The rain had gathered speed from the light drizzle of the late evening to the heavy downpour of the wee hours of the morning. It was then that Charlie Ewing stumbled home with the beginnings of a spectacular ache building up in his head and a strange lightness where his set of house keys had been just that morning.

Oh clocking-- That ginger bastard had taken his keys, he knew it. There was no other reasonable explanation as to why Charlie would find himself standing outside his own apartment at this godsforsaken hour, kicking at his own door unable to get in. If the little prick didn't let him in, he swore to Alioe he would batter him until his face split open. A pretty face, and a right terrible shame to waste it like that, but a man had to do what was necessary. Perhaps if Charlie's fist met Carmine's face, smearing warm red blood all over his knuckles, he's finally get the message and leave.

Something in him doubted such a venture would run so smoothly.

"Oi! Open up, I know you're in there!" He kicked the door several times in vicious succession-- it probably wasn't helping, but it did make him feel better.

Charlie Ewing's bed was so much nicer without a Charlie Ewing in it. Lumpy cotton mattress. Big iron backboard. Sheets worn thin, soft from lots of bodies that weren't his. And -- the big delicious and -- that coil radiator humming away, spilling warmth into the late Loshis morning. It was always Loshis, as far as Carmine was concerned. Raining forever, and raining forever after that. Put a grey pall on everything, soft-inscrutable under fog and cloud. No definition. Which was good -- there were a lot of things Carmine didn't want to analyze too closely.

The thunder at the door jolted him awake in that self-safe bed. Twisted his face away, bit the pillow to stifle a groan. It took so much will power not to just roll over, curl himself deeper into the sheets, fall back to sleep.

Crash. Crash. Crash.

He didn't have the patience to tolerate all that gods-be-damned noise the bastard was making. Good luck getting to sleep with some stupid cunt howling at the moon only a few meters away from your head. What was he even carrying on about? Just open the door, stupid -- oh. Right, that. The heavy brass keys stabbed against his hip, jangled around in his pockets as he slept. A safety precaution. If it was Carmine on the wrong side of that door, he didn't think there was any conceivable way he could convince Charlie to let him back in.

He rolled out of the bed, a muzzy blur of limbs and sweater down. When he started trumping towards the door, he noticed a funny tilt to his walk -- ah. One boot on, one boot off. Oh well. Stepping on half-graceful ibis feet over dead bottles and the deflated husks of clothing sans bodies, over abandoned tinkering projects. The apartment was never well-kept, but over the past week it had become a minefield.

Carmine heaved the door open, clutching the doorframe for support, arm making a flesh-bone barrier between Charlie and the semi-comfort of his flat.

"Yeah? Whatcher want?"

That little-- Standing there in his doorway like it was his flat, the bastard. What did he want? He wanted to get into his own home and sleep in his own clocking bed, thankyouverymuch. No ginger oddballs were going to keep him from sleep and work in the morning. Not if he could do anything about it.

"I want," he said through clenched teeth, "to get in. You clocking know what I want, get out of my godsbedamned way." He put his hand on the arm Carmine was using to block his way in.

"Soz."

Slurred from a sleepy tongue. A barely comprehensible mangling of something that could have been 'sorry'. Whether he was understood or not, Carmine flopped bonelessly back against the door, all at once opening it wide for Charlie and slamming it hard against the wall.

"Y'ent got t'be pissy or nah--ah--" That little constanant was stretched out like an elastic around a lionesque yawn. He rubbed the heels of hands at his eyes, the sockets still feeling fuzzy with sleep. That pirate tumble's liquor left his stomach feeling hollow-hot and his skull a bit cobwebby.

"Made ye some fish soup. Ye wasn' 'ere, though." He nodded blearily towards the kitchen, running his paws through his bed-mussed curls. They kept falling back flaccid into his eyes. Haircut. He needed one of those.

"...s'...prolly cold now, I guess." His heavy eyelids slipped closed. He almost looked as if he were going to doze off right there in the doorway.

"Y'should let go o' my arm, Chuck."

