline. Some things simply break beyond repair. Some choices can't be taken back and not all damage can be undone. He can forgive her and it still won't be enough to start over. Maybe he has already forgiven her.

„There is, isn't there? Do I know her?" And then it feels like a kick in the gut. „Are you sleeping with her?"

Like that would make a difference.

For a moment Charles is back in his office, late in the evening when everybody else had already gone home except for Liza (And the janitor. Fuck…the janitor.), right before his whole world had come crashing down on him. Back when Liza had talked about a cupcake being hard or stale or dry and how in the next moment she had been on him, loosening his tie that he helped her with and tossed into the room only to back her up on his desk and they were all lips and desire and something had definitely been hard then. But like everything else between them the situation had been compromised and everything he had been aching for for too long had ended before he had gotten around to thoroughly kissing her and making her his in the most primal way.

Is he sleeping with Liza? No. Does he want to? That is a definite yes.

Charles empties his drink with one final gulp, then puts the tumbler down with a thud. He exhales calmly and licks his bottom lip. „Pauline, you shouldn't be concerned about me sleeping with someone else. Sex is… It's bigger than that. But no, I'm not sleeping with her."

The next second he's up and walking away with long strides, not hearing the words that follow because he doesn't want to hear them. For tonight he is done revisiting the past and he is done with her bargaining with their future. His bedroom door closes once he's made it upstairs and it drowns out his wife's voice. A small part of him has him convinced that he's not being entirely fair but it had been Pauline who had walked out on their family to find whatever she thought she had lost. He owes her nothing. In fact he has giving her more than he truly thought she deserved from him at this point.

To be continued…