For Clumsygyrl, Sesa 2004.

Not An Exact Science
 

He goes up to the castle on the hill sometimes, usually carrying a dish of pasta or a cake at the urging of his warm-hearted mother. Joey makes a big show about how embarrassing this is - "awww, Ma, not another cake!" - but he doesn't really mind.

Truth is Joey likes the craggy Kirkpatrick castle, tilting precariously on its shelf of rock, and he likes the bats circling about the bell tower. He likes the cobwebby ceilings, the rusty old suits of armour, and the mysterious laboratory full of bubbling potions and swirly glass tubes.

Mostly, though, he likes crazy Chris Kirkpatrick.

"No time, Fatone!" Chris growls when Joey walks in the door. He doesn't look up from his test tubes, eyes hidden behind protective goggles and dark hair spiking above every which way. "Just leave it by the door!"

Same old routine - Joey smiles. "Nice to see you too, Kirkpatrick," he says cheerfully, and plunks the dish down on the nearest table. "Here's another of my Ma's pastas. I swear, she spends that much time worrying about whether you eat right, you're gonna give her a breakdown one of these days."

"Whatever," Chris mutters, shooting the dish a suspicious glance. He never says thankyou; never leaves a plate empty either.

"You ought to get out sometimes, Professor K. Come down to the tavern and meet some of the guys." Joey sweeps a chair free of debris and pulls it up by Chris' workbench. "Come on, you'll like it. And I'll tell you what - the first ale's on me."

"Oh, sure," Chris shoots back, pushing the goggles up on his forehead and giving Joey a full-strength glare. "Like I'm gonna take time off from the millennium's greatest scientific breakthrough to hang out with a bunch of village idiots. No thanks, Fatone."

"None taken," Joey says absently, distracted by the faintly smoking green vial of something vile sitting at his elbow. "What the hell is this...?" He taps at it cautiously. The vial teeters and totters alarmingly on its pedestal as Joey watches, fascinated.

"Don't touch that!" Chris shouts, too late, as the flask tips over and hits the --

BOOM.

*

Chris decides to hire a lab assistant.

"'cause hell knows I need one," said Chris says, "now," pointedly eyeing the ring o' destruction formerly known as his workbench.

Jobs are scarce in these parts but there isn't exactly a rush to apply. In fact there is, in the end, only one applicant.

"Fatone, this is the gimp, Chasez, JC, thingummy," Chris says, waving his hand distractedly. He has never been any good at introductions whatsoever. "Gimp, this is Fatone."

Joey grins, sticks out a hand. "Nice to meetcha, you can call me Joey."

JC is a skinny vague-looking guy with a mop of curly hair and a gypsy-esque clothing style who shakes hands limply but enthusiastically. He doesn't look like he knows the first thing about science - but then, Joey must concede, neither does Chris.

"You from around these parts?" Joey asks, genuinely curious. It's a smallish kinda hamlet and he knows most everyone by sight. But he can't recall seeing JC before and he's pretty sure he'd remember those clothes. Actually, he's pretty sure he'd remember those clothes if he were blind.

Chris, naturally, interrupts before JC has a chance to say more than "uh".

"Fatone," Chris admonishes sternly, rapping at the table with a glass stirring rod. "Don't disturb the gimp. And you!" He glares at JC meaningfully. "You think those chickens are gonna roast themselves? Not in this universe, buddy. Now get a move on."

Chasez rolls his eyes expressively, with affection rather than contempt, and ambles towards the kitchen. The bells on his pants jingle slightly as he walks.

"And don't forget the potatoes!" Chris hollers at his back. "I like 'em baked with butter!"

"Dude." Joey's mouth twitches. "I thought you said you were hiring a lab assistant."

"I don't know what you're implying," Chris says coolly, lips pursed, bent intently over his mortar and pestle. A moment later he can't control himself anymore and snaps: "Dammit, Fatone! Science is science, okay, but even genius has to eat."

