Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Dee books a role during her first week in Los Angeles, and everyone is happy for her. Unsurprisingly, she’s playing a cute-as-pie eldest daughter in a family sitcom, a character several years younger than her age. The show gets picked up for a second season, then a third, and all the while Dee doesn’t make a single headline. The girl playing her little sister is arrested for shoplifting during the first season.

Her kindness seems to be incorruptible, and it makes everyone she left home a little jealous. Dennis starts referring to his sister as “Saint Dee of Hollywood” when he gets drunk (which is something he’s been doing with alarming regularity these days). Charlie keeps his face pressed to a rag filled with chemicals and his eyes on the prize. In Paddy’s case, the prize is an empty rat trap that will get the bar past its first health inspector.

Charlie isn’t too pissed that they didn’t make it the first time – but he is scared that the bar’s never going to open for business at this point. Worse, he’s the one putting in all of the labor while Mac chases girls and Dennis plans for He’s been barely surviving on blocks of Cracker Barrel and saltines, and he’s working extra hours at the roller rink job he hasn’t yet quit.

The traps come up clean this time, and it feels kind of like a blessing on his future plans.

**

Two weeks later the bar finally opens. It’s Tuesday night, past nine, when Charlie finally has time to take a break. On the bar’s small television set, he can hear Dee’s voice piping forth through the wires and tubes and layers of dust and gold separating them.

“Someone turn it on the ‘76ers game,” says Dennis. But Charlie doesn’t move to take on the task. He just stands still, rag in hand, beer pouring over the top of the mug he’d been filling.

He doesn’t see Mac behind him, just hears bottles rattling. “That positivity, man. It just comes through the screen,” says Mac. Then he turns back toward a doe-eyed blonde trying to order a Michelob.

But Charlie just keeps staring at the tv, transfixed.

It’s like looking at an angel. And suddenly no other woman can compare.

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Charlie starts buying magazines as soon as Dee starts showing up in them. He reads her interviews with avid interest. Some of the stories he witnessed himself. The bullying she went through thanks to her scoliosis he’d witnessed himself -and participated in, something that shamed him deeply now. But she looks wonderful in the pages of People and Good Housekeeping, her youthful, glossed smile shining out from every single face. But Dee doesn’t sound bitter. Instead, the experience seems to have a crucible in which she had been formed her positive outlook.

No one comes to his apartment to complain about what’s rapidly becoming a shrine. No one knows that Charlie’s careful to schedule his time around “Sisterhood.” No one knows that Charlie waits every single day to hear that Dee is coming back to Philly for Thanksgiving – and when he does, he starts making plans to be around the bar when Dennis brings his sister by.

Dennis is a wreck over the visit, though he refuses to actually admit to his own vulnerability. But Mac notices and he brings it up to Charlie one night when they’re locking Paddy’s up for the night. “It would be easier if his dad didn’t call her Deandra in that tone. I know what it means. ”Deandra, you made it, unlike your twin.”

“Super harsh,” Charlie says. He remembers Dennis mentioning that Dee’s set up a trust so Frank won’t be able to dip his hands into her cash and rob her blind. She’s a loyal daughter, but a smart one, which makes Charlie like her even more.

“It’s a harsh world when your sister’s a star and you own the third worst dive in the Philly area.”

Fair enough. But Charlie has his own plans for Dee’s Thanksgiving. Maybe if he shows her his shrine she’ll believe that he’s worthwhile. She’ll like him as much as he likes her.

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Dee arrives without any fanfare at all. She is wearing jeans and a fake rabbit fur coat that Charlie yearned to reach out and stroke. He thinks about taking it to the back room with him and cuddling up to it, like the teddy bear he’d always been denied. But instead he washed his hands and combed his beard, and tried to be the Charlie she probably remembered from the roller rink.

She smiles at him, and sips her Shirley Temple while sitting on the bar. “You guys did a good job with this place. The floor is half as sticky as most restaurants in LA. You could use the floor at Trader Vic’s as a fly trap.”

“We used to use the floor as a mouse trap but it was scaring off the customers,” Charlie says. Dee gives him an awkward, sideways smile, and he remembers her as a teenager in her brace, always careful to acknowledge him as she creaked her way off to class. His heart flutters, and he feels like a rat stuck in a glue trap.

