Writers30days dump
Woww. One fic in twenty-four days and then ten more in one day. I might actually finish on time. Explanation is here. Evan=Jack. The overall rating is probably PG-13.
----
Journal Entry
Evan isn’t really one to go snooping about and reading people’s diaries, but neither does he try particularly hard to resist temptation when Janson leaves his lying on the bed of the twentieth century Earth motel room they’ve rented for the week. Evan wonders why he doesn’t just record it on his manipulator - it’s more private, with voice locks and code breaks and all sorts of things - but he can sort of see the appeal of a pen and paper. Very retro.
He checks for booby traps and picks the book up off the bed, thumbing through the stiff pages until he finds Janson’s chaotic scrawl across a blank page about halfway in.
GOTCHA.
Dropping the book, he looks down to discover that his hands are now covered in messy black ink. Janson laughs from the bathroom.
*
Writer's Choice 1
Every guy in the Agency has a history. None of them are good. Why else would anyone be insane enough to sign up for paradoxes and time loops and having sex with a hot chick from the future before finding out she’s actually your granddaughter?
They all choose their own names, too. Some people change it with every mission, some people like to stick with just one. Usually, they’re running away from something, a past they want to forget or a future they can’t bear. That’s probably why the Agency is so appealing - a better past, a better future. Maybe not everything is shit.
Well, Evan thinks, as he’s mucking out stables for his dinner in seventeenth-century France, maybe it is.
*
Song: Say (What You Need to Say)
The words are like Masin fruits from Exeter IV - heavy and bitter on his tongue until he’d do anything to spit them out but he can’t. The Masin fruits are because the locals would probably get offended and cut off his head. The words are because it could create a temporal paradox and quite probably rip a hole in the fabric of the universe. Fuck, he hates time travel.
“I know you’re keeping something from me,” Janson says in the middle of a shootout. Janson thinks the best time for conversation is when guns are being fired. Evan has yet to discover why.
“What makes you think that?” Evan yells over the sound of the AK-53 in his grip.
“I’m not an idiot, kid,” Janson replies calmly, a rifle in each hand as he mows down a line of dark-faced Kec. “Plus, you’re a really bad liar.”
Damn. He’ll have to work on that.
*
Quote: "No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention."- Chuck Palahniuk
He’s going to die.
Fuck. He hasn’t even visited a dozen of the spots on Gartrax 7 Weekly’s “Top 182 Places to Have Sex Before You Kick the Bucket” list yet and he’s going to die.
He feels like he’s missed something. He’s going to go out with guns blazing like he always said he would but he still feels like he hasn’t quite finished what he wanted to yet. His mother is still waiting for him back in Boeshane but that’s not it. He hasn’t found Gray yet, but that’s not it either.
So when Janson swoops in at the last minute and gives him a cheeky, “Should’ve known you’d be the damsel in distress,” Evan grabs him by the collar and crushes their mouths together like there’s no tomorrow (and there isn’t - they’ll be off back home just as soon as they’re finished, which might not be for a long while yet.)
*
Rainy Day
The best part of time travel is that you can skip the days you don’t like. Things going wrong, lack of alcohol/sex/meaning in life (or any combination thereof) get you down and all you have to do is pop off to tomorrow and see how things are going then. Usually Evan skips the rainy days too. He once saw some kids on Boeshane caught in an acid rain shower and he’s never really liked precipitation since.
But every once in a while it’s nice to actually get through a rainy day. If he’s alone sometimes Evan will pretend to race the raindrops on the other side of the windowpane. It’s good, cheap, childish fun, and no hangovers or awkward conversations in the morning.
Less fun is spending a rainy day trapped in a six-foot-square concrete bunker with Janson because the rain shorted out their vortex manipulators, there are soldiers with very sharp teeth and even more powerful guns marching through the streets, and the king has a reward on both their heads.
“They need to make these waterproof,” Janson says, fiddling with the wires in his wrist strap in a vain attempt to get it working again.
“You need to learn to keep your mouth shut.”
“How was I supposed to know what that meant in their language?”
*
Alternate Reality
Somewhere out there there’s a universe where Evan didn’t let go of his brother’s hand. Somewhere out there there’s a universe where Evan’s father is still alive and his mother still remembers how to smile. Somewhere out there there’s a universe where Evan didn’t spend seven years searching the darkest parts of the galaxy for any trace of Gray. Somewhere out there there’s a universe where Evan never ran away and joined the Time Agency, and somewhere out there there’s a universe where Evan and Janson never met.
It’s only when they grapple in sweat-soaked sheets in the dead of night that Evan is glad he’s in this universe, and not any of the others.
*
Light in the Dark
Three weeks.
That’s how long he’s been in the dark, according to the readout on his vortex manipulator. Three weeks, one day, fourteen hours, forty-three minutes, and twelve seconds.
Thirteen seconds now.
(He’d use the manipulator to get out except the circuitry caught a bullet sometime in the struggle and only the basic functions work now.)
