Keith would have been more than content to never get out of bed again, seeing as there were no cigarettes on the table, or alcohol. He flipped the sheets around, half expecting to find hidden goods there, but when he found none he grunted miserably and buried his face in his pillow, which felt more like a rock than a sack of feathers that morning. 

He had a vicious hangover, but he also had the distinct feeling of having forgotten something, though that particular feeling was so common place for him that he was quick to dismiss it. He’d probably forgotten to call a girl, or meet with a dealer. If it was important, Keith always told himself, they would get in touch, and get in touch they did as there came a knock on the door. 

Keith screwed his face into a grimace against the sharp sound. It sounded like whoever was outside was knocking on his head. He said nothing, showed no willingness to move, and moments later they knocked at his head again, and again until Keith was forced to respond.

He meant to ask what the person on the other side of the door wanted, but it came out as an outraged and incoherent holler that sounded like, “Hargnh!”

Luckily Charlie, who stood outside the room, was fluent in ‘Keith’.

“I’ve brought your suit,” he called, voice carrying through the door, bringing a frown to Keith’s face. 

A suit for what? The lingering booze from the previous night conjured ideas of bathing suits, snow suits and space suits. Keith shook his head to clear the absurdities and with all of the reluctance in the world he pulled himself out of bed to cross the impossibly long distance to the door. That is to say, it took him an astounding five steps.

When he wrenched the door open the creases visible beneath stringy bangs deepened as his eyebrows fell lower over his eyes, seeming to squish them into a scowl that was both disagreement to the light filtering into his room, and confusion at why Charlie might have brought him a two-piece suit.

“Why’d I need a suit?” he asked, barely separating words as the question came out in a tired slur. He opened the door wider all the same, letting Charlie into the hotel room.

“Because you told me last night that you would wear one to the dinner and interview this afternoon.  I like what you’ve done with the place, Keith,” he added, stepping over a pile of clothing which seemed to serve as a doormat. They’d been at the hotel for two nights and it already looked as though Keith had been there for months, and had already dug up the place to set in deep roots.

“What’s wrong with the clothes I wear?” he demanded, too tired and sore to be properly offended. 

“Really?” Charlie eyed the loosely fitting jeans Keith had fallen asleep in, orange underwear hitched up further yet, with no shirt and a festive scarf wrapped around his neck that Charlie was surprised Keith hadn’t managed to strangle himself with.

“Keith, you’re not going to this interview dressed like that, this is like… politics!” he explained, following his band mate who was wandering into the bathroom. “This is important, and it’s just you, Mick and I, and I’m not going to let you embarrass the lot of us. We’re in a band. You have to dress like you’re in a band—” His desperate persuasions fell short as Keith turned to face him, pressing on finger to Charlie’s chest as though to emphasize his retort.

“I’m in the Rolling Stones,” he explained, chin raised, peering down the bridge of his nose at Charlie. “An’ I’m gonna dress like I’m in the Rolling Stones.” His other hand gripped the door, and he meant to close it but Charlie grabbed it as well, wrenching it out of Keith’s grasp before pushing it open and stepping into the bathroom. 

“You can at least bathe first.”

“You know,” Keith nearly whined, leaning back against the sink. “This is fairly demeaning!”

“So are you, Keith.” Charlie’s swift responses nipped and bit harmlessly at Keith’s dignity. If he wasn’t still half asleep he might have laughed, but the idea was put out of his mind when Charlie turned on the faucet.

“You’re not washing me?” It came out more as a statement than a question, and this time he did laugh as Charlie passed him by, disappearing into the bedroom. “That would mean me taking off my clothes! Near you,” he added, waving one hand vaguely in Charlie’s direction.

“You’re playing shy now?” Charlie asked, hiding his smile by turning away, rummaging through Keith’s single travelling bag. The more he removed from the bag in an attempt to find the bottom, the more agitated he became until finally he sighed and turned completely to face Keith, always lounging in the doorway between bedroom and bathroom.

“Don’t you have soap? Or a razor or anything to stay clean?”

“I left it all at the other hotel,” he explained, another vague motion as he assumed the previous hotel was somewhere at his back. 

The motion made Charlie bow his head and sigh heavily. “I’ll be back then.”

“You’re goin’ back to the hotel?” Keith asked, frowning worriedly at the idea.

