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He rests his head on Claire's knee while she nurses Aaron, idly strumming at a G-seven chord and staring at the fire. When the baby is finished and resting in the crook of her arm, she runs her free fingers through Charlie's hair and whispers, "Play us a song."
He sits up (a little too fast, his head still aches from whatever happened in the hatch), and starts playing the first thing that pops in his head, the first song he taught himself when he inherited Liam's old guitar.
"Look at you all, see the love there that's sleeping..." he croons to the yawning Aaron. His mother taps out the beat gently on her knee and hums along.
He doesn't think about the words, he doesn't think about the chord, they just come out of him like water, so when Claire starts to cry (with every mistake, we must surely be learning), he doesn't know what to do. He plays the song out, and then puts the guitar aside, wraps an arm around her. "I'm sorry," he says softly.
She waves dismissively. "You didn't do anything, Charlie," she says, "I just always cry when I hear that song, you know? It always meant a lot to me."
He rubs her shoulder and looks at the fire again, remembering a fan letter he'd gotten once, talking about how this one ballad they did always brought this bloke to tears. He kept it in a desk drawer in his old apartment, and he would read it to himself, late at night, hopped up on smack, and laugh at this poor kid--Robert, he thinks his name was. He never showed it to anyone, and now he wishes he still had it, but Liam sold the desk without cleaning it out.
"Yeah," he says sleepily, "I know."