I was tagged by @mcgnagallsarmy and this looks fun!
Rules: share the first lines of ten of your most recent fanfics and tag ten people. If you have written less than ten, don’t be shy and share anyway!
I've posted quite a few drabbles/short fics recently so I'll post some single lines and others might be paragraphs. I may have cheated and skipped a few where the opening line relates to a workskin and doesn't work without it or the entire fic is only 100 words!
Tara Jones fiddles with the neckline of her dress, smiles politely at the guy who has been making desperate small talk with her for the last ten minutes and then dumps her drink the second he looks away.
She’d wanted a rum and coke. He’d brought her a Pornstar Martini – poured from a can with a wink.
To Appreciate Him Before Morning Takes Shape
They never turned off the fairy lights.
Charlie stares up at them – flushed and a little dazed – as Nick dozes on his chest. They give everything a warm and cosy glow that Charlie has never really appreciated, until tonight. There’s never been a moment to, really. They’ve never had cause to turn off all the other lights and just be together, well into the night. There’s always a curfew or homework or something else calling one of them away.
But school is over – for now – and their parents have relaxed – sort of – so there’s nothing pulling them apart.
There’s shouting downstairs again. Nick plucks one of the cuddly toys from under his covers – Puppy seems like the best option – and tiptoes towards his bedroom door. Across the landing, David’s door is still shut, while the baby snores gently in their mum and dad’s room. Nick thinks that all the shouting might wake him up if they’re not careful. He’s only just started sleeping through the night.
There are four floorboards on the landing and three on the stairs that creak when they’re stepped on. David has taught him all of them. Nick concentrates as much as he can, as he clings to Puppy and creeps downstairs. The light is on in the kitchen, so he only goes as far as the hallway.
Dad has been weird recently. Maybe that’s why Mum is shouting. He’s been strange since the baby arrived. Darren at school says that Gabriel can’t be Nick’s little brother because his mum didn’t get fat, like Kirsty’s mum, before the baby was born. Darren says a lot of things that Nick doesn’t always understand. He’s glad that David punched him for making Nick cry, even if Mum was cross about it.
It had taken the jury six hours to deliberate.
It takes the court six days to arrange a sentencing hearing.
The judge listens for an hour before he puts them all out of their misery.
And that is how, as a cry of relief hits his ears from across the room, Nick Nelson’s life changes forever.
The presiding judge – although the liaison officer who accompanies them through the building is keen to point out that officially the trial is over, the verdict given, and sentencing is just a formality that they don’t need to witness – is a stern-looking man with a deep furrow at his brow. Throughout the hearing, Nick had felt like the judge’s eyes were on him the entire time, boring into the crown of his head as he sat with his chin tucked in close to his chest and waited for the victim impact statements to be read out. It had been painful, hearing his every mistake be combed through by the judge, while she had sat diagonally across from him, her hair falling in a shiny curtain down her back. They haven’t spoken since the night the police led her away, Nick perched on a kerb with his shirt in disarray while an officer tried to prise his name and address out of him. She hadn’t looked back at the time, although he had begged her with silent eyes not to leave him there alone. She hadn’t looked at him throughout the hearing, not once, although her husband had glared at him from his seat on the benches behind them. David had glared back. Nick had tried not to think about it.
Charlie watches, wearily, as Nick thumbs tokens into the slot and slumps heavily against the machine. There’s a pregnant, tense pause as they wait for it to whirr to life – its ironically chipper pre-programmed voice bouncing out from the speakers – and declare that they’ve earnt back six hours of rest. It’s not enough, but it’ll take the edge off of things.
There’s a knack to these machines; to knowing which buttons to press to get exactly what you need. Nick presses a button to ask that his allocated sleep be portioned into three two-hour naps and hands Charlie two of the chips that the machine spits back out.
His battery is getting low again. It’s the one thing that they’re supposed to avoid, but Charlie was enjoying listening to Nick rant about today’s rugby match so much – more accurately, he supposes, that the information fit into his lines of code in such an easy way that it could be mistaken for enjoyment he categorically can’t feel – that he just lost track of time. It’s hard not to think of it as genuine enjoyment, though. Nick waves his hands around when he gets excited and his face lights up in a way that never happens when he’s simply talking about the minutiae of his day.
/mʌɪˈnjuːʃɪʌɪ,mɪˈnjuːʃɪʌɪ,mʌɪˈnjuːʃɪiː,mɪˈnjuːʃɪiː/
the small, precise, or trivial details of something.
