Between the Lines (1/17)
Title: Between the Lines (1/17)
Author: WibbleyWobbley
Pairing: Kevin/Scotty, Chad/Jason
Rating: R to NC-17
Summary: AU - wounded World War II soldier, bombed-out French cathedral. This is also a blatant rip-off homage to the movie/novel Possession, with smatterings of inspiration from The Edge of Love.
Spoilers: None
Word Count: A lot
Disclaimer: Not mine
Warning: Angst, tragedy, bittersweet romance. This is war. No one's safe.
A/N: Credit and all due respect to luna_veritas' French Cathedral. I wanted to wait until you were finished before I posted my version, but...I got too excited!
Additional Disclaimers: First, I am not a historian. No battles, characters or situations are based on any real people or events. In fact, some events are undoubtedly inaccurate or impossible with respect to geography and/or chronology. Secondly, the characterization for this story was admittedly problematic. There is just no way to drop Kevin and Scotty (and the other characters) as we know them into this time and these situations. What I tried to do was imagine how they would be in this context, while still maintaining as much of the essence of their individual personalities and emotional relationship with each other as possible. Problems with characterization for Chad and Jason that can't be explained away by "it's an AU," however, are...simply bad writing! Finally, I am also not a poet. Please don't make fun. ;)
Without further ado...
“Hello, darling. I’m home,” Michelle said, placing her purse on the counter and walking across the room. She bent over, wrapping her arms around Chad's neck as she kissed his cheek.
He mumbled a reply in greeting, not looking up from the script he was marking full of notes.
“Is that the script for the next episode?” she asked.
Chad finally focused his attention on her. “No, it’s a movie script.”
“Oooh!” Michelle said. “What movie?”
“It’s an art house film, nothing big,” Chad said. “But it’d be really great for me. I could actually get to…act.”
“What’s the part?”
“Kevin Walker.”
“And who is he?”
Chad laughed. “Michelle…Kevin Walker? The poet?”
Michelle shook her head and shrugged. Chad sighed.
“He’s only one of California’s most famous writers. World War II-era. Tragic life, died fairly young - as all good writers should.”
“How do you know all this?” Michelle asked skeptically.
Chad smiled. “I Googled his name when my agent told me about the role.”
“Thought so!” Michelle said, laughing.
***
“I’m not trying to be difficult,” Chad swore. “I’m just having a hard time finding the, you know, motivation for this scene. We’re really stressing these…these themes in his work, like devotion and fidelity even beyond death, right? Why are we then also showing an affair with his brother’s wife?”
The director opened his mouth but ultimately hesitated, turning to look at the writer of the film. Travis March leaned forward in his chair.
“Of course it’s contradictory,” he agreed. “That’s one of the key parts of his personality. His ideals versus his actions. Tormented artists, you know what that’s like, right? Try to imagine wanting someone that badly but knowing that everyone you know and even people you don’t know would condemn you for pursuing any relationship with them.”
Chad cleared his throat. He paused, then asked, “Is there any proof, though? Do we know that they were together? Or that Elizabeth was really his child?”
Travis sighed. “What do you want? DNA tests? There is no scientific proof, not for something that happened that long ago. But you have to remember, this story is simply inspired by real-life events. And the owner of his estate approved the script.”
Chad finally nodded. “OK. I’ll give it a try.”
***
Jason barely breathed as he removed the flimsy sheet of paper from its protective casing. He had read these few lines hundreds of times, but this was the first time he had allowed himself to seek out the originals. And after weeks of correspondence with the archives, he had been granted permission. He hoped there would be something in there that would help him finalize his research. The missing piece that would help him understand how Kevin Walker’s mind worked.
He was a contradiction, he would give Travis March that. But not in the way that March argued. The emotion between the lines of his poems didn’t make any sense. A lot of poets wrote of lost loves, tragic young deaths, the glory and horror of war, nostalgia for a more innocent time. But it was the timing of the associations that was confusing. Walker wrote of love and devotion, even if it was implied rather than overt, long before there was any hint of a romance between him and his wife; he wrote of death long before he lost her. He hated the war and made no attempt to hide it, but it was when he wrote about his combat experiences later in life that the longing for the past seemed the strongest.
Jason stared at the sheet, feeling strongly connected to the man. Intellectually, he knew that they shared a home city, a passion for the written word, and not to mention quite a few genes. But that all seemed very abstract most of the time. Times like this, sitting in front of a piece of paper that Kevin Walker touched, that’s when their link felt very real.
It was not a very well-known poem, if one could even call it a poem. For all their sincerity, the scribbled lines were too simple and incomplete for most scholars to pay much attention to. And yet, Jason always secretly believed there was something there, in this short, unfinished verse about a French cathedral, that held the key to Kevin Walker.
