It’s now been posted and shared properly over at the Small But Mighty Facebook Group Pride Flash Fic event, so I can share it here too – here’s the flash fic I wrote for Elizabeth Ellerby’s prompt of “a home designer and the ugliest cat ornament you’ve ever seen,” which was a perfect prompt, since I like cats and HGTV!
It’s also up in the group event over here, but I’ll share it here too – I may do something else with it, expand it a bit and see if JMS wants it, perhaps…I do like it, for something written quickly and unedited, purely for fun and pride-celebration joy!
So, here you go! Please enjoy! Also please vaguely picture Hozier as an inspiration for River, as a character, here. 🙂
~
“I cannot,” Taran explained despairingly, “work with that.” The horrifying ceramic cat stared at him from its shelf with profound mutual disdain. He actually shut his eyes. Opened them. No, still there. “You absolutely can’t keep it.”
“I’ve had it for years.” River Fey’s voice came low and hesitant, like bashful amber, stories hidden in honey. He still had a whisper of an Irish lilt, more so when speaking than when singing live or recording those multiplatinum folk-rock hits that’d made him the current poster-child for superstardom. River, Taran knew, played all his own instruments, from guitar to cello to fiddle to drums, though he also often brought in friends to record with. “I’m sure you’ve had stranger requests.”
“I design from the ground up. A blank canvas. Décor and all.” Taran eyed him. Much better to look at than the cat art, question-mark on the art description. “It’s why people pay me. I’m very good.”
Without exaggeration, he was: Winterink had movie-star, rock-star, billionaire, politician clients. Taran Winterink, young and fashionable and dramatic—and happy to embrace the persona, if that was expected of him—could sweep into a newly-bought home and dismiss or summon décor with a fingersnap, a cutting remark, a piece of praise. His clients generally wanted that; they could boast about it, having him work on their mansions or apartments. Always unique, flamboyant, expensive.
He’d jumped at the chance, when River Fey’s people had contacted him. River was hot, in so many ways. That long black hair, those big grey eyes, that lean taut strength. Twenty-seven, a year younger than Taran himself, and undeniably attractive, in a wistful wild-hillside fairy-ring way. Taran liked pretty and wistful and vulnerable; he also liked that River had just bought this house, a lovely if older sprawl of ocean-view and glass and good bones, up in the hills above Malibu, out in California. The house was empty at the moment, or mostly so, aside from a few articles of furniture, the grand piano, River’s teakettle over in the white-painted kitchen.
River had offered, tentatively, “I know it needs work…” upon greeting him at the door, a barefoot forest-elf wearing jeans and a cloud-grey oversized sweater and messy hair, loose around his shoulders. “I’m happy to listen to whatever you think’s best; I don’t know anything about design but I like what you’ve done for friends…oh, I’ve made tea, do you want some? It’s peppermint, but I’ve also got orange spice. I truly don’t know how this all works, but would you like food? I could order pizza. I know it’s not fancy—maybe not what you’re used to? But most people like pizza? I mean, I do.”
Taran had stared at engaging elfin awkwardness, had wanted to either pat River’s shoulder in reassurance or reach over to find out how silky that long hair really was, and had been horrified by his own unprofessional impulses. He’d said yes to the tea, but waved off the offer of food. They were working. Initial consultations. Serious.
River had not said anything, in all those words, about terrible, horrible, hideous cat ceramics. Which would be a sticking point, evidently. Again: serious.
Taran ran a hand through his own hair—dark blond, neat, as carefully trendy as his rose-pink button-down shirt and perfectly paired slacks and shoes—and repeated, in case that was necessary, “It’s part of the contract. You hire us. You give us some general guidelines. Then we do the work. All the design choices. So everything fits the theme, the aesthetics. Not…that.”
That glared back at him balefully. It was definitely a cat, no argument there. But it was oversized, oddly proportioned, made of ceramic but painted to suggest patchwork fabric. The patches were eye-watering clashes of violet, lime, scarlet, turquoise. The fake stitches, also painted on, slashed thick and black across the rainbow collisions.
He transferred his own glare to the cat’s owner. River looked unhappy. Rain in those grey-sky eyes, in the music of his voice. “I thought it wouldn’t be too unreasonable…”
Normally a single small request wouldn’t be. Taran wasn’t that overbearing. But this one was really, truly, awful. He just couldn’t. He said as much.
River flinched. Actually did a tiny step back, one hand pushing up a sweater-sleeve. He was tall versus most people, not just Taran’s medium-shortness; he was a presence on stage, but in person moved with a sort of bewildered elegance, as if not quite sure how to direct long limbs without choreography. “It’s just, my gran made them…the cats…all the grandchildren got one. Before she, well. Passed.”
