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valmoraTitle: the locker scene, for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
figletofvenice
Rating: R for sexual content and questionable language. it's mostly the sexual content.
Fandom: The Great Escape. AU.
Pairing: focus is Roger Bartlett/Sandy MacDonald; implied Virgil Hilts/Michael Goff, miscellaneous hetness, and implied RJ Ramsey+Friedrich vL
Disclaimer: If they were really doing this, I am truly a small eucalyptus-eating marsupial in Australia. With pink fur.
Notes: Roger uses the phrase “to make like Palm Pilots.” He means PDA’ing. ‘Bluer than grace’ refers to the Protestant belief that one can only reach Heaven because of God’s forgiveness (God’s grace).
Roger somehow persuades Nora to go to the dance with him, an exercise in coaxing that the Devil couldn’t have done if he tried. Nora’s already pissed off enough at him as it is, annoyed by his friendship with Louis and Nimmo, but by the time he wears her down, three weeks to the dance, she reveals that she already has a dress.
He’s not sure whether to be surprised or not. Not, probably. It’s like her to hold out just for the sake of watching him ask, over and over. Feels kind of like sex, at that – not that he’s sleeping with her. Yet.
So he figures if she’s still pleased with him by the end of dinner and the dance, he’ll go home and get laid and it’ll be a good conclusion to a fairly good year. If it weren’t for Eric and Louis making like Palm Pilots in the halls and RJ suddenly mooning over Herr V., then the year would’ve been excellent.
So, coming to German last period a few days before the dance, he’s in a good mood. Expectation will do that to a guy.
“Ten bucks,” Sandy says to Rupert as Roger walks through the door, “that Nora finally put out.”
“You shouldn’t bet in school,” Rupert tells him absently. “And I’m sure she’s much too moral a girl to do anything of the sort.” His voice has an undercurrent of irony, like a river under a coating of ice.
Roger lets his backpack fall to the floor and sits on his desk, waiting for the bell to ring as he says, “You owe him. She just said yes to taking her to Prom.”
“Damn. Here I thought I was going to be the only one with a date.” Sandy’s wry expression isn’t particularly disappointed, but –
“Wait, you? A date? What?” Roger sputters, then recovers with an ungraceful, “Did you lower your standards, or did you suddenly experience some sort of miraculous sexual conversion?”
Rupert laughs, then tries to stifle it, snickering anyway. Sandy glares at him, but it lacks the truly dangerous shadow that screams temper loss, so Roger isn’t worried.
“My standards,” he says, in lieu of beating RJ up, “have been met just fine.”
“Good for you, then,” Roger says, and means it.
The night of, he picks Nora up at her house and, contrary to stereotype, she’s the one waiting for him. Her toes tap on the ground in impatience, and she chews him out for being five minutes late, no matter if the main road on the way to her house was under construction.
On the bright side, though, her dress is gorgeous, clinging in all the right places and forcing his eyes to linger on her curves, on the shimmer of her dress and the play of its reflected light over her skin.
The dress is sienna-tan, a lighter background with dark accents on the edges, has a small waist and an easy flare over the hips and yards of tulle. She’s wearing elbow-length gloves, and by God if that isn’t a turn-on; the front of the dress comes low enough that his fingers ache to run over the more-than-barely visible swell of her breasts.
He wants her until she opens her mouth, and suddenly she is only annoying as she whines, voice shatter-glass high, “Well? Does it look like we’re there yet?”
“We’ll go,” he says by way of apology, and wishes momentarily that Sandy or RJ were there. At least then the conversation would be decent.
Later that night, Roger is stuck listening to her bitch like a particularly foul-tasting sweet, long past the area of ‘tart’ and into ‘rotten lemon.’ He is sick of her, desperately, horribly, and after dinner, lets her go to the Girls’ to primp with her friends and makes no fuss.
He goes looking for his friends, too unlucky to actually be seated by any of them. Finds RJ, dashing in a suit, dancing with a very pretty girl in a gothy dress, all corset and gromets and yards of noir-velour. RJ’s lips are black with the girl’s makeup and his eyes seem bluer than grace from the eyeliner, and Roger is loath to bother them.
He tries to find Sandy, too, and can’t – doesn’t know where to look, really. Asks Hilts, who has Goff by the waist and is apparently blackmailing him into dancing, to both Goff and Roger’s mortifications.
