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mrcowboydeanwinchester · 1 year

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☀️ on sunshine ☀️

charliedonna fic - 7250 words - rating: M - read on ao3

art by myself and @limbel - view full piece

“The two biggest rays of sunshine this side of the Atlantic,” Dean grins. “It’s fitting you two are finally meeting.”

Charlie knows all too well what it is to smile for everyone but herself. And after months of running across Europe to retrieve the Book of the Damned, she’s grateful for a change of pace when Dean suggests they spend the weekend with Donna and Jody in Sioux Falls. So now it’s spring, Donna is beautiful, and from the second Charlie lays eyes on her she wants to figure out who really lives behind Donna’s sunny smile.

thanks to @magdaclaire for the beta!

Charlie meets Donna for the first time, and is greeted with the widest smile she’s ever seen.

On the drive up, with ABBA playing in the background because Charlie has Dean wrapped around her little finger, Dean had promised a change of scene in Sioux Falls, a change of pace. Getting out of the tense coffin of the Bunker would be good for both of them: it would let Charlie unwind after being on the run for so long and it would let Dean forget, hopefully, about the mark burning its way through his arm.

Jody has a proper backyard, he’d said. Actual sunlight, and some room to breathe. And Donna is stopping by for the weekend, too, so you’ll get to meet her as well. Donna’s awesome, possibly the smiliest person I’ve ever met.

He’d looked over at her then, eyes off the road, fondness rolling off him in a way he always hides when the others are around. Well, maybe apart from you.

So it’s a smile she’s greeted with from Donna now, just as Dean had said. A welcoming, friendly, gorgeous one, as Donna holds open the door and beams hello.

“Hello you two! Jodes, they’re here!” she calls to the hallway behind her, before turning back to them and stepping down to wrap Dean in a warm hug.

“And you must be Charlie,” she grins, disentangling herself from Dean and turning to where Charlie is standing beside him.

“Hi,” Charlie replies, giving her a little wave. The second she does it it feels stupid but Donna returns it easily, before taking Charlie’s wrist lightly and pushing it aside so she can wrap Charlie into a proper hug, just like she had Dean.

Charlie barely has time to consider the feeling of the worn pads of Donna’s finger gracing the skin of her arm before she’s wrapped in her embrace wholeheartedly, everything suddenly the orange of Donna’s flannel.

Donna doesn’t just smile, then, she follows through with affection. How much of Charlie’s body can she feel in the lack of space between them? She probably thinks nothing of it, if she introduces herself through hugs full of so much love. So Charlie should think nothing of it either.

So Charlie thinks nothing of it as Donna releases her again, and leaves her cooling in the afternoon spring air.

“Didn’t want to crush you or anythin’,” Donna chuckles, motioning to the wrist she’d moved aside what now feels to Charlie like a lifetime ago.

“Yeah,” Charlie smiles a little breathlessly back. “I get it. You give really good hugs.”

Donna beams at the words, and as light seems to pour out of her, teeth dappling the rays, Charlie suddenly understands how a smile can be equated to sunshine.

“Oh, you really think so? Well, I try my best. And you know you’re not too bad yourself - I find folk like you who are all wiry and strong are always the best huggers.”

Charlie is saved from trying to find an acceptable response to that by a fond voice coming from further within the house.

“Donna, don’t tell me you’re leaving our guests on the doorstep again!”

A woman steps into the light of the doorway just as Donna turns a bashful look towards Charlie and Dean.

“Jody,” Dean greets her warmly, taking Jody’s cue and stepping up into the house, dropping his and Charlie’s bags to wrap her in a real bear hug.

Charlie lingers on the step slightly, not sure there’s enough room in the front corridor for her.

“Come on in, Charlie,” Donna says quietly with a nod of her head beckoning Charlie inwards. She shuffles herself to the side so Charlie can walk properly into the house. The doorway is still small, though, and Dean and Jody are still hugging, so Charlie only really has space to press herself up against Donna to squeeze inside.

As she passes, Donna’s breath heats the side of her neck, the ghost of the slightly awkward smile Donna lets out condensing itself onto her skin. They were closer when they hugged, setting themselves against each other with a friendly warmth. But this, somehow, feels more intimate.

Charlie slips past and is finally free within the berth of the corridor, with Dean and Jody moving further up and taking the bags with them. Donna still lingers next to her.

“And this is Charlie,” Dean says, gesturing between Charlie and Jody. “Jody, Charlie; Charlie, Jody.”

“Lovely to meet you,” Jody says, squeezing Charlie’s hand in a hearty handshake. Her demeanor is slightly rougher than Donna’s, maybe, but her eyes are still sparkling with camaraderie.

