Chapter Text
It’s not until 1973 that Charlie thinks it isn’t all a dream. Knox has his head in the toilet, there’s a groupie smoking in his connected room, and it hits Charlie all too suddenly that this isn’t what he wanted when he and Meeks decided one night they’d drunkenly start a band.
“You leave anything here?” He asks the groupie, who is putting her cigarette out on the carpet of Knox’s room.
“Haven’t even started anything yet.” She grumbles, and they don’t say anything more before she slips out of the door.
As soon as she’s gone, Charlie’s back in the bathroom, a sinking feeling rolling around in his stomach. “Knox?”
He can’t hear anything over the wrenching sounds, but Knox groans in response. Charlie’s on the ground in a blink of an eye.
“What’d you take?” He’s asking desperately, and Knox pulls himself from the toilet, shaggy bangs in his face. They’re plastered to his face with all the sweat. “What’d you take?” Charlie huffs, his hands on Knox’s back, steadying him.
“Nothing,” He coughs, and throws his head back into the toilet.
“Knox,” It’s a warning. They’ve done this before, the roles reversed. That was nearly eight months ago, in the longest, worst leg of a European tour Charlie could ever have imagined. He hadn’t slept in four days because of all the coke, and then he’d nearly overdosed after a cocktail of pills, all handed to him by various groupies or the people they were touring with.
Knox had rushed him to the hospital, muttering incoherently about how he had to take care of himself. It had been a terrible night, and even worse as the coke wore off subsequently during the next period of time.
“It’s nothin’, Char.” Knox chokes, and then he’s hurling again. Nothing’s coming out, but he’s wretching so badly his whole body is shaking.
“Knox?”
It’s another few moments before Knox can answer. He pulls himself away, his forehead drenched in sweat, his lips quivering. He’s shivering, and there seems to be something bubbling at the surface.
“What’s the matter?” Charlie asks, because he wants to believe that Knox isn’t using. He’s never seen him do anything, but the road gets hard. They’ve all had brushes with things they regret.
“I haven’t slept in three days.” He answers, the exhaustion suddenly so clear upon his face that Charlie doesn’t know how he didn’t see it sooner.
“What?”
“I just can’t.”
“What’s that got to do with this? Did you get food poisoning or something?”
“No,” Knox shrugs, “I’m just tired. You can get sick from that.”
“We gotta get you to bed.”
“I’ve tried, Charlie, but I can’t. I just can’t sleep.” Knox is pulling himself up, the nausea subsiding. He drags himself wearily to the sink, hanging onto it tightly.
“Knox,” Charlie’s gripping his hips, trying to keep him upright. Knox has got about three inches on him, but it feels like more now. Like he’s towering over him. Charlie wonders briefly if that was how it felt while Knox dragged him to get his stomach pumped that night.
“I’m fine, Charlie.”
“I sent that girl on your couch home.”
“I figured.”
“What were you thinking going on stage tonight? You should have told me you felt like this.”
“I was fine. The adrenaline,” Knox is explaining, but he’s not really saying anything at all.
“What’s the matter?”
Knox looks up at him through his bleary eyes in the mirror. He feels a deep thud settle in his chest because of all people, he didn’t want Charlie to see him like this. He was supposed to be the strong one of the two. The one that picked him up off of the ground and could take care of himself just fine. Charlie’d done enough in their childhood to account for all the years he was doing now.
“Talk to me,” Charlie says, his voice a bit above a whisper as his hold on Knox tightens. Knox would be spinning if it wasn’t for the sick feeling settling in his body.
“I am fine, Charlie. I’m just tired.”
“I know that, but…” Charlie could feel his insides rearranging, trying to make more space for all this hurt within his bones.
“Go back to your room. I’ll be fine.” Knox said, his toothbrush clacking against his teeth.
“No.”
“I’m fine, alright?” Knox says it through the paste, so it’s garbled, but Charlie can see from his eyes in the mirror that he means it. Knox may mean it, but it isn’t enough to let him feel like he’s off the hook.
“No.” Charlie tightens his hands on Knox’s hips, feels the scorch of his pinky that’s trailed underneath Knox’s tank and sitting atop his plaid pajama bottoms; the burn that’s coursing through his veins.
Knox spits, and then stills completely as he looks at Charlie through the mirror. His skin is burning from the touch, his head is swimming, and he feels like he’s unable to grab anything. His fingers feel like they’re slipping from the counter.
“What the fuck d’ya mean, no?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Charlie,” It comes out a huff. Knox knows he’s defenseless right now, too bone tired to do anything about it, and Charlie’s stubborn. Always has been.
“You gotta go to bed, Knox.”
“I know. I am. I will.”
Charlie lets go of him then, and they trudge out to the bed part of the hotel. Knox goes about checking on things: the alarm he’s set, his journal in his suitcase, his pack of Marlboros. By the time he’s checked everything and taken off his socks, he finds Charlie curled into his bed.
“I have a couch,” Knox grumbles, slinking carefully into the space next to his oldest friend.
