When There's A Will, There's A Where
Aug. 10th, 2011 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeTitle: When There's A Will, There's a Where
Prompt: Brown
Note: Polyverse. In the not-so-far future of Infinity Smashed.
Raige called up Thomas first, since he was the one with the phone line.
“Bueno?”
“Hey Thomas, it’s Raige.”
“Raige, my man! Good to hear from you. What can I do you for?”
“Cute.” Raige braced the phone between his ear and his shoulder so he could tape up a box as he talked. “Well, the big day has finally arrived. This weekend, I’m moving to my dorm room.”
“Don’t your classes start Monday?”
“So I procrastinated a little. I couldn’t decide what to bring.” Shrrrip. The tape stretched, then finally tore. “Anyway, Daddy’s got a board meeting, so he can’t help me out. I was wondering if you were free.”
“No worries. You don’t need the truck, do you? Because Austin to Vaygo, that’s a long drive; I can make it, but…”
“No, no, I’ve got the Lexus, so you can just grab a blip with M.D. It should only be a few hours work, no big deal; I’ve got it all packed up and just need help moving it.”
“Sure, no problem. M.D. coming then?”
“Once I can actually get a hold of her, probably. You know how it is with her work schedule, and she doesn’t have a phone or e-mail or anything, unless I want to send it through Bobby and I’ll probably see her first.”
“Enh, I owe her a visit; we were going to grab coffee the next couple of days. I’ll tell her. You know how it is, the Paradox are pretty flexible. I’m sure she can make it.”
“Thanks, Thomas. I owe you guys pizza and music. See you Saturday.”
“See you then.” Click.
Raige put the tape away and hastily scribbled SHEET MUSIC, BOOKS, COMICS on the side in pen. He patted it and took a deep breath.
“Adulthood,” he said.
After being tossed through a few dimensions and everything else, he somehow thought it’d be less scary.
Saturday came, and it was sweltering. Normally, this wouldn’t have been that big a deal—Raige had a decent heat tolerance, Thomas did hard labor every summer in the Texas heat, and M.D. was completely impervious to heat. However, the weather had gone unusually humid, and while the clouds cut the glare, the moisture in the air only made everything sticky and nasty.
Plus, it turned out the move was a little tougher than he’d planned. Raige figured the hard part was over, once he’d sorted through all his belongings. But no.
“God, how much crap do you own?” Thomas complained as he held the front door open with his hip. (Nobody wanted to leave it open in this weather.)
“It looked like less outside the boxes…” Raige protested weakly and hastily side-stepped the recycling bin before he tripped over it. The stack of boxes in his arms blocked his direct vision, but he was a bass drummer; he could crabwalk his way through an obstacle course.
“It shows, Raige. It really shows,” M.D. said. “I think this is the fourth box I’ve carried out of music alone. Didn’t I tell you to clean out your belongings before this?”
“I did,” Raige protested, which just made Thomas and M.D. groan.
“God, I don’t even want to know what it was like before…” Thomas said, kicking the bin out of the way.
“Raige, I never planned on going to college, and even I know dorm rooms are tiny. Where are you going to put all this?” M.D. asked.
“I’ll find a way. When there’s a will, there’s a where.”
M.D. wasn’t strong enough to load herself down like them, which meant he could see her roll her eyes. But then, the way she lived, she probably could’ve fit everything she owned onto a moped.
“Man, if I’d known you were going to have this much junk, I would’ve said screw the Lexus and chugged the truck down here,” Thomas said, stopping at the SUV to put his box down. He put both hands to the small of his back and rubbed. “There’s no way you’re going to fit all this in there.”
“Where’s there’s a will, there’s a where,” Raige insisted stubbornly—mostly because God, moving this was already awful, he didn’t want to have to drive it all over then come all the way back and load up again. He shoved the boxes into the trunk of the SUV with a sigh of relief, and straightened up to wipe sweat off his forehead. “And no way. Your truck has no air conditioning. It’d be like driving a greenhouse.”
Thomas shrugged. “It’s not so bad with the windows down, as long as you keep moving. And hey, you can cook eggs and bacon on the hood after you’re done.” He looked up at the cloudy sky hopefully, even as he shucked his shirt and mopped his face with it, showing no self-consciousness. Raige envied him. “Think it’ll rain?”
