Various - thenewpub entries for Week 2 ~ Rounds 1-4
Fandom: Psych
Title: Today isn’t That Day
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Unreliable Narrator
Word Count: 657
Burton Guster liked to consider himself an infinitely patient man.
It was a side effect of having a best friend like Shawn Spencer. There was a certain amount of patience that needed to be maintained at all times with Shawn and not want to throttle him. This, as per usual, was one of those times.
“Gus, I can explain.”
That was a phrase Gus had gotten used to hearing many times, and frankly, he didn’t want to hear it again. Not for this particular scenario. Not when he’s faced with something so, so … unthinkable.
“You know how I feel about Ronald McDonald, Shawn.”
“Gus, it was one time when we were five. We’ve met hundreds of nice Ronald McDonalds since the one that showed up drunk to work and trashed your birthday cake.”
“It wasn’t just any birthday cake. It was a cake that my mother had slaved over for hours, and he trashed it by slamming me into it. I never got the icing out of my blue dress shirt.”
“I never understood why you were so dressed up for that party anyway. The Play Place of the Santa Barbara McDonalds is no place for dress shirts and slacks.”
“It was my special day, Shawn. I’m allowed to look nice on my special day.”
“Or your mother forced you into it.”
“Don’t you bring my mother into this.”
“I didn’t mean it in a bad way! You know I love your mother. Even if she doesn’t love me.”
“This isn’t about whether or not you love my mother. This is about why you’re dressed as Ronald McDonald.”
“It’s actually a really great story.”
“Tell me the short version.”
“Why, what’s wrong with the long version?”
“Because when you tell the long version, it’s always ten times more extravagant than you make it out to be. We’ve been friends for over twenty years, Shawn. You don’t have to impress me anymore.”
“But what if I want to impress you? What if I want to dazzle you with my fast paced, fascinating life? Who are you to stop me?”
“Shawn.”
“Come on now, Gus. Don’t be a limp dish rag. It’s a good story.”
“Short. Version.”
Shawn sighed. Audibly. “Chief Vick needed someone to stand in for a sting operation and Lassie wouldn’t do it.”
“And you decided to?”
“I will happen to have you know, that it was my childhood dream to be Ronald McDonald. This case happened to fulfill one of my greatest desires.”
There was a pause. Not a long one as Gus tried to read between the lines, and then shook his head.
“You tried to pass yourself off as the real deal for free hamburgers, didn’t you?”
“Of course not.” A beat. “Maybe, a little, but that was after the operation was completed. I swear-this costume is completely authorized by the SBPD.”
Gus didn’t believe one word of it. He just continued making that face he knew Shawn hated, before his curiosity got the better of him and he had to ask. “Did it work?”
“Not in the slightest. But I probably should have went to a different McDonalds than the one holding the sting.”
Gus just shook his head and started walking away. “Goodbye, Shawn.”
“Wait, Gus! We could totally make this work. I just need you to be my Grimace-”
“Goodbye, Shawn.”
“I swear, you have no sense of adventure.”
And there it was. The challenge to his pride. The button that Shawn knew he could push and get Gus to do whatever he wanted, no matter how insane it was. He turned around to face his best friend again, trying to see through the clown make-up and red wig to the person that was underneath, and-sighed. Audibly.
“One of these days, I’m going to say no.”
“Probably. But aren’t you glad today isn’t that day?”
He sighed again. This was going to be a long day.
Fandom: Original
Title: Perfection
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Word Count: 340
Andrew Westen had grown up in a normal family, with normal goals and aspirations. His father was a leading scientist in the compound, his mother was part of the rotary club. They were well-liked, well-respected, and they expected their little Andy to be the same.
Unfortunately for them, their little Andy had no interest in being perfectly normal.
For Westen, it always flashed back to a picture that hung on the entryway to the family home. It was himself, his mother and his father. He was about sixteen, and they were all dressed in jeans and red tops-your standard holiday family portrait. If you looked closely at it, you could see the cracks in the perfection. Everyone expected him to follow in his perfect father’s footsteps, but really-Westen had no interest in perfection. In fact, he had no interest in science. He didn’t want to be his father in twenty years, with a woman who dotes on him, and a denim clad portrait on his wall. So he did the only thing he could do.