That’s how long he’s been in the dark, surviving on his own waste products and whatever moisture he can glean from the leaky corner of the ceiling ten feet over his head. (He’s also on withdrawal from several substances because Janson has his bag. It doesn’t help.)
There’s a light somewhere far off. A light in the dark, he thinks fuzzily, and chuckles. He’s been perpetually fuzzy for about a week and a half now. Or is it longer? He doesn’t remember.
The light flashes and goes away. “Oh,” he says out loud, and some instinctive part of his mind recognizes it as a burst of gunfire. It happens again, and then there’s Janson.
“Evan?” he says, and Evan doesn’t notice that Janson forgot to call him ‘kid’.
*
Stranded
The first thing Evan sees is the canoe, broken nearly in half with a shattered hull on the shore. There’s an arrow scratched in the dirt and a rough approximation of the Agency’s logo beside it. Evan follows it, silently cursing Janson for insisting on taking that stupid wooden death trap instead of using his manipulator like a sensible person.
It takes about a half hour, occasionally finding more arrows scratched in the dirt, before he comes across Janson huddled in front of a miserable little fire that clued Evan in on the fact that either he hadn’t been paying much attention in survival training or that it had been a long time since he’d gone through it.
“Like I said,” Janson says, holding up his burnt-out manipulator. “Waterproof.”
*
Stars
As children, Evan and Gray were like day and night. Evan was grounded, practical. As the eldest son it was his duty to make sure that they could get through any disaster. (They couldn’t.) But Gray wandered, in both body and mind. His dream was to travel the stars like their great-grandparents had done to get there.
The irony isn’t lost on Evan. He takes another gulp of his drink, runs a hand over the machine that could block out the past. All it would take is the touch of a button.
“Everyone has a past, kid,” Janson says, pushing a full glass down the table. “Don’t block it out just ‘cause you’re drunk.”
“And high as a kite,” Evan says, and laughs darkly. “Like the stars.” Like Gray should have been.
*
Gift
Evan looks down at the small, dark-skinned boy. The young native’s hands are stretched out in front of him and clasped in the cupped palms is a small stone, painted with red swirls.
“I think he wants you to take it,” Evan says. “It’s a gift.”
“Right,” Janson says, and takes the stone. The boy smiles nervously and Janson’s lips twitch at the corners in return. The boy seems to take that as acceptance of his offering and a wide grin spreads across his small features. He says something in his own language and scuttles off into the dense forests.
“Cute,” Evan says with a smile.
“Shut up, kid,” Janson says. When he thinks Evan isn’t looking he slips the stone into his pocket, and almost smiles.
----
Journal Entry
Evan isn’t really one to go snooping about and reading people’s diaries, but neither does he try particularly hard to resist temptation when Janson leaves his lying on the bed of the twentieth century Earth motel room they’ve rented for the week. Evan wonders why he doesn’t just record it on his manipulator - it’s more private, with voice locks and code breaks and all sorts of things - but he can sort of see the appeal of a pen and paper. Very retro.
He checks for booby traps and picks the book up off the bed, thumbing through the stiff pages until he finds Janson’s chaotic scrawl across a blank page about halfway in.
GOTCHA.
Dropping the book, he looks down to discover that his hands are now covered in messy black ink. Janson laughs from the bathroom.
*
Writer's Choice 1
Every guy in the Agency has a history. None of them are good. Why else would anyone be insane enough to sign up for paradoxes and time loops and having sex with a hot chick from the future before finding out she’s actually your granddaughter?
They all choose their own names, too. Some people change it with every mission, some people like to stick with just one. Usually, they’re running away from something, a past they want to forget or a future they can’t bear. That’s probably why the Agency is so appealing - a better past, a better future. Maybe not everything is shit.
Well, Evan thinks, as he’s mucking out stables for his dinner in seventeenth-century France, maybe it is.
*
Song: Say (What You Need to Say)
The words are like Masin fruits from Exeter IV - heavy and bitter on his tongue until he’d do anything to spit them out but he can’t. The Masin fruits are because the locals would probably get offended and cut off his head. The words are because it could create a temporal paradox and quite probably rip a hole in the fabric of the universe. Fuck, he hates time travel.
“I know you’re keeping something from me,” Janson says in the middle of a shootout. Janson thinks the best time for conversation is when guns are being fired. Evan has yet to discover why.
“What makes you think that?” Evan yells over the sound of the AK-53 in his grip.
“I’m not an idiot, kid,” Janson replies calmly, a rifle in each hand as he mows down a line of dark-faced Kec. “Plus, you’re a really bad liar.”
Damn. He’ll have to work on that.
*
Quote: "No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention."- Chuck Palahniuk
He’s going to die.
Fuck. He hasn’t even visited a dozen of the spots on Gartrax 7 Weekly’s “Top 182 Places to Have Sex Before You Kick the Bucket” list yet and he’s going to die.