Charlie stared, jaw hangingly slightly agape in disbelief. His keys stolen, locked out of his own house and--

Hello, what, had Carmine said 'soup'? Charlie could forgive many, many tresspasses if said tresspasses were then followed by a spot of food. Still irate, Charlie relinquished his hold on Carmine's arm, choosing instead to push on the nearly-sleeping man's shoulder and shove his way past into the flat. There was, in fact, soup, and it was indeed cold. Still, Charlie couldn't really complain-- he hadn't had anything that didn't come from a tin or his overly generous landlady in. Well, probably since he left his parents' house years ago.

"I don't know why you lock the door when you're here," he said, irritatedly looking through the sink for a mostly-clean dish. "And you shouldn't be-- here, that is. Leave." It was almost automatic, now.

"Y'know I can't --"

Carmine cut the retort off. It wouldn't help. Charlie had been saying that all week, but hadn't made any great move to get rid of him. Maybe he was scared, maybe he didn't want to. Carmine tried not to dwell on the reason.

After trailing after him into the kitchen, he paused, and leaned over Charlie's shoulder. Fingers stretching up to paw open the cabinet above their heads. He precariously plucked a bowl from among the others, barely avoiding sending them all crashing to the floor. The dish hovered in front of Charlie's face before he tipped it onto the counter.

"I...uh. Cleaned yer dishes."

If Charlie were attentive, he might have noticed his ever dwindling supply of dishes had dwidled even more. So what, he'd chucked two or three at the wall not even a couple minutes into washing them. It was funny how being up to your elbows in soap bubbles could make him feel so dirty.

"An'...an' I was gonna --" Broken by another yawn, quieter than the first -- "--gonna do yer linens, too, but...but they woulda still been wet by the time ye got back so I didn't."

Really, he'd been taken with a strange compulsion to clean the moment he got back from the Widow's Walk. Cleaning was familiar, it was safe. It was only when cleaning started unearthing spectrographs of naked wicklings and letters that smelled like old ladies did he decide to stop. To sleep.

He snorted softly, shaking his curls from his eyes. Hung over and half-asleep, he still somehow managed to look so godsdamn prim in that instant. "An'...an' o'course I lock the door. Ye know wha' bad men kin do to a lady at home all by her lonesome."

Perhaps Charlie didn't know. Maybe he'd lived alone forever and no one had bothered him once. Perhaps Carmine was the kind that was just asking for it. Speaking of asking for it...

"Where were ye, anyhow?"

A subtle shift in his body, leaning away from Carmine when he padded over to hand Charlie a bowl. Too much nearness, too much domesticity. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate having his dishes washed or food or anything absurd like that-- he just didn't want someone to be doing it for reasons Charlie didn't understand. He wanted Carmine to leave, to get the hell out and never darken his doorstep again. Still, he was strangely relunctant to make him. He could hear Tippy making rustling bird-noises behind him.

If he really pushed Carmine out, it'd be just him and the bird again. No laws against keeping someone around for white noise, was there?

Nah.

"None of your godsdamn business where I was." He took the bowl with more force than was strictly necessary. There was an overly-enthusiastic slapping of cold soup into a cold bowl, after which he shuffled to his broken-down couch to eat it.

Gods above that couch was uncomfortable. Bits of sharp gods-only-knew-what always poking into tender little Charlie flesh, ah, it was. Undesireable. Still, he'd cobbled the thing together from scraps of other, better couches, so there was something to that there he supposed.

Charlie squinted up at Carmine through a haze of mussed dark hair. "Why would you clean the linens, anyway? What's wrong with them?" Really, he'd just had them sent out, what? A month or two ago? They weren't that bad.

Carmine moved after him, muttering to himself, unthinking.

"Havin'...some sorta...time table...would be -- so could know if'n I should..." He trailed off, shaking his head as if trying to jostle cobwebs from the walls of his skull. There really wasn't any good reason why Charlie should tell him where he's going, or for how long. There was no reason for Charlie to tell him anything at all. Hiding in the bathtub was better than speaking to him.

A bath. He should take one of those soon.

Shuffling through the house after him like a sleepy specter, aimless. All this moving around was grating on his nerves a bit, but at Charlie had led him back towards the bedroom. Closer for when he finally decided crawl off and sleep again -- oh, who was he kidding. He was awake now, and would keep staying awake until he got some whiskey to dull his mind and lull him back to bed.

Carmine crumpled down to the floor next to the table opposite the couch. Lazy, in some sort of languid half-kneel half-sit about-to-flop-on-floor kind of seating. He crossed his arms on the pockmarked old wood, and nuzzled down into them. Pale blue eyes blinked up to Charlie, owlish, through the half-dark.

