honeydew and chocolate chip mint with chopped nuts
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Sick
Rating: PG
Challenge: Honeydew #1: slow dance, Chocolate Chip Mint #17: familiar
Toppings/Extras: chopped nuts
Wordcount: 562
Summary: Isaac Prowse wonders how well he really knows Charlie Buckett.
Notes: Well. This is a bit of an interesting AU. But one I’ll probably revisit.
Isaac was cleaning his knives as diligently as ever in the dim glow of their cheap lamp when the door opened and Charlie stumbled in. He barely glanced up as his rumpled friend slammed the door behind him loud enough to wake the entire street and then completed a small circuit of the room, kicking furniture and muttering to himself.
After a moment, Charlie Buckett turned to glare at his lifelong friend.
“What’re you lookin’ at?” he demanded. Isaac sighed, eyes still glued to his knife as he continued to polish carefully. When Charlie was in a mood like this, he would invent reasons to argue out of thin air. After a moment, he levelled his gaze at Charlie.
“What happened?” he asked wearily.
“Oh, nothin’. Nothin’ really. Just some bitch threw me over again.”
He’d obviously been drinking again. A lot. Isaac wasn’t surprised that a girl would reject Charlie in this state. His hair was loose and tumbling and greasy, gaze not quite straight, shirt half-unbuttoned, sleeves open and dangling. A mess of a man. He stumbled across the room and began rifling through a cupboard, empty bottles scattering with clinks and clanks. Isaac stood up.
“That’s enough, Charlie,” he said.
”Piss off, Zac.”
“No.” Isaac moved around to where Charlie stood, wondering how to go about this. The choice was taken out of his hands when Charlie suddenly slammed his fist into the cupboard, denting the centre and sending a bottle crashing to the floor.
”Shite! What am I doin’, Zac?”
Isaac just looked at him wordlessly.
“I think there’s somethin’ wrong with me. I’m sick,” Charlie said, trying to stand up straighter and staggering to one side. “Sick as a dog,” he added, and laughed a heart-wrenching laugh. Isaac held out an arm to steady him.
“Get yerself to bed, fool child,” Isaac snorted.
Charlie clamped his hands onto Isaac’s shoulders, facing him gravely. He was swaying a little but his eyes were serious and his steady gaze flicked from one of his eyes to the other. After a short hesitation, he moved his face closer to Isaac’s.
At first Isaac wasn’t sure what his intention was. Then he felt something in his stomach, a hot plunging sensation.
Their lips met tentatively and parted soon after, mouths opening only very briefly. Isaac shivered a little as the kiss ended. He was considering kissing him again when Charlie’s arms closed around him and suddenly Charlie pressed his face into his neck, crying like a newborn baby. His hair tickled under Isaac’s chin.
He had never, ever seen Charlie cry before. Not even when they had both been scrawny children in the orphanage, squashing snails and trying not to get caned. Not even when they had scrabbled for their lives on the cold nights in the winding alleys of central London. Charlie didn’t cry.
“Charlie...”
“Don’t say a word,” Charlie said, hitching voice muffled against his neck. “Don’t you say a fuckin’ word.”
So he didn’t. He just held him, rocking him side to side like a child, comforting him as best as he could. Charlie was the person that he knew best in the world, but sometimes he got the feeling that not even he could ever fully understand intense anger in the man; the resentment and scorn for the whole world. All he could do was hold him.