#adrien.misc

[mihlen]

Drabble Backlog (2025.02.11)

From January's personal "drabble a day" challenge, originally written January 3, 2025. These dailies are unedited and do not represent polished work.

You’re weird, you know that? “What?” Adrien tossed his girlfriend a quizzical look, gentle, underhand; smile quirking at the corner. “Weird how?” You just are. He laughed, lightly. It was golden hour, sunlight spilling through the living room drapes. The shadows of the room drank it up eagerly. “Gonna have to be more specific than that.” She hesitates. She speaks. Your emotions, she says, which isn’t an answer Adrien knew to expect at all. The range of them. It’s like you never feel things fully. The fridge hummed low behind him as he poured himself a glass of orange juice. The glass never made it to his lips as he pondered this. “What makes you say that?” he asked, still fondly amused. “I feel things!” But have you ever felt sad? “Of course I’ve felt sad!” Really, bone deep, ugly sob kind of sad? she asks, and Adrien realized then that this wasn’t a joking kind of conversation. It was golden hour. The shadows were long and the sunlight felt gauzy at the edges. He thinks he wanted to be somewhere else. “I,” he said. His mind flickered through petty melancholies, blink-and-gone. “… guess I’ve been pretty lucky.” The refrigerator droned low behind him. Then, his girlfriend says. Adrien, she says. What if I broke up with you right now? And he replied, “Of course I’d be sad.” And she asks, But would you feel it?

[mihlen]

Thinking about Adrien speaking Quebecois to some of his friends, and how he'd refer to his girlfriend as "ma blonde" while he does so… I know it's just a quirk of the language, but I'm stuck on it today for some reason. Maybe he's talking about what he's going to do on Valentine's Day…

[mihlen]

Daily Excerpt (2024.09.12)

An excerpt from "Hellevator: Dislocation" (working title). These dailies are unedited and do not represent the final product.

Adrien doesn’t set his jaw, but he presses his tongue tight to the roof of his mouth, lips pulling back. There’s a scream building in his chest, but as he bows his head, all that squeezes past the tightness of his throat is a low groan of pain. Fuck, it really hurts. Fuck, fuck, does it have to be so slow? How isn’t it done? He wants to tell Tarou to just get it over with, but he isn’t confident he could do so quietly. Every fraction of a millimeter feels like it takes a minute. When fingers wrap around the base digit of his ring finger to guide it into its socket, there’s a fresh ache, in the flesh itself, that blooms through his nerves. His measured breathing falters, turning into shallow, scraping breaths, because if he gets too much air into his lungs, he can sense that he’s going to cry out. The room is too hot, the steam billowing through the air suddenly unbearably oppressive.  Then there’s a palpable pop as the bone enters its socket, and he knows that it’s done. He knows it immediately, before truly registering it, because there’s a sharp reprieve of right that washes through him like a cleansing balm—but that doesn’t do anything for the lingering pain, radiating from his joint. His instinct is to rip it away from Tarou’s hand, but he fights that, sagging his head back instead in relief, letting it rest against the railing. The whole process couldn’t have taken longer than thirty seconds at most, but he’s broken into a cold sweat. But hey, he didn’t scream. That’s one down.

(This excerpt features idolkilling's OC Tarou.)

[mihlen]

Daily Excerpt (2024.08.23)

An excerpt from "Hellevator: Dislocation" (working title). These dailies are unedited and do not represent the final product.

This was a mistake. Tarou isn’t even pulling yet, but at the slightest redirection, whatever pressure had been numbing the nerves in his dislocated fingers comes loose, and Adrien isn’t prepared for the absolute storm of pain that screams through the knuckles of his hand—and then Tarou tugs. Adrien gasps—a sharp, choking thing—and his right hand flies for the railing beside him, clanging dully as he hooks his working fingers unevenly around the metal. He squeezes tight and screws his eyes shut and goes rigid with pain… but he doesn’t scream. The bone of his ring finger slides against the outer edge of its socket as it’s reoriented, clicks as it’s pulled into alignment, still distended. The overextended ligaments protest the motion, violently protesting Tarou’s gentle guidance. There’s that nauseating sensation again, swirling through the sea of pain and pouring into Adrien's skull. It’s a separate feeling from the agony, which doesn’t so much throb as build and build, like a note in a song climbing too high to hear but high enough to hurt. 

(This excerpt features idolkilling's OC Tarou.)