"What'cha mean 'why'?" he slurred. "They're filthy as fuck --" a muffled snort, a bit irate, followed that "--an' they'll be softer, too, if'n they get a wash." He paused there, for a moment. "...an' I don't want the ghost o' some wick givin' me an itch, neither."

Well, didn't somebody have standards for a godsdamn dirt-wallowing gravedigger. Charlie was almost offended.

"If you should what?" It was difficult to sound both dangerous and condescending around a mouthful of soup, but Charlie did his best. "Want know when you can bring someone 'round?"

Feh. Living with another person-- Charlie hadn't done it in years, he didn't like it, he hadn't intended to ever do it again. Another person's thoughts, desires, living habits pressed upon your own. Even with someone as strangely useful as Carmine, it was hellish and awful. This fastidiousness irritated him. It just meant more work for very little payoff.

"They're clean," Charlie protested. Clean-ish anyway. As clean as anyone in the Rose. "Since when does someone like you give a damn about cleanliness?" Or sleep in that bed, for that matter?

"I like baths. And...uh...I like...I like..." Somnolent, hungover, trying to pick through the limited lexicon of 'Things Carmine Likes That Aren't Dirty'. "I like smelling nice. Bath oils 'n' things. An'...an' I like clean sheets. I thought you'd like 'em too, 'r somethin'."

The bit about him being filthy and callow didn't bother him, not really. But that implication that he was putting out for someone else made his stomach ice over. As if this bastard had any room to talk. Carmine hadn't touched anyone for nearly a year, not until misfortune -- really, the consequence of spending all his rent money on booze -- came tossing him out into the street.

"An' n-no." Muttered, twinged ragged with exasperation. "I ent got nobody else -- nobody to bring 'round." Carmine almost thought of lifting his head off the table for that radiant defense of his virtue, but the half-soft glue feeling of his spine suggested otherwise. So he just stayed curled up how he was, the table being the only thing keeping him from sprawling on the floor.

"I don't even...I ent a whore," he stated blearily. Even through the soft haze, it was obvious Carmine was serious. "I ent."

Charlie snorted, stretching himself out more fully on the couch as he finished the soup and set it on the floor. Whatever Carmine wanted to tell himself, didn't matter a whit to Charlie Ewing. Filthy whore or fresh, untouched virgin (of which he was certainly not the latter), Charlie didn't care. He was just some guy, some lay who refused to go away.

"I don't mind." It was just baffling why anyone would go through the effort. This was Charlie's home and these were Charlie's things. He wasn't quite sure he liked someone doing anything with them, even something as innocuous and helpful as cleaning his dishes and his linens. This opinion was not changed when it became increasingly apparent he had less things to be doing anything to.

“I’ll do ‘em then. T’morrow, or somethin’,” he mumbled into his criss-crossed arms. Strange golly men were frustrating. Half-asleep, hung over, Carmine was easily bemused. Fussing about the linens being clean and then just saying that you never cared in the first place was bewildering. He inhaled deep, hauling down the scent of musky myrrh and violet bath oil he’d bought from the apothecary a few days past. Pawned dishes and silverware and ink quills just to infuse his skin with succulent smells or buy big bottles of cheap horse whiskey. One vial in rose, another in vanilla beans, another in jasmine. He’d hide in Charlie’s bath tub for hours, the whole washroom smelling like a flower garden in bloom alongside a gin distillery.

“Ya don’t hafta be so…I dunno,” he muttered. “I dunno.” The nights were getting warmer, steadily, but for now he was still cold. He wanted one of those blankets strewn on the couch, wedged firmly underneath Charlie. Carmine couldn’t be bothered just to snatch one out from under him.

Weak field or not, gollies worried him. Even sprawled out sleepy on an ugly couch with soup on his lips, Charlie worried him. Stay out of his way, do small favors for him, go through the callow motions he said he’d never do again, linger under his free roof. Well – ‘free’ if he only counted money exchanging hands. It was costing Carmine a lot in more intangible coffers. Things like ‘pride’ and ‘respect’ were in deep deficits.

When he spoke again, his voice was tired yet brittle. The words were clearly intended to prick at soft parts. Small gains in the coffers.

