Beginnings
of a number of unfinished fics I'm currently working on. Some new, some older, all still active, and none in danger of being finished anytime soon. *sigh*
(Re: occasionally potentially weird turns of phrase: remember, this is me, a non-native speaker, unbeta'd.)
He walks her home through dingy streets, chili smells, rustling papers in the gutter, words of a southern language drifting on the breeze and tinny sounds of late afternoon television deaths rising up into a heavy, yellowing sky. They make conversation, and he feels awkward, lets her take the lead. He talks but carefully edits what he is telling her, occasionally stealing a sideways glance at her, at the nape of her brown neck, her hair falling over her shoulder, her head slightly bent, listening. He skirts the touchier topics: John, and what they're doing here, and his family. She lets him. She mainly wants to hear his accent, an accent that makes her think of rain and ruins of medieval castles on green hills although she realises that that is not what his country's really like. So she bends her head and listens, and the ruins disappear and then there's just streets, though different streets, and a different kind of squalor than the one she is used to.
***
He is back in her bed now, where he belongs.
At night, she lies awake and listens to his breath. It is soft and ever so slightly irregular, a human sound, not the harsh machine wheeze that for far too long was part of him in her mind. It fills her with a trembling, disbelieving joy, and she lies listening, looking up into dark, feeling that she should be able to see his breath, catch it and cup it in her hands and feel his life in it; fearing, still fearing, that any moment it may stop.
When fear wins over joy, as it always does, she turns her head to see his peaceful form under the blankets, vaguely outlined by the meagre moonlight that gets past the curtains, his tousled hair, the rim of an ear just barely visible. When that is not enough she finds her hand spider-crawling towards him, feels the gradual increase of warmth as she approaches him, a message of his aliveness.
***
He doesn't quite remember when he started to listen to the talk. Not just listen to it: seek it out, in bars, among the badly paid, discontent crews of independent cargo transports and smuggling operations, in the disreputable back alleys of spaceports on countless commerce planets. He lurks in the background, sits at the far end of the bar, nursing his raslak, keeping to himself. In these places of transit and shady business, thousands of people, hundreds of species passing through each day, no one spares him a second glance. He's just another run-down runaway, another low-life. Another hardened criminal. Hard face and deadened eyes, a leather coat and an attitude and a gun underneath to back it up. Gazes focus on him for a microt, sort him - harmless/watch out for/try not to piss off/ignore - and slide off him as their owners turn to the bar. He reciprocates, registering new arrivals with a quick glance that is an analytical instrument, finely honed to assess danger. His posture and composure spell out distance.
***
Adam Pierson had a childhood of paper and dust, shadow and silence. His earliest memory is of the library: books stacked on floors, higher than his three-year-old's height; books lining walls like scaly dragonskin; books in precariously balanced stacks and books spread open on the floor; towers, walls, a labyrinth of books, a dusty, musty smell, fingers of sunlight picking out golden letters on dark leather and linen.
Methos has no memory of his childhood. Most of the time, he is certain of this. Sometimes, he doubts. There are feelings, images, the vaguest wisps of recollection - of wide skies, of barren hills, of a smell of goats and sweat and hot dust - that for a moment colour the present a shade of bitterness, all too rarely. They may be someone else's memories; fabrications, second-hand experiences pieced together to form a persona long discarded. Perhaps in five thousand years Adam Pierson's childhood will haunt him like these fragments do, and he will wonder if his existence began in some late-20th-century library.
***
The man comes home in the early morning, exhausted by yet another night shift. He is thin, grey-looking, weary. "Old before his time" the neighbourhood women who watch him from behind curtains, observe in pitying tones. He is lonely, they know. He has a dog, big black shaggy beast, that he has been seen talking to. It is a sad thing, the women agree, when a man like that is reduced to talking to a dog. They would not mind to soothe his loneliness, for despite his thinness, his greyness, his weariness, and his obvious out-of-money-ness the man is oddly magnetic. But he does not speak to them. He does not speak to anybody.
Except the dog.
The house awaits him in silence: dark, asleep.
He crosses the front garden which is wet, grey with dew, and very ill-kept. At the kitchen door he stops for a moment to search for a key in deep coat pockets.
Inside, the dog pricks his ears, lifts his big head from his big front paws, sniffs the air.
***
Can you tell I loooove descriptions? And ANGST? *snerk*
Oh, and for those who couldn't guess: 1.) Hellblazer, Chas - still untitled; 2.) Life on Mars, Maya - still untitled; 3.) Farscape, John - 'Terrourists'; 4.) Highlander, Methos (well, d'uh) - and Adam Pierson - 'Found In Translation'; 5.) Harry Potter, Remus (and Sirius) - 'A Black-And-White Picture'.
Watch this space for the next five years or so, and you'll probably see the finished stories some day.
