fic: A Good Day (STXI, Firefly, HP, FNL, SPN)
This is so not what I was supposed to write today.
A Good Day
various fandoms; various pairings; pg; 2,270 words; warning policy
Five ficlets on the theme of fireworks.
For the West Wing title project. Happy Fourth of July.
~*~
A Good Day
one
Federation Day
Star Trek:XI; Kirk/McCoy; pg; 310 words
McCoy surreptitiously tugs at the stiff material of his dress uniform, fake smile on his face as he raises his glass to toast after toast. He takes small sips, unsure of the effects of the alien liquor on his system after so little food, and longs for the bottle of bourbon stashed in his quarters, the potato salad and pecan pie of home (at this point in this endless, inedible feast, he'd take the reasonable facsimile from the ship's replicators).
When it's Jim's turn, he delivers his toast without stumbling over the clicks and glottal stops of the local language, and Uhura's not the only one eyeing him with quiet pride afterwards.
They beam back to the Enterprise as the serious drinking gets underway; McCoy is glad of it, itching to be out of his uncomfortable uniform.
"Come on, Bones," Jim says, steering him away from his quarters and towards the lift to the observation deck.
McCoy grumbles but allows himself to be led, knowing that fighting will just prolong his irritation and Jim will get his way in the end.
The lift doors open and the deep black of space is laid out before them; it never fails to make McCoy's stomach quiver, though these days it's with less terror and more awe than it used to be.
"Look." Jim leads him around the deck so they can see the planet below them, and the field of meteors crashing into its atmosphere, lighting up like the galaxy's celebrating with them. "Spock wouldn't let me have fireworks on board," McCoy makes a mental note to thank Spock, "so this is the next best thing." He grins, looking young and happy and proud of himself. His lips are warm and soft against McCoy's ear as he murmurs, "Happy Federation Day, Bones."
McCoy smiles and lets himself be charmed. "Happy Federation Day, Jim."
*
two
Unification Day
Firefly; Zoe, Mal, River; pg; 250 words
"This may be the craziest idea you've ever had, sir, and that's saying something."
"That's what makes it fun, Zoe."
"The whole damn moon is covered in purple bellies."
"And all of 'em are in town goggling at the fireworks and drinking themselves into oblivion. It's the perfect time for a little thieving. Ain't that right, River?"
River nodded, her eyes huge behind her goggles. "Can't fight if they're passed out."
Zoe sighed. "Your bit of fun ends with me riddled with holes, I'm gonna be a mite tetchy, sir." She finished wiring the charges and stepped back out of range.
Mal turned to River. "You wouldn't like her when she's tetchy," he mock-whispered. "Makes Jayne look downright cuddly."
River nodded again. "The plan is risky but sound." She looked up at Mal with those wide eyes and said, "Can I blow the charges, Mal? Can I?"
Zoe crossed her arms over her chest and bit back a smile, waiting to see if Mal would even pretend to be immune to the girl's pleas.
Mal handed over the detonator with nary a protest, and as the charges went off, fireworks shot into the sky, glittering red and green and gold, indistinguishable from the town's showy display.
"Happy Unification Day, Commander Hong," Mal muttered as they emptied the smoke-filled vault.
Zoe let her smile bloom.
*
three
Guy Fawkes Day
Harry Potter; Remus/Sirius; pg; 255 words
Sirius hasn't been outside in human form in a while, and the November air is chilly on his skin. He thinks about the moth-eaten fur robes tucked away in the closet, embroidered with the family crest, and decides the chill is bearable.
Remus presses against him. "I'll keep you warm," he says, his voice rich with promises Sirius intends to make him keep. "But first things first." He produces a bag that says Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes from somewhere within his pockets, and starts setting items from it on the ground.
"Remus?"
"I remember how much you used to love fireworks," Remus says, touching the tip of his wand to the first fuse. It shoots off with a scream and bursts into a glittering cloud of red and gold when it hits the sky. The next one explodes into a lion that opens its jaws and roars at the moon; a third becomes a huge green dragon that breathes fire.
