Prompts

0 comments on "FIC: Morning Song"

Title: Morning Song
Author: Harper Kingsley
Character: Neil Halsted, the Guy in 2D, Ben Hodgins
Note: Fill for Shower Buddies prompt

Neil “before Zod” Halsted was 32 years old, single, with dark brown hair and hazel eyes. He lived in an old apartment building that had been renovated several times over the years, going from The Shining-chic to something a bit more classic comfort. All he cared was that his apartment–apartment 2C–was a rent controlled two bedroom, two bathroom palace that he was going to live in until he died. They would have to pry the door keys out of his cold, wrinkled hands as they hauled him out on a stretcher, because he was not leaving otherwise.

He had a fabulous apartment in the city, and his neighbors were great. He’d never met them, and that was what made them great. He’d never had to complain to anyone about noise or cockroaches or mysterious leaks, and no one had ever had to complain about him.

His life wasn’t perfect, but it was good. He lived close enough to where he worked that he didn’t have to rush around in the morning, and there were plenty of restaurants and grocery stores within walking distance. There was even a bus stop on the street out front of his building, so on wet days he didn’t have to tramp very far in the rain if he had to get somewhere on the other side of the city.

His job wasn’t what he’d dreamed of when he’d put himself through college, but it gave him a nice enough paycheck. With the money he saved on rent, he was able to turn the second bedroom into the walk-in closet he’d wanted ever since he saw episodes of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” and “MTV’s Cribs” as a teen. He was able to add to his wardrobe each month and still grow his savings account.

He had everything that he needed and a bit extra. He was even able to help out his parents when they needed it. Things were going good in his life.

And part of what made things pleasant was his morning shower. Where he stripped and stepped into the large stall and shared a song with the man whose shower was on the other side of the wall.

It had freaked him out the first time it happened. One minute he was singing alone, the next he was in chorus with the guy from 2D–who had a particularly pleasant baritone singing voice. And then it was kind of cool.

It became part of his routine. In the mornings as he lathered up, he’d sing along with his neighbor–songs he never would have shared with anyone else.

It was romantic, but in a nonsexual way. This was his singing buddy. This was his beautiful friend whose face he never wanted to see.

How horrible was that?

But he’d been hurt before. He’d fallen out of love with plenty of people when he got to see how they truly lived.

His step-sister had delighted in taking all of the magic out of his world when he’d been twelve years old. It was the one stark memory of his childhood that he maintained: that monstrous figure looming over him, spitting out poisoned words that burned into his brain. He’d thought she’d been demonically possessed.

Always so quiet and still, she’d leaped out of her chair and begun screaming out answers to every question he’d interrupted her with all night. Bulging eyes and raging mouth; he’d been completely terrified. And ever since then, his every bogeyman-moment was tied to that fear. (He wished he hadn’t posted his worst fear in his profile. It would have been better if he’d made something up.)

He couldn’t handle it if his singing buddy was horrible to look at. Not for any mean reason, but because he’d built up a fantasy in his head and he didn’t want to find out that the guy was the opposite of everything he’d expected. [B1-1] It would ruin the one good thing that he had.

Things hadn’t been going that great in his work life of late, ever since Ben Hodgins had joined the company. His happiness levels had gone way down. So there was something uplifting about starting each day with a song.

It felt good. It got him energized on even the most blah of days.

Starting the morning off with a song enabled him to keep his mind focused on work and not on how horrible his coworkers were. They were related to the owners, so he had to put up with their laziness and frequent absences while he did all the work. [B1-2] And if he didn’t start each day off with a cheery tune, he would have probably lost his shit dealing with them and all their baggage.

Having a shower singing buddy was a bright spot to his every day, one that he never wanted to lose. So even when he was feeling curious about the guy in 2D, he went out of his way to not run into him. Because if he lost the magic of his morning song, there was a good chance that he’d quickly lose his job as well. And without his job, he wouldn’t be able to pay his rent, which meant losing his fabulous apartment and having to move back in with his parents.

Neil was grateful that the guy in 2D had entered his life. But he never wanted to meet him and ruin the magic of what they had.

=The End=

Fortress in the Eye of Time at Amazon
0 comments on "Dude’s yelling out your car windows, cut it out. Nobody likes you. [nsfw]"

I don’t know what drives some men to think that it’s a good idea to yell out their car windows. Like seriously, dude, what’s going on in your head? Do you not have any kind of decency?

For one thing, human beings don’t like being yelled at. You doing that shit makes people not like you.

You’re that guy that makes everyone roll their eyes when they hear you’re coming. It’s why things feel so awkward when you show up. Nobody wants to point out that they don’t like what a douchebag you are.

I mean, me and the Kid were walking back from Safeway and some guy zooms past, screaming some loud blurt of noise. I averted my eyes when I saw him coming, and just kept walking. The Kid flipped out.

He says the guy spit at him out the car window. A yell to make someone look, then a wad of spit to the face. What a charming asshole that guy must be.

The funny thing is that this is the second time someone has yelled at me when the Kid was there. I think it’s really shocked him to see what the average woman puts up with.

There’s always someone yelling at me. It’s made me learn to close my ears and turn my attention away.

I guess that’s what makes me narcissistic. I only want to be around a couple of people at a time and I spend a lot of time in my own head[1]. And I think a lot of that is the abuse I’ve suffered at the words of strangers and people I’ve barely met.

I once had a guy pull up beside me when I was walking home at night and ask if I was a prostitute. There I was in my shapeless polo and black casino pants, and this guy is asking to pay me for sex. It’s this shadowy guy in a sport’s car whisper-yelling at me from behind the wheel of his car. He even threw open the passenger side door (orange light spreading out from the leather black interior. His face is a shadow in the street lights, maybe spiky hair, and a preppyish look. He could have been handsome, he could have been hideous, there was a definite “No thank you, Mr. Sleeze” vibe to the guy.) and kind of beckoned me inside.