“No, Keith, I’m going to my room,” Charlie groaned as he climbed to his feet. “I have a razor, shampoo, a brush, and toothpaste. I’m not sure you’ve heard of any of those but they’re all good things, I promise you.” 

“Ha,” Keith laughed dryly, following Charlie to the door.

“You’ll be in the tub when I get back, won’t you?” Charlie asked, turning to watch the other with a stern expression. He was unable to keep a straight face however, and ended up mirroring the disbelieving smirk on Keith’s dry, cracked lips. “You won’t be in the tub when I get back.”

“No, sir,” Keith replied, slinking lazily away from the door, pushing it shut as he did so.

Alone in the hallway, Charlie smiled, still watching the door though never really seeing it. His mind was on the other side of it with Keith and his friendly banter. Anyone else except for perhaps Mick would have given up. Mick would have tossed him in the tub and done all sort of indecent things.

Charlie wasn’t indecent. He was on a mission and perhaps in love, though he didn’t need to waste his time dwelling on the idea – not when he had to clean something as impossibly filthy as Keith.

It was barely ten minutes later Charlie returned to Keith’s room. The bathwater had been turned off but there were no sounds of bathing, nor had Keith gone back to bed.

“Where did you bugger off to?” he asked, loud enough for his voice to carry into all adjoining rooms.

“I’m in the tub as you said!” Keith’s voice echoed off the tiled walls, and when Charlie walked into the room he found Keith laying in the bath, just as he’d said, arms resting on either side. He held a cigarette in one hand and Charlie winced as he noted that Keith was using the ceramic soap tray as an ash tray.

“So is this where you scrub me up, then?” Keith asked, bring the cigarette to his mouth for a drag. He tried to sound and look only mildly interested as he examined the smoke weaving its way past his lips and into the air before him.

“What are you? Five years old?”

The guitarist adverted his gaze from the smoke just as it was about to disappear entirely to watch Charlie set soap next to the makeshift ash tray, and a bottle of shampoo next to that.

“I don’ think so, not last time I looked,” he replied, eyes flickering downwards in an offhand way that still managed to catch Charlie’s attention. “Are you? You’re awful pink in the face, Charlie,” he remarked, cigarette hovering close by to smother his smile.

“No, I’m not,” was Charlie’s terse reply. “But my name’s not Mick Jagger either.”

“Touché,” Keith laughed, struggling into a sitting position. “Oh Charlie, I know that I’m not to your taste.”

“And what do you know about taste?” Charlie wondered, leaving the razor, shaving cream and hand towel on the small bench next to t he sink.

“I see you eying up the men in their suits,” Keith accused with a playful, mischievous jab of his finger in his friend’s direction. “The ones from the record companies, or the ones that write for the papers. I’ll bet you’ll be like a kid in a sweets shop this afternoon at the dinner.”

“Get cleaned up, Keith.” Charlie ignored the startlingly accurate observation, as well as the jab and the wink that followed. He motioned towards the soap and shampoo instead. “Use those, they’re your friends.”

Closing the door behind him, Charlie wandered to the center of the bedroom, staring aimlessly about. Clothing, cigarettes and half-eaten food littered the floor, as well as empty bottles and guitar picks; all the usual things Keith left a thick trail of wherever he went. 

Charlie wanted to be fine with it. He wanted to shrug off the mess as all the others did, perhaps because he wanted to like Keith more than all the others did, but his hands twitched and his feet kicked at the objects on the floor until he was unable to keep from sorting clothing into piles, food and bottles into the garbage can and guitar picks into a small pile on the mattress. All the while he listened to what sounded like a rinse cycle as Keith sloshed around the bath for a steady fifteen minutes.

“Don’t get dressed when you’ve finished,” Charlie called, crossing the relatively tidier room to stand outside the door when he finally heard water draining.

“Ah!” Keith shouted triumphantly, to which the other laughed and rushed to explain.

“You still have to shave and fix your hair. That would ruin the suit.”

“So I’m not clean enough for you yet,” retorted the voice beyond the door, feigning hurt.

“Not nearly,” Charlie replied, rolling his eyes even though Keith couldn’t see it. “Can I come in now?”

“Yes, I guess you may s’well. Get all this cleanin’ business over with,” Keith complained. Charlie opened the door to Keith crinkling his nose, wrapped in a towel, glancing himself in the mirror. “What are we doing next?”

