He opens the bathroom door and flicks on the fan, irritated and tired. He just spent an entire evening with the dumbest brunette in all of Manhattan and he’s not even getting laid.

He needs a cigarette.

It’s his addiction, he’s all excited for the familiar smell and taste of his expensive imported cigarettes. He knows it’s dangerous, and cancerous but he doesn’t care much. He wouldn’t mind dying young and beautiful. He wouldn’t mind that at all. Half the shit he pulls is dangerous and people have come to expect it from him. Hell, even he expects it from himself. What he doesn’t expect is to see his stepmother’s boyfriend’s daughter curled up on the floor of his bathroom, half dressed and sobbing. She looks up at him briefly, her dusky eyes drowning in tears. Her body’s shaking. He doesn’t want to interrupt a private moment, and so he turns.

“Chuck?”

Without thinking, he kneels and pulls her into his chest, consequently pulling her away from the unused razor blade lying menacingly on the tiled floor. She’s never seemed the type of girl who would cut herself, but then again, he’s never seen her so distraught.

Not even when he almost...he cuts his thoughts off there.

He can’t think about that right now.

He was drunk.

It was a mistake.
He’s already apologized.

She chokes back her sobs for a moment and looks up at him, her body stilled in his arms. He knows she’s thinking about that too. Jennifer Humphrey clutches him to her, grasping at his sweater wildly, pulling him closer.

Making sure he’s there.

Making sure he’s not leaving her.

She needs someone, anyone.

He smoothes her white-blonde hair out of her eyes and let’s her grieve. He doesn’t know what’s wrong, so he doesn’t know how he can help her. But he’s determined to find out, because once he does, the jackass that hurt her is going to be sorry. It’s the least he can do for her.

When she’s calm enough to sleep, he picks her up and lays her down on his step-sisters bed. She sleeps curled up against him and he finds, that he no longer wants a cigarette. Instead he plays with her hair, soft waves of sunshine across the pillowcase. He’s just replaced one addiction with another but…

The new one might me just as hazardous as the last.