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Keep Your Sickness
Date: 2012-01-15 03:42 pm (UTC)He's in love with her.
He's in love with her and with that discovery comes a hate so deep it's a wonder he doesn't retch with the sickness of it.
She's the exact opposite of Carla, although maybe that's the problem right there. Carla was soft and clean, with a worldly attitude and a love of bright lights, colours, pretty things and no sweet clue about just how much of a monster she had ended up marrying. She had made him feel like he used to be.
Charlie sleeps in the dirt, possibly believes that electricity is some kind of evil spirit and resembles a board so much he thinks a man would probably need a hammer to nail her. There might be hips and breasts in there under that coat, he'll suppose probably nice ones if he wants to be chivalrous about it, but it's impossible to tell under the leather and the armour and the blades.
Carla had liked sundresses. Strapless.
It had started a few miles out of Novac. One Legion scouting party, one woman heading ahead to act as bait, and one sniper who had repressed his anger so well he hadn't noticed just how much he had to let out when said bait went from luring to ambushing without warning. Charlie was cleaning the blood from her hatchets when he had caught up. She had moved so fast he hadn't even managed to get a shot off.
It had been months since he had killed one of the red-swathed bastards, and here was one right at his feet, dead from a combat knife instead of a .308 round, and something in him had exploded like sapwood in a fire. He had descended in a blind fury, ripping the knife free and stabbing at the padded chest until the fabric was indistinguishable from the torn meat. Coming out of that murderous little fugue, feeling the blood on his face and his hands clinging to his skin like filth in the humid morning air, he had braced himself for Charlie's reaction.
She was sitting four feet away, cross-legged in the dirt and finishing off a cactus fruit. Looking over to him, she had licked her fingers off and tilted her head. "All set?" It had come out like she was asking if he was finished with putting his boots on, not half-butchering someone.
When the Khans had called him a murderer, he knows she had thought they were talking about her. She didn't care when he told her he was one. It made him feel like the man he was.
He also knows that if he made an advance, she'd reciprocate. The only thing Charlie ever needs by way of invitation or encouragement from any man or woman is the right kind of smile and the time; generally all he needs is enough of the latter with a bottle beforehand. It's the only sort of relationship he should be capable of now, and the last thing he wants. It might mean more with someone like her, someone he sees every day, someone who might start looking like a good idea sober. Someone who could end up loving him as he is.
It would ruin everything.
There's a total lack of feeling, an emptiness, a nothing-space between them filling up with dust and dead Legionaries. They could fall into the boiling heart of the Earth through that hole, blazing a trail of death and blood until they both died in that same dust, nameless and rotting under the sky, together with no cares left to have.
She's a woman he wouldn't care about sleeping with, one he doesn't care about hurting or watching others hurt, the perfect replacement for one dead wife who caused him more pain than he thought he could ever bear.
Sometimes he's even happy.
It's this sick, sorry attitude that finally drives it home, makes what he's feeling completely undeniable. He hates himself because of it, he hates himself so, so badly, and if he pretends hard enough, he can make that feeling slop over onto her. It's the only thing he can do.
God help him, but he loves her so much.
Re: Keep Your Sickness
Date: 2012-01-15 03:54 pm (UTC)I love the way you write Boone, and that bit about the courier possibly believing electricity is an evil spirit made me laugh. I wish there was more. <3
Re: Keep Your Sickness
Date: 2012-01-15 10:22 pm (UTC)Re: Keep Your Sickness
Date: 2012-01-16 12:20 am (UTC)Re: Keep Your Sickness
Date: 2012-01-16 05:22 am (UTC)Re: Keep Your Sickness
Date: 2012-01-16 01:11 pm (UTC)This was very compelling- I appreciate how well you complete the contrasts between Charlie and Carla but don't dehumanize either of them in the process.
Re: Keep Your Sickness
Date: 2012-01-16 06:48 pm (UTC)Re: Keep Your Sickness
Date: 2012-01-16 06:55 pm (UTC)Re: Keep Your Sickness
Date: 2012-01-16 08:38 pm (UTC)Crap I'm so sorry. O_O
Re: Keep Your Sickness
Date: 2012-01-17 03:29 am (UTC)Re: Keep Your Sickness
Date: 2012-01-17 07:35 am (UTC)Re: Keep Your Sickness
Date: 2012-01-17 04:00 am (UTC)Re: Keep Your Sickness
Date: 2012-01-18 02:35 am (UTC)Re: Keep Your Sickness
Date: 2012-01-20 12:16 am (UTC)Re: Keep Your Sickness
Date: 2012-01-21 04:01 am (UTC)Outside Looking In - http://falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com/4875.html?thread=8042507#t8042507
Rosolare la Donna - http://falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com/4875.html?thread=8024843#t8024843
Down In Mexico - http://falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com/4875.html?thread=7155467#t7155467
Re: Keep Your Sickness
Date: 2014-07-22 06:31 am (UTC)