White Collar Ficlet - Quiet Days
Mar. 23rd, 2012 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elrhiarhodanTitle: Quiet Days
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elrhiarhodan
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: G
Characters/Pairings: Peter Burke, old and young
Spoilers: None
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: None
Word Count: ~ 500
Summary: From my Promptfest Archives, a story about young Peter Burke and his family.
A/N: Updated and published forrabidchild67’s KidFic Fest on the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
whitecollarhc comm. Title from the Battlefield Band album of the same name.
__________________
It's never really quiet in the city, except right after a big snowstorm when all the traffic's been brought to a halt. That type of quiet unnerves Peter; it's unnatural, it’s wrong. The City is a vital thing, a vast organism that lives and breathes, and the sounds it makes are its pulse beats. When those sounds are silenced, it's almost like the City has died.
The country; however, is another story altogether. Peter likes the utter silence of a country night, especially in winter. Because it's never really silent, it's just quiet. He can stand outside, on his grandfather's back porch and hear only the rustle of the oak leaves clinging stubbornly to their branches, the snap of a twig broken by a passing deer.
Some of his best childhood memories are wrapped up in the quiet of a country evening in the winter. Standing in the empty fields with his father and grandfather, learning the constellations - he was the oldest boy by far, and had the privilege of leaving his younger siblings behind. Orion was his favorite (he loved the story of the hunter and his faithful dog), followed by the Winter Triangle with the three brightest stars in the sky. The quiet of those nights was in distinct counterpoint to the raucous joy in the mornings, when his brothers and sisters and cousins would tumble down the stairs, clamoring for breakfast, to go out into the woods, to go sledding and skating and have snowball fights. No quiet then.
At least, not until midday, when everyone fell into piles of exhausted children and the adults convened in the kitchen for smokes.
These quiet times were good too, and Peter would sneak upstairs, cram himself into the window seat and read. The bright sunlight afternoon warmed him even as cold air whistled through the old window. He'd stay there, lost in whatever fantasy world created by his books, until his mother or his grandmother or one of his aunts shouted that dinner was ready. Then noise and children erupted from all of the corners and nooks and crannies of the old farmhouse, their happy shouts chasing away the quiet until night fell and the moon rose again.
FIN
Author:
elrhiarhodanFandom: White Collar
Rating: G
Characters/Pairings: Peter Burke, old and young
Spoilers: None
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: None
Word Count: ~ 500
Summary: From my Promptfest Archives, a story about young Peter Burke and his family.
A/N: Updated and published for
rabidchild67’s KidFic Fest on the whitecollarhc comm. Title from the Battlefield Band album of the same name.It's never really quiet in the city, except right after a big snowstorm when all the traffic's been brought to a halt. That type of quiet unnerves Peter; it's unnatural, it’s wrong. The City is a vital thing, a vast organism that lives and breathes, and the sounds it makes are its pulse beats. When those sounds are silenced, it's almost like the City has died.
The country; however, is another story altogether. Peter likes the utter silence of a country night, especially in winter. Because it's never really silent, it's just quiet. He can stand outside, on his grandfather's back porch and hear only the rustle of the oak leaves clinging stubbornly to their branches, the snap of a twig broken by a passing deer.
Some of his best childhood memories are wrapped up in the quiet of a country evening in the winter. Standing in the empty fields with his father and grandfather, learning the constellations - he was the oldest boy by far, and had the privilege of leaving his younger siblings behind. Orion was his favorite (he loved the story of the hunter and his faithful dog), followed by the Winter Triangle with the three brightest stars in the sky. The quiet of those nights was in distinct counterpoint to the raucous joy in the mornings, when his brothers and sisters and cousins would tumble down the stairs, clamoring for breakfast, to go out into the woods, to go sledding and skating and have snowball fights. No quiet then.
At least, not until midday, when everyone fell into piles of exhausted children and the adults convened in the kitchen for smokes.
These quiet times were good too, and Peter would sneak upstairs, cram himself into the window seat and read. The bright sunlight afternoon warmed him even as cold air whistled through the old window. He'd stay there, lost in whatever fantasy world created by his books, until his mother or his grandmother or one of his aunts shouted that dinner was ready. Then noise and children erupted from all of the corners and nooks and crannies of the old farmhouse, their happy shouts chasing away the quiet until night fell and the moon rose again.
