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Apr. 2nd, 2007 04:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnyRespond to this post with an icon and I'll write you a snippet of something based on it. I make no promises as to quality or coherence, but this'll save me from re-reading fanfic, which is what I've been doing all day so far.
Early responses have more chance of being answered, I confess, but I will do my very best to get through 'em. :D
Early responses have more chance of being answered, I confess, but I will do my very best to get through 'em. :D
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Date: 2007-04-02 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-04-02 04:33 pm (UTC)Even in this, he's dancing. Interpretive, perhaps, and on the theme of 'raging librarian', (it's the heavy black glasses still resting on his nose that give this impression, I suspect, as well as giving him the appearance of youth. His gun lies haphazard on a pile of unimportant faxes and pizza menus just inches from where I'm perched until it's noticed and placed absently back in its holster), but there's no questioning the grace in Ray's movements. I confess it is - distracting, at times.
Currently harmless, certainly, although it is with some difficulty that I suppress the smile that would tug at my lips; I fear Ray's response, given the circumstances, would be less than diplomatic. Other times my reaction to his customary fluidity of movement has been even less appropriate. But that, I find, is far easier not to reflect upon.
"I'm afraid, Ray, that it's standard procedure."
"Standard procedure?" He clenches his fists in wild blond hair and spins in a small frustrated circle; this time I'm quite unable to prevent a small snort of laughter from escaping. "Oh, yeah, laugh it up, Mountie. I gotta do this, I'm taking you down with me."
He's right in front of me now, two fingers stabbing towards my face, and I lean away, reflexively tugging my tunic down a little in front.
"Well of course, Ray, I had assumed - we are partners, are we not?"
"Right," he says with a little less volume, rocking back on his heels and giving me room to breathe. "You and me, Fraser, we're a fuckin' duet."
Ray spins on his heel, adding a little shimmy to it, looking back over his shoulder with a grin and a wink.
(I've never been much of a dancer, never quite managed to lose myself in the rhythm. I'd never before considered it might be a question of fitting partnership.)
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Date: 2007-04-02 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 04:41 pm (UTC)Thankyou. :D
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Date: 2007-04-02 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 04:48 pm (UTC)He picks up another book, checks it quickly for damage (and he's glad she's stormed out to the back porch, now, 'cos that would've probably prompted another inarticulate scream of rage - she never got the book thing), places it in one of the cardboard boxes. He treads carefully, setting his feet down really precisely because if the bad luck's not his already there's no use compounding the tragedy, right?
She threw the mirror but it bounced off his shoulder, and he's not quite sure where he stands with rebounds, not sure whether they count. (He has this problem a lot. Apparently his standards as to what does and doesn't count are a little looser than hers, which is kind of how they ended up in this situation in the first place.)
So he sets his feet down carefully between the fragments of glass that star the ground, reflect the sky in a spray of fragmentary blue across the lawn - like the little flowers they planted when they first moved here, the ones that never made it past the first winter.
(Like springtime, he thinks, like new beginnings. It's comforting.)
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Date: 2007-04-02 05:03 pm (UTC)Also, BOO discriminating against people who have no internet at work!
WTF? I don't know.
Date: 2007-04-02 05:26 pm (UTC)Die Hard's the one with the glass, he knows that. And Die Hard has Bruce Willis, and Alan Rickman, and ex-wives (which don't apply) and broken glass (which does). But what's really nagging at him right now is that (he heard a gunshot, see) he's pretty sure that Bruce Willis was the lone wolf type. He's frantically (thinking at that range they could have missed) scanning his memory and coming up blank, and the roiling in his stomach just gets worse.
(Things aren't how they used to be. He's not who he used to be, and he's learned to switch his mind off the job, sometimes. Thinks about other things, like the pub, like films, like how this is not an omen he fucking needs.)
"Danny?"
There's a retort, a crash way too near his head as another window shatters.
"Shit!" He tucks himself in a little tighter behind the table. "DANNY!"
More gunshots.
Silence.
(Nicholas wipes a sleeve across his eyes.)
