Fluffy Promptables
Jun. 24th, 2014 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scribblemynameWe're prompting fluffy, lighthearted stuff of any variety, no canon/pairing/character information required, though permitted.
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Date: 2014-06-24 08:25 pm (UTC)When your hand brushed by my hand
And I will be an old woman
Happy to have spent
My whole life with one man
~Lori McKenna - "One Man"
Ficlet: The Velocity of Rain [1/2]
Date: 2014-06-24 09:15 pm (UTC)“She’s on our team.”
I asked you why after we were both lying on our backs on the grass after kickball, sides still heaving from running our hardest in the game.
You grinned as you tossed the ball up in the air and caught it again. “You’re fast.”
I wondered when in the world you would have noticed.
I was ten years old when I raced home from the library in a surprise rain shower, and suddenly realized I heard feet thumping the concrete sidewalk behind me. I didn’t stop, but I did turn, still running and caught the sight of you behind me, your body grown lanky over the last summer.
I stopped around the corner, palms grinding hard into the stone wall.
You drew up beside me, panting.
“How long?” I asked. I had to take in a gulp of damp air to go on. “How long have you walked this route?”
You cocked your head at me curiously as if not understanding the question, then your face split into a wide grin and you laughed some sort of rough chuckling sound. “You’re fast.”
You ran to the next sheltering doorway. I was fast. It took me only moments to catch up.
You lay on your back on my bed, studying the ceiling or the trajectory of the ball you were tossing up and down in your hand. I thought you would be crazy to play baseball for a living, but I understood the skill that made you think of it.
We were teenagers then, and the only things I was certain of in that stuffy little room with its excess of books and pencils was that I was studying anything I could learn, since I didn’t know where I would end up, but that I wanted to be sure I ended up with you.
“You’re crazy,” I finally said, breaking the silence that settled in the weight of your declarations. “You can’t blow off college for baseball.”
“They let you do both, you know.” You sat up on the bed, tossing the ball to one side.
I watched where it rolled off in the corner. You didn’t.
“What do you think I ought to do?” you asked quietly in a serious voice I didn’t recognize.
My gaze stayed steady in the direction of the ball, but I didn’t see it any more. I was too focused on the stillness in the air and the gravity in your tone. I wondered if you would take it in your head to do whatever I answered. You were that kind of crazy.
I sighed and sat down beside you. “I think you should go to school and try things and then decide.” It seemed safe enough to say.
You nodded after a long moment and leaned your head on my shoulder. “Okay.”
Ficlet: The Velocity of Rain [2/2]
Date: 2014-06-24 09:15 pm (UTC)“They’re all books.”
You rolled your eyes at me and slid a textbook across the library table. “I hate the rain here,” you said out of the blue.
I glanced up at you without moving. You didn’t seem to notice, hands tapping restlessly on your homework. I picked up the textbook, propped it open on my own, and started reading.
Your hands went still and you listened as I read.
I understood what you meant. Rain was only alive when you and I were running in it.
In the middle of the second year, I was turning down the other guys who noticed me. We hadn’t talked about anything or where we stood, but I never thought we stood anywhere. We belonged to each other in motion, and the choice to move together had always been both of ours.
You noticed when you found me in the library, smile stretched thin at the history major who didn’t want to hear ‘no.’
You stepped forward and dropped your bag on the table, so we both looked up. You grinned. “It’s raining.”
I took your hand and followed you outside.
You hated college, and we both knew it. We stood under the eaves of the outside entrance to the campus library, watching water soak into the grass.
“I could get a job,” you mentioned offhand. Your hand played with mine in the absence of something else.
I turned into you and spoke honestly with a bravery I hadn’t known I had. “I don’t care what you do as long as we do it together.”
Your head came up, eyes widening in surprise. That broad grin split your face and you tugged on my hand.
We ran through the rain from the eaves to the little copse of trees to the gazebo further down the grounds. There you stopped, your weight arresting my speed and pulling me into you like a planet spiraling toward the sun. I laughed, and it felt unfettered for the first time in weeks.
