“Don’t go out there,” Charlie warned Steve, placing down the two glasses of Coca Cola he’d just fetched from the kitchen on his nightstand before flopping onto the bed on his stomach.
“Wendy’s cooking. She’ll try to force feed you if she thinks you look even a little malnourished.” Charlie joked but he knew that he probably would have been living solely on pizza if he hadn’t been placed with as attentive a roommate as Wendy Darling. She’d made sure he was looking after himself, even when he hadn’t felt much like bothering. Still, the attention could feel a little stifling sometimes and, now and then, like tonight, he just needed to get away and hang out with another dude.
Steve was sitting on his desk chair on the opposite side of the room. Charlie had left him in charge of choosing the music while he’d gone downstairs and he was interested to see what Steve had picked. He knew that his friend used to work at the record shop, like he did now, so he would have had access to a truly enormous selection of music. It intrigued Charlie to see what, if any of it, had rubbed off on Steve.
Steve raised an eyebrow and glanced outside before laughing a little. “Well, she is Wendy Darling. She’s had that ‘mom’ gene since she was like 13 or 14,” he chuckled. He had briefly met the young lady and thought she was sweet. A little too motherly, but sweet.
He browsed through the music before choosing a 90s classic, Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. He still preferred music from his time, but he had to admit some of the 90s and 00s wasn’t bad.
Charlie gave a snort of laughter. He’d never really put two and two together about Wendy in that way before. He supposed he kind of was a lost boy.
He nodded appreciatively when he heard the first few chords of Smells Like Teen Spirit start up.
“Classic,” he murmured, immediately realising that what, for him, was a song that had been around forever, for Steve must have been a rather recent discovery. The little idiosyncrasies of Atlantis still caught him off-guard more often than he cared to admit, even after having been there for over two months.
“Did you discover this when you were working at the shop?” he asked, curious. He was kind of gutted that Steve had stopped working at the shop before he’d arrived. Considering he’d never done a day’s work in his life before arriving in Atlantis, he found that he actually quite liked his job and he wasn’t horrendous at it either. It gave him something to get up for in the morning and, on his rough days, a reason to hold himself together. Still, it would have been infinitely better if he’d had a friend working there with him.
Steve leaned back on the chair and ran his fingers through his perfectly messy hair. “Yeah,” he said with a nod. “I spent as much time as possible listening to new music while I worked there. It was nice,” he smiled softly, missing a little that he wasn’t working there anymore. He sometimes missed the peace and quiet that job gave him, but he had to admit being an agent was a better fit for him, even if he wasn’t sure at first.
“I’m pretty much the opposite,” Charlie laughed, rolling over and shifting himself back so he could rest against the pillows at the head of his bed. “I’ve pretty much just been listening to old, dead, black guys from the seventies. Electric blues kinda shit. You heard of Albert King?”
“I’m from the 80s so I’ve listened to a lot of music that’d be considered old by some people, so I figured I’d educate myself with some music from ‘the future’,” he said with a chuckle. “Of course! He’s good. Some of the best music has been made by guys who are very dead now.”
“Fucking right,” Charlie agreed. The same could be said for comedy.
“You know, something interesting happened today,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant as he sat up and picked up his coke. “That girl, Violet, came into the shop.”
Steve’s brow arched curiously as Charlie spoke. “Oh,” he said, trying not to show any emotion that could give away his feelings toward Violet. “Cool, cool.”
Charlie observed Steve as he spoke, a small smirk twitching the edges of his lips. He knew, from their previous conversations, that Steve liked Violet. He just hadn’t been able to work out exactly how much he liked her.
“Yeah, she came in to buy a Doctor Who record,” he told Steve, pausing to take a sip of his drink. “You ever watched it?”
Steve shook his head before taking a sip of his coke. “I tried, but it’s too weird even for me. And I know about weird and strange.” He had only tried to watch it because Vi liked it, but it just wasn’t his thing — though he had thought about giving it a second chance.
“You might want to try again,” Charlie smirked, lifting his eyebrows pointedly. “She’s really into it.” He didn’t mention the fact that he’d kind of asked for an invitation to watch it with her some time. He wasn’t even sure whether he’d follow through with it. The show didn’t really sound like his kind of thing, although the idea of spending more time with Violet was definitely a draw. A lot of it would depend on how Steve felt, he realised. Steve had become a good friend in the time he’d been in Atlantis and he didn’t have enough of those to be careless with the few he had.
“Have you ever thought about, like, maybe asking her out on a date or something?” he asked curiously.
Steve scratched the back of his head as he felt nervous about the question. They did go to the theme park the first time she was there, but that was all. “Maybe I will,” he said, pushing some confidence through his words. “Yeah, I will.”