Then the crunch of standard issue footwear on glass, and he tilts his head back against the table and can't help the laughter that stutters out of him in breathless gasps.
"Shit," he says quietly, "Powell, yes."
And Danny's big face, streaked with sweat and grime and plastered with a familiar smile.
"You couldn't have made it without me."
"We've got to watch that one again, Danny." He stretches his hand up, wrapping it tightly around his partner's and not letting go even when he's steady(ish) on his own two feet. "Don't know it nearly well enough."
Meet Grant from Traders.
Date: 2007-04-02 05:54 pm (UTC)The thing is, the thing is that he likes - he likes the park. Trees especially but the whole park is good, friendly, uncomplicated. He knows the pigeons have missed him because of the way they flock around as soon as he starts scattering breadcrumbs.
This is important. He's - he knows he's not quite right, he knows, he knows that he sees things a little differently but that doesn't make him crazy. The pigeons don't talk back and he's only pretending that they're listening and they'd come and flock around anyone with breadcrumbs but that's good. Simple, simple exchange. Goods, service. One of the - the oldest patterns there is going, easily recognised, material and tangible and infallible. Solid, like the tree he's sitting in, like the way things used to be all the time.
Not like, not like derivatives. Trading in the potential and the intangible and he's good at patterns and he - he - he wins, and he loses, and it's complicated and it's invisible and it's still not so complicated as friendship.
He fought with Donald today. He's still not sure - it, it started with pizza crusts and vacuum cleaners and it ended with Grant talking to pigeons and he doesn't even know how. With friendship sometimes the patterns aren't just hard to see they're not even there. There are reactions that, that cannot be predicted by any model for analysis, that don't fit into any sort of pattern he's ever seen and, and major cosmic catastrophe because if he can't predict it how can he win?
Except the strange thing is that he does. Keeps winning. Looks down from his tree and thinks (Donald: God of Friendship) he must be doing okay at this somehow because he's winning more than he's ever had before.
"Hey Grant," and Donald sounds a little tired and a little sad but not angry any more. "How about we go home?"
No patterns he can predict but he's starting to think, to think maybe not thinking too hard will work better and right now Donald looks like maybe he needs a hug.
"Hey, Donald," he says, and starts climbing down.
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Date: 2007-04-02 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-04-02 07:50 pm (UTC)He doesn't move much any more but it doesn't do to question the ways of nature. Herself is bigger than any man, and she'll have it as she will, and seeds are made for spreading. Somehow word always gets out, see. Circumstances right. Doesn't even needs mouths or words any more, seems like, just someone with the germ of a seed of an idea, some trick of the light or the moon or the winds that brings them up in their colours and their movements and their young fresh faces.
He had a name once, and it's that name that has them coming. They expect more from the name, but he was never the name. He wore it for a while, that was all, wore it like the cloak and the tall hat, like the traditions and legends that wove themselves around him.
(He didn't ask for this, but since when has what he wanted ever mattered? Herself'll have it as she will.)
Of all of it, he kept the staff. Not so impressive as the tales would have it, for there's nothing a fire-bright crystal can get you that can't be got with eight feet of gnarled oak wood. It holds him up, besides, when he gets around to moving - his legs don't work so well as they once did, wood-stiff.
They come to him every so often, always in packs, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, but he doesn't move much any more. That cuts out half of them, straight away. This is a place of stories and the darknesses that live at the edge of them, and as soon as night falls a half of them are gone, and another half again after a day or two of searching.
(That's the problem with youngsters today. Lack of ambition. Searching for things they ought to be finding.)
Half again fall to the first of the storm clouds, half again with the half of a tree, lightning struck and lightning killed. (They know he's here by then, or they think they do.) Soon enough there's only one left, leaf-green and nut-brown and sharp white teeth, and it's been forever and forever since he's felt anything like fear but his sap rises to this, sure enough.
He doesn't move much any more, but neither does the boy. Sits, quiet, still, long enough to have set down roots in this place of stories and darkness.
Sometimes seeds fall in fallow ground. Everything has to start somewhere.
(Herself'll have it as she will.)