“Who…who’s Cerise?”

All the languid annoyance drained from him at once. There was a safe probability that he had never, ever mentioned his mother at any time in Carmine's presence-- so how did he know that name? Charlie made a point of never talking about his family. For all the Harbour knew, he was an orphan, or had hatched fully-formed from an egg fallen from the stars. Charlie Ewing was related to no one. This severance from the Viendan Almonds was deliberate and suited him perfectly well.

Charlton Lawrence was dead and buried, just where Charlie wanted him.

"That," his tone clipped and his eyes narrowed in Carmine's direction, "is my mother, and none of your godsdamn business."

“I thought so. She sounded kinda like a ma.”

Frilly penscript and a signature so puzzling it might have just been some beautiful scribble. Carmine had sunk down to the floor after finding them hidden under a sprawl of hand-drawn blueprint things and old parchment, a few of the neatly folded letters in his palms. He’d sniffed them to see if they had her perfume on them. They didn’t, but he pretended they did. The parchment was powder white and smooth to touch. It felt like money.

“Vienda is nice. I mean – it isn’t, but it is. It smells a lot nicer an’ the people aren’t as ugly. But I jus’ always think of all that smoke and this fella I once seen with his hand all ate up by a textile machine and I guess tha’ jus’ makes it bad.” Carmine lifted his weary head from the coffee table, blinking over at Charlie in the dimness. The faint blue phosphor lamp in the corner made everything look cold and shadowy and not all there. His voice was a mutter. “I bet she ent never seen any o’ tha’, though. I bet she smells good.”

He dragged a paw through his curls, a hazy sigh slipping past his lips. Carmine wondered if there was any cooking sherry left in the cupboard. Probably not.

“Do ye miss ‘er?”

"No."

Flat, no inflection, a simple word. Heavy, though. No, he didn't miss her. No, he didn't miss his sister, or Vienda, or anything Charlton had. Failing to meet expecations and quotas, his mother's heavy sighs. Rumours, glances and touches that thrilled him now but Charlton? Nah, nah, Charlton hated them as much as he wanted the attention. Approval.

Vienda should be hit by a meteor and reduced to a smoking crater. Alioe, he hated Vienda.

"What do you mean, she 'sounded' like--" Charlie sat up, his field snapping stiff with him. Those were his private letters.

Something small and visceral tightened in Carmine’s chest. He wasn’t an expert at fields. But in Brunnhold, he'd gotten good at picking up small bristles of that strange magical whatever-the-fuck it was. It made his skin tingle. Made him want to curl up into something very small. Fields were evil, no questions asked.

He drew himself up off the tabletop, almost cautious in his slowness. Settled back on his heels. When he realized he was kneeling, a shudder a danced up his spine. He raised his hand to his mouth and sank his teeth into it. The faint pressure of teeth, the worried throb of blood beneath the paperthin skin.

“I…I was cleanin’. An’…movin’ stuff around and I found ‘em under some other shit. They wasn’t hidden away or nothin’. I jus’…I read ‘em. Kinda?” Soft voice, stupid shrinking violet voice. The way he used to talk when he was small, murmuring an apology to his mum or trying to squirm away from the patron’s punishment. A bemused growl coated those words like a rime of dust.

Cleaning? He had been cleaning when he decided-- just decided-- to go through Charlie's letters? To read them? Charlie swung his legs from their position propped up on the couch and glared.

"You read them?" Charlie's voice was thick with incredulity. A sudden sneer pulled at his mouth. "I didn't even know you knew how."

“I…I can’t read real good but – y-yeah. I read ‘em some.” A glint of steel creeping into his voice, even as he ever so slightly shrank away from the table. Very still, every little muscle tensing up out of old and buried habit. Like a deer in the woods, poised motionless at the first hint of danger. His pride bristled at the stupid sneer. Sharp, brittle teeth kneaded his lower lip, holding back harsh words. Reading was for toffin erse twats anyway.

“I had a li’l sister, too,” he tacked on weakly. “Lau-rel. Laur-a. Innit she yer sister?” Even now his mouth seemed clumsy over the sleek and lovely letters.

“An’ is…is this—“ he raised a hand moved it in a sleepy gesture, the motion encompassing Carmine himself, the apartment, the entirety of Old Rose. “…what’cha meant by ‘doin’ well’?”

