prompting time
To celebrate my newfound freedom:
PROMPT ME:
fandom | pairing | song lyric
(Fandoms: Grey's Anatomy, The Big Bang Theory, Lost; also making exceptions for Dead Like Me, Oz, BSG)
Last time I got through the first half-dozen; this time it is my goal to surpass that.
And...go!
ETA: Prompting closed. Thanks for playing ( Read more... )
PROMPT ME:
fandom | pairing | song lyric
(Fandoms: Grey's Anatomy, The Big Bang Theory, Lost; also making exceptions for Dead Like Me, Oz, BSG)
Last time I got through the first half-dozen; this time it is my goal to surpass that.
And...go!
ETA: Prompting closed. Thanks for playing ( Read more... )
It was her idea. Back when it was just her and Jack and it didn’t take all that much to get to him once she was already under his skin.
“We could fix it up,” she’d said and bit her lip to keep the reflexive ‘you like fixing things’ from coming out.
It was a project, it was a thing to do with a purpose that kept him occupied, kept him from thinking too much, and so he’d said “yes” with very little fight.
There was very little fight left in Jack.
Claire planted a garden in the back, vegetables and herbs, things she’d learned back on the island, and wore this ridiculous wide-brimmed hat to keep from burning underneath the afternoon sun. In the evenings she’d cook and talk and run her fingers over whatever bruise or cut he’d gotten that day and wonder if it would scar (they never did).
In the summer, there was an old beat-up truck parked out front and then there was Sawyer.
“Well ain’t this cozy,” he’d remarked and she kissed him in quiet in lieu of calling him a hypocrite first (for the comment in the face of their past) and an asshole second (for leaving the last time).
The house had smelled like paint then, open windows and gauzy white curtains moving with the slow breeze (she feels all grown up again, with her curtains, and she thinks of her mother and thinks of Thomas, and hopes history is done repeating itself). There was splattered paint where it wasn’t supposed to be, just to the right of where she’d stopped for the day, blurring the line where the powder blue she’d chosen met the sunny yellow that was left behind.
At night, the three of them fit together like puzzle pieces and Claire tried to shake off the feeling that she couldn’t quite see the big picture from down here.
---
There is an old abandoned house, the shutters closed and cobwebbed and the grass too tall and a shade somewhere between healthy green and sunbaked brown, and this is somehow what they end up calling home.
She left Australia behind on a sixteen hour flight. She left California too, along with the son she’d never know, and found some place quiet and landlocked and new.
Some place to start over.
The place badly needs sprucing up, which she does, and the gutters need cleaning and there might be something wrong with the pipes, which she hasn’t figured out how to do, but she manages. In the afternoons, she gardens, and that’s how she meets him.
His name is Jack, he tells her with a proffered hand and something like a smile, and he just moved here a month ago, right before she did.
“I used to live in California.”
“What made you leave?”
He isn’t looking at her when he replies, “Too close to the coast. The ocean.”
Claire smiles and doesn’t tell him that the ocean makes her feel uneasy nowadays. She doesn’t tell him because it doesn’t make sense to her yet.
Eventually, he offers to clean the gutters and take a look at the pipes. She offers to make dinner. One night he brings alcohol and they stumble into bed. Things move in the natural sort of way that these things do.
In July, she buys paint and unloads her car while a pick-up truck pulls up alongside the curb. A man with a southern drawl and shaggy blonde hair tells her he’s got car trouble. He’s looking for a place to get it checked out, on his way elsewhere. She directs him, ends up having him follow her. The mechanics say three days and she offers up the spare bedroom in her house.
When she gets home, Jack’s moved the paint she left in the driveway, in her haste, into her house, and she learns the man’s name, Sawyer, right before Jack does.
It takes the car four days to be fixed; he parks it on the street and doesn’t seem in any hurry to leave. She isn’t in any hurry to make him.
He asks about her and Jack, once. She ducks her head and says “we’re just friends”.
The next time it comes up, he doesn’t ask, just slips inside the bedroom and shuts the door, fitting alongside them with ease.
In the morning, she paints over the powder blue walls with the bright sunny yellow she bought.
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Gosh you're clever!
And this line
At night, the three of them fit together like puzzle pieces and Claire tried to shake off the feeling that she couldn’t quite see the big picture from down here.
Fabulous! Oh Claire.
Also, I love the imagery in this. I can totally picture the house and the hat and Sawyer's southern drawl! I love it :)
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This line? There was very little fight left in Jack. Just kind of breaks my heart a little. But the idea of him just being able to rest, to have the quiet and comfort you paint in both of these scenarios is so amazing.
You just get better and better and always surprise me with your stories and even your sentence structure. (No really there are so many times when I go "Oh I LOVE how she worded that.") WHY are you not writing in this fandom anymore? Cause you do it so well.
I keep wondering about the symbolism of that paint splatter. A merging of two worlds. Hmm.
You're my hero. You know that right?
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I did do the sparse thing you told me to a month or two ago. Or I tried. There's exposition that's gone from this, and I think maybe it's better that way you know? It kind of makes me want to write in the fandom again but at the same time I never have any ideas of my own. Maybe one of these days.
You're onto something with the paint splatter m'dear.
I'm so freaking glad you liked this! Thanks for reading and reviewing!
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