Tag: fic rec

werelibrarian:

It’s October, and that means only one thing: preparing for Nano. 

But before I start to write again, I wanted to say goodbye to a bit of draft that is both completely unusable but full of my best effort at that point in time–garbage and precious in equal measure. 

If you have a draft like that, join me in setting it loose on the tide and go at your next project a little lighter. 

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In New York City, motorcycle couriers worked all night. It wasn’t just the city that never sleeps, it was the city that needed flowers delivered at midnight, fresh fish picked up at one in the morning, divorce papers served at two, newspapers put to bed at three, and parcels sent out at four. Motorcycles didn’t fill up the street like an ocean of yellow cabs, they zipped along as unobtrusively as a breeze, but they were out there, on the streets all through the night, and that was why Foggy Nelson was standing outside the back gate of Manhattan Motorcycle Couriers at a few minutes to five o’clock in the morning, keeping himself warm with the lack-luster orange glow of his cigarette lighter.

[edited to remove a scene wherein i break every single rule of writing re: not dumping description and backstory]

At the back corner of the garage, half-hidden by piles of lumber and old engine parts and and a sagging couch with cigarettes stubbed out on the arms, there was a motorcycle. Foggy put his hand on the front bumper. “Hey Red,” he murmured.

Red was a Harley-Davidson RL-45, with a 45.32 cubic inch flathead V-twin engine. She weighed nearly four hundred pounds, give or take a handful of rust, and she was going to save Foggy’s life.

She was olive drab and dull, and the paint had a too-soft, spongy quality to it, like decades of rain, or sweat, or motor oil had soaked into her skin. In patches, the paint had come off entirely. Her insides were nearly as uninspiring, featuring a total-loss oil system that might spontaneously burst in to flame.

Behind him, Mr. Gunderson snorted, and Foggy took his hand away. Flakes of rust stuck to his palm and he wiped it on his thigh. He wasn’t embarrassed. Where other men at the rail yard had pinups in the inside of their lockers, Foggy had papered the inside of his head with images of him tearing out of the old neighbourhood for good, Matt’s arms around his waist and their mingled laugher trailing behind them like smoke.

This was the bike that was going to get him out of Hell’s Kitchen, him and Matt together. His ride. His Red.

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