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rainbowfic2014-09-05 02:56 am
greenling) wrote in rainbowfic2014-09-05 02:56 am
Blue Opal #3
Name: Greenling
Story: Shatterverse/Mixed AU
Colors: Blue Opal #3 (Stable)
Supplies and Styles: Paint by Number (Hitomi has always been the level-headed one of them.), Eraser (Mermaid AU), Collage
Word Count: 2,393
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Summary: Jack's life is normal on the surface, but the adults in his life won't let it stay that way. When a series of events he's not a part of conspire to ruin his summer plans, will he manage to make the best of it? Or will the simmering tension turn into something worse?
The (erratic) intro/setup to Mermaid AU. Still no mermaids. Mermaids in one to one-and-a-half chapters. Hitomi isn't mine, but everyone else is. Comments, criticism, and questions are all appreciated.
A shrill, clanging noise shot through Dmitry's ears, and he sat up with a start.
His earbuds fell out and clattered on the desk; he squinted in confusion, rubbing the backs of his ears. The sun streamed in through the small clerestory windows in his office, and dust motes danced in its glare. On his desk, a propped-up tablet flashed a low battery notification. That would explain the noise; he must have fallen asleep. Dmitry swore under his breath, and for a moment, he considered letting the thing die a slow, painful death. Vengeance against an electronic device is unproductive, recited his rational brain. He cursed it as well, and ducked under the desk to look for the charger.
It was afternoon, by the angle the sun was coming in. Jack would be home soon, and he didn't have to look at the screen to see the cursor blinking on the blank white screen, taunting him. He'd gotten nothing done, and if he hadn't already, it was hard to believe he would at all. Not that Jack was the problem; he was fifteen, more than old enough to spend most of the day in his room, but on the other hand he might not, and then Peace would be home soon, and...
It was hard for Dmitry to explain, even to himself. When he came back up, he reviewed the half-dozen notifications blinking at him at the top of the screen. Most of them were emails or messages from the university's system. Nothing he wanted to bother with. He would have liked to have been angry, to maybe kick himself into some kind of action, but the best he could summon was frustrated and defeated. He considered reading a book, or just browsing the internet until he got bored, but then he noticed a notification unfamiliar to him. Curious, he tapped that one.
It brought up a screen with what looked like a VoIP program:
Hitomi Elderton (fashion_forward): Hi! What's going on??
Hitomi Elderton (fashion_forward): Oops, did I catch you in class? ^_^;
A smile attempted to form on his face and managed to hit smirk levels. Hitomi was a nice surprise; he hadn't spoken to most of his family in a few months at least. He remembered installing the app at her or someone's suggestion during Christmas, and had hardly used it since. Well- there were much worse wastes of an afternoon. Dmitry decided to reply.
?? (twacorbies): Hey Tomi. Nah, I'm here.
?? (twacorbies): Are you doing well?
Hitomi Elderton (fashion_forward): Yay! We haven't heard from you in a while. Guess you must be busy.
Dmitry sighed to himself. ?? (twacorbies): Pthbbt. Taking a break right now. Was there something specific, or did you just want to distract me?
Hitomi Elderton (fashion_forward): That's up to you. :P I guess I mostly just wanted to say hello.
?? (twacorbies): Hi. I wouldn't mind some conversation right now.
Hitomi Elderton (fashion_forward): Umm... I could show you some things from our last Japan trip? I found some adorable earrings, and we got gifts from a lot of people.
?? (twacorbies): Yeah, whatever. I can get on my desktop and we can do video?
Hitomi Elderton (fashion_forward): Okay. Send me a call when you're ready. :)
*
Outside, it was a reasonably nice day for early March. It had been sprinkling on and off all day, and the sky was a mix of light and dark blues, filled with clouds blowing around on a warm breeze that promised an early spring. It was still jacket-chilly, and a certain cafe a short walk from the high school had a sign out front advertising hot chocolate and fresh, warm brownies with ice cream. The smell of chocolate lingered in the air half a block down the shop-lined avenue, as did a not-insignificant number of people; on days like this, there was a steady staccato drip of shifty-eyed customers with neat polos and nametags in their pockets from the Starbucks and Krispy Kreme down the street.
