Work Text:
Raindrops against asphalt, an autumn afternoon. Cars going past, nearly indistinguishable from the rain. Beyond the intersection, the doppler of a siren going to the east.
The other direction: a crying child. Several footsteps. A door opens and closes.
A leaf falls from a branch, unheard. It washes down the street in the steady stream of water.
Upstairs, running feet, furniture being moved. Next door, electric screwdrivers performing home repairs. Wonder what they're doing. Wonder when they'll stop. Sounds like they're about to come through the wall. That'd be bad.
There sure are a lot of cars going by.
A frustrated switch to a different part of a playlist. The sounds of mouse clicks, the mouse wheel turning down and then up. The sound of key presses on the keyboard, each sound slightly different.
Oh, look, a truck.
Another day, sunny. Honking and car alarms. The snow plow goes by, the shovel grinding at the asphalt. It kept waking me up all night. Two people greet each other loudly on the sidewalk, the sound is muted by distance, the details lost.
She brushed her hair back from
No, that's terrible.
Sitting on a couch in a relative's house, typing ineptly on a phone keyboard. From the kitchen, the cooking music erupting from the speakers, the sound of spoons tapping and scraping against pans. The smooth swishing sound of the phone going back into pocket, plastic phone case against jeans, footfalls on carpet to the kitchen to answer the insistence of the beeping oven.
Maybe this can be used.
No. This can't.
On a bus between cities, the sound of tires hitting rumble strips. The toll booth approacheth. 'I get a little bit Genghis Khan,' floats from an open window to the left. Honking, less than expected. Everything slows down. Gaze narrows to a backlit screen. "There are more worlds out there," a character starts and pauses, unsure how to finish that.
Maybe this is a space AU.
Muted thud of a forehead against the chilled window glass.
In the distance, a train. In the distance, birds. In the distance, perhaps inspiration?
The familiar hum of a computer. The familiar hum of a computer. The familiar hum of a computer. Wait, that sounds louder than usual. Is there a problem? Oh god, what if there's a problem. This is horrible. This is horrible. Nothing ever goes right. The default button is right there. The familiar hum of a computer. The familiar hum of a computer. The familiar hum of a computer.
"The spaceship sounded like my too loud refrigerator," no, you're not Douglas Adams, stop it.
A coffee shop, not an AU, but the one down the block. Five people peering at screens, tapping intermittently. Comforting familiarity. The store's music is indistinguishable from the one across the street. More comforting familiarity. Why won't these characters figure out how to fix their spaceship. It can't be that hard. There's gotta be Jiffy Lubes up and down the space highway. I mean, it's only logical.
Maybe this is a story about that.
"The spaceship sounded like a coffee grinder," still not Douglas Adams. Delete delete delete.
No, not space. A local AU, filled with local color. No research necessary.
No. Unwritable. Boring. Plotless.
The thud of a forehead against the computer desk.
Lose a night to wondering what the default button sounds like when clicked. The roar of bears is entirely in my head, but that won't stop me from looking them up on youtube anyway.
Lose another night; the browser plays animal calls. None of this is usable. None of this is words.
Spend more time wondering about the sweet halcyon sound of the default button.
There's no such thing as silence. Even when you think there's nothing, there's still a sound to be heard, if you only just focus. If only your own heartbeat. If only your own blood rushing through your veins. If only the sound of yourself thinking. If only the sounds of nuclear fission in the spaceship's broken ninth engine.
No? Maybe?
Put it aside.
A click of the keyboard. Another click. Another. Another. A sentence grows by musical notes. The story is in the space between the words. The story is in the space between the keyboard taps. The story is not anywhere, it's been deleted again.
Take down a paperback for emergency canon review. The ruffle of the pages, the press of them against thumbs. Hum as the pages turn. Maybe this, maybe that, hmmm. The soft displacement of air as the book is put down by the computer.
The background click of the heating turning on. An icicle falls from the roof.
A ragged morse code of typing and pausing to think, spelling out unknowable secrets, because I don't know morse code. Still. It's better than the previous SOS that I was sending out into the world.
Focus.
I wonder what sound it makes when I focus.
500 words in, momentum fails. The sound of boots on sidewalk, uneven steps to avoid ice and slush. A heavier footfall to span a moat of plowed snow closing off the intersection from pedestrian traffic. Muffled cursing of snowplows. A door opens and closes. The slide of a credit card into and out of a reader. The satisfied sigh of the first sip of hot cocoa. Change your place, change your mind, get your word count. You can do it. The music system is behind you 100%.
Because you made the mistake of sitting in front of a speaker.
A thousand word is a howling in an empty parking lot at three in the morning, high-vis jacket on top of a black winter coat, muttering plot details under your breath to avoid freezing or falling asleep, trekking home, cursing every life choice that put you here, but the phone is secure in your pocket, the words will still be there once you're inside a warm foyer, the words better still be there, they better, they have to be, the sound of desperation, the sound of hope.
Except sometimes a thousand words is a rush for the bus, feet pounding the asphalt, the people up ahead of you signaling to the bus driver, who waits for you, and you catch up and grin and thank the driver and pull out your bus pass and move to the back and it's all over so fast that you're still panting for breath when the bus pulls up to your stop and you leave the bus, no time to think, everything flows with perfect timing, like jumping into a game of double-dutch, no misplaced steps, perfection in a world that so often lacks it.
A thousand words is a thousand words, but you can hear it in the lungs. It lives in the blood. It lives-- somewhere.
It lives in a completed draft.
The sound of the fulfill button is indistinguishable from the sound of the default button but, oh, how different it feels.
The sound of victory.
The sound of relief.
The sound of opening up the prompts list for treats.