Sirius can hear their muggle neighbors oohing and ahhing from beyond the garden wall, and he's torn between wanting to preen at their admiration and wanting to keep the fireworks all to himself. He's caught by the shimmer dappling Remus's face and throat as he tips his head back to watch. Sirius chases the light on Remus's skin with his mouth, enjoying the hitch of Remus's breath and the shiver that runs through him.
Remus turns into the kiss, mouth open and laughing.
"I'll show you fireworks," Sirius promises, and kisses him again.
*
four
Independence Day (observed)
Friday Night Lights; Tami/Eric; pg; 410 words
Independence Day is a big deal in Dillon--there's a parade in the morning with all the town's veterans, football players and townsfolk parading up Main Street while the Dillon High Panther marching band leads the way.
Afterwards, the air still ringing with brass and drums and cheers, people show up at the Taylors' house, ready to feast.
Eric pretends he doesn't know how it started, but Tami remembers his first couple of years as assistant coach, the way Smash and Street ended up hanging out in the backyard late in the afternoon, and of course, she fed them--hamburgers and hot dogs, fresh corn on the cob and coleslaw, watermelon, and her mom's famous pecan pie with ice cream and whipped cream on top. They'd toss the football around until it got dark enough for the fireworks, and then they'd sit with their heads tipped towards the sky, oohing and ahhing over the town fireworks display (sponsored by Buddy Garrity, of course).
As the years passed, more boys from the team started showing up, and some of them started bringing their families with them.
Nowadays, most of the team show up with their families. The men stand around the grill, drinking beer and telling Eric how to grill his burgers and run his offense, the women overrun the kitchen with their trays of homemade cornbread and their patriotic Jell-O molds (she tries not to feel like they're judging her), and the kids play touch football in the street out front.
Tami loves it (mostly), but it's exhausting.
So every year, the Saturday after the holiday, she has her own independence day. She goes for a manicure, pedicure, and a facial, and when she comes home, Eric and Julie have cleaned the house, there are steaks on the grill, and a piña colada with her name on it waiting on the end table next to the couch.
She kicks off her sandals and sinks down onto the sofa, grateful to whoever invented air conditioning, because it's too hot to live outside, and closes her eyes. She smells Eric's aftershave and hair gel and the underlying hint of soap and sweat before she feels the cushion dip as he sits down next to her, pressing the chilled glass into her hand and his warm lips to her cheek.
"I love you," she says, not opening her eyes.
She can hear him smile around the words when he answers, "I know."
*
five
The Fourth of July
Supernatural; Sam and Dean; pg; 1,045 words
The Fourth of July has never been a big holiday on the Winchester family calendar. Sam remembers ten-year-old Dean's excitement over M-80s and cherry bombs (and his disappointment when Dad explained that they were not actually as powerful as a quarter-stick of dynamite, or even as powerful as they'd been when he was a kid, leading to Dean yet again bemoaning the fact that he was born thirty years too late for cool stuff), but they'd never gone the beer and barbecue route, mostly because in the summer, they'd never lived in one place long enough. Occasionally they'd been at Pastor Jim's for the annual Fourth of July picnic, and his last summer at Stanford, Sam had gone home with Jess for the holiday, but since then, it's passed unremarked by both him and Dean, noticeable only for the bumper to bumper traffic or the shocking sound of mortars and sudden bursts of fireworks overhead as they hunted in the dark.
He'd asked Dean about it once--it's one of the few holidays Sam knows they spent as a family before Mom died--but Dean just shook his head and said he didn't remember. Sam's pretty sure he was lying, but he's never pushed. He'd tried to construct it in his head after they'd returned to Lawrence and he knew what the house looked like--Mom on a blanket in the grass with him, Dean and Dad tossing a baseball around...and that's pretty much where Sam's imagination, usually exceptionally vivid, failed him. He couldn't picture John Winchester, spatula in one hand, beer in the other, grinning over a grill.
