fic: Abstinence; Deprivation; Prohibition
opprobrium, on your birthday I'd like to provide further proof that the internet is lost and rotten without you. Your self-imposed prohibition is kind of killing me, even though I understand your reasons. I miss you while I'm out here on the coast, and I miss you even more when you're not on the internet, and I miss you most of all when you're not on the internet and I'm out here on the coast and it's YOUR DAMN BIRTHDAY, WOMAN.
I hope this gets to you when you're good and settled into your hotel after a productive day of hobknobbing around the OT in your Outlander with your straightened hair and primed cell phone. These are three fics in three of our favourite non-fandoms - ON A COMMON THEME, BUT I'LL LET YOU GUESS - just to prove that no matter how slim the pickings get, we will always have something ludicrous in common.
with love,
Paige
ABSTINENCE
Frank never really gave up on coming into the cafe. Even after Jamie started seeing Liz, or even after he stopped.
Frank just sidles in, orders his lox bagel and mocha, and then stands there monitoring the counter and announcing the amount people tip to the rest of the cafe. “Twelve cents, everybody. Twelve cents. Like, ten plus two, here.” His finger follows a skirt-suit talking on an iPhone to the other end of the counter.
The woman glares at him and everyone else who’s turned to watch the cheap fucker screw the baristas out of a living wage. But when she picks up her Americano, she pulls out a handful of singles and slaps them on the counter. She gives Frank the finger as she walks out.
The next person orders organic green tea and shoves a five into the jar.
Tips have gone up six hundred percent in the last few months. And if Frank’s announcements have shamed a few people out of coming back, the reduced volume means better service for those who stay. Or at least that’s how Jamie’s manager talks about it. Everyone he works with loves Frank.
And Jamie can’t say he doesn’t like the extra cash.
These things help Jamie rationalize when he realizes that he doesn’t mind seeing Frank, anymore. He’ll be chatting to Alyssa, wiping down the espresso machine, and there’ll be a flash of orange trucker cap: DOOM WIZARD, and an announcement, “Thirty-seven cents, and he pocketed the single he got back in change. Thirty-seven.”
It’s hard to be cold to the guy when he doesn’t so much as wink at Jamie, anymore. Just thanks him demurely when their fingers brush over the mug, and leaves behind a ten dollar tip.
One morning they hit a pre-lunch lull, and the new girl that Jamie’s been training all shift pushes her sleek hair out of her eyes, cocks her hip and says, “You know, we should hang out sometime.”
Jamie’s hands don’t stutter on the latte art, but he still curses himself for smiling at her too much.
He can’t help it, sometimes. If he wakes up in a good mood, some days the entire world thinks he wants to bang them. A few months ago he had this day where hair and sweater and shining eyes aligned and he got like, six phone numbers from customers on one shift. It’s like he puts off a scent. Frank is not his first rejected stalker.
So he tells the girl the truth. “Actually, I’m not really seeing girls right now.”
“Oh,” she says, flipping her bangs and covering whatever sting she feels with a stone wall of judgment. “No one told me you were-”
“I’m not gay. I’m just off. Women. For a while.” Jamie has said this to himself several times in his head, justifying the dry spell after Liz. The mourning period, more like. He really liked her, and her cabs and video games. He had plans for them. Partly plans for what she could do for his art, but mostly plans for trips they could take together and stuff they could do and how long it would take her to realize that he was better company than her job.
So, fantasies, more like.
“Sorry,” he says to the new girl as she turns away, feeling more guilty that she asked than that he rejected her.
Half an hour later Jamie’s shift ends and Frank waves from where he stands waiting for a tray of coffees. “So I hear you’re off the vag?” says Frank. His hat says: MASTICATOR.
Jamie doesn’t answer directly, but he does stop to say, “Who told you that?”
“Martino, when I called in the order.”
Jaime glances back at Marty, busy at the counter. “It just came up?”
“Yeah, I asked how things are going down here, and he said: Jamie isn’t doing ladies anymore. And I said, I’ll be right there.”
Jamie shifts, hefts the strap of his shoulder bag with his thumb, looks for a clear path to the door.
“I’ll be right there to pick up the coffees, I mean,” says Frank. “Heh, heh.”
“It’s just,” says Jamie, and maybe Frank is the only one he can say this too, because who else would know how awesome and horrible Liz is? No one at the cafe. Not his mom, who took Liz leaving that night as both a personal rejection and a blessing from a forgiving universe. “I’ve just been having a hard time since she dumped me.”
“Aw, Jamie,” says Frank. “She dumps everyone. She’s dumped like, five dudes in the last year alone. The one before you was a lawyer. I heard he was pretty funny.”
“That’s not. That doesn’t make me feel better,” says Jamie, and he notices that Frank’s picked up his tray of coffees and they’re heading out the door into the rain-flecked autumn wind. He wraps his scarf on more tightly and shoves his hands in his pockets.
Frank says, “Yeah, but, you were the only one she should’ve kept.”
“That’s.” Jamie snorts, and then pauses. “That’s nice of you to say.”
“Yeah, and you were also the hottest.”
“Uh,” says Jamie.
“If I had to bone any of them-” Frank angles to look into Jamie’s eyes, but Jamie eyes the sidewalk. “I’d choose you.”
“I. I think you’ve said so, before.”
“It bears repeating,” Franks says.
They’re at the revolving doors to the NBC tower, and Frank hefts the coffee tray, “You want to come up and say hi? Jenna misses you, she also voted for you as Liz’s Number One Best Ex. Lutz went for Floyd.”
“No, I’m okay,” Jamie’s already stepping away. He licks his lips and looks back: “But tell her.”
“Who, Jenna?”
“No, tell Liz.”
“That she turned you off women?”
“No she didn’t. Don’t tell her that. Just say I say hi.” Jamie gives an awkward little wave to illustrate the point.
“Alright, I guess.” Frank shrugs and goes inside.
Two days later Jamie comes in for his morning shift and three people are out sick because there was a Rapture show last night at Marquee, and there’s no one to do the deliveries but him.
Which he thinks should be fine - Frank comes down so often now that the writers never get deliveries anymore - but then he gets an order from Jonathan on the fifty-second floor wanting three half-whole, half-rice milk caramel double lattes with a shot of vanilla in each, identical in every way, and they should still be hot when delivered to Mr. Donaghy’s office, and - this last part is a hiss that Jamie isn’t sure if he actually heard - don’t screw this up or I will follow you to your home and destroy your future, coffee boy, because you will have destroyed mine.