“And you,” Charlie replies as she flashes a smile. “Dean says such awesome things about both of you. He could barely speak about anything else the whole drive here.”

The women turn to look at Dean with a fondness he doesn’t appear to really know what to do with.

“Oh, you know I love you all,” he huffs, eyes cast down to where he’s scuffing his feet along the carpet. He clears his throat and looks up, only to make a beeline to the bags and the stairs. “Where’s the best place to put these?”

“I’ll show you,” Jody says, exasperated smile evident in her voice. She grabs a bag out of Dean’s hand and slings it over her own shoulder before heading up the stairway, closely followed by Dean.

Charlie is left standing next to Donna in the hallway, the space around them suddenly feeling abundant and empty. Empty, in particular, of reasons for them to be standing so close together.

Out of politeness more than any real want, Charlie reshuffles herself to lean against the wall, facing Donna. It isn’t a long time that passes, then, but enough for Charlie to take Donna in properly. She’s got an orange and pink flannel on - lesbian colors, Charlie’s brain helpfully and needlessly supplies - tucked loosely into sturdy bootleg jeans that cling to her wide thighs. The seams are stitched in yellow and look almost ready to burst.

The fire that that image starts up in the furnace of Charlie’s belly is fierce and quickly ignored. She lets her gaze glide away like she used to do with the windows of lingerie stores at the mall.

Donna brushes a stray strand of wavy hair that’s fallen out of her low ponytail behind her ear, and it draws Charlie’s eyes back to her again. So far, Donna hasn’t stopped looking at her. She shoots Charlie a small smile.

This silence, after the bustle of their arrival, should be awkward. Maybe it is, a little. But there’s something about Donna that puts Charlie so at ease she doesn’t really mind.

“Would you like a drink?” Donna offers with a smile, gesturing towards what must be the kitchen.

“Sure,” Charlie says back, making sure to shoot her a grin.

Donna pads through to the kitchen with Charlie in tow, flicking on the coffee machine at Charlie’s nod.

“So did you arrive today too?” Charlie asks.

“Oh yeah, drove down this morning. Got here in time to have lunch with Alex before she went out for the weekend with her friends.”

“Alex is Jody’s kid, right?”

Donna smiles. “Yeah, basically. Although she’s feelin’ more and more like mine too, what with me spending so much time down here recently. It’s like I live here as much as Stillwater now.”

Suddenly, the orange and pink flannel doesn’t seem as irrelevant as Charlie first thought. Donna driving for hours to live with Jody and a kid who feels like her own - maybe she’s unavailable in a completely different way than Charlie expected.

And as much as she loves Dean, it’s definitely the kind of thing he’d neglect to tell her.

“Oh, are you and Jody together?”

Donna turns to her with a chuckle. “Oh, no, nothing like that. That’d be cute, but, uh. Jodes is just teachin’ me how to hunt and we’re good friends, is all.” She pauses, before adding, “not that I have any problems with it. At all.”

Her last words come out glittering, more meaningful than the rest. Charlie isn’t oblivious, but it’s not enough to go on, either. Not for the first time, Charlie mourns how girls in bars are so much easier to work out than any of her friends.

Again tucking her hair behind her ear with one hand, Donna passes Charlie’s mug to her with the other. It’s handpainted, by the looks of it, with swirls of pink, purple and blue decorating the sides.

Charlie admires it before taking a sip of the coffee. It’s horrific; she doesn’t like coffee. Donna made it for her though, so it tastes a little better than normal. “It’s a pretty mug, did you paint it yourself?”

“I sure did!” Donna says proudly. “Me, Jody and Alex went out for a girls pottery painting night. Had a real nice time painting mine, but Alex’s is by far the best.”

She shows off the mug she’s drinking her own coffee from, which has three recognisable little figures painted around the sides. Jody, Alex and Donna are labeled neatly above each one.

Charlie whistles. “Wow, she is good. And mini you is so cute!”

Donna smiles, the upward curves of her lips then hidden as she takes a sip of her coffee. Her eyes linger on Charlie until they don’t, until Charlie realizes she should probably glance away too.

“What about you,” Donna asks with a satisfied sigh after her drink of coffee, “you got anyone?”

Charlie shakes her head. She steadies herself too, for what she’s about to tell Donna, like she always does. It’s still instinctual, universes later. “No, not anymore. I traveled with this girl, Dorothy, for a while, but I had to come home in the end and she wanted to stay out there, so.”

That’s the simplest way of telling it, she’s figured.

“That’s rough, I’m sorry,” Donna says, face falling in sympathy. Charlie reckons it’s the first time she’s seen Donna look anything other than joyful since she arrived.

The smile flickers back a second later though, and Donna nods encouragingly. “But hey, it just means there’s somebody else right here who’s perfect for you. Everything’ll work out.”

