tune out everyone in the crowd Who: Rylee & Charlie What: Charlie bugs her bff about any potential weirdness that he might have noticed around the building. Where: Apt 703 When: 2:34 pm; after this Warnings: TBA
The dream bugged her throughout the rest of the day - she’d seen plenty of bad things, weird and strange things, both inside and outside of her service. A lot of that was left to be explained by her PTSD, and for a few hours Charlie tried to write off the dream to that particular corner of her brain. But there was something so real about it, and on top of that, it brought into sharp review the dream she’d had starring both herself and Rylee. That she’d tried to chalk up to some sick fantasy, shove it into a box and forget about it entirely, but it seemed that her mind wasn’t content to let it go.
So once she’d gotten off of work, she went immediately home, changed, and then headed for the elevator. Charlie had fallen back into the habit of just showing up at Rylee’s apartment, no warning at all, not even a text message. With both Jack and a peace-offering of hamburgers and fries she’d gotten from a decent looking mom and pop store in hand, she amused herself on the long elevator ride up by scritching the German Shepard between the ears.
Once the ding of arrival sounded and the doors opened, Charlie moved down the hall confidently toward Rylee’s apartment and opened the door. He had given her a key, after all, so she felt perfectly comfortable coming and going as she pleased. There had been a few awkward moments of catching the blond in half-dressed stages, ones she’d laughed off in his embarrassment, but nothing bad enough to make her stop coming over altogether. She wouldn’t go so far as to say she enjoyed catching her best friend with his shirt or pants off, only in boxers or skivvies, but she also couldn’t deny it either.
Making sure the door closed behind her with a well placed foot and tossing the sack of hamburgers onto the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room, she unhooked Jack as she called out Ry’s name to figure out where he was in the apartment. Jack shuffled off into the living room to find somewhere to plop down, and Charlie turned to busy herself by unpacking the food.
“Ry? Ry, where the fuck are yah?”
Rylee’s bedroom was such a mess that he had failed to hear the door open and shut. He had decided to rearrange some things, feeling that the room wasn’t working out for him exactly, and moved his desk supplies into the second room in the apartment. He figured that could be his office area and hopefully he would one day use it as a place of study for a PhD course. But now his bedroom was a mess, the bed half moved and his dresser looking awkward and out of place, but Charlie’s voice snapped him out of his obsessive straightening of the bed before the windows and urged him out of the room.
“Hey Lee.” He grinned at the sight of Charlie, immediately feeling some level of relief from his anxiety with the room, and eased his way into his kitchen. It was nice to have Charlie coming and going like she did when they were kids. Except now they were adults and didn’t need to sneak around. They also didn’t have a big breakfast made for them in the morning by his mother, but if Charlie stayed over Rylee could manage to make a half way decent breakfast too. “You came with food? Uh oh, what did you do?” He teased as he slipped onto one of the stools that lined the counter. He gave her a gentle nudge on her shoulder before turning to the food before them. “It looks pretty edible too.”
“Oh I just scraped a possum off the road,” she teased back, plopping a paper-wrapped burger in front of him as one hand fed her a fry. Charlie shrugged.
“Can’t a body just bring by some food every once in a while? Make sure yer gettin’ enough junk in between all’a that healthy stuff yah eat?” She glanced at him wryly, delivering a soft punch to his arm that wouldn’t have done much damage anyway. Taking her own burger and portion of fries, she took a seat on the other side of the bar, her legs criss-crossing underneath her happily. There was honestly no where else she’d rather be, and even though they hadn’t discussed all of the issues between them, Charlie was glad things were falling back into old habits.
“‘Sides, I have nothin’ else to do, so I figured I’d bug yah, ‘less yer busy,” she continued, taking a large bite out of a half-wrapped burger; she gave it a few chews before adding a french fry to her already stuffed mouth.
“Hey, if you wanna bring food it’s all right with me.” Rylee bit into his hamburger and waited until he finished chewing before he continued to talk to his friend. “I don’t know how you haven’t given yourself a stroke yet with all that crappy food you eat.” He smiled at Charlie, teasing her, but somewhere deep within him he was scared. He had nearly said ‘heart attack’ but he had immediately thought of his father and what he had suffered. With the way Charlie behaved, drinking and eating so badly, he worried often that she could end up like her father or his own father. Both dead.
