Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Are we not gonna talk about what happened yesterday?”

Charlie pauses. He only came upstairs to pick up a hammer, and now that he has it, he’s heading back towards the basement. Rat traps don’t repair themselves.

Only Dee is blocking his exit. She’s leaning with one hand on the wall, the other on the register, catching Charlie behind the bar in a rat trap of her own.

“Are we not? No?” Dee repeats, with an awkward laugh, when she doesn’t get a response the first time.

“I dunno,” Charlie says nervously, glancing around to make sure she’s definitely talking to him. Mac and Dennis are playing pool. Frank is in the back office. And as usual, they have no customers to speak of. Charlie looks back at Dee. “Uh, you’re talking to me?”

“Who else would I be talking to, silly?”

“I just came upstairs to get my hammer, Dee. I dunno what you’re talking about, and I got rats to deal with.”

“Yesterday,” she coos, “when you accused me of ra…” She narrows her eyes, lowers her voice. “R-a-p-e. In front of all those people.”

“I did?”

She only raises her eyebrows at him.

“I dunno,” Charlie shrugs, “I guess sometimes you do – it’s really more of a, uh, a squawk, like a more shrill kinda screeching sound, rather than a roar, but…”

“Not roar! You didn’t accuse me of roaring!” Her voice gets even more quiet. She’s annoyed, not playful anymore. “You accused me of raping you, moron.”

“Oh.” Charlie’s heart sinks. He’d hoped this would be one of those things that just faded away, never to be spoken of again. “I mean. I never said rape. I said you molested me. That’s different.”

“No, it isn’t. You came out and you said all that shit about what happened, and you made everyone think I was a rapist.” There’s genuine hurt in her voice when she demands, “Why would you do that to me, Charlie?”

“Well – ‘cause it’s kinda true, Dee. You – you did bang me, and I told you I didn’t want to.”

“I don’t have a shrill voice, you’re the one with the shrill voice,” she hisses. “Keep your shrill voice down.”

“I don’t think we need to whisper. The guys know what happened now, and they don’t seem to give a shit either way.”

Dee takes a slow step forward. “They don’t know what happened. All they know is what you said yesterday. And that was all bullshit.”

Charlie’s frown deepens. “Uh, no, it wasn’t.”

“It. Was. Bullshit. Charlie.” She takes another step, so that the toes of her shoes touch his sneakers, her hair brushes his shoulders. She glares downwards into his upturned eyes. “You don’t remember things that happened last week. How would you remember something that happened years ago?”

His voice continues to rise in volume and pitch as he becomes defensive. “I remember it pretty clearly, and I think you do, too.”

“You don’t remember anything, you stupid little junkie.”

“I remember stuff!”

“Liar!” Dee grabs Charlie by the front of his ratty t-shirt, forcing him closer. It brings up a visceral memory of the day in question – her looming over him, making him feel small. That scary, Dennisy look in her eyes. “You love dressing up, playing your dumb characters, making up your dumb stories. You just made up another story ‘cause you want people to feel sorry for you! Poor little Charlie the victim, can’t stand up to big bad Dee, boo hoo hoo!”

Charlie feels himself getting hot with anger. It makes his tongue clumsy. “That wasn’t – oh my god, you’re such a fucking…”

“Shut up.” She yanks on his t-shirt some more, upwards, forcing him onto his tiptoes so that their faces are mere inches apart. “It didn’t work anyway, ‘cause no one believed you. Everyone knows you’re psycho and your brain’s full of holes.”

His fist tightens on the hammer and he raises it up, vibrating with emotion now. “What if I put a hole in your brain? Bitch?”

Seeing the hammer, she quickly pushes him backwards and lets go. “Whatever. You wouldn’t dare.”

His voice is little more than a furious squeak by now. “D’you wanna try me?”

From the back of the room, Dennis yells, “Keep it down over there. And for the love of god, if you two are gonna bang again, don’t do it within a hundred miles of here.”

