Le Weekend Drabble Tree Challenge!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Yeay Saturday, especially chilly grey Saturdays, because just maybe it'll turn out to be far nicer to stay indoors, tucked in front of your keyboard/pen and paper, and take part in another little Dialj challenge?

This part of April's Drabble Month is courtesy of probodie - a Drabble Tree Challenge! The idea is that we start out with one drabble, and the next person/people to post a drabble have to begin their drabble with the word that ended the last one. The last word of those drabbles is the first word to begin the next drabbles posted, and so on. You can choose any drabble already posted (even the first one again) as the one that you grow out of - just use the last word of it to begin your own drabble. At the end of the weekend, we'll have a drabble tree - a series of drabbles that "grew" from each other, and ultimately from the first drabble!

The drabbles shouldn't be sequels to any other drabble - a drabble is supposed to be a complete story in itself, standing alone. It makes the whole story blossom in the reader's mind, in one glorious 100-word read.

My favourite drabble ever isn't really a drabble at all, it's a "six word drabble" by Earnest Hemingway:

"For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn."

Six words, and in your mind the whole story of that family is suddenly right there.

That said, the only real rules for this challenge are:

1. Drabbles have to to use the last word of someone else's drabble as the first word of their own

2. Drabbles must be 100 words exactly.

Two rules, to make it a challenge, but otherwise do what you will - because it's really all about the fun of writing Pros, innit? *g*

To start us off on the drabble challenge, here's one I prepared earlier...

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

*
Sunshine
by Slantedlight

The sun burned when you were out in it too long, everyone knew that. Bodie knew that. He felt the heat across his skin, soaking in, felt it running with his blood. Straight to his core.

Too late to come into the shade now, the damage was done. He had spent his days basking, had turned his face, his body, his world to the glorious shine of it, and now Doyle was his.

Here they lay, tangled together across the bed, and with every movement their skin enflamed each other anew, and the summer night burned slowly through to day.

(May 2006, slightly revised April 2008)

Drabble Tree Challenge

[draycevixen.livejournal.com]

Erm... *flails* Because I'm more than a little deranged, I decided to use all the drabble "end words" currently in play -- Day, time, Bodie, Flaring, Mouth, Before and Mate.

-----

Something Stupid

.

Drabble Tree Challenge

[schnuffi.livejournal.com]

Ok, starting with Bodie then - thanks for the easy prompt, mab_browne *G*

Blossoming Lotus

Bodie stopped dead in his tracks as he entered the flat. Doyle sat on the floor, stark naked with his legs hooked behind his head.

“What the deuce are you doing?” Bodie asked mildly, letting his eyes wander.

“Yoga. It’s called the ‘blossoming lotus position’,” Doyle replied, his voice sounding slightly strangled.

“Aha. Well, it does quite a few interesting things to your dangly bits, you know,” Bodie smirked, closing the door.

“Does it now? If you’re quite finished grinning like a baboon, maybe you could lend me a hand and unknot me legs,” Doyle snapped irritably, his eyes flaring.

Drabble Tree Challenge

[crimson-37.livejournal.com]

Note: Non-writer type person doing writer type things. Please make allowances. Hope I've done this right.
Carrying on from schnuffi's last word -- flaring.


"Flaring? I'm not a bloody horse!" Bodie stopped struggling as Doyle’s teeth ran over his sensitive neck. Bucking up to meet his warm skin, he breathlessly added, "maybe hung like a …”

Doyle bit down gently, smiling at Bodie’s exaggerated ego and the resulting shudder. Thrusting his hips down, he tightened his grip on the thick wrists, pressing them deeper into the thick carpet as he pushed himself up to read his lover‘s expression.
Sent.
“Still, your nostrils do flare when you're angry. It’s one hell of a turn on!”
“Not angry now.”
“No, just gorgeous.” Wetly kissing his mouth.

Drabble Tree Challenge

[draycevixen.livejournal.com]

Follows on from bistokids last word "Time."



Restrained

.

Drabble Tree Challenge

[hambelandjemima.livejournal.com]

 crimson_37's last word was mouth. Oh the things we could write about that! And yet, look what I did...

Shhh, I'm not really here.

Mouth opening and closing, eyes open wide; it takes a full thirty seconds for Bodie to realise that Doyle is in shock.

 

Gently pulling him by the shoulders, he steers Doyle into a chair and sits him down, pouring him a drink.