He gave a shake of his head, pushing away upsetting memories and also responding to Charlie’s final comment. “I was just moving around the furniture in my room. I have the spare room finished but the furniture in my room is still not centered along the walls.” He bit another piece of his sandwich and gave a nod to Charlie. “Why are you free? Day off?”
Charlie shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. “Yeah,” she said through her mouthful. “My schedule’s crazy, but I just deal with it.” Leaning forward on her elbows, she swallowed what she’d been chewing and took another large bite to replace it.
“So,” she started, as though taking a dive from a height into this next topic, “how’re you? I mean, yah know, work. Stuff.” She had no idea how to veer into asking him if he’d been sleeping all right, but addressing the issue like she was truly interested in his well-being (which she was) seemed like a good enough place to start. As she chewed, her eyes lit on him, waiting for his response.
Unsuspecting, Rylee continued to eat his hamburger and considered her question for a moment. “It’s going all right. That geode exhibit we snuck into is almost ready to open.” He grinned at her, the small adventure of Charlie visiting his job still vivid in his mind. It had certainly been ranked a favorite day of his since coming to California. “Maybe once it’s open we can go see it like normal people.”
He smiled again before beginning to pick at his fries. “Otherwise it’s just work; nothing too exciting. What about you? You seem sort of distracted. Is everything okay? You know, with work and your brother and stuff?”
She gave a shrug to his question - things had gone well enough to be expected. Taking her time to finish chewing, she did manage a smile toward his earlier remark. “What’s the fun in that, the sneakin’ was the good part.” Raising a hand to wipe away a bit of errant mustard with a finger, she licked it clean and tried to think of another way to approach her subject. Finding no other avenues, she decided to just come out with it. Sort of.
“Anythin’....I dunno, weird happen to you lately...like the night the power went out...?” Her voice was casual, and she immediately filled her mouth with another bite of burger, acting as nonchalant as possible.
Rylee frowned and sat back, sipping at his drink and studying Charlie for a moment. She always tried to act casual when bringing up something that might be weird or bad. He knew her well enough to see right through her nonchalant acting. And, unfortunately, she knew him well enough that she would see straight through any lies he would tell.
“Uh... nothing like the burn or anything,” Rylee said quietly and busied himself with his fries. “Just uh... a weird dream. I was talking to Samuel and he said that weird stuff always happens at this place though... kind of like what happened with the burns.”
A blush appeared on his cheeks as he thought of the dream and he bit back a smile. The dream, despite the strangeness of it, was enjoyable because he had what he had always wanted. And now they were in the waking world and what he wanted sat before him and wasn’t reachable the way that Rylee wanted her to be.
“A dream?” The words were awkward because of the burger in her mouth, but her surprise was evident enough. Charlie swallowed, turning to stare at Rylee. “What kind of dream?”
Rylee’s cheeks darkened in color and he avoided Charlie’s stare entirely. “Uh, you know, just a dream... you were in it. And uh, I guess I was watching too many war documentaries. We were in some ruins. And uh... we walked around and went and looked inside one of the buildings.” He clamped his mouth shut. He wasn’t lying to her but he was keeping out the details of what happened inside that little room.
Her eyes went a little wide and she turned to stare at the counter top. While her face didn’t blush quite like Rylee’s, her expression was certainly similar. A dream...with both of them? Surely that was just a coincidence. Ruins, walking around, then inside one of the buildings? It sounded much too like the one she’d had, the one where she’d believed she was just making up Rylee in her head. Not the one she’d been speaking of presently, the weird dream where a battlefield had appeared right outside of her apartment.
“What...what happened? I mean, if anything happened, in the building. That we were looking in.” She took another bite of her burger as though to distract herself.
Rylee quickly glanced at Charlie with a clear look of panic on his face. Why was she making him admit to this stuff? She surely could figure it out on her own the type of dream he had. “Uh...” Rylee’s voice came out high and nervous. When they were teens, this would have been one of the moments that his voice would have squeaked while his voice was changing. “We... we sat on this ratty bed and we talked for a little bit and then we just... uh...”
He looked around desperately then hopped off of his stool. “I think we should have some chips with our meal.” He slipped past the bar and went to his cabinets where he busied himself by looking for the chips while his face blushed further, straight to his scalp, and made his blond hair and eyebrows stand out more than they already did.
That sealed the deal - but how was it possible that they’d shared a dream? Maybe it was just a massive coincidence. She swallowed, putting her burger down and leaning back on the stool.
