Work Text:
INVISIGAL:
Feelings are stupid.
I wish I could enter my brain Inception-style and strangle the life out of my limbic system. That would make all of this life stuff so much easier. No work relationships could ruin my chance at turning life around because there would be no chance at any relationships at all. It would make ripping sex jokes at the office so much easier – no crimson red cheeks to hide or anything. The tan helps that last point for sure. I’ve got a rep to maintain.
But, holding a hand is…nice. Holding Robert’s is very okay.
Handing her the bag of sour patch kids, their hands brush. She unconsciously flinches, a move Robert pretends to ignore.
Feelings are stupid. My hands are stupid.
For some reason, holding a hand is so much harder than saying some crude joke at someone else’s expense. Or even sex for that matter. I don’t know why it is, and I don’t want to think about it.
Over the next twenty minutes, Robert finds more excuses to breach the sacred touch barrier. Reaching for popcorn at the same time as her. Passing his soda to her. More sour patch offerings. He doesn’t say anything about the permanent kiln fire red stains on her cheeks.
I walk a bit slower. It’s raining outside. It feels nice. I stop in the middle of the sidewalk and take some deep breaths. The harsh LED street lights unmask the haze hiding under the cover of a waning crescent moon. It smells like rain. Maybe it's ozone? I wouldn’t know, dropping out of high school half a semester deep.
Robert gets up and tells her that he’s going to the bathroom, and walks out of the theater. She deflates once the doors shut behind him, resigned to him bailing on her.
I shove my hands in my jacket pockets and keep walking. Well, it’s actually not my jacket – more like Robert’s coat I’m borrowing. But hey, he offered. Like I’m gonna pass up on some free shit. I would take that jacket if it was anyone’s, Robert has nothing to do with it. Not his scent or anything.
One minute goes by. Then two. Then four. The movie keeps moving without him. She crosses her arms over her chest, stares straight ahead, and tells herself she doesn’t care if he bailed. Bathroom, she thinks. Or cold feet. Or irritable bowel syndrome. Prostate trouble. Something embarrassing, hopefully.
Out in the hallway, he does not head straight for the bathroom.
He leans against the wall for a second, heart punching too fast, then digs around in his coat until his fingers close on a chunky instant camera. The one expensive thing he owns that does not have a practical explanation. He cracks the theater door open just enough to peek inside.
She is there in the dark, curled a little forward in her seat, face washed in flickering romcom light. Empty chairs around her. Legs crossed over the seat in front of her, her arms hugging themselves, with a hoodie bunched at her elbows. Her profile is soft, focused, mouth tilted up at some dumb line delivery. For a split second she looks like any other girl on any other date in any other shitty romcom. She’s beautiful, he unbiddenly thinks.
He lifts the camera, exhales, and snaps a quick photo. The click is smothered by the movie’s sound mix. A white rectangle spits out. He steps fully into the hallway while the camera whines and the image starts to bloom. He fans it with his hand, watches the ghost of her shape darken into a girl basked in Typecast 2. He hopes no one’s watching this unfold because this probably looks creepy as hell.
Jesus fuck, I’m acting like a teenage girl about this guy. Also how the fuck did this guy get the money for a Barbour? This fuck is definitely still holding out on us or something. Maybe it was his dad’s or something. I mean he’s a dispatcher. Also how could he get the money for snacks working that job? I’ve seen his pay stubs. This little conniving prick.
On the bottom edge, he presses a pen to the white border. Before he can overthink it, he scribbles three words that feel way too big for someone like him. They look stupid and earnest and exactly like how he feels. He wants to cross them out and write something less corny over it. He doesn’t.
He tucks the still-drying Polaroid into the right bellows pocket of his coat.
My fingers bump into something stiff at the bottom of the right bellows pocket as I walk. Polaroid-shaped. I pinch it between two fingers but don’t pull it out yet. The rain is starting to pick up, and I am not about to let whatever mystery trash Robert keeps in his coat get soaked.
The camera is still in his other hand - impossible to play off as “oh yeah, I always bring a whole-ass camera to the bathroom. I’m not a pervert though, swear.” He glances toward the lobby, then bolts for the side exit instead, pushing through the heavy door into the damp air.
It’s misting outside, the air heavy. He jogs a few steps to a scraggly hedge by the edge of the parking lot and slides the camera deep into the branches, lens turned inward with the strap tucked so it doesn’t dangle. It disappears into the leaves. He’ll grab it on the walk home.
