Prompt #29

Prompt #17

(Character A) is a colourblind painter who loves flowers (they became a painter of modern art on accident, after they were scouted in art class for their ‘interesting colours’, despite their attempts to avoid their family’s business/tradition).

(Character B) is a florist with allergies who loves art (they became a florist because it was the family’s business and tradition) and is a new friend to (Character A).

One day, they decide to switch jobs by taking each other’s places and they find themselves loving it. As they grow closer by asking questions about their professions, they realize both that their families hate each other from a feud in the 1800’s and that they can’t keep the ploy up forever.

And, as it gets more complicated, they start to fall in love.

as it should be

“Yellow is fake,” says Lilac to Oleander. “It is because I say so.”

Lilac tilts their head and keeps staring at the setting sun, squinting to see the colours. Oranges and yellows blended together and draped around the clouds like the most perfect curtains to ever exist, natural and ugly.

Fake.

“And all of the clouds must be paintings.” Oleander has never understood Lilac. Maybe they never would.

“What do you mean?” Lilac traces the sky with a gentle, steady hand, the clouds just barely shifting and twisting, gliding instead of pulling like a current in a river. Impossible, incomprehensible.

“Why are black and white not colors, but yellow is?” Lilac questions. Lilac has an awful lot of questions. They’ve always been curious. Not so much that they never look before they leap, but just enough to look over the edge and decide it isn’t that far of a drop.

That doesn’t mean that they would be right, however.

Oleander has always been the kind of person to never leap in the first place, let alone look. The varying perspectives is exciting the main diffference between the two.

Oleander responds, “Because black and white aren’t part of the rainbow.”

Lilac furrows their brow. “But we’re just humans. If we were mantis shrimp, and we had sixteen color receptors, then maybe black and white would be colors in the rainbow.”

Lilac gestures at all the fake colour. It dances around in streaks, brush strokes painting lines stolen right off the rainbow. “Why are we allowed to judge that if we can’t know for sure? Why can’t I declare that yellow is fake, like black and white?”

“Because we want labels.” Oleander is becoming annoyed. “We want labels, because we want to have purpose and meaning. We want to be defined. Purpose is having a place, a contribution to something. That gives us purpose, or whatever we think is purpose anyways.

“We all want purpose, because without it we don’t have meaning.”

“But why can’t we have no labels and still have meaning and purpose?” Lilac runs a hand through their hair, squeezing their eyes shut and staring at the yellows in the backs of their eyelids instead. Comforting fireworks of golden sparks, raining down in waves. An ocean of fiery yellow. It’s fake. “Labels don’t indicate worth. Labels aren’t a purpose. They’re a box. People can’t fit in boxes. I mean, I haven’t ever tried, but I don’t think the shapes would match up.”

Oleander may never understand Lilac, but they will always listen, in case one day, they find an answer in the horde of never-ending questions. In case one day, Oleander figures out why Lilac keeps them up all night when they’re not even there.

In case one day, Oleander won’t have to strike through their thoughts anymore.

“Because boxes are comforting. They’re a safe place. A shelter. And people aren’t always comfortable in their own selves, so sometimes they’ll put themselves in shelters. They’ll make a home in a label because they can’t find one in their own mind.” The words are spilling out of their mouth, clumps and pieces jumbling together. “They don’t feel comfortable with who they are, so they try to make themselves someone they like because they think that they’ll be comfortable with someone else. With a cliché.”

The words stop flowing. They drift off instead, and Oleander tries to catch them, tries to fit them in their fists. It barely works. They only snatch a single sentence. “But they never are.”

It’s a grey sentence, Oleander knows. Shiny silvery grey, colourless. It’s a truthful group of words, honest. Nothing is really black and white. Black and white sentences aren’t lies, really, but they’re always mistaken.

Grey is the only honest colour.

Oleander wonders what the least honest colour is. They think that maybe, just maybe, it might be yellow.

Lilac thinks that Oleander is right. Lilac also thinks that when they look up and open their eyes, all they can see looks like paint on the water, and their focus shifts once more.

“Crystal clear water,” they murmur. “And acrylic.”

Oleander is not following. “What?”

“The clouds,” Lilac explains. They’ve got a sleepy look on their face, and eyes like stars. “I’ve decided they’re paint on water. They can’t be real.”

