Do you nano?
Oct 18, 2021 4:52 pm
NaNo; queer sci-fi; chapter 12 of Night & Day!
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Hello, favorites!
It's almost National Novel Writing Month!
You can join the huge and vivacious community on the NaNoWriMo website, or informally in the various social media spaces that get populated with the hashtag. I always have good intentions about using the website to log my projects and word count updates. But every year I seem to wind up in smaller groups of writer friends elsewhere on the internet. There's no wrong way to NaNo!
I first participated in NaNoWriMo about fifteen years ago. Now that I write books during all months of the year, you might think that its shine would have worn off. But during the lead-up to November, I still get just as excited about prepping a project alongside thousands of other people around the world.
If you're a writer, are you doing NaNoWriMo this year? Have you participated in the past? I'd love to know how I can support you.
What I'm reading
I just finished Oaths of Legacy by Emily Skrutskie, the second book of a queer sci-fi series. I fell in love with book one, Bonds of Brass, last year. If you like secret princes, fun action, high political stakes, and a slow-burn romantic subplot, then I recommend you check out the series! Book one was one of my favorite reads of 2020. Book two had a bit of a slow first-half but made up for it in the race to the end.
If you've read books similar to these and you have recs to share, please, I'm begging you, save me from my book hangover!
What I'm writing
I used to say I wasn't good at working on multiple things at once. That's still true. And yet, I have so many things on my plate that I really need one of those school lunch trays with all the handy compartments.
Here is my project list for October:
- Secret novella edits
- First draft of As the Tallgrass Grows
- Night & Day chapters for future newsletters (I'm usually two ahead, though right now, only one)
- Magpie, a newsletter-exclusive short story
- Planning Undertow rewrites (my NaNoWriMo project!)
I expect to check #1 and #5 off my list this month, but the rest will carry over into November, when I'll have more to add to the list. I may need a bigger tray!
Have a great week.
xo,
Rachel
find me in more places
Website | Rachel's Party Barn on Facebook | Instagram | Discord
my books
Long Winter | Signs of Spring | Burning Season | As the Tallgrass Grows
***
NIGHT & DAY
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Jonathan didn't dislike the decor in his house. Not exactly. Landry had recommended an interior designer to him; a tall, impeccably dressed woman who laughed at her own jokes, which Jonathan hadn't minded, exactly, but he'd never felt like they were on the same page. That extended to the decor, as it turned out. He didn't mind it, exactly, but it felt slightly out of step with his taste in ways he couldn't name.
That might have had something to do with the way he'd answered every one of the interior designer's questions in the affirmative. There had been something about her phrasing. Do you like this? How do you feel about black and white?
Jonathan could see the aesthetic sensibility of most of the examples that she showed him, and nodded along agreeably, somehow not realizing that she wasn't just asking him if he "liked" this or that; she was asking him if he wanted something similar in his own home.
A crucial, if subtle, distinction, and how he'd wound up with a house full of so many clean lines and smooth textures, Ty had rightly remarked that it looked like something that could have been built in Minecraft.
Not that Jonathan had known what that meant. He'd had to google "Minecraft" later.
He realized after an hour of browsing the flea markets with Ty that he was possibly making the same mistake again. Ty kept pointing to furniture or holding up a knick knack and asking him what he thought, and Jonathan kept telling him that things were interesting.
Except, Ty had put everything back, and they left first one, then two stores without buying anything. Well, except for the vase that they'd broken when Isabel's stroller knocked into a table crowded with glassware. Navigating these places on foot was bad enough. In the next store, they left the stroller at the register and Ty carried her, laughing when he held her in front of a foggy old mirror and her arms windmilled excitedly at the sight of her own distorted reflection.
"I'd underestimated how hard it would be to have the baby with us," Ty admitted around noon, when they'd been browsing for two hours and had just climbed back into the car. There had been a knot of places along this street, and Ty claimed to know a similar stretch in another part of town.
Jonathan was somehow too relieved they hadn't wound up with a car loaded down with every odd and end that Ty had asked him to weigh in on, including the giant Japanese fan and the battered antique milk jugs converted to end table lamps, and the cookie jar in the shape of a Cheshire-like cat with a sinister smile.
Maybe, a few of the times he'd nodded affably in agreement with Ty's enthusiasm, he'd been less sincere than others.
The next place was arranged differently than the others, which had mostly been individual stalls that were contracted out from the store to individual collectors. This one, though, was more cohesive, and included big chunks of architectural salvage, like the pillars and awning of some old building facade that were arranged around the register, and a weatherbeaten pergola in the center of the open space.
There was still plenty of stuff that Jonathan didn't "vibe with," as Ty would have said, but the overall feel of the store was appealing to him. They hadn't realized there would be room for the stroller, so this time it was Jonathan holding Isabel and trailing after Ty, so he was busy distracting her when Ty paused midway through the space in one of its staged alcoves, and didn't look over properly until Ty said, "How about this?"
Jonathan turned. Ty was standing in the midst of heaps of woven baskets, of varying colors, sizes, and textures, but what he was holding up was an almost completely flat, rectangular one with wooden spool handles, reinforced here and there with strands of wire.
He wasn't sure why, and he couldn't really imagine how it could be put to decorative use, but Jonathan loved it.
"That's really neat," he said, which were more or less the same words he'd spoken in response to every other item that Ty had presented him with. He was trying to think of a way to add, but I mean it this time, when Ty surprised him with a satisfied smile, and held the basket carefully over his head so that he didn't knock anything around him off its shelf as he cleared the display and took a step toward the register.
