buttons & blows

TONZURA KOITE.

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:42:04 GMT

THIS JOURNAL HAS
MOVED.

buttonsandblows is moving to happenstance@ij.com. It'll take the better part of a month before I have the time to get it all updated, I suspect, so don't bother friending it just yet, because that will involve a fuckload of spam.

I'm not deleting b&b or cheloya. I'm going to go ahead and assume that anyone who wants to contact me is smart enough to leave a comment here or at IJ if they don't already have more likely methods.

I love you all dearly, and I will be keeping an eye on the flist - I just won't be lending LJ any more of my user-generated content from here on out. ^^ Not going to get dramatic about it, but will state, once and for all, yes, I know it was a business decision. Yes, I know it's a different company now. No, I don't care whether they are American or Russian or Tralfalmadorian. I am leaving because I believe that censorship of any kind is rubbish, and that is all. ♥

See you around, guys. You know where to find me.

[PSOH] Distinct; D/Vesca

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:17:09 GMT

Title: Distinct
Fandom: Petshop of Horrors
Character/s: Vesca Howell, Sofu D, Papa D
Words: 1 517
Notes: The fourth part in the Dissonance Arc. Dedicated to feather_qwill, who is very patient. ♥

For as long as he can remember, and probably before even that, Vesca Howell knows that he has dreamed.

His dreams are always indistinct, as though there is something wrong with his eyes, or he is wearing someone else’s spectacles - and for a long time, he cannot name anything in them; he is merely certain he has dreamed. Even before he could remember his dreams, Vesca knew that they were significant, and by the time he is old enough to retain some details upon waking, he clings to them like a sailor to his dinghy in a storm.

He is six the first time he wakes with a memory of voice, though he cannot put words to it. It had sounded like Grandfather, he tells himself sleepily, and almost immediately shakes his head. No. It had almost sounded like Grandfather. But Vesca remembers laughter, if not quite how the laughter went, and Grandfather doesn’t laugh.

He is nine the first time he sees the face, and is confused. The man in his dream is not Grandfather, cannot be Grandfather, but looks identical in all but three respects: first, his hair is longer; second, his eyes are the colour of dusk; and third, his smile is more like Vesca’s smiles – less Grandfather and more... something else. Vesca does not know what the dream means, and he still cannot remember the words he has shared with the-man-who-is-not-Grandfather.

As the days go on, Vesca finds himself watching his Grandfather, trying to work out what could make his sleeping mind change the colour of his eyes, his disposition. And Grandfather, being Grandfather, notices, but says nothing.

Eventually Vesca asks, “Are purple eyes important, Grandfather?” He watches as all movement stills on the far side of the low table, dotted with cakes and pastries and glazed fruit. His Grandfather stares back at him, eyebrows slightly raised, but otherwise impassive.

“Where have you seen such eyes, child?” he inquires, reaching for his tea.

Vesca fees abruptly uncomfortable, as though he is breaking some sacred trust by speaking to Grandfather about this. But his desire for an answer overrides, for the moment, the tightness in his gut, and so he says, “I dream about them.”

Grandfather sips his tea, long lashes resting against the ivory of his cheeks. There is no sign that he has found the question disturbing, and that is the best sign of all. Vesca presses.

“He looks like you, Grandfather, but his eyes are purple.”

And Grandfather stills.

“These are the memories with which your father gave you life,” Grandfather says. “When you can see clearly in these dreams, you will know your own mind, separate from his.”

Vesca wants to ask when that will be, but suspects, as with so many things concerning their history, that his Grandfather will have no satisfactory answer.

By the time he is eleven, the man who is not Grandfather is giving him sly expressions across a laboratory his dream-self knows very well, so his fumblings with whatever delicate glass and metal and plastic implements he is using awaken – at a distance – a deep humiliation. Vesca does not know this place, where the man who is not Grandfather twists his lips, twists his laughter, twists his hair around one finger and makes Vesca’s heartbeat race. But in dreams, Vesca understands what goes on there – understands the purpose of the glass and the metal and the plastic. The only thing he does not appear to understand is the man who is not Grandfather.

