[Reg] This Is My Florida (Charys/Charlie) {FIN}

[candy lamb]

Charys Murphy showed up to the Boyle house with her arms full of paper, wasteful colour print-outs and with sunglasses (it was the middle of winter) pushed up high on her hair. When he opened the door, she did not say hi: she said, "Did you know Orlando attracts more visitors than any other amusement park destination in the United States?"

Charlie let her in.

It was pretty much the only thing you could do -- he motored her past his parents, upon which she said her usual "What's up, Docs?" because obviously she thought this was funny -- she ended up walking the last few feet to his room in a kind of bizarre crabwalk, as one of the pieces of paper had escaped and she was now gripping it between her knees. Charys had the slightly dry manic light in her eyes that only fever patients had, and she dumped everything in her arms with no ceremony upon Charlie's bed. She had already seen his bedroom. There were to be no comments on the Boyle living quarter this time. Usually there were plenty. Usually she wrecked her ligatures flinging herself down onto his bed and rubbing her head into his pillow, claiming that his parents would reject him if she 'changed his scent.'

Her main trophy was a slightly yellowing map of Florida -- she anchored this down at one corner with her iPod, dropping to her knees and unwinding her scarf from her neck. Charys had a scarf that had been knitted to look like it was bacon and eggs: she always proudly said, "Regretsy," but Charlie was still debating what this actually meant.

She prodded the map with a finger and continued with every sign of fervency: "A museum in Sanibel owns two million shells and claims to be the world's only museum devoted solely to mollusks, Chaz. Boy, this is going to be great."

Apparently Charys had gone crazy.  

[Shazari]

The Boyles had long since gotten used to the comings and goings of Charys Murphy to their house. There had been a few months during their early teens where they'd expressed some concern if he brought Charys up to his bedroom and didn't leave the door standing open -- but the sounds of their belching contests and snorted laughter had quickly put those fears to rest. (Charlie and Charys had first kissed in second grade, when they had staged their own fake wedding -- four fake weddings -- and still jokingly referred to March 3rd as their "anniversary," but the Boyles were not privy to this information.)

Charlie had long since learned not to put anything past Charys. Once, when they were small, she'd decided they were going to run away to be on Road Rules, and they'd made it about three blocks from home, carry-on suitcases in tow, before Charlie had burst into tears, yelled "I hate you forever!" and run home crying. He still wondered sometimes if she'd have gone as far as Hollywood if he hadn't had all their bus fare money in his fanny-pack.

Nevertheless, things were different now. They had responsibilities here. Whatever Charys was up to this time, he couldn't guess.

"I think it's great you're planning our honeymoon to include some museums for my sake, pooh bear," he opened, planting himself down on the two feet of free quilt on the far side of the bed, "but I was really dead set on Easter Island, you know that." What was this overenthusiastic research project of hers? He stared at her inquisitively.  

[candy lamb]

The truth was that in second grade, she had given him twenty cents to marry her. This was despite them already having been friends since nursery years: the Boyles and the Murphys had lived in the same suburb, in the same city, for all of Charys and Charlie's natural lives. She had offered him twenty cents. To his youthful credit, he had at first declined, as that was not how things were in terms of engagements. She insisted. He had taken it. For the next five years, she had borrowed his coloured pencils on the value that she had "married him for twenty cents."

She was stabbing her finger at Miami now. "Do you know that the university of Miami has a twilight hurdles team," she said. "Fo' sho'. So when you go and do your major in whatever and I work locally as a bar-rag merchant, I can spend the evenings watching you jump twilight hurdles. Twilight hurdles. Hurdles made out of Robert Pattinson."

It wasn't parsing. She continued: "Boyle, let's be frontin': we will never regret moving to Florida after graduation. It is full of old people you can be angry at, all honking your horn at them all the time. My first choices were Milwaukee and Jersey, but Florida has shown itself to be the finest, crayest state of America."

What.

(The truth was they would have probably tried their damndest to get to Hollywood, only been indulgently stopped on the first out-of-city stop and gotten a newspaper headline all TINY TOTS MAKE GREAT ESCAPE! which would have been a source of lifelong mirth.)

"Charlie," she said, looking at his face, giving that stupid annoying god damned lazy Charys grin of hey, who cares, what's the haps. "We're not staying here. Come on. We're leaving Gotham City for warmer, marshier, less senshier climes."  

[Shazari]

And there it was. She wanted to run away. She wanted to run away.

