Ugh…Christ, wh-what the fu-is that dirt? Charlie rolled on his side as he started to cough. Stale alcohol, blood and the unmistakable taste of dirt lined his mouth as he pushed himself upright.
Red was the color he saw with his eyes closed, the ground was cold, grainy and soft. "Uggh fuuck." He coughed again and cracked his eyes, a hand shadowed his face from the bright light he was faced with. "…The fuck? Where the…where the hell…" He staggered to his feet, stumbling forward as he sleepily tried to regain his balance. "Am…I?" his fatigued stupor melted away into fear almost immediately.
His wrecked car hissed beside him in the ditch he had woken up in as wind whipped around his cut and bruised face, blowing fine grains of sand into his eyes. "Shit." He tried to walk to his crashed blue car, something tripped him up and Charlie ended up on his knees with a displeased grunt. It was then he realized the soft thing one of his hands had landed on was a shirt, his shirt, a shirt no longer packed away in the suitcase he had been living out of for the past three weeks. "Oh.. son of a-seriously?" He squinted at the surroundings around him to see that somehow or another his suitcase had indeed exploded, clothes were everywhere. "I really have to stop feeling sorry for myself."
For someone who could've potentially died in a head on collision, Charlie wasn't too rattled. As far as he was concerned the nadir of his life was ongoing and it couldn't get any worse. His mom had always said that life could never throw anything at you that you couldn't handle. Yeah, right.
Charlie sat back, retrieving a crushed pack of cigarettes from his back pocket, a dull ache pulsed, a fading reminder of the cocaine fading through his bloodstream. He sighed, slumping in exasperation when he realized he was left without a source that would light the damn cigarette.
Charlie palmed his face, pausing to stare down at his hands. Skin was marred with past and present bruising, the faint scrapes of blood and the weeping cuts on his knuckles only heightened the appearance of some sort of illness that Charlie felt infected his head more than anywhere else.
He was dirty.
Charlie remembered a time when that word had been so different…dirty. Usually a joke or a half-assed attempt at seduction until he and the other burst into fits of laughter. Dirty had never suited either one of them…and now look at Charlie. His skin was tan-and not because of the sun.
"I'm going to tell you…exactly what I'm going to do to you…"
Sigh of exasperation. "For the love of God, Charlie. Please don't start this again." Thinly veiled amusement and Charlie pouted. His chin leaving a phantom feeling behind on Steven's shoulder before Charlie sat on the floor next to the couch where Steven was sprawled. "You know your pathetic attempts at dirty talk are more amusing than anything else."
Charlie was uncharacteristically quiet, smiling as he palmed the pale and freckled hand that Steven was laxly hanging in front of him. "Studying." It was stated more to let Charlie know that Steven wasn't ignoring him rather than to warn Charlie off.
"You're always studying." Words whispered into Steven's knuckles followed closely by Charlie's dry lips.
Steven swallowed, the reports in his other hand slipping away slightly as he started to not care. "Glad your home again." His voice was thicker as Charlie worked his way across Steven's wrist. The dry sound of shuffled papers let Charlie know that he had won and was now the sole focus of Steven's diligent attention. "Missed you." His arm curled around Charlie's head, drawing him in close and pressing a kiss to his carless brown hair.
"Believe me when I say…I missed you much more."
Time and time again it was proven that the infamous "dirty talk" wasn't needed of course, that couch scene was a memory long past. Even with Charlie recovered, he still managed to prove to himself that he couldn't do it. He couldn't stay clean. The pull, the need, lust, burn and desire for that stupid…stupid drug…won again.
Charlie was dirty, he had left to protect the one clean aspect of his life.