***
Chad sighed, propping his chin in his hand as he read the computer screen in front of him. He didn’t want to risk his job; he honestly didn’t. But there was something that intrigued him about Kevin Walker, and he couldn’t quite buy Travis’ interpretation of the character. Or rather, the person. It just seemed…off. Chad knew something about expressing oneself artistically. He wasn’t an expert, by any stretch of the imagination, but he knew enough to know that Kevin’s words of endless love weren’t faked. That a falling-out between siblings several months before a niece was born was not enough support for nor evidence of an affair. By all accounts, and clearly by his own words, Kevin Walker was faithful to his own wife and devastated by her death and their child’s death during labor. It didn’t make sense.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Michelle said as he filled her in on the details. “So he’s schtupping one brother’s wife when he’s supposed to be mourning his wife, who used to be the other brother’s fiancée? Are you sure this isn’t the plot for Tempest Bay?”
“I don’t think he is schtupping her,” Chad said. “It just doesn’t feel right. And Justin - the other brother - died in battle. It wasn’t that uncommon for a brother to, ah, step in back then, you know.”
“Still. I don’t think I’d be able to just switch gears like that.”
“Yeah, but being an unmarried woman used to be a bigger deal back then. And besides it wasn’t, like, the next day. They didn’t get married until over a year after Justin’s death. It seems like they might have actually fallen for each other. Although I think Travis is right that it has something to do with the dad too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Their mom died six months earlier. Then William Walker started pursuing Holly Harper, who was the fiancée’s mom. Travis thinks he was after her land, but it actually belonged to her late husband and passed directly to Rebecca. I think everyone involved wanted to get Rebecca out of his reach, if you know what I mean.”
“So she married Kevin so she didn’t have to worry about the old man?”
“Seems so. But like I said, there does seem to be some real feeling there too. Walker never includes names or obvious subjects in his works, but most of his love poems are assumed to be about her.”
“But Travis thinks otherwise?”
Chad sighed, then shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”
“So, maybe you should talk to someone else.”
“Travis is the scholar on Kevin Walker. For all I know, he’s the only one.”
But it turned out he wasn’t. Chad went back to Google and broadened his search. There were a lot of fan pages - who knew? - but nothing that seemed to be written by anyone with any authority. And then he came across another name, someone who had published in a rather obscure journal on American literature. As luck would have it, the author was right there in L.A., teaching creative writing at the community college. Chad wrote the contact information down on a Post-It as he decided to get in touch with Jason McCallister.
Orchard (1949)
Trapped -
Lost -
Hidden between the walls of vine.
Savoring the taste of each other;
Drunk on the wine
of your lips.
Your tongue.
Your soft breath.
Unexpected, unplanned -
You were never meant to be
Mine.
Next Chapter
Main Page
Author: WibbleyWobbley
Pairing: Kevin/Scotty, Chad/Jason
Rating: R to NC-17
Summary: AU - wounded World War II soldier, bombed-out French cathedral. This is also a blatant rip-off homage to the movie/novel Possession, with smatterings of inspiration from The Edge of Love.
Spoilers: None
Word Count: A lot
Disclaimer: Not mine
Warning: Angst, tragedy, bittersweet romance. This is war. No one's safe.
A/N: Credit and all due respect to luna_veritas' French Cathedral. I wanted to wait until you were finished before I posted my version, but...I got too excited!
Additional Disclaimers: First, I am not a historian. No battles, characters or situations are based on any real people or events. In fact, some events are undoubtedly inaccurate or impossible with respect to geography and/or chronology. Secondly, the characterization for this story was admittedly problematic. There is just no way to drop Kevin and Scotty (and the other characters) as we know them into this time and these situations. What I tried to do was imagine how they would be in this context, while still maintaining as much of the essence of their individual personalities and emotional relationship with each other as possible. Problems with characterization for Chad and Jason that can't be explained away by "it's an AU," however, are...simply bad writing! Finally, I am also not a poet. Please don't make fun. ;)
Without further ado...
“Hello, darling. I’m home,” Michelle said, placing her purse on the counter and walking across the room. She bent over, wrapping her arms around Chad's neck as she kissed his cheek.
He mumbled a reply in greeting, not looking up from the script he was marking full of notes.
“Is that the script for the next episode?” she asked.
Chad finally focused his attention on her. “No, it’s a movie script.”
“Oooh!” Michelle said. “What movie?”
“It’s an art house film, nothing big,” Chad said. “But it’d be really great for me. I could actually get to…act.”
“What’s the part?”
“Kevin Walker.”
“And who is he?”
Chad laughed. “Michelle…Kevin Walker? The poet?”
Michelle shook her head and shrugged. Chad sighed.
“He’s only one of California’s most famous writers. World War II-era. Tragic life, died fairly young - as all good writers should.”
“How do you know all this?” Michelle asked skeptically.
Chad smiled. “I Googled his name when my agent told me about the role.”
“Thought so!” Michelle said, laughing.
***
“I’m not trying to be difficult,” Chad swore. “I’m just having a hard time finding the, you know, motivation for this scene. We’re really stressing these…these themes in his work, like devotion and fidelity even beyond death, right? Why are we then also showing an affair with his brother’s wife?”