He makes an escape after finding out that they’ve no idea where Sandy is, and then only realizes after he’s in the hallway that Goff was leading. It makes him smile as he passes the makeshift coat check set up in the caf, an expression that disappears as he catches sight of Nora and her gaggle of sycophants.
In an effort to hide, he backs up a few paces to the cafeteria doorway, then goes through, slinking past the benevolent and under-clothed moms handing out claim stubs to anxious couples. Goes up the stairs to the mezzanine, hoping that the waist-height walls around the tables and the second-floor location will hide him from her.
Up the stairs, and Roger keeps quiet so the moms won’t notice but loud enough that anyone up there will know he’s coming and, if needed, have a chance to get some clothes on. Hesitates at the last step in expectation, then rounds the corner and looks at the tables.
Empty, and so are the chairs, but in the corner, next to the glass-fronted library wall, slouched on the floor, is Sandy. Sandy, tie loosened and the top button of his shirt undone, spilled out in a mess of limbs and leisure, one eye opened and the other shut, as though Roger woke him from a nap.
“Hey,” Sandy says. “Were you and Nora looking for a place to make out?”
“No,” Roger answers. “Did I bother you?”
Sandy smiles, a little sharp and lopsided. “Not as effectively as usual,” he quips, voice low and without the usual lift in tone at the end to signify sarcasm. “Sit down. You look like a mime who broke the fourth wall and kept the glass one.”
Roger saunters over and slides down the length of the wall to sit beside him. “What’re you doing here?” He doesn’t bother to eliminate the curiosity. “I thought you had a date.”
“Strep throat,” Sandy says by way of explanation.
Roger winces at a thought that runs through his head. “…please tell me you don’t have it.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
He relaxes against the wall and shifts so that the rough carpet of the mezzanine floor isn’t digging into his hands quite so much. Looks at his palms, and his skin is red and has a relief of the weave pressed into it. He wonders if he should mention anything about the thoughts he’s been having the past few months, the little wonders and the quiet suspicions, and is saying before he realizes it, “I think I’m going to tell Nora it’s over.”
“Sounds good,” Sandy says, and nothing more. He doesn’t need to mention that he’s never liked her; Roger knows that. Sandy’s never liked Nora, never liked Julie, never liked any of –
And things have never made sense and still don’t, but at least they don’t make sense in a more comprehensible way.
Sandy has his foot flat on the floor and hands wrapped around the knee close to his chest, fingers clasped together and the backs of his palms streaked with pale lines of scar tissue. His knuckles are still bandaged, scraped bloody-raw underneath. Roger wonders defiantly what any guy would see in Sandy, then says, to stop the thought, “Sandy, I –”
“Oh, no.” Sandy’s voice is deeper than usual, some unidentifiable emotion in it. “I can only see two places where this is going to go, and I don’t like either of them.”
“What?”
The response is a low, “You think – you probably think that all your girlfriends have been horrible and you have terrible taste in girls, which is the truth. But that doesn’t make you gay, and if you think that it does, don’t. I know you’re not, and no matter what you might–”
“Sandy?”
“–think, that doesn’t mean anything, and you can’t just come out on a whim because you are going to like as not find you think guys are gross, so–”
“Sandy, I’m not gay.”
“–oh. All right, then.” A note of pleased defiance, but maybe also one of despair.
“I’m bi.”
“…you should be shot. It’s probably just a–”
And Roger knows, he just knows, that he’ll have a second scar to match the one across his eye in a few weeks, because Sandy is going to lose his temper. It’s worth it anyway, this proof of his point – that he can kiss Sandy, mean it, and want more.
Sandy pushes him away, and something inside his chest goes cold. He sits back against the wall and waits for the spark to hit the TNT. It doesn’t.
“Don’t use me,” Sandy says quietly from beside him. “I’m your friend, not your girl. Just because you’ve known I was gay for almost as long as you’ve known me doesn’t give you that right.”
“No,” Roger says, “it doesn’t. I shouldn’t have done it like that.” But he doesn’t apologize, and his lips still burn.
They sit in silence, still beside one another, before Sandy states, “Looks like RJ is the last straight man standing.” He smiles, raw and open. “And he’s not.”