“I’m gonna put some money in the jukebox,” she says, carefully getting up. “Does anyone have anything they want to hear?”

“Don’t pick A-6,” says Mac, pouring himself a beer. “That’s where Dennis shoved the record we got from that apocalypse preacher who shoved a bunch of pamphlets under our door the other day.”

“I set him up with Maureen,” Dennis says. To get rid of him, Charlie knows.

“The wedding’s in March,” says Mac. A lightning bolt hits Charlie. Maybe he can ask Dee to go with him?

“No problem,” Dee says. She picks out a number and punches in the code. Then she sways to the beat of a familiar tune. “Hey Charlie! Let’s dance!”

He remembers this one. Love Rollercoaster. They used to dance to it all the time when they were teenagers. Now, facing down a smiling Dee, Charlie felt a million different emotions course through his body. Chief among them was affection. He’d always like Dee, no matter what.

She didn’t dance in a sexy way, but kind of like a swan – long-limbed and loose, without anything self-conscious about it.

“So where are you gonna spend Thanksgiving?” she asks over the music.

“Oh, probably with my mom.” Charlie’s feelings about his mother notwithstanding, he doesn’t trust Frank not to poison him with his idea of a turkey.

“You can come hang out at my place. I’m just going to have Dennis and my assistant over. Maybe Frank, if I can talk him into it.”

“Dee! Who said you could invite him to my abode?” Dennis asks. He’s listening, Charlie realizes, to everything they’re saying, like a nest of rats in the dark.

“I’m paying for your abode,” she points out. And she doesn’t even make it sound like an accusation, which only makes Charlie want her more.

“I suppose,” Dennis grumbles.

“It’ll be fun,” Dee says.

Charlie thinks it might be. “Sure. I’ll stop by after I see my mom.”

“That’ll be great!” Dee says as the song ends. “I have to coast,” she says, slapping his shoulder gently. “Got a couple of friends to see.”

Charlie runs to the back to grab her coat. He indulges himself by stroking the coat, sniffing it. Even her perfume is innocent, a little to the left of grape soda, something that someone would buy at a drug store when they were desperate for a new scent. Charlie smiles as he helps her into the coat and sees her off.

He notices much later that she left her cherries behind in the Shirley Temple. He dumps the ice from the glass but twists the candied cherries around his tongue, savoring the tart sweetness, this microcosm of Dee.

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He brings marshmallows to the meal. No one told him what he should bring, and really, and his mother’s idea of Thanksgiving dinner was Schlitz and tobacco. He love his mom, even though she’s not perfect, and even though she couldn’t protect him against the worst of what life had dished up thus far.

Dee smiles and takes the marshmallows. Her assistant’s made dinner, and it’s the biggest, fanciest spread Charlie’s ever seen in his life. They have two kinds of potatoes and an entire plate of cheese.

He doesn’t know if she remembers or it’s just a coincidence, but he eats like a madman, and no one thinks to scold him. Dee even offers him more food. She’s the best. He can’t stop smiling whenever she compliments him.

Dessert is pie – so much pie – and his marshmallows. Dennis stares into space and tosses marshmallows into his mouth, while Frank and Dee’s assistant bet on the Bengals game. Dee pulls out a stack of playing cards and he tries to play hearts with her, trying to match her every move, her every victory.

He doesn’t win. But he goes home smiling, happy to be included.

Maybe she’ll come back for Christmas. It’s better to be with her in person than to like the girl on TV who can’t love him.

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Charlie counts down the days to Christmas. He spends half his salary on a nice bottle of perfume for Dee. He spends hours in drug store huffing bottles of the stuff, trying to get a contact high while trying to match the scent that had haunted him since Thanksgiving with a smell in a bottle. He bathes more often, brushes his teeth, tries to practice his manners. He wants to impress her. By the time the third week of December, he dropped a hint that he’d be swinging by Dennis’ place to see Dee for the afternoon.

Mac looks surprised, while Dennis looks smug. “Dee’s not coming home for Christmas, dude,” Mac says. “She’s supposed to grand marshal the Hollywood Christmas parade. Frank’s sticking with her over there in LA.”

“And I’m fine with it. I’m going to have Christmas my own way, in the arms of a beautiful woman,” Dennis declares. But Charlie’s vision blurs and his throat tightens; damn it. He’s been counting on her and this.

