East Coast Gazette

As predicted, I felt better Wednesday morning, and then I felt even better after I watched the latest episode of Eureka (wherein my suspicion that Fargo kind of has a man-crush on Jack grows and watching Stark watch chicks fight over Carter made me make squeaky, choking noises) and then of course today, Fleshbot gave me this beautiful, beautiful thing: Kal-El, at Rentboy.com.  Somewhere out there, Lex Luthor just had an orgasm and he doesn’t even know why.

And, because I feel bad because it’s been, roughly, a geologic era since I wrote anything, snapshots from WIPs upcoming, in the following order:

• Lustrous, because you guys dig the vagina John.
• Shift, because I love SG-9
• White Wedding, because Naruto + Gaara = OTP.  Fuck Sasu-GAY anyway. 

LUSTROUS:

Jane knew that her marriage was over — really over — when Rodney didn’t even fight her, just got quiet and tight-faced and moved his hepa filter into the guest room.  That night she couldn’t even sleep without the slow hiss of it in the background, and when she tried to hear it through the dividing wall, she heard Rodney’s voice instead, quiet and on the phone, talking to somebody in a tired tone.  The next morning he was gone for work before she left for school, and she spent half of lunch locked into the women’s restroom crying and the rest of it scaring the crap out of her six periods of students, who all went quiet and rabbit-like in their worry.  But the thing was, even after weeks of radio silence, she never would have called the lawyer if it wasn’t for the breach of her email, how she got furious with him rifling through her papers and changed the locks – only to find her papers rifled anyway.  So she’d called a lawyer and said something about stopping Rodney’s psychosis, and he’d soothed her saying restraining orders were pretty standard in a lot of divorces, which was when Jane had said, “Oh my God, I’m getting a divorce,” and promptly hung up to go sling herself over a toilet and throw up.

SHIFT

M6X-008 is a planet roughly a quarter of the size of Earth with exactly three natural resources: ore, smarts, and high reproductive rates.  It’s a tiny, blighted hole of a planet but technology has kept it lush, green, irrigated—they trade with dozens of other worlds, and barter with custom-made chemicals, lease out their scientists.  John can’t help but give Bambus a wayward glance and mouth, preemptive, No.  Bambus gives him a wrinkle-nosed look that makes him look all of fourteen.

The trade representatives meet them and offer up an itinerary, saying there’ll first be a good will tour of the facilities and then a luncheon and then they’ll get to the mines, and John grits his teeth at the thought of listening to the M6X-008 PR roadshow all morning.  But Bambus just says, “We’re just thrilled,” and so they’re off, John clutching his P90 a little too tightly.

M6X-008’s chemical production had taken what little virtue was originally in their planet and laid it to waste—the skies overhead aren’t overhead at all, just created atmospheres inside the enormous domes in which they live, heated by the Greenhouse effect, their planet just a few light years too far from their sun to sustain life naturally.

“This place is like that movie,” Wallace murmurs under his breath.

“I thought all you watched were pornos,” Bambus replies, tart.  John senses they might have had some sort of nasty, we’re no longer pot buddies anymore! breakup, but he doesn’t want to know anything about it, so all he does is give them both a warning glance over his shoulder—which of course only Holder sees.

“Yeah, no!  It’s like Biodome!” Wallace declares, laughing.  “Man, I loved that movie.”

Clearing his throat, John says to their guide, “He was dropped as a child—but he’s very earnest.”

The trader smirks.  “I see,” he says.

John’s wondered about this place before, how a rock that seems completely unsuited for a population can sustain such a large and bustling one, with moving walkways and malls and enormous hydroponic arboretums when there isn’t even a reliable supply of loam in which to grow food.  He’s heard Rodney’s spiel about God and how there isn’t one enough that he’s kind of written underneath his skin now, too deep to shake entirely, but once upon a time his mother had taken him to churches and he’d listened to the vibrating voice of organs and thought that maybe somebody was watching, feeling something in his chest flutter like wings.  And God—or something more sinister—is what John thinks it would take to explain this planet: how in spite of everything, people survive, they thrive, they—take John to lab after lab after chemical storehouse.

It’s all going swimmingly—This is our boring hermetically-sealed warehouse number one, and this is our boring hermetically-sealed warehouse number two, etcetera and so forth—until they get to warehouse number seven, where Bambus asks for a demonstration on one of their advertised products.

“You probably shouldn’t use that around the chemicals,” John suggests, when Bambus pulls out a somewhat experimental piece of pilfered Gouald technology: it depends on reactions for chemical identification.  He’s seen it in action—and hauled people to the infirmary after smoke inhalation afterward—three times, twice on Atlantis, because something about being in the city made scientists dumber.

Ignoring him, Bambus says, “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

When he wakes up again, after the explosion, it’s to Bambus’ tear-streaked, dirty face, wild with panic.

“Oh thank God, you’re alive,” he blubbers.

“I’ll kill you,” John promises him, trying to push himself up but his wrists and arms and body isn’t cooperating, so he tries to look threatening collapsed in a water-soaked heap, struggling to breathe.

Bambus just laughs, scrubs at his face and nods—beaming, just beaming.

WHITE WEDDING

The alliance was formalized with great elegance, and Tsunade and Gaara took tea together, ceremonially pouring one another’s cups in a sign of trust—banners decorated with their signets fluttering in the wind, pale in the golden sunlight.  It was a good day, for Sand and Leaf both; Iruka hated war.  And Kakashi—who wore the history of Konoha’s battles on his skin like a textbook of scars—had looked thoughtful, and tricked Gai into taking his B-level mission so he and Iruka could sit together on a grassy knoll that peered out over Hokage mountain, down into the valley of the town, lying next to each other under the cloudless blue sky.

*

Gaara and his contingent reluctantly left Konoha after that, with promises to return to Konoha in the new year, and Naruto sank into a depression so deep and darkly childish that Iruka finally resigned himself to the inevitability of it all and called Sakura from one of her long shifts at the hospital to tell her the good news.  She was overjoyed and very high-pitched and kidnapped Naruto with extreme quickness out of his trashed apartment to begin planning the wedding.

“Let met get this right: you told Sakura about the…” Kakashi trailed off, searching for the right words until he arrived at, “…arrangement so you could come in here and clean Naruto’s room?”

“It’s a sty,” Iruka said, stuffing another bag full with empty ramen cups.  “And he was never going to clean it on his own.”

“And so why was it our responsibility to do it?” Kakashi asked.

Iruka gave him a severe look.  “Soon, Naruto will be married—”

“Argh,” Kakashi said, sounding pained.

“—And we won’t be able to do nice things for him anymore,” Iruka finished, feeling oddly upset.  He was happy that Naruto would be happy, really.  And even if he wouldn’t necessarily be happy in Konoha, he would be happy with Gaara—and certainly Naruto would write, or at least, Iruka thought with increasing distress, Iruka could convince Gaara that it was some kind of tradition for married couples to write once a day, every day, regardless.  But really, more than anything else, what if Naruto didn’t make friends in Sand—what if they were mean to him, like they’d been in Konoha?  What if Gaara forgot him, or left him lonely, or went to wars once more?  And then, what if—?

Which was when Kakashi intervened, saying, “My, my, teacher, I think you’ve been tired out.”