Log: Beau and Oliver Who: Spaceman and Stardust What: Reveals! Where: Carousel, Mansion on the lake When: Backdated to just after plot Warnings/Rating: Low.
Time was a construct that could be distended and twisty-turny contorted like a performer in outer space. The rocker wasn't really certain how it all worked. Sir probably did, he probably had a catalog of degrees on things like time, and space, and gravitational pulls. The rocker might have asked his captain for the specifics, but he didn't really need to. He knew, he could feel it like an anchor in his heart, time wasn't on their side. Even if they absconded to the next solar system, time would chase them down. Time would lasso them in, it would haul them ass-backwards through their wormhole escape like a tow truck determined to repo them back to reality. Dawn would be upon them soon enough.
Ziggy kept his eyes open as Sir instructed, and their mismatched pupils were glossy with some unnamed feeling that was awe and sadness all at once. He knew that there was nothing more beautiful than this, that there would never be a moment so glorious in the rest of his life. He felt betrayed by the threat of morning. Why couldn't such a blissful moment stretch on into infinity? Why couldn't they chase the dark-end of the universe forever? They could out-race the sun, couldn't they?
Ziggy turned his head where his captain was laid up beside him. "It's beautiful," he whispered. He might not have been talking about the galaxy.
Time was relentless. Some considered it another dimension, equal but different from space. Some thought of time as a spiral, rather than a straight line, but they were all hypotheses about travel and how to beat it when Sir was rather content for the iron-clad goose-stepping it did. He did have books on those guesses both wild and bizarre and beautiful in their junction of knowing and not - and he would have had more, but the ship limited his ability to carry the universe around with him. The moments forward were unknown - something new could be found, something even more brilliant than now, but warmth seeped into his suit where he cuddled like a binary star into Ziggy's side.
Binary stars could pull everything that ventured between them apart, but it was cruel to separate two things that wanted to remain together. Perhaps the comparison was more apt than Sir realized, but they were pulling free of Earth's gravity, parting orbits that may, or may not ever meet again. It was a tangy taste on the back of his tongue and a whisper in his ear.
Ziggy was not looking at the sky, at the stars that free-ranged against the backdrop of darkness. It was a - thing, drawing on his breast bone, forcing his hands to move and cradle the guitar edge of his jaw. Some moments lasted forever, some were gone in seconds, and Sir Beau grasped this one like it was a wild bull made of china, and wrote the creation of stars on Ziggy's lips as the blasted through the exosphere to the awaiting dawn.
The stars were everywhere, scattered like intergalactic buckshot from God's great shotgun. Lights of planetary gold, supernova white, and dwarf red splashed across a blanket of blueblack ink. And right then, when he thought about it in terms of colors, Ziggy - no, Oliver - realized that he didn't know anything about the stars. He didn't know the names of the constellations or the galaxies that they sat in. He didn't even know anything about music, guitar chords were as foreign to him as the NASA algorithms that propelled little ships like this one through the stratosphere. But he knew about colors.
Oliver knew thirty different kinds of blue, and he could have explained the strange palette of the universe in shades of byzantium and licorice far better than his costume could have articulated. The stars were no longer stars at all, but just the lights of the carousel twinkling all above them. It didn't matter that the majesty slipped, it didn't matter that this wasn't a reckless careen through some unnamed galaxy, but rather another slow turn on a suddenly very empty carousel. Were they they only ones left? Did it matter? It had to be dawn by now, everyone else must have already been making their ways home.
But Oliver didn't want to leave, not with one of his knees hooked over Sir's. He slid painter's fingers across the front of his captain's shirt, across the cage of ribs to the other side for a closer clutch as they kissed their way into the dawn.
What Beau knew of space was relegated to a handful of books he no longer owned, and what he gleaned from reruns of Star Trek as he stitched and glued and burnt his fingers on the hot glue gun to make a new costume for the next performance. And there was always a next one, cyclical like a planetary orbit and as inescapable for him. He knew colors in dull terms, this mint with that, this cotton candy with that one, but he did not have a painter's intimacy, only the rapt attention of a purveyor bedecked in razing, glittering rainbows.
