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May. 12th, 2005 04:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
3pipeproblemThe long-promised little!Alan Shore/little!Ray K fic.
Takes place in this crazy TM AU, so only about 3 people will understand the context. There's not really any way to explain it, but a little bit of the crack is over here.
The hotel bed is so comfortable it makes his back ache, so Alan rolls onto his stomach and buries his face in the pillow that smells less like his father and more like himself by the minute. It’s been only two days and already he’s fallen into a routine: continuous, almost compulsive television viewing, occasional guilty glances in the direction of his father’s laptop, the soothing luxury of showers and room service.
Then there are the first four hazy minutes of the day when dreams and reality blur together and he wakes up with Ray beside him. Or rather, Ray wakes him up. Within two days that’s solidified into routine as well, to the extent that opening his eyes to the sight of a sleeping Ray heralds a betrayer’s guilty twist of the stomach.
Alan’s inhaling his father’s scent and struggling to remember his dreams when a familiar voice says, “Alex. Hey.”
He makes a great show of waking up, yawning and stretching, running his fingers through inevitably disheveled hair. Then with a nod of thanks he stalks off to examine his face, water colored with bruises that don’t ever seem to fade but rather shift and change hue, before taking a shower.
This’ll be the third day he’s worn these jeans and this t-shirt. He’s beginning to hate the color red, the Z-28 Camaro, denim, and Nike. He hates them with an indignation augmented by irrationality, not with the wary distrust he evinces when contemplating the door or speaking of Kara.
“You look okay,” Ray says with a reassuring smile, once Alan’s dressed and propped up against the wall, and Alan believes him easily, the way his head sinks into a pillow or his knees buckle beneath him when he attempts to walk too quickly.
“I feel better.” He’s come to rely on that word more and more, knowing it means nothing without a point of comparison. That’s the way they’re living, if he thinks about it. Without a point of comparison. He tries not to think about it.
Ray studies him and Alan, unused to scrutiny unless it’s heavily laced with suspicion (he knows this instinctively, as if his willingness to burn books didn’t prove it) looks down at his shoes. Sometimes he catches glimpses of the cop Ray claims he’ll someday be behind the other boy’s gaze, the quizzical intensity, and he can’t help wondering what it is that Ray sees when he looks at him.
“The pool’s real nice,” Ray ventures, and Alan’s head snaps up as though an accusation’s been leveled.
“Of course it is.”
“You can leave the room. Your dad isn’t gonna—“
Alan raises his eyebrows, a gesture he’s come to recognize as habitual. He acquires mannerisms in a rush, as quickly as he can acknowledge them as such. “What? Show up? Let another girl rend me limb from limb?”
“Are you scared?” Ray asks the question casually, as though inquiring if Alan’s hungry. As though they can call room service and order up some courage. It’s infuriating.
Alan bites his lip and there’s a rewarding welling up of blood in his mouth; he’s certain his dad’s been trying to cure him of the habit. “Let’s play elevator tag.”
Two-person elevator tag doesn’t actually qualify as a game. It’s a distancing exercise during which Alan suspiciously eyes three feet of green carpet as metallic doors smoothly obscure Ray from view. They haven’t agreed on a number to count to; maybe Ray already knows he’ll cheat.
Ten—under his breath, because the hall’s bereft of other guests and his voice reminds him he’s alive—and Alan’s impatient. Twenty and he’s prepared to pace, never mind the uncomfortable wrenching of sore muscles it will require. Thirty and there’s a frantic scramble through memory to recall what Ray looks like, as though the dirty blond hair, tumbling cadence of his voice and casual, graceful violence of his movements are subject to sudden revocation.
Alone, staring at elevator doors that if they were to open would reveal only a mechanical expanse of nothing, Alan wonders what it would be like to be buried in an avalanche.
He presses both the up and down buttons at thirty-five, reminding himself that the hotel contains nine floors, one pool, one restaurant, one hot tub, one video arcade, three workout rooms.
Zero missing fathers.
The doors part and the sole passenger gapes as he steps on. For one ridiculous moment he forgets the bruises and checks his shirt for stains. By the time inspection yields a smear of blood at his left shoulder he’s gained the presence of mind to duck his head, surreptitiously angling himself to the right, affording the woman what he’d painstakingly determined to by a scarcely existent margin be his better profile.
