Title: When the World Turns Its Back on You
Author:
Rating: T
Genre: Hurt/Comfort; Family
Pairing: Timon/Pumbaa
Warnings: Period-typical homophobia, indirect references to CSA
Spoilers: Lion King
Disclaimer: The Lion King is the property of Walt Disney.
Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting; Alternate Universe - Human; Hurt/Comfort; Fluff; Adoption
When the World Turns Its Back on You
La Paz County, Arizona
1994
A bell chimed merrily as Timon pushed open the door of ACME Market, feeling the whoosh of the air conditioning wash over him. He gave a cheeky half wave to Ethel, the elderly cashier, and grabbed a basket from the stack by the magazines.
"I-i-i swear," he sang along to the radio as he considered two packages of ground beef, one 1.13 pounds and one 1.47 pounds. "By the moon and the stars in the sky… I'll be there…" He selected the larger one and continued along the far wall of the store, reaching around a couple of truckers to grab a box of trash bags. He pretended not to notice one of them staring after him as he returned to the checkout counter.
"Ethel my dear," he said, unloading his groceries. "You're a vision today, as always."
"Oh hon," Ethel said with a sly grin as she rang him up. "You always make me blush. How are you doing, are you doing good?"
"Can't complain, can't complain" Timon said. "Put me down for a bundle or two of firewood?"
"Take three," Ethel said with a wink. "We're having a summer sale, everything must go."
"Aww, Ethel, you charmer," said Timon. "Lovely seeing you as always."
"You too young man," Ethel said. "You're going to make some girl very happy one day."
"Now you're making me blush," Timon said, with a smile that did not quite reach his eyes.
He left the store, still whistling, and casually checked if he was being followed before crossing the parking lot to where they had parked the RV. After he unloaded the groceries, he locked up and headed back to the main truck stop, where he had left Pumbaa to do laundry.
Ever since they had arrived in town a month ago, they had come to this truck stop on their day off – usually a Tuesday or Wednesday – to get all their errands done in one day – groceries, laundry, refueling. In the morning, it was almost always blissfully deserted. After running errands, they would sometimes take a drive to see a tourist attraction – today they were thinking of driving to Camp Verde to see the World's Largest Kokopelli – then return to the RV park where they had a seasonal gig as hosts – monitoring the campers' comings and goings, answering questions, cleaning up sites, and banging on the doors of other RVs to hustle hungover people out by check-out time. Timon mostly let Pumbaa, who was a head taller than him and almost a hundred pounds heavier, handle that. Towards the end of the season, they would start calling around and find a new host gig somewhere else.
Timon poked his head into the truck stop laundry room, expecting to see Pumbaa sitting in one of the chairs, reading the comics – but there was only one person there, a middle-aged woman reading a tabloid.
He frowned, and retraced his steps. Pumbaa wasn't sitting in the waiting area, or by the vending machines, and he wasn't in the restrooms. Finally, Timon steeled himself to go back out into the Arizona heat, and walked around the back of the building to the fuel and service area, where trucks refueled and waited for appointments with the mechanic. He poked his head into the parts department – maybe Pumbaa had gone to get those fuses they needed – but saw no sign of him there either.
He felt a twinge of annoyance, covering a deeper prickle of fear. It was true that if someone picked a fight with them, it was usually with Timon instead of Pumbaa, but Pumbaa also had a kind, trusting nature that even a lifetime of being queer and being punished for it – being driven out of his home and losing a job he loved – had managed not to disabuse him of.
Timon finally found Pumbaa at the edge of the fuel and service area, past where the tractor-trailers parked overnight. He was kneeling over something on the ground, right by the fence that separated the parking lot from the endless expanse of desert.
"Hey!" Timon called, approaching him. Pumbaa did not look up until Timon's sneakers crunched on the gravel, right up alongside him. "What are you–?" Timon trailed off as he saw what Pumbaa was looking at – a body. It was partially covered with a blanket, but Timon could see that it was young – a kid or a young teenager. The kid's head was resting on a duffle bag. One of his feet, clad only in a ripped sock, poked out from under the blanket. The body was very, very still.
Timon cursed under his breath, long and slow.
"He's alive," Pumbaa said.
"What?"
Pumbaa reached out and put a hand by the kid's nose and mouth – maybe a trick he had learned in his teacher days. "I can feel his breath. He's still alive."
"Oh," Timon said, momentarily thrown for a loop. "Good. Let's get out of here before he wakes up."
Pumbaa gave him a look of distain.
