fanfic for the masses, and nano

[boogieshoes]

hey, i did it - made a reasonably major advance on one of my stories! thus my goal for nano is achieved - write *something* this month, despite this being the busy part of my year!

for those of you who liked Tanya Evans dropping in on FC, that's the story i worked a little bit more on.  i changed the title to 'One Night In Bangkok' for various reasons, and it's likely to stay that way.  without further ado, here's what i've got of Ch. 4 (and 5? i haven't decided if i should put in a chapter break there at the end yet, but it might be a logical place to do it.)


Title: One Night In Bangkok
Fandom: Mag7: OW
Word Count: 1,495
Pairing: None/Gen
Rating: PG-13 up to present
Warnings: WIP, Pt 5/? 

previous parts found:

In Time Relieved, Pt 1/?;
In Time Relieved, Pt 2/?;
In Time Relieved, Pt 3/?;
In Time Relieved, Pt 4/?;

Chapter 4

 

The night old Cal Peters decided to play the broken-down piano in the saloon was a hard night for us.  Summer heat makes tempers short, and drives men to drink, and the men of the town were joined with some of the rowdier cowboys come in from the cattle drives.  We broke up no less than three fights, and that was on top of Ezra’s smooth tongue, Buck’s protectiveness of the saloon girls, and Josiah’s imposing presence staving off a few more. 

 

Old Cal had started one of the worst of the fights, defending his talent with the ivories.  He’s not a violent drunk, really, preferring instead to play and sing on the piano, which he was doing when one of the trailhands took exception to it.  The cowboy was dancing with Miss Nancy, one of the saloon’s sportin’ women, and as they whirled by the piano, Old Cal broke out into a particularly rousing rendition of (insert tavern song here). 

 

‘Damn it, old man! Cain’t you see I’m tryin’ to woo Miz Nancy here?  Why cain’t you play somethin’ romantic?’

 

‘I am playin’ somethin’ romantic!’ Old Cal slurred back. 

 

That was when the cowboy took a swing at Old Cal, and I still can’t blame him very much: Old Cal can’t play for beans, and his caterwauling is enough to make a chicken’s screech sound good.

 

The ensuing brawl enveloped the whole saloon, and even as I was counting up how many days we Seven would spend nailing together tables and chairs for Inez, I couldn’t quite bring myself to stop it so soon.  It was not even midnight, and still stifling hot, although the sun had gone down long since, and the jail was already full-up with drunks sleeping it off.  I was ready to shoot anyone who gave me an excuse, hot and tired and irritated with the world as I was.  I punched and ducked and jabbed with the rest of the men, but only half-heartedly tried to control things, telling myself I was waiting for the right moment.  That moment came when I saw someone go flying into the piano, and the groaning twang! of sprung wires and splintering wood sounded a sweet hymn to my ears.  I pulled my gun and shot into the air – three shots in quick succession.

 

‘That’s enough!’ I roared.  ‘Saloon’s closed – everybody out!’

 

The next morning saw all seven of us, even Ezra, at the saloon bright and early to help clean things up and see what needed to be done before Inez would open again.  Tanya and Inez had been up earlier still, making lists of what was needed and doing some preliminary organizing and cleaning. 

 

We were nearly finished cleaning up the debris when Tanya wandered over to the piano, a thoughtful frown on her face.  She ran her hands over the keys, wincing at the sour notes here and there, before circling ‘round it with a critical eye.

 

‘I’m sorry, Miz Tanya, but I don’t expect that old thing can be fixed no more,’ Buck said, looking truly regretful.  How the man does it, I’ll never know.  ‘I think she’s about done played her last tune.’

 

‘Actually…’ Tanya said hesitantly.  ‘I think I can fix it – it doesn’t look too bad.  Most of the damage is surface.’

 

‘Leave it,’ I growled, heartily glad we’d never be subject to Old Cal’s plunking again.  ‘Nobody here can tune it anyways, no sense spending time on it.’

 

Tanya blinked.  ‘I can, if the soundboard isn’t broken.  And I know enough of fine carpentry work to fix the rest of it, too.’

 

Oh, great.  I didn’t realize I’d mumbled that out loud until the rest of them grinned at me.

 

‘Chris, half of Old Cal’s problem is that this piano has always been out of tune,’ Tanya said.  ‘This thing was so bad it’d make Mozart sound awful.  But if I can fix it up right, the saloon’s customer base can certainly support a piano player.  And a decent piano player would be a good draw for more people, too.  More money for Inez to help her get back on her feet after brawls like last night,’ she added wryly.

 

I snorted, not entirely sure I liked the idea of even more drunken sods cluttering up my town.  But Inez was seriously considering the idea.

 

‘You are sure you fix this thing, Senora?’

 

‘Well, I think it’s worth a try at any rate.  Whaddya say?’