Jack was not one of them. Jack was on a date.
That is- it wasn't officially a date, probably. He'd just ended up running into a girl from his math class after school, Maria with the really long dark hair and the kinda short skirts, and through some means he had no memory of they'd ended up at the cafe together, and well-
They both liked marshmallow brownies, and that had to be a sign, right? They'd gotten a big one to share, plus hot chocolate for her and a cookies-and-cream milkshake for him.
"Uhm. So..."
They both sort of looked at each other for a moment, then his eyes went down to his shake. She giggled and started poking at the brownie. He had no idea what that meant, or why he'd said that, or what he had been going to say. She tossed her hair out of her face, and he managed not to stare at that or at the lines where her fluffy white faux-fur jacket drew down to the front of her dress. Or anything else. Staring was bad.
He ran through possible conversation topics he hadn't already used. The cafe was out, food was out. Math class was out, she'd mentioned that. "So, you, ah, have a lot of homework tonight?" God, that was boring. Try something else! "Or're you doing anything else?"
"No," she said with a smile. The same vague, small smile she'd had all afternoon. "Just a few things, nothing big. Did you... have anything planned?"
"Not really." He had been sort of planning to hang out with some friends online and play a game, but that wasn't interesting. Maria got a strange look in her eye- just briefly, very briefly- and ate the bite of brownie she'd been playing with. By that time the mallow and little fudge chunks had cooled together into a squishy mass of deliciousness.
Wait.
What was that look? Disappointment? Did she think he wasn't cool? Was she bored? Had she been expecting him to-
"I mean-" Jack's mouth started moving- "I was going to hang out with friends or something, you know, but nothing for sure." He leaned back in his seat and tried for "nonchalant", absolutely certain he looked ridiculous. "I kinda go with the flow, most of the time. Like..."
And then he said it.
"Maybe you wanted to go see a movie later?"
He started kicking himself as soon as he said it, but then she said:
"Yeah. If- if you want to."
Jack couldn't keep the stupid grin off his face; her smile got a little wider, and she started playing with her hair. It was really, really cute. She was really, really cute, and she wanted to go out with him, because that was definitely a date.
"So uh, what do you want to see?" He fumbled with his jacket to get at his watch and check showtimes, and unfortunately, that was when he realized he had messages.
*
Dmitry had let her go on for like an hour about the all shows they'd gone to and the relatives they'd visited in Japan, the cute earrings, the shops, and the gorgeous kimono a friend gave her. When that hadn't been enough, he'd even let her talk about some of Jaymie's sketches he'd let her see based on their visit, and all the blog posts she'd made. He'd barely said a word, which worried her a little, but she knew her cousin well enough to guess that whatever was wrong, she was helping by letting him not think about it. (And it wasn't like she minded going on about cute clothes.)
They had taken a break for a bit so Dmitry could get lunch and, honestly, so that she could find something else to talk about.
At the moment she had flopped back onto her bed, staring at the ceiling and pretending she was stretching her hands or doing something else vaguely productive. Jaymie was working, but Bryce was already home, sulking about something in his room, which lately seemed to be his favorite hobby. It seemed like every day he was getting more sullen and angry, and while intellectually she knew it was puberty, it was coming a little early and strong for him. Wendy hadn't been like that. Wendy also didn't have her genes, though, and on his quieter hours, Bryce reminded Hitomi a little of her brother.
Speaking of her brother- she heard a familiar muffled ringtone from her laptop and turned her head. It was really unusual for her brother or his husband to be around in the middle of the day; Hitoshi spent long hours at his restaurant doing what he loved, and she didn't even dare guess what Alex's work schedule-slash-social calendar looked like most of the time. She groped around for her headset and picked the call up on the second ring.
"Hello?"
The screen lit up with a video call; her brother's husband looked very... comfortable in an old t-shirt and sweatpants. Odd for him, but she didn't think much of it. She smiled.
"Hello," Alex replied, returning her smile. "How are you doing?"
