Fucking jazz music on the bloody radio and he can barely hear it because the sound of his own lungs trying to crawl up his throat is too loud-- Charlie scrabbles at her wrist. His fingers are all slippery and his tongue feels thick even after the cut of his coughing starts to subside and then it's just blood in his mouth and under his tongue and on the inside of his lip. He digs his fingernails into her skin. It's soft, he thinks.
Christ, his side's warm.
"Think that shrapnel perforated something," he breathes out through the hand still mostly covering his mouth. The words are all garbled. Flexes and tightens his fingers against her arm. And then: "I can't stand this music." And then he's quiet, head pressing back against the seat and fingers going vice like as he locks up.
Blood's seeping through the cracks of her fingers, running over her knuckles and the stickiness of it doesn't dissipate, doesn't fucking dry.
"Should've told me sooner," Her breath's all hitched up in her throat; it's hard to remember to breathe, hunched over him across the hard plastic of the e-brake-- the seatbelts and day old soda cans-- in a shot-up car parked on the curb of a busy storefront. People are staring. The flicker of lights bounces off a barely functioning rear view mirror.
"Can't change the damn thing when I'm keeping you alive, can I."
Charlie laughs all low and barking and crystal clear despite the blood and the sharp line as the muscle in his cheek jumps. And then it loops low, goes soft along with his fingers across the back of her hand. He knows someone in Tel Aviv who can find them a place to hole up for a few days and it's important to tell her that. He jerks a few times where he's sitting and then he stops.
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Christ, his side's warm.
"Think that shrapnel perforated something," he breathes out through the hand still mostly covering his mouth. The words are all garbled. Flexes and tightens his fingers against her arm. And then: "I can't stand this music." And then he's quiet, head pressing back against the seat and fingers going vice like as he locks up.
no subject
"Should've told me sooner," Her breath's all hitched up in her throat; it's hard to remember to breathe, hunched over him across the hard plastic of the e-brake-- the seatbelts and day old soda cans-- in a shot-up car parked on the curb of a busy storefront. People are staring. The flicker of lights bounces off a barely functioning rear view mirror.
"Can't change the damn thing when I'm keeping you alive, can I."
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