ak;jfoiwejfklsdf neck... + fic
I'm glad that I fucked up my neck so much that sitting in front of my computer doing work hurts. And it's too bad that my work on the newspaper, my work at Planned Parenthood, and my senior project involve me sitting in front of the computer typing like... a lot. And I can't just lie on my bed for no reason when I'm at one of those two offices because... well, my bed isn't there.
Oh, I'm really Pouty McGrumpsalot today, aren't I? Here are some things to make up for it. Neither of them are complete:
The Thrill of Victory, the Agony of Defeat
roughly pg-rated SGA fic in which a prank war is declared; gen-ish in the way that a show that's so gay I can't handle it is gen-ish. set after "The Intruder."
"Where is he?"
Rodney is breathing heavily, flushed pink, hair and eyes wild. He's trembling with rage, glancing furiously around the room and freaking the fuck out of the new med staff. Carson looks torn between mild amusement and mild apprehension, although Elizabeth thinks the apprehension has more to do with Rodney's blood pressure than anything else.
"Who are you looking for?" Elizabeth asks patiently, although it can really only be one person. Atlantis' very own Oscar and Felix have been suspiciously absent from each other's company recently. In the rush of returning to Pegasus and getting the new staff settled, she hasn't thought much of it, but now she's either curious or concerned. She won't know for sure before she talks to John, or, more specifically, sees which of his elusive smiles crosses his face when she mentions the Chief Scientist's name.
"Oh, you know who!" Rodney snaps. He glances around the conference room, under the table, out at the balcony. When he lunges forward to peer into a corner, one of the new nurses whimpers. "Where is he? Whatever he threatened you with, I swear I can do worse. Just because the city opens up for him like a two dollar whore doesn't mean I can't engineer something ten times more irritating in revenge."
"John, then," Elizabeth says. She's doing her best to seem stern and in control, but it's hard to bite back a grin at Rodney's irritation.
"Yes, Major Klepto!"
"Lieutenant Colonel Kelpto," Kate Heightmeyer says. She's wearing an evasive smile that just makes Rodney's scowl more severe. Elizabeth has a feeling that Kate is one of the few people on Atlantis who finds the Sheppard-McKay Variety Hour as amusing as she does.
"Yes, whatever," Rodney seethes.
"Why, exactly, is it so vital that you find Colonel Sheppard?" Kate asks, folding her hands on the table.
"Oh, don't try to shrink me over this." Rodney's voice is dripping with contempt. "He's taken several of my personal possessions in a dull-witted attempt to distract me from my very important work and decided an even more monumentally annoying idea would be to run around the city like the five-year-old that he mentally is, in some sort of glorified version of keepaway."
Elizabeth is vaguely afraid that he's going to pop a blood vessel.
"Well," she says, glancing around the table at the medical staff, all of who seem to be hovering between confused and wary. Carson is rolling his eyes and Kate seems amused, but she has a feeling she should probably get Rodney out of the room. "I'll keep my eyes open for Colonel Sheppard and send him your way if I see him."
Rodney stares at her for a long moment before turning on his heel and sulking out, mutter all the while. There's a lengthy, awkward pause once he's left that Elizabeth breaks by clearing her throat.
"We should probably get back on track so we can wrap this up before Dr. McKay and Colonel Sheppard end up in the infirmary requiring your attention."
There's a nervous titter and the ice is broken, the conversation sliding back to immunization and medical supplies, Rodney's outburst ignored if not forgotten.
***
I've got a few pranks lined up, and I've already written the ending. The inital title was going to be "boys will be boys" if that gives you any sort of hint as to the nature of the story. I might yet switch it back. The working title was 'sheppardandatlantisplaykeepawaywithrodney,' as that's the filename.
***
There's also this, which I'm literally two scenes away from completing but can't seem to wrap my head around. These days, unless Alan's overly anxious, I have to coax words out of him, and the scene in IHOP quells his anxiety quite a bit. Meaning I'm left with two guys sitting in IHOP at two am with a blizzard raging outside.
and then danny got stuck in chicago
which isn't really a title as none of these stories end up with titles. my senior project doesn't even have a title. um. pg-13 for language and vague references to blow jobs. set roughtly february 12, 2006.
