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New Year and The Fic That Must Not Be Named...
Yeah. That fic. The one we don't talk about. The next chapter is going out tonight. If I get this entry typed before midnight, it will still be 2008 and I can still say it's only been two years since the last chapter... right?
That's an estimate; the save date on the final version of Connections is March of 2006... so unless somebody wants to smack me with the actual posted date, I'm counting from there. Ouch. >_<; Been a long haul on this sucker, and all I can do at this point is stop stalling and just post the stupid thing... I'll have to accept the reassurances I've been given that it does not suck. Because I really just can't tell any more.
There should be some sort of deep philosophical end of year stuff here, but I have to confess that 2008 pretty much did not meet my expectations and leave it at that. Not really anything I much want to 'remember'.
So I'll look forward to 2009 and in my vaguely naive way, believe that this silly date that is probably pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things... will actually make a difference to some pissy deity somewhere up there, and hope for the best!
2009, I will woo you and court you and bake you cookies, if you will only be a kinder, gentler year for us all! ^_______^
So this here fic thing goes out with huge thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lavendarlizard who did the beta without so much as crying at the size, and to colorfulshadows who was kind enough to take time out from her hugely busy world to let me poke at her for medical details. Thanks to you both!
As you may have guessed, this thing is way too big to post here, but as has become tradition, I will post a bit of a sneak peek and then it will be going out to the archivists as soon as I'm done here. Assuming I can stay awake that long... >_>
Kidding. ^______^
Thank you to everyone who has hung in with me, waiting for this thing... I will do my best to not take this long on the next one. *knocks on wood and rubs the lucky bunny*
So happy New Year and I'll be shutting up now...
Warnings : Yaoi of the 1x2x1 variety, angst/sap/romance/bits of violence/moments of citrus, OOC, language, Duo POV, unrepentant use of pet-names and anything else I forgot.
Thanks to Plaiddragon for the beta read, prodding, and chocolate, and Dev_Basaa for allowing me to pick her brain for medical details. Any face-saving is theirs, any mistakes are mine. Thanks guys!
Feed-back is a dream I have.
And I don't own anything in this series, either.
Directions
So, anyone surprised that I got a cell phone from Heero as a sort of congratulatory gift for my grand art gallery opening? It was a couple of days after he returned home, and he had the most sheepish look on his face when he handed it to me, but I suppose I should have expected it. Hell, not like I hadn’t thought more than once during that time period that I ought to get myself one, but you know… I have to confess to a vague feeling like being tied down just a little bit more. Must have been my Spacer sense of freedom getting pinched, but I did manage to ignore it. Accepted it with quite a bit of good grace, I thought. Took me a while to get used to carrying it, but I’ll even go so far as to admit it’s come in handy a couple of times.
The only other ‘gift’ I got for my efforts, was one of those weird-ass little artist’s beanies. I think there’s a name for them, but damned if I know what it is. But if you stick one on a guy in the movies, the audience can immediately identify him as the artiste. It was sitting on my tool box the Monday after the opening. Still not sure who did it, or if the whole damn garage was in on it. I think they were sorry though, after I put the thing on without batting an eye and worked the whole day using a cheesy French accent. Hey… you don’t grow up under the tender mercy of the Sweepers and not learn how to handle teasing. Though, to be honest, it was a huge relief to find myself dealing with teasing about the art thing, and not dealing with teasing about the evening news thing. I have no doubt that it was a conscious effort on the part of the guys, but it let me just pretend that they hadn’t seen it. Made it a hell of a lot easier to deal with what could have been a damned humiliating situation.
As for the opening, it went pretty well, really. Aleyah even said so, in her quaintly caustic way. At least, I assumed that’s what her declaration of ‘I think you just might work out after all’ meant. I didn’t quite make enough for Allison’s surgery, but I made a damn sight more toward that goal than I had thought I would, so I suppose I’d have to say the venture was a success. Still reserving judgment on whether it was actually worth the ulcer and gray hairs. Could just as easily have sold a kidney, and I still maintain I could have made just as much money, but that comment makes Heero look at me strange, so I sort of gave up mentioning it. I don’t get him sometimes… it’s not like I don’t have two of the damn things.