Jamie makes the lattes himself.
He hands them over a few minutes later and keeps the change at Jonathan’s insistence, all seventeen cents of it.
He’s looking at the dirty singles he got paid with when the elevator doors open and Liz brushes by him. She’s wearing sneakers and her hair’s a mess and she smells like meatball subs, but he can’t help but put out a hopeful, “Hey, Liz,” once she’s three yards past him.
She turns with a grimace that she’s probably unaware of, and winces out a “Oh hey, you. How’s it… hanging?”
She’s probably forgotten his name. No one has ever forgotten his name before. No one’s ever dumped him before, either. Rejected him? No.
She’s so out of his league.
“Nevermind,” he says, and stares at the floor waiting for the elevator doors to close.
She loiters, though, and says, “I heard you’re off women.”
He stares back, and doesn’t answer as the doors slide closed.
He goes and finds Frank.
Frank’s office is where all the other writers’ offices are - but Liz is upstairs, so - so Jamie just taps on the open door and slips in, closing it behind him because Lutz is standing at the table with a donut in his mouth. Watching and chewing.
Frank is asleep on a dirty couch with a queue of youtube death metal videos playing on his desktop.
Jamie sits down and wonders what he’s doing. “Hey Frank.”
No response, but Frank smiles without opening his eyes.
“Your boss just tipped me seventeen cents on a seventeen dollar order. Actually, your boss’ secretary.”
“Donaghy believes in the trickle-down effect the way that Lutz believes in the Lucky Charms leprechaun.” Frank opens his eyes and wipes a wrist over his mouth. He sits up and looks at Jamie. He’s still smiling. “What’re you doing here, hot stuff?”
Jamie flips a useless hand at his grey t-shirt. “Delivering coffee.”
“I was gonna come down in half an hour. After I’m done this research for my death metal daycare sketch-” Frank waves at the screen. Bloody heads on spikes and a guy in a suit made out of barbed wire.
Jamie nods like he’s listening, but instead of saying whatever he was planning, he just blurts, “Maybe you wanna hang out tonight?”
And Frank looks at him with his eyes all wide behind his glasses and he licks his lips and says, “Really? Because I know this really great dance club that you’d love.”
Jamie knows he doesn’t want to go to a dance club. But he leans across from the chair and kisses Frank. Like, lips mashed, teeth knocking for a second because neither of them really expected it, but Frank capitalizes on the moment and puts his hands in Jamie’s hair and actually seems to know what he’s doing, because he pulls Jamie onto the couch with him and half an hour later their clothes are twisted and Frank’s hat (UTILITY SHEATH) is on the ground and Jamie’s careful fauxhawk is bent the wrong way.
“You could wear that sweater,” says Frank, breathing heavy. “To the club.”
“Maybe,” says Jamie, trying to think what he wants. What does he want? He tries to think clearly for a second.
Frank pats Jamie’s hand. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I promise this won’t end badly.”
DEPRIVATION
It’s fucking taxing, is what it is. Dale comes over and goes through Saul’s magical drawers and picks out the best stuff, the very best stuff for himself. Sometimes he even dabbles a little in mixing - a pinch of Eggplant Bertha and five of Afterlife Isle, some Count Dooku Drop - and makes his own special joint on Saul’s coffee table.
Then he gets righteously high and blows the smoke out through the window so Saul doesn’t tell him to knock it off.
It feels a little more illicit than usual, with Saul ignoring him like that. Whining about the smoke like that. Dale leaves the cash on the counter, but more often than not Saul’s in his bedroom with his plastic teepees, making his stop-motion films for youtube. He doesn’t want Dale to bother him. He’s not getting high anymore.
It’s like. It’s like Dale’s drug dealer is ten years old. He’s buying drugs from a ten year old on a purge for his art.
Dale still hangs out, though. One Saturday he comes over, and he’s wearing his suit because he had to nail a guy who’d been leaving his house at 3am every morning just to avoid him. But he didn’t expect his subpoena handed to him along with his weekend edition Times, so now Dale’s free and awake and accomplished at 7:00 AM. And all he wants to do is smoke a bowl.
Dale hangs out in his car in front of Saul’s building for half an hour wondering if Saul’s even up and then decides, fuck that guy, because even if he goes in Saul’s not gonna sit and hang out. He’ll make his egg-white omelet and close the bedroom door. And Dale, well, Dale’s place has been a shithole since he stopped having anyone to impress at all, so better here than there.
Saul’s voice is all gravel on the intercom, but he answers it pretty quick. “Yeah. What? Fine.”
He’s in his pajamas, he’s always in his pajamas, and he’s dirty and he smells bad but Dale just raises an eyebrow and peels off his loafers. “You got any coffee?”
“Shit, man. No.” Saul follows him from the door to the kitchen. “You know how hard it is to go cold turkey like this? I don’t need to reconstruct any habits, here.”
“It’s ass o’clock, Saul.” Dale says, and starts opening cupboards. “Why are you even up?”
Saul draws himself up and says, clearly and deliberately, “I am making some clear and deliberate life choices for myself.”
“What does that mean?” Success: a Folgers can under the sink. Dale opens it and it’s full of congealed fat. “Aw, shit. What are you, an eighty year old woman?”
“That’s my Bubby’s. Don’t touch that.”
“You keep your Bubby’s fat in a coffee can under the sink?”
“She uses it to cook, man. Sometimes I bring her over and we eat together.”
Dale shakes his head and puts the can back. He leans against the counter and looks at Saul, who looks back, expectant. “What about tea?” Dale says.
Saul boils water and they sit at the kitchen table and drink green tea with lemon.
“Seriously,” Dale says, eventually, because silences when you’re high are comfortable and pleasant and sometimes lead to makeouts, but silences when you’re drinking tea are just awkward, “When are you going to start smoking again?”
“I don’t know.” Saul pushes at his tea bag with his finger. “Maybe never. Like, I can’t think that. But it could be true. Or maybe when I’m a civil engineer. Maybe after I’ve designed my first multi-use complex.”
Dale leans back in his chair and decides that if he’s going to talk this out he’s going to start with problem number one, the most fundamental issue: “But you sell pot. For a living. That’s how you keep your grandmother in her home.”
