Barnes: where shabby chic is less a decorating choice and more a state of being...

♥ My bedroom looks as if a bomb has hit it. Admittedly, in many ways it looks better than it did last week, but still, it’s a bit of a shambles. But I now have the lovely mirror I bought last year up, and my new, slightly ridiculous, pink cupid hooks, courtesy of papa Stone. I also put up a couple of my pictures, and it’s all starting to feel more like home. We also have pictures/signs etc up throughout FT – huzzah! It was all feeling rather bland before. I also unpacked some of my hardbacks, despite the fact that my bookcase from home has still failed to materialise, and put them in the little bookcase previously known as ‘yonder crap-holder’.

♥ My parents. I love them very much. But JC on a stick, have they gone off me or something? They seem to be completely unwilling to come and visit. What’s that about? It’s not like they ever *do* anything at the weekend: weekends are, in fact, traditionally spent ironing and cleaning if you’re my mother, and walking and bitching if you’re my father. Sometimes they bop off to York or Harrogate if they’re in the mood. But basically my parents have no social life (this isn’t me being thoughtless, selfish child, honest. They really, really don’t). There is no reason for them not to be able to come, pretty much any given weekend. And yet, they don’t. And frankly it’s starting to piss me off a bit.

♥ Just ate a Krispy Kreme doughnut. I am wearing a black skirt and a black top. I look like the dalmatians after they’ve rolled in the soot and been snowed on.

♥ Katie and I watched actual teevee last night. Actual teevee off the actual teevee machine. I downloaded the first ep of Dexter and we watched that, and then watched the second ep on FX. (I love that channel; so pleased we finally have it.) It is very good; looking forward to the next. Sunday evenings at 10, people!

♥ Off to see MtW being filmed tomorrow, and hopefully Harry Pee on Wednesday, the week to be polished off by some species of Brownie shindig on Friday (Xanthe – do you still need my puffin-shaped input in stuff?).

♥ Next week it’s off to see Wicked avec the Guides. It looks like Katie isn’t going to be able to meet the Guides at Mortlake with me, helas. Are any other of you adults able to get to Mortlake (about 25 mins out of Waterloo) by quarter past six? It would be VASTLY appreciated, as there need to be two adults present to escort yonder children up to London, and though there is enough of me to count for two, technically it doesn’t work that way. Ooh, and I will be sending out an email some time this week with precise instructions on when and where to meet etc, never fear.

♥ Fresh news from the front: according to my grandmother, we need to be ever vigilant for evil, world-dominating twenty(-one)-spotted ladybirds. THEY MUST BE EXTERMINATED! Possibly to blame for world famine, the destruction of the countryside, BSE, and many things besides. We can know no rest until they have all perished…

A Gift, 1/1

Title: A Gift
Author: chaletian
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Sam, Dean
Summary: Several months after AHBL, Sam realises he has been given a gift.



Then

Back in fourth grade, Sammy was in the same class as a boy called Joey, who had one major source of trauma in his life. And this wasn’t a little, skittles-and-ice-cream-can-fix-it kinda trauma. This was the full-on kind. The kind that scarred kids for their entire lives. Sammy had understood. Sammy had sympathised.

Joey had been born on 29th February.

It was a curse, Joey had explained, because you only got a birthday like, once every four years. Joey’s brother had said that he shouldn’t even get presents and stuff, because of it not *really* being his birthday at all. In fact, Joey’s brother had said that Joey was only about two really, but Joey was pretty confident that Bobby had got that one wrong. Sammy had even asked Dean, cuz he was sure *his* brother knew better than stupid old Bobby Tucker, and Dean had shrugged and said Joey just had his birthday on a different day, and it was golden. So Sammy had relayed this to Joey, and Joey and he had both agreed that Dean was the better brother.

Now

There was a paper calendar in the motel room and Sam, without thinking, had ripped off yesterday’s flimsy sheet, as he dumped breakfast on the table, immune now to the sight of grease-blossomed paper bags. And then he stopped, standing quite still as the morning light shone through the dusty window. He lifted a finger, hesitantly to the calendar, and traced the bold black figures. He glanced back at where Dean lay, still dead to the world (unsurprising, after a run in with a poltergeist that had favoured the fling-Dean-Winchester-against-a-wall mode of business), and his heart filled as he realised that he had been given a gift.

February 29th. A leap year. An extra day.