Oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense.
“The point is, some ships are just for fun, like Chewie and Leia. And some ships…” She scrolls down. More gifs of Smokey and Heart. Heart is telling Smokey, I’ll never let that happen to you. “Some ships are more important,” she says. She scrolls again. I see another gif. Smokey tells Heart, You’re the only one.
Below that, another gif: Heart stares at Smokey from a distance as a single tear runs down his face.
Another. Another. Another.
“Some ships,” Claire says, “are supposed to be canon.”
“Okay. Smokey and Heart care deeply for each other, I grant you that. But it doesn’t make it romantic. They’re just friends. Comrades on the battlefield.”
“Do you even watch TV?” Claire says. “This is the language of romance on-screen. If Smokey and Heart were a man and a woman, everyone would just understand that they’re in love with each other. It would be a given. Mulder and Scully were never this explicit—they didn’t need to be. People could tell from the pilot that they would eventually fall in love.
“You can take any man and woman, put them in a TV show together and have them look at each other like this”—she gestures at the computer screen—“and it wouldn’t even be a question. But because Smokey and Heart are two men, it makes a perfectly normal reading of the show delusional, fantasy….”
“Crazy,” I murmur.
“Yeah,” she says. Then, almost as an afterthought, she adds rotely, “but you shouldn’t use crazy, like, to describe people you don’t agree with; it diminishes the struggle of people who actually have mental health issues.”
“Um, okay.” Jesus, is there anything I’m allowed to say with this girl?
All this is fine, but there’s this one piece that’s still missing. “I get what you’re saying but the thing about Smokey and Heart is…they’re not gay.”
“Who says?” She levels me with big eyes.
“Everyone. Jamie, the writers, me.”
“What if I disagree?”
I don’t know what to say to that.
“He’s not real, Forest. He can be anything we want him to be.”
The gif is on the screen again. Smokey and Heart, gazing deeply into each other’s eyes. I recognize the episode.
“That’s a famous moment, by the way. Everyone in fandom knows it,” Claire says. “Do you remember shooting that scene?”
“Yeah, of course. We were in the middle of the woods. It was freezing. Rico told wardrobe to get me another shirt to wear under my coat.”
What I don’t tell her was that I didn’t know I could ask for more clothes, but Rico saw me shivering and spoke up. He didn’t have to, and he slowed down production for it as wardrobe ran back to their trailer to get something warmer for me, but he still did it. You only get so many cards you can use in situations like that before you get labeled “difficult,” or worse, even when you’re number one on the callsheet. You try to use your cards on things that really matter. Rico used one on me.
It was a big moment in our relationship. I realized that night that he would always have my back—in this case literally. “We shot this scene right after that. I was much warmer.”
The gif plays again and again.
“Do you remember what you were feeling in that moment?” Claire asks.
“I don’t know. A lot of things.”
“Name one.”
“Gratitude?”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know what else.”
“Love?”
“Claire—” This girl doesn’t give up.
“I’m just asking.”
“I don’t know, okay? It was a split second captured six months ago. I didn’t know it would be analyzed in this detail.”
She shuts up then, and we both go back to watching the gif repeat. I take another doughnut. Old-fashioned. It tastes amazing.
“I never really thought about it before, but this thing’ll just play forever?” I ask.
“Forever,” she says.
“Forever.”
Rico and me. That night in the woods. I have no idea what I was feeling. I have no idea what I’m feeling now.
I watch my eyes glance down at his lips. What was that? Why did I do that? Was I thinking about kissing him? It’s impossible. Isn’t it?
What was I feeling? Friendship, trust, intimacy.
Friendship, I reiterate. Friendship.
Forever.
I’M EXPLAINING SHIPPING to Forest Reed.
Never in a million years would I ever think that I’d be doing this. How many times have I stared at his face on the poster on my bedroom wall, finding comfort in its familiar lines, lulling myself to sleep under his watchful gaze? And here I am sitting inches from him, gazing at that same jaw, that same nose, those same eyebrows. His eyelashes are so long they graze against his skin when he blinks. I could reach out and touch those eyelashes, that’s how real he is and how right there he is. But I won’t, because that would be incredibly creepy, and also because I don’t want to do anything to distract him from what he’s doing right now.
