Surprise! It's a missing scene!
Because allyndra said I could share this with the class, this is the ficbite I wrote her for help_pakistan, which ended up being a missing scene from wayyyy back in the fic's dark and dubious past. (This scene would take place just before the first scene in which Adam gives Kris a ride home.) The prompt she gave me was "hot cider," and the resulting snippet ended up taking place at exactly the time of year it is right now.
Thanks to adelate and cutoutawindow for the readovers, and to allyndra for the awesome prompt and being willing to share.
Kris was pretty sure the Saint Isidore's annual fall carnival was cursed. It was always held the first weekend of October, and without fail, it was ridiculously cold. Carnivals were supposed to be summery, with short sleeves and sno-cones and crickets chirping, but the fall carnival ended up being more like a sledding trip---still fun, but the kind of fun where you were also seemingly in danger of losing a couple fingertips or an ear to frostbite.
The cold snuck up on him this year. The sun had been warm on his shoulders when he left the house after dinner, lulling him into a false sense of security. Even the slight chill in the air felt crisp and sweet and like the absolute essence of fall. He met Katy (who was looking sort of essence-of-fall, herself, she had a plaid shirt on and her hair in braided pigtails) at the carnival entrance, and they rode the ferris wheel and the Gravitron and the Scrambler and walked through the totally lame haunted house three times and bought a giant cloud of blue and pink cotton candy and let the crackly, insane sugar of it melt between their mouths as they kissed behind the fresh-squeezed-lemonade truck. The truck's generator hummed pleasantly under Kris's shoulders, the dying sunlight caught in Katy's hair and surrounded her coming-undone braids with a glowing golden haze, and it was all so perfect that his heart almost hurt.
Which was when some guy Kris semi-recognized from school walked by and yelled at them to get a room, and the spell was broken after that. The wind picked up as the sun set and the carnival's midway lights came on, and after Katy shivered dramatically a couple times, Kris gave in and gave her his jacket. He felt like maybe he was supposed to say something cheesy like I'll keep you warm, but he couldn't make himself, and Katy seemed happy with the jacket, so he figured it was okay. They went on the Scrambler again, and then wandered through the haunted house to warm up (it seemed slightly less lame at night), and then they ran into Jess and her little sister, who dragged Katy off to ride the spinning teacups and the baby rollercoaster that was shaped like a caterpillar, and Kris was left to his own devices.
Everything looked different, partly just because it was dark and everything was neon and shadows and the bright, bubbly afterimages that danced in his vision whenever he looked directly at the lights on the various rides and trucks and booths, and partly just because he was alone, quiet inside all the noise surrounding him, and that always made things look different. The carnival at night was sparkling and magical but also a little worn-looking and sad, with this slightly unreal feeling like it was a movie set, and Kris thought if he hadn't been slowly freezing to death, it would have been even better. After a while he stopped caring about looking dumb and flipped the hood of his sweatshirt over his head. It didn't really help.
Everyone ever from school was always at the carnival (last year Kris's friend John, who had just broken up with a girl and was trying not to run into her or her friends, called it "the worst place in the history of the world to avoid someone"), and Kris said hi in passing to some people from the orchestra and a group of Daniel's friends and a girl from the lacrosse team who wanted to know if Katy was there, but he was still surprised to see Adam, who was standing by himself under the brightly-lit awning of a truck that was selling gyros.
He didn't know if he should go say hi or not, something about Adam intimidated him a little. He knew he was supposed to think Adam was weird and be scared away by that, but the more he talked to Adam, the more he liked the ways Adam was weird. He just wasn't sure if the feeling was mutual. It was easy to imagine that Adam would think he was boring, that he thought Kris was okay in an it's-cool-to-have-straight-guys-in-the-GSA way, but not someone Adam would choose to hang out with otherwise, that he wasn't loud enough or crazy enough or smart enough.
He just watched Adam for a minute---he watched Adam watching the carnival, and that was one of the things that made Kris feel wary, the way way Adam watched everything, how sharp his eyes were, the way you could just see him taking everything in and thinking about it. Which wasn't a bad thing, exactly, but could be kind of unnerving. Adam was holding a paper cup, the kind coffee and stuff came in, and he brought it up to his mouth to take a sip and then changed his mind and cradled it to his chest instead, and for some reason that was the point at which Kris started to feel like a stalker lurking in some shrubs with a set of binoculars, so he shook his hood back down off his head and walked over.
"Hi," he said.