"Yeah." Joey slaps another one of his Ma's pastas on the table. "I know."

Right on cue there's an unholy clattering from the kitchen, as from the crashing of a dozen pots and pans, and a faint cry of 'whoops...'

Full from a dinner of warmed-over pasta and slightly-burnt chicken, Joey grins as he walks back home that night. He likes the gimp already, and he's glad Chris will finally have some company, instead of moping around the castle by himself all the time.

Sometimes Joey worries about Chris too much. But, hey. He figures someone has to do it.

*

His Ma loves Chris, will bake him cakes to the end of time and no two things about it.

But when Chris's goat gets into her garden? Not so much with the loving. More with the shrieking.

It's Joey, naturally, who has to clean up the mess, who has to spend an hour chasing the goat around the garden (in the background his mother, crying "Jooooey, don't you trample my basil!") and trying, mostly in vain, to tempt it within reach of his cunning rope-noose with the remains of his mother's prize gardenias.

Add to that the time he wastes on coaxing the wretched thing through the village, and then hauling it up the mountainside, and, oh, Joey prays silently as he finally stumbles exhaustedly through the castle gates, for the love of GOD let this be over.

Of course, Chris thinks it's all thigh-slappingly hilarious, even yells for JC to come look, look, look at Fatone! Look at the giant dork! "You," he wheezes, "you, you," and dissolves into hysterics.

Joey, one hand grimly hanging onto the prancing goat-on-a-rope and the other clutching a whole bunch of his mother's tattered roses, knows he must be quite a sight. Somehow, it doesn't seem quite as funny from the other side. "Okay, whatEVER." He shoves the roses and the bleating goat-on-a-rope in Chris' general direction and starts stomping away.

"Awww, Fatone, don't leave already!" Chris says hurriedly.

Joey slows, but doesn't stop.

"I'm sorry about your Ma's garden, okay? I'm sorry. I'll make it up to her. And, you know." There's a sound, like he's scuffing the toe of his steel-cap boot in the dirt. "Thanks and all that. I mean it, Fatone," he says in a rush, fiercely.

So Joey stops. He turns around smiling, and for a moment all is quite still and good.

"Alright, alright, so slap that smirk off your face and help me drag this stupid animal into the barn, willya?" Chris growls at last, though his face is crinkled up like he's trying not to grin back.

Once they've penned the goat back into its pen they head back to the castle for a cool refreshing cider. As they walk Joey notices Chris is still clinging to the bunch of roses. "Here, you want me to get rid of those for you?" Joey asks, reaching out.

"What?" Chris looks blank for a moment before he snaps back to attention. "Yeah, uh. That's okay. I'll take care of it."

It's a few days later that Joey finds out where they've gone - they're shoved in a flask, sitting on the laboratory windowsill and slowly wilting. Kinda stupid, really. They were so beat up and mangled, he can't think why Chris would bother to keep them.

*

He does, finally, succeed in dragging Chris down to the tavern one night.

It should be a fun evening, and for the rest of them it is. Justin the innkeeper's son and Britney at the bar keep the ale flowing plentiful, while Lance and the rest of the boys are in full voice. Even JC is having fun, or giggling wildly in a corner at least.

But Chris just sits and drinks. He doesn't say anything, but Joey knows him well enough to tell he's getting steadily surly. Surlier. The scowl on his face enough to scare off any one sober enough to see it.

"Hey, Chris," Joey says, but it's hard to get heard when AJ and Nick are standing on the tabletop roaring out the chorus to Auld Lang Syne, and Chris isn't even looking in his direction.

Before he can get Chris' attention Joey is momentarily distracted by an extremely drunken Lance. "You're a real good guy, you know that Fatone?" Lance slurs. "Yeah, you're a --" and then his head hits the table with a snore. By the time Joey has dragged Lance to a relatively safe bench, or at least one where he can pass out in peace and wake up without a crick in his neck, Chris is long gone.

