anyone who dares to humor a fool

remember that i love you

2008-04-30T22:19:07Z

FREE CONE DAY.

Well, Day After Free Cone Day. But I hope everyone went and partook in excessively large numbers of ice cream cones. I believe my order went Phish Food, Mint Chocolate Chip, Lemonade Sorbet, Cherry Garcia. . .I think that's it, but really, it was just a daze of sugar induced joy after that. Then I went home and jogged in place until the guilt went away.

Speaking of guilt. . .I'm posting a definitive section of the House/Kutner fic, and ~~hopefully~~ (oops) with all luck, something will happen from there.

Title: a nervous tic motion of the head (or 1/4 of it)
Rating: PG13
Fandom: House, M.D.
Pairing: House/Kutner
Warnings: slash, slightly crack pairings, making up the Kutner characterization as I go along

He should have gotten Foreman to do this, but he also should have suspected that he would be the one to hire the employees who actually locked their doors. Or, as Kutner’s apartment has proven, triple-locked them. And put a chair against the other side.

Paranoia, he diagnoses, when the door finally creaks open after an hour of work. Nobody would take that much effort to protect their shitty apartment unless they were suffering from some chronic form of paranoia. Or unless they were not-so-secretly geeks who reads things like how to protect your 13^th century fortress from Barbarian attackers on WikiHow and then tried to apply the knowledge to real life. House surveys the Star Wars poster, probably an original, juxtaposed with a black velvet Elvis and is inclined to lean towards that theory instead.

There are bookshelves on one wall, all different colors and sizes, the sort of bookshelves that other people leave for broke on the side of the road but are now sagging under the weight of hundreds of medical texts, trashy science fiction novels, and some ill-hidden comic books behind a row of Proust and a lone copy of The Art of War. House makes a mental note (highlighted, underlined twice in red pen) not to forget about the comics and to also mockingly quote Proust as often as possible before moving on to the main reason he came.

It only take five minutes to break into Kutner’s laptop. It only takes two to find his extensive porn collection.

The first few pictures are what he expected, blondes with curves in all the right places, legs spread and smiling coyly. Further exploration produces more variety, positions that make his leg ache (among other things), lesbian fantasies, and. . .well.

Either that is a very masculine woman, or. . .

". . .hello?" He turns around in the chair to see Kutner staring at him from the doorway, keys in hand.

"Hello." House says, not bothering to cover up what he’s doing. "So, are you bisexual because it’s In now, or have you always been open opportunity?"

"I’m. . .wait, you’re the one sitting in my apartment. My previously locked apartment." Kutner shuts the door behind him, looking like he is trying to decide whether or not he should call the police. "Shouldn’t I be the one asking the questions?"

"Probably." House says. "But you won’t."

"No. No, I won’t." Kutner says, lingering for a moment before moving forward to exit out of the pictures, blushing impressively. He takes several steps back and sinks down in an armchair, a safe distance away from him. "And I’m bisexual. I’ve been bisexual. I didn’t, like, see Brokeback Mountain and decide it looked fun."

"Sex in a tent is rarely fun. And often painful. . .but you might be into that, too." House muses, leaning backwards and smiling at the ceiling. "Chase was."

"The blonde guy?"

"Oh, yeah. Are you interested?" House looks up at him, seriously. "He says he’s straight, but the attention to his hair begs to differ."

"His clothes help his case." Kutner murmurs, shaking his head. "And no, I’m not interested."

"Why, are you involved with someone?" House asks, then continues when Kutner gives him a startled look. "I mean, because the only reason I could think of someone not wanting to be Chase’s dominatrix would be out of some stupid sense of loyalty."

"You think loyalty’s stupid?"

"Are you trying to avoid my question?"

"Are you trying to avoid mine?" Kutner looks like he is enjoying this situation all of a sudden, sitting up to look at House intently. "What are you trying to do, House?"

"You still haven’t answered mine." House murmurs. He is almost smiling again, which even he thinks is strange. "And what self-respecting employer doesn’t break into their employees’ homes? It’s part of the process. I have to make sure you’re not a serial killer or a communist. . . or, apparently, a bisexual."

"That’s so. . ." Kutner starts, then stops himself. "I don’t even know what that is. So House? Can I say that yet?"

"That’s not really my decision, is it?" House rises, slowly, putting all his weight on his cane as his steadies himself. He leans over, pulling the pictures back up on the computer, then walks back towards the door.

"Good-bye?" Kutner calls.

"Have fun." House says, without looking back, but he knows that the tone of his voice is enough to know he is leering. He has so mastered the leering voice.

* * *

"What’s the policy on sexual harassing male employees?" House asks, unceremoniously dropping himself on the couch in Wilson’s office.

Wilson blinks at him.

"Don’t ask, don’t tell?" he offers.

"I think that’s only if they’re sexually harassing you back. . ." House carefully pulls his legs up and lays backwards, squirming until he can find a comfortable position. His voice is distorted from where his face is buried in the edge of the cushion.

"Do I really want to ask you what’s brought this on?" Wilson asks, and House turns his head just in time to catch his look of pain. Upon further examination, the look of pain grows to be just a look of ‘you, you will be the one to ruin my boyish good looks’, an expression that Wilson has been wearing a lot more around him lately, especially since the knife in the light socket incident.

"I found out that the foreign one swings both ways, and I’m trying to figure out how to work it to my advantage."

"And how exactly did you find this out?" Wilson acts like he doesn’t want to know, but House knows that, secretly, he does. He hears the squeak of a well-used desk chair and then he is moving without being asked so Wilson can sit at his feet. "Oh, oh god, you didn’t try to seduce him, did you?"

"No, I tried breaking and entering instead."

"Well, good, you should stick with what you know." Wilson murmurs, and House sits up slowly to see him squinting at the ceiling.

"So. . ." he starts, waving his hand in front of his expectantly.

"Are you planning on seducing him?" Wilson asks, looking over at him as he pushes himself further against the couch, trying to hide how obviously uncomfortable he is. "Are just using thinly veiled innuendo?"

"You forgot groping." House added, smiling to himself.

"I was trying to make this conversation less painful, but I’m glad to see you’re enjoying yourself." Wilson does not smile, which is understandable, House supposes, but now he has his serious face on. "What are you trying to do, House?"

Why do people keep asking me that."Because. . ." Wilson continues, spreading his hands out in front of him desperately. "You could get sued if you harass Kutner. . .and you’re verging on costing more than my wives."

"Did you ever think that maybe that’s what I’m trying to do?"

And there’s that face again.

Suggestions for what happens next? Edits? Anything would be greeted with romping amounts of love and affection.

let's get ready to crumble

2008-04-27T17:57:01Z

Who else thinks Joel Osteen is the Antichrist?

I mean, seriously.

And for one more bit of a religious nature,

FLASHBACK TO EASTER SUNDAY
PASTOR: *talking about Jesus telling Thomas to put his fingers in his wounds*
ME: *in my head* touch my body, put me on the floor, wrestle me around, play me with some more. . .

Damn you, Mariah Carey. Damn you.

(and the House/Kutner is not working out as immediately as I thought it would be, as House seems to just want to harrass him and Kutner just wants to cuddle. But someday soon.)

sound the keening bell, see it's painted red

2008-04-09T01:14:29Z

carmine_ink wrote me a lovely Grindeldore drabble for my birthday, and you should all go read it now and praise her.

Tomorrow, I will maybe post House/Kutner and talk about my children's book I'm writing for Creative Writing. Maybe.

there are lights in the clouds, anna's ghosts all around

2008-04-02T00:38:04Z

SCRIPTWRITING IS HARDER THAN NOVELING.

Y/N?

(oh my gosh, YES)

Am already behind on Script Frenzy, but I'm going to take a shower, rememorize my Latin noun endings, and stay up to obscene hours of the night writing.

(and LARGE AMOUNTS OF HAPPY BIRTHDAY LOVE TO

noneedofcrepe!)

there's a brisk, north-easterly wind blowing in this room

2008-03-25T16:13:54Z

I signed up to do Script Frenzy this year.

Because, apparently, I am actually insane, but I've had this large void since NaNoWriMo ended, and now I'm either writing a version of Degrassi that is indie and well-written or a musical about a young ragtag group of underground pool sharks.

. . .join with me!

You know, if you also have a problem.

Speaking of my problem,

I've seen most of S2 up to "Something Borrowed", and this show consistently kills me. In a very, very good way. I think it worries my parents, because I've been holed up in the sunroom to watch Doctor Who and Torchwood for four hours on BBCA every saturday. And they occasionally hear laughter and/or sobbing floating through the door. . .

But Jack and Ianto make me ridiculously happy (also, if my brother doesn't stop saying John Barrowman looks like the father from that one Mary Kate and Ashley show, I'll have to actually kill him), because they are pretty much adorable and them dancing at Gwen's wedding (as well as Owen and Tosh dancing, oh my god, I want him to love her) was actually the sweetest thing I have ever seen. And I've heard awesome things about certain scenes in "Adrift". Involving the greenhouse. And a lot of naked.

And I don't like Gwen, basically at all, but despite how I enjoy mocking Rhys, I really secretly adore him. Especially when he's weilding chainsaws around and saving the day (or he would have, if Jack didn't have the use of that ridiculously large gun, which looked like the mother of all super soakers).

