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polychromatic) wrote2010-11-21 09:55 pm
polychromatic) wrote2010-11-21 09:55 pm
Entry tags:
more shiny happiness!
Pushing Daisies
Loophole
Ned | Chuck
Written for The Shiny Happy Ficathon Meme.
Originally posted here.
Prompt: loopholes
741 words.
It was a normal Tuesday morning at The Pie Hole, and as the Piemaker touched a bowlful of moldering strawberries back to a pleasantly ripe state, he thought about how Chuck was now a part of his normal Tuesday mornings and how much better his life seemed for it. Although Digby had always proven to be a constant and dependable companion whose taciturn nature was nonetheless comforting, Ned’s daily life was now filled with a whirlwind of colour and cheerful chatter as well as a certain sense of completeness that he’d been missing since that fateful day 19 years, 43 weeks, 5 days, and 25 minutes ago.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Chuck as she carefully applied the lattice crust to her “Seize the Date!” pie, flour smudges on her cheek and berry juice staining her apron.
“You do a lot of thinking,” he paused with a smile that teetered on the edge of bashfulness, “I like that you’re such an intellectual thinker and I always appreciate it when you share the thoughts that you’re thinking with me. Not in a ‘you have to tell me everything ever because I’m a controlling and overly concerned boyfriend way”, just sort of in the vein of ‘I appreciate the privilege of being worthy enough of your confidences’.”
Normally he would have expected a hum of laughter at his unnecessarily long-winded reply, but Chuck merely applied the last piece of pastry to the pie with an air of soberness. “Are you happy, Ned?”
The Piemaker was taken aback by this question and the warm, fuzzy feelings that he had been indulging in only moments before promptly fled to make room for panic. “Happy? Of course I’m happy! Why wouldn’t you think that I’m happy?”
And then he blurted out the next, terrible thought that had dawned on him. “Chuck…” he said with all the courage of a quaking leaf, “Are you not happy?”
She looked at him a little forlornly for a second, but when she smiled he felt every tense muscle relax with an almost audible sigh of relief. “No, it’s nothing like that. I just wonder…” and she watched a little wistfully as a couple sitting in a booth reached their hands across the table to each other, “if all these by-proxy, prophylactic expressions of affection are enough. Sometimes I think with all the things you’ve been through, you deserve a little more. Well, a lot more, actually. I at least had my aunts growing up, but you didn’t have anyone.”
“I had Digby,” he said a little stoutly, and the golden retriever thumped his tail happily from his spot on the kitchen floor at the mention of his name.
“But you couldn’t touch him, Ned,” her smile waned a little, “I’m not trying to upset you but I can’t help feeling a little bit like I might be holding you back from really being happy sometimes. It’s like I’m reaping all the benefits of being Alive-Again and selfishly enjoying them on my own while you’re carrying all the burden.”
Abandoning his newly un-rotted fruit, Ned moved around the counter while hastily pulling on plastic gloves so he could grasp one of her hands in his own.
“You’re my happiness loophole, Chuck."
When she looked at him quizzically he continued, "Before you, I’d pretty much written up a statement that I would live a satisfactory, practical existence baking pies, waking the dead, and keeping people at an arm’s length in both the physical and emotional sense. Nowhere in that statement was there anything about really being happy until you came along and became a pretty central part of everything that makes me happy now, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. So, no, you're not holding me back, and yes, I am happy.”
When she squeezed his hand in return and beamed warmly at him with some of her usual spark, he felt the warm, fuzzy feelings rushing back to take residence in that part of his heart saved especially for her. “I think I like being a loophole,” she said to him in mischievous hushed tones, like she was sharing an especially juicy secret, and he laughed in spite of himself.
And so the Piemaker and the girl called Chuck went about their business as usual on that normal Tuesday morning, slowed down in their activities ever so slightly when both found that neither wished to relinquish their hand-holding privileges just yet.
Glee
Hip-Hop and Hippos
Finn, Brittany
Written for The Shiny Happy Ficathon Meme.
Originally posted here.
Prompt: Brittany & Finn, anything because it's these two
710 words.
“Hey, you’re like pretty smart, right?”
Finn looked to his left and then to his right. For good measure, he looked behind him as well. Nope, there definitely wasn’t anyone else in the room Brittany could be talking to. Well, unless she was talking to an imaginary friend or something, he’d had one of those once. Of course he was like five then, but hey, whatever floats other people’s boats.
Oh, right she’d asked him a question.
“Uh, me? Not really. Maybe you should talk to Rachel or something. She’s kind of more into the school and studying thing than I am.”
But Brittany didn’t seem to be listening to him at all, which was kind of weird since she was the one who’d talked to him in the first place. She circled around him once and then gave him one good look-over with her hands on her hips.
Okay, this was getting kiiiiinda creepy.
Just as Finn was debating making up an excuse about having to go and do a thing (he hadn’t gotten far enough to think what the thing was yet), she finally said “I’ve been watching you dance.”
“You’ve been watching me dance,” he repeated, not really sure what to make of that. Sure, he’d been practicing lately to try and get better, but he didn’t think anyone had noticed.
