flavour of the day, blueberry cheesecake and strawberry shortcake with lots of fresh fruit
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Potential
Rating: PG
Challenge: FOTD: longueur, Strawberry Shortcake #19: go the distance, Blueberry Cheesecake #30: go for broke
Toppings/Extras: fresh peaches, fresh strawberries, fresh blueberries, fresh pineapple, whipped cream
Wordcount: 1,389
Summary: Isaac Prowse nearly gives up. Edward Ashdown is nearly nice.
Notes: All of today’s daily prompts came together and pointed to Isaac while mouthing, ‘Write this.’ Longueur: a dull and tedious passage in a book, play, musical composition or the like. Peaches: Your strong will and desire to be appreciated get in your way. Strawberries: New York Library. Blueberries: Climbing the dusty hill, some fair effigies that once stood for symbols of human destiny have been broken; those I still have with me show defects in this broad light. Yet enough is left, even by experience, to point directly to the glories of that destiny; faint, but not to be mistaken streaks of the future day. Pineapple: ‘Born This Way’-Lady GaGa.
Hate this place, Isaac Prowse thought to himself, uncorking the bottle of whiskey he’d lodged in the wall. Hate this life.
Working for the frighteningly shrewd child that he now called his boss was wearing him down. It had only been a week and he was already drinking more than he’d done even straight after Charlie had died. Shit-had he just thought of Charlie again? He knocked back some of the whiskey, creamy fire down his throat straight to his belly. Cheap stuff but not foul.
What’s the point? he kept thinking. He was miserable and there wasn’t even anyone around to notice he was miserable. That was a bad way to be. Some of the staff were all right, but ‘all right’ didn’t really cut it and it was clear that none of them were that fond of him. The ones that knew where he’d come from turned their noses up-not that he blamed them-and the ones that didn’t were evidently rather scared of him.
Running a hand through his hair, Prowse leaned his head back against the wall and looked up towards the murky sky. It was one of those days when the clouds were impossible to pick from the sky, so seamlessly embedded in endless layers of dreary grey.
He wasn’t that sure how old he was now, but he suspected it was somewhere in the middle of his twenties. What was he doing here? He’d always assumed that by now he would have found some niche or other-one aside from knifeplay, that is. And maybe he’d be married or something stupid like that.
The time had come. He’d hit that glass ceiling so hard he’d practically fractured his skull. Even being some teenage brat’s dogsbody was proving too hard for him.
He blinked and looked up from the bottle in his hands, black-brown eyes dull.
Speaking of the bloody devil…
Master Ashdown was giving him that hard look he did sometimes, filled with scrutiny and judgment. Gawky little shite, Prowse thought, more out of spite than anything else. Ashdown was… polite. Usually. He was just-unbearable in every other way. His young master took a few steps towards him across the courtyard, eyes gleaming beneath blonde, scarcely-visible lashes.
“Drinking again, Mr Prowse?” he asked lightly.
What do you sodding think?
“Yes,” Prowse replied sullenly. “Sir.”
Ashdown said nothing for a moment, simply taking up position as an observer. It bothered Prowse hopelessly. He lifted the bottle, halted, and dropped it back to his hip.
“D’you want some?” he found himself asking banally.
“Er-no, thank you,” Ashdown said. He cleared his throat; a dainty, genteel little sound, not like the gut-wrenching coughs and hacks Prowse had been listening to all of his life, heralding early death from some pestilence or other. “There’s nothing forcing you to stay, you know,” he continued. “I made you a job offer and you took it.”
That was another thing Prowse couldn’t stand about Ashdown. He always seemed to know exactly what was going through his mind. If a man couldn’t have privacy in his own head, where in the world could he have privacy?
Unsure of what to say, Prowse fiddled with the rim of the bottle.
“What, exactly, is the problem?”
Had Ashdown actually noticed something about someone other than himself? That couldn’t be right. Prowse glanced up uncertainly at the seventeen-year-old. He seemed earnest enough and that just made the truth tumble out.
