Quartet for a Haunting 5/5
J2 RPS AU
R
Part 5 of 5
Master post
Art
Jared has seen it before, of course, but he's always a little worried every time he watches it that he'll find something else he should have fixed before he turned it in. So he watches Ross instead. And Ross is transfixed.
Jared was only allowed one audio track for his thesis film, so he used it for music rather than dialogue or sound effects. The Wild Night of Mr Fright was intended as a kind of homage to and update of old silent films, just without the dialogue cards, and Jared planned it to be enjoyable and scary even without the music. He wanted to use the uncanny silence of the city scenes, shot without any of the usual city noise, to bring out the tension and the terror. But he's glad the projection booth has a speaker, because he wants a musical opinion on the soundtrack from someone who went to school for composition and who writes his own music.
Ross is absolutely silent for the entire movie. It's not a long film, but Jared isn't used to complete silence during any films, even short ones. Even his short ones. But Ross is also absolutely absorbed, and in Jared's experience, a quiet audience generally means a very interested audience.
"Well?" he asks, after it's over. He turns off the projector.
"Wow," Ross says. "I know I haven't seen a movie in a while, but that was very good. Very tense and dramatic. I might have made some different music choices, but for a student film? It was really good. Bravo." He applauds, as if he's just watched a stage performance.
Jared can feel himself blush. It's not praise he hasn't heard - his professor told him the same thing about his choices for the soundtrack - but for some reason it means more coming from Ross.
"The way you used silence was really effective," Ross goes on. "A lot of people seem to think you need to write scary music to evoke a scare response, but silence can be just as terrifying. It's criminally underused even in formal compositions. It's like the use of blank space in a drawing or a painting - sometimes you can say more by saying less."
Jared knows a little more about fine art than he knows about music - part of the filmmaking curriculum dovetailed with the art history curriculum - and he knows about negative space. He knows about the use of shadows and empty spaces, or at least spaces empty of people, to convey unease and a sense of wrong. He didn't have much of a budget for his thesis film, by design, so he had to rely on camera tricks and inventive lighting and not a little luck to make up for a lack of fancy special effects.
"Anyway," Ross says, sounding almost embarrassed. "I liked it a lot. Thank you for showing it to me."
"You told me about the music you're writing," Jared says. "I had to share my work too."
"That scene with the police car - "
"That was a real cop! We were shooting on the street, guerrilla style, and the cop car was seriously just driving by. They thought something violent was about to happen, pulled over, and threw my poor actor across the hood of their car. Everyone's going 'It's a student film! It's just acting!' and my actress is trying to find her student ID and I'm still filming and the guy playing Mr Fright is lying on the hood of this cop car just laughing." Jared snickers. "Felicia - the actress - gave me such shit for not doing anything, but I wasn't worried. I kept the camera on the cop and Mr Fright, and I figured out how to fit it into the story. It turned out well, didn't it."
"It really did."
They sit in silence for a minute. Jared wants to talk about his film, and he wants to share his big idea for Ross's aborted orchestral piece, and he wants to ask why Ross never said he was a ghost, and he wants to know why Ross is so solid and so human for a dead person, and he wants Ross to kiss him, and he doesn't know what he wants.
He needs to bring up his idea about the performance to the whole house before he can suggest it to Ross, anyway.
"Are you," he starts to say, then stops, then starts again. "That piece you were working on, are you finished yet? Now that you've seen my finished work."
"No. I think it's close, but not quite. I keep being distracted and wanting to draw things, so I take a break and make some sketches, and then I lose my train of thought. Do you still want me to score your current movie?" He grins.
"Of course. Why wouldn't I? The script's not done, though."
"Unless you have another movie to show me, we should go back down. It's cramped in here."
So Jared unspools The Wild Night of Mr Fright from the projector, puts it back in its can, and follows Ross out of the projection booth and back to the stage.
It's as if nothing has changed, as if Jared never learned the truth about Ross, as if Ross were a normal living, breathing human being. They sit on the mattress and talk about movies in general and Jared's movie-in-progress in particular, they talk about music, they talk about art, they even talk a little about magic. The student filmmakers weren't allowed to use any spells at all in their thesis films, although if they wanted to tell stories about magic, that was acceptable. The professors wanted to know their budding moviemakers could get their movies made without resorting to spells, and the students all agreed with the prevailing idea that making a movie without magic was more difficult and more authentic. Using magic was cheating. Using magic was for big studio films. They were auteurs.
"My camera tried to eat the film twice," Jared says, "and I didn't even try to spell it to make it run smoother. No silence spells, no conjuring heat when the temperature dropped like twenty degrees in ten minutes and Felicia broke out in goosebumps, nothing. I didn't even try to heat up my coffee when it went cold." He's obscurely proud of that, although it would have fallen under the heading of "Unrelated to the final project and therefore okay" if he'd conjured a little heat to bring his coffee back to temperature.
"What about the current movie?"
"No magic on that either. Or in it. I want to use your little Christmas lights, though." He points overhead. Ross tilts his head back, gestures with his fingers, and the lights flicker on and off. Jared laughs, and when Ross looks at him, grinning, Jared accepts the risk, leans forward, and kisses him.
Ross's lips are chapped and cool, and he almost immediately pulls away. Just like the last time Jared tried to kiss him, but this time Jared thinks he understands.
"You know, don't you," he says to himself.
