thedeadparrot (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thedeadparrot) wrote2015-03-10 08:36 pm
thedeadparrot) wrote2015-03-10 08:36 pm
Prompts?
I'm avoiding this longer fic I'm working on because it's full of all this obnoxious plot nonsense. Give me some other prompts to write? Any fandom I've written in before.
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When he's at school, Roderick wears his headphones full time, listening his way through the music library that his older brother lent to him before going off to college, full of Outkast and Depeche Mode and Pearl Jam. It's great. It's awesome. It's like being in his own little world.
When he's at home, he does what any self-respecting (or self-hating), slightly overweight young man without a lot of friends does: he plays video games. He's not really one for first person shooters -- the Call of Duties and Halos of the world are not for him -- but there's a whole world out there beyond that. He explores the caves of Spelunky. He tries to keep his spaceship afloat in FTL. He starts wars with Gandhi in Civ 5. He sorts through passports as an immigration officer in Papers Please.
Even after he joins the glee club, it's still something that feels like something just for him, even though he knows it's not true. It's just that none of the other guys seem to care. Mason always wants to talk about what they're going to perform this week in glee. Spencer always wants to talk about football. And Roderick's not even sure Mr. Hummel even knows how to hold a controller. Roderick doesn't mind all that much. He's in it for the music and so is everyone else.
He's checking his phone for the daily deals during the Steam Sale -- the semi-regular video game sales that are pretty much designed to eat through two or three months' of Roderick's allowance at a time -- when Jane drops into the seat next to him. "Anything good today?" she asks. It's right after the last bell but before glee practice has started, so they're the only ones here. Well, if you don't count Mr. Hummel and Ms. Berry hissing at each other in the front of the classroom over their piles of sheet music.
"You mean, like, in the cafeteria?" Roderick still hasn't quite managed to figure out what to make of Jane. She's new this year, and she doesn't carry any of the baggage that a lot of the existing McKinley students have. Generally, that means that she's willing to talk to him even when everyone else is content to pretend that he doesn't exist. They'd even had a whole conversation about 90's grunge rock once that was pretty cool.
Jane laughs, rolling her eyes. "No. I mean in the sale."
Roderick blinks. "Oh," he says. "Oh."
"I've been waiting for Saint's Row IV to show up in a flash sale or daily deal," she says.
Roderick says, "You're into Saint's Row?" He tries to imagine a world where Jane would be interested in running a street gang and then becoming president before fighting aliens. It's a very strange world. Jane was probably the last person he'd have pegged to be another gamer. Not because she's a girl or anything. It's just that, she always seems so poised, so confident, so happy, that Roderick has a hard time believing that she'd ever need gaming to escape from the shittiness of her life.
She grins. "My dad and I used to co-op Left 4 Dead 2 together when I was thirteen. He said it was important for me to experience games with black women in it, but I think he just didn't have anyone else to play with him."
"Seriously?" Roderick can't even imagine his dad, who only seems interested in reading Fortune magazines and watching baseball, ever caring about the games that Roderick plays.
"There's nothing that says father-daughter bonding like killing zombies with shotguns together." Her grin gets brighter. "So what have you bought this week?"
"I got a good deal on Shovel Knight, but I haven't really bought anything else. I've been trying to hold off on spending too much." He shrugs and tries not to think about how stupid he must sound. He's used to talking about these things through the impersonal distance of a computer screen. Having a face-to-face conversation is really throwing him off.
"That's probably the smarter thing to do," she says, nodding. "My dad's threatened to lock down my account when this week rolls around. But I did manage to get ahold of Mass Effect 3 for pretty cheap."
"I just didn't know that you gamed," Roderick blurts out.
"Yeah," she says, and maybe that's the wrong thing to say, because something in her expression dims. "I didn't know that you gamed either, so I guess we're even."
Roderick wants to ask why, why she plays the games that she does and how does she feel about them and what it's like for her to love the games that she loves. But instead he says this: "Do you play Portal 2 co-op?" He's beaten the game single-player before, but he's never had a partner for the co-op levels.
That seems to bring back some of her spark. "Why yes, I do," she says, "even though we both know that the cake is a lie. Trade Steam usernames?"
It's not something he's used to, to have someone who understands, who speaks the same language as him, who understands the inside jokes and the weird cultural references. But it's something he could get used to in the future. He's looking forward to it. "Definitely," he says as he reaches for a pen.
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He collects his ingredients first, lining them up on the kitchen counter in order. Eggs first, vanilla last, and everything else in between. Next comes the utensils: the slightly dented metal bowls, the whisk and spatula, the glass measuring cups and the plastic measuring spoons.
Steve would probably take a look at the whole set up and shake his head. He likes to tell Bucky not to turn everything into a mission. He always frowns as he says it, his forehead creasing with worry. He's the same as Bucky half-remembers, always so serious, always so concerned, carrying the weight of the whole world on his shoulders. Bucky knows he's part of that weight. He doesn't like it, but he knows it's true.
First, he cracks open some of the eggs on the counter, and he tries not to think of the few times he's done that to human heads, the sounds their skulls made as they cracked open and the gush of red blood from the resulting wounds. But this is nothing like that. This is just waffles. Normal people make waffles every day.
Natasha walks into the kitchen while he's beating the eggs. He could use one of the handmixers to do this. There's a well-used one that, like the rest of the kitchen equipment, has been carted around by Sam from base to base, a little finicky but still reliable. Bucky almost crushed it once with his metal hand while trying to make angel food cake, and so he's not allowed to use it anymore.
