Left Turn

(( I\'m so, SO sorry everyone about the edit! I hadn\'t realized it would move my story like it did, or I\'d have waited until I had a chapter to offer before I gave it to you.

Now then, FIRST.. (and foremost) I want to direct everyone\'s eyes to \"The City of No Name\" that you\'ll see on the slash list. Please consider giving it a try. And then we can all groan and wish we were writers of such caliber. *L* (The mutual, horrendous, overwhelming groan of a multitude of hack writers! It should be awful to hear!) Go at it with an open mind and I promise you won\'t be disappointed!

::Lin: *S* Oh it\'s not that subtle is it? This is a huge cliché from beginning to end, but I hope it\'s a fun cliché to read. :) And I hope they meet! If they don\'t, then I\'ve somehow misplaced one of my main characters! *L*
::Yue: Ack! I seem to be disappointing all over the place. This is a fairly non-magic/etc fic. I\'m afraid there\'ll be no MPreg. I wouldn\'t have a clue how to write it if it did happen! *L*
Some Chick: Awe! I\'m sorry! Ky\'s not in this fic! He doesn\'t see Jack again after highschool. He\'s at the university by this time making his life with his cute lil\' stuffin\'s of luuuuv (aka: Ben). I truly think his story is over. If I did any more to those two, they\'d quit and leave me. I hope Chancey and Jack manage to be sort of half way substitutes! ^^;;;
Haywire: *laughing* I have to say, my dear.. that it is a delight to find your name on here as well. And I\'m glad you\'re enjoying them all! And for you! My goodness! When\'m I gonna get an update from your storyyy??? *wheedle, whine* I\'m hoping that you\'ll just give in to repeated mental/telepathic urges to put out a story of your own so I can counter-adore. *w* Thank you! It\'s so marvelous to see the same faces!

And please, do consider where you would be right now if you\'d chosen that next...))

Left Turn

Chance stood at the side of the Eiffel Tower, the gravel paths and marching trees down the parkway reminding him of a drive and not in the least of a public park. Then again, Europeans did things so differently than anyone had ever thought to do them in Haveston, Wisconsin.

He sighed. The morning had been decidedly stilted in feel. He supposed one night stands were like that. He\'d heard tale of how they could feel uncomfortable, the emotions of the build up to that night of sex shattered irrevocably by the first sun ray shooting through one\'s window. But there was no sun today. It seemed unfair that there wouldn\'t be some kind of stay on subsequent discomfort for his day, due to lack of sunshine.

\"Now, as you can see, we look all the way to the Arc from here - and the museum is back that way,\" Jack was telling Leigh who wasn\'t suffering from the same tenderness of spirit this morning as Chance had found himself to be. Jack, tall and free looking, his hair under a blue and tattered do-rag, brown tendrils tied at the nape of his neck, his green eyes alight with the fierce charisma that had originally drawn Chance to him.

That felt like so long before; years, perhaps. Chance tucked his arms around his body to ward off the chills that seemed to come from inside of him, rather than from the cool wind prowling down off of the low grey sky.

It had been so easy for Jack to pull himself out of bed that morning. Chance had watched in a kind of awe. Jack smiled, leaned over, kissing Chance\'s lips before drawing himself, nude and unashamed, out of the bed. Chance, on the other hand, couldn\'t just go on standing up and exposing himself. He tucked the blanket around his body, under his arms and draping down to his feet, then stood and when he was sure Jack was fully into the plastic stand alone shower that took up the corner of their room, he dragged on his clothes hastily, always fearful that Jack might peek out and see the skinny, ugly body he\'d so casually worshipped the night before.

Asked if he wanted to take a shower, Chance declined. He had a long flight and something about carrying that last piece of Jack\'s sweat on his skin back to the States seemed, in a way, tragic and romantic and perfect. It was the last moment of his great escape to Europe, to have met Jack Ivenson on a train from Kaiserslautern, Germany where he\'d spent days with his brother at the American base there, on the way to Paris France, to have tasted his first wine in a restaurant just down the hill from a gleaming white church atop a hill, to have flirted, to have been flirted with, and to have ended the night in the arms of that very person he\'d bumped into just a smattering of hours before. The last moment of his freedom from societal constrictions and he wanted to never forget it. Perhaps if he went onto the plane, if he kept the uncomfortable feel of another man\'s release in his body and his own tugging at miniature hairs on his abdomen, if he walked into the States with a Secret that no one could know, then perhaps he\'d find a shivering echo somewhere in Wisconsin that he might take and nurture and turn into a new freedom there.

But then, that was poetic nonsense. It was probably as simple as wanting to saunter around with the traces of having been \"fucked\" on him as he mingled with crowds of other human beings, none of which had the slightest clue that he was no longer a virgin, that he was one of the masses of debauched and hedonistic young men dragging that good country down into an immoral pit of hell.

Chance giggled at that thought then shot back a look in echo to the eyebrow raised glance Jack lobbed his way. Convinced he\'d made enough of a mess of things already by acting aloof and distant all morning, he really had nothing to lose by cutting loose a bit.

