07/28/2007: "Real Genius Fic: Placeholder (Mitch/Chris; PG-13)"

Title: Placeholder
Requestor: mklutz
Fandom: Real Genius
Pairing: Mitch/Chris
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: About 3800
Summary: Prompt: Lab accident leading to amnesia!
Disclaimer: Not my characters; no profit being made.
Notes: Future fic, set around 1991, about 5 years after the movie. Beta by the fantastic and super-fast valiant - thank you!

He smells smoke – smoke and harsh chemicals, and maybe something else – something organic.

Sweat, his brain tells him. Maybe he's sweating. Maybe someone else is.

"Chris?" a voice asks, fingers shaking his shoulder. "Chris?"

It would be nice to keep his eyes closed, watching the flashes of lights that play across his eyelids. But the hand is insistent, annoying, so instead he opens them. People are looking down at him, mouths tense, eyes worried.

"Chris!"

He turns his head – slowly, painfully – and sees a guy kneeling next to him, leaning in close.

"That," he says before thinking, "has to be the worst moustache I've ever seen."

And it is – thin and awkward and strangely flat. Not that it means much, since he can't remember seeing anything before opening his eyes.

*

"Nothing?" Moustache – Mitch – asks.

"Nothing." Obviously he can talk, and he could walk if they'd let him. But anything else – beyond a deep, certain feeling that sometimes moustaches are just wrong – is gone.

"Not Darlington? Or your project?"

"No. You really should shave."

Mitch frowns. "It makes me look older. You know I've got to look older because no one at work takes me –"

He stops, because obviously Chris doesn't know.

"Sorry."

Chris shrugs, scratchy hospital bed sheets scraping at his hands.

"Do you want to come home?"

"Do you know where it is?"

Mitch smiles, and for a minute, the moustache looks slightly less ridiculous.

*

Turns out they live together. Maybe Chris shouldn't be surprised, but he is anyway. Mitch fills him in on their history on the way home, and Chris can't decide if Mitch is shitting him or not. Popcorn, lasers, underground hideouts, turning halls into ice tunnels – who does these things?

"I'm serious," Mitch says, grin wide and eyes bright. "How could I make stories like that up?"

Chris looks at him – really looks at him – and takes it all in. There's the sensible, button-down shirt and the ugly brown cords. Bad moustache and shiny shoes. Hair that's just too flat, too conservative, shoulders tense and rigid, and he has to agree – guys like Mitch don't have it in them.

Except that Mitch claims he'd also been there – he'd been part of it all – and Mitch really doesn't look like that kind of guy.

It's late by the time they get out of the hospital – dark outside, and dark in the apartment. Mitch shows him around, awkwardly pointing out the bathroom, the kitchen, like Chris couldn't figure it out for himself.

"I'm gonna crash," he says, when Mitch shows him his room.

And he does, face-down on sheets that don't smell familiar.

*

In the morning, Mitch announces he's taking half a day off, and he looks guilty as hell as he says it. "But it isn't fair just to leave you alone," he finishes, determined, and Chris almost appreciates it, even if he can't imagine spending half a day with such a square.

Turns out that even though Mitch dresses like a suit – short-sleeves and collars all the way – he's not so bad. He's fun, even.

"Atari," he says again, when Chris can't remember the name of the thing. And, "Space Invaders," and he shows the log of high scores, and there's Chris's name, first, second, third, fourth, and Mitch's name shows up only once, mixed up with Chris and Jordan twice, and Chris and Chris and Chris.

"It's got to suck constantly losing to the magnificence that is me," Chris says, smirking.

Mitch just grins at him. He looks happy, his shoulders relaxed and rounded. "I've been biding my time," he says in a hollow, dark voice, and then grins wider.

*

It's hours later when Mitch finally stands up, stretching and groaning. "Work," he mutters. His hair is a mess from running his hands through it, from grabbing at it as Chris's score got higher and better and faster.

The hair doesn't match the moustache, not at all, and for a minute, Chris can see why he has it – without it, Mitch would look young, too young to be in charge of a –

Wait. "Hey. What kind of work do you do?"

