walk the line [charlie]

29 january 2003

Honey hadn’t shown up in her pajamas since the first time she had rushed over, not now that she was sure he wasn’t dying. He was just bored now--she had to roll her eyes at the look he gave her when she asked what he’d be doing if he hadn’t broken his leg--and traveling seemed to be out of the question; it wasn’t too often that Honey willingly spent time alone with someone in the daylight hours, but for Charlie--and his near death experience--she was making an exception. Merlin help her if she was just going to sit there and watch TV with him (again). She had since gotten over thinking she would damage him further if she touched him, but she couldn’t (realistically) spend the whole day doing that, either.

So she brought him lunch--having eaten hers in Hogsmeade--and plenty of paperwork to keep herself mostly occupied, and in an extra effort to not overstay or take this too far away from being something friends did to be friendly, she had made plans with Janice for later that night. (The bad sex, it turned out, had been a fluke.)

She had spread things out on the coffee table and was sat on the floor, occasionally leaning back against the couch when she wasn’t busy trying to write something. Honey’s focus was split about fifty-fifty on the film and on her work, and she glanced up at the screen again. It was something about a chocolate factory--she had been gifted the book the film was based on, she thought, but that had been twenty years ago and she still hadn’t read it--and a boy named Charlie—ha—but so far she had only seen a very sad looking sweetshop. She’d also heard one too many songs--there had been just the one in said sad sweetshop--and she pulled another owl order form toward her when someone else started singing.

There were plenty of Valentine’s orders to go through already--she offered discounts for orders placed early--and Honey was drawing up a schedule to make sure everything got made and packaged and sent; she had to schedule her employees, too, though that was a secondary (or tertiary) concern at this point. There was a stack of notecards she needed to fill out as well, to transcribe messages going along with gifts, and she decided to get a start on those before she got too deep into the gin.

“Do you listen to this song when you’re sad?” The woman had sung cheer up, Charlie for what seemed like the millionth time, and Honey glanced over her shoulder at the other Charlie with a smirk.

@Charlie Baker

He was meant to be in Las Vegas with Fflur right now, getting in a little sightseeing before the Bowie show he’d bought them tickets to -- and, he supposed, theoretically he could probably have gotten a muggle flight out but he would have had to navigate airports and two flights as a cripple just to get out there, and then he probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it anyway, being in a wheelchair for the whole fucking show because apparently that’s what they did with people who had broken legs (he’d looked into it), and then he’d have to repeat the travel debacle to get home. Not worth it, so Robin was getting an introduction to Ziggy Stardust in his place.

And instead of enjoying Sin City, Charlie was sat on his settee, eating scotch broth that Honey had brought him for lunch -- importantly, she had not made it herself, which gave him the confidence to actually eat it (he’d jokingly asked if her mum had made it for him, but apparently it was from the pub in Hogsmeade). Honey was sitting on the floor, just in front and to the side of him, doing some paperwork -- presumably so they weren’t just watching a movie together. They were a far cry from where they’d been a year ago (give or take a week), and even further from where they’d been the year before that, but there were only so many leaps and bounds they could handle (... in two years).

Charlie had discovered on her last visit that Honey hadn’t seen much, as far as films went, so he’d thought to start with something that might appeal to her: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (specifically the Chocolate Factory, not Charlie -- that was just coincidence).

Charlie (Baker, not Bucket) looked at the back of Honey’s head, and returned her smirk when she turned to look at him. “Yeah, I’ve got it on cassette,” he joked. He glanced back at the television. “Forgot how much singing was in this, actually,” he admitted distantly, but they couldn’t stop now -- surely she’d like it more once they got in the factory. Besides, it was mostly for something in the background -- he could watch movies all day by himself, it was the company he wanted -- not that he’d admit that to himself, let alone Honey.

He dipped his bread into the broth and bit off a mouthful. As he chewed, he peered over her shoulder at the parchment scattered over the coffee table. He swallowed and repeated the dipping process. “What’s that you’re doing?”

He had it on cassette--she knew what that was but she didn’t point it out, didn’t think it would impress him much--and she laughed, figuring he was joking. “Thought as much.” Honey watched him for a second after he turned away, unsure what she was looking for, before she looked back to the television. Charlie forgot how much singing there was but he didn’t tell her how much more to expect, and Honey rolled her lips inward as she inhaled. “How much?” She supposed she could distract them away from the film if it got to be too much, but still.