"Bored. I've been talking to Dmitry- he'll be back in a minute, but I've got time. What's up?"
"Mmh." His expression shifted when she mentioned Dmitry. He was clearly tired, and now his brow was furrowed with concern. "How is Dmitry, actually?"
Hitomi folded her arms over her chest and made a face. "Better. He's dodging any questions about work, or Peace, or anything that sounds like we're trying to get him to talk. But better."
"That's... not exactly good." Alex frowned deeply. It made his eyebrows look like adorable fluffy off-white caterpillars.
"It's normal. For Dmitry, anyway."
"Normalizing relationship problems... is what creates permanent rifts. That is-" He trailed off as Hitomi turned her head to look at him. His frown faded a bit into bashfulness. "Am I being nosy?"
Hitomi smiled again and rolled over onto her stomach, pulling the laptop in front of her. "Yeah, but that's what family's for. Unrelated: why'd you call, and then immediately change the subject?"
Alex pursed his lips. "Ah. Busted. The thing is, I have this problem, and while you probably can't help, I was hoping maybe you knew someone who could."
"You want a favor." Hitomi's smile turned into a smirk.
Alex met her gaze with another adorable raised eyebrow. "Let's start with advice."
*
"So... I guess this sucks, huh?"
"Yeah," Jack grumbled. "Completely sucks ass." His "go with the flow" afternoon out had been cancelled courtesy of a few stupid chores, and Maria had volunteered to walk him home. It would have been his first actual high school date. He was a sophomore, he was a football player for frick's sake, and he had to postpone a first date to wash the dishes, clean the kitchen, and help with dinner. Plus homework, but all he had was a half-dozen chemistry questions. He was so far ahead in math he had actually asked the teacher for extra credit, his electives were a joke, and the only reason he wasn't getting an A in English was because this year was creative writing and writing about "real life" things basically made him want to retch.
Thinking about real life too much made him want to retch, with the way his parents were acting.
"You said your Dad texted you?" Maria asked gently.
From Jack's angle, her face was peeking out from over her jacket ruff like a penguin peeking over a hill of fluffy snow. She was still trying to start up a conversation, which made him giddy except when he started thinking about it too hard and wondering if he'd missed some clue that she liked him before this.
"Yeah, one of them. Sometimes Dmitry's home at weird hours, since we live so close to the university. He's a professor," he said with slightly less sullenness than usual.
Her face lit up a little more. "Oh, what kind?"
"English. He finds people no one's heard of who write stuff in weird dialects and writes biographies about them. And normal professor stuff, I guess." He shrugged, not able to help himself from smiling back.
"That's cool. What's your, uh, other Dad do?"
"Uhm." Jack hesitated. "He's a manager at Target."
"Oh." She smiled down at the ground. He couldn't quite read her expression.
The wind started blowing then, a chilly and humid wind that felt like brewing storms. Jack's mouth started moving without his knowledge again. "I mean, that's his job," he said, his brain waking up immediately and throwing things at him in an attempt to stop the word train before it derailed, "but mostly he's a musician."
To Jack's great embarrassment, she stopped in place for a moment, her hands going up to her face. "Oh, wow- is he in a band?"
She didn't even stop long enough for him to catch himself. "He's- in a local band..."
Jack kind of fogged out the next few minutes. At some point he told her about the albums, and the studio, and probably every stupid thing he'd ever learned about guitars, because she kept smiling and acting like it was the most interesting thing in the world. At some point- and he did his best to pretend he hadn't- he even invited her to see the studio. It... it wasn't like he was embarrassed of his Dad; in fact, he was kind of embarrassed at the idea that he might be embarrassed about his Dad. He had a decent job, his stuff was probably good, nothing was really objectively wrong.
Except... his Dad didn't seem to see it that way, or something, and he and Dmitry had been really... tense off and on for a few months or longer, maybe even since his Dad's band had the thing, and Jack had been in the middle of it, and his Dad had been trying to get him back into music and he didn't know how to explain that...
He didn't really know how to explain to Maria "I don't want you to think I'm lying, but I'm not actually allowed in the studio". So he didn't, and then all of a sudden they were at his house, at the tall back fence that led to the garage...
