Asking: Writing Through the Disinterest
I'm in a weird writing slump right now. It's not that I'm feeling uncreative. In the past few days I have written in my head:
A Brendon/Spencer space AU. Pete sends Spencer off to the ends of nowhere to fetch someone with whom Patrick has been corresponding about theory. Brendon (the someone) is really, really in the middle of nowhere and Spencer's ship is damaged getting to the planet. (Gabe is Spencer's ship's computer. The salesman told him that it gave the ship personality, but Spencer knows that's part of why he got the ship for so cheap.) Brendon tells Spencer he's been Cast Out.
"But no one's been Cast Out in centuries."
Brendon shrugs. "I was."
But Brendon is who Patrick's been corresponding with, and Spencer can see why when he works on Singing his ship back together.
Spencer asks Gabe to dig up what he can about someone being Cast Out.
"It's not even a whisper of a rumor," Gabe says. He's put himself on the screen, and he looks uncharacteristically serious. "It was hidden in one of my subroutines. It says that the Emperor's youngest son didn't join a secretive religious order, but was Cast Out instead."
With a sinking sense of dread, Spencer asks, "Do you have a picture?"
Gabe splits the screen, himself on one side and Brendon - younger, clean-shaven, and wearing contacts, but unmistakably Brendon - on the other. While Spencer is mentally cursing Pete - because Pete had to know, that has to be the real reason he sent Spencer, not just to get him out of there - Brendon comes onto the ship and sees himself up on the screen. There's an argument.
Brendon spits out, "You get to know all my secrets and I don't get to know yours?"
Spencer, over Gabe's protestations, sets the code that will cause the ship to self-destruct if anyone makes a serious attempt to hack it.
"What's to stop someone from getting you to override it?"
"I don't know the override code," Spencer answers. "I don't even know who has it." But once that's done, once he knows that even if this is the wrong approach he won't take down the whole revolution, he tells Brendon almost everything: about the revolution, about how they've been fighting to depose the imperial family, about how if Brendon will come back with him and join them, they'll be able to do it and put him in power instead.
"Why send you?" Brendon asks.
"Because he wanted me to do something useful," Spencer spits out. "And to get me out of the way because Ryan hates me." After some prodding: "I went on a mission with the two people he loves most in the world, Jon and Z." He stops there.
"And what? You slept with his girlfriend? Or his boyfriend?"
"No," Spencer grits out. "I came back and they didn't."
There's a possibility that they're still alive somewhere, but Spencer's not sure he believes it.
Anyway, Brendon packs up and goes back with him. Brendon is always Singing, things Spencer remembers from when he and Ryan were children, things he's never heard before, sometimes just wordless notes. Spencer lies on the deck and listens to Brendon harmonize with the hum of the ship.
The first thing he sees when he gets off his ship when they get back is Ryan coming to hug him tight.
"I'm sorry," Spencer says, like he has a million times before.
"I'm sorry," Ryan says. "They chose to go. It wasn't your fault. And when we win, we'll have access to the Imperial Records, and we'll get them back."
Spencer remembers, while they're all standing around on the dock, to mention that he set the self-destruct code going. Patrick, of course, is the one who Sings the override code.
Then Brendon goes off with Pete and Patrick and Spencer gets used to the way things always were, missions and working with Ryan and all of it.
There are new Songs, Brendon's voice with Patrick's twining around it, broadcast outside the Empire's control and working to Sing the Empire together again.
Eventually there is the final showdown. Spencer's there when Brendon, Pete, and Patrick march into the throne room. Kara leaves their family and comes to stand with Brendon, but they arrest the rest of the family.
It's Kara, not Brendon or Pete, who signs the execution order. It's done publicly: there can be no doubt. Brendon doesn't attend, and Spencer goes to find him. There is probably more to this scene, but it ends with:
Brendon puts his hands on either side of Spencer's face. "I don't want to Sing the Empire back together if I can't Sing to you too."
"I'm always listening," Spencer says. He puts his own hands on Brendon.
Brendon Sings one note of pure joy before they're kissing.
In the epilogue, someone comms Spencer to let him know Ryan's on his way back in and he's asked for medical. Spencer races his way to the docks to meet him, and Ryan carefully brings down a panting and white-faced Z, Jon just behind them. Neither Z nor Jon has been getting enough to eat, and it makes the swell of Z's belly look almost obscene.
Spencer has to stop and stare, because surely it hasn't been that long.
"It's mine," Ryan says, "or Jon's. Ours."
Spencer goes with them in the medical transport, and it's while watching Z grit her way through a contraction that he comms Brendon. "How would you like to Sing a baby into the world?"