“Yeah,” Charlie looks a bit crushed, like his gesture of their age old slumber parties had left Knox’s mind all together.
“You’re fine,” Knox says a smile tinting through it, “Just giving you a hard time.” He shivers, although the sheets are reaching his chin.
Charlie’s a hydrant of heat. He always has been and tonight was no different, and so it took no effort or decision for Charlie to close the space between their bodies and wrap himself around Knox.
“You need a sweater or something?”
“Fine. Just tired,”
“How long has it been like this?”
Knox shifts in the arms, the scorch of them electrifying and comforting, like Charlie’s arms always had been. “Few months now,” He staggers through the rest. “Been having bad nightmares, I guess. Can’t get good sleep anymore, and I’m too afraid to take anything to help.”
“Maybe you’ll sleep well tonight.” Charlie offers, his breath hot on Knox’s neck. Knox can’t see him, but he doesn’t need to. He knows how dangerous it would be to turn around and fall in love all over again like that night when he was 12.
“Maybe,” Knox is still shivering from the exhaustion. “If I wake up screaming, don’t say anything.”
“I’ll fight ‘em off,” Charlie says, and Knox can feel the pride in his chest, can feel how he almost feels like the old Charlie behind him. The Charlie that was muscular and full, much unlike the Charlie he’d come to know in recent years. It was a comfort to know that he was coming back into himself. “I’ll fight all the damn monsters off. The dragons too.”
“Where’s your armor?”
“I’m wearing it. Can’t you feel it?” Charlie chuckles, small and low. It tickles the back of Knox’s neck, and Charlie pulls him closer. His arm snakes around Knox’s waist and finds his hand, threading their fingers together.
“Yeah,” Knox whispers, unsure if Charlie can even hear him, unsure why the gesture makes him want to cry. “I feel it.”
Charlie breathes easy after that, and as Knox seems to drift away in his arms, his own head starts spinning. Months . Knox has been sick from this exhaustion for months, and nobody noticed much of anything. He feels sick from that, from the implications. They’ve all been so busy the last few months. Getting back to touring, touring in America, getting through the festivals and the other bands around them breaking up and all the goddamn interviews. It’s been hard. Harder than Charlie had wanted it to be all those years ago.
1969
“Are we fucking going or what?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Charlie asks, a half eaten pear in his mouth.
“Woodstock, baby!” Meeks all but roars, placing the paper in front of them. “Everybody’s gonna be there.”
“Everybody who?”
“Charlie,” Knox says it like an admonishment, “Everybody.”
“And?”
“It’s a festival out in Woodstock. Joan Baez, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix. Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young. Everybody’s who’s anybody is gonna be there.”
“Bob Dylan?”
“He’s out.”
“What?” Knox asks, but it isn’t answered.
“I have four tickets, and they’ve got our names on them.”
“I don’t know, Meeksie.”
Meeks shook his head, clearly frustrated. “So you’re coming?”
“This isn’t gonna make you want to start a band, right?”
“No promises, baby.”
“Who else is coming?”
“Pitts is free.”
“Pitts is always free if you’re involved.”
“You’re just jealous one of us can pull off having a healthy relationship.” Knox said, taking a seat next to Charlie at the table.
“Oh fuck off,” Charlie says, unbothered by Meek’s watchful eyes.
Recently, Meeks has been watching a little too closely as Knox and Charlie bump around each other. Charlie is pretty sure he’s the only one who has confessed anything to Meeks, and he didn’t even mean to confess anything in the first place. He knows that Meeks would never say anything, but he’s been looking at them so pitifully lately. He wishes it would stop.
Besides, he and Knox keep to themselves in their own ways. They date, girls and guys or whoever comes their way. Knox prefers romantic gestures, movies and picnics in the park and writing poems for them. Charlie has always preferred a good one night stand over anything, really, especially if he’s down in the dumps. Of course, there had been that one time Charlie had seen Knox and a guy he’d seen a few times in the apartment. Most notably, the time he’d come home from work at the bar early, to find Knox pushed up against their kitchen counter, having the life sucked out of him. No one had heard him enter, and Knox had just tightened his grip on the guy’s head, his eyes going wide only a moment as he saw Charlie. He'd never officially come out to him, and they hadn't mentioned it if Knox was with a guy. Charlie made a face that signaled that he was sorry, and he wanted to move quicker, but Knox’s eyes had planted him in place a few moments too long. Knox was making noises that made Charlie’s hair stand up straight at the back of his neck. He excused himself back out the door a moment later, hoping he’d been just as silent leaving as he’d been entering.
But, that pair had fizzled out quickly, and Charlie was pretty sure it had hurt when they’d broken up. He’d never really met him, and he wasn’t ever going to. Knox loved hard, fast, and deeply; and he knew that that heartache was going to follow him anywhere he went.
“You okay, Charlie?” Knox asks, his eyes settling on him.
“Yeah,” Charlie nodded, too lost in his head.
“So it’s settled, wierdos?” Meeks says, twirling the phone chord in his fingers, “Woodstock?”
“Yeah,” Charlie nods, “Woodstock.”