Chapter Text
Dennis and Mac always had their monthly outings and fancy dinners, and it wasn’t until recently that Charlie and Dee had decided that they might as well do the same. It wasn’t often that they got to go to a diner (or really anywhere that wasn’t where Dennis wanted to go) and ever since the slam poetry night, it was rare for the two to get time alone. Though they weren’t sure if they really wanted that…they had been insulting each other even more recently, throwing bird and illiteracy jokes so fast it made both their heads spin, but something between them just wouldn’t go away.
It was when they finally got seated at the diner that either of them realized the strange tension that had grown between them.
“Hey, uh…Dee?” Charlie’s voice was timid and a bit nervous; a drastic change from the loud insults and uncomfortably exaggerated laughter Dee had been forced to hear come out of him for weeks.
“Yeah, Charlie? If it’s about the beak, you still don’t have to eat it. Infinite pass on the beak.”
“haha the beaks on your face!” he ended it like a joke, but neither of them were laughing. “Right…about that. I didn’t uh, I don’t mean any of the-“
“I know Charlie. And I didn’t mean anything I said about the illiteracy stuff. Well I mean-“
“Yeah. Right, no. I am.” An uncomfortable laugh, but it was the first time Charlie had admitted it without going on to explain why it wasn’t important that he know the entire alphabet. Because it was, it definitely was, and he did not.
Before Dee could comment on it, their waitress approached the table to take their orders. Charlie took a quick drink out of his glass to swallow down the urge to spew the thoughts rising up in his mind. The quick drink turned into a quick chug which turned into him drinking the entire glass of water and setting it a bit too roughly on the table with a gasp.
“…is he okay?” the waitress seemed genuinely concerned, which made Charlie feel even shittier. Not that he would ever say that out-loud or admit it to Dee, but he could see the way he was perceived by other people and he hated it. Still a bit out of breath, Charlie sucked in surrounding air before nodding sharply.
“I’m just going to have a slice of your cherry pie.” Dee cut in to give Charlie time to exhale and not make a complete ass out of himself.
“And I will have your chicken sandwich!” he exclaimed, slamming his hand triumphantly on the table. The waitress widened her eyes a bit, but walked away without another word.
Charlie watched her for only a split second more before turning to the blond in front of him with a look of obvious confusion on his face. “Why are you just getting a pie, Dee? A main course isn’t that expensive, I’m sure we can afford it.”
“I’m just watching my weight, Charlie. It’s not a big deal, everyone does it. I’m eating less food less often to sort of trim down. I’m hoping I’ll finally get men by looking pretty instead of being mistaken for a whore.” She sounded way too excited about the whole thing for Charlie’s liking.
“But Dee, you’re pretty as shit now.” He told her, his eyebrows knitted in confusion, and perhaps a little concern. No matter how many times he and the boys commented on her appearance, Dee was by far one of the prettiest girls he’d ever met. He had just been so preoccupied with the waitress for so long he never really saw it till that night a few weeks ago…
“Wh-what? Charlie, do you mean that?”
“Of course I do! Besides, who else can say they banged Lil Kev?”
“Probably a lot of people, actually.” Dee contemplated. Rappers weren’t necessarily know for celibacy, and she had always had the sinking feeling that she was just at the right place at the right time to have gotten such an opportunity.
“Oh...well, the guy was a retard anyway, so who cares.”
“God dammit, Charlie for the last time he wasn’--nevermind.” the blond sighed and brushed a hair out of her face, looking down to stare at her lap.
Charlie frowned a bit at himself, knowing he had caused some sort of distress in Dee. Granted, she was always distressed and they were always laughing about it, but right now there was no they, there was just Charlie feeling really shitty because he knew the emotion her face was covered in all too well. Inadequacy.
“Well, anyway, yeah, I think you’re pretty great. And you’re great at a lot of things, you just never get to prove yourself is all.” the young man’s hand snaked its way across the table to pat the top of Dee’s. It was a sort of sympathy that Charlie had never experienced within himself before, but Charlie wasn’t good enough with words to know that the feeling inside of him wasn’t sympathy, but rather empathy and perhaps something even greater…
Dee looked up then, staring not at Charlie but at the small, relatively dirty, hand that laid on top of her spindly, relatively clean one. As her eyes moved slowly upward to meet Charlie’s, the both of them practically threw themselves onto opposite sides of the booth. Dee could feel her bad back pressed firmly against the vinyl backing, and Charlie was rubbing his hand with how hard he had flung it against the back of his seat. Then the awkward laughter ensued and didn’t die out until the waitress arrived with their food. As she set the two plates down, Charlie stared silently at the small plate in front of Dee for a few moments before turning quickly to the waitress, who had just begun to walk away, and tapping her on the back (Dee was sure he was aiming for the shoulder, but was way too short to achieve his goal).