“I don’t know,” Roger says, doubtful, but does not continue. His hands are pressing into the mezzanine carpet, as though impressing the pattern into his skin could help him remember his self-control.
Sandy bows his head momentarily, his hair bright against the cloth of his suit, and then murmurs, “Roger.”
“Yeah?”
“Are you serious?”
“What about?” His shoulders feel tight and his body feels awkward, like it doesn’t fit his soul anymore.
“Everything. Anything. God.” Sandy gets to his feet, pacing to the other side of the mezzanine. “Sex. Kissing me. I don’t know.” He leans over the edge of the mezzanine, arms crossed along the railing.
Roger stands and follows him. “Yes.”
“Right, then,” Sandy says, and then again, “Right.” He turns to face Roger and says quietly, “I didn’t mind. I just thought you were teasing me.”
There is a temptation to respond with I guessed, but Roger doesn’t. Instead he answers, “I wasn’t.”
Sandy looks down over the cafeteria floor at the moms and their coat-check. “Nora’s going to kill you,” he says after a moment. “You sure?”
“I’m sure,” Roger answers, and then, “I think I like your attitude of hating girls. Makes dating easier.”
“Harder,” Sandy says, a correction, then smiles into his fist. “More difficult, that is,” and Roger just glances at him, arms crossed along the railing and leaning over to see down at the tile floor.
“Right,” he agrees. RJ’s date is getting her coat, and RJ is nowhere to be found. Guess it’s not going so well anymore for him.
Sandy kicks the poles holding up the mesh wall of the railing. “So, what now?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” He plays with the sleeve of his suit jacket. “What do you want?”
Sandy turns, looking at him in that sort of sideways, unconscious way that he’s always had, where he is somehow looking inside Roger’s thoughts without his eyes ever touching him.
Except now Sandy's looking right at him, and with that kind of intensity behind it, it’s uncomfortable.
Roger looks away, and Sandy says, “I could use a byline to go off of.”
He smiles and responds, “How about ‘Things Change?’”
“That’s unspeakably unjournalistic,” Sandy says, and suddenly he is almost-too-close, sharing Roger’s space and his air and his warmth, hands wrapped around the railing on either side of Roger’s waist and smiling.
No answer, no need for one. Roger just leans forward and –
If he’d known Sandy had been that hungry for him, he wouldn’t have waited so long to figure himself out, because kissing Sandy is raw, jagged-edged like his hands and it’s exactly like kissing a girl except Sandy isn’t playing games with him and that makes it completely unlike kissing a girl at all.
Sandy’s the one who stops it and takes the step back that shatters the moment.
“What time is it?” he asks, and Roger has to think to read his watch. Long hand past the ten, and the minute hand almost to the nine.
“Quarter to eleven. Why? Does your car turn into a pumpkin at midnight?” Roger doesn’t manage to get a smile for that one, but Sandy does inform him, sounding amused, “You are not Prince Charming.”
“Pity,” Roger observes, then pushes off the railing. “Are you going to stay for a while?”
Sandy meets his eyes and says deliberately, “I was thinking of leaving. I’m tired and I’d kind of like to sleep.”
Ohfuckohfuck. Sandy. Don’t have just said that, because Roger can remember the way you informed him that sex was stupid and dangerous and really only worth it if the other person was so special that it overcame the risks and – oh, Sandy.
“Let me see if I have to give Nora a ride home first,” he says, and takes the stairs three at a time.
He doesn’t have to. Nora slaps him when she sees him again, and though it only stings a little, the harm to his reputation is ruinous. He can hear it shattering behind him.
“You may not take me home,” she says. “I would die before I let you take me home.”
“Fair enough,” he responds, and pretends not to notice that Nora looks baffled by his easy acceptance of her rejection.
He finds Sandy in the stairwell next to the boys’ locker room, sitting on the second-to-lowest step and boot heels grinding against the floor tiles.
Sandy looks up at him, holding a pencil in his right hand like half of a set of chopsticks. “How’re things with Nora?”
“Over,” Roger answers, relieved to say the word. “Very over.”
Satisfied, “Thank God.”
Roger offers Sandy his hand to help him stand, gives him an extra pull to make them that much closer. Is less than surprised when Sandy uses the opportunity to kiss him, warm and slick and not afraid, not gentle at all.