Fortunately he wasn't so uncertain this time. He didn't pack a suitcase and trundle along down the street for three blocks after her before he realized he had to pee and there was nowhere to pee because they were running away from home and never coming back and he didn't want to run away, he wanted to pee in his own bathroom. He knew the set of his mind well enough, this time.

"Charys," he said, looking away out the window, "you can't be serious, and this isn't funny. You know it isn't. What the hell are you thinking?"

(Lessons learned: never send Charlie Boyle in to be a hostage negotiator.)  

[candy lamb]

Charys' teeth were piano keys in a Cheshire grin before he blurred them away with the window. "No joke, Holmes," she said. "I make many a joke, but never about Florida. Home of the putt-putt. Home of old people. Home of us getting out of here. Listen to my theorem: this stuff was funny and all back when it was fresh, but I'm not going to bullshit you, now there's every chance I'm going to end up in a white coffin with Aimee Mann's cover of The Scientist playing as a crane lowers me into a six-foot pit." He still wasn't looking at her. She drummed her fingernails on the map. "Or -- and this is even worse for me -- all six versions of Hallelujah on the loudspeaker as people sprinkle rose petals into your urn. I cannot handle that." She did not say: I can't handle losing you. She said, "I cannot handle Jeff Buckley."

Instead, presently, Charys persisted in the awkward silence: "Charboyle. Charlie. I don't know if you've grokked this, but being a superhero who prays to magical people from the stars is like five degrees from Scientology. Have you ever thought about how lame this is. This is lame. Everyone is lame. Name one not-lame senshi you have met."  

[Shazari]

The things Charys said tended to be, in Charlie's opinion, usually overpackaged. She always had a point, but the point was delivered in a giant cardboard box, padded in a non-biodegradable sea of packing peanuts. That being the case, he set aside the packing peanuts (for each one that you cut off, two packing peanuts would tend to grow in its place) and focused on the crux of what she was saying.

"I've met Sailor Nerissa, who isn't lame," he said, even though he knew Walt Disney tactics stood little chance of working with her. "I don't know if you knew, but she quips like Spiderman." He picked up one of the magazine cutouts of Florida from off the bed; it was really just a full-page photo ad for Corona Light. Two empty white beach chairs frame the picture, looking out in a crystal-sand beach and Caribbean blue water. There were two, fluffy cumulus clouds floating in the Hollywood-perfect sky. Charlie doubted it was even really Florida. "And there's Kunzite, who -- well, no, I take that back. Kunzite is actually, literally, physically lame right now. No Kunzite."

He held up the Corona ad. "Charys, here's the thing. This superhero thing isn't Scientology, it isn't like that church of the noodle monster you tried to join five years ago with the midget pirates. It's weird, really embarrassing observable fact. There isn't an opt-out choice where I get to check a tick-box and someone else will put on my magical skirt and go fight crime -- it's us or no one else. I can't just leave my family to die and go sit on a beach drinking strawberry daquiris. All of this, Destiny City, all this fighting, it isn't a made-up religion. This is real. Charys. Florida only exists in your imagination."

He paused. "Like, figuratively only in your imagination."  

[candy lamb]

Charys did her dead bug impression: she raised both her arms towards the ceiling, lying flat on her back on his floor, the same with her legs. This did not mean anything. An advertisement for SUNSHINE STATE! fluttered lonely to the ground. He knew how stubborn she was: if she announced at any time that she refused to move, she would in fact be there for at least an hour. She had done it at class. She had once spent an entire English period with her legs up in tabletop against the wall. Thankfully, that had been with Mr. Gordon, who simply laid things down on her knees as furniture.

There was a long silence. Eventually her arms and legs came down, and instead she picked at threads off his carpet. She did not comment about his apparent need to drink strawberry daquiris. She did not comment on the apparent made-upness of Florida. She did not even mention the "Miami Five-O."

Then she did something Charys never did: she swung herself up and paced back and forth. She paced. Charys didn't pace. "Okay, here's a flow chart," she said. "Hang with me here. What have I become, my Swedish friend. Okay."

She held up a finger. And then she talked very fast: "One, I meet Sidra Winters, aka Sailor Nova. Two, Sidra Winters becomes my junior Robin, my sometimes sidekick. Three, Sidra Winters teen sacrifices herself for me. Four, Sidra Winters becomes fallen Nova. Five, Sidra Winters is iced by Kunzite. Five point five I have nothing against her she just seems like a natural Predator -- Charlie. Charlie."

She was trying to shake his shoulders now. Her hands were bunched in his shirt. "Charlie I was gay for Sidra Winters. I was literally gay for Sidra Winters."  