So neither of them are expecting the jacked up motel room rates when they pull into the Warm Welcome Motel in Weehawken, New Jersey, or the extra fifty dollar viewing fee the clerk charges them.
"Viewing fee?" Dean says, tapping the credit card on the counter in an impatient rat-a-tat-tat. "We better be viewing Megan Fox naked at that price."
"Fireworks," the clerk says. He doesn't speak in complete sentences, which weirds Sam out a little. "Nine o'clock tonight. On the Hudson River this year. Best view in Jersey."
"Huh." There's an arrested look on Dean's face that could mean trouble, or could just mean he doesn't want to fart in public--even now, sometimes, Sam can't tell.
They drop their stuff in the room and have a decent dinner at Houlihan's, where Dean complains that the burgers have gotten smaller while the prices have gone through the roof, and Sam wonders when they turned into a pair of curmudgeons. Hopefully, it's just Dean anticipating the "hey, you kids get offa my lawn" stage instead of deciding he's not going to live that long so he might as well enjoy it now.
After dinner, Dean stops at a bodega near the motel and picks up a six pack of El Sol. He has a whispered conversation with the pretty, dark-haired girl behind the counter, and Sam wonders if he's going to end up watching the fireworks from the car in the motel parking lot, but Dean shoos him outside with a grin.
"She gave us free limes," Dean says when they get back to the room.
"Great," Sam says, not even trying to sound like he cares. He takes the beer Dean hands him, finds 1776 on TV, and is ready to settle in for the night, but Dean won't let him.
"We paid an extra fifty bucks to view the fireworks, so we are gonna view some goddamn fireworks," Dean says, herding him up to the roof.
It's a clear night, and there's very little in the way of smog; the New York City skyline gleams across the river, and Sam wonders vaguely what it would be like to live there, to work in one of the white shoe law firms headquartered in those buildings. He doesn't have any real desire for that particular life anymore, but still, sometimes, he wonders.
There are some cheap lawn chairs set up, but nobody else is around. Figures Dean's the only
one who shelled out the extra fifty bucks.
"What do you care, Sammy? It's not even our money."
"You're the one who made a big deal out of it, not me."
Dean takes a long sip of beer and says, "Whatever," in a way that makes Sam feel like an ungrateful prick even though he hasn't done anything wrong. They've both been twitchy and short-tempered lately, all the bad decisions and their consequences weighing them down, and the knowledge that it's only going to get worse hanging over them like a fucking black cloud of doom.
The distinctive click of Dean's Zippo snaps him out of his dark thoughts.
"Here," Dean says, and shoves a sparkler at him.
He takes it and flinches when a stray spark hits his wrist. "What the hell, Dean?"
"We had sparklers," Dean says, finishing his beer and setting the bottle down before lighting another sparkler. He holds it carefully, twirls it easily, gaze tracking the path it lights. "I remember that year, kind of. Mom wore a t-shirt with an American flag on it, and Dad played catch with me, and when it got dark, he lit sparklers and he let hold me his hand when he spelled our names out with it." The words tumble out, quick and breathless, making Dean sound twenty years younger than he actually is.
"Oh." Sam's surprised at how close he'd come to getting it right in his fantasies.
Dean's teeth flash white when he grins. "Yeah."
They go through the whole box of sparklers (there are two dozen, but a couple are duds), mock fencing with them and generally behaving like twelve-year-olds, before the real fireworks start.
The show is impressive, but Sam's pretty sure the thing that's going to stick in his mind about today is the sparklers.
He's lying in bed later, can still see the golden sparks behind his eyelids, when he says, "Happy Fourth of July, Dean."
Dean's voice is slurred with sleep when he answers, "You, too, Sam."
Sam curls up on his side and lets himself drift off.