Because Forest Reed is thinking about shipping. He’s deliberating about SmokeHeart, and it’s all because of me.
Some fans might not like what I’m doing right now. Fans like Tess, who think fandom should stay in fandom. But he asked! He demanded I show him Tumblr. I could have said no, but he would have just looked it up himself, and he’s honestly better off with me as a chaperone. If I weren’t there guiding him, he probably would have searched for my fanfic straightaway, and that’s like jumping into grad-level classes without taking the prerequisites first.
Maybe I’m totally off base, but it feels like he’s starting to understand. When he looks at those gifs, is he able to see what we see? Does he notice the obvious chemistry, the yearning emanating from their every torrid glance? Or does he just see his bro Rico and a cold night in the woods? I can’t be sure, but I think maybe, somewhere beyond his high walls, there’s a glimmer of a shipper, fighting to make it out.
It makes me want to hug him, to tell everyone in this hotel that there’s hope for Forest Reed, there’s hope for SmokeHeart. It makes me think the future could be better. Maybe he can talk to Jamie, convince him that this hyper-masculine heteronormative vision of demon hunting is beyond old-fashioned. Maybe he can be the ally we need to get SmokeHeart to finally become the canon it was always meant to be. It feels like a real possibility. For the first time in a while, it feels like hope.
If SmokeHeart ever had a chance, it’s right here, right in this moment. I have to say something.
“So… what do you think?” I ask, softly, gently.
He blinks hard and breaks his gaze from the computer to look at me. “What do I think about what?”
“About this.” I nod toward the computer screen. “About SmokeHeart.”
He frowns; he doesn’t know what I’m trying to say.
I try again. It’s now or never. “What do you think about its chances? Can you take it to Jamie, talk to him about it?”
He looks away, rubs his knuckles over his eyes. Shit. I thought I was getting through to him, I thought…
“Claire…” he starts.
“Don’t.”
“It’s just… It’s not going to happen like that. For a thousand reasons,” he says. He’s trying to be kind, I can tell, but there’s nothing kind about this.
“So you won’t even try?”
“There would be no point,” he protests.
“Just think about it,” I say, a little more fiercely than I intend to. I can feel my cheeks flush hot and the pressure building behind my eyes, but I won’t cry in front of Forest Reed. Not about this.
I hold his eyes and refuse to look away first.
“Okay,” he says finally, quietly. “I’ll think about it.”
“Thank you.” I start packing up my things. I have to get away from him, now. My phone buzzes with a text and when I glance at it, my stom
ach does a single, perfectly executed backflip. It’s from Tess.
We still on for dinner?
“Shit,” I whisper to myself. I had kind of forgotten we made plans.
“What is it?” Forest asks.
“Nothing, it’s just…” I sigh. “I’m supposed to get dinner with this girl.”
“Oh!” Forest exclaims, like this is some big realization. Then he says, “Ohhhhhhhhhh,” like the shoe is continuing to drop.
Good god, literally everyone I meet thinks I’m gay. Why do they keep wanting to decide my sexuality for me? Can I just have this one thing?
“It’s not like that,” I tell him. “It’s not a date. I date boys.” Well, a boy. Once. And it was bad.
“Ohhhhhh,” Forest says some more, like everything is finally clicking into place for him. And now he’s just being an asshole.
“Stop it,” I say. “Seriously. I’m gonna tell her I can’t make it.” I pick up my phone to text her back.
“No, you gotta go! Why wouldn’t you go?” He reaches out and covers my phone with his hand to stop me from texting. God, he’s so obnoxious.
“I’m not talking about this with you,” I say, jerking my phone away.
“Claire, seriously, dude. I’m not just saying this so you’ll stop stalking Jamie,” he tells me, “I actually think that’s pretty funny. I’m saying this as a friend—you gotta put yourself out there.”
