![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
templeremus.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
who_contestTitle: Every Passing Hour
Rating: G
Genre: Character Study/Romance
Word Count: 1210
Characters: Thomas Kincade Brannigan, Valerie Brannigan
Summary: Marriage takes commitment. Being married to a pregnant human during the longest traffic jam in history takes rather more than that.
Brannigan and Valerie muddle through. Set prior to the events of Gridlock.
Nobody had ever troubled Brannigan with the details of human pregnancy, so the full nine months came as a shock. Until then he hadn't realised that it was possible to be both terrified and elated, in equal measure, for quite so long. Time, already distorted from their decade on the motorway, slowed to a crawl. Minor irritations that hadn't bothered either of them for years took on a new urgency.
Valerie reprogrammed the food dispenser half a dozen times before lunch. He slept when she wanted company, and left too much fur on the driver's seat. Deep down they knew that none of it was worth arguing over, but there was no other outlet for all their nervous energy. Moping required at least a little privacy, and the only doors that slammed had a thousand-foot drop beyond them. They were bound together, just as they'd always been, only now it felt more like being trapped.
By the eighth month they were barely on speaking terms. In between shifts at the wheel, Valerie paced. She had made friends with an obstetrician and his husband several rows over, who had started phoning in unprompted. Their conversations were frank, veering towards intimate, and they made Brannigan want to start clawing the furniture. It wasn't that he was jealous; after all, you couldn't spend every last moment in a box with someone unless you trusted that person implicitly. He was an old-fashioned breed of cat, that was the trouble. To his mind birth was something that happened in dark corners, while the tom removed himself from the equation. Humans apparently thought of it more as a spectator sport. Advice had to be offered, and every development scrutinised. His uselessness in both areas had grown clearer week by week.
The low point came in the small hours of the morning. They hadn't budged an inch for two days. The fog outside was so thick that your eyes stung just looking at it. Brannigan tapped out a rhythm against the armrest to keep from nodding off. Valerie had her slippered feet on the dashboard and her hands clasped over her belly. Though she was trying to cry without drawing attention to herself, there was no hiding anything in a car this size. His gaze still on the taillights ahead, Brannigan reached over and waved a paw in her general vicinity. She swatted at him, and finally bit out:
"What sort of place is this for a family?"
It's our place, he almost said, but caution intervened. It was difficult to tell how she might react at present. Better to let the mood pass. Valerie, though, had other ideas - or rather, only the one idea, and an absolute determination to see it through.
"Crawling along with nowhere to stop, perhaps not even a job when it's all over. Nowhere for playing, no sky worth looking at. Maybe we should've stayed in Battery Park."
That did it. Like some half-evolved pet fixating on the end of a dangled string, he took the bait. "And live in a hellhole surrounded by mood-pushers, godforsaken wrecks, and - last but I don't mean least - your parents? Valerie, I love you dearly, but I'd rather tug out my own whiskers than go back to that."
The ensuing silence felt so complete that he began to think the engine had died. Then Valerie gave a hiccupping sob, and buried her face in his shoulder.
The couple in front of them had fallen asleep at the wheel, their two-headed silhouette just visible through the gloom. Brannigan put on the handbrake and closed his arms about her. When they started out as newlyweds she'd been cautious about such embraces, always half-afraid of prying eyes in the car opposite. A month on the road did away with those worries. Out here you learnt to take comfort readily, and to forgive as soon as you were able. Perhaps they'd have taught each other those things anyway, even in Battery Park. Or perhaps (and this was the thought that scratched at him, during the lonely night-time shifts) he wouldn't have stayed long enough to find out. He was, at heart, an outdoor cat. Wanderlust was in his blood.
No use entertaining all the paths they could have taken. They'd both settled on the route too many years ago for that. With her nose still resting on his collarbone, Valerie had brought her hands up to clasp his waist. This late in the pregnancy, her arms could no longer reach the full way. "Did I ever tell you how Mum needed three doses of Happy, just so she wouldn't throw a fit every time you were over for dinner?"