It was a good day.
end
~*~
Feedback is always welcome.
~*~
A Good Day
various fandoms; various pairings; pg; 2,270 words; warning policy
Five ficlets on the theme of fireworks.
For the West Wing title project. Happy Fourth of July.
~*~
A Good Day
one
Federation Day
Star Trek:XI; Kirk/McCoy; pg; 310 words
McCoy surreptitiously tugs at the stiff material of his dress uniform, fake smile on his face as he raises his glass to toast after toast. He takes small sips, unsure of the effects of the alien liquor on his system after so little food, and longs for the bottle of bourbon stashed in his quarters, the potato salad and pecan pie of home (at this point in this endless, inedible feast, he'd take the reasonable facsimile from the ship's replicators).
When it's Jim's turn, he delivers his toast without stumbling over the clicks and glottal stops of the local language, and Uhura's not the only one eyeing him with quiet pride afterwards.
They beam back to the Enterprise as the serious drinking gets underway; McCoy is glad of it, itching to be out of his uncomfortable uniform.
"Come on, Bones," Jim says, steering him away from his quarters and towards the lift to the observation deck.
McCoy grumbles but allows himself to be led, knowing that fighting will just prolong his irritation and Jim will get his way in the end.
The lift doors open and the deep black of space is laid out before them; it never fails to make McCoy's stomach quiver, though these days it's with less terror and more awe than it used to be.
"Look." Jim leads him around the deck so they can see the planet below them, and the field of meteors crashing into its atmosphere, lighting up like the galaxy's celebrating with them. "Spock wouldn't let me have fireworks on board," McCoy makes a mental note to thank Spock, "so this is the next best thing." He grins, looking young and happy and proud of himself. His lips are warm and soft against McCoy's ear as he murmurs, "Happy Federation Day, Bones."
McCoy smiles and lets himself be charmed. "Happy Federation Day, Jim."
*
two
Unification Day
Firefly; Zoe, Mal, River; pg; 250 words
"This may be the craziest idea you've ever had, sir, and that's saying something."
"That's what makes it fun, Zoe."
"The whole damn moon is covered in purple bellies."
"And all of 'em are in town goggling at the fireworks and drinking themselves into oblivion. It's the perfect time for a little thieving. Ain't that right, River?"
River nodded, her eyes huge behind her goggles. "Can't fight if they're passed out."
Zoe sighed. "Your bit of fun ends with me riddled with holes, I'm gonna be a mite tetchy, sir." She finished wiring the charges and stepped back out of range.
Mal turned to River. "You wouldn't like her when she's tetchy," he mock-whispered. "Makes Jayne look downright cuddly."
River nodded again. "The plan is risky but sound." She looked up at Mal with those wide eyes and said, "Can I blow the charges, Mal? Can I?"
Zoe crossed her arms over her chest and bit back a smile, waiting to see if Mal would even pretend to be immune to the girl's pleas.
Mal handed over the detonator with nary a protest, and as the charges went off, fireworks shot into the sky, glittering red and green and gold, indistinguishable from the town's showy display.
"Happy Unification Day, Commander Hong," Mal muttered as they emptied the smoke-filled vault.
Zoe let her smile bloom.
*
three
Guy Fawkes Day
Harry Potter; Remus/Sirius; pg; 255 words
Sirius hasn't been outside in human form in a while, and the November air is chilly on his skin. He thinks about the moth-eaten fur robes tucked away in the closet, embroidered with the family crest, and decides the chill is bearable.
Remus presses against him. "I'll keep you warm," he says, his voice rich with promises Sirius intends to make him keep. "But first things first." He produces a bag that says Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes from somewhere within his pockets, and starts setting items from it on the ground.
"Remus?"
"I remember how much you used to love fireworks," Remus says, touching the tip of his wand to the first fuse. It shoots off with a scream and bursts into a glittering cloud of red and gold when it hits the sky. The next one explodes into a lion that opens its jaws and roars at the moon; a third becomes a huge green dragon that breathes fire.
