Fic ahoy!
Dear God, more of the crackfic-that-ATE-MY-FUCKING-BRAIN.
It took awhile, because I wrote a whole scene last night that needed, in the cold clear light of morning, to be eliminated with extreme prejudice, but I'm back on track with my outline.
Maybe this notes-and-outline thing is gonna work out okay, after all.
John escaped his near-death experience with just a black eye, a sore throat, and a collection of assorted scrapes and lumps.
He was going to kill Steve Giedermann as soon as he had the chance, though, for pounding him in the face with a football.
Sighing, John ran his thumb lightly over the perfect set of handprint bruises just below his ribs, where his rescuer had forced seawater from his lungs before beginning CPR.
Darren Capano, whose mom was a nurse, said that John was the luckiest son-of-a-bitch on the East Coast, but he still hid the beer from him, just in case John had a concussion.
Frank Trifiletti missed the whole thing and had to hear about it over pizza the next night when he arrived.
“It was fucking unbelievable, man!” Frank Mancini shouted over the laughter of the other guys. “The lifeguards were just fucking around --”
“They were arguing over whether to run up the beach six blocks for the skiff,” Don interrupted.
“Right,” Frank agreed, “and we’re running into the water, trying to get past the breakers --”
“’The Gut’ was bitching that Shep dropped his favorite football,” Troy reminded them.
“I thought he was fucking with us!” Steve Giedermann said defensively. John rolled his eyes and pantomimed drowning as Ron reached over and slapped Steve on the back of his thick neck.
“By the time we even figured out that Shep was in trouble for real,” Frank continued, “some guy who’d been out on the sandbar with a boogie board was yelling at us to get the Jeep, and he was swimming out into the rip current and just kept diving until he came up with Shep’s skinny ass.”
“Hey,” John protested half-heartedly as everybody laughed. Still, it was the first time he was hearing the tale in its entirety, and he was listening just as closely as Trif was.
Don was shaking his head as he reached for another slice of pizza. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said quietly. “Shep had disappeared underwater, and the lifeguards were actually afraid to swim out because of the current, and this guy -- just some guy, just like any of us -- he’s just diving and diving, and he finally comes out, dragging Shep up the beach by his hair, and starts barking out orders like Mr. Cleary on the football field.”
Somebody passed around the two-liter of New Coke and everyone topped up their glasses, except for Dino, who was drinking Sprite as usual.
“But he knew what he was doing,” Ron pointed out. “Maybe he was an off-duty guard or something.”
Frank Mancini shrugged and stuffed the last of the pepperoni pizza into his mouth before anyone else could get to it.
“Rad,” Trif pronounced finally. “Seriously.”
Troy leaned across the table and pointed at John. “The babes are gonna go nuts for this! You know how much you’re gonna get laid when school starts?”
Everyone around the table groaned and laughed, and Troy made a face. “Oh, *shit*,” he said, and reached for his wallet.
Steve chortled and waved to the waitress. “Can we get another order of onion rings and some of those mozzarella sticks? It’s on him,” and he jerked a thumb at Troy, who buried his face in his hands.
“I don’t have enough money to feed your fucking gut,” he moaned, voice muffled.
Steve licked pizza sauce from his fingers and observed, “First asshole to mention school pays the check. You know that. Not my fault you’re rich instead of smart.”
Troy lifted his head and glared. “Fuck off, Giedermann. You’re such a dick.”
“Suck mine,” Steve retorted with his usual lack of eloquence.
Abruptly, John had had enough. He pushed his chair back and rose to his feet, coloring slightly when the guys all turned to stare at him. “I’m gonna walk the boards,” he mumbled. “Catch you all back at the house.”
Ron and Don both eyed him closely while the others clamored for John to stay, but he warned them away with a silent grimace.
“Dude, leave him alone,” Don snapped at Darren. “Let him go pick up chicks or whatever; it’s cool.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Ron chimed in. Steve gestured with his newly arrived fried food and said with his mouth full, “Want some of these, Shep? Fucking awesome!”
John wrinkled his nose. “Breaded, deep-fried cheese? No thanks, I’ll pass.”
Steve shrugged. “More for me.” As John walked away, he could hear Steve continuing, “Whoever came up with the idea of fried mozzarella was a fucking genius. I never saw it before this summer, but I’m gonna make these assholes bring it back next year when we come down.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Dino contributed. “You’re such a fucking meathead.”
