Title: Party Like It's '99 (Young Men's Fancies #3)
Author: Jane (jat_sapphire)
Contact: jat_sapphire@yahoo.com
Series: pre-TOS
Rating: [NC-17]
Codes: K/M, K/RuthSummary: Kirk's adventures, junior year at Starfleet Academy, including New Year's Eve. Third in "Young Men's Fancies" series.
Archive: Yes, please. Keep headings and disclaimers and what-not.
Disclaimer: Star Trek and most of the characters here are Paramount's. I invented a few cadets and other folks in the background, and borrowed Winona from other fans, and made up a whole lot of stuff for them to do. I don't make money at this.
Series Notes:
This is a series of stories about Kirk's early sexual and emotional life in which Kirk is bisexual, and sexually active with both men and women. The first two installments are "That Fairness Thing" and "Rain Check."
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Young Men's Fancies
#3 Party Like It's '99
*****
December, Jim's Junior Year, continued
***After the night they played cribbage and darts at the campus pub, Jim ran into Gary fairly frequently; then they began to arrange meetings - Jim still didn't know where Gary was staying for the semester break, but Gary could easily reach him through the Academy system, and did. Jim did some research for next semester, puttered over some practice command simulations and studied his plasma physics and starship specs, which he could always use more time on. When Ruth called - not every day - it was late in the afternoon, so Jim had most evenings free to spend with Gary.
Jim liked Gary, his sense of humor, his charisma, his intelligence and the wide-ranging things he knew about. Every card game ever invented, it seemed like. How the fasttrains worked. Where to buy unusual things for not much money. They both enjoyed running and boxing, and they were pretty evenly matched. Gary, being taller, outreached Jim, but Jim was more agile. They watched and discussed holovids, and Jim learned not to tease Gary about his fascination with them, since he never would admit to liking one.
The campus pub couldn't keep them occupied for long, and they began leaving the Academy grounds to find a club or a game room. Gary knew night spots off the beaten path, and Jim didn't ask how he found out which of them would serve underage customers. They never seemed to run into anyone Gary knew, though. And Jim found out that Gary had a temper, but never could really tell what was setting him off. One night when they were at a new holovid release, Gary just suddenly stalked out, and when Jim followed, wouldn't tell him why. "If you have to ask!" he said scathingly, and . . . well, Jim had needed to, so he just shut up. At a bar one night, Gary went to get a second round of beers - the next thing Jim knew, Gary was shouting at the bartender, and Jim never found out what that was about either, though he had to drag Gary away before the bouncer threw them out.
He never gave Jim points in anything again. On the contrary. When they ran together, Gary always had to be a few paces ahead, and when they boxed, his eyes were as flat as if Jim were a stranger, or even an enemy. They tried unarmed combat practice together only once, and Jim found himself on his back, throat in Gary's hands - Jim's head knocked twice against the floor, connecting solidly even through the mat, and then Gary backed off as if he'd set a destruct sequence to go off right away.
Jim rolled up on one elbow and coughed.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Gary was saying from the edge of the mat, and Jim wasn't sure how often he'd already said it.
"OK," he rasped out when he could. "Bout over."
"Yeah, sure - Jim, you're OK, right? God, I'm sorry, you're really OK?"
"Yeah." But his neck and skull hurt for quite a while.
On Christmas, of course, he didn't see Gary. He did spend a lot of time at the computer, on and off, amusing his grandmother, who as an old-fashioned nethead loved to set up what they used to call a chatroom, and get friends and family into it. Jim read, and tapped his keypad, and tried to keep it all straight in his mind, wondering why they couldn't just comm each other like normal people. "Silver Terror," his grandmother called herself for the chatroom. Jim wished he and Gary could laugh about that right now.
He read/wrote:
silver terror says it was Rigellian fever, one of u Starfleet types brought it here i spose
Winona56 says I don't think you've seen the guest rm since redecoration
silver terror says funny, none of the xchange guests had it
JTiberius says Starfleet types? *Starfleet* types?
Winona56 says its a serious thing, mom, you could hv died
silver terror says guest rm's the same tiny closet
Winona56 says and you still can't climb the stairs I don't think yr fine
JTiberius says anyway that's serious, grandma, now dont run around doing too much
silver terror saysthought about taking a chunk out of my bedrm but the automated bed
Winona56 says she just blames everything on starfleet Jim you know (g)
JTiberius says grandma where are u sleeping if yr not going upstairs?
silver terror says takes up too much space. guess u coulda stayed in there 2
Winona56 says actually we moved the guest bed down and Im in hers
silver terror saysbut i bet yr happier where u are. how's the girlfriend?
JTiberius says down the stairs? Who?
Winona56 says how are you Jim are you happy?
silver terror says tell us about her
Winona56 says mom's friends from the ex program, don't worry
JTiberius says I'm fine, mom, there are some other cadets staying and Im spending time w/ them
silver terror says oh pshaw stop *worrying* I'm not silly yet
Winona56 says isn't Lillian in town too?
JTiberius says Her name is Ruth but she's out of town for awhile
JTiberius says no Lil's not in town either for a few days
silver terror says I knew her *name* but what is she like
Winona56 says poor sweetie you said you'd be able to spend time with her!
Winona56 says i'm so sorry
silver terror says I remember Lil how is she?