"Don't look at me like that," Timon snapped. "We can call someone once we're gone. We'll get like a couple miles down the road, find a pay phone–"
"He's just a kid."
"I know he's just a kid." Timon looked up, checking to see if there were anyone else around. The coast was momentarily clear. "But what do you think we can do, huh? How are we going to make this better?"
"We go inside and call an ambulance," Pumbaa said.
"Okay," Timon said. "So play this out with me. We call for an ambulance and the cops show up. We say, 'Hey, we found this little white boy on the side of the road.'"
"Timon–"
"And the cops say–" Timon shifted into his impression of Rush Limbaugh. "Of course you did. Right after you kidnapped him to sacrifice to your Satanic AIDS cult. Have fun getting shanked in prison waiting for your court date."
Pumbaa sighed.
"You know I'm right," Timon said.
"If we don't call anyone, we should at least get him out of the sun."
"Yeah, move him into our RV to die there instead of here."
"Timon," Pumba said, with his usual superhuman patience. "When you were in his position…"
Timon sighed deeply, sensing an argument almost lost.
"Wouldn't you have given anything for someone to have helped you?" Pumbaa asked. "With no questioned asked, no strings attached?"
Timon looked at the kid again, took in the kid's sunburned cheeks, cracked lips, the cardboard 'Homeless' sign tucked under the duffel bag, and he saw himself as he must have looked years ago, begging for money to pay for bus fare to San Francisco, impossibly small and vulnerable, and he wondered, yet again, at some peoples' capacity for sheer meanness.
"You stay here," Timon said. "I'll bring the RV around."
When Simba woke up to a hand offering him a cup of water, he did not hesitate. He grabbed the wrist holding the cup, hauled himself up, and drank so quickly, it went down the wrong pipe and he immediately started to cough.
"Easy," a deep voice said. "Easy, now."
As his cough cleared and his eyes stopped watering, he took in the man attached to the wrist he was gripping. He was a big man, wearing faded denim, with dark eyes, long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, and a kind smile. "Hi," he said. "I'm Pumbaa. That's Timon."
Simba's eyes went to another man, sitting next to the first. He was smaller, with shorter curly hair, bright watchful eyes and a frown. Simba became aware that he was lying on a mattress, out of the sun. Looking around, he realized he was inside a mobile home. The two men were sitting on card table chairs, drawn up next to a small bed. Timon poured another cup of water and held it out to Pumbaa, who in turn offered it to him.
He accepted it and drank again, slower this time, then accepted a third and fourth cup before his throat felt a little better.
"Th-thanks," he said.
"Here," Pumbaa said, picking a wet cloth off the ground. "Put this back on your forehead."
Simbaa took the cloth and did as he was told. It felt blessedly cool against his skin.
"You need to cool down," Pumbaa said. "You were in the sun for way too long. You could have died."
"We saved you," Timon pointed out. "Completely out of the goodness of our hearts."
Pumbaa rolled his eyes. "Don't pay attention to him. Are you hungry? Do you want a peanut butter sandwich?"
Simba nodded.
"You're not allergic, are you?" Timon asked, as Pumbaa got up and disappeared out of Simba's sight.
"No," Simba said.
"Timon, leave the kid alone."
"It's a reasonable question! One of us has to think about these things! Imagine," Timon said to Simba. "If we tried to save your life and we poisoned you by mistake."
"You're going to scare him," Pumbaa said, from around the corner.
"I'm not scared," Simba said.
"I can see that," Timon said quietly. "I can see you're a very brave kid." The look he gave Simba was so knowing and sincere that Simba almost started crying.
Pumbaa reappeared with the sandwich, on a plastic plate, and settled back in his chair to watch Simba eat. When he was done, he handed the plate back to Pumbaa, and gingerly sat up on the bed.
"Thanks for the food. And water," Simba said. "Sorry I don't have any money, or anything."
"We wouldn't take it," Pumbaa said, at the same time Timon said, "You don't owe us anything, kid, not now, not later. You understand?"
Simba looked down.
"Can we take a look at your feet?" Timon asked, and held up a first aid kit that must have been sitting on the floor. "We noticed they were bleeding."
Simba looked down at his socks. "Someone took my shoes," he explained. The man on the coach bus had shown him a knife and taken them off his feet – the Jordans his Dad had given him. He gripped the edge of the cot so he would not start almost crying again.
"Can I see them? If we don't clean them, they might get infected," Timon said. Simba nodded, and the smaller man began to peel the dirty socks off his feet to expose the cuts he had gotten from walking on the pavement.
"Where are you from?" Pumbaa asked.
