Work Text:
One strange side effect of ecstasy is just how vulnerable you become, but it isn't the scary kind of vulnerability, it's more like 'I'm shit, and proud. Are you shit too? Good.' And then running through the streets with big signs of all your shit written in big shitty letters and not giving a single shit about it.
The way the holes inside of you shift from something formless and nameless and indescribable to tangible feeling with reasons and sound motivations. Solid things, suddenly voiceable, and if the person next to you is someone you've known and been close to for over two decades, you can bet your ass it will all tumble out. And it won't feel like ripping yourself open. All of the things that have made you, held you back, were once shoved down so far they are nothing but a sensation that drives your every belief and motivation and want; instead they become a connection, and it's the closest thing to human Dee has ever felt
Suddenly, in a bloom of dopamine, there is clarity and the life or death need to share, to make sense of impossible things. Just figure the shit out, in a sense. As if once it's out, it's purged from your body and soul, and there you are. Belly all shiny like a fucking newborn baby.
Of course, when you come down, it's all gone. Everything thats said is one distorted blur of embarrassment and every sort of resentment one can feel. Like a mental walk shame. Only instead of baring your body, you've born you're most naked self. And for people like Charlie and Dee, this is worse than any night of drunken sex they'd rather have buried beneath the scathing way they survive. (renewed with a vigor saved just for regrettable sex.)
It went like this.
The both of them wound up in Charlie's apartment, just after running like hell out of the train yard, just barely missing empty 40 oz bottles thrown at them from some wasted wanna be shit head vagabonds with dumb hair cuts complaining loudly at them for blowing up their spot and drawing the attention of the "fucking bulls"- whatever that horse shit that was.
Of course in true Charlie Kelly and Dee Reynolds fashion, they made it out alive, bottles of spray paint,and a wad of their clothes heavy in Dee's purse. Slinking through the sewer system that Charlie was sure would lead to his house. Any other time, Dee would take her chances above, but something strange like empathy and willingness was pumping through her body in a heady brain orgasm, so follow him she did. Stinking turds and all.
It was in the sewers where she began to really get it. Understand as much as she could-no, try for the first time (brain swirling with philosophy and metaphor spiraling into brilliant clarity that dissolved as soon as it came) the only thing that really stuck in her brain had been there all night, though that might as well mean for years. E did that shit to her. To people, probably. Human connection, her deepest parts, derived of the normal pain and shame, came bubbling to the surface as she watched Charlie trek through the sewage water infront of her. His hair a lovely mess, sticking out at all angles, his careless abandon of hygiene, his obvious hang ups with sex.
She loved ecstasy for the same reason now as she did then. It was the only time she didn't feel the spectre of Dennis. Expectations and judgements, and the consuming desire to be better, to break away from what she couldn't live with, or without. When all of her layers fell away and the core beneath was nothing scary, only a truth, he wasn't so scary anymore, she herself wasn't so scary. It wasn't forgiveness, but a strange sort of acceptance.
Charlie turns to looks at her, "Coming Dee? We're getting close. Unless you want a turd bath, I'd step it up." but despite his tone, he's smiling, pupils blown, and high as shit.
She nodded wide eyed, gripping her purse to her side and picked up the pace. Sneakers this time. Still in her thoughts, she cast a glance at Charlie. Feeling something rise in her throat, unbidden.
"Do you like gross shit cause you feel gross, Charlie?"
He stopped in his tracks, hair wild and eyes suspicious, "Uh, what the hell are you talking about?"
She looked up, the ceiling dripping, long swampy tendrils of something surely disgusting hanging down like stalactites, she felt another bust of dopamine like a truckload in her brain, causing her eyes to flutter. She laughed loudly. "I feel gross. I like it." was that weird? Eh, move past it.
Charlie blinked, shook his head, and grabbed her by the elbow, pressing on, muttering to about the coming wall of water, bum baths.
_
And there had been a bum bath in the end, despite her sneakers. They both smelled like shit, and Dee was okay with it. With the both of them and their shitty smell, and no access to a shower at Charlies apartment, and the metaphors and split second philosophical bullshit came round and round in her brain, breaking down, rebuilding. She wonders why the world isn't a better place, when better people than her have access to this shit.