My show ran for three weeks and I sold just over half of what was there. And I really can’t tell you how I felt about that. It was this strange mix of exultant… and sick to my stomach. I had the horrid urge the day the show closed and I realized what all was missing, to track all those people down and demand the pictures back. ‘You can’t have it! It’s mine!’ I would yell, and they would have me hauled away by the little men in the white coats. It was somehow a very large shock. Especially considering what some of those pictures had been. All of the paintings sold, and I honest to God don’t know where they all ended up. That pains me somehow… like I let Jensen loose on the world, all unknowing. I had a couple of bad nights because I couldn’t shake the feeling that the psycho was ‘out there’ again. Heero noticed I was a bit twitchy, but I couldn’t even begin to explain it to him… it just sounds nuts. I was very damn glad he was home though; would have been a stone cold bitch to get through those days if he hadn’t been there to distract me. I have something of an overactive imagination, in case you’ve never noticed.
There was some consolation in that Quatre and Trowa had been able to snag the picture they wanted, and I caught the picture of Wufei and Beowulf for Sally. Quatre had worked the deal for their portrait before I had a chance to intervene, but I’d at least seen to it that Sally’s was a gift. I hated when my friends paid for my work… it just didn’t seem right. Sally had been thrilled, though she was still holding me to the promise of a painted version. Woman had been something of a tactician in her day, and it showed sometimes; you didn’t out-maneuver Sally Po.
The Case of Flight 1410 ended up being rather anti-climactic in the end. Leslie had indeed come forward, cutting a deal and confessing. Once she talked, the other members of the crew folded one after the other. Spencer followed almost instantly, and I suspect the poor kid had been relieved that somebody else had bucked Daddy-dear so he didn’t have to keep up the lies. By the time the bartender talked, even the good up-standing Captain Gray gave it up and made a full confession. Ended up charged with negligent homicide and a host of other lovely things. Lost his job, lost his license, and wouldn’t see the outside of a prison for a number of years. Spencer would never own a pilot’s license, but since he’d never really wanted to fly in the first place… I don’t think that aspect upset him overly much. I got a post card from the guy addressed to me, care of Preventers’ headquarters, with a half-assed apology. Kid really is kind of weird. I imagine Heero will know where he is and what he’s doing for the rest of his life; he uses the word ‘stalker’ a lot when he mentions him.
Bobbi, the last I heard, had been ‘let go’ from her position, but had managed to parlay the whole thing into a stint on the talk show circuit. Leslie was the only one to keep her job. So I guess everything worked out ok, which was a pretty damn good thing considering that Heero had somewhat exaggerated his standing on the investigation team. Turns out that his hip-deep involvement was pretty much against policy, and while Une had given him the go-ahead, it had all been under the table, and had things actually gone to trial, Heero would have been in a world of hurt, because she couldn’t have backed him publicly. I suspect he would have had to bow out of the trial and hope it didn’t come to light. Part of why the guy had been so… on edge during those weeks. Part of why he hadn’t been willing to talk to me much on the topic. We’d had words when I’d found out, but I can’t say I really blamed him; not sure I could have stayed out of it either, had I been in his place. But I’d been more upset that he hadn’t told me about the limb crawling, than about the actual limb.
But he is nothing if not a stubborn bastard. In the end, I’d just decided to file the whole mess away under ‘worked out in the end’ and tried to forget about it.
Which hadn’t been easy when the phone calls had started. Bobbi wasn’t the only one the talk shows were interested in. We’d finally gotten an answering machine and pretty much stopped picking up the house phone. Everybody who mattered knew to call the cell phones if they really needed to talk to either of us anyway. Frankly, I was ready to completely rip the regular phone out and be done with it. The first couple of weeks I was deleting a hand full of messages every freaking day. It took forever before the damn fervor waned a bit and then I was pretty much down to just ignoring the darling of the Rising Times; Mizz Angie Masters. I didn’t even listen to the damn things anymore since the woman had tried to pull the ‘I thought we were friends’ shtick after a dozen or so ignored messages.
