(no subject)
Title: A Night of Boheme
Author: Stephanie
Written for: tolavieboheme
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Uh, general. Not angst and not fluff. In the middle.
Summary: Mark isn't enjoying this opera too much, but the kid next to him seems interesting enough. Mark/Roger, Maureen/Benny.
Disclaimer: Yeah. Not Jon.
A Night of Boheme
There are few things in the world that a school can do to amuse high school kids. No matter what they’re being taught, no matter how interesting the teachers try to make it, no matter how much they might actually be enjoying what they’re doing for a class no high school student is going to admit that they like anything they’re teachers force them to do.
Mark Cohen is absolutely not an exception. “This is so lame.” Groaning, he leans back, banging his head against the top of his chair in pure teenage agony. Any good teenager who is sick of the shit that their parents and teachers force on them can pull this off, and Mark pulls it off flawlessly. He is more than ready to get the fuck out of Scarsdale, but a class trip is not how he wants to be spending his time in the city.
Mark is seventeen and counting the days until freedom is his. No more mom worrying about his grades, no more dad telling him what to do. He’ll be able to make his own damn choices without what feels like the entire Scarsdale Synagogue breathing down his neck. Taking him up here is just mocking him, letting him see the city and not getting a chance to leave the nice lines and buddy systems his teachers have forced him into. Mark wants to be an artist. He wants to be the new Allen Ginsberg, minus the poetry and plus a camera. He is sick of staying in line and holding other’s hands.
“Who knows?” Mark’s head jerks around hard enough to correct the whiplash he’d gotten earlier on the bus. Fuck. Mrs. Dulcet, his English teacher, is standing over him with a small smile. She heard him, just great and - God, look at that cleavage. No, don’t look. Mark’s eyes jump up to her face quickly. “You may like it.”
“Err…” Not the smartest thing he’s ever muttered. What are the chances she’d be standing right there when he said that? And why is she wearing a shirt he can see down? “I’m just… Because it’s opera…”
She smiles and Mark manages to feel like even more of an idiot. Here is this beautiful, educated woman and he can’t string three words together to form a complete thoughts. Way to impress. “Weren’t you the one telling me how much you liked Kubrick?” Oh, God. She remembered something they talked about. Trying not to look like an idiot or look away from her face, Mark simply nods. “Well, without Puccini and without the time period that this,” she waves towards the curtain on the stage. “Was created, literature criticism would have never been what it was today, and books like A Clockwork Orange would have never been written.” Mrs. Dulcet smiles as if she’s made this wonderful point, and maybe she has but all Mark can think is don’t stare don’t stare don’t stare. “All art is based off other art. Every writer must read. Think of this as lending itself to your artist endeavors.”
“Right,” Mark mutters, swallowing hard as she smiles at him before turning and walking away to check on the other students. Mark watches her go, heart thumping in his throat so hard he can barely breathe. “Thank you, Mrs. Dulcet..”
After making sure Mrs. Dulcet isn’t still looking back at him, that’s when Mark slips down into his seat and fuck if he hopes the opera house doesn’t collapse right now and swallow him whole. His best friend sitting there with this huge, shit eating grin on his face so that Mark can tell he’s probably inwardly laughing his ass off is not helping. “You are so lame.”
Mark struggles to straighten himself out in his chair, mostly just to glare at Benny. “Asshole,” he mutters, trying not too look to ruffled by Mrs. Dulcet’s hearing him groan about the opera, or being able to see down her shirt while she talked to him. “You couldn’t have told me she was right there!”
“And miss all the fun,” Benny says, smirking over at Mark and he could just slap that look off him right then. If Benny weren’t in track and Mark in the art club then he’s definitely hit him.
“I wouldn’t worry that woody.” That isn’t Benny, but it might have been better if that were. Maureen is beaming as she points down at his lap and all Mark can do his groan and covering his lap with the playbill. “I’m sure the blue haired lady who sits next to you will help you out with that… little problem.”
That does make Benny laugh, wrapping his arms around his girlfriend’s waist as he kisses her. Most times Mark hates when they do that. It’s not really all that comfortable, sitting there awkwardly as your friends stuff their tongues down each other’s throats and see how far they can get their hands down each other’s clothes without taking anything off. In this case, Mark is more than glad for the distraction.
So, of course, this time they have to go and stop at just a kiss. “It’s a good thing you’re turned on by the smell of cats, huh?”
“Shut up,” Mark mutters, turning the playbill over and flipping through it. He can be into this stuff, stuff about loud singing in foreign languages. Marcello is a painter… He likes painting. He likes bohemian. He just doesn’t like it when it’s in some huge playhouse lined with fake gold, clearly directed towards anyone but artists. Still, he can get into this.
“Oh, come on,” Benny grumbles, knocking the playbill out of Mark’s hands.
“Hey!” Mark watches it flutter down to the floor for a moment before swatting at Benny, cuffing his shoulder lightly. “I was reading that!”
“What a suck up,” Maureen says with a roll of her eyes as she settles into Benny’s arms. “What’s it matter if you read up on the actors? Come on, you barely passed Spanish. You’re not gonna be able to understand it.”
“It’s in Italian,” Mark points out, not that this really helps. He can say maybe ten words in Hebrew despite his best efforts, and the only things he can only speak enough Spanish to barely get through his class. “Besides, not like you can do any better.”
“Oh, yeah, mi puta?”
Being the mature teen he is, Mark makes a face at Maureen when she gives him a smug, upper handed smile. “What’s that mean?”
Benny just smiles, clapping him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.” Hooking an arm around Maureen’s waist he leans in, and Mark figures this means that he’s lost the only people he has to talk to for the night. Mark knows that cuddling. That is the fuck the rest of the world, we might as well be alone cuddle. He’d seen them in it a whole lot. “He is not your bitch.”
Rolling his eyes, Mark looks away to give the two of them privacy as they tease each other between kisses. He isn’t a kid, but still it’s really gross. Not just because they’re kissing, but because they’re right there and Mark can feel Benny’s knee hit his when he moves. It’s like a threesome, only he doesn’t get to watch or participate or anything fun. Just sit awkwardly by while his friends make out in their chairs.