They lay on the floor passing back and forth a balloon full of nitrous. With nothing but the pop and tchhhhhhhhhhh, she figured he was in a similar state of warm, looping thoughts.
They'd found a box of 'whipped cream' cartridges at a sex store, and Charlie pocketed a few poppers while she flirted with the clerk. All in all it had been a successful night. Charlie and Dee at thier best.
She sucked in the rest of the gas, held in for a beat, and let out a long shuddering breath. Immediately, her ears were loud and her vision fuzzy. This was the moment she chose to say what had been on her mind all night.
Just hitting the gas, her voice was several octaves below normal, fitting, she thought. '"I know you're uncle Jack fucked you up. As in you." she says it like she's asking him to pass a beer.
Charlie, who had been filling up his balloon froze, promply let go and the whoosh of gas spewing into the air barely fazed her as a response.
"What? No- Dee, you goddamn bitch I just wasted all my-"
Kttcchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Filling her own balloon, she ignored his raving. Turned to face him, shoving the fresh balloon in his face, face blank. "It's cool, I mean to say, I get it. The nightman or what the fuck ever. Dennis did me too."
not it to me, just did me too. She wonders if that's weird.
Charlie's brow furrowed, jaw slack. A few beats passed like hesitation, with that she shrugged, and took back the balloon she was offering. Inhaled.
In and out, in and out, wawawawawawawawawawa.
When she came back to, Charlie was still staring at her, "If you are fucking with me, I swear to God, Dee-"
Propping herself up on her elbows, she focused in on him. How his pupils were blown wide, ring of iris all but gone.
"Pfft. Whatever. " Charlie's the weirdest person she's ever met, so she's got nothing to worry about there.
In and out in and out in and out in and out wawawawawawawawawawa
This time when the sound in her ears died and the world reassembled, Charlie was laying back down on the ground next to her. Head touching her head, both lying prone in opposite directions on his pull out futon.
Honestly, he didn't know how to respond. Charlie thought about the Reynolds twins, putting her words together in his mind- their weird closeness, borderline obsession with outdoing eachoher. That thing Dennis said about her at the comedy club just a few days ago. He'd thought that was weird as fuck but just chalked it up to Dennis being Dennis, but now-
"Dee that's fucked up. Like, I don't even know what to do with what you just said. How am I supposed to..." trailing off, he turned to look at her looking back at him. Charlie thought her pupils seemed so wide he could see into her head, so maybe she could see into his. He thought ignore looked to close he could see Dennis staring back at him in accusation, and it- no, didn't seem so preposterous after all.
He brought a hand up to brush a strand of hair from her cheek, pulling it through his two fingers. Yellow. Soft. She's not Dennis. He feel his heart clench and it's almost annoying that she would do this right now. And still.
"Nothing. You better not do a damn thing with it. Yeah, it's fucked up. But it's Dennis, you know? You know him. And I was just thinking. What Jack did to you. What Dennis did to me. I know how you feel about sex, Charlie..Come on." The way Dee said it, so blase, none of her usual judgement made his guts flip. Made him feel more naked than he'd been in the sewer with her. In a way, he supposed, they both were.
She eyed him, probably catching his response, yet continued. "You think it's gross... Sex I mean. I like... Basically do what Dennis did to me to other guys. Like some kind of revenge thing, but it also feels good in a different way... But not good. I don't get it. I think something's wrong with me... Both of us." (and Charlie felt that one in his bones. )
The honesty was there. He could hear it. Not some methodical trap being laid by the Reynolds twins, or lie to get him to- no. He listened to her ramble on, "We're fucked, but in a different way. Both of us had people who were supposed to take care of us... Do that" Dee swallowed, "... And yet you avoid sex and I basically emmulate the monster that did the shit. That's what I- what I don't get, Charlie. I don't fucking get it." Dee, stricken, scrambled madly for her cigarettes. Finally managed to light it with shaking hands.
Still, he couldn't respond, deep in thought. How perceptive she was caught him off guard. It was alot to take in. He wanted to hate her for it, but kept stroking her hair anyway.
