WW Fic: Backwards

[merelyn]

Title: Backwards
Fandom: Wilby Wonderful
Pairing: Dan/Val (his wife), Duck/Dan-ish.
Word Count: 2,500ish.
Rating: PG? PG-13? I dunno. Not exactly smutty, because it's me. People say "fuck". If that bothers you, uh, too late then, isn't it? *cheeky grin*
Summary: Set before the movie. It's a Dan character piece. My take on how he got there. Angsty, but hey, as I told foggynite, it does have a happy-ending sequel. It's called the movie.

A/N: Thanks to moonblade85 and foggynite for listening to me ramble about Dan and giving this the once-over. Any remaining mistakes are mine.

This is the first thing I've written in a while, quite a change from that epic, fluffy, craptastic HP fic of mine. And wouldn't you know it, after stalking dS for so long, the first thing I'd write since would be a WW fic? :)

Also, I've decided to call Dan's wife Val. Because even though the first time I saw WW I could have sworn Sandra Oh called her "Belle" in that scene (and even after watching it over and over I'm still not sure), "Val" fits her character better, as I have it. (Can anyone tell me for sure what it is? I'd be much obliged.)


Backwards


They'd met at a wedding. Sometimes, when Dan thought about it later, he’d almost say it was the reason they got married.

Man and wife. The pastor’s words were still echoing in his head at the reception. Dan had unfolded himself against the wall over by the bandstand, watching the couples, feeling as tall and gangly and wrong as he had at thirteen at school dances. Man and wife.

He was so distracted he didn’t notice that someone had joined him. "I’m Val," she said. She had brown hair and was a lot shorter than him. But then everyone was a lot shorter than him.

"Dan Jarvis," he replied with a nod.

"The wedding wasn’t bad, was it?"

"It was nice."

"The bridesmaids dresses were God-awful, but then bridesmaids dresses are tricky. You don’t want them to be tacky, but then you have to make sure that none of the bridesmaids look better than you." She nodded knowingly- so knowingly, in fact, that Dan suspected she was a little drunk already.

"Susie was my college roommate," Val continued, apparently unconcerned with the fact that he hadn’t replied. "Let me tell you, she was the last person I thought would get married," Val followed this up with a very suggestive chuckle.

Dan blinked. What kind of person came out and said things like that to complete strangers?

"I think my jaw actually dropped when I got the invitation. So, do you know the bride or the groom?"

"The groom," Dan said. "He’s my cousin," he added, to make conversation.

"Good looks must run in your family," she giggled.

Dan swallowed. She was more than a little drunk. She was flirting with him. That never happened.

"Here. You look like you could use this." She offered him her glass of champagne. "Come on, you look like you’re going to start climbing the walls. You’ll feel better..." she caroled, waving the glass in his face.

"I hate weddings," he said, grabbing the glass and downing it in one go.

"Holy crap! It speaks!" She grinned.

"I really hate weddings." That was all he had to say.

"Tell me about it. The panty hose alone. Oh, and of course, the 'When are you going to get married?' That’s my favorite."

Just then, Dan spotted his mother across the room. She was easy to pick out, being the only woman in the room with perfectly coifed hair and a lavender suit. "Yeah," he said. "I hate that too."

"I think we need more champagne," Val said.

They spent to rest of the reception leaning against the wall, Val making fun of the guests, Dan snorting occasionally.

He was having a surprisingly okay time until he caught his mother’s eye.

"Hey, you want to get out of here?" Val asked, going through her purse.

His mother would hate her. Val was funny and oblivious and a little vulgar and it was so nice talking to someone- no, he liked her, he did, and maybe she could keep him from being...so quiet.

He said yes. And if the sight of the dancing couples and the relieved satisfaction on his mother’s face as they left the room made him feel sick, well there’d been a lot of champagne.

And later, if the press of her breasts again his chest was awkward and the sex only half-satisfying (it made him feel vindicated and even sicker all at once), well the alcohol could be blamed for that too.

Man and wife, he thought, after she fell asleep curled against his side.

He proposed to her three months later. He still had no idea why she’d said yes.

~

Wilby looked like some quaint town out of a movie. That was what Dan had thought when they’d first seen the island. Wilby, the kind of place where you could neatly resolve any problem you’d ever had in under an hour and a half running time.

Dan was beginning to realize how wrong that’d been. To begin with, it took two solid weeks before anyone actually came into the video store. Apparently that was how long it took for the Islanders to decide that you were okay. And even then, "okay" was on a suspicious, purely conditional basis.

