Wounded Pride [OPEN]

[Charlie Holden]

He was in a vacuum; it was white, quiet, smelled of bleach and scared the heck right out of him. As a rather outgoing person in general hospitals just didn’t sit well with Charlie Holden, which was a shame because they certainly seemed to have a thing for him. As a child he had been exceedingly accident prone and his adventurous streak (his father called it ‘stupidity’) has seen to it that he had more or less constantly been in situations where he was in a position to do a lot of physical damage… to himself.

Broken bones, cuts, scrapes and every lesser virus known to humankind had been Charlie’s childhood companions and it was with an amused smirk that his matronly nurse had come by every hour on the hour to read his medical charts. ‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ she had said to him, even though her small, mean eyes had said something different. Charlie had asked her to tell him something he didn’t know – and hadn’t heard a million times from his mother.

How long had he been here? The tv was on but turned down so low that the people crying on Oprah’s couch looked like modern-day mimes, a black-and-white oldie suddenly thrown into the future of color. Time had a way of being stale in a hospital. Charlie supposed that it was because the people trapped there were lying around day after day that Time had nothing better to do than just lie around with them instead of passing as it was meant to.

A few cards stood guard on the table by his cardboard-feeling bed, well-wishes from colleagues, his mother and his grandmother. An oxygen mask was on standby in case he felt short of breath and a large jug with a little bit of water left in it accompanied the cards. He raked his hands through his hair in frustration.

She was still out there. Flashbacks of their encounter kept invading his mind, and no amount of oxygen or pain killers pumped in was enough to banish them. Charlie had heard of her beforehand in the Times but hadn’t realised what he had been up against until it was too late. Unfortunately for him he rarely thought with the head on his shoulders when a pretty woman was in the vicinity and now he was paying the price dearly.

His lungs had been severely damaged by the poison that he had inhaled. For the first two days he hadn’t been able to breath without assistance. The doctors had said that if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was fit and healthy – and the dosage of poison hadn’t been so relatively small – he wouldn’t have made it. Now Charlie wanted Poison Ivy in more ways than the first that had crossed his mind.

[Susanna Gossamer]

Susie wasn't a very good girlfriend. Most of the time she refused to admit it, particularly to ex boyfriends who accused her of being aloof and inaccessible, but the truth was, frankly, most of the time she just couldn't be assed. She dealt with more in her job on a day to day basis than many people had to deal with in their lifetime, so listening to some lazy boyfriend complaining about having a hard day at work after she had spent the day profiling murderers and chalking their dead victims made her laugh and want to hit someone. Hard. And sometimes she did. Susie homemaker she was not. It was safe to say she could use a few lessons in supportive.

Today, however, she was righting wrongs. Perhaps a few days late and maybe even a dollar short, but here she was, riding the elevator to Charlie's hospital room. She approached the open door and knocked on it, but didn't pause for his permission before she peeked in. One auburn eyebrow lifted itself as she looked at her ex boyfriend. "Jesus, Charlie," she told him, sparing him the polite small talk most people would have given him. He knew her better than that, anyway. "You look like hell," she told him, only exaggerating a tad for effect.

"You look like you could use..." she stepped into the room proper, pulling into view a styrofoam takeout box recognized the world over. "A half pound double cheeseburger and fries from Romy's." She walked forward with the offering. Maybe she hadn't been a good girlfriend, but she could be a good girl friend. But entirely selfless? "I know. I'm awesome," she preempted his thank you. Baby steps.

[Charlie Holden]

Even though they had never really been right for each other; even though they had ended pretty soon after they had begun and even though he had his issues and Susie had hers, Charlie still felt something every time he saw the sassy redhead. For a commitment-phobic jerk like him it was more than a little disconcerting, the tugging behind his heart that said he still wanted her in one way or another and he brushed it aside day after day because, simply put, he knew it wasn’t going to happen. The lump that stick in his throat as she breezed into his room as cool as a cucumber was dislodged with a somewhat gruff-sounding clearing of his throat, and he shifted himself to a better sitting position in the bed.

