Hope by Spikedluv (Challenge #16: Death)

[spikedluv]

Just for the record, audrarose is evil. *g*

Title: Hope
Pairing/Characters: Don/Charlie unrequited
Rating/Category: PG13
Word Count: 200-word drabble
Spoilers: Through 2.20 Guns & Roses.
Summary: Charlie hopes.
Notes/Warning: Angst
Written: May 28, 2006

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Since Don’s return to L.A. they’d managed to reconnect: watching baseball games together, going to the movies, family dinners, playing basketball in the driveway. He’d even offered to help Don with his cases so he could spend more time with him, maybe impress him a little with the very thing that had driven them apart, Charlie’s numbers.

He had dared to let hope blossom. Hope that Don would see him, would eventually come to need him just as much as Charlie needed Don.

Finding out about Kim had hurt, but she’d been in the past and Don had told him that they didn’t live in different worlds anymore, so Charlie’s hope had continued to thrive.

Don’s dalliances with Karen and Nadine had cut, but they’d been short-lived, so he’d still hoped.

It was more difficult to hold onto that hope when Don brought Robin Brooks over to the house for family dinners that had once been the three of them, when he’d asked Charlie to be his best man, though the drunken hug they’d shared the night before had briefly revived it.

But watching him exchange vows with Robin, exchange the rings Charlie had helped him pick out....

Hope died.