JTiberius says I'll see Ruth when she gets back. oh grandma how can I describe her? Blonde, beautiful, sweet, nice voice, had enough yet?
Winona56 says and Lil too! I hope yr not lonely
JTiberius says Mom please cut it out, you had to go
silver terror says it is a little much, doesn't she have some human error?
JTiberius says Lil was good the last time i saw her.
Winona56 says sorry whenever i'm with mom she sucks up all the sarcasm in the air
silver terror says i've bn *telling* yr mom to lighten up
JTiberius says human error? Nope. She's an angel. Dimples.
Winona56 says and i just turn into this limp rag. I'll try to be better.
silver terror says Dimples!
silver terror says I ask you!
Winona56 says she certainly sounds pretty
JTiberius says yes dimples, right around her mouth
silver terror says whatever happened to that boy u used to go around w/?
Winona56 says oh *mom*
JTiberius says don't sound so doubtful mom
Winona56 says you're always teasing him
JTiberius says she's a tech at the SerChemo labs
silver terror says the one with the irish name and the sense of humor
Winona56 says MOM!
JTiberius says FINNEGAN? Grandma are you crazy?
JTiberius says he beat me up!
Winona56 says I think I told her, Jim, but i never said you were friends
silver terror says u know what they say about repressed attraction
Winona56 says much less a couple
silver terror says yr just so soppy with girls, Jim
JTiberius says Im nauseous, I’ll be sick - Finnegan!
silver terror says always have been
JTiberius says youve gone so *beyond*, grandma
Winona56 says & thats so bad for the keypad
silver terror says (snort)
Winona56 says sorry, don't know what came over me
JTiberius says *mom* - what was that about Grandma getting all the sarcasm?
silver terror says look heres my real pt. dont sit around feeling sorry for yrself,
silver terror says find a new girl or a new boy and have a good time or i really am gonna feel guilty.
JTiberius says no im too busy to feel sorry for myself
silver terror says go out for Nyrs, k? on the town, on me. i'll send credits. take Lil if yr really being faithful to ms dimples.The number of credits she actually sent seemed astronomical to Jim. "Am I flying to Paris?" he asked when they were (finally) on the comm together. She laughed, still not the full grandma-bray he'd been hearing his whole life, but obviously happy.
"If you want, but then you really have to tell me all about it."
"I'll ask Lil where she wants to go. If she hasn't already got plans."
Grandma wrinkled her nose, ordinarily the only part of her face that wasn't wrinkled. "Lil's the best you can do?"
"I thought I might take out a group. For this, I could take out half the junior class if they were here."
She laughed again. It really did bother him a little, how much she'd sent, but it obviously didn't bother her.
He wanted to ask Gary. Not as a date, as a friend. But all those credits, the extravagant time his grandmother expected him to have, were actually an inhibition. He had a feeling that Gary's own family income wasn't too high, and he wasn't sure how to say, come to this expensive place with me and let me pay.
Jim left a message for Lillian, to start with, knowing he could be completely frank with her: "Grandma sent me untold wealth and told me to have a grand New Year's Eve. And she says how are you. And I say, what are you doing the 31st? Got a date? Decided a place? Let me know."
She caught him out too - one of life's unchanging verities, that people were never home to take the good calls. "Lil here - I lost my date, remember? But I still have a reservation at the Metreon's Reboot-Millenium bash, wanna go? Bring your light-sensitive eye-shade, they've got technobeams and all, totally unmedically cleared, the same stuff they did in 1999. Your grandma would love it. Pity she can't come. Shall we pick people up there or get someone lined up as a date beforehand?"
"Yes," said Jim, perversely without explanation, in his return message. "I will. She would. She can't. Whatever. Let's try to talk live, get the number straight, change the reservation."
He left a more user-friendly message for Ruth, in case she did get back in time. Now he had to find a way to ask Gary.
He was still wondering how six hours later, sitting in the red-leather, brass-tacked, mirrored splendor of Gary's latest favorite bar. He and Gary had picked up two girls, and were sitting in a booth chatting them up and drinking wine, trying to be classy.
"It's sour for a good white," said Jim's girl, looking at the glass she'd been sipping from. She had introduced herself as Miss Jones and didn't seem very eager to share her first name, or her personal space. Gary's girl, Sondra, was already snuggled up to him, taking up about half the booth seat for both of them. Both girls' hair was straightened, but while Miss Jones wore hers down in a kind of pageboy against skin almost as dark, Sondra's was streaked with red and brushed up into a kind of pompadour, from which a few shorter pieces of hair had come loose and were sticking out. When she sat up straight, one of these obviously tickled Gary, and once it made him sneeze. Jim would have laughed at that moment, but with his own Miss Icicle beside him he didn't feel in a position to tease Gary.
"I want to see if they've got anything better," said Miss Jones now, and turned to Jim, now improbably kittenish and vulnerable. "Come with me? They might get mad."
Jim didn't dare look at Gary, but let Miss Jones take his hand and tug him out of the booth. At the bar, among colored lights and even more mirrors, she seemed to relax at last, and didn't even call the bartender over.
"All right," he said after a moment, "what was that all about?"
She looked sideways at him under long, red-tinted lashes. Probably false. "Sondra's my sister," she said, "my big sister, and I just can't get comfortable with a man while she's watching."