Oleander wishes they could be Lilac, and see the world as simple as they do.

Just for a second.

A single, sweet second of understanding.

Oleander think about the comparisons of the both of them frequently. It’s glaringly obvious that they contrast each other greatly. One might even say that they complimented each other well.

Lilac smiles slow, small, and sweet, and Oleander doesn’t smile much at all anymore. Lilac is fantastical and creative. Oleander doesn’t even like anything other than non-fiction. Lilac always has an idea. Oleander can’t remember the last time they thought of something new, original.

Oleander wants to contribute to something. Maybe Oleander needs meaning as well.

“Maybe oil pastels on acrylic,” Oleander offers.

Lilac stretches their arms out on the grass below them, digging their fingers in the warm dirt and getting it under their nails. Wet earth stains their hands, but they don’t care. “On a canvas,” they add quietly.

Lilac feels like they could just melt into the ground, close their eyes again without looking once at the explosions of fake colours, and just fall.

Fall intangible through the core of the world, and through the other side.

Maybe even fall through China instead of digging their way there.

Fall into the sky.

Fall asleep.

And they do.

Oleander goes on to stare at the moon. And the clouds go on to being oil pastels on acrylic, and yellow goes on being fake.

Everything is wrong.

As it should be.

Prompt #19

(Character A) is the heir to the throne. Their parents hire a bodyguard after rumours of an assasination (false ones), who ends up to be (Character B).

Now, (Character B) was a mercenary before, so they gained a lot of enemies, and are very accident-prone. Really, (Character A) is more suited to be THEIR bodyguard.

In the end, (Character A) protects (Character B), and they bond over their situation.

hopeless

It goes like this.

A snake meets an angel in a garden of peace and figures that knowledge was more important than that peace. The angel believes they were not destined to be. He gives a sword to the first two humans, and does not fall.

The snake is decidedly not jealous.

He will never be jealous of not falling, because it was what he was always meant to do anyways, wasn’t he?

He was always meant to go down in a blaze of searing flesh and bone and fire, fire, flames that burnt him and swirled around him as he screamed and screamed but it wouldn’t stop, it would never ever stop because all his tears were evaporating and it’s like they never existed and it’s been so long now, is this his new forever? Is this what he is meant to be? Merely an angel for an instant, a plaything to be thrown away for simply asking the wrong questions at the wrong time?

Is this his fault?

(If all the tears he cried wouldn’t have gone up in smoke, maybe they would have been the water to fill the ocean).

It’s fine.

It’s what he was made for, to be tested. The angel wasn’t.

He was fine.

Anyways, he may have gone and fallen in love with said angel.

He was just so wonderful and sweet and genuine, and he was everything the demonic snake would never be. In fact, the demon hadn’t even known that he could love anything until now.

He wasn’t supposed to love anything at all, but here he was, stupidly pining for someone who could never love him.

Hopeless.

—

It goes like this.

Holy water is passed from an angel to a demon, no longer in the form of a snake, and it doesn’t burn the demon. It doesn’t even touch his skin. Not for a second did he even think it would.

They have changed a whole lot since they met, but they have sown trust, and they have sown a bond. A new bond.

Never before has there been a pair of genuine friends that consisted of a demon and an angel, never before has there been a pair that has come close to even fraternization. Not even after the six thousand years they had known each other.

And yet...

He is still going too fast for the angel.

And he doesn’t know how.

“Too fast?!” He throws a plate to the floor, and it shatters. The shards scatter all around the room, and it almost desperately trying to get away from him, hiding under the sofa and under the space between the counters and the floor. His plants are shaking like they never have before, terrified of his unheavenly wrath.

“It’s been so long,” and he sharply pulls on his hair and now he’s crying and tear tracks are running down his face. He doesn’t care. “I’ve waited so long. I’ve tried my best. I’ve-“

He chokes on nothing but his own despair.

He’s kneeling in the shards and they’re digging into his knees. He couldn’t care less.

“What do I need to do?” He was asking someone, anyone, whoever could give him any semblance of an answer, but nobody did. He didn’t know if anyone could.

