things happen in threes?

I have good news and bad news. The good news: I've been working on a sequel to The Eleventh Annual Hide or Die Summer Challenge. The bad news: I don't like how it started, so I'm scratching it. In fact, I'm still pretty uncertain about the story as a whole right now. I think that's mostly because I started out with a plan, and then started writing from Charlie's POV and realized that what I had in the first place just wasn't going to work. It wasn't Charlie to me. At the very least, it wasn't the story he wanted to tell. So I've started over. But I thought I'd post the scrapped bit here, just for fun. So that's like good news #2.

Good news #3 is that I've decided to do a series of stories concerning the extended Harris family, tentatively titled The Harris Family Tree. I've already got some ideas as to who's story I'll do next, and while I know that some of the characters from TEAHODSC are more popular than others, I should warn you ahead of time that I don't know if all the Harris children will have one. Mostly because I don't want to force a story on them - if they want to tell one, they'll let me know (bash me over the head with it, more like), but until that happens I'm just gonna write whoever's talkin'.

I would, however, love to hear your ideas, so if you really want to see a specific character's story or think it would be hysterical if [insert shinnanigans here] happened to one of the Harris kindred, kindly let me know. Who knows, it might inspire me. ;]

Now, without further ado, enjoy the scrap:
---------------------
Scrapped Hide or Die Sequel Start
[Rated-T for Charlie's dirty mind]

Hello. My name is Charlie Harris, I’m twenty-two, and I’ve had a crush on Adelaide Clark since the tenth grade.

It sounds more serious than it really is. I didn’t go to school with Addles – not until college, at least. But she and my cousins were friends for the longest time, so I’ve known her practically all my life. In the beginning I only saw her during the summer, and sometimes during holidays, whenever my parents took us to see the Harris cousins. She wasn’t much of anything to me then. I went to my own school, grew up in my own neighborhood, and did my own thing. I had the same crappy experience in Middle School that everybody else has. And then high school rolled around, and things changed a little. More specifically, girls changed. You girls blame puberty for this crap; I blame you. You didn’t have to wear that damn skirt to school. You didn’t have to wear the red shirt that practically molded itself to your breasts. No, that was all you.

About the same time, I stop trying to avoid being caught under the mistletoe at my Aunt and Uncle’s Christmas Extravaganza (we capitalize all important events in the Harris family), and started hunting for the perfect moment to catch Addles under it. I’m not sure why I picked Addles, beyond the fact that she was practically one of the only people at the party I wasn’t related to. That, and she looks ridiculously good in green.

She looks good in anything and nothing, actually, but don’t tell her I said that.

It figures that once I started actually trying to get her under the mistletoe, we never meet under one again. After two years of plotting I realized it probably wasn’t ever going to happen, and did the obvious guy thing and decided that little ol’ Addles is the hottest thing since sliced bread. I couldn’t have her, so obviously to make up for that I’d crush on her even more, leer when she wasn’t looking, and think about her when I masturbated. I’m positive that she never even so much as looked my way twice in those days. I was a Harris cousin, and lord knows there’s about a jillion of us running around.

And then one glorious Christmas, all of that changed. Since I couldn’t accidentally stick my tongue down her throat via a coincidental rendezvous under the red and green, I resigned myself to pretending she didn’t make me hotter than hell and made myself be sarcastic and antagonizing while meanwhile memorizing exactly what she looked like so I could go home later and make the most of my vivid imagination. It figures that the one time I’m not trying to corner her at all is the one time we actually get caught under one together. Thank god for Greg and his evil ways, otherwise the blessed opportunity might have passed us by completely.

I remember locating Greg again sometime later as the party was dwindling and thanking him. I might have been a little drunk at that point, but I could still taste her tongue in my mouth – in mine! – and I needed to let the eldest cousin know how much I appreciated the moment.

He laughed at me.

But to be fair, I was probably far more vulgar than I’m letting on. Alcohol turns me into a complete lecher.

Adelaide knows this well.

Maybe before the kiss I would have started to ween myself off of her. I would have started to notice other girls the same I way I noticed her, and I would have looked forward to specific classes or some dumb after school activity the same way I looked forward to going over to see the cousins. Maybe before the kiss I could have filed her away as a “what if” kind of scenario, locked that drawer, and moved on.

But once I kissed her that was it – I knew this was something I would have to do far more often. I knew I wanted to do far more than kiss her, that was for damn sure.

that particular scenario

I think everybody who reads or watches movies is pretty familiar with this scenario: boy (or girl... we're equal opportunity here) begins epic journey; boy meets girl; boy fights with girl; boy saves girl; girl joins the party; boy falls in love with girl; girl dies... or leaves... potentially because girl is not actually from the same world as boy and as such they can never really be together.