Mitch's mouth opens, a little 'o', and it's absurdly cute, just for a minute. "I work at Darlington. So do you."

Yeah, Chris remembers that much from yesterday. "But what do we do?"

"Um. Well, we both got hired out of school, and now we run labs. Because we're scientists." He says it slowly, like Chris is suddenly a moron.

"I'm not stupid, you know –" he starts to say, before the words sink in. "Hold on. You're telling me that I'm a scientist?" A suit who does science?

This is really not cool.

*

He successfully manages to avoid going into his workplace, even though Mitch suggests it might help him remember; that it's his "home away from home, you love it there."

Instead he makes plans.

A guy, he tells himself, with such a vast collection of excellent and stylish t-shirts would not be a guy stuck in some lab all day.

As soon as Mitch walks through the door, Chris confronts him. "Look at this," he says pointing at his t-shirt, "does this shirt say 'science' to you?" The shirt in question says 'Spatula City', and he's not sure what that means, but he's sure it doesn't mean scientist nerd.

"What?" Mitch's face scrunches up, and he licks his lips nervously. "'Spatula City'? No, I think it says too much time in tacky stores."

Clearly. "See!" he says, triumphant. "And look at this one!" He pulls the shirt from behind him, waving it in the air.

Mitch just squints at it. "'Chico's Bail Bonds'? Is that new?"

"It's not new," he says, even though he found it folded neatly inside a plastic bag. "There's no way I'm a scientist. You're lying to me."

Mitch blushes.

It's kind of endearing.

*

The first few days are quiet – Chris familiarizing himself with his life, his history, his photographs, and his wide and varied porn collection; Mitch stays at work for long hours.

When it gets boring, Chris figures he needs to do something about it. He goes out.

When Mitch gets home, he asks, "What did you do today?" He looks exhausted, slightly messy, and a little bit frustrated. It's his usual after-work look.

Chris grins, and shoots a few more space invaders. "Oh, nothing."

"Did you remember anything?"

"Nope. I discovered my love of processed cheese products, though."

"What's new?" Mitch mutters.

"Oh, and I got a job."

He counts the beats. One, two, three, fou—

"You did what?"

*

Being a cook in a vegan restaurant is fantastic. People are relaxed, the recipes are weird, and it freaks Mitch out.

"Vegan?" he asks, for the fifth time. Chris serves him the apricot and olive couscous, a leftover from the lunch rush.

"No meat, no meat products."

"But you love hot dogs!" He pokes at the couscous, looking doubtful.

"Well, strictly speaking, I don't think hot dogs are meat."

The gig lasts two weeks. At the end of it, Chris gets a small bonus, a handshake, and a speech about how America isn't ready for vegan cuisine. He's sorry to see the restaurant close, but the lunch rush had been two people. He'd been expecting this.

"Do you want to come back to Darlington now?" Mitch asks when Chris tells him the news.

"And do what?" Chris asks.

*

"Hey, are we fucking?" It seems like they might be fucking. The apartment is a sty, and Chris can't imagine ever bringing a woman here. It didn't look like he used to sleep on his bed much, at least judging from the junk that had been piled on top of it. Then there's the fact that sometimes he thinks of Mitch as 'cute' and 'endearing', which seems a little queer.

And Mitch watches him all the time, carefully, hands sometimes hovering, like they want to touch him, but can't quite do it. Mitch seems like the kind of guy who wouldn't mention it, either. Like he respects Chris's right to figure it out – or remember it – for himself.

Truthfully, Mitch seems like the 'do the right thing' kind of guy.

So he expects Mitch to own up to it, to admit it. Instead, he looks shocked. "What? No!"

Huh. "Really?"

"You're straight! You like girls." Mitch's hands are tracing hourglass curves in the air, over and over. "With big — hair!"

Chris scratches at his belly through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. Well, his porn collection certainly suggested that, but still. He hadn't been quite convinced. "You're sure?"

"Yes!"

Mitch is kind of cute when he's flustered. Even under that hideous moustache. "We've never made out? I've never made a pass at you?" He can imagine doing that – his hand sliding down Mitch's back, squeezing his ass. He can imagine pressing his nose into Mitch's hair.