Brendon's delighted because it's something he's never gotten to do, and he meets them there and Sings the baby into the world.
"Charlotte," Z says when she's asked for the baby's name. "She never got to see the end of the war, but this one will live in a new world."
Later, Z says something tart about Spencer's friends, and only then realizes who Brendon is. "Your Majesty-"
"No," Brendon says. "To you I'm only Brendon." He reaches out a hand that Spencer takes without looking away from his face. "Just Spencer's Brendon."
*
The beginnings of a Mike/Emma/Gabe story. Emma brings Mike copies of The Ethical Slut and The Threesome Handbook: A Practical Guide to Sleeping With Three."
"I have a well-worn harness that says you're not opposed to having sex with another man."
She's enough for him, but Mike's mouth does water at the thought of a flesh and blood cock.
He reads the books and thinks about it and eventually asks, "Did you have someone in mind?"
"Yes."
"Not someone from my band."
She laughs. "No, not your band."
He spends a moment being horrified by the implications of that - he respects Jared as a musician, but he doesn't want to sleep with him - before Emma takes pity on him.
"Not my band either. But you're going to have to ask him. You know him better."
"Who?"
"Gabe."
At some point, Mike calls Bill and tells him Emma wants to have a threesome.
"I hope you're not inviting me, because you know I'm straight. And married."
"I know."
Bill is Bill and makes some obnoxious comment that makes Mike hang up on him. Bill calls right back and admits to being a jerk and they talk for a while longer. Then Mike does what he should have done in the first place and calls Adam.
Adam's always very cheerful, and he just hmms when Mike tells him. "Do you want to have a threesome?"
That's the question, he supposes, and the next time he hears Gabe's going to be in town, he invites him out to lunch.
Gabe, when Mike gets around to telling him that Emma wants to have a threesome, says, "Why, Mike Carden, are you propositioning me?" He's clearly joking, but when Mike doesn't say anything, he seems to get that maybe Mike is.
They leave the restaurant and go for a walk on the beach. It's crowded, but not as much as the restaurant, and they don't have to look at each other.
"I never knew you were into guys."
Mike shrugs. "Yeah."
And then there are a bunch of people that Gabe never knew Mike slept with. Eventually he gets to, "Did you have a bad breakup with Pete? Is that why he doesn't like you very much?"
"Pete's only gay above the waist."
Gabe snickers. "Did you hit on him to find that out?"
"No. I always knew that."
"You're avoiding the subject."
Mike sighs. "It wasn't Pete and I who broke up." For a smart guy, Gabe is being really dumb and he has to spell it out: "Patrick broke up with me, but you know Pete. He blames me anyway."
Gabe just says, "Huh."
Somehow this leads to a threesome, but I don't really know how.
*
The beginning of a Mike/William space AU. Mike goes to Pete's, because that's where you go when you're on planet, especially if you need a job. Pete has one of the dancing girls perched on his knee and a stupidly pretty guy across from him.
"Perfect!" Pete crows when Mike says he's looking for a new gig. "William here needs a new first mate."
William is apparently the stupidly pretty guy. Mike eyes him up. "You have a ship?"
"I have an excellent ship." William bristles. It's cute, like a wet kitten.
"Sure thing, Princess. Pete, you got any other ideas?"
"No, no," Pete says with the rapt look he usually gets watching the dancing girls. "This is perfect."
"It's William," William says. "Or Captain Beckett. Or Bill." He seems less certain about the last one. "Not Princess."
"Pete," Patrick snaps, interrupting, "stop distracting my staff."
"Now, Pattycakes, don't be like that." Pete manages to be sincerely conciliatory in Patrick's direction while also sliding his hand up the dancing girl's skirt. "Ashlee and I are just talking."
"Pete," Patrick warns.
The girl giggles suddenly, and turns to catch Pete's mouth in a quick kiss. "You're going to see me later anyway." She hops off his lap and goes somewhere else with Patrick.
I have no idea what else would happen except that Gabe gets away with calling William "Kitten."
*
Other things that I no longer remember. (Really, I'm sure I was writing other things in my head this week, but I don't remember them anymore.)
But every time I sit down to edit book one or work on writing book two or the Leighton/Vicky-T story, I just don't want to. I end up reading fic (I will apparently read anything about Bob) or browsing the internet or poking at the never finished things I'm going to post this month. I think part of it is that while I'm invested in finishing the books and the Leighton/Vicky-T story, I'm not extremely passionate about them as stories. (The way I am with, say, the things above.) (Especially since the Leighton/Vicky-T story took an unexpected turn for the dark.) I don't know if I need an organized break from my large projects or if I need something new in my life to kickstart my brain. Any advice or ideas for writing through the disinterest?
