Title: Countenance
Fandom: Moonrise Kingdom
Rating: PG
Length: 218
Content notes: Implied sex, some angst.
Author notes: For fan-flashworks for the Amnesty challenge for the prompt: Masks
Summary: Randy Ward/Duffy Sharp (the Ed Norton and Bruce Willis characters). After sex, Duffy asks an innocent question, and Randy thinks about what it might mean.


They were both still breathing hard, their sweat still dripping onto Duffy’s flannel sheets, when Duffy turned to Randy and said, panting, “You can stay for breakfast. I have plenty of food.”

Randy looked at him strangely. He hadn’t even been planning to sleep there. But the way Duffy said it had sounded more like a plea than an offer.

Randy realized suddenly that this was why Duffy had done this. Duffy wasn’t just trying to get laid and settling for Randy (the way Randy was with him).

Duffy was desperately, hole-in-the-heart lonely.

Sam was staying at the Bishops half the time, and Randy knew that Laura was trying to stop seeing Duffy so often, probably because of that perceptive daughter. But until this second, Randy had never known that Duffy had a life of secret despair.

For just a brief moment, Randy wondered if this meant that Duffy was more profound than him in some fundamental way. If his suffering and emptiness somehow made him more real, made him solid. Randy felt ridiculous in that moment. He felt small.

But Duffy was still waiting for his answer, looking at him with large, soft eyes.

“Yeah. That sounds nice,” Randy said and did his best to give Duffy a little smile.

Duffy smiled back and pulled him closer.