“I can still sell pot. I’m selling it right now. To you.”
“So you wouldn’t mind if I lit up right here.” Dale crosses his arms.
“I said I was selling it, not hosting an opium den, you deviant. It’s only because you’re my friend that I let you smoke up on my couch while I’m working.” Saul narrows his earnest eyes, “But it’s pretty hard on me, Dale. Knowing my friend is out there having a good time while I’m trying to build a future for myself.”
Dale shakes his head, takes a swig of grainy tea. “You’re gonna have your own niche market: the Judgmental Weed Dealer. Guilt trip your clients before they’re even high.”
“I’m just saying that I got a plan.” Saul just rolls his eyes and stands up to wash his mug. He takes Dale’s, too. “I’m gonna film my ideas for the masses, go back to school and get the education to make them real. I don’t have to wait until Bubby dies to live my life. I can make her proud of me right now.”
Dale doesn’t say it. He wants to. He wants to call Saul on his Oprah-inspired epiphany. He wants to shut Saul down and make him realize that filming plastic teepees isn’t going to get him into CalTech. That selling weed is pretty much as good as it gets at this level of the food chain. That being a civil engineer? Is freaking hard, and that Saul is unlikely to succeed in his application, let alone classes, let alone a career.
But he watches Saul carefully soap and rinse the mugs and set them aside to dry and thinks that maybe that’s not what friends are supposed to do. And considering that Saul - and kind of Red, maybe a little Red - is his only friend at this point, there’s no point in assaulting the guy’s self-worth until it’s as naked and crippled as his own.
It’s not Dale’s real problem anyhow. His real problem is that because they’re not getting high anymore, they’re not making out.
It happened like, three or four times. Right after they took Red to the hospital, they came back to Saul’s place and sat around in the mess - Dale cleaned up his puke, but they had to throw out the printer - and got really high, and made out for like, three hours on the couch.
They didn’t talk about it after. Saul kind of fell asleep on Dale’s lap and then Dale went home.
The next time Dale came over to buy some more weed, it happened again. Saul packed a bowl and they got high and listened to Dale’s favorite political talk show and after probably a solid hour of sermonizing to no one but Saul, Dale stopped talking because Saul’s hand was in his pants.
Saul gives some really good handjobs. Like, Dale’s pretty familiar with his own dick, but Saul’s experienced. Similar to how Angie was experienced, but without the automatic fear of abandonment and insufficiency.
Dale’s talked out both relationships with Carl, the host of a call-in advice show he’s fairly sure no one he knows listens to.
But now Saul’s not smoking. So there is no relationship, period.
Saul turns around from the sink to look at him. He’s got water soaking the front of his pajama pants, splashes from the mugs, and three days worth of beard. He looks equal parts determined and pathetic.
Dale knows that he wants to side with the determined part. He’s seen what it can do. He grates out, “You’re right. You’re right. Live in the moment. Get up and go kind of thing.”
And Saul says, “Yeah man!” Just delighted, bright-eyed and immediately three inches taller. He slaps Dale on the back, sets the water to boil again. “You want to come see my teepee village? I marked the septic tanks out with M&Ms.”
“Yeah, sure.” Dale says, and when he stands up, Saul hugs him. Sober and warm and a little smelly.
“Thanks for understanding,” Saul says into his shoulder, and Dale knows that the guy’s getting teary-eyed. “You’re my best friend.”
Dale pats him on the back.
They take the tour of the plastic toys and watch Saul’s assembled footage. Dale promises to help with the voiceover.
And then, still not high, Saul sits Dale down on the couch and straddles him and they make out until lunchtime.
PROHIBITION
When Brock catches Hank jerking off in the X-1 for the third time that week, he puts his foot down.
“I can see you, Hank” he calls. Hank’s sitting up there in the pilot seat, peering down through slit eyes, with an O for a mouth.
Brock stops hosing down the concrete - coagulated blood from the scorpula infestation he had to put down yesterday - adjusts his headband and goes up to stand in the cockpit door.
Hank’s flushed pink face peers out from around the seatback. “Um, yes?”
“Hank,” he says, “Think of what you’re gonna do to the upholstery.”
And Hank looks away, his damp palm limp from the wrist like it’s a little distasteful, and sniffs, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m saying,” says Brock, stepping aside and gesturing Hank out, “That lemon juice and dabbing with cheese cloth ain’t gonna do the trick. Take it to your room, Hank.”
“Aw, but Dean’s in there,” says Hank, crawling out of the pilot seat, but making little effort toward the door, “He’s ‘doing science.’ To his giraffe.”
“Maybe if you ask nicely,” Brock mutters, hulking forward to inspect the seat for spillage, “He’ll help you out instead.”
Hank brightens a little as he sulks down the ramp, “Gee, you think?”
Brock watches him though a porthole to make sure he goes back into the house, and then scowls at the stiff pile of towelettes under the ignition console.
--
Doctor Venture catches him on his way out of the pool the next day.
“Brock, my son is defiling my late father’s office with his adolescent frustration. Could you-?” he trails off. He waves a hand.
Brock waits.
The doc shifts his weight from hip to hip and plucks at a button. “Could you tell him - not to?”
“Already did that, Doc. In the X-1, yesterday afternoon.” Brock tries to brush by him, but he’s a nimble little guy, elastic and clingy.
“Yes, well, perhaps you could be a little more emphatic this time? That area does contain some priceless remnants from my father’s illustrious career in superscience. I’d hate to see any holly-come-lately additions to his already impressive collection of mystery effluents.” Doc tilts his face up from where he’s spread-eagled, blocking the door to Brock’s room. He bats his eyes and lifts a coy shoulder.
Brock feels his shoulders slump, then turns to go back upstairs to catch Hank mid-act, and hopefully shame him into abstinence for a few days, at least.
--
Dean’s crying at breakfast the next morning. He’s trying not to show it, but his eyes are red and his shoulders shake as he lifts another spoonful of porridge to his mouth.
Salt drops splash on top of the brown sugar in the bowl and HELPeR bleeps and comes over to hover and measure the Ph balance.
Brock, drinking coffee out of the mug in one hand and refilling the mug from the pot in the other, watches Hank kick his brother’s shin under the table and decides what the problem is.
“Dean,” he says. “What’s going on?”
Another kick. The boy shakes his head sadly, giving cow eyes to Hank, who glares back.