“I’m slow,” you said and kissed me breathless. “I don’t hate the rain.”
It took me years to understand you would have gone anywhere and done anything to hold me. It took you years to realize I would follow you wherever you went.
I laughed and kissed you back. “I don’t hate it either.”
Re: Ficlet: The Velocity of Rain [2/2]
Date: 2014-06-24 10:40 pm (UTC)This seems like it would be very sweet/cute if I didn't have trouble reading this format.
Re: Ficlet: The Velocity of Rain [2/2]
Date: 2014-06-25 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-25 08:05 am (UTC)The Velocity of Rain (the Fill My Hands with You Remix), Part 1
Date: 2014-07-10 04:53 pm (UTC)When he was about seven years old and the neighborhood kids needed another kickball player at the picnic, he found her by the potato salad and pulled her by the hand from the table.
“She’s on our team.”
The dark-haired girl shot him a curious frown with furrowed brows, but then the ball was flying and she saved her questions for later.
Later came on the grass where they’d dropped after playing hard and eating until they were full to bursting. Dylan stared upward at the clouds and tossed a ball up and down in his hands, letting the weight of it settle into a comfortable rhythm as he imagined his father telling him, ‘Catch it, Dylan! You got this!’
Memory settled under the girl’s curious sharp lilt and gave way to her words: “Why’d you pick me?”
He glanced over and grinned, thinking of pounding feet on the sidewalk from the library running ahead of him. “You’re fast,” he said.
He let her stare and tossed the ball upward without looking to catch it easily in his hand.
Her name was Eleanor, but she called herself Ellie. She’d stop by his table in the school cafeteria from time to time and trade a few words before she moved on to sit with the girls.
He practiced playing baseball until the coach told him he was the best player on the team.
Dylan was twelve and Ellie ten when a surprise rain shower caught them in the library. He was checking out when he saw her pause under the doorway, watching the rain fall down long enough that he almost caught up to her, almost reached her side before she started running.
Almost.
She was like a streak of laughter and lightning, impossible to catch up to, impossible to reach and touch. But then, her head turned and he thought for a moment that she had actually seen him. She reached the corner and pressed her hands to the wall to bring herself to a halt.
The Velocity of Rain (the Fill My Hands with You Remix), Part 2
Date: 2014-07-10 04:54 pm (UTC)“How long?” she demanded. “How long have you walked this route?”
He wanted to tug on her dark braid and remind her of that long ago picnic, but instead he just grinned and chuckled over the slight sting that she never looked back to notice. “You’re fast.”
He ran ahead of her to the next sheltering doorway, then heard her pounding feet just before he felt her hands against his waist to stop her headlong rush. Her dark eyes were full of laughter. They ran together for the first time.
Ellie’s friends moved to his table and intermingled with his. He sat beside her at lunch and caught her hand as they laughed and ate. The world always felt better with something to fill his hands.
She wanted to go to college and he wanted to play baseball. Job offers in the neighborhood came in here and there: the local store, the library where he studied, the mechanic shop down the street.
Ellie would invite him up to her room sometimes to fill in the gaps of their homework behind an open door. He would clear a space among the crammed in books and watch her sit up on the desk and laugh, her smile white in her golden brown face, a sundress fanning out over her knees. She was good at school, loved to read the way he loved to play ball and catch impossible throws. Somehow he wondered if he ever would manage to quite catch her.
“You can’t blow off college for baseball,” she told him.
Dylan sighed and sat up on the bed as he tossed the ball aside and let it wander where it would. “They let you do both, you know.”
She watched the ball’s path while he studied her. Tension filled up the space in his chest. Her mind had run out ahead of him, and he wanted to stop her from slipping out of his grasp.
“What do you think I ought to do?” he finally broke the stretching silence. It made her look at him, made his chest tighten at the look in Ellie’s eyes.
She sighed and came over to settle on the bed beside him, her arm warm against his. “I think you should go to school and try things and then decide.” She looked up at him with something quiet and wanting, something like hope.