I've decided that the only bad thing about all of the wild, indiscriminate sex is that there isn't a lot of room for monogamy. And I think the thing between Jack and Ianto is obviously getting to be more than just sex, and Ianto seems to be the kind of person who would really want monogamy when he loves someone. I mean, look at how long he stayed with Lisa.

Also, I want to be Tosh when I grow up. The end! :D

torchwood flailing + 2ND FIC

2008-02-18T01:26:22Z

First of all, I watched Torchwood for the first time last night. I really don't know what's going on (my knowledge of Dr. Who is scattered), but oh my god. I'm not sure I've been so immediately in love with a television show since the first time I saw House.

It might be premature to start reading fic, but the Jack/Ianto parts in "To The Last Man" were gorgeous, and I really think I need more. Now.

And now fic. This one is for hype45, just because. . .and it's Remus/Lily, which is really fun. And I tried to make it witty, but mostly it's just shameless fluff

Title: A Step Forward
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Remus/Lily, one-sided Sirius/Remus
Rating: PG+
Notes: this was supposed to end up being Remus/Sirius, because Sirius is pathetic and in love, and Remus really can only be straight for about a month at a time (it totally says so in Deathly Hallows! Hardcore canon evidence, my friends), but it didn’t end up happening.

"Your friends are insufferable." Lily says, dropping onto the sofa next to him, five feet and four inches of feminine fury. Remus smiles at her, but cautiously. She gets like this at least twice a day, and by now he knows how to deal with it. It’s like knowing how to keep Sirius and James from killing themselves in any given situation, or how to make sure Peter doesn’t start thinking he’s the expendable friend and thus decide to jump from the astronomy tower.

"What did James do this time?" he asks. She folds her arms over her chest, staring straight ahead for a long moment before throwing her eyes up to him.

"He asked me out." she replies, shortly, then adds: "Again." for emphasis.

"Ah." He stares back at her, trying not to look amused. "What curse did you use?"

"Petrificus Totalus." she says, innocently.

". . .and?"

". . .and then I may have dropped him into the lake." She only looks up when Remus makes a strangled noise, standing up suddenly. "What?"

"Lily, he could have drowned." he says, eyes wide.

"Oh, Black was there to get him out. Tore off his shirt and dived in after him. Girls swooned. It was quite a sight." She’s taking a dark sort of pleasure out of it, he can tell, and he is caught between being mildly frightened and sad that Sirius didn’t have the common sense to just levitate James out.

He sits back down rather abruptly after a long moment of staring at her with his Horror Struck Prefect face, shaking his head.

"Someone’s going to die eventually." he murmurs, mostly to himself. "You’re going to kill James, or James is going to kill Snape, or Sirius is going to kill himself, but someone. . .someone is going to die."

She pats his leg affectionately.

"Or it’ll be you. Nervous breakdown. Tragic, of course, but not unexpected." He returns her smile briefly, sinking back further into the sofa with the warm weight of her shoulder against his. They are perfectly content to sit in silence until there is a loud noise from near the portrait hole, something that always signifies the dramatic entrances of James Potter and Sirius Black.

It is Sirius who notices them first, shirtless and dripping, and he shoots Remus a disapproving glance before nudging James.

"Evans!" Remus shuts his eyes tightly for a moment as James strides over to them, leaving puddles of water in his wake. When he opens them again, James is leaning against the arm of the sofa, smiling charmingly down at Lily.

"Do you want to go out a window next, Potter?" she asks, conversationally.

"I was just going to give you a chance to apologize." he continues. "Maybe, you know, by going to Hogsmeade with me next time?"

". . .apparently you do." Lily moves to get her wand, but Remus grabs her sleeve, a little desperately.

"Oh, come on, Evans. I don’t understand what your problem is." James sits down next to her with a loud, squelching noise, and she jumps to her feet immediately.

"My problem?" Her voice rises shrilly, a sign of disaster. "My problem is that you can’t take a hint! I don’t like you, you arrogant twat. I don’t like you in the least. In fact. . ." Impulsively, she moves and grabs Remus by the tie, pulling him forward to kiss him hard on the mouth. He feels his brain fracture just a bit. "There! I like Remus! Is that enough to get it through your head?"

Beside him, James is making faint noises of horror, and Lily is already halfway up the staircase to the girls’ dorm. From across the room, Sirius has dropped his shirt in a soggy pile on the floor and is gaping.

". . .Moony?" he squeaks.

Oh dear, Remus thinks dimly, as the entire Gryffindor common room breaks out into excited whispers.

---

Two hours later, the tale of Remus Lupin and Lily Evan’s epic love affair is known by the entire school, including the house elves, who have a fondness for Remus and sent up a wedding cake sample. It’s chocolate. There are tiny rosebuds. Sirius eats it while glowering from a slit in his bed curtains, refusing to speak to Remus and occasionally repeating the things that James says, loudly.

"How could you do this to me, Moony? I mean, Lily? Seriously? She. . .and you. .and mine. She’s. . .Moony! Seriously!" James has gotten past the yelling stage and has mostly been saying random words in a high voice for the past five minutes, while Remus stares at him, growing slightly more annoyed as the seconds pass.

"I’ve already told you, James. More than once. In fact, more than ten times." Remus gets up from where he had been sitting, poised on the edge of his bed in case one of them decided to give up on words and go with fists instead. "I did not kiss Lily. Lily kissed me. I was hardly even involved in the situation!"

"But she likes you, and that means you must have been leading her on with your books and your sweaters and your. . .your. . ."

"Raw animal magnetism!" Sirius cries, then blushes and glares at both of them before shutting his curtains. They both pause to listen to the sound of his muffled curses, then James rounds back on Remus, eyes blazing as the eyes of the Terribly Betrayed so often do.

"Whatever it is you have, you used it, and now everything is ruined! You cannot have babies with Lily! I forbid it!"

"I can’t listen to this anymore." Remus murmurs, shaking his head violently and heading for the door. "Babies! Honestly!"

"I’m not finished yelling at you, Lupin!" James calls after him, but Remus is already gone.

---

"I’m glad that Potter didn’t murder you." a quiet voice says, and then Lily has perched on the arm of his chair, awkwardly. "Also, I’m rather sorry." He looks up to see her not quite looking at him, green eyes firmly resting somewhere in the area of his knees.

"For what?"

"For kissing you." She pauses. "And then running off and leaving you to be eaten."

"James just flailed at me for an hour." Remus says, and puts his hand on her arm, feeling rather bold about the whole thing. "And you shouldn’t. . .you know, be sorry. It was. . .actually it was quite good." He hadn’t really thought about it until this point, of course, being too busy both defending Lily’s honor from Sirius ("She just jumped him, then? The tart!") and his own from James ("Moony, you slut.").

Now, though, Lily is finally looking at him, and he can remember the press of her lips against his, and he can still taste her lip gloss, faintly, like messy, sweet oranges in the middle of summer.

"Quite good, huh?" she asks, angling her head to smile at him.

"Yes." he replies, and he can only assume where such an answer will lead him. Remus has been kissed before, a handful of times, but they have all been under more stressful circumstances. He has painful memories of Madam Puddifoot’s, a girl whose name he can’t remember, being pulled into an alleyway and kissed with too much tongue. She had tasted of cupcake icing, which Remus hates, and they never spoke to each other again.

He likes Lily, likes to talk to her, and she hates cupcakes with a passions.

"I like you, Remus. A lot." she murmurs, and she has moved from her seat without him realizing and is kneeling in front of him, putting small hands on his knees.

"A lot, huh?" he asks, and he meets her halfway, leaning into the kiss. It is a slow and a very nice thing, and he sighs when it’s over.

"People are never going to leave us alone." she says, resting their foreheads together. Her freckles up close are really an amazing thing, and he has to pull his eyes back up to hers to be able to speak again.

"Worth it." he says, and she laughs, and he is beginning to see what James has been going on about all this time, green-eyed goddess of loveliness and the whole overdramatic deal.

---

"I saw you and Lily holding hands." Sirius says, accusingly, throwing himself onto Remus’ bed with a certain force that implies he might be staying there awhile. It has been two days since that night, and this is the first time Sirius has spoken to him apart from asking him to kindly pass the potatoes at dinner and then claiming that general pleasantries didn’t count in the no talking punishment.

"I’ve heard that’s what people who date often do." Remus replies.

"People who date." Sirius scowls, which he has a sort of natural talent for. "You aren’t a person who dates, Moony. You’ve never dated anyone." Remus starts to protest, to tell the story of Cupcake Girl, then decides against it. There was a reason that he didn’t tell Sirius about that in the first place, he’s sure of it.

"Then it was bound to happen eventually." A sharp elbow catches him in the stomach, and he turns on his side to glare at Sirius. "Look, why do you have a problem with it? It’s not like you. . .oh, bother, you don’t have secret crush on Lily, do you?"

"No! God, no!"

"Methinketh the lady doth protest too much." Remus murmurs, and Sirius pounces, pushing him back onto the bed with sharp knees in his thighs.

"Did you just call me a lady?" he asks, menacingly. "And quote Shakespeare?"

"I’m surprised you could recognize it." Remus squirms underneath him, uncomfortable with Sirius’s hands on either side of his head, their noses almost touching. "And yes, yes, I was. Now, would you please get off me."

