update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/harlequin.html

@@ -37,15 +37,15 @@
 <p>The trek home was dull. The amount of energy and attention required was just above the level where Nicky could've kicked back and gotten a bit of work done on personal projects, but below what was required to keep him interested and invested in anything other than just feeling grumpy.</p>
 <p>Too much time was spent changing trains or navigating the mindless mobs of other, equally tired commuters.</p>
 <p>The last step was easiest, at least. Just a ten minute bus ride from the station to the stop just up the block from his apartment. He bore it in patience, relying on the blur of colors from the signs of the restaurants they passed to keep him company on the way. His gloves were too hot, his face itched, he was bored, but he was also almost home.</p>
-<p>Home was where it was cool. Home was where he could change clothes and make a quick dinner. Home is where he could take off his gloves and sit at his deck without it being on-the-clock work. It was nice to take a moment to actually relax, no more bearing the weight of the hundreds of emotionless looks one gets while traveling through city.</p>
-<p>Nicky took a few minutes to clean his contacts, swabbing each of the implants with a sterile, alcohol-dipped swab, before settling in comfortably in front of his deck. There was always this meditative moment, he had discovered, before heading in, where one was confronted with the enormous complexity and expense of all of the gear required. The rig itself had been three months of saving, and the current set of implants nearly two years --- though thankfully those could be built up one part at a time.</p>
+<p>Home was where it was cool. Home was where he could change clothes and make a quick dinner. Home is where he could take off his gloves and sit at his rig without it being on-the-clock work. It was nice to take a moment to actually relax, no more bearing the weight of the hundreds of emotionless looks one gets while traveling through city.</p>
+<p>Nicky took a few minutes to clean his contacts, swabbing each of the implants with a sterile, alcohol-dipped swab, before settling in comfortably in front of his rig. There was always this meditative moment, he had discovered, before heading in, where one was confronted with the enormous complexity and expense of all of the gear required. The rig itself had been three months of saving, and the current set of implants nearly two years --- though thankfully those could be built up one part at a time.</p>
 <p>It was way more than one needed for a simple security job. Most of his time was spent at a keyboard --- real or virtual --- at a command line, typing, rather than delved in.</p>
 <p>Not that the getup was all that uncommon, even among his coworkers. His was even a few notches down the fanciness scale, since he was less into gaming than so many of his coworkers. He didn't need top of the line gizmos or the absolute latest in integration devices.</p>
 <p>He just needed it to be fast.</p>
 <p><em>Dawlding,</em> Nicky chided himself. He shook his head in an attempt to clear the mood and set his hands down on the cradles, feeling the contacts on his fingers click against the matching set on the handrests, then set his head back against the headrest of his chair.</p>
 <hr />
 <p>Nicky blinked away the afterimages of his exocosmic room.</p>
-<p>His own personal space this side of the deck was simple, spartan. The walls were white and the floor wood, but now, in the dark, the white of the walls had settled into a cool, comfortable gray, and the floor lost detail in dimness.</p>
+<p>His own personal space this side of the rig was simple, spartan. The walls were white and the floor wood, but now, in the dark, the white of the walls had settled into a cool, comfortable gray, and the floor lost detail in dimness.</p>
 <p>Throughout the room was suspended a constellation of his current work. Business-card sized slips of paper connected by thin strands of fillament that shone of their own accord. He prowled around the display, turning cards this way and that to peek at their titles and get a glimpse of their contents, before allowing them to snap back into place.</p>
 <p>Not finding what he was hunting for, Nicky dug through one of the decks set in the air next to the constellation, until he came up with a simple card with a string of forty letters and numbers embossed in its surface.</p>
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writing/sawtooth/happy-lesbians.html

@@ -160,7 +160,11 @@
 <p>"Sure. It's fairly slow. I can at least show you around behind the bar."</p>
 <p>She looked between the badger and her laptop, then shrugged and closed the lid, slipping it back into her bag. "Well, fuck it. Why not?"</p>
 <hr />
-<p><q class="comment">Two weeks after figuring things out, the lesbians are cute again (as if they ever weren't)</q></p>
+<p>The Book and The Bean was not enough to carry Winter, but it was enough to allow her to be more selective in her jobs. She still occasionally drove, but mostly focused on tasks when she wasn't working at the coffee shop.</p>
+<p>What it offered was a sense of stability that the gigs could not. She could always rely on at least a little bit of money to help supplement Katrin's income from Middagsbord. She could trust that a few shifts would help cover her share of rent, and that anything else would be covered by one-off tasks.</p>
+<p>More than that, it eased tensions between her and Katrin.</p>
+<p>She hadn't realized how tense the lack of security made her wife until she had regained it. The vixen once again became easy to talk to. She laughed more easily. She gushed about new recipes and bitched about customers. All those little things that are part of daily interactions that had been tamped down in the face of trying to make ends meet were suddenly back and in full force.</p>
+<p>That Winter was now working in food service as well certainly helped her case. They could commiserate in ways that neither had expected.</p>
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