Taran said, because of course he had to say, “I’m sorry.” He did mean it. He knew about having, or rather not having, family.
“We used to joke about it. She knew they were just dreadful—she tried to make them so. For fun. As thoroughly ugly as possible.”
“Well, she succeeded.”
“So I’d like it on display. If we could.”
“And I’d like it in some sort of landfill. No.”
“Really no?”
“I’m tempted to walk out and quit on you.” Taran was half-joking, but only half. He did not walk out on clients, especially not at a first face-to-face one-on-one meeting. He also hated the idea that someone might think he’d had anything to do with a lumpish kaleidoscope in ceramic cat shape.
“Oh. But…would you? Over this?”
“I don’t know.” He’d worked so hard for his reputation. He’d built Winterink from the ground up. He did not have family—they did not speak, given their thoughts on their son and being gay. He did not have friends, not precisely—he had fellow designers, people he’d employed because they’d impressed him. He had fought for everything he had; he’d made himself be dazzling, daring, a personality, famous for it.
He had not had a grandmother who’d made cat sculptures, who’d given them as presents, who’d had inside jokes with her grandchildren.
He shoved that thought aside. “We explained how this works. And I’d never let that anywhere near one of my rooms. How do you feel about grey and taupe and blue? Lighter beach tones?”
“I do like the ocean. You’re the expert. I’ve never even bought a house before.”
“Then let me be the expert.” He caught the mismatched gaze of the sculpture—one blue eye, one green—and grumbled, “I don’t even like cats.”
“I do. I’ve thought about getting one.”
Taran ran a hand through his hair again. Tried, and failed, not to feel the headache coming on.
“I know it’s hideous.” River picked up the figurine, cradled it in pianist’s fingers, touched clashing paint and jagged faux-stitching lines the way a soldier might memorize the feel of a letter from home. “It’s only…can’t we keep it somewhere out here? Anywhere?”
“Why out here?” Taran waved an arm at the large bare sunlit room, and by implication the rest of the house. “You’ve got a bedroom. You’ve got four bedrooms. And a recording studio. And, I’ll just point out, a lot of closets. With shelves that could hold things like…that. With doors.”
“With doors that close, you mean. So we’d hide her away.” River ran a finger along the violet-orange tabby-striped back. “I know she looks like something from a Halloween display.”
“You hired me to design your house. Let me design your house.”
River looked at the lopsided whiskers, the mismatched eyes. His fingers stilled, a catch in a melody, a break in a line. “If you think…that is, you do know best. About design. If you really think we can’t…”
“I think purple and orange don’t belong on the same wall, much less on the same ceramic cat.”
“Maybe not.” But River’s hands, setting the oversized cat back on her shelf, moved like a heartbreak, like a small tragedy; Taran couldn’t’ve said why. Only that that was the feel of it, in the slight hesitation, the lingering. “I suppose you’re right.”
Taran shifted weight, abruptly uncomfortable. “Look, we can figure something out. Just not here. Visible.”
River nodded, but didn’t say anything. Only wandered across the room—such a glorious room, wide and high-ceilinged and calling to Taran’s love of light and vertical space and open canvases for artistic expression—and trailed fingers across the dark sleek wood of the piano, by the large picture window.
After a second he touched the keys, gently. The sunbeam brushed his hair, layering ink with pale gold. His hand was pale too, thin and graceful, summoning music.
Taran did not know the song. Something old-fashioned. Some sort of Celtic folk tune, maybe. Certainly nothing modern, not a current hit record or top-charting pop fantasia. Only simple, delicate, wild, a little sad. Drawn out of air and light by slender artist’s fingers.
Taran looked at River’s bent head, at the acquiescence—I suppose you’re right hung like the piano-notes, or grief, or resignation, in between them—and then at the crooked colorful face of the dreadful cat.
Maybe that particular violet shade wasn’t so bad. Maybe some sort of highlight color would work. Throw pillows, flecks of that hue in a rug. Wallpaper.
Maybe Taran did not like seeing River Fey, who’d been so generous and welcoming and self-deprecating, who created art out of music and light and the touch of fingers to instruments, unhappy.
Maybe he wanted to do something, because he did not want River to be sad, and he’d made River sad, and therefore he needed to fix that. With a whole lot of need, abruptly.
It was guilt, of course. But it was more. It was a shimmering aching protective impulse, one Taran hadn’t known he had, except he looked across the room at River’s bent head in beachside sunlight, and he wanted to help. He wanted to see River smile again.
He glanced at hideous feline ceramic again. The cat gazed back, with smugness.