 

‘I say it won’t hurt anything to try, Senora,’ Inez nodded firmly, ‘but I cannot afford to send away for anything.  These brawls cost too much to fix; if you need parts or tools, we must scrounge around here for it.  And since they broke it - ’ she cast a mischievous glance around at us, ‘ – these Seven Magnificos will help to repair it!’

 

‘I do not recall agreein’ to that, Senora Recillios.’  Ezra was the quickest to object, but not the only one.  None of us wanted to be in on repairing the instrument of so much aural pain.

 

‘Oh, but I insist! For if you do not help us, I fear it will simply cost me too much to support all seven of you, gratis.’  Judge Orin Travis had hired us on to protect Four Corners for room and board, plus a dollar a day.  Not much pay, but many of the town businesses included basic services in that ‘board’ – so we got our laundry done for free, and baths once a week, and drink when we wanted it.  And we drank a lot.  ‘And of course, there is no fair way to select only some of you to serve for free.’ 

 

There was a collective groan, and I’m not too proud to say I was probably the loudest of the bunch.  Inez’s saloon was our preferred watering hole, and she was generally tolerant of us and our various eccentricities.  Besides, between Digger Dan’s – which watered their already-weak beer and served slop more deserving of a pig trough – and the one restaurant – whose employees had a tendency to look down their collective noses at us – Inez effectively had us by the short and curlies.

 

Tanya evidently felt a bit more for us than Inez, though.  ‘It really is old,’ she said, ‘if it’s too hard for me to fix, we should scrap it, and dig up a new one somewhere.  I should know in a couple of days if we can salvage it.’

 

‘Miz Evans,’ Ezra asked smoothly as Tanya started to turn around for a closer inspection of the piano.  ‘If an horrendously irritatin’ piano is but half of Mr. Peters’ problem, then what, in your opinion, accounts for the rest of his… ability?’

 

‘Well,’ she drawled, eyes twinkling, ‘it sure doesn’t help that he can’t play for beans and his singing is worse than fingernails on slate!’

 

 

 

So, the next few days Tanya spent taking the piano apart, carefully wrapping and labeling every piece.  I’d never thought about how many pieces made up a piano before, but I could see it was a far more complicated project than I’d ever handled myself.  Even my shack in the hills didn’t have so many pieces of wood.  And the piano’s elements were all small, precisely carved and made.  I’ve done a piece of carving myself, and know what it takes – I was impressed. 

 

More impressed with Tanya’s diagrams of the piano, though. I watched her working of an afternoon, and got my first inkling that she was not quite the same as us.  She carefully measured and sketched every single part in case she needed to reproduce them later, and just as carefully noted how they went together.  By the time she was finished deconstructing the monster, she had a sheaf of paper as tall as my knee, covered in construction diagrams.  Her pictures were covered in odd notations I couldn’t make heads nor tails of – some of it in characters I couldn’t even recognize.  But I thought of the odd pendent lying heavy in my duster pocket, and thought maybe she had learned this system of construction details at her father’s knee in a tinker’s campsite.  It would certainly account for her ability to bend little odds and bits to the use she needed.

 

We helped when we could – supplies, extra hands, and cutting out larger pieces.  She got Vin to help her replace some of the strings, too, with catgut instead of the hard wire.  We’d have to keep an eye on it, she said, because the catgut would wear out quicker under the hammers, padded as they were.  And they were more elastic, she said, and I raised an eyebrow at that.  Catgut does stretch out easier that steel wire – comes loose with time of its own accord – but to hear such a word in such a context out here in the West was surprising, when even Mary doesn’t use such speech.

-bs

Comments

[farad.livejournal.com]

I like your style - very clean and very efficient; it makes it easy to read and keeps the focus on the plot, which is intriguing! I'm looking forward to where this is going and - how.

I think your Chris voice is good. He's got the edge of anger and grief to him, and the way he's telling the story seems a lot like his character - direct and to the point. The other characters seem in-characters as well, particularly Ezra and Buck.

I'm looking forward to more - shall I friend you for updates?

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

i'm always happy to have new friends, but i write very slowly and this is not a 'fic-only lj. i have no problems with random (or not so random - i like your work, farad!) people friending me for fanfic updates, just be aware that there are Other Things going on here.

if you're ok hearing about my life and angst, friend away!

i think, if i get a good response for this post, that i will also begin to post updates to the clarion_news - that will allow people who don't want to see the rest of it to still catch updates.

third option: i keep the majority of my fanfic posts public, except if i'm doing a random scene experiment or something, and also i try to tag consistently. so you can also filter through my posts via the tags and get just about every fanfic thing i've written.

.... and i realize that sounds like a cool response, but believe me, i'm very, very happy to have you friend me, if you want!

-bs

[farad.livejournal.com]

You're sweet - thanks for the kind words! I have friended you and am very much looking forward to more of the story (and stories!) Slow is all right - I can be that way myself.