Mark has decided to just stare off into space until it’s over when someone drops into his vision. “Fuck.” Mark hadn’t been expecting that and he jerks back, landing on Benny who doesn’t seem to give a shit and is otherwise occupied.
The guy that had dropped from no where into the seat next to him doesn’t even look up at Mark, just opens his playbill and starts reading through with this serious look on his face, like he’s really getting into the actor’s bios. He isn’t an old lady and he doesn’t smell of cats, he’s just this kid around Mark’s age with bleached out hair and, well, Mark wouldn’t mind seeing him naked but that really isn’t strange. It really hard to get a hold of porn in his house, and he’d like to see almost anyone naked. Expect like his family or Mr. Grayson or, well, that guy that he sits next to on the bus when he rides into the city or…
Mark shakes his head, derailing the thoughts.
“Uh…” He slides into his seat properly again, leaving Benny and Maureen to their thing, trying to get this guy’s attention. He just keeps reading his playbill. Come on, what could possibly that interesting about a plot summary and list of scenes? So Mark coughs and wiggles a little closer as if quietly screaming, “Notice me!” and, of course, he doesn’t. “Hey…”
Finally the guy looks up and, Jesus. The serious look that he had fixed on the playbill, that is all on Mark now. No one should be able to look at people like that. Mark starts fidgeting around, of course, and the guy just stares harder. “Uh, that seat isn’t for students,” Mark mutters, feeling like he’s back in middle school. Come on, he can talk to the guy without feeling like a kid. “It’s uh…”
“I’m not a student.” Then he smiles and, okay, he still looks like he’s going to be able to stare him down until Mark breaks but it’s not as scary anymore. “I’m just here to watch.”
“Oh.” Mark actually has to think about that one. So, this cute teenager just comes to opera by choice. He looks over him at the woman sitting next to him, probably his mom. Well, that makes more sense. “Ah, sorry…”
“It’s fine,” he says with a small shrug, still with that unthreatening smile as he leans back into his seat and goes back to reading his playbill, and Mark keeps staring. Not for any real reason, but staring at this guy next to him is a little less awkward than listening to his friends exchange spit. Eventually, though, the guy looks back up with this sort of lost expression. “What?”
“Nothing.” And just like that Mark sits back in his seat, staring straight ahead. Just in time for the curtain to come up, too. Mark settles in, determined to give this a shot.
He figures he does a pretty good job. He makes it about ten minutes before intermission. Then he has to get up and go to the bathroom to stop the ringing in his ears.
“Stupid opera,” Mark mutters as he washes his hands down. He can still sort of hear it, echoing from the main room. This is really what Mrs. Dulcet is so crazy about? It sounds like that one guy, Mark has no clue what his name is but that one guy sounded like he was choking on a cat. A very loud, sick cat. Mark catches his ear, just too make sure they’re not bleeding.
“You left quickly.”
“Jesus.” Mark looks over just as the door stands shut and the guy he was sitting next to walks in, smiling as he walks over to the urinal. Seems he has a knack for making Mark jump around. “Uh, hey. Yeah, just needed a break.”
“Not a big Puccini fan, huh?” The guy asks, moving right by Mark as he watches his hands. Seven sinks, and he stands right there so that there shoulder’s almost touch.
“Uh…” Mark isn’t entirely sure who Puccini is, so to try and at least look a little intelligent he just shrugs. “I just don’t think that just because something is old means that it has to be good. And just because something is new doesn’t mean it’s trashy pop culture. Things should be, uh…” Shit, he’s rambling and probably making a fool out of himself. “I mean, if your mom likes them that’s cool, I just…”
Is the guy blushing? It kind of looks like he’s blushing but then Mark hands out with Maureen and Benny who are utterly shameless. He doesn’t see a lot of blushing so he can’t be sure. “I made her take me.”
“Oh! Oh, well…” Yeah, now he really has nothing to say. So this random guy and Mrs. Dulcet both like opera? Jesus, what is Mark missing.
“I like The Clash, too,” the guy says quickly, looking back up at Mark and suddenly his staring isn’t as scary. More like a comfort me look than anything else. “I mean, I can play guitar and…”
“Oh.” It would be helpful if Mark could say something more intelligent than that, but mostly he just ends up nodding. “That’s cool.”
“Yeah… I’m, uh…” The guy wipes his hands down his slacks before offering it to Mark. “I’m Roger, by the way.”
He takes Roger, who likes opera and the Clash and plays the guitar, up on that, shaking his hand. “I’m Mark.”
*
“Mm… Ouch.”
“Ouch?” Benny pulls back, frowning at his girlfriend. Ouch is not what a guy wants to hear when he’s kissing someone. Ouch is sort of like a girl suddenly announcing he’s not doing this right. He knows how to kiss, damnit. What is with the ouch? “Ouch? What does ouch mean?”
Maureen blows a curl out of her face, rolling her eyes. Like she’s so good at everything she does and has never messed up. Please, she shouldn’t be giving him that look. “It means you stepped on my foot,” she whispers over some guy’s cabaletta (and, yeah, he knows what an cabaletta is. He was listening to his chorus teacher.) Maureen curls her feet away from him, wiggling up in her chair so that she’s no longer draped across the armrest, which Benny takes to mean that he’s supposed to do the same. Damnit.
Benny winces as he sits back, sliding down in the seat and trying not to think below the waist. All Maureen has to do is straighten out her skirt and run her hand through her hair a few times, nails pulling the tangles from her hair. That simple and she is done, no trouble stopping in the middle of that at all. “Hey…” She looks over Benny’s chest. “Where’d Mark go.”
“You scared him off,” he says with a roll of his eyes as Maureen checks Mark’s seat. He doesn’t see what her big obsession with mark is, anyway, expect that he has a camera and asks her to read his scripts a lot. Benny knows Maureen and he knows that he cam never compete with a spotlight. Still, she shouldn’t worry about where he is so much.
“Shut up,” she says with what is supposed to be a friendly smile as she swats at him, but Benny knows better and just gives her a tight, frustrated smile in return, brushing away her hand. When Maureen is in a good mood, when she’s up, then they’re good together. When she’s worrying about Mark and fixing her hair nervously like she is now, that is when Benny wonders what the hell he was thinking, asking her out in the first place.
