Chapter 2: Progress

Chapter 2: Progress

“So what d’ya usually do around here anyway?  Freeze ass?” Frey tugged his black pea coat closer to himself with one hand and gave a tremendous shiver.  His other hand was completely uninvolved in keeping himself warm, but rather was trembling as it held his camera up to his face.  Adrian eyed it suspiciously and scowled.    

“Pansy, how long have you been living in New York?” Adrian asked, and his expression seemed to say that he was supremely unimpressed by the older man’s inability to deal with the chill.   

“My whole life..!” Frey whined through chattering teeth.  He wanted to say something about Adrian’s lack of respect for his awesome elders, but refrained for fear of biting his tongue. 

“Then you should know how to deal with the winter cold.”

“You’re heartless!”

“I’m sorry but was there something you needed?” Adrian asked testily, one eye still on Frey’s camera.  It was pretty obvious to Frey that its presence was making the younger man uncomfortable, but he figured Adrian needed to get used to it being around.  He had to acclimate to it or Frey would never get anything natural out of him.

“Huh?  It’s obvious isn’t it?  I’m getting footage for my character short!”

Adrian’s eyebrow twitched.  “You mean the one I haven’t agreed to be a part of yet?”

Frey gave a little smirk, confident that the brunette would eventually come around.  He could afford to humor Adrian for a while.  “’Yet’ being the operative word here.  You’ll say yes before long.”

The eyebrow that had previously been twitching was now rising up Adrian’s forehead.  “You’re used to getting your way a lot, aren’t you?” 

Frey nodded the affirmative unabashedly.  “Yup.  I’m a prime example of a charming spoiled rich kid who always got everything I wanted so now I don’t know how to be considerate of others’ wishes!  What’s your excuse?” 

Adrian blinked a few times, his face entirely devoid of understanding.  “Excuse?  For what?”

“You know, for the whole introverted bookworm thing?  And the taciturn attitude?”

“For someone who wants a favor, you’re sure doing a terrible job of buttering me up,” Adrian muttered.  Frey hoped his camera’s microphone was good enough to pick up on it; Adrian seemed to be a habitual mumbler.

“What?  I’m doing a character study, I’ve gotta figure out how you think of yourself!”  Frey exclaimed, his grin mischievous.  “So, what’s your tragic back story?”

Adrian’s eyes moved away from the camera in Frey’s gloved hand, drifting to his book bag.  Frey got the impression that Adrian was very close to simply getting a book and shutting him out completely.

“There is no tragic back story.  My life is average.”

“No way!  There must’ve been something!” Frey insisted and realized that if he wanted anything from Adrian, he was going to have to work for it.  “I know!  Your parents neglected you as a child, so you never knew love and now you don’t know how to deal with the attentions and affections of others!”

“How rude, my parents paid plenty of attention to me,” Adrian grumbled, a mild offense sharpening the gray of his eyes.   

“Then you had a bad relationship that made you turn away from emotionality?”

“….Do I look like a walking cliché to you?”

“Well you’ve got the tall, dark and handsome bit down already.  Why not add a tragic love story?”

The power of Adrian’s glower was lowered significantly by the flush that blazed across his face, which was quite unexpected in Frey’s opinion.  Sure, his comment had been damning with faint praise, but he hadn’t really expected to get any noteworthy reaction to it.  Dual urges pulled Frey in different directions; he wanted to spend exorbitant amounts of time dwelling on this new development, but he also wanted to continue his line of questioning.  Ultimately deciding that he could delay thinking for a bit, Frey moved on to his next over-the-top hypothesis.  “Then you were bullied in school and decided to become isolated in order to protect your feelings!”

Heat rose on Adrian’s cheeks at this.  “I was not bullied or neglected and I’m not heartbroken, okay?  I’ve just always preferred to keep to myself.  If I don’t have a million friends it’s just because I don’t go out of my way to make friends, and neither do most others.”

The statement sent Frey’s mind into a plotting frenzy, which made it hard to remember to keep his camera propped up and trained on Adrian.  This was definitely an important statement, a hint to how he could get what he wanted.  He just had to pry a little more, get Adrian to clarify the issue.  “Really?  So you’re not pushing people away because of some deep dark personal trauma, but rather because you’re just too lazy to be personable?”

Adrian simply shrugged and said, “’Pushing people away’ implies work.  I rarely do even that much.”

