SPECTACLE
Part I
Waterloo Bridge; Lea
Lea staggers out of the Red Lion, and the world is in a prosecco-induced spin. He's not quite...pissed, per se, but he's not convincing anyone he's sober either. There's heavy traffic along the Strand where taxis are trying to turn in to Charing Cross Station, and Lea stumbles through the glaring headlights and blinking indicators towards the billboards.
"Oh no," he murmurs, as orange letters and numbers swim in front of him. He squeezes his eyes shut and reopens them. "Aw, shit."
He wobbles and reacts a little too late to tired Londoners pushing past to the barriers. He catches the rancid smell of overdone pasties and with three uneven steps backwards, he grabs a shoulder.
"Mate, do me a huge favour. What's...what's the next train to Belvedere?" Lea realises he's doing more than holding the shoulder; he's hanging onto it for dear life. He's staggering as much as he's slurring.
"Erm...can't you read?"
"Yeah, course I can. I just...I forgot my specs."
"Some specs. It seems forgetting them makes you reek of alcohol as well. The last train to Belvedere leaves in two minutes, so you better move quick."
"Nah, fuck it." Lea slides off the warm sleeve and grapples an unsteady board advising of engineering works. "I'm getting a kebab. I'm gonna eat a kebab and then I'm gonna skewer Marly fucking Gardiner with it after." His senses are completely addled but he smells orange blossom, something faintly sweet and enticing. "Do you wanna come with?"
"Uh, I really don't think so."
The board shudders, and Lea realises it's on wheels. He tries to stay standing, but his body understands such necessity far too late. With a loud groan, the board skids out of reach and he trips towards the nearest seat. His hands seize the black metal rim and he slumps onto it. Well, he tries to. Before he knows what's happening, he's yanked aside and he collapses. Now all he can see is the stark stone stretch of the concourse.
"I'm fine." Lea bats away a set of hands, even though he's cringing from the pain shooting up his arse. "I'm totally fine."
"You do know you just tried to sit in a rubbish bin."
Lea groans, and sure enough, when he forces his eyes to adjust, it's an iron litter bin towering over him. He follows the hand loosely holding his elbow, to rolled up sleeves of a periwinkle shirt, to a curtain of blue hair. There's a cream lanyard dangling from his neck, a pair of teal glasses squaring a stare.
It's difficult to tell if the stranger has a natural poker face, or if Lea is simply too drunk to read expressions. "Holy shit," he manages, "you're beautiful. Your skin is flawless; do you know that?"
The stranger smiles. He might even have laughed, but it's lost in the booming tannoy of station announcements. "That's your beer goggles."
Lea doesn't think so. Hell, he knows so. He can't possibly create a figure so full of elegant complexities, so the stranger has to be very real. Heavy eyelids, pointed chin, a trio of tiny moles on the side of his neck - Lea finds himself inching forwards to study more, to discover more.
"Come on, up you get. I'll take you to the taxi rank."
"No," Lea protests. He throws his weight back. "We've only just met. Wh-what's your name? Let me buy you a drink."
"I think you've had enough to drink, don't you?"
Lea ignores him. He throws every ounce of what concentration he has left into a single task: to read the plastic badge that swings off the lanyard. "P...Pe..."
"Okay, I'm just going to leave you."
Lea seizes his elbow. "I've got it! It's Peri, your name's Peri...!"
"I'll find a station attendant and they'll look after you, all right?" Peri pulls his arm away.
"No, wait! I promise I'm not a pisshead. I just...I overdid it tonight but if you knew the whole story, you'd understand...! Please, don't go. Don't make Marly ruin this for me too." He grabs fabric. "Peri, please, don't let him."
"Oh for God's sake," snaps Peri, but he's smiling. "My name's Isa, okay?"
"Isa?"
"Yes, Isa. Perigee is my company's name. See?" He lifts the lanyard and Lea closes his fingers round it. "Let's find you a taxi. Can you stand?"
"Wait, wait." His hand slips, from the lanyard to the material at Isa's collar. He knows he has mere seconds left before he passes out. "I'm Lea," he manages, and he garbles a protest, a plea not to be bundled into a taxi to never see Isa again. "Wait...don't go..."
-x-
At first, Lea is convinced he's upside down. When he opens his eyes, he sees far off buildings suspended from the sky of a cracked pavement. He grunts a little, acknowledging a sharp pain at his throat. As he regains feeling in his body, he realises he's sprawled out in a camper's chair and tilted back towards the night. His head throbs with the after effects of so much alcohol.
