Tron fic: Moving Day (1/2)
Jan. 11th, 2011 01:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficTitle: Moving Day
Fandom: Tron
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,564
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Quorra
Previous: A Good Time To Change Your Facebook Status
Next: Moving Day 2/2
Summary: Sam knows every couple has to fight about something. This just wasn't what he had in mind.
"Uh-uh."
Sam reversed himself, since he'd obviously just upset his core demographic of Quorra. With him back in place, Quorra let out a satisfied, if muffled, "Mm-hmm…"
Sam forced his eyes open, although it felt like an uphill battle through how comfortable he was. He suddenly felt like he had too many limbs. There was his right leg and his left leg, then another pair sandwiched between the other two. And his arms seemed to be brushing against more arms, which were softer and hairless and a little cool, like glass.
He finally got his eyes open to find Quorra's disarrayed hair covering his face. It'd grown out since she'd left the Grid. Her head was scrunched up against his chest, ear pressed to it like a stethoscope while her upturned smile seemed to capture the same vibrancy of his now-racing heart. Her arms and legs tied him up like the ribbon on a present.
Seeing how close she was, Sam jerked away involuntarily. In response, Quorra groaned her wakefulness, opening her expansive eyes so slowly she might have been taking in her world one particle at a time.
"Morning," she said, breaking into a bright smile at the sight of him. Nestled in his arms with the sheets pulled tight around her, she looked snug as a bug.
"Morning," Sam said back. "I hate to break it to you, but I think you're the little spoon."
"I'm cool with that," Quorra laughed, throwing herself so Sam rolled onto his back and she laid across him. Sam felt like the mattress was quicksand, he was so comfortable. How did she do that?
"It's just weird for me, because when we went to sleep, we weren't any sort of kitchen utensil."
"Oh." Quorra looked abashed, then grew serious. "You were having a nightmare. You woke me in the middle of the night." Her voice dropped even lower. "Your father used to have them too. But this time I knew what to do. I put my arms around you and held you tight and you settled down." Feeling him stiffen, she rolled off him and into a sit by the bedpost. "I'm sorry if that was wrong. You just sounded so… like you were suffering, and I don't like that. I can't just watch you be in pain."
Sam wrenched himself up and turned, letting his legs dangle over the side of the bed. Quorra had seen one of his night terrors. Just perfect. "You didn't do anything wrong."
"Do you have a lot of nightmares?" Quorra asked. She persisted: "Is that normal?"
Sam jumped up from the bed, pretending he hadn't heard her. "C'mon, let's rustle up some grub. I'll show you how to make French toast."
Quorra stayed perched on the bed as Sam threw on some clothes. "In France, toast is served with grubs?"
***
After breakfast, and a second breakfast because Quorra liked French toast so much, they drove back to the garage. During the night, a U-Haul truck had been deposited in front of the apartment. Sam didn't have enough stuff to warrant hiring movers – for a long time he'd lived his life just waiting for Encom to have enough of him and press charges, freeing him up to go on the run with his laptop and Marvin. Now here he was, putting down actual roots. It was a good thing Quorra was completely oblivious to all that.
First off was clothes. Everything Sam wore fit into an antique steamer trunk his grandparents had left him. The books went into cardboard boxes. Sam set aside the box his PS3 had come in for books he thought Quorra might like. There were about a dozen Jules Verne books she hadn't gotten her hands on yet.
Then came gadgets, odds and ends. Sam had a few CDs and a few DVDs, but only a few. He liked to keep his music on his MP3 player and was content to watch movies while they were in theaters, not over and over again. These days there were too many resurrections of old intellectual properties, with too much special effects and too little plot. How could anyone enjoy a movie like that? All said, his multimedia tastes fit into one box.
The TV, most of the furniture, and the rugs he decided to leave for whoever had the apartment next… with an apologetic note, too. House-training Marvin hadn't been easy. What would be easy would be to buy better versions of everything. Take Quorra shopping… which was taking his life into his own hands, given certain feminine stereotypes and Quorra's Quorra-ness, but at least it wouldn't be boring. And a nice TV, big as they made them, with surround sound so he and Quorra could stay in and watch something from back when Hollywood knew how to make movies. Like The Princess Bride…
Okay. He was a total girl. He had admitted that to himself and he was okay with it.