John walked faster, and the usual insults faded into the wash of sound and color from the brightly lit boardwalk. Every t-shirt shop and arcade was playing a different radio station, background to the screams from the roller coaster and the log flume. Someone won a prize from a machine, and the ringing of alarms and joyous squeals made John’s ears hurt.
He turned abruptly, and headed out onto the pier with the kiddie rides. It was late enough that most parents were packing up their families and heading back to motels, and John felt like he could breathe a little better, out here with less noise and fewer people.
The giant Ferris wheel turned lazily at the end of the pier, brightly lit and rising four stories into the air. It was new, and huge, and before John realized what he was doing, he was buying a long string of tickets and clambering into a large, square gondola that was nothing like the rickety, two-person seats he remembered from his childhood.
The ride climbed the sky and John leaned back in his seat, spreading his arms across the railings and finally, finally soaring.
When the cycle finished, too soon, John hopped out and got right back in line.
By the time John finished his ninth trip, he was the only left on the ride, and the operator was beginning to get twitchy.
John didn’t care, and stuck out his hand with the ticket for his tenth circuit.
“No!” the operator snapped, folding his arms over his chest and looking mulish. “This is wrong, wrong, wrong -- wrong, on so many levels, I’d need an elevator to visit them all! No reasonably sane adult human being can *possibly* want to ride the Ferris wheel ten times in a row!”
John frowned. He knew that voice.
Then the guy looked up, startlingly blue eyes meeting his, and John felt all the blood leave his face. “Rodney,” he breathed, almost soundless with shock.
“Congratulations, you’re not completely illiterate,” the ride operator snapped. “Yes, the name tag gave it away. Now, run along and sober up somewhere else, why don’t you?”
“No, wait!” John said desperately, grabbing at Rodney’s arm as he moved to cut the power. “It’s *me*, Rodney. It’s John. From the beach, yesterday?”
Rodney froze before turning, tilting his head to the side in a move John remembered well. “John,” he said unnecessarily. “Well. You look . . . considerably less like a drowned cat. No wonder I didn’t recognize you.”
John realized he still had hold of Rodney’s arm and dropped it abruptly, rubbing his palms on his thighs to cover his nervousness. “Um. Hi.”
“Hello,” Rodney said, still eyeing John as if he were a dangerous lunatic. “So. You, ah . . . doing all right?”
John ducked his head, tongue-tied and feeling stupid. What could he say to the guy that had saved his life? “Yeah,” he finally said. “How are you?”
“Well, apparently I’m being stalked by some hoser who can’t catch a football and doesn’t have the sense to stay close to shore in a rip tide,” Rodney tossed back, but there didn’t seem to be any heat in his words.
John scuffed his feet a bit in the sand that gathered in tiny drifts on any rough surface. “About that,” he began, and then interrupted himself to repeat, “’Hoser’?”
It was Rodney’s turn to glance away. “Canadian slang,” he explained.
“Cool,” John said. “You’re from Canada?”
“Toronto,” Rodney said shortly. John couldn’t tell if he was bored or uncomfortable or simply finished answering.
Desperately, he asked, “What’s in Toronto?”
Rodney shot him an amazed look. “What kind of question is that?”
John shrugged. “I’ve never been there,” he admitted. “Never really heard of it, except for in Social Studies class. So, tell me what it’s like to live there.”
Rodney was studying John now as if he were a new and strange species of insect that might attack without provocation. “Look, I get it,” he said roughly. “And I appreciate it, really, I do, but I need to close up and clock out.”
He looked expectantly at John, who was feeling a bit stubborn now, himself, and sat down on the steps that led up to the Ferris wheel. “Fine,” he said, grinning his best and most obnoxious grin, the one he’d learned from watching Troy dealing with the braces he had to get last summer. “I’ll wait.”
Rodney rolled his eyes. “Oh, for crying out -- look, your reputation as a man among men is perfectly safe, so you can run along now.”
John felt his smile slip a bit. “What are you talking about?”
Rodney was flipping switches and locking electrical boxes as he talked, and he waved one hand vaguely in John’s direction as he said, “I’m sure your *friends* -- and I use that term loosely, especially for the idiot who thought throwing a football at a *drowning guy* was a good idea -- anyway, they’ve probably given you a bunch of nonsense about how someone, a guy in particular, was *kissing you*, when it was just cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, and how shallow and juvenile can people be, anyway?”
