Charlie was wasted. She didn't know how it had happened or who was responsible - in her current state, she also didn't particularly care - but she knew she'd passed the point of no return when she went to the bathroom and almost missed the toilet when she tried to sit down.
The problem was, really, that she was just having so much fun. And it was so hot in there with all those bodies packed into one space and all that dancing they'd been doing. How was she supposed to refuse when Chuck kept offering to buy her drinks, reassuring her he was getting them for himself, too?
But Chuck could clearly hold his alcohol better than she could. It had been stupid to try to drink alcohol for rehydration instead of water.
When she made her way back into the dance hall, Charlie paused for a moment on the edge of the room and searched for someone she knew. Chairs and tables were scattered around a patch of floor reserved for dancing, and paratroopers and local boys in uniform milled around with a mixture of local girls and girls working for the war effort.
While some people chatted and drank together, others danced to the fast-paced swing song the band was playing. The blur of motion on the dancefloor and the low lighting of the hall made it impossible for her to recognise anyone.
Charlie huffed and began to make her way to the door by herself. She'd seen some benches out front when they'd first arrived and she felt she could do with the fresh air.
There were two doors on the way out; one led from the dance hall to a little hallway, and the other outside. Charlie was glad for this, now, for she knew she'd let out way too much light if there was only one, and during her time in England she'd become extra cautious about never letting out light. The lingering threat of the Blitz loomed over her head every time it got dark, and she was constantly badgering the other girls about not shutting their blackout blinds properly. Her inebriation didn't get rid of this wariness, but unfortunately meant she couldn't adhere to it as well as she would have liked.
But at least the hallway was dark.
When Charlie opened the second of the doors a gust of cool night air hit her in the face and immediately cooled her skin. It was so refreshing she closed her eyes and leaned against the door frame, letting her head rest against it. She started swaying gently from one foot to the other.
Eventually, she got tired of hanging tightly to the doorframe to keep herself from falling over and stepped out into the quiet of the night.
And forgot about the concrete step leading up to the door.
"Ow," she said. She'd landed on her hands and knees in the gravel. Instead of pushing herself to her feet she let herself fall sideways onto her hip.
"Freckles!"
"Hm?"
"You okay?"
Floyd had rushed over the instant he saw her fall and slowed to a stop beside her, crouching down to look her over. "Aw, damn it, Charlie, look at your knees."
When she did she found them scraped, her stockings ripped right over her kneecaps. The right one, which had evidently taken the brunt of the fall, leaked a scarlet trail of blood down her shin.
"Oh no," she said quietly, staring at the blood and her ripped stockings as though in a daze. Stockings weren't easy to come by in England and now she was down a pair. If she kept going the way she was with all this falling over, eventually she'd have to resort to what the British women were doing: drawing lines up the backs of their legs with eyeliner to make it appear like they were wearing stockings when they weren't.
Floyd looked at her so hard she could feel his eyes on her profile. "Are you drunk?"
Charlie briefly considered giving him some sort of snarky reply, but when she looked up into his face the rebuttal died on her lips. She sighed, nodding. "Yeah."
"Where's Chuck?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. I couldn't find him before I came out here. Will you help me up?" She held out scraped hands to him. "Please?"
Floyd sighed and dropped his chin to his chest. "Oh, Charlie," he murmured. When he looked back up he was wearing an indulgent smile, and he grasped her gently by the elbows to help her stand so as not to hurt her cut up hands.
Floyd guided her over to the bench she thought he must have been sitting on before she came out. It was to the right of the door and propped up against the wall of the building, dark wood with a brass plaque in the centre of the backrest which reflected the moonlight.
It must have been late for it to be so dark, Charlie acknowledged idly. She was tired, anyway. She wouldn't have minded if the dance ended right about now. All she wanted was to go home.
"I'll go get Doc," Floyd told her as he guided her over.
Even in her drunken state, Charlie knew who he meant, and Eugene Roe was most certainly not going to come out here and see her like this. She shook her head rapidly, telling him 'no' repeatedly, until he sighed and yielded, which was out of character for him. There was something off about Floyd tonight, she realised, something that hadn't been off about him earlier. She didn't want to ask directly so she went with an easier question, one that she had a sneaking suspicion would lead her to the answer she really sought.
"Where's Mabs?" she asked around a yawn as Floyd settled her on the bench.
He came to sit beside her, leaning back into the backrest and tipping his head back to look at the twinkling night sky.
"She's dancing with More," Floyd replied. He sounded more exhausted than she felt, which was an achievement. When Charlie didn't reply he specified, "Alton More. He's one of the guys in the company."
"Right," Charlie acknowledged. "Why isn't she dancing with you?"
Floyd shrugged, laughing somewhat bitterly up into the stars. "She wants to keep her options open. Something like that."
Charlie didn't want to talk about this anymore. She loved Mabs dearly but she was also rather fond of Floyd, though she had no idea when this had happened. She didn't want to have to pick sides in their lovers' spat.
So, instead, she told him, "She loved the flowers you got her, by the way. The purple tulips."
"Oh yeah?" His smile was still bitter but his posture became easier. He rolled his head to the side to look at Charlie where she sat beside him, still resting his head back against the wall.
Charlie looked right back at him.
She hummed, nodding. "Yeah. She thought they were really sweet." He didn't have any discernible reaction to this, so she bumped her shoulder against his with a small grin. "I'm inclined to agree."
He laughed and turned back to the stars. "You're cute when you're drunk, Freckles."
Charlie laughed in turn. She watched her hands smooth down the skirt of her dress - the backs of her hands, since her palms were stinging. "I don't like being drunk," she confessed to him. "I feel vulnerable."