He wipes his palms on his jeans, makes sure his coat looks normal, schools his face into something not incredibly guilty or burning, and heads back toward the theater like he actually just went to pee.
I take the mystery photo out to get a better look. It’s too dark to see what it’s a photo of. Or the label I’m slightly smudging with my thumb. The rain starts to pick up, needling my scalp.
A jacket gets draped over her shoulders. Startled, she starts to turn her head.
“You looked cold,” he stage-whispers to her. He sits down next to her.
“What, your prostate okay, grandpa?” she mutters out of the side of her mouth. “You were gone long enough I was about to file a missing persons report on your bladder.” He just gives a small, mortified smile and nods, like yeah, fair, and doesn’t explain. She lets it go.
I jog toward the nearest street light so I can actually see what’s on this damn Polaroid. Robert has fucking no possessions, Royd told me about his apartment, and I’ve seen no cool shit from his balcony. Not that I was out there or stalking him or anything.
He sits down next to her, and slides his hand into hers. Fingers interlocking. She goes as still as a statue. Robert looks at her, apprehensive.
He mutters an apology and starts to unlace their hands. His action is stopped by a white-knuckle grip she holds him in. The blush returns to her face.
I get right under the light, my vision going from a pale darkness to a harsh glare right above me. I blink to clear my vision and look at the photo.
My eyes water. I don’t move for a few minutes. The rain taps on Robert’s coat like it’s trying to get my attention. I ignore it.
I drop my gaze to the bottom border.
On the edge, in his messy block letters, it says:
A TRUE HERO
I hate that a fucking photograph can do this to me. Paper and chemicals and a frozen second where I wasn’t a saboteur or a liar or the bitch in that fucking mask. Me alone in the frame, caught mid-laugh like I don’t have blood on my hands. I know how this story is supposed to go. People like me don’t get the soft lighting and the credits song. We get the news headlines and the court dates and the body counts. I keep waiting for the universe to notice the error in the script and rip this scene away from me. Any second now. Any second...
The credits roll, the screen goes black. They don’t move until they are kicked out by the cleaning crew. It was the last showing of the night.
I drag my thumb across the caption, smearing a drop of water over the word “hero,” like I am trying to blur it into something more accurate. Evil. Thief. Anything but what’s sharpied on there.
She shrugs on his jacket as he picks up their candy debris. They walk side by side out of the theater, silently in stride on the electra dye carpet. They look at each other and start to laugh about the movie, pointing out all the dumb inconsistencies and plot holes the dumb romcom had. Their conversation fills the empty movie theater, only joined by the clattering and general noise the closing shift makes.
I stuff the photo back in my pocket and try to press the swelling in my chest down.
They stand outside the entrance, both headed opposite ways from this theater – she knows. He offers to walk her back, and she makes a snarky remark. They both grin. He thinks of her cute smile, she thinks of his terrified face in the Shroud ambush.
I don’t deserve any of this. I deserve to be locked in a prison and the key to be melted into Mecha Man’s fucking armor or something.
He tells her she can give him the jacket on Monday, that she’ll want it for the walk back. It looks like it might rain, he says. He waves goodbye and walks away from her.
It starts to pour now. My eyes are red.
She is filled with something she doesn’t remember feeling since ever. She thinks it’s pathetic. That she doesn’t think she deserves to feel this.
The lone wolf, the rebel. Committed to the cause, she keeps climbing the suit.
I start towards my apartment again.
The villain. The coward. She plants the bomb.
I like the rain. It’s like snowfall on a shitty Hallmark town. It’s a protective beautification layer. It throws the dried, droughted, and shitty into the wash and makes everything anew. A morality rinse.
The backstabber. She watches from her car as DTLA’s very own Icarus meets his maker.
Can I ever be made good again? Am I made good, or do I just be good? Can I love? It sounds so simple, but it’s fucking impossible to get my head around. I’ve never known anything else than my nature. I can slip inside it with ease, the warm parka of villainy. But it has nothing on the wax coat of heroism.
The liar.
But I feel like I can be. Robert believes in me, and so does Bland Blazer. What do I have left to lose? Might as well try out something new for a change. I still have time to grow. I know my destination, I’m just not there yet.
All these feelings will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time to live.