“I don’t belong here. I’m too…” What was he? Too bawdy, too obviously common, too rough around the edges? “Stupid.”
“Oh?”
That was all Ashdown said. He didn’t deny it, didn’t agree nor disagree, didn’t comfort him or offer any sort of opinion. Just… oh. What was he meant to say in reply to that?
“Yes.”
Ashdown pulled his lips slightly to one side, which he always did when he was thinking about something he considered to be rather unimportant but worth a moment’s pause.
“I don’t think you are stupid, Mr Prowse,” he said eventually. It dropped out so casually-probably the only nice thing he’d said to him in the short time they’d known each other. Prowse found himself frowning. He was almost tempted to reply with a biting little ‘oh?’ but decided against it. Just as well. “Your biggest issue, I daresay, is your outlook.”
“My what?”
“Your stance.” Ashdown glanced at him. “Your attitude, Mr Prowse, not your posture. If I may say so, you are not exactly helping yourself.”
That was not what Prowse wanted to hear. Maybe Ashdown was right, maybe he wasn’t approaching it in exactly the right way, but that didn’t help him at all. It just enforced the feeling that he really shouldn’t be amongst the finery and pomp of Ashdown’s townhouse, the secrecy and intrigue of his business deals. He didn’t understand what happened at the Royal Exchange on all of those visits, didn’t understand why Ashdown stood on the wharfs and docks of the Thames counting the ships sailing in and out.
Prowse didn’t like not understanding things. It made him itch under his skin. He used to be the smart one. In all honesty, he still felt like the sensible one, but that wasn’t the same thing.
“If you want teaching, I’ll teach you,” Ashdown said, stern voice cutting through his thoughts. “But you really must stop moping about this way. In case you cannot remember, I am the teenager out of the two of us.”
Of course Prowse remembered. He remembered every bloody day that his boss had barely crawled out of the cradle.
“You’ll teach me what?” Prowse asked, a little suspiciously.
“What you want to learn,” Ashdown said primly. “Though I do expect you to try, Mr Prowse. I expect you to try very hard.”
He could have walked just then. He knew that Ashdown would have looked vaguely disappointed and then waved him out of his garden forever without any fuss at all. He knew that he could have been sliding around in London’s foggy web within the hour. There were still people he knew, still some places he could go.
Nonetheless, he hesitated.
Books were on his mind. Prowse had always liked books. There seemed to be something in them, both in substance and in essence, that was a little bit magical. Books knew a lot of things that he didn’t, but unlike Ashdown they were never smug or superior about it.
Books were just books.
He hadn’t quite told Ashdown that he couldn’t read.
Actually, he may have gone as far as lying about it.
He’d memorised some shapes, like Victoria Street and Hammersmith Road, but they were still pictorial in his mind, drawings as opposed to linguistic tools. Rs looked like Ps to him, and lower-case Gs made no sense at all. He thought that people had to be remarkably smart to remember the shapes of all of those words.
He realised that he was absent-mindedly chewing on one of his thumbnails.
“Can you make me clever?”
Ashdown arched an eyebrow.
“I can make you educated,” he replied. “Or rather, I can attempt to.”
And despite the debt he knew he would carry in his mind forever, Prowse knew that this was the best he could ask for. Once he learned things-once he knew things-he was certain that there would be some kind of change. He wouldn’t feel so crude and awkward and clumsy all the time, maybe he’d even be able to talk to people on occasion.
Maybe he’d be clever.
“Thank you,” was all he could think to say, a little numbly.
“I know it isn’t your…” Ashdown hesitated and then halted altogether, gaze dropping away. Slowly, he shook his head. Though curious about what he was about to say, Prowse said nothing. “This evening, then,” he finally said. “In the library, once you have finished your jobs for the day.”
“O’course…”
Ashdown rubbed his jaw distractedly. Bizarrely, Prowse found himself wondering if the boy was even shaving yet. Probably not.
“I wouldn’t have gone to the effort of hiring you if I didn’t think you had potential,” Ashdown finally said, just a little blandly. With that, he turned and strolled away.
