(This was actually the first chapter I wrote for this fic. obvs things got changed around a little. presenting: LE CHAPTER FOUR. whoo!)
It'll be easy.
What are you worrying about?
Leave it to me.
Charlie has always been linguistically persuasive – not so much with what he says, but the way he says it – his tone of voice, his eyebrows, his quirked mouth, his hands. Steven would never have been in this mess if Charlie wasn't such a smooth talker.
Now that he thinks about it, Steven supposes it all really began six months before the maiden voyage of Nuwanda!, when he arrived home from work to find Charlie Dalton sitting in his living room. He stood at the door with the keys still in the lock, looking from Charlie to the balcony door to the bathroom window and back again.
"Did someone let you in?" he finally asked.
"Is that how you greet your old friends?" Charlie retorted, leaning back on the couch with his arms spread across the back and one leg crossed over the other.
"If maintenance let you in then – well, then they're not doing a very good job of keeping the place secure." Steven removed the keys slowly, his eyes fixed on Charlie as if he might actually be a burglar.
"You've not got much worth nicking," said Charlie, looking around. That was true. Steven's flat was sparsely furnished, with the couch, a table, a single bed, and a dozen milk crates that served as storage – all neatly arranged, of course, but sparse nevertheless. "Are they not paying you enough at the patent office?"
"How did you know I worked at the patent office?" Steven shook his head as he closed the door, and ventured carefully into the lounge slash kitchen slash dining slash sleeping area.
Charlie tapped his nose, and smirked. Steven remembered that smirk; remembered it getting him into trouble more times than he cared to count in his high school days. "I know many things about you, Steven Meeks."
"Oh, really?" Steven folded his arms across his chest.
"I know you've been working with Greens and Co. for the past two years but you haven't yet been promoted. I know that you were engaged to be married but the girl dumped you. I know that you still read fantasy novels and comic books – "
" – so you looked through my stuff," Steven cut him off, annoyed. "Bravo. That's very clever of you."
"Hey, I never said I was Sherlock bloody Holmes. I was bored, so I had a snoop. You took longer to get home than I expected - "
"Very sorry," said Steven.
" - and I know that you're bored, too."
Steven shifted his weight from one foot to the other and then back again; the way he shifted from being enamoured with Charlie's cocky attitude to loathing his existence. "How do you know that?" he asked.
"So it's true then? You're bored?" Charlie grinned at Steven's exasperated face. "I know you, Stevie," he said, looking darkly through his lashes. "I know what you want; I know this isn't what you want."
"What do you want?" asked Steven.
"Got any whiskey?"
"No, I mean here – in my apartment – what do you want with me?"
Charlie folded his arms, mimicking Steven's solemn expression, until Steven sighed and took two glasses and a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard under the sink.
"By the way, the answer is 'no'," said Charlie, as Steven searched in the freezer for the ice tray.
"'No'?" He stuck his head around the freezer door.
"No, maintenance didn't let me in," said Charlie. "I came through the balcony door. You should consider locking that, by the way."
"I live on the third floor, in case you hadn't noticed. Generally people don't come climbing up to see if my door – wait, you climbed up here?" Steven asked, handing a glass to Charlie.
"Something like that. Well, actually I went up the fire stairs then climbed down from the roof, it was a bit easier."
"Whichever way you came – why?"
"To prove a point," Charlie said, shrugging his shoulders and knocking back the whiskey. He coughed. "Steven, this is foul."
Steven frowned. "Sorry it doesn't meet – no, I'm not sorry. What the fuck are you doing – "
"Ahh," Charlie grimaced, and rubbed his face with his hand. "I can see I've gone about this a bit wrong. The thing is, Steven – I wanted to ask you something. I need a favour."
"You. Need a favour." Steven raised an eyebrow incredulously. He knew all about Charlie and his 'favours'; once bitten, twice shy – so to speak.
But then Charlie got up and graciously offered the couch for Steven to sit on as he refilled Steven's glass from Steven's own whiskey bottle, and he talked into the evening, pacing the room and being earnest as he laid forth his plans; and Steven just sat there and watched this crazy lad, this crazy beautiful boy-man who had broken into his apartment and was offering him his very own dreams on a whiskey-smeared platter; and the five years between them dissolved into the night and Steven said 'you're insane' and 'are you high Charlie Dalton?' and, finally, 'yes' – and that, Steven supposes, was the real beginning.