Sirius can hear their muggle neighbors oohing and ahhing from beyond the garden wall, and he's torn between wanting to preen at their admiration and wanting to keep the fireworks all to himself. He's caught by the shimmer dappling Remus's face and throat as he tips his head back to watch. Sirius chases the light on Remus's skin with his mouth, enjoying the hitch of Remus's breath and the shiver that runs through him.
Remus turns into the kiss, mouth open and laughing.
"I'll show you fireworks," Sirius promises, and kisses him again.
*
four
Independence Day (observed)
Friday Night Lights; Tami/Eric; pg; 410 words
Independence Day is a big deal in Dillon--there's a parade in the morning with all the town's veterans, football players and townsfolk parading up Main Street while the Dillon High Panther marching band leads the way.
Afterwards, the air still ringing with brass and drums and cheers, people show up at the Taylors' house, ready to feast.
Eric pretends he doesn't know how it started, but Tami remembers his first couple of years as assistant coach, the way Smash and Street ended up hanging out in the backyard late in the afternoon, and of course, she fed them--hamburgers and hot dogs, fresh corn on the cob and coleslaw, watermelon, and her mom's famous pecan pie with ice cream and whipped cream on top. They'd toss the football around until it got dark enough for the fireworks, and then they'd sit with their heads tipped towards the sky, oohing and ahhing over the town fireworks display (sponsored by Buddy Garrity, of course).
As the years passed, more boys from the team started showing up, and some of them started bringing their families with them.
Nowadays, most of the team show up with their families. The men stand around the grill, drinking beer and telling Eric how to grill his burgers and run his offense, the women overrun the kitchen with their trays of homemade cornbread and their patriotic Jell-O molds (she tries not to feel like they're judging her), and the kids play touch football in the street out front.
Tami loves it (mostly), but it's exhausting.
So every year, the Saturday after the holiday, she has her own independence day. She goes for a manicure, pedicure, and a facial, and when she comes home, Eric and Julie have cleaned the house, there are steaks on the grill, and a piña colada with her name on it waiting on the end table next to the couch.
She kicks off her sandals and sinks down onto the sofa, grateful to whoever invented air conditioning, because it's too hot to live outside, and closes her eyes. She smells Eric's aftershave and hair gel and the underlying hint of soap and sweat before she feels the cushion dip as he sits down next to her, pressing the chilled glass into her hand and his warm lips to her cheek.
"I love you," she says, not opening her eyes.
She can hear him smile around the words when he answers, "I know."
*
five
The Fourth of July
Supernatural; Sam and Dean; pg; 1,045 words
The Fourth of July has never been a big holiday on the Winchester family calendar. Sam remembers ten-year-old Dean's excitement over M-80s and cherry bombs (and his disappointment when Dad explained that they were not actually as powerful as a quarter-stick of dynamite, or even as powerful as they'd been when he was a kid, leading to Dean yet again bemoaning the fact that he was born thirty years too late for cool stuff), but they'd never gone the beer and barbecue route, mostly because in the summer, they'd never lived in one place long enough. Occasionally they'd been at Pastor Jim's for the annual Fourth of July picnic, and his last summer at Stanford, Sam had gone home with Jess for the holiday, but since then, it's passed unremarked by both him and Dean, noticeable only for the bumper to bumper traffic or the shocking sound of mortars and sudden bursts of fireworks overhead as they hunted in the dark.
He'd asked Dean about it once--it's one of the few holidays Sam knows they spent as a family before Mom died--but Dean just shook his head and said he didn't remember. Sam's pretty sure he was lying, but he's never pushed. He'd tried to construct it in his head after they'd returned to Lawrence and he knew what the house looked like--Mom on a blanket in the grass with him, Dean and Dad tossing a baseball around...and that's pretty much where Sam's imagination, usually exceptionally vivid, failed him. He couldn't picture John Winchester, spatula in one hand, beer in the other, grinning over a grill.
