The First Date
Sep. 6th, 2006 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamcranverI've been watching Medium lately--or the first three episodes, anyway--and I thought I'd write a scene from early in Allison and Joe's relationship. It might very well be AU, since I've only seen three episodes.
She feels it coming all week, and finally on Thursday it happens: Joe from her Spanish class approaches her after discussion section.
“Hey,” he says with a broad grin. “This Don Quixote’s pretty great, isn’t he?”
He speaks with a southern accent, but he hides it because he doesn’t want to sound uneducated, especially in front of her.
“Yeah,” she says, amused.
“Hey, so, you want to maybe go out sometime?”
He has a lot of female friends, mostly ex-girlfriends with whom he broke up amicably. They all tell him to watch what he says because he sounds like a dork.
Though she knew he would ask her out, the abruptness of it startles her into a laugh. “Wow, nice segue there,” she says. His hair is falling in his eyes and his mother, who died two years ago of heart failure, clucks disapprovingly at him. The mother wishes he’d get a haircut and do his laundry more often.
His smile takes on a hopeful angle. “Yeah, well,” he says. “You probably got places to go, people to see. Thought I’d try and be as efficient as possible.”
His father worked for twenty years in a factory scaling fish to support the family, only to have his wife leave him. He’s the bitterest man Joe knows, and the cigarettes and alcohol he clings to will kill him before long.
“Good strategy,” she says, still smiling. If she says no, he’ll keep on flirting with her for a few more weeks before moving on to a girl in his astrophysics class named Susan. If she says yes…
They have three little girls, all as blonde as Allison. Joe sets up the sprinkler in the lawn and the girls run through it, giggling. Joe and Allison watch them, eating popsicles and holding hands.
It’s only one of a million possible futures. But it’s nice, so she pretends to ponder it for a moment and says yes.
She feels it coming all week, and finally on Thursday it happens: Joe from her Spanish class approaches her after discussion section.
“Hey,” he says with a broad grin. “This Don Quixote’s pretty great, isn’t he?”
He speaks with a southern accent, but he hides it because he doesn’t want to sound uneducated, especially in front of her.
“Yeah,” she says, amused.
“Hey, so, you want to maybe go out sometime?”
He has a lot of female friends, mostly ex-girlfriends with whom he broke up amicably. They all tell him to watch what he says because he sounds like a dork.
Though she knew he would ask her out, the abruptness of it startles her into a laugh. “Wow, nice segue there,” she says. His hair is falling in his eyes and his mother, who died two years ago of heart failure, clucks disapprovingly at him. The mother wishes he’d get a haircut and do his laundry more often.
His smile takes on a hopeful angle. “Yeah, well,” he says. “You probably got places to go, people to see. Thought I’d try and be as efficient as possible.”
His father worked for twenty years in a factory scaling fish to support the family, only to have his wife leave him. He’s the bitterest man Joe knows, and the cigarettes and alcohol he clings to will kill him before long.
“Good strategy,” she says, still smiling. If she says no, he’ll keep on flirting with her for a few more weeks before moving on to a girl in his astrophysics class named Susan. If she says yes…
They have three little girls, all as blonde as Allison. Joe sets up the sprinkler in the lawn and the girls run through it, giggling. Joe and Allison watch them, eating popsicles and holding hands.
It’s only one of a million possible futures. But it’s nice, so she pretends to ponder it for a moment and says yes.