Raige sighed and pulled his shirt away from his skin, trying to force a breeze. “God, I wish. But in Vaygo? In August? Not likely.”
M.D. nudged between them to drop the box. Her only concession to the heat was that she was wearing short sleeves. Still in pants, though, and her brown skin didn’t show a single gleam of sweat. Of course.
Raige sighed. He was jealous of all his friends today. At least Thomas’s expression wasn’t much better. M.D. saw their faces and smirked.
“Desert child. Feel envy, Earth mammals.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Thomas said, advancing on her with spread arms. “Here, I need comfort, gimme a hug—”
“Ew, no, you’re shiny…”
Thomas chased her around the lawn a bit, while Raige tried to arrange the boxes in such a way as to allow them to all fit in the car. Unfortunately, three-dimensional Tetris had never been his strong suit. After helplessly trying to put his record player somewhere where it wouldn’t get broken, he finally gave up and called, “Come on, guys, stop horsing around and help me fit these stupid things.”
“I’m not a god, milquetoast; I don’t work miracles,” M.D. responded, but Thomas pushed forward.
“Make way for the master,” he declared, pulling out boxes and stereo equipment. “You’re lucky I spent a summer with a moving company… hey, kid! Keep this in order? Great. You’re in charge of that.”
Within half an hour, Thomas had found an order for the Lexus. He automatically reached to load them in, only for M.D. to shove him away and squeeze into the car, taking them from him. They worked out an assembly line, and then it was all over.
“Wow,” Thomas said. “Wish you’d been around back when I worked with that moving company…”
“Nah. I’m an illegal alien; I would’ve stolen your job.”
There were still three boxes of varying sizes left out.
“What about these?” Raige asked, nudging one of them with his foot.
Thomas shrugged. “Either you tie them to the top, come back for a second trip, or you dump ‘em. I’m good, but I’m not a god either. Except in bed.” He flexed as though to demonstrate.
“Yes, yes, we’re all aware,” M.D. said, surveying the packing job. “Huh. Actually, that’s pretty good.”
Thomas bowed. But she wasn’t done.
“Now how’re we all going to fit in there?”
Thomas’s bow halted midway through. “Ah, crap.”
M.D.’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, ooh, I could ride on the roof, I haven’t done that in years, it’ll be great—”
“No,” Thomas and Raige said in unison.
“I’m going on the highway,” Raige added. “I’m not getting pulled over for—”
“For having an alien stuck to the roof of your Lexus? But it’d make such a great story for your future hypothetical grandchildren!”
“And how’s he going to get those with us?” Thomas retorted.
“I guess I’ll just have to unload a little and come back for you,” Raige said with regret. He didn’t look forward to unloading any boxes without help. “It’s going to be two trips anyway.”
“No worries,” Thomas said, draping a sweaty arm across M.D.’s shoulders. “We can keep ourselves entertained.”
“Speak for yourself,” M.D. replied, shoving his arm off. “You’re sticky.”
“I’ll be back fast, I promise,” Raige said, and got into the driver’s seat before he could find out what response Thomas would come up with.
All in all, the loading, transfer, and unpacking of Raige’s earthly possessions turned from ‘a few hours work’ to a full day of hot, sweaty labor. As an apology for his total underestimation of the magnitude of the undertaking, Raige treated to dinner.
“Nothing hot,” Thomas said instantly from where he was draped over Raige’s bed. “If it comes out of an oven, off a stove, or out of the microwave, the answer is no.”
“Salad?” M.D. asked.
“Don’t mock me.”
“Sushi?” Raige suggested.
Thomas and M.D. exchanged glances. They shrugged.
“It’s not hot.” Thomas said. “That’s all I care about.”
“I guess it can’t be weirder than some of the stuff I’ve eaten…” M.D. said, which was undeniably true.
A quick delivery call to Oishii Sushi and half an hour later, everyone was happy.
“Okay, I’m glad I let you convince me,” Thomas said around a California roll. “This is amazing.”
