Part of Femslash Week, organised by @flarrowverse-shipyard :D Femslash Week Day 4 - Bed Sharing/Snuggling
Pairing: Charlie/Zari Tarazi
Rating: Teen (mentions of sex)
TW: mentions of sex and character death
Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23028457
All That Glitters by coldflasher (capriciouslouis on ao3)
“Most of the rooms down this corridor are spoken for," says Sara. "You’re gonna have to bunk up.”
Thanks to a mysterious shortage of rooms on the Waverider, Zari and Charlie have to share a bed. Neither of them are particularly upset about the situation.
“So can you really shapeshift into anything?”
They’re lying in bed together in Charlie’s bedroom, which looks like a teenager’s emo phase met a museum exhibit in the middle of a tornado. Glossy vinyl records spill out of their sleeves all across the floor like the world’s most dangerous stepping stones. There are clothes abandoned everywhere where Charlie’s stepped out of them and left them there, including a pair of lacy black underwear draped over the lampshade, and battered punk posters of howling singers plastered all over the walls. It wouldn’t have been Zari’s first choice of bedroom, but she didn’t exactly get to choose. When she’d announced she was staying, she’d had a look through a bunch of different rooms and thought she’d finally found a nice one - a little vintage, smelling faintly of perfume - when Sara had grabbed her by the arm.
“Nope. This one’s off limits.”
“Why? There’s no one in here.” And there hadn’t been for some time, judging by the layers of dust.
Sara hesitated. “It belonged to a friend.”
“Well your friend isn’t here now, and I am, so…”
“You’re temporary,” Sara snapped. “You don’t get to rearrange everything just to suit you.”
“Who made you the boss?” asked Zari. Certainly no one who believed in the importance of manners.
Sara smiled thinly. “Popular vote.” She released Zari’s wrist. “Most of the rooms down this corridor are spoken for. You’re gonna have to bunk up.”
At the time Zari had been deeply unimpressed by this rudeness - the ship was huge, and there were so many empty rooms, so why shouldn’t she take one that was free? But when she’d tried to let herself into another empty bedroom, this time it was the AI that locked her out.
“What is with you people?” she demanded. “Why do you hate me?”
“This room belonged to Leonard Snart,” Gideon told her. “It has remained almost untouched since his death at the Vanishing Point in 2016.”
Zari had been trying to prise a panel off the wall to see if she could have another flash of inspiration that would let her hack her way in, but at this, she paused.
“Wait,” she said. “This room belonged to a dead guy?”
Gideon explained, and she discovered the sad truth of all those rooms lying empty. Each one was a time capsule for a departed team member. Some had left voluntarily, others had passed away - but regardless of the circumstances, each bedroom still remained as its occupant had left it, like a time capsule. As if the team was waiting for their lost and fallen members to come walking back through the door. They could travel back and forth in time, but the people they loved were still lost… and apparently it was easier to leave everything as it was than to move on.
This deeply traumatising discovery had a horrible effect on Zari, who was an empath and highly sensitive. She’d ended up in the kitchen having a staring competition with a doughnut, afraid that Behrad’s peace offering the other day had started a dessert-related backslide that she’d never be free of - and that was where Charlie found her.
“You all right?” Charlie asked, concerned. “You look a bit bummed out.”
“All the free bedrooms are for dead people,” Zari mumbled.
Charlie had given her a big grin that had a strangely uplifting effect, like she transferred happiness across the room with one glowing smile.
“Well. If you need somewhere to rest that pretty head, you can always come and have a kip with me.”
That was how they ended up in Charlie’s disaster of a bedroom, and if Zari’s being honest with herself, she doesn’t hate it. Thanks to her social media following, she doesn’t really have the opportunity to be messy. She has to be ready to turn on the camera at all times, to look pretty and perfect and put-together. Dirty laundry isn’t conducive with her brand.
“So you can really shapeshift into anything?” she asks.
Charlie turns towards her with a grin. “Ah, there it is. Knew it’d come up eventually. Come on then, spill the beans. Who’s your fantasy shag?”
“Excuse me?” says Zari.
“You know, your fantasy shag! George Clooney, Gillian Anderson… who makes your fanny flutter?”
“George Clooney’s like, super old,” says Zari, wrinkling her nose. “And for the record, your word choice leaves a lot to be desired. I don’t know how you do things in England, but where I’m from ‘fanny’ is not a sexy word.”
