WiPpet Wednesday: return of the half-arsed project

In most respects it's been an uneventful week, with the exception of yesterday and today...  Yesterday I decided to do a factory reset on my Nexus 7, Lydia, since she's a 2012 model whose battery life became steadily more and more appalling over time and who I suspect never quite recovered from having something like 8 failed attempts at installing Android 4.4.4 (gods only know why!).  One factory reset later and we have battery life again, far fewer apps and... absolutely no saved progress in things like Temple Run.  Sigh.  There goes 60+ gems and a few million coins...

Then today my work laptop, Four, decided he didn't much like last night's Windows update.  System froze literally five minutes after booting, and again three minutes after resetting.  I've narrowed down the problems so I guess I just have to wait and see if my fixes have worked.

And then our internet went down this morning, so it's been just great today.

Other than that, still working on the Half-Arsed Project, but it's unlikely I'll get to 30,000 before the end of Camp NaNo.  I'm at 15,000 now.

Speaking of that...

WiPpet Wednesday

It's that time of the week again!  The blog hop where everyone's WIP entries relate in some way to the date, hosted by the ever-gracious and brilliant K. L. Schwengel.  Curious?  You can find out more, visit other WiPpeteers and sign up yourself over here.

It's the 22nd July 2015 today, so my maths is going to be arse-about-face.  1 + 5 = 6.  7 - 6 = 1.  2 + 1 = 3 for butchering of the year and month.  22 + 3 = 5, for 25 sentences of the half-arsed projects that one character would quite like to turn into a detective story.  Unfortunately for him he's not the main character, so we'll just ignore him.

This is the closest we've been getting to tender scenes between Ais and Lirio just lately, and follows on from an ill-judged attempt by Lirio to hunt down information in places he really shouldn't, and a somewhat less ill-judged rescue by Ais...

This, on top of everything else, was almost unbearable.  He’d spent all that time—that he hadn’t had and he knew it even then—desperately searching Siwen’s office for something that would incriminate her and exonerate Ais, and he’d found nothing but a splitting headache and a fresh opportunity for her to make him suffer.

“Lirio?”  Ais asked softly.

“What is it?”  Because he’d better have found something, or—

“What did you mean, ‘because of me’?”

He hesitated, swallowing a couple of times.  “I needed her to think you were off-guard.  You needed her to think that.  Or that mobile mountain in the room with us...”

Ais snorted.  “He wasn’t that big.”

“Maybe not when you’re facing him or standing up,” he said bitterly.

One of Ais’ most irritating qualities was how few strides it took him to quickly cover ground; one of his most endearing qualities—not that Lirio would tell him and run the risk of him becoming big-headed—was how inexplicably comforting his arms were when they wrapped around Lirio’s shoulders.  “I should have got there sooner,” he mumbled into Lirio’s hair.  “I shouldn’t have let you go in alone.”

Guilt wasn’t a feeling Lirio was particularly accustomed to, and it certainly wasn’t one he enjoyed.  He should pull away from Ais, say something blunt to remind him he could barely protect himself, let alone Lirio.

He covered Ais’ arms with his own and allowed his eyes to close, savouring the feeling of his breath against his hair.  “You weren’t to know,” he said softly.  “Don’t worry.”

For once, Ais said nothing.  The fingers gently cupping Lirio’s shoulders squeezed gently.

“Well isn’t this the most disgustingly touching scene,” a sneering voice sheared through their reverie.  “I’d be sick but I wouldn’t want to ruin any evidence any more than you already have.”