"You are so very, very straight." Mitch sounds – embarrassed. Maybe a little regretful?

Suddenly, Chris gets it. Mitch made a pass at him, not the other way around. And it looks like it didn't go over well. "I'm surprised. I strike me as a two-beer queer kind of guy." He winks.

Mitch chokes on his coffee, cheeks pink and blotchy. "Have you been drinking?"

He grins. "Nope. But I got a new job."

*

Being a male model for an art class is weird. It's not the nudity – he'd expected that, and he's got great abs – and it's not the endless standing around. Or reclining.

It's the stares, the giggles of the women in the class. Chris knows how he should react – a wink here, and nod and grin there – but there's nothing behind it. No urge to bring one of them home, or ask her out for a drink.

"How'd you get into this line of work?" one of them asks once, during a break.

He grins at her – a reflex, something automatic, something charming. "I had an accident, lost my memory and my job, and my boyfriend said he'd kick me out of the house if I didn't start pulling my weight."

Her smile falters a little.

"Yeah, he's a real bitch sometimes," he says, laughing.

*

"Male model no more," he announces the evening after he gets fired.

Mitch looks relieved more than anything else. "What happened?"

"You don't want to know. It involves paint. Paint and fingers and inappropriate suggestions."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

Chris isn't fooled. "I'm sure I'll find something else."

"You could always come back to –"

"The land of the living death? No thanks."

Mitch shrugs. He's given up fighting Chris on this. "You want a beer?"

"Sure. Maybe I'll even have two." He winks, and Mitch blushes.

*

"Hey," he says one night, during the commercials, "when am I going to meet this Jordan guy you keep mentioning? And is he your boyfriend? Because if so, I think I might be jealous."

"What?" Mitch jumps, just a little, and Chris grins.

"I'm just wondering why you never bring him over. Not once in all of these weeks. Are you ashamed of me?"

"What? Why would I be asham— wait! Jordan's a girl! And she's not my boyfrie—I mean, my girlfriend." His cheeks are flushed again, his eyes wide and shocked.

It's adorable. Really, it's cute. Chris thinks maybe he might be a little more than just a two-beer queer. He thinks about leaning over and kissing Mitch – just going for it – but Mitch already looks like he might have an aneurysm. Really – the guy is too easy, too wound-up.

So he shrugs, and turns back to the TV. "What do you think of this MacGyver guy's hair? Think it'd look good on me?"

"You've been asking that for years," Mitch mutters.

*

"There's a new game console. It's called a Playstation. Maybe we could buy it?"

Chris shakes his head. "Forget it. I've seen it in the store."

"What store?"

"Ricky's Electronics Extravaganza. I work there now."

"Now? Now? Since when?"

"Since yesterday. Pretty good gig – stand around and demonstrate the stuff all day. And I get commission."

Mitch's eyes narrow. "How much have you sold?"

"Uh. It's been one day!" And he figures he's going to be leaving the job pretty soon too. Mostly he'd just wanted to try out the new stuff. "Anyway, the Playstation thinks it's slick, but there's no way," he reaches out and strokes the Atari, "that I'm giving up my baby over here."

"You've got an unnatural attachment."

"At least I don't have an unnatural hair growth above my lip. When are the doctors going to be able to safely remove it, by the way? Inquiring minds want to know."

"It's not unnatural," Mitch says, rubbing his hand across his mouth.

Chris kind of wants to lean over and lick that hand. And not just to see Mitch fall off the couch.

*

Working as a bartender at a leather bar is interesting. The crowd is interesting, the clothes are interesting, and the tips are very, very interesting.

The hours kind of suck, though.

He stumbles into the kitchen one afternoon, thinking about Coke and Atari and maybe something with flour and processed sugar in it; Mitch should be at work, toiling in some dingy lab, but instead, he's sitting at the kitchen table looking – Chris squints. Yep, looking glum.

His first thought is that it's later than he thought and that he's slept in. Shit. His second thought is holy shit. "You shaved! Did you do that for me?" Something catches in his throat, something pathetic and lame.

Mitch looks up, mouth turned down. "Accident at work. Singed. Sent home early. Had to shave off the remains."