"You did not." He was stroking her hair, marvelling (as always) at the length and the volume of it. "But your mother, my darling, and I mean this with all the love in the new world, she was mad as a bag of badgers."
Not that he had much to boast about where family was concerned. Da had left before Brannigan first opened his eyes and Ma had driven herself almost feral keeping the household in one piece. By the time Valerie knew her she spent most days in bed, talking to Sally Calypso on the telescreen. He'd put the introduction off for weeks, anticipating Ma's displeasure. But the old tabby had only felt Valerie's arm and remarked that she must get cold, before going back to the traffic reports. One good thing to come from being really daffy, it seemed - you lost the habit of judging people by how they looked compared with everyone else.
Other relatives and friends had not been so generous. There had been awkward dinners, and too many fur ball jokes. In the end he and Valerie had married on the quiet, taking off in the car that afternoon. Eight thousand yards down the road, they were still uncovering traits that made them different from each other. Brannigan thought of these discoveries as landmarks in the journey they'd chosen, far more significant than what went on outside. They gave direction to the times when nothing else was moving.
The next day he stitched three favourite handkerchiefs into a lining for the children's basket. It was tedious work, and his paws were pincushions by the end.
Valerie, nibbling a shard of biscuit by his left ear, grimaced. "That won't last long once they're born, y'know. All the little claws."
"No babby of ours is bedding down on scraps", he told her, only half joking. That was why they were travelling, after all; for a shot at a better future than the one they'd left behind.
In the early years he could have pictured life on Fire Island with almost hallucinatory clearness. The house would have three storeys, with a floor just for the children. There'd be apple grass growing on the veranda outside; windows with a proper view, and a sunny patch in every room for basking in.
It was a young cat's fantasy, but at low moments he still returned to it. On the good days, though - when he looked at Valerie, really looked, and weighed up everything in the kingdom they'd built for themselves - he couldn't imagine being happier anywhere else.
Rating: G
Genre: Character Study/Romance
Word Count: 1210
Characters: Thomas Kincade Brannigan, Valerie Brannigan
Summary: Marriage takes commitment. Being married to a pregnant human during the longest traffic jam in history takes rather more than that.
Brannigan and Valerie muddle through. Set prior to the events of Gridlock.
Nobody had ever troubled Brannigan with the details of human pregnancy, so the full nine months came as a shock. Until then he hadn't realised that it was possible to be both terrified and elated, in equal measure, for quite so long. Time, already distorted from their decade on the motorway, slowed to a crawl. Minor irritations that hadn't bothered either of them for years took on a new urgency.
Valerie reprogrammed the food dispenser half a dozen times before lunch. He slept when she wanted company, and left too much fur on the driver's seat. Deep down they knew that none of it was worth arguing over, but there was no other outlet for all their nervous energy. Moping required at least a little privacy, and the only doors that slammed had a thousand-foot drop beyond them. They were bound together, just as they'd always been, only now it felt more like being trapped.
By the eighth month they were barely on speaking terms. In between shifts at the wheel, Valerie paced. She had made friends with an obstetrician and his husband several rows over, who had started phoning in unprompted. Their conversations were frank, veering towards intimate, and they made Brannigan want to start clawing the furniture. It wasn't that he was jealous; after all, you couldn't spend every last moment in a box with someone unless you trusted that person implicitly. He was an old-fashioned breed of cat, that was the trouble. To his mind birth was something that happened in dark corners, while the tom removed himself from the equation. Humans apparently thought of it more as a spectator sport. Advice had to be offered, and every development scrutinised. His uselessness in both areas had grown clearer week by week.