He ran away and he joined the army.
The army was just another machine, but it was a machine he could rebel against. He played by the rules just enough for his COs to see that he was effective, and bent them just enough for them to know he wouldn’t be another cookie cutter soldier for them to shove into their mold. He was still his own man, and he always would be.
He didn’t know why Mason had picked him for his unit, and he never would-Westen wasn’t the type to ask why things happened to him, he just learned to roll with them-but more to the point, he just didn’t care. This unit, this place that he had found himself in, it was where he was meant to be.
It was true perfection, if ever he found it; the kind of perfection he could live with.
For once, it was nice not to see the cracks around the edges.
Fandom: Supernatural
Title: No Easy Answers
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: The Library of Babel
Word Count: 668
Warnings: Spoilers through the end of S6
It was supposed to be a myth.
Bobby Singer came from a world where most myths had some kind of powerful basis in reality, but this-this couldn’t have been real. This was beyond anything that he could have ever realized. The amount of sheer information in this room was a dream come true. There were answers here, answers that they were never supposed to have. He glanced back at the blond woman standing over his shoulder, the angel who had come to him, saying that she had the answers to saving one of his boys, and he had taken it without hesitation.
And she had taken him to the Library of Babel.
And yes, he meant that Babel.
Everyone believed it had been destroyed when the tower was, a tall building containing all the information the world had to offer in one, universally understood language. There had been hints here and there, messages that it’s possible that the library still existed, protected by angels and hidden away from the rest of the world. The properties of the library were infinite, and the magic there-
Bobby knew that if there was a way to fix Sam, this was it.
“I can just-look?”
The angel shook her head. “You don’t need to. The library has healing properties all it’s own.”
“So all we’d have to do is bring Sam here, and he’d be cured.”
She paused for a moment, her lips pressing together before she continued. “The problem with Sam is that there is too much for his memory to handle. His soul spent one hundred eighty years in Lucifer’s cage, and a human memory isn’t meant to hold that much information. He’s forgetting himself, and only remembering who he became when he was tortured.”
“So how does the library fix that?”
“The library is a collection of all the knowledge the world has to offer. Here nothing is ever forgotten, nothing is ever lost. You are already seeing it yourself.”
He was. His brain was filling in the answers before she finished the question. “So we bring Sam here, and it expands his memory-what’s the catch?”
Her lips pressed together again. “Without bonding to the library itself, the effects wouldn’t be permanent. The minute Sam left the library, he would be back in the same position he found himself in before.”
“Bonding to the library-”
“The library needs a keeper. If it chooses Sam, he will be able to live within the walls, tend to the books, and regain himself again. But he will not be able to leave-and once you leave, you will not remember that he ever existed.”
“So my options here are watch Sam go slowly insane, or forget that he was ever born.”
“Essentially, yes.”
Bobby was really starting to wish that he would learn not to ask when it came to these things. “Dean would never let it happen.”
“Dean would never even realize that there is something to miss,” she replied, moving forward and letting her fingers brush against the spine of one of the books. “There may be some residual psychic memory, similar to losing a limb, but after a while-he wouldn’t even remember having a brother. In fact-he might find himself in quite a different world.” She picked her fingers up off the corner, and brushed the dust from them. “The entire world corrects itself, Bobby. Almost like a domino effect.”
Bobby wasn’t sure what to make of this scenario. “Ain’t my decision to make. I’ll bring it up to them and see what they think.”
She shrugged. “You have three days before the library changes hands. I suggest that if you want to save Sam, you talk fast.”
A second later, he was standing back in his living room again, surrounded by books that held no answers and larger decisions weighing on his mind. In the end, there was only one question that mattered:
What was more important-saving Sam, or remembering him?
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Title: Loveable Basset Hound Seeks Friendly Shi-Tzu
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modern Bestiary
Word Count: 480
“I think he’s lonely.”
There was something to be said for the state of their lives when sitting on the back porch of her house, watching the basset hound in the next yard over stood for a normal date. The actual date that Buffy had had planned for the evening had involved dinner, a nice dress, and possibly a movie, but that had all been shot down horribly when a demon decided to crash the date before it even started.