Charlie smiled and nodded, although he couldn’t help feeling ever so slightly deflated. He guessed that meant he wasn’t going to be watching Doctor Who any time soon. Still, he liked the tone of resolve that had come through in Steve’s voice. He found that he was rooting for the guy.
“She’s really cute,” Charlie said, remembering the way Violet’s dark hair had fallen around her face, droplets of rain clinging to the strands closest to her cheeks.
“She is, right?” Steve smiled, maybe a little bit too much as he thought of Violet’s sweet face. She was so different from Nancy, and that’s what he liked about her. He just hoped she felt the same way he did. He knew she and Flounder had been getting kind of close before she disappeared, but he had no idea of how Violet felt about Flounder. Or him.
“If she says no it’s gonna suck,” he said.
“Well, she can’t say yes if you don’t ask,” Charlie said, matter of factly. Besides, if their meeting earlier that day told him anything, it was that she wasn’t opposed to hanging out. Surely, if there had been a hard and fast reason for her not to want to date, like having a boyfriend or something, she wouldn’t have been open to watching Doctor Who with him. That had to mean that Steve had a shot.
“What will you ask her to do?” Charlie asked, crossing his legs and leaning forward, his glass of coke resting on the bed between his thighs.
“No idea,” he admitted with a small chuckle. “But this place is always throwing parties for one reason or another, so I could ask her out then.” There were a million things they could do in Atlantis so he had options.
Charlie wrinkled his nose.
“That’s great, if your idea of a date is hanging out with Violet and the rest of Atlantis,” he teased.
“Hey, I gotta test the waters first, man. I have no idea if she likes me or not, and it’s not like we’ve hung out ever since she came back. I don’t wanna make a fool of myself and lose her as a friend too,” he said.
Charlie shrugged. He guess he saw Steve’s point. He’d never really been in that kind of situation with a girl, where a friendship was on the line if anything went wrong.
“You could just ask her to show you Doctor Who…” he suggested. “You know, no pressure, just hanging out. It would give you the chance to talk to her alone, right? Get an idea of what she’s thinking.”
Steve tilted his head to one side as he thought about Charlie’s words for a moment. “That’s not a bad idea, actually. Hanging out with no pressure... And hopefully no one else. As much as I like her friends, it’d be cool if it were just the two of us,” he admitted.
“Exactly,” Charlie said giving Steve a grin. “You don’t have to play your hand right away. Just see how things go.”
It was ironic, Charlie thought to himself, that he was the one giving advice on girls. After all, his own history with them was pretty fucking terrible. As much as he’d tried to put her behind him, he couldn’t help but think about Eva. His smile dropped slightly at the thought of where she might be right now. Wherever it was, he doubted it was anywhere good. He knew he was better off without her but that didn’t make it any easier when he thought about her. He still couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d failed her somehow, even though he knew he couldn’t hold himself responsible for her choices.
“You gotta let me know what happens, though,” he added, trying to block Eva out of his mind again. “It doesn’t look like I’m going to be getting any action any time soon. I might as well live vicariously through other people.” His mind momentarily flickered to the girl he’d met at the bar the week before, when he’d been on the brink of relapse. Rey. She’d done more than she knew to save him and he’d enjoyed talking to her. A lot. Still, he pushed the thought away almost as soon as it had surfaced. She’d seen him on the edge. There was very little chance she’d be up for hanging out with him again, after seeing what a miserable fuck he was.
Steve noticed how his smile dropped a little, but he said nothing. He figured Charlie would tell him whenever he felt like it. He didn’t want to push. “Don’t say that, man. There are a lot of girls available in this place.”
“It’s not about them being available,” Charlie sighed, leaning back against the pillows again as he lifted his glass to rest on his chest. “I’ve done the whole warm body thing. It doesn’t make anything better.” What he missed most about Eva wasn’t the sex; it had never been about the sex, at least not for him.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” he shrugged. “Girls aren’t good for my sobriety, apparently.”
Steve tilted his head to the side as Charlie spoke. “Most girls aren’t good for sobriety, but there are girls that help instead of creating more trouble,” he said. “I know I sound cheesy as fuck,” he chuckled.
Charlie’s lips twitched upward in a small smile. He got it. He really did. As much as the sober coaches had tried to tell him that his relationship with Eva wasn’t going to be good for him in the long run, he hadn’t been able to stop himself falling for her. At the time, the hopeless romantic in him had really believed they’d be able to get through anything, as long as they were together. The problem was, he’d been wrong and they’d been right.
Still, there was a part of him that, even after everything, wanted to believe what Steve was saying. Eva hadn’t been good for him - she’d had a fuck load of her own problems which, when added to his, had resulted in disaster - but that didn’t mean the same was true for all girls. Deep down, Charlie desperately wanted to believe that who and what he was, his mistakes, wouldn’t always preclude him from finding love. There had to be someone out there who could bring out the best in him, rather than stirring up his demons, didn’t there?