A/N I started this story for an assignment for Creative Writing, but I couldn't bring myself to turn in something so fluffy and have people know I'm the one that wrote it. (Thank heavens for the anonymity of Fanfiction) This idea wouldn't leave me alone after I realized I don't actually know where any of the scars Roday has came from.(aside from the one on his stomach from getting his appendix removed) They gave the one on his lip a story in A Very Juliet Episode –they made it look like the guy punched him and busted his lip. If anyone knows how he got these scars in real life feel free to PM me and let me know what you think- I know there are tons of theories on the message boards but he's never officially said.
But yeah- so here's this. I don't own the characters. Or Tarzan- I mean I own the VHS and the soundtrack, but that's as far as it goes.
(##)
"Breakfast Club or Fast Times?" He asked as he crouched in front of the shelves and shelves of DVDs underneath his plasma screen. It was just like him to have an expensive television and hundreds of obscure movies to go along with it, yet all the other furniture were barely acceptable by a homeless man's standards.
"Why can't we watch a movie from this decade? Or the last one? " I frowned. "Or the one before that? We've managed to watch every single Andrew McCarthy, Ally Sheedy, and Judge Reinhold 80's movie in the time span of the last three weeks. I need a break."
"But, Jules!" He gasped and held his chest in over-acted shock. "You can't just take a break from awesomeness! Unless, of course, you want to be not-awesome, in which case, you should probably leave my apartment because just existing in the same vicinity with me can up ones level of awesomeness exponentially."
"Shawn." I squinted at him. "Give me the definitions of vicinity and exponentially."
He stared blankly at me. "I don't know. I'm just repeating things I heard on Big Bang Theory." He shrugged and I giggled. "Okay, then," he sighed "How about you pick the movie and I pick the snack this time. You have to stop trying to shove 'healthy' down my throat." He made a face very much like that of a three-year-old realizing chicken nuggets and the animal that goes 'bawk bawk' were the same thing.
"Deal." I said as I looked through his hundreds and hundreds of random movies, dragging my finger across each. I stopped a couple times to laugh at the fact he owned Twilight, the Justin Bieber Movie, and, numerous Mary-Kate and Ashley movies. I was tempted to put in Winning London, but I decided against it. I finally landed on Tarzan, and after deciding it wouldn't be completely weird to watch a cartoon with my boyfriend, put the disk in the player.
"No! Jules! You can't do that!" Shawn yelled like I had threatened to close down every Red Robin in America.
"Do what?" I jumped.
"You can't just do this! It's deplorable!" He took the remote from my hand. "No!" He pulled the disk from the player and flung it across the room like a frisbee. It bounced off the back wall and landed behind a recliner.
"Shawn! You said I could pick the movie! I like this movie." I blushed a little. Shawn Spencer is too mature for something I want to watch, what does that say about me? He rolled his eyes, pulled me down the hall to his room, and ushered me to sit on his bed. "Shawn, what are you doing?" I frowned. He said nothing, instead holding both index fingers to my lips, and made a 'shhh' face. He turned his back to me, knelt in front of the analogue television sitting in his closet where his clothes were supposed to be.
"Shawn, where do you keep your clothes?" I questioned.
He shrugged. "Down the hall in the closet next to the bathroom."
"So, if your clothes are in the towel closet then where are your towels?"
"In the closet in the kitchen."
"The food pantry?"
"Jules, don't make up words." He turned back to me, holding a remote in the airspace next to his head. "Prepare for awesomeness." He aimed the remote at the TV and it flared to life, showing an animated boat stuck in a horrible storm.
I tilted my head to the side in question. "Shawn,"
"Yeah, Jules?" he said as he scooted toward the headboard on his bed, motioning for me to follow him.
"This is Tarzan." I blinked as I lay beside him, laying my head on his shoulder.
"Yes, it is." He nodded, looking down at me.
"You just flipped out on me for picking the same movie….You threw it like it was a bomb."
"Well, Juliet, you can't just watch Tarzan on DVD on a flat screen when there's an analogue and VCR in the same vicinity. It's not right. It should be against the law." He scoffed and looked back to the television.
I laughed at his use of the word 'vicinity' again. "Okay, so why do you have it on DVD in the first place?"
"I have doubles of everything I own on VHS on DVD, so I'll never wear out the tapes." He said like it was obvious.
"So why are we risking wearing out your tape now?" I watched as the man and woman on screen built a house in a jungle.
"I figured it was a special occasion." I looked up at him, his face stayed directed at the screen.
"Why?" I frowned.
"I dunno. Cause you got to pick the movie and I got to pick the snacks this time." He shrugged. "Oh, right!" He sat up. "I forgot the snacks! Pause it Jules! I don't wanna miss the cheetah attack!" He tossed over his shoulder as he jogged out of the room.
"She's a leopard!" I called after him. I grabbed the remote just as the animal showed up on the screen. "Shawn, hurry up!" I yelled and pressed the button with the two lines, stopping the frame.
"Delicious flavor takes time!" his voice came from his kitchen.
