100 Themes, 500 words.

100 themes, 500 words per day: This is the goal. Unfortunately I still have a term paper to write that's due in a week so I don't know when I'll be able to start this.

Soon, hopefully.

1. Entrance
2. Love
3. Light
4. Dark
5. Solitude
6. Break Away
7. BAM!
8. Graffiti
9. Ink
10. Breathe Again
11. Memory
12. Insanity
13. Misfortune
14. Caffeine
15. Bamboo
16. 367
17. I Create Things
18. Noodles
19. Gray
20. Puddle
21. Fluffy
22. Big Tree
23. Eyepatch
24. No Time
25. Tomorrow
26. Swirly
27. Insomnia
28. Sorrow
29. Happiness
30. Under the Rain
31. Monday
32. Night
33. Expectations
34. Stars
35. Imperfection
36. He Was a Sexy Man
37. Eyes
38. Abandoned
39. Dreams
40. Fantasia
41. Awesomeness
42. Standing Still
43. Dying
44. Two Roads
45. Illusion
46. Family
47. Jukebox
48. Childhood
49. Stripes
50. Breaking the Rules
51. Ninja
52. Deep in Thought
53. Lanterns
54. Tower
55. Exotic
56. I <3 Gid
57. Sacrifice
58. Kick in the Head
59. No Way Out
60. Rejection
61. Fairy Tale
62. Tangled
63. Do Not Disturb
64. Wires
65. Horror
66. Emergence
67. Playing the Melody
68. Hero
69. Annoyance
70. 67%
71. Obsession
72. Fly Me to the Moon
73. All the World's a Stage
74. Tattoo
75. Mirror
76. Balloons
77. Wish
78. Fishies
79. Misunderstanding
80. Words
81. Pen and Paper
82. Can You Hear Me?
83. Heal
84. Cups
85. Barrel Roll
86. Red
87. Classical
88. Rubber Ducky
89. Triangle
90. Drowning
91. Plaid
92. Give Up
93. Bird's Eye Perspective
94. Advertisement
95. Locks
96. Keys
97. Safety First
98. Bubbles
99. TV
100. Exit

Shameless Advertising

So, just to see if anyone subscribed or is actually following...

I'm planning on starting to write 500 words a day on a random subject starting soonish. I have tests to study for and term papers to write in the next three weeks though so it might be a bit before I get to that. I'll take any subject matter suggestions into consideration if you leave it in the comments.

Also, if you really are looking for more stuff to read, you can check out my friend's blog: http://satiricalprose.blogspot.com

She does a lot of work with me with the Jack and Risa stuff, so if you're into that you should check out Semantics.

That is all.

Snippets

As I go through my writing folder on my computer, I've found all sorts of things I had initially planned to work on, but had never gotten more than a few sentences or paragraphs in. These were things that were meant to be much longer but never got finished, not just the short drabbles that I do sometimes - those are meant so be concise, compact ideas.

The problem with these is that I wouldn't even want to post them as WIPs because there's so little material present.

[WOSF] Easy [Complete]

“I love you,” Elias whispered, bending down so that his lips were just a few inches from her ear. While she cleaned the blade of her sword. Allowing himself so close to her while bringing up such a delicate subject was a dangerous decision, but a calculated one.

“And what made you decide that burdening me with this information now was a good idea, on the eve of the end of the world?” She looked up at him with stormy eyes narrowed. “Did the sacred wisdom of the ages tell you so?” He could tell even now by the dry sarcasm in her voice that her approval of the entire invasion plan was thin at best.

He chuckled slightly, shaking his head as he turned his gaze from her and out to the horizon. “I wanted you to know in the event I didn't have another chance to say so.” He paused for a moment, before slipping a silver ring with a large red gem off of his finger and producing a silver chain from the pocket of his breeches. Pea couldn't help but glance down and watch his fingers fumble, noting to herself that even though he carried the sacred fire tomb with him now, he still dressed in the garb of a swordfighter and his sword scabbard hung from his side, the only difference now being the dark crimson cloak that hung from his shoulders, marking him as a prince and a fire mage.

The sandy-haired woman sighed and set her blade down on the cargo box she was perched on. “If you don't have another chance to speak with me after this is all over I would be quite disappointed in you... having gone through all the trouble to teach you to use a sword only for you to die. It would look bad for me as a teacher.”

Elias cracked a grin, despite himself. “And of course, that's all that matters.”

“Of course,” she replied evenly.