"Know?" Ross repeats.
"Yeah. You know. You...." He flails vaguely, unsure how to lay it out in words. You know you're dead is so harsh. "Fuck. I saw your obituary."
Ross just stares at him.
"I'm sorry," he says, which is not what Jared expected to hear.
"Why? Did you know?"
"No. Yes. Sort of." He sighs. "I didn't know, but I had a, a feeling. A sense. I always knew something was wrong. Everything felt just a little off. I couldn't remember ever leaving the theater, but at the same time things that clearly came from outside would just... appear. I wanted some gingersnaps, so there they were, but then I wasn't hungry after all. The books" - he gestures to the library books on the crate - "I'd checked those out before. I guess they followed me. I don't know how it works. I am completely clueless."
"When did you figure it out?"
"I could ask you the same thing."
"Osric saw an article about your sister's wedding, and it said one of your cousins was standing in for you as an attendant, because you were... you were dead."
Ross sighs and flops backwards onto the bed, landing on some sheets of composition paper. He covers his face with his hands. "I'm so sorry," he says through his fingers. "I got to know you despite myself. We're friends despite me. I kept wanting you to go without knowing why, I kept wanting you to leave, but I came to enjoy your company - no one's been in here in... I don't feel the passage of time so I don't know how long it's been, but you're the first person who broke in since I was here."
"Do you know why here? I mean, why the theater and not somewhere else. My theory is that you were going to premiere your piece here, the one you were writing when you... uh... when you were, um, killed, and you're here until you can finish it and it can be performed. Does that make sense? Am I right?"
"I don't know. Maybe? That's what I've been working on this whole time, when I'm not drawing. I love drawing. It's less work than composition. I don't have to think. It just helps me remember." He props himself up on his elbows to look at Jared. "I really am sorry I didn't tell you, but I've only known, really known, since after your friends broke in. Somehow that triggered something and I remembered. I didn't want to tell you."
That was a week or so ago.
"I didn't know how to tell you either that I figured it out," Jared says, looking down at him but not really focusing. A week Ross has known, and not said anything. A week he's known he was dead, and he never acted as if anything was different. "I only told Gen about the obit, and I don't think she told anyone else. So no one knows but me and her. And you, I guess. Don't apologize. If you told me I wouldn't have believed you. Is that why it's never hot in here, even though it's summer? Because ghosts are supposed to make cold spots."
"I don't know. If you'd asked me, I'd have said I thought the air conditioning was on, but I'm guessing it isn't."
"Not after three years."
They just look at each other for a minute, Ross from his position on his back and Jared sitting cross-legged on the bed. Then Ross sits up.
"I didn't tell you because I didn't want to scare you off," he says. "Even after your friends broke in - "
"I'm still really sorry about that."
"I know. I was so angry, but even then, I didn't want you to stop coming around."
"Is that why you never gave permission for us to use your theater? So I'd have to keep coming over to convince you?"
"No. It's my theater. It's my home, and I treated it that way before I realized I was stuck here. I didn't want strangers in it. Using it. Making themselves at home."
"Were you ever going to let us use it?"
"Eventually. I was getting there, I promise. I think you just forced my hand." He sighs.
"I'm sorry."
"Eh. What am I going to do now, say your friends can't use the theater because it's haunted?"
For some reason Jared finds that incredibly funny. He cracks up laughing and Ross looks at him like he's lost his mind.
"Sorry, sorry," Jared says eventually, catching his breath and trying to calm down. "I don't know why that was funny. Telling them it's haunted won't turn everyone off. Alona will try to banish you, though. Can you - if you wanted to - do you know how to leave?"
"I'm not sure."
"Do you want to?"
"I have to, eventually. It's not right to hang around after you're dead. There are so many magic prohibitions around death and dying, right? Just to make sure people die when they're supposed to, that they don't linger, that they stay dead. And now that I know, I feel kind of... less stuck. Like I'm not as tethered to this place, and I can leave if I want."
"Do you want?"
"Not really."
"I don't want you to either. If I kissed you again, would you let me this time?"
Ross doesn't say anything. Jared takes that for a yes, scoots closer, takes Ross's face in both hands, and kisses him again. And this time Ross doesn't pull away.
It's not much different from kissing other boys with intent, although Ross's face under Jared's hands and his lips against Jared's lips are cooler than usual, as if he just came inside from having been out in frigid winter weather without gloves. He rests his hands on Jared's shoulders, lets Jared's tongue explore his mouth, eventually pushes back to explore Jared's mouth as well. He's a pretty good kisser.
Jared wants to pull him down onto the bed, take the time to kiss him thoroughly, really taste his mouth and his jaw and his neck and -
Ross finally pulls away. Jared is a little breathless but Ross is not.
"You know how long I've been wanting to do that?" Jared asks.
"A long time," Ross suggests. "Was I worth the wait?"
"I don't know. I think I need to kiss you again. You know, to be sure."
So they kiss again, and again, and Ross lets Jared pull him down onto the bed so they can be more comfortable. Jared could do this for the rest of the night - he could do much more than this - but something in him tells him not to push it.
In the corner of his brain that's always on alert for raw material to turn into films, he's taking notes about what it feels like to kiss a ghost. How it feels to kiss a dead man. He doesn't know if he'll ever need this knowledge, and in fact he wishes he could turn his brain off and just enjoy the moment, but he can't turn his brain off and who knows, it might be useful in the future.