Alan smiles and nods when Danny explains that his flight is cancelled, and then drops a chemistry book on his favorite coffee mug with as much strength as he can muster. Thankfully, Doug has gone home for the evening--the snow is already coming down and even the five minute walk from Beaumont Hall to the faculty apartments is abominable--and the rest of the floor seems empty as well, or maybe they're just used to his increasingly erratic behavior. It's hard to tell, and that makes him laugh. It sounds bumpy and blunt in the silence of the hallways and he immediately closes his mouth, the abrupt end of the chuckle echoing around the classroom, off the star charts and periodic tables and posters on the wall.
When he took the position over, moved into the classroom while Donna Ashby was still missing, not even missing-presumed-dead, there were cute little signs with kittens and monkeys on them. The kind of posters you expect to see in a guidance counselor's office. "Attitude makes the difference!" "Hang in there!" "Is it Friday yet?"
He took them all down, one at a time, once every few weeks, until Allison Kane found Donna's body in the woods. After that, he took all the rest down at once and replaced them with his own.
The kids didn't say anything about it.
He wonders, absently, what his replacement would have done if he had died that night in May. He wonders what would have happened to all of his things. He rolled Donna's posters up in a tube, but her parents hadn't wanted them. Would his replacement have done the same for him? Would Danny have been presented with a poster tube filled with ten years' worth of classroom decoration? Would Danny have survived at all?
He stops, because he doesn't like to think about Danny Stevens being dead. Not at all. Especially not when Danny is stuck in an airport halfway across the country, because he just had to take the cheaper flight, the one with the stupid layover in the stupid midwest, because Danny didn't seem to understand that the two of them, at this point in their lives, could afford to actually spend money on luxuries like first class and direct flights. No, Danny had to fly coach and had to stop in Chicago and had taken to the whole idea as if it was some unique cultural experience.
"I'll bring you a key chain from O'Hare," he'd said, the corner of his mouth curling up in a smirk as he leaned over and kissed Alan's nose.
That was his boyfriend. His husband. His--that was Danny Stevens. Intrepid explorer, as long as he could fit it into his schedule and he didn't have to leave his laptop behind.
Alan wants to laugh again, he wants to cackle absurdly, but he can't bring himself to listen to the sound echoing through the hallways again. His skin is already crawling at the memory of his last bout of aborted laughter, so instead he bites his lip and pulls himself up onto his chair, pulls his legs up and sits cross-legged, staring at the back wall of his classroom.
He should go home. He knows that, he really does, but he really, really needs Danny tonight, because apparently it's really fucking hard for him to sleep alone in his bed any longer than he has to. He tries to remind himself that it's stupid--hey, remember those two years when that asshole left you in New York?--but his brain has always been good at making excuses for Danny when it wasn't busy hating him viscerally.
He's ready to sit and wait in his classroom until it gets dark (darker) or his brain clicks into place, but he hears the door swinging at the end of the hallway, and knows, somehow, maybe from the footsteps, maybe from something else, that the other Daniel in his life is coming to rescue him from fifteen empty lab tables and yet another in a long string of nervous breakdowns.
"Hey there, Al," Dan Green says, right on cue. He's leaning against the door, casual and relaxed, but naturally. He doesn't have any of the sly, practiced grace that Danny Stevens exudes, which is a very good thing, as far as Alan is concerned.
"How did you know I was still here?" Alan asks. He doesn't move, though.
"Well, I heard something smashing and I thought, 'Hm. Who in the science department likes to break things and then have panic attacks in the boys' bathroom?'"
"Funny."
"Yeah, well, Jenkins wasn't here, so I thought I'd check you next." Dan doesn't smile as he says it because Dan doesn't have to smile. Sarcasm is all but assumed when dealing with Dan Green. Dan saves his smiles as reactions to particularly nefarious plans, hilarious jokes, and attractive men. His friends, too, get smiles, but these days Dan's friends--much like Alan's own--seem to be in short supply, and most of them fit in the last category, with the exception of Laura Vienna, whose sarcasm and ability to kill all of them in their sleep gets her in the club anyway.