Of course, the day he asked her out Mark was there with, “You’re going to regret this.” Why does he have to be right about these things?
“Seriously,” she says, looking over her shoulder like she can see Mark waving for their attention somewhere. That is more her style than his. “Where did he go?”
“Um…” Benny looks around the seats in front of them at the rest of their classmates, who are either making out (lucky bastards), napping, or whispering too one another. The point of field trips, in his mind and with the rest of the school, is to socialize not actually learn anything. Probably, by the end of the day no one who didn’t read the playbill will be able to tell the teacher what the fuck happened in the opera. “I think he went to the bathroom or something.”
“When?” Maureen asks, interests peaked. Always is when they’re talking about Mark. Benny is the guy’s best friend, but he just doesn’t see what the big deal is. Most of the time Mark is just muttering to himself about scripts or staring down their teacher’s shirt. Maureen really needs to get her mind off him, and to help out Benny leans in, pressing his lips to hers. She pulls back, hand back in her hair. “When? And where is he?”
“Like at intermission, and I don’t know,” Benny grumbles, clearly annoyed. So of course Maureen makes this little pouty face begging him not to get upset with her. She’s too damn good at that, and Benny has to just sigh. Deep breath now. He loves her, remember?
“That was like… forty minutes ago!” Benny gets the feeling that if they weren’t trying to sit quietly in the opera that Maureen would have nearly yelled that out. As is, she just turns a couple of hear, who see who it is and turn away. Benny should be able to do that. “What could he possibly be doing for forty minutes?”
“Taking a really long piss?” He suggests with a helpless shrug. Maureen just makes this sound like Benny’s insulted her mom or something, swinging herself around to look down at the stage with a half pout and determined to be mad look. Great, Benny thinks as he leans back in his seat. This doesn’t bode well for the bus ride back to Scarsdale. Honestly, Mark better be up to something good to make up for this.
*
“Really?” Mark tugs down the side of Roger’s pants, just enough to show off his hips. He doesn’t get it an inch down before Roger is laughing, slapping away his hand.
“Yeah, really. What, you don’t believe me?”
“I want to see,” Mark says as he reaches for Roger’s pants away, laughing when Roger does as he knocks him back again. “Come on, you can’t just tell someone something like that and then not show them.”
“Dork,” Roger chuckles as he stands up. They’ve been sitting at the corner of the bathroom, probably filthy but it smells all right and Mark got sick of standing after the first, what, half an hour? It just turns out that Roger likes more than just opera and the Clash, and he’s pretty interesting when he isn’t staring Mark down like he had done before. Plus, well, he’s kind of cute in a high school boy way, which is okay with Mark being a high schooler and all.
“Bitch,” Mark says back, giving the guy a small shove and Roger just laughs it off. “Come on, show me.”
Roger snorts, shaking his head, but he stands up, rolling his shirt up his stomach. Mark can already see the top, thin black lines whipping out against the pale skin of Roger’s stomach. “Fine, fine,” he mutters, his fingers hooking in his nice slacks and tugging them down until Mark can see the whole design. A black tattoo, cradled right at his hips and crawling up his stomach.
“Cool,” Mark mutters, studying the shape. Tribal, Roger called it, and maybe that explains why Mark can’t really tell what it is. “Did it hurt?”
“Not really,” Roger says, shrugging. He’s still got his shirt pulled up and slacks tugged down. Mark can see the whole tattoo, he can see the line of hair going down where Roger’s fingers and pulling his pants off. He can see his skin reacting to Mark’s breath as he sits there, staring as each little gust of air waving over Roger. And he can see Roger’s hand shaking as Mark’s eyes ghost over the design on his stomach.
It’s fucked, how the most intimate setting Mark’s ever been in is on some grudge bathroom floor with a guy he barely knows who is pulling his pants down to show off. See, only Mark isn’t thinking about it like that. He’s thinking that Roger might be kind of weird and teenage looking, but right now he’s a person that Mark really wants to kiss.
It’s the hormones, eating up at him. Making it hard not to think those kinds of things when he is so close he can see every inhale that Roger takes, and his stomach move back out with the next breath.
“You’re staring,” Roger says, breaking into the moment and teasingly tugging his pants down another half an inch. “Wanna see more?”
“Ewe!” Mark says, making a face as he jerks back. He laughs and gives Roger’s shin a good kick. “Perfect.”
“Dork.”
*
“Where the fuck is he?.”
“You know, that was actually pretty good. For a opera” Benny adds quickly. Shouldn’t she be the one telling them that they have no appreciate for theater while going on about how good it had been and how inspiring it was to a young actress? Maureen is the star limelight whore of their school, not him. Benny’s only been in two musical productions and those were both to get the drama queen to notice him. Only Benny gets the feeling that Maureen isn’t thinking about the opera or acting right now.
“Whatever,” she says, leaning over him and looking back as the audiences rises from their seats and goes to make phone calls to their friends and families, presumably to tell them how much more high culture they are from liking opera. At least that’s the way Benny sees it, and he sees the way that Maureen is anxious over where Mark is as annoying, as trite because they’re dating and she can stop with the whole making him jealous act now. “Where do you think he is.”
“Dropping a crack deal?” He says it just to be casual, to annoy her and it does. Maureen turns on him, curls framing her face as she gives Benny what is supposed to be an intimating look. Honestly, right now it just annoys him. Sighing, he shrugs his shoulders and wonders again why he’s dating her. He must really be in love with her, to put up with that shit?
Of course, it’s high school and everyone thinks they’re in love with anyone who will like them enough. Benny has seen it a hundred times before in every other high school couple, and he choices to ignore it for Maureen. Because, yeah, they must be different. They’re really in love, right? If she’d stop worrying so much about Mark. “I don’t know.”
“You said that he went to the bathroom right?” She asks, hitting Benny when he does answer immediately. He glowers back at her, rubbing his arm and nodding. “Maybe you should go check on him.”
“Why don’t you go check on him.” He can do bitchy just as well as her. Better, because he doesn’t go all flailing hands and pouty lips that make it look overacted. Not that he’d ever tell her that. Well, not unless she kept pushing.