For a moment, Frey looked at Adrian with slack-jawed amazement before grinning broadly, a mix of determination and arrogance alighting in his eyes.  “So basically what you’re saying is that because you’re too lazy to play nice, other people have to go out of their way to befriend you?”

“Well, uh, I never said anyone has to.  I don’t really care either way,” Adrian mumbled, and Frey knew he is hunch was right.  Getting himself a challenging subject for his project was going to be easier than he thought. Which was a bit paradoxical, but he wasn’t going to think about that now!

“But if someone were to be persistent enough, then they could make themselves your friend?” 

Adrian made an obstinate expression; if that’s how it was, he clearly didn’t want to admit it.  “What are you getting at?” He asked instead of answering, though he seemed to be picking up on where this was going. 

“It’s just, I’m a pretty persistent guy, you know?  So much so that I think it’d save us both a lot of trouble if you just accepted me as your friend right off the bat.  Aaaaand then do your friend a favor by helping him with his project!”

This time it was Adrian’s turn to look at the other slack-jawed.  He quickly got his wits about him though, and turning his gaze away from the other man replied, “Sorry, but I don’t do shortcuts.  Besides, how can I know you’re persistent if you don’t prove it by being persistent?”

Immediately an expression came over Adrian’s face that clearly communicated how much he regretted that last statement.  In contrast, Frey felt like a cat that’d just caught a canary.  Wearing this guy down was going to be easy; hell, he’d practically just been invited to! 

Grinning smugly, Frey leaned back, one arm hooked over the back of his chair, the other still holding up the camera.  “Challenge accepted.”

Adrian didn’t even try to hide it as he groaned in frustration and sank down onto the frigid tabletop, and all Frey could do was laugh.

000

“You know, you warned me that he was this super-detached sort of guy, but I’m just not seeing it.” 

“Well, I guess someone’s gotta be able to get to him.”

This wasn’t Frey’s first time in Rory’s dorm, but it was the first time he was there when both occupants were in.  The two of them had sent Adrian down to the common room to make some popcorn, and in the meantime he and Rory were making themselves comfortable.  Rory had burrowed into his bedcovers and had the T.V. and DVD remote controllers next to him so that he wouldn’t have to get up.  Frey meanwhile had taken both of the dorm occupants’ desk chairs, sitting in one and propping up his feet on the other.  Now that the three of them were acquainted, Rory felt that it’d be a good idea to have a movie night together.  Frey was just happy to have more opportunities to observe his (soon-to-be) subject. 

“I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not,” Frey muttered; on the one hand he could very well be seeing a different but genuine side of the younger man, but he could also just be capturing an Adrian made unnatural by nerves. 

“Hm?  What was that?” Rory asked.

“Ah, nothing.  Think it’d be okay to keep the camera out though?  I’ll keep it off, don’t worry.”

Rory tilted his head to the side in confusion, a few strands of red-brown hair falling over his face.  “Then what’s the point?”

“The point?  Well, I’ve gotta get him used to the camera being around you know?  Otherwise I’ll never get what I’m looking for.”

For a quiet moment, Rory went through a series of expressions that made the freckles dance across his face before finally settling on a stern, lecturing look.  “Frey, I’m helping you out with this ‘cause I think it’ll be good for Adrian to be around someone who throws him off-balance a bit, but that doesn’t mean I’m okay with you using him purely for your personal benefit.”

Frey gasped with mock-offense.  “Geez, d’ya really think I’m that heartless?”

Rory shook his head, “No, but you’re pretty shallow when it comes to interpersonal relationships.”

“Yeah, an’ you’re pretty blunt,” Frey grumbled under his breath.  So he was sort of married to his movies and tended to only get involved with people so far as he could get what he wanted out of them; Rory didn’t have to be so harsh about it!

“Then again, Ace isn’t the only one who needs to be thrown off-kilter a bit,” Rory mumbled, his eyes excited but pensive.

“Huh?”

Before Rory could even wave off Frey’s curiosity, the door opened and in came the aroma of extra-buttery popcorn, accompanied by Adrian himself. 

“So did you two decide on what to watch first?”

“Uh…” Rory and Frey exchanged looks; they’d sort of forgotten they were supposed to do that.  Their reactions were answer enough that Adrian didn’t need them to say a word.   Instead he just rolled his eyes, picked up the movie closest to him, and loaded it into the DVD player. 

