Entry, with two focuses
Sep. 9th, 2004 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thrihyrneFocus the first:
A few fun/odd things I'm going to pack. I have the suitcase out, but wanted to let the cats play in it overnight. Unlike many people's pets, our cats are not wigged out by luggage, thinking, "Oh god, our owners are going away!" or "Egads! We're going to have to go to the vet!" or somesuch. Maybe because my stepkids bring over suitcases every other weekend. Dunno. I don't have a degree in pet psychology. In fact, Gimli is sleeping in the suitcase as I look over at it right now. *smile*
But! I'm going to include (yes, another list. I like lists.):
~ a wonderful card from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
edrys that I loved so much I had framed, and it's in the bathroom. Since I'm going to be in someone's home/B&B for a week solid, I wanted to have something familiar and beautiful around me, so I'm going to take that. Dear Nessime, please know I'm thinking about you and that I haven't abandoned the Ardaverse, though it must seem like that from recent posts. I'm taking my Tar-aldarion story to work on as well. Inspiration for that may well come fast and furious while in the port town of Stornoway.
~miraminx's "Redeeming Time." I printed it out after being reduced to a bawling mess after reading it the first time, and wanted to treat myself to a second reading when I was in a good place, not a "this is so good, I'll never write anything like this and my writing sucks" place. I've had some tremendous feedback for "Addiction" and even though she won't read my G/R because of the pairing, I'm all into the 4th G/R story (next bit to follow), plus the twinfic, and I even have inklings of original fic. Be very afraid.
~ a wonderful quote sent to me fromllembas on beautiful translucent paper: "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." By our thought-provoking friend and writer, T.S. Eliot. Jen rocks.
The rest is the usual: cold-weather clothes; CDs; probably a laptop; purple legal paper for writing on the plane or when the inspiration strikes; camera (with regular film; don't have/want a digital camera); knitting project; books (again, thanks tollembas and forodwaith); and the good wishes of many friends.
*grins*
Focus the second:
I know I'm putting this out half-baked, but I had to temper the first scene of "Never Break the Chain" with what will be the more complicated tone of the story, and a convenient tie-in with the new information about Remus's convoluted past in "Addiction." Because it wouldn't be one of my stories if it didn't dovetail into all the rest. (except for the Fred/Hermione and Ron/Hermione stories which have their own universes) so here's the following scene.
Half an hour later they were walking in the specially sanctioned graveyard on the periphery of Hogwarts’ school grounds. George looked over at Remus’s almost empty glass and came to a halt. “Top up?” he asked.
Remus shook his head, then, changing his mind, said, “Well, I suppose so.”
“That’s the spirit.” George poured him a very healthy serving of scotch, and followed it with even more into his own before screwing the lid back on the bottle. When he finished, he saw Remus looking thoughtfully at him.
“You’ve become quite the drinker,” he mused.
“Oy, it’s your fault,” George said, poking Remus in the shoulder, then drinking a good third of the contents in his tumbler with a satisfying swallow. “You’re the one who started foisting this stuff on me. Bad influence, you are.”
“I drink bourbon mostly. You know that.” Remus studied his glass, then the monument they had paused beside. “There’s only one person I knew who was as fond of it as you’ve become, rather suddenly, it seems.”
George took another swig. “Ron?” he offered, then contradicted himself. “No, he’s more a beer’n chips bloke, despite the time in Glasgow.”
“Severus Snape.”
“Snape?” George exclaimed incredulously, backing up to the stone memorial behind him and assuming a slouch. “Ugh. Couldn’t stand him in school, and being partnered with him during reconnaissance didn’t exactly make us friends either.” He sneered. “Can’t imagine what he would’ve thought about my mini-lab up in our room seventh year.”
“Good thing he can’t hear you,” Remus said drily, “seeing as how you’re right next to his marker.”
“Am bloody not!” George retorted. “I'm sure we’re at Fred’s. That’s where we always stop.” He thrust his arm back over his shoulder, expecting to feel familiar rock. “Oh, fuck,” George hissed, his fingers not meeting the Weasley name, but rather that of Snape. He whipped around, looking menacingly at the marker, gesticulating with his glass of liquor. “Where’s Fred? What’d you do to him?”
The memorial resisted George’s plea for information and stood resolutely mute.
“C'mon George,” Remus said, walking the few steps to be at George’s side and placing his arm reassuringly on George’s shoulder. "Let's go over to Fred's memorial."