He reads the breakfast menu affixed to the wall, resentful of the fact that eye level rests a good inch above his head. His thoughts are a whirl of mushrooms and skillets and buttermilk pancakes and wondering how soon the nice woman beside him, in her claustrophobically conservative purple blouse and dangling silver earrings, will casually ask if he’s okay. The implication being he’s not.
“Take a picture. It’ll last longer,” he snaps, turning to find her poised to disembark, already rummaging in her purse for some artifact of facial maintenance.
He stands with locked knees, staring down the mottled rendering of his reflection like a man searching for his image in a pool of muddy water. Revere unbroken, he presses number seven and the elevator begins to move.
Ray’s the sort of person who’ll select one square foot of space to designate as his hiding spot and, barring emergencies or blind women in need of assistance, never budge. Alan’s the sort of person who’d race to the roof, no doubt leaving a series of alarms blaring in his wake.
But as it turns out Ray’s the sort of person who lies in wait on the second floor, wedged between the ice and soda machines, and half-pounces, half-tumbles out when Alan happens past, frightening the other boy out of his ability to distinguish between pleasant and unpleasant surprise.
“Christ!” He tenses, ducking his head and then raising his fists in the hopes of salvaging whatever scraps of dignity remain.
Ray grins broadly and throws a tap to Alan’s shoulder, a mock-punch. “You’re it.”
“I started out ‘it.’” He rolls his eyes, knowing he’s mirroring Ray’s grin. “But you’re covered in dirt and if it’s all the same to you I’d rather not coat my hands in grime.” There’s a tempting tier of dust clinging to the top of Ray’s head and despite his words it’s all Alan can do not to ruffle the other boy’s hair, flinging particles against the room’s brilliant, almost nuclear neon backdrop.
“Scared you,” Ray says, smugly, as though he’s succeeded in convincing Alan to trade a dollar for two quarters.
“You keep telling yourself that.”
Ray shrugs, and for a moment Alan’s envious of the ease of the motion, relaxed rise and fall as simple as breathing. “Scared you.”
“It gets a little more true every time you say it.”
Ray purses his lips, prepared to repeat it yet again—third time’s the charm—and Alan takes a step forward, swearing firmly on the graves of assorted family member’s he’s certain must exist that, so help him God, he’s going to punch Ray’s lights out. Or at least throw a decent punch without flinching.
The next moment he’s contending with a staggering array of facts: the rustle of denim when you move quickly in it; the brittle tension in Ray’s arms; the taste of toothpaste in Ray’s mouth; the way a kiss feels when, in the same moment, you both inhale sharply.
He realizes he probably hasn’t punched Ray.
With a shudder Alan can feel through the soles of his sneakers, the ice machine churns to life. He presses Ray against the plastic face, hooks a finger or three around frigid metallic bars and hears the crash of some internal cascade of ice echo his every movement.
He kisses Ray because Ray taught him to box and Alan can’t do much besides lie, and even in that, his area of expertise, when compared to Kara he doesn’t deserve so much as a consolation prize. He kisses Ray for the same reason he’ll buy every candy bar he’s never tried from a vending machine and sample them in turn. He kisses Ray because his “thank you”s tend to be mumbled and genuine and perpetually met with disbelief. He kisses Ray because he hasn’t yet learned to fake a kiss.
They lurch apart and Alan hears himself exhale, feels a stab of pain like a handprint, like the indentation of a rough edge, in his side.
“Um,” Ray says, squinting as though dazzled by the room’s fluorescence. “I take it back.”
Alan kneads his side with a hand, staring blankly at smears of black like comets across the toes of Ray’s sneakers, until the words sink in. “We should go back to the room.” Ray scrunches up his face again, and with an inner flail of panic Alan replays what he just said. “I’m not…”
“Gay,” Ray supplies, dusting his hands on his jeans—strange, Alan thinks, because his jeans are dustier than his hands—and shouldering past Alan into the hall.
One kiss and they’re already finishing each other’s sentences.
“Or, uh, interested in me,” Ray continues, and Alan’s not sure what that means. Things that gain his interest—books, tapes, favorite tee-shirts—all end up worn to death. Anything he evinces interest in fades to translucence, to the point where he’s able to balance it on his palm and see mostly his hand beneath a thin film of whatever treasured object.
“I’ll sleep on the floor.” Alan’s focused on walking out of step with Ray, eliminating any discernible rhythm to their footsteps. He stumbles, staggers, and recovers with an exaggerated casualness. Ray turns to laugh at him, a snicker he might’ve picked up from Alan.
