Oh yes! Your English eyes, they're turning red...
Night is closing in; there's a full moon out; it is time for some fic. :D
Only a small snippet from me this month, as I've had quite a few things on my mind that have prevented me from having fun working on this serious task. It's original as well, which means that the only person who knows these characters is me. They're James and Hugh, both werewolves, who live together in sin above a bookshop in Charing Cross Road. I think the reason I haven't written about them before is because, in my mind, they mainly just argue and do the dishes and fall asleep on the sofa together. Werewolves are so dull sometimes.
“The thing is, there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore. Only ourselves. And that never changes.”
Hugh drags on his cigarette and surveys the ‘men seeking men’ column of the Guardian. He likes deciphering the code, building tragic life stories from the scant details. James, propped against the opposite arm of the sofa, glances up from his book.
“If you thought about that for a second, you’d see that it wasn’t true,” protests James, “I can think of ten things I’m terrified of right now.”
“Yes, yes,” Hugh grins, unsympathetically, “Let me name them. Nuclear holocaust, burglary, terrorist attack, fire, the Large Hadron Collider, the slow decline into old age and senility, cancer…”
“All right, you can stop that now. Aren’t you afraid of those things too?”
Hugh nods. “I understand that. But they’re all so… big. Impersonal.”
“I’d say mortality was pretty damn personal,” James points out.
“I know, but I was thinking more about our personal condition. We used to be frightening; other people didn’t know what to do with people like us. We’ve been labelled, drugged into submission and put into a box. We’ve been rationalised, sanitised, humanised and made upstanding members of the community.”
James looks slightly puzzled by this, slightly impatient. “Well that’s good, isn’t it? That’s what you’d want.”
“Yes, but… It’s not as if... I mean, there’s a better understanding. But sometimes I think most people don’t really understand us at all. They’ve just made us… safe.”
Hugh folds up the paper and, turning his head up to stare pensively at the ceiling, slides down the arm of the sofa. He puts his cigarette out on a saucer on the floor.
James pokes him in the ribs with his big toe and smiles consolingly. “I think you’re just feeling a bit down,” he says, sitting up and leaning towards Hugh.
“If you blame it on the time of the month, I might just kill myself,” says Hugh flatly.
“Actually, I was going to blame it on you being such a moody git. It’s the same for me too, you know, and I’m not philosophical and morose.”
“You’re just philosophical and morose for the other twenty-nine days.”
“It’s the perfect system,” says James.
Anyway, happily, here's a video for you to enjoy. Do you know how much I love Patrick Wolf's music? I love it a lot. This is Wolf Song.
Click to view"The moon, let it guide you and I shall find you a home in our heartland..."