"Shouldn't you be boning the American Lit teacher?" Alan says. He doesn't know what it is about Dan that makes him turn a simple question like, 'Why aren't you spending quality time with your boyfriend?' into something more likely to escape from the mouth of one of their students, but he can't seem to shake it. Even Danny notices sometimes, commenting on it with a fond, sly grin and then kissing Alan's scowl away until he can't remember what they were talking about.
"Yeah," Dan says. He straightens up and gestures vaguely towards the hallway. "Apparently he has essays that really need to be graded and I tend to distract him when I walk around his apartment with no pants on."
"Everyone who works here is a sex-fiend," Alan grouses, although he knows he fits into that category as well, especially when Danny's home and he's had a good day at work. "How do we ever get anything done?"
"We're also all caffeine addicts," Dan reminds him, leaning against a lab table, inspecting the measurements printed on it. "Speaking of sex fiends, where's your less-psychotic half?"
"Stuck at O'Hare. He was in LA for book stuff and for work stuff and bought a stupid flight with a stupid layover in the stupid midwest." He's not pouting. Not at all.
"Sucks," Dan says. He doesn't say anything else, but they both know what's coming next, and if Alan doesn't offer, Dan will ask anyway. Alan knows this, because Alan knows he can't be alone. Not that he shouldn't be alone, but that, for the past seven months, he is basically unable to be alone, unable to spend time by himself. He's done putting Doug through the ringer of, 'oh-my-boyfriend-is-out-of-town-and-apparently-i-am-paranoid-and-needy,' mostly because Doug is his best friend and thus he'd like Doug to still be talking to him by the end of the month. But Dan is a nice second. He's easy to be with in a way that never seemed to manifest itself when the two of them were dating.
"Wanna come over for dinner?" Alan finally asks, just like they both know he's going to. "This way you'll be right around the corner when Orpheus is done with his grading and wants a break for blow-jobs."
"When you put it like that, how can I refuse?"
***
They amble over to the faculty housing gossiping idly. Most of it is a random stream of baby names, as Laura is going to positively explode any day now and she still won't tell them what she's going to name her spawn. The name game lasts them through the entire walk home and half of preparing dinner, until Dan says, "Agatha Edith Vienna Carter!" and Alan starts laughing so hard he almost knocks the pot of pasta sauce off of the stove.
After picking at their dinner for an hour, they end up in front of the teevee, watching three bad scifi movies one after the other. Dan takes a break as the credits roll on their latest SciFi Original Movie and calls Orpheus, who answers in a craze of caffeine and poor grammar that makes Dan laugh a little evilly. Alan watches, vaguely amused, and ends up fishing his own phone out to call Danny.
"The hotel is nice, at least," Danny tells him. "I managed to score one of the last rooms, which means I'm not sleeping on a bench in O'Hare, thank god." Alan can tell he's tapping away at his laptop, happily enjoying room service and complimentary soaps and not having to elbow Alan in the ribs to steal the blankets back.
"I like it when you steal the blankets back, anyway," Alan murmurs, and at Danny's soft noise of concern, he adds, "Sorry, I was thinking out loud. When will you be home?"
They exchange Danny's new flight information and some more idle small talk and say "I love you" and "goodbye" so many times that Dan starts to mime gagging from his perch on the arm of the couch. Alan really, really doesn't want to say goodbye, and he knows that Danny can tell. He also knows that if he says as much out loud, Danny's going to suggest he call his therapist, which will just lead to more trouble and more awkward therapy sessions during which he discusses his very childish inability to let go of his boyfriend's hand for one goddamned minute.
"Certainly took you long enough," Dan says when Alan finally flips his cell phone shut. "God, remind me never to get married. That was just gross."
"Shut up," Alan mutters. He pauses and adds, feebly, "We're not really married."
Dan gives him a long look, one that, after a moment, very obviously dips from his eyes to the ring he wears on his left hand.
"Shut up," Alan grumbles again. He folds himself into a neat little ball on the far corner of the couch and returns his attention to Arachnophobia.