[Shazari]

It wasn't entirely what he'd expected. It wasn't unexpected -- she wanted to run away, and it had obviously had something to do with sailor soldier business. But her having had a secret romance that she'd never told him about was unexpected, unsettling, and a little unpleasant.

To his credit, although Charlie wasn't necessarily a philosopher, he was a calm, collected soul. He grabbed Charys's hands from out of his shirt, and held her there, tethered by them. "Hey," he muttered, "sit down. Don't go off the rails like this."

He waited, and she gave him a look that said she didn't want to be sat down like she was being head-shrunk; he, in turn, raised his eyebrows and tilted his head to indicate 'sit.' She raised just one eyebrow and made a fairly impressive gas face; he indicated 'sit' again. They went back and forth like this until finally Charys sat on the bed, on top of an ad for Burn Notice.

"Tell me what happened with Sidra Winters," he suggested. "The director's cut version, not your movie-in-fifteen-seconds." (The fact that the latter was a nearly-accurate internet culture reference was very likely just pure coincidence.)  

[candy lamb]

Burn Notice crinkled underneath her. Charys leant back on her hands, drumming her heels momentarily (and irritatingly) on the carpet before looking at the trappings of Charlie's room: the blankets on the bed, the carpet on the floor, the chair at the desk. Bits of clothing. Trophies dutifully placed on a shelf awarding him first place for most hurdles angrily jumped. After a moment he said, "Charys -- " and she said, "I'm thinking, I'm thinking."

After even more moments, she said: "Sid Winters was -- Amnesty International, Teen Hope Hotline. Had band-aids in her purse. That type. Didn't have anything to do with witches after all. We never -- it's not even what you're thinking," she added a little dourly, as though she could read the hamster wheels going around in his head. "I took her out on a date once and we had. Lesbian kisses. Oh, holy s**t, I'm a lesbian, I kissed her on the mouth."

He didn't say a word. Then Charys said, "So I dumped her like, the next day because she wouldn't run away to Florida either, and the lesbian kisses were -- anyway, she took a hit for me one night and the N.V. got her. Then Kunzite KO'd her. End of story. We knew each other six months tops."

Burn Notice crinkled again, and Charlemagne Boyle didn't say a thing.

"It wasn't Titanic. It wasn't even DeGrassi High. It was just me, and I treated her like a piece of s**t and now she's dead. I am remorseless, Chaz. I am notorious. I am -- I'm actually a pretty terrible person -- "

"Charys."

"She was a nice kid." Silence again. "She was just a really nice kid. She had unironic pigtails, you know?" She wasn't meeting his eyes, either. "Her keychain had a stuffed bear on it saying, Never Lose Me!!."

This wasn't quite a director's cut, but it was more than a flow chart. There was more silence. Out in the distance in the neighbourhood, someone was chopping up logs with a sharp crack! each time the blade got brought down. When she looked at him again his blonde eyebrows were still screwed up a little, only slowly unknitting.

"I was all Callum Birdseye at her," she said after a moment.

"Charys, nothing is ever Callum Birdseye," he said. "You only dated Callum Birdseye because his last name was 'Birdseye.'"

"And his first name was Callum, thusly, Callum Birdseye. His mother also packed him a Fruit by the Foot every day and he let me have it."

Charlie said a bit stiffly, "Callum Birdseye was an a*****e."

Finally she let herself slide down so that Burn Notice crunched beneath her, lying back on his bed to stare at his ceiling, pulling her knees up into her chest. "QFE," she said, sounding out each letter. Queue eff ee. "Mr. G never liked him either, who'da thunk. But back to the meat and bologna of my point, Charboyle, that's the whole truth, the full truth, nothing but, so help me God. You could've done me a favour and been the gay one."  

[Shazari]

Charlie didn't answer. In fact, he took an unusual and very un-Charlie-like amount of time not answering. Normally he was the sort of person who said a lot of what he was thinking, and the way in which he said it bore out that he didn't have much of a brain-to-mouth filter. Normally he was blunt and about as subtle as an air horn. Apparently there were things that even Charlie Boyle kept guarded.

His eyes flickered over the Corona ad again like he was looking for something, some kind of message in the sand. There was nothing there, just two empty beach chairs that didn't hold any answers -- but still he looked, and, when he found nothing, crumpled the ad in his hands.