“Hank?” Brock says.
“Nothing, Brock!” Hank smiles brightly. “Deano’s just a little tired from all the bed-learning we did last night.”
“It was… super interesting,” Dean laments.
“Dean.” Brock pauses to level a warning look at Hank. “Let’s be honest here. Your brother was - with his junk - and you were… what. What happened.”
But Dean jerks up from the table, his face white, sending his porridge bowl across the floor and HELPeR whirring back in alarm. His voice cracks: “Triana can never know! NEVER!”
He darts out of the kitchen, and a wail rises up in the hall, trailing through the house like a ghost.
But before Brock can even turn to Hank, the doc’s calling down to tell them to stop with the noise, and asking “Maybe you could bring me up a little hair of the dog? There’s my good man.”
--
Brock finds Hank a few hours later, sitting by the pool with a pair of binoculars and his bird book. His swim trunks are reassuringly slack.
Brock has a laundry list of chores to do around the house, but he sits down beside the boy with a pair of sodas and says, “I suppose your bed teaches abstinence until marriage.”
“Yeah, it’s said that a few times. No milk without buying the cow, I guess? But I’m not giving up cereal. I love my fruity-ohs and I’m not waiting until I get married to keep eating them.”
“That’s a metaphor, Hank.” Brock rubs a hand over his eyes, “It means, no sex-”
“Woah, now,” says Hank, “Stop right there. I need to. I need to think about this.” He averts his eyes to the middle distance. His jaw goes slack and his fingers twitch on his lap.
“All you need to know,” says Brock, standing up and taking a few steps back, “Is that no means no. With anyone. Even Dean.”
“No? No what?”
“No to anything.” Brock grates it out. The only thing saving this conversation from complete worthlessness is that it’s him, not the doc, who’s trying to have it. “Respect your brother’s feelings, Hank. Try not to make him cry.”
“He’s a doofus, Brock. Who cries in the middle of the best discovery made in the name of science, ever?”
Brock twists his mouth and says, “You didn’t discover jerking off, Hank. It’s man’s oldest occupation.”
“Dad said that crying into your drink and then getting really sick and spending the night on the bathroom floor was man’s oldest occupation.”
“That too.” Brock stands up. “Just keep your junk away from your brother. And stop jerking off so damn much. At least in public.”
“Or I don’t get milk?” Hank draws himself up “So that’s the deal, is it, Samson?”
“Sure, Hank,” says Brock, “Sure, that’s the deal.”
--
He catches Hank smugly sneaking milk out of the fridge at 3am a week later, and the kid just gives him this little pissant smirk when Brock goes, “Hank, are you sneaking milk because you were jerking off again?”
Hank shrugs. “Maybe.”
“Is your brother alright?” Brock is in the kitchen at 3am because he was having a very hectic dream about Mo that woke him up and kept him in the bathroom for twenty minutes before coming upstairs in search of a gentling shot of rye.
“He’s not crying, as far as I know.” says Hank. He pours his milk into a plastic cup as Brock swirls the rye around in its bottle.
Brock sighs, “That’s good.”
“Do you wanna know what I did?” asks Hank. Like he’s about to unveil an antfarm or a baking soda volcano.
“No,” says Brock. And there’s a hurt silence from Hank while Brock remembers a point ten minutes earlier when he’d paused in the bathroom, briefly attuned to the sound of the floor creaking outside the door. But the sound hadn’t repeated, and he’d been pretty well distracted, so.
So Brock is one hundred percent sure he’ll go back to find a wet pillow on his bed.
Hank watches his face and smiles, smug as his father when he’s won some petty victory.
Brock snatches the boy’s glass and pours the milk down the drain. “Don’t make me put a retina scanner on the fridge, Hank.”
“You wouldn’t have caught me if I hadn’t told you,” Hank declares.
“Yeah, well you’re still caught.” Brock marches him back to his room in his aquaman underoos.
--
“He’s like a poorly trained dog, Brock. You just have to take him in hand, and-”
“And hit him with a rolled-up newspaper? You really think that’ll work?”
“-or hire the dog whisperer.” Doctor Venture gestures impatiently.
“You know, the other ones didn’t have this problem. Dean doesn’t have this problem. I’m thinking it has something to do with - you know - the vat this one was in or something. Maybe something fell into it, a new chemical, or-”
“Oh, well well, Dr. Science! Let me just hand over my doctorate in applied genetics and let you take over on the science part of this operation, because you’re obviously far better qualified than me to assess this situation from an academic standpoint.”
Brock says, “I’m just saying, maybe we should just start up with a new one.”
“What, do you think I’m made of amniotic protein? Start a new Hank, we’ll have to off Dean, too. No wide-eyed questions, that way. And those slugs are worth - what, oh, let me do the math, here - like, seventy bucks each, in electricity bills and protein powder. Plus clothes! Do you want that taken out of your pay, or what?”
“You don’t pay me.”
“Just, no. Alright? No. You screwed him up: you fix him. God, man, is it that hard for you and your cold-blooded past to show a child a loving hand and a kind word for once? Lord!”
--
Hank comes to him in the night.
There were a few days there where Brock tried to reel him in: played catch with him, helped him pick some flaming skull decals for his hover bike, even brought both of the boys out for ice cream and a movie, Dean’s choice. But they had to leave the theatre when Hank started breathing heavy and shaking the seat in the scene where Lord Darlington displays a sparkling wit along with his well-turned ankle.
Brock is running out of ideas as to how to show the boys Doctor Venture’s suggested loving hand. Even the kind words are getting difficult, these days.
Hank creeps across his bedroom floor through the shadows and when Brock wakes up it’s black except for the dull glow of the solar garden lights shining in from the window, and his serrated blade is under Hank’s adam’s apple.
“Brock,” squeaks Hank. “Hi.”
Brock doesn’t even manage a word, he just growls and tucks his knife back under his pillow without drawing a drop of blood.
“Shhhh,” says Hank, putting a finger to his lips. “You’ll wake HELPeR.”
“Go to bed, Hank.”
“I can’t. Dean peed in it. I’m serious. He was sleepwalking.”
“If he’s crying again tomorrow-”
“Then I’m on soymilk for a year, I know.” Hank rolls his eyes and tucks himself under Brock’s arm. “Goodnight, Brock.”