That lady was still going, still wishing Charlie would cheer up; he was a little kid, how depressed could he be? Honey refocused on the parchment in her hand, scanning over the dates she had lined up so far before she decided that was enough of that for now and set it back down. She pulled the stack of notecards toward her on the table and her bag toward her on the floor, blindly rummaging for her other bottle of ink.

“Hmm?” She set the ink--pink and shimmery for the love notes--on the table and looked back to Charlie. Her brain caught up after a minute, realizing he had asked her what she was working on. “Oh.” She reached for the schedule again and held it up, close enough to see if he cared to look. “Planning for Valentine’s,” she said, sighing a little. It was going to be a lot of work, and she was about to get to the point of not being able to bring her work with her to London. She remembered then that she needed to make sure she had everything to actually make the orders and probably needed to put in for a delivery before the end of next week; she made a note on the schedule before she set it aside again.

Honey turned more to Charlie, arm on the seat of the sofa, elbow bent so she could lean her head on her fist. “I’ve got a lot of owl orders already,” she explained. “Have to write out their little messages to include with the order.” She wanted to make it clear that she wasn’t coming up with the messages herself, because more often than not they were pretty lovey-dovey and cheesy and Honey’s least favorite part of the whole deal. “Like--” she turned and shuffled through the first few owl order forms until she found what she was looking for: “Sweets for my sweet,” she read off, making another face. Her eyes flicked up to the name at the top of the form, making sure it didn’t belong to anyone she knew personally.

“Erm, a bit, I think. Mostly the Oompa Loompas,” he answered her, failing to elaborate on what an Oompa Loompa was because it was so easy to forget that it was possible someone wouldn’t know what one was. “Just— wait ‘til they get inside,” he suggested, figuring he might be pushing shit uphill getting Honey to enjoy any film if she hadn’t found one she liked in thirty years but wanting to try, at least.

Charlie had another bite of his bread to finish it--licking his fingertips free of the bit of broth he’d dipped them in on his mission to soak up as much liquid as possible--and zeroed in on the very pink ink she had withdrawn from her bag. He almost asked why he hadn’t warranted the special pink ink when she’d been writing to him but she redirected his attention by holding a sheet of parchment up to him. He looked at it, not really taking any of it in, until— Valentine’s. Of course. He grimaced, hoping that sigh was more exasperation than… whatever.

He zoned out, spoonful of broth held midway between his bowl and his mouth, as he thought about last Valentine’s, when he’d effectively set in motion his divorce— and the one before, when he’d almost drank himself to death after seeing Kate with another man -- when he’d hooked up with Honey only days earlier and fucked things up with her, too. Where would they be if he’d had the sense then to just do what they were doing now? Well, not right now--don’t overthink what they were doing right now--but the last few months; if he hadn’t been so eager to jump into a relationship after torpedoing the last one?

The chunk of potato on his spoon plopped back into the bowl when Honey turned and rested her head-on-fist on the sofa, gazing up at him. Charlie stared at her, blinking a couple of times. She explained--owl orders, little messages--and Charlie wrinkled his nose in the same moment she did— then grinned at sweets for my sweet. “Original,” he scoffed, glancing back at the stack she had to work through.

He had another go at his potato before setting the almost-empty bowl on the side table next to him, holding his free hand out to her and opening and closing it in the universal gesture for pass it here— “Give us some and I’ll help you,” he said, “you got another quill?”

Honey didn’t love the message either--sweets for my sweet really wasn’t original; she saw it at least twice every holiday--but she took slight offense on her customer’s behalf. She read it one more time and rolled her eyes; it really was bad and they should rightfully make fun of it. “Like you could do better,” she said, realizing half a second later that he probably could. She really hadn’t thought that one through.

She looked at his hand, mainly surveying for soup on his fingers, but also stalling a little as she considered his offer to help. (She might have had some issues with delegating.) She raised an eyebrow as she caught his eye. “Do you know how to use a quill?” He had given her shit about quill usage for long enough now that she had her suspicions. But she did have another one--a quill, not a suspicion--and she pulled it out of her bag after another quick hesitation. She reasoned with herself as she handed him the quill that if he helped, she could be done sooner, and wasn’t that what really mattered?

There was only the one bottle of pink ink, though, and Honey pushed herself off the ground and re-settled on the couch cushions, pulling the table closer and folding her legs beneath her. “So it’s just--” she handed him an owl order form and leaned over to point at the box for the message-- “This, on one of these.” She reached for a note card and handed him that, too. She waited a second--in case he somehow had questions about what she had just told him--before she handed him half of the rest of the order forms, including the ‘sweets for my sweet’ one. She left the rest of the notecards--with some silvery embossing around the edges that spelled out ‘Honeydukes’ over and over if you looked close enough--next to the bottle of ink on the table.

