Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟴𝟲 charlie (reprise)

𝙇𝙓𝙓𝙓𝙑𝙄.
CHARLIE / 𝘙𝘌𝘗𝘙𝘐𝘚𝘌

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i just ????

tw: graphic discussion of drug abuse and just a lot of conflict.

please remember that addiction affects people in real-time.
be mindful and tpwk ❤️

so you guys wanna know what's been happening with charlie? right?

✧

LYING, as Charlie had found, was all about strategy.

His Mother was a good liar. 

She sold products for a living, stood on television with a bleached smile and little stars in her eyes, showing off whatever product she'd been contractually obliged to push. An adjustable rolling pin, a corn peeler, a plastic block that cut butter into even slices, an egg cuber, a dual-sided utensil called a Chork (equally a fork as it was chopsticks). 

They were all thrust forwards under studio lighting on a brightly dressed set, between perfectly buffed nail beds and tips that shone a little too clean. They were posed and angled, showing only the good parts and hiding the shadowed, cracked edges. 

They were sold as invaluable, as sensible purchases that would change your life–– for just four instalments of $19.99, eternal happiness and wellbeing could be yours.

(Yeah, Charlie doubted that.)

As he sat there, he found himself thinking about it, about being a kid and watching his Mom on TV. 

She'd always been so squeaky clean on the screen, so pristine and polished that he'd almost been unable to recognise her. 

He'd been a kid, specifically sat in their Boston townhome, watching his Mom selling her hundredth cookbook of the season, smiling over branded coffee mugs with some television host, telling the whole world how perfect their lives could be with just a single page of her latest read. 

He'd been a kid when he'd learnt that the way things appeared, this hyperrealistic blast of nice and bright, were not always as they appeared.

Things had to be prepared, planned, lies needed to be drafted ahead of time. 

Scripts needed to be written, wardrobe needed to be prepared and sets needed to be dressed. There was a flow to things, a natural progression, you needed to have a storyline, a character, a motivation–– Charlie had watched it all play out all around him. It was so easy to insert yourself. It was so easy to just step in and let everything go exactly to plan––

"Would you like a drink?"

Charlie had not expected Beth's question.

It was said so pristinely, so politely, as if the first half of this conversation had never happened.

 There was something about the confrontational element of her that seemed to be locked so tightly behind such a nonchalant query. His eyes raised to look at her.