"You do know that James is dying, don’t you?" Sirius doesn’t move an inch, staring at him directly, breath warm against Remus’ face. "Like, actually dying. It’s all I hear anymore, the wailing and the gnashing of teeth, the torn souls, the ‘woe is me’s."

"I think he’ll get over it." Remus harnesses all of the amazing werewolf strength that he never pays that much attention to and flips Sirius off of him. His bed protests the sudden movement, and Sirius echoes its feelings, giving him the look that Padfoot does when he’s stopped petting him.

"He was planning the best way to take out you, Lily, and a few helpless bystanders before flying into the sun."

"You can’t fly into the. . ."

"That doesn’t matter, Moony, because you’ve driven him to insanity! And turned him into a terrorist, which might be worse." Sirius lays back again with a huff, folding his arms over his chest.

"What exactly do you want me to do, Sirius? Break up with her?" Remus attempts to put eleven years of sacrifices made for his friends into one sigh. "If I had to choose between you three and a girl, you know I would always choose you. So, if it’s going to ruin our friendship, then I’ll break it off with her. Just say the word."

Sirius fixes him with an intent gaze, eyes narrowed.

"This is reverse psychology, isn’t it." He throws his head back down and buries his face in Remus’ shoulder, so his voice comes out muffled. "Do you like her?"

"I do."

"More than me?"

Remus smiles, elbowing him gently.

"Never, Padfoot."

---

A week later, James sits next to him during Charms and passes him a note once Flitwick starts lecturing on Containment Charms.

Lily was never going to go out with me, was she? Remus looks up at him, a little surprised, and his hands are shaky as he scrawls out a reply.

I’m sorry, Prongs. James bites down on the end of his quill until there are bits of feather left in his teeth, and it looks like it physically pains him to write anything.

I’m the one who should be sorry, I guess. Just treat her right, Moony.

If James had come across this sudden growth of maturity a few days ago, Remus would never have had a chance with Lily. Despite being too sensible for her own good, she’s also a teenage girl, and everybody at Hogwarts knows that eventually James Potter’s own sensibilities (but mostly his smile) will win anybody over. He smiles, looking up to see James giving him a look of amused earnestness, and he nods.

"I will." he whispers.

---

"James hijacked me in front of the common room and gave me his permission to, I believe his exact words were, make a man of you." Lily slips into the armchair next to Remus, pressing into the crook of his arm and raising an eyebrow in his general direction. "Do you have any idea what that’s about?"

"He’s resigned himself to never having your children." Remus says, sleepily resting his head on top of hers. "And did you just call him James?"

"I didn’t." she says. "Because that would be insanity."

Or a step forward, Remus thinks, kissing her forehead. Sirius and Peter and James sit across the room, and they play Exploding Snap without a hint of menace.

It could be a step forward.

-FIN-

all it's got inside is vacancy

2008-02-13T16:00:18Z

FIRST FIC. For

noneedofcrepe, in the Pay It Forward. . .thing. I'm afraid that I left my talent back with NaNoWrimo.

Title: Par for the Course
Rating: PG
Fandom: Psych
Pairing: Shawn/Lassiter
Word count: a bit over 2000.
Summary: takes place a few years before the first season. pink, mini golf, adhd, first dates.

"Ooh, which color should I choose?"

Shawn has seen plenty of unhappy faces in his days as Practically Assistant Manager of the Tropical Paradise Mini Golf and Family Fun Center (Now With 20% More Fun!), but he believes the man in front of him beats them all. He is standing awkwardly straight and is looking just over the head of the little blonde woman clinging to the sleeve of his sweater with pale pink fingernails, and the look on his face reads ‘I’m on a terrible date that I can’t get out of, does someone have a blunt object I can hit myself and/or this terrifying woman over the head with repeatedly?’

"I don’t know." he murmurs, looking down at the rack of multicolored golf balls and wincing. "Pink, maybe?" Shawn watches as the woman purses pink lips thoughtfully, then nods.

"I think so." she says, picking one up gingerly. She inclines her head to the side for the moment before plucking up a light blue ball and pushing it into his chest with a grin. "And this one’s for you, because it matches your eyes."

"Of course." he says through his teeth, then looks up at Shawn, who gives him a pitying look. "How much?"

"Five dollars per person." Shawn replies, cheerfully, extending his hand for the money. "Have an enjoyable and safe experience!" The woman smiles at him, and clings tighter to the man’s arm as she tugs him to the next rack.

"This is going to be so much fun, Carlton." she says, handing him his plastic golf club and walking ahead, skirt swishing with every step. Carlton lingers behind, so Shawn makes a split second decision and coughs significantly, then loudly, then asthmatically, until the older man looks at him.

"Are you dying?" he asks.

"No, but your date is." Shawn replies. "And I’m here to offer my services."

"Your. . .services?"

"Probably not what you’re thinking. Nothing to do with drugs, snipers, or prostitution, in any case, though if that’s what you’re looking for. . ." he draws off, raising an eyebrow at him.

"I’m a police officer." Carlton says dryly, raising an eyebrow in reply.

"Ah, well. None of those things then." He should have known, really. The immaculate clothes, the perfect posture, the ability to be respectful of a woman who has obviously driven lesser men to insanity. This man could have been his father when he was still young enough to shoot people. "I’m offering services of a different sort. . .I can get you out of your date in five minutes or less, as long as you ask no questions and go along with everything I say. How does that sound?"

"Carlton, what are you doing?" The sound of unreasonably high heels against linoleum loom ever closer.

"Uhm." Carlton hesitates.

"Boy Scout’s honor." Shawn says, holding up three fingers. He was only a Boy Scout for three meetings that Gus dragged him to, before they went on their first camping trip and he realized he didn’t enjoy sleeping in small tents that smell of other boys in the middle of the woods for even one night, nevertheless an entire Weekend Camporee. Carlton looks like he is about to betray everything he’s ever believed in. Shawn smiles encouragingly.

"All right!" he says with an air of finality, turning sharply on his heel and disappearing through the door just as his date is opening it.

Two minutes later, Shawn follows them. It’s not like he actually has to have a plan, and he considers it something of a sacred duty to end all bad first dates before they lead to something worse, like bad second dates or bad marriages. It just happens that no one else has deserved his help as much as this guy.

"Can you show me how to do that again?" he hears the woman asks, just as he begins to round the windmill. Flattening his back against it, he inches forward just enough to get a clear shot of them. She is leaning back into his chest, eyes half shut and smiling flirtatiously as he awkwardly positions her limbs.

"Aha!" Shawn cries, jumping out towards them, partly for the satisfaction of hearing her scream and partly because he just enjoys it.

"What are you doing." Carlton says, not even bothering to act surprised.

"You are breaking Rule #452 of the Tropical Paradise Mini Golf and Family Fun Center, sir, which prohibits any public displays of affection, otherwise known as PDA." He crosses his arms over his chest and uses his best glare. "I’m afraid I’ll have to escort you from the premises."

"Oh no." Carlton says, obviously fighting to maintain his composure.

"Oh no. You can’t do that." his date cries.

"Actually, I can, ma’am." Shawn replies gravely. He rummages in his pockets until he finds the majority of what is left of his last paycheck and hands it to her. "For a cab. Good day." He grabs Carlton’s arm and pulls him away, keeping his head bowed until they are far enough away that she can’t hear them. He breaks out into laughter, leaning against the other man for support, still holding his arm.

"That. . .that was awesome. Did you see the look on her face?" he chokes out, grinning up at Carlton who smiles hesitantly back.

"I feel like I should feel bad, just leaving her here." he says, but his eyes show nothing but relief. Shawn wonders momentarily why he didn’t look at Carlton’s eyes before, because they are very blue, and then takes another moment to wonder why he even cares.

"She’ll be fine." he assures him, looking down at his hand, still holding tight to the strong arm.

"Of course. I think. . ." he pulls away from Shawn, pointedly. "I think I’ll go, then."

Shawn nods, dumbly, watching as he walks carefully over the bright green carpeting and through the door. It only takes him a second to realize that Carlton leaving is a bad idea, a really terrible idea, even though he doesn’t know why, and he is running before he can even think about it.

"Hey, wait up!" he calls, high-tops pounding against the pavement of the parking lot. Carlton looks back at him, surprise lighting up his features. "I don’t normally rescue people, so I don’t know how this whole thing goes, but doesn’t the rescuee generally treat the rescuer to dinner?" It’s not the smoothest line he’s ever used, but, then again, it wasn’t meant to be a line at all. Everything just seems to come out that way.

"I don’t know about that." Carlton says, leaning into his car. He is smiling, which is nice, Shawn decides, and he looks more comfortable in the darkening parking lot than the technicolor dreamland they had just left.

"Well, the rescuer just spent all his money on the rescuee, and look how thin he is! If he goes without a meal, he could very well waste away, and then wouldn’t the rescuee feel guilty?" His mouth has a tendency to move faster than most other parts of his body, but most of the time it works out in his favor.

"Get in." Carlton murmurs, laughing as he walks around towards the driver’s side. Shawn tries not to look too eager as he slides into the seat opposite him. The car is a dark nondescript undercover type deal, and he feels both incredibly important and incredibly uncomfortable as his bare arms stick and slide against the worn leather. In the floorboard at his feet, there’s a bouquet of flowers in shades of pink and purple that have already started wilting. He picks it up, raising an eyebrow when Carlton gets in.