Her dress was ruined, dinner had consisted of cold pizza from the fridge, and the movie of the evening was Louie, sitting in his dog house and looking very, very sad.
“He’s a basset hound, Buffy. I don’t think he has any other expression.”
There was something to be said for Riley’s predictability. She loved that she didn’t have to be the normal one in their relationship. He may be involved in the supernatural, but he wasn’t supernatural, and that meant that she could do things that normal girls did. Like create feelings for dogs that didn’t even belong to her.
“Point. But I think he even looks lonely for a basset hound. Things just haven’t been the same since the Winstons moved.”
“Is that so?”
Her head was resting against his shoulder as she pulled in closer, and nodded. “He had such a thing for Snowflake. Whenever she walked past the house, he perked up like it was the mailman.”
“Huh.” His arm curled a little bit, pulling her in closer, and he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Guess he’ll just have to find another girlfriend.”
“Guess so.” There was a beat. “I wonder how dogs find girlfriends. Do you think they put out personal ads?”
“I think personal ads are a bit beyond a dogs capability, Buffy.”
“I think it’d be kind of sweet-Loveable Basset Hound seeks friendly Shi-Tzu for play time and companionship. Must love long walks and rawhide bones.”
“Shi-Tzu?”
“Snowflake was on the tiny and fluffy side. I think that’s his type.”
“I see,” he nodded, and then they both lapsed into silence again. There was something about that too, the ability to just let things go and be quiet for a little while. That was nice-even if Buffy couldn’t be quiet a lot of the time. There was at least five minutes of good, solid silence, before he spoke up, pressing his lips to the top of her head again. “I should go. I’ve got an early class tomorrow.”
“’Kay,” she murmured, before looking up at him. “Want me to walk you home? There might still be some spare demons running around.”
He smirked, before leaning in to kiss her. “I think I can figure it out. You should get some sleep.”
She sighed at the kiss, before nodding. “Okay. Be safe.”
“I will. Goodnight, Buffy.”
“Night, Riley.”
Title: Today isn’t That Day
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Unreliable Narrator
Word Count: 657
Burton Guster liked to consider himself an infinitely patient man.
It was a side effect of having a best friend like Shawn Spencer. There was a certain amount of patience that needed to be maintained at all times with Shawn and not want to throttle him. This, as per usual, was one of those times.
“Gus, I can explain.”
That was a phrase Gus had gotten used to hearing many times, and frankly, he didn’t want to hear it again. Not for this particular scenario. Not when he’s faced with something so, so … unthinkable.
“You know how I feel about Ronald McDonald, Shawn.”
“Gus, it was one time when we were five. We’ve met hundreds of nice Ronald McDonalds since the one that showed up drunk to work and trashed your birthday cake.”
“It wasn’t just any birthday cake. It was a cake that my mother had slaved over for hours, and he trashed it by slamming me into it. I never got the icing out of my blue dress shirt.”
“I never understood why you were so dressed up for that party anyway. The Play Place of the Santa Barbara McDonalds is no place for dress shirts and slacks.”
“It was my special day, Shawn. I’m allowed to look nice on my special day.”
“Or your mother forced you into it.”
“Don’t you bring my mother into this.”
“I didn’t mean it in a bad way! You know I love your mother. Even if she doesn’t love me.”
“This isn’t about whether or not you love my mother. This is about why you’re dressed as Ronald McDonald.”
“It’s actually a really great story.”
“Tell me the short version.”
“Why, what’s wrong with the long version?”
“Because when you tell the long version, it’s always ten times more extravagant than you make it out to be. We’ve been friends for over twenty years, Shawn. You don’t have to impress me anymore.”
“But what if I want to impress you? What if I want to dazzle you with my fast paced, fascinating life? Who are you to stop me?”
“Shawn.”
“Come on now, Gus. Don’t be a limp dish rag. It’s a good story.”
“Short. Version.”
Shawn sighed. Audibly. “Chief Vick needed someone to stand in for a sting operation and Lassie wouldn’t do it.”