“Grandfather...”

“More dreams, child?” Grandfather runs his fingers along an orchid’s stem and smiles faintly as the flower continues to bloom, peaceful and radiant. “How wild your mind must be.”

Vesca knows it for a reprimand, but cannot bring himself to mind very much. He is finding things out. He is learning. “Yes, Grandfather. What is SUNY?”

Grandfather answers. Distant. Careful. “The State University of New York. A human place of learning.” He does not look to see the effect of his words and Vesca is glad because his eyes must be as round as saucers. A human university. He has attended a human university. Why would he—? “Not a place you should concern yourself with, child,” Sofu suggests, soft and insidious, and something in Vesca rises in his throat and speaks without him, in a voice that hardly sounds like him at all.

“How many children would you bury?” asks Vesca’s throat, mimicking Grandfather’s smooth and liquid tone. “How many children would you have buried, had I not ‘concerned myself’ with that place? Grandfather.” The voice says the word with relish and amusement, and Vesca watches Grandfather’s frozen limbs in numb horror, wondering what this voice has led him to, hoping that it knows what it is doing. Grandfather has never struck him, but he is suddenly very aware of the possibility.

But when Grandfather turns toward him, his face is as close as it will ever be to open, and his golden eyes are dull and dead, exhausted. “It has been too long since I heard your voice,” he says, and Vesca is confused.

“But Grandfather, I talk to you all the time,” he says, and is relieved and disappointed to discover that his voice is his again. It strikes him that his Grandfather feels much the same, for he stares at Vesca for half a second and does not move, his shoulders not so straight, his golden eyes closer to cheap yellow quartz, faulty and clouded with impurities.

“...I know you do, my child.”

His dreams are lonely after that; lonely and desperate. There is a rawness in him while he sleeps, so that when he wakes he cannot help choking into his pillow at the sheer relief of not feeling that way; hollow and angry and exhausted all the time. The man who is not Grandfather does not appear in these dreams, and Vesca is not so young or inexperienced, now, that he cannot see the correlation or realise what it is - who it is – that his dream self searches for.

He wonders why his dream self is alone in the human world, and why the man who is not Grandfather left him there.

He does not like his conclusions.

Vesca is fifteen when he watches the man who is not Grandfather die. He sees the kingdom rush toward him and he does not move; neither he nor his dream self is afraid of the danger any more, and when he wakes, he vomits. The only other option is to scream.

He retches until there is nothing left in his stomach, and then he climbs into the bathtub and huddles there, feeling that very soon his heart and throat and lungs will go the way of his stomach and he cannot hold it in. There is too much. They are too many.

Vesca shivers and chokes. His hands fill the bath with hot water and his voice whispers soothing things, though the voice that is not Grandfather’s sounds the worse for being piped through a throat made raw with stomach acid. Vesca’s hands card through his own hair with the gentleness of the man who is not Grandfather, the man who is dead, and Vesca can almost hear his words without his throat working at all.

“It’s too much,” he tells the other one inside him, and his own mouth responds, slowly, sadly, “Yes. I only thought to keep you, not of what else we might lose.”

“D,” says Vesca, and the admission that they are two hurts more than anything, and the knowledge that this is correct and true does nothing to lessen the pain.

“Vesca Howell,” his voice responds, and he can hear D’s voice, now, clear as memory. Grandfather has never used a surname.

“Too much,” Vesca says. His hands touch his cheeks; eyes, ears, lips. His voice comes slowly when D says, “You are mine, now. Part of me. We may try again.”

In Vesca’s small frame they are too many, but another vessel will lessen the strain, and Vesca’s tears run unchecked as he smiles helplessly into the steam.

Count D wakes with the surge of the kingdom through his halls, and by then he is already too late. By the time he reaches the bathroom there is a crowd of pets already at the door, and the child is already gone.

It is not the blood in the bathtub or the forest of vines that gives him pause – it is the baby, silent and patient as perhaps only he has learned to be. His eyes are violet as thunderclouds and his hands, when he lifts them, expectant, are the perfect ivory of all their family.