"You actually wanted to encourage her?" he asks, shaking them a little bit. Blooms fall off and drift casually to the floor again. He drops the rest of them a moment later, smiling a little at the satisfying noise they make.

"I didn’t know she was insane the first time we met. She hid it well." Carlton shakes his head, turning the key in the ignition. Music fills the car, and Shawn bursts out laughing again.

"Jewel? Please, please tell me that doesn’t belong to you. I might have to reject your extremely generous dinner invitation."

"She brought it with her." He messes with the radio until a classic rock station plays the welcome first chords of a Led Zeppelin song, then adds, "And I didn’t exactly invite you."

"But you know you wanted to." Shawn stretches out more comfortably, smiling. "Besides, you owe me. I can be paid off with french fries."

He drums out a solo on the dashboard as they pull out of the parking lot.

***

"Are you sure you don’t want some, like. . .meat? It’s really good." Shawn holds out his hamburger temptingly over the table, raising an eyebrow. "And not so green, which I just can’t find appetizing."

"I don’t eat meat anymore." Carlton says.

"Anymore?"

"Since the first time I shot someone." Long fingers play with a straw, bending the top of it aimlessly.

"Wow." Shawn can’t say he’s not impressed, despite a lifetime of hearing about people getting shot. There’s something very nice about that.

The dinner has been going like this, short conversations that end in him being unable to do much other than continue to steal all of Carlton’s pocket change to play power ballads on the jukebox. It’s not awkward, really, but he feels like there is something that they aren’t saying.

They have coffee before they leave, though, and Shawn orders pie and convinces the older man to eat half of it.

"Back to the golf course?" Carlton asks, really smiling by now, stretching strong arms above his head. Shawn watches the sun set from behind the neon sign outside, trying to decide on an answer.

"I took the bus, actually," he says, which is a lie, because his brand new used motorcycle that he had saved up for since his freshman year is sitting behind the golf course, strategically hidden between the dumpsters to insure its safety. "And since I no longer have any money, d'you think you could maybe drop me off at my place?"

His place. This is all seeming startlingly similar to the night he lost his virginity to Cissy Danes, the lies and Journey playing softly and the very, very blue eyes, and Shawn doesn't know how he feels about that.

"Where do you live?"

Score! Shawn thinks, a little hysterically, and gives him directions.

***

"So, you’re a cop." When they are in the car, almost to his apartment, Shawn begins to grasp at the straws of polite conversation.

"I’m a police officer." Carlton is one of those people who refuses to look away from the road while he’s driving, so Shawn watches the way his eyes stay intent in front of him, the corners of his mouth curving in a half smile. "Why?"

"Oh, no reason." He doesn’t want to tell him about his dad, but there is that voice in his head telling him that it is a point of interest, that it will make this silence less uncomfortable, that dear God, Spencer, say something. "Well, my dad’s a cop."

"Really? Here?" Carlton’s eyes flicker over to him for a moment, which he counts as a victory.

"Henry Spencer."

"You’re Henry Spencer’s son?" Shawn sighs and points out his apartment building as they near it.

"Yes, and I am very aware of the man crushes that other officers have on my father. You have no idea how often I’ve had to listen to grown men swoon." They come to a slow stop in front of the door, and Shawn throws his eyes back up to him, smiling lazily. "My mother got so jealous."

"I would imagine." Carlton says, blushing slightly, and Shawn is torn between being uncomfortable that he is one of his father’s many younger fanboys and finding the fact that he’s blushing something more than uncomfortable.

They stare at each other for approximately five seconds.

"Erm, are you going to get. . ." Carlton starts, and Shawn slips fingers into the neck of his sweater and pulls him forward, kissing him on the mouth. Carlton’s sentence finishes with a vague trailing off, punctuated by a surprised noise and a bit of flailing at him. Blue eyes regard him warily. Shawn wonders whether he keeps a gun on him.

"So, are you. . .interested?" he asks, looking up through his eyelashes. He is fairly certain that he has been more than shamelessly flirting all night, but he’s only recently gotten into this whole bisexuality thing, so it’s possible that all he just did was molest an officer of the law.

"No?" Carlton says.

"Are you sure?" Shawn gets on his knees to get better access as he kisses him again, attempting to put many years of diligent practice to good use before he pulls away, smiling knowingly.

". . .no." Carlton admits, looking breathless and hardly disinterested, and Shawn glances up at the window to his apartment before slowly getting out of the car, sauntering towards the doors.

There is a long, quiet moment before he hears desperate shuffling from him and turns to see Carlton, hair messy and cheeks flushed, moving up the sidewalk to meet him.

This is probably a bad idea." he says.

"Oh, definitely. A horrible idea." Shawn takes his hand and tugs him towards the elevator, grinning all the way.

-fin-

I thought I would leave the rest to your imagination.

We're off for 6 days for winter break/flu recovery, and that's freaking amazing, except for the fact that we don't get to go on our Kiterunner field trip. I never get to watch subtitled indie movies for school!

all your friends and sedatives mean well but make it worse

2008-02-05T00:14:50Z

Wilson/CTB.

DISCUSS, PLEASE.

I'm for he's suppressing his, you know, special feelings for House by going out with someone distinctly House-like (just blonde and pretty, when did CTB get pretty?), though in the spectrum of H/W never happening, I honestly rather like CTB. I will never call her Amber, but I do like her, and I'm glad they brought her back on the show.

Though she was supposed to be having angry lesbian sex with Thirteen. . .just think of all the crazy OT3s.

(Also, House is adorable and sad, and I think he should start listening to Bright Eyes. And now I'm gone.)

still we're not robots inside a grid

2008-02-01T02:25:31Z

Hullo, eljay! Long time, no see!

It's been about a month since I've been around, and I've already giving up on catching up on my flist, so we can consider this a start. Exams are over, and I've started second semester (it's horrifying: Chemistry and Geometry ONE AFTER THE OTHER, but I've got Creative Writing, which is filled with people praising me, and Latin II, which is just made of awesome, anyway, so I am happily surviving ) at a reasonable pace. . .

(and all of the fics have at least 1000 words now! It's all painful and slow, but it's happening, and there is minigolf and bars and park romps. . .)

BUT NONE OF THAT IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE I AM TRAUMITIZED:

A girl came onto me over fanfiction.net.

Eep.

So, i guess the time has come for me to start using this account. I can

resist no more! I wandered into your profile and well, I liked what I saw..

So um, my name is ___________. I think you and I should be friends, because

you seem pretty cool, and maybe even cute! (it's so tough to tell in this

digital world :)

anyway, i'd go on forever, but I'd like to get a response from you.. You

should check out my other profile on this other site, I'm usually on over

there: (my username is ________). Then maybe we could chat sometime! you

know what they say.. appearance captures the eyes, but personality captures

the heart.. haha..

talk to you soon,

____________

. . .is this. . .normal? Do girls ever come onto you over the internet? I'm sort of shocked, in both a disturbed and slightly pleased way. . .

And I feel too bad to reply and tell her that I rather like boys, so I've decided to just ignore it! It is My Way. Also, it how I deal with unfortune people who have crushes on me in real life, such as the Myspace Wooer (who used my love of Oscar Wilde to blindside me. So not on) and the Library Stalker (I don't even know his name, but he tends to find me anytime I'm near the folk tales section and quietly follow me around until I grab my brother and make him walk with me :D).

I'm not asking for an attractive person to like me; I am asking for someone not creepy.

show her what it's all about

2007-12-02T19:52:11Z

I tried to flag the lj biz entry on flagging inappropiate entries as inappropriate and my internet locked up and then refused to let me back on for half an hour. I've been looking suspiciously over my shoulder every few seconds since then. . .

This is just not making anything better, eljay. I'm sad.

And another short fic, because I'm going through NaNoWriMo withdrawal symptoms and am also writing an essay on the Swing revolution in Nazi Germany, so that means I had to rewatch Swing Kids. For research purposes.

(hopefully the fics I'm supposed to actually be writing will be coming soon! I have two in the actual written stages as of yesterday!)

Title: Shake down the Stars
Rating: G
Fandom: Swing Kids
Pairing: Gen
Summary: Peter listens

Peter listens as Arvid plays his guitar like Django Reinhart and Thomas sings like no one else, belting it out as he swings his way from girl to girl, and, when they stumble out into the night air, it tastes like 'young' and 'rebellious' and 'free.' They jitter jive all the way down the rain-slicked street to the tune of the faded music, tangling limbs and scarves, matching footsteps beat for beat. At his stoop (always the first, somehow, no matter where they come from), Afrid moves on, pulling his hat down further over his face with a smile and limping less than usual, his guitar case seeming lighter on his shoulders. Thomas follows him up, though, until they reach his door and, suddenly, a sharp chin on his shoulder and a sharper whistle (no, it don't mean a thing) right in his ear, and he is gone.

He listens to the dulled sound of wet shoes until they disappear entirely, leaving nothing but that ache of a musical echo at the opening of the stairwell, halfway to his ears. Lately, he hasn't liked for anything to be quiet.

It is just as he expected when he gets inside. Everything is cast a shade darker with that time just past twilight, and he can only barely make out the sound of breathing, from further distances. They have stopped waiting up for him, like he used to beg them to do, before all of this started to mean something. He passes his mother's room (with the door opened just a crack so she'll wake if something -they say this like they don't know what something is -happens) without looking in, straight to his own. His brother is curled up, asleep, with nothing but a crown of almost-white hair showing from a bundle of sheets, so wrapped up that he can't even tell if he's breathing.