“How do I be enough? How long do I have to wait until I’m worth more to somebody?” The unknowing of what comes next cut his heart out with a butcher knife made of his own desperation. The only sound to answer his pleas, his prayers, was his own shaky breathing and his plants shuddering.

“Can he even love me?”

And that was the question, wasn’t it? He clenched his eyes shut and put his hands over his ears, alone but surrounded by so much noise, a ringing in his ears that wouldn’t go away. He could hear his decorative heart beating, pounding away, like a symbol crashing with crescendo of a whole orchestra his ears.

He was making up noises at this point, wasn’t he? Trying to deafen the silence with his own imagination. As if it could take away everything that there wasn’t. His plants had stopped cowering. They knew the only thing he wanted to yell at right now was himself.

How had God made him this way? Why did he have to exist like this, confused and incapable of accepting the simple fact that he was unlovable? How had he been cursed with a heart that cared about everything?

How had he been cursed to love when he couldn’t be loved himself?

And as he was breaking down for the thousandth time exactly in his lifetime, the angel was fixing himself a cup of tea and humming a simple melody, settling down to read one of his more recently acquired books, completely and utterly unaware of any of it. And he was still alone.

Utterly hopeless.

—

It goes like this.

The Armageddon’t was averted, and the angel and demon have saved the world. Neither of them were expected to, and neither of them were supposed to, but they did. They exist just the same as they did before.

They still drink too much together and dine at the Ritz and talk about dolphins and whales and ducks and live quite normally.

(Well, as normal as you can expect it to get.)

The demon still has yellow snake eyes and listens to Queen almost obsessively and drives too fast, and the angel still loves fancy restaurants and reads old books and barely sells any of them to his customers.

And the demon still loves.

And he still hates that he does.

“I hate caring,” he says one evening, half-way into his third bottle of fine wine. There’s no way he’s sober at this point. He had been drinking since he had arrived at Aziraphale’s bookshop, despite Aziraphale himself declining to partake in it. “I just hate it so much.”

“I know, dear,” Aziraphale raises an eyebrow and turns a page of the book he’s reading. Crowley’s pretty sure it’s one of Jane Austen’s earlier novels. “You’ve told me many times.”

“I know, I know, I know,” Crowley waves him off, but just a bit too enthusiastically, and leans forward on his knees. “But I just hate it. Too much.”

“Too much what?” He asks. He turns the page, but is almost certainly not reading it. He seems more focused on the conversation now.

“There’s too much. I feel too much. Not s’posed to.” Crowley pulls a disgusted look. “Demons ‘r not s’posed to love ‘n stuff.”

Aziraphale frowns and it looks almost like he’s trying to figure out a puzzle in his head. “You can love?”

Crowley chokes like he did so long ago, and there’s something trapped in the back of his throat, a lump that’s suffocating him, and he almost hopes that he could really die instead of just discorporate.

“I-“ he swallows deep, “I wish I couldn’t. God- Satan- Somebody,” he doesn’t know who somebody even is.

“I wish I couldn’t, so bad. So bad.” He wishes he weren’t so drunk, too, but he doesn’t want to sober up, and the love thing precedes the drunkenness by a large portion.

“Why would you not want to be able to love?” Aziraphale questions, a concerned look in his eyes. “Why would you ever want that? That would be horrible!”

“No it wouldn’t.” Crowley is completely serious, and it’s clear that Aziraphale doesn’t understand at all.

“How could not loving ever be a good thing?!”

“How could it ever be a good thing?”

Aziraphale pinches his nose and sighs. “I’m really arguing with a drunk Crowley right now,” he mutters under his breath. “Sober up.”

“But-“ Crowley whines, and Aziraphale shushes him with a finger. He huffs. “‘Kay...”

He sobers up in less than a minute, and opens his eyes to see Aziraphale with his arms crossed in front of him.

“Explain your argument.” He asks politely, and Crowley is so ready to destroy him with his debate skills.

“I love a lot, unfortunately, and people can’t love me.” He lays it plainly out in front of them, and can’t understand for the life of him why Aziraphale looks so pained.

“... Are you okay?” asks Crowley, and is completely surprised and overtaken by Aziraphale squeezing the living daylights out of him. He makes a noise that is not a squeak (it totally is, but he will never admit it) as his rib cage is practically ground to dust.