I know, I know. I've seen way too much anime, probably.

Anyway, two of my favorite examples of that particular scenario are FFX and Escaflowne. Youtube has some amazing music videos of both, so I thought I'd share the angsty, romantic deliciousness with the rest of the world.

Escaflowne
"I Surrender"

FFX
"Wherever You Will Go"

You might need a box of kleenex for these.

wishful thinking [rated-M]

The breeze coming in from the open window was cool, especially so against her bare, damp skin. She could smell the faint scent of the sweet olives wafting in with it and that, combined with the lazy stroke of his fingers on her back, lulled her into a hazy, dream-like state. This was something she could get used to. The chase had lasted for weeks - it went on for so long, in fact, that she'd begun to doubt the outcome. Jordan had seriously thought there for a little bit that nothing would ever happen, that maybe he really wasn't all that interested after all and she'd only imagined those moments of intensity when his eyes drifted over to her - had some how conjured them up out of her own desperate want. But now here she was, languid and spent after three energetic and impassioned hours of hot, sweaty sex, feeling very much like a well-sated house cat licking her whiskers, and almost entirely convinced that she'd just been to heaven and back.

"It's almost four." His deep voice was low and throaty. It was the kind of voice that she felt just as much as she heard, made even sexier by the fact that it was the kind of voice one did not expect from a man his size. Aaron was slender, only a few inches taller than she was, and could probably fit into her jeans. But then he opened his mouth and that low, gorgeous baritone rolled out and made her skin goosebump. She remembered one of the first times she'd seen him - he'd had a presence to him, a kind of lazy and brooding confidence, but it was hearing his voice that had really made her look twice.

She traced a finger over the dark lines on his arm, admiring the design of the sleeve. The tattoo went from his shoulder to his elbow, inky swirls and shapes intermingling with vague references from music and other places. It was one of the other things she'd found incredibly attractive about him. "You kicking me out?" She asked, her own voice light and teasing.

The hand caressing her back continued without interruption but the one he'd had on her thigh began to show its own signs of movement, his thumb brushing lightly across her skin. It had been too warm to cover up afterwards; she'd been hot and sticky and the open window was a much needed refreshment. Now, her skin still felt a little damp but the breeze and his fingers were starting to send delicious little shivers up and down her spine. It felt more than good.

"I don't think so," Aaron replied, with a hint of amusement. She could detect in her the slow build up of warmth again as he asked, "You have anything to do tomorrow?"

Jordan made a sound of dissent, her fingers still tracing over his tattoo. "Nothing. No class on Wednesdays."

"Good." He paused. "You want coffee in the morning?"

She stretched a little and tilted her head up to kiss the side of his throat, just under his jaw. "Mmm, Starbucks?"

"Yes, snob."

She could feel the low words vibrate up out of his throat as he spoke, and pressed her lips against his Adam's apple gently, becoming a little more aroused. It didn't help that his hand on her thigh had begun caressing a little more determinedly. "Of course," she murmured, and moved her attention to his jaw line.

It was an attention that didn't last long. The hand on her back moved up her spine into her hair, threading his fingers through the already tangled strands, and pulled her head back as he shifted down to kiss her. His mouth moved expertly over hers as his body did the same, lifting her leg over his hip as he edged his way in between her legs. She arched up against him and both gave low, shuddering breaths at that southern contact before resuming the kiss with a little more force.

It still surprised her how fast the need built up - he could make her uncomfortably warm with one look. The rest went unsaid.

Aaron hooked her other leg around him and then shifted even closer, sliding one throbbing warmth into another. They were a snug fit, and his slow, leisurely movements produced for both of them the same exquisitely painful sensations they'd indulged in only an hour before. As their momentum picked up, he couldn't seem to keep his mouth off of her, moving over her neck and breasts with his tongue and his teeth as she raked her fingers through his short hair and dug her heels into his back to push him even closer. The easy summer pace they'd set gave way to one that was much harder, and a little frantic.

And then there was the peak, the head over heels plunge, and then a gradual dissipation that left behind a kind of hazy, mild fog of pleasure that still tingled every now and again. Aaron half sighed, half groaned into her neck, and swore under his breath exhaustedly. "I'm just going to stay here," he muttered, and rolled his hips against hers almost playfully. The slight shivers that followed were a pleasurable reminder that he was still buried inside her.

"Comfortable?" She asked, amused.

He grinned against her neck and then kissed a particularly tender spot, his tongue flicking against the already bruising skin. "Yes," was his eventual, matter-of-fact answer.