He stood in silence for a moment, still looking out over the deck of the ship rather than at Pea or at his fingers as they unclasped the chain and slid the silver ring onto it. “I want you to have this,” he said finally, looking over at her again and holding the chain outstretched in his hand. “The band is likely too big for your fingers, so wear it around your neck. It's magic.”

“You know how I feel about magic, my Lord Sage.” He knew she was going to give him problems, even over something as simple as this. It wouldn't be like her not to, after all.

“Yes, but I also think I know how you feel about me,” he replied, grabbing one of her hands with his free hand and placing the chain in it. “And as flighty and fickle as women are... hold on to it for me for a while at least.” He curled her fingers over her palm, gazing back into her eyes as he did so.

Pea nursed her lip for a moment before nodding slightly and pulling her hand out of his grasp to inspect the contents. “Do not think I am so easily won by trinkets and charms,” she murmured, unclasping the chain and refastening it around her neck before inspecting the ring more closely.

“I know better than to presume anything involving you could ever be considered 'easy',” he replied with a slight laugh.

~~~

So, this is an introduction drabble into a fantasy story I've been contemplating in the last week or so, although in the timeline I have planned it would actually be quite near the end. The problem I have with this story is that it feels like something that should be less of a written narrative and more of a video game.

I Want You [Complete]

I want you.

She stared at the phone's tiny screen, taking a deep breath and letting the air escape through barely-parted lips. A wave of emotion hit her, something the stupid, childish part of her automatically and incessantly declared as love despite the more experienced half of her brain knowing better. No, this was physical lust, pure and simple, garnered from events and actions taken two weeks ago to the day that in all honesty probably should have never happened.

And she loved it.

She bit her lip, contemplating the characters of her response as she selected each key deliberately. It wasn't something she did often, usually hitting the buttons on her phone as quickly as she could tell her fingers to do so and leaving room for any number of mistakes and typos. This, though... this was important. Important for the moment; as important as any single moment could be.

I want you too.

She paused for a second more, before hitting send.

~~~

Short little drabble, not related to anything. Complete.

Take You Back [complete]

She wished, at this point, that she was a guy.

Guys had it easy, after all. Anyone who had ever seen a romantic comedy knew that all you had to do to win a girl's heart back after a fight or the unwanted breakup was show up outside her window and croon some sappy sweet song, waiting for her to appear in the window a la Romeo and Juliet. Just grab a guitar and go, or, barring that, show up at school or one of her hangouts and play some beautiful music with lots of oohs and aahs and 'nobody said it was easy's.

She wanted to pick up a guitar and run after him. She wanted to wheel an upright piano onto some stage and pour her all her hurt and sorrow out into a heartbroken ballad, on display for the whole damn city to see. She wanted to find the perfect song to say 'I'll still take you back even though that skanky pitysex bootycall you called to pick you up got blood on my carpet after I punched her in the face and broke her nose.'

Yeah, she would have made a better guy, she decided, crouching against the door and rubbing the scratch marks left on her cheek by fake nails. Not that it mattered much now.