Dee and Charlie both shout back at him to mind his own business. Dennis retorts that it’s absolutely his business if his janitor is going to bang his sister. Realising that the conversation cannot continue right now, Dee gives Charlie an ominous look – this ain’t over, Chuck – before turning to stalk out the door.

Charlie stares at her back until she’s gone. He breathes hard and adjusts his sweaty grip on the hammer.

Then he heads back down to the basement, to lose himself in work. And then probably some paint, too.

Walking home that night with Frank, the sky is orange-grey from the light pollution. It’s a cold, still night, with police sirens whizzing past every few minutes.

Charlie kicks up a puddle and mumbles, “I had kind of a weird talk with Dee today.”

Frank grunts. It’s barely an acknowledgement, let alone a question.

“She was all mad at me and stuff,” Charlie continues, regardless. The paint is making him dumb and sad. “She said I was lying about the time we banged.”

Immediately, Frank is paying attention. “Whoa, wait, wait, time out. You banged my daughter?”

“Oh, uh, yeah. Were you not listening? It all came out at the thing yesterday.”

“I had bigger fish to fry yesterday, Charlie.”

“Whatever, man. It doesn’t matter.”

“No, I wanna know, I should know. How the hell did you two end up doin’ it? And why didn’t you ever tell me sooner?”

“Okay, well, it was a couple years ago, I think. And we were just hanging out, the two of us. And we kinda started making out. But then, um.” Charlie wipes some sweat off his forehead and wonders if it sounds like he’s lying. He’s not lying, but what if Dee’s right? What if Frank doesn’t believe him? “She wanted to have sex, and I didn’t want to, so she just…”

Charlie trails off, and they walk in silence for a while.

Eventually Frank says, “What?”

Charlie blinks hard. “I think she raped me, man.”

“That’s stupid. A broad can’t rape a man, that’s not how it works.”

“But at the thing yesterday, they said…”

“Huh, those liberal pansies don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“I guess,” mumbles Charlie. “But like, she definitely made me do it. And I definitely didn’t want to.”

“Then why didn’t you just sock her one?”

Charlie doesn’t have an immediate answer for that. Why didn’t he hit her? Yeah, she’s bigger than him, but he’s still pretty sure he could take her in a fight. At the very least, he could have tried.

“She was all big and intimidating,” he says lamely. “She put her fingers in my mouth.”

“You didn’t even try to bite ‘em off?”

“Nah, dude. I was trying to yell but she wouldn’t let me.”

“That’s the most pathetic shit I ever heard,” says Frank. “No offence.”

Charlie can feel his insides slowly turning to a swampy puddle of misery and shame. Being small is no excuse. Frank is smaller than him, and Frank would never let himself get raped.

Aloud, Charlie laughs. “Now she’s telling me I like, made it all up and don’t remember it properly ‘cause my brain doesn’t work.”

Frank nods. “Yeah, that’s a real thing, Charlie. Been on the other end of it myself. You have a lapse of judgement and bang someone you shouldn’t, like Deandra. Well, naturally, you live to regret it. So your brain constructs this false rape narrative to shift the blame for your mistake onto someone else.”

Charlie squints as he considers this. “You’re saying that’s what happened with me?”

“Probably,” Frank shrugs. “It’s normally just chicks. But you’ve always had a real vivid imagination, ain’tcha, Charlie?” He nudges Charlie’s elbow and chuckles. “Real sensitive soul.”

That night, Charlie doesn’t sleep. He eats his cat food and drinks his beer and huffs his glue like a good boy. But he doesn’t sleep.

It feels like a Nightman night, but different. If he was going to lose sleep and have Nightman nightmares about what happened with Dee, it should have started right afterwards – why would it wait all this time to creep up on him? It’s ridiculous, is what it is. Embarrassing. Charlie feels confused by it all and, for some reason, guilty. As far as he can tell, he hasn’t actually done anything wrong, but he still feels like a horrible person. And that makes him angry, which makes him thrash and groan, until Frank growls at him to cut it out.

Charlie snaps back at Frank, finding some excuse to turn it into a fight. They fight, which lets him get some of the anger out of his system, but not much. Charlie grabs his sock and flounces off to sleep in the hallway.

