No Self-Control and WiPpet Wednesday

I shouldn't be allowed to keep my computers and my debit card near each other, and particularly not when I'm not exactly feeling cheery.  I end up... buying things.  And I forget to read the dimensions on the things I'm buying, so when they arrive I get a bit of a surprise.

At least it gives me things to play with on my desk.

...Not that I can be trusted on that front either...

Still got very little on the actual writing front done, though at some point I know I'm going to have to stop staring at one of these stories and start writing.  At least the characters are still fidgeting around in my head and providing new revelations—for instance, one did actually deign to tell me his name was Demiah and he has heterochromia, so now I at least know what he looks like.  Always useful.

In non-writing news, although I've not resumed work on the other four (*sigh*) crochet projects, I did sit down yesterday and crochet a cuddly bunny.  It was kind of an experiment, to see if it'd be feasible to make some for my NaNoWriMo group, but he was too fiddly and time consuming: around five hours total, start to finish and finding eyes etc.  Plus, making him used almost all of a 50g ball of yarn, soooo...

And halfway through it I remembered stray fibres really don't play so well with my sinuses, so that wasn't much fun either.

Ahh, it's been such an exciting week.

WiPpet Wednesday

WiPpet Wednesday is K. L. Schwengel's brilliant blog hop, where everyone shares snippets of their works in progress with just one twist: the snippet must in some way relate to the date!  It's a lot of fun (I say this every week, don't I?  Well, it's true) and you can sign up and read other participants' WiPpets here.

Apropos of last week, I meant to reply to everyone's comments but somehow it got away from me...  I should say that RQ isn't a crossdresser in the everyday, 21st century meaning of the term.  It's a little hard to explain, but (as I'll no doubt go into further detail on later), he was born on and has lived his entire life on an orbital space station—and a quite particular one at that, but that's a little spoileriffic—with its attendant lack of access to anything other than plain, functional clothes that are assigned to pretty much everyone on board.

...In short, as far as RQ's concerned, if the clothes fit and look good on him, he couldn't care less who they were intended for.  This in no way reflects personal reasons for my general horror over clothing stores and their layouts, of course.  And Fayth certainly isn't complaining.  :p

It's the 3rd June today (and a surprisingly humid day too), and as a result my maths is 3 × 6 = 18, plus 2 from the year for a total of 20 paragraphs.  They don't follow exactly on from where I last posted, I skipped a little bit about Fayth asking why RQ was kidnapped for his gardening skills so I could have a section instead that shows how sheltered RQ actually is...

When he looked up again, it was with a proud smile that took Fayth’s breath away. “I’m the only person who can grow Halfeti roses in space.”

Fayth stared blankly at him.

He’d feared his incomprehension would dim the man’s pride; instead, the Rose Queen grinned. “They’re black roses, hence the name.”

Well, that made sense, as much as anything plant-related did, although it didn’t necessarily answer one important thing: “but... Queen?”

The Rose Queen shrugged. “I know as much as you do about that. It’s probably the hair. It usually is.”

It was so, so difficult to resist the urge to lean across and run his fingers through the glossy black strands, but Fayth had already seen how unexpected contact seemed to make him nervous, and with good reason judging from the events of a few hours before. Still, he couldn’t help imagining touching it, envisioning it spread behind him like a dark halo as he lay, sweet and compliant and beautifully naked, on the floor beneath him—

He hurriedly turned his attention to the navigation panel. “Maybe it was to throw people off the scent.” His voice sounded thicker than it should; he swallowed a few times, trying desperately to clear his mind. “You know, to make sure people were looking for a woman, not for a man.”

“Maybe.” The Rose Queen didn’t sound convinced.

Fayth waited until it was clear no further answer was forthcoming, then busied himself with re-checking their co-ordinates for the fourth time in as many minutes. No change; big surprise. He leaned forward to flick to another exterior camera.

The Rose Queen murmured something in surprise and reached out toward Fayth’s hand, pausing when Fayth froze. “Can I look?”

“At what?”

“Your knuckles,” he said, frowning at the hand in question. “When you hit—there was blood. You hurt yourself.”

“Oh, yeah. That.” Swallowing again, he let the Rose Queen very gently take his right hand and turn it this way and that. “My nanites are pretty good. I was fixed up within a minute.”

His frown deepened. “Nanites?”

Some people might be suspicious of them, but pretty much everyone Fayth had ever met at least knew what they were. How could the Rose Queen not? It was Fayth’s turn to frown at nothing in particular, the feeling of the Rose Queen’s skin on his own momentarily forgotten. “Yeah. You know.” But his mystified expression made it obvious he didn’t. “Tiny robots designed to repair any scratches or scrapes I get... or pretty much anything else so long as it’s not too badly damaged. They even fix diseases.”

The Rose Queen dropped his hand like it burned. “Really?” His voice filled with either distaste or panic, and Fayth wasn’t sure which. “They’re inside you? Can they get out?”

“Well, I assume I lose some when I sweat or sneeze or whatever, but they replicate to keep up a steady supply, so—what?”

Horror was written plainly across the other man’s face. “I could catch them from you?”

“No!” He laughed, unsure whether to be amused or just slightly insulted. “No, they’re hardcoded to my DNA. They won’t work for anyone else so don’t worry, you’re safe.”

“Oh...” The Rose Queen breathed, taking possession of Fayth’s hand again to stare more closely at his knuckles. There was no trace of the graze beyond some flecks of dried blood staining the back of his hand, which the Rose Queen flaked away with one nail.