Finally, the video games. His one weakness. He liked to support the industry, so he never rented when he could buy, and if he didn't like a game, he tended to chuck it in his closet. He finally started making good use of the Goodwill box that he'd set aside, as anyone who's ever had a mother will do. In a minute's time, he'd thrown in a dozen Doom clones, some movie tie-ins he really should've known better than to buy, and a House cash-in for the casual gamer that allowed players to solve medical mysteries in the grand tradition of Dr. Mario. Quorra examined it for a minute. With the box just about full, Sam pried it away and put it inside before taping the box shut. "You wouldn't be interested in that."
He sent Quorra for another box to contain every Japanese RPG that contained spiky hair, speechless main characters, or an obsession with trapping small animals. That was a weird phase he'd gone through. He picked up another jewel case, wondering if it was for a PSX game or maybe a Dreamcast game… a Dreamcast he'd have to keep on general principle…
Wait. Stormtroopers. He loved Star Wars since he was a kid; dreamed of traveling to alien worlds, fighting with glow-y weapons, learning from wise old masters, rescuing beautiful princesses, ducking into strange little cantinas filled with weird creatures; not to mention fighting faceless, black-suited menaces and manning the gun-port of a spaceship to defend it from enemy fliers.
Hmm…
It wasn't one of the latter-day LucasArts games, from when they'd started to kinda suck along with the rest of Star Wars. This was original trilogy, Dark Forces, Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors and the Rusty Crow. The Force was strong in it.
Quorra came back, holding out a box for the CD, but he clutched it to his chest. "Babe. This is Dark Forces. I grew up on this game. I must've killed a thousand Stormtroopers…"
"K-killed?"
Oh. Crap.
Quorra's eyes angled with suspicion. "You killed Programs?"
"No, no, I mean…" Couldn't have been. His dad never would've let him so much as play Tetris if a single block had a Program behind it. Right? "I didn't even know there were Programs back then."
"So that makes it alright? That you killed my friends for fun?"
"Not your friends, you would never even have heard of them…" That was the wrong thing to say. Quorra stormed into the other room, tossing the box over her shoulder when she realized she was still holding it.
Sam followed after her, dropping the treacherous game onto the ground. "Quorra, hey…"
She was sitting, but not in her usual Zen fold. Instead she'd sat down on a footstool, not caring that it was too small for her, probably not even realizing it, her legs bunched up angrily under her, head twitching from side to side as she tried to think the problem away. He reached for her shoulder, hoping some skin contact would calm her down.
Quorra jerked away, bunching herself up again. "Don't! I've decided to be angry with you, Sam," she informed him. "Very, very angry."
Sam tried not to laugh. As patronizing as it was to say so, she was pretty cute when she was angry. If it weren't for the fact that she meant it, that this was enough to wreck their relationship and send her spiraling off in God only knew what direction, he'd actually be able to enjoy the whole kerfuffle.
"That's too bad," he said somberly. "How long are you going to be angry with me?"
"I don't know. As long as I feel like it. I may also direct my feelings of anger toward you." She looked at him disdainfully. "You may have thought from certain statements I've made or physiological reactions I've had that I find you attractive. That's not the case. In fact, you're very extremely unattractive."
Physiological reactions? Sam nodded. "That's hurtful."
"It was supposed to be!"
"So I guess you want to be alone now?"
"I don't know," Quorra said, confused. "Do I?"
"Yeah, I think that's how it works."
"Alright then." Quorra hugged her legs. "I'll be alone now."
Sam went to find his phone. He knew every couple had to have a first fight. He'd just prefer it weren’t about whether or not he'd been committing genocide in his off-hours.
Fandom: Tron
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,564
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Quorra
Previous: A Good Time To Change Your Facebook Status
Next: Moving Day 2/2
Summary: Sam knows every couple has to fight about something. This just wasn't what he had in mind.
"Uh-uh."