There’s something else going on, George thought, the verve of scotch and his inner troublemaker deciding that he’d have nothing to do with Remus’s attempt at coddling.
“How do you know about Snape's drinking habits? I didn't think you were close in school or while you were teaching.”
There was a pause, as the unexpected balm of late afternoon drifted through the graveyard. Various animated stones made their way amid the bright flowers and other gifts that had been placed that day in memoriam of the end of the war with Voldemort.
“We shagged.”
A bit more time passed as George noticed the clouds beginning to accept their sunset colours of lilac and betrayal.
“What?” he asked disbelievingly. He slumped against the tombstone, then remembering whose it was, jerked himself upright from it.
“Shagged. Fucked. Only a few times. At Severus's initiation, actually.”
George finally turned to glare at his lover, astounded into shocked anger. “Why?”
Remus swirled his scotch in the glass, then drank a goodly amount before answering. “Does it matter? We were two men with similarly dismal and familiar pasts. It wasn’t as though people were clamouring to be with a werewolf trying desperately to keep that knowledge a secret. I’m not proud, George, but neither can I honestly say that I regret it.”
George drank the rest of the contents of his glass, poured himself some more scotch. “Merlin, Remus. It’s not like I thought you were chaste after Sirius or anything, or, well, maybe I guess I did. I don’t think I’m making sense anymore. But knowing that you, and he, it makes me ill. Snape.” He shuddered.
“There was more than just Severus. I couldn’t tell you the names of all of the men I had in Halifax when I was trying to be a Muggle,” Remus murmured, running his hand down to George’s hip. “It was a dark time in my life. Consider yourself lucky so far that you haven’t-”
“If you say anything about my age I swear to Merlin I will Apparate out of here before you can say 'younger man,'" George growled. Despite himself, George leaned his head against Remus’s vest-clad shoulder, desperate to draw Remus’s attention back to him and away from Remus’s past. “Bloody hell, would it kill you to say you love me, especially after what you just told me? Tell me you're different now than then. We're handfasted, you and me, and I'm bloody bound to you, and you've never said so." The liquor was positively singing in his veins now, willing his speech and body forward, fast and furious, and definitely not filtered through his head. He straightened up, placed his glass on Snape’s marker, then opened his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt so the scar on his chest was plainly visible under his red chest hair. He pulled Remus's hand to his skin, clutching the warm palm against his breastbond. “Bound to you,” he said again for emphasis, staring at his partner's eyes, then stepped closer so he was leaning into Remus, hip to hip. “I’m a Weasley. We do have our pride, y’know. We’re nobody’s second best. Never second best.”
George stood for a few moments, waiting for reassurance that he knew was coming. Surely Remus loved him, even if he hadn’t said so in words.
"You know I do," Remus said, his voice husky.
George was assaulted by a completely irrational desire to fall to Remus's feet, but his stubborn streak held him fully in sway. Why he'd had to fall in love with an often-distant werewolf whose past got more convoluted and inaccessible by the minute, he didn't know. He was George-ridiculous-jokeshop-owner-Weasley, for heaven't sake. Sod it all, he'd been pursued by this complicated man and he'd liked it.
Liked Remus.
Loved Remus.
Remus, who had apparently fucked half of Halifax and Snape as well. Maybe even before George was ruddy born, because he was always going to be seen as some youngling, though George had been the one to try and console Fred after his daily sessions of Death Eater torture, who had seen his share of death and dealt it during the War, there would always be Sirius and Remus’s past…
George dropped to his knees, then rested his head against the beloved thin legs he knew so well. “If you'd just say so, just once,” he pleaded into the wool trousers.
Long fingers threaded in his hair. “Something’s come over you since your curse-breaking,” Remus’s calming voice said above him. “I think it has to do with what happened to you at the end of the War.”
George snapped. “I think I’m leaving.” He wrenched himself away from his bondmate, hastily refastening shirt buttons and grabbing his tumbler to finish his drink, but not before toasting the granite behind Remus. “Sorry for the irony, Snape,” he said bitterly. “Guess we shared all kinds of things we didn’t know.” George looked balefully at Remus. “Talented at potions, mutual loathing, knowing what it’s like to be shagged by Remus I’ll-never-get-over-Black-but-you’ll-do-instead Lupin.” He paused. “Cheers.” He tossed back the scotch then hurled the glass the short distance so that it shattered satisfyingly against Snape’s memorial.