Taran sighed, “I can’t believe I’m going to ruin my reputation over the world’s ugliest cat…” and took a small step toward River’s side, toward the music. His shoes were too loud across the floorboards. He winced.
But River’s head came up, and those wide grey eyes were blank with astonishment, first; and then they melted into absolute joy like the rush of thunderstorms, electric. His fingers made a note on the piano, a startlement, a shooting-star sound. “You’d do that for me?”
Taran inched a bit closer. “For me. I like a challenge. And that’s definitely…well, a challenge.” He said it lightly; he said it because it was that or admit that, inexplicably, his heart had done a somersault at River’s happiness.
“It is, yes…” River moved away from the piano, closer to Taran. Tall height, awkward as a heron learning about long legs, a swoop of night-black hair across his face, he was artwork himself, shy and hopeful. “What changed your mind?”
“I don’t know.” Taran tipped his head back, met those curious thunderstorm eyes. “I like making my clients happy.”
“You want me to be happy.”
“Something like that.”
“But you were ready to walk out, if I argued.”
“But you didn’t.”
“And that changed your mind.”
Taran shrugged a shoulder, not looking away. River was very close, and gorgeous, and the air hummed and sang, drenched in sun and possibilities. “I didn’t want you to be sad. And…” Honesty, because he couldn’t not say it, caught by those eyes and their questions. Truth for truth, here and now. “I know about being lonely. You shouldn’t be. If I can help it.”
“Oh.” River’s gaze got more surprised, and thoughtful: taking that in. And then they warmed up even more. “Which is why you love design, of course—making someone a home. No wonder you’re so good at it.”
Taran, breathless at this compliment, gazed at him. River blushed.
Taran said, “I’m thinking about built-in shelves, over there, on that wall behind you—white, simple, but with color in the back panels, different colors, bright ones. And we’ll have to buy a few more decorative pieces. Strong designs, patterns, eclectic choices. Like Patches.”
River’s smile swept back up, brilliant and brimming over. “You named my hideous cat sculpture?”
“She was staring at me. I couldn’t not.” They’d moved even closer together. A breath away, a touch. The quickness of words, of connections, beat under Taran’s skin. He thought that River must hear it, know it, feel it too; that same emotion tap-danced in the sparkle of grey eyes, the glory of River’s smile.
Taran said, softly, “Of course it’ll require some revised plans. Updated. With your input.”
“Yes…”
“If there’s anything else you want to tell me. Any other requests.” He paused, added, “Might take a while. I could stay longer.”
“Possibly,” River said, tentative but happy, “you could stay…for dinner? I know the kitchen needs remodeling, but it works. I could try to cook. Or we could have something delivered. From anyplace you’d like. And we could talk about plans, and colors, and what we both might…want?”
Possibilities, Taran thought again. Unfolding. Elated as the sun, tangible as kitten-fur. Himself and River Fey. Who’d just asked him to stay for dinner. And neither of them would be alone, or lonely; the night would, instead, be full of color and plans.
He said, “You said pizza, earlier. And pizza with you sounds exactly like something I want; it’s actually been a while, I can’t remember the last time I just ordered, y’know, delivery.”
River’s eyes got even happier. Taran added, filled up with the edges of sunlight, color, delight, “Also I think Patches approves.”
River started laughing—Taran wanted to hear that sound forever—and glanced at patchwork cacophony, grinning; swung back to Taran. “I think she does. I think she likes you coming up with designs.”
“Good,” Taran told him, “because I can definitely come up with more designs, for you,” and he watched River get the innuendo and then laugh more, spectacular and weightless, like everything Taran hadn’t known he wanted until right now, like the recognition that he was exactly where he wanted to be, forever, with River Fey and a piano and laughter and every ugly cat sculpture in the world, if Patches wanted friends; he’d give in and buy them all.
And, six months later, when they brought home a tiny kitten with fur in black-and-white patches, and named her Sally after a certain sewn-together rag doll, Taran looked around at his life—his new home office in one of those former bedrooms, the big comfortable space of the living room with the piano and the ocean views, the built-in display shelves with sea-glass stripe backdrops, holding colorful animal sculptures collected from various stops on River’s latest tour, when Taran had come along and cheered so loudly—and ended up smiling.
Home, he thought. He had one, now. With Winterink’s ever-expanding client list, and design work which had grown even better—more warm, said the comments, the praise: more human and friendly. With River’s wide unfurling smile, looking up while teasing Sally with a feather-toy, both of them down on the floor atop the violet-flecked blue shaggy rug.
And with Patches, in all her familiar cacophonous ceramic glory, front and center on her display shelf—painted whiskers crooked as ever, proudly approving of color and warmth and joy.
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