Lea watches the blinking light of a plane, a tiny red dot trying to emulate the stars behind.
"You all right there?"
Lea starts. He drops his gaze from the scattered sky to three feet in front of him. Two tripods stand side by side, facing out; one cradles a camera, the other a strange contraption Lea can't quite remember the name of. Tucked behind them, sat on the concrete base of white railings, is Isa.
Lea gives a shaky laugh of relief and tries to tidy his hair without making it too obvious. He's sobered up, which means hours must have passed. "You didn't leave."
"You made it pretty clear you didn't want me to. I'm pulling an all-nighter anyway so I don't mind the company." Isa gestures to the tripods, as if it should mean something. "It's Lea, isn't it? How much do you remember?"
"...The station," Lea mutters. "That's about it." He winces at the memory of blinding strip lights and spinning billboards. "I think you tried to take me to a taxi?"
"Yeah, that didn't work out." Isa smiles from behind a granola bar. "You wouldn't get in and after you puked on a wheel, the taxi driver refused to take you anywhere. We walked here," he finishes. "We're on Waterloo Bridge."
Lea groans and drops his head into his hands. "Man, I'm so sorry. You obviously had plans of your own and I've gone and wrecked them. Look, I've even nicked your chair."
"It's fine, don't worry. You've been a pretty good laugh." Isa points to a cooler bag between the tripods. "If you're hungry or thirsty, by the way, just help yourself."
Lea knows he shouldn't inconvenience Isa any further, but his stomach growls in protest. "Thanks." He drags the chair towards the tripods and reaches for a plastic bottle. It's clear Isa only ever packed enough food for one person; Lea makes sure he has very little of it. "So..." he begins, and he suppresses a happy groan at the wonderful taste of cold water. "Was it always your plan to go camping on Waterloo Bridge tonight?"
"Not quite." Isa rests his elbows on his knees and wets his lips. "Everyone else went to Primrose Hill."
"Your mates?"
"Eh..." Isa shrugs and ducks a fraction behind the camera's tripod. "Couple of colleagues and some new people who had their stands set up near ours. I work for an imaging company, and astronomy conventions are a massive marketing platform."
"Why didn't you go to Primrose Hill with the others?"
"...Didn't fancy it. I thought I'd catch the sunrise here instead." Isa stands up and busies himself with adjusting the camera.
"Telescope, that was it," Lea recalls abruptly, earning a thin smile from Isa. "That's really been bugging me."
He glances at the navy tube that points across the Thames. The view, he admits, is pretty remarkable. For all his years spent living in London, he's never really stopped to acknowledge the beauty of the city, from the bright blue web of the Eye reflected in the water to the proud spotlights beaming up at Big Ben and Westminster. Behind him, the dome of St Paul's cuts into the dark like a gibbous moon and the Shard pierces into the stars.
He wants to believe that Isa sacrificed Primrose Hill for such a view, but the pieces won't add up to such a theory. Waterloo Bridge has far too much light pollution for the telescope to have any good use, and Isa has barely looked across the water. Moreover, he seems to have a problem looking anywhere but at his equipment. Lea distinctly remembers how easily Isa was able to talk and look at him before; now, without the happy spark of alcohol, Isa's behaviour seems stinted, nervous.
He gets out the chair and leans on the railings. "Well, Primrose Hill is nice if you're only going to be looking up. I doubt you're missing out on much," he reassures.
Isa gives a wary smile and adjusts his glasses. "You know that feeling when you're in a group simply by association? Like, you're tagging along and you know you're out of place there, and everyone else knows it too, but no one says anything?" He concentrates on unscrewing his flask of tea. "I don't really mix in groups. Maybe you don't get into situations like that - you seem pretty outgoing."
"I'm all right in crowds," he admits. "I feel safer in them. I get it's not everyone's thing, though."
Lea catches his gaze this time, of green eyes half obscured by the frame of his glasses. Isa clears his throat and mutters something about getting tea, and as he ducks his head, his glasses slide a fraction down his nose; the orange lamplight shines just right for Lea to see what Isa has been hiding all along.
"Hey," he murmurs, but words fail him and he touches the bridge of his own nose instead.
Isa cringes, and Lea's stomach turns at his audacity to have drawn attention to it. Isa has a very visible scar on his face, a perfect cross etched between his eyes. His glasses hide the crux of it, and Lea is quite certain this is not a coincidence. The eyewear, the long hair, the rare bursts of eye contact - Isa is embarrassed, ashamed, and it would not be a stretch to think he has been hoping Lea wouldn't notice.
