Can you see me now?

[trinityofone]

ETA: All right, I think I get the general picture. Y'all can stop torturing yourselves now. (And thank you to those who already did!)

Okay, I'm trying to do something cool (read: dorky) with fonts for my Urban Legend Challenge, due tomorrow. The only problem is, I'm afraid that all the shiny pretty fonts that are showing up for me won't be visible for you. So I'd really appreciate it if you'd do me a favor and fill out this



First, take a look at the following sentences. Then fill out the poll.

1. Courier makes essays longer BY MAGIC!
2. Hey, this font is sort of...rakish.
3. And this one's sort of fruity. (Oh God, I just made a font pun.)
4. I like to walk on the beach, but I'm afraid to do more than wade.
5. In my adolescence, I used this font a lot. That says bad things.
6. I'm totally running out of clever things to say.
7. Um, not that I had anything all that clever to say in the first place.
8. Sometimes I'm afraid that my fandom legacy is going to be lesbian ponies.
9. Or priest!kink. Or Canadian spies.
10. Actually, I'm pretty okay with that.

Okay, now in an ideal shiny perfect world, all of those would look different to you--from each other, and from the main text. Did they?

[Poll #681676]

Thank you, thank you, thank you to anybody who actually took the time to fill that horrendous thing out. Um. Now's probably not a good time to tell you that the story doesn't even have any sex in it, is it?

Comments

[siria]

It was not, in honesty, a very large amount of snow. Just enough to make me say 'Ooh' and lean back in my chair and stare up at the skylight. It was all over in about fifteen minutes, though.

John and Rodney in Italy in general would just be hot like David Hewlett's ass. Ooh, and they could go to Florence, and since John had never been to Italy, and since he really wants to have a Proper Vacation, he insists on doing everything like a Proper Tourist. Rodney just wants to stay asleep in their penzione and eat gelato and drink proper coffee and maybe wander along the Arno in the evenings when the light isn't so clear and light on the water doesn't remind him so much of the seas around Atlantis.

But what he's nowhere near as persuasive as John, who drags him out of bed at six in the morning so that they can beat the queue at the gallery, and Rodney spends an hour standing in line, bitching about the cold until the sun comes up and warms that patch right between his shoulder blades, plus John buys him a (surprisingly good) coffee from one of the street vendors, so he shuts up (as much as he's capable of) and only murmurs a little at how outrageously expensive it is to get in.

And then John drags him around the rooms, one hand loosely clasped around Rodney's wrist, and Rodney's shivering even though it's warm in there and already filling up slowly with other tourists, only a little shiver, this little contraction of sensation, running up his arm whenever John starts talking in Italian about duocento and quattrocento. And he's trying his best to ignore it, but John's giving him these little side-long looks while they're walking down the galleria, and Rodney's blustering and tilting his head up to look at the statues that John's explaining to him, and complaining that John's clearly just memorised some guidebook to Florence in order to impress someone, and John just smiles and says "Is it working?" and that just makes Rodney open and shut his mouth until John grins and drags him into a room which is still empty.

Or something. Working on the essay! Honest!

The essay will have a beginning, a middle, and also, an end. Of this, I have faith!

From your mouth to God's ears, etc etc.

I will certainly go back and look at that part for you. I'll try to get some work done on this first, though.

*goes back to trying to get John into leather pants*

*quiet cry of hallelujah*

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

This is the best comment I have ever gotten. You know what? Fuck the essay: write this story!

Right. Not helping. Sorry.

[siria]

Do you know how pretty John would be in Italy? With his loose shirts, and his hair in the breeze, and the way his mouth would relax at the corners, and standing in the countryside that looks like it was painted with a child's paint box, and it would be so painfully bright that it would hurt Rodney's eyes to look at it? Mmm. Yes.

In conclusion: David Hewlett Essay.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

Meep.

Now I'm picturing him standing on a dusty road, his jacket slung over his arm and his shirt open at the collar. And he's talking to someone, someone else, maybe a little old woman selling fruit, and Rodney stares at him, just stares--as you say, like a man squinting into the sun--and he knows: suddenly, he just knows.