“So what’re we watching then?” Rory asked, settling more comfortably into his bed. 

“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” Adrian replied, climbing onto his own bed.  Frey decides this is about as good a time as any to pull out his camera, though he figures he’ll just keep it in his lap during the movie. 

The move apparently caught Adrian’s attention for he asked, looking to his roommate.   “Why’d he bring that here?  We’re supposed to be just watching a movie, right?”

“We are, but separating this guy from his camera is like separating the soul from a body!” Rory joked as he grabbed the DVD player’s remote and skipped to the disc’s main menu.   

 “D’ya think it stole his soul?”

“That would explain a few things.”

“Ahem,” Frey butted in, though he honestly didn’t care much about the conversation itself so much as he disliked having them talk over his head.  “I am definitely right here you two.”

At this Adrian looked down at him through his thick dark lashes, as though realizing for the first time that yes, Frey was there, and in no small part due to him.  The gray of his wide eyes seemed to flash silver as they caught the light coming from the television and reflected it back into the otherwise dark room.  There was something oddly intense about the sight and, helpless against the impulse, Frey pressed the record button on his camera.  However the minute Adrian saw the little red light turn on, he scowled and looked away.

“At least put it down during the movie,” he muttered to his bedspread.  Frey got the sense that Adrian wasn’t going to look at him again until he did, and so reluctantly he stopped recording and set the camera down in his lap.  His avoidance, his words, his tone, they had all broken something.  What it was, Frey couldn’t say.  He couldn’t even begin to guess. 

000

“It is finished!”

It was the Monday before Thanksgiving and Frey had spent most of the day holed up in his room, making the final edits to his observational documentary project.  Oh, but those ten minutes of footage were more painful to put together than they had any right to be.  Still, it was well worth the effort for he rather felt he’d outdone himself this time. 

“Oh, lemme see?” The soft voice of Callen, his roommate and fellow Film Studies major, drifted over to him from the opposite side of the room.  Callen Baker was a mousy-haired wisp of a man who had a gentle demeanor and tended to look rather disheveled on most days.  This was mostly due to the unreasonable amount of time he spent putting together his own films, especially his non-curricular projects.  While Callen tended toward the fictional and fantastical, he still liked to watch Frey’s projects and give him helpful little critiques where he could. 

Frey turned his laptop toward Callen, and pressed play.  After a frustrating minute lost to the loading process the short began, opening with multiple overlaid shots of the empty courtyard taken from the same position on numerous different days.  One by one each disappeared until only a single clip was left playing.  Callen watched attentively as one clip melded into another, each of them a different meeting taking place, a different person running to catch up with a friend or lover, a different level of success being achieved by each subject.  There was a short clip of a man sitting on the low wall, obviously waiting for someone but leaving before anyone showed up, then one of a girl throwing her arms around a friend from behind. A third of a boy reaching out to get a girl’s attention but stopping before he did, and another of a young man with his nose in a book who didn’t seem interested in meeting anyone at all.  And yet Callen knew it was undoubtedly his voice that narrated the ending sequence, as one by one clips of even more meetings and partings overlapped, until it seemed as though they all belonged to one shot of the area, filled with people. 

When the last of the video faded from the screen, Callen whistled lowly.  “Not bad, not bad at all.  This is your observational short, right?”

“Yup,” Frey sighed with relief at the positive response.  He knew this was good—maybe a bit cliché in terms of the theme, but well, he was being graded on technique this time around so he figured he could get away with some cheesiness in the face of his excellent cinematography. 

“I think what you were trying to portray here was pretty clear—the courtyard as a place of meetings, right?”  He waited for Frey to nod before continuing.  “Well, it gets that across loud and clear.  The opening and closing are excellent, and I like how you didn’t let the angle used for those two scenes dominate the rest.”

“And the lighting?  Did you see how I mastered the sun and bent it to my wishes?”

Callen snorted at this but nodded all the same.  “You do show a lot of improvement in your use of natural lighting here, yes.  Now if only you could manipulate the background noise the same way?”

At this Frey scoffed once, and then scoffed again for the sake of being dramatic.  “Freakin’ wind ‘n people walking around when I’m trying to film…”

Callen shot the few-months-younger man a stern look.  Or, well, as stern a look as he was capable of giving.  “Now, now, don’t go blaming the wind for your lack of skill with sound editing.”

Frey pouted at the admonishment, before asking, “So whadd’ya think I’ll get for it?  It’s at least a B-plus, right?”

