Fic: Sparkles in the Night

[raqs]

Title: Sparkles in the Night
Author: raqs
Summary: The most basic joys.
Word Count: 3,075
Rating: G
Disclaimer: None
Written For: rivulet027
Prompt:Playful Jack
Notes:This is undoubtedly more pensive than the requester wanted, and undoubtedly a lot less graphic. I do apologize - this is what I had in me.


The crunch of gravel under the tires woke Daniel.

He blinked, sitting up, wondering if the new bend in his neck were permanent. He wondered why aliens had never invented the perfect travel pillow.

He reached for the neck of his shirt, where he always kept his glasses while sleeping sitting up.

"What is it?" He blinked harder as he adjusted the glasses.

Jack didn't answer. The setting sun also contributed to his blindness. He was too stubborn to ask what state they were in if he didn't recognize it from the geography. He also didn't wonder if Jack wanted him to take a turn driving. If Jack wanted to be the passenger for a while, he'd say so.

There were more cars, pulled up in almost-neat rows on the grass. A rope tied to a row of cheap flimsy stakes set ten feet apart. A homemade parking lot.

"Why'd you stop?" Daniel still felt bleary. Waking up as the sun went down always felt wrong and a little bit wretched.

Jack came around the side of the truck, opened the door for Daniel. He did that sometimes, when he felt Daniel was moving too slowly, or perhaps sometimes just to feed a gallant urge.

He put out his hand.

"It's a fair," he said in a tone that clearly, as far as he was concerned, conveyed everything that needed to be conveyed.

Daniel blinked again. He was standing on bent, newly-crushed grass, standing next to a gravel track that twisted away into the waving green sea. Beyond the haphazard beaching of cars, beyond the homemade rope wall, there were the strange humps and blobs of not-yet-operable carnival structures. There was a frozen tilt-a-whirl, a closed dark house of mystery, a row of boxes containing games and gimmicks, each one lined with extinguished old-fashioned glass lightbulbs, and above it all the immobile silent cranelike framework of a ferris wheel, bucket seats lying motionless between their struts like lonely marionettes.

Between them and the silent masses, there were children. Old people. Mothers with babies in strollers, dads with sticky children, teenagers afraid to stand too close to each other, teenagers in single-sex chains following each other and only each other through the crowd.

It wasn't as loud as Daniel would have imagined. They were excited, and there was a lot of noise, now that Daniel's glasses were adjusted and he could somehow take in the whole scene and the sound came on. But it wasn't crazy loud.

Daniel turned to Jack, both eyebrows climbing. "Jack?"

"It's a fair," Jack said again, slowly, as though waiting for Daniel to catch up to him linguistically.

"Uh," said Daniel.

They could have had a conversation, but it wasn't necessary. No, there wasn't anywhere they had to be. Yes, this was as good a place to stop as any. Better than some.

Daniel blinked again, ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth as though he could find some answers in there, ran through the various things he could or should say. He looked up at Jack.

He said, "Are you going to win me a stuffed animal?"

A rare actual smile. The vertical grooves appearing, then disappearing on either side of that lean, sculpted face. Jack didn't meet his eyes. He was watching as the glowing centers of the light bulbs came on, the orange and purple glow around the fun house, a string of lights outlining the gate to the tilt-a-whirl. Children squealed.

Jack smiled again. "Yep," he said.

And he took Daniel's hand.

They wandered down the strip, taking in all the sights and sounds. As soon as the string gate was removed - such power in a little string with plastic flags on it! - the kids flooded the place, and they frequently paused to keep from tripping over someone knee-high who cut in front of them with single-minded determination to reach the animal petting pen, or the cotton candy.

By the time they turned and walked back, the sun had dipped below the curve of the land, leaving just an orange strip of memory in the sky, and the last of the lights had lit. Some of them spun, some of them shifted colors. Some blinked. Some couldn't seem to decide.

"Want to try the fun house?" Jack's question had a mild suggestion of something in it, something Daniel was supposed to pay attention to.

"Isn't the fun house where you try to cop a feel in the dark of stuff you're not supposed to be groping in public?"

"Yep," Jack said again, the line of his jaw flat-out relaxing as he grinned.

Daniel felt something warm open up in his chest. "You should win me a stuffed animal first."

"Ah. Bribes." Jack sauntered up to a shooting game, where the unsuspecting barker was encouraging him to buy himself three tries for a dollar.

Daniel's knowledge of carnival games was limited. They weren't all skill, he knew. But skill didn't hurt.

The barker lost a good deal of his enthusiasm when Jack put out his hand for his third batch of prize tickets. "Good at this, aren'tcha?" he said, trying to still sound like he was praising Jack even as he was wondering how to get this guy to go bug someone else's game.

Jack took pity on him. The huge stuffed pony that hung from the booth's wall remained unclaimed. He waved his hand magnanimously for Daniel to choose from the second-tier toys, a cut above the dollar-store thin fabric puppets but not bothering to step up even to the arm-length tigers and bears that aspired to be as majestic as that pony.

