Title: Power Cut
Fandom: Culture Club
Pairing: Boy George/Jon Moss
Rating: G
Length: 905
Author notes: Decided to write a little comedy.
Written for: Challenge 511 - Beam
Summary: The power goes out at half eleven. George gets his hands on the torch. This is a mistake.

The power went out at half eleven, right in the middle of George arguing that Karma Chameleon was, objectively, the greatest song ever written by any human being in the entire history of recorded music.

"You can't just say that," Jon said, gesturing with his wine glass. "You literally cannot just say that about your own song."

"I can and I did." George pointed at him. "Name one song better."

"Blue Monday."

"That's not--" George opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "That's not even a real answer, Jon."

"It's a fantastic answer."

"It's a coward's answer--"

And then the lights went out.

For a moment nobody said anything. The flat settled into a thick darkness, the only light a weak orange smear from the London streetlamps pressing through the curtains.

"Right," said Roy.

Mikey just let out a "Hm."

"I win," George announced.

"You absolutely do not win," Jon replied, with an amused roll of his eyes.

Roy sat his glass down on something -- the coffee table probably, or possibly Mikey's leg, it was hard to tell -- and stood up. "I'll find the fuse box."

"There's a torch in the kitchen drawer," George said. "The one next to the sink, not the one next to the cooker, that one has a spider in it."

A brief silence.

"Why," Jon began, "do you know there's a spider in the drawer next to the cooker?"

"Because I looked in it."

"And then you just… left the spider there?"

"It was there first, Jon."

Roy located the kitchen by memory and feel, rattling around in the drawer next to the sink until his hand closed around a torch. He clicked it on. A bright, solid beam cut through the dark.

"Brilliant," he said, and turned around to find George already standing directly behind him.

George took the torch.

"Thank you," he said, in a tone that suggested this had always been his torch and Roy had simply been keeping it warm.

"I was going to use that."

"You still can." George angled the beam directly under his own chin. "Once I'm finished."

What followed was, by any reasonable measure, a solid four minutes of George illuminating himself from various dramatic angles while providing what he described as artistic commentary and what Jon described, loudly and repeatedly, as absolutely nothing useful at all. Mikey had migrated from the sofa to the floor at some point, back against the armchair, and seemed to be having a genuinely lovely time. He'd found a packet of crisps from somewhere. Nobody asked how.

"Give me the torch," Jon said, for the third time.

"In a moment."

"George."

"I'm exploring the space."

"You're standing in your own kitchen."

"Everywhere is a space if you're willing to look at it." George swung the beam grandly around the room. It caught Mikey full in the face. Mikey raised a crisp in acknowledgement.

"Roy," Jon said, "please help me."

"I genuinely don't know what you expect me to do," Roy said, from somewhere near the hallway. He was still, admirably, attempting to locate the fuse box. He had opened three doors and found a bathroom, a coat cupboard, and another coat cupboard.

"George." Jon stood up and held out his hand. "Torch. Now."

George considered him. Then he clicked the torch off.

The dark came back, immediate and total.

"Whoops."

"GEORGE--"

"I don't know what happened--"

"You clicked it off, I saw you--"

"It's very dark, Jon, I'm not sure how you could have seen anything--"

"Give me the TORCH--"

A crash, which turned out to be Jon walking into the coffee table. A brief muffled sound from the floor that was Mikey attempting not to laugh and failing. A click, and the beam came back on, this time pointed at the ceiling, where it bloomed outward into a wide pale disc.

All four of them looked up at it.

"Huh." Said Mikey.

"If you go like this--" George tilted his head back further--"with your eyes--"

"Oh," said Jon, slowly. "Oh, that's…"

"Like a stage," Mikey replied.

It did, genuinely, look like a stage. Well, more like the idea of one -- a circle of light hovering above them in the dark, the kind of light you'd walk toward without quite meaning to.

They were quiet for a moment. Just the four of them and the beam and the low background hum of London doing whatever London did at half eleven on a Wednesday.

"Right," Roy said, from the hallway, going back to looking for the fusebox. There was a clunk, a mechanical click, and every light in the flat came on simultaneously.

Mikey, George, and Jon blinked. Mikey's crisp packet was now already empty.

Roy walked back into the living room, took in the scene -- George still holding the torch, Jon standing beside the coffee table favoring his shin, Mikey on the floor surrounded by crisp crumbs -- and said nothing for a long moment.

"Fuse box was in the airing cupboard," he said.

"Brilliant," said George, and clicked the torch off.

"Well done, Roy." Mikey said.

Jon sat back down on the sofa. "Blue Monday," he said, picking up his wine glass. "Still a better song."

"It is not--"

Roy went to bed at a quarter past eleven. He felt, on the whole, that this was the correct decision.