They stumble, this time, too tangled up in each other to pay attention to anything so simple as balance, and Sandy’s shoulder jams into the whitewashed-cement wall, taking the brunt of both their weights. He makes a pained noise into Roger’s mouth but no more than that, one hand at the back of Roger’s head and the other creeping along the side of his ribs, fingertips tucked beneath the waistband of his pants.
“My parents aren’t home,” Roger says faintly, “and won’t be back until late tomorrow. They’re staying in the city.”
“Your parents are mad,” Sandy quips, “but in the best way we know. How about –” and here that look, of insanity and daredevil-fire and temper, “– right here?”
He thinks he’s going to die of embarrassment. “Here?” he squeaks. “No. Maybe…” A look around and then a decidedly more assured, “Here,” with a yank through the swinging door to the boys’ locker room, not bolted shut despite the event.
Slams back-first into the jamb of the second set of doors, and ow, fuck, but at least there’s some privacy here – hopes so, anyway – and now the two of them are pressed so close together that there’s no way not to know where this is headed. Sandy all raw bones and muscle under that suit, under Roger’s hands, heat and skin, easy lines and the look of him when the pace of their movements slows – good, better than good, to see him hazy-eyed and distracted and out of breath. His shirt is untucked, too, wrinkled, and he doesn’t look so much just-fucked as about-to-be, Roger’s hands over his as the two of them unbuckle Sandy’s belt and unfasten and – if Roger were thinking this would seem really weird – further, a kind of awkward not-really familiarity.
Sandy doesn’t seem to mind, though, judging by the grip of his hands on Roger’s arms, tight and bruising, and the way he seems to be saying, “Yes,” over and over again into Roger’s mouth. And Roger isn’t planning on stopping, not when Sandy is enjoying it, not when he’s finally got himself figured out and everything’s falling into place.
Doesn’t know how he couldn’t have realized Sandy was this precious to him, but he is, heat of his skin warming Roger too, the both of them getting hot and Roger wants out of his clothes, makes to loosen his tie.
“Keep it on,” Sandy says, referring to the tie, thrusting faintly into Roger’s hand, breath coming fast and his cheekbones red as though burned from cold. “Don’t you want-” but the sentence remains unfinished as Roger kisses him, feels the press of their bodies against each other.
And then Sandy stops. Stops kissing, stops moving, steps away, still breathing so fast and Jesus fuck but Roger knows he’s still hard and what the hell? He’s zipping up his pants, tucking his shirt back in, smiling for real like a cat and the canary.
“I’m sorry,” he tells Roger, shoving his hands in his pants pockets, staring him right in the eyes. “Got carried away. Was going to wait until we got back to your house. And a bed.”
So maybe Roger is upset, but hearing that makes him a lot more reasonable about it, since he knows what’ll be after. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he says, thinking about his own dishevelled appearance and making some effort to fix it.
“What, me disappoint? Never,” Sandy answers, and then adds, “If you’re ready to face the world, we can go home.”
“Right,” Roger says, and walks with him out the door to the car.
figletofveniceRating: R for sexual content and questionable language. it's mostly the sexual content.
Fandom: The Great Escape. AU.
Pairing: focus is Roger Bartlett/Sandy MacDonald; implied Virgil Hilts/Michael Goff, miscellaneous hetness, and implied RJ Ramsey+Friedrich vL
Disclaimer: If they were really doing this, I am truly a small eucalyptus-eating marsupial in Australia. With pink fur.
Notes: Roger uses the phrase “to make like Palm Pilots.” He means PDA’ing. ‘Bluer than grace’ refers to the Protestant belief that one can only reach Heaven because of God’s forgiveness (God’s grace).
Roger somehow persuades Nora to go to the dance with him, an exercise in coaxing that the Devil couldn’t have done if he tried. Nora’s already pissed off enough at him as it is, annoyed by his friendship with Louis and Nimmo, but by the time he wears her down, three weeks to the dance, she reveals that she already has a dress.
He’s not sure whether to be surprised or not. Not, probably. It’s like her to hold out just for the sake of watching him ask, over and over. Feels kind of like sex, at that – not that he’s sleeping with her. Yet.
So he figures if she’s still pleased with him by the end of dinner and the dance, he’ll go home and get laid and it’ll be a good conclusion to a fairly good year. If it weren’t for Eric and Louis making like Palm Pilots in the halls and RJ suddenly mooning over Herr V., then the year would’ve been excellent.
