A/N: warnings for self harm, infidelity, dark!Blake and sex as payment. Heavily (and by heavily I mean an adaptation) of a small loan of a million dollars by NikkiNarcotic on Underground Poetry.

There was a ring on his dresser on Thursday, and Charlie gazed at it, as he slowly undid his belt, and allowed his pants to pool at his ankles, ripples of fabric like waves on a desperate and engulfing ocean. He emerged from his starched ocean in time to catch Blake's gaze.

His eyes are also on the ring. Charlie walks over, allowing his thighs to move in the way that he knows Blake likes. He gathers it into his fingers and looks over it's surface. There is an inscription on the inside, in Chinese.

"It says 'We were meant to be'" Blake said, "It's a replica of the ring I was wearing when Singapore fell." A slight pause. "Mai Lin had the matching one." Charlie sets it back down, unable to shake the sinful feeling from the inside of his gut, turning his stomach acids into a swirling whirlpool of anxiety and disgust at their actions.

But not enough disgust for him to prevent himself turning back around, and walking towards Blake, careful with his thighs and legs, keeping his movements pretty and submissive and gentle, just how he likes. He lowers himself into Blake's lap, so his feet hand over the edge of his thighs, and Blake undoes his tie with steady fingers.

His lips are swollen with kisses, his mouth tastes heavily of copper from biting his lips and tongue when Blake was rough with him. Charlie assured himself that Blake didn't mean it, there was no way he'd be rough and choking and overpowering with Mai Lin or Jean so it must have been an accident. He strokes his growing bruises, budding swirls of purple and brown and green, with no small amount of sadness as the chasm in his chest grew in size.

He puts his boxers back on before getting up, no daring to find what Blake would do if he found him still here in the morning. He gathered his clothes from the floor, and then after several moments, took Blake's ring too, putting it on his thumb, since that was his only finger wide enough to wear it.

He wears it to work. He wears it home again. He wears it to work. He wears it home again, and he notices his finger has turned green where the ring rubbed against his skin. (He's still wearing it.)

Charlie works on Blake's schedule, everyone does. So when Blake calls on him he knows he has no choice. He has to pay his rent somehow.

It's a ritual, the same every time. If Blake notices the green on his finger, then he says nothing.

His fingers curl on the bedspread, holding on for dear life. The bed is positioned as so not to scrape at the wall. He's on his back, looking up with wide eyes at Blake's pinched face and bare chest. He's swimming in a fabric oceans and Blake is the unfortunate life boat preventing him from sinking into it and falling to the very bottom of the cold still sea of wrinkles and bleach.

When he is finished, he won't play along with Charlie's attempts to initiate contact, rolling away into his own private ocean. Charlie watches him for a while, before deciding to leave. He takes Blake's pocket knife from the bedside table, and positions himself in the bottom of the wardrobe.

He took the knife, and sliced a great big gash into his thigh, watching the skin split into a chasm, and then watching as blood pool in the chasm for a long time, before wiping it away on his hands and onto his feet and arms so that he didn't get anything onto Blake's floor, allowing the pain to throb in time with the hand shaped bruises that had become customary on his thighs. He bled for so long.

After a long time, Blake opens the door, and watches him, and Charlie watches back. Blake breaks the holy stillness of the house.

"Did you get any on my floor?"

He hadn't.