Title: Alternating Current/Direct Current
Mar. 13th, 2011 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmic_tuesdaysTitle: Alternating Current/Direct Current
Author: Hannah Orlove
Fandom: Benny & Joon
Rating: PG
Pairing: Benny/Ruthie, Joon/Sam
Notes: Written for The Everyday Superheroes Fanfic Challenge.
Thursday was now Game Night over at Ruthie’s. Officially, anyway. It was mostly a way for Benny to check on how Joon was doing without smothering her too much that also let him stay in contact with Ruthie.
The timetable of their odd quartet could be measured by the games they had played. For the first two months, Joon had insisted on hand after hand of Hearts. Cribbage ruled for five weeks when Benny found their old playing boards. Sam then introduced them to Fool, and once everyone had learned the rules, he trounced them all before they realized what he was doing.
When everyone had gotten tired of suites and numbers, Ruthie brought out Parcheesi. That had been right at the beginning of Autumn, and now, four months later, they had gotten through Monopoly and Scrabble – Benny’s finest moment yet at Game Night had been “starving” on a triple-word bonus, something no one had been able to top – as well as Scattergories, Chinese Checkers, Pictionary, Diplomacy, Trivial Pursuit, Yahtzee, and Clue. They had begun to work their way through the thousand-piece puzzles cluttering up Joon’s closet, switching over to Benny’s house for the time being, mostly out of convenience’s sake.
They had just finished one of Monet’s bridges and were working on some of Degas’ dancers. It was raining outside, in a way that Joon had dubbed “positively torrential.”
A crack of thunder made Sam jump and stare at the ceiling, like he could see the sky through it. After a moment, Ruthie joined him.
“You do have lightning rods here?”
“Of course. I put them up seven years ago.” He didn’t look up from a group of edge pieces.
“Are they attached well?” The wind, while not echoing the question, did reinforce the point she was making.
“Yeah….” Benny nodded.
“How secure are you about their security?” Joon queried.
“Pretty secure.”
“Ah.”
Two minutes later, the lights went out.
“Oh-for-one, Benjamin.” Joon’s smirk was visible even in the dark.
Ruthie sighed. “Do you have any storm candles?”
“Yeah, in the kitchen. I’ll go get … Sam, what are you doing?” He had walked over to the nearest lamp, removed the cover, and was unscrewing a light bulb. “It’s not going to work if…” Even Joon was taken by surprise at what she saw. Sam was holding the bulb in his hand, and miraculously, it was emitting light.
He blushed under their gazes, smiling apologetically. “I thought it’d be easier than getting candles.”
“How long can you do that?” Benny pointed at the bulb. Sam shrugged. “I’m just gonna get the candles, then. I don’t want you to get tired out.”
The light from six candles wasn’t as bright or focused as it was from a hundred-twenty-watt bulb, but Sam didn’t keep the charge going once they were lit. He didn’t join back in the puzzle, either, staying in a large chair by the window, even when Joon tried to get him to join back in.
Everyone spent the night there, not wanting to go out in the rain, especially after Benny got soaked after just four minutes coming and going from the fuse box. Sam slept in Joon’s studio, just like he had when he’d first come to the house.
“I didn’t know he could do that.” A hot plate, almost forgotten, had provided Ruthie and Benny with hot water after Sam had provided power for it. The teas hadn’t suffered the same fate, though with Joon gone they were used much less often.
Ruthie took the proffered Lemon Zinger instead of the Honey Vanilla or Peppermint. “The hot plate or the bulb?”
“Both.”
“To tell you the truth, neither did I.” Ruthie began dipping her teabag in and out of the water. “I mean, he told me about the electricity, but I didn’t know he could get that much control over it.”
Benny’s expression explicitly demanded more of an explanation. Ruthie shrugged, and said to talk to Sam about it in the morning.
When he was asked about it, Sam usually would avoid the topic, but knowing Benny, he didn’t withhold any information that was requested on the porch before breakfast. But he didn’t give up anything that wasn’t asked for, not unless he really thought it was needed.
He said he’d always been able to work with electricity, and so could his cousin Martin, two years older than him.
“Sparkplug” was the most common word. Sam had heard it often enough. That or “firecracker.” He didn’t really like either of them, but both names seemed to be going the way of “wop” and fading from accepted usage in favor of “electra” or “electro,” depending on the gender of the person in question.
They weren’t as uncommon as most people thought. He wasn’t surprised that Benny was surprised, though. He’d given him no sign he was an electro. Being alone had given him a lot of time to work on that. He didn’t need rubber gloves or boots. Most didn’t, but the stereotype was still there. A few bad apples spoil the barrel, his mother had said. It was right in that respect, at least.
He said that he could get things like light bulbs to work without any trouble, but he didn’t say that he’d made almost twenty explode before he’d gotten it down. He could recharge batteries, even car ones – the first time he had done that, he was nine, and the car of his aunt Phyllis (not the mother of Martin; the mother of Theodore) had stopped dead by the side of the road and needed a boost. He said he could make appliances work, but not that he’d tried – and succeeded – to power the house of his uncle Kevin, father of Martin, until he’d gotten tired. It had taken him almost thirteen hours to get tired enough to stop, though.
He didn’t say he’d been a lightning rod for his grandparents in Idaho during the summer right after he turned twelve, before they installed any themselves; he hadn’t minded it, it was just attracting current and getting to pass through him, both of which were incredibly easy.
Sam knew he couldn’t read very well and his writing was horrible, even with Joon’s tutoring. These bothered him, but not as much as being seen as second-class for something that he couldn’t do anything about, like not being able to understand why people thought what he did was odd. But he’d learned how to deal with people and currents, and could make his own way in the world. He had a home, a job, and a place where he was accepted. And what more could he want?