He listens for a few seconds and can't stop himself from checking afterwards, shaking the boy gently before accepting his stirring and the high whimper, child whimper. Was he ever that small? It seems impossible. Almost unfair. His hands are shaking as he hangs up his coat and his scarf on the headboard and lays down in his clothes. A lot of nights, he doesn't sleep. It's easy to see that this will be one of them.

The sun eventually pushes away the night-time with saving fingers, inching over the window sill and spilling onto the floor, and soon he'll be going to school and soon he'll be dancing again and maybe that will end the war (even though he knows it won't).

WEIRJWEPIORUWEIORUWEPIOUR!!!!!!!!!!

2007-12-01T05:08:43Z

MY PROGRESS BAR JUST TURNED PURPLE, GUYS. A REALLY, REALLY DELICIOUS SHADE OF PURPLE.

It happened exactly ten minutes before midnight, but I WON! I WON! I WON! PERWPOPEIRPWEORIEOIRPWOEIRWPEORIPWEIORUPIWERUTOERIT! OEJrPOWjemrwiehrowpeJRWJIOWEIHWOEIWOEIRJHWOEIHWOERIUJWEORIUWEORIWEH!!

This has been the longest and the shortest month of my life, but it was so worth ignoring all of my friends and doing nothing but type for 30 days. I am officially a NaNoWriMo novelist. And I'm eventually going to post my novel, when I get around to editing it.

But I think I'll take a break.

And maybe go to sleep. . .

Sleep sounds really nice.

(CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE WHO WON OR DIDN'T WIN OR WHATEVER! WE DID IT!)

no, you don't love me, don't you say that you do. . .

2007-11-17T15:16:55Z

I'm so awfully behind on my NaNoWriMo novel. Like 12,000 words. And I haven't gotten my pep talk from Neil Gaiman yet, which means I can't possibly go on until then.

Which is, uhm, er, exactly why I'm writing this. It's cathartic. Perhaps I can make it to 20k after posting, and my main characters will learn to love me again, and my random adding of a gay couple and a garden will boost my word count like they were originally meant to do.

Title: Woodcut
Rating: PG13+
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Word count: 797
Warnings: angst, lots of touching, dust, no capitilization, JOY song!fic
Summary: change is beyond me/I'm helpless to start

hmph, he thought, and: aha, and: oh, fingers twisted and fumbling through the excess papers until crashing down on just the one, and he wrinkles the edges and tears it a bit (a few words off the right edge, an address that he memorized years ago, how many, 10 years or more), but this is it. it has been days since he caught the memory slipping back into his dreams, days since he first started searching, making a desperate trail through his house up the dusty ladder to his attic past the bookshelves with school books and paperback novels and straight into a trunk full of who he used to be.

i've still got three fingers left on this hand
take off your belt and i'll do what i can for you. . .

remus, it reads, in a shaken sort of boy-scrawl, the very tops of the letters torn off, remus, REMUS, please. we need to talk about this, and we can't do that, not if you won't even look at me. fuck. remus. i don't know what you're thinking right now, but you might be thinking that what we did was bad. or wrong. or something. but we did it, anyway, and that's all that matters. and it wasn't bad. and i don't think it was wrong, either.

just please talk to me. i'll be in the astronomy tower finishing up the homework that i wasn't able to copy from you, all night. please.

-s.

he didn't say no, and he couldn't have, anyway, so maybe it didn't matter. maybe it wasn't wrong. 10 years later, probably more, he remembers that he did go up to the astronomy tower, and he did talk to sirius, and that it didn't feel wrong. not at all.

you sure look like you could be some kind of fun

"padfoot," he murmurs, that night long before, "oh sirius". a whisper between lips that have never done this before, but it feels like breathing, just like. ahh, ahh, ahh. sirius doesn't say anything, just presses against him, denim and skin, heartbeat that isn't his own against his chest. it's scary to feel, but he doesn't mind. it's like feeling himself being alive.

from somewhere further off, james sighs in his sleep, turning in a rustle of sheets. they stop where they are.

"moony-" sirius starts, but remus is already gone.

maybe it's true you're more gifted than most
but you'll still be remembered by the notch in my bedpost

left in your wake, at the break of the day that comes afterthe letter is falling apart in his hands by the time he has finished reading it, the pieces of yellow paper resting on the knees of his trousers, and he is still not ready to put it down. it doesn't make sense, that he put sirius away so many years ago, that he let him be put away. . .he should be able to do it now. there shouldn't even be these memories to cling to, these stolen kisses, these deserted hallways full of light. they made up their minds in the tower that night (so long, not so long ago), but that doesn't have anything to do with now. sirius broke those promises, those forevers, sirius not him.

and now he's gone. and remus might as well be. he folds the paper, harder than he means to, and pushes it back into the trunk.

there's no one above me to stain my fierce hands
no, you don't love me, don't you say that you do!

"hi." says sirius, when remus comes into the astronomy tower, where there is no light but the moon (the half moon, th' inconstant moon, and it only tugs at his heart) and the tip of his wand.

"hi." says remus, and he doesn't know what he is doing, but he sits next to sirius in the window sill. they are close, hip against hip, and this is what feels right, this is the only thing that will ever feel right again. they don't even have to say anything, because remus knows he has been stupid, and he knows that sirius can figure out exactly what to say to make everything seem normal again.

"we don't have to tell james." he whispers, and remus nods, and there are lips on his skin, all over, and hands moving in the same path. this could just be a thing to pass the time for him, and he thinks that's probably all it is, but when he presses his hands against the smooth skin of his chest, it doesn't seem to matter. it all happens for a reason.

a moan breaks the silence, and neither of them knows who it was.

you-you can't!

remus goes to sleep alone.

fin, like.

Also: I am sorry for my woeful lack of commenting, old darlings and the new darlings, the NaNoWriMo darlings. Once December comes, I am planning to fill my life with you and fandom and my brand new Advent calender I found while strolling through WalMart with my mother yesterday. See you then.

the devil will find work for idle hands to do

2007-11-03T13:48:16Z

I'm not entirely on course with NaNoWriMo, but I did figure out what my novel is about while having a weird, impromptu write-in with a friend (write-in apparently meaning holing ourselves up in the computer room with a bowl of Halloween candy, a bottle of RC, and pomegranate flavored tea). . .

There's More to Life Than This, You Know:

The SAT
Touching Grandfather/Grandson relationship (not a ship.)
Pregnant mothers.
Scholarly blonde love interests (female this time!).
Falling in love with a picture (name the Who reference!)

.Maybe it will make more sense if you read it. . .

His hands are unfaithful, slick around his pencil as he writes out his name in letters so careful he can barely recognize them, each one tall and straight black in its individual box. E-L-I-O-T J-A-M-E-S __________, a name that is a living testament to his father, whose name was James, whose well-worn copy of The Wasteland was left on the foot of Eliot's bed two years ago, the night he ran away.

That is what Eliot is thinking of as he pencils in bubble after bubble, heavy and dark, not listening to the drone of the Testing Administrator as she instructs everyone to give up their addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, etc, in a light tone referencing kindergarten. In some number of minutes, he will be tested on everything he has learned in sixteen years, but all he can think about is how his mother's smile still doesn't seem real, and how he'll probably never put The Wasteland up on his bookshelf, and how absolutely none of this is fair, and still. When he gets to those probing personal questions about ethnicity and religion (Caucasian, unsure?), he falters for a moment before marking ‘prefer not to respond’ on each and closing his eyes.

Behind his eyelids, he can see red and gold, framed in black, all composing a little street map out of skin and veins. He tries to follow it, wishes he could follow it, hoping it might lead to some place new. He traces a path until he reaches the edge if his vision and hears footsteps from somewhere behind him, and, suddenly, everything is light again.

"Please open your books, turn to page two, and begin." the Test Administrator coos, a few feet away from him. He glances over his shoulder for a moment to get his first real look at her. She is a just past middle age woman with a pleasant face and gray streaked hair falling in wisps from her ponytail. There are lines on her face, but he thinks they are laugh lines, and she sort of reminds him of his grandmother, back when she was still around. She raises an eyebrow at him now, not unkindly, and gestures vaguely. He’s supposed to have started by now. Beside him, a girl he only knows by sight is already on the next page, filling in each bubble with a certain ferocity that looks out of place on her.

Eliot opens his book, sets pencil to paper to follow along with the passage, and begins to read.

***

At a state specified amount of time later, he has come to the conclusion that, though he very well can read, he doesn’t enjoy having to answer ambiguous questions pertaining to articles he didn’t particularly care to read to begin with. There is something expressively wrong about having to read about someone else’s family car trip this early on a Saturday morning.

They are taking a break before starting the math section, and he and the girl beside him are the only people who haven’t escaped to the haven of the bathrooms.

"Did you think you did well?" she asks, then continues before he has time to answer. "I think I did incredibly well. Don’t you?"

"I’m, uh, sure you did." he says, hesitantly. She stares at him for a long moment in which he wonders whether he said the wrong thing, then smiles, looking satisfied. They don’t say anything else while people begin to drift back in, looking paler than before as they pull out their calculators and check casually for the programs they had frenziedly shared with each other this morning.