“Yeah,” Brittany said, tilting her head to the side as she regarded him, “You kind of suck.”
“Uh…”
“I can help you get better,” she said with such seriousness that he thought he’d better not laugh, “But I need something back. Like a trade.”
Wracking his brain for anything that might be a fair trade for dancing lessons, Finn came up with… nothing. He sort of shrugged and hoped the whole awkward situation would just go away.
~~~
It didn’t go away.
Finn still wasn’t sure how he’d been talked into tutoring Brittany in trigonometry, especially since math was kind of his worst subject. And this was taking into account that he didn’t really have any subjects that he was awesome in to begin with.
“So then this is the hypotenuse. I think. Well, I’m pretty sure,” he said pointing to the line that looked the longest on the triangle.
Brittany nodded, her eyes fixated on the line with great intensity.
“And then there’s this thing that Mr. Hinkle always says when you’re trying to find out the angle. Uh. Something that sounds like ‘sock it to ‘em’, I can’t remember.”
“Hippopotamus and socks and toes,” Brittany said like she was a little dazed by the idea, “That’s a totally weird combination.”
~~~
He’s spent at least an hour trying to work his way through the routine that Brittany’s running him through, and Finn’s pretty sure he’s getting worse.
“Look,” he said, “I’m happy to just stand at the back and like… wave my arms around or something. You really don’t have to do this. I didn’t do a very good job teaching you trig anyway.”
“Do the body-wave move again,” she responded while inspecting her nails, acting like no words had actually come out of his mouth.
Finn sighed and rubbed his face wearily with one hand before attempt number he-didn’t-even-know-anymore of the body-wave move, feeling (and looking) more like a wobbly octopus made of rubber instead of a totally sick dancer like Mike Chang. Nine attempts later and he’s pretty much ready to just make a run for it, but on the tenth try Brittany squealed and clapped her hands and did one of those cheerleader fist-pumps into the air because it’s finally – finally – looking less like an gorilla suffering from a seizure.
And okay, he had to admit it felt pretty cool.
~~~
Everyone in the Glee Club stared as Brittany showed her C+ trigonometry quiz to Finn and he performed a happy dance that looked like a cross between a hip-hop step and the hokey-pokey. When they moved into some sort of patty-cake-down-by-the-roller-coaster-with-Miss-Mary-Mack-Mack-Mack clapping game and stepped out into a slide complete with pointed finger-guns, a few mouths even dropped open.
“What is even going on here?” huffed Rachel from her seat.
“Obviously the beginning of a beautiful and deeply weird friendship,” Kurt answered.
Loophole
Ned | Chuck
Written for The Shiny Happy Ficathon Meme.
Originally posted here.
Prompt: loopholes
741 words.
It was a normal Tuesday morning at The Pie Hole, and as the Piemaker touched a bowlful of moldering strawberries back to a pleasantly ripe state, he thought about how Chuck was now a part of his normal Tuesday mornings and how much better his life seemed for it. Although Digby had always proven to be a constant and dependable companion whose taciturn nature was nonetheless comforting, Ned’s daily life was now filled with a whirlwind of colour and cheerful chatter as well as a certain sense of completeness that he’d been missing since that fateful day 19 years, 43 weeks, 5 days, and 25 minutes ago.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Chuck as she carefully applied the lattice crust to her “Seize the Date!” pie, flour smudges on her cheek and berry juice staining her apron.
“You do a lot of thinking,” he paused with a smile that teetered on the edge of bashfulness, “I like that you’re such an intellectual thinker and I always appreciate it when you share the thoughts that you’re thinking with me. Not in a ‘you have to tell me everything ever because I’m a controlling and overly concerned boyfriend way”, just sort of in the vein of ‘I appreciate the privilege of being worthy enough of your confidences’.”
Normally he would have expected a hum of laughter at his unnecessarily long-winded reply, but Chuck merely applied the last piece of pastry to the pie with an air of soberness. “Are you happy, Ned?”
The Piemaker was taken aback by this question and the warm, fuzzy feelings that he had been indulging in only moments before promptly fled to make room for panic. “Happy? Of course I’m happy! Why wouldn’t you think that I’m happy?”
And then he blurted out the next, terrible thought that had dawned on him. “Chuck…” he said with all the courage of a quaking leaf, “Are you not happy?”
She looked at him a little forlornly for a second, but when she smiled he felt every tense muscle relax with an almost audible sigh of relief. “No, it’s nothing like that. I just wonder…” and she watched a little wistfully as a couple sitting in a booth reached their hands across the table to each other, “if all these by-proxy, prophylactic expressions of affection are enough. Sometimes I think with all the things you’ve been through, you deserve a little more. Well, a lot more, actually. I at least had my aunts growing up, but you didn’t have anyone.”
“I had Digby,” he said a little stoutly, and the golden retriever thumped his tail happily from his spot on the kitchen floor at the mention of his name.