It’s not her fault, of course – he never has the courage to text or email her, and to be frank he forgets and SHE could text him, but when she does she always tells him to keep his chin up. It’s like he’s trying to get closer to a beautiful goddess who could gladly annihilate him with a smile.

But then he thinks of the skimpy paycheck Dennis gave him this morning. It’s enough to pay his rent. But it’s also enough to fly out to Los Angeles. He takes a couple of huffs of paint to give him a little courage.

The next thing he knows he’s thousands of feet in the air, jetting to the opposite coast of the country.

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Charlie has no idea where he’s going when he steps off the plane, but he knows he shouldn’t have brought his army jacket. It’s crazy warm here, and he’s pretty sure that he’s not feeling the effects of the frankly-way-too-many beers he’s had on the flight.

But he does have Dee’s address, written ungrammatically on a scrunched-up, used napkin. He uses it to tell a cab driver how to get to her front door.

“You know Dee Reynolds ain’t gonna let you in, right?” the cabbie asks, anxiety dancing in his eyes.

Charlie just grins. “Hey, buddy, I’ve been friends with her since she was a kid, it’s fine.”

He stabs his thumb down on the button once the guy is gone. Dee’s voice is a chirp on the intercom line, as politely sweet with him as she is with her fans.

“Oh, Charlie, I wasn’t expecting you!”

Apparently, no one was. Dee’s home is beautiful, well-manicured, and shining with lights – someone else did the lawn and took care of the cooking. But she is well-combed and smiling, her arms around him, when the door opened. It is pretty in there – lots of marble, wood panels, and shiny surfaces. Someone has spent a lot of money making it look like a paradise beyond compare.

“Did you stop in just to see me?” Dee asked, taking his too-heavy coat and duffle bag.

“Yeah, just you. Dennis said you weren’t coming to Philly, so I thought I’d come see you. So I had something and I though maybe you’d like to have it.”

“Aww, Charlie, that’s sweet. I mean I’m not alone – my mom’s here because she uh, doesn’t really like Dennis a lot and somehow Dennis kind of got custody of Frank – but you can stay if you like. Did you mom decide to do something else?”

“Nah, we’re not very close.” And he knows Dee doesn’t like her own mother, though she tries to avoid admitting as much in front of most people. Dee had used everything from meditation to avoidance to deal with her mom – even Frank is preferable to her.

“So uh…wanna go out to Denny’s? Get a shake?”

As if by magic, Dee’s mother starts shouting for her in the belly of the house. Dee’s nose wrinkles up – so did Charlie’s. She deserves better, even when she was standing at the top of the glass mountain of success. She reaches over and grabs her jacket.

“Y’know what? That’d be great right about now.”

Chapter Text

Dee’s neighborhood looked like Disney World to Charlie. It was beautifully manicured, with some huge trees and a lot of big, wide-open spaces. Charlie was heartened by the beauty of it all, and he really wanted to get out there and enjoy the breeze on his back.

Dee walked apace with him, waving to her neighbors. He was amazed that the community was so open, that people were so nice. No one was nice in Philadelphia, and he was used to it. It was the way he liked it because it felt more honest, usually.

But then he felt Dee reach over and grab his hand. Charlie smiled openly. He could really get used to nice.

“So, your mom’s something, huh?”

“Yeah.” Dee admitted. “Dennis keeps talking about putting her in a home, but she’s too young for that.”

“Aww, that sucks,” he said. Being related to Dennis sucked too, but he wouldn’t tell Dee that. “We don’t have to go back there if you don’t want to. I mean I haven’t got a hotel but…” Her nose wrinkled for a second, but then she smiled.

“Charlie,” she said. “If you’re trying to make a pass at me…”

“I wasn’t.” Not yet. “No no, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, man. I just wanted you to know there’s plenty of space at my place if you need anything…and if you don’t want to leave LA we could spend it hanging out in a cheap motel eating pizza.”

“And in your case doing drugs?”

“Uh…I don’t remember anyone saying anything about this being a DARE meeting, officer bringdown.” He felt guilty about being mean to Dee, but he didn’t like it that everyone knew he was an addict, that he sniffed glue, got high off of fumes.

“I’m not going to get on your case for it. But uh…would you mind doing them somewhere else?” He frowned, felt guilty. “It’s just that between Dennis and Frank and my mom, I’m trying to go choirgirl with this bod.”