There’s an assurance in her words that unearths Charlie a little. She is suddenly aware that with Donna, she doesn’t really know where she stands. But Donna is looking at her like she really is hopeful for Charlie. In the breezy light of the kitchen, maybe Charlie can invest in a little blind optimism too.

“You really believe that?” she asks, quirking an eyebrow.

Donna shrugs. “I have to.”

There’s something more to Donna, Charlie estimates, with the fixed determination in her eyes and the supposed levity of her smile. She’s holding on.

The heavy footsteps of Dean and Jody plodding down the stairs and across to the kitchen break the hush of their conversation and the intensity of their gazes. Donna jumps into cheery action, offering coffee to Dean and Jody.

“You two getting along?” Dean asks, happily accepting the mug Donna passes to him.

Donna smiles at Charlie. “Oh, you betcha! She’s a real sweetie.”

A heat spreads across Charlie’s cheeks, one she knows will be fluorescent against the weedy paleness of her skin. Damn ginger genes. She takes another sip from her coffee, hoping to hide her flush with her mug. She glances over to Donna as she does so though, and shoots her the warmest look she can muster in exchange.

“The two biggest rays of sunshine this side of the Atlantic,” Dean grins, oblivious to it all. “It’s fitting you two are finally meeting.”

“Keeping two old grumps like us smiling is quite the feat, but you two sure do it,” Jody heartily concurs, raising her mug slightly as if in toast.

Donna ducks her head and chinks her mug with Jody’s, as Charlie chuckles, reaching up to mess with Dean’s hair. “Well, someone has to.”

“And you do it brilliantly,” Dean says softly, the tenderness of his words completely undermined by his forceful batting away of Charlie’s hand.

“We left your bag on yours and Dean’s bed by the way, Charlie,” Jody says. “You’re in Alex’s room and she has a double, but there’s no room for a mattress on the floor.” She gives her an apologetic grimace. “I hope that’s alright.”

“You’re welcome to stay in my room if you’d rather,” Donna chimes in, looking towards Charlie. “It’s just one bed still, but it’s a little bigger.”

It’s a kindness, another obvious example of the way kinship just seems to stream out from Donna and light the surroundings. But it’s also a dangerous game: sharing a bed, sleeping with her. One that never ends well, and that she’ll fall for all too quickly.

The implications of Donna’s suggestion ricochet around Charlie’s head. Dean, on the other hand, is safe and easy, and doesn’t send Charlie reeling when he does something as simple as hold the door open for her.

“Thanks, but I’m sure me and Dean’ll be okay,” she smiles instead.

Donna’s eyes darken for a second, but her kindness doesn’t. “No worries! If he starts getting smelly though, you’re always welcome.”

“Old and smelly,” Dean laments. “Is this all I am to you now?”

“Always,” the three women laugh fondly. Dean just sighs and shakes his head.

Jody collects the now empty mugs of coffee from everyone’s hands and pushes them towards the sink, before gesturing out the window.

“I’ve got some new fruit trees growing in the backyard if you guys wanted to take a look before it starts getting dark?” she asks, much to Dean’s immediate joy.

“Sure!” Charlie agrees, eager just to see something green and alive after the gray and gray and gray of the bunker.

She’d had houseplants in her old apartment, before she had to move. And then move again. And then run across Europe. She misses them now, and she’d tried to petition Dean to get some for the bunker once, before he pointed out there was no sunlight down there. Nothing can live without sunshine, after all.

Sometimes, Charlie thinks that’s why they keep her around.

“Just make sure to say nice things,” Donna chuckles, “Jody’s real protective over those trees of hers.”

Charlie hesitates in her movement towards the door. “You’re not coming?”

Donna shakes her head with a laugh and gravitates towards the sink. “I’ve had the tour already, many times. I’ll stay and clean up.”

She takes the cuffs of her flannel, and unbuttons and rolls the sleeves up in one swift motion, revealing the thickness of her lower arms. The light brown hair which sweeps up them is just visible in the light.

Charlie feels a little dizzy with it.

“As Donna keeps telling me, if you’ve seen my plum trees once, you’ve seen them a thousand times,” Jody says, her chuckle echoing Donna’s.

No one else seems to care about Donna’s forearms, or the way Donna’s fingers deftly tuck the cuffs of her sleeves up in the fold of fabric around her elbow.

“Good job we’re seeing them for the first time then,” Dean grins placidly as he heads out the door.

Charlie makes a beeline to follow before she embarrasses herself when Donna calls out behind her.

It’s just them in the kitchen. Unlike in the corridor, with its emptiness, the kitchen feels warm and full. And Donna feels too far away.