Dude, did you study your moves from an anti-rape video? I’m not getting in your fucking car. For all I know, I could have ended up going through a meat grinder or being melted by acid, like a real life Very Bad Things but with Jesse Pinkman and Walter White handling things.

Ugh, people are gross.

* * *

I like watching serial killer and murder shows to teach myself what not to do. All the psychological stuff keeps my brain active, and then seeing how the criminal got to where he was going shows sometimes how unobservant the people around him were.

I enjoy old school CSI, before the dust up or whatever happened. I think the new crew is okay, I just wish the stories weren’t so drawn out and tangled. It’s like, we don’t have enough room for the science, we’ve gotta fit in a whole bunch of drama with the CSIs.

I had 0-interest in the life and times of Sara. And the romance with Grissom seemed forced. It killed some of my love for the show.

See? That’s why I prefer my shows to be more focused on the victims and the criminals than the main cast. I like a character more if there’s some mystery.

Take Criminal Minds for instance. There are some episodes where I wish they focused more on the guests than on the main cast. And then chosen episodes are taken and expanded to turn into full-length movies or mini-series movies. The original Criminal Minds stuff is still in there, but it’s part of a bigger story focusing on the guest stars.

I figured if I was wishing, I might as well reach for the stars. It is very annoying to want to see what happens next, and have the episode cut to a close.

Was it Criminal Minds where the kid from Perception was kidnapped and had one of his legs removed? Some crazed doctor was trying to perfect limb transplants by sewing people together. There was so much character development for the guest stars that I was completely drawn in. I would have liked to know what happened after the episode closed.

There aren’t even any good Criminal Minds stories to read. There’s a lot of Spencer Reid crying and having to be rescued, but none of my favorite authors are in the fandom, and I’m just not interested in any of what’s out there. Mostly because I want follow ups to episode events, and I don’t want the main cast to be involved.

I want continuations of the episodes. I want a juicy delicious tie-in story to The Good Earth.

I want to see the couple that were lobotomized and had their lives completely destroyed by her crazy brother redeemed. I want to see that they have a happy ending, not the reality that they would end up in some kind of care facility. And I would hope that her father is a nice enough dude to keep them together, rather than sending his daughter to some far away care facility (ala Marcone if he does it to protect her, and ala douche bag if he just does it to keep them apart because the boy isn’t good enough).

I even want to see a story where Pasiv technology is used to allow them to be bound together. Years of lucid dream time would mean plenty of mental therapy, and would only take a couple of days in the real world.

Like they volunteer to be put in a medically induced coma while attached together. There might be a doctor there, or maybe the Halo is programmed to run them through a training sequence, and they have each other to lean on.

I wouldn’t want them to come out of the dream world and immediately break up, so the training would be a dealable level of hard. They run through a program sequence that gets them talking again and retrains their brains, and the elapsed time would be ridiculously short.

A month of rehab versus years.

They could go to sleep each night connected together. The real world would be a place of hospital, meds, and visual recognition communication programs. To go into a dream and be able to talk about everything that’s going on and what they feel about it…

I don’t know. I think I ended up talking about Unimatrix Zero or something. (We don’t talk about Unimatrix Zero. They‘re always waching.)

* * *

1. Am I the most fascinating person I’ve ever met? I don’t know. Who can ever tell something like that? I certainly do enjoy my own company though.

There’s a ridiculous amount of imagination happening in my brain. I don’t know if it’s some kind of escapism, but there’s cool ideas always flowing through my mind. It makes it hard to face reality.

The real world sucks.

I’m hoping things get better, but I’m currently in that lowest-lower level of indepence. You know, where you can feel free to scream in horror, but no one is listening and things can’t get much worse. The only thing to do is scrabble away at the walls and hope to make it over the top.

Dammit. I ruined the mood. Sorry.

Here, have this one thing:

There are moments when he wished nothing more than to be able to scream. Except he’s locked in carbon and can only watch the room around him. People pass in and out, but no one ever turns to speak to him.

A. He’s locked in carbon and can see and hear, but not speak. Someone — the love interest — frees him and takes him away.

A1. They live in a cabin in the woods far away from civilization and everything they knew.

A2. His descendents can push a button, activating his speech program. He is able to speak with a simulated voice and offer advice.

A2-1. The family has forgotten the old ways. He becomes a relic, a decorative antique too big to easily move out of the house.

A2-2. He is sold.

A2-3. He is woken using a “spell” found by the Last Descendent years and years in the future. In a dark future where most technology has been forgotten, the family is in trouble and one of the heirs is willing to do anything to save them.

B. Can you be any more dramatic? He rolled his eyes at himself. He adjusted his tie one more time, swallwing to clear his throat.

B1. He’s a rebellious looking boy, but he’s one of the best go-players in the world.

B2. He’s waiting to go on trial. He can see the destruction of his life looming over him.

B2-1. He hadn’t meant to hit the woman. Why had she been walking that late at night in the first place?

B2-1a. He is given community service for his recklessness, but it’s understood that the woman had been at fault. He hadn’t been drinking and she’d stepped in front of his car.

B2-1b. They’d thrown the book at him. Drinking, driving, and vehicular homicide. He was going to prison. Daddy’s money wasn’t going to fix anything.

B2-1c. There are times he wished that he’d killed her with his car. He wouldn’t constantly be hassled about late payments because she had no family to hit him with the lawsuits. He would be home in the house he’d had to sell, drinking a beer and watching the game. Instead he was here.