***
He was still miserable in his half-asleep fog later that night when he felt Remus join him under the covers and heard Remus whisper, “A ghaoil,” in his ear. In the morning, after abandoning Remus in their bed to salve his raging headache by making an individual batch of his Hogwarts-perfected pepper-up potion, he thought he remembered hearing something when Remus had climbed in, but then decided it’d been his overactive imagination.
***
p.s.llembas, if I perchance stumble across Jeremy Jeffrey while gone, I'll be sure to send him back. I miss your Marauder-era story updates. :(
A few fun/odd things I'm going to pack. I have the suitcase out, but wanted to let the cats play in it overnight. Unlike many people's pets, our cats are not wigged out by luggage, thinking, "Oh god, our owners are going away!" or "Egads! We're going to have to go to the vet!" or somesuch. Maybe because my stepkids bring over suitcases every other weekend. Dunno. I don't have a degree in pet psychology. In fact, Gimli is sleeping in the suitcase as I look over at it right now. *smile*
But! I'm going to include (yes, another list. I like lists.):
~ a wonderful card from
edrys that I loved so much I had framed, and it's in the bathroom. Since I'm going to be in someone's home/B&B for a week solid, I wanted to have something familiar and beautiful around me, so I'm going to take that. Dear Nessime, please know I'm thinking about you and that I haven't abandoned the Ardaverse, though it must seem like that from recent posts. I'm taking my Tar-aldarion story to work on as well. Inspiration for that may well come fast and furious while in the port town of Stornoway.~
miraminx's "Redeeming Time." I printed it out after being reduced to a bawling mess after reading it the first time, and wanted to treat myself to a second reading when I was in a good place, not a "this is so good, I'll never write anything like this and my writing sucks" place. I've had some tremendous feedback for "Addiction" and even though she won't read my G/R because of the pairing, I'm all into the 4th G/R story (next bit to follow), plus the twinfic, and I even have inklings of original fic. Be very afraid.~ a wonderful quote sent to me from
llembas on beautiful translucent paper: "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." By our thought-provoking friend and writer, T.S. Eliot. Jen rocks.The rest is the usual: cold-weather clothes; CDs; probably a laptop; purple legal paper for writing on the plane or when the inspiration strikes; camera (with regular film; don't have/want a digital camera); knitting project; books (again, thanks to
llembas and forodwaith); and the good wishes of many friends.*grins*
Focus the second:
I know I'm putting this out half-baked, but I had to temper the first scene of "Never Break the Chain" with what will be the more complicated tone of the story, and a convenient tie-in with the new information about Remus's convoluted past in "Addiction." Because it wouldn't be one of my stories if it didn't dovetail into all the rest. (except for the Fred/Hermione and Ron/Hermione stories which have their own universes) so here's the following scene.
Half an hour later they were walking in the specially sanctioned graveyard on the periphery of Hogwarts’ school grounds. George looked over at Remus’s almost empty glass and came to a halt. “Top up?” he asked.
Remus shook his head, then, changing his mind, said, “Well, I suppose so.”
“That’s the spirit.” George poured him a very healthy serving of scotch, and followed it with even more into his own before screwing the lid back on the bottle. When he finished, he saw Remus looking thoughtfully at him.
“You’ve become quite the drinker,” he mused.
“Oy, it’s your fault,” George said, poking Remus in the shoulder, then drinking a good third of the contents in his tumbler with a satisfying swallow. “You’re the one who started foisting this stuff on me. Bad influence, you are.”
“I drink bourbon mostly. You know that.” Remus studied his glass, then the monument they had paused beside. “There’s only one person I knew who was as fond of it as you’ve become, rather suddenly, it seems.”
George took another swig. “Ron?” he offered, then contradicted himself. “No, he’s more a beer’n chips bloke, despite the time in Glasgow.”
“Severus Snape.”
“Snape?” George exclaimed incredulously, backing up to the stone memorial behind him and assuming a slouch. “Ugh. Couldn’t stand him in school, and being partnered with him during reconnaissance didn’t exactly make us friends either.” He sneered. “Can’t imagine what he would’ve thought about my mini-lab up in our room seventh year.”
“Good thing he can’t hear you,” Remus said drily, “seeing as how you’re right next to his marker.”
“Am bloody not!” George retorted. “I'm sure we’re at Fred’s. That’s where we always stop.” He thrust his arm back over his shoulder, expecting to feel familiar rock. “Oh, fuck,” George hissed, his fingers not meeting the Weasley name, but rather that of Snape. He whipped around, looking menacingly at the marker, gesticulating with his glass of liquor. “Where’s Fred? What’d you do to him?”