Raige grinned. “No problem. You guys definitely earned something for all the work today. Thanks and sorry; I really had no idea how long it would take.”
“No worries,” Thomas said, waving it off. “You keep buying the goodies, I’m all yours.”
M.D.’s mouth was too full of spring roll to speak, but she nodded agreement.
Thomas reached for a spring roll, offering a California roll in trade. M.D. was trying to negotiate ownership of the wasabi and pickled ginger without actually having to clear her mouth enough to speak coherently, and Raige finally just reached forward to hand it over when he saw rosy pink.
“Aw, no!”
Both M.D. and Thomas looked up. M.D. made an inquiring sound through the food in her mouth, but Raige was too busy surveying the damage. The backs of his hands, his forearms, his thighs and calves—
“Sunburned. Great.”
“No way, seriously? You didn’t even take off your shirt.” Thomas was already leaning over to examine.
“Yeah, well, now you know why.” He sighed and tugged his sleeves down over the abrupt white demarcations at his shoulders. “I’m going to have to cover myself with aloe or it’ll itch like crazy tomorrow…”
“Really? You spend one day outside, with cloud cover, with your shirt on, and you burn?” Thomas sounded fascinated.
“I’m white, okay? It happens. Aw, man, and I wore shorts today… I’m going to look like a candy cane…”
M.D., who was approximately the color of undyed leather, swallowed her spring roll and smirked at Thomas, who’d had a complexion like honey even before he’d started working construction. They grinned at each other.
“Power to the brown,” he said, putting out a fist.
“Melanin is swellanin,” M.D. agreed, bumping it.
“Yeah, yeah,” Raige grouched, and got up to find the aloe vera.
“Need help reaching the tricky spots?” Thomas asked innocently.
“I’ve got it, thanks,” Raige said, still irked at his complexion’s betrayal.
“Are you sure? I mean, the way you are, man, you might have sunburns in places you’ve never even thought of.”
He probably did. It didn’t make him feel any better. “I told you, I’ve got it.”
Thomas’s expression was nigh-angelic. “Just saying, where’s there’s a will, there’s a where…”
Raige should’ve known better than to keep feeding him straight lines.
Prompt: Brown
Note: Polyverse. In the not-so-far future of Infinity Smashed.
Raige called up Thomas first, since he was the one with the phone line.
“Bueno?”
“Hey Thomas, it’s Raige.”
“Raige, my man! Good to hear from you. What can I do you for?”
“Cute.” Raige braced the phone between his ear and his shoulder so he could tape up a box as he talked. “Well, the big day has finally arrived. This weekend, I’m moving to my dorm room.”
“Don’t your classes start Monday?”
“So I procrastinated a little. I couldn’t decide what to bring.” Shrrrip. The tape stretched, then finally tore. “Anyway, Daddy’s got a board meeting, so he can’t help me out. I was wondering if you were free.”
“No worries. You don’t need the truck, do you? Because Austin to Vaygo, that’s a long drive; I can make it, but…”
“No, no, I’ve got the Lexus, so you can just grab a blip with M.D. It should only be a few hours work, no big deal; I’ve got it all packed up and just need help moving it.”
“Sure, no problem. M.D. coming then?”
“Once I can actually get a hold of her, probably. You know how it is with her work schedule, and she doesn’t have a phone or e-mail or anything, unless I want to send it through Bobby and I’ll probably see her first.”
“Enh, I owe her a visit; we were going to grab coffee the next couple of days. I’ll tell her. You know how it is, the Paradox are pretty flexible. I’m sure she can make it.”
“Thanks, Thomas. I owe you guys pizza and music. See you Saturday.”
“See you then.” Click.
Raige put the tape away and hastily scribbled SHEET MUSIC, BOOKS, COMICS on the side in pen. He patted it and took a deep breath.
“Adulthood,” he said.
After being tossed through a few dimensions and everything else, he somehow thought it’d be less scary.
…
Saturday came, and it was sweltering. Normally, this wouldn’t have been that big a deal—Raige had a decent heat tolerance, Thomas did hard labor every summer in the Texas heat, and M.D. was completely impervious to heat. However, the weather had gone unusually humid, and while the clouds cut the glare, the moisture in the air only made everything sticky and nasty.
