Archive of Our Own ^beta

It started with Elden. It was only one week into shooting when Elden made a comment about Charlie’s ass.

“You really could bounce a quarter off it.”

Charlie frowned as he walked over to Elden and Deborah who were standing off set.

“Bounce a quarter off what?” Charlie asked.

"That ass!"

Charlie glanced around at who else was milling about. A couple costumers and Chris Brewster were off to the side checking wardrobe.

"Whose? Chris?"

They hadn’t done many fight scenes yet – they were still working on the first two episodes – but Chris had been working with Charlie since day one on the fight choreography and his ass was pretty prominent in the black costume.

Elden laughed and Deborah hid her smile behind a hand.

“No, you, Charlie.”

“Excuse me?” Charlie was a bit stunned. He’d heard a few things about his ass in the past but they were mostly from significant others.

“Your ass,” Elden deadpanned while rolling his eyes. "Is God’s gift to asses.”

“What does that even mean?” Deborah asked, still giggling but no longer hiding it.

Elden just shrugged and whistled as Charlie wandered off to find some saner people. Charlie threw a weird look over his shoulder at the two.

~

Then, it was Joe Quesada. Charlie was flattered when he found out how Joe had pegged him for Matt Murdock years before Charlie even batted an eye at the superhero.

“Seriously, Charlie,” Joe was telling him, hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “The way you were able to perfect the character in Boardwalk Empire – all that hidden rage – I knew you were meant for this role.”

Charlie grinned, ducking his head slightly. He could feel his face heating up, knew his ears were probably bright red.

“Well, y’know, Joe, I’m so thankful for this oppor-“

“And that ass!” Joe kept going, interrupting Charlie.

“Sorry, what?” Charlie sputtered out.

“In Boardwalk Empire! Your bubble butt! It had Matt Murdock written all over it.”

Joe was doing the typical, hand across the sky, look into the bright future, sleezy director type move and Charlie tried to shrug Joe’s hand off his shoulder.

“Oh, well, thanks.”

Joe finally let go of Charlie.

“You keep on working on that bubble butt, Charlie!”

Charlie was too stunned to walk away, thankful that Joe had already done so. He kept repeating in his head, a mantra if you will, of how wonderful of an opportunity Daredevil was for him. This would lead him to big things. He could deal with the ass comments.

~

Deborah’s husband, EJ, stopped by the set and Charlie couldn’t be more excited. Deborah was a lovely person who talked up her husband to anybody with ears. Charlie loved how personal the Daredevil show was for them and he wanted to meet her better half.

“EJ, lovely to meet you,” Charlie said while extending out a hand for the man. EJ took it with a strong hand and shook.

“Charlie, nice to finally meet you. Deborah says nothing but good things.”

Charlie laughed, felt the redness creeping up his chest towards his neck. He never had been good with any type of compliment.

“That’s very kind of her.”

“Yes, we have nightly discussions about that ass of yours.”

Charlie froze, smile stuck in place and he could feel it slipping into something of horror-shock. With the amount of times people had commented on his ass within the past couple weeks he shouldn’t be surprised. But this was Deborah’s husband not some random groupie.

“You have…” Charlie cleared his throat. “You have nightly discussions?”

“Oh, yes.” EJ nodded. “She showed me some of your work – very stunning.”

This must be a huge, elaborate prank. People did not discuss other people’s asses at length like this. And if you did, you definitely did not tell that person to their face. Constantly. Maybe it was an American thing.

“Thank you?”

EJ didn’t seem to notice how uncomfortable Charlie was as he cheerfully greeted Elden who had just joined them.

“I was just telling Charlie, here, about our discussions about his ass.”

Elden laughed at Charlie’s face.

“You just gotta embrace it, dude. Your ass is magnificent – it’s a compliment!”

Charlie swallowed, nodded, and sped-walked to his trailer. Far away from people.

~

The rest of the shoot went fairly uneventful – Charlie even took everybody out for ice cream one day. Elden declared him the best cast mate ever and only a couple people commented on his ass, which was a nice change of events.

Then, the pinching started.

Elden gave a quick nip while they were shooting an office scene. Then Deborah joined in, the tips of her ears turning pink when she did so. Charlie was ever thankful Vincent and him didn't have a lot of scenes together.

On Charlie’s last day of principle photography, Chris full on smacked his ass.

“Good fight,” Chris said with a nod and then was jumping into place to fight Vincent in Daredevil and Fisk’s last show down.

Charlie accepted the jacket from Tim, his PA that day, and sat down hard in the closest empty chair. He was not going to stand up until the last very second – he was tired of having his ass fondled by everybody he knew.

~

Press tour. Charlie thought he was safe. Charlie quickly realized he was never safe.

He was on camera, being interviewed, when he felt the telltale pinch of his ass.

“Somebody just pinched my bum,” he said into the microphone and hoped somebody out there in internet land would save him.

In the reflection of the camera he could see Matt Gerald behind him and the thought of ‘Melvin freaking Potter just pinched my bum’ ran through his head and maybe he finally lost it because he couldn’t stop giggling.

Stockholm syndrome or something to that effect. Conditioning, maybe. He was now so used to being commented, smacked, pinched, that it had actually started to become funny ridiculous instead of horrified ridiculous.

~

Rosario had a lovely laugh and it grew tenfold when she grabbed his ass. Like took a huge handful of it and Charlie couldn’t help the jump.

“What the bloody-?” He exclaimed as he spun around to find Rosario doubled over.

“I’m sorry,” she said, waving a hand around as if she couldn’t help herself. “I just had to – Elden told me I had to at least once.”

Charlie crossed his arms and frowned.

~

“Elden, we need to talk.”

First day of season two and Charlie needed to lay down some ground rules.

“Sure, dude, what can I do ya for?”

Charlie pulled Elden into the shared trailer they were using for the New York shoot.

“Look, I know my bum is a piece of work or something,” Charlie started, hand smoothing down his tie to keep them busy. “But could we not this time?”

Elden frowned and leaned against the built in couch.

“Not what?”

“The pinching and the smacking and the general comments about how spectacular my bum is.”

“You don’t like it?” Elden asked with a cocked head. Charlie sighed in relief.

“Not at all. Could we tone it down a bit?”

“Sure, man,” Elden shrugged. “All you had to do was say something. We thought you thought it was funny.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem, I will spread the word. Although,” Elden added. “You may need to talk to Rosario herself – she was way into the butt grab.”

Charlie chuckled and clapped Elden on the shoulder.

“It was a pretty nice grab.”

Elden laughed.

“C’mon, dude, they’re probably wondering where we’re at.”

The two stumbled out onto the sidewalk and were immediately surrounded by crew for their next scene.