Going Home
Copyright © 2001 Em

Another *mprov, with words provided by Stacia.
words: splintered, visionary, compulsive, unadulterated, teddy bear

"Here it is," Chris announced suddenly, jerking forward to look out of the window and startling Lance beside him. "Stop. Here. This is the place."

Lance leaned back to see past Chris as the cab slowed, and could only make out the bottom half of a stoop from his vantage point. He could feel the tight, nervous energy going through Chris, just from the point of contact where their legs touched. "Are we just gonna look around?" he asked softly, sliding his hand along the seat behind Chris and lifting a finger to touch the gap at the back of his jeans.

Chris shrugged with his whole upper body, paying the driver, tipping him with an uneasy smile. "Don't know yet," he muttered, and shoved his wallet into the back of his jeans as he opened the door. He glanced over his shoulder at Lance as he slid away. "Well, let's go."

Lance took off his shades as the cab drove away, feeling self-conscious. He felt silly, squinting into the sun, but Chris wasn't wearing shades either, and Lance felt like he'd be drawing attention to himself if he kept them on, though the street was mostly clear. There was a small boy on a tricycle, peddling in circles on the sidewalk in front of the stoop, and Lance frowned.

"Where's his mom, my God," he murmured under his breath, leaning into Chris, and Chris shook his head, already eyeing the building and stroking his chin.

"Probably taking care of her other three kids inside, or working her second job for the day," he said absently, then pointed. "That second window," he said, and Lance followed his finger to a pane with daisy-printed curtains partially obscuring the view inside-- "that was ours. You can see the whole street from there, or it looked like it." He paused. "Watched a lot of kids learning how to ride bikes from there when I couldn't get my own."

Lance bit his lip and nodded, gaze flickering back to the boy on the trike and back up to the window. Chris took his arm and turned him slightly to the right, pointing again. "That... there was a paper stand there, I remember." Chris pursed his lips. "And I remember if you tugged on the door, once soft, twice hard, it opened up without you having to put money in it." Lance laughed slightly, and when Chris looked back at him, he was grinning, too. "We'd get the paper and I'd help Mom look for jobs and stuff. That was, like, our together time, you know?"

Lance nodded. "Yeah. It's not, you know, the same, but when my mom would take home, um, assignments and stuff from school, we'd get to hang around while she marked 'em, and. That was kind of. Like, our time?" his voice went up at the end in the dreaded question, desperately seeking some parallel, some sense that his experiences in life and Chris's could have had similarities, however vague.

Chris was nodding, too, still staring down the sidewalk. "No, no, that's. If it was anything like the times we had... that's cool." He started up the stairs tentatively, passing Lance, and Lance stood there dumbly, watching him go. "I wonder if..." he said, just loudly enough that Lance could hear him, and peered closely at that second window, searching for signs of movement. Turning, he gestured at the boy on the trike, and Lance got the gist of what he wanted, and bent over the child.

"Hello," he said gently, and the boy looked up, watching him with wide, dark eyes. "Is your mom home?"

The boy stared up at him wordlessly. Don't talk to strangers, Lance thought belatedly, thinking that he probably would have run at that age if approached by a man he didn't know on the street. He glanced back at Chris, helplessness written across his face, and Chris merely shrugged, ringing the buzzer. A girl in her early teens -- pre-teen, possibly -- answered the door, and Lance fought the instinctual burst of adrenaline that shot through him. Their target audience, right there, and would she recognize them? What would she do? But she was only one, not a mob, and maybe she could make this easier for them as it was.

"Hey there," Chris said easily, when she blinked up at him. "Me and my friend here--" he gestured over his shoulder at Lance-- "We. Uh, I used to live here, as a kid, and um, we were. Is your mom home?" He extended a hand. "I'm Chris. Hi."

The girl tilted her head at him, uncomprehending. "Chris?" She looked past him to Lance, and her mouth worked wordlessly for a moment. "Lance?" she said weakly, and glanced back to Chris again, a look of unadulterated shock on her face now. "Mom?" she called, backing up into the dimness of the complex. "Mom!" and she was gone, footsteps running through the house and the door left wide open. Lance stifled a grin when Chris turned and raised an eyebrow at him.

A moment later, she was joined by a very pregnant, very tired-looking woman who slouched against the doorway next to Chris. "Can I help you?" she asked pleasantly, despite the exhausted look on her face, and Lance moved closer, climbing the steps, as Chris explained quickly.

"Sorry to bother you, ma'am, but-- see, we were in town, and I used to live here, and I just wondered if. Would it be okay if we just. Looked around? We'd be real quick, just in and out. If not," Chris added, "that's okay. I just thought it'd be worth a try."

They could both hear the frantic whispers coming from inside now; the "OhmyGod, please -- Mom. Mom. It's *NSYNC. Don'tsaynodon'tsayno, please, please. Mom. Pleaseplease" that accompanied the hand tugging on the woman's arm, before she relented. "Sure," she told them. "Come on in. Place is a mess, though," she warned, as Chris disappeared inside, holding the door open for Lance. He smiled and nodded as he passed her.