The human soul is nowhere to be felt.

Count D reaches for his son – his grandchild – his son – and wonders now how broken his child was, to shed no tear at his own child’s return to his side.

“It has been too long,” he murmurs against the child’s brow, and knows that he will not survive another parting.

[ATM] Exercise: Silence, Foggy Signifiers

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:50:06 GMT

1) Play with using deliberately foggy signifiers at key moments as an exercise in foregrounding these moments.
2) Play with writing a piece where one or more of the important bits are left off the page. (Some of these bits might include things people don’t say in dialogue.)

The markets of Thinner South were stretched and slanted affairs. Bright sailcloth strained, riotous against plain plaster walls, with wares propped carefully beneath them so that an inattentive touch would not send them rolling straight onto the rug of a downhill rival. Tol took small steps and deep, careful breaths as he angled through the crowd, wary of over-exerting himself even as he struggled to keep Ban in sight. He supposed himself fortunate that she was tall enough to be easily distinguishable amidst the shorter, stouter Remiellan crowd, since she alone seemed to know where they were going.

Rin was pressed into his left side, both her grubby hands tight about his forearm as she stared around them, bright-eyed and quivering as though she couldn’t decide upon a direction in which to bolt. He hoped that she would not. Ban had paused for them to catch up several times already, and her displeasure had been plainer on her face with every stop. When Rin tugged them off course again toward a food stall, Tol glanced in the vampire’s direction with an expression that he hoped would convey helpless apology at another pointless distraction, but Ban was not glaring at them. She was not even looking in their direction.

“Leave the pup to me.” Sanga’s glamoured human hand smoothed over Tol’s shoulder, and the illusory face he had donned while they were in the city jerked its chin in the vampire’s direction.

It took some careful manoeuvring to reach her. Ban’s eyes were impassive when she looked at him, but there was a softness to her mouth that prompted him to ask, “What did you find?”

For a moment he was certain she would ignore him and move on, but her eyes dropped to a nearby stall and Tol followed the path of her gaze. Small tooled leather pouches were arranged in neat rows on an Azran carpet. The trader called loudly for those with fortune’s favour to try their hand at a game he called simply ‘War’. Tol recognised the symbols for the base elements and glanced back at Ban with raised brows. “Do you know the game?”

“In Azra, it is known as ‘Shar’s War’. But also ‘The Oracle’.” Tol scoffed, expecting Ban’s usual wry smirk to find its way back to her face. Instead, she raised her brows at him. “You do not believe me?”

“I wonder that you believe it,” he managed truthfully as Rin reattached herself to his arm, gnawing on something warm and oily. He made a sound of disgust as either grease or saliva dripped down his arm, and glanced at Sanga with narrowed eyes. “I hope you paid for that.” The sprite’s laugh was not reassuring.

When he turned back, Ban was tossing a few coins to the Azran trader. She rattled the game pouch at him before she tied it to her belt. “Have some respect for folklore,” she told him with a smirk. “You’re travelling with much of it.”

They played Shar’s War in the privacy of their room at the inn beneath the ropeway. It seemed to Tol that there was little skill involved. All depended on the stones one drew from the pouch, and which element one had been assigned at the beginning of the game. After an hour in which Rin’s chin bruised both his shoulders and one thigh in her boredom, Tol was certain that either his luck was beyond abysmal, or that every other person at the table was cheating. He rolled into his blankets glad he had no coin to lose, and woke several hours later to Rin’s ever-present bony limbs and drool and the faint rattle of wooden pieces in the dark.

He extricated himself from the wolf-girl’s embrace and slid from the blankets as silently as he knew how. The sound of the game pieces did not cease, but Ban’s voice came to him at a mutter through the darkness: “Rest while you can. There’ll be no room for that while we traverse the Arrow.”

Their fire was down to embers: the best Tol could make out of the table was a large patch of similarly coloured blackness. There was a rattle, then the muted click of wooden marker against the tabletop. Tol groped for a chair and sat with his back to the fire, willing his eyes to adjust. “Are you playing against yourself?”