It's days - days of stony, pointed silence - before Chris even speaks to him again, and that's only when Joey finally loses his temper and says, "Look. I don't know what you're so mad about, and at this point I'm pretty much past caring. I give up, okay? I give. The fuck. Up."

And apparently turning on his heel and heading for the door is the key to the vault of Chris, because he's really about to leave when Chris shouts it out: "I just don't know, okay?"

"Know what?" Joey shoots right back, not in a mood for forgiving. "Know what?"

"I don't know why the fuck you even hang around, okay?" Chris pulls the goggles off his head. He turns them over in his hands, avoiding Joey's eyes like crazy. "Just. Seeing you with those guys. Having fun. With all of your friends." He spits the word out. "Yeah, so. If you're gonna leave - well, go right ahead. You never belonged here anyway."

Joey shakes his head. "Jesus, Kirkpatrick. You are un-fucking-believable."

Chris looks like this is both the answer he was expecting and dreading. He shrugs wearily. Resigned.

"Jesus," Joey says again, incredulous, and makes it back to Chris' side in two big strides. "You idiot," he says, shaking Chris by the shoulders. "Why do you think I hang around for, you dumbass?" And to seal the words Joey lays Chris a smacker, right on the lips.

Though Chris doesn't exactly melt in his arms. In fact when Joey pulls back, slightly embarrassed, Chris is looking at him all shocked-like, almost angry. Joey swallows. He's starting to think maybe he's blown it. Maybe he's read the signs all wrong.

"Look, Fatone," Chris says, his turn to sound disbelieving, his voice very cold. "I don't know what the hell you think you're - oh, fuck it," he says suddenly, giving up, grinning, "who the hell am I kidding?"

And he's the one to lean in this time, to pull Joey into the kiss.

*

The letters: there's three of them now, full of Steve's eager outpourings about fame and fortune in the big city, how easy it is if as you're willing to work up a sweat, to take a chance and run with it.

Thing is, times haven't been all that easy in the village of late. Some days Joey works with Ma behind the counter at the bakery, and other times his carpenter father needs an extra hand, but there isn't much else to do - and Joey is one of the lucky ones. More and more Joey reads over Steve's enthusiastic letters, dreaming of the big smoke.

So when the fourth one arrives - promising Joey a job as a stagehand in the theatre if he can get his ass down there, like right now - he's already made up his mind. He just has to tell Chris about it.

"Two weeks' fucking notice!" Chris yells without looking up at Joey's entrance, banging pots and pans in the kitchen sink. "Is that too much to ask? You don't just walk out, you know, there's this thing called - oh, what's the word - alright, I forget, but it's something."

Joey is taken off guard. "But how did you know I --" He catches himself just in time. "Umm. I mean. Errr."

Chris is too mad to notice the slip. "Stupid gimp," he snarls, hurling a wooden spoon. "Never trust a gypsy, Fatone! Especially if his name starts with 'C' and ends in 'hasez'. You'll only live to regret it."

"Ummm. What happened?"

"He ran off, that's what happened." Chris picks up the spoon and hurls it again, just for kicks. "So much for loyalty!"

"Hmm." He thought it over. "So you're saying he left without telling you?"

"Well. Okay." Chris pauses, scrubbing furiously at a burnt pan. "He did say it once, but I thought he was kidding."

"Just once?" Joey pressed.

"Okay, so maybe he said it twice. Or something." Chris glares at him resentfully, elbow-deep in suds. "Jesus, Fatone, you're such a detail freak. Twice, five times, what difference does it make? Fucker's left me in the lurch and you're supposed to be on my side, dammit. Who the hell is going to cook me dinner now?"

"Quit whining and move over." Joey hugs Chris, pushes him gently away from the sink. He smiles, trying not to look too obviously guilty, trying to forget about the letter burning a hole in his pocket. "I'll wash, you dry."