After awhile, SciFi starts to repeat the same movies they've already seen. They actually sit through most of Raptor Island a second time before Dan steals the remote and turns on Law and Order reruns instead. They squabble over who really committed the murder until Dan accidentally reveals that he can basically recite the dialogue of this entire season and they give up.
Alan is getting more agitated as the minutes tick by, not less. He's filled with a strange, unsettling energy, the kind that Danny usually coaxes out of him with brain-melting orgasms or a back rub. He taps his feet and shifts restlessly as Dan channel surfs. Finally, Dan drops the remote on the couch and gets up to peer out the window. He opens his phone and dials, eyes still focused on the snow falling outside.
"Hey, Allison, are classes cancelled yet?" There's a lengthy pause. "Uh-huh. Sorry to wake you, then. Yeah, it's still snowing and I think you should just cancel classes so I can take Pratchett out for a drink and not have to worry about him setting some kids on fire tomorrow." Another pause. "Great. We'll see you on Thursday." He hangs his phone up and shrugs. "Allison cancelled classes tomorrow. Let's go to IHOP."
***
When Dan and Alan were dating, they spent a lot of time at a bar called Maxine's in town and even more time naked and sweaty in Dan's house. They didn't go to IHOP, although Dan spent a lot of time waxing poetic about two am waffle runs. Alan knows that IHOP was Dan and Orpheus' first date, which makes Alan smile, even as he glances at the menu and orders a cup of coffee and an order of toast.
"What are you grinning about?" Dan asks. It's the middle of the night, there's a blizzard building up outside the window, but Dan is still ordering pancakes, sausage, juice, and coffee. It's a move that's almost comforting, and Alan is starting, maybe, to relax.
"Just... we never did this, when we dated, and it really seems to be your thing."
Dan shrugs.
"I mean, you do it with Orpheus all the time," Alan continues. "We were both insomniacs, but we never did this." It's his turn to shrug. "I guess I'm saying that I'm glad that you got over the disaster that was our awful relationship and were able to move on to... someone you can do this with."
"Have you ever known me to pine over anything?" Dan asks, stirring his coffee and raising his eyebrows.
"Nothing that wasn't being broadcast in high-definition, no," Alan admits, but Dan glares at him. "What?"
"I do not pine over television."
"Oh please." Alan barely holds back a snort, and when he does, it's only because he knows it makes him look and sound about twenty years old. "We were naked. You were warming up the lube and talking dirty and then, all of a sudden, you were in the living room, resetting the TiVo because you forgot your show was starting an hour early."
"There's... a perfectly valid explanation for that," Dan says, and it's exactly the same thing he says every time Alan brings it up, although he never elaborates.
"Daniel, please." Alan gets a look for that, a very particular look that means that Alan's doing a fine impression of Dan's old Jewish mother. Alan smirks. "Anyway. The point is." He waves the spoon he's been idly stirring his coffee with. "I'm glad. That you have Orpheus."
"This conversation is starting to frighten me." Dan is staring at him critically now. The last time he and Dan sat down to talk about feelings and relationships and life and all of those wonderfully deep things, he had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown and Dan had been trying to remind him that, oh, right, he loved Danny Stevens and there was no reason to leave him, nor was there any reason for Danny to leave. "Although," Dan muses, "I guess I kind of expected as much seeing as how you've been bouncing off the walls all night because you're afraid of the dark or something."
"Fuck you," Alan says, but he says it kindly, if that's even possible.
They're interrupted by the waitress showing up with Alan's toast and Dan's breakfast buffet. Dan actually grins when he sees his order is picture perfect, and Alan mentally adds "food" to the list of things that can coax a smile out of Daniel Green.
"Thanks, Cindy," he says, and Alan realizes that there probably aren't too many waitresses who bother with the 2am shift. He bets that Dan knows all of them.
Dan digs into his pancakes like Alan didn't just feed him six fucking hours ago and like he didn't eat an entire bag of dried cranberries on the couch.
***
I dunno, maybe one day, when my brain isn't mush and sitting up doesn't hurt I will be able to finish this whole thing. WE SHALL SEE.
