Charlie lay awake with Dani asleep beside him, wondering if she was going to be okay.
She had to be, he had promised her mom as much.
Dani opened her eyes again and groaned. She didn't look well. He offered her more water. She refused.
He eyed her kind of nervously, not knowing if she remembered anything about the night before, or the nearly-but-not-quiteness of them sharing a bed again. She looked back at him, wanting to die, hating herself for allowing him to see her in such a state.
"Charlie. I'm so sorry.", she started again, unaware she had already tried to apologize once. "I feel like I've ruined everything. Now you know what I'm like."
"I already knew what you were like. And you haven't ruined anything.", he replied. "Why didn't you call me last night, Dani?"
"But I did call you. That's how come you're here, right? I don't think I even want to know what I said to you."
"You didn't call me, I called you. Your mom picked up. You were already passed out. I asked to come over. You know, you really scared her.", he explained. "You scared me too, Dani."
Dani closed her eyes, ashamed. She blinked back tears. All she needed was to cry again in front of him for her humiliation to be complete. "I don't know how to say sorry. I don't know how to make it right."
"Yeah you do. Just never do it again.", he replied plainly and wrapped his arms around her. "Easy for me to say, I know."
She started to explain the events of the day before, not to excuse herself but in the hope he might understand, just a little bit. About her fight with Tidwell and his threats towards Charlie. "He's out to get you over Roman, Charlie." How Roman had been shot, according to Seever, so the injuries that Charlie had inflicted on him where not all that would be listed in the autopsy. How Tidwell had been through her phone and seen a certain text message Charlie had sent her and how she believed that this was driving him to search for dirt on him. How she had threatened Tidwell right back. She told him how she and Seever had visited the morgues and had found her dad almost immediately. "He was just laying there cold, all shot up, just waiting to be found.", she said. He watched the memory of it haunting her eyes. She told him about the way he had flown at Tidwell in front of Commander Boyczech and then stormed out. As she told him all of this, she felt his body tense underneath hers. He was mad and he was silent and he didn't speak again for what seemed like an age.
Charlie took a moment to compose himself.
"What was going through your mind when you picked up that bottle?", he eventually asked her softly, brushing her cheek with the back of his fingers, not really expecting her to answer him.
"I don't know. Lots of things, I guess. I was mad at everyone, at Tidwell, at my dad for being such a bastard and the fact I'd never get to tell him so, at Roman for killing him...at myself for even caring. It was just a way to make it all stop for a moment. I know, it's stupid." There was an element of dark spite towards herself that she had felt too, but she just didn't have the words to explain that part. She looked at him cautiously, watching him for an expression that would say he thought she was crazy or disgusting.
Charlie was surprised that she was being this candid. It hadn't been the night with her that he had spent the entire day before imagining, but it was a new intimacy that he welcomed nonetheless. They had enlaced fingers as they talked, just their fingertips grazing gently, and he knew he shouldn't be distracted from the important things she was expressing but he couldn't help but be entranced by her lips as they moved. His whole body ached for her. This was the weirdest kind of pillow talk he had ever known, the content of their conversation was violence, murder, grief and alcoholism but the way they looked at one another, the way she fiddled lightly with the buttons on his shirt and the way he caressed her hip was as if they had just made love.
He could tell that Dani was in pain too, but for different reasons, although she hadn't said anything. "You need to get some more sleep, it'll make you feel better.", he said.
"You need to get out of here before my mom gets up and figures out what you've been doing, or not doing, as the case may be, in bed with her daughter all night.", she replied, wit shining through her hangover. Charlie knew then that she would be okay. She did remember the way they had spent a tortuous night together, he just hoped she appreciated how much restraint he had shown.
"Okay, I'm going.", he smiled. "But I'll be back later. You should stay with your mom today, she needs you here." He meant that, but he also knew that she stood a greater chance of staying sober with Fariba around her.
Dani wondered how the hell Charlie was qualified to know what it was that her mother needed, but figured that they had met last night, and anyway she quickly became distracted by the dread she felt at the thought of facing her mom this morning.
Charlie kissed Dani softly on the lips, both of them fighting the urge to turn his goodbye into something more torrid. "Please call me if you need anything, if you struggle.", he asked shooting her a meaningful look, leaving it at that, not wanting to crowd her where drinking was concerned. He had to show her he trusted her.
"I'll see you later.", she replied. She had no intention of letting him down again, so grateful was she that he hadn't been repulsed by her behavior. She had never felt so loved by a man and they hadn't really ever done more than kiss.
She tugged the blanket up around her chin, cold now that he wasn't there to keep her warm.