Ship It(41)

“Ew. Chewie and Leia?” Please.

But Claire just shrugs. “Something for everyone. Some people have a kink about height differences.”

I try to picture Leia standing on her tiptoes, reaching up to kiss Chewie’s furry lips. Then I imagine Han watching them from the doorway, pushing away in anger when he sees his best friend moving in on the girl he likes. I bristle. “It would never happen. Leia and Han belong together. And even if she were into Chewie, he would never do that to Han.” I shake my head in disgust. “It’s obvious.”

She turns to look at me excitedly. “That’s it! That’s shipping!”

Oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense.

“The point is, some ships are just for fun, like Chewie and Leia. And some ships…” She scrolls down. More gifs of Smokey and Heart. Heart is telling Smokey, I’ll never let that happen to you. “Some ships are more important,” she says. She scrolls again. I see another gif. Smokey tells Heart, You’re the only one.

Below that, another gif: Heart stares at Smokey from a distance as a single tear runs down his face.

Another. Another. Another.

“Some ships,” Claire says, “are supposed to be canon.”

“Okay. Smokey and Heart care deeply for each other, I grant you that. But it doesn’t make it romantic. They’re just friends. Comrades on the battlefield.”

“Do you even watch TV?” Claire says. “This is the language of romance on-screen. If Smokey and Heart were a man and a woman, everyone would just understand that they’re in love with each other. It would be a given. Mulder and Scully were never this explicit—they didn’t need to be. People could tell from the pilot that they would eventually fall in love.

“You can take any man and woman, put them in a TV show together and have them look at each other like this”—she gestures at the computer screen—“and it wouldn’t even be a question. But because Smokey and Heart are two men, it makes a perfectly normal reading of the show delusional, fantasy….”

“Crazy,” I murmur.

“Yeah,” she says. Then, almost as an afterthought, she adds rotely, “but you shouldn’t use crazy, like, to describe people you don’t agree with; it diminishes the struggle of people who actually have mental health issues.”

“Um, okay.” Jesus, is there anything I’m allowed to say with this girl?

All this is fine, but there’s this one piece that’s still missing. “I get what you’re saying but the thing about Smokey and Heart is…they’re not gay.”

“Who says?” She levels me with big eyes.

“Everyone. Jamie, the writers, me.”

“What if I disagree?”

I don’t know what to say to that.

“He’s not real, Forest. He can be anything we want him to be.”

The gif is on the screen again. Smokey and Heart, gazing deeply into each other’s eyes. I recognize the episode.

“That’s a famous moment, by the way. Everyone in fandom knows it,” Claire says. “Do you remember shooting that scene?”

“Yeah, of course. We were in the middle of the woods. It was freezing. Rico told wardrobe to get me another shirt to wear under my coat.”

What I don’t tell her was that I didn’t know I could ask for more clothes, but Rico saw me shivering and spoke up. He didn’t have to, and he slowed down production for it as wardrobe ran back to their trailer to get something warmer for me, but he still did it. You only get so many cards you can use in situations like that before you get labeled “difficult,” or worse, even when you’re number one on the callsheet. You try to use your cards on things that really matter. Rico used one on me.

It was a big moment in our relationship. I realized that night that he would always have my back—in this case literally. “We shot this scene right after that. I was much warmer.”

The gif plays again and again.

“Do you remember what you were feeling in that moment?” Claire asks.

“I don’t know. A lot of things.”

“Name one.”

“Gratitude?”

“Okay.”

“I don’t know what else.”

“Love?”

“Claire—” This girl doesn’t give up.

“I’m just asking.”

“I don’t know, okay? It was a split second captured six months ago. I didn’t know it would be analyzed in this detail.”

She shuts up then, and we both go back to watching the gif repeat. I take another doughnut. Old-fashioned. It tastes amazing.

“I never really thought about it before, but this thing’ll just play forever?” I ask.

“Forever,” she says.

“Forever.”

Rico and me. That night in the woods. I have no idea what I was feeling. I have no idea what I’m feeling now.

I watch my eyes glance down at his lips. What was that? Why did I do that? Was I thinking about kissing him? It’s impossible. Isn’t it?

What was I feeling? Friendship, trust, intimacy.

Friendship, I reiterate. Friendship.

Forever.


I’M EXPLAINING SHIPPING to Forest Reed.

Never in a million years would I ever think that I’d be doing this. How many times have I stared at his face on the poster on my bedroom wall, finding comfort in its familiar lines, lulling myself to sleep under his watchful gaze? And here I am sitting inches from him, gazing at that same jaw, that same nose, those same eyebrows. His eyelashes are so long they graze against his skin when he blinks. I could reach out and touch those eyelashes, that’s how real he is and how right there he is. But I won’t, because that would be incredibly creepy, and also because I don’t want to do anything to distract him from what he’s doing right now.