Floyd shook his head, rolling it from side to side against the wall. "I wouldn't let anything bad happen to you, Freckles. Neither would Mabel or Chuck or any of your friends."
"Well, I don't know where any of them are right now," she admitted. "Only you."
He grinned. "I finally made it onto your friends list?"
She rolled her eyes jovially. "You've been on my friends list for a long time."
Floyd gave her a crooked smile and then turned back to look up at the stars. He remained quiet for a long while, so long she wondered whether she was supposed to leave him be and head back into the dance, but eventually he spoke up again. This time when he spoke his voice was soft. Earnest. She wasn't sure he'd ever talked to her with such sincerity. "You're quite a girl, Charlie Lancaster."
He looked over at her once he finished speaking, searching for her reaction.
Charlie smiled, somewhat confusedly, and shook her head. "In a good way or a bad way?"
Floyd barked a laugh. "Haven't decided yet."
"Will you let me know when you do?"
"Depends."
"On?"
"How much you annoy me that day."
Charlie pointed an accusing finger at him. "You're mean," she declared, then poked him in the shoulder with that same finger.
He only smiled and took hold of her finger, then used it to turn her hand over and look at her palm. He hissed through his teeth when he saw the damage. "Freckles, let me go and find Doc."
"No."
"Why not?"
She frowned. "None of your business."
"What? All this honesty and now you decide to clam up?"
She mimed zipping up her lips and throwing the key behind her. Then, after a beat, she suggested, "Maybe you could find Autumn? I think Violet is having lots of fun with George, so I don't want to interrupt them, and Mabs is dancing with Less or whoever he is."
"More," Floyd corrected, grinning.
"More what?"
Floyd chuckled, sitting up straighter as he rolled his eyes affectionately. "No, his name is More. The guy Mabel's dancing with. Alton More."
"Right," Charlie confirmed. "That's what I said."
He reached out and patted her head. "Sure it is, Freckles."
She huffed at his patronisation. "Anyway." She batted his hand away with a halfhearted glare. "You can find Autumn and maybe she can help, but it's not like we have any medical stuff here, anyway. Or you can do it yourself. It's not that hard to clean up a cut."
He scoffed. "Says the trained nurse."
She rolled her eyes. "Says the boy about to jump out of a plane into a warzone."
"What's that got to do with anything?"
Floyd was saved from making a decision about whether or not to tend to her injuries when Mabs burst out of the door. She all but skidded to a stop with her back to them and looked frantically from left to right until she turned and caught sight of Charlie and Floyd sitting together on the bench.
"Charlie!" Mabs exclaimed, hurrying over.
Charlie offered a lazy smile and then looked past her, watching as Chuck also emerged from the hall prematurely and looked around. It only took him a moment before he spotted the three of them by the wall.
"What happened to your knees?" Mabs asked.
Charlie shrugged. "I fell."
Mabs sighed as she crouched down to get a closer look at them. "Why didn't you come get me?"
"It's not that bad. Floyd offered to go and find someone but I told him not to."
"Why?!"
"Because it's not that bad," she answered slowly, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Are you drunk?"
Charlie fell back against the bench and rested her head against the wall. Her eyes fell shut as she tried to focus on the gentle breeze on her cheeks. It ruffled the curled hair around her face and tickled her eyelashes, and she smiled as she revelled in the feeling.
"She is," she heard Floyd answer for her.
And thus an argument broke out. Mabs accused Chuck of being too careless with Charlie, Charlie insisted that it was her fault and that she could take care of herself, and Floyd tried to stop everyone else from arguing. When silence fell over them again it was in stark contrast to the raised voices of the moment before. It balanced precariously on top of the muffled swing music peeling out of the hall behind them.
Eventually Mabs came to sit on the floor at Charlie's feet, her back leaning against the leg of the bench, and Charlie's knees never got seen to. Chuck wandered in circles in the patch of grass in front of them, his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the invisible tracks he was following.
The four of them sat in silence for a long while. For her part, Charlie tried to fall asleep. But as much as she was unwilling to move, the bench was uncomfortable, and her body didn't seem to want to shut down for the night just yet.
It was as she was shifting in place that a thought occurred to her. "Hey, Floyd," she said. She sat up straight and turned to face him, vaguely aware that both Mabs and Chuck had looked over in intrigue as well but not caring enough to acknowledge them.
"Freckles?" He glanced over at her with a small, tired smile.
"Did you see my corsage?" She pointed to where the pink rose was still pinned onto her dress just below her left shoulder, where a lapel would have been if she'd been wearing her dress uniform like he was. "Chuck got it for me, so now I have a corsage to show to my future children after all."
Floyd smiled. He looked hard at the corsage before turning back to sit straight on the bench again, his head tipped back into the cool night air. "That's great, Freckles. I'm happy for you."
"I'm glad you like it," Chuck added from where he was still standing in front of them.
Charlie smiled softly at him. "I do. Thank you again."
"Why a corsage?" Mabs asked curiously.
Charlie explained an abridged version of her prom story - how the boy she'd gone with had told her he'd get her a corsage and then hadn't, so she'd been the only girl at prom without one - all the while fingering the rose pinned to her dress.
"How did you know about it, Chuck?" Charlie wondered when she finished. She watched him walk slower with her eyes on him, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.
He shrugged bashfully, avoiding her eyes. "Just a guess." He stopped for a moment and glanced at Floyd, and something passed between them. A second later he continued to walk in his circles on the grass. "Thought it would be a nice gesture."
"Well, it was." Charlie sighed happily as she ran her fingers over the soft pink petals. "It really, really was."