Date: 18 December, 2005
Fandom: Playing by Heart
Disclaimer: "Playing by Heart" not mine, yadda ya
Ratings: no higher than the movie itself
Pairing: Keenan/Joan
Story Notes: Um, more of a drabble/character study than anything else.
*****
1.
Once upon a time, in a far away kingdom, lived a very beautiful prince. He had moon-blond hair and big blue eyes. The king and queen loved and adored him, and so did his people. They gathered around him every day and told him how beautiful he was. Under all this attention, the prince grew up to be very proud and arrogant, despite his perfect manners. Yet he was also lonely and sad, even when surrounded by admirers, for he deemed no one worthy of his love.
One day, a princess from a foreign land visited and all the people were overcome with tears by her beauty. Her tresses were long and black, and her eyes a lovely deep violet, and for her smile, all the men would have braved a mountain of knives and a cauldron of boiling oil. And at the sight of the princess, the prince smiled for the first time in years, for finally he had found someone worthy. He learned the true meaning of courtesy and soon wooed the princess.
For a short while, the pair was envied by all, and their beauty could outshine the stars. But soon, the princess realized that no matter how much the prince loved her, he still loved himself best. Hurt, she visited every wizard in the country for a spell that would blind her prince to all else but her. The wizards all extracted high prices, yet none could produce a useful spell. Worse yet, when she berated these wizards, one of them put a curse on her instead, that she could never love again. Scared, she ran back to her prince, and because she thought that a curse would bind them together when love couldn't, she made sure he too was cursed before telling him her unfortunate adventures.
It broke the prince's heart, but he couldn't deny her charge that he never loved her best. So he stayed with her until she died, dyed his hair blue, and moved to the kingdom of Los Angeles to seek a way to break his curse. And there his real story begins.
2.
For all the time he spent on the dance floor, Keenan actually hated clubbing.
Oh, the thrill of it was in his blood, of that he had no doubt – probably as much a part of him as the virus was. He could spent months at a job he hated (and how good of a job could a kid with only a GED get?) only because the manager had promised never to give him a night shift. But as was the wont of managers, eventually they would break their promise and Keenan would, once again, have to quit his job. No, he belonged to the night ever since she told him, and inevitably, he was always in one club or another.
Most of the time he would simply throw himself into the throbbing music with wild abandon, its pounding drum beats controlling him and his movements. But sometimes he would just stand in the middle of the dance floor with his eyes closed, letting the powerful bass course through his veins. And in his mind's eye he could see the notes weaving into strands of light so brilliant that they were almost blinding.
But soon the press of moving bodies would jolt him out of his oblivion, and he would open his eyes to that wave of utter loneliness possible only in the midst of a crowd. He felt connected to all of them and yet none of them. And in the middle of it, something so similar to sex and yet nothing like it, the nightly clubbing was the only time he felt cleansed anymore. He loved it; he needed it; he couldn't live without it. It was the perfect drug, the perfect anesthetic, without any side effects.
And he hated it with all the passion of youth, as short-lived as his would be, because every time the night ended and reality came crashing down, where could he be but his own bed, alone and unloved? He kept telling himself that he didn't want love, that he couldn't afford love, but when had his heart ever listened to his brain? So he kept going to that club, night after night, searching for that something that he couldn't even name.
And even though he knew himself to be damaged goods, his eyes would still linger on only the most beautiful girls. His appreciation for beauty hadn't diminished a whit, despite his unwillingness and inability to do anything about it. Aesthetic tastes didn't change just because one couldn't afford it anymore, just like his need for love and intimacy hadn't changed, despite everything.
Take tonight, for example, the only girl he could bear looking at was the gorgeous brunette at the phone, yelling one thing or another into it – probably at the top of her lungs – not that anyone could hear her, with the music and all. He never had a type – other than they must be beautiful, of course – but if he ever had one, she would have trumped all that without ever looking at him. Yet despite her unbelievably sultry looks and the obvious heat of her emotions, she remained absolutely aloof and unapproachable.
That was, until she caught his eyes and smiled back apologetically, even if it was just to ask for a quarter so that she could continue her apparently very disastrous conversation. And sucker for gorgeous women that he was (how else could he have fallen in love with his bitch of a high school sweetheart otherwise?), he couldn't help but give her what she wanted, even if it was just change.
It wasn't long before he realized that she wanted much more than just change, of course, but by then he was already halfway in love and entirely snared.
3.
Even after moving in with Joan, Keenan still went to the club three out of four weekends. Most of time he and Joan would go together, and everyone would be looking, for they were the most beautiful couple on the dance floor, even in this land full of beautiful people.
Keenan tried not to, but he enjoyed the attention. It scared him a little, because it reminded him of his high school days, when he could break some freshman girl's heart with barely a glance, when landing the hottest cheerleader was all there was to life.
He thought getting the virus had changed him, at least a little. Even though he was still only attracted to beauty, it no longer mattered when he was off the market. He was willing to pay attention to plain-looking people, even ugly people, to help them out if help was needed. And whenever they over-stepped their bounds and made advances at him, he would give his little "damaged goods" speech and they would obligingly run away.
It made him feel both vindicated and guilty; so he simply stopped altogether.
But now he was with Joan and all his long-gone snobbery was coming back. He had to fight to keep that shit-eating grin down these days, whenever some guy looked at her with hardly-concealed longing. Sometimes he wondered why Joan never caught it -- caught him.
He often felt unworthy of her, especially when Hannah thanked him for turning Joan away from alcohol. He never dared tell her or Joan that, actually, he rather liked alcohol; he just couldn't touch it because his doctor would report it back to his nearly useless medical insurance. No, Joan was the one who had changed him for the better.
And the fact that he couldn't have sex with her was frustrating him to the point of physical pain. Oh, she would jerk him off sometimes, but he couldn't think of any equivalent for her that would pose as little risk. And every time she urged him on, every time she reassured him that she was willing to take the risk (as long as they practiced safe sex, of course), he would hate himself just that little bit more, because having her death on his hands would destroy him much more completely than any disease ever could.
And those were the times that he would wander into that dance club all by his lonesome again, overwhelmed with the need to be nothing more than a pretty face. He had grown up knowing that he was physically beautiful, but it had become a curse on that night five years ago. And every time he had faced a mirror since then, his mirror-self would always be covered with a mass of lesions, his inner ugliness finally reflecting upon his physical self.
Only Joan's presence had stopped the nightmarish visions, because in her eyes, he would always be beautiful, both inside and out. For that alone he would have been hers until death, soon to come as it might be, but she also gave him a future that he never thought he would have again. And that, he could never repay.
4.
So, although the curse on the beautiful prince was never broken, he did find a way to love and be loved again. And like all fairy tales, he and his princess lived happily – though imperfectly – ever after.