“I’m a girl!” Maureen says, and to make her point she grabs her boobs, and that does make Benny smile even if he’s still mad at her. “I can’t go into the boy’s bathroom!”
“Why not? You have more balls than Ma- Owe!” He winces and pulls back as Maureen slaps at him again, and in the same exact place, too. “Okay, okay. I’ll go find him.”
Love sucks.
*
“You, uh…” Mark wonders if he brushes his teeth well this morning. If he should have flossed longer. Why Roger tastes like his mom smells. “This, uh, comfortable?”
No, of course it isn’t. The two of them are pushed into some toilet stall, and Mark is leaning up against Roger who is bent back to avoid stabbing himself on the paper roll. Not even close to comfortable.
The kisses are awkward. Broken and slow, kind of sloppy. Mark has spit down his chin, maybe Roger’s, and he can’t figure out where to really put his tongue. Roger’s slides into his mouth and Mark tries sucking on it, because he’s heard Cindy mention that and it just feels weird. Should he put his tongue into Roger’s mouth, or is a both tongues in one mouth type deal?
Roger’s lips are rough and chapped, kind of like his hands, which slide under Mark’s shirt, then to his back, then down to his hips. As jumpy as he is, Mark is doing worse. He can’t seem to find anywhere for his hands to go. He sets them on Roger’s shoulders for a second, but then Roger jerks back and winces when he hits the toilet paper roll. So Mark moves them to the back wall, which is working for now.
Mark decides to just concentrate on the kiss, putting his mind to work on that. Roger seems to be trying but, well, Mark wouldn’t know if he were doing it right or not. It feels good enough, is helping to get some of that pressure building in his chest to find it’s way out and at the same time is making it worse. Like jerking off, but a little more exiting. Like jerking off in public.
Roger’s jumpy hands are back in his shirt, sliding up his chest. Those rough fingers brush his nipples and, oh, that actually feels good. Should it feel good? Yeah, it’s supposed to be cool with girls but should - Oh, it doesn’t matter. He does it again and it feels good again and Mark makes this small sound into the messy kiss, which Roger returns with a low moan. That’s nice, too. This is nice.
Mark begins to relax, leaning in so that they’re bodies press together, taking over the kiss with a bit more confidence. They’re hips bump and - Fuck, Roger is just as hard as he is. They both shift around and that makes it work as their bodies brush together. Then everything gets faster, messier yeah but they both stop caring so much about how awkward it feels.
The first time the door opens and the sound of incoherent conversation filters into the m Roger and Mark both hit the wall.
Mark looks at the door then to Roger, who is wincing and rubbing his back. Right.
They wait, and people come and go but no one seems to notice them. Mark looks back to Roger who is, is he blushing? Mark thinks he is. That’s okay, he probably doesn’t look great, either.
He leans back in, press their lips together. It’s a sort of hungry kiss and now, this is like jerking off in public. This feeling that they are doing something they shouldn’t and doing it anyway, and that makes it even better than before so that the teenage awkwardness and inexperience just doesn’t matter. Mark pants against Roger’s lips and Roger slides his hands up his back and they rock up together through their clothes, trying to be as silent as they can. Maybe a little louder. At least Mark is, because somehow it makes it a little more exciting now.
“Mark!” It doesn’t quite get through to him. Mark is busy with Roger, who is moving his lips against his in a hungry kiss. Like, well, two teenagers in heat really. Mark moves against Roger, legs brushing against him and Roger makes this sound, bucking up towards Mark’s thigh and, God, did he really just make that happen?
“Mark!” Oh, okay. Someone is screaming for him and it isn’t Roger and once again, Mark is jumping back against the wall.
It takes a few seconds of his head spinning until he can catch up with what is happening. He looks at Roger, clothes messy and half pulled down, hair even wilder before and Roger looks at Mark with spit down his chin and slacks tight in his lap. Not the picture of innocence, and that is Benny calling for him.
“Sorry,” Mark mutters, slipping out of the bathroom.
What the fuck had that been about?
He shakes his head, getting those thoughts to scatter. The fact that his first real sexual encounter was with a stranger in a bathroom at an opera doesn’t worry him. Actually, the more Mark thinks about it as he looks through the crowd for Benny, the brighter his smile gets.
He got some reasonably cute and really cool guy to want to have sex with him in the bathroom. He fucking rocks.
He feels the number that Roger had given him earlier while they were talking in his pocket. Maybe it’s just the lust and nerves still in his system, but it feels like a medal. Maybe Mark isn’t a total unwantable freak. He’s apparently good enough to make out with. It makes him feel good, even if it’s kind of shallow. Maybe this is why Cindy is having sex all the time. This is a good feeling.
“There you are.” A heavy hand lands on his shoulder and as pump about this as Mark feels he nearly screams. Knowing is one thing, but for a second this panicked though that he had been caught hit him straight in and, no, that would be bad. It’s just Benny, though, frowning at him and looking totally ignorant to the whole bathroom event. Thank God. “Where the fuck have you been? Maureen is going to have my head.”
Mark just shrugs him off, heading back to their seats before Benny grabs his shoulder, pushing him towards the exit where their class has gathered. “Just got bored, I guess…”
“You missed the whole damn opera,” Benny says, waving to Maureen when she spots them and starts jumping around to get their attention. Mark hardly looks at her, glancing over his shoulder to see if maybe Roger is following. He doesn’t know why he’d follow Mark, but he was sort of hoping he would.
“Oh, well,” Mark says, shrugging it off. Roger isn’t following, but that’s okay. He gave him his number, and maybe he wants to talk to Mark again. The whole thing has left him with this buzz, a sort of need for contact and not just because he’s still hard. He just needs that connection.
Of course, then Maureen is throwing herself in his arms and swatting him as she questions where the hell she’s been and it turns out that any contact really does feel good. “You missed half the opera!” She says, just like Benny.
“So?” He says, shifting nervously as he pries her off. Not a good time for jumping right now no matter how good it feels. That can only end in Mark never being able to look Maureen in the face again. “I mean, it’s not like it’s that big of a deal anyway. A bunch of people singing really high notes? Not exactly important.”