Plus, it turned out the move was a little tougher than he’d planned. Raige figured the hard part was over, once he’d sorted through all his belongings. But no.
“God, how much crap do you own?” Thomas complained as he held the front door open with his hip. (Nobody wanted to leave it open in this weather.)
“It looked like less outside the boxes…” Raige protested weakly and hastily side-stepped the recycling bin before he tripped over it. The stack of boxes in his arms blocked his direct vision, but he was a bass drummer; he could crabwalk his way through an obstacle course.
“It shows, Raige. It really shows,” M.D. said. “I think this is the fourth box I’ve carried out of music alone. Didn’t I tell you to clean out your belongings before this?”
“I did,” Raige protested, which just made Thomas and M.D. groan.
“God, I don’t even want to know what it was like before…” Thomas said, kicking the bin out of the way.
“Raige, I never planned on going to college, and even I know dorm rooms are tiny. Where are you going to put all this?” M.D. asked.
“I’ll find a way. When there’s a will, there’s a where.”
M.D. wasn’t strong enough to load herself down like them, which meant he could see her roll her eyes. But then, the way she lived, she probably could’ve fit everything she owned onto a moped.
“Man, if I’d known you were going to have this much junk, I would’ve said screw the Lexus and chugged the truck down here,” Thomas said, stopping at the SUV to put his box down. He put both hands to the small of his back and rubbed. “There’s no way you’re going to fit all this in there.”
“Where’s there’s a will, there’s a where,” Raige insisted stubbornly—mostly because God, moving this was already awful, he didn’t want to have to drive it all over then come all the way back and load up again. He shoved the boxes into the trunk of the SUV with a sigh of relief, and straightened up to wipe sweat off his forehead. “And no way. Your truck has no air conditioning. It’d be like driving a greenhouse.”
Thomas shrugged. “It’s not so bad with the windows down, as long as you keep moving. And hey, you can cook eggs and bacon on the hood after you’re done.” He looked up at the cloudy sky hopefully, even as he shucked his shirt and mopped his face with it, showing no self-consciousness. Raige envied him. “Think it’ll rain?”
Raige sighed and pulled his shirt away from his skin, trying to force a breeze. “God, I wish. But in Vaygo? In August? Not likely.”
M.D. nudged between them to drop the box. Her only concession to the heat was that she was wearing short sleeves. Still in pants, though, and her brown skin didn’t show a single gleam of sweat. Of course.
Raige sighed. He was jealous of all his friends today. At least Thomas’s expression wasn’t much better. M.D. saw their faces and smirked.
“Desert child. Feel envy, Earth mammals.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Thomas said, advancing on her with spread arms. “Here, I need comfort, gimme a hug—”
“Ew, no, you’re shiny…”
Thomas chased her around the lawn a bit, while Raige tried to arrange the boxes in such a way as to allow them to all fit in the car. Unfortunately, three-dimensional Tetris had never been his strong suit. After helplessly trying to put his record player somewhere where it wouldn’t get broken, he finally gave up and called, “Come on, guys, stop horsing around and help me fit these stupid things.”
“I’m not a god, milquetoast; I don’t work miracles,” M.D. responded, but Thomas pushed forward.
“Make way for the master,” he declared, pulling out boxes and stereo equipment. “You’re lucky I spent a summer with a moving company… hey, kid! Keep this in order? Great. You’re in charge of that.”
Within half an hour, Thomas had found an order for the Lexus. He automatically reached to load them in, only for M.D. to shove him away and squeeze into the car, taking them from him. They worked out an assembly line, and then it was all over.
“Wow,” Thomas said. “Wish you’d been around back when I worked with that moving company…”
“Nah. I’m an illegal alien; I would’ve stolen your job.”
There were still three boxes of varying sizes left out.
“What about these?” Raige asked, nudging one of them with his foot.
Thomas shrugged. “Either you tie them to the top, come back for a second trip, or you dump ‘em. I’m good, but I’m not a god either. Except in bed.” He flexed as though to demonstrate.
“Yes, yes, we’re all aware,” M.D. said, surveying the packing job. “Huh. Actually, that’s pretty good.”