“As a friend?” I repeat incredulously.
“What?” he says, taken aback. “We can’t be friends?”
This is a supremely weird conversation.
“Tell me about this girl,” he says. “What’s her name?”
“Tess.”
“What’s she like?”
“She’s kind of… She’s…” How do I explain Tess and Everything She Is? “It doesn’t matter, I’m gonna tell her I can’t come. If I tell her I’m with you, she can’t complain.”
“No!” He hits the table softly with his fist. “You will not use my name to get out of a social engagement. If you try to do that, I’ll… I’ll tweet that I’m playing Red Zone alone in my room and then she’ll think you’re lying!”
I gasp. “You wouldn’t!”
“I would! I absolutely would!”
I start laughing. “You don’t even know how to use Twitter; you’d have to call Rico and have him help you.”
“Stop changing the subject. You text that girl back right now and tell her you’ll meet her in five minutes.”
I look at my phone, but I can’t bring myself to do it. My stomach twists in knots at the very idea. Why? Why?
“I get it,” Forest says, getting serious. “It’s scary, meeting people you like.”
“I’m not scared, I’m just…” I trail off.
“What?”
Great question. What? What? What, Claire? What’s the problem? Tess is cool and she wants to get dinner, what could possibly be wrong with that?
Maybe because she might like me, and that’s scary as hell. Maybe because I can’t seem to stop noticing things like her cute legs and her smile and her lipstick, and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I don’t even really have friends, so why should I have a date? Not that this is a date. Because it’s not. And if it were, I would definitely ruin it somehow, by talking too much, or not enough. Or getting too personal, or not personal enough. Whatever. It’s just safer not to go.
“I’m not good with other people, I’m not good at… talking,” I say, gesturing back and forth between us. I mean, prime example. Forest has disliked me since practically the first moment we met. Most people do. That’s fine. I’ve accepted it. Tess just hasn’t figured it out yet, but this dinner tonight is sure to turn that around.
“You’re fine at talking. What do you mean?” Forest asks, and I honestly can’t tell if he’s being genuine or if he’s just acting, like always.
“You don’t get it. She’s just supersmart and very cool, and she wears dresses with little foxes on them. I could never do that. She’s just… She’s more than I am, you know?” I sigh. “No, you probably don’t know what that feels like because you’re rich and too pretty for this world and you’re famous and you’re not a teenager anymore. But Pine Bluff is so much less and Tess is so much more. Maybe if I didn’t put people off so much, but I do. She’ll want to look at her phone, but she’ll be too polite to. That’s just what happens to me; I’m not good at being interesting.”
I stop rambling, and I can’t look at him. This is the most I’ve ever told him, the most I’ve maybe ever told anyone. Shit, why did I do that? Now he probably thinks I’m some small-town loser with no friends and social anxiety who can’t talk to people about anything more personal than a TV show. Which is completely accurate.
“Never mind,” I mumble as I close my laptop and slide it in my bag, then grab the power cable. I don’t bother winding it, I just shove handfuls of it in my bag, probably hopelessly knotting it forever.
“Claire,” he says, but I don’t look at him, I just zip up my bag and grab the box of doughnuts. I’ll keep those for later tonight when I have nothing else going on except room service and a three-hundred-thousand-word fic.
“Claire,” he says again, soft but firm. I shoulder my bag and, slowly, turn to face him. He’s still sitting in the chair where I left him, his arm looped over the back of it as he’s turned around to watch me leave. His expression is serious, genuine. “Trust me when I say, you’re good at being interesting. Interesting is not your problem.”
And maybe it’s just because he’s an actor, but when he says it, I almost believe him.
“Text her back,” he says.
And I close my eyes and let all the air out of my lungs in one long exhale. When I open them, I look at my phone, type as quickly as possible, I’ll meet you in five! and hit SEND before I can talk myself out of it.
“Okay,” I say.
His eyes start smiling first, then his cheeks, then his mouth breaks open and his whole face brightens. God, what an image. I wish I had that as a gif.
“Have fun!” he says. “Tell me everything tomorrow.”