Author: Stephanie
Written for: tolavieboheme
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Uh, general. Not angst and not fluff. In the middle.
Summary: Mark isn't enjoying this opera too much, but the kid next to him seems interesting enough. Mark/Roger, Maureen/Benny.
Disclaimer: Yeah. Not Jon.
A Night of Boheme
There are few things in the world that a school can do to amuse high school kids. No matter what they’re being taught, no matter how interesting the teachers try to make it, no matter how much they might actually be enjoying what they’re doing for a class no high school student is going to admit that they like anything they’re teachers force them to do.
Mark Cohen is absolutely not an exception. “This is so lame.” Groaning, he leans back, banging his head against the top of his chair in pure teenage agony. Any good teenager who is sick of the shit that their parents and teachers force on them can pull this off, and Mark pulls it off flawlessly. He is more than ready to get the fuck out of Scarsdale, but a class trip is not how he wants to be spending his time in the city.
Mark is seventeen and counting the days until freedom is his. No more mom worrying about his grades, no more dad telling him what to do. He’ll be able to make his own damn choices without what feels like the entire Scarsdale Synagogue breathing down his neck. Taking him up here is just mocking him, letting him see the city and not getting a chance to leave the nice lines and buddy systems his teachers have forced him into. Mark wants to be an artist. He wants to be the new Allen Ginsberg, minus the poetry and plus a camera. He is sick of staying in line and holding other’s hands.
“Who knows?” Mark’s head jerks around hard enough to correct the whiplash he’d gotten earlier on the bus. Fuck. Mrs. Dulcet, his English teacher, is standing over him with a small smile. She heard him, just great and - God, look at that cleavage. No, don’t look. Mark’s eyes jump up to her face quickly. “You may like it.”
“Err…” Not the smartest thing he’s ever muttered. What are the chances she’d be standing right there when he said that? And why is she wearing a shirt he can see down? “I’m just… Because it’s opera…”
She smiles and Mark manages to feel like even more of an idiot. Here is this beautiful, educated woman and he can’t string three words together to form a complete thoughts. Way to impress. “Weren’t you the one telling me how much you liked Kubrick?” Oh, God. She remembered something they talked about. Trying not to look like an idiot or look away from her face, Mark simply nods. “Well, without Puccini and without the time period that this,” she waves towards the curtain on the stage. “Was created, literature criticism would have never been what it was today, and books like A Clockwork Orange would have never been written.” Mrs. Dulcet smiles as if she’s made this wonderful point, and maybe she has but all Mark can think is don’t stare don’t stare don’t stare. “All art is based off other art. Every writer must read. Think of this as lending itself to your artist endeavors.”
“Right,” Mark mutters, swallowing hard as she smiles at him before turning and walking away to check on the other students. Mark watches her go, heart thumping in his throat so hard he can barely breathe. “Thank you, Mrs. Dulcet..”
After making sure Mrs. Dulcet isn’t still looking back at him, that’s when Mark slips down into his seat and fuck if he hopes the opera house doesn’t collapse right now and swallow him whole. His best friend sitting there with this huge, shit eating grin on his face so that Mark can tell he’s probably inwardly laughing his ass off is not helping. “You are so lame.”
Mark struggles to straighten himself out in his chair, mostly just to glare at Benny. “Asshole,” he mutters, trying not too look to ruffled by Mrs. Dulcet’s hearing him groan about the opera, or being able to see down her shirt while she talked to him. “You couldn’t have told me she was right there!”
“And miss all the fun,” Benny says, smirking over at Mark and he could just slap that look off him right then. If Benny weren’t in track and Mark in the art club then he’s definitely hit him.
“I wouldn’t worry that woody.” That isn’t Benny, but it might have been better if that were. Maureen is beaming as she points down at his lap and all Mark can do his groan and covering his lap with the playbill. “I’m sure the blue haired lady who sits next to you will help you out with that… little problem.”
That does make Benny laugh, wrapping his arms around his girlfriend’s waist as he kisses her. Most times Mark hates when they do that. It’s not really all that comfortable, sitting there awkwardly as your friends stuff their tongues down each other’s throats and see how far they can get their hands down each other’s clothes without taking anything off. In this case, Mark is more than glad for the distraction.
So, of course, this time they have to go and stop at just a kiss. “It’s a good thing you’re turned on by the smell of cats, huh?”
“Shut up,” Mark mutters, turning the playbill over and flipping through it. He can be into this stuff, stuff about loud singing in foreign languages. Marcello is a painter… He likes painting. He likes bohemian. He just doesn’t like it when it’s in some huge playhouse lined with fake gold, clearly directed towards anyone but artists. Still, he can get into this.
“Oh, come on,” Benny grumbles, knocking the playbill out of Mark’s hands.
“Hey!” Mark watches it flutter down to the floor for a moment before swatting at Benny, cuffing his shoulder lightly. “I was reading that!”
“What a suck up,” Maureen says with a roll of her eyes as she settles into Benny’s arms. “What’s it matter if you read up on the actors? Come on, you barely passed Spanish. You’re not gonna be able to understand it.”
“It’s in Italian,” Mark points out, not that this really helps. He can say maybe ten words in Hebrew despite his best efforts, and the only things he can only speak enough Spanish to barely get through his class. “Besides, not like you can do any better.”
“Oh, yeah, mi puta?”
Being the mature teen he is, Mark makes a face at Maureen when she gives him a smug, upper handed smile. “What’s that mean?”
Benny just smiles, clapping him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.” Hooking an arm around Maureen’s waist he leans in, and Mark figures this means that he’s lost the only people he has to talk to for the night. Mark knows that cuddling. That is the fuck the rest of the world, we might as well be alone cuddle. He’d seen them in it a whole lot. “He is not your bitch.”
Rolling his eyes, Mark looks away to give the two of them privacy as they tease each other between kisses. He isn’t a kid, but still it’s really gross. Not just because they’re kissing, but because they’re right there and Mark can feel Benny’s knee hit his when he moves. It’s like a threesome, only he doesn’t get to watch or participate or anything fun. Just sit awkwardly by while his friends make out in their chairs.