Adam smiled and gave him a little wave with his non drink-holding hand. "Hi. Have you seen Nina and Alicia, by any chance?"
"No, sorry."
"You know how in kindergarten, they tell you to plan a place to meet your family if you get separated? Apparently that was a good idea. Did you---are you lost, too?"
"Nah, I'm supposed to meet Katy at the funnel cake stand in a while," Kris said.
"See, you guys have a plan. You're way smarter than we are."
"If I were smart, I wouldn't be so cold," Kris said.
"I don't think those two things are related," Adam said.
"I gave Katy my jacket."
"Aww, that's nice."
"For her," Kris said grumpily, folding his hands into fists in his pockets to try and keep his fingers warm.
Adam laughed. "I'd---I have all these jackets in my car, and I'd offer you one, but---"
"They wouldn't fit me?" Kris wondered, all of a sudden, how that kind of thing worked if you were gay. If two guys were dating, did one of them still have to be the guy and give up his jacket if the other one got cold? Could they both be the guy and just like, swap jackets? It seemed weird to Kris that he knew (in theory, anyway) how gay sex worked, but not any of the other stuff, the tiny ordinary stuff like who had to give who their jacket or hold doors or let the other person have the seat with the armrest on the right hand side in a movie theater.
"I don't have my car," Adam finished. "I got a ride with Nina. But---here, you can hold this." He extended his paper cup to Kris, who raised his eyebrows to say huh? "It's hot, so it'll at least warm your hands up."
"Oh. Thanks, that would be good," Kris said, uncurling his hands from his pockets and taking the cup from Adam. Adam's hands were warm and covered in freckles that Kris hadn't ever noticed before. The smell of spiced cider---apples and cinnamon and something else, one of those other spices that went in pumpkin pie, maybe---drifted out of the cup, so sweet and tantalizing that it was like being in a cartoon where smells had an actual shape, little swirly clouds that surrounded the characters' heads. It made Kris remember why autumn had seemed like an amazing idea just a couple hours earlier. He closed his eyes and inhaled, thinking about fallen leaves crunching under his feet, and when he opened his eyes, Adam was looking at him in an interested way that made Kris feel newly arrived somehow, like he should say hi again. He settled for: "I thought this was coffee."
Adam wrinkled his nose. "I'm not really a coffee person."
"Me either," Kris said, shifting the cup around in his hands. It was hot enough that it was starting to make his fingers hurt as they thawed. "But this smells really good."
"Doesn't it? But don't drink any. Wait, sorry, that came out wrong. Not like ew, don't drink my cider, it's just really hot. Burn-your-tongue hot, so..."
"I'll just hold it," Kris said, trying to resist the urge to press the cup to his face. "I think this carnival is cursed."
"What like...the ferris wheel is haunted? By the ghost of carnie who got killed in the machinery?" Adam looked excited by the prospect, like he was getting ready to plan a whole horror movie about the concept. (It was possible that he was, Kris had heard him have conversations in a similar vein with Megan.)
"No," Kris said. "It's just always freezing cold for it. Every year."
"It totally is, you're right," Adam said after a moment. "I remember one year my mom made us wear gloves, and my brother argued with her for like an hour. He was all 'mom, wearing gloves will ruin my carnival experience.'"
"...Seriously?"
"Yeah. My brother's kind of a jackass."
"Mine, too," Kris said. He felt a ridiculous kind of solidarity, like both of them having jackass brothers meant something, cemented something between them. He was pretty sure it actually didn't, because everyone felt that way about their siblings, but it still triggered one of those hindsight is 20/20 moments where he looked back at himself all of three minutes ago and wondered why he'd hesitated before coming over here. "I like your story better, with the ghost of the crazy carnie."
"That sounds like a Scooby-Doo episode. The Ghost of the Crazy Carnie," Adam said, waggling his fingers to indicate spookiness.
"But it's never really a ghost on that show, it's always---"
"And I would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"
"Yeah," Kris said, laughing. He went to take a sip of Adam's cider, and stopped himself just in time.
"You can have some if you want," Adam said. "It might be cooler by now."
Kris looked down at the cider suspiciously and took a cautious sip. It tasted perfect, like standing in front of a bonfire or the tiny, barely edible (but still amazing) apples he'd stolen from his neighbors' front yard as a kid or like coming in from trick-or-treating and sorting out his candy haul on the living room floor, half still in his costume and half in his pajamas. It also burned his tongue. Kris winced, sucking in a mouthful of freezing cold air to try and fix it.