He welcomed the fingers with a roll of his spine. The dawn was coming; they were missing the drench of sun across the sky and they were alone within the small universe made whole by the ship. His fingers curved around slender neck like he was touching the rings of Saturn, a hungry supplicant's touch. The orbit of the carousel continued, and he gave not a speck of dust as he leaned into the kiss.
The eased back seat, tilted for better sky watching, made it easier to swing onto Ziggy's lap, one lip stick barrel thigh sliding between he and the door, his weight coming to rest on his legs. His lips moved slightly, asking "Okay?" without fully separating. To part now would be risking being blinded by the sun.
The strangeness of it never got any easier - slipping back into himself like fingers finding a home in the favorite winter glove. He'd been to enough of these parties to know the sensation -- that tilt-a-whirl, that loop-the-loop sinking feel in his stomach when the stranger that he still somehow managed to be left his mind alone. He'd never been a rag doll or a pirate or a rockstar, he'd only ever been Oliver, but he could still remember what it felt like. Dreams unforgotten were still a part of him, an inspiration clawed up from the rubble by bare hands and panned through for gold.
There wasn't a lot of gold to be found on nights and mornings like these, but maybe this counted. When Sir swiveled space explorer hips up and onto Oliver's skinny lap, he dug a jackknife elbow back against the seat to accommodate. One of his hands found his pilot's hip, thumb fitting into the divot of bone and performer muscle there, familiar as the dip in one of his disposable paint palettes. Maybe too pale to be a paint palette, skin not marked up bruise-grip blues and greens or hickey-sucked purplereds. At least, not yet.
"Okay," Oliver murmured with his head dropped back against the seat to consider the figure above him, no longer cast in the midnight magic of party time. "Do we have to leave?" The place was quiet, probably empty and Oliver wasn't sure what the rules were. Belatedly, he wondered when and if he'd become obedient of rules.
Being less of a space explorer and more of himself, he smiled warm like the sun in spring. The hand at his hip was welcome, his spine straightening to feel the pull of muscles beneath his thumb, assuring himself of the grip before he leaned forward, his hands catching the span of his shoulders. The base of his palms rested steady against the narrow rungs of his collarbones.
The question dragged him from the bubble of the two of them and into the world filled with the hundreds of this little town. His gaze slanted away, first to the painted steeds and carriages and creatures that ringed their spaceship. Then wider, to the empty area just beyond the carousel, where photic retinopathy had threatened earlier, but was now reduced to the night's magic and no longer a threat. Beau's fingers tickled up the slope of his captive's trapezius. No one waited in the door to escort them out with a wagging finger or judge's stare down the length of their immaculate nose.
With no one to tell them otherwise, the rules seemed to say 'stay' until they were willing to go. That suited Beau just fine and with a happy puppy wiggle of his hips, his attention was once more swallowed up by his companion. The room relegated to unimportant other. "Seems to be go when you're ready. No one's coming to kick us out." His head cocked, curious. "Is it always like this? Coming back?"
Oliver had the good sense to feel a little stupid now that his costume was only a costume and no longer an extension of his rockstar persona. The leather pants squeaked against the spaceship's seat and the brightly painted lightning bolt that stretched across one of his eyes was a little smeared from some absent-minded rub of hand. His hair was bright red, cough syrup red and polyester stiff until Oliver tugged the itchiness of the wig off his head. The hair underneath wasn't much better really, it was a bad bleach job that made his curls look dry and tired. The roots were beginning to grow in and they were a dark contrast against dyed sunlight blond. He tired to tame the wiry explosion of his disobedient mop with one hand while Sir strolled fingers up the back of his neck.
The sinking feeling of coming back to reality had finally settled in his stomach, a briefly nauseating feeling that was still pleasant and weird like a rollercoaster loop. This is ground control to Major Tom, welcome home. Oliver blinking up at Sir, with eyes that finally matched with pupils the same size. The irises were mud swathed across autumn's last ditch attempt at holding onto some green. "Always. I mean, you always come back. Last time I came back and had to go to a hospital, so … this was nicer."
