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June 2020 Writing Prompts
June is here! A very special welcome to all our new and returning players; it's good to have you here! There's a lot going on in and off the community right now, and we hope that this gives you at least a little respite from the real world. And As always--
Disclaimer: I never close old writing prompts from previous months. People can and should be encouraged to post on old month's prompts and I highly encourage players to track these posts to catch stragglers or new people writing on old prompts.
Now. With that out of the way, onto this month's prompts.
1. "I could just fall asleep right here."
2. Coming home to a pleasant surprise.
3. "Well, I've solved one problem... and found two more."
4. What's your character's fondest memory?
5. "I thought you were kidding, but this is actually pretty good."
Bonus image prompt:
1
“Goodness, I was actually starting to get worried. Usually you at least drop me a text if you are asked to cover a second shift.”
Minoru kicked off his shoes, stretching some of the stiffness out of his joints. “Didn’t take a second shift. I was over at Ziggy’s.”
“All night?”
“Yeah. Mister Newton sent me a pinpoint message while I was on shift, and I checked out right then and there.”
At that point, Isamu turned around in his chair, clutching his green tea in both hands. If Minoru had left his job with that degree of urgency, this had to be serious. “Oh no, is everyone all right? What happened?”
“Hiroki’s gone.”
“Again?” Isamu recalled the last time, how distraught his brother was upon finding Ziggy in such a deplorable state.
“For good.” Minoru replied, shaking his head. “Something about the witch destroying either the portal back here or their entire universe. I don’t know. I don’t know if anybody really knows. But Ziggy’s...”
When his voice trailed off, Isamu finished the sentence for him. “I believe the word you are searching for is inconsolable...”
“Yeah.” Minoru nodded. Isamu sipped his tea. “He was wailing so loudly, you could hear it outside the house. And you could feel it too. Mister Newton gave me earplugs, but Tom was trying to get him to drink some gin to knock himself out. It was bad. But I was able to help calm him down, without even touching the gin!”
Minoru was proud about that part. He (and Hiroki as well, among who knew how many others) had made Ziggy promise not to overdose again. Drowning those feelings in gin, even once, could be a very slippery slope for a grieving Anthean.
“Oh? What method did you employ that resulted in such profound success?” Isamu asked curiously. His scientific wheels were certainly turning.
“Believe it or not, most of it was the meditation exercises on those yoga videos you had back in undergrad.” He laughed, and Isamu took a rather large sip. “Then I kinda ended up sleeping with him.”
Isamu choked. With no desire to aspirate a lung full of matcha, the tea went the only place it could go - out, over everything, in a cartoonish spit-take.
“...repeat that, if you would?” He coughed, spitting and sputtering.
“Uh... I ended up sleeping with Ziggy?”
Minoru had a nervous smile on his face, and was scratching his head - mannerisms that were in no way out of character. But the words themselves - the behavior of which his brother was referencing - simply did not line up with ANYTHING Isamu would have ever expected to hear. He had tea stains down the front of a perfectly clean dress shirt and he didn’t even notice. Hell, he had tea stains on the pages of three different books and he didn’t even notice.
“YOU slept with ZIGGY?!” He spat, eyes bulging out of his head.
“Ziggy. Me. In his bed. Together... I think it really helped.”
You could hear the gears inside Isamu’s mind grinding to a complete halt. Error messages were flashing in the central processing unit.
“In... in bed... with Ziggy Stardust...”
Minoru nodded his head. “Tom needed to take a break. When he came back, he found us, tucked us in, and made me a sandwich.”
Isamu was thankful he hadn’t even considered taking another drink. He was still choking on the last one, and that didn’t help.
“Major Jones... found YOU... in BED... with his son... I mean daughter... I mean... ZIGGY...” Isamu sputtered. “And made you a sandwich?!”
“I’m pretty sure half of the veggies weren’t even native to this planet.”
On any other day, at any other moment in time separate from this conversation, Isamu would have been thrilled at the prospect of diving into the topic of Anthean vegetation. However...
“The sandwich is hardly the important part of that sentence! After our visit with the Major, between the conflict and misunderstandings and the boundary discussions you actually practiced in front of the bathroom mirror before having the conversation with Ziggy, you... How are you even remotely calm about this?!”
“I don’t know. Even Tom thought Anthean grief was going to be completely overwhelming. But, bro, he needed somebody.” The pain was evident in Minoru’s voice. “He didn’t just lose his fiancé. For an Anthean, it’s like losing a part of your soul or something. He needed an anchor, so I just did whatever I could to calm him down... bring him back from the brink... any friend would have done the same.”
“But... but...” Isamu whispered.
