fic: Road to Damascus (2/?)
Second in an ongoing series of vignettes detailing Hank and Karen's lives during her pregnancy.
Title: Fill Your Paper With the Breathings of Your Heart
Fandom: Californication
Rating: PG-13 for drug references and language but nothing graphic
Pairing: Hank/Karen
Spoilers: Working off the montage of clips from the end of In Utero but they're only brief flashes; I'm making up the story behind them
Word count: 418
Disclaimer: In an alternate universe, I like to believe they're mine. In this one, however, they belong to Tom Kapinos and Showtime.
You don't have to read part one to understand this but I'd be very grateful if you did. Find it here.
Summary: The second in a series of glimpses into Hank and Karen's lives during her pregnancy. Hank versus the typewriter.
2. fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
Again, the muse is being a fickle bitch. Crumpled balls of paper, white roses, pepper the floor around the trashcan; when he can’t write, everything else gets shot to shit as well, including his aim. He decides nothing is more daunting than a blank page staring back from a typewriter, daring him to mark its surface, mocking his ability and making him self-doubt. It’s usually only weed that makes him this paranoid. Maybe the muse is still high from his last joint.
Either that or PMSing, Hank decides, chewing on a pen.
His notes for Novel Number Two are tacked to a wall behind him for safekeeping. The plot pays rent to live inside his head; he thinks he’ll have to spend the credit on a private eye to find out where his words went. Probably shacked up with a bunch of hookers and a pile of blow. They need to realise the party’s over and start holding down nine-to-five again; he has a kid on the way to provide for.
Flexing his fingers, limbering up, he glares warily at the typewriter; it is a predator to be feared, one near the top of the food chain. The keys are teeth, ready to bite and take a chunk out of his ego. He begins to tap at letters that become words and then sentences, and his frown deepens with every line added because it all sounds so false and contrived, relying on coincidence as much as a Dickens story. And in this day and age, there has to be a reason, a motive neatly spelled out for the Internet generation.
He’s starting to scowl like a two-year old when a pair of arms slide around his shoulders from behind. The glower disappears from his face as Karen leans over to read his mangled efforts at creativity and he finds himself smiling at his ridiculous use of metaphor and the stiff tone of dialogue that somehow sounds like Bela Lugosi in his head. A glance over his shoulder confirms she is smiling, too.
“The guy who wrote this must be a fucking asshole,” he says, making light of his morning failings.
“That’s the father of my child you’re talking about,” she protests.
Grinning, he pulls the paper from the typewriter and tosses it towards the wastebasket. It misses and adds to the garden growing around the can. Karen laughs and squeezes him tighter. He reaches for a blank page.
Title: Fill Your Paper With the Breathings of Your Heart
Fandom: Californication
Rating: PG-13 for drug references and language but nothing graphic
Pairing: Hank/Karen
Spoilers: Working off the montage of clips from the end of In Utero but they're only brief flashes; I'm making up the story behind them
Word count: 418
Disclaimer: In an alternate universe, I like to believe they're mine. In this one, however, they belong to Tom Kapinos and Showtime.
You don't have to read part one to understand this but I'd be very grateful if you did. Find it here.
Summary: The second in a series of glimpses into Hank and Karen's lives during her pregnancy. Hank versus the typewriter.
2. fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
Again, the muse is being a fickle bitch. Crumpled balls of paper, white roses, pepper the floor around the trashcan; when he can’t write, everything else gets shot to shit as well, including his aim. He decides nothing is more daunting than a blank page staring back from a typewriter, daring him to mark its surface, mocking his ability and making him self-doubt. It’s usually only weed that makes him this paranoid. Maybe the muse is still high from his last joint.
Either that or PMSing, Hank decides, chewing on a pen.
His notes for Novel Number Two are tacked to a wall behind him for safekeeping. The plot pays rent to live inside his head; he thinks he’ll have to spend the credit on a private eye to find out where his words went. Probably shacked up with a bunch of hookers and a pile of blow. They need to realise the party’s over and start holding down nine-to-five again; he has a kid on the way to provide for.
Flexing his fingers, limbering up, he glares warily at the typewriter; it is a predator to be feared, one near the top of the food chain. The keys are teeth, ready to bite and take a chunk out of his ego. He begins to tap at letters that become words and then sentences, and his frown deepens with every line added because it all sounds so false and contrived, relying on coincidence as much as a Dickens story. And in this day and age, there has to be a reason, a motive neatly spelled out for the Internet generation.
He’s starting to scowl like a two-year old when a pair of arms slide around his shoulders from behind. The glower disappears from his face as Karen leans over to read his mangled efforts at creativity and he finds himself smiling at his ridiculous use of metaphor and the stiff tone of dialogue that somehow sounds like Bela Lugosi in his head. A glance over his shoulder confirms she is smiling, too.
“The guy who wrote this must be a fucking asshole,” he says, making light of his morning failings.
“That’s the father of my child you’re talking about,” she protests.
Grinning, he pulls the paper from the typewriter and tosses it towards the wastebasket. It misses and adds to the garden growing around the can. Karen laughs and squeezes him tighter. He reaches for a blank page.