Good-boy Charlie

Fandom: The Italian Job (2003 version)
Pairing: Charlie/Steve (slash - don't read it if you don't like it)
Rating: PG13 angst
Summary: That scene at the restaurant.
Disclaimer: Not mine.

"You dumped me for some bars of pretty coloured metal, Steve."

"You dumped me first, Charlie, and for the approval of some has-been wannabe father-figure."

Gazes locked, eyes jittery on whether the stare-out was really appropriate. Charlie's skin looked as healthily elastic and soft as ever, his jaw solid and his demeanor as wholesome. Steve thought about the body in front of him that he knew in such detail, knew exactly how it unspun and came undone. Knew in delightfully intimate detail how sinfully it could be teased and persuaded into corruption, and yet revert to that permanent strength of person so seamlessly once the moment had passed. Dependable.

He thought about how real it still was in his head, thought about how it was still a surprise when some unwelcome part of his mind pointed out it was no longer a reality. It was a reality of its own kind, he supposed, something he could make real in his head without any substantial effort. The classically toned sculpt of flesh on bone above him, beneath him, encompassing. It left an empty place inside, but it was bearable. Charlie beside him, that was the absence he truly felt. Beside him in life, always beside him, dependable that way. Always, always, and then...

And then missing, hidden, absent. Always so absent. Never saw that coming. Dependable, but not predictable. Could always be depended upon to be unpredictable. But only ever in a wholesome, good-boy Charlie kind of way.

Steve puts the trembling on the inside, the egotism on the out.

Always unpredictable, good-boy Charlie, but he still had to fight his body's chemical reaction to feel safe due to his presence. Charlie, and safety, dependable, good-boy Charlie. Reality on the inside, abstraction on the out.

Never even saw the punch coming.