Ross has apparently had enough, because he finally pulls away for good.
"I hate saying this," he tells Jared, "but you should probably go."
"Yeah, probably," Jared says, unwilling to pry himself away but recognizing that he can't stay the night, as much as he might want to. He has a plan, anyway, and conversations he needs to have with his friends and housemates. "I'll be back tomorrow night."
"I'd be surprised if you weren't."
Another quick kiss - quick because Ross makes it so - and Jared rolls off the bed, gets to his feet, and goes home.
The plan is simple - explain to Sunflower House that the squatter in the theater is actually a ghost, that Ross was working on a commission when he died, that its incompleteness might be the reason he's still hanging around, and if he finishes it, and sees it performed, he'll move on to wherever ghosts go. And then the theater will be theirs.
"We have to push your play back," Jared finishes, looking at Misha and sounding apologetic. He isn't sure but he thinks Alex might be stifling a cheer.
"Have you talked to him about this?" Sam asks. It's a reasonable question.
"Not really. I wanted to mention it to you all first, make sure it was okay that our premiere performance is a string quartet and not a play. He said he's been working on the piece the whole time he's... been dead, which is like three years, so it has to be close to done."
"We should smudge the place," Vicki says, "just to be safe."
"I'm not working anywhere that's been haunted," Alona says. "Find someone else to paint the sets."
"Rob will do it," Jared says. "I thought you were working with him anyway."
"He can do all of it now."
"Your squatter is really a ghost?" Jake asks, as if the entire conversation only just started to make sense to him.
"Where've you been?" Alex demands. "What do you think we've been talking about?"
"Yes, he's a ghost," Jared says. "He knows he's a ghost. I don't think he knows why, but I've seen enough movies. I can guess."
"What if he finishes this piece of music," Misha says, "we find musicians to perform it, and he doesn't leave? How did he figure out he was a ghost in the first place? Has he been haunting the theater since he was killed? How did he manage to conjure lights and a bed and all those drawings? This is fascinating. I want to talk to him."
"I don't think he'll talk to you. Do you know any musicians?"
"I do," Osric says, and Genevieve volunteers that one of the other bakers she works with is married to a violin teacher.
"We'll hold auditions," Vicki says, and Jared is grateful that someone besides him is taking responsibility for making things happen. "We'll need the finished piece for them to rehearse, though. Not like you," she says to Misha, "always rehearsing a draft." Misha just grins at her.
"Let's vote on it," he says. "I'll give over my spot as Director of the Premiere Performance so we can help send this ghost to his final reward."
So they vote, argue, vote again, and start hunting down string players. Jared tells Ross what's going on. Ross needs to be convinced that Jared's plan can actually work. Jared is happy to kiss him until he's sure. He makes a concerted effort to finish his commission. Jared agonizes over whether or not to tell Ross's family that his final unfinished piece will actually see the light of day.
What Jared doesn't do is think about the conflict inherent in wanting someone to stick around at the same time you're working with determination to finish a project that will guarantee they can't.
He continues to not think about it, and when midsummer rolls around and Sunflower House hosts its annual midsummer barbecue and bonfire, he's as social as he ever was, stuffing his face and taking his turn at the grill and letting Danneel make a flower crown for him and agreeing with Kim's complaints that now all the days are going to get shorter. Afterwards, after the clean-up, he goes over to the theater to see Ross, to tell him about the barbecue and to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him, and to somehow convince him to unzip his pants and become who Jared thinks must be the first ghost to receive a blowjob from a living boy who knows.
And Jared still doesn't think about what he's doing and what will happen when his plan comes to fruition until he sneaks into the theater to watch the first rehearsal of what Ross has titled "Quartet for a Haunting". They held the auditions at night so he could be involved. He made notes on the backs of all the musicians' head shots - Jared was surprised musicians had head shots, the same as actors - with his opinions of their playing and whether or not he knew them when he was alive.
Jared doesn't know anything about string quartets, but he does know movie scores, and he can't shake the feeling that Ross wrote the piece he did, the way he did, so that Jared can use it in his film.
"It's yours if you want it," Ross tells him, after the rehearsal is over and the quartet has packed up and gone home. "I wrote it for you. I kept drawing you because I wanted to remember you, so now you have something to remember me."
He looks pleased.
"You did ask me if I'd score your movie," he adds.
Jared can't think of anything to say besides "Thank you," which seems inadequate, so he grabs Ross's face and kisses him.
"Does that mean you want it?" Ross asks, grinning, when they finally pull apart. "Go home. I heard some things during the rehearsal that I want to fix, and I think you'd just distract me."
"I can be a great distraction," Jared admits.
"I know. That's why you should go."
Another kiss, and Jared does.
But it finally hits him as he's walking home - if everything goes according to plan, and so far it has, Ross's piece will premiere, he'll finish the thing left unfinished when he died, his hold on the world of the living will be severed, and he'll go wherever it is ghosts go. He'll leave. Jared will lose him.
Jared isn't a big enough asshole to sabotage the piece or the performance so Ross can stay, but he can't keep helping it along, and now he can't stop thinking about how little time they have and how much it's going to hurt for Ross to vanish just as they're getting closer. He manages not to freak out until he's actually home and discovering most of the house cleaning up from what looks like a grown-up dinner party. It started raining as he was walking home so everyone must have moved the party into the front room, because before the rain it was cool enough to eat outside.
