three mental images

[nepheliad.livejournal.com]

Rating: G
Word Count: 827 total; each are approximately 300
Characters: Frank, Katie, Caper, Torry, Robert, Tate, Alice
Summary: Mental images resulting from that pairing meme. All are possible canon but since this isn't a post in dirty_life are not official until rewritten with the proper players in the proper places (as anyone reading this already knows, so I'm not sure why I specified). Just a prose-shaped mental image dump.

They were settled on the same couch; her feet were on his feet and she didn't notice it for a while, as they both read (and she didn't know what he was reading, and he didn't know what she was reading) and took turns petting two different cats, who changed spots every now and then to get a variety of touch from four different hands.

(The female cat was his; the male was hers. The cats got along like neutered opposite-sex cats did -- fairly decently and with a tendency to gossip with each other. The cats didn't understand why their people, not neutered, were so passive toward each other.)

He might have been inventing drink recipes.

She might have been reading poetry.

Suddenly, though, she realized her feet had ended up on his legs and cautiously, carefully, doing it casually enough he might not have noticed, withdrew her feet and folded them underneath her.

Both cats raced toward the spot where her feet had been.

They both laughed.

"Katie," Frank finally asked, "what are you doing?"

"Reading," she replied.

"I know that," he said. "What." It wasn't a question, quite. He didn't ask questions, quite, very often. She noticed that easily.

"About university."

"Are you going?"

"No."

"Then why --"

"Well," boldly, she interrupted, and Katie never, ever interrupted, "I'd like to. But I can't afford it, and I didn't go to college so I don't think I'd get in. I mean, I have GSCEs but no A-levels, so I'd have to take a couple billion tests and I couldn't ever afford to attend anyway --"

She was rambling, babbling, nervous.

He thought about cutting her off with a kiss, killed the thought as soon as it came up (because that wasn't at all what she needed, and it never had been) and cut her off by snatching up her wildly gesticulating hand, instead.

"Pet the cat," he told her.

She did.

It went back to being quiet.

---

"You're incorrigible," Torry told him as she wrote out the check to pay his bail. Thankfully, the money had been his; she didn't have it or anything close to it to spare.

Caper blinked up at her from the bench he was handcuffed to and replied, solemnly, "I don't even know what that means."

"I think the dictionary definiton is bad without correction or reform. Thank you," she added, attention redirected to the bailiff-cashier, who seemed to find the entire thing absolutely absurd (he was not alone; she did too).

"Well." Caper grinned at her. "Good, then. I'd take that as a compliment."

Torry sighed. "Whatever. I insist that it isn't. I didn't use it as one."

"Bitch."

"I'd take that as a compliment."

"I didn't use it as one."

She rolled her eyes at him.

He lunged at her. He was still attached to the bench. In momentary fury, he nearly upended the bench, and ended up landing on the floor instead of standing up and smacking her as intended.

"You know he's in for assault, right?" the bailiff yelled. "Sure you want him?"

"Of course!" Torry called back, laughing. "Only can you leave him cuffed and still like that long enough for me to take a picture?"

The bailiff laughed.

"Fuck you," grumbled Caper.

Torry pulled out her mobile.

---

The pretty colours on the screen were moving.

Not that she knew they were called 'colours,' or that the thing in front of her was a 'screen,' but she knew there was an exciting display before her eyes and reached out to grab it. This plan failed as Tate's tiny hand flattened against Robert's computer monitor and she didn't end up with anything in her hands at all. Wriggling in her father's lap, she started to cry.

"I do not understand it either," Robert lamented, in a soft, soothing voice largely unrelated to what he was saying. The tone would calm her down and he could speak his mind -- his infant daughter always listened. "They've made it all different again and I hadn't even gotten used to the old one yet. At least my recording software still functions the way it did before -- I think --"

Robert realized he had no idea how to even turn the microphone on anymore.

Everything was different. It even looked different. Did he even know how to turn off the screen saver again?

Tate, helpfully reading his mind, mashed her hand down on the spacebar and the computer duitifully asked him for a password.

"I ... don't know," Robert told the computer. "I didn't set a password."

It couldn't hear him. He realized this, picked up the microphone (which may or may not have been on, he didn't know) and tried again: "I didn't set a password."

The computer didn't respond.

Tate mashed her hands on the keyboard again.

"Thank you," said Robert.

Incorrect password, said the computer.

Robert groaned.

Tate started wailing.

Alice, in the other room, put down Better Homes & Gardens and came in to see what was going on. Greeted by this display, she sighed, typed in the password (which was written on a Post-it attached to the monitor), kissed the top of Tate's head, kissed the top of Robert's head and waited for the computer display to load so she could teach him how to use Windows 7.