He has his mother’s old calculator, and it barely turns on, nevertheless indiscreetly give him answers while he looks like he is in intense thought.

"Sit down, everyone!" the woman’s voice rang through the cafeteria, a bit more desperately than it had before. "Please! Open your books to the math section and begin!"

The room falls silent except for the sound of shuffling paper and the click of calculator keys. Eliot takes a long breath before opening his book, staring down the first problem.

***

Once more, they are instructed to put their pencils down and stop writing, informed they are not allowed to go back to any of the previous test, and released to contemplate their fate for five more minutes. Eliot is still shell-shocked from realizing what only half paying attention for 11 years of math classes will leave you with, and can only watch as the girl beside him assures herself by assuring him.

She has blond hair that she has parted carefully in the center, framing a soft face and sharp eyes. Looking at them for even this long has given him the impression that she could, and would, if she saw fit, see straight into his soul. The idea was at first frightening, but also, as he thought about it more, comforting. She says something about the mean test scores to get into some very prestigious university, and he nods like he’s already thought about all this. She is playing with her pencil compulsively as she speaks, small fingers lacing around and around it.

"So where are you going?" she asks, leaning her head to the side, the universal sign that you are either a dog or just trying to look acutely interested in what the other person is saying.

"Going?" He’s fairly certain that she’s aware of the fact that he hasn’t been listening, but she’s smiling anyway, and that must be a good sign.

"To college."

"Oh. I don’t really know." The look on her face that this brings up is abject horror, and the pencil falls from her hand and hits the table with a clatter.

"You don’t know?" she cries, just as the last person sits down and they are forced into silence again to begin the section that will test their abilities to discern exactly where a comma should and a semicolon should not go.

***

Three hours later, it is finally over, and Eliot is about to gather his thing to leave when the girl steps in his path.

"How can you not know where you want to go? This-this is your future?" she demands, hands placed firmly on her hips as she glares up at him. He frowns in response, too disconcerted to reply right away. Her eyes widen impatiently, and that isn’t helping matters.

"I just don’t know." When he starts to walk away, she stumbles forward to walk beside him, clutching a notebook firmly to her chest. As they walk out the double doors, he turns to squint at her in the sudden burst of sunlight.

"I’m only sixteen."

She makes an angry sort of noise in her throat, half laugh and half scoff, then turns on her heel and disappears down the sidewalk in a whirl of hair and floral perfume. He is sure that this will not be the last time they meet, but he waits until he is absolutely certain that she is gone before he blinks, curiously, and sets off in the opposite direction.

***

The leaves are starting to fall on Main Street and, at any point in the day, at least three shop owners can be seen attacking the sidewalk with their brooms. Eliot dodges the owner of the local bookstore, nodding a greeting and quickening his pace. If he hurries, he’ll beat his mother home, which is the ideal situation for both of them. By the time she arrives, he might be hiding in his room or asleep, and they won’t. He’s noticed that doing that with her has been getting progressively more difficult, and it’s better for both of them if they just avoid the act altogether.

Their house is six blocks from the school, and he walks them every day, two miles each way. This has been the routine since he was six years old, when the idea had given him a feeling of ultimate independence. Now, though, he just wants to sleep when he gets home, and that doesn’t bode well for the state of his geometry homework.

Relief floods him as he sees his stoop from the end of their street, the house with the bright red door, and his legs unconsciously speed up until he collapses on the steps. There is mail sticking out of the mailbox and even more leaves sticking underneath him, but he takes one long moment to breathe in the cold air and sunlight before moving on. The leaves he will leave for later; he gets out the mail and lets himself in.

It is colder inside the house than it is outside, but it’s normally like that, except in the summer. He slips a jacket on with one hand as he sorts through the mail. Bill, bill, you could already be a winner!, a credit card offer for his grandfather, and letter from him, as well. He drops the rest on the coffee table as he passes it and takes the letter into his room. Every time he steps inside his room, he locks the door, even though he doesn’t know why. The sound of the lock helps him to calm down, sometimes, like he’s truly safe.

He sits down on his floor and opens the letter with one finger, a long tear at the very top of the envelope. Inside, through the paper, he can see that the writing is messy and dark, bleeding through to black. His grandfather’s handwriting has been getting worse ever since he moved away, and that’s almost worse than not seeing him. The Assisted Living Center (they call it an Assisted Living Center, even though it’s a nursing home and everyone knows that it’s a nursing home) is four hours away, and they can almost never find the time to get down there, so they are stuck living alone in his house while he’s all alone there, and sometimes Eliot can’t even look at his mother, knowing that she did that to him. The letter sticks to the sweat on his fingers, smearing ink beneath them as he carefully unfolds it.

Dear Hannah and Eliot,
I miss you both, accordingly, and I cannot wait until you can come and visit again. I just needed to ask a favor of you, for when that time comes. In the attic, there is an old chest that used to belong to me back in school. I stored a few photo albums there when we first moved in. If you could, please bring that to me. It will help to have those old memories, too, as well as these new ones.
Please make sure that you are treating yourselves well, and Eliot, good luck on the testing you were telling me about in your last letter. You are a brilliant boy, and you will be able to do anything you want when you grow up. Never forget that.

One of his grandfather’s many skills (along with actually being able to cook and base jumping, back in the day) was making Eliot feel better about himself in the worst of condition. Even though they might not admit it, even teenagers sometimes enjoy being told that they can still be astronauts or cowboys if they want to. He sets the letter aside and stands on his bed so he can reach the string. Narrowly missing getting hit in the head by the ladder, he manages to catch it and get a precarious footing. The bottom of it presses firmly into his carpet, and he realizes that he hasn’t gone up there since Christmas. As he climbs up, he can already see the light from the single bulb reflecting broken ornaments and silver tinsel, the sort they always complain about having to hang around the windows. The thin glass shatters quietly beneath his sneakers when he steps into the attic, ducking to avoid the low ceiling.

A long time ago, his grandfather had taken him up here and shown him the chest, pulling out memories and explaining them intently. They had looked through the albums for hours while Eliot learned the faces of family members he had never met and will never be able to meet. He remembers dark hair and eyes that look like his, even in black and white, and how he felt different for days afterwards, bigger, somehow.

The chest is still in the same place, almost hidden in a corner behind a black trash bag filled with his old stuffed animals, and he drags it out into full view. It’s made of a dark wood he can’t recall the name of, and his grandfather’s initials are burned into the front of it in block letters. His father, Eliot’s great grandfather (who to him is just another face in a picture), made it for him when he went off to college, and he has kept it ever since.

The latch catches when he goes to undo it, and he spends an inordinate amount of time fumbling with it until it finally swings open, revealing a small cloud of dust and insects. Beneath it, though, there are a stack of albums for him to pull out, and beneath that are old clothes and school books and letters. Eliot considers reading them, knowing that his grandfather wouldn’t mind, but he knows that he should wait. After slipping them gently inside one of the albums, he puts the trunk back in its spot and makes his way back down into his room.

More dust flies up when he drops the albums onto his bed, and one photographs falls out and slides across his floor. It makes him feel guilty, the look of disuse, the edges of photographs and pages showing from beneath the binding, torn and yellow with age. His eyes move to the fallen photograph, curiously, spotting his grandfather’s old handwriting on the back of it in neat, self-assured lines. The edges of it crumble in his hand when he picks it up, and he lays it delicately on his palm to read.

Lily, only. 1950.
In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word.

On the other side is a picture of a girl, maybe a woman, smiling with teeth at the camera. Only one of her arms is shown, bent at a strange angle as she rakes a long hand through a sweep of pale hair. There is something in her eyes that shows she isn’t as confident as she seems, that maybe the happiness there is just a show for whoever’s taking the picture. He doesn’t know why, but when he looks at her, he’s reminded of himself.

In case you were wondering, my friend is writing about a boy who plays a Mexican Apple Thief on a Spanish language soap opera, then goes to play flute in the Philharmonic and falls in love. . .with my brother.

YOU SEE, TO ME YOU'RE JUST SOME FAGGY GIRL, AND I NEED A LOVER WITH SOOOOOUL POWER

2007-10-26T14:15:43Z

Today, I got online at 7:00 and wandered about, reading Spn/HP crossovers and realizing that all I really wanted in life was to read some Marc/photographer who's name I can't recall, but srsly? SRSLY? (I started watching Ugly Betty, guys. I can't stop.) and listen to the new Polly Jean CD forever, when suddenly I recieved an IM.

AND GUESS WHO'S GOING TO CHAPERONE A BUNCH OF BROWNIE GIRL SCOUTS AT HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL. . .ON ICE!?

That's right.

This could possibly be more flamboyant and glittery than the Of Montreal concert.

IN REGARDS TO THE NEWS. NOW WITH ADDED DRABBLE.

2007-10-22T00:44:19Z

Oh, guys. I'm never going to stop capslocking after this.

After reading the Grindeldore news (thank you, Flist, for two full pages of it) and dashing down to my brother's basement, almost killing myself on the stairs:

ME: Oh my god. . .so, Dumbledore? You know Dumbledore?
BROTHER: . . .yes?
ME: GAY. SO VERY GAY.
BROTHER: Uhm.
ME: YOU SEE THERE'S THIS GUY NAMED GRINDELWALD AND THEY MAKE PLANS FOR A BETTER WIZARDING WORLD AND DUMBLEDORE TOTALLY FALLS IN LOVE WITH HIM. BUT THEN HE TURNS EVIL AND HE HAS TO DEFEAT HIM IN AN EPIC BATTLE.
BROTHER: Did he turn evil because Dumbledore wouldn't give him butt sex?
ME: . . .