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

::friends back:: :-)

-bs

[sfulton229.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting the link to this; it's a wonderful idea and I'm enjoying reading this. Chris is really in character and you have a good grasp on Ezra and Vin as well. Please keep updating Clarion news when you write more. I'm looking forward to the next part and seeing just how this all shakes out.

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

thank you, and i think i will keep updating the Clarion. :-)

-bs

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

I don't usually read WIPs but I had a go, and I think you have a very promising start here. I'll be honest and say I think once you finish, you'll probably want to do some judicious cutting, but that's not a criticism (I wield a red pen over my own with startling vigour :) more a fact of WIP life.

Chris's voice is good, and the bits with the others - especially Ezra and Vin - as well, in fact I'd encourage you to push them forward more. I liked Cal Peters in this bit too, a small part but quite sharply drawn :) And opening with the scene with Jim and Blair (which was terrific, by the way, both of them from Chris's POV were great) sets up the story beautifully by plunging straight in and then going back to the start, a good solid storytelling technique).

I'll be even more honest though... Tanya doesn't come over very clearly, she's a bit colourless to me, possibly because there didn't seem to be any culture shock or real reaction from her to what had happened (part of the joy for me of time travel stories is the inherent shock of the PastIsAForeignCountry thing) and she seems to slip into their world too easily, possibly because I didn't get a sense of what she was like, physically or mentally. I don't dislike her, and certainly she's not a bad OC, but at the minute... she's a rather vague one.

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

thanks for taking a chance with my WIP, Sally. :-) i totally understand not liking to read stuff until it's finished, so if you'd apologized for *not* reading, that would have been totally ok. i my lj just seemed to be languishing for lack of comments of any sort, lately, so....

i agree that i'll probably edit this quite heavily when i'm finished getting the whole thing out. them's the breaks on WIPs - and i promise i'll post and link to the edited version as well, when i get there.

re Chris voice: thanks! it's always good to hear if i'm getting that right. i don't usually write in first-person, so it can be a little difficult for me to keep the narrative all in same voice.

re: Tanya... part of why i let her go for six weeks in Nathan's clinic was to gloss over the culture shock issue: she has a bit of time to adjust, and she's naturally reticent, when she's not sure what's going on.

she *does* slip into their world too easily, even a bit too easily for a contemporary traveler come to town, but that's sort of the point. Chris is very slowly realizing she *isn't* from 'around here'. and that 'around here' is actually 'this era'. he literally just doesn't pay a lot of attention to her at first, because she was a normal part of his duties as peacekeeper. i'm basically trying to drop hints as i go, to have this story unfold like a rose: every layer has another layer underneath it, and another and another. but because Chris is telling it, we're seeing what *he's* noticing, *when* he notices it, and how, and it's not all that much just now.

anyway, the intent is for Tanya's personality to slowly come into focus as the story continues. but, uh, i'll stop rambling now, heh.

-bs

[seremela2.livejournal.com]

bs, yes, a story from you!!!!

Interesting... heheh, and I see it ends up as a crossover with The Sentinel - now, why am I NOT surprised? ;- D

I like all the OW so far, if I remember correctly you haven't written much OW, right? I just love being in that old, small town, and your story takes me there all the way. That said, can't wait to see the seven interact with our time! (and morales, lol. "What ya mean I had no right to shoot that mother-fucker? I had every right, he had it coming a mile away! Arrest? Arrest? That's a joke, right? You can try...." *aiming and cocking gun*)

I can understand your worry about Chris' voice. He's not the most talkative after all and now suddenly he's sort of the one telling all this, so I can see your dilemma. I've only just written my first ever 'first person' story (Star Wars, sorry) and wow, did it give me grieve!!!! As a die-hard Chris fan one of the things that appeal to me about him is the fact that he's not wordy, so I have to admit, I had to get used to him being the one telling it all. Didn't take me too long though, because I agree with everyone above, that you do his voice very well. And I do love his voice....

Now.... wasn't there some other, very interesting Sentinel crossover, military, in a sort of future, with Chris and Vin as a Sentinel/guide pair as well as Jim and Blair? Hmmmmmmmmm?

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

::grins:: thank you, Seremela!

i do tend to find the OW harder to write in than the ATF AU, yes. and yes, i'm doing two other 'Sentinel' crossovers in the ATF version.

one is a fusion with Susan Foster's GDPverse - no Sentinel characters, but the majority of the rules apply, with some minor tweaks. in that one, Chris is the Sentinel, and yet another OFC becomes his Guide... teh dramah ensues.

the other is the one you're thinking of, where Chris is Vin's Guide - that one's what i think of as my 'apocolypse' AU, with the world slowly getting so many disasters modern society just can't recover without a major re-organization. that one *does* have Jim and Blair, and as i believe i was mentioning, a third pair of complete originals, with the intent to focus on all three pairings to show different variations on the S/G bond, and how different people handle the world slowly going to sh*t.

i'm very flattered you remembered that!

again, thank you.

-bs