And later, they're staying in these rooms with thick, cool walls, and a breeze is coming in off the Mediterranean, ruffling the long, white curtains, and John pauses in the doorway of Rodney's room, his features dusted in moonlight. Even in the darkness, Rodney thinks he can make out the individual hairs on John's arms, where the sleeves are loosely rolled, coiled around his tensed biceps, and--

and--

I don't know, back to you. I like yours better, anyway. It's potent.

[siria]

This, of course, is when they're staying near Genoa, right where green mountains tumble down, falling down into the calmer green of the sea. It's near to the city, but somehow, it's quiet and still on this stretch of the coast, and if Rodney closes his eyes and pretends, he can imagine that they're the only two people left. There's a certain kind of peace in that, but with everything Rodney knows, it's too, too easy to imagine, so he only ever does that once, just once.

He prefers to curl himself up in white cotton sheets, around and over John, and sleep in cool white bedrooms. But then in the mornings, always before the sun's up, when everything is still dim, dark, and John's eyes are still grey, John drags him out of bed (what, do you have some kind of fixation?) and up from their villa, up, up, the side of the mountain.

John sits down when they reach the top (or as close as they get, because Rodney might be the fittest he's ever been, but still, not exactly athlete material), legs flexed and stretched out on a bed of grass and wildflowers, tilts his head back and watches the sun come up. Rodney watches the line of John's throat.

Later, John produces a picnic basket (Rodney's never quite able to figure out how he pulled that one off, though he suspects that significant amounts (these words are underlined, in his head. twice) of charm were used on the women in the village) and there's breakfast. Rodney is making these happy little noises as he digs through the basket, and John's grinning, and it's warm and sunny, and the breeze is playing with John's hair, and if ever Rodney thinks he could forget about everything, just forget, it would be here.

John digs a peach out of the basket, curling his fingers around the sun-warmth of it for a moment before biting into the flesh. Rodney swallows once, twice, and he almost has to close his eyes again. Instead, he leans over and licks at the corner of John's mouth where some of the juice has spilled out.


Or something. I miss Tuscany. God, bad me. Essay. Essay!

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

Oh my God. You can't do this to me. Peaches. Peaches. I'm a trained Prufrockian, I melt at peaches. And John watching the sun as Rodney watches John's throat...you can't keep doing this to me.

(Please keep doing this to me.)

[siria]

I thought you would appreciate the peaches. I appreciate the peaches. Rodney appreciates the peaches (because the juice is warm on John's skin, and Rodney can taste it, taste peaches and sweetness and John, knows the flavour of him, and he can feel his stomach tighten and his eyelashes flutter closed, and he leans in)

I really should resist the urge to continue writing meandering, self-indulgent crap and just finish this bloody essay. All I need is three to four hundred words of a conclusion, and yet I am stymied. *cries softly*

[wychwood]

Guh.

...I think you broke my feedback muscle.

(I'll write your conclusion! You just, um, get on with what you were doing!)

[siria]

Um. Thank you? I think. I did not mean to inflict pain and injury with my scribblings!

[wychwood]

:) Don't worry, I recovered very quickly...

Such lovely mental images as you were making, though. Mmmm.

[stellahobbit.livejournal.com]

You're story is pure sensuality. I'm getting goosebumps and more please!

Of course, when you finish your essay.

[siria]

Wow. Thank you. What a lovely compliment.

*eyes the essay as it prints off*

[birdsflying]

oh my god. oh my god. You need to write this. I just. Oh my god. I mean, totally write your essay first because I so shouldn't distract from that but uh, write it faster so you can write that fic. :g:

I am so helpful

[siria]

It would be kind of awesomely hot, if I could write well enough to do the idea justice. I'll add it to the queue, though. There are a couple of other things I should really finish, or Trin will kick my ass.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

Yes, I will. I really, really will.

Or worse: you will have to see a grown girl beg.

[siria]

I'd beg for David Hewlett?

[eccentric-alex.livejournal.com]

Oh please. Both of you. Either of you. Write this write this please. For us poor cretins that have never been to Italy. Please please please. Oh and also because, damn, pretty pictures.