Title: Ghosts
Author: The Color Grey
Summary: Ghosts don't scare Charlie, but flesh and blood people do. Or, Charlie decides to spend the day snowboarding and meets Dean. And the weirdest part is, he can't seem to get enough of him. CharlieEppes/DeanWinchester
A/N: I love Charlie Eppes. I love Dean Winchester. Put them together, and there's not even words to describe it. So, I tried to go for a more poetic voice in this one just because I wanted to try something different and I can't tell if it came out really good or really confusing. I literally wrote the story and then spent like two hours putting in pretty sounding analogies and stuff of that sorts. Hope it turned out good :)
Disclaimer: I do not own NUMB3RS or Supernatural. I am merely having some fun with them.
WARNING! This is a SLASH story so there is some boyxboy action in here. Nothing too graphic, but it is implied. Enjoy!
Ghosts
At last. It's a perfect winter day- no wind, no Arctic freeze. A cloudless sky, a perfect day to fly. Snow drapes the mountains like a blanket. It's far away from the city dirt and noise, far above suburban gridlock, far beyond the grasp of home.
Charlie's glad he got here early, nothing better than first tracks beneath cloud-clear skies. He takes a deep breath of winter-spiked air, stinging lightly across his lips. Here, there are no hypocritical eyes, and he can slip past his ghosts and into the moment. It's all up to him.
He rides down the slopes, enjoying the blasts of cool, refreshing air and the slight bite it leaves behind. It's getting closer to midmorning and the crowd is starting to build. Most people prefer the high-speed chairs, and those lines are long. Not sure why so few like the old-fashioned slow lifts to the top, but Charlie loves these unrushed minutes in a life so full of things fast-pased.
Charlie surveys the terrain beneath him, finds the relatively unpopulated route through the trees. Risky to ride there alone, but he doubts he'll have a lot of trouble, even though it's been a while since the last time he's boarded here. He disembarks the chair, traverses the flats, and brakes to a stop beside a tall tree, scanning for path he saw.
He spots it and then swoops into the woods, the low-slung branches of the pines clawing menacing at his hair and face. But he manages to avoid them all. What he doesn't miss is the boulder tip, lurking out of view, just beneath the surface of the snow. It scrapes his snowboard, catching it just enough to send him, face first, into a deep, wide drift.
Charlie inhales snow, swallows snow. When he opens his eyes, all he sees is white. He cartwheels his arms, but can't get traction. He bites back panic. Okay, think. For some weird reason, though he pretty much buried, he can still breathe. What he can't seem to do is get out. God, he's such an idiot!
He could die right now and who knows when someone would find him? Panic claws its way back up his throat, making him choke. Silent here, in his tomb. Warm. He could sleep. That would be easy...
Suddenly he hears, "Hang on." The snow around him loosens and he's yanked backwards. His eyes find color while his lungs grab for air.
His rescuer rolls him onto his back. "Are you okay? Damn, kid, it's a good thing I happened to come this way. You're crazy to shoot trees solo." He looks down at Charlie with deep green eyes, and he finds them in equal parts disgust, amusement, and awe. He offers his hand, pulls Charlie up to his feet.
"Thanks." He should say more, but it hits him that this stranger might have saved his life. All repartee deserts him. His savior is close to his age- tall, with short, light brown hair. Charlie doesn't know him, but he wants to. Their eyes lock, and he feels something stir. Something restless. Disquieting. And this person is to blame.
He smiles, and Charlie likes how warm it makes him feel. "Maybe we should buddy up?"
Why not? "S-sure." The voice is throaty, not his at all. Oh my God. What's wrong with him? His face flares, dry-ice hot.
The other guy can't help but notice. "You sure you're okay? You look... never mind." He lowers his goggles. "I'm Dean, by the way."
"Charlie." God, could he manage multiword sentences, maybe? "And thanks again." There. Three words. Blood whooshes in his ears and he can barely hear him say, "No problem." Dean turns, pushes off, and he follows him through the snow-draped trees.