Prowse had no idea what ‘potential’ meant but he was very glad he had it.
Title: Potential
Rating: PG
Challenge: FOTD: longueur, Strawberry Shortcake #19: go the distance, Blueberry Cheesecake #30: go for broke
Toppings/Extras: fresh peaches, fresh strawberries, fresh blueberries, fresh pineapple, whipped cream
Wordcount: 1,389
Summary: Isaac Prowse nearly gives up. Edward Ashdown is nearly nice.
Notes: All of today’s daily prompts came together and pointed to Isaac while mouthing, ‘Write this.’ Longueur: a dull and tedious passage in a book, play, musical composition or the like. Peaches: Your strong will and desire to be appreciated get in your way. Strawberries: New York Library. Blueberries: Climbing the dusty hill, some fair effigies that once stood for symbols of human destiny have been broken; those I still have with me show defects in this broad light. Yet enough is left, even by experience, to point directly to the glories of that destiny; faint, but not to be mistaken streaks of the future day. Pineapple: ‘Born This Way’-Lady GaGa.
Hate this place, Isaac Prowse thought to himself, uncorking the bottle of whiskey he’d lodged in the wall. Hate this life.
Working for the frighteningly shrewd child that he now called his boss was wearing him down. It had only been a week and he was already drinking more than he’d done even straight after Charlie had died. Shit-had he just thought of Charlie again? He knocked back some of the whiskey, creamy fire down his throat straight to his belly. Cheap stuff but not foul.
What’s the point? he kept thinking. He was miserable and there wasn’t even anyone around to notice he was miserable. That was a bad way to be. Some of the staff were all right, but ‘all right’ didn’t really cut it and it was clear that none of them were that fond of him. The ones that knew where he’d come from turned their noses up-not that he blamed them-and the ones that didn’t were evidently rather scared of him.
Running a hand through his hair, Prowse leaned his head back against the wall and looked up towards the murky sky. It was one of those days when the clouds were impossible to pick from the sky, so seamlessly embedded in endless layers of dreary grey.
He wasn’t that sure how old he was now, but he suspected it was somewhere in the middle of his twenties. What was he doing here? He’d always assumed that by now he would have found some niche or other-one aside from knifeplay, that is. And maybe he’d be married or something stupid like that.
The time had come. He’d hit that glass ceiling so hard he’d practically fractured his skull. Even being some teenage brat’s dogsbody was proving too hard for him.
He blinked and looked up from the bottle in his hands, black-brown eyes dull.
Speaking of the bloody devil…
Master Ashdown was giving him that hard look he did sometimes, filled with scrutiny and judgment. Gawky little shite, Prowse thought, more out of spite than anything else. Ashdown was… polite. Usually. He was just-unbearable in every other way. His young master took a few steps towards him across the courtyard, eyes gleaming beneath blonde, scarcely-visible lashes.
“Drinking again, Mr Prowse?” he asked lightly.
What do you sodding think?
“Yes,” Prowse replied sullenly. “Sir.”
Ashdown said nothing for a moment, simply taking up position as an observer. It bothered Prowse hopelessly. He lifted the bottle, halted, and dropped it back to his hip.
“D’you want some?” he found himself asking banally.
“Er-no, thank you,” Ashdown said. He cleared his throat; a dainty, genteel little sound, not like the gut-wrenching coughs and hacks Prowse had been listening to all of his life, heralding early death from some pestilence or other. “There’s nothing forcing you to stay, you know,” he continued. “I made you a job offer and you took it.”
That was another thing Prowse couldn’t stand about Ashdown. He always seemed to know exactly what was going through his mind. If a man couldn’t have privacy in his own head, where in the world could he have privacy?
Unsure of what to say, Prowse fiddled with the rim of the bottle.
“What, exactly, is the problem?”
Had Ashdown actually noticed something about someone other than himself? That couldn’t be right. Prowse glanced up uncertainly at the seventeen-year-old. He seemed earnest enough and that just made the truth tumble out.
“I don’t belong here. I’m too…” What was he? Too bawdy, too obviously common, too rough around the edges? “Stupid.”