So, coming to German last period a few days before the dance, he’s in a good mood. Expectation will do that to a guy.
“Ten bucks,” Sandy says to Rupert as Roger walks through the door, “that Nora finally put out.”
“You shouldn’t bet in school,” Rupert tells him absently. “And I’m sure she’s much too moral a girl to do anything of the sort.” His voice has an undercurrent of irony, like a river under a coating of ice.
Roger lets his backpack fall to the floor and sits on his desk, waiting for the bell to ring as he says, “You owe him. She just said yes to taking her to Prom.”
“Damn. Here I thought I was going to be the only one with a date.” Sandy’s wry expression isn’t particularly disappointed, but –
“Wait, you? A date? What?” Roger sputters, then recovers with an ungraceful, “Did you lower your standards, or did you suddenly experience some sort of miraculous sexual conversion?”
Rupert laughs, then tries to stifle it, snickering anyway. Sandy glares at him, but it lacks the truly dangerous shadow that screams temper loss, so Roger isn’t worried.
“My standards,” he says, in lieu of beating RJ up, “have been met just fine.”
“Good for you, then,” Roger says, and means it.
The night of, he picks Nora up at her house and, contrary to stereotype, she’s the one waiting for him. Her toes tap on the ground in impatience, and she chews him out for being five minutes late, no matter if the main road on the way to her house was under construction.
On the bright side, though, her dress is gorgeous, clinging in all the right places and forcing his eyes to linger on her curves, on the shimmer of her dress and the play of its reflected light over her skin.
The dress is sienna-tan, a lighter background with dark accents on the edges, has a small waist and an easy flare over the hips and yards of tulle. She’s wearing elbow-length gloves, and by God if that isn’t a turn-on; the front of the dress comes low enough that his fingers ache to run over the more-than-barely visible swell of her breasts.
He wants her until she opens her mouth, and suddenly she is only annoying as she whines, voice shatter-glass high, “Well? Does it look like we’re there yet?”
“We’ll go,” he says by way of apology, and wishes momentarily that Sandy or RJ were there. At least then the conversation would be decent.
Later that night, Roger is stuck listening to her bitch like a particularly foul-tasting sweet, long past the area of ‘tart’ and into ‘rotten lemon.’ He is sick of her, desperately, horribly, and after dinner, lets her go to the Girls’ to primp with her friends and makes no fuss.
He goes looking for his friends, too unlucky to actually be seated by any of them. Finds RJ, dashing in a suit, dancing with a very pretty girl in a gothy dress, all corset and gromets and yards of noir-velour. RJ’s lips are black with the girl’s makeup and his eyes seem bluer than grace from the eyeliner, and Roger is loath to bother them.
He tries to find Sandy, too, and can’t – doesn’t know where to look, really. Asks Hilts, who has Goff by the waist and is apparently blackmailing him into dancing, to both Goff and Roger’s mortifications.
He makes an escape after finding out that they’ve no idea where Sandy is, and then only realizes after he’s in the hallway that Goff was leading. It makes him smile as he passes the makeshift coat check set up in the caf, an expression that disappears as he catches sight of Nora and her gaggle of sycophants.
In an effort to hide, he backs up a few paces to the cafeteria doorway, then goes through, slinking past the benevolent and under-clothed moms handing out claim stubs to anxious couples. Goes up the stairs to the mezzanine, hoping that the waist-height walls around the tables and the second-floor location will hide him from her.
Up the stairs, and Roger keeps quiet so the moms won’t notice but loud enough that anyone up there will know he’s coming and, if needed, have a chance to get some clothes on. Hesitates at the last step in expectation, then rounds the corner and looks at the tables.
Empty, and so are the chairs, but in the corner, next to the glass-fronted library wall, slouched on the floor, is Sandy. Sandy, tie loosened and the top button of his shirt undone, spilled out in a mess of limbs and leisure, one eye opened and the other shut, as though Roger woke him from a nap.
“Hey,” Sandy says. “Were you and Nora looking for a place to make out?”
“No,” Roger answers. “Did I bother you?”
Sandy smiles, a little sharp and lopsided. “Not as effectively as usual,” he quips, voice low and without the usual lift in tone at the end to signify sarcasm. “Sit down. You look like a mime who broke the fourth wall and kept the glass one.”