This part of the hill is steep. Unforgiving. A lot of work, but Dean surfs it like he was born to do it. To keep up, Charlie has to forget about face-planting and other possible outcomes. Finally, they exit the trees, and their trail merges with a beginner run. Newbies and kids fan out across the gentle slope, some upright, some on their asses, and some just flat-out on their backs. Dean cuts through them and Charlie follows.
Charlie hates crowds, and would usually call it quits right about now, except... he's not sure. He feels scared. Hopeful, borderline sick, sort of like his first day of high school. He watches Dean hold a tight line down the side of the run. Confident. Bold. Oh yes, Charlie has to know him.
It isn't until they're both seated safely on the (slow- hurray!) chair that it hits him. "You said I was crazy to shoot trees solo. So what about you?"
"What about me, what?" He scoots sideways, his knee touching Charlie's. And for some crazy reason, he wants Dean to kiss him. Wait. What?
Dean hasn't come onto him at all. Oh. He's waiting for an answer. "Why did you take that way down? You were riding all by yourself."
He shrugs. "Maybe I'm psychic. I saw you go that way, figured I'd better keep an eye on you." Dean suddenly breaks out into a grin. "Hey! It's almost like Final Destination and I'm Alex. Except we all didn't die."
Charlie ignores the movie reference. Keep an eye on him? How long has he been watching him?
"Why are you alone?" Dean asks, breaking Charlie out of his thoughts.
Now it's his turn to shrug. "I asked my brother to come, but he had to work."
Dean eyes soften with something- Sympathy? Understanding?- and says,"Yeah. Kinda same thing here."
"You have a brother?" Small talk was something Charlie's become somewhat of a master at. Years and years of his mother forcing him to "make friends" at school trained him in the art of being able to talk to someone for hours without even revealing anything too personal.
"Yeah," Dean says, a small smile gracing his features and Charlie finds himself loving that smile. "We were, uh, apart... for a while before," Dean says, "but we're working on things now."
His story sounds so close to his and Don's that Charlie can't help but give a small laugh. "That's funny," Charlie says and Dean gives him a sharp look. Charlie's quick to backtrack. "Not like ha-ha funny, but like, uh..." Great. The guy saves his life and he practically insults him. Way to go, Charlie!
"It's just... that sounds a lot like me and my brother," Charlie gets out somehow. Dean blinks at him and then looks out over at the racecourse run. The pines at its edge have grown. How long ago was it he and Don raced there? Too many years, that's how long.
"So you from around here?" Charlie hopes he didn't permanently piss Dean off, but he was extremely aware of the heat of Dean's knee still pressed against his own.
Dean turns back to Charlie, expression unreadable. "Nah. Kinda wish I was, though. Nice slopes here. What about you?"
It doesn't go unnoticed by Charlie that he never did mention where he was from, but he lets it slide. "No way," he says. "I live down in L.A."
He looks surprised, like California was the last place he would've pegged Charlie to come from. "Really?" he gives a low whistle. "Then where did you learn to board? Because I know it sure as hell wasn't in L.A."
"Actually, this old girlfriend of mine in England tought me how when I lived up there," Charlie tells him.
"Oh." Dean makes a point of moving his knee away from Charlie's. "For some reason, I had a different idea about you. I thought you might be..."
Charlie slid his leg back against his. "I might be." Then he admits, "But I'm not sure."
"Well, I definitely am. Bi, that is. I still like my women," he gives Charlie a wink and a laugh. His laugh is so freaking sexy. Husky. Deep. And totally real. Somehow, Charlie doubts he's fake about much.
Their chair swings wide at the top of the hill. Together they stand, and move to one side to discuss the best way down. "Let's take that long beginner run around the back of the mountain. A no-brainer will be fun," Dean says. He doesn't wait for Charlie to say okay, so Charlie just follows his trail along a wide track, dodging snow-plowers.
Dean seems to take a wrong turn into a thick stand of trees. But when he stops, Charlie realizes he came this way purposely. They were curtained by the pines. When Charlie draws even, Dean looks into his eyes, sending shivers up his spine.