“Charlie?” she says, and Charlie whips around to face her.

“Yeah?”

Donna’s large hands clutch the mug she’d given Charlie earlier, the one painted in swirls of pink, purple and blue, as she runs the tap over the sink. Her knuckles are a little bruised.

So are Charlie’s, lately.

“I know you’ve been all over, but now… I think you’re right where you need to be.”

She’s earnest and soft about it, in a way that sends shivers across the hairs on the back of Charlie’s neck. Charlie finds a smile working its way onto her face. She nods, something like gratitude and something like agreement, the words raising a blush on her cheeks.

Donna smiles again, then switches her attention back to the bubbling water and coffee stained mugs.

Just as Charlie turns away to join the others outside, she catches Donna’s reflection in the glass of the window above the sink. If it were a horror movie, this image would be haunting, different as it is from what Charlie’s come to expect from the other woman. Turns out in real life it’s just sad.

When she thinks no one can see her, Donna’s smile drops.

The evening falls, and it falls visibly, which Charlie realizes is something she is no longer used to.

In the bunker, the lights are artificial and bright and decidedly on , until she decides to turn them off. They never change, never waver, never indicate the time of day or if the moon is out. The library’s ambient lamps are the closest they get to evening.

And she hasn't realized how stark a difference it is until she spends dinner half listening to the conversation and half watching the sunset through the mirror facing her opposite the window. It isn’t a special sunset: the clouds aren’t spun purple and the sky is never tinged that tender pink. But still, it’s the first sunset she’s seen in two weeks, maybe.

And she watches the light melt across Donna’s face the whole time.

It’s not long after the sun has sunk completely below the horizon that the four of them turn in for the night, with three of them having traveled for hours earlier and Jody confessing she considers any night she gets to sleep before 11 o’clock a huge success.

Dean teases her for it, but Charlie can tell he’s really all too eager to follow suit. The second he gets the chance, he pulls his hearing aids out from his ears with a sigh of relief and flicks them off, dumping them on the bedside table of Alex’s room where they’re sleeping.

“You could just not wear them around Jody and Donna you know, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind,” Charlie points out to him as he rubs at the back of his ears with a pout.

Dean waves her off. “I just haven’t worn them for that long in a few weeks, it’s fine. Besides, I don’t wanna make things hard.”

“You don’t make things hard, it just makes things different,” Charlie says, stepping right in front of him to make sure he can understand her. “No one minds switching a few things up to make it easier for you.”

She tells him this because she believes it wholeheartedly, and it’s true. It’s times like these, though, that she wishes she believed the same for herself. It’s not like she doesn’t think that Dean and Sam don’t want her around, or wouldn’t drop everything to help her out, because they’d proved that theory wrong a long, long time ago. It’s just the instinctual little things to make herself smaller, more easily digestible, that are harder to shake.

The princess only ever gets saved if she smiles enough, right?

Charlie smiles at Dean, determined to make him understand that she cares, and he scrubs the backs of his ears again, but more out of bashfulness than ache this time.

“Alright, alright. Stop being good to me, Bradbury, I don’t know what to do with it.”

“You could get changed and brush your teeth,” Charlie says hopefully. “I want to go to bed.”

Dean rolls his eyes but ambles off to the bathroom, and Charlie takes the time to get changed herself. She throws on her pajamas and then stands in the mirror for a moment, lifting her t-shirt to see her stomach, where the bullet wound is meant to be.

Castiel healed it weeks ago now, but it’s still strange. The pain of it plays so frequently in her mind; she wakes up remembering it and the nightmare tears through her like the bullet did. In a way, how angels can heal a wound so completely isn’t all kindness. There’s no proof, then, that it still hurts inside.

Dean wanders back into the room in his pajamas and with minty fresh breath. It’s a Led Zeppelin long sleeve shirt he’s wearing, one Charlie had picked out for him last time they swung by a Goodwill. He barely ever wears t-shirts now, and he rolls his shirt sleeves down too, especially around Charlie. Charlie pretends she doesn’t notice.

“Strange, isn’t it? Took me years to get used to it,” Dean says sympathetically at where Charlie’s hand still ghosts her stomach. He can be quick when he wants to be.

“It’s odd,” Charlie says. “Like the wound was never there. I know it was, but only I know it was.”

“Messes with your head, having nothing to show for the pain,” Dean nods perceptively. He perches on the bed, looking up at Charlie with his big labrador eyes. “But it’s still a good thing, though. That you don’t feel pain.”

Charlie is all too aware of the intricacies of the singular and plural you in the English language, but she swears that in that moment, Dean means it for her specifically.

“Yeah,” she replies. She wonders if not feeling the pain is the same as not feeling anything.