“What?” says Brock, “No, Hank, I said-”
“Just for tonight,” says Hank, eyes closed and smiling. He snuggles deeper in, and stays put. He stays quiet and still all night.
In the morning, Brock feeds him fruity-ohs and pours the milk himself.
I hope this gets to you when you're good and settled into your hotel after a productive day of hobknobbing around the OT in your Outlander with your straightened hair and primed cell phone. These are three fics in three of our favourite non-fandoms - ON A COMMON THEME, BUT I'LL LET YOU GUESS - just to prove that no matter how slim the pickings get, we will always have something ludicrous in common.
with love,
Paige
ABSTINENCE
Frank never really gave up on coming into the cafe. Even after Jamie started seeing Liz, or even after he stopped.
Frank just sidles in, orders his lox bagel and mocha, and then stands there monitoring the counter and announcing the amount people tip to the rest of the cafe. “Twelve cents, everybody. Twelve cents. Like, ten plus two, here.” His finger follows a skirt-suit talking on an iPhone to the other end of the counter.
The woman glares at him and everyone else who’s turned to watch the cheap fucker screw the baristas out of a living wage. But when she picks up her Americano, she pulls out a handful of singles and slaps them on the counter. She gives Frank the finger as she walks out.
The next person orders organic green tea and shoves a five into the jar.
Tips have gone up six hundred percent in the last few months. And if Frank’s announcements have shamed a few people out of coming back, the reduced volume means better service for those who stay. Or at least that’s how Jamie’s manager talks about it. Everyone he works with loves Frank.
And Jamie can’t say he doesn’t like the extra cash.
These things help Jamie rationalize when he realizes that he doesn’t mind seeing Frank, anymore. He’ll be chatting to Alyssa, wiping down the espresso machine, and there’ll be a flash of orange trucker cap: DOOM WIZARD, and an announcement, “Thirty-seven cents, and he pocketed the single he got back in change. Thirty-seven.”
It’s hard to be cold to the guy when he doesn’t so much as wink at Jamie, anymore. Just thanks him demurely when their fingers brush over the mug, and leaves behind a ten dollar tip.
One morning they hit a pre-lunch lull, and the new girl that Jamie’s been training all shift pushes her sleek hair out of her eyes, cocks her hip and says, “You know, we should hang out sometime.”
Jamie’s hands don’t stutter on the latte art, but he still curses himself for smiling at her too much.
He can’t help it, sometimes. If he wakes up in a good mood, some days the entire world thinks he wants to bang them. A few months ago he had this day where hair and sweater and shining eyes aligned and he got like, six phone numbers from customers on one shift. It’s like he puts off a scent. Frank is not his first rejected stalker.
So he tells the girl the truth. “Actually, I’m not really seeing girls right now.”
“Oh,” she says, flipping her bangs and covering whatever sting she feels with a stone wall of judgment. “No one told me you were-”
“I’m not gay. I’m just off. Women. For a while.” Jamie has said this to himself several times in his head, justifying the dry spell after Liz. The mourning period, more like. He really liked her, and her cabs and video games. He had plans for them. Partly plans for what she could do for his art, but mostly plans for trips they could take together and stuff they could do and how long it would take her to realize that he was better company than her job.
So, fantasies, more like.
“Sorry,” he says to the new girl as she turns away, feeling more guilty that she asked than that he rejected her.
Half an hour later Jamie’s shift ends and Frank waves from where he stands waiting for a tray of coffees. “So I hear you’re off the vag?” says Frank. His hat says: MASTICATOR.
Jamie doesn’t answer directly, but he does stop to say, “Who told you that?”
“Martino, when I called in the order.”
Jaime glances back at Marty, busy at the counter. “It just came up?”
“Yeah, I asked how things are going down here, and he said: Jamie isn’t doing ladies anymore. And I said, I’ll be right there.”
Jamie shifts, hefts the strap of his shoulder bag with his thumb, looks for a clear path to the door.
“I’ll be right there to pick up the coffees, I mean,” says Frank. “Heh, heh.”
“It’s just,” says Jamie, and maybe Frank is the only one he can say this too, because who else would know how awesome and horrible Liz is? No one at the cafe. Not his mom, who took Liz leaving that night as both a personal rejection and a blessing from a forgiving universe. “I’ve just been having a hard time since she dumped me.”
“Aw, Jamie,” says Frank. “She dumps everyone. She’s dumped like, five dudes in the last year alone. The one before you was a lawyer. I heard he was pretty funny.”
“That’s not. That doesn’t make me feel better,” says Jamie, and he notices that Frank’s picked up his tray of coffees and they’re heading out the door into the rain-flecked autumn wind. He wraps his scarf on more tightly and shoves his hands in his pockets.
Frank says, “Yeah, but, you were the only one she should’ve kept.”
“That’s.” Jamie snorts, and then pauses. “That’s nice of you to say.”
“Yeah, and you were also the hottest.”
“Uh,” says Jamie.
“If I had to bone any of them-” Frank angles to look into Jamie’s eyes, but Jamie eyes the sidewalk. “I’d choose you.”
“I. I think you’ve said so, before.”
“It bears repeating,” Franks says.
They’re at the revolving doors to the NBC tower, and Frank hefts the coffee tray, “You want to come up and say hi? Jenna misses you, she also voted for you as Liz’s Number One Best Ex. Lutz went for Floyd.”
“No, I’m okay,” Jamie’s already stepping away. He licks his lips and looks back: “But tell her.”
“Who, Jenna?”
“No, tell Liz.”
“That she turned you off women?”
“No she didn’t. Don’t tell her that. Just say I say hi.” Jamie gives an awkward little wave to illustrate the point.
“Alright, I guess.” Frank shrugs and goes inside.
Two days later Jamie comes in for his morning shift and three people are out sick because there was a Rapture show last night at Marquee, and there’s no one to do the deliveries but him.
Which he thinks should be fine - Frank comes down so often now that the writers never get deliveries anymore - but then he gets an order from Jonathan on the fifty-second floor wanting three half-whole, half-rice milk caramel double lattes with a shot of vanilla in each, identical in every way, and they should still be hot when delivered to Mr. Donaghy’s office, and - this last part is a hiss that Jamie isn’t sure if he actually heard - don’t screw this up or I will follow you to your home and destroy your future, coffee boy, because you will have destroyed mine.
Jamie makes the lattes himself.
