Protect the flock! From JP and Hachette!
What are you doing right now?
Besides posting on here and replying to this thread. Original credit for this goes back to Fate and Nathan on MX.
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Permalink Reply by Xuut on
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Mine is naturally straight. As of late it has gotten rebellious. No clue why. I'm hoping this dry as hell weather will set it right.
XDDD Why don't you just straighten the ends outwards and blowdry all over? I mean you have to have a blowdryer somewhere in your house.... And then you can gel it in place. Or hairspray. Whatever floats your boat. -
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Permalink Reply by Hannah on
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It's awkward because she didn't ask.
Not awkward: Oops, hey I forgot toothpaste, can I borrow some?
Awkward: You keep your toothpaste in here, right? *grabs toothpaste*
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Permalink Reply by nathan_p on
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iz writin a fic.
plz disregard this nonsense
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(morning)
The thing that made it hard to give up on Fang entirely was the fact that he wouldn't leave me alone.
Yeah, I know. Physically he was who knew where, doing who knew what. He could be dead, he could be in jail, he could be hooking up with a thirty-seven-year-old transvestite named Phil.
My subconscious still refused to let him go.
The human subconscious -- or avian-human, in my case -- is fairly unoriginal. We dream about things we see when we're awake, repurposed to serve new ends.
Fang had been in my life every day for fourteen years, and a few weeks of a fifteenth. He played a role in almost every dream I'd ever had.
Five years after the last time I'd seen his face in person, he was still in my dreams –- a blurry face in a crowd, a silent presence at my side.
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At fourteen, Max had looked like Val.
At nineteen-going-on-twenty, she no longer did. Her hair, once dark from days on end inside, was sun-bleached and cut short. She was taller than he remembered, almost taller than he was.
She had the same eyes, but he'd seen that one coming.
“I wouldn't recommend getting up yet,” she said without looking, standing bent over the desk looking at something. “Or if you do, I'm not gonna clean you off the floor.”
Eyes in the back of her head.
She'd probably heard the springs creak when he sat up. He shifted his weight off of his left arm – as ever, that shoulder was stiff, though not yet painful.
They'd been honest with him once he was lucid enough after the surgery to ask questions.
80% recovery if you're lucky, the surgeon had said, looking him up and down. (He was well aware how unimpressive he looked – mangy, unshaven, and with his ass hanging out the back of a hospital gown – but did the man really have to rub it in?)
I'm not a very lucky person.
Obviously not – it doesn't take luck to take a bullet for someone who could shrug off a wound like his with a good meal and a few days' recovery time. But pride required him to put in a word against his stupidity.
Will I ever play the violin again? Jeb said, making a stab at humor.
Only if you could play it before, he replied, moving for the door.
Standard repartee, but even then he'd been aware that 80% was an optimistic estimate. A very optimistic estimate.
As it was – he moved his arm gently backward and forward, swiveling it in the joint – he had come out on the bad side of things (again). He had left himself too little recovery time before putting stress on the joint, and here he was five years later.
Max straightened up, taking the papers from the desk and tapping them into a neat pile before laying them aside. She glanced at him. “How's your arm?”
“Fine,” he said. Strictly speaking, it wasn't a lie. It didn't feel like there were nails driven into the joint, and his hand wasn't entirely numb. Comparatively speaking, the hand at least was better than it had been for a long time – today he probably stood a fair chance at being able to not drop things held in that hand.
Not quite as much, anyway.
She raised her eyebrows. “It didn't look fine last night.”
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“Yeah?”
“You almost decked Mom when she tried to take your pulse,” she said absently, sitting down in the chair to pull on a surprisingly heavy-looking pair of work boots.
“Ah.” Well, that made them even, then. And it had only taken a quarter of a century. “So you're going to work, then?”
She clapped a helmet on her head. “Yep.” There was a vest folded on one corner of the desk, and she slung it over her shoulder.
Max working construction.
That he had never considered.
He watched her moving around, picking up her gloves. Well. There probably weren't many fathers who did think of their little girls going into construction.
She'd wanted to be an astronaut.
