#drive-ins

It had been awhile since you had taken a group trip with the masters, and you missed them. Now that you were officially Marcus' mate, perhaps Aro thought you didn't need your little outings anymore. You had read an article in a magazine about one of the few remaining movie drive-ins left in Italy. It intrigued you because you had lived on the cusp of their existence. You would go to one of two that were in your home town with friends during high school. You'd all chip in for pizza and cans of cold soda so you could skip the snack bar altogether, unless you happened to run into other friends enjoying the Friday night ritual.

Then it all changed when walk-in theatres were born. Both drive-ins in your home town were still open, but one served as a flea market on weekends. You ran to find Aro to see if he might be interested in going. And if you had your way, it would be in his roomy Bentley. You knock on his office door, opening it when you hear him say 'Come in.'

"Good morning, my dear. Do you need something?" Aro asked, looking up from the papers lying on his desk.

"Aro, I was wondering, if you would still be interested in experiencing bits of being human." You sat down on the chair facing him.

"What have you in mind?" he asks you, curious.

"I read that there is still a real movie drive-in...in Milan." You mumble the last two words, but Aro hears it, of course.

"Milan!"

"It's only a four hour drive, and none of you has to sleep. I'll nap in the back with Marcus. As long as we get there before dusk, we'll be on time. After the film is over, you can drive us back home where I'll go to sleep for two days."

The Volturi master looks at you, seeing your eagerness expressed in your eyes. "Two days. Oh very well, my dear. And what is the film?"

"It's nostalgia night, so they're showing an older American film, '2012'. It'll be in Italian, but I've seen it so many times, I know some of the lines by heart, and the basic storyline too."

"You've seen it?"

"Oh yes, I never missed a good disaster movie."

"Ah, so this film is about a disaster?" Aro asks you.

You smile and reply, "If you consider the end of the world a disaster, I guess so."

"I'm sure Caius will thoroughly enjoy it then," Aro says, rising from his chair.

He puts his arm around your shouders as he walks you from his office and down one of the corridors.

"But, Aro, don't you ever worry about the end of the world for vampires? I suppose if it were a pandemic, it wouldn't harm your kind, but with your food source wiped out..."

"I see your point, my dear. What cannot harm us, can still end up killing us."

"Well, while we watch the film, you can tell me what would and would not kill you."

"Yes, yes, dear one. Now get the things you will need, and we will leave this afternoon."

"Hmm, I'll need a pillow and blanket, and some snacks. I'll see what the chef has in the way of leftovers. Thank you, Aro." You give him a tight hug and run off to the kitchen before the chef has left for the night.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

The drive to Milan was uneventful, and you were soon at the drive-in. Once Aro paid, the car was waved in. You showed him where to go to park the car.

"Just park next to the sound post. Open the window part way, then pull the speaker in through the window and hang it on the glass." Once the sound was tested and you heard it working, you sat back and praised Aro for managing another human job.

Aro raised an eyebrow at your comment, not sure if he should feel insulted.

The movie starts and everyone goes quiet while watching. It isn't long before the foreshadowing of the major disaster begins.

Since you had been relegated to the back seat with Marcus, you decided to educate him on the etiquette of going to a drive-in and not watch the movie. Snuggling against him, your hand slipped up to his neck and circled around it. You looked up into his face when he turned to you, pulling on his hair gently. He complied and lowered his head to capture your lips with his own. When you were unable to hold in a moan, Caius turned around and glared at you both.

"Is that why you wanted to come here?" he asked, annoyed. "And why are you dressed in your sleepwear?"

"Tradition, Caius. You wear your pajamas to the drive-in. Well, children do, but I wanted to tonight." You glare back at the blonde vampire. "Why don't you be a darling, and go get me some popcorn and a Coke from the snack bar. Please?"

"You brought snacks. Why do you require more?" Caius demanded.

"Brother, be quiet. I'm watching the movie," Aro says, hushing Caius.

"Gee, I don't know. Maybe because I want popcorn. And I can't have popcorn without Coke. I don't query you about your eating habits, Caius." When your tormentor smirks at you, you know your leg is being pulled. "You're missing the part when California falls into the ocean."

Marcus's hands were not still, while you were trying to find a way to get rid of the other masters, if only for a bit. "You could go with him, Aro. Mingle with the humans, check things out. For about twenty minutes?" You laugh when Marcus' fingers tickle you. You see Caius scowl.

"Why are you so unhappy, Caius. You got to sit in the front seat. What more do you want?"

"Alright, if we go to the snack bar, may we partake in a snack ourselves?" Caius asked playfully.

You had thrown your head back when Marcus began kissing and sucking on your sensitive neck. Distracted, you replied, "Mmmm...sure, Caius. Just be sure to hide the evidence."

Caius looks at Aro, shocked. "She doesn't care!"

Once the pair of vampires left the car and headed for the snack bar, Marcus begins to kiss you, his hands sliding up under you nightgown, seeking your breasts.

Your hands are not still either, and move to Marcus' lap, stroking the hardened length you can feel through the fabric of his slacks. You like the roominess of Aro's Bentley, and take advantage of the space, by lifting up your nightgown and straddling Marcus' lap. You slide down the zipper, and with Marcus' help, you manage to slide his slacks off his hips.