“Sorry. Picked up an English accent back in the seventies and for some reason I can’t seem to shake it.” Charlie stretches lazily, pointing her toes, one painted nail poking out through a hole in her fishnet tights. “But you’re changing the subject. Being in bed with me means you can sleep with anyone you like. Who do you want me to be?”
Zari thinks about it for a while. She looks at Charlie sprawled out on the bed with her fuck-me eyes half closed, her wicked grin and the wild cloud of hair wrestled into its braid, tinged purple at the end; her stripey shirt and mesh jacket. Effortlessly sexy and cocky enough to know it.
“I don’t think I want you to be anybody. I like you how you are.”
Charlie looks surprised. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Zari says. “I mean I know this isn’t your original form, but it looks good on you. I’m sure you still look sexy with your tentacles or whatever -”
“My original form would melt your brain,” says Charlie. “But I can probably rustle up a couple of tentacles if you’re into that.”
“Maybe later,” says Zari. “That’s not my point. I feel like if I was going to sleep with someone with shapeshifting powers, I’d want them to look whichever way made them comfortable. A body’s just a body. The sexy part is what you do with it.”
“You really mean that, don’t you?”
“Of course. I’m very sincere. It’s one of my most awesome qualities.”
Charlie grinned a little bit at that. Zari found herself smiling back.
“I don’t think anyone’s said that to me before,” says Charlie. Her expression dims slightly and she starts toying with a loose thread on the pillowcase. “This isn’t my real face, obviously. Belongs to some bird named Amaya who lived here a few years back. When I first met the team, I put her face on just to mess with them. Then I kind of got stuck with it for a bit. Now I can change again, but I’ve had it so long that it feels like my face. But they still don’t see it that way. Sometimes I feel like they still look at me and see…”
“Her,” Zari says softly.
“Yeah.” Charlie rolls onto her back. “It’s partly my fault, I know. That’s the whole reason I looked like this, because I knew it would throw them off. But now I want to just be me, Charlie, without some random woman hanging over me making them do a double-take when I do something that’s super anti-Amaya. You’re the only one on the ship who hasn’t met her, the only person who looks at me and sees… me.”
It’s the first time she’s ever heard Charlie be serious. No flirting or wisecracks. For the first time, staring into her eyes, Zari can believe that Charlie is a fate. That she’s seen civilisations fall and the centuries pass like seasons. No one as young as Charlie looks could have eyes so old.
“I get that,” she says quietly, propping herself up on her elbow. “It’s not the same, but… when you grow up famous, people think they know you. It’s like there’s a part of you that doesn’t belong to you. I can never just be me; I have to be the brand. And I love it, I’m proud of it, I spent years building it - I just wish people could see past it. Even my parents don’t know me.”
“I have a confession,” says Charlie.
“Go on.”
“I don’t have a bloody clue who you are.”
Zari cackles. It’s a horribly unattractive sound she would never have permitted in one of her vlogs, but it feels so good to let it out.
“I’m serious! You could tell me you’re the Queen of Sheba and I’d believe ya.”
“You gotta join the Z-nation,” Zari teases, snapping her fingers in a Z-formation. “I’ll add you to the mailing list.”
“You’d better bloody not.”
It feels good to laugh, and even better to have someone laughing with her. When she first joined the team and realised none of Behrad’s friends recognised her, it had pissed her off. She’s an icon! She has a make-up range and a million followers and even if the perfume launch didn’t go exactly to plan, she’s still in the running for influencer of the year if she can knock Stormi Jenner off the top spot. But although Charlie doesn’t know her, she doesn’t make it sound like a bad thing. It’s not because she thinks Zari is vapid or irrelevant or beneath her notice. She just… doesn’t know. There’s no prior expectations, no way she can disappoint. For the first time in years, she can be judged not on who she has been for a decade, but on who she is today.
“I may not know you,” Charlie says softly. “But I’d like to.”
“Well then,” says Zari, offering her a manicured hand. “I’m Zari. Nice to meet you.”
She’s expecting Charlie to shake her hand, but instead, she lifts it up to her mouth and kisses it. And like a fourteen-year-old with a first crush, Zari blushes.
“Yeah,” Charlie says with a smirk, knowing exactly what kind of effect she’s having. “I think you and I are going to get along just fine.”