They cook themselves a hasty dinner; or to be precise, Chris curses JC's name in five languages while Joey makes soothing sounds as he dashes between one hot pot and another. They drink a lot of wine together, and weave up the crumbling tower stairs together, and fall into bed together too.

They don't come together. But they have fun trying.

And it's all so easy, easy, easy. It's just too easy and too good and the fact that this is the last time makes Joey wish, even more than usual, that it didn't have to end.

He falls asleep wishing that, and wakes up the next morning when Chris thumps him over the head. Hard.

"Ow," Joey moans, playing it up a little. "Why'd you do that for?"

"When," Chris says very loudly and correctly, "were you going to tell me?"

He rolls over. Joey squints and the fuzziness blobby things resolve into a very furious Chris holding a very incriminating letter. "Huh." Joey winces. He thinks he preferred it when he couldn't see what was happening.

The fact that he expected this - that if Chris hadn't found the letter first Joey would be telling him about it later - doesn't make it any better.

"Get the fuck out of my bed," Chris says, and yanks the sheets out from under him. "Get out of my house, yeah, and the sooner you clear out of town the better, okay?"

"It doesn't --" Joey, fumbling for his clothes, fumbling for an explanation. "It doesn't have to be like way. You could --"

"Save it, Fatone." Chris points at the door. "OUT."

*

What did you ever expect, Fatone? Joey asks himself as he packs his few belongings. Chris is happy to stay in his castle forever, you're always itching for something new - this was never gonna last and you knew it. You were lucky it happened at all.

Yet he can't help looking over his shoulder as the wagon slowly draws away from the village. Hoping for, oh, he doesn't know what. Not some grand declaration or anything. But a goodbye would have been nice.

It's a long journey to the city and for the first night they sleep rough and out in the open. Joey settles down in a woolly blanket, trying to ignore the stones sticking in his back and the snores of his companions. He sighs, pillowing his head against his arm, and wonders wistfully what Chris is doing now. Who's gonna look after him from now on.

He's just nodding off when he hears a "Pssst."

"Huh?" Joey reaches stealthily for his knife and wonders if he should wake the others. "Who's there?" he says warily.

A match flares in the darkness; a lamp wick sparks to life. Chris' face is revealed, grinning demonically. "Shove your fat ass, Fatone, and gimme some of your blanket."

"Oh my god," Joey hisses, moving over, "I can't believe you!"

"What, you think I'm incapable of the romantic gesture?" Chris puts the lamp down and pauses to wriggle underneath the blanket. "Okay, so maybe that's true. But I'm here, aren't I?"

"But what about your castle?"

"Sublet," he says smugly.

"And what about your experiments?"

"Finished!" Chris sings triumphantly. "And now I got me a whole stack of papers to publish. All right here. These babies are gonna make my fortune." He pats his rucksack confidently.

Joey grins, mouth warm against Chris' hair. "Really?" The surprise of seeing Chris is starting to wear off and he's starting to feel the pleasure of it. "What sorta things did you write about?"

"Oh." Chris yawns and snuggles in a little closer. "You know. The usual. The migratory habits of the Amazonian swallow. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Ravens and writing desks. Perpetual motion machines. Cold fusion. String theory. Quarks." He yawns again. "Butterflies. Hurricanes. Symbiosis..."

"Symbiosis?" Joey repeats sleepily, latching onto any old word. "What, you mean, can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em?"

"Sort of. Well." Chris mumbles into Joey's shoulder. "No. But close enough..." After a moment, he begins to snore.

It's gonna be a long journey to the city and this only the first night. No doubt a hard slog when they get there too, no matter what Steve says or even if Chris' papers are as good as he says they are.

But Joey doesn't think any of that's gonna matter, not any more - and despite the stones, despite the cold, he falls asleep smiling.

By Ro, December 2004
Thanks to SQ for beta-reading.

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