"Comfortable with a man," he repeated. The phrase sounded so false.
"Yes," she said, blinking slowly, then more quickly. "I haven't . . . done this much before."
Jim wasn't sure what made him look again, really look, at the sharp jawline where the wing of black hair brushed it. . . the shape of the hands lying dark against the synthesized quartz of the bar . . . the bony wrists poking out of the soft fuzzy sweater. . . the long throat and its adam's apple. "Oh," he said. "Look, how old are you really?"
Miss Jones raised brown eyes gone wide and startled. "Fifteen."
"I do like guys," said Jim, covering the nearer hand with his own. "I like them dressed like guys, frankly. Is that OK with you?"
The wariness faded out of the brown eyes. "I have a choice?" asked the husky voice that Jim now heard as masculine.
"Not really, I guess." But Jim smiled, trying to take the sting out of it. "I also like guys and girls my own age, or sometimes older, but not as much younger as you are. It's just a thing I have. So tell me - do you want to look for someone else, or come back to the booth and just talk?"
Miss Jones looked at him steadily for what seemed a long time. "I meant it about the wine," he said.
"Then let's call the bartender," Jim said. He waved down the bar, and a man in a white coat nodded back. Jim raised his other hand to the hard shoulder covered with soft fuzz and shook it a little, gently. "Just when were you planning to tell me?" he asked.
Miss Jones shrugged. Jim felt at a loss for words, though actually he liked Miss Jones better, thinking of him as a younger boy new to drag, than when he'd been relating to a woman of his own age or older. The stiffness, the awkwardness, the way every flirtatious bit seemed so carefully rehearsed and unrelated to anything, all made sense now. Though he suspected he was never ever going to hear the end of this Miss-Jones thing from Gary.
The bartender came over, and he and Miss Jones talked wine with an utter seriousness that Jim also found engaging. The bartender called what they'd been drinking "tourist wine," and that amused Jim, seeing that it had been Gary who ordered it for them. They went back to the table with a new set of four glasses, a white with a fruity, stinging scent that Jim found he wanted in his mouth, though he didn't usually like wine.
"Too sweet, really," murmured Miss Jones, "but I know Sondra likes it."
"Miss Jones," Jim said right to the knowing smirk on Gary's face that said he knew now, if he hadn't known before, "is a connoisseur of wine. Impressed the hell out of the bartender. He broke out the good stuff for us this time." And he gave a glass to Gary and slid into the booth. Miss Jones followed, handing the fourth glass to Sondra.
"Ooh," Sondra said as she smelled the bouquet, "Jackie! My favorite! Thank you, I didn't even know they had it!"
"You've never learned the name of it," said Jackie Jones, gruffly but with a little smile.
After that, conversation in the booth flowed more easily. And Sondra sat about six inches away from Gary, so there was no more sneezing. Jackie told them about wine, with extra information about the best vineyard tours, and it was actually interesting. An hour or two later, Sondra gave her comm code to Gary, but insisted on seeing Jackie home. Gary and Jim handed them into a cab - with a live driver, yet - and when Gary turned back to him, still shaking his head, something in his expression made Jim lean against the wall of the bar and laugh until Gary joined in.
"Miss Jones, Miss Jones . . . we should have known right then," said Jim when he could speak, and Gary nodded.
Later, on their way home, Jim suddenly snorted again, and when Gary looked questioning, said, "You can really pick 'em."
"Hey, I picked a keeper," said Gary. "I'm definitely calling her."
"OK," said Jim, taking the plunge, here in the back of the muni where the overhead light was flickering and he could hardly see Gary's face, "you want to ask her out for New Year's Eve?"
Gary asked, "What are you talking about?"
"My grandmother sent me this . . . present, and she told me to take some friends out for New Year's. Lillian, you know, I've mentioned her, she's coming, maybe with a date. She chose the place. The Metreon."
"Your grandmother give a lot to charity?" Sharp, that voice, cutting, though it wasn't loud.
"Mitchell . . . " Jim began, then realized he didn't really have anything in mind to say. "Never mind. Just a thought."
They rode in silence for a while, the atmosphere so stiff that Jim thought even Miss Jones would have been a more comfortable companion.
"Why did you ask me?" Gary's voice was still angry.
"Because I wanted to be with my friends at New Year's," Jim answered as simply as he could. He was miffed himself, but held on to his temper, remembering that he had anticipated a reaction like this.
There was another silence, though a shorter one.
"I don't want to be a pig about it," Gary said at last, more calmly this time.
"You're doing a fine imitation," said Jim, but smiled. "And I'm a farm boy, so I know a pig when I smell one."
Gary shoved him in the shoulder, almost exactly the way Jim himself might shove Lillian if she said a thing like that. Jim relaxed, and ventured to say, "If you don't come and help me spend these credits, I'll have to buy Jackie Jones a pearl necklace to use them up."
"And lie to your grandmother?"
Actually, Jim thought his grandmother would find Jackie Jones very interesting, but he said to Gary, "So help me out."
Another pause. Nothing more Jim could do. Gary would take the gift or turn it down.
"I'll come, but I don't know about Sondra."
"Good." Jim was so relieved he reached out and caught at Gary's sleeve. And then, recovering, he let go and sat back at his end of the seat. "Good."
