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then
“Quit flicking. This used to be my favourite show,” his grandma demands, her voice even lower and raspier than usual thanks to her cold.
They’re all sitting together on the couch for once, him, her and the baby. Fez left the soup on the stove a little too long but once you lift off the nasty skin it’s not so bad. His grandma is wrapped up under the crochet blanket that usually sits on the back of the couch, still shivering occasionally. He’s not used to seeing her sick, or sitting down in one place for too long.
The pictures on the screen are not what he’s expecting from a favourite show of his grandma’s. She usually watches CSI or Criminal Minds and laughs about how quick the cops or the feds figure the crimes out. This doesn’t look like a crime show. It’s some family in old timey clothes on a farm. Ash fusses and as Fez pats his back he thinks he can sympathise.
“What’s it called?” His grandma must have watched it when she was his age or something, even the way it’s filmed looks old as fuck.
“Little House on the Prairie. Now shut your mouth, this is an important episode.” She snuggles further under the blanket, tickling Ash’s foot and winking at him before turning her attention fully to the screen.
Fez doesn’t understand how she can know this is an important episode, but he does find himself getting sucked into the story. It’s actually pretty sad because this girl is going blind and her dad doesn’t know how he should tell her. Going blind would be shit in any situation (it would make preparing their product real difficult), but Fez thinks it might be worse if you were living out in the countryside. Even though the picture quality is kind of blurry or something he can still see that the sky is the clearest blue, the water in the little streams too. There’s tonnes of grass and trees as well, all green rather than the sort of tired brown he’s used to around here. And the mountains are tall and strong, pure white on top. The thought of getting to see that every day and then going to nothing, just darkness, reminds him of the feeling he gets when one of his headaches is coming on. Like nothing will ever be quite right again, something always missing.
He has to give props to whoever made this show, they do not hang around with having this chick lose her sight. When Mary does go blind he hears his grandma start to sniff and goes to reach for the tissues. He hands her the box and sees that it’s not just her cold, she’s actually crying. Fez feels his face drop. The last time he saw her cry was after his mom died, and even now he’s not sure if that’s a real memory or just something he thinks happened. Back when he used to spend his afternoons after school at the strip club he’d heard one of the girls say that Marie O’Neill never cried, just made grown men weep.
“It’s okay, kid,” she assures him, mopping her eyes before blowing her nose so loud that Ash stirs from his nap. “Nothing wrong with crying when it’s just your family ‘round to see. None of that soppy shit outside this house,” she points at the door, chipped red nail making circles in the air, “but sometimes ya gotta feel your feelings.”
Fez doesn’t think he’s going to be crying over Little House on the Prairie anytime soon, can’t really picture himself crying in front of anyone, but he guesses it’s a nice idea. He wouldn’t want Ash to feel bad about crying if he was sad.
They end up watching the next episode the day after, and the next one the day after that. It’s a quieter time of day for them, in between businessmen who call at lunch and the high school finishing up. One day his grandma arrives home with the complete set of DVDs and they start from the beginning.
The next time he watches the episode where Mary goes blind he does cry, the sound of his grandma’s monitor from the room next door the only other sound in the house.
now
Fez is surprised when Lexi tells him she hasn’t heard of Little House on the Prairie. It seems like it would be her kind of shit. She loves period dramas - he remembers her telling him about how she and her mom used to watch Downton Abbey together, how it was one of the few things that was just for the two of them. She has this one shirt too, white with these tiny little pink flowers, that sort of looks like something one of the girls from the show would have worn.
They watch the first few episodes together when she comes over after rehearsal that day and he presses the box set into her hands after. He knows she’s torn between wanting to be anywhere but home and wanting to be there in case her mom or Cassie need her. And as much as he loves having Lexi over, there’s a not insignificant part of him that worries if he’s being selfish. Surely there are better places for Lexi Howard to be than sitting on his couch. Certainly there are safer places for her to be.
But he can’t find it in him to push her away. Not when it clearly makes her happy to be here, with him. It’s like a little piece of magic every time he gets to see how happy she is to be in his company, a jolt of joy that makes him want to pinch himself. Sometimes he wishes he were a writer like she is, or a painter or something, just so he could capture her when she’s at her happiest, the way he wishes she could always be. Fez knows that’s not possible or realistic though, thinks that the way he and Lexi both know that truth so fucking intimately is part of what ties them together.
As much as he’d like to be with her to see her reactions to the show, he also loves being on the phone with her while she watches, narrating both the storyline and her own reactions. Everything sounds better from Lexi’s lips. Even if she’s not actually here with him, her voice on loudspeaker surrounds him, warms him.
Ash wanders into the living room, starts rolling his eyes as soon as he hears Lexi’s voice and then mimics making out with his hand. It’s something that Fez does not need to see and he hopes the middle finger he wields in his brother’s direction makes that very clear. It doesn’t do anything to stop him though. Fez appreciates that Ash doesn’t say anything out loud, nothing that would disturb Lexi’s train of thought or make her uncomfortable. It goes some way to confirming his suspicion that his brother might actually like Lexi underneath all his eye rolls.
“Sorry, I’m rambling,” Lexi says, and if Fez had a dollar for every time he’d heard something similar to that he thinks he’d have quadrupled his earnings from the carnival last fall.
“S’all good, Lex, I just got distracted by Ash. You lucky you don’t have any brothers.” Ash winks at him before grabbing a packet of Cheetos and heading back towards his room.
Lexi laughs, this sweet bubbling sound like one of those brooks on Little House. “I used to want a younger brother, I didn’t like being the baby.” Fez stores up that little piece of information, saves it for them to talk about another time.
“What was you saying before he distracted me anyway?”
“Oh, something silly probably. I guess I was just thinking about how hard life was for a frontierswoman. I don’t think I could do it.” He can hear her closing her laptop and lying down.
“Sure ya could,” he says, easy in his conviction that Lexi could do anything she set her mind to. “You fuckin’ fearless, remember? And smart. And resourceful. You’d make it work.”
“I suppose I’d have to, there wouldn’t be much of a choice.” There’s a rustling sound, like she’s pulling her bedspread up. “I know that a life like that would be super rewarding, but I’m not sure it’s what I’d want.”
Fez lays down on the couch. “Ain’t nothing wrong with thinking someone’s life is good for them, but ain’t the one for you.”
“That’s true. I do like that idea of adventure, of making a new life somewhere.” Her voice softens, gets a little wistful maybe, “Doing that with the people you love.”
He doesn’t like to acknowledge it, but as wonderful as it is to hear of Lexi’s big plans for her future, sometimes there’s a bittersweet aftertaste. A feeling that there can’t be a place for someone like him in the great things that are to come for her. But other times, when it feels like maybe they’re the only people still up in this town, the only people in the world even, he can almost see a path where they both get out.
Times like now. It’s a feeling he wants to hold onto and not let go. So he settles in and listens.