“What would be the point of that?” Rattle, click. Rattle, click. Rattle, click. Tol waited. Finally there were no markers left in the pouch. There were a few moments more of contemplative silence, and then the skittering of pieces over hardwood as Ban scooped them all back into the bag and, with a firm few shakes of the bag, began again. “I’m divining.”

Tol crossed his arms along the edge of the table. “And how do our fortunes look?” He grimaced. Well, the words were not as skeptical as the first that had risen to his tongue. Ban’s placement of the markers did not falter.

“Interesting,” she replied. “These are not made properly, of course.”

“Of course.” Tol frowned. It had been a long while since she had answered him so vaguely. “Are you going to do this all night? You’ll wake the others.” Ban shifted, and for a moment he caught a dim red flicker of her eyes against the darkness.

“Go back to sleep, boy,” she told him, and when next he woke it was at dawn and his face hurt from resting on the table.

[ATM] Exercise: Voice, Foregrounding

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:13:42 GMT

Write something in a voice totally alien to you. Play. Before you write, list four characteristics of the voice you want to capture: Velocity of language. Verbosity (including the types of words used). Viewpoint – are we up close, or very removed, what person? Vision – what kinds of things does the narrative voice OBSERVE? Write for a while and then foreground a moment or object by playing a variation in voice against the rest of the text.

Velocity: Swift. Short sentences, simple ideas. Short attention-span.
Verbosity: Simple words. Slightly more refined ideas on smell and sound.
Viewpoint: Immediate. Very close.
Vision: Concerned primarily with sound and scent; sight a lesser concern.

(I apologise in advance for the general lack of coherence; it’s set toward the end of a novel from the perspective of a relatively unfamiliar character.)

The forest is dim. Full of sound. Full of movement. Rin trots, nose to breeze, ears straining. Hungry. Scuffling leaves and bark this way, musk-scent and loam: badger. Rin slows. Feet soft. Tail straight. Head low. Stalking.

Stop. Bristle. Badgers are large; large as Rin. Grumpy. Claws. Rin circles, quietly, quietly. Smaller game is best. Rin is only a puppy. Rin pads on. Rin smells mushrooms. Weasel musk. Rotting leaves, rotting wood. Hears humming. Buzzing. Music. Bees. Follows the sound. Watches the hive. Hungry. Rin moves on.

The sun comes up. The forest gets lighter. Warmer. Quieter. Rin huffs. Hunting is bad in daylight. Rin shifts. Pushes off, balances on two feet. Human nose is bad for smelling. Human ears are worse for hearing, but not bad. Rin hears footsteps. Many feet, no rhythm. Rin hears human feet. Light and heavy. Rin cracks branches as Rin walks. Closer. Teeth bare. Shoulders hunch. Rin smells flowers. Rin smells water. Rin smells dead things. Dry things. Old bones. Rin steps closer, and Rin smells nothing interesting, hears nothing interesting. There is nothing interesting here; Rin should go home. Rin steps back. Rin wants to go home. Nothing to hunt, here. Nothing to smell.

Rin sees movement. Rin turns. There is a squirrel. The squirrel freezes. There is nothing interesting here, no interesting smells or sounds; Rin should go home. Rin watches the squirrel. Rin steps closer. The squirrel scurries away. Still, there is nothing interesting here; nothing to chase, nothing to hunt, nothing to smell. Rin tilts Rin’s head. Listens hard.

Here there is silence. No scent. No heartbeats. No breathing. Rin steps forward. There is nothing interesting here; Rin should go home. Rin turns toward home. Rin pivots. Leaps. Strikes.

The air yelps, flickers. Two people fall. Rin snarls. Rin hunkers down, palms to earth. Rin scurries backward toward nothing, nothing at all, and nothing at all grabs Rin by the back of the neck. Rin dangles. Whimpers. Smells fish flesh. Dead flesh. Human flesh. Flowers. Sweat. Mud. Water.

Water holds Rin tightly. Water’s fingers are sharp. Water glares. “Your glamour could use refining,” Water says. “She smelled you.”