"Oh... just ignore it," he mutters, "if you can."
"I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to make you uncomfortable-"
"No, it's fine, really. It's a thing of the past; he's gone now and I'm okay with it. Let's move on. Please."
Lea wishes he could just change topic for Isa's benefit, but his head snaps up at a particular word. "He? Someone did that to you?"
"What else do you think would have?"
Of course, Lea thinks to himself. Only a person can be that precise, that cruel. And because his mind insists on these thoughts - and his expression betrays this - the next time Isa looks at him, he might be angry more than hurt.
"Look, just forget it. I've already said too much about myself, and all to someā¦some stranger."
To Lea's relief, Isa isn't pushing him away; rather, like a card game with a tailored deck of admittances, he is signalling for Lea to raise the stakes or at least, call.
"I was at these promotion drinks this evening," he says finally. Isa frowns a little. "This guy called Marly beat me to team leader and we went out to celebrate. Everyone was hoping for a reaction, you know. Marly and I have hated each other for years, and they thought this would be the final straw. I didn't, though. I turned up like a good sport, I congratulated Marly, and then I got totally plastered so I wouldn't hear what everyone was saying about me."
Isa tugs him away from the telescope. "You do know that makes you the bigger person." His gaze is steadier now. The scar doesn't detract from his appearance; however, in the wake of his touch, Lea can't form the right words to say this. His hand rests on Lea's forearm. Lea would pull Isa into his arms in an instant, but he thinks there's something off about Isa's body language.
"Yeah, I know. Fecking annoying though," he adds. "I mean, it wasn't even about me getting one up on Marly. Part of that new job makes you manager to the junior staff. I was trying to save Roxas and Xion from that, but I screwed up. Now they have Marly on their backs."
"Is he a shit then?"
Lea tests Isa a little, reaching out to touch his shoulder. Almost immediately, Isa looks at the contact, makes a note of it. He seems hyper-aware of the space around him.
"Calling Marly a shit is a bit of an understatement," replies Lea. "He's vile. Marly's like... well, you know when loads of crap happens to you and you wonder why it isn't happening to someone who actually deserves it? It's kinda like that. Marly's this slimy, douche of a bully, who always seems to get rewarded for it, who always has people fawning over him. You know how he does that? How he wins people?"
"He just opens his mouth and talks," replies Isa, with a dead expression that will eventually haunt Lea for months. "There's a lot of people like that."
-x-
Isa claims back the camper's chair, while Lea spends the next hour or so venting about the politics of his workplace. Isa is a difficult audience, though. Lea tries his hand at jokes, mostly at Marly's expense, but the most Isa does is give a polite and forced smile.
Everything about him is so controlled, Lea realises. It's as though he plans his actions minutes in advance, following some kind of protocol. Even when talking about his imaging company's contributions to astronomy - his main interest, Lea assumes - there's very little heart to it.
Minutes before sunrise, Lea helps him pack away the telescope. Isa sets up the camera so that it will take a series of photos over time. "It's called time lapse," he says. His fingers trace the camera and as he bends, Lea pays a little too much attention to the sliver of bare skin at his waist.
"Can I ask you something?" he says, to which Isa nods. "I don't suppose scruffy, pissed redheads are your type?"
Isa's hand shoots to his head to tuck some loose strands behind his ear. It's the first spontaneous action Lea has seen from him. "They might be."
"'Cause, you know...I was hoping I could take you out for a coffee sometime."
They both clear their throats at the same time. Isa cracks a smile. "Hey, you don't want to miss this." He gestures to the Thames and rests his arms on the railings. The horizon is just starting to glow pink, and Lea can't work out if Isa's face is reflecting this, or if that's colour in his cheeks. It's only when Lea stands next to him that Isa replies, safe in the distraction of the glittering river, "Coffee would be great."
"Yeah?"
"Yes please." Isa tilts his head a fraction, sneaking a quick look at him before turning back to the sunrise. The light captures the sharp contours of his face just right, such that it takes every ounce of Lea's strength to not kiss him there and then. "But I have one condition, if that's okay?"
"Of course!" Lea says, a little too readily. "Let me guess, it has to be a proper coffee shop?"
"Well, yes," Isa replies, around a smile, "but my main condition is that we don't go to North London. Specifically, Camden. There's someone I want to avoid."
"Seems reasonable." Lea nods for emphasis. "Crazy ex?"
Isa favours him with a tight smile. "Crazy husband."