John felt a little dizzy from the verbal barrage, but he managed to climb to his feet when Rodney closed the gate and turned away to leave, still talking.
“So, now that we’ve cleared that up, you can go back to whatever macho posturing you would normally be engaging in, and -- hey, are you okay?”
The world grew alarmingly gray and dim, and John swayed on his feet for a moment before he felt Rodney’s hands catch hold of him, firm and reassuring as they pushed him back down to a sitting position.
“Deep breaths, slowly, that’s it,” Rodney murmured, and a light flashed briefly, twice. “Lift your head for me . . . good. Pupils are equal and reactive, that’s a good sign. I think you just stood up too fast. Why do you keep insisting on dying around me?”
“Dunno,” John whispered. “Maybe because you keep saving me?”
Rodney’s hand on his chin tightened before he released his grip and settled back on his heels, smiling tightly. “You can stop it now, really. Your manly virtue is perfectly safe.”
“Huh?” John asked wittily. He missed Rodney’s hands on his shoulders and his face, hard and competent and soothing, making John feel calm and safe.
Rodney rolled his eyes. “Look, nobody’s around to see you make a big show of your masculinity, so it would really be rather pointless to beat me up, just to prove to your buddies that getting mouth-to-mouth from a guy doesn’t automatically turn you into a faggot.”
He stood suddenly, dusting his hands firmly against his rumpled khaki shorts, mouth set in a tight line. “You can stay here all night if you want,” he tossed over his shoulder as he strode away. “I’d rather sleep away what remains of the night in my moderately comfortable bed, surrounded by the ruckus of a boardinghouse full of morons.”
John blinked, feeling a lot like he’d just been run over by a tram car.
After a few minutes of sitting on the uncomfortable steps, he looked around and saw no sign of Rodney, or anyone else for that matter.
Climbing to his feet, John casually hopped the low metal railing and made himself comfortable in one of the gondolas of the Ferris wheel, head pillowed on one folded arm and legs draped over the side.
If he turned his head just the right way, he could lean back and watch the night sky for a while.
***********************
So? What's everybody thinking? Is anybody reading this, besides emrinalexander and lucifrix?
It took awhile, because I wrote a whole scene last night that needed, in the cold clear light of morning, to be eliminated with extreme prejudice, but I'm back on track with my outline.
Maybe this notes-and-outline thing is gonna work out okay, after all.
John escaped his near-death experience with just a black eye, a sore throat, and a collection of assorted scrapes and lumps.
He was going to kill Steve Giedermann as soon as he had the chance, though, for pounding him in the face with a football.
Sighing, John ran his thumb lightly over the perfect set of handprint bruises just below his ribs, where his rescuer had forced seawater from his lungs before beginning CPR.
Darren Capano, whose mom was a nurse, said that John was the luckiest son-of-a-bitch on the East Coast, but he still hid the beer from him, just in case John had a concussion.
Frank Trifiletti missed the whole thing and had to hear about it over pizza the next night when he arrived.
“It was fucking unbelievable, man!” Frank Mancini shouted over the laughter of the other guys. “The lifeguards were just fucking around --”
“They were arguing over whether to run up the beach six blocks for the skiff,” Don interrupted.
“Right,” Frank agreed, “and we’re running into the water, trying to get past the breakers --”
“’The Gut’ was bitching that Shep dropped his favorite football,” Troy reminded them.
“I thought he was fucking with us!” Steve Giedermann said defensively. John rolled his eyes and pantomimed drowning as Ron reached over and slapped Steve on the back of his thick neck.
“By the time we even figured out that Shep was in trouble for real,” Frank continued, “some guy who’d been out on the sandbar with a boogie board was yelling at us to get the Jeep, and he was swimming out into the rip current and just kept diving until he came up with Shep’s skinny ass.”
“Hey,” John protested half-heartedly as everybody laughed. Still, it was the first time he was hearing the tale in its entirety, and he was listening just as closely as Trif was.
Don was shaking his head as he reached for another slice of pizza. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said quietly. “Shep had disappeared underwater, and the lifeguards were actually afraid to swim out because of the current, and this guy -- just some guy, just like any of us -- he’s just diving and diving, and he finally comes out, dragging Shep up the beach by his hair, and starts barking out orders like Mr. Cleary on the football field.”