The low point came in the small hours of the morning. They hadn't budged an inch for two days. The fog outside was so thick that your eyes stung just looking at it. Brannigan tapped out a rhythm against the armrest to keep from nodding off. Valerie had her slippered feet on the dashboard and her hands clasped over her belly. Though she was trying to cry without drawing attention to herself, there was no hiding anything in a car this size. His gaze still on the taillights ahead, Brannigan reached over and waved a paw in her general vicinity. She swatted at him, and finally bit out:
"What sort of place is this for a family?"
It's our place, he almost said, but caution intervened. It was difficult to tell how she might react at present. Better to let the mood pass. Valerie, though, had other ideas - or rather, only the one idea, and an absolute determination to see it through.
"Crawling along with nowhere to stop, perhaps not even a job when it's all over. Nowhere for playing, no sky worth looking at. Maybe we should've stayed in Battery Park."
That did it. Like some half-evolved pet fixating on the end of a dangled string, he took the bait. "And live in a hellhole surrounded by mood-pushers, godforsaken wrecks, and - last but I don't mean least - your parents? Valerie, I love you dearly, but I'd rather tug out my own whiskers than go back to that."
The ensuing silence felt so complete that he began to think the engine had died. Then Valerie gave a hiccupping sob, and buried her face in his shoulder.
The couple in front of them had fallen asleep at the wheel, their two-headed silhouette just visible through the gloom. Brannigan put on the handbrake and closed his arms about her. When they started out as newlyweds she'd been cautious about such embraces, always half-afraid of prying eyes in the car opposite. A month on the road did away with those worries. Out here you learnt to take comfort readily, and to forgive as soon as you were able. Perhaps they'd have taught each other those things anyway, even in Battery Park. Or perhaps (and this was the thought that scratched at him, during the lonely night-time shifts) he wouldn't have stayed long enough to find out. He was, at heart, an outdoor cat. Wanderlust was in his blood.
No use entertaining all the paths they could have taken. They'd both settled on the route too many years ago for that. With her nose still resting on his collarbone, Valerie had brought her hands up to clasp his waist. This late in the pregnancy, her arms could no longer reach the full way. "Did I ever tell you how Mum needed three doses of Happy, just so she wouldn't throw a fit every time you were over for dinner?"
"You did not." He was stroking her hair, marvelling (as always) at the length and the volume of it. "But your mother, my darling, and I mean this with all the love in the new world, she was mad as a bag of badgers."
Not that he had much to boast about where family was concerned. Da had left before Brannigan first opened his eyes and Ma had driven herself almost feral keeping the household in one piece. By the time Valerie knew her she spent most days in bed, talking to Sally Calypso on the telescreen. He'd put the introduction off for weeks, anticipating Ma's displeasure. But the old tabby had only felt Valerie's arm and remarked that she must get cold, before going back to the traffic reports. One good thing to come from being really daffy, it seemed - you lost the habit of judging people by how they looked compared with everyone else.
Other relatives and friends had not been so generous. There had been awkward dinners, and too many fur ball jokes. In the end he and Valerie had married on the quiet, taking off in the car that afternoon. Eight thousand yards down the road, they were still uncovering traits that made them different from each other. Brannigan thought of these discoveries as landmarks in the journey they'd chosen, far more significant than what went on outside. They gave direction to the times when nothing else was moving.
The next day he stitched three favourite handkerchiefs into a lining for the children's basket. It was tedious work, and his paws were pincushions by the end.
Valerie, nibbling a shard of biscuit by his left ear, grimaced. "That won't last long once they're born, y'know. All the little claws."
"No babby of ours is bedding down on scraps", he told her, only half joking. That was why they were travelling, after all; for a shot at a better future than the one they'd left behind.
In the early years he could have pictured life on Fire Island with almost hallucinatory clearness. The house would have three storeys, with a floor just for the children. There'd be apple grass growing on the veranda outside; windows with a proper view, and a sunny patch in every room for basking in.
It was a young cat's fantasy, but at low moments he still returned to it. On the good days, though - when he looked at Valerie, really looked, and weighed up everything in the kingdom they'd built for themselves - he couldn't imagine being happier anywhere else.
