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rainbowfic2014-02-15 09:41 pm
greenling) wrote in rainbowfic2014-02-15 09:41 pm
Canary Yellow #1
Name: Greenling
Story: Asking for Roses
Colors: Canary Yellow #1 (Conscience is the sentinel of virtue.)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas, Acrylic (image link)
Word Count: 695
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Summary: People sometimes change a lot in high school. Alex certainly did. Comments, criticism, and questions are all appreciated.
By sixteen, it was obvious he would always be small; at fourteen, he still had hope. He was already small-framed, and not handsome by any conventional definition: his round cheeks and chin made him look younger than he was, puppy-faced, with a large nose and full, almost girlish lips. His hands and feet were small, and at least his shoulders were getting broader, but it put him off-balance, so he'd developed a careful, deliberate way of walking to keep himself from tripping over things.
People made fun of him, not always other children, mostly in the quiet sort of way. No one had called him frog-face or dainty since he was small, but they still asked him if (or usually /why/) he bleached his hair so white, because his roots were darker, so of course that was what it was. Or they looked at him strangely when he wore long-sleeved shirts and jeans in the summer, when he couldn't go to the beach for hours and hours or tried to wear a hat over his hair. He had tried being nice, being the kind of person the adults liked, and that had gotten him a few casual friends who barely spoke to him. He had tried doing what the other kids did, wearing nice clothes even though his parents didn't have much money, going out for sports even if he was terrible at it, and even going out in the sun anyway, though he had to miss school the next two days because his sunburn started to blister and the doctor looked him dead in the eye and gave him a very stern lecture about skin cancer and going blind and probably, somewhere in there, dying. He mostly remembered the pictures.
And so when Alex was fourteen, and his parents decided he should attend the good, private high school with the well-paid teachers and high dual enrollment and all the rich people's kids, he decided he would put his nose to the grindstone and find some way, some way at /all/, of fitting in. He hardly felt he had a choice.
For the first few months, he was invisible. It wasn't the same thing as /fitting/ in, exactly, but he did his best to blend into the herd of scholarship students and middle-class brown-noses who made up roughly half the student body. The uniforms helped with some of the clothing-related problems, so long as no one saw him after school, and being a freshman meant that much of the teasing he did receive wasn't personal. For the rest of it, he observed.
Alex had always been good at paying attention, especially to people, but he had never quite put his back into it the way he did that semester, and he noticed things. He noticed how insular most of the students were, and how some groups were more porous than others. He noticed who got away with what, in front of the teachers and among the other students. He noticed that making friends seemed to be more about being someone people wanted to impress than being likable. He tried a few tests, joining after-school clubs that seemed like possible entrances, making comments, creating a personality to be known for.
As he bobbed and weaved through the first few hiccups, he learned just how good he was at reading people. He learned how to lead questions, how to find out what people wanted and what they would do to get it. He learned in a manner of weeks, and startled himself with how easy it was when he asked the right questions. What startled him more was how much better at it he seemed to be than many of the people who had what he wanted.
If it was easier to change people's minds than change who he was, then all the better. If some of them wouldn't change, then he would just have to limit their ability to retaliate. If some people had to get out of the wayto make room for him, then so be it. He would ascend the social ladder or die trying.
By sixteen, he saw no reason to ever stop.
Story: Asking for Roses
Colors: Canary Yellow #1 (Conscience is the sentinel of virtue.)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas, Acrylic (image link)
Word Count: 695
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Summary: People sometimes change a lot in high school. Alex certainly did. Comments, criticism, and questions are all appreciated.
By sixteen, it was obvious he would always be small; at fourteen, he still had hope. He was already small-framed, and not handsome by any conventional definition: his round cheeks and chin made him look younger than he was, puppy-faced, with a large nose and full, almost girlish lips. His hands and feet were small, and at least his shoulders were getting broader, but it put him off-balance, so he'd developed a careful, deliberate way of walking to keep himself from tripping over things.
People made fun of him, not always other children, mostly in the quiet sort of way. No one had called him frog-face or dainty since he was small, but they still asked him if (or usually /why/) he bleached his hair so white, because his roots were darker, so of course that was what it was. Or they looked at him strangely when he wore long-sleeved shirts and jeans in the summer, when he couldn't go to the beach for hours and hours or tried to wear a hat over his hair. He had tried being nice, being the kind of person the adults liked, and that had gotten him a few casual friends who barely spoke to him. He had tried doing what the other kids did, wearing nice clothes even though his parents didn't have much money, going out for sports even if he was terrible at it, and even going out in the sun anyway, though he had to miss school the next two days because his sunburn started to blister and the doctor looked him dead in the eye and gave him a very stern lecture about skin cancer and going blind and probably, somewhere in there, dying. He mostly remembered the pictures.
And so when Alex was fourteen, and his parents decided he should attend the good, private high school with the well-paid teachers and high dual enrollment and all the rich people's kids, he decided he would put his nose to the grindstone and find some way, some way at /all/, of fitting in. He hardly felt he had a choice.
For the first few months, he was invisible. It wasn't the same thing as /fitting/ in, exactly, but he did his best to blend into the herd of scholarship students and middle-class brown-noses who made up roughly half the student body. The uniforms helped with some of the clothing-related problems, so long as no one saw him after school, and being a freshman meant that much of the teasing he did receive wasn't personal. For the rest of it, he observed.
Alex had always been good at paying attention, especially to people, but he had never quite put his back into it the way he did that semester, and he noticed things. He noticed how insular most of the students were, and how some groups were more porous than others. He noticed who got away with what, in front of the teachers and among the other students. He noticed that making friends seemed to be more about being someone people wanted to impress than being likable. He tried a few tests, joining after-school clubs that seemed like possible entrances, making comments, creating a personality to be known for.
As he bobbed and weaved through the first few hiccups, he learned just how good he was at reading people. He learned how to lead questions, how to find out what people wanted and what they would do to get it. He learned in a manner of weeks, and startled himself with how easy it was when he asked the right questions. What startled him more was how much better at it he seemed to be than many of the people who had what he wanted.
If it was easier to change people's minds than change who he was, then all the better. If some of them wouldn't change, then he would just have to limit their ability to retaliate. If some people had to get out of the wayto make room for him, then so be it. He would ascend the social ladder or die trying.
By sixteen, he saw no reason to ever stop.
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The choices he makes because of it, not so much, but this is just a summary.
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Ugh. High school.
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Thanks for reading.
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I'd also like to watch him /work/ too, of course.
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Yeah. He needs an opportunity to do that. I should give him one.