Somebody passed around the two-liter of New Coke and everyone topped up their glasses, except for Dino, who was drinking Sprite as usual.
“But he knew what he was doing,” Ron pointed out. “Maybe he was an off-duty guard or something.”
Frank Mancini shrugged and stuffed the last of the pepperoni pizza into his mouth before anyone else could get to it.
“Rad,” Trif pronounced finally. “Seriously.”
Troy leaned across the table and pointed at John. “The babes are gonna go nuts for this! You know how much you’re gonna get laid when school starts?”
Everyone around the table groaned and laughed, and Troy made a face. “Oh, *shit*,” he said, and reached for his wallet.
Steve chortled and waved to the waitress. “Can we get another order of onion rings and some of those mozzarella sticks? It’s on him,” and he jerked a thumb at Troy, who buried his face in his hands.
“I don’t have enough money to feed your fucking gut,” he moaned, voice muffled.
Steve licked pizza sauce from his fingers and observed, “First asshole to mention school pays the check. You know that. Not my fault you’re rich instead of smart.”
Troy lifted his head and glared. “Fuck off, Giedermann. You’re such a dick.”
“Suck mine,” Steve retorted with his usual lack of eloquence.
Abruptly, John had had enough. He pushed his chair back and rose to his feet, coloring slightly when the guys all turned to stare at him. “I’m gonna walk the boards,” he mumbled. “Catch you all back at the house.”
Ron and Don both eyed him closely while the others clamored for John to stay, but he warned them away with a silent grimace.
“Dude, leave him alone,” Don snapped at Darren. “Let him go pick up chicks or whatever; it’s cool.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Ron chimed in. Steve gestured with his newly arrived fried food and said with his mouth full, “Want some of these, Shep? Fucking awesome!”
John wrinkled his nose. “Breaded, deep-fried cheese? No thanks, I’ll pass.”
Steve shrugged. “More for me.” As John walked away, he could hear Steve continuing, “Whoever came up with the idea of fried mozzarella was a fucking genius. I never saw it before this summer, but I’m gonna make these assholes bring it back next year when we come down.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Dino contributed. “You’re such a fucking meathead.”
John walked faster, and the usual insults faded into the wash of sound and color from the brightly lit boardwalk. Every t-shirt shop and arcade was playing a different radio station, background to the screams from the roller coaster and the log flume. Someone won a prize from a machine, and the ringing of alarms and joyous squeals made John’s ears hurt.
He turned abruptly, and headed out onto the pier with the kiddie rides. It was late enough that most parents were packing up their families and heading back to motels, and John felt like he could breathe a little better, out here with less noise and fewer people.
The giant Ferris wheel turned lazily at the end of the pier, brightly lit and rising four stories into the air. It was new, and huge, and before John realized what he was doing, he was buying a long string of tickets and clambering into a large, square gondola that was nothing like the rickety, two-person seats he remembered from his childhood.
The ride climbed the sky and John leaned back in his seat, spreading his arms across the railings and finally, finally soaring.
When the cycle finished, too soon, John hopped out and got right back in line.
By the time John finished his ninth trip, he was the only left on the ride, and the operator was beginning to get twitchy.
John didn’t care, and stuck out his hand with the ticket for his tenth circuit.
“No!” the operator snapped, folding his arms over his chest and looking mulish. “This is wrong, wrong, wrong -- wrong, on so many levels, I’d need an elevator to visit them all! No reasonably sane adult human being can *possibly* want to ride the Ferris wheel ten times in a row!”
John frowned. He knew that voice.
Then the guy looked up, startlingly blue eyes meeting his, and John felt all the blood leave his face. “Rodney,” he breathed, almost soundless with shock.
“Congratulations, you’re not completely illiterate,” the ride operator snapped. “Yes, the name tag gave it away. Now, run along and sober up somewhere else, why don’t you?”
“No, wait!” John said desperately, grabbing at Rodney’s arm as he moved to cut the power. “It’s *me*, Rodney. It’s John. From the beach, yesterday?”
Rodney froze before turning, tilting his head to the side in a move John remembered well. “John,” he said unnecessarily. “Well. You look . . . considerably less like a drowned cat. No wonder I didn’t recognize you.”
John realized he still had hold of Rodney’s arm and dropped it abruptly, rubbing his palms on his thighs to cover his nervousness. “Um. Hi.”