Evidently, I have been spending too much time with my brother.

And I, uhm, wrote some Grindeldore. Just a bit, because how could I not. . . J.K. ROWLING IS JUST ONE STEP FROM MAKING EVERYTHING ELSE CANON. ONE MORE INTERVIEW. POSSIBLY WITH SOME ALCOHOL BEFORE HAND. R/S! COME ON!

Title: Games
Rating: PG
Pairing: AD/GG (I &hearts; canon)
Word count: Drabbley. 280.
Summary: Angst! Unrequited love! Quit playing games with my heart!

"You know it's for their own good, right?" Gellert says rather than asks, stretching his long legs further across Albus' bed. His boots make dull noises against the headboard as they land there, the sound of well worn leather on hard wood. Albus doesn't know, but he nods anyway.

"I just wish there was some way it could be different. That we could. . .I don't know. I care about my people, but I feel like I have to care about them, as well." He looks up at Gellert, hesitantly, and is granted a careless smile. He isn't sure how he feels about this boy, so suddenly taking up his entire life, but he isn't quite sure it's a bad thing.

"Of course, you want that. We have to consider what's best for us, though, and this must be it. This is what we were made for, Albus." His voice takes on a tone of disapproval, barely audible, but enough to shake Albus terribly. "You know that."

"Yes. I know." Quietly, he gets to his feet and sits on the end of his bed. Gellert moves his feet up obligingly, the toes of his boots pressing affectionately into his thigh. They smile oddly at each other, a bit too forced, a bit too. . .something. Albus can feel something press against his heart, a dull ache as the other boy sits up gracefully to face him.

"I'm doing this for the entire world, Albus, but. . ." A quirk of lips, pale skin and red lips. "I'm doing it for you, too. Mostly you."

He is in love, and Gellert knows it. No one but Albus would ever suspect that he isn't being sincere when he does this, but his eyes betray him. There is mischief beneath, games, and he doesn't know what to do about that.

I CAN'T WAIT TO HEAR WHAT LAURA MALLORY HAS TO SAY ABOUT THIS BLASPHEMY!

screaming 'big girl you are beautiful!'

2007-10-17T01:09:08Z

So.

When I was a child, I was not exactly tiny. I wasn't clinically obese, but I definitely do not go around showing people yearbook pictures of about kindergarten through 5th grade. After 6th grade, I grew a few inches, and things sort of evened out. I had all of that healthy gym exercise, and I was quite normal.

Now, though, I've hit sophomore year and gotten my required Physical Education over with. I've noticed that I've gained a little bit of weight. . .nothing monumental. Just a little bit.

And I'm freaking out. Because apparently, who knew, I'm a teenage girl.

I would ask people in my immediate Real Life, but I don't want the 'oh, Chelsea, darling, you're perfect the way you are!' comments. You don't know what I look like. So what sort of things (excercises, Secret Diets That Won't Draw Concern From My Mother, etc) can I do to help me lose the bit of weight I've gained? Anything fascinatingly creative? Anything that doesn't involve bulimia/anorexia/jogging?

I mean, I don't eat a whole lot. My metabolism just apparently has a vendetta against me.

BRING ME YOUR WISE ADVICE, O GLORIOUS FLIST.

Also: BRING ME YOUR NANOWRIMO PENNAMES IF I HAVE NOT YET NOVEL BUDDIED YOU.

NANOWRIMO SIGNUP PARTY

2007-10-01T22:20:37Z

I'm waiting for them to open signups at NaNoWriMo.Org.

SO NANOWRIMO SIGNUP PARTY.

COME HANG OUT WITH ME AND LET ME SINGLE HANDEDLY PERSUADE YOU INTO WRITING A NOVEL IN A MONTH.

THERE IS ICE CREAM INVOLVED. DOUBLE CHOCOLATE BROWNIE CLOGGED ARTERY ICE CREAM.

ALSO, I'M CHANGING MY PENNAME TO MYWHOLECRY, SO NOVEL BUDDY ME PUHLEESE.

(Guys, I'm just so excited. NaNo is my favorite time of year. It's full of rainbows and glitter and schitzophrenia and I'm writing everything by hand this year and I think I'm going to get a t-shirt if I win. Hopefully, I will use more commas in The Novel. Which is called <i>There's More To Life Than This, You Know</i>, even though I have no idea what it's about. CHEERS.)

the occasional book was the only fun I ever took

2007-09-11T00:33:16Z

pay it forward
fluffy Remus/Sirius for unrequited_rain
Teddy/James or some such for fathomlesssky
something for noneedofcrepe? Something.

birthdays
so far, just xmindthegapx. There is exactly two paragraphs of Wilson/Chase on my laptop. Two paragraphs. Which might lead to things done on desks, or at least ambiguous allusions to things done on desks.

other things
Remus/Lily, for hype45, because fluff cures. . .well, some ails.
drabbles for shakespeare140(SHAKESPEARE FIC. 'S WONDERFUL.)
and eventually get around to working on 15pairings

I don't quite think I've overextended myself. . .maybe a little.

I'm also going to write some femmeslash eventually. If I could decide on a pairing. If you have a favorite femmeslash pairing, or just a femmeslash pairing in general (I'm relatively new to the idea. I've written Rory/Paris, but that's about it), . . .let me know. So I can think about it.

Also BOOKS. Books and I had a long period apart over the summer, but I have a LIST now and we are going to have a glorious bibliophilic reunion. There's going to be Shakespeare and indie novels and also Winnie-the-Pooh, and I will have Ella Fitzgerald on repeat, because I am in love with her. I'm so terribly excited to go to the library tomorrow.

BOOKS.

is true love a trip to chinatown?

2007-09-02T18:29:06Z

this is really. . .overly poetic. Or overly Trying-To-Be-Poetic. Yeah. I stuck it at the Pit a really long time ago (they were all like: this? this is beautiful), because I didn't like it nearly enough to put it here, but there are a few lines that I've been clinging to like a life preserver. . .maybe I'll throw them into something else. Later. For now, while I'm shamelessly not writing gifts, you get this.

Goals for the next bit: study for irreverently hard Driver's Ed test, learn Latin vocabulary, find cheap copy of The House at Pooh Corner, and maybe do This Side of Paradise things. I miss my laptop. It greatly assists these processes.

Title: A Secret! A Secret! How Superior!
Rating: edging at PG13.
Fandom: Dead Poet's Society
Pairing: Neil/Todd
Summary: He’d so like to write him down, every word, until he formed some surrogate Neil, a walking talking lifelike doll.
Warnings: pseudopoetic. slash. enough simile&metaphor to give Ogden Nash an aneurysm. stealing lines from myself. mangled love sentences? ohgod

Neil smiles each smile like simile and metaphor, too quick for Todd to capture. He’d so like to write him down, every word, until he formed some surrogate Neil, a walking talking life-like doll. Eyebrows thick and sharp, like exclamation marks pushed on their sides, always showing each emotion before it hits his eyes. Open mouth, pretty lips, girl kind of lips. He checks out books of poetry from the library but can never seem to find the right lines to pin down those lips.

The look on his face when he comes back from his audition, throwing himself wild onto Todd’s bed, can’t be withheld between the lines of his notebook. It can’t end with period or comma or anything at all, it is a wild free verse thing that he will never be able to interpret. Never be able to imitate.

Sometimes, when he can’t find the right words to put down, he’ll copy down straight from what Neil is saying, endlessly, line after line until the words run together and start to form pictures. Blotches of ink coming together to make vines and flowers and a crown, a little crown of gently circled wood, made for a faerie. Mischievous Robin. It fits him much better than a human body does. He always seemed unearthly.

He asks to read Todd’s poetry, but he never lets him. He thinks that if he gets a hold on the words, he will know exactly who they are trying to become, that they are trying to steal him away into their own world, to carbon copy him so even when he leaves Todd for bigger things, there will still be something of him left behind.

One day, Todd leaves his notebook lying under his blankets before he goes to return his books. Neil is somewhere else. He doesn’t know, and he ignores the fact that it makes him anxious.

When he gets back, though, there are the long limbs spread across his bed like a young colt, all angles and bones. Neil’s hands move butterfly fast across the pages. Todd makes a noise that comes out as something of a half breath whimper, like all of the air has come from his body, leaving nothing but this moment. He can’t move; Neil can. Stands up close to him to shut the door. They stand watching each other until a thin hand touches his neck, his jaw, his temple, smearing his own ink on his face.

"Those poems." Neil whispers. The air he breathes is too good for Todd. He doesn’t deserve it, doesn’t deserve this. He is too used to being a spectator.

"You." he says. The words choke him, leave him gasping desperate and broken. "All of them. They’re you."

"They are." Neil agrees, and his smile is like Whitman or Yeats or every poet that ever fell in love. "But you. You’re amazing, do you know that, Todd?" The hand slips back down to cradle the back of his head, gingerly.