ETA: Heh. I have to stop plagiarizing myself. Just discovered a phrase in one of these I've already used in another story. How embarassing. But then, all of these are very, very unfinished yet, so there's still plenty of time for revising... *g*
(Re: occasionally potentially weird turns of phrase: remember, this is me, a non-native speaker, unbeta'd.)
He walks her home through dingy streets, chili smells, rustling papers in the gutter, words of a southern language drifting on the breeze and tinny sounds of late afternoon television deaths rising up into a heavy, yellowing sky. They make conversation, and he feels awkward, lets her take the lead. He talks but carefully edits what he is telling her, occasionally stealing a sideways glance at her, at the nape of her brown neck, her hair falling over her shoulder, her head slightly bent, listening. He skirts the touchier topics: John, and what they're doing here, and his family. She lets him. She mainly wants to hear his accent, an accent that makes her think of rain and ruins of medieval castles on green hills although she realises that that is not what his country's really like. So she bends her head and listens, and the ruins disappear and then there's just streets, though different streets, and a different kind of squalor than the one she is used to.
***
He is back in her bed now, where he belongs.
At night, she lies awake and listens to his breath. It is soft and ever so slightly irregular, a human sound, not the harsh machine wheeze that for far too long was part of him in her mind. It fills her with a trembling, disbelieving joy, and she lies listening, looking up into dark, feeling that she should be able to see his breath, catch it and cup it in her hands and feel his life in it; fearing, still fearing, that any moment it may stop.
When fear wins over joy, as it always does, she turns her head to see his peaceful form under the blankets, vaguely outlined by the meagre moonlight that gets past the curtains, his tousled hair, the rim of an ear just barely visible. When that is not enough she finds her hand spider-crawling towards him, feels the gradual increase of warmth as she approaches him, a message of his aliveness.
***
He doesn't quite remember when he started to listen to the talk. Not just listen to it: seek it out, in bars, among the badly paid, discontent crews of independent cargo transports and smuggling operations, in the disreputable back alleys of spaceports on countless commerce planets. He lurks in the background, sits at the far end of the bar, nursing his raslak, keeping to himself. In these places of transit and shady business, thousands of people, hundreds of species passing through each day, no one spares him a second glance. He's just another run-down runaway, another low-life. Another hardened criminal. Hard face and deadened eyes, a leather coat and an attitude and a gun underneath to back it up. Gazes focus on him for a microt, sort him - harmless/watch out for/try not to piss off/ignore - and slide off him as their owners turn to the bar. He reciprocates, registering new arrivals with a quick glance that is an analytical instrument, finely honed to assess danger. His posture and composure spell out distance.
***
Adam Pierson had a childhood of paper and dust, shadow and silence. His earliest memory is of the library: books stacked on floors, higher than his three-year-old's height; books lining walls like scaly dragonskin; books in precariously balanced stacks and books spread open on the floor; towers, walls, a labyrinth of books, a dusty, musty smell, fingers of sunlight picking out golden letters on dark leather and linen.
Methos has no memory of his childhood. Most of the time, he is certain of this. Sometimes, he doubts. There are feelings, images, the vaguest wisps of recollection - of wide skies, of barren hills, of a smell of goats and sweat and hot dust - that for a moment colour the present a shade of bitterness, all too rarely. They may be someone else's memories; fabrications, second-hand experiences pieced together to form a persona long discarded. Perhaps in five thousand years Adam Pierson's childhood will haunt him like these fragments do, and he will wonder if his existence began in some late-20th-century library.
***
The man comes home in the early morning, exhausted by yet another night shift. He is thin, grey-looking, weary. "Old before his time" the neighbourhood women who watch him from behind curtains, observe in pitying tones. He is lonely, they know. He has a dog, big black shaggy beast, that he has been seen talking to. It is a sad thing, the women agree, when a man like that is reduced to talking to a dog. They would not mind to soothe his loneliness, for despite his thinness, his greyness, his weariness, and his obvious out-of-money-ness the man is oddly magnetic. But he does not speak to them. He does not speak to anybody.
Except the dog.
The house awaits him in silence: dark, asleep.
He crosses the front garden which is wet, grey with dew, and very ill-kept. At the kitchen door he stops for a moment to search for a key in deep coat pockets.
Inside, the dog pricks his ears, lifts his big head from his big front paws, sniffs the air.
***
Can you tell I loooove descriptions? And ANGST? *snerk*
Oh, and for those who couldn't guess: 1.) Hellblazer, Chas - still untitled; 2.) Life on Mars, Maya - still untitled; 3.) Farscape, John - 'Terrourists'; 4.) Highlander, Methos (well, d'uh) - and Adam Pierson - 'Found In Translation'; 5.) Harry Potter, Remus (and Sirius) - 'A Black-And-White Picture'.
Watch this space for the next five years or so, and you'll probably see the finished stories some day.
ETA: Heh. I have to stop plagiarizing myself. Just discovered a phrase in one of these I've already used in another story. How embarassing. But then, all of these are very, very unfinished yet, so there's still plenty of time for revising... *g*