Mark has decided to just stare off into space until it’s over when someone drops into his vision. “Fuck.” Mark hadn’t been expecting that and he jerks back, landing on Benny who doesn’t seem to give a shit and is otherwise occupied.
The guy that had dropped from no where into the seat next to him doesn’t even look up at Mark, just opens his playbill and starts reading through with this serious look on his face, like he’s really getting into the actor’s bios. He isn’t an old lady and he doesn’t smell of cats, he’s just this kid around Mark’s age with bleached out hair and, well, Mark wouldn’t mind seeing him naked but that really isn’t strange. It really hard to get a hold of porn in his house, and he’d like to see almost anyone naked. Expect like his family or Mr. Grayson or, well, that guy that he sits next to on the bus when he rides into the city or…
Mark shakes his head, derailing the thoughts.
“Uh…” He slides into his seat properly again, leaving Benny and Maureen to their thing, trying to get this guy’s attention. He just keeps reading his playbill. Come on, what could possibly that interesting about a plot summary and list of scenes? So Mark coughs and wiggles a little closer as if quietly screaming, “Notice me!” and, of course, he doesn’t. “Hey…”
Finally the guy looks up and, Jesus. The serious look that he had fixed on the playbill, that is all on Mark now. No one should be able to look at people like that. Mark starts fidgeting around, of course, and the guy just stares harder. “Uh, that seat isn’t for students,” Mark mutters, feeling like he’s back in middle school. Come on, he can talk to the guy without feeling like a kid. “It’s uh…”
“I’m not a student.” Then he smiles and, okay, he still looks like he’s going to be able to stare him down until Mark breaks but it’s not as scary anymore. “I’m just here to watch.”
“Oh.” Mark actually has to think about that one. So, this cute teenager just comes to opera by choice. He looks over him at the woman sitting next to him, probably his mom. Well, that makes more sense. “Ah, sorry…”
“It’s fine,” he says with a small shrug, still with that unthreatening smile as he leans back into his seat and goes back to reading his playbill, and Mark keeps staring. Not for any real reason, but staring at this guy next to him is a little less awkward than listening to his friends exchange spit. Eventually, though, the guy looks back up with this sort of lost expression. “What?”
“Nothing.” And just like that Mark sits back in his seat, staring straight ahead. Just in time for the curtain to come up, too. Mark settles in, determined to give this a shot.
He figures he does a pretty good job. He makes it about ten minutes before intermission. Then he has to get up and go to the bathroom to stop the ringing in his ears.
“Stupid opera,” Mark mutters as he washes his hands down. He can still sort of hear it, echoing from the main room. This is really what Mrs. Dulcet is so crazy about? It sounds like that one guy, Mark has no clue what his name is but that one guy sounded like he was choking on a cat. A very loud, sick cat. Mark catches his ear, just too make sure they’re not bleeding.
“You left quickly.”
“Jesus.” Mark looks over just as the door stands shut and the guy he was sitting next to walks in, smiling as he walks over to the urinal. Seems he has a knack for making Mark jump around. “Uh, hey. Yeah, just needed a break.”
“Not a big Puccini fan, huh?” The guy asks, moving right by Mark as he watches his hands. Seven sinks, and he stands right there so that there shoulder’s almost touch.
“Uh…” Mark isn’t entirely sure who Puccini is, so to try and at least look a little intelligent he just shrugs. “I just don’t think that just because something is old means that it has to be good. And just because something is new doesn’t mean it’s trashy pop culture. Things should be, uh…” Shit, he’s rambling and probably making a fool out of himself. “I mean, if your mom likes them that’s cool, I just…”
Is the guy blushing? It kind of looks like he’s blushing but then Mark hands out with Maureen and Benny who are utterly shameless. He doesn’t see a lot of blushing so he can’t be sure. “I made her take me.”
“Oh! Oh, well…” Yeah, now he really has nothing to say. So this random guy and Mrs. Dulcet both like opera? Jesus, what is Mark missing.
“I like The Clash, too,” the guy says quickly, looking back up at Mark and suddenly his staring isn’t as scary. More like a comfort me look than anything else. “I mean, I can play guitar and…”
“Oh.” It would be helpful if Mark could say something more intelligent than that, but mostly he just ends up nodding. “That’s cool.”
“Yeah… I’m, uh…” The guy wipes his hands down his slacks before offering it to Mark. “I’m Roger, by the way.”
He takes Roger, who likes opera and the Clash and plays the guitar, up on that, shaking his hand. “I’m Mark.”
*
“Mm… Ouch.”
“Ouch?” Benny pulls back, frowning at his girlfriend. Ouch is not what a guy wants to hear when he’s kissing someone. Ouch is sort of like a girl suddenly announcing he’s not doing this right. He knows how to kiss, damnit. What is with the ouch? “Ouch? What does ouch mean?”
Maureen blows a curl out of her face, rolling her eyes. Like she’s so good at everything she does and has never messed up. Please, she shouldn’t be giving him that look. “It means you stepped on my foot,” she whispers over some guy’s cabaletta (and, yeah, he knows what an cabaletta is. He was listening to his chorus teacher.) Maureen curls her feet away from him, wiggling up in her chair so that she’s no longer draped across the armrest, which Benny takes to mean that he’s supposed to do the same. Damnit.
Benny winces as he sits back, sliding down in the seat and trying not to think below the waist. All Maureen has to do is straighten out her skirt and run her hand through her hair a few times, nails pulling the tangles from her hair. That simple and she is done, no trouble stopping in the middle of that at all. “Hey…” She looks over Benny’s chest. “Where’d Mark go.”
“You scared him off,” he says with a roll of his eyes as Maureen checks Mark’s seat. He doesn’t see what her big obsession with mark is, anyway, expect that he has a camera and asks her to read his scripts a lot. Benny knows Maureen and he knows that he cam never compete with a spotlight. Still, she shouldn’t worry about where he is so much.
“Shut up,” she says with what is supposed to be a friendly smile as she swats at him, but Benny knows better and just gives her a tight, frustrated smile in return, brushing away her hand. When Maureen is in a good mood, when she’s up, then they’re good together. When she’s worrying about Mark and fixing her hair nervously like she is now, that is when Benny wonders what the hell he was thinking, asking her out in the first place.