"Nowhere," Simba said.
"Hmm, everyone's from somewhere."
"It doesn't matter. I can't go back."
"Why not?" Pumbaa asked.
"I don't want to talk about it," Simba said.
"This'll sting a little," Timon said. "Ready?"
Simba nodded, and watched Timon wipe the cuts with a disposable alcohol pad, then carefully peel open and apply several band-aids. "Whew," he said when he was done. "Doogie Howser can move right on over."
"If you want," Pumbaa said. "We can give you a ride somewhere."
"That's okay. I don't have anywhere to go. I'll just…" He trailed off.
When he looked up, Pumbaa and Timon seemed to be having a silent conversation made up of significant glances, back and forth.
"How about you stay with us?" Pumbaa finally said, at the same time Timon said, "How about you stay the night?"
Simba wasn't sure which man to reply to. "Is there room?" he asked.
"Sure," Pumbaa said, nodding upwards with his head. "You can have the top bunk. We can share the bottom one. We could even break out the tent, do some real camping."
"Pumbaa," Timon said. "Maybe we should talk about this outside?"
"Do we really need to talk?" Pumbaa asked, and they had another, shorter, silent conversation of glances.
"I guess we don't," Timon said, and slapped his hands down on his thighs. "Okay kid – ever seen the Grand Canyon?"
Simba shook his head.
"Well, you should. Let's go. Right now. We can get you some new shoes on the way. How about that?" he glanced at Pumbaa.
"Sounds like a plan," Pumbaa said with a grin. "I'll drive there, you drive back?"
"Deal. What do you think, kid?"
They both turned to look at him.
"Um… okay, I guess. But don't you have to go to work or something?"
"It's our day off," Timon said. "As long as we're back by 10AM tomorrow, we can go anywhere the Timon-and-Pumbaa-mobile can take us."
"It wouldn't be the end of the world if we didn't show up tomorrow either," Pumbaa said with a sly grin.
"Yeah, that's true. Remember Colorado?" Timon said.
"Yeah, I remember we still got paid," Pumbaa said, and they both laughed.
"C'mon kid, I'll give you the grand tour," Timon said. "Over there's the dining room – you can see the table's covered in my electric stuff – don't touch anything, especially the soldering iron – it's that thing there. Then here's the bunk-bedroom, there's the kitchen, and the bathroom's back there. Have you ever used a bathroom in an RV before?"
"No."
"I'll show you how later. And last but certainly not least, here's the cockpit. Pumbaa, you want to do the honors?"
"Sure."
Pumbaa turned the key partway around the ignition – not enough to rev the engine, but enough to turn the power on – and the walls of the cockpit suddenly lit up with what looked like Christmas lights, mounted on the walls and ceiling, arranged to look like rows of buttons, indicator lights, and displays of stars charts.
"Wow, cool," Simba breathed.
"Do you recognize it?" Timon asked.
"…No?"
"It's the Millennium Falcon!"
Simba looked from one to the other. "What's that?" he asked.
Both men stared at him. "'What's that,'" Timon mimicked. "That is something we will rectify, if you stay. You want to ride in the passenger seat?"
"Sure," Simba said.
"Climb in kid. We'll let you punch the hyperdrive."
Simba climbed into the passenger seat and looked around.
"It's the red button there," Pumbaa said, pointing to a red glowing button on the dashboard, with the word 'Hyperdrive!' written above it in black marker. "The RV can't move until someone presses it."
Simba looked back at the two men. "You know I'm twelve years old, not two."
He jumped as Timon and Pumbaa suddenly burst out laughing. As he watched them laugh and laugh – Pumbaa gasping for air, Timon bent over, he couldn't help but start to giggle along with them.
"Are you–" Timon said, still chuckling a bit. "Are you going to push the button or not? C'mon kid, we'll be here all day!"
With a grin, Simba reached over and pressed it. On cue, Pumbaa turned the key in the ignition and the RV engine roared to life.
"Seat belt," Pumbaa reminded Simba, as they turned the RV out of the parking lot and headed out onto the desert highway.
A/N: Guys, in answer to all your questions – I don't know.
I don't know why they have their cartoon names if they're human. I don't know where this idea came from. The scene just planted itself in my brain one day and I couldn't get a good night's sleep until I finished it. I don't plan to write more, but we'll see.
In the meantime, here are some things you young'uns can look up if you're curious. ;)
-I Swear, All-4-One
-How to Survive a Plague, IFC Films
-Matt Baume Culture Cruise
-Star Wars VHS box set