"I hope she makes you pay for the hospital bill, you ass," she mumbled quietly.

~~~

A drabble I wrote a while ago. Short, simple, not really related to anything.

[JIL] Beach Vacation, Part 3 [WIP]

Despite his rather melodramatic display earlier in the restaurant, it appeared as though Jack had remembered the advice that the waiter (who would now forever be referred to as Fernando in Risa's mind) had given them: go to the beach.

That, and there really wasn't anything else to do at this point.

The flip-flops both Jack and Risa were wearing stayed on for as long as they were walking through the parking lot; once the two had climbed over the rocky precipice that served as a sort of natural stairway onto the sand, they were kicked off in unison. Risa tucked hers in the crook of one arm, holding both arms across her chest for warmth against the ocean breeze; Jack held his limply at his side, bumping them against the woman occasionally as they walked.

As soon as she saw the breaking of the waves against the sand, Risa felt the sudden urge to go running out to meet them. It was only after she had taken a few excited steps out towards the water that she remembered that it was almost ten o'clock out, that it was maybe fifty degrees out, and that she wasn't seven years old anymore.

“I'm cold,” she murmured to herself, nursing her lip. A quick glance revealed bonfires dotted along the beach, meaning that all the good driftwood had probably been taken already.

A soft foomph in the sand next to her announced where Jack had decided to sit and enjoy the view. She dug her toes into the sand for a moment, finally deciding that he tended to be decent enough company, and if he was going to keep up his dickery she could always just start walking away. An unceremonious flop later, she was sitting next to him and looking out at the waves once more.

Risa couldn't remember how long it had been exactly since she had been here last. They would take a vacation to the coast every summer and it was one of the few memories of her parents she could genuinely look back upon fondly, yet they had just decided to stop coming one year for reasons she had never really found satisfactory answers to. All she knew right now was that it was gorgeous, and, as an involuntary shiver reminded her, cold. She set her flip-flops on her open side and drew her knees to her torso, stealing a glance over at Jack only to find him pulling his sweatshirt off and tossing it at her. She paused, blinking at him a few times as he gazed steadily out at the ocean and seemingly refusing to look back. Shaking her head at his ridiculousness, she let out a slightly exaggerated sigh.

“I'm still not going to sleep with you,” she informed him half-jokingly, finally deciding that she'd take the sweatshirt, cliché as it was for the situation, and slipping the fabric around her arms.

From the corner of her eye, she saw him smirk. “Yeah... except you already are.”

She rolled her eyes. “Har har, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, well,” he murmured, looking up at the nearly cloudless sky, “Who said I wanted any repeats on my resume, anyway?”

“Right.” She looked down at the zipper of the sweatshirt, thankful for the darkness as she felt the blood rush to her cheeks. The wind was blowing and it was cold out, she assured herself mentally, and that was why. It had nothing to do with him at all.

The iPod in her other hand had been playing continuously the whole walk, and she finally paused long enough to pay attention to it. She wanted to say something, but she didn't know what; she wanted to do something but she didn't want to bother getting up. So she sat and listened to the music playing in one ear, before taking her finger and beginning to draw in the sand.

Eventually though, the cold and the hour of night won out over Risa's love of scrawling lyrical nonsense for the tide to wash away. Her little pet project had soon outgrown the immediate vicinity of their spots in the sand, and Risa had stood up, writing ever bigger letters and longer verses from whatever song came on her iPod or just happened to pop into her head. By the way he was pacing around, muttering inanely to himself, and by the occasional “What the fuck does that even mean?” the breeze brought to her ears, she could tell that Jack had been ready to go back for a while.

She backtracked to the original spot where they had sat down, grabbing her flip-flops and waiting expectantly for the male, looping her free arm around his now that her iPod was safely in the pocket of Jack's newly-liberated sweatshirt. He looked down at her with eyebrows raised; she met his gaze with a 'dare you to complain' grin.

He didn't, at least not about her arm. “Why do you even bother listening to the lyrics of this crap? I hate it when bands try to sound all profound and shit when the songs don't actually mean anything at all.”

She shrugged. “Like I said, I do it to fuck with people.”

“Liar,” he snorted, “You do it because you think it sounds cool and hope that someone will come along and read it and go 'hey that's interesting' and somehow remember or care long enough to Google it when they have access to the internet.”

“I think someone's just pissed he didn't get the references.”

“No, no, I'm really not.”

“Whatever.” Risa rolled her eyes, for the god-knows-what-th time that night. It occurred to her that she should probably find another means for expressing her distaste, as clearly this one wasn't really doing much.

“Whatever yourself. Quit being a bitch and trying to push this back on me when you're the one acting stupid. Like always.”

“Stupid's a pretty harsh label coming from someone who mentioned that both his livers were still intact and functioning the other day.”

“Fuck you.”