Some people just seriously don’t know how to take a hint. What in hell did she think a total lack of response meant? There were days I feared her just showing up on our front porch, since that tactic had worked so well for her the first time.
That's an estimate; the save date on the final version of Connections is March of 2006... so unless somebody wants to smack me with the actual posted date, I'm counting from there. Ouch. >_<; Been a long haul on this sucker, and all I can do at this point is stop stalling and just post the stupid thing... I'll have to accept the reassurances I've been given that it does not suck. Because I really just can't tell any more.
There should be some sort of deep philosophical end of year stuff here, but I have to confess that 2008 pretty much did not meet my expectations and leave it at that. Not really anything I much want to 'remember'.
So I'll look forward to 2009 and in my vaguely naive way, believe that this silly date that is probably pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things... will actually make a difference to some pissy deity somewhere up there, and hope for the best!
2009, I will woo you and court you and bake you cookies, if you will only be a kinder, gentler year for us all! ^_______^
So this here fic thing goes out with huge thanks to
lavendarlizard who did the beta without so much as crying at the size, and to colorfulshadows who was kind enough to take time out from her hugely busy world to let me poke at her for medical details. Thanks to you both! As you may have guessed, this thing is way too big to post here, but as has become tradition, I will post a bit of a sneak peek and then it will be going out to the archivists as soon as I'm done here. Assuming I can stay awake that long... >_>
Kidding. ^______^
Thank you to everyone who has hung in with me, waiting for this thing... I will do my best to not take this long on the next one. *knocks on wood and rubs the lucky bunny*
So happy New Year and I'll be shutting up now...
Warnings : Yaoi of the 1x2x1 variety, angst/sap/romance/bits of violence/moments of citrus, OOC, language, Duo POV, unrepentant use of pet-names and anything else I forgot.
Thanks to Plaiddragon for the beta read, prodding, and chocolate, and Dev_Basaa for allowing me to pick her brain for medical details. Any face-saving is theirs, any mistakes are mine. Thanks guys!
Feed-back is a dream I have.
And I don't own anything in this series, either.
So, anyone surprised that I got a cell phone from Heero as a sort of congratulatory gift for my grand art gallery opening? It was a couple of days after he returned home, and he had the most sheepish look on his face when he handed it to me, but I suppose I should have expected it. Hell, not like I hadn’t thought more than once during that time period that I ought to get myself one, but you know… I have to confess to a vague feeling like being tied down just a little bit more. Must have been my Spacer sense of freedom getting pinched, but I did manage to ignore it. Accepted it with quite a bit of good grace, I thought. Took me a while to get used to carrying it, but I’ll even go so far as to admit it’s come in handy a couple of times.
The only other ‘gift’ I got for my efforts, was one of those weird-ass little artist’s beanies. I think there’s a name for them, but damned if I know what it is. But if you stick one on a guy in the movies, the audience can immediately identify him as the artiste. It was sitting on my tool box the Monday after the opening. Still not sure who did it, or if the whole damn garage was in on it. I think they were sorry though, after I put the thing on without batting an eye and worked the whole day using a cheesy French accent. Hey… you don’t grow up under the tender mercy of the Sweepers and not learn how to handle teasing. Though, to be honest, it was a huge relief to find myself dealing with teasing about the art thing, and not dealing with teasing about the evening news thing. I have no doubt that it was a conscious effort on the part of the guys, but it let me just pretend that they hadn’t seen it. Made it a hell of a lot easier to deal with what could have been a damned humiliating situation.
As for the opening, it went pretty well, really. Aleyah even said so, in her quaintly caustic way. At least, I assumed that’s what her declaration of ‘I think you just might work out after all’ meant. I didn’t quite make enough for Allison’s surgery, but I made a damn sight more toward that goal than I had thought I would, so I suppose I’d have to say the venture was a success. Still reserving judgment on whether it was actually worth the ulcer and gray hairs. Could just as easily have sold a kidney, and I still maintain I could have made just as much money, but that comment makes Heero look at me strange, so I sort of gave up mentioning it. I don’t get him sometimes… it’s not like I don’t have two of the damn things.