*****
New Year's Eve
***The Metreon, from the outside, looked exactly like the kind of building that made people say, 'Oh, what a perfect 20th century survival!' though Jim never understood why that was wonderful. This building looked blockish and unbalanced to him. The party being replicated - sort of - was the 1999 gay ball called the Mondo-Millenium; afterward the whole building would be available for public use except the big-screen flatvid thing, still being restored. Lillian told Jim all this on the way there, but Jim just couldn't see what all the fuss was about.
But he was surprised at the wild, almost alien curves and angles that met his eyes inside, and the way the glossy wood and the white plastic panels and the metal struts, pipes, and grilles went together in their daffy postmodern way. And the air of excitement and pleasure that the whole crowd gave off was as intoxicating as the champagne that was just everywhere he looked. He was handed a glass almost as soon as they got in the door and turned down two others while he was still carrying the plastic flute, nearly untouched.
"I take it," he murmured to Lillian, "we're all supposed to be of age here."
"Nobody asked me when I reserved the table," she said, clutching her date's hand as if she was afraid the girl would bolt into the crowd. Sumiko, her name was. Gary and Sondra were behind them.
Jim hadn't, in the end, brought a date himself. Maybe Ruth would come after all; maybe he'd find another single person in the crowd milling in front of him; or maybe he'd just be with his friends, which after all had been the main point of the evening. That, and spending Grandma's credits. And that was easy. The tickets alone had put a sizable hole in Grandma's credit chip. And Lillian, when she revamped the reservations, hadn't skimped on anything.
They had a table near the dance floor, an area called the Night Kitchen, the small stage for the live band towered over by huge cartoon characters dressed as chefs. The dance floor was edged with all kinds of light equipment, and Jim really wanted to get a look at it, to see if it was really antique or reproduced, but nobody was allowed: there were security staff members beside every installation. The light itself was phaser-bright but intermittent, tied into the music somehow, changing color, flashing. They could scarcely see the plates of old-style hors-d’oeuvres: little sausages wrapped in pastry, tiny smudges of pate on crisp wafers, edible straws filled with some sort of soft cheese, and all sorts of other unlikely finger food. Crayfish. Snails. The weirdest were little orange puff things - he thought they were orange - that when he pinched one, turned out to be the consistency of insulation foam. None of it was anything Jim had ever eaten before, he thought, or if he had, it hadn’t looked like that. And the champagne just kept coming. There was supposed to be non-alcoholic stuff somewhere but everything Jim tasted was . . . not non-alcoholic. Which was, on the whole, OK with him.
They'd hired the clothes they were wearing, and Jim had taken care to get fladvids of all of them as they milled around before leaving Lillian's place; he knew that his grandmother would be dying to see them. Lil was dressed warp-fast, in a short-skirted outfit with wild long fringe. It was more 1920s than 1999, but Jim didn't have the heart to say anything. Usually Lillian went more butch, and it was fun just looking at her with color on her eyelids and cheeks and earrings dripping from her ears. She had to stop pulling on her neckline, though. Jim made a mental note to tell her.
Sumiko was wearing what would have been a formal kimono if it hadn't been so short, which made it look weirdly like an exercise wrap with trailing sleeves in too-gaudy silk. Jim was grateful Zelda was still not among the mentionable. He didn't even want to know what she would have looked like - or acted like, once she'd gotten wrapped around some of this champagne. At least Sumi was friendly. She kissed Lil's cheek when they got back from one of their dances, a gesture Jim couldn't remember Zelda making the whole time he'd known her. Jim approved, though he was afraid moving too fast would spook Lillian.
Sondra was draped in a lot of gauzy bits that kept threatening to simply float up and show whatever they were theoretically covering. When Jim danced with her, a fast whirling kind of dance, he realized the whole dress was less precarious than it looked, which was sort of disappointing.
Jim did a lot of dancing, a certain amount of talking, ate in a gingerly way if the stuff didn't seem too strange, and drank sparingly, not wanting to get sloppy in front of - well, anyone. The hired clothes were another reason not to get out of control. The shop clerk had said it was a tuxedo, but Jim had balked at the cut of the jacket and that sash thing, so he was just in shirt-sleeves. He was glad, though he noticed that some other people were wearing the whole ensemble and it didn't look as ridiculous as he had thought. But the room was warm despite its high ceilings and moving air, and he'd folded his cuffs back as it was and opened the collar.
Gary had insisted on wearing his own, dark-colored, soberly cut clothes, and perhaps he'd meant to be unobtrusive. Instead, the sheer understated sexiness of his snug half-sleeves and v-neck stood out against all their peacock colors and crazy styles. Sondra kept running her hand along Gary's bare forearm, too, or playing with the hair at the back of his neck, so she obviously felt the outfit was a success.
Late in the evening, when Jim and Lillian were just back from a dance set and everyone was disheveled and flushed, Lil turned to Jim with mischief in her face. "You've danced with strangers, and you've danced with me," she said, enunciating carefully, "and you've danced with Sumi, and you've danced with Sondra, but you haven't danced with Gary." She was standing behind Gary, and waggled his shoulder back and forth. "It's very rude, isn't it, Gary?"
Sondra looked on with a half-smile that Jim didn't quite like. There was a pause of a few seconds, and then Gary said, "If you want to?" and stood, looking down at Jim as if he were the reluctant one.