He blinked away from Charlie, peering at the whorls in the hardwood between his knees.

“We got any booze left?”

Scrap, little guttersnipe, going through his things, poking at his life. A rising tide of heat built in his blood and pushed at his bones. That was his life, his, not anyone's business but his own. Dirty things shouldn't touch it, dirty things shouldn't look at it. Wanting to drink more, was he? Well he couldn't have any-- it was Charlie's liquor, too.

"Come here," Charlie purred, snaking a hand out. His fingers brushed against Carmine's face, almost gentle, almost kind.

Then his fingers clamped around his chin like a vice, sudden and vicious in their violence. Digging in, trying to reach the bones beneath. The syllables for Melt came tripping off his tongue in a hiss.

Unlike some residents of the Harbor, the mona was by no means fickle. Their mysterious separate intelligence made it impossible to catch the magical particles off-guard, but the tension that flared in the air at Charlie's sudden, unprompted violence stung like sulfur in the nose and burned like ashes in the eyes from a fire whipped by the wind. The air thickened with the weight of the galdor's field, shimmered briefly like they were suddenly standing in summer heat.

Heat. Not like melting, but like too much friction.

Something warm passed over Carmine's face, stinging like a slap more than a burn. A hot flash and a bit of sweat, the hint of discontent felt in the mona between them.

However, it was Charlie's fingertips that grew uncomfortably warm. Where his hand touched the passive's face felt like fire between them. As the galdor's spell words faded, the fiery, boiling feeling reluctantly subsided.

Both had blisters, but nothing more.

And to think he was an instant away from leaning into that bastard’s touch like a kitten.

Had he cried out? Had he winced in anticipation, that hairsbreadth before the spell was cast? Who knows. Who cares.

All that mattered now was the fire blazing on his cheeks, in tissue paper blisters and a roaring blush. The swathe of burn under his chin wear that big boney hand had clutched him. A dozen scalds from dishwashing, splashed across his face.

He reared back, the echo of some strangled curse ringing in his mouth. His back slammed to the floorboards, the ruined jags of his nails scrambling there for something real to clutch. They didn’t find anything but little dust motes. Stupid sweater, riding up his spine, the uneven flesh of his back pressed flush on the dank hardwood. Oh, he should –

If you run, pussy boy, I’ll cut that throat faster than any golly will.

The first clear thought he’d had all night.

Frosty eyes buldging in his fine-boned little skull, spinning around the room for something to – smash that bowl, carve out his eyes with a fat, stew sticky shard. Slash his neck with it. Geld him with it. Bite his fingers off at the knuckle. Smash that petite golly nose up into his brain. Take off those stockings and cinch that windpipe ‘til his lungs wither like old party balloons. Make him swallow that fucking monite. Make him swallow his teeth.

His mum didn’t seem to like him much. And his sister sure sounded angry with him. Nobody would miss a Charlie Ewing.

But –

Field unfolding all over him. Tangible as being held in the palm of some big calloused hand. Black room, pale blue light making them thin as ghosts. Carmine didn’t move. Just sprawled. Just wide eyed. Just clenching those eyes shut. Just gasping out a string of words once his stupid lungs could haul down all that humid air again.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry – I didn’ mean t’ – don’t fuckin’ –“ Tangled and breathless.

“Please, sir.”

Then there was pain, blisters on the tips of his fingers and regret down in his bones. No doubt the blisters were a punishment from the mona, reminding him of what a terrible man he was to do such a thing. That monic judgement was different from the judgement of mere mortal men rarely occurred to Charlie-- they were, after all, sentient. What sentient things could not think such about him?

Still he forced himself to pull his fingers away slowly, deliberately. Eyes wouldn't focus, wouldn't turn to look at Carmine. Called him 'sir', even, since when did Carmine call him that.

"Don't touch my things," he growled, the tremble in his voice at the sudden violence in him disguised as best he could. Not long in the Harbour, such things still seemed harsh, out of place. Flashes of a life where a fistfight was of utmost shame-- real galdori use magic, Charlton --and he'd never even been very good at those. Well he'd used magic there, hadn't he? Like he should.

