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Norman Polk was not a large man.
He had clever, thin fingers, perfect for reaching into the guts of his projector and fixing anything that might have happened to it. His shoulders were slouched inward and he could fit himself into dark corners and small rooms as necessary. His body was long and thin and his voice was deeper than you’d expect from the frame of him. Strong and lithe, his limbs didn’t look like he could pick up and cart around his equipment but he could. Much to the surprise of people who looked at him, he could.
Sammy watched as Norman puttered around in the projection booth, his eyes focused intently on the machine in front of him.
Norman Polk, projectionist extraordinaire, had the most talented fingers outside of the animation department.
The man watched everything, saw everything…
Except for what was right in front of him.
God, but the man was so stupid when it came to what was right in front of him. Sammy adjusted his cap, brushing at the ink on his hand. It had smeared over his knuckles when he had been scoring a scene earlier. Sometimes his music scores didn’t fit the scenes they were for, not perfectly, because he was thinking of Norman when he wrote them.
Norman, who seemed to have a weird ability to just…Derail all of his thoughts.
His entire body was thin and long and his fingers were the same. He was capable of putting them into the small nooks and crannies of the projector to fix anything. And he could fix anything. Given that he had worked for the company since the very beginning when they’d had only enough of a budget to have one animator, one music-oriented person, and one projectionist, he probably had fixed everything.
Sammy leaned on the wall as he watched Norman work.
In some way, Sammy could almost convince himself that it was like he and Norman were working together. From here, he could have an excuse to watch Norman work – the projector room overlooked the orchestra pit for the purpose of having the music played directly in contrast to the cartoons.
The man was elbow-deep in the guts of a projector, one of the ones that had recently stopped running for one reason or another. Probably just some quirk of the building, Sammy thought. From where he sat, he could see Norman’s brow was drawn low and his tongue stuck out of his mouth as he concentrated on some small parts.
All in all, he was ridiculously handsome.
When they sat next to each other in staff meetings, he was always aware of the heat coming off the man’s body, the thin shape of him folded neatly into a chair. Norman wasn’t much for talking, not even in meetings or when speaking with friends.
He carried strips of film with him at all times, like he wanted to remain with the projectors no matter what.
But knowing about Norman, his habits and his soft smiles and his wild-eyes, that was dangerous, even as much as Sammy wanted to know more.
Joey Drew was a kind man, exceptional in his understanding and acceptance, but the world outside of their studio was nothing like him. Outside their doors, Norman was hated for his skin color and anything that Sammy felt for him would get Norman hurt. The world outside the front door would sooner rip them apart and pin the blame on Norman, kind and good and strong and amazing Norman, and Sammy would rather have his own limbs ripped off than put the man in danger.
It was dangerous enough to like men, he told himself as he shuffled through his music sheets. If he dared to say anything to Norman, the man might even get lynched.
So he admired him from afar.
And Sammy had fallen in love with him from just about the first time they had met.
X
His mother had always told him that love was love.
Norman tried to keep that in his mind as he met Sammy Lawrence, tried to ignore the fluttering of nervousness in his gut as he watched the composer. Quiet and in the shadows, he had always had a way of going unseen when he chose to. Watching Sammy from his booth had made things…
Almost simple.
Sammy was nice to watch.
And Norman, who saw everything, who saw so much, had seen him from the very first. The man was elegant in his own way, practically dancing around the room as he composed the music for each scene. Norman leaned on the ledge of the window that looked down into the music room, watching as Sammy held his compositions in hand and waved a hand like he was conducting an invisible symphony. His frantic movements took him all around the room, feet practically given wings as he danced to his silent orchestra.
From the time he had been a child, his mother had always told him that no matter who he loved, she would still love and care for him.
He thought, as he watched Sammy move, that she would have loved to meet Sammy.
It had been a simple twist of fate that had brought them together – an employer had hired both of them. That had been all it took for them to find each other. Neither of them had said anything, so far, but Norman knew how the man felt about him.
But Joey Drew was, unfairly, a rare find in the world.
Norman loved Sammy and there were so many reasons that the world outside would want to destroy him for that. Sammy was white, he was black, and they were both males. Joey Drew was understanding and kind, discrete as he could be, but the rest of the world was not.
He supposed that was what his mother had been trying to give him bolstering against.
The world did not like men like him, did not like his skin color or who he loved and it did not matter that these were things that didn’t hurt anyone. His skin color was a part of him, a part of his entire family, something he could never change, and it made a whole bunch of folk want to tear him apart. Being in love with Sammy made him feel centered and relaxed but there were a whole lot more folk who would just as soon kill him for it. Didn’t matter that nothing about either part of him was hurting anyone – there would always be people who wanted to destroy others for who they were.
Norman didn’t care, anymore.
He had seen enough bad in the world, had seen enough suffering and hatred and anger. His father had served in the war, his mother doing her best to support him and his sisters on her own. He had seen her come home exhausted and worked to the bone. He had seen the coffin his father had been buried in.
Suffering and sadness in plentiful amounts. Good was good and bad was bad.
And love was love.
And he was in love with Sammy Lawrence.
The words themselves were a soother of sorts, a balm to a wound inside of him. After the life he’d had before becoming a projectionist, Norman had plenty of reasons to become bitter.
Loving Sammy had been easy, had soothed him and calmed him and carried him forward.