After the first week, it’d become a routine, the same routine in a different location: wake up, drink a cup of Val’s terrible coffee (he never had the heart to tell her how awful it was), go into the store, take care of paperwork, ‘open’ the store- he didn’t bother watching the door anymore- watch movies until 10, and go home, his head weighed so heavily with fake lives that there wasn’t room for his own. Then one day:

"Hey," said a voice, halfway through an episode of Gunsmoke.

Dan jumped out of his skin, knocking over a stack of tapes on the counter. He really should get a bell for the door at some point, Dan thought, red-faced, as he grabbed for them. Dan's hands stilled when he looked up.

The owner of the voice was a man with short blond hair, an old, paint-splattered t-shirt and jeans, and some sort of tattoo on his arm. Dan remembered him; he’d seen him around town once or twice or three times.

"Hey," Dan finally managed, stacking the tapes. You’d think that once you passed 30 you’d be too grown-up to be clumsy, but somehow it didn’t work that way.

The man was smiling at him though, so quietly. "You mind if I look around?" The man’s voice was like fine, fine sandpaper.

"Uh…sure. Go ahead." Dan turned off the TV and shuffled some paperwork (it looked more professional, like he had a business to run instead of a big movie collection parading as a store).

Dan's eyes couldn’t seem to stay down on counter; they kept getting drawn by the strange grace of the man as he padded down the aisle. The arch of his back when he bent over to examine a title (the space between his eyebrows crinkled). His arms.

You’re staring, Dan told himself, mouth dry, as he ducked his head back to the papers.

The man came back up to the counter, empty-handed, after what seemed like a long time.

"You’re not getting anything?" Dan asked.

A flash of teeth and a tiny whuff of laughter. "Nah. I don’t have a VCR," the man said.

"Then why...?"

The man glanced out the window. The quiet smile was back. "Someone had to be your first customer." He reached across the counter to shake Dan’s hand. "The name’s Duck."

It had been a long time since he’d touched a man. The difference- Val’s hands were soft and small.

"Jarvis. Uh…Dan Jarvis." Who the hell did he think he was, James Bond? This was why he didn’t talk much.

"Don’t worry. The rest of them will come around eventually." Duck drummed his fingers on the counter for a second. "Nice store." With that, Duck left, leaving behind him a comfortable silence that even the nervous beating of Dan’s heart couldn’t touch.

It must be the shock of having a customer. Because he was married. And married men weren’t like that.

~

It happened pretty quickly after that.

"Hi," Val said one morning, going up on tip-toe to give him a peck on the lips. For a few minutes, the only sound at the breakfast table was the clinking of silverware and the rustle of the Sunday edition of The Sentinel. Mornings were beginning to feel like a cross between a marriage and a one night stand.

"Oh, I forgot." Val’s overly-bright voice grated on him. "I called someone to take care of window. He’s a handyman, painter thingie," Val said, waving her hand around.

When he’d met her, Val’s talkativeness was one of the things he liked about her. Now, sometimes he wished she’d shut up.

"What was his name?" she went on. "Pigeon? I don’t know. Some dumb bird name. Oh, Goddamn. I got to go."

Dan had dropped his fork.

Duck MacDonald was coming to fix his back window. Duck, who still came into the store to not-rent things, who watched Dan all the time. (Dan knew this, because secretly, he watched back.)

"Nice view of the Watch," Duck said, after Dan had showed him the window. "You been out there yet?" Dan couldn’t place the tone of his voice.

"No," replied Dan. Why was he watching the man work, anyway?

Duck pulled out a screwdriver. "You should sometime. It’s nice."

Duck looked at him. Dan’s heart stopped. It wasn’t just sad, it was like a mother putting peroxide on her kid’s scraped knee. This is going to hurt, but it’s for your own good. It was kind. The kindness in the blue eyes broke him wide open.

Somehow, Duck managed to unstick the unstickable window in a matter of seconds.

"No charge," he said, and grabbed his tool box. Dan was left staring at his backyard, thunder and lightning inside.

He had to do something.

~

Of course he knew what it was. Every town had one. He knew that from those times before Val when he’d had too much to drink.

After dinner, he’d casually told Val he was talking a walk. It didn’t come out casual, not really, and all Dan could think as he pulled on his jacket was she knows she knows she knows. But Val didn’t even look at him- thank God. She nodded at the TV.