Daniel picked a smallish anthropomorphized elephant. It reminded him pleasantly of Babar books from his youth; it was wearing a tie.

They took the elephant on the tilt-a-whirl, then Daniel stuffed it into his shirt before they wandered into the fun house.

It wasn't easy to find a corner that wasn't occupied by children too small to observe what they wanted to do in there, or children old enough to be trying it themselves. Jack had to take a few tactical turns around the place before he found a spot, behind some fun mirrors, where technically it was clear enough that no one was supposed to be standing. The polyester black curtains billowed over the spot as they disappeared inside.

It was warm, and smelled of odd sticky things, and Daniel laughed into Jack's neck as Jack's hands did indeed wander, and then reported back, and then wandered some more.

When they emerged the sky had darkened sufficiently to show the stars that had been there all along.

"Ah!" Daniel made a surprised noise of desire. He stretched out a hand.

Jack turned and cocked his head.

"Deep fried Oreos!" Daniel pointed.

Daniel wanted to buy three; Jack talked him into just one. "Try one first," he urged.

He couldn't keep from laughing at the expressions that chased each other across Daniel's face as he put the hot crusty thing into his mouth and bit down. Amazement, wonder, delight... then the second bite, and, yes, the pucker of something too sweet, then a reluctant swallow.

"That was incredible. It was the most delicious thing when I put it into my mouth. And then by the second bite, I was already thinking, why did I buy this revolting thing?"

Jack just nodded.

His hands were stuffed in his pockets. Daniel wanted to go back to the fun house.

"Well, it's time," said Jack, and Daniel felt his heart plummet. Not time to go, surely? Not already? The stars had just really come out, and they twinkled in absolute storybook fashion in between all the garish cartoon-colored earthly lights.

"You're not afraid of heights, right?" said Jack, tucking a hand under Daniel's elbow and steering him towards the ferris wheel.

It was rhetorical, Daniel mused as they waited in line. Jack surely knew the answer to such a question. Or maybe he didn't. Thousands of miles up in space wasn't the same as twenty-five feet up on a ferris wheel, after all.

Jack's leg was warm against his. From a height they could see that the grass fields, unplanted corn fields, apparently, stretched in three black directions from the bright center that was them. The carnival, they could now see, butted up against a low industrial building - a body shop, or a school. It was just a darker grayer shape in the night.

Jack looked at him solemnly when they reached the top.

"And now it's time."

And Daniel thought he was going to rock the seat. Which, he realized, he would hate. But which he would put up with, for the look on Jack's face, which he'd never really seen before - a combination of calm happiness, mischief, and smugness.

Jack tickled him.

"Goddamn it, Jack!" sputtered Daniel, irritated as hell because he was laughing, and couldn't stop it, and hated the sensation of being tickled, hated squirming in the swinging bucket seat, hated that it was him making it swing because Jack was tickling him, hated that Jack was so damn lovable that it was impossible to be really mad with him even as he was considering how to get the drop on Jack and kick him in the balls once they were back down on solid ground.

Jack's belly laugh was relaxed, even though he knew exactly what Daniel was thinking, and both of them knew it.

"Dammit," said Daniel again, but he didn't mean it, and when Jack leaned in to kiss him, he let him.

He had a hard time not thinking, and in his head he composed a long series of musings on whether happiness stumbled upon was better than happiness reached for. But he didn't say them. Jack was happier this way, and they were thoughts just passing through. If one of them felt good enough to stay, he'd tell Jack later. Later, when they were driving again, and he was keeping Jack awake, or Jack was keeping him awake, and both of them would be stimulated by the way Daniel ran off at the mouth about whatever was wandering around in his head.

The seat stopped at the bottom, but there were only a handful of other people waiting to get on. Jack leaned forward and muttered to the operator a little, and when he leaned back, a folded bill in his hand was gone, and the ferris wheel operator obligingly balanced out the wheel by filling some seats at the La Grange points instead.

At the top again, they could look down.

"Are they doing what it looks like they're doing?" Daniel asked, his eyes fixed on the ground below him.

Jack peered, his long-distance vision better. "They are racing piglets."

"Of course they are."

"I've never seen anything like that in my life."

The piglets' squeals floated up towards them in the night air.

The announcer was trying to heat up interest in the race, or perhaps betting. Extolling the virtues of this or that piglet, he kept up a running patter while the piglet handler tried in vain to get the piglets to line up in a row all facing the same way, largely by clever use of a trough full of food in front of them. Still, it was rough going.

Suddenly, slam, the handler threw a lever and the trough flew up out of the way. Though there were a few small confused souls, most of the piglets threw themselves hell-for-leather down the little course, heading for the trough filled with food on the other side. The announcer kept up his running commentary for the whole ten seconds or so of the race, commenting on the speed of the winner, when really it looked to Daniel like the winner was simply the biggest piglet down there. Probably from one of the earlier batches, he thought.

Jack looked at Daniel, and this time it was he who blinked. "Daniel. On this planet. My home planet. They are piglet racing."