(Also, around this time in my little universe, Laura should be popping out a baby. I guess I should... get on that. Because... so many of you care. Besides Moonsheen, I mean, and I can just yell across the hall to her, need be.)
Oh, I'm really Pouty McGrumpsalot today, aren't I? Here are some things to make up for it. Neither of them are complete:
The Thrill of Victory, the Agony of Defeat
roughly pg-rated SGA fic in which a prank war is declared; gen-ish in the way that a show that's so gay I can't handle it is gen-ish. set after "The Intruder."
"Where is he?"
Rodney is breathing heavily, flushed pink, hair and eyes wild. He's trembling with rage, glancing furiously around the room and freaking the fuck out of the new med staff. Carson looks torn between mild amusement and mild apprehension, although Elizabeth thinks the apprehension has more to do with Rodney's blood pressure than anything else.
"Who are you looking for?" Elizabeth asks patiently, although it can really only be one person. Atlantis' very own Oscar and Felix have been suspiciously absent from each other's company recently. In the rush of returning to Pegasus and getting the new staff settled, she hasn't thought much of it, but now she's either curious or concerned. She won't know for sure before she talks to John, or, more specifically, sees which of his elusive smiles crosses his face when she mentions the Chief Scientist's name.
"Oh, you know who!" Rodney snaps. He glances around the conference room, under the table, out at the balcony. When he lunges forward to peer into a corner, one of the new nurses whimpers. "Where is he? Whatever he threatened you with, I swear I can do worse. Just because the city opens up for him like a two dollar whore doesn't mean I can't engineer something ten times more irritating in revenge."
"John, then," Elizabeth says. She's doing her best to seem stern and in control, but it's hard to bite back a grin at Rodney's irritation.
"Yes, Major Klepto!"
"Lieutenant Colonel Kelpto," Kate Heightmeyer says. She's wearing an evasive smile that just makes Rodney's scowl more severe. Elizabeth has a feeling that Kate is one of the few people on Atlantis who finds the Sheppard-McKay Variety Hour as amusing as she does.
"Yes, whatever," Rodney seethes.
"Why, exactly, is it so vital that you find Colonel Sheppard?" Kate asks, folding her hands on the table.
"Oh, don't try to shrink me over this." Rodney's voice is dripping with contempt. "He's taken several of my personal possessions in a dull-witted attempt to distract me from my very important work and decided an even more monumentally annoying idea would be to run around the city like the five-year-old that he mentally is, in some sort of glorified version of keepaway."
Elizabeth is vaguely afraid that he's going to pop a blood vessel.
"Well," she says, glancing around the table at the medical staff, all of who seem to be hovering between confused and wary. Carson is rolling his eyes and Kate seems amused, but she has a feeling she should probably get Rodney out of the room. "I'll keep my eyes open for Colonel Sheppard and send him your way if I see him."
Rodney stares at her for a long moment before turning on his heel and sulking out, mutter all the while. There's a lengthy, awkward pause once he's left that Elizabeth breaks by clearing her throat.
"We should probably get back on track so we can wrap this up before Dr. McKay and Colonel Sheppard end up in the infirmary requiring your attention."
There's a nervous titter and the ice is broken, the conversation sliding back to immunization and medical supplies, Rodney's outburst ignored if not forgotten.
***
I've got a few pranks lined up, and I've already written the ending. The inital title was going to be "boys will be boys" if that gives you any sort of hint as to the nature of the story. I might yet switch it back. The working title was 'sheppardandatlantisplaykeepawaywithrodney,' as that's the filename.
***
There's also this, which I'm literally two scenes away from completing but can't seem to wrap my head around. These days, unless Alan's overly anxious, I have to coax words out of him, and the scene in IHOP quells his anxiety quite a bit. Meaning I'm left with two guys sitting in IHOP at two am with a blizzard raging outside.
and then danny got stuck in chicago
which isn't really a title as none of these stories end up with titles. my senior project doesn't even have a title. um. pg-13 for language and vague references to blow jobs. set roughtly february 12, 2006.