"No." He almost cries, because here are the lips he could never describe pressed firmly to his own in the art of unpracticed kissing, here are the hands he spent days sketching out with adjective upon useless adjective, slipping around his back, here is the boy, the illusive, the changeling, sharing his breath like grace. It is not poetry, this feeling. It is a rife, animal need in the bottom of his heart, pulling it up into his throat. It is thick tongues and hot skin and the clothes between it, like the time it takes to turn a page. Words don’t form on his lips anymore. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to speak again, with Neil’s hands beneath his shirt, pressing hard against the waistband of his trousers. He wouldn’t care. Nothing else matters anymore.

"Todd. Todd. Oh." Neil murmurs.

"Carpe diem." Todd whispers, and kisses him back. Words form lines around them, bracelets on their arms, collars for their necks, encircling their hips. Need, want, love, more, please, now. It doesn’t form anything, but it is theirs. Todd memorizes each word that slips into his mouth. Devouring them whole, tasting each, like sweat and boy and sweet beneath. Sucking the very marrow out of it. They tangle themselves further in their mangled love sentences and don’t listen to the critics with their claims of useless words and stilted phrasing. They write with broken pens and sticky hands. They write with nothing at all.

Am now going to start to read the E.M. Forsters again, methinks, before I have to get a new library card to avoid all of my fines. . .

EDIT: I JUST CHANGED MY ACCOUNT BACK TO BASIC. IT'S SORT OF A PROTEST, AS I'M NOT ACTUALLY MAKING SIXAPART MONEY ANYMORE. NOW I JUST HAVE TO NARROW MYSELF DOWN TO 6 ICONS. NEVER SHALL WE DIE (HAHA).

all these stupid words

2007-08-19T20:07:53Z

stolen from

noneedofcrepe, just reworded.

pay it forward!

the way this works is, the first three people to comment and ask for a gift (as in fic, of any pairing/fandom that I know, R or below. Preferably not very smutty, but I can try) will receive a shiny new one. . .eventually. This year.

the only catch is, you have to put this meme in your own journal and return the favor to three other people. Unless, of course, you've already put in your journal, than you can have one for free :D

and, seriously, this is the only way I'll ever get fics written, now that school is starting tomorrow. You have to make me, inbetween Chemistry homework and amorously quoting things in Latin! Be harsh! Tough love! Demand it!

Uhm. Uhm. Uhm.

I watched HSM2. When it premiered. Am not necessarily proud of this. But now I want slash. As I'll show in the following recorded conversation:

ME: I want the ambiguously gay brother to fall in love with Zac whats-his-name. The one with the pretty hair and the Skin As Unto A Bronzed God.

BROTHER: . . .*shakes head*

ME: the guy with the afro would work, too. You know, or the one who cooks. He doesn't have a love interest, does he?

BROTHER: *horrified look*

People write these things, yes?

. . .or October Sky slash? Because my soul cries out for some October Sky slash. You've seen this movie, haven't you? With the Rocket Boys? It's practically a requirement in Tennessee schools, and it's all Homer/O'Dell. Or Homer/the pretty one that isn't Jake Gyllenhaal. Or. . .I don't know, Rocketcest?

I am so much better than I used to be

2007-08-16T13:53:29Z

I've been gone for about a week, because my laptop battery exploded (EXPLODED. SMOKE COMING OUT OF THE SIDE), and I hate using the PC. Must come up with a way to make $140 that doesn't involve a bank job or prostituting my brother. Must go back through 10 pages of Flist and try to comment (I've only made it to fathomlesssky's last post so far, but you need to go to her journal and read the first chapter of her Teddy/James epic RIGHT NOW)

Uhm. . .Eljay sucks. But apparently they are trying to suck less by making a warning system before BAHLEETING people, so that's. . .good. . .I suppose.

And now a meme! which I stole from. . .half the people I met through the scrubsficfriending meme.

Comment with one of my fandoms and I'll. . .

01. The first character I first fell in love with
02. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now
03. The character everyone else loves that I don't
04. The character I love that everyone else hates
05. The character I used to love but don't any longer
06. The character I would shag anytime
07. The character I'd want to be like
08. The character I'd slap
09. A pairing that I love
10. A pairing that I despise

My fandoms being Harry Potter, House, Scrubs, Gilmore Girls, and any other things that you know of that I didn't list.

what kind of life do you know?

2007-08-03T19:23:45Z

THINGS I SHOULD BE DOING RIGHT NOW:

1.writing Anything but Temptation, my AugEd sort of novel.

2.trying to finish The House of Mirth, as the librarians at My Local Library have begun to stop thinking of me as charmingly forgetful and it’s a week overdue

3.spackling the holes in my wall

WHAT I’M DOING RIGHT NOW:

1.posting fluff I wrote in five minutes

2. reading my flist

3. downloading PotterCast (BECAUSE OMG POTTERCAST, WHY HAVE I NOT LISTENED TO THIS BEFORE?)

I LOVE YOU FANDOM BUT YOU’RE EATING MY LIFE. SOMEONE, PLEASE TO BE STOPPING ME NOW.

Title: Byzantine Plans
Rating: PG
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Word count: 700ish
Warnings: fluff. five minute fluff. on a couch.
Summary: in which Lily is shagging Dumbledore, Remus is not a girl, and Sirius never finishes his tea.
Notes: (written in hum de hum minutes, sort of in honour of the brief SHIP WAR at the Remus Lupin Wikipedia article yesterday)

"Evans is leaving James for bigger and better things." Sirius announces, storming into Remus’ flat without knocking and settling onto his sofa with an appropriately dramatic sigh. Remus blinks over his tea.

"Oh?"

"Yes." Sirius replies, sagely. "He doesn’t understand, poor infatuated sot that he is. Thinks she’s taking a job as a healer."

"She is taking a job as a healer, Sirius." Remus says, taking another sip calmly.

"So she says."

"So St. Mungo’s says."

"See, she’s fooled you as well. Tragic." Sirius stretches his legs impossibly far, setting dusty trainers on the opposite arm and leaving prints in the fabric like he did so on purpose. "All of that St. Mungo’s garbage was an elaborate ruse. She’s actually having a love affair with Dumbledore."

"Dumbledore?" Remus murmurs. "Really?" Over the years, he has figured out that it is easier to indulge Sirius Black than force reality on him. He wonders idly if he can fix the charm on his door so it only lets Sirius in when he is in one of his reasonably sane moods and then busies himself making another cup of tea instead.

"Of course. Nothing but the best for our illustrious Miss Evans. She has big plans, and I, being both keen to the feminine mind and also top in our Divination class, have figured them out." He angles his head to the side to get a better look at Remus, who is cradling a chipped teacup and saucer in his hands and drifting aimlessly towards him. "And, if that tea is for me, I will tell you everything."

"You would tell me everything, anyway." Remus says. "Otherwise, you would have to stop talking, and I’m not certain that you’re able to do that. You’d quite possibly explode." He hands him the cup, anyway, and motions for him to move his feet. When he doesn’t, he simply sits on his legs with a content smile.

"Ow." Sirius says, cheerfully. "You’re absurdly bony, y’know. Where was I?"

"Lily’s byzantine plans."

"Right!" He sits up so Remus is half in his lap, before taking a long drink and dropping his cup precariously to the floor. "Right. So, Lily’s shagging Dumbles, yeah?" His smile is careless and angled perfectly towards Remus, who feels himself smiling back unnecessarily.

"Yes." he agrees, voice patient, resting his arms around his shoulders.

"And, once she gets knocked up, the love child’s obviously going to be a super intelligent girl with red hair and. . .and. . ."

"A white beard?" Remus offers. "Tiny spectacles?"

"Frightening eyes!" Sirius continues, almost knocking Remus onto the floor as he gestures wildly. "You know, how he has those all knowing I can see into your soul sort of eyes, and Lily’s got the same, except more like I will and can eat your soul, and nothing will give me more satisfaction in life than doing so?" Remus tightens his arms a little and rests their foreheads together, smiling wider.

"Obviously." he murmurs.

"So, on top of having a genius baby, she’ll also get part of the Dumbledore fortune, and will retire somewhere far, far away from us, like Argentina, and James will have to forever live alone out of grief." Sirius finishes in one breath, nodding a little so their noses bump uncomfortably and Remus chokes on a mouthful of black hair.

"Mmph." he says, pulling back. "You know James won’t leave Lily just because you tell him that, don’t you. They’re still going to get married and have babies and such."

"Hush, Moony, darling." Sirius kisses him on the corner of his mouth, primly. "Let me disillusion myself, please."

"Alright, but we can’t all just be best friends forever. Somewhere there’s got to be some feminine influence." Remus pauses, thoughtfully. "Well, maybe not here, but with James and Peter. . ."

"You’ll just have to be my feminine influence, then." Their fingers lace together as Sirius stands up, narrowly avoiding shattering the teacup as he tugs Remus towards the bedroom.

"I’m not a girl." Remus protests, between kisses, and Sirius trails his mouth aimlessly down his neck with a long sigh. "I’m not even close to a girl. You of all people should be aware of that."

"Oh, very. But you make me tea and wash my clothes and get all huffy when I forget your birthday." Long fingers curl around the back of Remus’s head, tangling in his hair. "Also, you’re quite fetching. S’all I have."

Remus is torn between being offended and slightly giddy that he called him fetching. Instead, he lets Sirius continue to pull him towards the neatly made bed and resolves to show him just how much of a boy he actually is.