“We've been over this already,” she mused, tossing her sandals onto the rock in front of her and slipping her feet into them. Jack followed suit, pulling his arm out of her grip for balance and not bothering to offer it back after they had reached the top.

She told herself she wouldn't have taken it back even if he had.

“You know,” he began conversationally, his voice and the clacking of sandals against the paved concrete parking lot the only noise besides the distant crash of waves. “It almost hurts that you actually think I'm that much of an idiot... and then I remember: you're a bitch.”

“I thought irony was for hipsters and assholes?”

He gave her that look. That 'come on, really?' look that tended to embody half their conversations (friendly or otherwise), completed with a raised eyebrow and a dramatic blink. “I never denied being an asshole. You seem to mention it quite frequently yourself, in fact.”

“And it still applies,” she murmured, nursing her labret ring.

“Why? Because I'm not giving up on my point and telling you, 'oh, fine, you win'?”

“No,” she shook her head, quite thankful for the stairs up to the room that they were rapidly advancing towards. “Because you're a stubborn ass who doesn't know when to quit or let things go. What were we even talking about originally, or did you forget in your crusade to be right?”

He paused, taking the first few steps in silence.

“You,” he said finally. “You, and how you're so fucking cool and everything's about what you like and what you want. There's no room for dissent, no room for compromise, and anyone who disagrees is wrong and inferior for it.” He reached the top of the stairwell, reaching to pull the key out of the sweatshirt he wasn't wearing anymore. “You're just as bad as all those people you claim to hate.”

She shoved past him angrily, pulling the key she had been fingering out of the pocket and jamming it in the keyhole.

After fumbling for a moment, the redheaded woman pushed the door open to reveal that in the time Risa and Jack had spent out on the beach, Taylor and Clark had already fallen asleep. Either what the beach-going duo had assumed would be going on was a lot tamer than they had thought, or it was over more quickly than expected. Or, alternatively, they had just spent entirely too much time out in the relative cold, bickering.

Most likely, however, was some combination of all three.

Seeing Taylor sleeping peacefully was actually a fairly rare sight; it meant he had actually taken the sleeping medication he was prescribed. That also meant that there was a good chance they would be dealing with a zombie Taylor in the morning. In all honesty she wasn't sure what was really worse, but she like all people had been indoctrinated into believing that sleep was always the best course of action and she didn't have any other real evidence to the contrary to combat it. While generally she adhered to the notion of 'anarchy for anarchy's sake', going against the generally accepted thing just because it was generally accepted and didn't necessarily have any factual basis... when it came to Taylor, she didn't really mind occasionally going back on one of her usual principles. Sleep was good; medicinally-induced sleep just meant that they would have to give the man extra help making sure his shoes were matched and on the proper feet the next day.

Risa made her way through the room, cursing under her breath as she stumbled over suitcases and bags in the half-darkness, her only light source the sliding glass door that opened up to the outside deck and the unnatural orange glow of the streetlights (or, rather, parking-lot lights) that shown through it. Despite the far greater amount of noise than she had intended to make, she reached her own suitcase and pulled out what she had decided to sleep in: a pair of plaid pajama bottoms and a sports-bra. The disgustingly bright pink blanket that had been layered on top of everything else was tossed onto her side of the bed; she would return to it in a moment.

She pushed past Jack again, this time towards the bathroom, shooting him a glare rather than saying anything in a continued attempt to not wake anyone else up. Despite the fact that even if they were awake no one would really be able to make out anything particularly explicit, Risa still felt the need to change away from the men; she didn't want to freak Taylor or Clark out, and she didn't want to give Jack the satisfaction of seeing her strip.

She emerged a few minutes later, changed, teeth brushed, and all the rest of her nightly rituals adhered to. She tiptoed through the narrow walkway to her bed more carefully this time, setting her worn clothes down next to her suitcase and tossing the borrowed sweatshirt back at the brunette man fiddling with his cell phone in the bed.

“You look like some kind of fucked up modern-art lamp,” she goaded through barely parted lips, hopping on the mattress and immediately wrapping the pink blanket she had pulled from the suitcase earlier around her shoulders. Who cared if it was obnoxiously bright pink? She certainly didn't; it was warm, and it went everywhere with her, no matter how appropriate it actually was for the situation. The redhead had shown up for class on more than one occasion decked out in a fuzzy neon cape. After the immediate shock had worn off, she had to protect the blanket-turned-accessory from would-be thieves and classmates jealous of her truly awesome getup.

Angrily, Jack tore the sweatshirt from his head and motioned to chuck it back at her, before changing his mind mid-throw and tossing it easily into what the woman assumed was his pile of things on the other side. “Yeah, you're welcome,” he muttered, rolling onto his side and facing away from her.

Apparently whatever he was doing with his phone had died or otherwise been finished, as he tossed it over to wherever he had thrown the sweatshirt and flopped his head onto the pillows. By their usual standards it was still rather early yet, but for some reason, it seemed much later to them both now.