“And it’s got to be legible,” she added as an afterthought, glancing over with a soft smirk before she got started on her next one (‘Happy Valentine’s Day xx’).

Charlie shot Honey a look -- he damn well could do better than that and surely she knew it; fortunately, this was Honey, so he knew that hadn’t been her fishing. “I’m not gonna waste it on you, am I?” he said pointedly, avoiding her gaze -- but hadn’t he already done better, writing (chart-topping, mind you) songs about her? Still wasted, apparently.

Honey was either so taken aback by his (very in-character) kind offer to assist, or she didn’t trust him to do a good enough job. Charlie rolled his eyes at her jibe, even if he deserved it after all the shit he’d been giving her about ball-point pens. “Hilarious,” he said simply in acknowledgement, though a small smile did creep onto his lips because it (she) was a little bit funny. He took the quill from her when she offered it and ran the feather through his fingers like the eleven-year-old boy he had once been, shunted back into the dark ages when he’d joined the wizarding world.

He watched Honey move up off the floor to sit beside him and adjusted to ‘make room’ for her (if anything, made less) and sit up straighter. He did, however, pay attention as she started explaining the task at hand -- he genuinely wanted to help, and this was obviously important to her (her business, livelihood, etc.)— And was this not the closest thing he’d had to a normal person’s job in a decade? He felt some weird compulsion to prove that he could do normal things.

Charlie nodded along with her instructions, then flashed her an ooh sort of face when she said legible (that was a big word for Honey). “It’ll be more legible than yours,” he said snarkily, smirking after the fact. He hesitated long enough to peek at her as she began to write her first, making note of where she was aligning the message on the card, and the way her lips pursed together when she concentrated, then dipped his borrowed quill in the pink ink. His face grew serious as he focused--using his best handwriting--and Christ when was the last time he’d used a quill? This was harder than he remembered— He grimaced briefly at the tiny splodge he’d made on the initial ‘S’ (too much ink on the quill).

He swallowed and held the card up for inspection, more nervous about it than he ought to be but with a forced air of confidence: “That legible enough for you?”

Charlie said it would be more legible than hers and Honey rolled her eyes, waving him off. “Go on, then.” She didn’t want to explain the sort of concentration she used on these, determined to make them look as good as possible; it was more time consuming to write them all by hand rather than by magic, but they looked better, and in the end that was more important. It didn’t need to be said that she was already worried about making hers neat, but now there was the additional, unspoken need to make hers better than Charlie’s, too.

She went extra loopy on the P’s and the Y, keeping her capital letters dramatic, everything she thought made for a good card. She was still on her second word when Charlie held his up; it was nice, and she had to bite her bottom lip to keep herself from smiling. His handwriting was somewhere between what she was used to and what he had used to sign her dad’s record. It was legible enough, to say the least. “Aye--” Honey pointed at the S without touching it. “Bit splotchy, though.” She smirked before she handed him another card.

Honey went back to work on hers, pausing after a couple letters to have another sip of her drink; she was grateful she had made herself one now; it made it much easier to not overthink him helping her, especially when considering what they were working on, what they could be doing instead. But there was singing from the telly again and Honey looked up, raising her eyebrows as she spotted the dancing.

She took a break from her card and picked up Charlie’s first attempt at one in some sort of effort to not focus on the film. “I knew you couldn’t use a quill,” she said with another smirk.

He definitely hadn’t gone the fancy route that Honey had, but she didn’t seem to mind too much; his focus was drawn to her lower lip as she pulled it between her teeth. Charlie flicked his wrist to look at his attempt again as she pointed at it. He scowled softly; "You're a bit splotchy,”  he told her quietly, taking the next card.

The next order form said something almost as bad as sweets for my sweet; Charlie frowned and looked at whom it was from and to--just in case he knew them and could give them shit about it later (alas, not so)--before settling to begin writing I love you berry much in a slightly more loopy font than he’d used previously, trying to up his game after seeing Honey’s—

Charlie paused on love and looked up at her with a blank expression at first before breaking out into a grin. “Fuck off. Do you want help or not?” He shot her a reproachful look, then went back to his card and frowned again, disappointed in the human race. “Do people really send this shit?” he asked, tilting his form at her so she could read it.

“Do you ever get someone you know?” he asked.