"Waffles?" Natasha asks. She yawns, stretching her arms over her head. Her hair is a little rumpled, and her eyes are a little sleepy. When they're out in the field, she's always alert and ready from the moment she opens her eyes, but when she stays in the modest apartment shared by Steve, Sam, and Bucky -- protected by the best security Stark technology can provide -- she's willing to walk around like this, half-guarded and comfortable.
"Yeah," Bucky says. The eggs are looking fluffy enough now, so he's measuring out the flour and the milk, mixing them in carefully so that none of the batter manages to slosh over the sides of the bowl.
"Good," she says, settling into a chair by the kitchen table. She pulls open yesterday's newspaper -- Steve is adamant about continuing to subscribe to the paper version of the New York Times -- and starts reading it.
Vegetable oil, sugar, baking powder, salt, vanilla. Each one gets mixed in one after the other. It's straightforward, methodical, easy. So much of Bucky's life is difficult and confusing, like trying to navigate undiscovered territories without a map. At least cooking doesn't have to be like that, too.
He heats up the waffle iron as soon as the batter is ready. Then he digs through the refrigerator for toppings. Sam likes chocolate syrup and whipped cream. Steve is a bigger fan of strawberries and powdered sugar. Bucky always has his with bananas and peanut butter, which Sam claims is an abomination against breakfast foods, but he still always restocks the peanut butter when they run out anyway.
"Did you want anything?" Bucky asks Natasha before realizing how loaded that question sounds. He's learned, is learning, how to talk to Sam and Steve about things. They have their own shorthand for simple stuff around the house. Bucky has his own shorthand when it comes to Natasha, but the two don't overlap at all.
There's a pause before Natasha responds. "You seem to be doing better," she says, and Bucky can hear the guarded question in her voice.
"I feel better," Bucky says. He's still a half-functioning mess these days, but it's still better than being a mostly non-functional mess. They might even let him take on official Avengers business sometime soon. He sprays down the waffle iron with cooking oil and starts to pour the batter in. It sizzles a little as it hits the hot iron, and the whole room starts to smell good, like breakfast ought to.
"I'm glad," Natasha says. Bucky risks a glance at her. Her lips are quirked into a small, warm smile, and Bucky feels a rush of… something. It's harsher than affection, less intense than love, more intimate than gratitude, and the feeling is so acute, it leaves behind an almost physical pang.
He looks down at the waffle iron. "I was trying to ask what you wanted on your waffle," he says, because that's safer. That's easy ground to walk on.
She stands, moving in closer. He can hear her footsteps on the hardwood floors. "You're the chef," she says. "You can pick for me." And that's new for the two of them, her letting him lead for once, even if it is only breakfast.
When Sam comes downstairs a half an hour later, he takes one look at the open peanut butter jar before rolling his eyes and sighing. Bucky laughs and Natasha smirks and it's good. It's enough.
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Breakfast! And feelings! And recovering-from-trauma!Bucky feelings! YAY. (Although peanut butter and bananas on waffles, WTF Bucky.) Thank you!
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Matt's not, like, against music or anything. He goes to Landry's concerts and stuff, and he listens to the radio in the morning before school, because Grandma always asks for it to be on when he forgets.
But he doesn't really understand why the glee club shows up to lunch with their musical performances all the time.
"I think it's cute," Julie says, grinning, as another glee club member sprints by them. She pokes at the yellowish lump on her plate that seems like it should be mac 'n' cheese. The glee club singing something that Matt's heard a few times but that he's having a hard time placing. Something about partying with Mick Jagger?
They're not all strangers to Matt. Puck, Sam, Finn, and Mike are on the team, and Matt's met their on-again off-again girlfriends before. He likes them all fine. He just doesn't get it. "I dunno," Matt says as Mike and Brittany, the blonde cheerleader who's always joined at the hip with the really mean one, Santana, start doing what Matt can only think of as a 'dance solo' right next to the vending machines. "It's just a lot. Do they have to do one of these every month?"
Julie shrugs. "I kind of like it. Free entertainment that doesn't involve rally girls." Mike's doing some kind of bending thing that's making his bright pink t-shirt ride up and show off his abs. Matt really doesn't like the way Julie's watching him, but Julie's really good at not freaking out when some of the cheerleaders like to flirt with Matt at parties. Quinn always gets a little handsy when she's had a few drinks. "I was thinking about joining, actually," she says. "Kurt says that they could always use more members."
"Oh," Matt says. The glee club rehearsals are usually scheduled at times when they don't have practice, because of how many members overlap. It'd mean that Matt would have less time with Julie, and that's just… it would suck. But Matt would much rather have her be happy, and he could always pick up more shifts at the Alamo Freeze. "You'd be great at it."
"I can do the dancing, at least," she says. "I don't know about the singing." She makes a scrunchy face. It's a really cute face, but Matt's not sure if Julie would want to know that he finds it cute.
The song ends with the glee club running back out of the cafeteria like they were never here in the first place, leaving behind a stunned silence. It's only a moment before it fills again with the chatter of students.
"I'd go to all your performances," Matt says. He already goes to all of her dance recitals, because they're really great, and he likes the way she lights up when she's up on stage. It reminds him of what it's like to have a blank page in front of him, pencil in hand, trying to make something come to life.
"That's sweet," Julie says, "but I think they're probably a little too high drama for me."
As if on cue, someone screeches in the hallway outside the cafeteria. Maybe it's another chapter of the Finn-Quinn-Rachel thing. Matt can never remember who Finn's dating anymore, so he always makes sure to ask Finn how his girlfriend is doing before practice so that he doesn't accidentally say something unforgivably stupid.
"Yeah," Matt says. "I can see what you mean."
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And awwwwwwwwww She makes a scrunchy face. It's a really cute face, but Matt's not sure if Julie would want to know that he finds it cute.
And also Matt going to all of her recitals. THOSE LITTLE BABIES <33333