Joon smiled at him as she passed the pancakes. He smiled back.
Nothing.
Author: Hannah Orlove
Fandom: Benny & Joon
Rating: PG
Pairing: Benny/Ruthie, Joon/Sam
Notes: Written for The Everyday Superheroes Fanfic Challenge.
Thursday was now Game Night over at Ruthie’s. Officially, anyway. It was mostly a way for Benny to check on how Joon was doing without smothering her too much that also let him stay in contact with Ruthie.
The timetable of their odd quartet could be measured by the games they had played. For the first two months, Joon had insisted on hand after hand of Hearts. Cribbage ruled for five weeks when Benny found their old playing boards. Sam then introduced them to Fool, and once everyone had learned the rules, he trounced them all before they realized what he was doing.
When everyone had gotten tired of suites and numbers, Ruthie brought out Parcheesi. That had been right at the beginning of Autumn, and now, four months later, they had gotten through Monopoly and Scrabble – Benny’s finest moment yet at Game Night had been “starving” on a triple-word bonus, something no one had been able to top – as well as Scattergories, Chinese Checkers, Pictionary, Diplomacy, Trivial Pursuit, Yahtzee, and Clue. They had begun to work their way through the thousand-piece puzzles cluttering up Joon’s closet, switching over to Benny’s house for the time being, mostly out of convenience’s sake.
They had just finished one of Monet’s bridges and were working on some of Degas’ dancers. It was raining outside, in a way that Joon had dubbed “positively torrential.”
A crack of thunder made Sam jump and stare at the ceiling, like he could see the sky through it. After a moment, Ruthie joined him.
“You do have lightning rods here?”
“Of course. I put them up seven years ago.” He didn’t look up from a group of edge pieces.
“Are they attached well?” The wind, while not echoing the question, did reinforce the point she was making.
“Yeah….” Benny nodded.
“How secure are you about their security?” Joon queried.
“Pretty secure.”
“Ah.”
Two minutes later, the lights went out.
“Oh-for-one, Benjamin.” Joon’s smirk was visible even in the dark.
Ruthie sighed. “Do you have any storm candles?”
“Yeah, in the kitchen. I’ll go get … Sam, what are you doing?” He had walked over to the nearest lamp, removed the cover, and was unscrewing a light bulb. “It’s not going to work if…” Even Joon was taken by surprise at what she saw. Sam was holding the bulb in his hand, and miraculously, it was emitting light.
He blushed under their gazes, smiling apologetically. “I thought it’d be easier than getting candles.”
“How long can you do that?” Benny pointed at the bulb. Sam shrugged. “I’m just gonna get the candles, then. I don’t want you to get tired out.”
The light from six candles wasn’t as bright or focused as it was from a hundred-twenty-watt bulb, but Sam didn’t keep the charge going once they were lit. He didn’t join back in the puzzle, either, staying in a large chair by the window, even when Joon tried to get him to join back in.
Everyone spent the night there, not wanting to go out in the rain, especially after Benny got soaked after just four minutes coming and going from the fuse box. Sam slept in Joon’s studio, just like he had when he’d first come to the house.
“I didn’t know he could do that.” A hot plate, almost forgotten, had provided Ruthie and Benny with hot water after Sam had provided power for it. The teas hadn’t suffered the same fate, though with Joon gone they were used much less often.
Ruthie took the proffered Lemon Zinger instead of the Honey Vanilla or Peppermint. “The hot plate or the bulb?”
“Both.”
“To tell you the truth, neither did I.” Ruthie began dipping her teabag in and out of the water. “I mean, he told me about the electricity, but I didn’t know he could get that much control over it.”
Benny’s expression explicitly demanded more of an explanation. Ruthie shrugged, and said to talk to Sam about it in the morning.
When he was asked about it, Sam usually would avoid the topic, but knowing Benny, he didn’t withhold any information that was requested on the porch before breakfast. But he didn’t give up anything that wasn’t asked for, not unless he really thought it was needed.
He said he’d always been able to work with electricity, and so could his cousin Martin, two years older than him.
“Sparkplug” was the most common word. Sam had heard it often enough. That or “firecracker.” He didn’t really like either of them, but both names seemed to be going the way of “wop” and fading from accepted usage in favor of “electra” or “electro,” depending on the gender of the person in question.
They weren’t as uncommon as most people thought. He wasn’t surprised that Benny was surprised, though. He’d given him no sign he was an electro. Being alone had given him a lot of time to work on that. He didn’t need rubber gloves or boots. Most didn’t, but the stereotype was still there. A few bad apples spoil the barrel, his mother had said. It was right in that respect, at least.
He said that he could get things like light bulbs to work without any trouble, but he didn’t say that he’d made almost twenty explode before he’d gotten it down. He could recharge batteries, even car ones – the first time he had done that, he was nine, and the car of his aunt Phyllis (not the mother of Martin; the mother of Theodore) had stopped dead by the side of the road and needed a boost. He said he could make appliances work, but not that he’d tried – and succeeded – to power the house of his uncle Kevin, father of Martin, until he’d gotten tired. It had taken him almost thirteen hours to get tired enough to stop, though.
He didn’t say he’d been a lightning rod for his grandparents in Idaho during the summer right after he turned twelve, before they installed any themselves; he hadn’t minded it, it was just attracting current and getting to pass through him, both of which were incredibly easy.
Sam knew he couldn’t read very well and his writing was horrible, even with Joon’s tutoring. These bothered him, but not as much as being seen as second-class for something that he couldn’t do anything about, like not being able to understand why people thought what he did was odd. But he’d learned how to deal with people and currents, and could make his own way in the world. He had a home, a job, and a place where he was accepted. And what more could he want?
Joon smiled at him as she passed the pancakes. He smiled back.
Nothing.