“At least, if not an outright A,” Callen assured him with a kindly smile. Frey took a minute to fist-pump before turning back to his laptop to email the file to his professor.  As he minimized his various windows Callen noticed that he already had a folder set aside for his next project.

“You don’t waste time, huh?  Who’s your subject?”

Frey clicked on the project file, and then again on the most recent clip.  It was from just the day before; Frey had walked up to Adrian, camera in hand and recording until the younger man had given the device a withering look.  But his open displays of hostility toward the camera had yet to dissuade Frey from pursuing him as a subject, because for all the shots he had of Adrian glaring at his camera, he was accumulating an increasing number of clips of the brunette giving it curious looks from the corner of his eye, looks Frey often didn’t even pick up on until he saw them later. 

“Huh, I’ve seen him around,” Callen said at the end of the clip.  “Didn’t realize you knew him though.”

   “I didn’t until just a few weeks ago,” Frey said with a shrug. 

Callen’s jaw dropped.  Frantically he rushed to speak, “Y-you mean you’re following a stranger around with a camera?!  I hate to say this but that’s a really dumb idea!  He doesn’t look too happy with this to me; you’ll end up getting stuck with a restraining order if you’re not careful!”

Admittedly, Frey was not entirely oblivious to the possibility of this ending Very Badly and so spent much of his time walking a fine line to ensure that he stayed in Adrian’s good graces.  This was made significantly easier by the fact that Adrian seemed to have no capacity to maintain high levels of emotion, rage included.  At most he might raise his voice for a minute, but he seemed to have no emotional stamina and things like anger and annoyance burned out quickly.  Okay, so he wasn’t really worried about Adrian getting terribly upset with him after all.

No, Frey thought as Callen continued to fret in the background, what worried him more was the dogged determination he had to get this guy to agree to be his subject.  Sure, he already had footage enough make a rough draft for his character study, but that wasn’t why he wanted Adrian’s permission.  His motivation was something else, something much harder to get a handle on but far more persuasive. Even so, he wasn’t sure he could explain it to Callen in a way that made sense; heck he wasn’t sure he could explain it to himself in a way that made sense.  So instead he just shrugged and kept the reason close to himself, warm and growing.

000

For all that Adrian insisted that a real New Yorker could handle the cold just fine, it had been remarkably easy for Frey to convince him to just read in the school’s café in the afternoons. (Sure, he’d said, it was noisier, but it was also warmer and smelled like coffee.  Who didn’t like the smell of coffee?)  He was particularly thankful for this as their evening meet-ups got steadily longer and longer.  There was just something about the younger man with the messy mop of curly black-brown hair that made Frey want to record and record and record until he finally found whatever he was searching for so frantically in those slate gray eyes. 

This troubling compulsion was made doubly so on the days where he forced himself to leave his camera in his dorm or keep it in his bag.  He couldn’t have it on hand every time they met after all; it would give Adrian the wrong impression (or, well, the right impression that Frey didn’t want him to know was right).  But it was painful all the same, the way his right hand clenched reflexively around air whenever something happened that he needed to capture and couldn’t.  

His hand was doing a whole lot of that right about now, and Frey hated that he didn’t know why.

“…And you know, sure, she’s got a pretty obvious axe to grind and she isn’t exactly subtle in her approach, but there’s just something about the story itself that keeps you reading through all 1,200 pages…”     

Frey was fairly certain that in the three or so weeks since they’d started talking, he had never heard Adrian say so much in one go.  Oh sure, he’d hold up his end of the conversation just fine, but he was not exactly prone to monologue.  Today though, Frey’d just asked about the book Adrian was reading and now here he was, maybe a whole ten minutes later, listening to a recitation on the pros and cons of reading Ayn Rand.  While Frey had admittedly tuned out much of the other’s words already, he couldn’t help but be fascinated by his face.

Adrian wasn’t quite excited or passionate, but he had a certain animated quality to him today.  It was the beginnings of something, perhaps the something that Frey was so busy looking for.  He tried to put that thought out of his mind before it could fully form; if he allowed himself to believe that was true it would only make the fact that he didn’t have his camera with him that much more unbearable. 

Because his focus was on the visual rather than the audio, Frey noticed the abrupt closing off of Adrian’s expressions before he realized that the other had changed the subject.

“…Probably really boring you, huh?”