“Uh huh. Because your dad needs you bleeding all over his carpet.” Ray slings an arm over Alan’s shoulder, like a war buddy, or maybe a rescuer. “Besides, I can give you a black eye to match the first if you try anything.”
Alan nods, taps the button for the elevator. There’s the familiar yearning for a gaping hole to appear in the floor, spare him the awkward reassurances and Ray’s newfound belief that touch is an acceptable substitute for eye contact. Maybe that’s what the man who invented the elevator imagined: that proverbial hole in the floor, swallowing up the hasty and humiliated at the press of a button. The light hovers on seven. Someone has need of it there, and Alan wonders what they did.
The elevator dings open and Alan’s seized with the sudden urge to kiss Ray again, dispense with the pretense that the touch of lips was somehow accidental, a fluke, like walking in on your sister while she’s changing. He doesn’t want to quickly look away and never mention this again. It’s not his style, he thinks, but then he thinks maybe that’s just his way of copping a style for himself. As though by refusing something, he’s able to claim the opposite as his.
Ray tilts his head to the side and looks at Alan, expression carefully blank. Is this how cops pity?
“You kiss better than you punch,” Ray says, words clearing Alan’s consciousness seconds after they’re spoken. This could be because Alan’s staring at Ray’s lips.
“Thanks a lot,” Alan says, too softly for any sarcasm to glint through. He touches a finger to Ray’s lips, traces the outline of his mouth, as though expecting a bruise to have formed.
Takes place in this crazy TM AU, so only about 3 people will understand the context. There's not really any way to explain it, but a little bit of the crack is over here.
The hotel bed is so comfortable it makes his back ache, so Alan rolls onto his stomach and buries his face in the pillow that smells less like his father and more like himself by the minute. It’s been only two days and already he’s fallen into a routine: continuous, almost compulsive television viewing, occasional guilty glances in the direction of his father’s laptop, the soothing luxury of showers and room service.
Then there are the first four hazy minutes of the day when dreams and reality blur together and he wakes up with Ray beside him. Or rather, Ray wakes him up. Within two days that’s solidified into routine as well, to the extent that opening his eyes to the sight of a sleeping Ray heralds a betrayer’s guilty twist of the stomach.
Alan’s inhaling his father’s scent and struggling to remember his dreams when a familiar voice says, “Alex. Hey.”
He makes a great show of waking up, yawning and stretching, running his fingers through inevitably disheveled hair. Then with a nod of thanks he stalks off to examine his face, water colored with bruises that don’t ever seem to fade but rather shift and change hue, before taking a shower.
This’ll be the third day he’s worn these jeans and this t-shirt. He’s beginning to hate the color red, the Z-28 Camaro, denim, and Nike. He hates them with an indignation augmented by irrationality, not with the wary distrust he evinces when contemplating the door or speaking of Kara.
“You look okay,” Ray says with a reassuring smile, once Alan’s dressed and propped up against the wall, and Alan believes him easily, the way his head sinks into a pillow or his knees buckle beneath him when he attempts to walk too quickly.
“I feel better.” He’s come to rely on that word more and more, knowing it means nothing without a point of comparison. That’s the way they’re living, if he thinks about it. Without a point of comparison. He tries not to think about it.
Ray studies him and Alan, unused to scrutiny unless it’s heavily laced with suspicion (he knows this instinctively, as if his willingness to burn books didn’t prove it) looks down at his shoes. Sometimes he catches glimpses of the cop Ray claims he’ll someday be behind the other boy’s gaze, the quizzical intensity, and he can’t help wondering what it is that Ray sees when he looks at him.
“The pool’s real nice,” Ray ventures, and Alan’s head snaps up as though an accusation’s been leveled.
“Of course it is.”
“You can leave the room. Your dad isn’t gonna—“
Alan raises his eyebrows, a gesture he’s come to recognize as habitual. He acquires mannerisms in a rush, as quickly as he can acknowledge them as such. “What? Show up? Let another girl rend me limb from limb?”
“Are you scared?” Ray asks the question casually, as though inquiring if Alan’s hungry. As though they can call room service and order up some courage. It’s infuriating.
Alan bites his lip and there’s a rewarding welling up of blood in his mouth; he’s certain his dad’s been trying to cure him of the habit. “Let’s play elevator tag.”
Two-person elevator tag doesn’t actually qualify as a game. It’s a distancing exercise during which Alan suspiciously eyes three feet of green carpet as metallic doors smoothly obscure Ray from view. They haven’t agreed on a number to count to; maybe Ray already knows he’ll cheat.