Story: Shatterverse/Mixed AU
Colors: Blue Opal #3 (Stable)
Supplies and Styles: Paint by Number (Hitomi has always been the level-headed one of them.), Eraser (Mermaid AU), Collage
Word Count: 2,393
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Summary: Jack's life is normal on the surface, but the adults in his life won't let it stay that way. When a series of events he's not a part of conspire to ruin his summer plans, will he manage to make the best of it? Or will the simmering tension turn into something worse?
The (erratic) intro/setup to Mermaid AU. Still no mermaids. Mermaids in one to one-and-a-half chapters. Hitomi isn't mine, but everyone else is. Comments, criticism, and questions are all appreciated.
A shrill, clanging noise shot through Dmitry's ears, and he sat up with a start.
His earbuds fell out and clattered on the desk; he squinted in confusion, rubbing the backs of his ears. The sun streamed in through the small clerestory windows in his office, and dust motes danced in its glare. On his desk, a propped-up tablet flashed a low battery notification. That would explain the noise; he must have fallen asleep. Dmitry swore under his breath, and for a moment, he considered letting the thing die a slow, painful death. Vengeance against an electronic device is unproductive, recited his rational brain. He cursed it as well, and ducked under the desk to look for the charger.
It was afternoon, by the angle the sun was coming in. Jack would be home soon, and he didn't have to look at the screen to see the cursor blinking on the blank white screen, taunting him. He'd gotten nothing done, and if he hadn't already, it was hard to believe he would at all. Not that Jack was the problem; he was fifteen, more than old enough to spend most of the day in his room, but on the other hand he might not, and then Peace would be home soon, and...
It was hard for Dmitry to explain, even to himself. When he came back up, he reviewed the half-dozen notifications blinking at him at the top of the screen. Most of them were emails or messages from the university's system. Nothing he wanted to bother with. He would have liked to have been angry, to maybe kick himself into some kind of action, but the best he could summon was frustrated and defeated. He considered reading a book, or just browsing the internet until he got bored, but then he noticed a notification unfamiliar to him. Curious, he tapped that one.
It brought up a screen with what looked like a VoIP program:
Hitomi Elderton (fashion_forward): Hi! What's going on??
Hitomi Elderton (fashion_forward): Oops, did I catch you in class? ^_^;
A smile attempted to form on his face and managed to hit smirk levels. Hitomi was a nice surprise; he hadn't spoken to most of his family in a few months at least. He remembered installing the app at her or someone's suggestion during Christmas, and had hardly used it since. Well- there were much worse wastes of an afternoon. Dmitry decided to reply.
?? (twacorbies): Hey Tomi. Nah, I'm here.
?? (twacorbies): Are you doing well?
Hitomi Elderton (fashion_forward): Yay! We haven't heard from you in a while. Guess you must be busy.
Dmitry sighed to himself. ?? (twacorbies): Pthbbt. Taking a break right now. Was there something specific, or did you just want to distract me?
Hitomi Elderton (fashion_forward): That's up to you. :P I guess I mostly just wanted to say hello.
?? (twacorbies): Hi. I wouldn't mind some conversation right now.
Hitomi Elderton (fashion_forward): Umm... I could show you some things from our last Japan trip? I found some adorable earrings, and we got gifts from a lot of people.
?? (twacorbies): Yeah, whatever. I can get on my desktop and we can do video?
Hitomi Elderton (fashion_forward): Okay. Send me a call when you're ready. :)
*
Outside, it was a reasonably nice day for early March. It had been sprinkling on and off all day, and the sky was a mix of light and dark blues, filled with clouds blowing around on a warm breeze that promised an early spring. It was still jacket-chilly, and a certain cafe a short walk from the high school had a sign out front advertising hot chocolate and fresh, warm brownies with ice cream. The smell of chocolate lingered in the air half a block down the shop-lined avenue, as did a not-insignificant number of people; on days like this, there was a steady staccato drip of shifty-eyed customers with neat polos and nametags in their pockets from the Starbucks and Krispy Kreme down the street.