The conversation dips as they both settle under the duvet, taking a moment to get comfortable. Dean switches off the big light.

“So,” he eventually murmurs. “Do you like them?”

The words feel loud in the quietness of the night, and Donna and Jody are only walls away. But Dean can't really hear himself if he whispers, and he definitely can't hear Charlie if she does, so when she speaks she murmurs too, facing Dean in the bed so he can read her lips in the lamplight.

“Of course I do,” she says. “I never expected not to.”

“You and Donna seem to get along well,” he smiles, and Charlie isn’t sure if there’s more meaning she should be reading into that than she is.

She takes up the edge of the duvet in her hands and twists it a little, mostly for something to do.

“She’s really nice, yeah,” she says carefully. She looks up at Dean then, and feels the carefulness drop away in the warmth of a shared bed with her best friend. “She’s really pretty, too. How did you forget to mention she’s so pretty?”

Dean chuckles. “I thought you would figure it out for yourself, it’s not hard to see.”

“No,” Charlie says, the word coming out as a deep sigh in a way she hadn’t quite intended. “It’s not.”

Dean brings his hand up to near hers on the edge of the duvet, and takes up the little creases she’s been folding into it and squeezes them like an accordion. Charlie can just make out the way his Adam's apple bobs, just the way it always does when he wants to say something but is struggling to.

She waits him out. You’ve got to be patient, to hear Dean Winchester.

“I’m sorry about the way things have been going lately, Charlie. You know that, right?”

He’s staring at the patterns they’re both tucking into the blanket. This was not the way she thought the conversation was about to go.

“Yeah, Dean, of course.”

“What with Dorothy, and the mark, and you going on the run… it’s nothing like what you should be doing.”

He’s refusing to meet her eyes, but in the gold of the lamplight they’re turning an earnest hazel.

“I don’t blame you, Dean, if that’s what this is.” She pauses for a second, the question fizzing on her lips before she gets it out. “Is that what all this is?”

His gaze snaps back up to meet hers, surprised. “No, no. I wanted you to meet Donna and Jody, spend some time together. I thought it would be nice for you.”

“And Donna’s really lovely, and Jody’s kind. And I got to play ABBA all the way here. It’s good, Dean.”

He sighs, obviously unsatisfied with her answer; rolls away slightly to look restlessly towards the ceiling. His hands stay by hers on the duvet, tapping against the folds.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, loud enough for him to hear her say something, if not make out the words.

He gestures to show he didn’t understand her, but shows no sign of moving to face her. She asks him again, louder this time. Starts tapping it onto his wrist in morse code too, but he cuts her off before she can finish by turning back towards her with an intensity he didn’t have before.

“I want you to be happy, Charlie.”

Charlie stills next to him, the duvet she'd been fiddling with on the bed laying flat between her fingers.

She does what she always does. She meets Dean’s eyes and smiles.

“Who says I’m not?”

For the first time in months, Charlie wakes up slowly and freely, not to the scream of the alarm but instead to the morning light glowing in warmly from behind the curtains. She didn’t quite close them fully last night, so a slither of clear sunlight arches its way across the room. As she stirs, breathing in a deep, relieving breath, she follows its trail along the walls and ceiling. Little rainbows spiral out from it where it hits the mirror.

She looks beside her, and Dean is still slumbering away. His breaths are deep and even. Although the mark is still visible from underneath his rucked shirted sleeve, for the moment he seems peaceful. It’s nice, that Dean’s face isn’t creased in repressed ire, that Charlie can see all this without even having to flick on a light: this morning, this is just how the world is.

No more bunker, no more shitty motels , Charlie thinks as she stretches luxuriously out under the clean cotton sheets which Jody’s own hands undoubtedly strung up on the washing line. I should live somewhere else. After all this, I’m gonna live somewhere else.

When she does check the time, it reads a comfortable half past eight. Dean won’t be up for a few hours if he can help it - although maybe he’ll be stirred early like her by the light of a genuine sunrise. He must’ve seen even less of them than she has in recent years. Maybe, if he got out of that damn hole in the ground, he would photosynthesize a little and see that the sun was already out there.

As she wiggles gently out of bed, careful not to disturb Dean with her movements, Charlie lets her mind stray to what Donna’s house might be like. Does her bedroom face east and get the sun in the mornings? Is it cluttered and cozy with trinkets and souvenirs, or swept clean and neat? Probably a mix of the two, Charlie decides. Homey, while still being organized, with everything important kept within reach.

It’s as she ponders this that she pads airily down the stairs. In the kitchen, with the large window opening out upon the vivid spring planes of the fruit trees in the backyard, Charlie helps herself to a breakfast of berries and yogurt that Jody recommended last night. It’s all green outside, dewy with the morning. The sour bite of the berries tickles her tongue.

