audrarose

Don/Charlie, as threatened. *g* Kinda freaking, here, b/c it's my first trip to the special hell. When I've actually been driving. eeep.

Title: Absolution
Pairing: Don/Charlie, Numb3rs
Rating: R
Summary: Don and Charlie, promises and forgiveness.
Notes: Written for the Numb3rs Slash Ficathon. For sori1773 and spikedluv without whom the special hell (and lj-land in general) just wouldn't be so much fun. *hugs*
Math: Volume. Briefly.









Don hopes someone is going to come along soon and wash the blood off the street. He could probably go get someone to do it, but he’s not quite sure who to tell and he feels weird asking whose job it is, like he should know that already. He’s not usually here for this part. Shouldn’t be here now; should be working on the evidence, on finding the shooters, but he isn’t leaving until Charlie finishes giving his statement. And maybe he shouldn’t have passed that job off to David, either, but when it comes right down to it, in this he’s a coward. He thinks he might be able to read about how Charlie almost got shot but knows he can’t face hearing him describe it.

Better to sit on the curb and wait, watching the blood on the street get swallowed up by the advancing darkness and try to make his hands stop shaking. Just sit here and ride out the after-effects of the adrenalin that he’d felt surge up his spine and paint the back of his mouth when he’d seen Charlie go down in the confusion of gunfire, watched him drop behind a parked BMW blue, with California plates where Charlie had been safe and away from the action. Or would have been if the shooters hadn’t managed to get behind David and Terry, get where Don couldn’t see them, couldn’t see him, couldn’t tell if Charlie dove for the ground or fell to it.

Finding Charlie alive but holding onto the woman who’d been standing next to him right next to him and watching helplessly as she died in Charlie’s arms had done nothing to restore Don’s composure, so yeah. He’s a little shaky.

(He’d been just six but they’d let him sit on the couch and hold the baby in his arms, hold him tight, feeling the slight weight through the pillow they’d propped up to make sure Charlie wouldn’t fall, make sure Don couldn’t drop him. His mother’s eyes had been joyful but serious, focused on him not his brother, he’s yours, Donny, you need to take good care of him; and maybe she’d read that in a book somewhere, a way to alleviate sibling jealousy, but he knows she believed it and he knows he did, too. Believed it inside somewhere deep and important and his nod had been a promise that lately it’s been hard to keep.)

“Don?” He hadn’t heard Charlie walk up.

“They done with you?” he asks, looking up at his brother, who seems hesitant to come closer, shoulders hunching in like he wants to take up less space.

“Yeah. I guess.” Charlie sounds strange, but Don figures he should expect that.

“We should get going, then,” Don says, standing. “I’ll drive you home -”

“4.7 liters doesn’t sound like much,” Charlie says abruptly. “As volume goes. Compared to a… a swimming pool, or an oil tanker, it’s practically nothing, proportionally speaking.”

“What?”

“But it covers a lot of surface area.”

Don follows Charlie’s gaze to the blood on the street, now almost invisible in the near-dark. Don curses himself, thinking he should have moved away from where the woman died, that maybe Charlie has reason to be a little incoherent standing here with the street and his shirt still soaked with blood.

A lot of blood.

“Did the med techs check you out, Charlie?” Don asks sharply.

Charlie laughs, a short, harsh sound that balances on the edge of hysteria.

“Hey, you’re not getting shocky on me, are you?” Don’s moves closer, skittering thoughts reminding him that he’s seen shock make seasoned agents oblivious to their own injuries, and he knows Charlie’s never been good at noticing things that don’t require calculation.

Don moves without thinking, without knowing he’s moved until he’s pressing Charlie’s shoulder blades to the brick wall in the alley behind them and running his hands over Charlie’s damp shirt.

“Don -- don’t.” Charlie sounds concerned, looking down at himself. “There’s blood…”

“Yeah, I see it, Charlie. Just trying to figure out if any of it’s yours.”

He knows he sounds annoyed with Charlie for maybe bleeding to death, but panic always makes him irritable and the twilight and the bloody fabric make it impossible to see clearly. Don’s nervous hands can’t seem to feel anything but clammy cloth. With a sound of frustration, he shoves the ruined, sodden t-shirt up, hears Charlie gasp. His brother’s body in the near darkness is pale skin streaked with black, and thin, so thin -- just muscle and bone as if Charlie’s mind leaves him nothing to spare; like it’s burning Charlie up the way Charlie’s skin burns Don’s fingers.

Charlie moves, shifts beneath his touch. Slender muscles and smooth skin, velvet soft over his ribs and on the arcs of his shoulder blades where they curve up into Don’s palms. The vulnerable line of his spine bumps against Don’s fingertips and Charlie’s head drops forward, so that Don can barely hear him speak.

“Don, it’s okay, you don’t need to—“

“Shut up.”

Don falls to his knees, drags his hands down Charlie’s narrow hips and over his thighs, feeling denim and the tremor of wiry muscle moving beneath his fingers – but no tears, no blood, no wounds. Relief like a fist and it hits him somewhere in the middle of his chest so that he almost collapses forward to rest his forehead against Charlie’s stomach, his nose bumping the cool metal button of Charlie’s jeans.

He feels Charlie’s strangled words more than he hears them; looks up to see Charlie’s face, expression almost frantic.

“Come on, get up, Don, get up --.” Charlie’s been repeating this for awhile, judging by the ragged rasp of his voice; and now he can feel Charlie’s hands pressing brief touches over his shoulders, his jaw, his face. Don uses Charlie’s hips to pull himself up, hard bone that fits perfectly into his palms, and feels Charlie steady him with a firm grasp on his shoulders. Don runs a hand through Charlie’s hair, once, roughly, and tries to breathe again.