Of course, the day he asked her out Mark was there with, “You’re going to regret this.” Why does he have to be right about these things?
“Seriously,” she says, looking over her shoulder like she can see Mark waving for their attention somewhere. That is more her style than his. “Where did he go?”
“Um…” Benny looks around the seats in front of them at the rest of their classmates, who are either making out (lucky bastards), napping, or whispering too one another. The point of field trips, in his mind and with the rest of the school, is to socialize not actually learn anything. Probably, by the end of the day no one who didn’t read the playbill will be able to tell the teacher what the fuck happened in the opera. “I think he went to the bathroom or something.”
“When?” Maureen asks, interests peaked. Always is when they’re talking about Mark. Benny is the guy’s best friend, but he just doesn’t see what the big deal is. Most of the time Mark is just muttering to himself about scripts or staring down their teacher’s shirt. Maureen really needs to get her mind off him, and to help out Benny leans in, pressing his lips to hers. She pulls back, hand back in her hair. “When? And where is he?”
“Like at intermission, and I don’t know,” Benny grumbles, clearly annoyed. So of course Maureen makes this little pouty face begging him not to get upset with her. She’s too damn good at that, and Benny has to just sigh. Deep breath now. He loves her, remember?
“That was like… forty minutes ago!” Benny gets the feeling that if they weren’t trying to sit quietly in the opera that Maureen would have nearly yelled that out. As is, she just turns a couple of hear, who see who it is and turn away. Benny should be able to do that. “What could he possibly be doing for forty minutes?”
“Taking a really long piss?” He suggests with a helpless shrug. Maureen just makes this sound like Benny’s insulted her mom or something, swinging herself around to look down at the stage with a half pout and determined to be mad look. Great, Benny thinks as he leans back in his seat. This doesn’t bode well for the bus ride back to Scarsdale. Honestly, Mark better be up to something good to make up for this.
*
“Really?” Mark tugs down the side of Roger’s pants, just enough to show off his hips. He doesn’t get it an inch down before Roger is laughing, slapping away his hand.
“Yeah, really. What, you don’t believe me?”
“I want to see,” Mark says as he reaches for Roger’s pants away, laughing when Roger does as he knocks him back again. “Come on, you can’t just tell someone something like that and then not show them.”
“Dork,” Roger chuckles as he stands up. They’ve been sitting at the corner of the bathroom, probably filthy but it smells all right and Mark got sick of standing after the first, what, half an hour? It just turns out that Roger likes more than just opera and the Clash, and he’s pretty interesting when he isn’t staring Mark down like he had done before. Plus, well, he’s kind of cute in a high school boy way, which is okay with Mark being a high schooler and all.
“Bitch,” Mark says back, giving the guy a small shove and Roger just laughs it off. “Come on, show me.”
Roger snorts, shaking his head, but he stands up, rolling his shirt up his stomach. Mark can already see the top, thin black lines whipping out against the pale skin of Roger’s stomach. “Fine, fine,” he mutters, his fingers hooking in his nice slacks and tugging them down until Mark can see the whole design. A black tattoo, cradled right at his hips and crawling up his stomach.
“Cool,” Mark mutters, studying the shape. Tribal, Roger called it, and maybe that explains why Mark can’t really tell what it is. “Did it hurt?”
“Not really,” Roger says, shrugging. He’s still got his shirt pulled up and slacks tugged down. Mark can see the whole tattoo, he can see the line of hair going down where Roger’s fingers and pulling his pants off. He can see his skin reacting to Mark’s breath as he sits there, staring as each little gust of air waving over Roger. And he can see Roger’s hand shaking as Mark’s eyes ghost over the design on his stomach.
It’s fucked, how the most intimate setting Mark’s ever been in is on some grudge bathroom floor with a guy he barely knows who is pulling his pants down to show off. See, only Mark isn’t thinking about it like that. He’s thinking that Roger might be kind of weird and teenage looking, but right now he’s a person that Mark really wants to kiss.
It’s the hormones, eating up at him. Making it hard not to think those kinds of things when he is so close he can see every inhale that Roger takes, and his stomach move back out with the next breath.
“You’re staring,” Roger says, breaking into the moment and teasingly tugging his pants down another half an inch. “Wanna see more?”
“Ewe!” Mark says, making a face as he jerks back. He laughs and gives Roger’s shin a good kick. “Perfect.”
“Dork.”
*
“Where the fuck is he?.”
“You know, that was actually pretty good. For a opera” Benny adds quickly. Shouldn’t she be the one telling them that they have no appreciate for theater while going on about how good it had been and how inspiring it was to a young actress? Maureen is the star limelight whore of their school, not him. Benny’s only been in two musical productions and those were both to get the drama queen to notice him. Only Benny gets the feeling that Maureen isn’t thinking about the opera or acting right now.
“Whatever,” she says, leaning over him and looking back as the audiences rises from their seats and goes to make phone calls to their friends and families, presumably to tell them how much more high culture they are from liking opera. At least that’s the way Benny sees it, and he sees the way that Maureen is anxious over where Mark is as annoying, as trite because they’re dating and she can stop with the whole making him jealous act now. “Where do you think he is.”
“Dropping a crack deal?” He says it just to be casual, to annoy her and it does. Maureen turns on him, curls framing her face as she gives Benny what is supposed to be an intimating look. Honestly, right now it just annoys him. Sighing, he shrugs his shoulders and wonders again why he’s dating her. He must really be in love with her, to put up with that shit?
Of course, it’s high school and everyone thinks they’re in love with anyone who will like them enough. Benny has seen it a hundred times before in every other high school couple, and he choices to ignore it for Maureen. Because, yeah, they must be different. They’re really in love, right? If she’d stop worrying so much about Mark. “I don’t know.”
“You said that he went to the bathroom right?” She asks, hitting Benny when he does answer immediately. He glowers back at her, rubbing his arm and nodding. “Maybe you should go check on him.”
“Why don’t you go check on him.” He can do bitchy just as well as her. Better, because he doesn’t go all flailing hands and pouty lips that make it look overacted. Not that he’d ever tell her that. Well, not unless she kept pushing.
