26 Fics in 26 Minutes

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A story for a song by a band starting with every letter of the alphabet. Ranging from angst to fluff to humour to porn to general whimsy. Encompassing Boosh, RPS, Nathan Barley, Robots in Disguise, and Asylum, and probably a few other things too.

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Length: words

The Jam – In the Midnight Hour

Contents

The Jam – In the Midnight Hour

It was funny how, at a certain point in any party, you could start to sort of feel the ways people got together, or didn’t. Example: there’s this woman. And she’s stunning. Long black hair, although it’s all tied up in a bun, pity. Thick black-rimmed glasses, but you can see her eyes behind them, watching you. Nice face, wicked body, all tied up in this black outfit like she doesn’t want to put herself on show, but you can tell by the way that it tucks here and is loose there that she does, really.

Ultra watches her at the bar, sipping at a drink for all the world as if there was no one else at the club, just her and her clinking ice cubes. And she follows an invisible line in the air (but is it invisible, now? It’s blue and thin, like thread, but perhaps Neon slipped her something in her kisses) over to a dark corner, a man leaning against the wall watching her. Mussed hair, stubbled chin, but not in the way those things can be sexy. Maybe. She doesn’t know, so long since she knew what it was that women looked for in men. He’s sucking on a bottle of beer, watching the woman at the bar, eyes dark, and she sees this jerking movement in his legs now and then like he wants to go over but he can’t.

Another line (this one is red and glows, pulsating to the beat) over to the dance floor. The music sucks, tonight, and she knows she could do better in a way that makes her angry for a bit, but the people are either drunk enough or stupid enough that they can dance to this bilge without listening to it, throwing themselves around like crash dummies. The tramp guy, he’s being watched by a man Ultra did think might be a woman, cross-dressing, before Neon pointed out the Adam’s apple, the hands, so on and so forth. He’s concentrating on dancing, but you can tell by the way that he’s always facing that corner but never actually looking at it, arms open wide to beckon but never making a move, you can tell who he’s dancing for.

Behind him, close enough that they might be lovers, although the way the non-cross-dresser keeps elbowing him in the ribs every time he gets close probably disproves that theory. A man in a blue outfit, bulging and making him look bigger than he is, like an animal with its fur puffed out, dances like an idiot. He’s aiming for sexy but keeps hitting retarded. This isn’t a thread, it’s a field, like magnets and iron filings, and they’re set the wrong way around, Blue-Suit pulled in all the time, Non-Transvestite pushing away, dancing away, pulled towards the corner by his red line.

And then… Ultra squints a bit because this one is harder to see. Up on the balcony lurks a man, and there’s the thinnest of lines connecting him to the man in the blue outfit. It’s fishing wire, curling and tangling like it’s attached to him accidentally and he hasn’t yet got around to detaching himself. But he looks down on the crowd, gyrating to the beat, and he sneers. He watches the man in the blue suit throwing himself at the pretty boy, and drinks, and smokes. Occasionally he glances over at the tramp in the corner, as if to reassure himself that he’s not the only broken link in this stupid chain.

From the balcony, to the dancefloor, to the corner, to the bar, to the wall where Neon and Ultra stand, Ultra closes her eyes and feels the air shiver as she moves into the web. She watches the woman at the bar, and Neon watches Ultra, knowing she wants to go over there, but doesn’t, because Neon wants her to. Neon, for whom lesbianism has always been more of a statement than a lifestyle, something to reject rather than something to choose. Ultra feels the woman at the bar tense up, knowing she’s being watched, and counts to ten, wondering how long she can resist doing something Neon wants.

It’s never long.