No mater how much he tried to forget about, push it away, uncle Jack did- it happened. And it was affecting him still. He hadn't thought about it before, but sex was weird to him and maybe... And there was that clench again. And then Dennis. This was his best friend. And so was Dee. He didn't know how he could possibly look at Dennis without wanting to kill him. But he knew Dee would hate him for that because he got that kind of crazy shit. And also if what Dee said was true did that mean he has to hate her for what she's done since too? No it's different. He tell himself this over and over and thinks its enough.
Instead he stayed silent, still toying with a strand of her hair.
"I don't know, Dee I don't really think about it much."
"Yeah, it was stupid to bring up. "
Charlie propped himself up on one elbow to peer down at her, "No it's not stupid. I think it's brave. You, you're so brave, Dee. I never... "
Charlie looked down.
Dee shifted to catch his eyes, deflecting his last statement (Dee and her never ending search for approval can't take a real god damn compliment, Charlie thinks, dismayed.) "No. I'm sorry for bringing it up. Your shit I mean. I just want you to know you don't have to feel weird I mean. I get it. Also I just," Dee rolled over to rest on her stomach, propped up on her elbows to look at him, her voice all soft, " When I'm with you it's gone. It's weird."
Charlie was quiet for a moment, had been quiet his whole life, instead bleeding peices of himself into music. Losing himself. And then, "How do you just talk about it like that? You don't even seem... "
He'd said it so low, she wasn't sure she'd realize he'd spoken if she hadn't seen his lips move.
"Drugs." her lips quirked up at the corner before flopping back down.
Charlie kind of smiled then nodded, and finally, finally lauged. Dee closed her eyes, feeling another bloom. She caught it in Charlie too, the way his eye lids fluttered.
Dee placed a hand over his heart, rubbing the plush worn fabric of his shirt he'd owned since high school.
"And you make me feel like I can. Like, you get it too. You won't... Be weird about it. It's weird. When someone you love makes you feel special. But it's wrong. And you don't know it, and you love them anyway. And then you get whats going on and feel like you've been left. And hate them. Dennis... I hate him Charlie... But I would do anything to just- He... I can't believe I'm saying any of this."
A sudden, fleeting moment of delicate hands that weren't his, fear shaped like love, loneliness that followed, a rejection that felt perverse, made him feel like a freak. Surprisingly, he didn't crawl inside himself. Dee's hand was on his chest, and his hand was in her hair, and it felt like a normal conversation. Not like being paralyzed, salting old wounds, open and weeping.
"No, no, Dee. You don't have to... You're right. I do get it. More than I can explain."
Dee picked up the nitrous and balloon and reloaded. Passed one to Charlie and held tightly onto her own. Finally both laid back down and Dee sucked all the gas out of her balloon, melting into the futon
He thought about the comment she'd made in the sewers, looking wild and gross, almost pretty. She could have been. .
Do you like gross shit cause you feel gross, Charlie?
He took a moment to consider Dee, her messy hair, her sweaty skin. The dark bags beneath eyes made like two way mirrors. He suddenly felt sick, sick about all of the times he laughed with Dennis at her appearance, sick about the way they acted in Chardee Macdennis. Sick at the way when Dennis' attention was on her, she would turn on him.
Ms. Klinsky.
Sick at the way her understood nearly all of it.
Only made worse because he knew this would change nothing.
"Were both idiots Charlie," Dee scoffed, and hit another balloon.
He felt something inside of himself dislodge. Some long dormant connection, instantly snap. It was jarring, throwing him out I'd his reverie. The drugs were making it hard to put all of it together, to make sense. He prayed to Mac's God that tomorrow he would forget or think it was a dream. But at the same time he didn't want to forget about Dee like this. All of her superiority bullshit and masks traded for something authentic and real, and so much like himself, he couldn't believe how different they were. He wanted to keep her here with him forever, tell the color to never wash away, go find more and more until they drugged themselves whole again. Have her pet his cheat forever.
Instead, he prayed he would forget. It was in the best interest for them all. For him and her.
They agreed to never speak a word, but in the end none of it mattered.
They left to go get more nitrous, their conversation soon forgotten by the end of the night in between all of their drug fueled escapades. By morning the night before is gone, memory with it, and the holes are back, ever more gaping than before.
In the end, all is as it should be.