Roger saunters over and slides down the length of the wall to sit beside him. “What’re you doing here?” He doesn’t bother to eliminate the curiosity. “I thought you had a date.”
“Strep throat,” Sandy says by way of explanation.
Roger winces at a thought that runs through his head. “…please tell me you don’t have it.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
He relaxes against the wall and shifts so that the rough carpet of the mezzanine floor isn’t digging into his hands quite so much. Looks at his palms, and his skin is red and has a relief of the weave pressed into it. He wonders if he should mention anything about the thoughts he’s been having the past few months, the little wonders and the quiet suspicions, and is saying before he realizes it, “I think I’m going to tell Nora it’s over.”
“Sounds good,” Sandy says, and nothing more. He doesn’t need to mention that he’s never liked her; Roger knows that. Sandy’s never liked Nora, never liked Julie, never liked any of –
And things have never made sense and still don’t, but at least they don’t make sense in a more comprehensible way.
Sandy has his foot flat on the floor and hands wrapped around the knee close to his chest, fingers clasped together and the backs of his palms streaked with pale lines of scar tissue. His knuckles are still bandaged, scraped bloody-raw underneath. Roger wonders defiantly what any guy would see in Sandy, then says, to stop the thought, “Sandy, I –”
“Oh, no.” Sandy’s voice is deeper than usual, some unidentifiable emotion in it. “I can only see two places where this is going to go, and I don’t like either of them.”
“What?”
The response is a low, “You think – you probably think that all your girlfriends have been horrible and you have terrible taste in girls, which is the truth. But that doesn’t make you gay, and if you think that it does, don’t. I know you’re not, and no matter what you might–”
“Sandy?”
“–think, that doesn’t mean anything, and you can’t just come out on a whim because you are going to like as not find you think guys are gross, so–”
“Sandy, I’m not gay.”
“–oh. All right, then.” A note of pleased defiance, but maybe also one of despair.
“I’m bi.”
“…you should be shot. It’s probably just a–”
And Roger knows, he just knows, that he’ll have a second scar to match the one across his eye in a few weeks, because Sandy is going to lose his temper. It’s worth it anyway, this proof of his point – that he can kiss Sandy, mean it, and want more.
Sandy pushes him away, and something inside his chest goes cold. He sits back against the wall and waits for the spark to hit the TNT. It doesn’t.
“Don’t use me,” Sandy says quietly from beside him. “I’m your friend, not your girl. Just because you’ve known I was gay for almost as long as you’ve known me doesn’t give you that right.”
“No,” Roger says, “it doesn’t. I shouldn’t have done it like that.” But he doesn’t apologize, and his lips still burn.
They sit in silence, still beside one another, before Sandy states, “Looks like RJ is the last straight man standing.” He smiles, raw and open. “And he’s not.”
“I don’t know,” Roger says, doubtful, but does not continue. His hands are pressing into the mezzanine carpet, as though impressing the pattern into his skin could help him remember his self-control.
Sandy bows his head momentarily, his hair bright against the cloth of his suit, and then murmurs, “Roger.”
“Yeah?”
“Are you serious?”
“What about?” His shoulders feel tight and his body feels awkward, like it doesn’t fit his soul anymore.
“Everything. Anything. God.” Sandy gets to his feet, pacing to the other side of the mezzanine. “Sex. Kissing me. I don’t know.” He leans over the edge of the mezzanine, arms crossed along the railing.
Roger stands and follows him. “Yes.”
“Right, then,” Sandy says, and then again, “Right.” He turns to face Roger and says quietly, “I didn’t mind. I just thought you were teasing me.”
There is a temptation to respond with I guessed, but Roger doesn’t. Instead he answers, “I wasn’t.”
Sandy looks down over the cafeteria floor at the moms and their coat-check. “Nora’s going to kill you,” he says after a moment. “You sure?”
“I’m sure,” Roger answers, and then, “I think I like your attitude of hating girls. Makes dating easier.”
“Harder,” Sandy says, a correction, then smiles into his fist. “More difficult, that is,” and Roger just glances at him, arms crossed along the railing and leaning over to see down at the tile floor.
“Right,” he agrees. RJ’s date is getting her coat, and RJ is nowhere to be found. Guess it’s not going so well anymore for him.
