On the eighth day of Christmas... 2019 Final Version
You know what this holiday needs more of this year? Aside from debt forgiveness options that work, present supply that actually meets demand, and same hour delivery for online shopping so you never have to leave your house to fight the horde? Fluff. I figure angst may be a bit too on the nose this year, and risqué is awkward to think about when your official fandom secretary is doing your proof reading and posting. So I’ve landed on this little fluff piece that I hope everyone can enjoy with a stereotypical aww at the end. I figure some will likely make a wrong leap back to day five. Don't worry, the contents of that book will show up exactly when it should which is Christmas Eve night.
Note from the offspring- So, funny story, day eight’s story was missing from the nicely collected and organized holiday folder I was given. I had to dive in to her other files with only her preamble file to go off of and, with some much needed help from t_shirt1x2 I think this is it (I really hope this is it. The file date fits the time frame). We also couldn’t find this story anywhere else in her archives. Also, I just became aware about the twelve day art not showing up when I’ve posted it to A03. I’ll be getting that fixed either tonight or tomorrow.
It was really not a very big box, to contain such a load of ‘omg, what have I done’.
I mean, it’s not like I didn’t know what was sitting there on the coffee table in front of me. I’d seen the thing birthed through all the standard steps. From predatory gleam in Aleyah’s eye when I’d first approached her, through all the copyright stuff, the proofing and the tweaking, and the arguments about ‘ghost writing’. I’d won that one… I’m not a writer and I don’t take credit for what I don’t do… so there would be a second name on this, my first (only?) children’s book.
No, it was the relatively simple inscription that was making my heart do weird things in my throat.
‘To my husband, Heero Yuy, rescuer of strays, without whom Kemi and his friends would never have been’.
What did it say about me that I’d struggled with just what to put in the dedication from the zone of my own comfort, that it had taken the box arriving at my door before I’d stopped to think… what if Heero objected?
Well, then. I don’t think even a call directly to Aleyah would get me more than laughed at, at this stage of the game. The ship had sailed. The deed was done. The box… had arrived.
Hope my lunch didn’t arrive right after.
With a sigh nobody could hear but me, I carefully picked the packing tape loose to reveal my latest endeavor. Seeing files on-line and concept layouts was one thing but the real thing, in my hands, was quite different and I wasn’t about to risk scoring the contents.
I was holding Heero’s gift, after all, dubious as it might be.
Kemi and Kamy. Sylkwater City. The lush green skies of Ranspang. They had all been Heero’s since the moment I had found him digging unheeding through our kitchen trash basket, rescuing scraps of paper with little bits of time-wasting concept art on them.
Concept art with no concept. It had just been me arting out loud while I’d been trying desperately to figure out how to win a mystery commission with a mystery commission.
In other words… trash. I’d tossed them out appropriately.
Somewhere in the dozens of sketch pads I had around the house dedicated to Heero, there was one that contained his expression in that moment. It was a kind of shocked, hurt, confused, desperate look. It had horrified me for a moment… it had seemed it was all directed at me. If there had been some wound that night, I had inflicted it. In the end, when I’d realized what he was upset about… it had been all I could do not to laugh.
His attitude toward my art is … endearing. And sometimes weird.
When I’d found the scraps of paper carefully cleaned and pressed out on the desk in the spare room, some days later, it had lodged the urge to do that sketch of him that captured that expression.
After winning both mystery commissions and surviving the unstoppable trio that was Jack Lee, Aleyah Winner, and Stan Kirby, enough time had passed that I almost forgot the whole thing.
Until I found the little matted picture of rescued and obviously much-cherished alien bugs hanging in the spare room. I finally did the sketch, and when I was done… Ranspang was a place… and it belonged to Heero.
My name was predominant… the art was all mine, and I’d never put so much effort into detail in my life. The general story and concept were mine. But I really am not a writer, so there was a bi-line for one Ms Ursula Otani. Whose career, Aleyah had informed me in her smug manner, was about to be made. I had my doubts what tying herself to me would really do for her… but that is a true digression.
Aleyah apparently knows the cream of many, many crops, and when she put the two of us together… we birthed a solar system.