"Don't feel bad," Chad says, passing Jared on the way into the kitchen and pausing long enough to pat him on the shoulder. "It was a last-minute thing and we all knew you'd be at the theater listening to the rehearsal. Why are you home, anyway?"
"Ross asked me to leave," Jared says.
"There's leftovers in the kitchen," Sam tells him. "Rob! Stop eating all the rolls!"
"But they're so good!" Rob calls from the kitchen. He sounds like he's talking with his mouth full.
"You really need to stop him before he finishes Gen's rolls," Danneel says to Jared. "She made so many, but they're so good. You have to try one."
"It just hit me," Jared says. "Ross is going to leave me."
"He's not leaving you, he's just... leaving."
"You're helpful."
"Sorry. Let me dump this" - she hefts the serving bowl she's carrying, which has a few tomato slices in the bottom but is otherwise empty - "and we can talk." She moves around him towards the kitchen.
"I don't want to talk," he says to her back. I want Ross to not be dead.
"I know what you want," she calls from the kitchen. "Go see Matt."
"Don't go see Matt," Chad says, appearing at Jared's elbow. "He was a dick."
"He wasn't a dick," Jared says, "we just weren't compatible."
"He's not gonna help."
And that's true, but Jared can't have the person who will help. Or he can, just not for long, and not tonight.
He's wet from being rained on. He changes his clothes and goes to see Matt.
And Chad is right. Matt doesn't help. Matt is still cute and still good in bed, and Jared feels worse afterwards. He almost feels as if he's cheating on Ross, which is absurd. And he was hoping he'd be able to relive some of his old feelings for Matt, and he can't. Apparently it's the ghost or no one for him.
The string quartet rehearses for ten days, and in that time Ross seems more and more distant and less and less substantial. The coffee and sugar and gingersnaps and camp stove vanish from their crate in the dressing room. The clean and pressed regular-person clothes vanish too. All of Ross's papers and his library books on their crate and his lantern and his bed have been moved backstage to make room for the quartet's chairs - moved backstage and not returned after each rehearsal - and Ross feels less and less tethered to the theater, less and less tethered to the world, and less and less tethered to Jared.
"Quartet for a Haunting" plays for one night only, a special performance just for the composer. Jared had no idea how to tell anyone who might have known Ross that the commission he was working on when he died has been finished, so the audience is composed of friends, friends of friends, and colleagues of both Sunflower House and the musicians. It's warm in the theater with all the people, and everyone is fanning themselves with their copies of the program. Jared stands in the very back of the theater with Ross and spends half the performance watching him and half the performance watching the audience.
It's a beautiful piece, eerie and haunting, and Jared can't help but match it to scenes for his movie in his head. It's a fantastic soundtrack.
Ross looks startled and almost embarrassed when the piece ends and the auditorium breaks into applause. No one can see him but Jared, and he still looks a little uncomfortable with the enthusiastic response. The musicians stand, bow. He turns to Jared, whispers "Come with me", and leads him out the auditorium doors, through the lobby, and into the ticket office.
"Privacy," he explains. Of course - people will be standing and leaving, and Ross doesn't want to be seen.
"You were amazing," Jared tells him. "Your piece was perfect."
"It's yours now." Ross leans in to kiss Jared's lips. It's an insubstantial kiss, as if Ross has already started to fade.
"Don't go."
"I can't stop it. Don't forget me."
Jared's laugh is hollow and humorless. "I don't know how I could. Can I stay? Where'd they put your bed?"
"Wait until everyone has left."
Jared half expects Danneel or Misha or someone to try and find him, but no one does, and when it sounds as if the last person has finally left the theater, Jared and Ross emerge from the ticket office to head back into the auditorium to retrieve Ross's bed.
Jared drags the mattress out from the back of the stage, along with the sheets and pillow, and they lie down under the conjure lights and kiss for a while, until Jared - despite all desire and effort - falls asleep.
He's alone when he wakes up. The conjure lights are out and other than himself and the mattress, the stage is completely empty. He knows Ross is gone, the theater freed of its ghost. There's a piece of paper on the mattress, a sketch of Jared's sleeping face with Thank you. Don't miss me too much. Ross. scrawled across the bottom. Jared rolls over and screams into the pillow for a while.
Eventually he collects himself, takes the drawing, and walks home.
Now that "Quartet for a Haunting" has had its one performance, Misha can get his play ready for its premiere. They can't get the air conditioning to work, but the theater can otherwise be whipped into shape. Everyone is very solicitous of Jared's feelings, although Chad tries to set him up with a coworker and a friend of Rob's aggressively hits on him at a Fourth of July party. Jared finally says thanks but no, and the guy, to his credit, leaves him alone.
He listens repeatedly to the recording Osric made of the quartet's performance, and is impressed at how well his movie works with the soundtrack Ross wrote for him. It's as if Ross knew the story he wanted to tell and the film he really wanted to make.
Every once in a while, someone will claim to hear music from the theater stage, even though no one has a radio on and there are no musicians in the vicinity. Jared never hears it, but he believes when someone else does.
He's never heard the music, but so far he's found two sketches on pieces of paper that look like they were torn out of a regular composition notebook, sketches that he knows no one living ever touched.
They're both of him, and in the lower right corner of each is a single letter, the artist's signature - R.