Val had never been good at picking up the obvious- but then, apparently, neither had he.

Dan had never cheated on his wife before- that was the whole point. He didn’t know why he was going, or what he was going to do when he got there.

Maybe he just had to be sure. He had to do something.

The Watch was dark and foggy, so the flicking flame of the lighter and ember of the man’s cigarette attracted his attention at once. Dan’s heart raced for second before he got a disappointing look at the stranger’s face.

Dan had never seen him before, but maybe that didn’t matter. He put his hands in his pockets, feeling too, too tall.

"Hey."

"Hey."

The stranger looked him over, and just like that, they were on the same page. Dan hadn’t been on the same page with anyone in so long. It felt like his whole life.

The touch of the stranger was like falling from heaven. Dan was dizzy, he wasn’t dead after all, he was human, he was dirty and lonely. Lonely, because this wasn’t what he wanted either. It was so much closer he wanted to scream, but still just another wrong pair of arms (too thick and bulky), attached to a wrong pair of hands (too clumsy and squarish). It wasn’t enough.

Looking back, he still wasn’t exactly sure what happened.

Dan remembered the glare of the flashlight, and the smirk on the stranger’s face. He remembered the look the officer gave him.

...This is very serious...

...No, just a warning...

...Scribbling...

...Why don’t you head home to your wife, Mr. Jarvis?...

An entire island-full of scorn and shame pressing around him.

And the dazed thought: Should have figured.

The funny thing was, Dan had been planning on telling Val anyway. He had to. Because lying to himself and lying to her were two different things. Because she didn’t smile as much anymore, and he knew that somewhere she was still funny and crass and Val and she didn’t deserve to be stuck with someone like him, someone so backwards inside.

She was practically the only real person in his life- this life he’d fashioned from scraps of celluloid impressions of how the world was supposed to be. This life with nothing much in it besides her, an island where they didn’t belong, a failing video store to go with his failing marriage, and a dyslexic sign painter Dan barely knew but was probably in love with anyway. God, he hated it.

He didn’t want to hurt her. Now it looked like he had no choice.

~

After he spoke, in a halting tumble of words (words felt so unfamiliar in his mouth), she stared straight ahead for the time it took for the mantle clock to click three times. Then Val exploded all over the living room.

"How long have you known?" She picked up the nearest thing (a hardcover copy of “Buckskin Brigadier”) and chucked it at him. Her inflection was strange and strangled, like screaming into a pillow. Val stalked toward him. "How long have you known???" A newspaper this time. "Tell me, how long have you known?" A couch pillow.

In some perverse, unflinching corner of his mind, Dan could sit on the sofa arm and admire the way his wife could throw and scream and let everything inside of her out. What must that be like?

"Did you know when you married me?" Val shrieked, absolutely hysterical at this point.

He didn't respond; he was getting a headache. "I thought maybe one or twice- and I know we never had- but how could you- say something, for fuck’s sake!" She let out a noise of pure frustration and picked up a vase; it hit the ground near his feet. He could almost feel it shattering inside.

"Dammit!" Val clinched her fingers in her hair.

"I’m sorry," he whispered.

"No, not that, I really liked that vase." She said, pointing to it. Then, she burst into tears. Oh God.

He’d known she would be angry, but he’d never thought she would cry. He’d never seen her cry before. Not once. He finally stood up then, and went to where she was, over by the back window, with her hands on her face.

"I didn’t mean to…I’m sorry," Dan said, reaching for her.

"Don’t touch me." She jerked back into the window with a hitched sob. Dan could do nothing but watch her crumpled shoulders and listen to the raw, pained sounds coming out of her.

They ripped right into him. He deserved it.

After a few moments Val quieted. She took two deep breaths and lifted her chin; the tear-tracks glinted in the lamplight. "I hope you rot in hell."

With that, she wiped her nose with the back of her shaking hand and slapped him across the face.

It threw everything into sharp relief.

She was supposed to pull him up, but instead he’d dragged her down here with him.

He’d done a terrible thing to her.

Soon everyone would know.

After she left he wandered around the mess of the living room, rubbing his stinging left check. The worse part was, the true sign that besides being a sick pervert he was a horrible, terrible, awful person as well, he couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to spread Duck MacDonald against the back window and taste his mouth.

Dan's hands clenched painfully on the cushion he'd bent to pick up. It's never going to go away, is it?

He ought to put an end to it, Dan thought, turning to look out the back window. He was completely alone now, anyway.