Everything is growing here. Everything is alive.

Charlie is so involved in her cloudless thoughts as she strolls back up the stairs to the hallway, that she doesn’t quite notice Donna stepping out of the bathroom with only a towel wrapped around her until her own forearms make contact with Donna’s still lightly damp skin.

“Oh, sorry-!”

“No worries,” Donna grins with a smile, not bothering to move too far away. She’s tossed her hair over her shoulder and now the ends, darkened with water, are creating small wet patches on the side of Charlie’s pajama sleeve.

This morning, Charlie can’t find it in her to mind.

Donna’s had her hair up in a sensible low ponytail the entire time Charlie’s seen her so far. But after the wet of the shower, it’s curling around her face and down her back in tight ringlets. Somehow they bounce slightly as Donna moves her head, even under the weight of the water.

Charlie has spent years learning how to keep her friendships with women exactly that - friendships. She is an expert in all things platonic, so she doesn’t even think about how little the towel is really covering Donna’s freshly showered, lavender smelling skin. She keeps her eyes fixed on Donna’s face, on the water-shining rosiness of her cheeks and the single strands of hair that fall in lazily gorgeous curls in front of her eyes.

Charlie swallows down a swallow.

“Your hair is curly? I’ve only ever seen it straight.”

Donna nods, her face falling from her always friendly smile to one of frustration. “Oh, you betcha. Takes me hours to straighten the damn stuff.”

“But it looks so pretty curly,” Charlie says, maybe a little softer than she intended in an attempt to hide the pout she knows is otherwise audible in her voice.

But Donna is pretty, that’s plain as day, and has been since Charlie slipped closely past her through the door yesterday. And it’s not just the natural curls of her hair that bring this further into the light; with all the layers of flannel removed, all the shields down, the round curves of Donna’s figure are even more evident.

Charlie forces her gaze back to the (admittedly relative) safety of Donna’s smile. Rather than the wide, sunshiney thing she’d been greeted with so far, it’s morphed into something softer. A little surprised.

“Oh, I dunno-”

“No, it looks real pretty. You should wear it down curly, it suits you.”

Charlie finds herself reaching out to thread a tangle of Donna’s hair through her fingers and brush it neat before she can catch the action and stop it. Donna’s hair is silky, freshly conditioned, and it slips easily between her fingers.

Donna’s eye catches hers and it’s only then she pulls her hand away, jerkily.

“Sorry, that was weird,” she starts, feeling the heat flood to her face.

Donna shakes her head slightly, the gentle radiance of her smile still lingering. “No, it’s okay. I don’t mind.”

“Your hair, it’s soft,” Charlie manages. The words scratch a little as they make their way up her throat. She shouldn’t be doing this.

“Thanks.”

Donna reaches out, now, twisting the longer front strands of Charlie’s hair around her own finger. Yesterday’s flat-iron curls give in to her movement as her hand brushes just slightly against Charlie’s cheek, and the quiet damp of her skin sends a shiver, barely a shiver, through Charlie.

Her hair’s a little greasy, Charlie knows, she needs to shower. But Donna’s lips quirk up as she strokes her thumb against it. “Yours is soft too.”

“Thanks,” Charlie whispers, just about.

Donna pulls her hand back away and stray hairs follow the action, ginger turning gold in the morning light chasing after the loss of contact. Some wild part of Charlie runs to strings of spit, her lips pulling away from Donna’s and their connection still not leaving her completely.

Oh, Bradbury, this cannot be happening right now.

She sways back, falling out of Donna’s space, away from the lavender scent and the ever-drying blonde curls and the warm blush blossoming on the tops of Donna’s shoulders above her towel.

“I just always wanted curly hair as a kid, you know. And all my favorite characters had curly hair, I was always kinda jealous of people who had it. People say all kinda things about ginger hair but I’ve just always loved curly.” Charlie gets the distinct sense she’s rambling, and perhaps even more hysterically than normal.

“Yeah, well tell all that to my ex-husband,” Donna laughs almost sourly, wrapping the towel a little tighter around her again as she starts towards the guest bedroom that seems to be decidedly hers. “Come sit with me as I get ready, I don’t mind,” she calls back to Charlie.

Charlie doesn’t bluescreen often, but she’s pretty sure she hears the dull thunk of the error sound at that comment. Donna has an ex-husband, and she knows Charlie’s a lesbian, and Charlie just ran her hand through her hair, and Donna’s inviting her to sit in her room as she gets dressed as casually as gals who actually are pals.

“You sure?” she asks, wandering to the door. She’s giving Donna an out, if she wants one. Don’t they all normally want one?

“Of course, hon!”