"Sure," Jim said.
As they walked away from the table, Jim said, "OK, what's the hitch?" knowing there must be one.
"I can't dance," said Gary. "I never learned. Sondra and I went up to that Wild Things place and just walked around there."
"How did you get out of it?" Jim asked. "I would have given a lot at the time. Even being homeschooled after . . . I was 14, even that didn't get me out of going to dance class."
Gary didn't answer. They walked together through darkness shot with glare, spots and flashes and lines of colored light moving away from and back to the improvised stage. The windows from floor to ceiling on the patio-side pulsed with the reflections. In the dark times blacklight found Jim's shirt and made him feel like a beacon. Music shrilled, growled, shook their bones, and came up through their feet. They stood at the edge of the dance floor to watch the gyrating bodies, not trying to speak. The song stopped, and some people left the floor and others went on to it. When the music started again, it was much more subdued, woodwind and drum and bell sounds. Jim recognized it as an Andorian circle dance for pairs. "Try this, it's just walking in a circle, I promise. Come on, surprise Sondra."
Again a pause before Gary said, "OK."
Jim walked onto the dance floor and held out his hand to Gary. "Like shaking hands." And then as Gary's hand came to meet his, he caught it in both his: "Hold my wrist, like this," grasping the handful of Gary's bone. Jim let his other hand drop; Gary's fingers closed around Jim's wrist, warm, and of course covering more skin than Lil's or the other women's. "Now walk with the drum-beat," said Jim, raising his voice a little to carry over the sound, "and I'll tell you when we switch directions."
The lights flashed and moved, increasing speed slowly, making everything throb in time with the music. "Don't look at your feet," said Jim, "please." Gary raised his head, but his face was blank, as far as Jim could see it in the moving waves and lines of color. His hand on Jim's skin was neutral too. Gary had picked up the rhythm well - three steps faster, one slower, three faster again - and began at last to relax into the movement, so Jim did too, and smiled. Gary's eyes flicked past Jim to the other couples dancing. "OK, change hands," Jim said.
They did, with only a slight fumble, and walked in the other direction. "Well, you're right," said Gary, "it is easy. But we're not doing it the way the others are."
"No," said Jim, a little embarrassed, "but I wanted you to get the hang of the steps first." He slid his hand up Gary's arm now as they walked, and Gary did the same, as the other couples had already been doing, so that as they walked faster they also drew closer together. Jim was very aware of the hair under his fingers, the smooth skin under his palm; of Gary's hand, ruffling the hair on his own arm and warming his own skin; of Gary's face and body nearer with every circle they walked.
"Change hands," he said as he touched the crook of Gary's elbow.
They did, back at the wrists again, and Gary smiled for the first time since they had left the table. "I get it," he said, and this time he was the one to slide his hand along Jim's arm, just that little bit, then more, and Jim followed until they held each other's elbows and circled almost too closely to keep their steps apart. In the dim colored light Gary's eyes were too dark to read, nearly too dark to see, but his pale skin was luminescent, and when he smiled, his teeth caught the lights in blue flashes, like Jim's shirt did.
And again they changed hands, and again slid warm palms along each other's skin, and Jim remembered that Andorians considered this dance too intimate for anyone but life-partners and family members to do.
Then as they were closest, the music stopped and the dance floor was almost completely dark. Some couples, Jim knew without looking, were kissing; some hugging; some stepping quickly away. He and Gary just stood, still gripping each other's arms, their faces only inches apart. The lights came up, just normal yellow-white, and they had not moved.
"This is the free-style part," Gary said, holding on, staring down at Jim. "Right?"
"Yes," said Jim.
Gary touched Jim's face with the tip of one finger, and moved it across until he reached just the corner of Jim's mouth.
Jim was not in control. Usually he hated that. If he had been in control, he would have pulled Gary's hand from his face; he would have moved away and found a joking comment to make, something that friends said to each other. He actually tried, but his hand wouldn't grasp, just rested on Gary's. Gary was the one whose eyes moved, looking over Jim's head, and it was Gary who pulled away. His finger left Jim's cheek; his arm left Jim's grasp; his body heat was gone.
Jim couldn't be disappointed, could he? It must have been the way Gary walked back through the crowd, faster than Jim expected, so that he didn't keep up and other people separated them. In the new darkness and noise of the next dance, Jim told himself that he wasn't disappointed, he was just disoriented, and a little dizzy from the circling dance-steps and the champagne.
He turned, peering, trying to get his bearings and go back to the table, but someone else grabbed him by the elbow. A woman's hand. A short woman, head tilted back, he couldn't see her properly, and then a spotlight ran past and Jim said, "Ruth!"
"Jim, darling," he thought she said, and he put his other hand into her hair and kissed her. It was like a dream, the dark and the music and her body flowing into his. Not real at all, and so he just fell into it, gathered her as close as he could and sank into her kiss. He played his tongue over her teeth and under her tongue to tease her in that tender spot, and suckled her upper lip, and kissed down to her neck, and she rubbed his back, murmuring too softly to hear through the music.
"I missed you, I missed you," he said into her ear, because surely that was what he was feeling. She buried her face in his neck.
The lights came up again, between sets, and Jim said, "When did you get here?"
"I got your message when I got home, later than I really planned, and just dressed up and left again. I wanted to be here at midnight."