Last week, the two of them had giggled as they’d worked out how to patch an update to give Charlie better dictionary access than the pre-installed Junior version he’s been living with up until now. It took about three hours before they got bored of him just learning rude words and Charlie moved on to picking up better vocabulary instead. Now, he can use words like minutiae and tell Nick that he’s elucidating about sport and praise his audacious strategy as captain and watch as Nick rolls his eyes and pokes his tongue out at him.
“Bye Mr Nelson! See you Monday!”
I’m raising my hand to wave and trying to set my face in to something that doesn’t resemble annoyance as Sofia, my last coding club attendee, and her clock-challenged parents wander up the path from reception to where I’m pretty sure they’ve blocked the pavement to park outside of the school. It’s now twenty past four, a good half an hour since all the clubs finished, and my phone has been buzzing in my pocket for the last ten minutes. Kate, the teacher who has overall responsibility for my class while I’m here on placement, has already stepped back into the school entrance hall in order to let loose her angriest expression. She claims that being a teacher for twenty years has given her a distinct inability to deal with the bullshit that parents throw her way.
“Tell your mentor next time she claims something will look good on your uni reports to fuck off,” she smirks when I lock the reception door behind me. “Nothing is worse than suffering the timekeeping of the Blake family.”
There’s an ominous crash from somewhere in the other room, followed by the sound of Charlie swearing profusely. Nick weighs up the pros and cons of ignoring whatever’s going on, before carefully picking up his mug of tea and wandering into the kitchen.
“What’s up?” he asks casually, as he takes a sip. Charlie is on his hands and knees on the floor – head buried in one of the cabinets – and Nick isn’t about to complain about the view, but the smattering of pots and pans on the floor next to him doesn’t spell good news. There’s a thump, another swear word that’s almost impressively out of character, before Charlie extricates himself from the depths and glares at him.
“Seriously, Nick?” he glowers, although the effect is slightly ruined by the two curls that have decided to tumble down his forehead and make him look debauched instead of mad. “We seriously need to rearrange this kitchen.”
“But everything makes sense where it is!”
“Okay, then we need to cut back on some stuff because if you buy one more kitchen gadget I think the entire structure will collapse.”
Nick pouts. He knew this would be about the crab pot watcher that he found in TK Maxx at the weekend. Charlie wasn’t as charmed by the little crabby claws holding a spatula while they made stir fry as Nick would have liked. Or maybe it’s actually about the carrot pencil sharpener… that caused some swearing when it was Charlie’s turn to do the washing up on Thursday.
You have arrived at your destination.
I stop to check three things before I turn off the engine in Tao’s beat up old Peugeot and push out in to the night air. Firstly, that my location sharing with Isaac has stuck on the drive over- for his benefit more than mine, given Geoff and I are still in the early stages of dealing with what some might consider my slightly self destructive tendencies. Tao may have leant me his car for the drive, under the slight misapprehension that I am heading for a date, but Isaac has been the one to watch my nervous pacing as I check my phone and debate out loud- to his horror- the veritable pros and cons of this particular Grindr hookup. This was our compromise.
Next is a two parter. The address is pinned in to Google maps where I’ve checked my arrival time four times already today, but the inherent obsessiveness that isn’t counteracted by copious amounts of behavioural therapy and meds has me checking the last message to make sure that I’m definitely in the right place.
Twenty four Victoria Street, Oxford building, grey door. See you soon gorgeous x
“How was the first day back, Nicky?”
She’s saved the question up for dinner, clearly. She could have asked him during the car ride home – instead of humming gently to herself and glancing across at him as he scrolled mindlessly through Instagram. The same posts from the same people. Braggy piles of presents and gloomy shots of whatever parties had been thrown over Christmas. Harry’s was clearly the biggest – not that Nick had bothered to show up in the end – and there are already rumours swirling that one of the rugby lads managed to get off with the Head Boy’s girlfriend in the toilets. Christian claimed it had been him, until Otis pointed out that he was neither at the party, nor could he take Johnathan Grimsby, hulking Head Boy and profound arsehole, in a fight.
Then there’s the Whatsapp banter, which has picked up after the Christmas holiday lull. Banter that he’s apparently supposed to join in with now that Coach Singh has appointed him captain. He’s the first non-Sixth-former to get the honour, she told him carefully before they broke up for the holiday, and he couldn’t help but feel like it was a poisoned chalice of an appointment. David was pissy about the whole thing, while their dad crooned praise down the phone but never saw fit to bother to show his face in person.
He mentally noped out of the Whatsapp group at the first sight of the word clunge on the screen. In context, it didn’t need googling. The entire group chat has been unceremoniously muted until further notice – the rest of them guilty by association and emoji-reactions.
I'll tag anyone who wants to join in!