Sam reversed himself, since he'd obviously just upset his core demographic of Quorra. With him back in place, Quorra let out a satisfied, if muffled, "Mm-hmm…"
Sam forced his eyes open, although it felt like an uphill battle through how comfortable he was. He suddenly felt like he had too many limbs. There was his right leg and his left leg, then another pair sandwiched between the other two. And his arms seemed to be brushing against more arms, which were softer and hairless and a little cool, like glass.
He finally got his eyes open to find Quorra's disarrayed hair covering his face. It'd grown out since she'd left the Grid. Her head was scrunched up against his chest, ear pressed to it like a stethoscope while her upturned smile seemed to capture the same vibrancy of his now-racing heart. Her arms and legs tied him up like the ribbon on a present.
Seeing how close she was, Sam jerked away involuntarily. In response, Quorra groaned her wakefulness, opening her expansive eyes so slowly she might have been taking in her world one particle at a time.
"Morning," she said, breaking into a bright smile at the sight of him. Nestled in his arms with the sheets pulled tight around her, she looked snug as a bug.
"Morning," Sam said back. "I hate to break it to you, but I think you're the little spoon."
"I'm cool with that," Quorra laughed, throwing herself so Sam rolled onto his back and she laid across him. Sam felt like the mattress was quicksand, he was so comfortable. How did she do that?
"It's just weird for me, because when we went to sleep, we weren't any sort of kitchen utensil."
"Oh." Quorra looked abashed, then grew serious. "You were having a nightmare. You woke me in the middle of the night." Her voice dropped even lower. "Your father used to have them too. But this time I knew what to do. I put my arms around you and held you tight and you settled down." Feeling him stiffen, she rolled off him and into a sit by the bedpost. "I'm sorry if that was wrong. You just sounded so… like you were suffering, and I don't like that. I can't just watch you be in pain."
Sam wrenched himself up and turned, letting his legs dangle over the side of the bed. Quorra had seen one of his night terrors. Just perfect. "You didn't do anything wrong."
"Do you have a lot of nightmares?" Quorra asked. She persisted: "Is that normal?"
Sam jumped up from the bed, pretending he hadn't heard her. "C'mon, let's rustle up some grub. I'll show you how to make French toast."
Quorra stayed perched on the bed as Sam threw on some clothes. "In France, toast is served with grubs?"
***
After breakfast, and a second breakfast because Quorra liked French toast so much, they drove back to the garage. During the night, a U-Haul truck had been deposited in front of the apartment. Sam didn't have enough stuff to warrant hiring movers – for a long time he'd lived his life just waiting for Encom to have enough of him and press charges, freeing him up to go on the run with his laptop and Marvin. Now here he was, putting down actual roots. It was a good thing Quorra was completely oblivious to all that.
First off was clothes. Everything Sam wore fit into an antique steamer trunk his grandparents had left him. The books went into cardboard boxes. Sam set aside the box his PS3 had come in for books he thought Quorra might like. There were about a dozen Jules Verne books she hadn't gotten her hands on yet.
Then came gadgets, odds and ends. Sam had a few CDs and a few DVDs, but only a few. He liked to keep his music on his MP3 player and was content to watch movies while they were in theaters, not over and over again. These days there were too many resurrections of old intellectual properties, with too much special effects and too little plot. How could anyone enjoy a movie like that? All said, his multimedia tastes fit into one box.
The TV, most of the furniture, and the rugs he decided to leave for whoever had the apartment next… with an apologetic note, too. House-training Marvin hadn't been easy. What would be easy would be to buy better versions of everything. Take Quorra shopping… which was taking his life into his own hands, given certain feminine stereotypes and Quorra's Quorra-ness, but at least it wouldn't be boring. And a nice TV, big as they made them, with surround sound so he and Quorra could stay in and watch something from back when Hollywood knew how to make movies. Like The Princess Bride…
Okay. He was a total girl. He had admitted that to himself and he was okay with it.
Finally, the video games. His one weakness. He liked to support the industry, so he never rented when he could buy, and if he didn't like a game, he tended to chuck it in his closet. He finally started making good use of the Goodwill box that he'd set aside, as anyone who's ever had a mother will do. In a minute's time, he'd thrown in a dozen Doom clones, some movie tie-ins he really should've known better than to buy, and a House cash-in for the casual gamer that allowed players to solve medical mysteries in the grand tradition of Dr. Mario. Quorra examined it for a minute. With the box just about full, Sam pried it away and put it inside before taping the box shut. "You wouldn't be interested in that."