He hands them over a few minutes later and keeps the change at Jonathan’s insistence, all seventeen cents of it.
He’s looking at the dirty singles he got paid with when the elevator doors open and Liz brushes by him. She’s wearing sneakers and her hair’s a mess and she smells like meatball subs, but he can’t help but put out a hopeful, “Hey, Liz,” once she’s three yards past him.
She turns with a grimace that she’s probably unaware of, and winces out a “Oh hey, you. How’s it… hanging?”
She’s probably forgotten his name. No one has ever forgotten his name before. No one’s ever dumped him before, either. Rejected him? No.
She’s so out of his league.
“Nevermind,” he says, and stares at the floor waiting for the elevator doors to close.
She loiters, though, and says, “I heard you’re off women.”
He stares back, and doesn’t answer as the doors slide closed.
He goes and finds Frank.
Frank’s office is where all the other writers’ offices are - but Liz is upstairs, so - so Jamie just taps on the open door and slips in, closing it behind him because Lutz is standing at the table with a donut in his mouth. Watching and chewing.
Frank is asleep on a dirty couch with a queue of youtube death metal videos playing on his desktop.
Jamie sits down and wonders what he’s doing. “Hey Frank.”
No response, but Frank smiles without opening his eyes.
“Your boss just tipped me seventeen cents on a seventeen dollar order. Actually, your boss’ secretary.”
“Donaghy believes in the trickle-down effect the way that Lutz believes in the Lucky Charms leprechaun.” Frank opens his eyes and wipes a wrist over his mouth. He sits up and looks at Jamie. He’s still smiling. “What’re you doing here, hot stuff?”
Jamie flips a useless hand at his grey t-shirt. “Delivering coffee.”
“I was gonna come down in half an hour. After I’m done this research for my death metal daycare sketch-” Frank waves at the screen. Bloody heads on spikes and a guy in a suit made out of barbed wire.
Jamie nods like he’s listening, but instead of saying whatever he was planning, he just blurts, “Maybe you wanna hang out tonight?”
And Frank looks at him with his eyes all wide behind his glasses and he licks his lips and says, “Really? Because I know this really great dance club that you’d love.”
Jamie knows he doesn’t want to go to a dance club. But he leans across from the chair and kisses Frank. Like, lips mashed, teeth knocking for a second because neither of them really expected it, but Frank capitalizes on the moment and puts his hands in Jamie’s hair and actually seems to know what he’s doing, because he pulls Jamie onto the couch with him and half an hour later their clothes are twisted and Frank’s hat (UTILITY SHEATH) is on the ground and Jamie’s careful fauxhawk is bent the wrong way.
“You could wear that sweater,” says Frank, breathing heavy. “To the club.”
“Maybe,” says Jamie, trying to think what he wants. What does he want? He tries to think clearly for a second.
Frank pats Jamie’s hand. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I promise this won’t end badly.”
DEPRIVATION
It’s fucking taxing, is what it is. Dale comes over and goes through Saul’s magical drawers and picks out the best stuff, the very best stuff for himself. Sometimes he even dabbles a little in mixing - a pinch of Eggplant Bertha and five of Afterlife Isle, some Count Dooku Drop - and makes his own special joint on Saul’s coffee table.
Then he gets righteously high and blows the smoke out through the window so Saul doesn’t tell him to knock it off.
It feels a little more illicit than usual, with Saul ignoring him like that. Whining about the smoke like that. Dale leaves the cash on the counter, but more often than not Saul’s in his bedroom with his plastic teepees, making his stop-motion films for youtube. He doesn’t want Dale to bother him. He’s not getting high anymore.
It’s like. It’s like Dale’s drug dealer is ten years old. He’s buying drugs from a ten year old on a purge for his art.
Dale still hangs out, though. One Saturday he comes over, and he’s wearing his suit because he had to nail a guy who’d been leaving his house at 3am every morning just to avoid him. But he didn’t expect his subpoena handed to him along with his weekend edition Times, so now Dale’s free and awake and accomplished at 7:00 AM. And all he wants to do is smoke a bowl.
Dale hangs out in his car in front of Saul’s building for half an hour wondering if Saul’s even up and then decides, fuck that guy, because even if he goes in Saul’s not gonna sit and hang out. He’ll make his egg-white omelet and close the bedroom door. And Dale, well, Dale’s place has been a shithole since he stopped having anyone to impress at all, so better here than there.
Saul’s voice is all gravel on the intercom, but he answers it pretty quick. “Yeah. What? Fine.”
He’s in his pajamas, he’s always in his pajamas, and he’s dirty and he smells bad but Dale just raises an eyebrow and peels off his loafers. “You got any coffee?”
“Shit, man. No.” Saul follows him from the door to the kitchen. “You know how hard it is to go cold turkey like this? I don’t need to reconstruct any habits, here.”
“It’s ass o’clock, Saul.” Dale says, and starts opening cupboards. “Why are you even up?”
Saul draws himself up and says, clearly and deliberately, “I am making some clear and deliberate life choices for myself.”
“What does that mean?” Success: a Folgers can under the sink. Dale opens it and it’s full of congealed fat. “Aw, shit. What are you, an eighty year old woman?”
“That’s my Bubby’s. Don’t touch that.”
“You keep your Bubby’s fat in a coffee can under the sink?”
“She uses it to cook, man. Sometimes I bring her over and we eat together.”
Dale shakes his head and puts the can back. He leans against the counter and looks at Saul, who looks back, expectant. “What about tea?” Dale says.
Saul boils water and they sit at the kitchen table and drink green tea with lemon.
“Seriously,” Dale says, eventually, because silences when you’re high are comfortable and pleasant and sometimes lead to makeouts, but silences when you’re drinking tea are just awkward, “When are you going to start smoking again?”
“I don’t know.” Saul pushes at his tea bag with his finger. “Maybe never. Like, I can’t think that. But it could be true. Or maybe when I’m a civil engineer. Maybe after I’ve designed my first multi-use complex.”
Dale leans back in his chair and decides that if he’s going to talk this out he’s going to start with problem number one, the most fundamental issue: “But you sell pot. For a living. That’s how you keep your grandmother in her home.”
“I can still sell pot. I’m selling it right now. To you.”
“So you wouldn’t mind if I lit up right here.” Dale crosses his arms.