“I’m a girl!” Maureen says, and to make her point she grabs her boobs, and that does make Benny smile even if he’s still mad at her. “I can’t go into the boy’s bathroom!”
“Why not? You have more balls than Ma- Owe!” He winces and pulls back as Maureen slaps at him again, and in the same exact place, too. “Okay, okay. I’ll go find him.”
Love sucks.
*
“You, uh…” Mark wonders if he brushes his teeth well this morning. If he should have flossed longer. Why Roger tastes like his mom smells. “This, uh, comfortable?”
No, of course it isn’t. The two of them are pushed into some toilet stall, and Mark is leaning up against Roger who is bent back to avoid stabbing himself on the paper roll. Not even close to comfortable.
The kisses are awkward. Broken and slow, kind of sloppy. Mark has spit down his chin, maybe Roger’s, and he can’t figure out where to really put his tongue. Roger’s slides into his mouth and Mark tries sucking on it, because he’s heard Cindy mention that and it just feels weird. Should he put his tongue into Roger’s mouth, or is a both tongues in one mouth type deal?
Roger’s lips are rough and chapped, kind of like his hands, which slide under Mark’s shirt, then to his back, then down to his hips. As jumpy as he is, Mark is doing worse. He can’t seem to find anywhere for his hands to go. He sets them on Roger’s shoulders for a second, but then Roger jerks back and winces when he hits the toilet paper roll. So Mark moves them to the back wall, which is working for now.
Mark decides to just concentrate on the kiss, putting his mind to work on that. Roger seems to be trying but, well, Mark wouldn’t know if he were doing it right or not. It feels good enough, is helping to get some of that pressure building in his chest to find it’s way out and at the same time is making it worse. Like jerking off, but a little more exiting. Like jerking off in public.
Roger’s jumpy hands are back in his shirt, sliding up his chest. Those rough fingers brush his nipples and, oh, that actually feels good. Should it feel good? Yeah, it’s supposed to be cool with girls but should - Oh, it doesn’t matter. He does it again and it feels good again and Mark makes this small sound into the messy kiss, which Roger returns with a low moan. That’s nice, too. This is nice.
Mark begins to relax, leaning in so that they’re bodies press together, taking over the kiss with a bit more confidence. They’re hips bump and - Fuck, Roger is just as hard as he is. They both shift around and that makes it work as their bodies brush together. Then everything gets faster, messier yeah but they both stop caring so much about how awkward it feels.
The first time the door opens and the sound of incoherent conversation filters into the m Roger and Mark both hit the wall.
Mark looks at the door then to Roger, who is wincing and rubbing his back. Right.
They wait, and people come and go but no one seems to notice them. Mark looks back to Roger who is, is he blushing? Mark thinks he is. That’s okay, he probably doesn’t look great, either.
He leans back in, press their lips together. It’s a sort of hungry kiss and now, this is like jerking off in public. This feeling that they are doing something they shouldn’t and doing it anyway, and that makes it even better than before so that the teenage awkwardness and inexperience just doesn’t matter. Mark pants against Roger’s lips and Roger slides his hands up his back and they rock up together through their clothes, trying to be as silent as they can. Maybe a little louder. At least Mark is, because somehow it makes it a little more exciting now.
“Mark!” It doesn’t quite get through to him. Mark is busy with Roger, who is moving his lips against his in a hungry kiss. Like, well, two teenagers in heat really. Mark moves against Roger, legs brushing against him and Roger makes this sound, bucking up towards Mark’s thigh and, God, did he really just make that happen?
“Mark!” Oh, okay. Someone is screaming for him and it isn’t Roger and once again, Mark is jumping back against the wall.
It takes a few seconds of his head spinning until he can catch up with what is happening. He looks at Roger, clothes messy and half pulled down, hair even wilder before and Roger looks at Mark with spit down his chin and slacks tight in his lap. Not the picture of innocence, and that is Benny calling for him.
“Sorry,” Mark mutters, slipping out of the bathroom.
What the fuck had that been about?
He shakes his head, getting those thoughts to scatter. The fact that his first real sexual encounter was with a stranger in a bathroom at an opera doesn’t worry him. Actually, the more Mark thinks about it as he looks through the crowd for Benny, the brighter his smile gets.
He got some reasonably cute and really cool guy to want to have sex with him in the bathroom. He fucking rocks.
He feels the number that Roger had given him earlier while they were talking in his pocket. Maybe it’s just the lust and nerves still in his system, but it feels like a medal. Maybe Mark isn’t a total unwantable freak. He’s apparently good enough to make out with. It makes him feel good, even if it’s kind of shallow. Maybe this is why Cindy is having sex all the time. This is a good feeling.
“There you are.” A heavy hand lands on his shoulder and as pump about this as Mark feels he nearly screams. Knowing is one thing, but for a second this panicked though that he had been caught hit him straight in and, no, that would be bad. It’s just Benny, though, frowning at him and looking totally ignorant to the whole bathroom event. Thank God. “Where the fuck have you been? Maureen is going to have my head.”
Mark just shrugs him off, heading back to their seats before Benny grabs his shoulder, pushing him towards the exit where their class has gathered. “Just got bored, I guess…”
“You missed the whole damn opera,” Benny says, waving to Maureen when she spots them and starts jumping around to get their attention. Mark hardly looks at her, glancing over his shoulder to see if maybe Roger is following. He doesn’t know why he’d follow Mark, but he was sort of hoping he would.
“Oh, well,” Mark says, shrugging it off. Roger isn’t following, but that’s okay. He gave him his number, and maybe he wants to talk to Mark again. The whole thing has left him with this buzz, a sort of need for contact and not just because he’s still hard. He just needs that connection.
Of course, then Maureen is throwing herself in his arms and swatting him as she questions where the hell she’s been and it turns out that any contact really does feel good. “You missed half the opera!” She says, just like Benny.
“So?” He says, shifting nervously as he pries her off. Not a good time for jumping right now no matter how good it feels. That can only end in Mark never being able to look Maureen in the face again. “I mean, it’s not like it’s that big of a deal anyway. A bunch of people singing really high notes? Not exactly important.”