Jack was not one of them. Jack was on a date.
That is- it wasn't officially a date, probably. He'd just ended up running into a girl from his math class after school, Maria with the really long dark hair and the kinda short skirts, and through some means he had no memory of they'd ended up at the cafe together, and well-
They both liked marshmallow brownies, and that had to be a sign, right? They'd gotten a big one to share, plus hot chocolate for her and a cookies-and-cream milkshake for him.
"Uhm. So..."
They both sort of looked at each other for a moment, then his eyes went down to his shake. She giggled and started poking at the brownie. He had no idea what that meant, or why he'd said that, or what he had been going to say. She tossed her hair out of her face, and he managed not to stare at that or at the lines where her fluffy white faux-fur jacket drew down to the front of her dress. Or anything else. Staring was bad.
He ran through possible conversation topics he hadn't already used. The cafe was out, food was out. Math class was out, she'd mentioned that. "So, you, ah, have a lot of homework tonight?" God, that was boring. Try something else! "Or're you doing anything else?"
"No," she said with a smile. The same vague, small smile she'd had all afternoon. "Just a few things, nothing big. Did you... have anything planned?"
"Not really." He had been sort of planning to hang out with some friends online and play a game, but that wasn't interesting. Maria got a strange look in her eye- just briefly, very briefly- and ate the bite of brownie she'd been playing with. By that time the mallow and little fudge chunks had cooled together into a squishy mass of deliciousness.
Wait.
What was that look? Disappointment? Did she think he wasn't cool? Was she bored? Had she been expecting him to-
"I mean-" Jack's mouth started moving- "I was going to hang out with friends or something, you know, but nothing for sure." He leaned back in his seat and tried for "nonchalant", absolutely certain he looked ridiculous. "I kinda go with the flow, most of the time. Like..."
And then he said it.
"Maybe you wanted to go see a movie later?"
He started kicking himself as soon as he said it, but then she said:
"Yeah. If- if you want to."
Jack couldn't keep the stupid grin off his face; her smile got a little wider, and she started playing with her hair. It was really, really cute. She was really, really cute, and she wanted to go out with him, because that was definitely a date.
"So uh, what do you want to see?" He fumbled with his jacket to get at his watch and check showtimes, and unfortunately, that was when he realized he had messages.
*
Dmitry had let her go on for like an hour about the all shows they'd gone to and the relatives they'd visited in Japan, the cute earrings, the shops, and the gorgeous kimono a friend gave her. When that hadn't been enough, he'd even let her talk about some of Jaymie's sketches he'd let her see based on their visit, and all the blog posts she'd made. He'd barely said a word, which worried her a little, but she knew her cousin well enough to guess that whatever was wrong, she was helping by letting him not think about it. (And it wasn't like she minded going on about cute clothes.)
They had taken a break for a bit so Dmitry could get lunch and, honestly, so that she could find something else to talk about.
At the moment she had flopped back onto her bed, staring at the ceiling and pretending she was stretching her hands or doing something else vaguely productive. Jaymie was working, but Bryce was already home, sulking about something in his room, which lately seemed to be his favorite hobby. It seemed like every day he was getting more sullen and angry, and while intellectually she knew it was puberty, it was coming a little early and strong for him. Wendy hadn't been like that. Wendy also didn't have her genes, though, and on his quieter hours, Bryce reminded Hitomi a little of her brother.
Speaking of her brother- she heard a familiar muffled ringtone from her laptop and turned her head. It was really unusual for her brother or his husband to be around in the middle of the day; Hitoshi spent long hours at his restaurant doing what he loved, and she didn't even dare guess what Alex's work schedule-slash-social calendar looked like most of the time. She groped around for her headset and picked the call up on the second ring.
"Hello?"
The screen lit up with a video call; her brother's husband looked very... comfortable in an old t-shirt and sweatpants. Odd for him, but she didn't think much of it. She smiled.
"Hello," Alex replied, returning her smile. "How are you doing?"
"Bored. I've been talking to Dmitry- he'll be back in a minute, but I've got time. What's up?"
