Title/Prompt: Writer's Choice: Home
Rating/Warnings: G
Word count: 1,088
Summary: Ben Hobart hates that it's January and there's snow on the ground.
Notes: Set against a verse from Dorothea Mackellar's poem, My Country. Which is just so Australia to me.
And, if things go to plan, the next chapter should be more Pike-AU :) I'll make sure it's labelled clearly.
Thank you, as always, to my invaluable betas, this time isabelquinn and miss_slipslop. And thank you to everyone leaving reviews! I really appreciate it. :)
I love a sunburnt country.
Connecticut is white, and Ben thinks it's bulldust that it's January and there's all this snow on the ground. Snow that's wet and cold and doesn't even hold together enough to make proper snowballs or anything – it just slops through his fingers like a poorly-made slush puppie.
This isn't what he signed up for. This isn't what he was told snow would be like.
He stands in the yard, knee deep in slush, and thinks about home. He closes his eyes and tries to imagine the smell of hot dry grass, dust, shimmering tar and far-off rain. He tires to conjure up swarms of invisible cicadas and cockatoos.
He kicks a wet spray of snow in frustration and slips and slides his way back to the house.
A land of sweeping plains.
"There's not even any room to play cricket!" Johnny whines, gazing out into the backyard. "Da-ad, you said the yard here would be bigger than our old one."
"There's plenty of room to play cricket," Mum says. "The backyard is huge, you guys."
"We used to have a whole paddock," Ben says dramatically, backing Johnny up. "Anyway, if we play with six-and-out, we'll be out every ball."
"Please don't hit any sixes," Mum says. "The neighbours are too close. I don't want any broken windows, okay?"
Ben folds his arms and adds another con to his list of pros and cons for The New House in Nowhere, Connecticut.
Of ragged mountain ranges.
The mountains here are different. (They're barely mountains at all.)
Ben wants blues and greys and silvers, but here they're all green and brown and white. They don't blur into the horizon in a sweep of purple and blue.
He's used to mountains that roll away, on and on and on until you can't tell what's mountain and what's sky; it's all hazed together like smoke.
He doesn't like looking up, expecting a rise of blue-purple, only to see snow.
More snow. Ugh.
Of droughts and flooding rains.
It's January. January means the beach, and backyard cricket and fishing trips to the river for the day.
January means Australia Day.
January means bushfires and heat and drought. Flies. Cows in dusty paddocks and sheep with short fleece.
January means Queensland is flooded and Mum is always on the phone to Nan and Pa, asking if they're all right.
"You want to build another snowman?" Johnny asks Ben gloomily.
"No," Ben mutters. "I'm sick of snow."
I love her far horizons.
The mountains here are all crammed in around him and he can barely see the sky, for God's sake. How do people even breathe here?
Don't they feel like everything is closing in? Don't they realise the sky is really, really, really bloody wide? Don't they realise they could have it stretching right from horizon to horizon instead of being cut off, like, right there?
Dad says the mountains are actually miles away, but Ben doesn't think he knows what he's talking about.
Everything else Dad has said about this place has been wrong so far.
I love her jewel sea.
School starts, and not only is it somehow not the start of the school year here, but it's not even been a proper holiday for anyone.
There are no sunburnt kids with salt-rough skin or hair. There are no stories about Christmas barbecues or snakes in the chook yard on Boxing Day.
Ben doesn't think he's going to be able to stand this.
The school is different here – everything is different here – and all he can think about is how it's January and he shouldn't already be behind in his classes.
He should still be on holidays – Christmas holidays; summer holidays. He should be on the beach with his friends, throwing tennis balls into the waves for Tom's dog, or throwing seaweed at girls or playing cricket.
Ben can't believe a January like this one actually exists.
Her beauty and her terror.
At some point between realising that this will be the first January of his life where he hasn't been to the beach, and that he hasn't seen a patch of blue sky since leaving Australia, Ben notices Mallory.
Maybe he feels a slight affinity toward her because of the red hair.
Or maybe he just has to realise that there are likely to be some pros added to the list regarding Living in Nowhere, Connecticut.
He keeps her entertained with stories about snakes and sharks. (Some of them are only embellished a little.)
"No wonder you moved here," she says, looking sick when Ben describes how many surfers he knows with limbs missing. "Australia sounds really dangerous."
"I haven't even gotten onto the spiders yet," Ben says.
His heart sinks when he realises sharks and snakes and spiders are no longer things he needs to worry about so much.
He's formed habits – check your boots for redbacks, check behind the bathroom towels for huntsmen and geckos, keep the shovel out in case Dad needs it for snakes...
These habits aren't ones he needs anymore.
That kind of sucks.
The wide brown land for me.
The snow eventually melts. Eventually.
And it's brown for a while, before the mud is replaced with grass, and Ben thinks that maybe he's finally found a hint of Australia in Connecticut after all.
"It'd still be pretty brown back home, right Mum?" Ben asks one afternoon, gesturing to the mud-splattered front lawn. "I mean, pretty dry?"
"I guess so," Mum says. "Why?"
Ben shrugs.
But he's not feeling so bad about Connecticut now. He supposes he's getting used to it. Knowing that right now, all the way over on the other side of the world, his old front lawn is probably brown and crisp and dusty, waiting for autumn to rain upon it.
Here, the yard is brown and soft and muddy, waiting for spring to shine upon it.
He can feel a little overlap between both of his worlds, and he likes it. He feels satisfied with his place, suddenly.
He's not sure it'll last.
But his comparisons aren't always fair. Connecticut is bound to win at some things. (Even if it loses most of the time.) He doesn't suppose he can hold a grudge for too much longer anyway.
Still. Australia will always be home.
Even if it is full of things that could kill you.