"So...not cooler yet," Adam said, his eyes amused and sympathetic.
"No," Kris said. "But worth it."
Thanks to adelate and cutoutawindow for the readovers, and to allyndra for the awesome prompt and being willing to share.
Kris was pretty sure the Saint Isidore's annual fall carnival was cursed. It was always held the first weekend of October, and without fail, it was ridiculously cold. Carnivals were supposed to be summery, with short sleeves and sno-cones and crickets chirping, but the fall carnival ended up being more like a sledding trip---still fun, but the kind of fun where you were also seemingly in danger of losing a couple fingertips or an ear to frostbite.
The cold snuck up on him this year. The sun had been warm on his shoulders when he left the house after dinner, lulling him into a false sense of security. Even the slight chill in the air felt crisp and sweet and like the absolute essence of fall. He met Katy (who was looking sort of essence-of-fall, herself, she had a plaid shirt on and her hair in braided pigtails) at the carnival entrance, and they rode the ferris wheel and the Gravitron and the Scrambler and walked through the totally lame haunted house three times and bought a giant cloud of blue and pink cotton candy and let the crackly, insane sugar of it melt between their mouths as they kissed behind the fresh-squeezed-lemonade truck. The truck's generator hummed pleasantly under Kris's shoulders, the dying sunlight caught in Katy's hair and surrounded her coming-undone braids with a glowing golden haze, and it was all so perfect that his heart almost hurt.
Which was when some guy Kris semi-recognized from school walked by and yelled at them to get a room, and the spell was broken after that. The wind picked up as the sun set and the carnival's midway lights came on, and after Katy shivered dramatically a couple times, Kris gave in and gave her his jacket. He felt like maybe he was supposed to say something cheesy like I'll keep you warm, but he couldn't make himself, and Katy seemed happy with the jacket, so he figured it was okay. They went on the Scrambler again, and then wandered through the haunted house to warm up (it seemed slightly less lame at night), and then they ran into Jess and her little sister, who dragged Katy off to ride the spinning teacups and the baby rollercoaster that was shaped like a caterpillar, and Kris was left to his own devices.
Everything looked different, partly just because it was dark and everything was neon and shadows and the bright, bubbly afterimages that danced in his vision whenever he looked directly at the lights on the various rides and trucks and booths, and partly just because he was alone, quiet inside all the noise surrounding him, and that always made things look different. The carnival at night was sparkling and magical but also a little worn-looking and sad, with this slightly unreal feeling like it was a movie set, and Kris thought if he hadn't been slowly freezing to death, it would have been even better. After a while he stopped caring about looking dumb and flipped the hood of his sweatshirt over his head. It didn't really help.
Everyone ever from school was always at the carnival (last year Kris's friend John, who had just broken up with a girl and was trying not to run into her or her friends, called it "the worst place in the history of the world to avoid someone"), and Kris said hi in passing to some people from the orchestra and a group of Daniel's friends and a girl from the lacrosse team who wanted to know if Katy was there, but he was still surprised to see Adam, who was standing by himself under the brightly-lit awning of a truck that was selling gyros.
He didn't know if he should go say hi or not, something about Adam intimidated him a little. He knew he was supposed to think Adam was weird and be scared away by that, but the more he talked to Adam, the more he liked the ways Adam was weird. He just wasn't sure if the feeling was mutual. It was easy to imagine that Adam would think he was boring, that he thought Kris was okay in an it's-cool-to-have-straight-guys-in-the-GSA way, but not someone Adam would choose to hang out with otherwise, that he wasn't loud enough or crazy enough or smart enough.
He just watched Adam for a minute---he watched Adam watching the carnival, and that was one of the things that made Kris feel wary, the way way Adam watched everything, how sharp his eyes were, the way you could just see him taking everything in and thinking about it. Which wasn't a bad thing, exactly, but could be kind of unnerving. Adam was holding a paper cup, the kind coffee and stuff came in, and he brought it up to his mouth to take a sip and then changed his mind and cradled it to his chest instead, and for some reason that was the point at which Kris started to feel like a stalker lurking in some shrubs with a set of binoculars, so he shook his hood back down off his head and walked over.
"Hi," he said.
Adam smiled and gave him a little wave with his non drink-holding hand. "Hi. Have you seen Nina and Alicia, by any chance?"
"No, sorry."