The director opened his mouth but ultimately hesitated, turning to look at the writer of the film. Travis March leaned forward in his chair.
“Of course it’s contradictory,” he agreed. “That’s one of the key parts of his personality. His ideals versus his actions. Tormented artists, you know what that’s like, right? Try to imagine wanting someone that badly but knowing that everyone you know and even people you don’t know would condemn you for pursuing any relationship with them.”
Chad cleared his throat. He paused, then asked, “Is there any proof, though? Do we know that they were together? Or that Elizabeth was really his child?”
Travis sighed. “What do you want? DNA tests? There is no scientific proof, not for something that happened that long ago. But you have to remember, this story is simply inspired by real-life events. And the owner of his estate approved the script.”
Chad finally nodded. “OK. I’ll give it a try.”
***
Jason barely breathed as he removed the flimsy sheet of paper from its protective casing. He had read these few lines hundreds of times, but this was the first time he had allowed himself to seek out the originals. And after weeks of correspondence with the archives, he had been granted permission. He hoped there would be something in there that would help him finalize his research. The missing piece that would help him understand how Kevin Walker’s mind worked.
He was a contradiction, he would give Travis March that. But not in the way that March argued. The emotion between the lines of his poems didn’t make any sense. A lot of poets wrote of lost loves, tragic young deaths, the glory and horror of war, nostalgia for a more innocent time. But it was the timing of the associations that was confusing. Walker wrote of love and devotion, even if it was implied rather than overt, long before there was any hint of a romance between him and his wife; he wrote of death long before he lost her. He hated the war and made no attempt to hide it, but it was when he wrote about his combat experiences later in life that the longing for the past seemed the strongest.
Jason stared at the sheet, feeling strongly connected to the man. Intellectually, he knew that they shared a home city, a passion for the written word, and not to mention quite a few genes. But that all seemed very abstract most of the time. Times like this, sitting in front of a piece of paper that Kevin Walker touched, that’s when their link felt very real.
It was not a very well-known poem, if one could even call it a poem. For all their sincerity, the scribbled lines were too simple and incomplete for most scholars to pay much attention to. And yet, Jason always secretly believed there was something there, in this short, unfinished verse about a French cathedral, that held the key to Kevin Walker.
***
Chad sighed, propping his chin in his hand as he read the computer screen in front of him. He didn’t want to risk his job; he honestly didn’t. But there was something that intrigued him about Kevin Walker, and he couldn’t quite buy Travis’ interpretation of the character. Or rather, the person. It just seemed…off. Chad knew something about expressing oneself artistically. He wasn’t an expert, by any stretch of the imagination, but he knew enough to know that Kevin’s words of endless love weren’t faked. That a falling-out between siblings several months before a niece was born was not enough support for nor evidence of an affair. By all accounts, and clearly by his own words, Kevin Walker was faithful to his own wife and devastated by her death and their child’s death during labor. It didn’t make sense.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Michelle said as he filled her in on the details. “So he’s schtupping one brother’s wife when he’s supposed to be mourning his wife, who used to be the other brother’s fiancée? Are you sure this isn’t the plot for Tempest Bay?”
“I don’t think he is schtupping her,” Chad said. “It just doesn’t feel right. And Justin - the other brother - died in battle. It wasn’t that uncommon for a brother to, ah, step in back then, you know.”
“Still. I don’t think I’d be able to just switch gears like that.”
“Yeah, but being an unmarried woman used to be a bigger deal back then. And besides it wasn’t, like, the next day. They didn’t get married until over a year after Justin’s death. It seems like they might have actually fallen for each other. Although I think Travis is right that it has something to do with the dad too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Their mom died six months earlier. Then William Walker started pursuing Holly Harper, who was the fiancée’s mom. Travis thinks he was after her land, but it actually belonged to her late husband and passed directly to Rebecca. I think everyone involved wanted to get Rebecca out of his reach, if you know what I mean.”
“So she married Kevin so she didn’t have to worry about the old man?”
“Seems so. But like I said, there does seem to be some real feeling there too. Walker never includes names or obvious subjects in his works, but most of his love poems are assumed to be about her.”
“But Travis thinks otherwise?”
Chad sighed, then shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”
“So, maybe you should talk to someone else.”
“Travis is the scholar on Kevin Walker. For all I know, he’s the only one.”
But it turned out he wasn’t. Chad went back to Google and broadened his search. There were a lot of fan pages - who knew? - but nothing that seemed to be written by anyone with any authority. And then he came across another name, someone who had published in a rather obscure journal on American literature. As luck would have it, the author was right there in L.A., teaching creative writing at the community college. Chad wrote the contact information down on a Post-It as he decided to get in touch with Jason McCallister.
Orchard (1949)
Trapped -
Lost -
Hidden between the walls of vine.
Savoring the taste of each other;
Drunk on the wine
of your lips.
Your tongue.
Your soft breath.
Unexpected, unplanned -
You were never meant to be
Mine.
Next Chapter
Main Page