He felt worse than he looked, he was sure, until her timely insult thwacked him dead in the forehead like a well-aimed rubber band. Robbed of any comeback by the squeaking noise of the Styrofoam in her hand and the incredible, aphrodisiacal smell of the food the Devil-woman had in her possession, he settled for simply shrugging (which made his ribs ache like a sonofabitch). “I might look like shit, but you’re full of it,” he said, the sting completely taken from his words by the impossible grin that split his bruised face. The box was open and the cheeseburger half gone in record time. One day on the cardboard hospital diet had been enough to make Charlie fantasise about Romy’s. He left the box open on the bed so she could share, if she wanted. Hell, they’re shared more than burger-cooties before.

“You look like you could use a decent drink,” he said, his own way of breaching the subject of her recent suspension. He knew her well enough to know that if she wanted to talk that she would, and he gave her an in without pressing any further. She still looked the same, unflappable steel Magnolia that she always seemed to be, but there was stress fraying her edges and he saw that too. He uncharacteristically refrained from crassly asking about her ‘boyfriend’, the heated words of their last discussion on the matter and her blunt refusal to see Bruce Wayne for the person he really was still sticking in Holden’s side like a niggling thorn.

“What’s new, Susie-Q?”

[Susanna Gossamer]

Well he wasn't too bad off, Susie figured when he came back at her. She curled one of her lips and glared softly before rolling her eyes. If there was any person in the precinct less full of shit than himself, it was her! But never mind that. She settled for parking her derriere on the side of his hospital bed, near his knees where he took up less space. Before he had even offered, cuz that's how she was, she stole one of his french fries. She had brought the food after all; she was entitled!

"Hmm," she responded mid-chew when he remarked about her need for a drink, only able to nod in agreement. "More than a few," she admitted when she swallowed. She brushed off her hands, vowing not to have another fry because then she would be fat and she was still in that honeymoon stage where she wanted Bruce to think well of her. To hell with New Year resolutions. New Boyfriend resolutions were much more likely to be stuck to. At some point she would realize that Bruce, new and cute and Batmany or not, is still a man and thereby a disgusting creature more likely to scratch his balls right before eating than to notice the extra mile she went through to please him. Whatever. She grabbed another fry.

"What's new, Susie Q?"

Susie shrugged, tilting her head the exaggerated way she had when she was about to deliver a zinger. "Well, I wouldn't know what's new, because see I'm suspended and my would be informant on the inside got beat within an inch of his life." She added in a stage-whisper, "By a girl." Eying him in a curious or suspicious way, one or the other, she wondered for a brief but potent moment just what he had been thinking getting involved with Poison Ivy without backup. But then, because it was Charlie, she probably already new, she just genuinely preferred not to believe it. "What is it with you and this weakness for redheads?" she asked him, as if she was entirely innocent in the scenario and not one of said redheads.

[Charlie Holden]

Charlie had pressed one hand theatrically to his heart when she’d razzed him about being beat-up by a girl, right before diving for the cheeseburger that was, in his imagination, singing ‘Happy birthday, Mr Holden...’ in a husky voice that sounded eerily like Marilyn Monroe’s. Taking a man-sized bite and consequently struggling to chew it, Charlie snorted in derision as she questioned him about his penchant for women of the fiery-haired variety. He shifted in his bed indignantly, subconsciously giving her more room to move as he munched on his mouthful.

“Ish no da ahhv oh eeshnesh,” he said, his mouth obnoxiously full before he swallowed, grinning arrogantly at Susie because he knew full well that a) she hated that and b) she wouldn’t have understood what he’d said and she hated that even more. “They just seem to like me, for some reason.” With a smirk that she had seen many times throughout their relationship he leaned forward painstakingly to grab the soda that had come with the food, slurping it unnecessarily to irk her further.

“It would have been just fine if my damned back-up had arrived before the Second Coming,” he added ruefully. “I managed to hold her off for a decent while, but she had that damn pow-“ He started in on another coughing fit, hastily thrusting the soda cup at Susie so he could avoid spilling it all over the bed as he hacked. The cough was deep-sounding, reverberating through his chest cavity and making his throat sound like rugged sandpaper. “Jesus,” he rasped once he’d regained control, reaching for the soda again with an apologetic look.

