Ephemera & Tales

The rain was coming down in flurries and swirls, and whichever way Trent turned, it seemed to manage to be in his face. He hunched himself around the hot takeout cups he was carrying, and wished, increasingly petulantly, for the freaking bus to turn up already. He’d been waiting for at least ten minutes, and his trainers were getting soggy, and even layered up he was starting to freeze, and if the bus didn’t show up soon Ru would already have left by the time Trent got over to the art warehouse.

Trent juggled the cups to get them resting warm against his chest so he could look at his watch. Twelve minutes, and eight past due, and he was going to miss Ru, and next time he was just going to phone first and forget about nice surprises. He squinted into the gloom, straining to make out any vaguely bus-shaped vehicles : the road was mostly sweeping headlights and rumbling noise. He shivered, wrapped both arms around the coffee cups, and resolved that he was going to buy a new hat when he picked up his check on Friday.

He wasn’t entirely sure if it was actually possible to be any colder or more miserable than he was currently, but he was plenty happy never to find out when a solid block of warm golden glow resolved into a much-delayed city bus. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and tried to ignore the unpleasant squelching, instead concentrating on the bus’s steady glide through the traffic and the promise of heat when the doors hissed open.

For tsuki_no_bara, for her birthday - Ru's her boy and Trent's best friend, and I apologise for any liberties I've taken with him here. More Trent and Ru can be found here, here and here.


***** ***** *****

If his mom were to call the dorm, Russell would tell her that he was with Ru. Which was true, it's just if she knew where they were or what they were doing she'd have a cow. Mrs Abernathy probably knew, although Trent hoped she was assuming it was an all ages, because the idea that she might know about the fake ID's was a bit scary.

He was also pretty sure neither of them really looked twenty one, but the huge bald guy perched behind the tall table at the door had greeted Ru like and old friend and taken their money and told them to have a good show and hadn't even glanced at the cards, and now here they were. The Principles. Ru had been talking about this for weeks.

( ***** ****** ***** )

Trent is my ballet boy : his story can be found indexed here. I asked for a ficlet with music, motion and lighting effects from tsuki_no_bara and it kicked this loose for me.

( Dance this way )

Previous parts of Trent's story are indexed here. Ru belongs to the lovely tsuki_no_bara. Eden belongs to cicirossi

***** ****** *****

Written on lined paper torn out of a ringbound notebook, with no return address.

Dear Gram,

I’m going to assume mom’s already been in touch to tell you how I’ve messed up and left school, right? It isn’t quite like that though.

I guess I should start at the beginning. First, though, sorry it’s taken me a while to get to telling you all this. It’s been a very weird couple of days. I really wanted to call you, except I’m staying at Ru’s and running up his parent’s long distance seems like it would be rude, and I’m trying to keep the cell just for emergencies.

You remember Ru, right? I think my mom would have introduced him as Trent – that’s his real name – but he came over a bunch of times the last summer you were staying with us. Tall, skinny, really good friend? So, yes – I’m staying at his for a few days, and we’re going to be getting a place together just as soon as we can find somewhere half decent. And that’s not starting at the beginning.

Yes, I have left school, no I haven’t gone insane, no I’m not totally ungrateful for all the opportunities mom and dad have given me, and no I’m not throwing it all away over a teenage temper tantrum.

( snipped for length )

Previous parts of Trent's story are indexed here, and this follows on from Snap, Breath, and Shelter..

Ru Abernathy belongs to the lovely tsuki_no_bara. Eden belongs to cicirossi

Comments of any sort are most welcome.

***** ***** *****

Well – he wasn’t going back to school, and he hadn’t actually burst into tears, so on average that had gone better than expected.

He’d more or less expected ‘do you have any ideas the sacrifices we’ve made’ and ‘wasting your talent, throwing it away’ and the shrill insistence that he march himself ‘back to that school right now young man’ and apologize to everyone for everything.

He hadn’t expected “I supported you when you came out” thrown at him like that made everything else ok.

( Read more... )

Previous parts of Trent's story are indexed here, and this follows on from Snap and Breath.

Ru belongs to the lovely tsuki_no_bara, who co-wrote this section.. Holey Rites, like the rest of Eden, belongs to cicirossi Comments of any sort are most welcome.

***** ***** *****

Ru wasn't sure how long the doorbell had been ringing when he finally heard it - he had his stereo up pretty loud. He hadn't been doing anything too involving - just drawing - but no one was home so he could play his music at ear-bleeding volume. At least he could until someone showed up at the house. He stuck his pen behind his ear and went to see who it was.

It was Trent.

Who should probably have been in class.