Jim looked down at her composed face, and played a little with her hair. "I'm glad." One hand fell to her shoulder. "Come on, come and meet everyone."
But she leaned back, and when he took her arm she still wouldn't move. "Not right now, please. I just want to be with you. Isn't there somewhere . . . we can just walk around for a little while?"
This reminded him of what Gary had said, so Jim answered, "There is, but I'm not sure . . ." He turned and saw the passage into the main mall, and he and Ruth made their way out. They could have just walked back and forth here, but it was hardly romantic, the lighting ordinary and the passers-by weighed down with trays and dirty dishes. So they stopped one of the zillion waiters and asked her the way up into the Wild Things place.
"Oh, it's darling!" Ruth said when they saw this child's daydream of a jungle. Walkways arched up and around; strange beasts smiled fiercely from trapeze-like wires; nothing was real. The plastic leaves were large, muting even the pin-pricked lights of the city that reached through the vast dark windows. Jim and Ruth walked on flat green artificial turf past gnarled, garishly painted trunks twisting this way and that; pillars and benches seemed to be made of blocks of stone, but were only more plastic, painted. When they reached the ramped walkway, Jim put his hand on the rail and discovered that it was not real wood either. They both looked around for a moment.
"Cute monsters," said Ruth. Then they climbed the ramp, farther into the shadows, holding hands at first but then with arms around each other's waists, ducking under artificial vines and dodging artificial tree-branches. Just where the walk turned, they stepped into the far corner and could see the cityscape through the foliage; they stopped to look and then to kiss, and Jim ran his hands over the body he was beginning to know so well. When he held her breasts like this she always moved closer, into his hands, and this time she moaned softly in her throat. Still, after they'd necked and groped for a while she stepped away, took his hand again and pulled him back to the railed walk. He followed, a little frustrated but not enough to make an issue of it. They went to the end of the walkway, a little platform raised above the turf, also with a view of the city. There they stood, Ruth's head on Jim's shoulder, and they might have been alone, but for the remote sound of the band and the crowd.
Suddenly, a speaker somewhere above them coughed a little static and then amplified the voices chanting in the Night Kitchen: "Ten . . . Nine . . . Eight . . . "
Jim turned Ruth to face him, cupped her face in his hands. "Almost midnight," he murmured to the full lips so near his.
"Three . . . Two . . . One . . . Happy New Year!" shouted the speaker in many voices.
Jim leaned in to kiss Ruth; his eyes closed, and in the dimness of the false jungle it seemed the only light was the little sparkle behind his eyelids, a private version of the light show on the dance floor. How soft her lips were, how wet and giving . . . it would be different with Gary . . . he banished the stray thought and pressed his tongue into Ruth. Sweet, she tasted sweet and sharp together like the champagne punch. The skin of her throat was smooth in his hands. He passed his thumbs over the nearly-hidden lump of her adam's apple, and she swallowed reflexively. He slid the thumbs up to her jaw, stroked up to her ears, back into her hair. She pushed her body against him, rubbed a little back and forth, and just that easily he got hard, all the stimuli of hours focussed at last. Her hands went down his sides, over his hips, back up to the waist of the rented pants with their old-fashioned zipper. He leaned back a little, breaking the kiss, his hips forward, wild for those small fingers to find the clasp and undo the little metal tracks and . . . "Here?" he whispered, wanting to hear her say yes with her mouth, see it in her eyes, as well as feel it in those creeping fingers.
And he was sure that she would, but it was someone else's voice, below their feet somewhere, that said "Yes . . . yes . . . " hoarsely, in a range that could have been man or woman. Jim and Ruth both froze.
"Now," said the voice distinctly, and it was definitely a man. "Take me." Jim pulled Ruth closer and bent his head to hide his snuffle of laughter in her hair. The other couple must be under the platform where they stood, probably behind the fake tree trunk that held it up. No way to slip past them if he and Ruth wanted to leave. And he hated interrupting people almost as much as being interrupted.
Ruth might have thought of the other couple as more than erotic background noise, or not; anyway after that first few seconds she thrust her fingers into Jim's waistband again, her body against his. She opened the button at the top and fumbled with the zipper, one hand running up and down along Jim's re-hardening cock, outlining it through the fabric. Waves of sensation beat through Jim and for once he just stood still, or as still as he could, reaching back to grab the railing behind him. She untucked the long white tails of the shirt, reached through the opening in his briefs and worked his erection out into the cooler air. Then she went down on him, and he shuddered at the chill where she was no longer against him, the heat where her mouth surrounded him, the friction of her hands along his thighs and her tongue on the end of his cock. He opened his legs, bracing himself, and she moved closer between them, kneeling between his ankles, her breasts just above his knees, and her hands still stroking. She squeezed his thighs up right below his buttocks and he thrust forward helplessly into her mouth and she did it again. So good.
"Ah . . .oh," said the voice, and it was as if the other man was making the sounds Jim felt choking in his own throat, as if the fingers teasing him and the mouth milking him were a stranger's. Jim swallowed, and the taste of Ruth's mouth was still faintly in his. He concentrated on it, savored it, felt the warm pulling, swirling, squeezing and rode the feeling until it burst.