[Susanna Gossamer]

Susie lifted an eyebrow as Charlie tried unsuccessfully to communicate around the cow inside his mouth. She couldn't tell what he'd said at all, which made her grit her teeth, but given that his next statement and his stupid grin was completely arrogant she guessed it must have been something annoying, so she rolled her eyes. Irritated as she was, she couldn't find it within herself to be all pitying and sad when he started coughing pathetically, even if it did sound like one of his lungs was trying to come up. She lifted her eyebrows until he finished, and then tilted her her succinctly. Her brown eyes narrowed unnecessarily.

"Wow, you sound awful," she told him, but rather than baby coddling him like a mother would, she continued. "I guess that's what karma sounds like after you tell someone's cousin she's thinking with her dick." She smiled angelically at him, before reaching across him to steal his remote control. "Rockems are playing," she explained, but nevertheless once she actually had possession of the surfboard she used it as a weapon to whack the hell out of him for that comment to Mary-Lou. Then she switched the channel to the game and happily noted that while everything else in her life was going to Hell in a handbasket at least the Rockems were winning.

[Charlie Holden]

Lord help him, but Charlie almost lived to see Susie roll her eyes at him. It was that clear, undeniable expression of exasperation in her that – since their relationship failed spectacularly – he had striven to inspire. It was a well-known fact that he found Gossamer attractive; most men in the Department did, even though none of them were man enough for her (himself included). But there was something about the curve of her smirk, the spark of brimstone in her eyes and the way her tongue could lash him like a whip that held Charlie Holden completely enthralled, the poor bastard.

“Hey!” he yelped when the remote thwacked him in the thigh. “Give me a break, I’m an invalid here!” he rubbed the sting on his leg with an appealing, injured look on his face as she turned on the game. “And I’d never say something like that to Mary-Lou, Suze,” he added, snaffling some fries and putting them in his mouth as he grinned, a laugh escaping in the bargain. “Mainly because I think she’d faint at the word ‘dick’.” Chewing loudly, he turned his attention back to the cheeseburger. A couple more huge bites disappeared in record time as the guy ate like he hadn’t eaten in months (and wouldn’t eat, probably, for the next few days at least).

For a couple minutes the only sounds in the room were Charlie’s grunts of appreciation for his food and the roar of the crowd at the Rockems game. A few times he looked over at Susie, who was looking at the TV. Because he was a guy and because the fact that they can’t multitask is a load of phooey especially when it came to envisioning fantastical situations that would probably never come to pass (again), Holden let his mind wander. His burger remained held aloft and momentarily untouched as his eyes wandered over her neck, down her shoulder and along her slender but well-toned arm. When she turned unexpectedly to look at him he jumped, caught in the act. Too used to playing the Romeo, Charlie smirked and held out the cheeseburger.

“You want some? Might not get a second chance.”

Such was life.

[Susanna Gossamer]

Susie smirked at Charlie's quip about Mary-Lou. She was surprised to find that her cousin was actually growing on her now that she was being forced to spend more time with her. Something about growing up without a mother and the warm and cozy family life being turned suddenly and forcefully into just her and her Dad against the world - quite literally, now that they were both cops - had made her somehow retreat from any warmer, fuzzier relationships. It was most obvious with her boyfriends, as Charlie knew. The soft, tender moments between them had been very rare and generally only came about after thorough physical exhaustion. She only cried when she was angry and she never courted affection from others, even when she needed it. Mary-Lou's bubbly, affectionate personality seemed entirely at odds with her cousin's sparse one, but she was growing on her.

That didn't mean she didn't giggle at the girl's naivety.

"Be nice," she cautioned protectively in between a grin, letting the almost sisterly moment fade into her sudden interest in the Rockems, lest Charlie get the idea she cared for her cousin or something. She wasn't some big softie or anything, just because she had weird feelings for people cropping up all over the place. Bruce, Mary-Lou. What was next? Best to nip the trend in the bud and watch some good ol' baseball.

She turned around to remark to Charlie something about the game, but was caught off guard to find he wasn't watching. Her mouth snapped shut and she looked for half a second like a deer in the headlights, Mary-Lou's words coming back to her forcefully. I think he's still sweet on you. Luckily he quickly moved the attention to his hamburger and there was no awkwardness in the moment. She shook her head, finally formulating a dry, "No thanks. I might catch whatever brand of stupid made you take on Poison Ivy on your own."