Alan smiles and nods when Danny explains that his flight is cancelled, and then drops a chemistry book on his favorite coffee mug with as much strength as he can muster. Thankfully, Doug has gone home for the evening--the snow is already coming down and even the five minute walk from Beaumont Hall to the faculty apartments is abominable--and the rest of the floor seems empty as well, or maybe they're just used to his increasingly erratic behavior. It's hard to tell, and that makes him laugh. It sounds bumpy and blunt in the silence of the hallways and he immediately closes his mouth, the abrupt end of the chuckle echoing around the classroom, off the star charts and periodic tables and posters on the wall.
When he took the position over, moved into the classroom while Donna Ashby was still missing, not even missing-presumed-dead, there were cute little signs with kittens and monkeys on them. The kind of posters you expect to see in a guidance counselor's office. "Attitude makes the difference!" "Hang in there!" "Is it Friday yet?"
He took them all down, one at a time, once every few weeks, until Allison Kane found Donna's body in the woods. After that, he took all the rest down at once and replaced them with his own.
The kids didn't say anything about it.
He wonders, absently, what his replacement would have done if he had died that night in May. He wonders what would have happened to all of his things. He rolled Donna's posters up in a tube, but her parents hadn't wanted them. Would his replacement have done the same for him? Would Danny have been presented with a poster tube filled with ten years' worth of classroom decoration? Would Danny have survived at all?
He stops, because he doesn't like to think about Danny Stevens being dead. Not at all. Especially not when Danny is stuck in an airport halfway across the country, because he just had to take the cheaper flight, the one with the stupid layover in the stupid midwest, because Danny didn't seem to understand that the two of them, at this point in their lives, could afford to actually spend money on luxuries like first class and direct flights. No, Danny had to fly coach and had to stop in Chicago and had taken to the whole idea as if it was some unique cultural experience.
"I'll bring you a key chain from O'Hare," he'd said, the corner of his mouth curling up in a smirk as he leaned over and kissed Alan's nose.
That was his boyfriend. His husband. His--that was Danny Stevens. Intrepid explorer, as long as he could fit it into his schedule and he didn't have to leave his laptop behind.
Alan wants to laugh again, he wants to cackle absurdly, but he can't bring himself to listen to the sound echoing through the hallways again. His skin is already crawling at the memory of his last bout of aborted laughter, so instead he bites his lip and pulls himself up onto his chair, pulls his legs up and sits cross-legged, staring at the back wall of his classroom.
He should go home. He knows that, he really does, but he really, really needs Danny tonight, because apparently it's really fucking hard for him to sleep alone in his bed any longer than he has to. He tries to remind himself that it's stupid--hey, remember those two years when that asshole left you in New York?--but his brain has always been good at making excuses for Danny when it wasn't busy hating him viscerally.
He's ready to sit and wait in his classroom until it gets dark (darker) or his brain clicks into place, but he hears the door swinging at the end of the hallway, and knows, somehow, maybe from the footsteps, maybe from something else, that the other Daniel in his life is coming to rescue him from fifteen empty lab tables and yet another in a long string of nervous breakdowns.
"Hey there, Al," Dan Green says, right on cue. He's leaning against the door, casual and relaxed, but naturally. He doesn't have any of the sly, practiced grace that Danny Stevens exudes, which is a very good thing, as far as Alan is concerned.
"How did you know I was still here?" Alan asks. He doesn't move, though.
"Well, I heard something smashing and I thought, 'Hm. Who in the science department likes to break things and then have panic attacks in the boys' bathroom?'"
"Funny."
"Yeah, well, Jenkins wasn't here, so I thought I'd check you next." Dan doesn't smile as he says it because Dan doesn't have to smile. Sarcasm is all but assumed when dealing with Dan Green. Dan saves his smiles as reactions to particularly nefarious plans, hilarious jokes, and attractive men. His friends, too, get smiles, but these days Dan's friends--much like Alan's own--seem to be in short supply, and most of them fit in the last category, with the exception of Laura Vienna, whose sarcasm and ability to kill all of them in their sleep gets her in the club anyway.