Chris moves closer, leans down. Mitch's skin is pink, and it looks baby-soft. He takes a deep breath. "You smell like smoke."

Nose wrinkled, Mitch says, "So do you."

"The difference," Chris straightens up, "is that I get paid to smell like smoke. On purpose." He winks.

The grin on Mitch's face is like a crack in the wall – it gets wider slowly, a little wobbly around the edges.

"It looks good," Chris says. Quieter, "You look good."

*

Pastry chef is by far the best job, even without the tips. And he never comes home angry or annoyed, bitching about a bad day at the office.

"Assistant to the pastry chef," Mitch reminds him waspishly. "You can't just become a pastry chef like that. Not even you."

"Now, now, no need to take out your sexual – ooops, I mean workplace – frustration out on me." He pulls a box out of his bag. "Otherwise I won't share these delicious leftovers that I brought home." With a flourish, he opens the box, grabbing one of the éclairs and holding it out.

Mitch just frowns at him. "Why are you doing this – when are you going to just admit that you're faking it and you don't want to come back to Darlington?"

"I'm not faking it," he says, as mildly as he can.

"They won't hold your job forever, you know, and already there are internal fights for your lab space, and I just wish you'd –"

Chris reaches out and stuffs the éclair in Mitch's mouth. "I'm not faking it. I don't remember. I don't want to go there and wander around and not understand it and waste my time."

"Mgbe ff yutrefted," Mitch says around the éclair.

"I am trying. I'm just not trying there." He grins, pushing away the frustration. "I'm trying at a fabulous pastry shop, and bringing you home the leftovers. They're good, aren't they?"

Eventually Mitch nods, and he only looks slightly reluctant.

Chris holds out a Belgian cookie.

*

Mitch doesn't even try to grow the moustache back. Chris takes it as a sign, but then it isn't followed up with anything else. He takes that as another sign.

There's a calendar in the bakery break room – tattered around the edges, a little greasy, but this month it's showing a vista of heavily treed mountains and a green, lush valley. Chris finds himself staring at it, day after day, staring and munching on slightly burnt cookies and undercooked tarts.

He thinks about watching for forest fires and watching over migrating herds of elk.

He makes a decision, and quits the bakery job.

"You're going to what?" Mitch yells when Chris tells him.

"The National Park Service," he says again, holding out the pamphlets.

"You hate insects! And camping!"

Chris can't actually remember that.

"You love TV."

True enough, but there's a drawback to everything.

"We live in the city!"

He nods. "I'll have to move. It's probably for the best, it's not like I'm doing much here. I'm mostly just a placeholder."

Mitch deflates slightly, and walks out of the room.

All in all, it hadn't gone too badly. He leans back against the couch, staring at the ceiling, thinking about looking up at the open sky.

When Mitch walks back into the room, he's holding two beers. He holds one out. "Here."

The bottle is cold against Chris's hand, almost shockingly cold. "Thanks. Look, I'll make sure my half of the rent is covered for the next – are you even tasting that?" It doesn't look like it. It looks like Mitch is knocking back the beer, just waiting to move onto the next one.

"Shut up," Mitch says finally, pulling the bottle away from his mouth. "Give me that." He gestures with his free hand, impatient and annoyed and – something. Something else.

Chris hands the beer over. It goes the way of the first one.

"You're not," Mitch swallows, lips slick, "going to become a Park Ranger."

"Actually –"

"No," he says, punctuating the word with a wave of the beer bottle. Then he drops it on the floor.

Chris watches as it falls – slowly, too slowly – until it hits the carpet with a solid thud. Slowly, he looks back up at Mitch's flushed, tense face. "Are you –"

"I don't care what you do," Mitch steps forward, "as long as it's here. In the city." He takes another step, and another, and then before Chris realises what's happening, before he can sit up and ask what the hell is going on, Mitch is on him – legs straddling Chris's hips, fingers fisted in his shirt, and mouth a determined line.

"Umm –" Chris starts. It's all he can get out before Mitch leans down, close and closer, before Mitch is kissing him, soft and tentative and beer-stained, and Jesus, this is one hell of a job incentive, but – he pulls away. "Look, you don't have to do this –" even if he wants it – Mitch's weight on him, pushing him down, Mitch's free hand splayed across Chris's chest.