He sent Quorra for another box to contain every Japanese RPG that contained spiky hair, speechless main characters, or an obsession with trapping small animals. That was a weird phase he'd gone through. He picked up another jewel case, wondering if it was for a PSX game or maybe a Dreamcast game… a Dreamcast he'd have to keep on general principle…
Wait. Stormtroopers. He loved Star Wars since he was a kid; dreamed of traveling to alien worlds, fighting with glow-y weapons, learning from wise old masters, rescuing beautiful princesses, ducking into strange little cantinas filled with weird creatures; not to mention fighting faceless, black-suited menaces and manning the gun-port of a spaceship to defend it from enemy fliers.
Hmm…
It wasn't one of the latter-day LucasArts games, from when they'd started to kinda suck along with the rest of Star Wars. This was original trilogy, Dark Forces, Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors and the Rusty Crow. The Force was strong in it.
Quorra came back, holding out a box for the CD, but he clutched it to his chest. "Babe. This is Dark Forces. I grew up on this game. I must've killed a thousand Stormtroopers…"
"K-killed?"
Oh. Crap.
Quorra's eyes angled with suspicion. "You killed Programs?"
"No, no, I mean…" Couldn't have been. His dad never would've let him so much as play Tetris if a single block had a Program behind it. Right? "I didn't even know there were Programs back then."
"So that makes it alright? That you killed my friends for fun?"
"Not your friends, you would never even have heard of them…" That was the wrong thing to say. Quorra stormed into the other room, tossing the box over her shoulder when she realized she was still holding it.
Sam followed after her, dropping the treacherous game onto the ground. "Quorra, hey…"
She was sitting, but not in her usual Zen fold. Instead she'd sat down on a footstool, not caring that it was too small for her, probably not even realizing it, her legs bunched up angrily under her, head twitching from side to side as she tried to think the problem away. He reached for her shoulder, hoping some skin contact would calm her down.
Quorra jerked away, bunching herself up again. "Don't! I've decided to be angry with you, Sam," she informed him. "Very, very angry."
Sam tried not to laugh. As patronizing as it was to say so, she was pretty cute when she was angry. If it weren't for the fact that she meant it, that this was enough to wreck their relationship and send her spiraling off in God only knew what direction, he'd actually be able to enjoy the whole kerfuffle.
"That's too bad," he said somberly. "How long are you going to be angry with me?"
"I don't know. As long as I feel like it. I may also direct my feelings of anger toward you." She looked at him disdainfully. "You may have thought from certain statements I've made or physiological reactions I've had that I find you attractive. That's not the case. In fact, you're very extremely unattractive."
Physiological reactions? Sam nodded. "That's hurtful."
"It was supposed to be!"
"So I guess you want to be alone now?"
"I don't know," Quorra said, confused. "Do I?"
"Yeah, I think that's how it works."
"Alright then." Quorra hugged her legs. "I'll be alone now."
Sam went to find his phone. He knew every couple had to have a first fight. He'd just prefer it weren’t about whether or not he'd been committing genocide in his off-hours.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-01-11 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-11 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-11 09:29 pm (UTC)It wasn't one of the latter-day LucasArts games, from when they'd started to kinda suck along with the rest of Star Wars. This was original trilogy, Dark Forces, Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors and the Rusty Crow. The Force was strong in it.
May I say I'm kind of in love with Sam now? I miss old skool LucasArts!
"You may have thought from certain statements I've made or physiological reactions I've had that I find you attractive. That's not the case. In fact, you're very extremely unattractive."
Quorra gives the best insults ever.
Also LMAO at the jab at House and the meta-ish thing about sequels and remakes.
I can't wait to read more. I love this little 'verse of yours.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 12:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 12:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 12:45 am (UTC)"These days there were too many resurrections of old intellectual properties, with too much special effects and too little plot. How could anyone enjoy a movie like that?" Well, a lot of us seem to have enjoyed at least one....