Lying there on the ancient, filthy carpet, Charlie thinks about Dee calling him a stupid little junkie.

Deep down, he finds it very hard to dispute. 

He does feel little. Frightened little boy, trying to fend for himself in the city. Only he’s in his forties now, and it’s much too late to hope things will ever get better.

Maybe Dee and Frank are right. Maybe he did want it, in the moment. It’s strange, because he definitely remembers struggling; even now, he can clearly remember the feeling of Dee’s hand clamped across his mouth, all the mean things she said while she was on top of him. Insults, threats. Did his memory invent those words, too? Piece them together from all the other mean things people have said to him over the years?

It’s scary, not being able to trust his own brain. He knows it’s not the most biggest or the most smartest, and it often plays tricks on him. But this particular trick makes him feel so sweaty and angry and scared, tingly all over, like the spiders are inside his skin.

Charlie wishes he knew what the truth was. He wishes he was smart enough to figure it out.

He wishes he had a gun. Instead he cradles the dirty sock to his face and lets the fumes carry him away.

Chapter Text

“Oh my god, Charlie, what happened? Get up.”

“Mmnnmm,” Charlie groans. “Mmnnmmm?”

Thin but strong fingers are wrapping around his arms, hauling him up off the floor. Something cold and thick and sticky is clinging to his cheek.

“Oh, that smells foul,” says a voice that sounds like Dee, and she gags loudly.

Charlie struggles to open his eyes. It’s not too bright in the dingy hallway, but it is daytime. He looks down to see a puddle of congealed, bloody vomit with his own blurry face-print in it.

“D-i-o-d?” he slurs.

“Yeah, Charlie, I think you OD’d. You definitely shit yourself. And it looks like someone stole your t-shirt. Man, your neighbours are the worst. Why the hell were you lying out here? Your apartment is literally right there.”

He swipes at the sick around his mouth. “Mm, fight w’Frank.”

Dee sighs. She’s holding him upright, at arm’s length. He can’t lift his head to see her face; he can only watch her feet on the floor as it spins, spins, spins. He’s still high and/or drunk, he realises, his thoughts coming like slow clouds on the wind.

“Here,” says Dee, “take my jacket. Let’s go get you cleaned up.”

“‘Sokay, Dee, ‘mokay…”

“No, not ‘sokay, Charlie. You’re not well. We need to get you somewhere safe and warm. Come on.”

Everything goes blurry for a while. The next thing Charlie knows, he’s stepping into Dee’s apartment. The carpet feels nice under his socked feet.

“Alright,” says Dee brightly, pushing the door shut as she kicks off her shoes. “Isn’t this an improvement!”

Charlie looks down at his hands and sees them completely swallowed by denim sleeves. “Did I get a new jacket?”

“No,” says Dee, with uncharacteristic patience, “it’s mine, remember? I let you have it. Wasn’t that nice of me?”

Charlie nods blearily. His head is starting to clear, just a little. He feels those slender fingers brushing the matted hair from his forehead. Then, the last thing he expected: a gentle kiss to his temple.

“Oh, Charlie,” Dee murmurs. “I’m so sorry about yesterday. I shouldn’t have said those mean things.”

Charlie breathes. His insides begin to unclench. “You really mean that?”

“I really mean it. And I’m gonna make it up to you, okay? I promise. I’m going to make things right between us, whatever it takes.”

Charlie shakes his head. “‘Snot your fault, Dee. Talked to Frank and he… I actually don’t totally get it, but I…” His legs wobble. He goes to collapse on the couch, but Dee rushes to catch him.

“No, no, no,” she says quickly. “We have to get you cleaned up and out of those yucky pyjamas before you touch any of my furniture.”

“I’d rather just take a nap first,” he protests, as she peels her jacket off him, leaving his torso exposed. “Like, a tiny little catnap on your couch. I’ll take the floor, if that’s better.”

“No way, José. Bathroom, now.”

Charlie coughs and swallows the sour taste in his throat. “‘M not dirty.”

Dee guffaws. “Are you serious? Charlie, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re, like, ninety-nine percent dirt. You need a shower.”

