"Someone Today" 'verse update
I got the sweetest little request for a "Someone Today" update from Anon. Of course, I posted a response half-written, then deleted it, which deleted the original message. How do Tumblr?
Anyway, I’ve been a bit stalled out on the sequel to “Someone Today”, tentatively titled “Hold Hands and Stick Together”, because it keeps trying to get serious and Clint keeps trying to save the world.
Phil has a one of his first play dates in the back yard.
Clint kept his curses silent in deference to the children in the yard and lifted his shirt to towel off his forehead again. This last piece of the play equipment was proving to be even more of a bear than the previous ones. And he had the enormous bruises across his thighs to prove that wrestling with those boxes solo hadn’t been his best idea to date.
Phil’s delighted laughter, mixed with his school friend Tyler’s, carried to him through the sultry air, reminding him why this was all worthwhile. Clint had tried to get the play structure up in the back yard before the next series of storms to ensure that Phil could take advantage of even the shortest breaks in the rain to play outside. But instead February had done a jump-shift and gifted them with several days of 80-degree weather.
It seemed Clint wasn’t the only one surprised by the heat. Tyler was wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt where he sat beside Phil on the swings, their toes barely brushing the grass as they swung idly back and forth. Phil’s mouth was turning a bright cyan blue from his popsicle, and Tyler’s was a more subtle orange.
“What happened to your dad’s legs?” Tyler asked. His voice was “kindergarten quiet”, which meant it was clearly audible on the other side of the yard.
“Hmm?” Phil turned to look at Clint who suddenly realized how scary those large black and purple areas might look to a child. “Oh, the boxes from the play set. He rested them on his legs to lift them up.”
“Oh. I thought he might have fallen down the stairs.” For a moment, Tyler regarded Clint owlishly from his perch. “Sometimes I fall down the stairs,” he confided matter-of-factly.
The problem with that, though, Clint thought grimly as he ripped the box cutter through the cardboard with precisely as much force as necessary, and no more, was that Tyler’s house, like most in his neighborhood, had only one floor.
But then, when Clint was growing up, no one had commented on his ability to fall down the stairs in the one-storey Barton house, either.
