Pushing Daisies Fic: The Mother of Invention 1/?
Mother of Invention 1/?
Pushing Daisies, Ned/Chuck, R, 450 words
AN: Set early on, after episode 4. This is not a WIP, but it might be an ongoing verse. More soon.
Chuck finds a fancy-dress costume shop in town and takes to buying gloves. Old gloves, elbow length and elegant, with a whole row of fiddly little buttons. Soft calfskin, worn smooth and shiny and supple. She wears them everywhere now, giving Ned a whole expanse of slim wrist and slender forearm whenever he wants to take it. Giving herself the ability to put her hand on his shoulder when she rises from the table, touch his back as she passes. The gloves win her odd looks in public, but her entire manner of dress has always been old fashioned, those color-coordinated outfits with modest necklines and wide skirts, and she is one of those pretty girls who can wear anything she wants and have it blessed with a positive adjective -- spirited, or individualistic, or, in the case of her gilded-age gloves, "retro" -- because no one that pretty is stodgy.
She inspects the gloves, looks for even the smallest snag or hole and goes back to the shop to return them for better ones, and so even though the cotton ones are old they have never seen moths; even though the calfskin is worn shiny it is never worn through. She takes to touching his bare skin, his cheek, lightly, sweetly, in public. Then she does it in private, late at night when the neon sign reads "Closed." She takes his shirt by the hem and draws it over his head and lets those gloved fingers run down. Neck, collarbone, chest, stomach, hipbone. She can hear his breath catch and feel every flicker of ticklish muscle beneath her fingertips. His eyes are wide and his hands are trembling and the matched stinks of terror and arousal pour off him in waves. She suddenly can see herself (feel herself, with a muscle memory like the very most acute deja vu) throwing herself at him, kissing him--
It's like that moment when you stand on top of a cliff and suddenly become certain you will jump.
She runs out of the dark Pie Hole, leaps in a cab, and tears off her archaic, anachronistic gloves. Tells the cabbie to take her to a club and dances, presses herself up against sweaty men who palm her ass and let their lips brush her ear when they talk. She doesn't answer them, doesn't accept their drinks, just grinds harder and shoves her ass back against their hands. She can't talk. If she opens her mouth, she will scream with rage, because she wants. Her whole life she was trapped, coddled, kept away, and now suddenly she is completely, frighteningly free, and she burns with frustrated want in a way the bee-keeping niece of the Darling Mermaid Darlings never did.
Part two
Pushing Daisies, Ned/Chuck, R, 450 words
AN: Set early on, after episode 4. This is not a WIP, but it might be an ongoing verse. More soon.
Chuck finds a fancy-dress costume shop in town and takes to buying gloves. Old gloves, elbow length and elegant, with a whole row of fiddly little buttons. Soft calfskin, worn smooth and shiny and supple. She wears them everywhere now, giving Ned a whole expanse of slim wrist and slender forearm whenever he wants to take it. Giving herself the ability to put her hand on his shoulder when she rises from the table, touch his back as she passes. The gloves win her odd looks in public, but her entire manner of dress has always been old fashioned, those color-coordinated outfits with modest necklines and wide skirts, and she is one of those pretty girls who can wear anything she wants and have it blessed with a positive adjective -- spirited, or individualistic, or, in the case of her gilded-age gloves, "retro" -- because no one that pretty is stodgy.
She inspects the gloves, looks for even the smallest snag or hole and goes back to the shop to return them for better ones, and so even though the cotton ones are old they have never seen moths; even though the calfskin is worn shiny it is never worn through. She takes to touching his bare skin, his cheek, lightly, sweetly, in public. Then she does it in private, late at night when the neon sign reads "Closed." She takes his shirt by the hem and draws it over his head and lets those gloved fingers run down. Neck, collarbone, chest, stomach, hipbone. She can hear his breath catch and feel every flicker of ticklish muscle beneath her fingertips. His eyes are wide and his hands are trembling and the matched stinks of terror and arousal pour off him in waves. She suddenly can see herself (feel herself, with a muscle memory like the very most acute deja vu) throwing herself at him, kissing him--
It's like that moment when you stand on top of a cliff and suddenly become certain you will jump.
She runs out of the dark Pie Hole, leaps in a cab, and tears off her archaic, anachronistic gloves. Tells the cabbie to take her to a club and dances, presses herself up against sweaty men who palm her ass and let their lips brush her ear when they talk. She doesn't answer them, doesn't accept their drinks, just grinds harder and shoves her ass back against their hands. She can't talk. If she opens her mouth, she will scream with rage, because she wants. Her whole life she was trapped, coddled, kept away, and now suddenly she is completely, frighteningly free, and she burns with frustrated want in a way the bee-keeping niece of the Darling Mermaid Darlings never did.
Part two