"Have you ever kissed a guy?"
His boldness is a surprise, but when Charlie shakes his head, his reaction is no more than what he expected. And honestly, hoped for. Dean's lips are soft, with a whiskey like strength. The kiss is tentative, but only for those few moments that can never happen again. Desire is scratching at the door. Terrifying. Electrifying. But he has to know what it means. He inhales the scent of the forest, of the man. The two are intoxicating.
Dean stops. Pulls back. "So?" The kiss was saturated with need. His head is light, he wants to sway beneath the weight of the air, dizzy on Dean. Light filters through his closed eyelids, the sun chasing shadows, telling Charlie it's not a dream.
He hears Dean laugh. "I'm guessing you thought it was good then?"
Charlie opens his eyes again long enough to grab a fist-full of Dean's jacket and pull him back down for round two. He feels Dean make a surprised sound against his lips and Charlie smiles into the kiss.
It's more heated this time, with Dean running his tongue against the seam of Charlie's lips. Charlie parts his lips to Dean, letting him in. He could feel Dean's tongue trace the path along the roof of his mouth and around his teeth. Charlie slowly moves to meet Dean's tongue with his own, earning himself a low rumble in Dean's throat.
They break away when breathing become a necessity, but just only. They're both panting and Charlie wants to kiss Dean again but Dean slides his board away from Charlie. Dean leans over and unstraps his board, stepping off, and then moving forward to unstrap Charlie's feet. Huh, he had forgotten about the boards.
Dean straightens and before Charlie could ask him why he did that, he found himself pushed up against a tree, Dean's body trapping his. For a moment, Charlie can't breathe, can't think. And now that's scary.
But it doesn't matter because Dean's mouth is back on his and Charlie can't make himself think about anything other than the things Dean's doing with his tongue. He doesn't feel Dean's hand until it's scraping up under Charlie's shirt and jacket, touching the over-heated skin there.
Dean breaks away to ask breathlessly, "How far do you want this to go?"
"As far as we can go," Charlie whispers back, surprised at how messed up his voice sounds. Dean grins at him wolfishly and lowers back down to Charlie.
It is yielding. Flesh, lust, and the excitement of knowing they could get caught any moment. It is giving, gracious, respectful, and though Charlie lacked experience, Dean was forgiving, taught him what he asked to know, left him to discover what he could. His kisses were typhoons, wind, rain and lightning, storming into open windows.
Dean blanketed him with velvet hot skin, pillowed him with his musky scent, lifted him onto a cloud just one breath away from heaven. Charlie couldn't say no, didn't say stop. He wanted more.
Wanted to go on forever.
"You could stay with me," Charlie whispers to Dean once they're clothed again and sitting on the ground under a large pine. He doesn't know why he's whispering, if anyone were to be near by, they would've already heard them (no doubt, if Charlie remembered correctly how loud he was), but it seems that anything louder would shatter the moment.
"I can't," Dean whispers as well, regret tingeing his eyes and voice. "I shouldn't have done this."
"Why?" Charlie demands, suddenly angry. "Why not?"
Dean looks down at his hands, which were entangled with Charlie's. "I just can't."
"But why?" Charlie persists.
Dean gives him a pained look. "It's complicated. There's these things about me that... I just-It wouldn't work, Charlie."
Charlie sighs loudly and swallows down the hurt that's starting to bubble up. "So that's it then? I'm just a one-night stand?"
"Charlie... It's not like that," Dean looks guilty, like that was exactly what he had been thinking.
"Whatever. Let's just... just enjoy the moment now. Can you do that?" Charlie asks.
Dean relaxes and smiles tiredly at Charlie. "Yeah. I can do that."
And together they watch as the sun sinks behind the mountains, darkness spreading around them, bringing out the ghosts, silhouettes of what is no more. But ghosts don't bother Charlie. They may prank your psyche or haunt your nightmares, but lacking flesh and blood they are powerless to hurt you- cannot hope to inflict the kind of damage that real, live people do.
Ghosts don't scare Charlie, but flesh and blood people do.
Fin