She wanted him there with her. It was tentative and frightening, but it was there, right where Dylan had always hoped to find it.
He leaned his head on her shoulder and slid one arm around her waist. Her hand found his and she didn’t pull away.
The Velocity of Rain (the Fill My Hands with You Remix), Part 3
Date: 2014-07-10 04:54 pm (UTC)Once they got on campus, things were supposed to get easier. They were going to the same college, still studying together at the library, still poring over books and cloudy skies and the velocity of baseballs and pounding feet, but Dylan could never quite shake the feeling he was falling behind. He hated school and more than one professor suggested tutoring or a different, easier course when they saw how much he studied and how little good it seemed to do.
Ellie smiled when she walked with her friends, but her eyebrows furrowed together in worry whenever she threaded her arm through his.
He wanted to wipe the concern out of her eyes. He wanted to find a way to keep up with her as she laughed her way through stacks of books.
“Textbooks are dead literature,” he told her over the library table one day, but he left them open anyway and pretended to be trying to read them. Endless weeks of studying and getting nowhere were beginning to wear away at Dylan’s edges, but he kept staring at the words, thinking somehow they’d start making sense.
Ellie glanced up from her pile of homework and fun books, the kind she used to read aloud to him in her bedroom. “They’re all books.” She shrugged, but her dark eyes took in his restless hands beating time on a history book, and he didn’t think she was as unconcerned as she was trying to let on.
He rolled his eyes and slid the history book across the table, indicating a particularly dry passage. “Dull, dead, boring. I hate the rain here,” he muttered. It wasn’t like the rain at home. They didn’t run in it.
She seemed to hesitate, then surprised him by drawing the history book toward her and beginning to read it aloud. Somehow, it didn’t matter how dry the material; she made it live with her voice.
By the middle of the second year, Dylan wanted out. Ellie was a good student and a beautiful girl. She was getting attention from students and teachers alike, and he was barely scraping by in a world he didn’t belong in.
She still tucked her hand into his arm as they walked, but he knew he was slowing her down. He knew if she ran, he couldn’t possibly keep up.
“Dylan.” Ellie shook her head as they stood in the sheltering doorway of the library as rain fell and soaked the green lawn. “I don’t...” She paused and lapsed into silence. “I don’t care if you get a degree in business.”
The Velocity of Rain (the Fill My Hands with You Remix), Part 4
Date: 2014-07-10 04:54 pm (UTC)“I could get a job,” he said at last, thinking of grocery stores and book shops and libraries and garages. He looked into Ellie’s eyes and wondered if she’d let him brush back the damp hair from off her cheeks.
She turned her body into his, startling him, and breathed out softly, “I don’t care what you do as long as we do it together.”
He stared at her, trying to understand that, trying to understand why someone like Ellie who could always run faster, learn more, be better… It hit him then with something like laughter and fierce lightning that she’d been chasing after him almost as hard as he’d been chasing her.
He grinned; he couldn’t help it. He tugged on her hand and pulled her laughing into the rain to run, to run with the velocity of rain toward the small gazebo further down the grounds. He pulled her under its shelter and into his arms.
“I’m slow,” he said, admitting something that had pained him for years and he’d always thought she’d known. He was slow, and she was fast, and somehow that had always made him afraid he would lose her. He pulled her close and kissed her, feeling her smile beneath his lips. He kissed her until he was no longer afraid. “I don’t hate the rain.”
Ellie laughed her warm, golden laugh and caught his shoulders in her arms. “I don’t hate it either.” She caught him and he caught her.
They held on. They laughed.
His world was always better when his hands were full.
#
Re: The Velocity of Rain (the Fill My Hands with You Remix), Part 4
Date: 2014-07-10 05:42 pm (UTC)I like that they were both chasing each other all the time. :)
Re: The Velocity of Rain (the Fill My Hands with You Remix), Part 4
Date: 2014-07-10 05:44 pm (UTC)Re: The Velocity of Rain (the Fill My Hands with You Remix), Part 4
Date: 2014-07-10 07:45 pm (UTC)