( snipped for length )

Previous parts of Trent's story are indexed here, and this follows on directly from Snap.

Joshua and Holey Rites, like the rest of Eden, belongs to the wonderfull cicirossi, who co-wrote this section. Ru belongs to the lovely tsuki_no_bara. Comments of any sort are most welcome.

***** ***** *****

The place was a lot – more - when it was empty. Bigger and somehow more intimidating. Trent came to a halt a couple of steps in to the room. He didn’t recognize the guy perched on a stool dozing behind the counter either. Which maybe would make it easier. At least in theory. Except he was rapidly realizing he had no idea where to start after all, and maybe he should just step back out again and think about this some more.

He shifted the bag on his shoulder a little, one hand reaching behind to feel for his wallet inside it, the shine of the cases making him remember the small matter of paying for this. He inched forward a little, rather than moving backwards.

“Do I have to make an appointment , or ….?” He managed.

"Depends on what you want a hole in." A wide grin split the guy's broad, black face. "You don't if it's not something...really personal. I'm slow today."

( snipped for length )

Previous parts of Trent's story are indexed here.

As always, Ru belongs to the lovely tsuki_no_bara, and Holey Rites, like the rest of Eden, belongs to the wonderfull cicirossi. Comments of any sort are most welcome.

***** ***** *****

By the end of their three hour session Ms Carech had made it abundantly clear that she was not going to be the one recommending him as an understudy to the corps du ballet with the actual company this semester. If he couldn’t get the knack of that entrechat passage he may as well pack up and go home, in fact. Well, Ms Benson was still pushing for him to try for the role, but he could feel that something wasn’t perfect, and when the whole point was a stage full of perfectly uniform movements ….

“Did you even begin to comprehend the assignment, Mr. Donovan?”

His composition professor slammed Trent’s folder down on the table as punctuation. Trent snatched his attention back from rerunning his internal record of the earlier class and gave Mr. Matthews his full, if slightly stunned, attention.

( snipped for length )

The rest of Trent's story can be found indexed here - this particular episode takes place after two other dance class ficlets : Phone call - Outreach Ballet Class and Teasing. Erin and the city of Eden, where Trent goes to ballet school, belong to cicirossi.

***** ***** ****

A month in and the Saturday morning ‘outreach’ class was starting to settle into a regular pattern. Each of the student assistants had their own pupils, and Mr Sampson kept looping through his class music for the sections – once for the whole class, then twice more while he and Vo and Kaitleen did what they could and Mm Devon watched like an evil tempered hawk. Every piece, three times over. It was soothing – the repetition, the familiar classroom smell of sweat and rosin, the light marking time across the floor.

They were working on plies, the whole class lined up along the barre, attempting long sweeping dips while the piano marked a leisurely tempo, and Mm Devon sing-songed the slow progression of positions.

OK, so the normally neat rows of identical movements were kinda lacking, and the whole Saturday morning thing just plain sucked but – well ok, so there was something worth watching. Someone, rather. And Trent had managed to end up watching him – supervising him. In a purely student / teacher kind of way. Yeah right. Although at least part of the fascination this week really was trying to figure out what the faded words on his t-shirt said. Jeep Naked just didn’t make any sense, and it was bothering him.

( onwards )

Ru belongs to tsuki_no_bara and has a journal of his own at runeden. They live in Eden, which belongs to cicirossi, and this is somewhat out of timeline, for which I apologise.

****** ****** ******

Trent feels kinda weird being in Ru's room in an empty house. There had probably been a couple of times when they were back in high school that he'd been in here without Ru being around, waiting for him to get back from running an errand for his mom or something, but this was totally different.

Like, silent and heavy and just a little uncomfortable. He'd soaked his piercings and mostly remembered not to scratch when they itched, and packed and re-packed the stuff Sari and George had managed to rescue from his dorm room so it took up less space, and now he couldn’t settle to anything.

Trent thought that once Mrs Abernathy got home she'd probably have something to say about him sitting around. At least he'd be able to get on with combing the paper for jobs and apartments, and there'd be someone else here, even if he was sure she was looking at him like he was some kind of slightly odd alien thing she didn’t quite know what to do with. Ru's parents were being really cool about the whole unexpected house guest thing, but the sooner he and Ru could get a place of their own, the better.

He figured if he turned the radio he might be able to forget that there was no one home – possibly no one anywhere on the whole street save a couple of stay at home moms - but the aerial was bust on Ru's boom-box. Somehow he couldn't pick out a cd any more than he could choose a single book from the stack he'd flicked through or figure out what he could do to be helpful that wouldn't be rude to start doing without asking first. In the end he just listened to the silence and the slow swoosh of the ceiling fan turning.