The memorial resisted George’s plea for information and stood resolutely mute.
“C'mon George,” Remus said, walking the few steps to be at George’s side and placing his arm reassuringly on George’s shoulder. "Let's go over to Fred's memorial."
There’s something else going on, George thought, the verve of scotch and his inner troublemaker deciding that he’d have nothing to do with Remus’s attempt at coddling.
“How do you know about Snape's drinking habits? I didn't think you were close in school or while you were teaching.”
There was a pause, as the unexpected balm of late afternoon drifted through the graveyard. Various animated stones made their way amid the bright flowers and other gifts that had been placed that day in memoriam of the end of the war with Voldemort.
“We shagged.”
A bit more time passed as George noticed the clouds beginning to accept their sunset colours of lilac and betrayal.
“What?” he asked disbelievingly. He slumped against the tombstone, then remembering whose it was, jerked himself upright from it.
“Shagged. Fucked. Only a few times. At Severus's initiation, actually.”
George finally turned to glare at his lover, astounded into shocked anger. “Why?”
Remus swirled his scotch in the glass, then drank a goodly amount before answering. “Does it matter? We were two men with similarly dismal and familiar pasts. It wasn’t as though people were clamouring to be with a werewolf trying desperately to keep that knowledge a secret. I’m not proud, George, but neither can I honestly say that I regret it.”
George drank the rest of the contents of his glass, poured himself some more scotch. “Merlin, Remus. It’s not like I thought you were chaste after Sirius or anything, or, well, maybe I guess I did. I don’t think I’m making sense anymore. But knowing that you, and he, it makes me ill. Snape.” He shuddered.
“There was more than just Severus. I couldn’t tell you the names of all of the men I had in Halifax when I was trying to be a Muggle,” Remus murmured, running his hand down to George’s hip. “It was a dark time in my life. Consider yourself lucky so far that you haven’t-”
“If you say anything about my age I swear to Merlin I will Apparate out of here before you can say 'younger man,'" George growled. Despite himself, George leaned his head against Remus’s vest-clad shoulder, desperate to draw Remus’s attention back to him and away from Remus’s past. “Bloody hell, would it kill you to say you love me, especially after what you just told me? Tell me you're different now than then. We're handfasted, you and me, and I'm bloody bound to you, and you've never said so." The liquor was positively singing in his veins now, willing his speech and body forward, fast and furious, and definitely not filtered through his head. He straightened up, placed his glass on Snape’s marker, then opened his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt so the scar on his chest was plainly visible under his red chest hair. He pulled Remus's hand to his skin, clutching the warm palm against his breastbond. “Bound to you,” he said again for emphasis, staring at his partner's eyes, then stepped closer so he was leaning into Remus, hip to hip. “I’m a Weasley. We do have our pride, y’know. We’re nobody’s second best. Never second best.”
George stood for a few moments, waiting for reassurance that he knew was coming. Surely Remus loved him, even if he hadn’t said so in words.
"You know I do," Remus said, his voice husky.
George was assaulted by a completely irrational desire to fall to Remus's feet, but his stubborn streak held him fully in sway. Why he'd had to fall in love with an often-distant werewolf whose past got more convoluted and inaccessible by the minute, he didn't know. He was George-ridiculous-jokeshop-owner-Weasley, for heaven't sake. Sod it all, he'd been pursued by this complicated man and he'd liked it.
Liked Remus.
Loved Remus.
Remus, who had apparently fucked half of Halifax and Snape as well. Maybe even before George was ruddy born, because he was always going to be seen as some youngling, though George had been the one to try and console Fred after his daily sessions of Death Eater torture, who had seen his share of death and dealt it during the War, there would always be Sirius and Remus’s past…
George dropped to his knees, then rested his head against the beloved thin legs he knew so well. “If you'd just say so, just once,” he pleaded into the wool trousers.
Long fingers threaded in his hair. “Something’s come over you since your curse-breaking,” Remus’s calming voice said above him. “I think it has to do with what happened to you at the end of the War.”
George snapped. “I think I’m leaving.” He wrenched himself away from his bondmate, hastily refastening shirt buttons and grabbing his tumbler to finish his drink, but not before toasting the granite behind Remus. “Sorry for the irony, Snape,” he said bitterly. “Guess we shared all kinds of things we didn’t know.” George looked balefully at Remus. “Talented at potions, mutual loathing, knowing what it’s like to be shagged by Remus I’ll-never-get-over-Black-but-you’ll-do-instead Lupin.” He paused. “Cheers.” He tossed back the scotch then hurled the glass the short distance so that it shattered satisfyingly against Snape’s memorial.
