It's a new story. Charlie and Neville have their own problems.
Un-beta'ed, so quibble away.
- o – o -
With Another Man
Charlie and Major Neville have an arrangement.
If anyone knew, they'd kill him. Or her. Charlie's not really sure which. But no one's tried to kill them yet, so the arrangement still stands. It started out as a pathetic, broken attempt to prove that they weren't the broken ones, and they could still be people. They weren't broken.
The attempt had been pathetic, and Charlie had hated herself in the morning. She was pretty sure Major Neville had hated himself too. He hadn't met her eyes all day. He hadn't looked at his son once either. Charlie didn't speak to him for three weeks, when the pressure got to be too much.
The meetings were short, at first. A few quick strokes in a back alley to help both of them along. (Charlie wonders if the fact that a man twice, almost three times, her age is what gets her…going, was the phrase Miles used once, was wrong.) She bites his shoulder hard enough to bruise and draw blood, on the nights they're sure they'll get caught. He pulls her hair a shade too tight, but always holds close to the scalp—as if her hair had been shorter.
It's stupid. It's sick. He's married. She's supposed to be grieving for her baby brother, for her father. They're supposed to be dedicating themselves to The Cause. She's Saint Charlie, patron saint of stupid, pathetic, utterly hopeless lost causes. He's Major Neville, formerly General Sebastian Monroe's right-hand man. (Another thing to blame a man named Randall Flynn for. Another sin to add to both their souls, Charlie thinks.)
She cuts her hair three months after their first time. It sticks up at odd angles, and Charlie can only give herself a pathetic, broken smile as she sees the look in the mirror. It's like seeing Danny again, but with softer features. A harder jaw, for sure, but… She's softer than he is.
Charlie pretends, that night, for the millionth time, that she doesn't hear Major Neville gasping her brother's name in her ear as he pounds roughly into her from behind. He pulls her hair, a few shades too tight.
He pretends he doesn't hear her uttering the name of a man who probably wants both of them dead. (It bothers Charlie that she prefers thoughts of President Monroe. She could have Jason. She could have Jason's father. But she wants her uncle's former best friend, the man responsible for Danny's death.)
Being this sick and twisted suits her, she thinks.
It still doesn't make it right, though.
Eventually, Charlie will stop. She'll grow her hair back out, stop fluffing it up into spikes like Danny had when he'd still been an awkward, gangly thirteen. She'll stop fucking Major Neville while she thinks of President Monroe. She'll stop pretending that she doesn't hear Neville whispering her brother's name like a prayer against her shoulder, or the soft sigh he utters as he presses a kiss to her collarbone, above her lungs. (Where Danny's asthma had been, she thinks.)
It should be his wife's name Neville gasps when he's fucking her. But it's not. They're both broken and pathetic, and they need this. It's the only thing they've got left.
And in the morning, when Charlie slides out of his embrace so she can go clean up and pretend that she's slept in her bed—again, something she hasn't done in almost nine months—they rebuild the polite fiction that Major Neville was never in love with her brother. They pretend that she hadn't spent the night pretending she was riding someone else.
Because it's the only thing that doesn't hurt in the morning.
- o – o -
So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Do they need to find a different outlet? Drop a line and let me know.