Honey managed more of a grin than a smirk, but just barely, and shrugged the shoulder closest to him. “I’d be done a lot quicker if I went home.” In more ways than one, probably, but so far she was enjoying herself more with Charlie. She watched him for a second too long as he went back to work, taking whatever advantage she could of not being watched, and she had just looked away--back to her own card--when he asked his question.

“Apparently,” she said without looking up, adding some sort of curlicue to the end of ‘Valentine’. She glanced up then, eyebrows raised, silently asking if he thought she made all this up for show, because of course people sent it. But she looked from his face to the form, and grimaced as she read the message. “Merlin,” she choked out between laughs. “At least there’s berries in it.” She pointed to the actual order part of the form: raspberry swirl fudge (heart-shaped and pink, of course). “Still.” She grinned. It didn’t quite make up for berry much.

She finished her card after another minute, adding the ‘xx’ with a flourish, afterwards waving a hand through the air above the card to dry the ink before she set it and the corresponding form back on the table.

“Of course.” But he meant with these cringe-inducing messages, and Honey clarified. “Not like these.” She shrugged as she pulled another form onto her lap. “Most people I know just pop by the shop.” She smirked softly; Charlie was one of those people. He had also ordered by post, but nothing he had written on the form could very well have been included with the box of chocolates for his mum which meant there had been a generic ‘Happy Christmas’ note.

But she was getting off track, and she looked down at what she needed to write next. “They have to know I read them or they wouldn’t--” she grinned and held up the form, a few lines of poetry--We had a quarrel, a lover’s spat, I write I’m sorry but my letter keeps coming back--on it. “Who would write this?” She turned the form back around and squinted at it. “It doesn’t even rhyme.”

Charlie smiled--eyes still on the prize (the card)--at her comment -- she probably wasn’t wrong.

His disgusted expression relaxed into a grin as Honey laughed. He followed her point to the actual confectionery that had been ordered, then glanced back at her. “Barely makes it alright,” he asserted.

Charlie carried on with writing--berry much--as he listened to her. He paused at the end of the message and peeked at her out of the corner of his eye, caught hers before smirking back. “Well, don’t worry -- I won’t be popping by for a Valentine’s anything,” he all but scoffed -- and not just because of his leg.

The musician waved his finished card to dry it before setting it on top of the last one with its corresponding order form, then picked up a fresh set. He’d barely sat back when Honey drew his attention to her next one. He leant closer (to her) to read it and— read it again, before flicking between Honey’s face and the card a few times. He grinned. “Erm, Elvis Presley,” he said, in a duh sort of tone. “Return to sender, address unknown,” he sang before he could think about it too much.

She was looking at him with a dumbfounded sort of expression. “Don’t tell me you don’t know who he is and all?” he smirked, hoping this wouldn’t be another Dolly Parton.

Honey laughed lightly as Charlie reassured her he wouldn’t be popping by. “Somehow I wasn’t worried about that.” Never mind the leg; she didn’t think he’d pop by for Valentine’s or even just for her around the date. They had already established that he wasn’t stupid enough to buy Honeydukes sweets for another woman--his mum excluded--so she didn’t need to worry about that, either (not that she would call that emotion worry but she wasn’t about to call it anything else).

She was frowning at the form, doing her best to not pay attention to how close he was; there was a reason she had been sitting on the floor up until a few minutes ago, considering they had figured out how not to make excuses for not getting distracted. She could spot his expression out of the corner of her eye, though, and she turned her head to look at him. Elvis Presley-- Honey furrowed her brow, wondering what he had to do with it. What about Elvis?

He offered the explanation without her having to ask for it. Honey’s eyes went a little wide as she recognized the melody, understanding why he had mentioned Elvis, but mostly she was caught off guard by him singing. She shouldn’t have been-- he was a professional musician and she had heard him sing before but he’d never been like, right in front of her. She blinked, smirked softly. She didn’t hate it, anyway. She had figured out while browsing his record collection that Elvis was most likely the reason she liked Charlie’s hair like that--done up, not like it was now (though the no-product look was growing on her, too)-- but he questioned her about it before she could say anything (and thank goodness for that because she hadn’t figured out what to say, anyway).

She wanted to be offended that he thought she didn’t know who Elvis was, but she wanted him to keep helping her so she let it slide. This time. “No, I--” She returned his smirk-- “My mum loves him.” Her mum’s mum, too, but there were more important things to talk about. “Sounds better when he sings it.” She didn’t emphasize sings like she should have, half hoping he could think she was talking about an Elvis vs. Charlie situation for a second before she finished the thought: “The words, I mean.” She offered him another smirk. “Doesn’t even rhyme,” she said again.