Risa followed suit, slipping under the blankets, turning her back to Jack and attempting to get comfortable in the foreign bed in the room she wasn't used to. Of course, falling asleep for her tended towards the difficult on the best of nights, but unlike Taylor she was too proud (or maybe just stubborn) to admit it to her doctor; instead she tacked her problems to any number of things ranging from too much light in the room to the mattress being too soft. Most prevalent, however, were her complaints of sleeping alone; perhaps it was actually due to the fact that when she slept with someone else in the bed she usually wasn't asleep so much as passed out from drinking, but she tended to 'sleep' better when she was with someone else. Not that it mattered now; at the moment she was seriously reconsidering the tub option as a viable alternative to dealing with the body she was currently supposed to share with.

“I'm not going to apologize to you,” she murmured, taking one last look at the sleeping Taylor across from her before closing her eyes. Yes, it was true: all the good ones were gay or taken. It was just her luck that she'd manage to find a guy that was both.

For a moment, there was no reply, and she mentally shrugged, assuming that he was just going to ignore her for however long again until he couldn't bother his friends or girls he had tricked into giving out their numbers anymore. But, to her surprise, she got one.

“I didn't think you were going to,” he muttered back, his voice obscured by sleepiness and feathers. “Now shut up before you wake someone up.”

Eyes still closed, she flailed blindly behind her back with her right arm until fist collided with shoulder. Satisfied with the muffled grunt she got in response, she snuggled into the covers and drifted off.

Or, at least, she tried to.

It felt as though she woke up every hour on the hour, judging by the green glow of the time on the microwave across the room; she was too hot at first, too cold next. Her side was uncomfortable but she couldn't roll over too much lest she bump into her bed-mate, never mind all the times he flopped an arm or a leg over her. He pushed; she shoved back. Covers were tossed off and then pulled back on, sometimes by one party to the ire of the other. She didn't even bother to check the time the penultimate hour; all she knew was that it was getting light outside and that maybe, just maybe, she could get a little bit more sleep in, even if she was stuck with The Bed Hog From Hell.

Finally, she resigned herself to the fact that she wasn't going to get any more sleep, at least for the time being. She found herself curled up on her side, arms under her head replacing pillows that had been shoved off the mattress some time between two and three AM. It took her a moment in her groggy state to realize that at some point she had gained an extra limb from the experience; a limb that was half as tan and twice as hairy. Only as she tried to stretch out of her fetal position did she realize why: somehow, at some point in the night, Jack had managed to claim a good two-thirds of the bed, sprawling out across the mattress diagonally into her foot-space and unintentionally offering up his arm as a headrest.

Risa sat up, kicking her legs over the side of the bed and grabbing the corners of a fallen pillow; if she couldn't sleep anymore, then neither could he. In a single swift motion, the pillow went from floor to face, soliciting a vaguely angry groan from the no-longer-sleeping brunette that only served to egg the woman on more. She repeated the motion once more before tossing the pillow back onto the floor - leaving it on the mattress would just leave ammunition for use in his retaliation strikes, whenever he got his sorry ass into a sitting position.

“Up!” she called, slapping her palm against his stomach. “Up, or I'll twist your nipples again.”

At some point in the night he had managed to steal her blanket, and he proceeded to pull it from his head and roll onto his side. “You know,” he began, surprisingly conversationally for having supposedly just woken up – must be practice, she decided - “Generally, I prefer refereeing pillow fights to participating. And generally there are more girls... and less clothes... Princess doesn't count,” he added as an afterthought.

“They're not here anyway,” she said, jerking her head over to the empty bed before flopping back onto her side and rubbing up against him with a smirk. “Oh what, you mean I'm not enough for you? Even though if someone just walked in here now it would look like we just got done boning all night?”

A pair of hands pressed against her back and pushed her away. “Yeah, don't do that.”

She rolled her head over to look at him. “Oh? Can't handle this?”

“Nope,” he said, rubbing his eyes and sitting up, revealing a truly spectacular case of bedhead that would be the envy of any anime character. “Because I know you're just a tease and you don't like sausage in the morning.” He stared at the pink blanket in his lap for a moment before throwing it at her. “This is yours. The only pinks I like are flesh-tones.”

Watching the man get up and stumble haphazardly to the bathroom, Risa couldn't help but realize how much she liked men in nothing but boxers... even if those men happened to be Jack.

It was only after he had left her line of sight that she began looking for some sort of notification as to where the other two MIA males had gone off to. Eventually her search was rewarded in the form of a yellow sticky-note stuck to the TV in Taylor's compulsively neat handwriting, explaining that they had left for breakfast and the beach and would like to meet up for lunch. A glance down at the microwave located conveniently below the television (what, so that stoners sitting too close to the TV had easy access to their microwaved burritos? But, who was she to question the logic of the room designers) revealed it to be 10:30 already; apparently that last 'hour' of sleep had lasted far longer than she thought.