“What-“ he lets out a breath as Aziraphale hugs him closer. “What’s this for and also I can’t breathe please let me go what are you doing-“

“I’m hugging you,” says Aziraphale simply, and only lets Crowley have a bit of breathing room.

“But why?” Crowley asks with a furrowed brow.

“Because you need one, clearly,” and that’s the explanation he gives.

Crowley is still not following. “Why would I need a hug?”

“You can be loved,” and Crowley’s lungs are screaming for another reason as all his air is stolen, along with his words.

“You can be loved so much, Crowley, you can be loved, you can be loved, I love you and you don’t even know how much, I promise you I’ll never hide it ever again, I promise, you go so fast but I think I’ve caught up, Crowley, oh dear...” There’s tears dripping and soaking his shirt, but he doesn’t care, because he’s ruining Aziraphale’s coat too.

“I-“ How does one say that they have loved another for thousands of years? Since the garden of Eden? Since they knew each other?

“I love you so much I can’t think anymore,” is what he goes with. “I just never thought that anyone could love a demon.”

The angel, his angel, was still holding him in his arms. “I’m not sure if being a demon suits you, darling. I think you may be the only exception.”

And so they live as exceptions.

Mutual exceptions, a demon who didn’t quite suit being a demon or an angel, and an angel who didn’t quite suit being an angel or a demon.

In the end, they were quite human.

And they were quite happy with that.

Maybe they weren’t quite hopeless.

Prompt #30

(Character A) is a typical teenage protagonist of a high school movie. (Character B) is the typical teenage love interest of the high school movie. Only, there’s a few things in the way of their relationship - their depression, anxiety, problems with authority, and their parents...

All of them teachers at their school.

Prompt #12

(Character A)’s life is set up completely by their parents for a social experiment; complete with castings for background characters and side characters.

(Character B) is a side character in (Character A)’s life. They’re supposed to be the bully, but as they find themselves falling for (Character A), they start to break their script.

burn

It wasn’t about him. It was never about him.

In fact, she never meant for him to have any involvment in the matter, never meant for him to ever know about it. He was never meant to know anything.

It had started long before she ever knew him.

It started when her father had brought out a lighter one evening. He opened his pack of cigarettes and took a long drag, his shoulders relaxing. He sunk into the chair. He no longer cared about hiding his addiction from his daughter, playing with a doll idly on the carpeted floor, six years old and quiet as a mouse.

She was known for being a rather emotionless child. Not once had she laughed or grinned or cried. Her mother fretted about her, but her father didn’t mind. No tantrums was fine with him. The lack of feelings wasn’t a problem with him. She watched with glazed eyes as flaky ashes fell to the carpet. She stared at them as they floated gently to the floor, choking and coughing a bit from the fumes.

She stared even longer at the lighter. How could a fire be hiding in the tiny object?

Late into the night, she snuck into the living room where the lighter was still lying next to the ashtray, and stole it. The next morning, she hid it in her backpack and ran off into the woods to play.

It was yellow and shiny and had a grey top that flipped open. She immediately was fascinated, entranced. Her eyes lit up for the first time. It was so small, but had such power! When she mimicked her father’s motions, it let out a fizzling spark once, twice, thrice, and then burst into a tiny flame.

She knew what she was doing tomorrow. Her eyes burned with the fire she now possessed.

Her mother found the neighbor’s cat later that month, half-decomposed and covered in soot, and she had screamed. It was the kind of scream from a horror movie that got half-hearted reviews, one that never really sent shivers down your spine. It never even got under her skin. She didn’t care that she had been found out. The cat was annoying anyways. Her flames were bright, unstoppable, unable to be extinguished, and she would feed the fire until everything came down around her.

Years later, in her twenties, she met him. Her lover. He was sunny and bright and passionate and emotional and everything she wasn’t. He was her fire. She wanted him, in a way that she hadn’t wanted since she’d laid her eyes on that lighter over a decade ago.

And eventually, she got him. It seemed like she had attached herself to him, in a strange way. She wanted him to be hers, and only hers, but shied away from affection and emotion. She didn’t know how to respond to his hugs, how to smile for him. She didn’t know how to be genuine.