***
He was still miserable in his half-asleep fog later that night when he felt Remus join him under the covers and heard Remus whisper, “A ghaoil,” in his ear. In the morning, after abandoning Remus in their bed to salve his raging headache by making an individual batch of his Hogwarts-perfected pepper-up potion, he thought he remembered hearing something when Remus had climbed in, but then decided it’d been his overactive imagination.
***
p.s.
llembas, if I perchance stumble across ![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-10 11:39 am (UTC)on the other hand, kitties in suitcases! yay!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-11 02:54 am (UTC)I'll be listening to you telling me to "breathe" all the way 'cross the pond. Thank you for all of your well wishes!
♥
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-10 09:15 pm (UTC)I hope you have a fulfilling trip. And come back safe. :-)
You've hit the nail on the head...
Date: 2004-09-11 02:56 am (UTC)Aww, he just wants to deposit some cat hair in with your clothes so you won't forget about him while you're away.
That's exactly it. And I'll enjoy wearing my clothes with their usual deposit of black cat hair whilst in the Outer Hebrides. I'm just glad that they two of them got out of the suitcase and carryon long enough for me actually to put my stuff in them. But must do some purging in the morning. I've already overpacked. Gah.
Thank you for your comments- just seeing that card from you makes me happy.
-K
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-11 02:18 am (UTC)Also, I can't tell you how flattered I am that you printed out RT and are taking it with you. That's a fantastic compliment.
Have a great trip!
Well, be even more flattered.
Date: 2004-09-11 03:06 am (UTC)I suppose you could just say that I adore your stories. I was going to print out the entirety of your "Lost Feeling" series and then decided that it was just too much, since I do have two books and may get a book on CD and I'm imposing too many expectations on accomplishing things and I should just stop. Since this trip is about trying to be a human 'being' and not a human 'doing', which is my modus operandi.
So I did. But you're well-represented in my ficage that's going with me. It's just very familiar and well-written and snarky and heartbreaking and inspiring. Just what I need to do a lot of writing myself.
There will be much to say upon my return, I'm sure.
And of course I hope that some random person somewhere prints out my stories, whether Tolkien or HP for reading material, but even if not, that's okay too.
I trust you are well! Hadn't heard from you in a while and figured you were busy, as is all of our wont, I know. But it was lovely to hear from you, and I'm glad you know I have your writings with me. Consistent characterization is a fabulous thing, and one I want to keep pursuing, whether Ardaverse of Potterverse.
Must go and look at the suitcase. And probably take some things out, even though it's going to be coldish and rainy and I'm cold-natured. Need room for potential yarn purchases. ;)
Thanks again,
Kristi
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-11 02:58 am (UTC)have a most excellent and indulgent time away.
re not taking a laptop w you - good move. I angst when I'm travelling that I'll be 'unconnected' for a while but, in the end, I hardly ever miss it. I find it much more satisfying to winnow thoughts and responses from a trip away - too much immediacy robs it of synthesis. or maybe that's just my navel-gazing brain talking. :P
***hugs***
Date: 2004-09-11 03:13 am (UTC)I promise to be incredibly indulgent. Writing, wandering, taking photos, reading magazines with no value whatsoever, eating food that's bad for me, taking naps (?!), reading books, and just doing whatever the hell I feel like, because it'll be just me.
"Self? What would you like to do today?"
"Hmmm. Don't know. Maybe go to that castle?"
"Excellent idea. After we've had a huge breakfast."
"Lovely."
I already hear dialogue in my head from the characters I write about, so being alone and having my own exclusive banter should be quite freeing.
No laptop. Just the legal pads, a HP notebook that Amy gave me as a joke a few months ago, other people's writings, my own writings ('cause I have to edit, lol), and two books. Am really looking forward to it, despite the dismal-appearing weather. It feels extraordinarily good to be adventuring solo again, even more so going to a colder climate, and in fact, a place just not all that far from Iceland. I was looking on Sam's globe this evening and realizing just how far north the Hebrides are. Same kind of latitude as southern Sweden.
Hmmm.
Thanks for posting- rest assured you'll be assailed by at least one letter from me. Ack! Must go and pack a few envelopes for good measure.
Heaps and heaps of love,
K