“But I don’t wanna shower. The bar sink is better for me. I’ve got, like, a whole system…”

Losing patience, Dee takes Charlie by the arm and drags him to the bathroom, ignoring his complaints the whole way. She shoves him towards the bath. He topples over backwards, landing in the tub with bruising force against his head and ass and elbows.

He screams. “Ow! Shit!”

“Stop whining,” Dee scolds, leaning over him to twist one of the squeaky faucets.

Charlie hears the pipe gurgle, then a splutter, then the steady thrumming of water hitting the surface behind him. It’s running hard and fast, and he can feel cold droplets splashing up against the back of his neck as he lies there awkwardly.

Before he has a chance to question this approach, Dee puts her hand on his face and pushes his head down, forcing him backwards until his face is directly under the stream.

A torrent of cold water rushes down between Charlie’s eyes, drumming into his skull, blinding him. It’s so cold he has to gasp. Water rushes to fill his nose, his mouth, his eyes and ears. He can’t breathe or hear or see anything but water, frigid and furious. There’s so much of it. He can’t move. He is completely enclosed in a watery Hell.

It may never stop.

It stops. Or rather, it lets up slightly when Dee yanks his head upwards; the water’s now hitting the top of his skull instead, and streaming down through his eyelashes. Still unpleasant, but at least he doesn’t feel like he’s drowning anymore.

Charlie takes the opportunity to scream some more. Dee yells back at him: “Stop shrieking, you little retard! I’m trying to help you!” And she holds him under again. Twice as long, this time.

By the time she releases him again, he can only pant for breath. Dee says, “No more bitching, Charlieboy, got that?”

“G-got it,” Charlie agrees weakly, his teeth chattering from the cold.

“Good,” says Dee. “Now I’m gonna see if there’s anything human under all this grime.”

She grabs a bar of soap and starts scrubbing it against his face. Quickly, she moves on to his neck and chest, revealing the freckles scattered across his shoulders. Charlie can’t help squirming when she forces it into his armpit, but she pins him in place with one hand and shoves the soap in with the other.

After a minute, she moves down to his lower half. She peels off his soiled, ragged pyjamas and shoves them into a trash bag, along with his thermal socks. Then she vigorously scrubs his feet, which tickles, but not in a fun way.

Finally, she reaches for his hips. Charlie can’t hold his protests in anymore. “No,” he screeches, clutching at her arm. “No, Dee, don’t do that!”

“Shut up, Dirtgrub.”

The nickname sends a violent flinch through Charlie’s whole body. He feels the fight draining from him as high school rises up to take its place. He has to surrender, to appease those bigger and stronger and smarter than him. To entertain them. To avoid their wrath. To do as he’s told.

He lies there, limp and lifeless, while she rubs the soap over his junk and ass and between his thighs.

“You’re really filthy,” she grimaces, disgust clear on her face. “All I can do for now is chip away at the top layer.”

“Haha, yeah,” Charlie nods anxiously, not sure what he’s agreeing with.

Dee takes up the detachable shower head and turns the water back on. This time it’s hot, scorching hot, and Charlie yowls like a cat when she sprays him. There’s a sadistic giggle on Dee’s lips as she rinses him off, sending soap bubbles and dirt swirling down the drain.

Finally, it’s over. Charlie huddles face-down in the tub, panting, all scrunched inwards, as if he could somehow protect himself. Tears of pure humiliation join the water droplets on his face.

“Roll over,” Dee orders. “Come on, little buddy. Let’s see that pretty face.”

Charlie sniffs and does as she says, shifting to lie uncomfortably on his back once again.

Dee is already squeezing toothpaste onto a toothbrush. “When was the last time you brushed your teeth?”

“I don’t like the taste,” Charlie blurts, avoiding the question. “It tastes bad. I don’t like the bristles.”

“You know you’re not supposed to eat the bristles, right? Just show me your teeth and hold still.”

Charlie turns his face away. Dee leans over and grips him by the hair, forcing him to face her. Despite his struggles, she manages to jam the plastic toothbrush between his lips. “Come on, Charlie,” she grumbles, “work with me, here.”