 

He presses the glass into Doyle’s hand. “Here. Get that down you.”

 

Doyle lifts it to his lips and splutters as the fiery liquid hits the back of his throat, bringing him back to his senses.

 

He looks at the table and then up at Bodie, bewilderment in his eyes.

 

“But….. you’ve never cooked dinner for me before!”

Drabble Tree Challenge

[bistokids.livejournal.com]

What a fantastic challenge! *climbs into the drabble tree*

This follows on from hambelandjemima's drabble, whose final word was 'before'.
------

Before, it was easy.

Before, he relished the danger. Threw himself into harm’s way with vicious glee and no real belief in his mortality.

But that was before. Before he clambered into his partner’s flat, found him helpless and half-dead in a pinkish pool of blood and milk. Before he was forced to stand apart, relying on others to do what he should have done, to protect and preserve the only person that mattered in his fucked-up, isolated, terrifying world. Before he realised that, despite all his instincts, he’d started to care.

Now?

Now, he is afraid. All the time.

Drabble Tree Challenge

[callistosh65.livejournal.com]

Following on from crimson_37's last word, 'mouth'. Well, I mean, who can resist that one?


“Mouth on you like the Mersey tunnel, Doyle. Can’t let Cowley think the car got dented by accident, can you? Not dot-the-bloody-i’s, Raymond. You have to tell him-”

“Bodie-”

“-that yours truly did it scraping round a corner in Peckham. Didn’t fucking tell him why, though, did you? You randy, crotch-grabbing-”

“Bodie!”

“What? What’re you pointing..?”

“No, he most certainly did not tell me, 3.7. In fact 4.5 led me to believe 6.2 was the one responsible. I see now how... misguided that was. The off switch to an r/t, gentlemen, is on the left.”

“Sir.”

(pause)

“Mersey what, mate?”

******

Drabble Tree Challenge

[schnuffi.livejournal.com]

Picking up corvidology's last word - Restraint.

Bodie

Restraint was one of his virtues. He never lost control. Well, almost never. There was one thing that could leave him utterly defenceless and stripped bare to the bone. That one "thing" was Ray Doyle. That ratty, snarky partner of his. One look from those jade green eyes could turn his knees into jelly. A smile from those luscious lips would make his stomach do the fandango. One touch of those strong but gentle hands inevitably turned him into a quivering mass of yearning flesh. He wondered how one human being could have such a tremendous impact on his life.

Drabble Tree Challenge

[callistosh65.livejournal.com]

What can I say? I'm a drabbling fool.. I used hambelandjemima's last word 'before'.

This is a little 100 word coda to 'The Rack'.


Before Doyle can reset the locks Bodie pushes him onto the door handle. He opens his mouth to swear but Bodie’s tongue fills it and his groan becomes erotic.

Doyle smells of the Thames, where he sat and rubbed his knuckles for hours. Yet Bodie is kiss-biting his jaw, clearly oblivious. Bodie’s palm finds the ache in his kidney while the other finds his neck.

Their breathing is loud and uneven.

Doyle fists Bodie’s shirt in his hand, lays his head down on that wide shoulder, and knows he has never heard anything so hopeful in his whole fucking life.

******

Drabble Tree Challenge

[mab-browne.livejournal.com]

And here's a little something I just threw together. :-)

Day is scarier than night. By day there's no avoiding seeing everything there is to see. Cowley's frustration, Bodie's scowl, the way that his own hand shakes infinitesimally before the action, as well as after. By day, one day, he might have to see someone hurt because he's getting too fucking old for this. And him not forty yet.

One night, keeping company in the dark, Bodie states, "Time we packed this in."

"That obvious, is it?" There's no hiding the relief in his voice.

"Always did need me to point out the obvious." He's a smug bastard, sometimes, Bodie.

Drabble Tree Challenge

[hambelandjemima.livejournal.com]

I'm using 'Life' which was callistosh65's last word, and also schnuffi's.

It's ok. I'm supposed to be here now *g*

Life is all about looking after number one. Living each day as it comes, because it might be the last, and one day it will. No ties, no emotional baggage and definitely no Significant Other to cause confusion and disarray in an unpredictable existence.

 

The last thing he wants in this erratic life is someone to distract him from living, someone to remind him there are worse things than caring. The last thing he needs is someone to love and who will love him for himself.

 

But that’s the someone he has. And he wouldn’t have things any other way.