“And you decided to?”
“I will happen to have you know, that it was my childhood dream to be Ronald McDonald. This case happened to fulfill one of my greatest desires.”
There was a pause. Not a long one as Gus tried to read between the lines, and then shook his head.
“You tried to pass yourself off as the real deal for free hamburgers, didn’t you?”
“Of course not.” A beat. “Maybe, a little, but that was after the operation was completed. I swear-this costume is completely authorized by the SBPD.”
Gus didn’t believe one word of it. He just continued making that face he knew Shawn hated, before his curiosity got the better of him and he had to ask. “Did it work?”
“Not in the slightest. But I probably should have went to a different McDonalds than the one holding the sting.”
Gus just shook his head and started walking away. “Goodbye, Shawn.”
“Wait, Gus! We could totally make this work. I just need you to be my Grimace-”
“Goodbye, Shawn.”
“I swear, you have no sense of adventure.”
And there it was. The challenge to his pride. The button that Shawn knew he could push and get Gus to do whatever he wanted, no matter how insane it was. He turned around to face his best friend again, trying to see through the clown make-up and red wig to the person that was underneath, and-sighed. Audibly.
“One of these days, I’m going to say no.”
“Probably. But aren’t you glad today isn’t that day?”
He sighed again. This was going to be a long day.
Fandom: Original
Title: Perfection
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Word Count: 340
Andrew Westen had grown up in a normal family, with normal goals and aspirations. His father was a leading scientist in the compound, his mother was part of the rotary club. They were well-liked, well-respected, and they expected their little Andy to be the same.
Unfortunately for them, their little Andy had no interest in being perfectly normal.
For Westen, it always flashed back to a picture that hung on the entryway to the family home. It was himself, his mother and his father. He was about sixteen, and they were all dressed in jeans and red tops-your standard holiday family portrait. If you looked closely at it, you could see the cracks in the perfection. Everyone expected him to follow in his perfect father’s footsteps, but really-Westen had no interest in perfection. In fact, he had no interest in science. He didn’t want to be his father in twenty years, with a woman who dotes on him, and a denim clad portrait on his wall. So he did the only thing he could do.
He ran away and he joined the army.
The army was just another machine, but it was a machine he could rebel against. He played by the rules just enough for his COs to see that he was effective, and bent them just enough for them to know he wouldn’t be another cookie cutter soldier for them to shove into their mold. He was still his own man, and he always would be.
He didn’t know why Mason had picked him for his unit, and he never would-Westen wasn’t the type to ask why things happened to him, he just learned to roll with them-but more to the point, he just didn’t care. This unit, this place that he had found himself in, it was where he was meant to be.
It was true perfection, if ever he found it; the kind of perfection he could live with.
For once, it was nice not to see the cracks around the edges.
Fandom: Supernatural
Title: No Easy Answers
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: The Library of Babel
Word Count: 668
Warnings: Spoilers through the end of S6
It was supposed to be a myth.
Bobby Singer came from a world where most myths had some kind of powerful basis in reality, but this-this couldn’t have been real. This was beyond anything that he could have ever realized. The amount of sheer information in this room was a dream come true. There were answers here, answers that they were never supposed to have. He glanced back at the blond woman standing over his shoulder, the angel who had come to him, saying that she had the answers to saving one of his boys, and he had taken it without hesitation.
And she had taken him to the Library of Babel.
And yes, he meant that Babel.
Everyone believed it had been destroyed when the tower was, a tall building containing all the information the world had to offer in one, universally understood language. There had been hints here and there, messages that it’s possible that the library still existed, protected by angels and hidden away from the rest of the world. The properties of the library were infinite, and the magic there-
Bobby knew that if there was a way to fix Sam, this was it.
“I can just-look?”
The angel shook her head. “You don’t need to. The library has healing properties all it’s own.”
“So all we’d have to do is bring Sam here, and he’d be cured.”
She paused for a moment, her lips pressing together before she continued. “The problem with Sam is that there is too much for his memory to handle. His soul spent one hundred eighty years in Lucifer’s cage, and a human memory isn’t meant to hold that much information. He’s forgetting himself, and only remembering who he became when he was tortured.”