So Charlie lets herself walk through the door and flop down onto the bed, grabbing a cushion to fiddle with, something to keep her eyes busy as well as her hands. Donna shrugs a bathrobe on over her towel and Charlie knows she doesn’t really need to look away, but she does anyway. The cushion has little purple flowers embroidered all over.

“I can’t imagine not liking your curly hair,” Charlie says, mostly as a means to get the conversation going again, but also decidedly to pick at the thread she thinks might unravel a little more of Donna’s mask. The darkening of her face in the kitchen window has a cause, and whatever the cause is, Charlie wants to hunt it down and eclipse it. It’s instinct.

“Oh, Doug liked me best however I wasn’t,” Donna chuckles disparagingly, as she slides her towel off underneath her robe and lays it on the bed next to Charlie.

The towel is damp, still. Charlie can feel its coolness next to her. Damp with the water that once sat on Donna’s skin, smelling still of the lotion Donna rubbed between her hands before smoothing it over her arms, down her stomach, the wavy cellulite of her thighs.

Charlie wants to reach out and touch it. Charlie wants an excuse to use that towel after her own shower, like kissing through a shared bottle of beer.

“I wore my hair curly, he liked it straight. I put on a full face of makeup, he liked me natural. I gained a few pounds, he told me…” Donna trails off, the reverie clouding her face completely.

Anger flushes hot through Charlie, a burning passion building on her already quickening heartbeat. “He was wrong, you know,” she says.

Donna turns, looking surprised at the change in Charlie’s voice. She smiles at the intensity of it. “You’re kind, Charlie. A lot of people say that, but I can never seem to shake the feeling he’s right.”

“I’m not being kind, Donna, not right now. I’m telling you the truth,” Charlie insists. She takes Donna’s hand and pulls her down to sit on the bed next to her. “You’re beautiful.”

It’s only as she says those words that she realizes the potency of them, and how Donna’s hand is now in hers, and how she’s only wearing a bathrobe. Charlie wants to recoil, suddenly, and take it all back. But that would be a lie. And Donna’s been told too many of those already.

The other woman’s eyes are wide as she looks at her. Full of so much, and so much of that incredulous doubt.

Charlie steels herself and raises her hand and brushes it through Donna’s hair again. “I say a lot, but I mean this. Believe me.”

“I would like to,” Donna says, decidedly lightly for a room full of gravity. “Of course I want to. But I can’t.” She shakes her head slightly, like she wants to clear it. When she looks back up at Charlie, her eyelashes are dewy with tears. Her throat bobs beneath her smile.

Charlie caves in, her anger turning to a porous sadness inside. “But it’s over, Donna. He’s over.”

Donna draws in a teary breath. “Maybe people, relationships, can be over. I don’t think words ever are.” She shoots Charlie a grin; it’s a false, self-deprecating thing.

“You’re still smiling,” Charlie says softly. She runs her thumb over Donna’s, smoothing over the skin like it will smooth over the tired corner’s of Donna’s lips. “Honey, you don’t have to keep smiling.”

Donna wavers in front of her, the expressions on her face flickering like heat on the horizon. Charlie can’t quite make her out, anymore, underneath it, but at the same time Donna feels more touchable than she ever has before.

“Don’t I?”

Charlie shakes her head. “No, love, you don’t.”

Like rain spilling down and pouring after the bitterest summer drought, Donna cracks. Her face falls completely, her lips pulled downwards in pure, luxurious upset. The tears that had been locked into place around her eyes pool forward and fall. The rosy apples of her cheeks relax too, the smile lines shifting into creases of sadness.

The mask cascades down around them both, and Charlie sits and holds Donna’s hands, and the absence of her smile feels like being let in on something special and sweet, something secret.

“Thank you,” Charlie whispers.

Donna looks up at her through watery eyes; the light of the morning hits them and the sheen of her tears is clear as glass.

“What for?” Donna asks, voice gooey and lips still trembling.

“For letting it be me you let the smile fall for.”

Donna heaves in a shuddering breath at that, like she’s scared that what Charlie said just made it real. “It’s not usually anyone, I’m not usually like this,” she sniffs. She glances back up again, and then seems to catch something in Charlie’s eyes, not averting her gaze. “You’re not usually like this either though, are you?”

It goes against every instinct for Charlie not to flash a grin, feels like short circuiting not to come back with a witty remark. But she shakes it off, letting it fall away like Donna did.

“No,” she admits. “I smile so much my cheeks ache, most days. But without it, it feels like - what do I do?”

Donna nods, taking Charlie’s hands in hers now. Charlie isn’t sure she knows she’s doing it, and she’s not sure who she’s doing it for, but it’s spreading warmth up her arm. “Gives you someone to be, a way to hold everything together.”