Ten—under his breath, because the hall’s bereft of other guests and his voice reminds him he’s alive—and Alan’s impatient. Twenty and he’s prepared to pace, never mind the uncomfortable wrenching of sore muscles it will require. Thirty and there’s a frantic scramble through memory to recall what Ray looks like, as though the dirty blond hair, tumbling cadence of his voice and casual, graceful violence of his movements are subject to sudden revocation.
Alone, staring at elevator doors that if they were to open would reveal only a mechanical expanse of nothing, Alan wonders what it would be like to be buried in an avalanche.
He presses both the up and down buttons at thirty-five, reminding himself that the hotel contains nine floors, one pool, one restaurant, one hot tub, one video arcade, three workout rooms.
Zero missing fathers.
The doors part and the sole passenger gapes as he steps on. For one ridiculous moment he forgets the bruises and checks his shirt for stains. By the time inspection yields a smear of blood at his left shoulder he’s gained the presence of mind to duck his head, surreptitiously angling himself to the right, affording the woman what he’d painstakingly determined to by a scarcely existent margin be his better profile.
He reads the breakfast menu affixed to the wall, resentful of the fact that eye level rests a good inch above his head. His thoughts are a whirl of mushrooms and skillets and buttermilk pancakes and wondering how soon the nice woman beside him, in her claustrophobically conservative purple blouse and dangling silver earrings, will casually ask if he’s okay. The implication being he’s not.
“Take a picture. It’ll last longer,” he snaps, turning to find her poised to disembark, already rummaging in her purse for some artifact of facial maintenance.
He stands with locked knees, staring down the mottled rendering of his reflection like a man searching for his image in a pool of muddy water. Revere unbroken, he presses number seven and the elevator begins to move.
Ray’s the sort of person who’ll select one square foot of space to designate as his hiding spot and, barring emergencies or blind women in need of assistance, never budge. Alan’s the sort of person who’d race to the roof, no doubt leaving a series of alarms blaring in his wake.
But as it turns out Ray’s the sort of person who lies in wait on the second floor, wedged between the ice and soda machines, and half-pounces, half-tumbles out when Alan happens past, frightening the other boy out of his ability to distinguish between pleasant and unpleasant surprise.
“Christ!” He tenses, ducking his head and then raising his fists in the hopes of salvaging whatever scraps of dignity remain.
Ray grins broadly and throws a tap to Alan’s shoulder, a mock-punch. “You’re it.”
“I started out ‘it.’” He rolls his eyes, knowing he’s mirroring Ray’s grin. “But you’re covered in dirt and if it’s all the same to you I’d rather not coat my hands in grime.” There’s a tempting tier of dust clinging to the top of Ray’s head and despite his words it’s all Alan can do not to ruffle the other boy’s hair, flinging particles against the room’s brilliant, almost nuclear neon backdrop.
“Scared you,” Ray says, smugly, as though he’s succeeded in convincing Alan to trade a dollar for two quarters.
“You keep telling yourself that.”
Ray shrugs, and for a moment Alan’s envious of the ease of the motion, relaxed rise and fall as simple as breathing. “Scared you.”
“It gets a little more true every time you say it.”
Ray purses his lips, prepared to repeat it yet again—third time’s the charm—and Alan takes a step forward, swearing firmly on the graves of assorted family member’s he’s certain must exist that, so help him God, he’s going to punch Ray’s lights out. Or at least throw a decent punch without flinching.
The next moment he’s contending with a staggering array of facts: the rustle of denim when you move quickly in it; the brittle tension in Ray’s arms; the taste of toothpaste in Ray’s mouth; the way a kiss feels when, in the same moment, you both inhale sharply.
He realizes he probably hasn’t punched Ray.
With a shudder Alan can feel through the soles of his sneakers, the ice machine churns to life. He presses Ray against the plastic face, hooks a finger or three around frigid metallic bars and hears the crash of some internal cascade of ice echo his every movement.
He kisses Ray because Ray taught him to box and Alan can’t do much besides lie, and even in that, his area of expertise, when compared to Kara he doesn’t deserve so much as a consolation prize. He kisses Ray for the same reason he’ll buy every candy bar he’s never tried from a vending machine and sample them in turn. He kisses Ray because his “thank you”s tend to be mumbled and genuine and perpetually met with disbelief. He kisses Ray because he hasn’t yet learned to fake a kiss.