I sighed and sat back on the pillows against his headboard. I took a moment to admire his bedroom, this was the first time I'd been in it, and I was pleasantly surprised. I didn't really expect him to live like a slob, but after seeing his living room I figured he wouldn't be hung up on his room. The bed was made, the walls were clean, his dresser looked antique but still in good condition. He had a total of three framed pictures on his side table; a family portrait from the 90s (though it wasn't his family- I'm assuming it was Gus' because they were all black,) a horrible shot of he and Gus, and a picture of the SBPD softball team. I was wondering why he didn't have an alarm clock when he walked back in holding a plate of sliced pineapple, a bag of marshmallows, Doritos, and a two liter of orange soda. I raised an eyebrow. He sat the sugar, fat, and pineapple on the foot of his bed. "No cups?" I asked him. He pulled two straws from his pocket and smirked. I laughed.
He pressed play and we ate almost all the marshmallows, finished the bag of Doritos, and all the pineapple. We gave up on drinking the soda with straws when Shawn dropped his inside the jug. He looked so guilty so I pulled my own straw out and we just took turns tipping the thing back like a drunk would with a bottle of cheap champagne. By the time Kerchak had forbid Tarzan from seeing the humans, we were back against the headboard again; Shawn's arm around me; my head resting on his shoulder.
I wasn't really watching the movie. I had watched far too many movies this week anyway. I just liked being with Shawn. I sighed and curled into his side, one hand tucked under my cheek. He kissed my forehead. I smiled. I reached up to the chain around his neck, twisting it between my fingers. Eventually, my twisting and turning became just loosely holding on to it, my hand resting on his upper chest, rising and falling with his slow breathing.
I could feel his heart speed up ever so slightly when Tarzan and the leopard had their epic fight and I smiled. "It's completely adorable that you are that invested in this movie." I whispered; he shhhhhed me. Out of boredom, I began to play with the buttons on his shirt. The top one came undone, I honestly didn't mean to unbutton it, but he didn't seem to mind. I decided to watch the movie again, and my hand fell limp on his chest. His thumb drew small circles on my arm.
After only a few minutes of trying to focus on the movie I had seen seven hundred times before, my eyes began to wander back to my boyfriend. I took in his messy hair, the two holes in his ear that were mostly grown over, the hazel of his eyes, his perfect amount of scruff on his jaw line, the small scar he had gotten a while back during a fight with the guy from witness protection (fighting for an ex boyfriend of mine – how sweet is that?) I watched him chew his bottom lip, watched him rub his thumb over the stubble on his chin. I kissed his jaw. He smiled down at me, then back to the TV: I turned back to it too; we finished the movie in silence.
The credits started rolling, but neither of us moved to turn it off. We lay there watching the words scroll up the screen until the very last. I was actually caught off guard when the Phil Collins music video for Two Worlds came on. "Hey, cool! I didn't know this was here."
"Me either." He made an approving gesture and then made a joke about Genesis. I laughed. The song ended and the screen went blue as the rewind function kicked in. "So what did you think, Jules? VHS is definitely better than DVD, right?"
"I really don't see the difference." I said honestly, looking down at my hand that was still on his chest.
He gasped and shifted slightly to look at my face. "I can't believe you! This is the way it was made to be watched: pixilated and with the hum of the VHS player drowning out the too quiet parts." I shrugged and he moved back to his original spot. "You didn't even watch most of it." He smirked.
I blushed at the fact he had caught me staring at him. His shirt had opened when he moved and now my fingers were against his skin, I frowned when I felt a single line of raised skin: curiosity got the best of me and I pulled at his shirt to see what it was. I was shocked to see a long scar running down his chest. My eyebrows shot up in surprise. His hand dropped from his scruff to cover my own, he pulled his shirt closed. He didn't seem angry. "Shawn."
"Yeah, Jules?" He kissed the back of my hand.
"Where did that come from?" I nodded towards his chest.
"Where did what come from?"
"That scar."
"Oh. That. I got that a few years back; I was captured by aliens. They studied me because of my awesome psychicness. Then, they apparently dropped me off in a corn field in the middle of Oklahoma and when I woke up, it was there. I assume there's some kind of cool alien technology inside me now that gives me the power to drink as many shots as I want without becoming drunk."
"Shawn. You were drunk off four beers and two glasses of wine at the last department picnic."
"Was I? Well maybe it's got some sort of tracker underneath so they will know where I am in case they need to use my powers for some reason or another." He shrugged. "Even extraterrestrials need the expertise of the sexiest psychic detective in Santa Barbara."
"Oh yeah, that makes complete sense." I laughed, but fell silent. I could tell he didn't want to tell me about it yet, but I made sure to remind myself to ask him again sometime. I could ignore it for now, but eventually I would need to know what caused my boyfriend to get some kind of heart surgery. I knew that's what it had to be from- it was far too straight and clean to be from an accident. I lay there listening to his story about a job he had in Oklahoma at a Chick-fil-a that he was fired from for eating all the brownies, hoping he'd decide to tell me the truth about that scar. But he didn't offer any real explanation that night, and I was too afraid of the real answer to ask.
(##)
Whatcha think? Let me know! I may or may not leave this as a one shot. I dunno. In case you're wondering: I do think VHS is better than DVD and an analogue television is better than a flat screen. Anybody agree? No? Just me and Shawn? Okay. I aint mad at it. ;)
REVIEW even if you think this was a horrible waste of your time- feel free to yell at me. I just need to have real feedback- something other than my mother's typical "This is really good Em!" or my sisters' "I liked it." They're family- they have to say that- BE HONEST! REVIEW please? Thanks!