Thomas bowed. But she wasn’t done.
“Now how’re we all going to fit in there?”
Thomas’s bow halted midway through. “Ah, crap.”
M.D.’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, ooh, I could ride on the roof, I haven’t done that in years, it’ll be great—”
“No,” Thomas and Raige said in unison.
“I’m going on the highway,” Raige added. “I’m not getting pulled over for—”
“For having an alien stuck to the roof of your Lexus? But it’d make such a great story for your future hypothetical grandchildren!”
“And how’s he going to get those with us?” Thomas retorted.
“I guess I’ll just have to unload a little and come back for you,” Raige said with regret. He didn’t look forward to unloading any boxes without help. “It’s going to be two trips anyway.”
“No worries,” Thomas said, draping a sweaty arm across M.D.’s shoulders. “We can keep ourselves entertained.”
“Speak for yourself,” M.D. replied, shoving his arm off. “You’re sticky.”
“I’ll be back fast, I promise,” Raige said, and got into the driver’s seat before he could find out what response Thomas would come up with.
…
All in all, the loading, transfer, and unpacking of Raige’s earthly possessions turned from ‘a few hours work’ to a full day of hot, sweaty labor. As an apology for his total underestimation of the magnitude of the undertaking, Raige treated to dinner.
“Nothing hot,” Thomas said instantly from where he was draped over Raige’s bed. “If it comes out of an oven, off a stove, or out of the microwave, the answer is no.”
“Salad?” M.D. asked.
“Don’t mock me.”
“Sushi?” Raige suggested.
Thomas and M.D. exchanged glances. They shrugged.
“It’s not hot.” Thomas said. “That’s all I care about.”
“I guess it can’t be weirder than some of the stuff I’ve eaten…” M.D. said, which was undeniably true.
A quick delivery call to Oishii Sushi and half an hour later, everyone was happy.
“Okay, I’m glad I let you convince me,” Thomas said around a California roll. “This is amazing.”
Raige grinned. “No problem. You guys definitely earned something for all the work today. Thanks and sorry; I really had no idea how long it would take.”
“No worries,” Thomas said, waving it off. “You keep buying the goodies, I’m all yours.”
M.D.’s mouth was too full of spring roll to speak, but she nodded agreement.
Thomas reached for a spring roll, offering a California roll in trade. M.D. was trying to negotiate ownership of the wasabi and pickled ginger without actually having to clear her mouth enough to speak coherently, and Raige finally just reached forward to hand it over when he saw rosy pink.
“Aw, no!”
Both M.D. and Thomas looked up. M.D. made an inquiring sound through the food in her mouth, but Raige was too busy surveying the damage. The backs of his hands, his forearms, his thighs and calves—
“Sunburned. Great.”
“No way, seriously? You didn’t even take off your shirt.” Thomas was already leaning over to examine.
“Yeah, well, now you know why.” He sighed and tugged his sleeves down over the abrupt white demarcations at his shoulders. “I’m going to have to cover myself with aloe or it’ll itch like crazy tomorrow…”
“Really? You spend one day outside, with cloud cover, with your shirt on, and you burn?” Thomas sounded fascinated.
“I’m white, okay? It happens. Aw, man, and I wore shorts today… I’m going to look like a candy cane…”
M.D., who was approximately the color of undyed leather, swallowed her spring roll and smirked at Thomas, who’d had a complexion like honey even before he’d started working construction. They grinned at each other.
“Power to the brown,” he said, putting out a fist.
“Melanin is swellanin,” M.D. agreed, bumping it.
“Yeah, yeah,” Raige grouched, and got up to find the aloe vera.
“Need help reaching the tricky spots?” Thomas asked innocently.
“I’ve got it, thanks,” Raige said, still irked at his complexion’s betrayal.
“Are you sure? I mean, the way you are, man, you might have sunburns in places you’ve never even thought of.”
He probably did. It didn’t make him feel any better. “I told you, I’ve got it.”
Thomas’s expression was nigh-angelic. “Just saying, where’s there’s a will, there’s a where…”
Raige should’ve known better than to keep feeding him straight lines.
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Date: 2014-05-08 04:23 am (UTC)