![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I took pictures around my apartment complex today for my REL1300 project, and if the photo processors at Walgreens don't screw me like the monkey-rogering nincompoops at CVS did the last time I asked for a digital photo disc, I'll have a picture of myself to share with the flist sometime this week.
Aside from the photo shoot, I've written 1,200 words of the Flack/Stanhope vignette, which brings its total to 10,742 words. If I don't need to leave the house tomorrow to drop my disposable digital camera at the Walgreens, it will be finished Monday. If irksome academic duty calls, it will see light Wednesday. Tuesday is my midterm exam, and since I have to get up at the buttcrack of dawn to meet my professor in his office, I'll likely be in no mood for fandom participation that day.
Apropos of nothing in the preceding paragraphs, my Roomie and I were eating at The Loop a few days ago and enjoying a pizza when he suddenly said, "Oh, no. What the fuck do you want now?"
I turned in my seat to see who had incurred his wrath. It was the President.
You know, "What the fuck do you want now?" is not the first reaction a President should inspire.
Lastly, since it's not done yet, another snippet from the untitled Flack/Stanhope vignette:
Five minutes after Malfoy went down, four cops from a neighboring precinct arrived, stamping their feet and shaking the snow from the shoulders of their jacket. Three of them headed for the captain's office without so much as a glance at the carnage in the bullpen, while the fourth, a thin Hispanic man with close-cropped hair and light olive skin, approached them.
"Rebecca Stanhope?" he said.
"It's Flack now, but yes," Rebecca answered from the vicinity of his neck.
The officer pursed his lips and consulted his notebook. "Hm. I have no record of your name change on file."
"I dropped out of wizarding society in 1997 and had no intention of entering it again. Wouldn't have, if Malfoy hadn't shown up. My marriage certificate is on file with the Muggle authorities. February 2, 2003."
The officer jotted the information into his notebook. "We'll check that out. You called the perpetrator Malfoy. Did you know him?" He jerked his head in the direction of the body.
"We were schoolmates at Hogwarts and fought on opposite sides in the war."
"The war?"
"Against Voldemort."
The officer's pen froze. "Against Volde-," He trailed off. "You're that Rebecca Stanhope?"
She raised her head from the crook of his neck. "Rebecca Flack," she repeated patiently. "But yes, I suppose I am."
"What's the fuck is going on?" Flack demanded. It was exasperated and plaintive.
"He don't know?" the officer asked Rebecca.
"He does now," she answered mildly.
The officer turned to him. "Your wife was one of sixteen Americans to fight in the war against Voldemort, and the only one to survive. It's in all the American wizarding history books."
Rebecca cackled. "My friends all died on a scorched, blood-soaked moor, and I made the history books." Her voice was tight and strained, and he felt hysteria beneath her skin like the furtive shiftings of parasitic contagion.
Flack shook his head. "Look, I don't know who the fuck you are, pal, but you better start tellin' me what's goin' on. In case you haven't noticed, my wife is pregnant, she needs to lie down, and I need a goddamned drink."
The officer offered his hand. "Auror Tony Ramirez."
Flack ignored the proffered hand. "What the fuck is an Auror, and what precinct are you from?"
"Magical law enforcer, and the 129th," came the reply.
Flack narrowed his eyes. "Never heard of the 129th," he countered suspiciously.
"Well, you wouldn't," Ramirez said calmly. "You're a Muggle."
Muggle. There was that word again, strange and secretive and dissonant, a word wrested from the playful context of a child's tale and pressed into the service of the mundane. He was no genius-that was the sole province of his exhausted wife-but he knew how to read the inflections of words and the people who spoke them. There was no malice in it as there had been with Malfoy, but there was a subtle condescension that prickled his skin.
You're not what he is, and he knows it, his father muttered. I bet that word is Magical Prick for uneducated douchebag. You could always remind them that his shit stinks.
Ramirez turned his attention to Rebecca once more and flipped to a fresh sheet in his notebook. "So, you want to tell me what happened here?"
"I was eating an anniversary hoagie with my husband-," Rebecca pointed in the direction of the desk, where the half-eaten hoagie sat hardening on its deli paper. "-and Malfoy came in and pointed a gun at my stomach. Then he pointed it at my husband's head. I killed him. I meant to do it, I'm not sorry I did it, and I'd do it again to anyone who threatens what is mine. I would see this city burn if anything happened to him."
Flack stared at the crown of his wife's head. His heart was a hot, throbbing ball inside his chest, and he wanted to sit down, tuck his head between his knees, and breathe. The world as he'd always known it had been obliterated in a flash of crimson, and the one thing he had always thought immutable was unfamiliar. Rebecca had always been soft and timid beneath his hands, shy even with people she knew well, and in his heart, he had long suspected she was not a human at all, but a miracle fashioned of spidersilk and hubris. She was tough as old rawhide beneath her smooth, cold skin, but life had not robbed her of her innocence and sense of wonder at the simple pleasures of the world.
Like watching Derek Jeter hit a bomb out of Yankee Stadium one August night, he thought, and his throat constricted.