"I'll ask them to hold it for us while we keep looking."
Jonathan wasn't sure what to say, or why he was so baffled. Maybe this was just a piece that Ty had liked especially? But then, it kept happening. Ty would hold something up that Jonathan didn't actually like, but said he did, and Ty would put it back. Then Ty would hold something up that Jonathan did like, and after Jonathan said as much, Ty would take it to the register, until they had a pile of things that shouldn't go together, but somehow did. The basket. A tall glass lamp. A leather strap studded with bells from an antique sleigh harness. A wool rug in a classic pattern in muted silvers and grays, and a stack of worn wooden boxes, as well as one tool box, all wizened as driftwood.
They wound up with more than Jonathan wanted to fit in the car, so he organized a delivery with the woman at the register after they'd paid. Ty, though, extracted two of the boxes from their pile of purchases, and carried one under each arm on their way out.
After he'd buckled Isabel into her carseat, Jonathan climbed into the driver's seat and looked over at Ty, who was examining one of the nail heads on the smaller of the two boxes.
"We'll have to make sure this one is out of Isabel's reach. I don't think it's babyproof. Some of these nails are… what?"
He'd glanced up and caught Jonathan looking at him. Jonathan quickly averted his eyes and turned the key in the ignition. "Nothing."
"No, really, what?" Ty shifted in the seat, making the boxes he was holding in his lap knock together. "Was I way off? Did you hate the stuff we got?"
"No," Jonathan muttered, feeling a faint tingle of shock at the word “we” from Ty. "No, you weren't way off. That's what I—" He shook his head, frustrated. At work, he easily communicated what needed to be communicated. He was thought to have a special talent for expressing a complex legal argument in a simple and compelling manner.
But when it came to this kind of conversation, he couldn't even put the state of his own mind into words without a struggle. And then he was resigned to people never understanding what he was trying to say, anyway.
How long had it been since he'd tried to talk to someone about what was going on in his head and heart? Many, many years. It had been something of a relief, to let himself be alone with all of it instead. There was a kind of safety in it.
He pulled up to a stoplight and flexed his hands on the steering wheel. "What I was wondering," he managed at last, "was how you seemed to know what I mean, even when I don't… say it." He glanced at Ty. “Like with the things in the stores today. I more or less said I liked everything you showed me, whether I did or not. And you seemed to know the difference anyway.”
"Oh," Ty said, his look of consternation giving way at once to a bright smile. "Three sisters, remember? I know bullshit when I see it."
Jonathan was startled into a laugh, but the comparison to Ty's sisters was a little unnerving too.
"Don't worry," Ty said, halfway reading his mind again, apparently. "Your bullshit is better than theirs. Top-tier, some might say. I bet it comes in handy at work. But, what can I say? I'm an expert."
Jonathan laughed again, and this time it felt loud in his ears, and unrestrained in his chest. He shook his head with a grin. The light changed, and he followed traffic back up to the speed limit, his smile still lingering stubbornly all the way back to the townhouse.
***
That night, Jonathan was going to the kitchen for a glass of water when he almost bumped into Ty in the hallway, leaving Isabel’s room.
Ty was wearing his version of pajamas, which was sweats and a T-shirt that apparently didn’t meet even Ty’s relaxed standards for daytime clothing anymore, and was relegated to the privacy of nighttime. Ripped, torn, and threadbare, they seemed to accentuate his sinewy body more than cover it. The sight of him like this, unexpectedly and his eyes shining in the dark, struck Jonathan hard.
“Sorry,” Ty said in a rough whisper and with a careless, sleepy smile, then crossed his arms over his head as he yawned with a little stretch. “I thought I heard her, but it was a false alarm.” He yawned again. “Back to bed.”
And with that, he brushed past Jonathan, and the door to his room opened and closed as he went back into it.
Jonathan, on the other hand, was rooted to the spot in the hallway, his thirst for water forgotten.
Earlier, he'd admitted to himself how long it had been since he felt his inner workings were open to anyone, with the occasional exception of Natalie, but even she was always working on old information. Relating his present behavior to what she understood of him from when they were younger. Closer.
His head wasn't the only part of him that had begun to feel distant from other people. His body had too.
He'd admired Ty, developed an infatuation. Thought of kissing him. Stood arrested in small moments by certain small details of his body.
But right now he was flushed all over, tingling with a tremendous, forgotten need, and his cock was hard as stone.
Christ, he'd forgotten this, if he'd ever known it at all. The dizzying power of sexual want, its single-minded, selfish purpose. He stood right there in the hallway and slid his hand into his boxers and grasped himself, blinking hard at the pressure of his own hand. He hadn't jerked himself off once since Isabel came home. And how long had it been before that?
He hadn't even thought to miss it, but now, grasping himself but not stroking, a tear escaped the corner of his eye. He made it back to his bed, and it didn't occur to him to feel predatory or terrible as he rolled onto his stomach, lifted himself a little on his knees, and jacked himself with his face buried in his pillow, imagining Ty, his sly, mind-reader's smile and his laugh, his appreciative moans when he ate good food, and his blushes.
It was hard and fast. His dry hand, his pent up longing for Ty, and several years of celibacy combined to wreck him with an explosive orgasm he couldn't suffer in silence, but he muffled his cries in his pillow, collapsed into his sticky sheets, and didn't move again until morning.