She flipped through her phone idly, trying to decide on what she could do to kill time before lunch. It was a little late for breakfast now if they were just going to eat again in two hours or less, and no matter what she might say to anyone on the subject implying otherwise she felt the strange need to look halfway decent and well-groomed for wandering around on the street with three men. While she would never admit to anyone exactly how long it took her just for a shower (and doing her hair, and eyeliner and eyeshadow and mascara...), an hour was a pretty conservative estimate. 'Meet you at noon outside the lobby?' she texted Taylor finally, deciding that an hour and a half was probably enough time to get her act together. Probably.

A few minutes of staring around the hotel room and pondering food later, her sole remaining temporary roommate re-appeared, glancing around clandestinely before walking out of the bathroom with nothing but a white hotel towel wrapped around his waist and his mop of ruddy brown hair stuck to his neck. “Taylor and Princess aren't back yet, are they?” he asked, pausing to snatch the sticky-note from the TV and crumple it into a ball.

“Um, no...” normally, Risa would immediately jump on the opportunity to point out the fallacy behind asking a question like this when he could clearly see all the current occupants in a room, but she supposed she could let him slide just this once.

Because the only thing that beat guys in boxers was dripping wet guys in towels.

He tossed the paper ball into the trash can and smirked as he made the shot, looking back over at Risa and quirking an eyebrow. “You know, there's plenty of hot water left if you want to see some instant replay, and we could get into some overtime.”

She'd been caught.

Fortunately the buzz from her phone that marked Taylor's response saved her from Jack's gaze, and she managed a semi-convincing “Oh, fuck you,” as she flipped the phone open.

“Yeah, that's kind of what I was going for, actually, though in nicer terms...” he trailed off, flopping back onto his side of the bed and running a hand through his wet hair. He flicked the water at her, still apparently amused by the fact that he had caught her oogling him red-handed. “I mean, ten minutes ago you were grinding up on me.”

'Don't do anything I wouldn't do.' She stared at the text for a moment, trying do decode Taylor's rather cryptic message, swinging her left arm behind her. The windmill slap connected with one of Jack's pecs, and she made good on her previous nipple-pinching promise.

“Owww!” he grabbed her wrist and wrenched it away with a scowl. “You do that way too hard for it to be a turn on!”

As if right on cue, the phone buzzed again. 'Incest is disturbing.' Apparently, thanks to the invention of text messaging, siblings didn't even have to be in the same room to try and cock block each other anymore.

“It's not like I'd do your brother anyway,” she muttered to the phone, typing out a hasty 'I'll take that as a yes, then' and hitting send. She pulled her other hand from Jack's grip, mentally writing off the redhead's non-response as a byproduct of his benzodiazepine-induced haze. “We're meeting them at noon,” she explained, loud enough for Jack to actually hear this time, “And I'm getting in the shower.”

He opened his mouth, but she cut him off before he could say it. “No, I do not need any instant replays.”

She knelt down, grabbed a handful of clothes, and stalked off into the bathroom.

“Want me to wash your back?” Jack yelled after her.

“NO.” Risa rolled her eyes and closed the door.

Risa emerged some time later after twenty minutes in the shower and the rest of the time devoted to a battle royale involving overly-damaged hair and a flat iron. On the plus side, though, she looked great. Or, well, as great as she ever thought she looked.

“Holy hell, I thought you'd drowned,” Jack called to her, flipping idly through TV channels and somehow still managing to be only half-dressed. If not for the khaki-colored shorts that had replaced the towel, she would have sworn that he hadn't moved at all in however long it had taken her to get everything taken care of.

“It's the hair,” she explained, playing with a piece in front for added visual effect. “It takes forever to dry and straighten and blah blah... and you seemed real keen on helping me out, if something had actually happened.”

He shrugged. “Hey, you gone means I get the whole bed to myself.”

Risa covered her face with one hand, careful not to smudge any of the green and black eye makeup. “Good to know you care, there.”

“Always,” he replied with a grin.

She tossed her dirty clothes onto the growing pile on her side of the bed and sat down on the mattress, pulling her pink blanket around her shoulders out of habit more than need. There were still a few minutes to kill before they were supposed to meet up with Taylor and Clark, and at the moment Risa was content with watching Jack's spastic channel-surfing rather than actually doing anything useful.

“Why do you bother?” he asked after a moment, eyes still fixed on the TV as he contemplated the program briefly before changing to a new one.

She looked over at him. “Bother with what?”

“With spending such an ungodly long time on your hair, when we're going to go down to the beach and it'll just get fucked up again,” he said.

It was her turn to shrug, as she readjusted the blanket and snuggled into the pink fuzz. “Because.” She didn't really have a good reason. She just did.

“Ah.”

~~~

Short(ish) story using the characters from Millennials. Unlike the last sectioned piece, this was written in order, and is just really fucking long. Unfortunately, it's not finished.