Author's note!
R
Part 5 of 5
Master post
Art
Jared has seen it before, of course, but he's always a little worried every time he watches it that he'll find something else he should have fixed before he turned it in. So he watches Ross instead. And Ross is transfixed.
Jared was only allowed one audio track for his thesis film, so he used it for music rather than dialogue or sound effects. The Wild Night of Mr Fright was intended as a kind of homage to and update of old silent films, just without the dialogue cards, and Jared planned it to be enjoyable and scary even without the music. He wanted to use the uncanny silence of the city scenes, shot without any of the usual city noise, to bring out the tension and the terror. But he's glad the projection booth has a speaker, because he wants a musical opinion on the soundtrack from someone who went to school for composition and who writes his own music.
Ross is absolutely silent for the entire movie. It's not a long film, but Jared isn't used to complete silence during any films, even short ones. Even his short ones. But Ross is also absolutely absorbed, and in Jared's experience, a quiet audience generally means a very interested audience.
"Well?" he asks, after it's over. He turns off the projector.
"Wow," Ross says. "I know I haven't seen a movie in a while, but that was very good. Very tense and dramatic. I might have made some different music choices, but for a student film? It was really good. Bravo." He applauds, as if he's just watched a stage performance.
Jared can feel himself blush. It's not praise he hasn't heard - his professor told him the same thing about his choices for the soundtrack - but for some reason it means more coming from Ross.
"The way you used silence was really effective," Ross goes on. "A lot of people seem to think you need to write scary music to evoke a scare response, but silence can be just as terrifying. It's criminally underused even in formal compositions. It's like the use of blank space in a drawing or a painting - sometimes you can say more by saying less."
Jared knows a little more about fine art than he knows about music - part of the filmmaking curriculum dovetailed with the art history curriculum - and he knows about negative space. He knows about the use of shadows and empty spaces, or at least spaces empty of people, to convey unease and a sense of wrong. He didn't have much of a budget for his thesis film, by design, so he had to rely on camera tricks and inventive lighting and not a little luck to make up for a lack of fancy special effects.
"Anyway," Ross says, sounding almost embarrassed. "I liked it a lot. Thank you for showing it to me."
"You told me about the music you're writing," Jared says. "I had to share my work too."
"That scene with the police car - "
"That was a real cop! We were shooting on the street, guerrilla style, and the cop car was seriously just driving by. They thought something violent was about to happen, pulled over, and threw my poor actor across the hood of their car. Everyone's going 'It's a student film! It's just acting!' and my actress is trying to find her student ID and I'm still filming and the guy playing Mr Fright is lying on the hood of this cop car just laughing." Jared snickers. "Felicia - the actress - gave me such shit for not doing anything, but I wasn't worried. I kept the camera on the cop and Mr Fright, and I figured out how to fit it into the story. It turned out well, didn't it."
"It really did."
They sit in silence for a minute. Jared wants to talk about his film, and he wants to share his big idea for Ross's aborted orchestral piece, and he wants to ask why Ross never said he was a ghost, and he wants to know why Ross is so solid and so human for a dead person, and he wants Ross to kiss him, and he doesn't know what he wants.
He needs to bring up his idea about the performance to the whole house before he can suggest it to Ross, anyway.
"Are you," he starts to say, then stops, then starts again. "That piece you were working on, are you finished yet? Now that you've seen my finished work."
"No. I think it's close, but not quite. I keep being distracted and wanting to draw things, so I take a break and make some sketches, and then I lose my train of thought. Do you still want me to score your current movie?" He grins.
"Of course. Why wouldn't I? The script's not done, though."
"Unless you have another movie to show me, we should go back down. It's cramped in here."
So Jared unspools The Wild Night of Mr Fright from the projector, puts it back in its can, and follows Ross out of the projection booth and back to the stage.
It's as if nothing has changed, as if Jared never learned the truth about Ross, as if Ross were a normal living, breathing human being. They sit on the mattress and talk about movies in general and Jared's movie-in-progress in particular, they talk about music, they talk about art, they even talk a little about magic. The student filmmakers weren't allowed to use any spells at all in their thesis films, although if they wanted to tell stories about magic, that was acceptable. The professors wanted to know their budding moviemakers could get their movies made without resorting to spells, and the students all agreed with the prevailing idea that making a movie without magic was more difficult and more authentic. Using magic was cheating. Using magic was for big studio films. They were auteurs.
"My camera tried to eat the film twice," Jared says, "and I didn't even try to spell it to make it run smoother. No silence spells, no conjuring heat when the temperature dropped like twenty degrees in ten minutes and Felicia broke out in goosebumps, nothing. I didn't even try to heat up my coffee when it went cold." He's obscurely proud of that, although it would have fallen under the heading of "Unrelated to the final project and therefore okay" if he'd conjured a little heat to bring his coffee back to temperature.
"What about the current movie?"
"No magic on that either. Or in it. I want to use your little Christmas lights, though." He points overhead. Ross tilts his head back, gestures with his fingers, and the lights flicker on and off. Jared laughs, and when Ross looks at him, grinning, Jared accepts the risk, leans forward, and kisses him.
Ross's lips are chapped and cool, and he almost immediately pulls away. Just like the last time Jared tried to kiss him, but this time Jared thinks he understands.
"You know, don't you," he says to himself.
"Know?" Ross repeats.