I had to snort, realizing suddenly that somewhere Ursula was sitting in front of her own box, reading her own dedication page and going over our book one word at a time.
There would be later releases and all the ‘whatever’ stuff, but what sat here now was the high-end first part. Oh, I was learning so many new words… Leather bound, first edition, limited, signed and numbered. Oh yeah.
A gift to Heero that he didn’t have a clue existed beyond a few scraps of lovingly rescued paper.
Topped off with the dubious cherry of an announcement that had taken me months to work out around my stupid childhood phobias.
My husband… Heero Yuy.
I carefully put the top book back in the box, pressed the packing tape back in place, wrote Heero’s name on a sticky note placed in the middle… and went to hide.
I mean, I went to weed the roses until Heero came home from work.
It really didn’t take the ten years it felt like.
When I heard his car coming down the street, I actually had a moment of panic and scampered around the back of the house to make sure he went on in, instead of seeing me and coming to join me.
The rose bed had never been so clean; I had probably sacrificed a million weeds on the altar of my anxiety.
I gave him a good twenty minutes before slipping in the back door and going around through the kitchen so I would be able to see his face. I had some regrets of not being able to be there to catch his initial reaction… but it had been a choice to let him have time to digest the whole thing.
I knew he knew I was standing there, leaning in the doorway, trying for all casual and shit… but I hadn’t thought to have a line ready, and all that came out of my mouth was an almost whispered ‘Marco?'
He had that top book in his hands, knuckles white, eyes shining like… like I don’t even know. At first I thought he was crying. And then I was sure he’d been crying. I thought he didn’t get it. I knew he didn’t get it. I didn’t know if I should start explaining myself. What if he’d forgotten the damn alien bugs after all this time and just flat didn’t…
‘Yes,’ is what came out of his mouth, cutting across it all. ‘I will marry you.’
Guess he got it better than I did. It left me blinking at him, and the smile that didn’t know what to do with itself danced around on my face in some manner that must have been reassuring, because God damn if my phobias would ruin this moment, but words weren’t coming.
‘Polo,’ he finally said and it let me shake myself out of my head and into the moment.
There was a meeting in front of the couch, and the tightness of his arms, and the part where he didn’t want to put the book down through it, told me more of what I really already knew when I let myself believe in the shiny, wonderful parts and stopped waiting for something to explode in my face.
And despite what I’d just done. Despite what he’d accepted. Despite what we’d just committed to, and would have to decide on the logistics of… our moment ended up being hunched over that Pandora’s box that, for me was still shiny and new and I didn’t stent him. It was almost a bigger part of the gift to not let myself start the doubting. His eyes just glowed while I talked and it was a wonder the copy in his hands wasn’t dented. Number one of two thousand, signed and numbered; that was ‘his’ special copy and I knew he’d be reading it at least once before the day was out.
It just added to my grin. Aleyah had told me to preserve and don’t even touch our box of books… they would be worth thousands some day. I’m sure Ursula was carefully not touching her twenty copies, but the first thirty were Heero’s and not about that kind of value.
‘I need copies for the guys!’ he suddenly blurted. ‘And there need to be some for the kids at the home… can I buy more on-line yet?’
I couldn’t help laughing with delight. Kissing him with more delight. Meeting that look of I-am-so-out-of-my-depth, almost confusion with answers.
‘Not yet,’ I explained, basking in his attention, ‘There are only two thousand of these and you don’t even want to know what Aleyah priced them at. After that, there will a hard back release and there’s a schedule until the things are actually affordable by the average person, and … of my part of the profits… seventy-five percent will be going to the home.’
More icing? I hadn’t been sure… but the way his smile softened and changed; I’d made the right call.
‘That’s perfect,’ he said softly and hugged his copy to his chest like he thought someone was going to take it away. I realized, that it was himself he’d been afraid of. That somewhere in there, he had a clue what was sitting in front of us, and it was his own guilt he was trying not to think about. I recognized his in the echo of mine. I had proactively fixed it for the both of us.
‘Perfect,’ he muttered again, and for once… I had to agree. Maybe it was the fact that Ursula had a hand in it too. Maybe it was the subject… alien insects? Nobody could freaking tell me right or wrong… I damn well made them up. Maybe it was a being that would take on a life of its own.