“Mm-mm.”

“You gotta take care of the teeth you got left, or they’ll go as well. I know you can’t afford dentures. You don’t wanna drink your food through a straw, huh?”

Charlie shakes his head. Dee scrubs at his teeth as best she can, filling his mouth with stinging foam and bristles. The bubbles spill out and dribble down his chin, through his beard.

Eventually, Dee tuts and casts the toothbrush aside into the sink. “Well, that’s a start.” Next, she reaches for a pink razor and a big can of something.

Charlie eyes the razor uncomfortably. “Can I go sleep yet?”

“Soon,” says Dee, squeezing shaving gel into her palm. “When was the last time you shaved, huh?”

“Dunno,” Charlie mutters.

“Well, your gross beard has shit living in it. Your hair, too.” She tenderly cups his jaw. “Hold still.”

What feels like an eternity later, Charlie is standing beside the bathtub, shivering, wrapped in one of Dee’s stripy towels. When he catches sight of the mirror, he barely recognises his reflection.

His hair is cropped military-short. His face is clean-shaven for the first time in forever, making him look childlike and vulnerable. In fact, he looks for all the world like a frightened little boy. In his forties.

Dee beams like the sun, her yellow hair in disarray like a halo. “Wow! Isn’t that just so much better? Aren’t you relieved to get that over with? Jeez, I know I am.”

Charlie shivers and looks up at her. “I don’t –”

“I know, you don’t have any clothes to change into! Well, that’s okay. Come through to the bedroom and we’ll see what we can do.”

Shuffling, Charlie follows her. She guides him to sit on the edge of her bed. He sits there, fiddling with the edge of the towel, while she searches through her dresser.

“So,” says Dee, over her shoulder. “You said you talked to Frank? What did he say?”

After a pause, Charlie says, “He said I was wrong about you raping me.”

“Oh, uh-huh?”

“Yeah. He says I’ve got a too-big imagination, or whatever.”

“Well, for once, he’s not wrong. Had to happen eventually, I guess.”

It sounds like a line being drawn. Charlie wishes he could leave it there. Never speak of it again. He really does. But instead he finds himself opening his mouth. Hearing his own voice, whiny and hoarse, like a ten-year-old who smokes. “I’m not making it up, Dee.”

Dee stops what she’s doing. She turns around and looks at him, seriously.

“I’m not making it up,” Charlie repeats. Almost whispering.

Dee puts her hands on her hips. “Charlie. We’ve been over this.”

“I know, but –”

“Ghouls and shit – you struggle with the whole fantasy versus reality thing. We all know that. And we put up with it because we’re your friends, but god, Charlie! You can’t – ugh!” She grunts in frustration, pushes back her hair. “You’re taking it too far this time. You’re hurting people. You’re hurting me! I wanna help you, but you’re making it so hard!”

He pulls the towel tighter around himself. “I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“I know you’re not. I know.” Dee sighs in exasperation. “I know you’re a good guy, Charlie, in your heart. You’re just confused, aren’t you? Look at your face. You’re so confused. You poor thing.”

She’s not wrong. He is confused. Almost all the time, he’s confused, and especially about this. His eyebrows knit together as he looks up at her searchingly, eyes wide, lips parted.

Dee comes to sit beside him on the bed. She takes his hand in hers. “It’s okay if you feel bad about what happened between us. But we have to learn to live with it. Making up stories never fixed anything, for either of us.” She squeezes his hand. “I’m not your enemy here, Charlie.”

“Never said you were,” he mumbles.

For a long moment, she just looks at him. At last she says, “Can I tell you a secret?”

“... Sure.”

“I had a really good time that day. When it was just the two of us. Hanging out.”

Charlie feels his mouth twist into a sad, lopsided smile. “Me too.” It’s true. Or at least, he thinks it’s true – who knows what’s true anymore?