"Yeah. You know. You...." He flails vaguely, unsure how to lay it out in words. You know you're dead is so harsh. "Fuck. I saw your obituary."
Ross just stares at him.
"I'm sorry," he says, which is not what Jared expected to hear.
"Why? Did you know?"
"No. Yes. Sort of." He sighs. "I didn't know, but I had a, a feeling. A sense. I always knew something was wrong. Everything felt just a little off. I couldn't remember ever leaving the theater, but at the same time things that clearly came from outside would just... appear. I wanted some gingersnaps, so there they were, but then I wasn't hungry after all. The books" - he gestures to the library books on the crate - "I'd checked those out before. I guess they followed me. I don't know how it works. I am completely clueless."
"When did you figure it out?"
"I could ask you the same thing."
"Osric saw an article about your sister's wedding, and it said one of your cousins was standing in for you as an attendant, because you were... you were dead."
Ross sighs and flops backwards onto the bed, landing on some sheets of composition paper. He covers his face with his hands. "I'm so sorry," he says through his fingers. "I got to know you despite myself. We're friends despite me. I kept wanting you to go without knowing why, I kept wanting you to leave, but I came to enjoy your company - no one's been in here in... I don't feel the passage of time so I don't know how long it's been, but you're the first person who broke in since I was here."
"Do you know why here? I mean, why the theater and not somewhere else. My theory is that you were going to premiere your piece here, the one you were writing when you... uh... when you were, um, killed, and you're here until you can finish it and it can be performed. Does that make sense? Am I right?"
"I don't know. Maybe? That's what I've been working on this whole time, when I'm not drawing. I love drawing. It's less work than composition. I don't have to think. It just helps me remember." He props himself up on his elbows to look at Jared. "I really am sorry I didn't tell you, but I've only known, really known, since after your friends broke in. Somehow that triggered something and I remembered. I didn't want to tell you."
That was a week or so ago.
"I didn't know how to tell you either that I figured it out," Jared says, looking down at him but not really focusing. A week Ross has known, and not said anything. A week he's known he was dead, and he never acted as if anything was different. "I only told Gen about the obit, and I don't think she told anyone else. So no one knows but me and her. And you, I guess. Don't apologize. If you told me I wouldn't have believed you. Is that why it's never hot in here, even though it's summer? Because ghosts are supposed to make cold spots."
"I don't know. If you'd asked me, I'd have said I thought the air conditioning was on, but I'm guessing it isn't."
"Not after three years."
They just look at each other for a minute, Ross from his position on his back and Jared sitting cross-legged on the bed. Then Ross sits up.
"I didn't tell you because I didn't want to scare you off," he says. "Even after your friends broke in - "
"I'm still really sorry about that."
"I know. I was so angry, but even then, I didn't want you to stop coming around."
"Is that why you never gave permission for us to use your theater? So I'd have to keep coming over to convince you?"
"No. It's my theater. It's my home, and I treated it that way before I realized I was stuck here. I didn't want strangers in it. Using it. Making themselves at home."
"Were you ever going to let us use it?"
"Eventually. I was getting there, I promise. I think you just forced my hand." He sighs.
"I'm sorry."
"Eh. What am I going to do now, say your friends can't use the theater because it's haunted?"
For some reason Jared finds that incredibly funny. He cracks up laughing and Ross looks at him like he's lost his mind.
"Sorry, sorry," Jared says eventually, catching his breath and trying to calm down. "I don't know why that was funny. Telling them it's haunted won't turn everyone off. Alona will try to banish you, though. Can you - if you wanted to - do you know how to leave?"
"I'm not sure."
"Do you want to?"
"I have to, eventually. It's not right to hang around after you're dead. There are so many magic prohibitions around death and dying, right? Just to make sure people die when they're supposed to, that they don't linger, that they stay dead. And now that I know, I feel kind of... less stuck. Like I'm not as tethered to this place, and I can leave if I want."
"Do you want?"
"Not really."
"I don't want you to either. If I kissed you again, would you let me this time?"
Ross doesn't say anything. Jared takes that for a yes, scoots closer, takes Ross's face in both hands, and kisses him again. And this time Ross doesn't pull away.
It's not much different from kissing other boys with intent, although Ross's face under Jared's hands and his lips against Jared's lips are cooler than usual, as if he just came inside from having been out in frigid winter weather without gloves. He rests his hands on Jared's shoulders, lets Jared's tongue explore his mouth, eventually pushes back to explore Jared's mouth as well. He's a pretty good kisser.
Jared wants to pull him down onto the bed, take the time to kiss him thoroughly, really taste his mouth and his jaw and his neck and -
Ross finally pulls away. Jared is a little breathless but Ross is not.
"You know how long I've been wanting to do that?" Jared asks.
"A long time," Ross suggests. "Was I worth the wait?"
"I don't know. I think I need to kiss you again. You know, to be sure."
So they kiss again, and again, and Ross lets Jared pull him down onto the bed so they can be more comfortable. Jared could do this for the rest of the night - he could do much more than this - but something in him tells him not to push it.
In the corner of his brain that's always on alert for raw material to turn into films, he's taking notes about what it feels like to kiss a ghost. How it feels to kiss a dead man. He doesn't know if he'll ever need this knowledge, and in fact he wishes he could turn his brain off and just enjoy the moment, but he can't turn his brain off and who knows, it might be useful in the future.