“You’re okay. Fuck.”

“I’m fine. I told you.” Charlie won’t look at him, but Don has to admit that he seems better – face flushed instead of ghost-pale, skin of his neck heated beneath Don’s fingertips instead of icy. He closes his eyes and leans forward, puts them forehead to forehead so he can feel Charlie’s breath on his face; drops his hands to Charlie’s hips so solid bone and muscle can anchor them both.

“Not my blood,” Charlie whispers.

“Could have been.”

“But it’s not.”

“No,” Don concedes on a breath, leaning forward to brush his face against Charlie’s, “it’s not.

“Not yours, either,” Charlie says, less evenly, but it comes out muffled against Don’s cheek.

“No.” Maybe he can just lean here against Charlie’s shoulder until they both actually believe it. “So fucking sorry –” he murmurs against Charlie’s neck, stumbling over the words, “you shouldn’t have been here, Charlie. Shouldn’t be in this at all –“

Wordless, negating sounds; arms tightening around him. The kiss, when it comes, is just a touch, a whisper against the base of his neck too solid to be air. He lifts his head and gets another brush of Charlie’s lips, against his mouth this time. There’s forgiveness there, if Don can find it, so he leans in and opens his mouth over Charlie’s; sinks into him until he can almost taste the helpless sound he makes when Don uses hips and thighs and chest to press him into the wall.

God – Charlie - wet and heat and welcome and the opposite of everything this awful, fucking day has been. Don wants to stay here, drown here, never move except closer to Charlie’s warmth and sweetness. He thinks he could live in this wet, drugging, open-mouthed kiss that is all about closeness and tenderness and nothing about sex.

Until it is. Until Charlie moves beneath him and Don moves to follow and heat blooms low and tight between them, seeping through Don’s veins like honey. Kisses, touches, movement; all have purpose now. The sound Charlie makes, rough and needing, makes Don dizzy, makes him hard, blanks out everything but want want want and he wonders if this need alone could kill him.

The line of Charlie’s jaw is sharp beneath Don’s tongue, salt and rough and necessary as he finds a place on Charlie’s neck that makes him writhe and run his hands restlessly over Don’s back and shoulders. Don wants to press back into the touch as much as he wants to press forward into Charlie’s body and he hauls Charlie closer in frustration. Soft moans from both of them when hard slides against hard and Don thinks maybe nothing should feel this good. Charlie’s hands are mapping Don’s body the way he did Charlie’s, leaving trails of warmth behind, tracing his body through his shirt. Then Don feels Charlie’s hand clench convulsively in the leather of his shoulder holster and suddenly Charlie freezes against him.

“Don,” whispered harshly in his ear. “Don, not here. We need to go home.”

The words make no sense next to the shape of Charlie’s collar bone beneath his mouth, the taut muscles of Charlie’s shoulder beneath his teeth. A slow grind against Charlie’s hips makes Charlie’s sentence bleed into a moan, but he pushes firmly against Don’s chest anyway.

“Home,” Charlie repeats, his face against Don’s neck. “Let me take you home.”

The meaning penetrates, and Don remembers. Alley. Crime scene. Blood. His brother. In his arms like he should have been there all along, but, God, this can’t happen here. Letting Charlie go is painful and his body screams in revolt. If Charlie takes one step toward him he won’t be able to stop himself but Charlie waits, letting his hands drop away from Don’s chest, reluctantly it seems.

“Okay, home.” Don takes a deep breath, gathering up his control, and looks at his brother. Charlie is messy hair and bruised lips, glazed eyes and ragged breaths, and there isn’t anyone who wouldn’t guess what they’d been doing. He hopes it’s dark enough now.

“Come on,” Don says abruptly, closing his hand around Charlie’s arm and pulling him along, slowing slightly when Charlie stumbles.

There are a few people left, and the street outside the alley is wet, blood washed away. With a start Don realizes someone had been working 10 feet from where they’d been standing in the darkness. The insanity of their actions hits him, and Don thinks wildly that he still doesn’t know whose job it is to clean the street but whoever it is probably saw them and isn’t that going to keep him awake nights now.

He makes Charlie walk faster, feels the muscles beneath his grip tighten as he nods to the uniformed officers closing down the scene.

“Need anything else?”

Don turns at the voice and recognizes the LAPD detective who arrived after the shooting. He shakes his head, not slowing his steps.

“All finished here. Just going to take my brother home,” and hopes it sounds more like ‘I’m taking the shell-shocked civilian away from the scene’ and less like, ‘We’re going home to bed’, but he isn’t sure.

He’s amazed that the car is where he left it, hours, years ago.

“Do you want me to drive?” Charlie looks at him with eyes that seem a lot clearer than they did a few minutes ago.

Don looks back at him like it should be obvious. “You don’t have a license.”

“I think I should drive.” Charlie’s serious expression is back. “You’re upset.”

“And driving with you is going to relax me?” It comes out with a half-laugh, gasping and harsh, but it makes Charlie smile at him. Makes Don want to kiss him.

“Get in,” he says, and he even manages an almost-grin. “I’m fine. We just need to be somewhere else right now.”

Charlie’s hand brushes his arm, warm fingers across his wrist as he moves away. He reaches out to catch Charlie’s hand in his, squeezes it briefly and it’s a promise, one Don hopes he can keep this time.

End

(the sequel - Resolution - should be finished in the next couple of days, if anyone's interested. *g*)