"Shouldn't you be boning the American Lit teacher?" Alan says. He doesn't know what it is about Dan that makes him turn a simple question like, 'Why aren't you spending quality time with your boyfriend?' into something more likely to escape from the mouth of one of their students, but he can't seem to shake it. Even Danny notices sometimes, commenting on it with a fond, sly grin and then kissing Alan's scowl away until he can't remember what they were talking about.
"Yeah," Dan says. He straightens up and gestures vaguely towards the hallway. "Apparently he has essays that really need to be graded and I tend to distract him when I walk around his apartment with no pants on."
"Everyone who works here is a sex-fiend," Alan grouses, although he knows he fits into that category as well, especially when Danny's home and he's had a good day at work. "How do we ever get anything done?"
"We're also all caffeine addicts," Dan reminds him, leaning against a lab table, inspecting the measurements printed on it. "Speaking of sex fiends, where's your less-psychotic half?"
"Stuck at O'Hare. He was in LA for book stuff and for work stuff and bought a stupid flight with a stupid layover in the stupid midwest." He's not pouting. Not at all.
"Sucks," Dan says. He doesn't say anything else, but they both know what's coming next, and if Alan doesn't offer, Dan will ask anyway. Alan knows this, because Alan knows he can't be alone. Not that he shouldn't be alone, but that, for the past seven months, he is basically unable to be alone, unable to spend time by himself. He's done putting Doug through the ringer of, 'oh-my-boyfriend-is-out-of-town-and-apparently-i-am-paranoid-and-needy,' mostly because Doug is his best friend and thus he'd like Doug to still be talking to him by the end of the month. But Dan is a nice second. He's easy to be with in a way that never seemed to manifest itself when the two of them were dating.
"Wanna come over for dinner?" Alan finally asks, just like they both know he's going to. "This way you'll be right around the corner when Orpheus is done with his grading and wants a break for blow-jobs."
"When you put it like that, how can I refuse?"
***
They amble over to the faculty housing gossiping idly. Most of it is a random stream of baby names, as Laura is going to positively explode any day now and she still won't tell them what she's going to name her spawn. The name game lasts them through the entire walk home and half of preparing dinner, until Dan says, "Agatha Edith Vienna Carter!" and Alan starts laughing so hard he almost knocks the pot of pasta sauce off of the stove.
After picking at their dinner for an hour, they end up in front of the teevee, watching three bad scifi movies one after the other. Dan takes a break as the credits roll on their latest SciFi Original Movie and calls Orpheus, who answers in a craze of caffeine and poor grammar that makes Dan laugh a little evilly. Alan watches, vaguely amused, and ends up fishing his own phone out to call Danny.
"The hotel is nice, at least," Danny tells him. "I managed to score one of the last rooms, which means I'm not sleeping on a bench in O'Hare, thank god." Alan can tell he's tapping away at his laptop, happily enjoying room service and complimentary soaps and not having to elbow Alan in the ribs to steal the blankets back.
"I like it when you steal the blankets back, anyway," Alan murmurs, and at Danny's soft noise of concern, he adds, "Sorry, I was thinking out loud. When will you be home?"
They exchange Danny's new flight information and some more idle small talk and say "I love you" and "goodbye" so many times that Dan starts to mime gagging from his perch on the arm of the couch. Alan really, really doesn't want to say goodbye, and he knows that Danny can tell. He also knows that if he says as much out loud, Danny's going to suggest he call his therapist, which will just lead to more trouble and more awkward therapy sessions during which he discusses his very childish inability to let go of his boyfriend's hand for one goddamned minute.
"Certainly took you long enough," Dan says when Alan finally flips his cell phone shut. "God, remind me never to get married. That was just gross."
"Shut up," Alan mutters. He pauses and adds, feebly, "We're not really married."
Dan gives him a long look, one that, after a moment, very obviously dips from his eyes to the ring he wears on his left hand.
"Shut up," Alan grumbles again. He folds himself into a neat little ball on the far corner of the couch and returns his attention to Arachnophobia.
After awhile, SciFi starts to repeat the same movies they've already seen. They actually sit through most of Raptor Island a second time before Dan steals the remote and turns on Law and Order reruns instead. They squabble over who really committed the murder until Dan accidentally reveals that he can basically recite the dialogue of this entire season and they give up.