“Boring?  Bullshit!” Frey exclaimed perhaps a bit louder than he should have.  The man responded with an eyebrow raised in disbelief. 

“Really now?”

“Really!  It’s just that I—ah, well,” Frey gave a sheepish smile, feeling oddly abashed about what he was intending to say.  “It’s just I’m sort of hitting myself over the head for not having my camera with me right now.”

For a moment, the corner of Adrian’s mouth dipped down.  “You know I still haven’t agreed to be your subject yet.”

“Awe, c’mon Ace!” Adrian gave a little start at Frey’s use of that nickname.  When had he started calling Adrian that?  Frey wasn’t sure himself.  “I’ve already got a crap-ton of footage an’ I know you think my works are good enough.  Besides, I see the way you look at my camera—you’re totally curious about what I’ll make of you.  You can’t wait to see the final result!”

Frey of course had no way of proving his assertions correct, but the suggestion was enough to make Adrian react with what he suspected was a mixture of guilt and embarrassment.  Adrian seemed to struggle with himself for a moment, and it must’ve been a mighty struggle if it was showing on his face so clearly, before finally heaving a great sigh and slumping forward onto the table.

“Whoa, you okay there buddy?”

“Yes.  No.  I give up.”

“You give up…what?” Frey asked, confused even as the more intuitive something in him soared in victory. 

“Stalk me to hell with your camera all you want.  I’ll be your damn subject.”

Frey couldn’t remember the last time getting his way had felt so good.  If not for his conviction that a victory dance would lead to Adrian rescinding his surrender, Frey would’ve waltzed himself right around the café.  He officially had his subject, and not only that but he also had permission to keep his camera with him! 

‘Oh, happy days are here again!’

“I can’t even tell you how much I wanna party right now,” Frey said excitedly.  Adrian just groaned into the tabletop and waited for Frey to ride out his excitement. 

It took a few minutes to collect himself enough not to squeal girlishly as he said, “This is so great!  You’ll have to sign another form in order for me to actually use you for this, let’s meet up tomorrow and I’ll give it to you.”

“I can’t,” Adrian said immediately, his voice laced with apology.  “I’m taking the train home tonight.  Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving you know?”

It was as though a bucket of freezing cold water had been thrown in his face, instantly killing off his excitement at having finally succeeded in wearing Adrian down.  Mentally he shook himself, trying to reclaim the soaring joy he’d felt just a moment before.  It worked enough for him to continue talking in his usual confident manner, even if it didn’t succeed in making him feel that way.

“Sorry, I forgot.  I uh, don’t usually go home for Thanksgiving.” 

Adrian’s eyebrows knitted into a deep furrow at this admission, as though he couldn’t imagine not going home for the holiday.  “But you live in-state right?  Is it really that inconvenient to go home?”

There was no doubt that the answer to such a question was ‘no’; his family’s home was within walking distance of the university.   Even so, distance was not the only thing that made going home inconvenient.  “Something like that, yeah.”

“Oh.  So what’re you doing instead?” Adrian asked, the awkward stilted of his voice making Frey regret the absence of his camera all the more.

“Me?  Oh, I’m gonna spend the weekend with Rory since he’s stuck here too,” Frey said with a shrug.  This much was true at any rate; Rory’s family was from east Massachusetts and he found that the four hour drive (in light traffic, a phenomenon unfamiliar to the Wednesday before Thanksgiving) it took to get there was a bit much for a visit that would last less than a week. 

“So that’s why Rory is staying here this year,” Adrian mumbled to himself.

“What’cha mean this year?” Frey asked, tilting his head in confusion.

“Hm?  Oh, it’s just, last year he was so down about not being able to go home that I brought him to my house.  I asked if he wanted to this year but he said he had plans,” Adrian explained, looking just a little embarrassed.

“Awe, you’re a good guy after all!” Frey cheered, and resisted the urge to teasingly pinch the other’s cheeks or something similarly invasive.  “Fear not, I’ll keep him in good spirits with liquor and Thanksgiving day specials!”

Adrian’s expression was blank for a moment, before an easy smile spread over his face and he said, “Sounds like it’ll be a good time.”

“O’course.  It’s gonna be awesome, so don’t you worry your pretty little head over us,” Frey said with breezy confidence as he mussed the younger man’s hair. (And boy, it sure was soft.  ‘Can’t catch that on film,’ Frey thought, and let his hand linger a little while longer.)