fic: How cold was it that morning in Vermont?
Fandom: Mad Men
Pairing: Salvatore Romano/Ken Cosgrove
Wordcount: 594
Spoilers: up to and including 2.07 - the Gold Violin
Notes: This is what I wrote because I got stuck on the thing I was writing to take a break from the thing I'm supposed to be writing (which is that same thing I've been writing since July, or November, but who's counting, it's not like the wordcount reflects that). Also, I've been moody like a motherfucker for weeks, and I needed to get the angst out of my system. It's... not. But I tried. And I can't stay away from this show, so. I expect more of these.
Sal Romano’s been in love three times in his life, and the third time happens somewhere between reception on the twenty-third floor and the lobby on the ground floor. He stepped into the elevator, and Ken Cosgrove was this good-looking kid with a five dollar haircut and a grade school grin, but when he steps out, he almost stumbles from the shock of it. Cosgrove lights a cigarette outside, flipping a wave and a goodnight through closed teeth, and Sal walks down the block to catch his train and can’t stop himself looking back twice.
Maybe it’s the story. It was probably the story. The disconnect is painful. Cosgrove’s an ass, but the story felt like something coming out of the war. Pathos rising up like a scent between the lines, nothing stated, the result like a tear in the lungs that aches for hours afterwards. Constricted like a hand holding yours too tight in the dark. Tight as your throat, standing in an elevator with a familiar feeling rising inside you. Something like nausea, something like a scream.
Sal goes home to Kitty, and thinks about Ken Cosgrove all night. Or he doesn’t think about him. He thinks around him. He doesn’t sleep.
He gets out of bed at 4am and tries to draw a fucking maple tree at the kitchen counter. He’s never been to Vermont. Connecticut, but not Vermont. It can’t be that much colder, not even in February, Cosgrove must be making it up. Sal’d bet he’s never been there, either.
He stands there in the stove light in his undershirt and his shorts and thinks about the cabin - the shack, really - in Cosgrove’s story. He thinks about maple trees and sap and syrup and what it would have been like to be there with him. When he wrote it, or when he was thinking about writing it. If it even exists.
He pictures them there, together. The framing of it, the colours: single bed, pot-bellied stove, snowmelt, beers. White, grey, amber. That weird blue the sky gets between the black trees at twilight. He’s seen that color in paintings.
And this is a painting: a fictional shack, a fictional pair of men. Eating, sleeping. He pictures Ken Cosgrove’s breath in the winter air, he pictures his warm mouth, sly grin. He pictures his fingers on Ken’s skin. He pictures clothes on the floor, a thin mattress, threadbare sheets.
And then his mind veers away.
It’s important to not think about it. It’s a practice, not thinking about anything. About that asshole Elliott from Belle Jolie, with nothing to lose. Not about Tony Bianchi, either: sixteen, dark eyed and smirking in his altar boy’s smock, blushing when his eyes catch Sal’s during the sermon. And not about Will Digby sitting bare-chested in a warm, sunny room. Spine straight, lips parted, a crowd of boys all hunched around at wooden easels, staring at and drawing him in charcoal. Like they could transcribe him. Like any of them even knew what they were doing, looking at Will Digby through the wrong eyes.
It’s important to not think about these things, because the cold that comes up inside him is like a storm surge, is like the numb white of a winter’s morning in the woods.
Sal puts his pencil down and looks at his maple tree. He closes his eyes against it.
Closes his eyes and lets his mouth fall open. Puts his forehead against the countertop and lets his knees crumple. Sal thinks about Ken Cosgrove.
Image used without permission from marko_k at Flickr.
Pairing: Salvatore Romano/Ken Cosgrove
Wordcount: 594
Spoilers: up to and including 2.07 - the Gold Violin
Notes: This is what I wrote because I got stuck on the thing I was writing to take a break from the thing I'm supposed to be writing (which is that same thing I've been writing since July, or November, but who's counting, it's not like the wordcount reflects that). Also, I've been moody like a motherfucker for weeks, and I needed to get the angst out of my system. It's... not. But I tried. And I can't stay away from this show, so. I expect more of these.
Sal Romano’s been in love three times in his life, and the third time happens somewhere between reception on the twenty-third floor and the lobby on the ground floor. He stepped into the elevator, and Ken Cosgrove was this good-looking kid with a five dollar haircut and a grade school grin, but when he steps out, he almost stumbles from the shock of it. Cosgrove lights a cigarette outside, flipping a wave and a goodnight through closed teeth, and Sal walks down the block to catch his train and can’t stop himself looking back twice.
Maybe it’s the story. It was probably the story. The disconnect is painful. Cosgrove’s an ass, but the story felt like something coming out of the war. Pathos rising up like a scent between the lines, nothing stated, the result like a tear in the lungs that aches for hours afterwards. Constricted like a hand holding yours too tight in the dark. Tight as your throat, standing in an elevator with a familiar feeling rising inside you. Something like nausea, something like a scream.
Sal goes home to Kitty, and thinks about Ken Cosgrove all night. Or he doesn’t think about him. He thinks around him. He doesn’t sleep.
He gets out of bed at 4am and tries to draw a fucking maple tree at the kitchen counter. He’s never been to Vermont. Connecticut, but not Vermont. It can’t be that much colder, not even in February, Cosgrove must be making it up. Sal’d bet he’s never been there, either.
He stands there in the stove light in his undershirt and his shorts and thinks about the cabin - the shack, really - in Cosgrove’s story. He thinks about maple trees and sap and syrup and what it would have been like to be there with him. When he wrote it, or when he was thinking about writing it. If it even exists.
He pictures them there, together. The framing of it, the colours: single bed, pot-bellied stove, snowmelt, beers. White, grey, amber. That weird blue the sky gets between the black trees at twilight. He’s seen that color in paintings.
And this is a painting: a fictional shack, a fictional pair of men. Eating, sleeping. He pictures Ken Cosgrove’s breath in the winter air, he pictures his warm mouth, sly grin. He pictures his fingers on Ken’s skin. He pictures clothes on the floor, a thin mattress, threadbare sheets.
And then his mind veers away.
It’s important to not think about it. It’s a practice, not thinking about anything. About that asshole Elliott from Belle Jolie, with nothing to lose. Not about Tony Bianchi, either: sixteen, dark eyed and smirking in his altar boy’s smock, blushing when his eyes catch Sal’s during the sermon. And not about Will Digby sitting bare-chested in a warm, sunny room. Spine straight, lips parted, a crowd of boys all hunched around at wooden easels, staring at and drawing him in charcoal. Like they could transcribe him. Like any of them even knew what they were doing, looking at Will Digby through the wrong eyes.
It’s important to not think about these things, because the cold that comes up inside him is like a storm surge, is like the numb white of a winter’s morning in the woods.
Sal puts his pencil down and looks at his maple tree. He closes his eyes against it.
Closes his eyes and lets his mouth fall open. Puts his forehead against the countertop and lets his knees crumple. Sal thinks about Ken Cosgrove.
Image used without permission from marko_k at Flickr.