Her body was nothing like any choirgirl Charlie had ever seen, but he didn’t protest. “Okay, Dee.”

“All right,” she said. “But anyway, all of my people are taking care of mom. So let’s go to a motel…but a nice one.”

“Uh, how nice?”

“Have you ever been to the Sheraton?”

“No?”

She grinned. “This place shits on the Sheraton.”

“Cool,” he said, and followed behind her as she tugged him along by the hand, her other retrieving her phone to make the arrangements.

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Dee and Charlie wound up at an old, fancy place downtown. It was so fancy that Charlie felt completely out of place just standing in the lobby. But all Dee had to do was smile and wink, and they proffered up a room key for her.

She tossed her jacket on the bed the second they got in. “Let’s get something from room service,” she said.

He found the menu and punched in his order. Turkey for them both – stuffing, mashed potatoes, peas, rolls. He even managed to figure out how to get them to send him hunks of cheese, which he devoured the second it came through the door.

Dee watched him eat silently, amusement shapeshifting her expression. Charlie waved her off, and she ate what she could. He had no idea how she kept that birdlike figure of hers when she ate like a horse.

In spite of that, he thought she looked beautiful with that gravy clinging to her chin.

When they cleaned away the dishes she turned the Eagles game on. They sat in the nothingness, and let it soak into their skin for awhile.

He bent over the bed and kissed the top of her head. She didn’t shrink away, but she leaned into him.

He didn’t push it. He knew what happened when you put a brick through a plate glass window.

Chapter Text

Aha I’ll fix up the previous chapter’s tense shift ASAP!

***

The kiss was nice. She didn’t flinch away, or tell him he was wrong to do it – or a misguided friend. “You know,” Dee says happily, after the game’s finally over and the Eagles have managed a close 10-9 victory, “I think we have what it takes this year. I was worried when we traded out Palmer, but they finally have the fullback they need.”

“Yeah. They look great.” Charlie sometimes forgets that Dee was one of the guy when they were younger – mostly because she was grandfathered in due to her connection to Dennis, and partially because everyone pitied her because of her back brace. On her show, she’s a dainty, kind teenager struggling with first love. At nineteen she can pull it off, with the good writing and directing team she’s been given.

“Hey, do you need a place to stay for the night?” she asks. “I’ve got a suite, there’s a couch and a bed.”

“Uh, no, that’d probably be weird, right?” He didn’t want to make it weird, to push her into a place where she didn’t want to be.

“No, I don’t want to be weir either. It’s cool. I just don’t want to be alone,” she confessed. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to dump on you – usually I can get through anything with a little positive thinking. But it’s my mom, and the holiday and…I’d keep the door locked. I know you’ve….”

He didn’t want to hear the end of her sentence. “I know how you feel.” Charlie didn’t want to untangle his symbiotic connection to Bonnie, not at this point in time. “Okay, I’ll go sleep on the couch.”

“Thanks – maybe we can get breakfast tomorrow, hit up some Black Friday sales before I fly back out to LA?”

“That sounds great,” Charlie said. No one had ever taken him Christmas shopping before, not since he was a little kid. He fell asleep thinking of her golden hair and her smile.

Being around Dee was only making his crush way, way worse.

Chapter Text

Friday morning dawned late. Charlie woke to the nonstop chirping of his cell phone. He groaned and rolled over. He wondered if he should take a shower or something. Was that weird? Would being naked in Dee’s guest room make everything even weirder between them?

He checked the phone and they were all texts from Dennis, ranting about Dee, wondering where the hell Charlie had gone off to, furious that everyone had abandoned him in the hour of his need -which was a weird turn of phrase, because as far as Charlie knew he and Mac had decided to take Thanksgiving together after Frank all but told Dennis he wasn’t welcome to join Dee and their mother for a meal. The Reynolds family was weirder and more complicated than his, and Charlie thought Dee’s choice to stay away from her hectoring mother and grasping stepfather was a good one.

He bit back the gnawing guilt he felt about skipping Thanksgiving with Bonnie. He wasn’t in the mood for dissecting his truly weird feelings about his mom.

Charlie muted his phone and decided to take a shower after all.

