@winged
ewwwwwww! i physically recoiled when i read that!
my only bit of advice is in regards to this quote:
"The realization mounted upon Femie, and she began to recoil in horror as she understood that the walls were not really painted brown."
when i read it, it didn't flow the same as the other sentences did; it felt choppier, repetitive. what i would recommend is trying to shorten it a bit, weaving the necessary words into the sentence while throwing the short/redundant ones out. one example of that is if you had written this:
"Femie began to recoil in horror as she realized that the walls were not really painted brown."
the sentence becomes shorter and flows slightly differently. if you wanted to keep the sentence length, you could write:
"As realization mounted on Femie, she began to recoil in horror as she understood that the walls were not really painted brown."
it all depends on how you want the action to flow. and i'm certainly no expert, so take my advice with a grain of salt.
i actually wrote today, hooray! a whole 892 words. it was sort of inspired by #4 here. i'm definitely going to be making a story out of this. my only issue is where to publish it. anyone have any ideas? i don't know of any site that allows you to set up your work where you can manually reorder chapters so i can publish as i write. i might just write the chapters separately on gdocs. oh well, here it is! i apologize if there's any mistakes, i didn't proofread.
Aftermath wrote:Clint was watching Star Trek when he heard a knock at his door. Confused, he paused the show and walked over to the door, peering through the spyglass. On the other side was a man he didn’t recognize, with black hair sticking up haphazardly. His pale face was a mottled red, with whiskey eyes pink from crying. He seemed scared and unsure, fidgeting with the hem of his leather jacket and rocking back on his heels. Clint opened the door; he was never one to ignore someone who might need his help.
“Hello. How can I help you?” There was something about the shorter man that seemed oddly familiar, and he couldn’t help thinking of the one person it could never be.
“Blue?” The nickname confirmed Clint’s suspicions. The man in front of him was Blackhawk without the mask.
“How did you -”
“No, you know what, nevermind, this was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have come here,” Blackhawk interrupted. He stepped back and began to walk away, but Clint gently pulled him inside.
That careful touch seemed to have snapped something in Hawk. He melted into Clint’s chest, wracked with silent sobs.
“I’m so sorry, it’s all my fault. It should have been me, not them.” His voice broke on every word, and Clint’s heart ached to see such a powerful, dangerous man so vulnerable.
“Is this about the fire?” He whispered, cradling the villain to his chest. He felt him nod against his shoulder, soft hair tickling his cheek. He closed his eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
They stood there for a while until he felt Hawk lean against him, exhausted from crying for so long. He led hawk to the couch and motioned him to sit down. Leaving the supervillain to get comfortable, Clint went into the kitchen to get a glass of water.
When he re-entered the living room, he saw that Hawk had laid his jacket on the floor, bundled himself in a blanket and had burrowed as far as he could into the corner of the couch. He looked a lot better than before, his cheeks less flushed and eyes clearer.
“Are you a fan of Star Trek, Hawk?” He sat up, freeing a hand as he accepted the water from Clint. His eyebrows furrowed at the question.
“Call me Tyran. And why do you ask?” He eyed the glass suspiciously as Clint sat down next to him, grabbing the remote and turning the tv on.
“I was going to watch it before you showed up. Besides, you don’t look like you want to think much right now. It’ll be a good way to distract yourself.” He paused. “Call me Clint, by the way.”
“Alright, Clint. We can watch Star Trek. But we’ll have to start from the beginning. I’ve never gotten the chance to see it.” Tyran finally took a sip of water, having decided that it wasn’t poisoned.
Clint flicked on the first episode and they watched in silence for a few minutes. Clint shivered at the cold air in his apartment and made yet another mental note to fix the heater.
“Do you want your blanket back, Clint? You look like you’re freezing.” Tyran had been watching Clint out of the corner of his eye, impressed by how strong he looked even outside the suit. He had noticed the goosebumps rise on his arms, but refrained from saying anything about it until he shivered.
“No, I’m okay,” came the response.
“I know that you’re lying. I can hear the tremble in your voice. And don’t think that shiver escaped me, young man.” Clint scoffed at that.
“Young man? Please, I’ve got to have at least four years on you.”
“Look, do you want the damn blanket or not,” Tyran muttered, annoyed.
“Like I said before, I’m fine, Tyran.” His response was followed by another shiver, this one much more violent than the last.
“Alright, that’s it,” Tyran says. The next thing Clint knew was that he had an arm full of supervillain and was being wrapped in the blanket. “There.” Tyran paused, realizing he can’t shift off of Clint. “Aw, crap.”
“Um. Did you mean for this to happen? I think you’re stuck.”
“Shut up.” Tyran hid his face in Clint’s shoulder to hide a growing blush.
At Tyran’s embarrassed tone, Clint began laughing harder than he had in a long time. Before long, Tyran joined in, giggling at the whole situation. They laughed until their ribs ached, and they smiled at each other for a while, dizzy and wondering just how they got into this mess.
Clint arched his back a bit so that he could loosen the blanket’s edge trapped under him, allowing Tyran to slip off his chest and settle next to him.
The pair sat like that for hours, pointing out plot holes or making fun of special effects. Tyran checked his phone for the time, and realized it was almost one-thirty in the morning. Looking up to tell Clint that he should be leaving, he realized that the hero was already fast asleep. He quietly slipped off the couch and looked around for the remote.
He sighed heavily. He hated to leave the television on, and the show was really good. Unsuccessful at finding the remote, he shrugged and laid down next to Clint on the couch, resting his head on the older man’s shoulder.
i love these idiots already and will defend them until i die. a little backstory on clint's nickname: his hero name is bluejay. cheesy, i know, but i like it.
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