Fic: Drabbles and Original Fiction
I've been battling some serious SAD this winter. Bad enough that I actually went to the doctor on Monday and signed up for Lexapro. Yay me! I wont bore you with all the whiny crap of why I'm so depressed, because really nothing is all that bad.
But, plus side to depressy-ness... depressy-fic! I drabbled The Inside, Firefly and even original fiction (which, I cheated and started out as Danny Love, and then went back and changed the name because I can).
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Title: Run
Author: Rinny
Fandom: The Inside
Word Count: 192
Rating: G
Characters: Danny, team
Prompt Table: Race
They were running.
Feet slamming against the pavement, jacket lapels flapping in the wind, breath puffing white in front of them. Danny brought up the rear, moving only as fast as the slowest team member: Mel this time, her high heels holding her back from top speed and in the back of his mind he wished she’d consider buying sensible shoes.
Paul was out distancing them and Danny mentally urged Mel faster. Heart pounding and gun feeling slippery in his hand.
They’re always running after Locke.
He and Paul and Mel. Even Web, when his machinations get out of hand and even he doesn’t know if they’ll get to her in time.
Danny knows what it’s like to run. To run and run and never get there in time. He dreams about it. About her. The ends of her hair tickling his palm just out of his grasp.
Web knows their secrets, he knows about Holly and he knows Danny didn’t reach her in time. It’s one of many reasons Web likes putting Rebecca front and center. Because Danny has to save her.
He has to save someone.
And so they run.
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Title: The Sharpest Lives
Author: Rinny
Fandom: Firefly
Word Count: 103
Rating: R
Characters: Jayne/River
Notes: Not happy. You have been warned.
He wanted it to be Mal.
But his life never had gone according to plan. It wasn’t Mal at all that came for him and it wasn’t for any reason he deserved.
Death came in a reed thin package with big puppy eyes and a sharp knife. She whispered confusing words and cried big tears as she slid the knife through his ribs and twisted.
He didn’t fight her.
Why, when he knew he couldn’t win?
Why, when that moment was the happiest of his life?
That moment, with his blood on her hands and his name on her lips.
“I love you.”
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Title: First Cut
Author: Rinny
Fandom: Firefly
Word Count: 127
Rating: PG
Characters: Simon
Notes: Kinda medically gory. Very kinda.
Simon didn’t have many secrets. He was too transparent, too easily read, and too cocky to care if anyone knew those things he kept so thinly veiled.
He had one secret and even that maybe wasn’t so much a secret, he was a surgeon, after all. One probably assumed that he got some sort of pleasure from his work.
For him, it was the blood. He liked the feel of it sticking to his fingers, the slippery lubrication of plasma, fibrin, red blood cells and platelets as he worked. The odd conglomeration of cells mixed to the perfect consistency to control the ebb and flow of a single existence.
It was Life.
The blood on his hands was as close to God as Simon Tam ever got.
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Title: Snow Day
Author: Rinny
Fandom: Original Fiction
Word Count: 692
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Maybe my first work of original fiction ever. Like the others, not happy.
It snowed the day of the funeral.
Rick told himself that was the reason no one came. It was too cold. Too messy on the roads to bother with a toddler’s funeral. He swallowed the lump in his throat, looking out through the cemetery covered in angelic white, half expecting to see a straggler coming to join him.
The babysitter, his sister, the clergyman, a neighbor, a co-worker. Someone.
Anyone to come and stand by his side as he buried his flawed little boy into the frozen ground.
He knelt over the headstone, his frozen fingers nerveless as he pushed the snow from the headstone.
James Randall Poole.
September 21, 2000 - January 4, 2004.
“Beauty is on the inside.”
The crunch of snow came as a surprise and he turned, rising to his feet when he saw Angela approaching. The snow clung to her curls of dark hair, and she held her arms wrapped tight around the gray peacoat she wore. Her eyes were the same blue he remembered looking into every day for the last three years.
“You came.”
“Of course I came,” she turned her back to the wind, shivering as she eyed the miniature coffin that held their son.
“There’s no ‘of course’,” he growled, but even that was hollow. “You walked away the day he was born. Why should his death mean anything now? Are you really here to say goodbye to the child you rejected out of the womb? Are you going to beg forgiveness over his body and weep pretty tears over a life taken too soon?”
“Don’t,” she choked. “Don’t be like that, Rick.”
“You wouldn’t even touch him, Angela,” he reminded her. “We created a child, we loved him from the moment he was conceived. Tell me, Angela. Tell me how that love can just go away in a second. And tell me,” he breathed, “Tell me how you can dare show your face here and pretend like you ever cared.”
“You know how I… he was disfigured, Rick.” She swallowed, her voice thick in the cold.
“He wasn’t!” He growled, “He was perfect. He was beautiful. He was smart and affectionate and the funniest little guy-“
“I couldn’t deal with it,” she said firmly when his voice broke. “I just couldn’t. I’m sorry, but… you did fine without me.”
“How the fuck would you know?” he swiped a hand beneath his eye.
“I know because you were at the hospital for the first five months of his life. Every day you went and saw him and held him and-- I know because you divorced me rather than give him up for adoption. I know because you loved him enough for both of us.”
“He was worth it,” Rick whispered. “All of it.” He glanced at her, “Even you. Especially you.”
She nodded, “I never…”
“You never what?” he sighed tiredly, awaiting the platitudes he’d come to expect in the last three days, plus whatever ridiculousness she chose to spout to absolve herself of abandoning her husband and newborn almost three and a half years ago.
“Nothing,” she finally exhaled, shaking her head. “Nothing.”
She reached out and squeezed his hand once before turning and walking away, her figure blurring into the white of the snow .
Rick stayed.
The cold grew numbing and he stopped feeling it. As long as he stood there it wasn’t real.
It wasn't real and he would go home, and Jamie would be there, taking a running leap and wrapping tiny legs around his waist and jabbering in toddler-speak about his day. That he would draw up another bath with Mr. Squish and rub a wash cloth over the massive leathery skin that covered three-quarters of his son’s back and legs. That he would read Goodnight Moon with Jamie curled trustingly on his chest with his thumb tucked into his mouth and “One more time, Daddy.”
The lump in his throat began to ache and he closed his eyes, letting it break free in a sob, his shoulders shaking. They cut tracks down his cheeks and burned in his eyes.
“Goodbye, baby. Goodbye.”