Charlie’s smirk widened to a knowing grin; “Your mum, right.” His expression flickered for a brief second, but it wouldn’t do to look offended -- everything sounded better when Elvis sang it. Charlie shrugged instead. “I’m not a tribute act,” he said simply, realising belatedly that he’d never sung (if you could call one line singing) in front of her before. He wasn’t sure if Honey was trying to soften the blow or— he caught her smirk and decided that she’d known exactly what she was doing. He smirked back despite himself, then told her sagely: “Doesn’t have to.”

There was a pause before he turned his attention back to the task at hand. His latest form was a little less soppy (a simple Be my Valentine?) and he wrote it in silence -- or, as much silence as Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory allowed (which, at the present moment--Gene Wilder’s appearance as the titular character--was much more noticeable). Charlie glanced sidelong at Honey, noticing she’d stopped writing; she appeared to be hypnotised and he wasn’t convinced it was in a good way. He reached forward to set his finished card on the table and picked up another.

...

They had finished the cards twenty minutes or so ago--making sure to alert the other to any hilarious (awful) messages; dramatising the odd really passionate passage--and then watched the end of the film together; Charlie had subconsciously slipped his arm around her shoulders--habit--but Honey hadn’t shrugged out from under him (yet), and he hadn’t retracted the action upon realising what he’d done for fear of making it more of a thing.

As the final credits rolled and Pure Imagination played, though, Charlie felt the need to do or say something. He let out a deep breath he hadn’t intentionally been holding. “You gonna add some new products to Honeydukes after this?” he smirked, glancing down at Honey out of the corner of his eye.

Honey had tried to make her work stretch to the end of the film--the end would have been a good reason for a break, and she could think of a few things they could do that didn’t involve (film) Charlie singing--but the film was still going strong as she finished her last note card, was still going even after she had slowly reorganized all the cards and order forms. She had tried, but how long could she realistically spend spelling out Valentine for the thousandth time? (Though she had misspelled angel as angle--not on purpose--and Charlie had had no issue pointing it out, so that had been a card needing a genuine do over).

There was only so much fussing about she could do and keep it believably necessary; she gave up and sat back, leaning into Charlie to finish watching the film. She had lost the plot a while ago--something about a boat and a goose?--but trying to catch herself up was kind of pointless; that, and she had other things to focus on, like Charlie’s hand placement. She had tried to glance at it without turning her head--nearly impossible--as it slipped over her shoulder, trying to convince herself it was a reasonably friendly sort of thing to do, just like how she was sitting close to keep warm. She didn’t want to say anything about it, make it into a Thing, or let on that she was still thinking about it minutes after the fact (or that she was comfortable and she thought it was kind of nice).

She looked at the television again, watching everyone get into a lift and… shoot straight through the roof. She exhaled and glanced at Charlie out of the corner of her eye and wondered what her chances were for distracting him, but of course some music swelled up at the same instant and-- it was over? Merlin. There was barely even any chocolate in the film about a chocolate factory.

Honey blinked slowly before she turned to look up at him, smirking softly. “One of those lifts,” she said, as if it were the most obvious choice. “Can launch annoying customers up and out.” She might have seriously considered it, too,  if she didn’t live above the shop. She opened her mouth to say something else--something about that blueberry gum, maybe--but she leaned in instead, tilting her chin up to press her lips to his. She moved slowly, tracing her fingers up his thigh; they had figured out how to do this by now, with him in that state, and no sudden movements was key, closely followed by light touches. It was different (for them) but she was done overthinking it.

[[ out ]]

Charlie laughed. He met Honey’s gaze and was about to ask if she’d be launching him up and out in her new lift, but the look in her eyes told him the time for conversation (for eating, working, movie watching, whatever other delays) was over. His focus fell to her lips and he met her in the middle, pressing his mouth to hers.

The soft touch of her fingertips along his bare thigh was almost ticklish enough to twitch out of her reach, but he could suffer through it better now, however many weeks into this he was -- he didn’t have the presence of mind to do the maths right now, too busy trying to manouevre them both into place without any hiccoughs; there had been a wayward elbow to his bruised ribs, a knee to the groin, and a direct tap against his cast in the first (real) attempt alone. The awkward trepidation that had followed was almost bad enough to abandon it altogether, but either Honey had taken pity on him or— No, there was no other excuse.

Charlie pulled her--carefully, in a now-practised motion--into his lap and leaned into her, kissing her harder as she helped him out of his zip-up hoodie.


[ end ]