She wasn't soft anymore. Now she was hard and jagged, all angular joints and fleshless bone. He groped for her softness, for the velvet smoothness of her nape or the unblemished, soothing texture of her pregnancy-rounded cheek, but his fingers had gone numb, and he could feel neither of them. Her eyes had changed, too. They were dull and distant and unspeakably weary.
"What hex or Curse did you use to kill him?" Ramirez asked. He was all business now, pen poised elegantly over the paper.
When she spoke, her voice was hoarse and parched. "Sectumsempra." She traced her fingers over his scalp, brushing at unseen hairs.
"Sectumsempra?" Ramirez repeated. "You are aware that's classified as a Gray, or Restricted, Curse? Some here have been lobbying to have it reclassified as a Dark Curse."
She shrugged. "Its designation in the wizarding world is of no consequence to me. What did matter was its efficacy. I wanted him to suffer, and he did. It hurt like a son of a bitch before he gargled to death on his precious Pure blood. Besides, I used far worse during the war."
Flack swallowed an agonized moan. This was not his wife, this seething, hardened dybbuk in his arms, and yet it had to be, because her fingers and hands were as tender on his face as they had ever been. They danced over his jawline and gently skirted a razor cut he had given himself that morning, standing over their bathroom sink with Barbasol slathered over his face and listening to her bring up the remnants of last night's dinner.
This is not my wife, he thought again. My wife cries at Old Yeller and at dead cats on the street. She'd buy every kitten she saw if I wasn't allergic, and the puppies in Central Park reduce her to giggling, cooing mush, and until she came up pregnant, I was thinkin'a buyin her a dog to keep her company when I gotta work double and triple shifts. She likes lookin' at our neighbors' windowboxes in the spring, and when I bought her an Easter lily and a stuffed rabbit on a whim two Easters ago, she lit up like a Christmas tree and screwed my brains out.
She loves me, and she teaches math to idiots and burnouts who don't deserve to know what she knows, and sometime in late July or early August, she's gonna have my baby. She does not kill. That's my job when push comes to shove, and that's why, at the end of every shift, I shower three times in the precinct shower with the Irish Spring soap that she loves so much. I don't want to carry the slow-killing, soul-eating taint of this job home to her, to smear it on our bed every time I roll over in the night, or slip it unawares into her when we make love, a prenatal legacy from Dear Old Fuck-Up Dad to the next generation. I don't want her to smell death on my skin when I come home, and have bitterness fed to her like stale, soured wedding cake. And now she's sittin' here in my arms with a mangled corpse beside her, discussin' death like she's seen it a thousand times.
Ramirez' lips thinned as he scribbled in his notebook. "This isn't a war."
Aside from the photo shoot, I've written 1,200 words of the Flack/Stanhope vignette, which brings its total to 10,742 words. If I don't need to leave the house tomorrow to drop my disposable digital camera at the Walgreens, it will be finished Monday. If irksome academic duty calls, it will see light Wednesday. Tuesday is my midterm exam, and since I have to get up at the buttcrack of dawn to meet my professor in his office, I'll likely be in no mood for fandom participation that day.
Apropos of nothing in the preceding paragraphs, my Roomie and I were eating at The Loop a few days ago and enjoying a pizza when he suddenly said, "Oh, no. What the fuck do you want now?"
I turned in my seat to see who had incurred his wrath. It was the President.
You know, "What the fuck do you want now?" is not the first reaction a President should inspire.
Lastly, since it's not done yet, another snippet from the untitled Flack/Stanhope vignette:
Five minutes after Malfoy went down, four cops from a neighboring precinct arrived, stamping their feet and shaking the snow from the shoulders of their jacket. Three of them headed for the captain's office without so much as a glance at the carnage in the bullpen, while the fourth, a thin Hispanic man with close-cropped hair and light olive skin, approached them.
"Rebecca Stanhope?" he said.
"It's Flack now, but yes," Rebecca answered from the vicinity of his neck.
The officer pursed his lips and consulted his notebook. "Hm. I have no record of your name change on file."
"I dropped out of wizarding society in 1997 and had no intention of entering it again. Wouldn't have, if Malfoy hadn't shown up. My marriage certificate is on file with the Muggle authorities. February 2, 2003."
The officer jotted the information into his notebook. "We'll check that out. You called the perpetrator Malfoy. Did you know him?" He jerked his head in the direction of the body.
"We were schoolmates at Hogwarts and fought on opposite sides in the war."
"The war?"
"Against Voldemort."
The officer's pen froze. "Against Volde-," He trailed off. "You're that Rebecca Stanhope?"
She raised her head from the crook of his neck. "Rebecca Flack," she repeated patiently. "But yes, I suppose I am."
"What's the fuck is going on?" Flack demanded. It was exasperated and plaintive.
"He don't know?" the officer asked Rebecca.
"He does now," she answered mildly.
The officer turned to him. "Your wife was one of sixteen Americans to fight in the war against Voldemort, and the only one to survive. It's in all the American wizarding history books."
Rebecca cackled. "My friends all died on a scorched, blood-soaked moor, and I made the history books." Her voice was tight and strained, and he felt hysteria beneath her skin like the furtive shiftings of parasitic contagion.
