#now to think where i can fit eizen...maybe in the next fic...

[alteredphoenix]

An Unexpected Joyride (The Veleanor Modern AU #7)

A/N: While I'm thinking of which Celia/Michelle WIP I'm going to pull from the USB Drive and work on next (and given the month we're in, it'll probably something holiday-themed), I decided to open this guy up since it's last update in June 23 (to which it was created in May 23 of this year) after I received a lovely ask from an Anon last night about the Veleanor Modern AU series.

I had been thinking about this WIP on and off again since the last time I touched it, and I figure now would be a pretty good time to dust it off and work on this while (1) I am browsing my WIP list and (2) it's still on my mind before the brain decides To Go Brrrr and plunks it back into the far recesses of the thoughtful nether where all things belong and go to.

This is also the fic where Magilou makes her first actual appearance! But the WIP so far hasn't gotten to that point yet (but it's almost there!), so this little snippet will do for now.

Part of the summary goes as such: "(Or: Magilou has a busted muffler and it needs to be fixed last month, so Velvet, being the good convict that she is, decides to drive the damn car to the auto shop herself. As always, Magilou makes for...interesting company.

There are less than one-hundred ten hours to go.)" (I honestly might change this up as I go along idk, I kind of want to try fitting the countdown into the titles somehow)

(At the moment, the doc is sitting at 2.1k words. I get the feeling it might turn into a longfic, or close to it, so I foresee this maybe reaching around the 10k mark. Even if it doesn't, it's a good idea to set a tentative goalpost - Just To Be On The Safe Side.)

-

The first thing that Velvet notices that today is not going to be like any other normal day in this corner of hell upon waking up at six in the morning is there’s a distinct lack of music playing somewhere from the next block over. Only the fan churning quietly in the corner and the distant early morning traffic that would surely get drowned out by a higher setting could be heard.

Why the fuck...? is the first thing she thinks of after listening to the world, and then she frowns and glares up at the ceiling. No. It’s nothing. Quit being fucking paranoid all the time. With a grunt she pushes herself up onto her elbows and swings her legs off to the side of the bed. Just as she’s about to stand, she stops, and glances behind her, mattress creaking with the motion.

On his back, with his paws up in the air, Doodle snores gently, his smile eternal.

Velvet slowly shakes her head, gets up, and starts the day.

The sun is just peeking over the horizon when she’s refreshed, alert, and wondering once more how she’s going to spend her day off. The tiled floor on her bare feet say it’s cool, but one glance out the door into the world beyond the houses with their manicured lawns and the vehicles parked on the sidewalk next to their trash and recycle bins and then the street that’s plunging away down the decline and deeper into Pendrago proper and Velvet can already feel the heat is going to be a motherfucker.

This is the second thing that crosses her mind when she goes back into the kitchen to open up the fridge and crack open an ice-cold bottle of canned coffee that Eizen loves to call Aifread’s finest espresso on this side of the equator, grown and brewed straight from the coastal towns of Shining Blue: hot weather makes for a hot girl in all the wrong ways, and working in the garden, in all her pasty-ass white girl glory, makes for being hot in all the wrong places. At this rate, she’d welcome the rain. She’d even welcome snow, lack of shovels and snowblowers and extreme winter weather survival gear be damned.

Her hand is slick with the gathering condensation. Velvet sighs and halfheartedly knocks it back.

(It’s not the worse coffee she’s ever had. It could be whatever black magic the Katz Gang throws together in their labs, nicked off the boats and the warehouses in their raids from nearby Hellawes to distant Fennmont and Sapstrath in Rashugal – but knowing Eizen, and knowing Eizen’s luck, he’s probably had it and then some. The Reaper’s Curse as he calls it, and Velvet’s not sure if it’s from his time rolling with the Van Eltia Family before he got involved in her bullshit that made him miss death every single time or, as Edna puts it, is ungodly, recklessly stupid enough to somehow avoid going to an early grave by sheer circumstance every single time, without fail.

Velvet likes to think it’s the latter.)

She plugs in the toaster, jams in two cold Pharia cinnamon waffles from the freezer into the slots, and watches them slide out of sight as soon as she primes the lever down and mucks around with the settings (just enough to make it brown; she’d have to be out of her goddamned mind like Rokurou and Eizen are for wanting to have her grains black as sin). Then, after a pause, she walks across the island and turns the TV on. As always, it’s tuned to the news, the necessary evil in her life among the sea of reality shows, game shows spanning back forty years, and other programs that pad the airwaves for the stay-at-home parents, the retired elderly, and people that don’t have anything better to do with their lives.

Thankfully, it’s not about the weather (and anybody with a brain that’s lived in Pendrago, even just Hyland by itself, or the westbound border of Rolance, for more than a month would know that the forecast is almost going to be warm and dry as hell ninety percent of the time), so Velvet more or less ignores it in favor of getting her plate out of the cupboard and preparing the rest of the meal. The toaster hums away.