happy friday!
First, I think I said thank you for the Hearts, but if I didn't, THANK YOU! You guys are the best friends ever. *hugs* And also thank you to
penguingal, who wrote me adorable Erik/Charles Valentine's comment!fic. With pineapple!Second, I hope you all had a lovely Tuesday (or Valentine's Day, or whatever holiday you want to make it). Awesome Husband bought me a pair of Rebel Alliance insignia earrings AND a new sonic screwdriver (River Song's) AND a plush U.S.S. Enterprise (classic, of course). We now have more sonic screwdrivers than people living in our apartment. *grin* (For the record, I bought him Batman and Green Lantern Lego sets and a TankBot. The TankBot has scared the cat every time, so far. Yeah, we're geeks, but you all know that!)
Third, I have finally updated the masterlist! It should include everything now, even the most recent Erik/Charles holiday fic from two days ago (Halloween).
Fourth, I am a bad person and might be writing this prompt from the kink meme. I didn't mean to. I just kind of...had an idea for how that story would go, and...um, yeah. Sorry?
Fifth, am working on the next James p.o.v. thing, the sequel to Like A Song You Still Know... Excerpt under the cut, and by excerpt I mean nearly the whole thing, at least this part. There'll be a tiny bit more. Working title from the Dropkick Murphys ("The Only Road")
how could you choose a path
without knowing where you'd end up
where you came from was a time and place
that you had never been
is this the only road
can you fake your way through conversation
or just simply turn away
set a course for the desert sun
James agrees to do Arthur Christmas for a lot of reasons. He explains, in interviews, and to himself, that it’s because it’s easy work, that it’ll allow him to relax and spend some time closer to home, with his family. That it’s a film he could imagine taking Brendan to see, and that’s important: he wants to make movies that his son will enjoy. All of those things are true. None of them are lies.
What he doesn’t say is that he wants all of those things, desires that closeness, and needs to create something fun and joyful, because he doesn’t feel any of them anymore. Or because he does, but not the right way. Not the way he should. He loves his son in a way he’s never known he could love anything, and he looks at his wife and thinks that she’s his friend. She always will be. He’s not going to stop caring about her.
But she’s not the person who makes his heart skip a beat, when he finds a random photo lurking on his phone; her smiles don’t make him smile back, involuntarily, just because the world gets a little bit brighter at the thought.
After he signs on for Arthur Christmas, and they’ve finished up all the details of all the contracts, scripts start arriving, and then a flurry of notes announcing script changes, and then, sometimes, phone calls. One of these phone calls begins, at an ungodly hour, with a horribly unbalancing question.
“Can you sing?”
“What? Sorry.”
“They want Arthur to sing. In the film. It’s jolly. Or something. Can you sing?”
“I…”
“We already have the scene written. But if you can’t, we can get someone else to be the singing voice, Disney does it all the time, we just need to know. Like now.”
And James shuts his eyes and takes a breath, standing there in his kitchen, barefoot, early-morning sunlight spilling across the floor around him, warming up his toes. Hears another, too-familiar, voice, laughing, and sees pale eyes, warming up for him, just for him: come on, you know this one, sing with me…
He says, “Yes, I can.”
“Great!” The line goes dead. He stares at his phone for a minute, and thinks, fuck, and then thinks, oh, god, breakfast, I’m supposed to be making breakfast, and then thinks, I’m actually going to do this, and almost smiles, and then remembers that he shouldn’t feel like he’s just made a life-altering decision, because it can’t mean anything, because it shouldn’t mean anything, because the reason he’s up this early making breakfast is because the person asleep in the other room is his wife.
He doesn’t say fuck again, in his head or out loud. But he wants to. He starts, automatically, finding ingredients for pancakes, instead.
In the end it doesn’t matter. He’s never been good at keeping secrets. He’s never liked secrets; he isn’t much for concealment. If the secret is something happy, the world should know, so they can join in on all the happy; if the secret isn’t happy, then maybe talking about it can help; keeping wounds hidden only makes them fester.
He’s tried to keep this secret, though. They both know it isn’t a perfect marriage, too fast then, too far apart these days, but they’ve been making it work, and they’ve been faithful to each other mostly out of habit, because it’s comfortable and easy and they are still friends, and telling her this, when there’s nothing he can say to make it better, would only hurt everyone involved. If he doesn’t tell her, he only hurts himself. And he can live with that.
But he really isn’t good at secrets.
He sings Brendan to sleep, that night. He doesn’t mind singing at home, and his son seems to like it. Still incredible, really. He has a son. Imagine that.
Treacherously, his brain thinks at him: what if you could share this, could raise your son, with Michael? What if this was your life, and when you turned around he’d be there, in the doorway, smiling at you? And suddenly he forgets the next line of the song, even though he’s sung it a hundred times before.
He doesn’t cry. Not then. But he wants to.
Brendan, who is already asleep, doesn’t notice; James doesn’t try to keep singing, just turns around, and there is someone in the doorway, and it’s Anne-Marie.
She doesn’t ask him whether he’s all right. She just waits.
He says, “They want me to sing. In the movie. Arthur, I mean. They want Arthur to sing. They asked me whether I could sing. Today.”
He says, “I said yes.”
He says, “I’m sorry,” because she’ll know that he means it, if not why.
And she says, very quietly, “I saw that interview. Months ago.”
And then there really isn’t anything left to say.
He wants to say “I’m sorry” again, but he’s pretty sure that if he opens his mouth he’s finally going to cry, this time. The tears are right there. They burn. But they don’t fall.
She stands there framed by the doorway, light from the hall coming up behind her like a halo, and says, “I know.” And then, “He’d better make you happy, or I’m going to have to kill him,” and then they both laugh, because it’s that or the tears.