They lurch apart and Alan hears himself exhale, feels a stab of pain like a handprint, like the indentation of a rough edge, in his side.
“Um,” Ray says, squinting as though dazzled by the room’s fluorescence. “I take it back.”
Alan kneads his side with a hand, staring blankly at smears of black like comets across the toes of Ray’s sneakers, until the words sink in. “We should go back to the room.” Ray scrunches up his face again, and with an inner flail of panic Alan replays what he just said. “I’m not…”
“Gay,” Ray supplies, dusting his hands on his jeans—strange, Alan thinks, because his jeans are dustier than his hands—and shouldering past Alan into the hall.
One kiss and they’re already finishing each other’s sentences.
“Or, uh, interested in me,” Ray continues, and Alan’s not sure what that means. Things that gain his interest—books, tapes, favorite tee-shirts—all end up worn to death. Anything he evinces interest in fades to translucence, to the point where he’s able to balance it on his palm and see mostly his hand beneath a thin film of whatever treasured object.
“I’ll sleep on the floor.” Alan’s focused on walking out of step with Ray, eliminating any discernible rhythm to their footsteps. He stumbles, staggers, and recovers with an exaggerated casualness. Ray turns to laugh at him, a snicker he might’ve picked up from Alan.
“Uh huh. Because your dad needs you bleeding all over his carpet.” Ray slings an arm over Alan’s shoulder, like a war buddy, or maybe a rescuer. “Besides, I can give you a black eye to match the first if you try anything.”
Alan nods, taps the button for the elevator. There’s the familiar yearning for a gaping hole to appear in the floor, spare him the awkward reassurances and Ray’s newfound belief that touch is an acceptable substitute for eye contact. Maybe that’s what the man who invented the elevator imagined: that proverbial hole in the floor, swallowing up the hasty and humiliated at the press of a button. The light hovers on seven. Someone has need of it there, and Alan wonders what they did.
The elevator dings open and Alan’s seized with the sudden urge to kiss Ray again, dispense with the pretense that the touch of lips was somehow accidental, a fluke, like walking in on your sister while she’s changing. He doesn’t want to quickly look away and never mention this again. It’s not his style, he thinks, but then he thinks maybe that’s just his way of copping a style for himself. As though by refusing something, he’s able to claim the opposite as his.
Ray tilts his head to the side and looks at Alan, expression carefully blank. Is this how cops pity?
“You kiss better than you punch,” Ray says, words clearing Alan’s consciousness seconds after they’re spoken. This could be because Alan’s staring at Ray’s lips.
“Thanks a lot,” Alan says, too softly for any sarcasm to glint through. He touches a finger to Ray’s lips, traces the outline of his mouth, as though expecting a bruise to have formed.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-05-12 10:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-12 10:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-12 10:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-12 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-12 11:42 pm (UTC)You're God. Well Dylan is God. Fine. You're Dylan's right hand man. With little Alan and little Ray as your little minions.
I need to lay off the Coke. I need to lay off the Coke.no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 12:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 12:13 am (UTC)I'm so there. *joins*
no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 12:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 12:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 12:24 am (UTC)And Victoriamun just pointed out that it's going to be 4 boys sleeping in Alan's room...
no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 12:28 am (UTC)*snerk* That's so many levels of wrong. But it's so right.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 12:30 am (UTC)Alan invited Victoria to sleep over too ;)
no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 12:44 am (UTC)*ponders and wanders to create*
no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 12:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 01:02 am (UTC)But yeah, this sounds interesting to say the least!
no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 01:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 01:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 03:13 am (UTC)I love it. Really, really, really love it.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 03:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 07:41 pm (UTC)Little!Alan/little!Ray was so my OTP through the whole sixteen debacle and they still remain my OTP to this day. This is so lush and gorgeous and I loved it. Still love it!
I'm so re-reading this.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 08:10 pm (UTC)because omgthey're so cute.no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 08:25 pm (UTC)They are the Jimmy/Caleb of sixteenhood! Which, also, is high praise, because my ultimate TM OTP is Jimmy/Caleb. What can I say? I'm biased.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-06 06:18 am (UTC)Also, you need to make an Alan post at the blank slate so Joe can bug him.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-08 08:01 pm (UTC)I will soon! I have some (TM) stuff to catch up on and then I plan to post for him. And I'm hoping to get Stephen approved soon too.