It was Tess’s suggestion to go to a place she read about online called the Roxy. It lights up the whole block with the red neon in its windows. The inside walls are covered with faded ancient signed 8x10s of famous actors from twenty years ago (everyone’s a fan of something!). On the far wall there’s a jukebox underneath a life-size hanging sculpture of Jesus on the cross, bloody and anguished. My eyes about bug out of my head when we walk inside. We don’t have anything like this in Pine Bluff. Or Boise. Or all of Idaho.
As we walk in, our server hollers at us from the kitchen that we can take a seat anywhere. It’s pretty empty in here, just us, a group of four punks in ripped denim jackets and dyed hair by the windows, and two elderly gentlemen by the jukebox who are… holding hands. Oh my god, are they on a date? That’s so adorable!
I notice they’re selling T-shirts in a glass case, including ones that say PORTLAND FUCKING OREGON and GAY FUCKING PRIDE. And maybe I should have figured it out before then, but that’s the moment I realize that this is a gay café. Blood rushes to my cheeks as I wonder if everyone in here assumes we’re on a date. Are we on a date? How am I supposed to figure it out?
Tess leads us to a table by the wall, and we sit down. Our server comes over, and I realize I can’t tell what gender they are. I must be making a wide-eyed Where am I? kind of face because our server smiles warmly at us and says, “Welcome to the Roxy, this your first time?” Their voice has just a touch of Southern lilt to it, which is a nice change from the bland Northwest accents around here.
“Yes,” Tess and I say in unison, then look at each other and laugh.
“Well, my goodness, aren’t you two just the cutest?” the server says. “I think you might have just usurped that couple in the back as the most adorable date of the evening.”
My ears get even hotter as I stare so hard into my menu that my vision starts to develop spots aro
und the edges. Tess doesn’t say anything to correct the server, and they leave us alone with a pair of epic menus.
“So,” Tess says, somehow acting normal. “Are you planning to go to any other panels while you’re here?”
“Oh, um, I don’t know.” Does that make me boring?
I take a sip of water, then crunch on an ice cube. I’m not sure what else to say.
Tess tries again. “That was a pretty great panel today, huh?”
“If by great you mean train wreck,” I say, because there was literally nothing great about that panel.
“Oh, well, yeah, I guess so. I was surprised by the question moderators, too.” She glances at me. “I saw your text posts about it. But, I don’t know, it didn’t seem that bad to me?” She chews on the inside of her lip. “I mean, I guess I just feel like, he shouldn’t have to answer any questions he doesn’t feel comfortable with, you know?”
Wow. Yeah, this was a mistake. I start wondering if I should try to make my exit now before we order anything. Tess drove us here in her car, but I could figure out how to take the streetcar back if I needed to.
Tess must register my hesitation because she says, “Sorry. We don’t have to talk about Demon Heart.” But without Demon Heart, what do we talk about? It’s the only thing we have in common, and the only thing I really ever think about. I’ve got nothing else in the conversation bank.
But Tess doesn’t believe in my mission. Why not? No matter how popular I get on Tumblr, I’ll never be able to compete with network TV for views. Not that I want my writing to be über-famous, but I do want to see a queer reading of these characters reach people. Does Jamie even know what kind of power he wields every time he opens his computer and starts typing? Does Tess see the difference between what he does and what I do?
Tess. Tonight her dress is blue and meant to look vintage. It comes in at her waist with a red ribbon that ties at the back. I wonder if I pulled on the ribbon if the dress would flow out or if it’s sewed down and just for show.
I like that Tess wears a lot of dresses, even though she’s queer. The only lesbians at Pine Bluff High (there are two that I know of, and everyone always assumes they’re dating, even though they’re like three years apart) both play sports and wear folded hats and dirty Carhartts like the rest of the farm kids. Tess isn’t like them at all; she isn’t like anyone in Pine Bluff. I want to ask her about her clothes, but now too much time has passed without either of us talking, and it would be weird to ask her about her fashion sense anyway when I clearly don’t have any.
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