“I said I was selling it, not hosting an opium den, you deviant. It’s only because you’re my friend that I let you smoke up on my couch while I’m working.” Saul narrows his earnest eyes, “But it’s pretty hard on me, Dale. Knowing my friend is out there having a good time while I’m trying to build a future for myself.”
Dale shakes his head, takes a swig of grainy tea. “You’re gonna have your own niche market: the Judgmental Weed Dealer. Guilt trip your clients before they’re even high.”
“I’m just saying that I got a plan.” Saul just rolls his eyes and stands up to wash his mug. He takes Dale’s, too. “I’m gonna film my ideas for the masses, go back to school and get the education to make them real. I don’t have to wait until Bubby dies to live my life. I can make her proud of me right now.”
Dale doesn’t say it. He wants to. He wants to call Saul on his Oprah-inspired epiphany. He wants to shut Saul down and make him realize that filming plastic teepees isn’t going to get him into CalTech. That selling weed is pretty much as good as it gets at this level of the food chain. That being a civil engineer? Is freaking hard, and that Saul is unlikely to succeed in his application, let alone classes, let alone a career.
But he watches Saul carefully soap and rinse the mugs and set them aside to dry and thinks that maybe that’s not what friends are supposed to do. And considering that Saul - and kind of Red, maybe a little Red - is his only friend at this point, there’s no point in assaulting the guy’s self-worth until it’s as naked and crippled as his own.
It’s not Dale’s real problem anyhow. His real problem is that because they’re not getting high anymore, they’re not making out.
It happened like, three or four times. Right after they took Red to the hospital, they came back to Saul’s place and sat around in the mess - Dale cleaned up his puke, but they had to throw out the printer - and got really high, and made out for like, three hours on the couch.
They didn’t talk about it after. Saul kind of fell asleep on Dale’s lap and then Dale went home.
The next time Dale came over to buy some more weed, it happened again. Saul packed a bowl and they got high and listened to Dale’s favorite political talk show and after probably a solid hour of sermonizing to no one but Saul, Dale stopped talking because Saul’s hand was in his pants.
Saul gives some really good handjobs. Like, Dale’s pretty familiar with his own dick, but Saul’s experienced. Similar to how Angie was experienced, but without the automatic fear of abandonment and insufficiency.
Dale’s talked out both relationships with Carl, the host of a call-in advice show he’s fairly sure no one he knows listens to.
But now Saul’s not smoking. So there is no relationship, period.
Saul turns around from the sink to look at him. He’s got water soaking the front of his pajama pants, splashes from the mugs, and three days worth of beard. He looks equal parts determined and pathetic.
Dale knows that he wants to side with the determined part. He’s seen what it can do. He grates out, “You’re right. You’re right. Live in the moment. Get up and go kind of thing.”
And Saul says, “Yeah man!” Just delighted, bright-eyed and immediately three inches taller. He slaps Dale on the back, sets the water to boil again. “You want to come see my teepee village? I marked the septic tanks out with M&Ms.”
“Yeah, sure.” Dale says, and when he stands up, Saul hugs him. Sober and warm and a little smelly.
“Thanks for understanding,” Saul says into his shoulder, and Dale knows that the guy’s getting teary-eyed. “You’re my best friend.”
Dale pats him on the back.
They take the tour of the plastic toys and watch Saul’s assembled footage. Dale promises to help with the voiceover.
And then, still not high, Saul sits Dale down on the couch and straddles him and they make out until lunchtime.
PROHIBITION
When Brock catches Hank jerking off in the X-1 for the third time that week, he puts his foot down.
“I can see you, Hank” he calls. Hank’s sitting up there in the pilot seat, peering down through slit eyes, with an O for a mouth.
Brock stops hosing down the concrete - coagulated blood from the scorpula infestation he had to put down yesterday - adjusts his headband and goes up to stand in the cockpit door.
Hank’s flushed pink face peers out from around the seatback. “Um, yes?”
“Hank,” he says, “Think of what you’re gonna do to the upholstery.”
And Hank looks away, his damp palm limp from the wrist like it’s a little distasteful, and sniffs, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m saying,” says Brock, stepping aside and gesturing Hank out, “That lemon juice and dabbing with cheese cloth ain’t gonna do the trick. Take it to your room, Hank.”
“Aw, but Dean’s in there,” says Hank, crawling out of the pilot seat, but making little effort toward the door, “He’s ‘doing science.’ To his giraffe.”
“Maybe if you ask nicely,” Brock mutters, hulking forward to inspect the seat for spillage, “He’ll help you out instead.”
Hank brightens a little as he sulks down the ramp, “Gee, you think?”
Brock watches him though a porthole to make sure he goes back into the house, and then scowls at the stiff pile of towelettes under the ignition console.
--
Doctor Venture catches him on his way out of the pool the next day.
“Brock, my son is defiling my late father’s office with his adolescent frustration. Could you-?” he trails off. He waves a hand.
Brock waits.
The doc shifts his weight from hip to hip and plucks at a button. “Could you tell him - not to?”
“Already did that, Doc. In the X-1, yesterday afternoon.” Brock tries to brush by him, but he’s a nimble little guy, elastic and clingy.
“Yes, well, perhaps you could be a little more emphatic this time? That area does contain some priceless remnants from my father’s illustrious career in superscience. I’d hate to see any holly-come-lately additions to his already impressive collection of mystery effluents.” Doc tilts his face up from where he’s spread-eagled, blocking the door to Brock’s room. He bats his eyes and lifts a coy shoulder.
Brock feels his shoulders slump, then turns to go back upstairs to catch Hank mid-act, and hopefully shame him into abstinence for a few days, at least.
--
Dean’s crying at breakfast the next morning. He’s trying not to show it, but his eyes are red and his shoulders shake as he lifts another spoonful of porridge to his mouth.
Salt drops splash on top of the brown sugar in the bowl and HELPeR bleeps and comes over to hover and measure the Ph balance.
Brock, drinking coffee out of the mug in one hand and refilling the mug from the pot in the other, watches Hank kick his brother’s shin under the table and decides what the problem is.
“Dean,” he says. “What’s going on?”
Another kick. The boy shakes his head sadly, giving cow eyes to Hank, who glares back.
“Hank?” Brock says.
“Nothing, Brock!” Hank smiles brightly. “Deano’s just a little tired from all the bed-learning we did last night.”
“It was… super interesting,” Dean laments.
