(no subject)

[zarahemla]

I've been having lots of fun writing drabbles for the first lines of other peoples' fics, so I present here some of mine in the hopes of getting drabble-age out of it.

I won't tell you the fandoms (though some are obvious) so you can just riff on it.



It's not a dark alley they meet in, but a vast, brightly lit ballroom in Los Angeles.

A ranchers son ought to be used to hardship.

They cut the rope from the saddle and let him fall.

Two days after Archie Kennedy died of his gut wound, and all the other officers of the Renown were cleared of charges of mutiny most foul, and one day before Captain Hornblower will sail the Retribution back to England, Horatio takes William out into Kingston Harbour and teaches him how to swim.

She looks at him with eyes that are, strangely, not blank, but electric.

Riley has only ten minutes with the nameless dead girl.

The leaves sigh around Alain, as if they're trying to tell him something, something so low and delicate that he will never hear it.

Bright is not stupid.

Freed from the stifling heat of the tavern, Jack stumbles into darkness.

The moonship's black corridors echo under Uther Doul's heels.

The train goes by every day, but it only goes one way.

We're watching the moonlight bounce off the New York City skyline.

I think I had him there, for just one minute.

In the arena of Krycek's head, he's playing chess.

Comments

Lost in Translation

[typicrobots.livejournal.com]

We're watching the moonlight bounce off the New York City skyline. Blue and green and gold, but by the way John is drumming his fingers against the windowsill, I can tell that he's playing a song in his head. To him the lights are music notes and me his guitar as he thrum thrums his fingers against my back. He moves away from the window and starts to dig through his CD collection. Already he has his headphones on.

The guitar has been John's latest obsession every since we came back from Tokyo, and he hasn't stopped twitching or humming yet. There's a manic energy that surrounds John that makes me feel I have to be still for the both of us. Like a calm before the storm.

It gets too much sometimes that I have to leave the room. I go down the hotel bar and it's the same dim lighting, the same clinking of glasses, but nothing is really the same. I turn around looking for the jazz band but of course the soft elevator music is coming from a sound system.

Tokyo feels like a faded and hazy dream, like everything that happened there happened to someone else and I was just watching it on TV. There was a man at the bar with clips on his back and the girl sitting behind him laughed, which surprised her because she'd forgotten what that sounded like. It was like the faint rumbling of distant thunder, short and sudden and far between. I close my eyes but that feeling never comes back.

Sometimes late at night, I'm flipping through the channels and I see that man staring back at me through the screen, but he's years too young and driving a truck. He's not the man I remember and this isn't the show that I was watching. I shut the TV off.

I turn away from the window to look at my husband. John is singing out loud and slapping his hand against his knee, keeping time with the beat. I sit on the windowsill and lean up against the pane, feeling a little dizzy from knowing that we're 34 floors up.

New York isn't Tokyo, and my life isn't a television show. Somewhere across the country, the man is sitting at home with his wife and kids and that isn't the way I remember him either.

I call out to John. He looks up at me expectantly, pulling off his headphones, and I realize that there's nothing to say.

Re: Lost in Translation

[zarahemla.livejournal.com]

Oh, that is so cool. He's not the man I remember and this isn't the show that I was watching. Fabulous, so evocative. ::loves on winter_baby::