And that meant that she had to avoid him, and that meant that she left the house often, coat over her shoulders and lighter in her pocket.

She didn’t know what she wanted more, him or her fire. And that scared her.

She hadn’t known what it was like to be scared before.

She flicked the lighter, and threw it down on the large pile of dry grass and twigs at her feet. The willow tree sheltered the newborn flame, and it slowly climbed higher and higher. As it began to lick the tree top, she backed away to admire the light in the drizzling rain. Her light.

Her eyes gleamed.

Her fire burned.

Her lover still smiled for her when she came home. He smiled through watery eyes, and she wasn’t sure if it was from her late return or from the water drops tapping out a rhythm on the sidewalk or from the ash that clung to her shoulders, even through the rain. She didn’t know how to understand what he felt on their best days together.

He hugged her close and securely whenever she came home, and she responded the same. Her eyes were as dry as the Sahara, saved from the rain by her umbrella, glazed over with disinterest. Waiting for the next opportunity to buy another lighter. To buy more gasoline. To build a stack of sticks and grass. To relish in the newfound brightness.

To burn.

(She never thought about how he had had an umbrella of his own when she came out to greet him, and how his clothes were dry.)

She would set the world on fire just to watch it go ablaze, and she would smile the same smile she always had before. An answering smile. An answer to the questions, to the counselors at school and the dead cat her mother found covered in charcoal and gasoline, to the classmates who were afraid of her in kindergarten, to the prescriptions in her cabinet, ever fluorescent.

To her lover, whose eyes were still full of water on the sunniest day of the year. She still ignored the drip-dropping of water on her neck whenever they hugged.

(It wasn’t raining.)

(She didn’t know how to explain it, so she avoided it.)

(Sometimes, she thinks that he cries because he doesn’t know what to do anymore.)

He cried when she left and cried when she came home, and he cried when he was alone and cried when she was with him. He cried when she smelled like a campfire and when she had ashes sprinkled in her hair, and he cried when their budgeting started to include lighters and gasoline.

He cried every tear that she never could.

Sometimes she wished that she could cry for him instead. He must have been so dehydrated.

(For his birthday, she bought him a nice water bottle. “So you can stay hydrated. You cry an awful lot,” she said. He grinned and hugged her, then pulled away quickly.

“Thank you.” His lips were wobbly and saltwater streamed down his cheeks. She smelled like a campfire.)

She always had grey peppering her clothes. Her smile was subdued, but her eyes were distant and wild. Like they knew something. Like they had already watched the world burn down in their head a million times, and enjoyed every second.

A psychopath.

An arsonist.

Someone who burned trees and papers for fun. Someone who bought too many lighters in too little time. (The gas station attendant had never seen so many lighters be laid out on the checkout counter.) Someone who watched her lover cry and looked away with disinterest. Someone who didn’t leave the house one day to burn.

(He was still home, crying in the corner. She didn’t notice him until the end.)

Someone who never cried when she watched her lover scream and his tears evaporate, ugly crying, with eyes of crimson and half moon bruises underneath and snot running down his face, saltwater on his tongue and dripping off his chin just to go up and evaporate in flames and smoke.

Someone who died with her lover by accident and didn’t care. Someone who watched the flames with gleaming eyes until the end.

(Her eyes were still gleaming when they burned to the ground.)

said softly means you are speaking, but sweetly, and heartfelt. said quietly means it is less sweet, but still not loud or inaudible. whispered means you aren’t speaking at all, and it can have a negative or positive connotation, but more negative than softly. mumbled means it’s nearly inaudible, and has a more negative connotation.

try me, connotations are everything in writing; especially when conveying emotions.

I know adverbs are Controversial, but “said softly” means something different than “whispered” and this is the hill I will die on.

She thinks that maybe it’s the bone structure.

Her face was odd, and it was odd in the way that it didn’t seem normal to anyone else. It was something different, and she didn’t like it.

Once, she waxed her eyebrows off entirely. All the way gone. The clock on the bathroom wall showed that it was late, a bit too late to be up. Good. Eye bags would diminish exceptional beauty.

She never got eye bags.

She had panted in front of the mirror, eyes tearing up, but smiling all the same. Finally, she wasn’t perfect. Finally, she felt she could match how pretty she was on the outside with herself on the inside. After so long....