“Ry...I think...I think we might’a shared a dream. How the fuck does that happen? What did you say you told Sam? He says this stuff happens all the time?!” A panicked note rose in her voice, even if her volume level didn’t.
Rylee paused at the cabinets and turned slowly to look at Charlie. The blushing was still there but now concern was clear on his face. “You had the same dream? That we almost...” Then he blushed more and looked at the floor. “I told Samuel that I had a dream about you and it seemed really real. I told him about the burn on my leg and I told him that I have this funny feeling that I know him and Lia really, really well. Like I’ve known them for years. He agreed... he said he felt the same thing. He felt that way when he met you too, he said. And that the dreams... he’s had dreams like that too.”
Charlie still didn’t know who this Lia person was that both Rylee and Samuel kept talking about, but things were getting a little too weird for her comfort. She was acutely aware of what she and Rylee had almost done in that dream...would that have made it more real, since they were both in that dream? How did something like that even happen. She stared at Rylee, trying to find something to focus on to remove her sudden reaction to anything she didn’t have control over.
“The fuck...” She had similar feelings with several other people in the building, among them Sam, Elias, Cat. The brother that she’d just met. What the hell was going on?
“So is this...is the management puttin’ something in the water? What the fuck?”
Rylee scratched at his hair and frowned, slowly he made his way back to his seat, completely forgetting about the chips. “I thought that maybe they’re pumping something in through the air ducts. Making everyone hallucinate and stuff.”
He sat down, hunching his back and picking a fry to pieces. “So... you had the dream too? That we were in that place and went to that little house?” Color appeared on his cheeks again just as they had began to fade but he willed himself to look at Charlie. “I remember you being upset about something. You told me you didn’t want me to change. Did you dream of that too? Why would I be changing?”
Though she didn’t look away from him, her face paled a little as she immediately knew what he was speaking of.
“Yeah...I know what yah mean...” She spoke slowly, as though trying to stretch out the words and give herself more time. But she continued the eye contact and decided to just spit it out. “The night...the night yah...” she waved her hands as though to encourage the words to come out. “The night Sam got yah drunk, I went an’ yelled at him. An’ he said that...maybe I didn’t like yah the way yah are.” The explanation was short and left out quite a few details, but she was fairly certain that Rylee would understand what she was saying.
Rylee frowned and crease appeared between his eyebrows as he studied Charlie. “I don’t really remember much of that night, Charlie, you know that. So you yelled at Samuel for getting me drunk? How did it turn into him saying that you didn’t like me the way I am? And why would I change?” He didn’t like questioning Charlie. Too often she would grow frustrated and in turn angry; then everything would fall apart as she would overreact and leave, but since they were discussing the issues that had passed he felt if he was ever going to question her, now would be the time.
Her expression darkened, mouth flatted into a thin line. This was not what she had intended in coming over - now she was regretting even thinking that she could just stop by and prod Rylee’s brain for information. Instead, she was the one being interrogated, and she felt cornered.
“I jus’ got angry, an’ he was bein’ a dick, an’....” Her hands reached out for the burger, though she’d lost all interest in it. They stopped half way and palms fell to rest lightly on the counter top. “He thinks...he said...” There was just no good way to phrase this, and she could already feel like leaving was the better option. The door was right behind her, all she had to do was stand up and walk through it. But she forced herself to remain sitting.
“He thinks I’m a cock tease,” she muttered, using her hands to start rewrapping the burger.
Rylee’s jaw dropped and the color faded from his cheeks. He felt a sense of protectiveness for Charlie, that Samuel had said such rude, even if they were slightly true, things to Charlie and upset her... well he didn’t want anyone to upset her. Closing his mouth he blinked and stared at the wall. “I... uh... you...”
He noticed Charlie beginning to wrap up the burger and reached out, grabbing her hand and stilling the motion. “No, you aren’t leaving, not now. I’m not mad or anything, Lee, but don’t run away. Come on, you brought all of this food. We should be able to eat and discuss this like adults. Weird stuff is going on, yes. We’re both experiencing it which is a comfort to me. I’m glad I’m not the only one having these weird dreams. But, Charlie...” His voice faded and he ran out of words. A cock tease. He thought that was too strong of a word and somewhat rude to imply of her. “You don’t want me in that way, it’s as simple as that, you aren’t a cock tease.”