“Dean.” Brock pauses to level a warning look at Hank. “Let’s be honest here. Your brother was - with his junk - and you were… what. What happened.”
But Dean jerks up from the table, his face white, sending his porridge bowl across the floor and HELPeR whirring back in alarm. His voice cracks: “Triana can never know! NEVER!”
He darts out of the kitchen, and a wail rises up in the hall, trailing through the house like a ghost.
But before Brock can even turn to Hank, the doc’s calling down to tell them to stop with the noise, and asking “Maybe you could bring me up a little hair of the dog? There’s my good man.”
--
Brock finds Hank a few hours later, sitting by the pool with a pair of binoculars and his bird book. His swim trunks are reassuringly slack.
Brock has a laundry list of chores to do around the house, but he sits down beside the boy with a pair of sodas and says, “I suppose your bed teaches abstinence until marriage.”
“Yeah, it’s said that a few times. No milk without buying the cow, I guess? But I’m not giving up cereal. I love my fruity-ohs and I’m not waiting until I get married to keep eating them.”
“That’s a metaphor, Hank.” Brock rubs a hand over his eyes, “It means, no sex-”
“Woah, now,” says Hank, “Stop right there. I need to. I need to think about this.” He averts his eyes to the middle distance. His jaw goes slack and his fingers twitch on his lap.
“All you need to know,” says Brock, standing up and taking a few steps back, “Is that no means no. With anyone. Even Dean.”
“No? No what?”
“No to anything.” Brock grates it out. The only thing saving this conversation from complete worthlessness is that it’s him, not the doc, who’s trying to have it. “Respect your brother’s feelings, Hank. Try not to make him cry.”
“He’s a doofus, Brock. Who cries in the middle of the best discovery made in the name of science, ever?”
Brock twists his mouth and says, “You didn’t discover jerking off, Hank. It’s man’s oldest occupation.”
“Dad said that crying into your drink and then getting really sick and spending the night on the bathroom floor was man’s oldest occupation.”
“That too.” Brock stands up. “Just keep your junk away from your brother. And stop jerking off so damn much. At least in public.”
“Or I don’t get milk?” Hank draws himself up “So that’s the deal, is it, Samson?”
“Sure, Hank,” says Brock, “Sure, that’s the deal.”
--
He catches Hank smugly sneaking milk out of the fridge at 3am a week later, and the kid just gives him this little pissant smirk when Brock goes, “Hank, are you sneaking milk because you were jerking off again?”
Hank shrugs. “Maybe.”
“Is your brother alright?” Brock is in the kitchen at 3am because he was having a very hectic dream about Mo that woke him up and kept him in the bathroom for twenty minutes before coming upstairs in search of a gentling shot of rye.
“He’s not crying, as far as I know.” says Hank. He pours his milk into a plastic cup as Brock swirls the rye around in its bottle.
Brock sighs, “That’s good.”
“Do you wanna know what I did?” asks Hank. Like he’s about to unveil an antfarm or a baking soda volcano.
“No,” says Brock. And there’s a hurt silence from Hank while Brock remembers a point ten minutes earlier when he’d paused in the bathroom, briefly attuned to the sound of the floor creaking outside the door. But the sound hadn’t repeated, and he’d been pretty well distracted, so.
So Brock is one hundred percent sure he’ll go back to find a wet pillow on his bed.
Hank watches his face and smiles, smug as his father when he’s won some petty victory.
Brock snatches the boy’s glass and pours the milk down the drain. “Don’t make me put a retina scanner on the fridge, Hank.”
“You wouldn’t have caught me if I hadn’t told you,” Hank declares.
“Yeah, well you’re still caught.” Brock marches him back to his room in his aquaman underoos.
--
“He’s like a poorly trained dog, Brock. You just have to take him in hand, and-”
“And hit him with a rolled-up newspaper? You really think that’ll work?”
“-or hire the dog whisperer.” Doctor Venture gestures impatiently.
“You know, the other ones didn’t have this problem. Dean doesn’t have this problem. I’m thinking it has something to do with - you know - the vat this one was in or something. Maybe something fell into it, a new chemical, or-”
“Oh, well well, Dr. Science! Let me just hand over my doctorate in applied genetics and let you take over on the science part of this operation, because you’re obviously far better qualified than me to assess this situation from an academic standpoint.”
Brock says, “I’m just saying, maybe we should just start up with a new one.”
“What, do you think I’m made of amniotic protein? Start a new Hank, we’ll have to off Dean, too. No wide-eyed questions, that way. And those slugs are worth - what, oh, let me do the math, here - like, seventy bucks each, in electricity bills and protein powder. Plus clothes! Do you want that taken out of your pay, or what?”
“You don’t pay me.”
“Just, no. Alright? No. You screwed him up: you fix him. God, man, is it that hard for you and your cold-blooded past to show a child a loving hand and a kind word for once? Lord!”
--
Hank comes to him in the night.
There were a few days there where Brock tried to reel him in: played catch with him, helped him pick some flaming skull decals for his hover bike, even brought both of the boys out for ice cream and a movie, Dean’s choice. But they had to leave the theatre when Hank started breathing heavy and shaking the seat in the scene where Lord Darlington displays a sparkling wit along with his well-turned ankle.
Brock is running out of ideas as to how to show the boys Doctor Venture’s suggested loving hand. Even the kind words are getting difficult, these days.
Hank creeps across his bedroom floor through the shadows and when Brock wakes up it’s black except for the dull glow of the solar garden lights shining in from the window, and his serrated blade is under Hank’s adam’s apple.
“Brock,” squeaks Hank. “Hi.”
Brock doesn’t even manage a word, he just growls and tucks his knife back under his pillow without drawing a drop of blood.
“Shhhh,” says Hank, putting a finger to his lips. “You’ll wake HELPeR.”
“Go to bed, Hank.”
“I can’t. Dean peed in it. I’m serious. He was sleepwalking.”
“If he’s crying again tomorrow-”
“Then I’m on soymilk for a year, I know.” Hank rolls his eyes and tucks himself under Brock’s arm. “Goodnight, Brock.”
“What?” says Brock, “No, Hank, I said-”
“Just for tonight,” says Hank, eyes closed and smiling. He snuggles deeper in, and stays put. He stays quiet and still all night.
In the morning, Brock feeds him fruity-ohs and pours the milk himself.