A Brendon/Spencer space AU. Pete sends Spencer off to the ends of nowhere to fetch someone with whom Patrick has been corresponding about theory. Brendon (the someone) is really, really in the middle of nowhere and Spencer's ship is damaged getting to the planet. (Gabe is Spencer's ship's computer. The salesman told him that it gave the ship personality, but Spencer knows that's part of why he got the ship for so cheap.) Brendon tells Spencer he's been Cast Out.
"But no one's been Cast Out in centuries."
Brendon shrugs. "I was."
But Brendon is who Patrick's been corresponding with, and Spencer can see why when he works on Singing his ship back together.
Spencer asks Gabe to dig up what he can about someone being Cast Out.
"It's not even a whisper of a rumor," Gabe says. He's put himself on the screen, and he looks uncharacteristically serious. "It was hidden in one of my subroutines. It says that the Emperor's youngest son didn't join a secretive religious order, but was Cast Out instead."
With a sinking sense of dread, Spencer asks, "Do you have a picture?"
Gabe splits the screen, himself on one side and Brendon - younger, clean-shaven, and wearing contacts, but unmistakably Brendon - on the other. While Spencer is mentally cursing Pete - because Pete had to know, that has to be the real reason he sent Spencer, not just to get him out of there - Brendon comes onto the ship and sees himself up on the screen. There's an argument.
Brendon spits out, "You get to know all my secrets and I don't get to know yours?"
Spencer, over Gabe's protestations, sets the code that will cause the ship to self-destruct if anyone makes a serious attempt to hack it.
"What's to stop someone from getting you to override it?"
"I don't know the override code," Spencer answers. "I don't even know who has it." But once that's done, once he knows that even if this is the wrong approach he won't take down the whole revolution, he tells Brendon almost everything: about the revolution, about how they've been fighting to depose the imperial family, about how if Brendon will come back with him and join them, they'll be able to do it and put him in power instead.
"Why send you?" Brendon asks.
"Because he wanted me to do something useful," Spencer spits out. "And to get me out of the way because Ryan hates me." After some prodding: "I went on a mission with the two people he loves most in the world, Jon and Z." He stops there.
"And what? You slept with his girlfriend? Or his boyfriend?"
"No," Spencer grits out. "I came back and they didn't."
There's a possibility that they're still alive somewhere, but Spencer's not sure he believes it.
Anyway, Brendon packs up and goes back with him. Brendon is always Singing, things Spencer remembers from when he and Ryan were children, things he's never heard before, sometimes just wordless notes. Spencer lies on the deck and listens to Brendon harmonize with the hum of the ship.
The first thing he sees when he gets off his ship when they get back is Ryan coming to hug him tight.
"I'm sorry," Spencer says, like he has a million times before.
"I'm sorry," Ryan says. "They chose to go. It wasn't your fault. And when we win, we'll have access to the Imperial Records, and we'll get them back."
Spencer remembers, while they're all standing around on the dock, to mention that he set the self-destruct code going. Patrick, of course, is the one who Sings the override code.
Then Brendon goes off with Pete and Patrick and Spencer gets used to the way things always were, missions and working with Ryan and all of it.
There are new Songs, Brendon's voice with Patrick's twining around it, broadcast outside the Empire's control and working to Sing the Empire together again.
Eventually there is the final showdown. Spencer's there when Brendon, Pete, and Patrick march into the throne room. Kara leaves their family and comes to stand with Brendon, but they arrest the rest of the family.
It's Kara, not Brendon or Pete, who signs the execution order. It's done publicly: there can be no doubt. Brendon doesn't attend, and Spencer goes to find him. There is probably more to this scene, but it ends with:
Brendon puts his hands on either side of Spencer's face. "I don't want to Sing the Empire back together if I can't Sing to you too."
"I'm always listening," Spencer says. He puts his own hands on Brendon.
Brendon Sings one note of pure joy before they're kissing.
In the epilogue, someone comms Spencer to let him know Ryan's on his way back in and he's asked for medical. Spencer races his way to the docks to meet him, and Ryan carefully brings down a panting and white-faced Z, Jon just behind them. Neither Z nor Jon has been getting enough to eat, and it makes the swell of Z's belly look almost obscene.
Spencer has to stop and stare, because surely it hasn't been that long.
"It's mine," Ryan says, "or Jon's. Ours."
Spencer goes with them in the medical transport, and it's while watching Z grit her way through a contraction that he comms Brendon. "How would you like to Sing a baby into the world?"
Brendon's delighted because it's something he's never gotten to do, and he meets them there and Sings the baby into the world.