Before the rape-not-rape, he remembers feeling relaxed and free, just making up rhymes with Dee. Maybe the happiest he’s been in years. In the guys’ absence, he’d felt safe enough to lower all his defences for her. It makes him feel nauseous now to remember how stupid he was, how fucking dumb and naive he must have been, to leave himself so vulnerable.

Unless he didn’t. Unless he wanted all of it.

He lets her rest her hand on his cheek. It feels weird, skin to skin, no beard in the way. “I thought,” Dee says, hesitating. “It’s dumb. But I thought I felt something real between us. Or at least, like. The possibility was there, you know?”

Charlie lowers his eyes and tries to turn away, but Dee keeps his head turned towards her. “It’s okay,” she breathes. “The guys don’t have to know. We can have this, just for ourselves.”

She leans forward and kisses him softly on the mouth.

Charlie stays still, frozen, neither joining in nor pulling away. A part of him feels drawn to her, even now. The possibility of something real that was always there, unspoken, before the rape-not-rape. Or maybe it’s just the feeling of being wanted, being touched. Someone being nice to him. Soft and warm. So pretty.

Another, much larger part of him is silently freaking the fuck out. Alarm bells ringing in his ears, heart pumping in his throat, fingernails slicing into his palms. Not again. Not again. If he tried to run away now, he’d have no clothes, no shoes, no way of getting back to his own apartment.

After an eternity, Dee slowly pulls back and looks at Charlie from beneath her eyelashes. He feels like a rat about to get bashed, panicking, stuck between fight or flight. For a long time, the two of them just stare at each other, each evidently trying to pick their next move.

And then, within a split second of each other, they move. Dee puts her hands on Charlie’s shoulders and shoves him backwards. He shoves back, jumping up off the bed and shedding the towel. “Okay – I can’t, I gotta…” he blurts loudly, stumbling over the words with no idea what he ought to say.

Dee reaches up, grabs him by the neck and slams him back down onto the bed. He’s too frightened and stupefied to do much more than splutter for air as she crawls on top of him, straddling his thighs.

“Let me go,” he pleads. “Dee, I’m serious, let me go.”

“Stop being such a little bitch, Charlie.” She wraps a hand around his cock and starts tugging on it roughly. “We both know you want it.”

“I don’t! I just wanna go home!”

Her free hand presses down on his mouth again, just like before.

And just like before, he just fucking lies there.

Lies there. Lets her do it. Like a little bitch.

“You should be grateful,” Dee huffs, squeezing the head of his cock, massaging it to hardness. “Any time a woman looks at you, has to be in the room with you – you should be fucking grateful. You know why?”

Charlie groans incoherently, trying and failing to lift his arms, to push her off.

“Yeah, you know why. ‘Cause you’re a creepy little freak from the gutter and you smell like sewage. I’m so far out of your league it’s disgusting, and you know it.”

Her bony knee jabs into his soft, fuzzy belly while she lines herself up with his cock. It knocks the air out of him so he gasps against her hand. Screws his eyes up tight. He can’t see, only feel, as her wet cunt takes him inside.

“You don’t wanna enjoy the view? Remember, this is the only sex you’re gonna get for a long time. Maybe ever. May as well make the most of it.”

Charlie whimpers and shakes his head side to side, his new short hair bristling against the sheet.

Sweet Dee goes tsk. “Whatever, Charlie.” She pushes herself up, then back down again, a practised movement. It doesn’t seem at all difficult for her to use his body. “Ugh, yeah. Oh, that’s good. That’s right. You’re my dog, aren’t you?”

She said that last time. He shakes his head again, eyes still shut tight. Spots and shapes are dancing against the darkness.

“Yes, Charlie,” says Dee, moving her free hand to his throat. “You’re my dog. And you’re so desperate and pathetic that you’ll do whatever I tell you, isn’t that right? Tell me!”

He gives up and nods a few times, moving his head up and down with difficulty. A whine escapes from his throat. Get it over with. Give them what they want.

Dee moans in pleasure and starts riding him harder. The bed squeaks loudly as their hips rock together. “Oh, yeah. You belong to Queen Dee. You’re worthless white trash, Charlie.” With every word, her voice gets more sultry, more ecstatically cruel and uncontrolled. “You’re a doormat. A pathetic maggot. You’re nothing. Y– aahh…”

Her weight presses down harder on his upper body. Her hair flicks him in the face with every thrust, and her hot breath comes faster, closer, right next to his ear.