Alan is getting more agitated as the minutes tick by, not less. He's filled with a strange, unsettling energy, the kind that Danny usually coaxes out of him with brain-melting orgasms or a back rub. He taps his feet and shifts restlessly as Dan channel surfs. Finally, Dan drops the remote on the couch and gets up to peer out the window. He opens his phone and dials, eyes still focused on the snow falling outside.
"Hey, Allison, are classes cancelled yet?" There's a lengthy pause. "Uh-huh. Sorry to wake you, then. Yeah, it's still snowing and I think you should just cancel classes so I can take Pratchett out for a drink and not have to worry about him setting some kids on fire tomorrow." Another pause. "Great. We'll see you on Thursday." He hangs his phone up and shrugs. "Allison cancelled classes tomorrow. Let's go to IHOP."
***
When Dan and Alan were dating, they spent a lot of time at a bar called Maxine's in town and even more time naked and sweaty in Dan's house. They didn't go to IHOP, although Dan spent a lot of time waxing poetic about two am waffle runs. Alan knows that IHOP was Dan and Orpheus' first date, which makes Alan smile, even as he glances at the menu and orders a cup of coffee and an order of toast.
"What are you grinning about?" Dan asks. It's the middle of the night, there's a blizzard building up outside the window, but Dan is still ordering pancakes, sausage, juice, and coffee. It's a move that's almost comforting, and Alan is starting, maybe, to relax.
"Just... we never did this, when we dated, and it really seems to be your thing."
Dan shrugs.
"I mean, you do it with Orpheus all the time," Alan continues. "We were both insomniacs, but we never did this." It's his turn to shrug. "I guess I'm saying that I'm glad that you got over the disaster that was our awful relationship and were able to move on to... someone you can do this with."
"Have you ever known me to pine over anything?" Dan asks, stirring his coffee and raising his eyebrows.
"Nothing that wasn't being broadcast in high-definition, no," Alan admits, but Dan glares at him. "What?"
"I do not pine over television."
"Oh please." Alan barely holds back a snort, and when he does, it's only because he knows it makes him look and sound about twenty years old. "We were naked. You were warming up the lube and talking dirty and then, all of a sudden, you were in the living room, resetting the TiVo because you forgot your show was starting an hour early."
"There's... a perfectly valid explanation for that," Dan says, and it's exactly the same thing he says every time Alan brings it up, although he never elaborates.
"Daniel, please." Alan gets a look for that, a very particular look that means that Alan's doing a fine impression of Dan's old Jewish mother. Alan smirks. "Anyway. The point is." He waves the spoon he's been idly stirring his coffee with. "I'm glad. That you have Orpheus."
"This conversation is starting to frighten me." Dan is staring at him critically now. The last time he and Dan sat down to talk about feelings and relationships and life and all of those wonderfully deep things, he had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown and Dan had been trying to remind him that, oh, right, he loved Danny Stevens and there was no reason to leave him, nor was there any reason for Danny to leave. "Although," Dan muses, "I guess I kind of expected as much seeing as how you've been bouncing off the walls all night because you're afraid of the dark or something."
"Fuck you," Alan says, but he says it kindly, if that's even possible.
They're interrupted by the waitress showing up with Alan's toast and Dan's breakfast buffet. Dan actually grins when he sees his order is picture perfect, and Alan mentally adds "food" to the list of things that can coax a smile out of Daniel Green.
"Thanks, Cindy," he says, and Alan realizes that there probably aren't too many waitresses who bother with the 2am shift. He bets that Dan knows all of them.
Dan digs into his pancakes like Alan didn't just feed him six fucking hours ago and like he didn't eat an entire bag of dried cranberries on the couch.
***
I dunno, maybe one day, when my brain isn't mush and sitting up doesn't hurt I will be able to finish this whole thing. WE SHALL SEE.
(Also, around this time in my little universe, Laura should be popping out a baby. I guess I should... get on that. Because... so many of you care. Besides Moonsheen, I mean, and I can just yell across the hall to her, need be.)