Or maybe it was just the fact that it was a gift to my husband… one that I would find would always be… well; the best. There would be gifts for Heero as long as I lived, but this one would always be special. This evening would always be special.
It was four in the morning before we got through the book the first time… and I was delighted that he found most of the details on his own.
Note from the offspring- So, funny story, day eight’s story was missing from the nicely collected and organized holiday folder I was given. I had to dive in to her other files with only her preamble file to go off of and, with some much needed help from t_shirt1x2 I think this is it (I really hope this is it. The file date fits the time frame). We also couldn’t find this story anywhere else in her archives. Also, I just became aware about the twelve day art not showing up when I’ve posted it to A03. I’ll be getting that fixed either tonight or tomorrow.
It was really not a very big box, to contain such a load of ‘omg, what have I done’.
I mean, it’s not like I didn’t know what was sitting there on the coffee table in front of me. I’d seen the thing birthed through all the standard steps. From predatory gleam in Aleyah’s eye when I’d first approached her, through all the copyright stuff, the proofing and the tweaking, and the arguments about ‘ghost writing’. I’d won that one… I’m not a writer and I don’t take credit for what I don’t do… so there would be a second name on this, my first (only?) children’s book.
No, it was the relatively simple inscription that was making my heart do weird things in my throat.
‘To my husband, Heero Yuy, rescuer of strays, without whom Kemi and his friends would never have been’.
What did it say about me that I’d struggled with just what to put in the dedication from the zone of my own comfort, that it had taken the box arriving at my door before I’d stopped to think… what if Heero objected?
Well, then. I don’t think even a call directly to Aleyah would get me more than laughed at, at this stage of the game. The ship had sailed. The deed was done. The box… had arrived.
Hope my lunch didn’t arrive right after.
With a sigh nobody could hear but me, I carefully picked the packing tape loose to reveal my latest endeavor. Seeing files on-line and concept layouts was one thing but the real thing, in my hands, was quite different and I wasn’t about to risk scoring the contents.
I was holding Heero’s gift, after all, dubious as it might be.
Kemi and Kamy. Sylkwater City. The lush green skies of Ranspang. They had all been Heero’s since the moment I had found him digging unheeding through our kitchen trash basket, rescuing scraps of paper with little bits of time-wasting concept art on them.
Concept art with no concept. It had just been me arting out loud while I’d been trying desperately to figure out how to win a mystery commission with a mystery commission.
In other words… trash. I’d tossed them out appropriately.
Somewhere in the dozens of sketch pads I had around the house dedicated to Heero, there was one that contained his expression in that moment. It was a kind of shocked, hurt, confused, desperate look. It had horrified me for a moment… it had seemed it was all directed at me. If there had been some wound that night, I had inflicted it. In the end, when I’d realized what he was upset about… it had been all I could do not to laugh.
His attitude toward my art is … endearing. And sometimes weird.
When I’d found the scraps of paper carefully cleaned and pressed out on the desk in the spare room, some days later, it had lodged the urge to do that sketch of him that captured that expression.
After winning both mystery commissions and surviving the unstoppable trio that was Jack Lee, Aleyah Winner, and Stan Kirby, enough time had passed that I almost forgot the whole thing.
Until I found the little matted picture of rescued and obviously much-cherished alien bugs hanging in the spare room. I finally did the sketch, and when I was done… Ranspang was a place… and it belonged to Heero.
My name was predominant… the art was all mine, and I’d never put so much effort into detail in my life. The general story and concept were mine. But I really am not a writer, so there was a bi-line for one Ms Ursula Otani. Whose career, Aleyah had informed me in her smug manner, was about to be made. I had my doubts what tying herself to me would really do for her… but that is a true digression.
Aleyah apparently knows the cream of many, many crops, and when she put the two of us together… we birthed a solar system.
I had to snort, realizing suddenly that somewhere Ursula was sitting in front of her own box, reading her own dedication page and going over our book one word at a time.
There would be later releases and all the ‘whatever’ stuff, but what sat here now was the high-end first part. Oh, I was learning so many new words… Leather bound, first edition, limited, signed and numbered. Oh yeah.