Sandy kicks the poles holding up the mesh wall of the railing. “So, what now?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” He plays with the sleeve of his suit jacket. “What do you want?”
Sandy turns, looking at him in that sort of sideways, unconscious way that he’s always had, where he is somehow looking inside Roger’s thoughts without his eyes ever touching him.
Except now Sandy's looking right at him, and with that kind of intensity behind it, it’s uncomfortable.
Roger looks away, and Sandy says, “I could use a byline to go off of.”
He smiles and responds, “How about ‘Things Change?’”
“That’s unspeakably unjournalistic,” Sandy says, and suddenly he is almost-too-close, sharing Roger’s space and his air and his warmth, hands wrapped around the railing on either side of Roger’s waist and smiling.
No answer, no need for one. Roger just leans forward and –
If he’d known Sandy had been that hungry for him, he wouldn’t have waited so long to figure himself out, because kissing Sandy is raw, jagged-edged like his hands and it’s exactly like kissing a girl except Sandy isn’t playing games with him and that makes it completely unlike kissing a girl at all.
Sandy’s the one who stops it and takes the step back that shatters the moment.
“What time is it?” he asks, and Roger has to think to read his watch. Long hand past the ten, and the minute hand almost to the nine.
“Quarter to eleven. Why? Does your car turn into a pumpkin at midnight?” Roger doesn’t manage to get a smile for that one, but Sandy does inform him, sounding amused, “You are not Prince Charming.”
“Pity,” Roger observes, then pushes off the railing. “Are you going to stay for a while?”
Sandy meets his eyes and says deliberately, “I was thinking of leaving. I’m tired and I’d kind of like to sleep.”
Ohfuckohfuck. Sandy. Don’t have just said that, because Roger can remember the way you informed him that sex was stupid and dangerous and really only worth it if the other person was so special that it overcame the risks and – oh, Sandy.
“Let me see if I have to give Nora a ride home first,” he says, and takes the stairs three at a time.
He doesn’t have to. Nora slaps him when she sees him again, and though it only stings a little, the harm to his reputation is ruinous. He can hear it shattering behind him.
“You may not take me home,” she says. “I would die before I let you take me home.”
“Fair enough,” he responds, and pretends not to notice that Nora looks baffled by his easy acceptance of her rejection.
He finds Sandy in the stairwell next to the boys’ locker room, sitting on the second-to-lowest step and boot heels grinding against the floor tiles.
Sandy looks up at him, holding a pencil in his right hand like half of a set of chopsticks. “How’re things with Nora?”
“Over,” Roger answers, relieved to say the word. “Very over.”
Satisfied, “Thank God.”
Roger offers Sandy his hand to help him stand, gives him an extra pull to make them that much closer. Is less than surprised when Sandy uses the opportunity to kiss him, warm and slick and not afraid, not gentle at all.
They stumble, this time, too tangled up in each other to pay attention to anything so simple as balance, and Sandy’s shoulder jams into the whitewashed-cement wall, taking the brunt of both their weights. He makes a pained noise into Roger’s mouth but no more than that, one hand at the back of Roger’s head and the other creeping along the side of his ribs, fingertips tucked beneath the waistband of his pants.
“My parents aren’t home,” Roger says faintly, “and won’t be back until late tomorrow. They’re staying in the city.”
“Your parents are mad,” Sandy quips, “but in the best way we know. How about –” and here that look, of insanity and daredevil-fire and temper, “– right here?”
He thinks he’s going to die of embarrassment. “Here?” he squeaks. “No. Maybe…” A look around and then a decidedly more assured, “Here,” with a yank through the swinging door to the boys’ locker room, not bolted shut despite the event.
Slams back-first into the jamb of the second set of doors, and ow, fuck, but at least there’s some privacy here – hopes so, anyway – and now the two of them are pressed so close together that there’s no way not to know where this is headed. Sandy all raw bones and muscle under that suit, under Roger’s hands, heat and skin, easy lines and the look of him when the pace of their movements slows – good, better than good, to see him hazy-eyed and distracted and out of breath. His shirt is untucked, too, wrinkled, and he doesn’t look so much just-fucked as about-to-be, Roger’s hands over his as the two of them unbuckle Sandy’s belt and unfasten and – if Roger were thinking this would seem really weird – further, a kind of awkward not-really familiarity.
