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Title: Mocking Cursors
Author: Orilon
Rating: PG-13 for suggestive themes
Summary: A writer deals with mocking cursors and his 2 roommates.
Author's Note: This is an original fic that was written as a response to a three aspect prompt of 1)a writer 2)comedy 3)a broken cup.
Feedback: Please.

Jesse growled at the mocking cursor from the blank computer screen. Ok, if you want to get technical, they don't mock they just blink, but in his head he could hear a high pitched voice saying "you're late, you're late," then he heard a real life voice from one of his room mates.

"What's with the growling? Did they shut down your favorite geek forum?"

Jesse sighed. He loved Ben but he could really aggravate him sometimes.

"If I'm a geek, then you're a dork." He had to admit it was childish, but it just came out.

"I'm rubber, you're glue and anything you say bounces off me and onto you."

Jesse sighed. Well he had been childish first.

"That is so second grade. Ok mister rubber I need you to stick around so I can bounce some writing ideas off you to get this chapter done and turned in."

"Don't you usually bounce ideas off Robin?"

"Yeah, but he's not talking to me right now."

"Why?"

"I accidentally dropped my coffee cup full of hot chocolate on his school notes and it broke, so he was cleaning up broken glass and liquid."

"So that's what the yelling and cursing and damning you to hell was about."

"Yup."

"So you need me to help you until he calms down?"

"Please. The deadline is the day after tomorrow and with the level of yelling I don't think he'll start talking to me until at least three days from now."

"Can't you turn it in a week after like before?"

"No, Eric has said that he will kill me if I don't turn it in on time, and I can't seem to get this last chapter started."

"Eric is really riding your ass on this?"

Jesse shuddered at the mental images the question creates. He wasn't homophobic, but since Eric was fat and bald, any image of him in a sexual context was nauseating.

"Eww, please keep your gross fantasies yourself."

Ben visbly shuddered. "If you insult me, I won't help you."

Jesse was instantly contrite. "I'm sorry, please don't go, I really need your help."

"What did you need help with?"

Jesse felt bad about the hint of the reluctance tone in Ben's voice, but he really needed his help.

"Is 'embalming but not in a traditional sense' a good euphemism for sex?"

He saw Ben jump; obviously he didn't expect a question like that.

"Excuse me, what but not in the traditional sense?"

"Embalming, after all they call orgasm the 'little death'."

Jesse began to have second thoughts as Ben laughed; maybe he should stick to the more traditional euphemisms like Shakespeare's 'beast with two backs.'

"Unless one of your characters is an Undertaker, it really doesn't make sense. I mean if you're using two normal people and you have had them on a date, saying that they embalmed but not in the traditional sense doesn't really make sense."

"Well when you put it that way, you're right it doesn't work."

They heard knocking and Ben left to answer it, and Jesse went back to looking at the blank computer screen and mocking cursor again. He tried to get ideas flowing by writing silly sentences just for fun like:

'Vampires embalm each other in coffins'
'He embalmed her in the cemetery'
'The jogger found a beast with two backs in the middle of the path'

Hopefully, he got that out of his system so he could get back to serious writing and finish the chapter by the deadline. He normally wrote horror stories, not romance, so he was finding it hard to keep the shock, horror and death out of his writing and stay with nice, sweet, romantic themes.

He had a feeling that Eric would not appreciate his characters prettily going to dinner and a movie and then the guy taking the girl back to his place and strangling her which lead to embalming in the traditional sense. He went back to brainstorming and growled when he heard Robin and Ben talking loudly outside his room.

"Yes, I'm not talking to him right now, he dropped a coffee cup on my notes and it broke, and they were ruined by his stupid hot chocolate. If he must be a klutz, I wish he would be a klutz away from my things."

Jesse poked his head out the door and looked down the hall.

"I'm sorry, it was an accident. Can you please keep quiet, I'm trying to write."

He sat back down again and erased the silly sentences and tried to write several serious paragraphs. He knew that Eric was going to chastise him for putting in the stereotypical dinner, movie date scenario, but he just could not think of anything inventive since his mind didn't work that way. Anyway it was Eric's fault for making him write the romantic story in the first place. He knew very well that Jesse was a horror writer.

He started writing again, and was glad when the cursor stopped mocking him. That's the way to get the cursor to be quiet, keep it moving with writing. If it was busy moving it didn't get a chance to annoy him with its high pitched voice. Also he noticed that they mocked more when the page was blank and mocked less when the page was full of writing. He let out a whoop in his head when it stopped mocking him after jumping to the next page. However on the third page, it started mocking again because he hit a writer's block again and he growled again.

"Are you part animal now, I have to wonder with all the growling you're doing."

"No, just very frustrated. Why did he pick me?"

"I don't know. Why did he pick you?"

"I don't know for certain, but I have a feeling that it's his way of punishing me for missing the last two deadlines. That's the reason why I don't want to miss this one, what's next? Porn?"

"Somehow I can't imagine you writing porn."

"Honestly, I can't either."

Jesse shuddered. Making him write romance was bad enough, but he vowed to revolt if Eric tried to make him write porn. He would just have to get paid for his stories somewhere else.

"I have a feeling I'm going to regret asking this, but was that a good or bad shudder?"

"Bad. I'm almost afraid to think of what I would come up with if he did make me write porn."

"So am I if your asking me if 'embalming but not in the traditional sense' is a good euphemism."

"Hey, I usually think of things in terms of death and horror, so that just came to mind."

"I have to say, you have a scary mind sometimes."

"I know. That's why I normally write what I do."

Ben fell silent as if processing that statement and Jesse turned to the computer screen again. He was just about to write again when he heard:
"If you are late and Eric makes you write porn, would you ask me to help you with ideas?"

Somehow Jesse had a feeling he didn't mean verbally asking if such and such would work, but physically acting it out.

"Only if you really want me to, I might be in a bad mood and ask if I could embalm you."

He turned back to the computer, not sure if he wanted to be late or not.