challenge # 5
um.
Fic-ish:
JC and Lexi are walking, slowly, meditatively, with many more pauses than Baron usually makes. Still the exercise seems to be doing Lexi good; she's stopped to shit three times already, and is beginning to hunch her back like it's time for a fourth. She was definitely cooped up for way too long.
The first few shits were solid, almost hard, but what she deposits now in the grass at the sidewalk's edge is much softer, like a very thick mousse that can just barely hold its shape. Malleable, JC thinks, slipping a fresh plastic bag over his hand and stooping to scoop the shit up, and indeed it smushes easily under the pressure of his fingers, shaping itself to his palm. It's still warm, too, the warmth of Lexi's body not gone from it yet, and barely blunted by the thin plastic.
JC flexes his hand again and studies the yellow tint of the smear at his fingers, deepening through goldenrod and ochre to the warm brown of the mass cupped in his palm. Funny how something is part of your body and then it isn't anymore. Or was it never part of you at all? Inside you but separate, never merging.
Lexi tugs on the leash, and JC pulls the bag off inside out with his other hand and ties off the top. Soon after that she makes the turn toward Lance's house of her own accord. JC throws all the bags in the trash out back and opens the door for Lexi without going in himself. When Lance gets back JC's going to return his key, for real.
Commentary:
Hm. I feel like I wimped out a little on the horrible and repulsive aspect of this, in that picking up after a dog is a fairly everyday thing to do, if not exactly appetizing, and also I couldn't bring myself to forego the plastic bag. Though in my defense/rationalization, I couldn't think of a non-unbalanced reason for JC not to use a bag or glove or whatever.
I also worried a bit that the sense of beauty relies a little too much on a fanon characterization of JC as being so incredibly attuned to his senses that he's out of touch with practicality. But I also had in mind the post-breakup mindframe where you're trying so hard not to think about that overwhelming thing that you focus extra hard on what's happening right now to try to distract yourself. And I felt like it needed something to make this JC, and not just Random Passer-by with Dog, so I ended up leaning perhaps too far into the stereotype.
Also, I think in non-challenge fic I would not compare your lover leaving you to shit leaving your body. er. But perhaps I can win back repulsive points on that score!
The pairing is based purely on an uneducated guess as to which of the dogs in this picture would walk the slowest, which in turn determined the dog owner JC would have been with.
Critique welcome.
Fic-ish:
JC and Lexi are walking, slowly, meditatively, with many more pauses than Baron usually makes. Still the exercise seems to be doing Lexi good; she's stopped to shit three times already, and is beginning to hunch her back like it's time for a fourth. She was definitely cooped up for way too long.
The first few shits were solid, almost hard, but what she deposits now in the grass at the sidewalk's edge is much softer, like a very thick mousse that can just barely hold its shape. Malleable, JC thinks, slipping a fresh plastic bag over his hand and stooping to scoop the shit up, and indeed it smushes easily under the pressure of his fingers, shaping itself to his palm. It's still warm, too, the warmth of Lexi's body not gone from it yet, and barely blunted by the thin plastic.
JC flexes his hand again and studies the yellow tint of the smear at his fingers, deepening through goldenrod and ochre to the warm brown of the mass cupped in his palm. Funny how something is part of your body and then it isn't anymore. Or was it never part of you at all? Inside you but separate, never merging.
Lexi tugs on the leash, and JC pulls the bag off inside out with his other hand and ties off the top. Soon after that she makes the turn toward Lance's house of her own accord. JC throws all the bags in the trash out back and opens the door for Lexi without going in himself. When Lance gets back JC's going to return his key, for real.
Commentary:
Hm. I feel like I wimped out a little on the horrible and repulsive aspect of this, in that picking up after a dog is a fairly everyday thing to do, if not exactly appetizing, and also I couldn't bring myself to forego the plastic bag. Though in my defense/rationalization, I couldn't think of a non-unbalanced reason for JC not to use a bag or glove or whatever.
I also worried a bit that the sense of beauty relies a little too much on a fanon characterization of JC as being so incredibly attuned to his senses that he's out of touch with practicality. But I also had in mind the post-breakup mindframe where you're trying so hard not to think about that overwhelming thing that you focus extra hard on what's happening right now to try to distract yourself. And I felt like it needed something to make this JC, and not just Random Passer-by with Dog, so I ended up leaning perhaps too far into the stereotype.
Also, I think in non-challenge fic I would not compare your lover leaving you to shit leaving your body. er. But perhaps I can win back repulsive points on that score!
The pairing is based purely on an uneducated guess as to which of the dogs in this picture would walk the slowest, which in turn determined the dog owner JC would have been with.
Critique welcome.