Those words tilt Charlie’s world slightly to the left before righting it completely again, like she can feel the gears of her mind clinking right back into place and running smoothly.

“You put it into words,” she breathes.

Donna strokes a thumb across the aching inside of Charlie’s palm. It’s a movement intended to soothe, but it just draws Charlie closer in. With every circle Donna graces against the sensitive skin of Charlie’s heart line her gravity is stronger, more magnetizing. She’s no longer sure where the comfort they’re sharing in each other ends and the sparking press of her fingertips tapping along Donna’s thumb begins. Every flare of contact begs another. Now, everything about Donna is comforting - but nothing about the way she makes Charlie feel is safe.

Donna worries at her plush lips. They’re a little chapped, and downturned too, finally relaxed. When she wets them with her tongue and leaves them shining and rosy in the morning light Charlie feels the inner workings of herself break and give way.

Donna speaks and her voice is low. “Sometimes it just feels like… I’ve just got to be sunshine.”

And that’s what they are for everybody else at the end of the day, aren’t they? But this morning, by god can that be broken with the dawn.

“I don’t want sunshine,” Charlie whispers.

“Really?” Donna asks, like she still doesn’t quite believe her. Like she’s sitting here, inches from Charlie’s mouth, realizing she doesn’t have to be who she thought she had to. Charlie wants her to realize it all. Charlie wants Donna to realize her .

“There’s a sun already. Can you see it, through the curtains?” she breathes. “Can you feel it on your back?”

Charlie lets her hands roam to the tie of Donna’s robe. No inhibitions, no pretenses, she pulls the knot away. Donna leans into her touch, into the cool freedom of the unbroken air. Her skin is still slightly damp; Charlie can feel it all along the insides of her wrists as she takes the edges of the robe from Donna’s shoulders and pulls it tenderly down her soft arms, until it falls away and gives in completely.

The sunlight pours through the windows onto the fullness of Donna’s back, descending upon the upper curves of her arms. The robe lays around her on the bed. Kneeling naked in the fresh white of the robe upon the flat of the sheets, it looks like Donna has parted the sea.

Or maybe it looks like wings, spread out across the ground. Like Icarus, and Donna is still glowing, silhouetted in the warm light. Never has flying too close to the sun prompted such sweet a fall.

Charlie feels Donna inhale, feels the intake of breath and expansion of Donna’s stomach against hers with it.

“I can feel it,” Donna murmurs.

Her breath is hot and quivering against Charlie’s cheek.

“I can feel everything.”

With that it’s like Donna’s bashfulness evaporates under the warmth of the sun, and she surges forwards with her hands under Charlie’s t-shirt. Charlie lifts her arms as soon as she catches on, feeling the light hit her skin as she raises them upwards past the shadows. Donna coaxes her t-shirt off of her, over her head, and for the split second Charlie can’t see Donna it’s like being taken out of orbit, out of gravity. When she resurfaces Donna’s eyes are the first thing she sees; the warmth on her arms is the first thing she feels.

She drops her arms in all their sunlight, runs her hands through Donna’s hair instead. Clutches her close, until Donna becomes more than silhouette and more than a ray of light and is a body, soft and damp and lavender in her arms. Donna is kneeling but Charlie is reverent. She wants Donna’s lips, she wants to taste the lavender and saltwater, she wants to leave that string of spit hanging between them, but she takes it slow.

She sighs forward, pressing kisses along Donna’s rounded collarbone. Donna melts into her, her hands roaming across Charlie’s back, grazing her lips along Charlie’s bony shoulder. The pads of Donna’s fingers are tracing along her spine. Charlie pulls herself closer, every fuse within her shorting.

“Don’t want sunshine,” Charlie mumbles again, into the soft slope of Donna’s neck. “I want you. Just you.”

Donna breathes, one hand still on her back but the other cupping her cheek upwards. “You have me.”

Their eyes meet in startling clarity, the world dipped in salted caramel all apart from them, together, suspended. Charlie has some of Donna’s hair in her mouth.

And then they’re kissing and Donna’s knee is slotting between Charlie’s legs and her lips are touching hers, and she doesn’t just taste of lavender and saltwater she tastes of something true and real and god, Charlie knows . Charlie knows it all, she knows what Donna means. She can feel everything.

Beneath the smiles, naked and silhouetted and tender, she can feel everything.

#IT'S HERE IT'S FINALLY HERE #AFTER 6 WHOLE MONTHS #finally the fic is out alongside the art....... they literally go together that is how old this fic is #so so so proud of this #thanks to mer for betaing again!!!!!!#charlie bradbury #donna hanscum #charliedonna #sapphicnatural #spn fic #femslash #hohnatural #ola writes

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