Ross has apparently had enough, because he finally pulls away for good.
"I hate saying this," he tells Jared, "but you should probably go."
"Yeah, probably," Jared says, unwilling to pry himself away but recognizing that he can't stay the night, as much as he might want to. He has a plan, anyway, and conversations he needs to have with his friends and housemates. "I'll be back tomorrow night."
"I'd be surprised if you weren't."
Another quick kiss - quick because Ross makes it so - and Jared rolls off the bed, gets to his feet, and goes home.
The plan is simple - explain to Sunflower House that the squatter in the theater is actually a ghost, that Ross was working on a commission when he died, that its incompleteness might be the reason he's still hanging around, and if he finishes it, and sees it performed, he'll move on to wherever ghosts go. And then the theater will be theirs.
"We have to push your play back," Jared finishes, looking at Misha and sounding apologetic. He isn't sure but he thinks Alex might be stifling a cheer.
"Have you talked to him about this?" Sam asks. It's a reasonable question.
"Not really. I wanted to mention it to you all first, make sure it was okay that our premiere performance is a string quartet and not a play. He said he's been working on the piece the whole time he's... been dead, which is like three years, so it has to be close to done."
"We should smudge the place," Vicki says, "just to be safe."
"I'm not working anywhere that's been haunted," Alona says. "Find someone else to paint the sets."
"Rob will do it," Jared says. "I thought you were working with him anyway."
"He can do all of it now."
"Your squatter is really a ghost?" Jake asks, as if the entire conversation only just started to make sense to him.
"Where've you been?" Alex demands. "What do you think we've been talking about?"
"Yes, he's a ghost," Jared says. "He knows he's a ghost. I don't think he knows why, but I've seen enough movies. I can guess."
"What if he finishes this piece of music," Misha says, "we find musicians to perform it, and he doesn't leave? How did he figure out he was a ghost in the first place? Has he been haunting the theater since he was killed? How did he manage to conjure lights and a bed and all those drawings? This is fascinating. I want to talk to him."
"I don't think he'll talk to you. Do you know any musicians?"
"I do," Osric says, and Genevieve volunteers that one of the other bakers she works with is married to a violin teacher.
"We'll hold auditions," Vicki says, and Jared is grateful that someone besides him is taking responsibility for making things happen. "We'll need the finished piece for them to rehearse, though. Not like you," she says to Misha, "always rehearsing a draft." Misha just grins at her.
"Let's vote on it," he says. "I'll give over my spot as Director of the Premiere Performance so we can help send this ghost to his final reward."
So they vote, argue, vote again, and start hunting down string players. Jared tells Ross what's going on. Ross needs to be convinced that Jared's plan can actually work. Jared is happy to kiss him until he's sure. He makes a concerted effort to finish his commission. Jared agonizes over whether or not to tell Ross's family that his final unfinished piece will actually see the light of day.
What Jared doesn't do is think about the conflict inherent in wanting someone to stick around at the same time you're working with determination to finish a project that will guarantee they can't.
He continues to not think about it, and when midsummer rolls around and Sunflower House hosts its annual midsummer barbecue and bonfire, he's as social as he ever was, stuffing his face and taking his turn at the grill and letting Danneel make a flower crown for him and agreeing with Kim's complaints that now all the days are going to get shorter. Afterwards, after the clean-up, he goes over to the theater to see Ross, to tell him about the barbecue and to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him, and to somehow convince him to unzip his pants and become who Jared thinks must be the first ghost to receive a blowjob from a living boy who knows.
And Jared still doesn't think about what he's doing and what will happen when his plan comes to fruition until he sneaks into the theater to watch the first rehearsal of what Ross has titled "Quartet for a Haunting". They held the auditions at night so he could be involved. He made notes on the backs of all the musicians' head shots - Jared was surprised musicians had head shots, the same as actors - with his opinions of their playing and whether or not he knew them when he was alive.
Jared doesn't know anything about string quartets, but he does know movie scores, and he can't shake the feeling that Ross wrote the piece he did, the way he did, so that Jared can use it in his film.
"It's yours if you want it," Ross tells him, after the rehearsal is over and the quartet has packed up and gone home. "I wrote it for you. I kept drawing you because I wanted to remember you, so now you have something to remember me."
He looks pleased.
"You did ask me if I'd score your movie," he adds.
Jared can't think of anything to say besides "Thank you," which seems inadequate, so he grabs Ross's face and kisses him.
"Does that mean you want it?" Ross asks, grinning, when they finally pull apart. "Go home. I heard some things during the rehearsal that I want to fix, and I think you'd just distract me."
"I can be a great distraction," Jared admits.
"I know. That's why you should go."
Another kiss, and Jared does.
But it finally hits him as he's walking home - if everything goes according to plan, and so far it has, Ross's piece will premiere, he'll finish the thing left unfinished when he died, his hold on the world of the living will be severed, and he'll go wherever it is ghosts go. He'll leave. Jared will lose him.
Jared isn't a big enough asshole to sabotage the piece or the performance so Ross can stay, but he can't keep helping it along, and now he can't stop thinking about how little time they have and how much it's going to hurt for Ross to vanish just as they're getting closer. He manages not to freak out until he's actually home and discovering most of the house cleaning up from what looks like a grown-up dinner party. It started raining as he was walking home so everyone must have moved the party into the front room, because before the rain it was cool enough to eat outside.