“Oh?”
That was all Ashdown said. He didn’t deny it, didn’t agree nor disagree, didn’t comfort him or offer any sort of opinion. Just… oh. What was he meant to say in reply to that?
“Yes.”
Ashdown pulled his lips slightly to one side, which he always did when he was thinking about something he considered to be rather unimportant but worth a moment’s pause.
“I don’t think you are stupid, Mr Prowse,” he said eventually. It dropped out so casually-probably the only nice thing he’d said to him in the short time they’d known each other. Prowse found himself frowning. He was almost tempted to reply with a biting little ‘oh?’ but decided against it. Just as well. “Your biggest issue, I daresay, is your outlook.”
“My what?”
“Your stance.” Ashdown glanced at him. “Your attitude, Mr Prowse, not your posture. If I may say so, you are not exactly helping yourself.”
That was not what Prowse wanted to hear. Maybe Ashdown was right, maybe he wasn’t approaching it in exactly the right way, but that didn’t help him at all. It just enforced the feeling that he really shouldn’t be amongst the finery and pomp of Ashdown’s townhouse, the secrecy and intrigue of his business deals. He didn’t understand what happened at the Royal Exchange on all of those visits, didn’t understand why Ashdown stood on the wharfs and docks of the Thames counting the ships sailing in and out.
Prowse didn’t like not understanding things. It made him itch under his skin. He used to be the smart one. In all honesty, he still felt like the sensible one, but that wasn’t the same thing.
“If you want teaching, I’ll teach you,” Ashdown said, stern voice cutting through his thoughts. “But you really must stop moping about this way. In case you cannot remember, I am the teenager out of the two of us.”
Of course Prowse remembered. He remembered every bloody day that his boss had barely crawled out of the cradle.
“You’ll teach me what?” Prowse asked, a little suspiciously.
“What you want to learn,” Ashdown said primly. “Though I do expect you to try, Mr Prowse. I expect you to try very hard.”
He could have walked just then. He knew that Ashdown would have looked vaguely disappointed and then waved him out of his garden forever without any fuss at all. He knew that he could have been sliding around in London’s foggy web within the hour. There were still people he knew, still some places he could go.
Nonetheless, he hesitated.
Books were on his mind. Prowse had always liked books. There seemed to be something in them, both in substance and in essence, that was a little bit magical. Books knew a lot of things that he didn’t, but unlike Ashdown they were never smug or superior about it.
Books were just books.
He hadn’t quite told Ashdown that he couldn’t read.
Actually, he may have gone as far as lying about it.
He’d memorised some shapes, like Victoria Street and Hammersmith Road, but they were still pictorial in his mind, drawings as opposed to linguistic tools. Rs looked like Ps to him, and lower-case Gs made no sense at all. He thought that people had to be remarkably smart to remember the shapes of all of those words.
He realised that he was absent-mindedly chewing on one of his thumbnails.
“Can you make me clever?”
Ashdown arched an eyebrow.
“I can make you educated,” he replied. “Or rather, I can attempt to.”
And despite the debt he knew he would carry in his mind forever, Prowse knew that this was the best he could ask for. Once he learned things-once he knew things-he was certain that there would be some kind of change. He wouldn’t feel so crude and awkward and clumsy all the time, maybe he’d even be able to talk to people on occasion.
Maybe he’d be clever.
“Thank you,” was all he could think to say, a little numbly.
“I know it isn’t your…” Ashdown hesitated and then halted altogether, gaze dropping away. Slowly, he shook his head. Though curious about what he was about to say, Prowse said nothing. “This evening, then,” he finally said. “In the library, once you have finished your jobs for the day.”
“O’course…”
Ashdown rubbed his jaw distractedly. Bizarrely, Prowse found himself wondering if the boy was even shaving yet. Probably not.
“I wouldn’t have gone to the effort of hiring you if I didn’t think you had potential,” Ashdown finally said, just a little blandly. With that, he turned and strolled away.
Prowse had no idea what ‘potential’ meant but he was very glad he had it.