“I’m not goin’ anywhere,” she grumbled in reply, shoving the burger away from her completely. Charlie had no idea what to say to his last statement. Maybe in some ways she had been leading him on, in not firmly putting down his interest. Maybe she did get a sick interest in his puppy-dog attention. Folding her arms on the counter top, she looked back at Rylee.
“I know, he was jus’ bein’ a dick. An’ it was jus’ a dream. A stupid dream,” Charlie finished, feeling a little defeated. Her mouth opened as though she were going to continue, and then closed with an audible click. She wanted to point out that she had kissed him in the dream, and encouraged him to strip and a whole other number of things, but maybe it was just a dream, in the end. The corners of her mouth turned down, her expression relating her feelings toward what Rylee thought she wanted. But it was better this way - she couldn’t make him bleed if he wasn’t that close.
Rylee let go of Charlie’s hand and hung his head, staring intently at his lap for a few moments. He might have hoped somewhere deep within his heart that Charlie would proclaim that he was wrong, that his assumption about her feelings was completely off, but of course that didn’t happen. “Yeah, just a dream... it was a nice dream though.” Rylee replied quietly. He lifted his face and looked at Charlie, a near hungry look in his eyes as he stared at her and thought of the dream. The fact that she hadn’t admitted to secret feelings still burned him and he pulled his gaze away as he returned to picking at his fries.
She met his gaze and felt her stomach do flip-flops. Her legs squeezed together and she bit her lower lip, carving a trail in the soft skin before turning her eyes back to the burger. Quickly she busied herself with unwrapping her burger and took another bite.
“It was an interestin’ dream, all right,” she admitted, unable to fight the smirk or the slight reddening of her cheeks from her face.
Rylee smiled as well, picking at his fries and not noticing Charlie’s blush. “Well then, we’re having similar dreams because we’re hallucinating or something from this building. At least we’re going nuts together, huh?” He smiled at Charlie then took a sip of his drink. “Oh, before I forget, I have a request for you.”
He sat his drink down and looked at Charlie rather pathetically, pouting his lower lip jokingly as he asked. “Would you be able to take me to the doctors on Friday? I have to get my wisdom teeth out. The doctor said I have to have someone drive me home because I’m being knocked out and that I would need someone to be with me for twenty four hours afterwards. If you can’t do it, it’s okay, Lia said she might be able to stay with me.”
“No, I can do it,” she responded before she was even aware the words were leaving her mouth. Whoever this Lia person was, Charlie wasn’t about to let her take up more of Rylee’s time than she already apparently was. She was still allowed to take care of her best friend! She was fairly certain that she had an evening shift at some software development firm, and she could always take a nap on Rylee’s couch in order to prepare for work. “When and where am I takin’ yah?”
“Friday morning, I have to be there by eight am, Newport Beach Oral Surgery.” He got to his feet and drifted into the spare room, leaving Charlie behind in the kitchen while he grabbed a piece of paper and jotted down the information.
Coming back into the kitchen area he looked down at the paper then handed it to Charlie as he stood beside her, his arm brushing lightly against hers. “They’re saying I’ll be living off of soup and pudding for a few days but if I’m lucky the swelling won’t be very bad. I know you’d have to stay here all day but you know, you could do whatever you want here, go on my computer or watch tv. I don’t know how active I’ll be, I’ve never had surgery before.”
Without really realizing it she leaned into him, pressing her arm flush against his in some manner of reassurance, taking the paper and reading it haphazardly. It was a simple enough task, but Charlie was still glad that he was asking her to take care of him instead of looking elsewhere. Whatever he thought of her feelings toward him, she would always be there to take care of him - as often as her pride allowed it, at least. “I’ll be sure to bring a video camera to record any incriminatin’ statements.” Smirking, she turned her face toward his.
Rylee didn’t move away from Charlie, enjoying their arms pressed against one another, but he smiled down at his friend and then gave her a gentle push. “One of these days I’m going to be the one getting incriminating videos of you.” He parted from her, returning to his seat, and bit into another fry. “I guess I should enjoy this greasy food you brought since I won’t be eating much of anything in a few days, so thank you Lee.”
“And tah think of all the opportunities I’ve given yah,” she replied, shaking her head. Pulling her burger closer, she unwrapped it entirely and took another bite, chewing.
“Yer welcome, any time,” was her final comment, leaning forward on her elbows. Her feet swung happily underneath her - there really wasn’t any other place she’d rather be.