My show ran for three weeks and I sold just over half of what was there. And I really can’t tell you how I felt about that. It was this strange mix of exultant… and sick to my stomach. I had the horrid urge the day the show closed and I realized what all was missing, to track all those people down and demand the pictures back. ‘You can’t have it! It’s mine!’ I would yell, and they would have me hauled away by the little men in the white coats. It was somehow a very large shock. Especially considering what some of those pictures had been. All of the paintings sold, and I honest to God don’t know where they all ended up. That pains me somehow… like I let Jensen loose on the world, all unknowing. I had a couple of bad nights because I couldn’t shake the feeling that the psycho was ‘out there’ again. Heero noticed I was a bit twitchy, but I couldn’t even begin to explain it to him… it just sounds nuts. I was very damn glad he was home though; would have been a stone cold bitch to get through those days if he hadn’t been there to distract me. I have something of an overactive imagination, in case you’ve never noticed.
There was some consolation in that Quatre and Trowa had been able to snag the picture they wanted, and I caught the picture of Wufei and Beowulf for Sally. Quatre had worked the deal for their portrait before I had a chance to intervene, but I’d at least seen to it that Sally’s was a gift. I hated when my friends paid for my work… it just didn’t seem right. Sally had been thrilled, though she was still holding me to the promise of a painted version. Woman had been something of a tactician in her day, and it showed sometimes; you didn’t out-maneuver Sally Po.
The Case of Flight 1410 ended up being rather anti-climactic in the end. Leslie had indeed come forward, cutting a deal and confessing. Once she talked, the other members of the crew folded one after the other. Spencer followed almost instantly, and I suspect the poor kid had been relieved that somebody else had bucked Daddy-dear so he didn’t have to keep up the lies. By the time the bartender talked, even the good up-standing Captain Gray gave it up and made a full confession. Ended up charged with negligent homicide and a host of other lovely things. Lost his job, lost his license, and wouldn’t see the outside of a prison for a number of years. Spencer would never own a pilot’s license, but since he’d never really wanted to fly in the first place… I don’t think that aspect upset him overly much. I got a post card from the guy addressed to me, care of Preventers’ headquarters, with a half-assed apology. Kid really is kind of weird. I imagine Heero will know where he is and what he’s doing for the rest of his life; he uses the word ‘stalker’ a lot when he mentions him.
Bobbi, the last I heard, had been ‘let go’ from her position, but had managed to parlay the whole thing into a stint on the talk show circuit. Leslie was the only one to keep her job. So I guess everything worked out ok, which was a pretty damn good thing considering that Heero had somewhat exaggerated his standing on the investigation team. Turns out that his hip-deep involvement was pretty much against policy, and while Une had given him the go-ahead, it had all been under the table, and had things actually gone to trial, Heero would have been in a world of hurt, because she couldn’t have backed him publicly. I suspect he would have had to bow out of the trial and hope it didn’t come to light. Part of why the guy had been so… on edge during those weeks. Part of why he hadn’t been willing to talk to me much on the topic. We’d had words when I’d found out, but I can’t say I really blamed him; not sure I could have stayed out of it either, had I been in his place. But I’d been more upset that he hadn’t told me about the limb crawling, than about the actual limb.
But he is nothing if not a stubborn bastard. In the end, I’d just decided to file the whole mess away under ‘worked out in the end’ and tried to forget about it.
Which hadn’t been easy when the phone calls had started. Bobbi wasn’t the only one the talk shows were interested in. We’d finally gotten an answering machine and pretty much stopped picking up the house phone. Everybody who mattered knew to call the cell phones if they really needed to talk to either of us anyway. Frankly, I was ready to completely rip the regular phone out and be done with it. The first couple of weeks I was deleting a hand full of messages every freaking day. It took forever before the damn fervor waned a bit and then I was pretty much down to just ignoring the darling of the Rising Times; Mizz Angie Masters. I didn’t even listen to the damn things anymore since the woman had tried to pull the ‘I thought we were friends’ shtick after a dozen or so ignored messages.
Some people just seriously don’t know how to take a hint. What in hell did she think a total lack of response meant? There were days I feared her just showing up on our front porch, since that tactic had worked so well for her the first time.
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