Daniel just grinned. "Who knew."

They watched for a few more seconds, catching glimpses of the piglet wrangler trying to herd the pigs back down the track for another go as they spun around the wheel, steel beams periodically blocking their view.

"Want to go down and watch?" Daniel offered.

He thought about it for a second, then, "Nah," said Jack. Whatever the mystery was for him, he seemed to want to keep it at arm's length.

There was a bittersweet sadness to climbing out of the bench bucket and back on to mere ground. Oreos, elephants, and racing piglets were all in the past. Daniel looked up.

He was preferring these moments when past and future didn't exist, he decided. Looked over at Jack, relaxed Jack, hands in his pants pockets, braced for anything, waiting for nothing.

"Tilt-a-whirl?" Jack inquired colmly.

Daniel looked around. Much longer among all these kids, surging evidence of life, and it would become sad. "Nah," he said in unconscious imitation of Jack. "I'm good."

"Let's --"

But Daniel would never find out what Jack was going to say, because right then, in the soft black night sky, a red rocket exploded.

Then a blue one.

All the people at the fair made their noises of surprise or pleasure or excitement, and Jack grabbed Daniel's hand. "Run," and Daniel felt his heart thump unpleasantly in his chest, the adrenalin pound that undoubtedly took a year off his life every time.

But it was just fireworks, green and pink and white joining the red and blue, and Jack threw himself into the truck and had it almost in gear before Daniel's butt had met the seat.

Daniel yanked his door shut as Jack sent the truck bouncing further afield on the new bent green track.

"You can't set off fireworks out over a field like this. Not as dry as it is." Jack seemed uncharacteristically inclined toward explanation as the truck jerked and bounded over the hillocky ground. "There must be a lake."

Sure enough, in just a few minutes a gravel parking lot came into view, with a dozen vehicles parked in it, and the glittery fall and disappearance of each firework was reflected in the still dark of a lake below.

Jack didn't help Daniel out of the truck this time - he beat him, out the back and climbing over the tailgate. By the time Daniel reached him Jack was flat in the truck bed, hands folded under his head, staring up at the sky.

"You gotta get close enough to feel the boom in your chest," Jack explained, unnecessarily, as Daniel lay next to him, close enough to touch.

They watched the patterns, rosettes and ribbons and pom-poms of bright fiery color, and listened, and lived.

The last few explosions built up and over each other, competing to light up the sky and the earth and leave only their grey smoke shadows behind.

"That's the finale," Jack finally said, almost under his breath.

Daniel expected to feel a little sad again, but he didn't. It was good. It was fine.

They lay there, invisible to most eyes, as the other cars, vans and trucks in the little country lot filed out. One woman in a high truck cab saw them down in their bed and rolled down her window to yell inexplicably, "You can't camp here!" as she followed the rest of the vehicles out.

Daniel's eyes narrowed. They'd given no indication of doing any such thing. Town busybody? Just a random jerk?

"When you look like that, I'm glad you're not armed," said Jack lightly, rolling and standing - not as quickly as he used to - and holding out his hand.

"Sometimes I'm armed," Daniel replied evenly.

"Well, when you look like that and you're not armed, I'm glad of it," Jack said, just as off-the-cuff as before, and climbed down to the gravel. Daniel jumped down.

They climbed into the cab but the peaceful odd magical streak of existence was gone, blown out like a candle. Jack flashed Daniel a not-quite-real smile. "Just say it."

"It's like a turd in a koi pond."

At that, Jack did laugh, for real.

"Back on the road, buddy," he said, steering after where almost all the other vehicles had gone. There were a few cars left behind. Maybe there were kids - or grown-ups - planning to camp at the side of the lake, local rules be damned.

Back on the two-lane quote-unquote highway, they passed a mile marker, also a sign that they seemed to have re-entered the real world. There were edges to their headlights, colors were gone, the road made its usual susurration underneath their tires.

Daniel wanted to ask why they'd done it, or what they were going to do now. But Jack had already given him everything. He was ready to drive on.

Daniel let the patches of yellow slip past the car for a while.

"I don't - I've never believed that saying about how you have to have some bad times or you wouldn't appreciate the good times. Something about it just doesn't work for me."

Jack just nodded, eyes still on the road, loose and easy in his seat, hands on the steering wheel.

Daniel went on. "But there are times, like this, when everything - when you know everything is special. When you see every blade of grass, you know --" he looked out at the silvery green tufts speeding past them in the leaked side light of the truck - "-- and you know you're going to remember them, just like that, for the rest of your life."

"Hmm," said Jack.

"And at these times, I think - well, it's no wonder bad things happen. Because if it were all this good, all the time... The thing is, it can't be."

"No, it can't be," Jack agreed, with a slow nod, reflecting the bounce of the truck over the highway. "But at the same time, you know, it is."

Of course. Jack was already there. How did Jack know so much and say so little?

"Yeah," Daniel agreed, slumping down in the bench seat, looking forward down the road again. "It is."