“But you couldn’t touch him, Ned,” her smile waned a little, “I’m not trying to upset you but I can’t help feeling a little bit like I might be holding you back from really being happy sometimes. It’s like I’m reaping all the benefits of being Alive-Again and selfishly enjoying them on my own while you’re carrying all the burden.”
Abandoning his newly un-rotted fruit, Ned moved around the counter while hastily pulling on plastic gloves so he could grasp one of her hands in his own.
“You’re my happiness loophole, Chuck."
When she looked at him quizzically he continued, "Before you, I’d pretty much written up a statement that I would live a satisfactory, practical existence baking pies, waking the dead, and keeping people at an arm’s length in both the physical and emotional sense. Nowhere in that statement was there anything about really being happy until you came along and became a pretty central part of everything that makes me happy now, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. So, no, you're not holding me back, and yes, I am happy.”
When she squeezed his hand in return and beamed warmly at him with some of her usual spark, he felt the warm, fuzzy feelings rushing back to take residence in that part of his heart saved especially for her. “I think I like being a loophole,” she said to him in mischievous hushed tones, like she was sharing an especially juicy secret, and he laughed in spite of himself.
And so the Piemaker and the girl called Chuck went about their business as usual on that normal Tuesday morning, slowed down in their activities ever so slightly when both found that neither wished to relinquish their hand-holding privileges just yet.
Glee
Hip-Hop and Hippos
Finn, Brittany
Written for The Shiny Happy Ficathon Meme.
Originally posted here.
Prompt: Brittany & Finn, anything because it's these two
710 words.
“Hey, you’re like pretty smart, right?”
Finn looked to his left and then to his right. For good measure, he looked behind him as well. Nope, there definitely wasn’t anyone else in the room Brittany could be talking to. Well, unless she was talking to an imaginary friend or something, he’d had one of those once. Of course he was like five then, but hey, whatever floats other people’s boats.
Oh, right she’d asked him a question.
“Uh, me? Not really. Maybe you should talk to Rachel or something. She’s kind of more into the school and studying thing than I am.”
But Brittany didn’t seem to be listening to him at all, which was kind of weird since she was the one who’d talked to him in the first place. She circled around him once and then gave him one good look-over with her hands on her hips.
Okay, this was getting kiiiiinda creepy.
Just as Finn was debating making up an excuse about having to go and do a thing (he hadn’t gotten far enough to think what the thing was yet), she finally said “I’ve been watching you dance.”
“You’ve been watching me dance,” he repeated, not really sure what to make of that. Sure, he’d been practicing lately to try and get better, but he didn’t think anyone had noticed.
“Yeah,” Brittany said, tilting her head to the side as she regarded him, “You kind of suck.”
“Uh…”
“I can help you get better,” she said with such seriousness that he thought he’d better not laugh, “But I need something back. Like a trade.”
Wracking his brain for anything that might be a fair trade for dancing lessons, Finn came up with… nothing. He sort of shrugged and hoped the whole awkward situation would just go away.
It didn’t go away.
Finn still wasn’t sure how he’d been talked into tutoring Brittany in trigonometry, especially since math was kind of his worst subject. And this was taking into account that he didn’t really have any subjects that he was awesome in to begin with.
“So then this is the hypotenuse. I think. Well, I’m pretty sure,” he said pointing to the line that looked the longest on the triangle.
Brittany nodded, her eyes fixated on the line with great intensity.
“And then there’s this thing that Mr. Hinkle always says when you’re trying to find out the angle. Uh. Something that sounds like ‘sock it to ‘em’, I can’t remember.”
“Hippopotamus and socks and toes,” Brittany said like she was a little dazed by the idea, “That’s a totally weird combination.”
He’s spent at least an hour trying to work his way through the routine that Brittany’s running him through, and Finn’s pretty sure he’s getting worse.
“Look,” he said, “I’m happy to just stand at the back and like… wave my arms around or something. You really don’t have to do this. I didn’t do a very good job teaching you trig anyway.”
“Do the body-wave move again,” she responded while inspecting her nails, acting like no words had actually come out of his mouth.
Finn sighed and rubbed his face wearily with one hand before attempt number he-didn’t-even-know-anymore of the body-wave move, feeling (and looking) more like a wobbly octopus made of rubber instead of a totally sick dancer like Mike Chang. Nine attempts later and he’s pretty much ready to just make a run for it, but on the tenth try Brittany squealed and clapped her hands and did one of those cheerleader fist-pumps into the air because it’s finally – finally – looking less like an gorilla suffering from a seizure.
And okay, he had to admit it felt pretty cool.
Everyone in the Glee Club stared as Brittany showed her C+ trigonometry quiz to Finn and he performed a happy dance that looked like a cross between a hip-hop step and the hokey-pokey. When they moved into some sort of patty-cake-down-by-the-roller-coaster-with-Miss-Mary-Mack-Mack-Mack clapping game and stepped out into a slide complete with pointed finger-guns, a few mouths even dropped open.
“What is even going on here?” huffed Rachel from her seat.
“Obviously the beginning of a beautiful and deeply weird friendship,” Kurt answered.
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Thanks for reading! I know how you feel; I miss the show a lot and am constantly searching out fic for it myself!