Title: Whatever I See in You
Fandom: The Libertines
Characters: Carl Barât, Peter Doherty
Rating: Adult (language)
Length: 340
Notes: Part of an AU but stands alone.
Content notes: None




"You're a cloud." Carl says, aware on some remote level that he is a little bit drunk. A bit drunk and a lot stoned.

"Eh?"

"You're a cloud."

Peter sighs. "That, my dear boy," he says with a grandiose gesture that Carl can see Peter's shadow fingers sweep across the wall, "was an invitation to elaborate, explain, or expand upon."

"Hmmm?" Carl is still watching Peter's hand. He watches it slide through his hair, reach for a bottle, light a cigarette as his 'hmmmm' vibrates gently through his skull. Like a snore. Peter snores. Peter snores all night, and Carl doesn't think it's cute at all.

"Carlos. Why am I a cloud? In three words. No more, no less."

Peter makes such silly rules. Carl screws up his brain and thinks. "Floaty."

Peter snorts a laugh. "Light on my feet, isn't that what they call it? You old charmer, you."

"Fluffy," Carl pronounces, though he thinks he maybe used a few more 'f's than the word technically has. And it has a lot.

Peter's indignant face looms over him, so Carl ruffles his hair until it stands on end.

"Well I am now," Peter says, but he leaves it that way, and he's grinning. "Dare I ask for the third?"

Un-holdable Carl wants to say, looking up into those wide brown eyes. No, not quite. Unhold-onto-able. You slip through my fingers every time I think I have you in my grasp. And full, so full of something waiting to burst out, waiting to-- You think you're the rain, but you're before the rain, you're the promise of rain, the promise of something that could be soft and warm, or it could be shards of ice, a raging storm, a cleansing deluge. You're there and not, you're whatever I see in you, but I know it can't be fuckin' real. It never is.

He can't say any of that.

"High," he says in the end, deadpan, and Peter licks a wet, beery stripe right up his face.