TITLE: Happy in the dark
E-MAIL: eli @ popullus.net
ARCHIVE: Ask, please.
RATING: PG-13
POSTED: Feb. 3, 2005
AUTHOR NOTES: Between Stella and Fraser, Ray has a lot of memories in the dark of a movie theater. Written for the DS Flashfiction "necking" challenge. Thanks to Minnow and Rez for the beta.
DISCLAIMER: Read
A dark theater is a happy memory.
Afternoons spent with stories and lives that were better than his own, sure, hours of thinking about bigger, better places and things. And popcorn. Never dismiss the power of the liquid butter. But the real good memories came later, when there wasn't a buddy in the next seat, there was a girl. Stella. Pretty, warm, moving closer, elbows bumping, holding hands when he finally got up the nerve. Then, almost forever later when he got some smarts, the heat of her body, maybe the tingle-starting softness of a breast against his arm, definitely her face pressed into his neck every time Jamie Lee Curtis screamed. Perfect. Take a picture. It got even better when he gave in and took her to the movies she really liked, the ones that made her start crying, which, okay, scared the shit out of him that first time. Lots of trees, big lake, people yapping and boom! Tears. What the hell? But right before he freaked and started apologizing for whatever, she took his hand in both of hers and just hung on. And he got it. Like, he was the rock that was going to keep her from floating away out to sea, or at least out into the lake. Some of their best kisses happened after movies like that, when she was all wound up. Those kisses weren't just lips, they were open mouths and tongues and all kinds of things her parents would totally flip over if they knew. Long, long times spent around the corner from her house before she pushed him away and slid out of the car, and he would be watching her with a big grin on his face when she peeked back at him over her shoulder. That made everything worth it, even the sneering he got from the guys who didn't have girls "dragging" them to movies without any body count. Their loss, he sneered back.
It didn't take long after that to figure out kissing could happen in the theater, too. You had to position yourself right, find the right seat in the right row, and second and third from the wall in the fifth row down from the door was their spot. Those two chairs weren't better than any others, but the arm in between them was busted and you could push it right through the back, just shove it back there, so it was like sitting in one big seat. Ideal. They could get up against each other that way, without someone, usually him, ending up bruised. He could even sort of pull Stella into his lap, just kind of, her leg bending almost by mistake over his while she wriggled against his side and they both lost their breath. For a while he joked about carving their names in the back of those chairs, the way Stella said they had those little metal signs on some of the seats in her fancy school auditorium. Ray'n'Stella. 1978. Then one afternoon he actually did it, gouging and scraping away curls of blue plastic so that they were there, just their initials, but he didn't tell her; she was supposed to notice.
Like with just about everything, he discovered, high school was the peak, the crest of the damn hill. They still went to movies later, yeah, who didn't? But after she pushed him away when he looked over and he just had to kiss her ear, because he could see it with her hair new and short -- after she said that grown-ups can hold hands but stop it, stop doing that, because they don't make out in the middle of a public place, Ray -- the dark theater lost some of its brightness. It was still a familiar place he could go for some happiness in all those off times, though. Those times when Stella didn't want to see him and he knew, deep down where stuff that hurts grows and lives, that it was better that he didn't see her, not then. Beer and fighting didn't do it for him all the time, and he and Rebecca De Mornay had a meaningful relationship one summer. Lana, Jesus she'd sizzled. But really, that was more of a three-way, with him and memories of her, and his hand, all together in the hotel bathroom. Anyway, stories and pictures can only get you so far once you've been to the top.
He stopped doing much of anything after the last papers, the last gasp of life in his marriage and him, went through. He did lots of nothing.
Lately, though, he's been enjoying picking out a time to go and not think for a couple of hours. Movies do that for him like nothing else. Sports are too much about yelling and praying, or they're too completely fucking boring. And work, well, sometimes he's not thinking there, either, but he's doing, and now with Fraser he's usually trying not to get killed, which takes up oodles more time than you'd think. For someone who throws loaded guns at people's heads, Fraser sure attracts a lot of bullets. And bombs. And all sorts of exploding, make-you-dead stuff.
One Saturday he picks up the paper, and then he picks up the phone. It's a weekend, he says, and Fraser's ability to discuss a film made since Hollywood added all those neat things called colors is seriously lacking. So how about they go catch a flick? He can hear the raised eyebrows over the phone line, and he nudges things along with the offer of pizza after and, you know, bring along Dief. The wolf started barking at the magic word -- he's only half-deaf, Ray chuckles when Fraser sighs -- and Fraser gives in.
Maybe it's having someone he's close to next to him again in the darkness, someone who means hell of a lot to him. Maybe it's all those thoughts he hasn't been thinking since that buddy breathing didn't change anything. Maybe it's that no matter how big a gap Fraser keeps between himself and every other person on the planet, there's hardly ever been a gap between them, and there isn't one at all right now with their arms pressed close on the seat arm so Fraser can sneak some of Ray's popcorn when Ray pretends like he's not looking. Maybe it's those memories. But about halfway through, Ray snorts -- stupid soldiers, fooled by a stupid skinny paste-on moustache; they deserve a Zorro ass-kicking -- and Fraser leans closer. He's probably got a question, he hasn't been all nitpicky or anything, but Ray turns to shush him and whoa. He's nose-to-nose with Fraser. Which he's been before, okay, but whoa, that's a new stare.
The music blares, calling brassy and loud from all the speakers, and Fraser sucks in a breath, and that air must've come out of Ray's lungs, they hurt so much, but the music. It's the opening of a tango, a good one, made for dancing, with sexy flourishes right from the start. And then the guitars and violins kick in, and maybe Ray loses his head a bit. What's Fraser's excuse? Because he doesn't jerk back when their lips touch, soft and kind of slick with that fake-butter. He doesn't even freeze like he should, like Ray's thinking he should. No, Fraser just leans in more, leans right across the hard plastic seat arm and makes this hungry little noise as he opens his mouth, and Ray's lost. All of him. His head, his body, everything him is into Fraser and now he's making noises, too, Jesus. Another second, a beat where he feels Fraser's hand tight on his arm, and Ray doesn't care. It won't last, it's too wonderful and dirty and right to, so it can't, but more-more-more is maybe what his noises are. Then there's clapping and cheering, and shit. Ray tries to say that, to let Fraser know that maybe now the audience is their audience, since Fraser isn't stopping, and that's okay, Ray doesn't actually want to stop, and why would anyone but him be cheering for this, anyway? But something must get through because they do. Stop.
Panting, Ray snatches his hand out of Fraser's hair and bites his tongue to make real sure he doesn't lick his lips. The clapping is for the dancers on the screen, he realizes, not for them, which is good. Greatness. All he'd be able to say is, Fraser, and that's not helpful.
And then Fraser smiles, his mouth swollen and shy and smug all at the same time in the darkness. And Ray slowly smiles back, because, hey, you know what, he remembers how this happiness works.
##
Return to my due South stories