So neither of them are expecting the jacked up motel room rates when they pull into the Warm Welcome Motel in Weehawken, New Jersey, or the extra fifty dollar viewing fee the clerk charges them.
"Viewing fee?" Dean says, tapping the credit card on the counter in an impatient rat-a-tat-tat. "We better be viewing Megan Fox naked at that price."
"Fireworks," the clerk says. He doesn't speak in complete sentences, which weirds Sam out a little. "Nine o'clock tonight. On the Hudson River this year. Best view in Jersey."
"Huh." There's an arrested look on Dean's face that could mean trouble, or could just mean he doesn't want to fart in public--even now, sometimes, Sam can't tell.
They drop their stuff in the room and have a decent dinner at Houlihan's, where Dean complains that the burgers have gotten smaller while the prices have gone through the roof, and Sam wonders when they turned into a pair of curmudgeons. Hopefully, it's just Dean anticipating the "hey, you kids get offa my lawn" stage instead of deciding he's not going to live that long so he might as well enjoy it now.
After dinner, Dean stops at a bodega near the motel and picks up a six pack of El Sol. He has a whispered conversation with the pretty, dark-haired girl behind the counter, and Sam wonders if he's going to end up watching the fireworks from the car in the motel parking lot, but Dean shoos him outside with a grin.
"She gave us free limes," Dean says when they get back to the room.
"Great," Sam says, not even trying to sound like he cares. He takes the beer Dean hands him, finds 1776 on TV, and is ready to settle in for the night, but Dean won't let him.
"We paid an extra fifty bucks to view the fireworks, so we are gonna view some goddamn fireworks," Dean says, herding him up to the roof.
It's a clear night, and there's very little in the way of smog; the New York City skyline gleams across the river, and Sam wonders vaguely what it would be like to live there, to work in one of the white shoe law firms headquartered in those buildings. He doesn't have any real desire for that particular life anymore, but still, sometimes, he wonders.
There are some cheap lawn chairs set up, but nobody else is around. Figures Dean's the only
one who shelled out the extra fifty bucks.
"What do you care, Sammy? It's not even our money."
"You're the one who made a big deal out of it, not me."
Dean takes a long sip of beer and says, "Whatever," in a way that makes Sam feel like an ungrateful prick even though he hasn't done anything wrong. They've both been twitchy and short-tempered lately, all the bad decisions and their consequences weighing them down, and the knowledge that it's only going to get worse hanging over them like a fucking black cloud of doom.
The distinctive click of Dean's Zippo snaps him out of his dark thoughts.
"Here," Dean says, and shoves a sparkler at him.
He takes it and flinches when a stray spark hits his wrist. "What the hell, Dean?"
"We had sparklers," Dean says, finishing his beer and setting the bottle down before lighting another sparkler. He holds it carefully, twirls it easily, gaze tracking the path it lights. "I remember that year, kind of. Mom wore a t-shirt with an American flag on it, and Dad played catch with me, and when it got dark, he lit sparklers and he let hold me his hand when he spelled our names out with it." The words tumble out, quick and breathless, making Dean sound twenty years younger than he actually is.
"Oh." Sam's surprised at how close he'd come to getting it right in his fantasies.
Dean's teeth flash white when he grins. "Yeah."
They go through the whole box of sparklers (there are two dozen, but a couple are duds), mock fencing with them and generally behaving like twelve-year-olds, before the real fireworks start.
The show is impressive, but Sam's pretty sure the thing that's going to stick in his mind about today is the sparklers.
He's lying in bed later, can still see the golden sparks behind his eyelids, when he says, "Happy Fourth of July, Dean."
Dean's voice is slurred with sleep when he answers, "You, too, Sam."
Sam curls up on his side and lets himself drift off.
It was a good day.
end
~*~
Feedback is always welcome.
~*~