“So how does the library fix that?”
“The library is a collection of all the knowledge the world has to offer. Here nothing is ever forgotten, nothing is ever lost. You are already seeing it yourself.”
He was. His brain was filling in the answers before she finished the question. “So we bring Sam here, and it expands his memory-what’s the catch?”
Her lips pressed together again. “Without bonding to the library itself, the effects wouldn’t be permanent. The minute Sam left the library, he would be back in the same position he found himself in before.”
“Bonding to the library-”
“The library needs a keeper. If it chooses Sam, he will be able to live within the walls, tend to the books, and regain himself again. But he will not be able to leave-and once you leave, you will not remember that he ever existed.”
“So my options here are watch Sam go slowly insane, or forget that he was ever born.”
“Essentially, yes.”
Bobby was really starting to wish that he would learn not to ask when it came to these things. “Dean would never let it happen.”
“Dean would never even realize that there is something to miss,” she replied, moving forward and letting her fingers brush against the spine of one of the books. “There may be some residual psychic memory, similar to losing a limb, but after a while-he wouldn’t even remember having a brother. In fact-he might find himself in quite a different world.” She picked her fingers up off the corner, and brushed the dust from them. “The entire world corrects itself, Bobby. Almost like a domino effect.”
Bobby wasn’t sure what to make of this scenario. “Ain’t my decision to make. I’ll bring it up to them and see what they think.”
She shrugged. “You have three days before the library changes hands. I suggest that if you want to save Sam, you talk fast.”
A second later, he was standing back in his living room again, surrounded by books that held no answers and larger decisions weighing on his mind. In the end, there was only one question that mattered:
What was more important-saving Sam, or remembering him?
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Title: Loveable Basset Hound Seeks Friendly Shi-Tzu
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modern Bestiary
Word Count: 480
“I think he’s lonely.”
There was something to be said for the state of their lives when sitting on the back porch of her house, watching the basset hound in the next yard over stood for a normal date. The actual date that Buffy had had planned for the evening had involved dinner, a nice dress, and possibly a movie, but that had all been shot down horribly when a demon decided to crash the date before it even started.
Her dress was ruined, dinner had consisted of cold pizza from the fridge, and the movie of the evening was Louie, sitting in his dog house and looking very, very sad.
“He’s a basset hound, Buffy. I don’t think he has any other expression.”
There was something to be said for Riley’s predictability. She loved that she didn’t have to be the normal one in their relationship. He may be involved in the supernatural, but he wasn’t supernatural, and that meant that she could do things that normal girls did. Like create feelings for dogs that didn’t even belong to her.
“Point. But I think he even looks lonely for a basset hound. Things just haven’t been the same since the Winstons moved.”
“Is that so?”
Her head was resting against his shoulder as she pulled in closer, and nodded. “He had such a thing for Snowflake. Whenever she walked past the house, he perked up like it was the mailman.”
“Huh.” His arm curled a little bit, pulling her in closer, and he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Guess he’ll just have to find another girlfriend.”
“Guess so.” There was a beat. “I wonder how dogs find girlfriends. Do you think they put out personal ads?”
“I think personal ads are a bit beyond a dogs capability, Buffy.”
“I think it’d be kind of sweet-Loveable Basset Hound seeks friendly Shi-Tzu for play time and companionship. Must love long walks and rawhide bones.”
“Shi-Tzu?”
“Snowflake was on the tiny and fluffy side. I think that’s his type.”
“I see,” he nodded, and then they both lapsed into silence again. There was something about that too, the ability to just let things go and be quiet for a little while. That was nice-even if Buffy couldn’t be quiet a lot of the time. There was at least five minutes of good, solid silence, before he spoke up, pressing his lips to the top of her head again. “I should go. I’ve got an early class tomorrow.”
“’Kay,” she murmured, before looking up at him. “Want me to walk you home? There might still be some spare demons running around.”
He smirked, before leaning in to kiss her. “I think I can figure it out. You should get some sleep.”
She sighed at the kiss, before nodding. “Okay. Be safe.”
“I will. Goodnight, Buffy.”
“Night, Riley.”