Sandy doesn’t seem to mind, though, judging by the grip of his hands on Roger’s arms, tight and bruising, and the way he seems to be saying, “Yes,” over and over again into Roger’s mouth. And Roger isn’t planning on stopping, not when Sandy is enjoying it, not when he’s finally got himself figured out and everything’s falling into place.
Doesn’t know how he couldn’t have realized Sandy was this precious to him, but he is, heat of his skin warming Roger too, the both of them getting hot and Roger wants out of his clothes, makes to loosen his tie.
“Keep it on,” Sandy says, referring to the tie, thrusting faintly into Roger’s hand, breath coming fast and his cheekbones red as though burned from cold. “Don’t you want-” but the sentence remains unfinished as Roger kisses him, feels the press of their bodies against each other.
And then Sandy stops. Stops kissing, stops moving, steps away, still breathing so fast and Jesus fuck but Roger knows he’s still hard and what the hell? He’s zipping up his pants, tucking his shirt back in, smiling for real like a cat and the canary.
“I’m sorry,” he tells Roger, shoving his hands in his pants pockets, staring him right in the eyes. “Got carried away. Was going to wait until we got back to your house. And a bed.”
So maybe Roger is upset, but hearing that makes him a lot more reasonable about it, since he knows what’ll be after. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he says, thinking about his own dishevelled appearance and making some effort to fix it.
“What, me disappoint? Never,” Sandy answers, and then adds, “If you’re ready to face the world, we can go home.”
“Right,” Roger says, and walks with him out the door to the car.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-10 04:58 pm (UTC)Hi everyone, my name is Incoherent, and I'm in love with this fic.
I love it, I love Roger, even if he is confused for far too long. I love your Sandy, and I love the interaction between all of them in class. HOW ABOUT I JUST SAY THAT I LOVE IT ALL.
I'M FLAILING SO MUCH I D0N'T EVEN KNOW WORDS ANYMORE.
AND I LOVE VIRGIL BLACKMAILING MICHAEL TO DANCE.
AND THE LOCKER ROOM.
...Sorry, but, yeah. I'm dead. You killed me with your fabulous fic.
And now I need to finish mine, because I feel super super guilty that I haven't and that I made you wait this long. And also, I want to.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-19 06:14 pm (UTC)Yay!
he is confused for far too long
I agree. Canon!Roger should be less clueless.
I love the interaction between all of them in class
Aww. Thanks. That's one of my favorite parts, too. =D
I LOVE VIRGIL BLACKMAILING MICHAEL TO DANCE.
I'm fond of that. Poor Michael. =) I hope Virgil was wearing steel-toed boots.
You killed me with your fabulous fic
Eee!
no subject
Date: 2006-03-19 07:35 pm (UTC)Agreed. And real canon, movie canon, Roger had better be less clueless, otherwise he'd kill everyone by accident.
I hope Virgil was wearing steel-toed boots.
Awww, is Michael a really bad dancer, or is he doing it on purpose to get back at Virgil?
... And I posted my half, finally. It's here, if you want to read it: http://addandsubtract.livejournal.com/12899.html
no subject
Date: 2006-03-19 07:40 pm (UTC)Seconded.
otherwise he'd kill everyone by accident.
That would be funny in a sick sort of way. XD
doing it on purpose to get back at Virgil?
I'm assuming this one. Michael is such an apple-pie sort of boy he probably took fortnightly in eighth grade. =D
And I posted my half, finally
I just read it. Um, incoherency ahoy. I'll try to leave a coherent comment soon. XD
no subject
Date: 2006-03-19 11:37 pm (UTC)I think if I ever tried to write that, I'd die laughing during the process. It would be fun! :D
Michael is such an apple-pie sort of boy he probably took fortnightly in eighth grade.
I agree! He's so... "all-american" and prudish, ahahaha. I think it's adorable.
Um, incoherency ahoy. I'll try to leave a coherent comment soon. XD
Ahahaha! Did you see my original comment? Coherency is overrated, if you ask me. Probably because I'm bad at it.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 12:22 am (UTC)I'd bring you back with an infusion of badfic so that you'd have to come back just out of fury at being exposed to it. Like smelling salts.
Coherency is overrated
Indeed it is. =)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-12 01:53 am (UTC)you need to go see. Very good. and Dreamy [pun intended]