'Sorry' almost born on his tongue and then died, bitten off by viscious teeth. What was he thinking, about to apologize to vicious gutter trash? Carmine had been going through his things, not the other way 'round. Charlie stood, leaving the empty bowl on the floor. It could be cleaned in the morning, now all he wanted to do was go to bed. Sleep, forget he'd done that, wake up and continue in the same.

"I'm going to bed."

“I – “

Hfff. There was nothing to be done about it. His voice faded into the hollows of his throat. Get out, leave, don’t ever look back Carmine thought. Funny thing that Charlie didn’t say any of those things. That was…not what he was expecting. Slowly, all his little muscles uncoiled. Relaxing out of that full body tense up, braced against whatever flash of pain would come next. Blood flowed through his limbs again, bidding him to sit up. And he did.

That faint tremor in his voice. Someone else might not have caught it. But Carmine did, kind of. He’d been hearing that thinly veiled quaver in his own words for too long not to recognize it. His stomach did somersaults. He felt a bit queasy, but he told himself it was still just that pirate hooker’s bad booze. That’s all.

“…’m sorry.”

Breath was seeping back into him. Nearly pissed on himself like a little girl. Called him ‘sir’ like some trembling piece of gated snatch. Old and buried things, shaken out of the shallow graves he’d dug for them. Carmine hated them. He wanted this sudden sickness of meekness to bleed out, leave him pale and harsh again. Not linger here like some shivering specter. Shrouding the jagged glass edges of his words, his actions.

Carmine lingered in the small main room of the apartment, even after Charlie wandered off into the even more cramped space of his room. He lay there for long minutes, piecing himself back together again. Stood after awhile, curled up on the couch. Removed his singular boot. Stumbled off the couch, out into the kitchen. Wet a dishrag under a torrent of cold water from the tap, pressed it to his burning cheek. Cooled him off, but it was rough on the blisters. Held the rag limp at his side, lingered in the kitchen. Lingered. It was cold out here, not warm like the bedroom with the radiator. He didn’t want to leave with that dumb golly bastard pissed at him. Coming back to that would be – not good.

A slow sigh escaped into the dark and he shuffled off towards the bedroom. Like a gated girl making a face at a sinkful of dirty dishes, but shoving her hands in anyway. A chore, that’s what he told himself.

Quietly as he could, Carmine eased open the bedroom door. The radiator heat brushed against him like cat ‘round his ankles. He leaned against the door frame, damp rag still clenched in his fist. Silhouette on the faint blue phosphor light. His voice was soft, unsure. Spoke to the dark, in that little warm room.

“H-hey…I…” faltering. “You can…you can fuck me, if’n ya want. ‘m sorry.”

Charlie stood with his back facing the door, staring down at the helter-skelter mess of his workbench. Shreds of metal and glass, stray gears, tools, scraps of plans and hastily scribbled notes warred for dominance on the smooth wooden surface. His life's work. Useless, all of it, ideas that would never come to fruition because he was too busy playing the well-seasoned layabout to work on any of it.

He could hear him, Carmine, that bastard, padding over to the doorway. Leaning on the frame. Wretched thing, making Charlie act this way. Act like the villain here. He wasn't. Carmine had only himself to blame. Hadn't Charlie told him over and over to get out, leave, never darken his doorway again? To say it anymore felt useless. Waste of breath, waste of time.

"I don't want to fuck anything, as you so vulgarly put it," he let out in a long-suffering sigh. Feigning the delicate sensibilities he had been raised with. "Go away."

Go away, leave him alone. That's the way he liked it best, just him and Tippy. No one to see the ugly bits of him, the things that couldn't pass muster. No one to judge him but his own self when he was alone. Charlie was an excellent judge of himself.

Well, there goes that.

Somewhere, he was pleased by that reaction. A soft sigh was halted at his lips. He hadn’t been looking forward to it, but at least it was a way to assuage Charlie’s anger, at least for a little while. Until he came back to his senses. The couple hours of respite where he would’ve been lulled or asleep afterwards would have been nice, but Carmine could manage without that. He would just hide in the bathtub more.

A different peace offering had to be arranged. Unfortunately.

Cautiously, his stocking-feet picked over the floorboards towards where Charlie’s pale back was faintly illuminated in the blue light. He clenched the damp rag in his hand, finding solace in the wet squish of it.

“Is…ah, is yer hand okay? I seen ya wince. Ye’ve prolly got a burn.”

He was close now, and his words were cautious as his steps.