She felt like she was crying happy tears, despite the constant twinges of pain, and it was glorious to feel individuality, as if she could choose what happened! Like she belonged in her body, after trying so long.

And then it grew back in the morning.

Flawlessly shaped and full.

And nothing she ever did changed anything.

God, it was so depressing to think about.

Nothing she did changed anything. Nobody took her seriously, nobody ever looked at her and wanted to see her any less beautiful. The best thing she could be was pretty.

And she didn’t really feel like she matched it, really.

Her body was different from her brain, her face didn’t match her heart - and she didn’t feel like her heart was even that great! She wasn’t super brave or smart or nice or anything, she was just pretty.

She wished she was ugly.

People whispered about her behind her back, and it wasn’t the kind that usually hurt feelings. Normally, nobody would be offended by being called gorgeous or beautiful or hot or cute or whatever adjective English could produce! Normally it would be accepted, craved, even!

But she wanted nothing more than to be wanted for being less than perfect, less than desirable. She was starving for genuine affection, and was getting superficial attention. She didn’t know if unconditional love was real. Isn’t that what a mother should feel?

Does her mother feel that, if she let this thing be her daughter?

It was like a drowning man being showered with money and being told to buy his way out. It would be helpful in any situation other than the one she was in.

Just once, she wished to shave her whole head and wear the ugliest jumper in the history of mankind. Sing like a tone-deaf monkey and break a glass, and have people act horrified and scandalized. She wanted to walk down the street and not hear anything but the cars roll by, and go to a coffee shop without getting five different numbers, maybe enjoy her black coffee for a change.

Anything but perfection.

She wore the loosest hoodies and sweatpants, littered with holes and frayed edges. Her hair was long and smooth. She kept it in a low ponytail, under her hood and away from sight. Nothing she did changed how people saw her. It was like she didn’t matter.

And then she had a brilliant idea; the kind of idea that deserved a light-bulb above her head and sparks behind her eyes. Something new and unexpected, something that could help her be her and not pretty -

A mask.

A mask! What a genius invention, the mask! Something not made to hide beauty, but to disguise an unwelcome face, perhaps. No matter. She wasn’t one to be proper.

She would wear a mask, and maybe people would listen to her words and not her bone structure, or whatever it was that everyone was fascinated with. It could also be her eyelashes or something.

And she got a mask. And went to school.

“Hi,” said her teachers.

“Hi!” said the boys, hoping to get a date.

“Hi!” said the girls, hoping to get a date.

“Hello,” said her friends, who whispered behind her back every time she turned around as if she was deaf.

“Hello!” said everyone passing by her in the hall.

It didn’t change anything.

Dear god, it didn’t change anything-

Nothing she did mattered, did it? She could scream to the high heavens that she’d had enough, and they’d smile and say hello. The holiest demons in Hell had blessed her with ugly beauty, and it was so terribly evil. She wasn’t sure if anyone ever saw her real face. Could she see her real face? Was she being tricked?

She was hiding in the bathroom. Sitting on the floor with her knees curled into her chest and her arms hugging her knees too tight and restricting her lungs so that they screamed louder than the thoughts in her head. It was smelly, and weirdly sticky, but she didn’t care. She was tearing out her hair, or was that even her hair?

The air was being stubborn and hiding from her nose, so she sucked in deep breaths through her mouth, but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. It was so hot in the room but she was so cold, and her throat was so dry and parched that her tongue felt like rubber on sandpaper.

Breathe.

Breathe. Was this even her nose?

Breathe.

It didn’t matter, she didn’t think.

Was this even her brain?

She didn’t care.

She smiled up deliriously at the ceiling. “Hello,” she said, and she knew it sounded like honey in December, but all it felt like was February rain.

It was too cold for her here.

Way too cold........

She wanted to just fall asleep.

...

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the world would let her not wake up?

She hated that fairy that had given her mother the boon of the most beautiful child.

She wished she could be ugly. She wished that when she cried people didn’t whisper about how beautiful she was. She wished that her anger was horrifying. She wished her ill manners were repulsive. 

She wished she could be ugly.

Prompt #4

(Character A) is a superhero who keeps getting sued. (Character B) is their lawyer.