kellifer | While I'm working...

I'm seeing snippets pop up of people's

j2_everafter fics and honestly, this challenge and every story in it is just going to turn my eyes into hearts for days.

So, contributing to the smooshiness, here is the prologue to my story. I was very nearly going to post the cross-dressing boys section I've written but... no. I think I'll save that.

Also, I have no idea how I'd ever thought I'd write anything but this story.

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He sits in a dingy basement of a bar, fingers walking the strings of his guitar. He's flirting with a melody, hands up under its skirt, but he hasn't committed yet.

"Lemme tell you a story," he says.

The bar only has a scattered handful of patrons. One woman at a table in one of the dank corners is wearing an old, stained flapper dress from the 20's. She has a glass of red wine that she takes tiny sips from, never setting the glass on the table.

She is but one of the oddities present.

"My name's Christian, but some call me Rooster," he says.

"Is that because you're a giant cock?" a man calls from the back, sitting at a table with another, their heads bowed together.

"Maybe it's cause I got a giant cock," he rejoinders and there's a smattering of chuckles. People this late in this dark place enjoy that kind of humor but he will only tolerate interruption so long. He raises a son, I got a story to tell and you are going to listen eyebrow and the room hushes again.

"There was this city called Knottingham once," he starts and his fingers stroll the strings again, seeming to make his words echo even though he's not playing anything really. "Shining beacon of plenty, a beautiful place."

The hush has changed now, from scolded to expectant.

"Man named Jeff Morgan, known to friends as King and a real entreprenuer had wrastled that place out of the muck with a lotta cash and a private police force. He loved that city and after a grudging tapdance, it loved him right back. The citizens started to hope, but hope is a dangerous thing."

He takes a moment to sip at the beer resting on the stool next to his.

"But King left, chasing some kind of personal Crusade. He took his money and his manpower and Knottingham fell from grace. Hope thrashed and mewled but slowly started to die."

Now he smiled a little, half a turn up of his lip.

"But it wasn't extinguished completely. While there was still the tiniest sputter of a spark left, another man came. He didn't have money or manpower but that didn't stop him."

He swallows hard now, takes his hands from the guitar for a moment to rub at his eyes.

"He had faith."