"Don't feel bad," Chad says, passing Jared on the way into the kitchen and pausing long enough to pat him on the shoulder. "It was a last-minute thing and we all knew you'd be at the theater listening to the rehearsal. Why are you home, anyway?"
"Ross asked me to leave," Jared says.
"There's leftovers in the kitchen," Sam tells him. "Rob! Stop eating all the rolls!"
"But they're so good!" Rob calls from the kitchen. He sounds like he's talking with his mouth full.
"You really need to stop him before he finishes Gen's rolls," Danneel says to Jared. "She made so many, but they're so good. You have to try one."
"It just hit me," Jared says. "Ross is going to leave me."
"He's not leaving you, he's just... leaving."
"You're helpful."
"Sorry. Let me dump this" - she hefts the serving bowl she's carrying, which has a few tomato slices in the bottom but is otherwise empty - "and we can talk." She moves around him towards the kitchen.
"I don't want to talk," he says to her back. I want Ross to not be dead.
"I know what you want," she calls from the kitchen. "Go see Matt."
"Don't go see Matt," Chad says, appearing at Jared's elbow. "He was a dick."
"He wasn't a dick," Jared says, "we just weren't compatible."
"He's not gonna help."
And that's true, but Jared can't have the person who will help. Or he can, just not for long, and not tonight.
He's wet from being rained on. He changes his clothes and goes to see Matt.
And Chad is right. Matt doesn't help. Matt is still cute and still good in bed, and Jared feels worse afterwards. He almost feels as if he's cheating on Ross, which is absurd. And he was hoping he'd be able to relive some of his old feelings for Matt, and he can't. Apparently it's the ghost or no one for him.
The string quartet rehearses for ten days, and in that time Ross seems more and more distant and less and less substantial. The coffee and sugar and gingersnaps and camp stove vanish from their crate in the dressing room. The clean and pressed regular-person clothes vanish too. All of Ross's papers and his library books on their crate and his lantern and his bed have been moved backstage to make room for the quartet's chairs - moved backstage and not returned after each rehearsal - and Ross feels less and less tethered to the theater, less and less tethered to the world, and less and less tethered to Jared.
"Quartet for a Haunting" plays for one night only, a special performance just for the composer. Jared had no idea how to tell anyone who might have known Ross that the commission he was working on when he died has been finished, so the audience is composed of friends, friends of friends, and colleagues of both Sunflower House and the musicians. It's warm in the theater with all the people, and everyone is fanning themselves with their copies of the program. Jared stands in the very back of the theater with Ross and spends half the performance watching him and half the performance watching the audience.
It's a beautiful piece, eerie and haunting, and Jared can't help but match it to scenes for his movie in his head. It's a fantastic soundtrack.
Ross looks startled and almost embarrassed when the piece ends and the auditorium breaks into applause. No one can see him but Jared, and he still looks a little uncomfortable with the enthusiastic response. The musicians stand, bow. He turns to Jared, whispers "Come with me", and leads him out the auditorium doors, through the lobby, and into the ticket office.
"Privacy," he explains. Of course - people will be standing and leaving, and Ross doesn't want to be seen.
"You were amazing," Jared tells him. "Your piece was perfect."
"It's yours now." Ross leans in to kiss Jared's lips. It's an insubstantial kiss, as if Ross has already started to fade.
"Don't go."
"I can't stop it. Don't forget me."
Jared's laugh is hollow and humorless. "I don't know how I could. Can I stay? Where'd they put your bed?"
"Wait until everyone has left."
Jared half expects Danneel or Misha or someone to try and find him, but no one does, and when it sounds as if the last person has finally left the theater, Jared and Ross emerge from the ticket office to head back into the auditorium to retrieve Ross's bed.
Jared drags the mattress out from the back of the stage, along with the sheets and pillow, and they lie down under the conjure lights and kiss for a while, until Jared - despite all desire and effort - falls asleep.
He's alone when he wakes up. The conjure lights are out and other than himself and the mattress, the stage is completely empty. He knows Ross is gone, the theater freed of its ghost. There's a piece of paper on the mattress, a sketch of Jared's sleeping face with Thank you. Don't miss me too much. Ross. scrawled across the bottom. Jared rolls over and screams into the pillow for a while.
Eventually he collects himself, takes the drawing, and walks home.
Now that "Quartet for a Haunting" has had its one performance, Misha can get his play ready for its premiere. They can't get the air conditioning to work, but the theater can otherwise be whipped into shape. Everyone is very solicitous of Jared's feelings, although Chad tries to set him up with a coworker and a friend of Rob's aggressively hits on him at a Fourth of July party. Jared finally says thanks but no, and the guy, to his credit, leaves him alone.
He listens repeatedly to the recording Osric made of the quartet's performance, and is impressed at how well his movie works with the soundtrack Ross wrote for him. It's as if Ross knew the story he wanted to tell and the film he really wanted to make.
Every once in a while, someone will claim to hear music from the theater stage, even though no one has a radio on and there are no musicians in the vicinity. Jared never hears it, but he believes when someone else does.
He's never heard the music, but so far he's found two sketches on pieces of paper that look like they were torn out of a regular composition notebook, sketches that he knows no one living ever touched.
They're both of him, and in the lower right corner of each is a single letter, the artist's signature - R.
Author's note!