And seeing as how it was his choice of when to leave, Oliver - with no more trace elements of an alien rocker who might have preferred to stay - bucked his skinny hips a little to suggest Sir climb off of his lap. "Then let's get out of here. I've got a long walk." Which was going to suck in his platforms.
Sometimes he needed his cues in dazzling neon, as bright as the sun and as painful to look at. The jostle of ram's horn hips under him? Beau got that, and reached over the small door to unlock it and slink his way off the rockstar-that-was' lap with a creak of leather and a rustle of bleached white denim. His white high-tops thumped as he landed on the wood flooring of the carousel, and he paused, teeth catching his bottom lip as indecision warred for half a second and he finally held out a hand to help Ziggy out.
The teeth went safely back behind his lips as they curved slightly upwards. "Glad to hear it was nicer than that." And maybe, maybe if he was lucky, he'd manage to tone it down just enough that he wouldn't scare his companion off like he did with everyone else, but the carousel seemed to quiet now and he just couldn't. His mouth went off like his body had earlier, yanking Ziggy along to his spaceship. "I've never been to one before and this was - this was -" The teeth were back for a nervous chew as he peered at his even-pupiled, slightly smudged former rockstar.
"Good. Fun." An understatement too, because his nearly space-void black eyes dipped down and there was the faintest comet's tail of color across his cheeks. Maybe he could still be embarrassed, somewhere without the bright lights of the carnival stage and a name to act as a shield. "C'mon. I'm not very far if you want somewhere to crash. It's not much, but it's mine, and I promise to be on my very best behavior."
When Sir offered his hand like some gallant astronaut gentleman, Oliver naturally took it. He'd had better stability in his platform sparkle boots when he'd been pure Ziggy, and he wasn't wanting to risk a sprained ankle now. Repose was no place for a sprained anything, considering how Oliver walked everywhere that he needed to go, no matter the weather. It probably helped that he liked the cold. Cold was a chance for scarves and gloves and big thrift store coats that buttoned all of the way up to his neck. Under non-Ziggy circumstances, Oliver didn't know anything about fashion. He likes things that were colorful and he liked things that were cheap because he didn't get attached to the thrift store stuff when it got covered in splatters of mismatch paint, making it only more colorful. Unless it was a gray day. On gray days, Oliver didn't wear anything that wasn't monochromatic. He hadn't had one of those in awhile, but realizing that also meant realizing that winter was coming around the bend - it was his worst season for gray days.
"Yeah, okay," he said when Sir offered a closer place to crash. The comment about best behavior was ignored while Oliver knelt down to unzip his glitter boots. He had thick socks on underneath, and he decided that he'd rather walk in socks than stumble around. The boots were brought up into the criss-cross of his arms, elbows bent and possessive of boots he'd never wear again. Straightened up again, Oliver gave the astronaut a look of totally freaking nonchalant sincerity. "I mean, you can fuck me if you want." It was no big deal. Summer had taught Oliver that. He didn't know Sir, didn't even want to really, not even Sir's real name, which is why he hadn't asked yet. But the guy was offering him a place to crash it seemed like something he was supposed to offer up like a fair trade.
Beau stumbled a little at the nonchalant offer. While Sir had been all bad lines and temporarily sincere promises that ended in the very real possibility of his starship doubling as a Jackson Pollock painting (which he only knew about due to a certain movie), Beau was more gentleman and less intergalactic space hussy-slash-Captain. "That wasn't quite where I was going with that invitation," he said with squinty, frowny eyes. It could be taken in so many ways though, ways that Beau didn't mean that while his mouth was open for his foot to insert, he decided to swallow his toes and see if he could get his teeth up to his ankle. "Not that I wouldn't, I mean, you're cute, but, that wasn't a 'hey wanna come back to my place and fuck' invite. I meant it, it's late, my place isn't that far, especially since you're walking in socks -- aren't your feet going to get cold?" Somehow even bare feet seemed wiser than socks, though fuck if Beau could tell why.