"Charlotte," Z says when she's asked for the baby's name. "She never got to see the end of the war, but this one will live in a new world."
Later, Z says something tart about Spencer's friends, and only then realizes who Brendon is. "Your Majesty-"
"No," Brendon says. "To you I'm only Brendon." He reaches out a hand that Spencer takes without looking away from his face. "Just Spencer's Brendon."
*
The beginnings of a Mike/Emma/Gabe story. Emma brings Mike copies of The Ethical Slut and The Threesome Handbook: A Practical Guide to Sleeping With Three."
"I have a well-worn harness that says you're not opposed to having sex with another man."
She's enough for him, but Mike's mouth does water at the thought of a flesh and blood cock.
He reads the books and thinks about it and eventually asks, "Did you have someone in mind?"
"Yes."
"Not someone from my band."
She laughs. "No, not your band."
He spends a moment being horrified by the implications of that - he respects Jared as a musician, but he doesn't want to sleep with him - before Emma takes pity on him.
"Not my band either. But you're going to have to ask him. You know him better."
"Who?"
"Gabe."
At some point, Mike calls Bill and tells him Emma wants to have a threesome.
"I hope you're not inviting me, because you know I'm straight. And married."
"I know."
Bill is Bill and makes some obnoxious comment that makes Mike hang up on him. Bill calls right back and admits to being a jerk and they talk for a while longer. Then Mike does what he should have done in the first place and calls Adam.
Adam's always very cheerful, and he just hmms when Mike tells him. "Do you want to have a threesome?"
That's the question, he supposes, and the next time he hears Gabe's going to be in town, he invites him out to lunch.
Gabe, when Mike gets around to telling him that Emma wants to have a threesome, says, "Why, Mike Carden, are you propositioning me?" He's clearly joking, but when Mike doesn't say anything, he seems to get that maybe Mike is.
They leave the restaurant and go for a walk on the beach. It's crowded, but not as much as the restaurant, and they don't have to look at each other.
"I never knew you were into guys."
Mike shrugs. "Yeah."
And then there are a bunch of people that Gabe never knew Mike slept with. Eventually he gets to, "Did you have a bad breakup with Pete? Is that why he doesn't like you very much?"
"Pete's only gay above the waist."
Gabe snickers. "Did you hit on him to find that out?"
"No. I always knew that."
"You're avoiding the subject."
Mike sighs. "It wasn't Pete and I who broke up." For a smart guy, Gabe is being really dumb and he has to spell it out: "Patrick broke up with me, but you know Pete. He blames me anyway."
Gabe just says, "Huh."
Somehow this leads to a threesome, but I don't really know how.
*
The beginning of a Mike/William space AU. Mike goes to Pete's, because that's where you go when you're on planet, especially if you need a job. Pete has one of the dancing girls perched on his knee and a stupidly pretty guy across from him.
"Perfect!" Pete crows when Mike says he's looking for a new gig. "William here needs a new first mate."
William is apparently the stupidly pretty guy. Mike eyes him up. "You have a ship?"
"I have an excellent ship." William bristles. It's cute, like a wet kitten.
"Sure thing, Princess. Pete, you got any other ideas?"
"No, no," Pete says with the rapt look he usually gets watching the dancing girls. "This is perfect."
"It's William," William says. "Or Captain Beckett. Or Bill." He seems less certain about the last one. "Not Princess."
"Pete," Patrick snaps, interrupting, "stop distracting my staff."
"Now, Pattycakes, don't be like that." Pete manages to be sincerely conciliatory in Patrick's direction while also sliding his hand up the dancing girl's skirt. "Ashlee and I are just talking."
"Pete," Patrick warns.
The girl giggles suddenly, and turns to catch Pete's mouth in a quick kiss. "You're going to see me later anyway." She hops off his lap and goes somewhere else with Patrick.
I have no idea what else would happen except that Gabe gets away with calling William "Kitten."
*
Other things that I no longer remember. (Really, I'm sure I was writing other things in my head this week, but I don't remember them anymore.)
But every time I sit down to edit book one or work on writing book two or the Leighton/Vicky-T story, I just don't want to. I end up reading fic (I will apparently read anything about Bob) or browsing the internet or poking at the never finished things I'm going to post this month. I think part of it is that while I'm invested in finishing the books and the Leighton/Vicky-T story, I'm not extremely passionate about them as stories. (The way I am with, say, the things above.) (Especially since the Leighton/Vicky-T story took an unexpected turn for the dark.) I don't know if I need an organized break from my large projects or if I need something new in my life to kickstart my brain. Any advice or ideas for writing through the disinterest?