Since you're already wet with desire, Marcus slides into you easily. You gasp, but urge him to thrust deeply into you. Your hands grip his shoulders while you ride your mate. You kiss him while his hands are on you, squeezing your breasts, the nipples taut. Your fear of Aro and Caius returning spurs you on, as you take Marcus inside you. Finally, you lean into him while you kiss his neck. You try to hold in the groans so as not to alert the occupants of the neighboring cars. Your inner muscles grip Marcus' cock, you feeling the cold emission as he fills you. You know you will have bruises by morning, he grips your body so hard.

You sit on your mate's lap, waiting to come down from your sexual high, your heart beating hard.

"I love you, il mio cuore," Marcus whispers to you.

"I love you, Marcus, and I always will," you say.

You rise up off his lap, and set your nightgown to rights. And just in time.

When Aro and Caius returned, Aro took his place behind the steering wheel, while Caius opened the back door, forcing himself next to you, not that you minded sitting closer to Marcus, but you wondered what in the hell Caius was doing.

Caius smirked, unseen by you in in the darkness. The smell of sex hung heavy in the air, making Caius feel like teasing you all the more.

"Your popcorn and Coke, princess," Caius says with such exaggeration, it makes you laugh.

"Thank you, my slave," you reply, stifling your laughter.

"Your what?" the blonde says a bit too loudly.

"Brother, you're attracting attention," Aro warns.

"My 'mistress' demands my attention, brother." He leans over, grabbing your chin and kissing you. You melt into the kiss you know is Caius' way of teasing you, but you were not Marcus' mate back then.

Marcus feels protective of you and grabs Caius' wrist. "Brother, shouldn't you go back up front?"

You give Caius a wink when he opens the back door and gets out. He jumps into the front seat and goes back to watching the movie. You see Yellowstone blowing up, and wonder what Aro thinks of it.

"Aro, has anything in the film shown to be a danger to your kind, in a truly fatal final-death kind of way?" you ask, while eating the popcorn and drinking the soda.

"Most of the disasters would not be fatal as long as land remained. The fire would be a problem, however," he pointed out. "And the loss of so many humans could be an issue, for obvious reasons, dear one. Fortunately, our kind do not come close to outnumbering humans, and you do breed prolifically."

The whole get-to-the-arks scene comes and goes, and soon, the film is over.

You've fallen asleep on Marcus, right in the middle of you two discussing the film. His arm encloses you within its comforting circle, making you unconsciously snuggle closer, the blanket wrapped around you. He kisses your forehead and whispers endearments to you.

Caius turns around and can't help but smile at you. He may tease you terribly, but he loves you all the same. You are one sister he intends never to lose. He looks at Marcus, who smiles at his vampire brother and nods knowingly. He turns back to face forward and turns the radio on low so as not to completely disturb you.

Marcus brushes his thumb over your lips. "I love you, cara mia."

"I love you, Marcus," you say, before nestling against his cool body.

Movie theaters were segregated; either they did not allow black people in at all, or they relegated them to “colored balconies” or matinee/late-night films only. “Stand-in” demonstrations in Austin, TX from 1960-1962 (which spilled over into Dallas) forced the desegregation of movie theaters there and other cities in the South, but colored balconies persisted for years. This remained true in Dallas, where none of the cinemas on Theatre Row would allow black people to buy tickets at the main entrance. Given that the protestors at Allison & Ray’s sit in are literally chanting “No more back door,” I felt the Chestnuts are more likely to picket and/or drop kick the Majestic than buy tickets there.

So what are our options? Well, there were black-owned movie theaters for black audiences. However, these theaters typically got movies months or even years after their release (and I want Allison to see this movie sometime before shit goes down in Nov. 1963). Also, while I can find evidence of plenty of black theaters through the 20′s and 30′s, it seems like almost all of them had closed down by 1960 since they couldn’t compete with the rise of television.

What about drive-ins, which peaked in popularity in the 50′s and 60′s? There were plenty of these in Dallas! Plus, segregation was less enforced there, though it did exist in the form of partitioned “colored sections” of parking lots. Happily, activists found that the “stand-ins” they’d do at regular movie theaters were even more effective with drive-ins. At the theater you stand in line to try and politely buy a ticket, get refused, go to the back of the line and try again -- and wildly inconvenience the movie theater & white customers in the process. In the drive-in, you park your car at the ticket window and effectively block all other customers from coming in, and no one can shove you out of the way or really do much about it. Research is sparse, but from what I’ve found drive-in theaters ‘saw the writing on the wall’ and started quietly desegregating in 1961-62. It’s cutting it pretttty close, though, to say that they’d be desegregated by June 1963.

But hey, happy news: we’ve got a best of both worlds option with the Starlite drive-in theater! The Starlite seems to have been more famous/better off than other black-owned movie theaters of the day; it was marketed as “Southwest’s finest for colored entertainment,” survived the rise of television, and played films for black audiences in Dallas for more than 25 years. And it was definitely still around in 1963. Boo yah!