“I think the yoga thing helped.”
“That... honestly... I mean... Minoru...” he sputtered, the effects of increased flexibility coming immediately to mind, shoving vocabulary and proper sentence structure right out the window. He nervously joked, “and I suppose if I dared to ask you how he behaved in bed...”
“Well, he was in my arms most of the time...” Minoru scratched his head. “Tom didn’t warn me how much of a cuddler he is. I think next year, I need to buy him one of those giant teddy bears...”
“A teddy bear... Minoru... I... YOU... I mean... I think I need to sit down...” Isamu’s voice trailed off as he reached for the arms of the chair.
“Bro. You ARE sitting down. You’ve been sitting down since I came in... are you okay?”
“I am fine. Absolutely fine. I just... I simply do not believe this...”
“Seriously, Isamu. What’s so hard to believe?!”
Large, overdramatic gestures preceded the words, “You... YOU... SLEPT. WITH. ZIGGY!!”
“Oh. Ohhhh...” He immediately smirked. “Not like THAT!!”
“I beg your pardon.”
“I sat on his bed and held him in my arms until he fell asleep on top of me. Didn’t want to wake him, and I was so exhausted, I pretty much just passed out too. Right there.” Told that way, it painted a very different, far more reasonable picture. “What did YOU think I was doing?!”
Isamu turned bright red.
“You did that on purpose.”
Minoru snickered. His friendship with the rock star was certainly starting to rub off in some ways. “You might want to change shirts before you go to the lab.”
4 - Fondest Memory (Ziggyverse AU)
Of course, they both knew practically every inch of the venue already. Jay performed there regularly for years. Dee, though not as regularly, had sung in multiple choruses beside the orchestra.
They knew if you sat in Orchestra East, you could read the sheet music off the bassists' stands as they played. They knew if you sat in Terrace west, you could watch the pianist's hands as they played. They knew where every wheelchair accessible seat was - and every section had them. Hell, they even knew that the architect's favorite spot was along the exterior, at the apex of the stairwell that goes from one side of the building to another, where you could see the auditorium through a small window. (The best seat in the house that didn't even need a ticket.) Dee snuck up there once, when he was still at Cal Arts and could climb stairs. It would be a lot harder to get up there now.
But despite all of that, Dee was happy listening to the tour guide talk about everything from the rose statue in the Blue Ribbon Garden to the acoustics of the Hall. It was so personal, so peaceful, and about to be so entirely unforgettable.
"Now, we normally don't let people on stage, but you said you used to perform with the LA Phil, right?" The tour guide asked as she took them through one of the adjacent doors to avoid the stairs.
"First violin, for two years." Jay smiled, gazing out to a familiar seat. The LA Phil tended to rotate their musicians, so he wasn't always in the same spot every time. But Jay had fond memories of at least one seat in particular. "And I believe I was sitting there when I first saw you in the choir...."
Dee snickered, and the tour guide smiled.
"I was definitely sitting there when you had a solo part." He pointed to the chair on the end as he walked over and sat down.
"Do you remember where you stood?" The tour guide asked as she took hold of the wheelchair handles.
Dee pointed, and she was more than happy to oblige, even if it left him facing the audience instead of his date. "You know, looking back on it... he got a far nicer view of me than the other way around."
"And you've been together ever since?" The guide smiled, buying time as Jay reached into his pocket. While Dee was still in the dark, their tour guide knew exactly what was about to happen. "That's so romantic."
Dee couldn't help but laugh. "Well, not at the time..."
A concerned look crept over the tour guide's face, but thankfully, it was short-lived as the singer explained the odd way their relationship began.
"I could stand a lot longer back then. But not always for as long as rehearsals lasted... It was the final dress rehearsal, the day before opening night, and I collapsed on stage. I wasn't hurt." He clarified. "...but it's not like anyone expected it. I... wasn't really as open about my condition back then. It wasn't like I had to be."
"They shouted for help, and I jumped in." Jay added. "I guess you could say all those years in nursing school paid off."
"Yeah. It kept them from calling an ambulance."
Needless to say, the relationship itself had a very rocky start. One of them was a young college student with a debilitating illness, a corresponding phobia of practically everyone in the medical field, and a hell of a lot to prove. The other was hitting his thirties and trying to juggle working at a new nursing agency with the musical career that he still dreamed of having. They were an unlikely pair. But persistence, too, paid off, in more ways than one.
"Yeah... that was the exact spot you swept me off my feet by failing to stay on yours." He reminisced, walking across the stage in roughly the same path. "And now, it's time for me return the favor."
He dropped to his knee, and held out a ring.
"My little Blackbird, will you marry me?"