Pushing Daisies ficlet: Chuck/Ned, PG
Title: A Beautiful Sight / We're Happy Tonight
Pairing: Chuck/Ned, (Olive/Randy)
Rating: PG
Summary: For the Impromptu Multi-Fandom (im)Promptathon, prompts: winter and hands. 360 words.
Note: x-posted from here
A Beautiful Sight / We're Happy Tonight
When the first snow begins to fall, she goes directly upstairs to her hall closet and, from the shelf where she keeps her heavy galoshes, she retrieves a box stuffed so full it threatens not to stay closed. He's not sure when and how she's accumulated so many scarves and hats and mittens, and in every color and style imaginable, but there's so much of it he can't help but remember that winter outerwear--and the season that goes with it--has always been one of the great passions of her life.
So Ned lets himself be bundled in wool and led out into the dark winter street to watch the snow swirl lazy in the light of the street lamps. Ned doesn't like wool; it's itchy, and it usually smells funny. Of course, Ned doesn't particularly like winter, either, but he doesn't have the heart to tell her.
To Ned, winter is for cruel, icy air that creeps in through the cracks of the windows and accosts you and takes your breath as you open doors. It's for chapped lips and tingling feet and clothing in uncomfortable layers. And winter is for long, boring holidays at a mostly empty boarding school with other children whose parents don't want them, or for long nights huddled in the kitchen eating too much pie just to keep from feeling the way the cold weather seems to echo empty a whole world of solitude and separation. At least that's the kind of thing Olive says sometimes, when she's feeling melancholy.
But Olive isn't melancholy now. At this very moment, she and Randy are locking the door to the Pie Hole and chasing each other into the street. And Chuck's reaching out one of her gloved hands and taking his, and that's when Ned remembers that there are other things winter is for, now, the least of which is holding hands again with the person at the center of his world. He smiles as he watches Chuck's cheeks turn pink, under a bright blue beret and above a rather mischievous smile, and he waits, listening to the musical echo of laughter on the cold, clean air.
~
Pairing: Chuck/Ned, (Olive/Randy)
Rating: PG
Summary: For the Impromptu Multi-Fandom (im)Promptathon, prompts: winter and hands. 360 words.
Note: x-posted from here
A Beautiful Sight / We're Happy Tonight
When the first snow begins to fall, she goes directly upstairs to her hall closet and, from the shelf where she keeps her heavy galoshes, she retrieves a box stuffed so full it threatens not to stay closed. He's not sure when and how she's accumulated so many scarves and hats and mittens, and in every color and style imaginable, but there's so much of it he can't help but remember that winter outerwear--and the season that goes with it--has always been one of the great passions of her life.
So Ned lets himself be bundled in wool and led out into the dark winter street to watch the snow swirl lazy in the light of the street lamps. Ned doesn't like wool; it's itchy, and it usually smells funny. Of course, Ned doesn't particularly like winter, either, but he doesn't have the heart to tell her.
To Ned, winter is for cruel, icy air that creeps in through the cracks of the windows and accosts you and takes your breath as you open doors. It's for chapped lips and tingling feet and clothing in uncomfortable layers. And winter is for long, boring holidays at a mostly empty boarding school with other children whose parents don't want them, or for long nights huddled in the kitchen eating too much pie just to keep from feeling the way the cold weather seems to echo empty a whole world of solitude and separation. At least that's the kind of thing Olive says sometimes, when she's feeling melancholy.
But Olive isn't melancholy now. At this very moment, she and Randy are locking the door to the Pie Hole and chasing each other into the street. And Chuck's reaching out one of her gloved hands and taking his, and that's when Ned remembers that there are other things winter is for, now, the least of which is holding hands again with the person at the center of his world. He smiles as he watches Chuck's cheeks turn pink, under a bright blue beret and above a rather mischievous smile, and he waits, listening to the musical echo of laughter on the cold, clean air.
~