"You know how in kindergarten, they tell you to plan a place to meet your family if you get separated? Apparently that was a good idea. Did you---are you lost, too?"
"Nah, I'm supposed to meet Katy at the funnel cake stand in a while," Kris said.
"See, you guys have a plan. You're way smarter than we are."
"If I were smart, I wouldn't be so cold," Kris said.
"I don't think those two things are related," Adam said.
"I gave Katy my jacket."
"Aww, that's nice."
"For her," Kris said grumpily, folding his hands into fists in his pockets to try and keep his fingers warm.
Adam laughed. "I'd---I have all these jackets in my car, and I'd offer you one, but---"
"They wouldn't fit me?" Kris wondered, all of a sudden, how that kind of thing worked if you were gay. If two guys were dating, did one of them still have to be the guy and give up his jacket if the other one got cold? Could they both be the guy and just like, swap jackets? It seemed weird to Kris that he knew (in theory, anyway) how gay sex worked, but not any of the other stuff, the tiny ordinary stuff like who had to give who their jacket or hold doors or let the other person have the seat with the armrest on the right hand side in a movie theater.
"I don't have my car," Adam finished. "I got a ride with Nina. But---here, you can hold this." He extended his paper cup to Kris, who raised his eyebrows to say huh? "It's hot, so it'll at least warm your hands up."
"Oh. Thanks, that would be good," Kris said, uncurling his hands from his pockets and taking the cup from Adam. Adam's hands were warm and covered in freckles that Kris hadn't ever noticed before. The smell of spiced cider---apples and cinnamon and something else, one of those other spices that went in pumpkin pie, maybe---drifted out of the cup, so sweet and tantalizing that it was like being in a cartoon where smells had an actual shape, little swirly clouds that surrounded the characters' heads. It made Kris remember why autumn had seemed like an amazing idea just a couple hours earlier. He closed his eyes and inhaled, thinking about fallen leaves crunching under his feet, and when he opened his eyes, Adam was looking at him in an interested way that made Kris feel newly arrived somehow, like he should say hi again. He settled for: "I thought this was coffee."
Adam wrinkled his nose. "I'm not really a coffee person."
"Me either," Kris said, shifting the cup around in his hands. It was hot enough that it was starting to make his fingers hurt as they thawed. "But this smells really good."
"Doesn't it? But don't drink any. Wait, sorry, that came out wrong. Not like ew, don't drink my cider, it's just really hot. Burn-your-tongue hot, so..."
"I'll just hold it," Kris said, trying to resist the urge to press the cup to his face. "I think this carnival is cursed."
"What like...the ferris wheel is haunted? By the ghost of carnie who got killed in the machinery?" Adam looked excited by the prospect, like he was getting ready to plan a whole horror movie about the concept. (It was possible that he was, Kris had heard him have conversations in a similar vein with Megan.)
"No," Kris said. "It's just always freezing cold for it. Every year."
"It totally is, you're right," Adam said after a moment. "I remember one year my mom made us wear gloves, and my brother argued with her for like an hour. He was all 'mom, wearing gloves will ruin my carnival experience.'"
"...Seriously?"
"Yeah. My brother's kind of a jackass."
"Mine, too," Kris said. He felt a ridiculous kind of solidarity, like both of them having jackass brothers meant something, cemented something between them. He was pretty sure it actually didn't, because everyone felt that way about their siblings, but it still triggered one of those hindsight is 20/20 moments where he looked back at himself all of three minutes ago and wondered why he'd hesitated before coming over here. "I like your story better, with the ghost of the crazy carnie."
"That sounds like a Scooby-Doo episode. The Ghost of the Crazy Carnie," Adam said, waggling his fingers to indicate spookiness.
"But it's never really a ghost on that show, it's always---"
"And I would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"
"Yeah," Kris said, laughing. He went to take a sip of Adam's cider, and stopped himself just in time.
"You can have some if you want," Adam said. "It might be cooler by now."
Kris looked down at the cider suspiciously and took a cautious sip. It tasted perfect, like standing in front of a bonfire or the tiny, barely edible (but still amazing) apples he'd stolen from his neighbors' front yard as a kid or like coming in from trick-or-treating and sorting out his candy haul on the living room floor, half still in his costume and half in his pajamas. It also burned his tongue. Kris winced, sucking in a mouthful of freezing cold air to try and fix it.
"So...not cooler yet," Adam said, his eyes amused and sympathetic.
"No," Kris said. "But worth it."