"Charys, I am gay," he said quietly, eyes trained not on his life-long best friend but on the sunlight sifting in, unbroken, from beneath his bedroom door. "And I never liked Callum Birdseye because he was a goddamn scumbag. And it's not a crime that you cared about someone, or that they died. You didn't corrupt her starseed by making out with her. If you want my blessing to run away, I can tell you right now, that's not happening.

"I'm not going to try and stop you leaving," he promised. "It's your choice. But I don't think it would mean a damn thing if it wasn't, if you only did it because I wanted you to." He handed the Corona ad back to her.  

[candy lamb]

Charlie was faced with the sight of the girl in front of him opening her mouth, then closing it, then opening it again. She looked like a fish out of water. She looked desperate. She suddenly looked really desperate, and it was taking an unusual and very un-Charys Murphy-like amount of time responding: he just kept that same level expression at the light beneath the door, that strip of butter yellow. He kept looking at it.

She jumped up like a jack-in-the-box from the bed and put her hands on his shoulders. Charlie didn't flinch, but she couldn't say anything. She took them off. She still couldn't say anything. When she put them back on again she shook him a little like you could get an answer from him: a Charlemagne Boyle 8-ball that might respond through agitation. But she still couldn't say anything. The crumpled-up ad fell from her hands to the ground in wrinkled deck chairs and lay there.

"You're not gay," she said, stupidly, and there was a rise in the back of Charys' throat. "You would have told me if you were gay."  

[Shazari]

"Like you told me you had an entire relationship with Sidra Winters?" he answered her, stung. Honesty went two ways, and Charlie sometimes wasn't sure that Charys felt the same rules applied to her that applied to other people in this regard: other people were expected to be straight with her (pun aside), but it often required a secret decoder ring just to get the general gist of anything that was going on inside Charys's head. She spoke not in sentences, but in sound bytes, as if at any moment she might be quoted by the Destiny City Gazette and had to make it look good.

There were subjects about which Charlie was willing to play ball. This wasn't really one of them. He traced the stitching in his comforter with the side of his thumb.  

[candy lamb]

"That's so different that it's -- " She was apparently having difficulty articulating how different it was. "That's so different that it lives on another planet, Charlie, it eats different food and has fur."

They were both staring at each other now. It really wasn't different. Charys didn't often look accusatory at anybody: it wasn't in her modus operandi, she said, she didn't judge. She could not be bothered judging. Now she looked at him as though it really was different in her brainpan and he had stuck a knife into her sternum.

"No," he said stonily, "it's not."

Her brown eyes were looking a little wild around the edges now. She was losing it. She was agitated, upset and accusatory, three things you never usually applied to Charys Murphy. The last time she had lost it so completely she was nine, and they were waiting in the wings for the December talent show that she'd signed up for for no reason he'd ever been able to discern. She'd choked and left. "I get it. Okay. The happenstance is clear to me."

"I don't know what y -- "

"You're mad that I said that I was gay so you're trying to be all 'no, wait, you're not gay, haha I'm the gay,' so that you don't look like you care or you're hurt or whatever. Jesus, Charlie, what the ******** Charys was a grade-A a*****e.  

[Shazari]

"Because that sounds so like me," Charlie snapped back. He glowered down at the bed, all strewn with maps and pictures of Florida, and one plastic keychain with a dead seahorse suspended inside it. All the mess that was Charys Murphy. "Down to the 'haha,' I mean, that is a completely plausible scenario for what I would totally reasonably do."

He started sorting the scattered clutter into a pile -- then a stack -- then a tidier armful of stuff. This was picked up as he got to his feet. Charlie held the armful out to his best friend. "I think maybe you should go home, Charys," he said, flatly. Calmly. He was definitely calm. "I don't feel like having this discussion with you."

And there it was, like a hacksaw to their conversation -- amputating it off jaggedly at the joint. The tone was left hanging in the air, abandoned. He didn't want to be having this scene, so they weren't going to. Just like that. He and Charys weren't people who did scenes, anyway. They never had been.  

[candy lamb]

"Fine," she said. Her arms were full of crumpled maps, careless of how she squashed them. There was a terrible falseness in how bright her voice was. The dead seahorse keychain fell unnoticed to the floor. "Cool beans."

Charys propelled herself backwards to the door and opened it with her elbows, her pile of stuff still threatening to shed maps and pamphlets. They stared at each other from the gulf between doorway and room, but they were not people who did scenes. It was probably the closest they had ever come to doing a scene barring him bursting into tears and running home from the bus stop. She was always the one coaxing and cajoling and laid-back, not the one who --

"Bye," she said carelessly, and left.