“Shaving. You look like a lumberjack.” Charlie took up shaving cream, razor and hand towel and motioned for Keith to sit on that bench, while he knelt on the bathroom floor before him, already reaching up to run the shaver beneath the tap with one hand and shaking the can of shaving cream with the other.

“Don’t chop my nose off,” Keith murmured, only half jokingly as he watched Charlie settle into place, a careful hand holding his left cheek still while he brought the razor over the right. 

“I won’t,” Charlie reassured, pressing his thumb against the underside of Keith’s chin, gently tilting his head back. He worked in silence, eyes mostly on the razor, but occasionally they flickered up to judge the expression on Keith’s face. He didn’t seem bothered in the least. On the contrary, he seemed hypnotized by the rhythmic strokes against his face and jaw line, his dark eyes adverted away from Charlie, towards the ceiling.

“Do you want to see?” asked Charlie, dropping the razor into the sink and placing the can next to it. He took up the towel draped over Keith’s thigh to dry his cheeks, jaw and neck, and nearly gaped at the clean-shaven face when he pulled the towel away.

“No, do my hair first,” Keith told him, and it was impossible for Charlie to suppress his smile at Keith’s new enthusiasm for getting cleaned up, so he tried to hide it by getting up abruptly, taking up the hair brush and any enthusiasm Keith possessed.

Charlie moved behind Keith, running one hand through damp hair as he did so and Keith leaned against his touch like a cat, but when Charlie pulled the brush through unkempt hair a yelp escaped Keith that nearly made Charlie drop the brush altogether.

“What?” he demanded, nervous. “I didn’t pull all that hard—”

“How about I get you completely drunk, then you go to bed, and then wake up in the mornin’ with a splitting headache, and then I’ll mess up your hair and run a fucking brush through it,” he ranted, exhaling sharply at the end of it.

“Well, I have to brush your hair—”

“Wasn’t the shave and the wash and the shampoo enough?” Keith asked. “You’re making me wear a suit after this an’ everything for Christ’s sake.”

Charlie paused, holding the brush limply in his hand before setting it near the sink as well. He kept his head bowed, like a child being scolded and took to gently rearranging Keith’s hair with his fingers instead, finding the part and brushing his bangs slightly to one side, out of his eyes. If they had the time, he thought, he would just cut it but not only did they not, but he was certain that Keith would stab him with the scissors before letting him near his hair either way.

“You can get dressed now,” Charlie told him quietly, to which Keith nodded and got up off the bench, staggering slightly under the sudden shift. He didn’t move elsewhere once he’d stood, but stared from the suit near the bathroom door to Charlie and back again, clearly thinking.

“Go wait in the other room again,” he told him, hands against his back as he steered him out of the bathroom once again to wait.

Charlie settled on the bed to wait for Keith, only imagining the trouble he might have once alone with the suit. Undoubtedly watching it reproachfully before discarding his towel and taking up the first shirt, the white button-up one that would go under the jacket.

Twenty minutes later, most of which must have been occupied by Keith trying to understand how to properly wear his tie, he wandered into the bedroom holding the jacket, deciding against it as he rather preferred his dress-shirt roughly tucked into the pants, sleeves rolled half way up his forearms. As for the tie, it was wrapped around his head like a headband.

“What is this?” Charlie laughed, getting up from the bed where he’d taken to waiting. He pulled on the tie and it came undone, slithering over Keith’s shoulders and into his remarkably agile hands as he laced it around his neck, and took several steps Keith was certain he would never remember to tie it up.

“Better?” Keith asked him as they both looked up from the tie simultaneously, bringing them nearly nose to nose.

“Very much,” was the genuinely satisfied answer he received. “I like it without the jacket as well,” Charlie remarked, tugging the folded sleeves lightly.

“Is this for easy access?”

Keith turning his head away slightly, devious eyes still on Charlie as his lips worked furiously to suppress a smile.

“That is bad, Charlie.”

“Probably,” he agreed, never bothering to put more distance between them. Though in his defense, neither did Keith.

“So,” the newly cleaned man stated suggestively. “Am I clean enough for you yet?”

As though to answer his question, one hand reached up to smooth nearly-parted hair before trailing down to trace his smooth jaw line, while the other hand curled around the tie, promptly closing the distance between the two of them.