“Look at me,” she pants, finally pulling her hand away from his mouth.

Charlie obeys, opening his eyes. He blinks a few times to shed the tears that have built up, sending them rolling down the sides of his face. He sees Dee, leaning right down over him. Her face flushed beautifully pink. Her blue eyes looking pale and desolate.

“Tell me you want me,” she begs. All the sadism has suddenly gone from her voice, replaced with something much sadder and scarier.

“I want you, Dee,” Charlie croaks, desperate to appease her, to make it stop at last. “I want you so bad, I want you, I want you…”

She breathes out the word Thumbelina and slams herself down onto Charlie as if she’s trying to break him. After a few more seconds of this, her eyes roll upwards and her breath catches violently.

Charlie finds himself with Dee draped over him, still at last. Both of them are sweaty and sticky. A horrible silence blankets the bed.

Why didn’t you just sock her one?

Why? Charlie has no idea. The only explanation he can find is that there is something profoundly wrong with him. But everyone knew that already.

“I think,” Dee says quietly, into Charlie’s shoulder, “I think the reason that part of you fights this, it’s ‘cause you don’t want to admit that we’re right for each other. Like, you don’t want to accept that you’re busted, like me. I don’t want to accept it, either.” She strokes his arm very slowly. Her voice sounds distant, alien. “But here we are.”

Charlie rests his hand on her hair and stares up at the ceiling. “That’s probably it.”

A long, long time passes in silence, with them both just lying there, on top of each other. Eventually, Dee shifts. “Right,” she says breezily, scrubbing a tear from her left eye. She pushes herself up and gives Charlie’s tummy an affectionate smack. “Let’s get you dressed, then, kiddo.”

Dee gives him a wink when she drops him off outside his building. “See you at work,” she calls to him, through the open window of her car, as she pulls away.

Trudging along the hallway towards his apartment, Charlie feels acutely conscious of the building around him. Bodies fill unheated, mouldy rooms like his. Little kids scream. They grow up to be Charlies, and make more little Charlies of their own. A woman is passed out on the floor, just like Charlie was last night; he’d like to help her, but instead he draws further into himself and shuffles past. Behind one door, a couple are raging at each other. In the opposite room from them, some crackhead is ranting loudly to himself.

Charlie feels like he’s in one of those olden-days jails for madness and poverty. The distinction between the two afflictions isn’t clear. He’s stuck here because, for one reason or another, his brain doesn’t work properly. He can’t get it together to go somewhere better. He doesn’t deserve anything better.

He’s got another nosebleed coming on. He wipes it with the sleeve of Dee’s hoodie and knocks on his door. “Yo, Frank. You there, buddy? I left my key again.”

After a moment, he hears clumsy footsteps, and then the door opens. “Hey, Charlie.” If Frank is still mad about their fight last night, he doesn’t show it. He looks up at Charlie with a hint of concern, then moves aside to let him in.

Charlie hesitates a moment before stepping inside. He ambles over towards the window. He starts scrounging up some paper off the floor to stuff up his nose.

Frank shuts the door. “Where’d you go, Charlie? I was worried about you.”

“Um, yeah. I OD’d a bit last night, just a minor one. So I went to Dee’s,” Charlie says, in the most casual-est tone he can muster. “You know when you OD and it’s like, ‘Oh, Dee!’ Isn’t that kind of funny, man?”

Frank is still staring, giving him nothing back. “What happened to your hair?”

“Just wanted to change things up, I guess. New look.”

“And your long johns?”

“Dee t– took them.” Charlie holds up his arms to demonstrate the too-long sleeves of the pink hoodie, and sticks out his legs to show the sweatpants swallowing his feet. “She gave me these. Says I don’t have to give ‘em back.”

“Hm.” Frank shrugs. He points to the couch. “I saw a kid running round in the corridor with your t-shirt. Managed to grab it off him.”