A gift to Heero that he didn’t have a clue existed beyond a few scraps of lovingly rescued paper.
Topped off with the dubious cherry of an announcement that had taken me months to work out around my stupid childhood phobias.
My husband… Heero Yuy.
I carefully put the top book back in the box, pressed the packing tape back in place, wrote Heero’s name on a sticky note placed in the middle… and went to hide.
I mean, I went to weed the roses until Heero came home from work.
It really didn’t take the ten years it felt like.
When I heard his car coming down the street, I actually had a moment of panic and scampered around the back of the house to make sure he went on in, instead of seeing me and coming to join me.
The rose bed had never been so clean; I had probably sacrificed a million weeds on the altar of my anxiety.
I gave him a good twenty minutes before slipping in the back door and going around through the kitchen so I would be able to see his face. I had some regrets of not being able to be there to catch his initial reaction… but it had been a choice to let him have time to digest the whole thing.
I knew he knew I was standing there, leaning in the doorway, trying for all casual and shit… but I hadn’t thought to have a line ready, and all that came out of my mouth was an almost whispered ‘Marco?'
He had that top book in his hands, knuckles white, eyes shining like… like I don’t even know. At first I thought he was crying. And then I was sure he’d been crying. I thought he didn’t get it. I knew he didn’t get it. I didn’t know if I should start explaining myself. What if he’d forgotten the damn alien bugs after all this time and just flat didn’t…
‘Yes,’ is what came out of his mouth, cutting across it all. ‘I will marry you.’
Guess he got it better than I did. It left me blinking at him, and the smile that didn’t know what to do with itself danced around on my face in some manner that must have been reassuring, because God damn if my phobias would ruin this moment, but words weren’t coming.
‘Polo,’ he finally said and it let me shake myself out of my head and into the moment.
There was a meeting in front of the couch, and the tightness of his arms, and the part where he didn’t want to put the book down through it, told me more of what I really already knew when I let myself believe in the shiny, wonderful parts and stopped waiting for something to explode in my face.
And despite what I’d just done. Despite what he’d accepted. Despite what we’d just committed to, and would have to decide on the logistics of… our moment ended up being hunched over that Pandora’s box that, for me was still shiny and new and I didn’t stent him. It was almost a bigger part of the gift to not let myself start the doubting. His eyes just glowed while I talked and it was a wonder the copy in his hands wasn’t dented. Number one of two thousand, signed and numbered; that was ‘his’ special copy and I knew he’d be reading it at least once before the day was out.
It just added to my grin. Aleyah had told me to preserve and don’t even touch our box of books… they would be worth thousands some day. I’m sure Ursula was carefully not touching her twenty copies, but the first thirty were Heero’s and not about that kind of value.
‘I need copies for the guys!’ he suddenly blurted. ‘And there need to be some for the kids at the home… can I buy more on-line yet?’
I couldn’t help laughing with delight. Kissing him with more delight. Meeting that look of I-am-so-out-of-my-depth, almost confusion with answers.
‘Not yet,’ I explained, basking in his attention, ‘There are only two thousand of these and you don’t even want to know what Aleyah priced them at. After that, there will a hard back release and there’s a schedule until the things are actually affordable by the average person, and … of my part of the profits… seventy-five percent will be going to the home.’
More icing? I hadn’t been sure… but the way his smile softened and changed; I’d made the right call.
‘That’s perfect,’ he said softly and hugged his copy to his chest like he thought someone was going to take it away. I realized, that it was himself he’d been afraid of. That somewhere in there, he had a clue what was sitting in front of us, and it was his own guilt he was trying not to think about. I recognized his in the echo of mine. I had proactively fixed it for the both of us.
‘Perfect,’ he muttered again, and for once… I had to agree. Maybe it was the fact that Ursula had a hand in it too. Maybe it was the subject… alien insects? Nobody could freaking tell me right or wrong… I damn well made them up. Maybe it was a being that would take on a life of its own.
Or maybe it was just the fact that it was a gift to my husband… one that I would find would always be… well; the best. There would be gifts for Heero as long as I lived, but this one would always be special. This evening would always be special.
It was four in the morning before we got through the book the first time… and I was delighted that he found most of the details on his own.