ficlets

For fuzzyfruit: Joey/Kelly. "There's something in the way she moves / or looks my way, or calls my name / that seems to leave this troubled world behind. / And if I'm feeling down and blue / or troubled by some foolish game / she always seems to make me change my mind."

"Come on, baby," Joey said, and grabbed Kelly's waist with one hand and her hand with the other. "Dance with me."

He got a whack across the arm with a wooden spoon for his trouble. Fortunately, the spoon had not yet been used to stir the pasta sauce. "Joseph Anthony Fatone Junior, get your hands off of me and leave me in peace to finish making dinner, or I swear to God, I'm never feeding you again."

"I can subsist on bread and smiles from you." Joey tugged the spoon out of her hand and set it down on the counter. "I said, dance with me."

Kelly blew her hair out of her eyes in frustration and gave him another one of Those Looks, which she'd learned from her mother, who'd learned it from her mother before her. Joey was fairly certain that Those Looks were genetic, going back to the days of Eve. Lance had once explained the concept of mitochondrial DNA, and it had explained so much about how every woman he'd ever really loved had been able to make him feel three inches tall just by a lifting of the brows and a twisting of the mouth. "If the alfredo burns because I wasn't there to stir it, I'm pouring it over your head. There's no music."

"Pretend." Joey swept her into a dip backwards; she moved with him automatically, with the ease of long practice, fitting her body against his and sliding across the floor with him as he spun her away, then back into his arms. It wasn't the cracked and peeling linoleum, the cramped span of the Brooklyn kitchen of his childhood; Frank Sinatra wasn't on the turntable, and he was the one dancing, not four years old and out of bed for a glass of water, watching his father's hands on his mother's hips as they swayed. Some days the kitchen felt larger than the entire apartment he'd grown up in.

Kelly fit her head against his shoulder, her token protest over and done with. "What's wrong, babe?" she asked, voice soft.

"Nothing," Joey said. "Nothing, as long as I've got you."

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