“Mom will show up at some point to make sure you're not going to die on us,” she informed him, her hand on the doorknob. “The bathroom is the door that doesn't come out to the hallway or a closet. Your stuff's in that closet, by the way.” She checked her phone for the time. “I'll be back around six.”
She paused, looking at him with a faint smile – then the smile widened into a grin and she slipped her phone back into her pocket, making a finger-gun with her free hand. (And such are the liberties of those with two functioning arms.) “Don't go anywhere.”
“I won't,” he muttered.
“Good. I'm not driving out to find your ass again. See you.” She slipped out, leaving him there.
He sighed, brushed the back of his left hand against his forehead. Christ, but he had a headache.
Why had she bothered to save him? What good could he do her? He sat up straighter and cradled his left hand in his lap as he flexed the fingers, looking at himself with sour clarity.
She'd phrased her choice as a kind of atonement – he had saved her once. More than once, actually, and she'd picked a poor time to repay him.
He forced his hand to form a fist, ring finger and pinky following the others recalcitrantly. There were exercises he was supposed to do, but he'd long since given up the pretense, and he was finally paying the price; over time, the little mobility and strength he did have left in that arm were fading.
He didn't really want the use of his left arm back, anyway. Lately he'd even been neglecting the lab-safety rules that had been dinned into him for so long. He didn't care anymore – it didn't matter if he couldn't use his hand, or if he died.
Max – and Val, apparently – seemed to think it did.
The door opened, and he looked up.
Oh, that was a bad move. He felt suddenly seasick.
Val was standing in the doorway, looking faintly amused and much older than she had last time he'd seen her.
“So I'll gather you're still nauseous?”
“I was nauseous last night?” Memory loss wasn't a good sign, but he could deal with it.
“I'd say so.” She shut the door behind her. “You almost threw up on me.”
“Sorry about that.”
“I've had worse.” She shrugged, then smiled, wielding a thermometer. “Now, to business. You know the drill, put it under your tongue.”
He took the thermometer with his right hand, leaving the left in his lap. Best not to let her know that weakness... or at least to keep a little vanity.
“How's the arm?” she said, once he had the thermometer in place.
He mumbled around the glass tube. “Fine.”
“Doesn't look like it. Let me see you move it.”
He winced, but raised it, making a ninety-degree angle to his torso.
“Fingers,” she commanded.
“I thought you were a vet.” He rotated his wrist, clenched his hand into a fist and then relaxed it, brutally aware of how awkward and slow his movements were.
“That doesn't prevent me from examining you. Put your arm down, and give me that thermometer.”
He obeyed, and she looked at the temperature, tisking. “Hundred one. Symptoms?” She took his right wrist in her hand, glancing at the desk clock as she moved to take his pulse.
“None.”
“There has to be something.”
“Fatigue,” he admitted. He had to think for a moment. “Muscle ache. I'm cold.” He sighed. “I have the flu.”
“Good man,” she said crisply. “Your pulse is normal, by the way.”
“Fantastic.”
She sat down at the desk. “So. Other than the flu... how are you?”
He hesitated. Fine wouldn't suffice – with Val it never did. “I feel like I got hit by a truck.”
“Your arm's not getting any better.”
He blinked. “How did you even find out about that?”
“I was there.”
“Right.” Of course she'd been.
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Best part of tonight: wondering why I felt so crappy and unable to write coherently.
Then I stopped myself and thought: hey you, when was the last time you took your meds?
It's true. I am a caricature of my own characters.
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Being angry that no one knows what a bunnyhug is.
NOT IT IS NOT A HOODIE.
BUNNYHUG DAMMIT.
I don't care if you sound less gangster if I refer to it as a bunnyhug. IT'S A BUNNYHUG.
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Permalink Reply by Contradiction on
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XD
Is that a Canadian term?
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Permalink Reply by Devil's Sunrise on
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Is it alright if I don't know what either of those are?
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O.o
Like a hooded sweatshirt? You've never heard it called a hoodie?
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Well yeah. But I thought she meant it was slang for some sort of hug or something. You mean to tell me people call hooded sweatshirts "bunnyhugs"? On how many drugs are you?
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