Drabbles: Moon Walk and Moonshot

[lirazel]

In which I use the word "ponce" multiple times.

This one's for louise39 , who wanted Spike watching [tv or sky] as a man lands on the moon.   And you get a bonus drabble, too!  One's funny, one's not.  The funny one is last, and is, once again, exactly 100 words.  (The other one ran away with me.)

Inspiration comes from this interview with James Marsters.

So these two are Spike in 1969; two views on how he could have experienced watching the moon landing.

--

It’s a bit anticlimactic, really.  The screen is small, the picture grainy, and, really, what’s the point?  He enjoys television as much as the next bloke—each new invention is a source of wonder for him: cars, jazz, miniskirts—but he, at least, knows its limits.  What the whole world is seeing as they gather around the fuzzy picture in the black box, that isn’t anything like reality.  Nothing like what it must be like for the ones who are there.

 

It must be lonely, he thinks, up there in the night, touching the face of the moon, and strangely beautiful.  He has no need to breathe, and he wonders if he could walk there unencumbered, no need for the bulky suit.  Pictures himself scooping up a handful of moondust and wonders if it’s the same in consistency as his own will be when he meets his final end.

 

His fag has burnt down as he ponders, and he hisses and shakes his burning fingers, jarred from his speculation.  He flicks the butt aside and strides away, scowling at himself for being such a ponce.

 

(But maybe when he looks up at the moon that night, he feels the wonder.)

--

And now for something completely different!

--

“That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.”

 

The words float over hundreds of thousands of miles, rough and fuzzy as they emerge from the television set.  Words spoken from the surface of the moon, words that will echo through history.

 

Spike shakes his head and glances over at Dru, who is seated less than a foot away from the screen, enraptured, though he knows she has no idea what she’s watching.  “Can you believe that ponce?  Bet he’s been planning that for months.”

 

He likes that Aldrin bloke better, anyway.  Buzz is a much better moniker.

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