In celebration of my upcoming Sin Bin release, Haka Ever After. I decided to do a small flash fiction event. Today’s the third (and last) one titled, The Peanut Gallery. It features several characters from the series.
“Ten quid says they break a hip.” Graham dropped onto the grass in between Freddie and Francis. Several of their other friends sat on either side of them, watching the group of former rugby players tossing around a ball. “Who thought a game in the back garden of the Inn was a brilliant plan?”
“You.” Francis nudged him in the side and laughed when Graham stuck his tongue out at him. “You and your twin thought this nonsense up. We tried to talk you out of it.”
“What’s this we shit?” Freddie snickered on the other side of him. “I’ve no issues watching Taine strut his stuff without a shirt on. Plus, I’ve got twenty quid that says one of them goes tumbling off the cliff.”
“They’d better not.” Sarah, Remi’s wife, glared fiercely at the group of men on the makeshift field of play. “Why aren’t any of you playing?”
“I’m the medic.” Freddie lifted the first aid kit that he’d brought with him. “And I have a brain in my head that tells me I’d be squashed like a bug underneath the louts.”
Francis dropped his hand on the head of his ever-present service dog, Sherlock. “I don’t run for anything other than antiques.”
“Bet you’d run to catch up with Caddock.” Rupert ruffled Francis’s hair on his way past them. He glanced back at his twin with a smirk. “Not joining us, Grimmie?”
“Me?” Graham shook his head with a laugh. “Dr Gen told me not to risk a concussion.”
“Dr Gen didn’t tell you shit.” Genevieve threw a tiny pebble at him. “Dr Gen is keeping herself out of this.”
“Aren’t you supposed to protect your patients?” Graham caught the pebble and tossed it to the side. “I might bruise. I’m a sensitive sort.”
“Oh, you’re something.” She laughed.
“Why don’t you and Sarah play?” Graham shot back at her.
“And show them up by kicking their arses?” Sarah grinned over her cup of tea. “Besides, can you see Remi’s reaction if someone so much as bumped me on the field?”
“Right. Pancaked into the ground in a second flat.” Graham had seen how overly protective the massive Frenchman tended to get with his wife, even though Sarah could handle herself quite well. “Might be amusing to watch.”
“Have they figured out we’re laughing at them?” Francis handed over the bowl of popcorn. They’d come prepared for the entertainment with a variety of snacks and tea. “Is an ambulance on standby just in case?”
Freddie snagged the bowl from him. “Not a chance. Let them enjoy their delusions of grandeur.”
“They’re not half bad.” Graham’s gaze followed BC as he ploughed through his friends with the ball tucked tightly under his arm. “Not convinced it won’t end up in broken bones.”
“Bones do get brittle as we age,” Freddie commented.
“As long as they don’t break the important bits.” Sarah laughed when her husband knocked BC off his feet.
“Like the ones between their legs.” Graham managed to keep a straight face until Freddie choked on a kernel of popcorn. “Most important bone in the body.”
The Peanut Gallery © 2018 by Dahlia Donovan
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The Peanut Gallery is a work of fiction. All names, characters, events and places found therein are either from the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to persons alive or dead, actual events, locations, or organizations is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Author Dahlia Donovan 
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