Charlie looks and sees his horse t-shirt draped over the back of the couch. “No way!” he shouts, his face lighting up. “Aw, thanks, dude! I didn’t think I’d see it again!”

Frank grunts vaguely and cracks open a beer.

Charlie sheds the hoodie and tosses it into the corner. He wriggles back into his t-shirt, savouring the seconds when it envelops his head. It smells like his own stale sweat, and gasoline, and human waste. Comforting, familiar smell.

Next he kicks off Dee’s sweatpants and changes into a pair of his own jeans. “That’s more like it, bro,” he declares, catching the beer can that Frank tosses him. “Feels good to be back to normal.”

Everything’s gonna go back to normal now. Back to before he opened his idiot mouth and said those idiot things about Dee.

Frank has just started to say something when his phone rings. He stops to answer it. “Mhm? Yeah, he just got in. Yeah, yeah – Charlie, here, it’s for you.”

Charlie takes Frank’s phone and puts it up to his ear. He winces slightly at Mac’s voice, coming loud and angry down the line. “Charlie, where the fuck are you?”

Charlie takes a swig of beer before answering. “I’m at home with Frank. I just got in.”

“Yeah – why aren’t you here?”

“Here?”

“At work, dude! You were supposed to be here an hour ago to open up!”

Charlie looks to Frank and rolls his eyes, but keeps his voice neutral. “Aw, I had a little bit of an OD-type situation last night. Rough start to the day. Sorry about that.”

Seemingly not listening, Mac barrels on. “Okay, there’s a pipe leaking in the men’s bathroom, and the whole place fucking stinks of shit, so we need you here right now. Like, sooner than now. You need to go back in time and fucking get here sooner and come clean this shit up, man.”

“I dunno about going back in time –”

“Alright, that’s great, Charlie! See you soon!”

“I’ll have to –” Charlie sighs when Mac hangs up on him mid-sentence. He gives a sort of well isn’t that nice gesture with the phone before tossing it back to Frank. “Gotta go to work. You coming?”

“Nah.” Frank settles himself down on the couch. “I didn’t sleep so well last night.”

“Okay, sure.” Charlie feels a little blood escaping from his nose, trickling down onto his lip. He licks it up and pushes the paper deeper into his nostril to keep it plugged. “It doesn’t sound like it’s gonna be a good day at the bar anyway.”

“What’d they do this time?”

“I dunno, something about a leaky pipe, that’s all.” Charlie leans against the wall while he tugs on his sneakers. “Mac and Dennis are probably making a big deal over nothing. You know how squeamish they get about sewage.”

He picks up his grey hoodie from the floor and pulls it down over his head. It feels good to be fully dressed again, with a few layers between himself and the world. Safer. “Alright, Frank, I’m gone. I’ll see you later, okay, buddy?”

“Laters,” Frank yells, as Charlie hurries out the door and slams it behind him.

It only takes a few hours to stem the leak and clean up the mess in the bathroom. Charlie would have been happy for it to take all night. He’d have been even happier if it had taken the rest of the week, kept him working round the clock for a month, a year, a decade. If he could spend the rest of his short, meaningless life scrubbing shit off the floor of the men’s bathroom, and he never had to go home to try to sleep, and he never had to pause for a moment to remember or think about anything.

When he’s done, he joins Mac and Dennis for a beer. They don’t discuss the leak. They do ask him about his hair and beard, though. By way of explanation, Charlie starts explaining about his fight with Frank, and passing out in the hallway, and how Frank got his t-shirt back from the kid who stole it.

They seem to enjoy the story, and Charlie is pleased to laugh along with them. To his relief, they’re already too drunk to realise that he never actually explains how it all connects to his new look.

Every time the bar door opens for a customer to arrive, Charlie’s eyes snap over to look, no matter how hard to tries to stop it. Every time, he’s certain that Dee is about to walk in.

She doesn’t show, though.

All night, Charlie’s heart keeps beating a little bit too fast. He huffs some bleach so he can blame it on that, instead of on the memories that keep winding their way between his ribs.