The bumpy texture of the railing made his hands ache. He was leaning way out, his head hanging back, his mouth open though he thought he hadn't made any sound himself. The voice below was still grunting and moaning. Ruth let his cock slip from her mouth and laid her cheek against him, still holding his hips. He stood straighter and she kneeled back. He put himself back into his pants and zipped them, then knelt himself to take Ruth in his arms again.
"Happy New Year," she whispered.
"Happy New Year," Jim repeated, his hands running up and down her sides, her back.
"Uh!" said the voice, and then fell silent. After a moment there was subdued rustling, some thumps against the hollow plastic tree.
"I think we can go now," Ruth said against Jim's neck.
"Is that what you want?" Jim murmured.
"Yes." So they got up. "Tuck in your shirt," Ruth said a little louder, and there was a renewed flurry of sound below. Jim had an impulse to step over to the rail, lean over it, and say something about how much fun they'd all had. But the couple below was scrambling like mice surprised in the pantry, and he didn't have the heart to embarrass them even more.
By the time he and Ruth were back on the lower level, no one was there.
And when they reached the table, Lillian greeted them with, "Gary took Sondra home, Jim. They just stayed for midnight and then they went."
Jim looked at the empty glass and crumpled cloth napkin on the table at Gary's place and felt a surge of some feeling he wasn't sure of, except that it wasn't good. Then Ruth squeezed his arm closer to her side and he pulled himself together and introduced her. Lillian was narrowing her eyes, trying hard to keep Ruth in focus, but obviously not quite succeeding. Sumi wasn't even trying, but flashed a big smile.
Ruth sighed. When he looked at her, he found an odd expression on her face. It was - yes, it was the expression he'd seen on the faces of his primary school teachers when the class was being unruly: not anger, but a kind of weariness. For an instant, even as he moved his arm around her waist and saw her face soften into a smile, he felt the gap in their ages and saw a time coming when it would be each other they were tired of. His other hand closed on cloth and when he looked, he found himself holding Gary's napkin, and again raw feeling overtook him. Gary wasn't here.
Ruth was. "Jim?" she said, as if to prove it. "Darling?"
He picked up the glass by its rim and said, "Sit here, babe." She did, and he picked up Sondra's stuff too and put it in the middle of the table, then sat there himself, and waved at a waiter for more champagne. This was his party, and it wasn't over yet.
*****
Interlude: Gary's POV
***
Gary stumbled out of bed and hit the comm control. The buzzing stopped. "H'lo?"
"It's dawn," said a dreamy voice. "Gary, it's dawn."
"Christ, Jim, what the fuck?"
"D'I wake you?"
Gary realized finally that Jim was drunk. And what a sweet drunk he sounded. It might have been a mistake to leave the New Year's Eve party before Jim got like this.
"Yeah. Never mind. Why'd you call?"
"Just . . . why'd I call? . . . I just wanted . . . Gar, it's so beautiful, the sky is just pink 'n . . . "
"You," Gary smiled at the speaker, "are wasted, my friend."
"I am." Vast satisfaction in that innocent voice. "Your friend."
"Where are you?" Gary asked after a pause. "And how did you get my code anyway?" He knew he hadn't told Jim where he was staying.
"Rer . . . Re-routed," said Jim, "through the Academy . . . I said it was a 'mergency."
"Really." Gary hoped it wasn't. He'd never seen Jim drunk and didn't know whether he'd ever had this much alcohol in his system before. "You feel OK?"
"Oh, ya . . . yeah. I just wanted t'talk." And then he didn't.
"So talk," Gary said. He hit the button for visual, but nothing happened. "Hey, I can't see you."
"'S a booth, the pickup's broke."
"Where are you?"
"Near Ruth's."
So now beside Gary's image of Jim flushed, in that tuxedo shirt with all the tiny pleats rumpled and the neck open, came the vision of Jim's hair disheveled, his mouth still swollen, maybe hickeys on that tender neck. Gary shifted in his chair. Damn. At the most ordinary times Jim looked good enough to eat, and if Ruth had . . . it was just as well Gary couldn't see him. "Jim," he said, and heard the roughness in his own voice, swallowed, and cleared his throat. "Jim, shouldn't you be on your way back? In a cab or something?"
"Autocab. Got one. Then it passed this booth, and I thought."
"You thought?" Gary prompted.
"Of you." Another pause, and Gary visualized the bright head bent, the boyish hand raised to touch the comm unit, irrationally, adorably. "Of you." Gary closed his eyes.
He had flirted with Jim when Jim taught his Ethics class, but he hadn't meant it, not really, except as distraction. He had tried again when they met the first time afterward, in the campus pub, and Jim had slapped him down, in a nice way. They had gone around together and picked up girls together (or tried to - hard to count Miss Jones), and been friends, and Gary wanted that; he wanted an ordinary friend, like other people had. He was sure Jim had dozens of friends.
"I wanted to dance with you again," said Jim, sounding forlorn. "Would you? If you's . . . you'd st- . . . if you ha'n't left? Or did you leave so you wouldn't have to? I wouldn't make you, Gary."
The tone caught at Gary's throat. "No, I know." And he would have held that warm, sweet-scented, relaxed body in his arms, moved clumsily after him as the music played, ached with wanting what Jim now seemed ready to give. If Gary could let him get that close.
"I missed you. Ruth was there but I missed you."