He feels like he’s missed something. He’s going to go out with guns blazing like he always said he would but he still feels like he hasn’t quite finished what he wanted to yet. His mother is still waiting for him back in Boeshane but that’s not it. He hasn’t found Gray yet, but that’s not it either.
So when Janson swoops in at the last minute and gives him a cheeky, “Should’ve known you’d be the damsel in distress,” Evan grabs him by the collar and crushes their mouths together like there’s no tomorrow (and there isn’t - they’ll be off back home just as soon as they’re finished, which might not be for a long while yet.)
*
Rainy Day
The best part of time travel is that you can skip the days you don’t like. Things going wrong, lack of alcohol/sex/meaning in life (or any combination thereof) get you down and all you have to do is pop off to tomorrow and see how things are going then. Usually Evan skips the rainy days too. He once saw some kids on Boeshane caught in an acid rain shower and he’s never really liked precipitation since.
But every once in a while it’s nice to actually get through a rainy day. If he’s alone sometimes Evan will pretend to race the raindrops on the other side of the windowpane. It’s good, cheap, childish fun, and no hangovers or awkward conversations in the morning.
Less fun is spending a rainy day trapped in a six-foot-square concrete bunker with Janson because the rain shorted out their vortex manipulators, there are soldiers with very sharp teeth and even more powerful guns marching through the streets, and the king has a reward on both their heads.
“They need to make these waterproof,” Janson says, fiddling with the wires in his wrist strap in a vain attempt to get it working again.
“You need to learn to keep your mouth shut.”
“How was I supposed to know what that meant in their language?”
*
Alternate Reality
Somewhere out there there’s a universe where Evan didn’t let go of his brother’s hand. Somewhere out there there’s a universe where Evan’s father is still alive and his mother still remembers how to smile. Somewhere out there there’s a universe where Evan didn’t spend seven years searching the darkest parts of the galaxy for any trace of Gray. Somewhere out there there’s a universe where Evan never ran away and joined the Time Agency, and somewhere out there there’s a universe where Evan and Janson never met.
It’s only when they grapple in sweat-soaked sheets in the dead of night that Evan is glad he’s in this universe, and not any of the others.
*
Light in the Dark
Three weeks.
That’s how long he’s been in the dark, according to the readout on his vortex manipulator. Three weeks, one day, fourteen hours, forty-three minutes, and twelve seconds.
Thirteen seconds now.
(He’d use the manipulator to get out except the circuitry caught a bullet sometime in the struggle and only the basic functions work now.)
That’s how long he’s been in the dark, surviving on his own waste products and whatever moisture he can glean from the leaky corner of the ceiling ten feet over his head. (He’s also on withdrawal from several substances because Janson has his bag. It doesn’t help.)
There’s a light somewhere far off. A light in the dark, he thinks fuzzily, and chuckles. He’s been perpetually fuzzy for about a week and a half now. Or is it longer? He doesn’t remember.
The light flashes and goes away. “Oh,” he says out loud, and some instinctive part of his mind recognizes it as a burst of gunfire. It happens again, and then there’s Janson.
“Evan?” he says, and Evan doesn’t notice that Janson forgot to call him ‘kid’.
*
Stranded
The first thing Evan sees is the canoe, broken nearly in half with a shattered hull on the shore. There’s an arrow scratched in the dirt and a rough approximation of the Agency’s logo beside it. Evan follows it, silently cursing Janson for insisting on taking that stupid wooden death trap instead of using his manipulator like a sensible person.
It takes about a half hour, occasionally finding more arrows scratched in the dirt, before he comes across Janson huddled in front of a miserable little fire that clued Evan in on the fact that either he hadn’t been paying much attention in survival training or that it had been a long time since he’d gone through it.
“Like I said,” Janson says, holding up his burnt-out manipulator. “Waterproof.”
*
Stars
As children, Evan and Gray were like day and night. Evan was grounded, practical. As the eldest son it was his duty to make sure that they could get through any disaster. (They couldn’t.) But Gray wandered, in both body and mind. His dream was to travel the stars like their great-grandparents had done to get there.
The irony isn’t lost on Evan. He takes another gulp of his drink, runs a hand over the machine that could block out the past. All it would take is the touch of a button.
“Everyone has a past, kid,” Janson says, pushing a full glass down the table. “Don’t block it out just ‘cause you’re drunk.”
“And high as a kite,” Evan says, and laughs darkly. “Like the stars.” Like Gray should have been.
*
Gift
Evan looks down at the small, dark-skinned boy. The young native’s hands are stretched out in front of him and clasped in the cupped palms is a small stone, painted with red swirls.
“I think he wants you to take it,” Evan says. “It’s a gift.”
“Right,” Janson says, and takes the stone. The boy smiles nervously and Janson’s lips twitch at the corners in return. The boy seems to take that as acceptance of his offering and a wide grin spreads across his small features. He says something in his own language and scuttles off into the dense forests.
“Cute,” Evan says with a smile.
“Shut up, kid,” Janson says. When he thinks Evan isn’t looking he slips the stone into his pocket, and almost smiles.