"I mean, fuck, I'm going to fuck this up," he said as his chin went up and groaned heavenward. Sir was so much smoother than him, like laser etched diamonds to his rough, bumpy coal. Give him feathers, and sequins, and rhinestones of every shade of the rainbow and he could work with it. Put him with another member of the human race and he'd end up burning his fingers on the glue gun. As long as he wasn't on stage -- he took a deep breath, one of those ones that was always said to calm, but mostly it just forced his abdominal muscles to ease up on his internal organs.
It was just like being on stage. He smiled a little, a twinkle twinkle, and shook his head enough that the pink hair of his wig resettled. "I'm more of a cuddler than a fucker, really, honey." But it was only an offer, and unlike earlier, Beau didn't reach for his hand and drag him along for the walk.
The mention of his socked feet was somehow more distracting to Oliver than Sir's decline to the rare offer of screwing around. Well okay, the offer wasn't so rare these days, not since the summer had blasted off with all the splendor of a gay boy busting through his sex-phobic chrysalis into some strange new world where he realized that it wasn't the sex that was so terrifying, but rather the hopefulness that went along with it.
Still, Sir said no and it wasn't that Oliver seemed emotionally injured by the decline, it'd been an offer than seemed as emotionless as business on his end anyway. He actually smiled a little, mouthed a soundless kind of 'okay'. Weren't his feet going to get cold? Oliver looked down, contemplating the risks of cold and flu season in his socks and yeah, Repose wasn't small enough to suggest that walking everywhere or anywhere was an hour or less sort of thing. Mentally, he tried to calculate how far it was to Sonrisa, how far it might have been to the house in the woods that was undoubtedly still abandoned but also undoubtedly without heat or warm water. Oliver didn't even know where Jude was living now, and even if he had? That doorstep drop-in was so not worth the apologies that were going to have to go along with it. Oliver, with party-magic fading and no sense of rockstar antics in his bones any longer, was painfully aware of his own social losses. Jude wouldn't want to see him, not yet, as was Jude's right. Misha and Damian? Oliver couldn't even begin to guess what page they were on and guessing on that in itself wasn't worth it. Cris and Sam had a baby and didn't need the weird daylight wake up of Oliver sneaking in and surely being too loud about it all in his wet socks and clumsiness..
So the spaceman's offer seemed sound, and Oliver wasn't afraid of him. The guy wasn't big, he wasn't muscled or older or any of the things that Oliver associated with his own natural state of weakness. "Okay, I'll come with… if you have a couch or something." Because cuddling was a sore spot, and stranger's beds had never been a comfort to the kind of boy who was way too familiar with sneaking out of windows before dawn.
Twinkle, twinkle seemed to work fine, a little bit of stage magic without the full show. Beau had learned the lesson there, in the tense silences of people that weren't prepared for him to be all up in their orbit like personal space was a construct to be smashed. No reaching, no grabbing, only a toss of Pepto hair over his shoulder.
"I do, it's a lumpy thing though, but you're more than welcome to it." He'd spent enough of his own nights on it, too exhausted or too drunk to make it the extra twenty feet to his actual bed. And yet, no matter how much he regretted in the morning when he could barely move his neck or shoulders, he still came back like a bad date every few days. It was unhealthy.
Possibly as bad for him as walking home in socks. Should he offer up his own boots? They were flat footed and he had more than enough experience in heels that he could walk home without twisting an ankle. What would the spaceman do? He stopped, smacked one hand palm on the spaceship that had seen better days, and started to toe out of his boots. "You take these, I'll do the platforms. We both get there without managing to catch our deaths." It was too cold to be walking around in only socks and while he wasn't the epitome of taking care of himself, carnival workers took care of one another, and for tonight, the former rock star was inducted into their masses.
The exchange made, platforms secure and practically homey on his feet, he led them out of the party and back to his home not-quite-sweet home.