"I'm sorry." And he was. Sorry to have brought Ruth into the picture at all. Sorry he'd ever said, 'go to this lecture, I know he'll be there - how do I know? I just do. A guess. Ask questions, be noticeable. And if you can, go with him afterward, impress him with how nice you are, and he'll be easy.' He'd been right. He was very, very sorry to be right.
"Gary," said the voice of his friend, the unknowing beneficiary of his matchmaking skills, the most beautiful guy he'd seen for years, "Gary, you looked so good tonight. Las' night. You know."
"I know. Thank you."
"Gary . . . I wanna tell you. OK? I wanna tell you."
"Yes, OK, tell me."
"OK?" Then silence.
Only Jim could play this drunken-echo game and make Gary hang on his every slurred word. Gary wasn't going to encourage him any more to make what he suspected was a confession. Of course, if Jim felt . . . something . . . he'd be easier to manage, but Gary almost didn't want to hear it.
"God you looked good," said Jim. "Sondra kept petting you . . . your arm . . . I wanted to. Wanted to feel your skin. And then we danced."
They'd only touched each other's forearms, but the memory came back to Gary so strongly that he grabbed the armrests and pushed back in his chair. And afterward -
"After, you touched my face," Jim was saying, "and oh, I didn't want you to stop. Gary? Are you listening? Why'd you stop?"
"I . . . I'm listening."
"I want to kiss you. I wanted it then."
"Yes," Gary said, knowing Jim was not likely to remember this in the morning. "I know."
"You're so. You're so." Jim sighed gustily. "If I wasn't with Ruth. You know. I'd be with you. I'd want that."
Gary tipped his head until it rested on the high back of the chair. He wondered, forcing the distraction on his mind, if he could find a chair like this for his dorm room. It was one of the very few things he missed when he wasn't here.
"Could I? See you? Come there?"
"No, Jim." He wouldn't tell Jim where he was. It would just start a million other questions.
He gave himself a second to imagine confiding in Jim, not tonight, of course, when he wouldn't remember, but for real. 'This is where I'm staying, this is how I got stuck staying here, this is where I come from, this is what I used to do to stay alive . . .' no, he really couldn't. Couldn't imagine how this sheltered boy would react, whether he'd decide Gary was some sort of charity case or curiosity or . . . whatever. The gleam that came into the Admiral's eye when he realized that Gary wanted to take the entrance exam, that he could put Gary under that kind of debt - if he ever saw that, or anything even a tiny bit like it, on Jim's face he might hit out, might lose it the way he almost had in the gym that time. And then he hadn't even had a reason.
Jim was still babbling. Even drunk he had the kind of voice Gary could listen to for a long while.
". . . so good doing things with you. Fun. 'N hearing your voice, Gar, I like talking to you 'n hearing you talk. D'you? Gary?"
"Yes," Gary admitted.
"Yes? Did you say yes?"
"Yes, I said yes."
A pause. "Yes what?"
Now Gary was the one who sighed. "Jim, go home. To the dorm. You need to sleep."
"Yeah? Think I should?"
"I do."
"I'm not sleepy."
"You will be."
"Will I?"
If he were here, Gary wouldn't keep trying to argue; he'd just make Jim lie down and let him tell the ceiling how not-sleepy he was, for the minute or so it would take. Like a child. Like a few children he'd known, except they had better reasons than this for having a hard time getting to sleep. The old anger swept up from chest to throat, and he forgot this was just Jim, just the babbling and spurious energy of somebody who'd been drinking champagne for hours. "For god's sake," he snapped, "will you get in the cab and go back to the dorm? It's, what, around four in the morning? Fuck, Jim! I want to sleep if you don't. Hear me?"
"I hear."
"Good night." And Gary really should have turned off, except he didn't trust Jim to break the connection and go back to the cab. So he waited.
"Goo'night," said Jim, forlorn again. Then a pause, but there was no break-sound. "Gary?"
Gary rubbed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose between strokes. Of course. "What?"
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Gary. I woke you up, di'n't I?"
"Yeah, you did, and I want to go to sleep again now."
"Yeah, good idea. Go back to sleep. To bed." Jim sighed again.
"And you get into that cab, OK? Shut the comm off and get into the cab."
"Yeah, I will." But he still didn't.
Gary waited.
"Gary?"
"What, Jim?"
"You mad?"
"If I say I'm not mad, will you get into the damn cab?"
"You're mad. I'm sorry, Gary. Di'n't mean to make you mad."
"I know. I'm really not mad. I'm really tired. OK, Jim? You understand? I want you to stop talking. Turn the comm off. Get into the cab. Go home. Go to bed. Understand?" Jesus, drunks and children and dogs, you just had to say little things over and over.
"OK." Pause. "I'm gonna turn it off now."
"Good, Jim, do that."
"Good night," he said, suddenly clear, and louder, as if he'd leaned into the audio pickup. "Gary. Sleep tight. Sweet dreams." And then he really did turn off the comm.
Sweet dreams? Did Jim's mother tell him that when she tucked him in? Gary wouldn't have been surprised. His own goal was no dreams at all, thanks very much.
He pushed himself out of the chair and went back to bed, only to lie looking at the ceiling himself, seeing that vision of Jim in the booth full of faint, rosy light. Sweet enough, certainly. But a dream?
**end of "Party Like It's '99 "**
Continued in "The Trouble With Gary,"