fandomweekly | [#297] The Kindness of Strangers (Sense8)

Theme Prompt: Unexpected Kindness
Title: The Kindness of Strangers
Fandom: Sense8
Rating/Warnings: Teen for referenced homophobia
Bonus: No
Word Count:655
Summary: Watching a movie with his Family, Lito sees a familiar face

Lito jabbed his finger into the button on the blender, using margaritas to drown out Dani's voice as she beckoned him to the living room. He was on a new career path. A better career path. And even though they were hate watching what should've been his movie, he wasn't quite ready to relinquish his bitterness enough to sit back and even enjoy being bitchy to his replacement.

Glancing over his shoulder to ensure she and Hernando were focused on the TV and the beginning of the movie he was deliberately missing, Lito tossed back a couple shots of tequila. Then he filled everyone's glasses with the overly strong margaritas, grabbed the popcorn, and joined them on the sofa for what would be an hour and forty-six minute runtime of something that should've been his.

"We don't have to watch this," Hernando said for the forty-sixth time.

"We're watching it. I want to watch it." He shoved some popcorn into his mouth, then started picking through the bowl for the perfect piece rather than give any attention to the movie.

"Oooh he's cute!" Dani cooed to Hernando, pointing her freshly manicured hand at the young man in the opening scene.

The cute man—named Street Punk #1 in the screenplay—would shortly be dead. Lito knew it from the script he'd already begun memorizing in anticipation of a filming start date that wasn't to be. He mouthed what would've been his first line under his breath and returned to the popcorn. It wasn't until Dani asked "Gay?" that Lito looked up.

"Obviously there's no definitive way to tell someone's sexual orientation just by looking at them, especially in costume while pretending to be someone else…" Hernando started, intellectualizing the legitimacy of gaydar.

"Yes," Lito confirmed. He stared at the man he'd seen only once before, when the world had come crashing around him and he felt utterly alone. A case of literal Pride before the fall, still high from São Paulo only to have reality slap him in the face. And stab him in the back.

He'd stood in the elevator of his former talent agency, freshly fired for being who he was, unironically going down. This young man had shown him an unexpected kindness, hugging him suddenly and thanking him before getting off at the next floor without another word. Lito was so stunned by it he didn't even hug him back, but that action from a stranger gave him the strength to survive the humiliation, to make it home to Hernando when all he'd wanted in that moment was for the building to collapse and take him and everyone else with it.

"He is. But he's not out yet." Two million hits on Lito's YouTube video from Pride, but none felt as meaningful as that man's gratitude for taking a step out of the closet for all of them.

"You know him?" Hernando asked with more concern than jealousy over the emotion in Lito's voice.

Lito hesitated, unsure how to answer that. Did he know him? The man was a stranger. Lito didn't even know his name. But he did know him, the same way that man had known Lito. The man had recognized himself, had reached out to comfort Lito in the elevator because he knew what it was like to be rejected for who he was. He knew that fear and that shame and for just a moment they shared a human connection on the level of psycellium. "No. He was just kind to me."

Hernando gave Lito's leg a reassuring squeeze, his eyes warm as he understood what Lito wasn't saying. Just like that young man had understood.

"Can we watch something else?" Lito didn't want to see him die. Not as Street Punk #1 and especially not at the hands of a character Lito would've played had he only continued living a lie.

"Legally Blonde again?" Dani suggested.

"Perfect."

[#297] The Kindness of Strangers (Sense8)

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