\"So do you think they did this on purpose?\" Leigh asked to which Jack suspected so with a laugh. She sat down heavily on one of the many benches along the way, gazing at Chance. \"Did you want to go anywhere, Chancey? Before your bus has to be caught.\"

Chance smiled and settled gracefully down next to her, throwing his arm around his friend and leaning his head against hers. They sat quietly, listening to the city of Paris waken all around them. Only Chance had his pack. The other two had until ten to clear out of the rooms. \"I\'m glad you were able to meet me, Leigh,\" Chance whispered. The girl next to him snuggled in closer and sighed. It was enough.

They bought two subway tokens to take the subway to the bus stop for the airport and doubled up on one of them, Jack tucking himself almost unbearably close to Chance as they passed through the subway round. Chance double checked his ticket to be sure he was going to the correct airport with a feeling that this would be truly, as Jack had put it, a memory he\'d never forget, past his wildest imaginings.

Jack leaned over his shoulder and stared at the ticket. He smelt of lavender that Chance had discovered that morning came from a hemp soap he carried in a small bottle with him. Under that was a musk Chance could remember from the night before rising off of Jack\'s sweat slicked skin. \"Weird. That we\'re both from the same state and here we are... thousands of miles away from Wisconsin, on the same subway.\"

Chance smiled but didn\'t answer. The truth was far more stunning than that.

He watched a slender woman across from them, sitting in her suit dress and talking in low, foreign tones to a young boy. The boy\'s voice piped out over hers, clear and high, in response. Chance wondered at it. This child, speaking somewhere else in the world, more than likely telling her of an imaginary dinosaur or a bully at school or what he\'d had for breakfast, though Chance couldn\'t understand a single word of it past Mammon.

\"So you\'re going to go back to Wisconsin.. meet some girl and have lots of cheddar head babies?\" came a teasing voice in Chance\'s ear, breaking through his thoughts. He didn\'t look up. \"Probably in ten years you\'ll not even remember the name of the guy you met in Paris,\" Jack continued. \"You\'ll have blushed adorably while you told your wife about your one homosexual encounter and..\"

Chance turned quickly, hearing a strange note in Jack\'s voice. Frowning, he shook his head. \"I won\'t forget you, Jack,\" he said, choosing to ignore the concept of sexual preference and wives and children and... and... futures.

Jack searched his face as if he had forgotten something there and needed desperately to find it. His green eyes were lit like fairy flames, burning against Chance\'s skin. He gave a smirk and shrugged, the fire and the search over, a tainted sense of disappointment in the air. \"Well... I won\'t know either way. So it doesn\'t matter.\" He chuckled.

Their stop came and anything Chance might have said then was put off by the bustle of getting out of the train, through the tiled subway station, and out into the daylight; the grey, misted, surreal daylight.

The bus already sat ready at the curb, waiting to take its passengers. Chance hugged Leigh tightly to him and kissed her cheek. Leigh cried a little and Chance promised to write to her. Then he stuck his hand out to Jack. \"Thank you. For the tour, for the extra companionship, for.. e-everything,\" Chance flushed, not knowing how to thank someone for having sex with you.

Jack looked at the hand and then nodded, taking it in his own. It was a manly way to end an encounter. \"You\'re welcome, Chance,\" he murmured and smiled slowly, a piece of him already preparing for the next adventure, the air of travel settling onto his shoulders again at that smile. \"If you\'re ever in Haveston, look me up, hmm?\" he arched a brow. \"I should be home in about four months. Dunno how long a drive it is from wherever you are.\"

Chance didn\'t want to lie so he just smiled in return. \"Bye, Jack.\"

He didn\'t watch the curb to see if Leigh and Jack were watching the bus. He was sure Leigh was, just because she was one of those quirky girls that got off on that kind of thing. But he knew it wasn\'t Leigh whom it would bother him to watch drift away.

~*~**~*~

On the flight over, with a grey flight blanket over him and the window shade opened so he could watch the endless miles of ocean stretch out, blue and broken by the tail white clouds left from the storm hanging over Paris, Chance dug his nose into the space under the blanket and breathed in the scent of his and Jack\'s bodies left on his skin, warm and filling the small cave he\'d made against his heart.

He ate graham crackers and Nutella, something he\'d had before in the States but which seemed perfect for a flight over the ocean, cocoa and comforting, instead of the airline food. He read the brochures left for him in the pocket of the seat back ahead of him. He wrote some in a diary and he watched a movie in French with English subtitles on the screen. And he slept some, realizing that he\'d not gotten much rest the night before. Well, for obvious reasons.

And at the entry and departure gate, after his plane had released it\'s passengers, he laughed and hugged his sister when she pulled away from him and wrinkled her nose, stating, \"Is that what Europe smells like, Chance?\"

He had laughed because somehow, here in the States, it was better than crying, and he nodded. \"Yeah. That\'s one of the smells of my Europe, Babs.\"

~*~TBC~*~

((Oh bother. I can\'t tell you how badly my writership muse wants to STOP THERE! Ack! I promise we won\'t. I just haven\'t a clue what\'ll happen next. Put your little fingers into wraps for me and hope Jack comes up with something quick. *w*))