“Uhhhhhhhh, miss? Could you please bring another chicken sandwich to the table? And, like, an entire cherry pie?”
With a roll of her eyes the waitress walked away and the small bearded man-child turned back to Dee with a look of beaming pride, like he had just saved a kitten from being murdered...Except Dee thought he sort of looked like a kitten himself.
“I told you I’m not that hungry.” She reminded him, but her stomach betrayed her and growled loudly in protest against her words. She smiled sheepishly, watching Charlie smugly bite into his sandwich...Except maybe it wasn’t smugness at all. Dee had hung around the gang as a whole for far too long and it was hard to let herself see that Charlie wasn’t happy he was proved right, he was happy because he wanted her to be happy...that was a weird feeling.
“Y’know what, Dee.” Charlie said, his mouth filled with bread and chicken. “I think you and I make a really good team-” the blond tensed up a bit at those words, remembering them coming out of her mouth just a few weeks ago...and what they had led to. Did Charlie expect that to happen again? Did he want it to? Did she? Oh god, what if he sniffed so much damn glue between then and now that he forgot it had even happened?
“Yeah, I guess we do.” She agreed, pressing a fork into her pie and taking a bite. God, it tasted fucking delicious, and Dee was secretly so glad Charlie had ordered her more of it. “I mean, we don’t tear each other down, we actually build each other up.” she said, shoveling more pie into her mouth and gladly taking the extra food from the waitress when she arrived. “What about it, though?”
“Well I mean, last time-” Charlie chose the most inopportune time to shove his face full of sandwich.
This is it, Dee thought, he thinks I’m just going to ahead and fuck him, oh god...I knew this whole thing would shit on our friendship-
He swallowed. “It’s just that last time, we were actually pretty damn good at Def Poetry. I know Dennis told you we would bomb, but if we had actually gone and done it instead of…” he coughed then, skipping over the one part of the night that Dee was so confident he would have lingered on...She let out a breath that she hadn’t known she’d been holding. “If we had actually gone, I think we would have done really well.” he continued. “So maybe we should...keep hanging out? I mean, just you and me...without them. The gang. The other guys...Dennis and Ma-”
“Yeah, yeah, Charlie I get it.” Dee confirmed, biting a large chunk of her sandwich. She chewed for a few moments before simply gulping it down with a drink of water. Impressive.
“So, like...is that a yes?” the end of his sentence raised in pitch and she couldn’t help but laugh at him. Still, she nodded her head as she wiped off her mouth with a napkin. Charlie’s lips grew into a large toothy grin and he moved to take a slice of pie-
But Dee’s hand quickly slapped him away and gave him an animalistic glare. She must’ve been starving. Raising his hands in surrender, Charlie leaned back in his seat to watch her. He was strangely calm, a feeling he didn’t get to feel very often when he was at the bar or with the boys. He was always on his toes, but sadly he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box, and usually couldn’t anticipate many of the things that they threw at him.
“I’ve been working on some poetry on my own,” Dee said in between bites. “Maybe after this we could go to my place and look at them? I’m sure if we both work at it, it’ll be a lot better.”
Charlie definitely loved the suggestion, but he also knew there was one hurdle that would be hard to jump if Dee wanted him to read her writing...he couldn’t. He could barely read his own words half the time, and he had this nagging feeling in the back of his mind that most of the things he wrote weren’t even real words...Still, he gave a nod of his head and began to look over his shoulder to gauge how far away the only waitress on the floor was. The opposite side, taking orders. The chef? He was preoccupied in the back.
“Uh, hey Dee?” he asked, still looking around as he called to her, clearly preoccupied. “I definitely don’t have enough money to pay for this so…”
There was a sound like shattered glass and Charlie jumped, turning ahead towards the noise...and Dee was standing, pie tray in hand, and a shattered plate from their table on the ground. He looked her in the eyes for a split second before throwing himself out of the booth and towards the front doors. By this time, the waitress had heard the crash and looked towards them, but she wasn’t fast enough to catch the two shit-bags hauling ass down the street.
But they were cute shit-bags, weren’t they?