"Couldn't be worse than when I lived here, I promise," Chris called back, and Lance didn't dare dispute it. "Wow," he added under his breath, calling Lance's attention to the splintered wooden frame of the doorway to the bathroom. "Somebody got angry."

Lance whistled low. "Maybe the kids got out of control or somethin', playing," he suggested, but Chris shook his head.

"Maybe," he said, as though he didn't believe it. "I really like what you've done with the place," he said more loudly, as he moved on, leading Lance down the hall past the kitchen and into the living room. There was a playpen with a teddy bear in it and a few other toys scattered about in the center of the room, a small TV with antennae extended, a TV tray in front of the couch. It was like a throw-back to the fifties, Lance thought, glancing around. Really nice use of space, he thought, and meant it, but didn't say it out loud because he feared it would come out sounding sarcastic. He said it to Chris instead, who said, "You used the space really well, you know? We had it all crowded when I lived here; you couldn't walk from the kitchen to your room without stepping over ten things on the way."

"Thanks," the mother said, smiling bashfully. She draped her arm over her stomach and seemed content to watch them explore the place without intruding.

"I'm sorry; I didn't get your name?" Lance offered, extending his hand to her. "I'm Lance. This is Chris; we were telling your daughter, before."

She nodded as she shook his hand. "Anne," she told him. "Cheryl's a fan," she added, smiling, and when she smiled she looked a whole lot less tired, and Lance returned the gesture easily and cheerfully. "Did you sleep in the big bedroom?" she asked, returning her attention to Chris, and Lance turned to hear his response as well.

"Not for long," Chris shook his head, poking around behind the sofa for something. "That was where the girls slept. I had the Hide-a-Bed out here." He made a small sound of victory and waved Lance over. "Check it out," he said, pointing to a dark stain on the carpet that the couch nearly covered. "Melted action figure. Chris Kirkpatrick, circa 1979."

"That stain's as old as me!" Lance laughed and shook his head, and Anne smiled as well, folding her arms.

"So that was you, huh?" she asked. "You're worse than my Brad."

"The little boy outside on the trike?" Chris asked, and Anne nodded. "Anne," he said solemnly, crossing the room to meet her. "A word of advice. When Brad comes to you one day and tells you a long story about how he was kidnapped by aliens who thought Hot Wheels were a dessert food and insisted that he toast them, and that's why the kitchen smells like smoke and melted plastic? Don't spank him, okay? He'll turn into a compulsive liar." He patted her on the shoulder with a "Lance, I gotta show you the bedroom," and moved back into the hallway, giving Cheryl a smile when she hovered nearby.

"Wow," Lance said, when he saw the space. There was really nothing more to say. The bedroom was huge, by the complex's standards; large enough to hold a double bed and a full dresser, but small enough that one couldn't walk by the bed and open the folding door to the closet at the same time. "This is a great room," he said, looking around it again, and Chris draped an arm around his shoulder casually.

"So this is where I slept," he informed Lance. "And that's the window, there." Lance slipped away from Chris and shuffled around the bed, peeling back the curtain to see, and there was the street below, Brad riding around on his tricycle. He could imagine school-age children pedalling back and forth on the sidewalk on shiny new bikes, probably not unlike the one he got when he was five. He could imagine the newspaper stand where the sidewalk was now bare, only a box-shaped scar on the pavement indicating that anything had once been there.

"Hey, man."

Lance turned to see Chris standing in the doorway. Anne was nowhere in sight, nor was Cheryl. "Wanna go now?" Chris suggested. "I think I've seen everything I wanted to, so." He shrugged one shoulder.

Lance nodded slowly, trying to shake the impact of his visionary experience from his mind, but it hung over him like a cloud of muggy air. "Okay," he said. "Let's go, then."

Anne called a cab for them, offered to make them coffee or something, but they declined, signing autographs for both Cheryl and for Anne instead. The latter protested, but "it's really the least we can do," Chris insisted. Lance thought the least they could do was give Anne a few twenties, but knew that probably wouldn't go over very well.

Brad waved shyly at them when they pulled away, and when he was out of view Lance turned to Chris in the backseat once again. "Well," he said softly. "Did that go the way you wanted it?"

Chris nodded thoughtfully. "I think so. It was good to see the place," he said. "It was kind of like going back home. I mean," he shrugged. "We only lived there for a few years, but." He glanced out the window and shrugged again, bringing his thumb up to his mouth to chew on the nail. "I'll probably send them something," he added, as an afterthought. "You know, as a gift. So it won't be like charity, you know?"

"Right," Lance nodded. "Something for the baby, maybe."

"Yeah."

"I'm glad you brought me along," Lance told him. He reached out tentatively and placed a hand on his own knee, extending his pinky so that it touched Chris's knee. "I really wanted to see that. Thanks."

"Well, you have to know the whole package you're getting, right?" Chris raised his eyebrows at him, as though challenging him, as though searching for any signs of pity in Lance's face.

"I think you just showed me the best part of the package," Lance said.

-The End-

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