Flack shook his head. "Look, I don't know who the fuck you are, pal, but you better start tellin' me what's goin' on. In case you haven't noticed, my wife is pregnant, she needs to lie down, and I need a goddamned drink."
The officer offered his hand. "Auror Tony Ramirez."
Flack ignored the proffered hand. "What the fuck is an Auror, and what precinct are you from?"
"Magical law enforcer, and the 129th," came the reply.
Flack narrowed his eyes. "Never heard of the 129th," he countered suspiciously.
"Well, you wouldn't," Ramirez said calmly. "You're a Muggle."
Muggle. There was that word again, strange and secretive and dissonant, a word wrested from the playful context of a child's tale and pressed into the service of the mundane. He was no genius-that was the sole province of his exhausted wife-but he knew how to read the inflections of words and the people who spoke them. There was no malice in it as there had been with Malfoy, but there was a subtle condescension that prickled his skin.
You're not what he is, and he knows it, his father muttered. I bet that word is Magical Prick for uneducated douchebag. You could always remind them that his shit stinks.
Ramirez turned his attention to Rebecca once more and flipped to a fresh sheet in his notebook. "So, you want to tell me what happened here?"
"I was eating an anniversary hoagie with my husband-," Rebecca pointed in the direction of the desk, where the half-eaten hoagie sat hardening on its deli paper. "-and Malfoy came in and pointed a gun at my stomach. Then he pointed it at my husband's head. I killed him. I meant to do it, I'm not sorry I did it, and I'd do it again to anyone who threatens what is mine. I would see this city burn if anything happened to him."
Flack stared at the crown of his wife's head. His heart was a hot, throbbing ball inside his chest, and he wanted to sit down, tuck his head between his knees, and breathe. The world as he'd always known it had been obliterated in a flash of crimson, and the one thing he had always thought immutable was unfamiliar. Rebecca had always been soft and timid beneath his hands, shy even with people she knew well, and in his heart, he had long suspected she was not a human at all, but a miracle fashioned of spidersilk and hubris. She was tough as old rawhide beneath her smooth, cold skin, but life had not robbed her of her innocence and sense of wonder at the simple pleasures of the world.
Like watching Derek Jeter hit a bomb out of Yankee Stadium one August night, he thought, and his throat constricted.
She wasn't soft anymore. Now she was hard and jagged, all angular joints and fleshless bone. He groped for her softness, for the velvet smoothness of her nape or the unblemished, soothing texture of her pregnancy-rounded cheek, but his fingers had gone numb, and he could feel neither of them. Her eyes had changed, too. They were dull and distant and unspeakably weary.
"What hex or Curse did you use to kill him?" Ramirez asked. He was all business now, pen poised elegantly over the paper.
When she spoke, her voice was hoarse and parched. "Sectumsempra." She traced her fingers over his scalp, brushing at unseen hairs.
"Sectumsempra?" Ramirez repeated. "You are aware that's classified as a Gray, or Restricted, Curse? Some here have been lobbying to have it reclassified as a Dark Curse."
She shrugged. "Its designation in the wizarding world is of no consequence to me. What did matter was its efficacy. I wanted him to suffer, and he did. It hurt like a son of a bitch before he gargled to death on his precious Pure blood. Besides, I used far worse during the war."
Flack swallowed an agonized moan. This was not his wife, this seething, hardened dybbuk in his arms, and yet it had to be, because her fingers and hands were as tender on his face as they had ever been. They danced over his jawline and gently skirted a razor cut he had given himself that morning, standing over their bathroom sink with Barbasol slathered over his face and listening to her bring up the remnants of last night's dinner.
This is not my wife, he thought again. My wife cries at Old Yeller and at dead cats on the street. She'd buy every kitten she saw if I wasn't allergic, and the puppies in Central Park reduce her to giggling, cooing mush, and until she came up pregnant, I was thinkin'a buyin her a dog to keep her company when I gotta work double and triple shifts. She likes lookin' at our neighbors' windowboxes in the spring, and when I bought her an Easter lily and a stuffed rabbit on a whim two Easters ago, she lit up like a Christmas tree and screwed my brains out.
She loves me, and she teaches math to idiots and burnouts who don't deserve to know what she knows, and sometime in late July or early August, she's gonna have my baby. She does not kill. That's my job when push comes to shove, and that's why, at the end of every shift, I shower three times in the precinct shower with the Irish Spring soap that she loves so much. I don't want to carry the slow-killing, soul-eating taint of this job home to her, to smear it on our bed every time I roll over in the night, or slip it unawares into her when we make love, a prenatal legacy from Dear Old Fuck-Up Dad to the next generation. I don't want her to smell death on my skin when I come home, and have bitterness fed to her like stale, soured wedding cake. And now she's sittin' here in my arms with a mangled corpse beside her, discussin' death like she's seen it a thousand times.
Ramirez' lips thinned as he scribbled in his notebook. "This isn't a war."
Tags:
- csi:ny,
- don flack,
- fandom,
- fic excerpt,
- ficcing,
- flack,
- hp,
- miscellaneous,
- uni