I prefer to think of it as enterprising.

[in_the_blue]

Because I have a cold -- or maybe that's not why -- I feel like doing something creative.

To the first five people who comment: I'll look at your LJ interests list and write you something based on one or more of those interests (my choice). How's that sound?

ETA: All full!
1. vivien529
2. silveraspen
3. lostinapapercup
4. kit_the_brave
5. sotto_voice

P.S. If you haven't seen Lost in Translation, you might want to skip the comments.

Comments

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

There's something about little brothers that's just so annoying, and especially this pathetic runt of a brother. He's eight and he still cries? Isn't he ever going to grow up? Well, she'll teach him.

"Hey, Yorick. Come with me. Come on, put on your sneakers and let's go. There's this place I want to show you." Queen Victoria won't mind; she says it's okay to bring...

---

...wait. This isn't the story I was going to tell. Give me that remote! *SKIP*

---

One thing this humble bounty hunter's always been interested in is birth control. Like he ever wanted some little green-haired clone of himself running around in diapers? Yeah, right: he was enough of a damn handful himself when he was a little shit, emphasis on the shit part, literally. He used to hear the stories all the time when he was growing up about how difficult, how stubborn, how all those things he was. How he made life so difficult for his saint of a mom and for his dad. Especially for his dad, who never took to parenting... ever. He always figured if by some twist of fate he ended up in that role, he'd be just as horrible at it as his own father was. Hell of a role model and all. But when he looks at Beth Junior taking those first halting steps, his heart fills with...

---

...wait. This isn't the story either. *SKIP*

---

(to be continued...)

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

Japan is one of the weirdest places Bob Harris has ever been but... he likes it. He likes it more than he thought he would and even though he spent the whole time trying to break out of the country -- with or without an accomplice -- in the end he sits in the back seat of the limo not filled with regret, but tinged by it. Like he told Charlotte, he'd already been thinking about the Porsche, but who wants to grow up to be a cliché? Even (or especially) after twenty-five years of marriage to someone he used to love like crazy, but who he's now relegated to the role of his own personal interior decorator and nanny to his kids? That's not fair: it's not Lydia's fault they grew apart after the kids came along. He was an actor; she was a stay-at-home mom. He traveled; she took care of the kids. He got paid stupid amounts of money for saying things like for relaxing times, make it Suntory time and she got to reap that financial bounty, even if he can't give her the emotional one any more.

She only ever seems to complain about it when he's out of town anyway. And here he is, on his way to the airport. Bittersweet: that's how he classifies the whole visit. And sure, Charlotte sets off some little fireworks for him, but she's just a kid. A beautiful kid, an enjoyable kid, but a married kid: that's what he felt like around her too. A married kid. A wrongly-married kid and he's never had a lot of scruples but the ones that stick with him stick strong when he's around her. She's got an innocence that's beguiling.

Apparently he had no scruples at all when it came to the lounge singer, the redhead. But she isn't the one on his mind as the car winds slowly through Tokyo's crowded streets, the signs still as incomprehensible to him as they were when he arrived; he casts an idle glance at the crowds. This place is backwards, that's the problem with it: it's day when it should be night, crowded when it should be empty, noisy when it should be quiet, confusing when it should be straightforward. If it hadn't been for Charlotte, he...

"Can you pull over a second?" The driver isn't about to say no, not to the American movie star, and the door... sticks. Stupid automatic doors! Finally, it opens and he leaps out (kind of like that scene he filmed when he was 28 and in great shape) and makes his way past all the diminutive Japanese people with their umbrellas held up against the misty sunshine and...

"Charlotte!"

She can't hear him, though, not until he's right there, right by her side. Her eyes, puffy and red, stream with tears.

"Why are you crying?" No hello, comrade, let's bust out of this joint or any other fooling around: just the question.

"I'll miss you." Her voice is heavy.

It's so simple, so poignant, so... sad. His wish is coming true: he gets to go home, where he can... eat more like Japanese people do than he's done his whole time here. But Charlotte gets to stay with her photographer husband, the one who leaves her behind to go off gallivanting around the countryside. They say that like attracts like and he knows even if the age difference were smaller, he's no better than that. It's exactly what he's done to Lydia.

That doesn't change the attraction. "I know, I'm going to miss you, too."

Maybe it's unfair but now that he's leaving -- really leaving, as in the limo is waiting, Mister Harris -- he caves and gives Charlotte that kiss he's been aching to deliver this whole time, ever since she smiled at him from across the bar. And he hugs her too, holds her close, whispers that thing that always makes girls laugh right into her ear before letting go.

She's not crying any more.

When he makes it back to the car where the doors open on cue this time (all it took was the one rehearsal), she's smiling.

And then she's lost to the crowd, and the doors automatically lock, and when he leans back in the seat and nods to the white glove-clad driver, he only looks back once but Charlotte's nowhere to be seen.

[lostinapapercup.livejournal.com]

Heh, reading this made me so happy. It's so sweet and unexpected and kind of perfect. I'm just completely delighted.

(And now I want nothing more than to read some Y and thread Milliways Beth and Spike (plus Junior) and watch Lost in Translation all at once.)

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

Let's shall! ♥