She stood suddenly, her panic mode somehow engaged by the last thirty seconds of Charlie's company. Everyone had their faults; a complete inability to deal with emotions was hers. "I'd better get going," she mentioned, and she desperately searched for an excuse why. Don't say it, her mind cautioned as she landed on the most obvious one, but a cruel one given the circumstances. But she could think of nothing else. "I told Bruce I'd meet him." You said it, she berated herself, wincing mentally. "Can I get you anything else?" she asked, hoping to bury the reference in kindness so it would sting less.

[Charlie Holden]

Even though he had a terrible habit of acting like a complete and utter jerk most of the time, Charlie Holden was, in fact, human. This news might have possibly shocked a string of young ladies he’d dated and ‘latered’; the majority of whom wondered whether he actually had a heart or was just some kind of lean-mean-wanker-machine. Clear evidence supporting such a supposition was the way he continued to leer at Susie in a comical kind of suspended animation, his burger held out to her like a perverted olive branch and his trademark grin plastered all over his All-American Quarterback type face. The name did eventually sink through the thick skin of arrogance he usually sported, and when it did his face only faltered for a split second before he forced the smile even wider.

“One of those, maybe?” he said with a nod towards the TV at the busty Rockems Rockettes, who had just run out onto the pitch in a flurry of short skirts and pompoms. “And some ketchup,” he added with a thick smattering of innuendo. It clearly wasn’t for his burger, which was pure and out heart-attack material. The thing about Charlie was that – perhaps fortunately for him – a lot of people underestimated him. The sugar-coated tone that accompanied Susie’s offer told him instantly that she regretted saying that she was meeting up with Wayne almost as much as Charlie regretted hearing it. By saying something that would fit in with his usual pseudo-chauvenistic behaviour he was effectively letting her off the hook. She’d roll her eyes and possibly say something like ‘You’re a pig, Holden’ before she left.

The problem with this solution was that Charlie was most definitely not off the hook. When the hospital door closed behind his ex, leaving the lingering temptation of the perfume he had bought her two Christmases ago, he would sit there on his own with the Rockems game playing until the end. He’d lost his appetite for food, largely, now that his mind would be occupied with thoughts of what Susie and Gotham’s premier play-boy would be up to while he sat there and stagnated. Every cloud has a silver lining though, or so they say. If nothing else, this news that she was off on a play-date (or whatever the hell rich people did with their flavour of the moment) made him all the more determined to get the hell out of Gotham General and back to the Department where he could keep an eye on things.

“Aside from that,” he said, looking away from her and picking up the remote she’d abandoned, “I’m good to go, Sweet-cheeks.”

[Susanna Gossamer]

One auburn eyebrow hiked higher as she glanced at the television to catch the scantily clad Rockettes. She always liked baseball better than football because there weren't any cheerleaders, but then the Rockems broke the streak and hired the ridiculous so-called 'dancers.' She could hardly stop watching her team just because of the ho-tastic bimbos shaking their tits and asses for the crowd (though she considered it), but she could let her feelings known to any males who were stupid enough to express approval of the Rockettes in her presence. Luckily for her, she didn't even have to go to any effort to tell Charlie what she thought of him or the girls on the television. Her ex already knew she thought he was a pig.

But calling her sweet-cheeks made her expression morph into disgust. Normally demeaning her in that way would earn him a black eye or a bruised groin, and it was just unfair to do so when it was impossible to give him his just deserts without being arrested. "Ugh, fuck off," she told him, proving he knew her pretty well when she rolled her eyes at him. It was like he was going out of his way to remind her how little she really missed his crude manners, and he really needn't bother. It wasn't like she needed reminding that they were a total failure romantically, and it just made her want to pick a fight. She was sure he did it on purpose, and after trying so hard to be so nice to him she really thought he could have made a little more effort to, yanno, not! "If you weren't in a hospital bed, I'd kick your ass," she told him seriously, before rising from her spot.

It was time to leave, to keep him from getting a further rise out of her and to keep herself from saying something more hurtful than she already had. "I hope you die," she called over her shoulder as she made her exit from the room, which only qualified as less hurtful because she didn't mean a word of it. In fact, she meant the opposite. Though if he suffered a little, well, it was only what he deserved, the prick!