"Mmh." His expression shifted when she mentioned Dmitry. He was clearly tired, and now his brow was furrowed with concern. "How is Dmitry, actually?"
Hitomi folded her arms over her chest and made a face. "Better. He's dodging any questions about work, or Peace, or anything that sounds like we're trying to get him to talk. But better."
"That's... not exactly good." Alex frowned deeply. It made his eyebrows look like adorable fluffy off-white caterpillars.
"It's normal. For Dmitry, anyway."
"Normalizing relationship problems... is what creates permanent rifts. That is-" He trailed off as Hitomi turned her head to look at him. His frown faded a bit into bashfulness. "Am I being nosy?"
Hitomi smiled again and rolled over onto her stomach, pulling the laptop in front of her. "Yeah, but that's what family's for. Unrelated: why'd you call, and then immediately change the subject?"
Alex pursed his lips. "Ah. Busted. The thing is, I have this problem, and while you probably can't help, I was hoping maybe you knew someone who could."
"You want a favor." Hitomi's smile turned into a smirk.
Alex met her gaze with another adorable raised eyebrow. "Let's start with advice."
*
"So... I guess this sucks, huh?"
"Yeah," Jack grumbled. "Completely sucks ass." His "go with the flow" afternoon out had been cancelled courtesy of a few stupid chores, and Maria had volunteered to walk him home. It would have been his first actual high school date. He was a sophomore, he was a football player for frick's sake, and he had to postpone a first date to wash the dishes, clean the kitchen, and help with dinner. Plus homework, but all he had was a half-dozen chemistry questions. He was so far ahead in math he had actually asked the teacher for extra credit, his electives were a joke, and the only reason he wasn't getting an A in English was because this year was creative writing and writing about "real life" things basically made him want to retch.
Thinking about real life too much made him want to retch, with the way his parents were acting.
"You said your Dad texted you?" Maria asked gently.
From Jack's angle, her face was peeking out from over her jacket ruff like a penguin peeking over a hill of fluffy snow. She was still trying to start up a conversation, which made him giddy except when he started thinking about it too hard and wondering if he'd missed some clue that she liked him before this.
"Yeah, one of them. Sometimes Dmitry's home at weird hours, since we live so close to the university. He's a professor," he said with slightly less sullenness than usual.
Her face lit up a little more. "Oh, what kind?"
"English. He finds people no one's heard of who write stuff in weird dialects and writes biographies about them. And normal professor stuff, I guess." He shrugged, not able to help himself from smiling back.
"That's cool. What's your, uh, other Dad do?"
"Uhm." Jack hesitated. "He's a manager at Target."
"Oh." She smiled down at the ground. He couldn't quite read her expression.
The wind started blowing then, a chilly and humid wind that felt like brewing storms. Jack's mouth started moving without his knowledge again. "I mean, that's his job," he said, his brain waking up immediately and throwing things at him in an attempt to stop the word train before it derailed, "but mostly he's a musician."
To Jack's great embarrassment, she stopped in place for a moment, her hands going up to her face. "Oh, wow- is he in a band?"
She didn't even stop long enough for him to catch himself. "He's- in a local band..."
Jack kind of fogged out the next few minutes. At some point he told her about the albums, and the studio, and probably every stupid thing he'd ever learned about guitars, because she kept smiling and acting like it was the most interesting thing in the world. At some point- and he did his best to pretend he hadn't- he even invited her to see the studio. It... it wasn't like he was embarrassed of his Dad; in fact, he was kind of embarrassed at the idea that he might be embarrassed about his Dad. He had a decent job, his stuff was probably good, nothing was really objectively wrong.
Except... his Dad didn't seem to see it that way, or something, and he and Dmitry had been really... tense off and on for a few months or longer, maybe even since his Dad's band had the thing, and Jack had been in the middle of it, and his Dad had been trying to get him back into music and he didn't know how to explain that...
He didn't really know how to explain to Maria "I don't want you to think I'm lying, but I'm not actually allowed in the studio". So he didn't, and then all of a sudden they were at his house, at the tall back fence that led to the garage...
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Thanks for reading!
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Thank you for reading!