This was a rare treat, as the shower at his place barely worked and didn’t have warm water. He scrubbed himself for the novelty of it and rubbed himself dry and clean with the hotel’s thick towels once he was done. By the time he’d pushed his teeshirt down across his chest Dee’s knock sounded on the adjoining door.

“Hey, are you ready to go?”

“Sure!” he said.

“We’ll pick up breakfast on the way,” she told him. Charlie was amazed she could afford all of this stuff. TV really must pay better than he thought.

They took a car down to the mall, and Charlie spent way too much time playing with the instruments in the music store.

“Do you need a new keyboard?” Dee asked him, and Charlie looked up, surprised

“It makes you happy, and I like it when you get happy,” Dee said simply. Huh. That was nice to hear. It was also something he’d never heard from Dee before.

She bought some very typical stuff for her mother he could only call ‘mom stuff’; scarves and perfume. He decided he’d get something for Bonnie that wasn’t mallish. Maybe she’d like a new jar for her teeth.

Before they left for the afternoon, they piled into a photobooth together.

Before the flash went off, she pecked him on the cheek.

He nearly fell out of the booth in pure joy.

She bought him a cheeseburger, which he ate like a madman. They finished everything off with milkshakes before she dropped him off in front of his place.

“Hey, don’t be a stranger, okay? I won’t be back until Christmas,” she said. “Stay positive! I hope Dennis isn’t being uncool!”

“It’s okay, I can handle him!” Charlie said, though he didn’t know how true that one was.

He was amazed that she wanted to come back to Philly. If he had all of this at his beck and call he’d never come back to this place ever again.

But he stood on the curb for hours, looking at the spot her car had vacated. His mind stayed there all day, as he prepared to go to the bar and confront Dennis and Mac with a very Paddy’s Christmas argument.

Chapter Text

Dee was on the Dick Clark New Year’s Eve special that year, and Dennis told everyone that was his sister on the screen.

“Look at her. And without me she’d be NOTHING!” he bellowed, taking another shot of whiskey.

Charlie didn’t tell him that without Dee, Frank wouldn’t have been sweet-talked into letting him be a part of his business. He kept pounding boilermakers and waited for the hours to pass. Suddenly the year turned over, and Charlie was left with no one to kiss. He settled for pecking Mac on the cheek while Mac tried to convince a handsome and tall customer to give him a second look.

Charlie watched the fol de rol. He wished he was with Dee, blowing a noisemaker. They wouldn’t even need to get drunk together.

An hour after midnight hit on the east coast, the bar’s phone rang and he picked it up.

“Hey, Charlie,” came a familiar voice.

“Dee,” he blurted out. “Uh, would you like to talk to Dennis or something?”

“Actually, I was hoping to talk to you,” she admitted.

He almost dropped the receiver. “Oh, sure! I’m right here, uh…lay it on me!”

“I wanted to wish you happy new year’s. I didn’t do it when I left around Christmas. I’ve been thinking about you a lot since I got to New York. I wasn’t sure if you were still thinking of me.”

He was always thinking about her. “What like – like you’re always in my head, Dee! Like a gremlin or that Coors Beer ad with the girls in the bikinis.”

“Uh. Cool!” she blurted out. “It’s just kinda lonely out here. The people are plenty nice,

“Anyway,” he said. “Uh…your show’s going to stat shooting again, right?”

“Yeah,” she admitted. “In a couple of weeks.”

“Cool,” he said. “You won’t be leaving until it’s done in March?”

“We might be finishing sooner, and I might be back sooner than that,” she said. “Wanna hang out?”

He grinned. “Sure! I mean I could make room for you opening day for the Phillies.”

“Oh, awesome! I bet I could talk them into letting me throw the first ball out.”

He was thinking of a much more intimate date – hot dogs, snuggling, soda, pie, the rhythm of the rats - but whatever she wanted. “Okay, okay, we can go with that…”

“Maybe we can go back to my place after that. If you want to,” she suggested.

He more than wanted to. But he wasn’t going to ruin the enchantment between them by saying so. “I’m…definitely, yeah,” he said.

“You hang loose now, Charlie. Keep it cool,” she ordered him. Then she hung up, leaving him alone to close the bar, and leaving him to remember the way she would float through the roller rink, a grin on her lips, just hanging cool and keeping it all together.

He promised he would. But he hung on to her promise as the winter trudged on, his little flame in the frigid winter night, pulling him onward.