"Shut up," Mitch says again, and this time he's smiling, soft around the edges.

"You don't have to convince me." His throat feels sore, his chest tight.

The smile widens. "I know."

Something loosens. "Really?"

"Really," Mitch murmurs, coming close again.

Later, he shifts a little, hand trailing down Mitch's back. "You're heavy, can you please get off me now? And also, where did you learn that?"

Mitch punches him in the shoulder but otherwise stays where he is. "Where did you?"

"Obviously I can't remember." And he doesn't even care.

*

Chris goes back to the bakery and stays there, bringing home cakes and pastries and strange little tarts.

Three weeks, four days and a handful of hours after they start fucking – "We're not just fucking," Mitch mutters, and Chris grins, easy, hand curved against Mitch's shoulder, because of course they're not – Chris falls out of bed while they're fucking.

It's embarrassing, it's ungainly, and it really, really hurts Chris's head. And his wrist, which twists painfully.

"Do you have a concussion?" Mitch frets, hand hovering over Chris's face.

"Do I look like a doctor?" he asks, and smirks when Mitch glares at him.

Two nights later, he wakes up thinking, of course, and energy conservation rates, and it was stupid to forget that the rate of decay could change.

Of course. "Hey," he reaches out and shakes Mitch, "hey, wake up."

It's dark outside, but the room's bathed in the soft glow of the streetlights. Mitch turns, eyes still closed, mouth curved into a sleepy frown. "Mmph. What? Mom?"

He smirks. He can't help it. "Is there something you want to tell me?" He slides his hand behind Mitch's neck. "Huh?"

Eyes snapping open, Mitch jerks back. "What? What's happening?"

"I've got some news."

"Now? Can't it wait? I have to work in the morning."

But Mitch is smiling, loose and soft, and his hand is warm on Chris's hip. Chris leans in, breathing in a sleepy, warm, familiar scent. "I just wanted to tell you I'm quitting the bakery job."

"You wanted to tell me that now?" He pushes Chris down, settles against him.

"Yeah," Chris says, closing his eyes. He falls asleep thinking about equations and wondering if he'll be able to convince Mitch not to wear a suit to work tomorrow.

End.

And a Mitch POV Bonus Scene:

"I think he's lying." He really does. No one would have this much fun with amnesia. Not even Chris.

"Lying? Why bother lying? What good would that do? Have you asked him? Have you even asked me, because I think that maybe if you asked him you'd realize that he's just really lost. Lost, you know, like that one time when you got down into the tunnels and you couldn't figure out where you were – of course, he's not actually physically lost," Jordan grins, taking a deep breath, "just sort of metaphysically lost. And oh my god, don't tell him I said metaphysically! You know what he'd say."

That's just it. Old Chris would have teased Jordan for talking about metaphysical loss, but now? He'd probably ask her to go and visit his new best friend, the psychic. Or the crystal reader. Mitch shakes his head. "I think he's just bored with his project and is using this as an excuse to have some fun. Without getting fired."

She laughs. "That does sound like Chris."

It's frustrating. "We aren't even sure what he was doing in that lab. You know what he can get like ever since –"

She frowns, nodding rapidly, repeatedly.

"He's so secretive! Darlington lets him get away with it because – well, because he always ends up making them a lot of money."

"Do you have his notes? Wait. Notes, no notes, right? It's all in his head?"

"Right."

"Oh well! What can you do? Nothing, I think nothing, you just have to wait it out and just be his friend and let it go, because you're awfully tense about this whole thing, which maybe you shouldn't be –"

"He keeps flirting with me!" Mitch just lets it burst out.

There's a pause, a longish pause, the longest pause he's ever experienced while talking with Jordan. Finally, "Oh. Well. Maybe it's the moustache." She smiles brightly.

"What?" And he didn't screech it at all. Not at all.

"It looks kind of –" she waves her hand. "Like maybe you want –"

"What?"

"To get picked up by some guy with a handle-bar moustache," she blurts out, blushing.

What is wrong with his friends?