“Hello,” Rodney said, still eyeing John as if he were a dangerous lunatic. “So. You, ah . . . doing all right?”
John ducked his head, tongue-tied and feeling stupid. What could he say to the guy that had saved his life? “Yeah,” he finally said. “How are you?”
“Well, apparently I’m being stalked by some hoser who can’t catch a football and doesn’t have the sense to stay close to shore in a rip tide,” Rodney tossed back, but there didn’t seem to be any heat in his words.
John scuffed his feet a bit in the sand that gathered in tiny drifts on any rough surface. “About that,” he began, and then interrupted himself to repeat, “’Hoser’?”
It was Rodney’s turn to glance away. “Canadian slang,” he explained.
“Cool,” John said. “You’re from Canada?”
“Toronto,” Rodney said shortly. John couldn’t tell if he was bored or uncomfortable or simply finished answering.
Desperately, he asked, “What’s in Toronto?”
Rodney shot him an amazed look. “What kind of question is that?”
John shrugged. “I’ve never been there,” he admitted. “Never really heard of it, except for in Social Studies class. So, tell me what it’s like to live there.”
Rodney was studying John now as if he were a new and strange species of insect that might attack without provocation. “Look, I get it,” he said roughly. “And I appreciate it, really, I do, but I need to close up and clock out.”
He looked expectantly at John, who was feeling a bit stubborn now, himself, and sat down on the steps that led up to the Ferris wheel. “Fine,” he said, grinning his best and most obnoxious grin, the one he’d learned from watching Troy dealing with the braces he had to get last summer. “I’ll wait.”
Rodney rolled his eyes. “Oh, for crying out -- look, your reputation as a man among men is perfectly safe, so you can run along now.”
John felt his smile slip a bit. “What are you talking about?”
Rodney was flipping switches and locking electrical boxes as he talked, and he waved one hand vaguely in John’s direction as he said, “I’m sure your *friends* -- and I use that term loosely, especially for the idiot who thought throwing a football at a *drowning guy* was a good idea -- anyway, they’ve probably given you a bunch of nonsense about how someone, a guy in particular, was *kissing you*, when it was just cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, and how shallow and juvenile can people be, anyway?”
John felt a little dizzy from the verbal barrage, but he managed to climb to his feet when Rodney closed the gate and turned away to leave, still talking.
“So, now that we’ve cleared that up, you can go back to whatever macho posturing you would normally be engaging in, and -- hey, are you okay?”
The world grew alarmingly gray and dim, and John swayed on his feet for a moment before he felt Rodney’s hands catch hold of him, firm and reassuring as they pushed him back down to a sitting position.
“Deep breaths, slowly, that’s it,” Rodney murmured, and a light flashed briefly, twice. “Lift your head for me . . . good. Pupils are equal and reactive, that’s a good sign. I think you just stood up too fast. Why do you keep insisting on dying around me?”
“Dunno,” John whispered. “Maybe because you keep saving me?”
Rodney’s hand on his chin tightened before he released his grip and settled back on his heels, smiling tightly. “You can stop it now, really. Your manly virtue is perfectly safe.”
“Huh?” John asked wittily. He missed Rodney’s hands on his shoulders and his face, hard and competent and soothing, making John feel calm and safe.
Rodney rolled his eyes. “Look, nobody’s around to see you make a big show of your masculinity, so it would really be rather pointless to beat me up, just to prove to your buddies that getting mouth-to-mouth from a guy doesn’t automatically turn you into a faggot.”
He stood suddenly, dusting his hands firmly against his rumpled khaki shorts, mouth set in a tight line. “You can stay here all night if you want,” he tossed over his shoulder as he strode away. “I’d rather sleep away what remains of the night in my moderately comfortable bed, surrounded by the ruckus of a boardinghouse full of morons.”
John blinked, feeling a lot like he’d just been run over by a tram car.
After a few minutes of sitting on the uncomfortable steps, he looked around and saw no sign of Rodney, or anyone else for that matter.
Climbing to his feet, John casually hopped the low metal railing and made himself comfortable in one of the gondolas of the Ferris wheel, head pillowed on one folded arm and legs draped over the side.
If he turned his head just the right way, he could lean back and watch the night sky for a while.
***********************
So? What's everybody thinking? Is anybody reading this, besides emrinalexander and lucifrix?