[TRC] Music Meme #3

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 03:36:53 GMT

Yet another music meme, as a break from writing F&F. Theme of the day was initially Kurogane, and I'm not sure how strictly I stuck to that. XD;

1. Lou Reed; Perfect Day

Perfect days were few and far between. If you had asked him when they first met, Kurogane would have told you that any day with the mage in it had no chance of being perfect. And if he’d said it out loud, in Fai’s hearing, the mage would have mourned loud and long about Kuro-wan’s cruelty, but quietly, to himself, he would have agreed.

Perfect days are still, in Kurogane’s opinion, few and far between. But even on the worst of days, each other’s presence is what makes things bearable.

2. Staind; Can’t Believe

There are too many things to say, and Kurogane can’t say any of them; whether with fury or simple unease, the mage always leaves him dumbstruck.

3. Deftones; Change (In the House of Flies)

There is a tree in the garden that Kurogane likes to sit beneath, when it’s warm and calm and he thinks he can get away with it. On days like this, the kids are elsewhere, picking berries with the pork bun for all he knows, and he doesn’t worry about them so much any more because the kid has a will of iron and the princess, under Tomoyo-hime’s watchful eye, could never come to harm.

There is a particular root that he likes to lean against, to close his eyes and bask in the sun, and this is the root that the mage slings both arms over, resting his cheek against the bark, his blue eyes close and warm, but not yet as warm as the day, and Kurogane can only ever think that he’s glad he had the chance to see the change, to watch the most infuriating person he’s ever met transform into the most transfixing.

4. Ben Folds; Philosophy

There are moments, when the mage is cavorting around the room like a long-limbed puppet whose strings are being shaken, when Kurogane wants to grab those strings and cut them, but to keep shaking, until the mage can’t feel his fingers and has to learn where they are on his own. He thinks this all the time, and he thinks it so long and so hard that eventually, he knows, he’s going to snap; he’s going to snap the strings and grab the mage by his silly, frilly jacket and he’s going to shake the man even sillier before he lets him go again, because he doesn’t understand.

He wants to, though.

That knowledge is, perhaps, the most frustrating of all.

5. Panic! At the Disco; The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage

Fai is never sure whether Kurogane is at his most astute when he’s ever so slightly drunk, or whether it’s simply the only time his lips are loose enough for him to state his onservations. He does his best not to let the ninja’s words shake him, but there’s only so much he can do with alcohol in his system, only so many faces he can hide.

“It’s like you’re so used to being ignored that you’ve come out the other side,” Kurogane says, his red eyes disturbingly focused, and there is only so much Yuui can do to juggle it all desperately aside.

6. Super Mario RPG; Still, the Road is Full of Dangers

“Oh, we’ll be just fine,” Fai coos to the well-meaning vendor. “Daddy has a very big sword, and there’s nothing he won’t swing it at. Ne?” he adds to Mokona, and ne? the meat bun echoes with a laugh, and Kurogane has to remind himself very sternly that unsheathing Ginryuu right now would only prove the mage’s point.

7. The Black Mages; The Man With the Machine Gun

There is joy and there is peace in the battle, as there is joy and there is peace in ceremony, in calligraphy, in meditation, in being correct. When he was younger, not quite the man he wanted to be, he had been under the impression that it was the freedom, the heat of the moment, but as he gets older, as he understands more, he realises that this is not what brings him joy on the battlefield.

What endears him to the sword, and the sword to him, is the fact that his decisions are already made. There are things he has vowed to do. And so that freedom turns out to be nothing more than to throw himself forward, never doubting, because he knows that he will win, or die trying, and there can be nothing more joyful or peaceful than that.

8. Akemi Kimura; Pursuit ~ Cornered 2002

There is no feral grin on Kurogane’s face when he approaches his foe for the final time, and Tomoyo smiles and clasps her hands and knows it is because he has grown, because he cared enough to change, that his destiny will remain.

9. Placebo; Peeping Tom

Kurogane can do nothing but sneer when he first meets the mage. It does not occur to him to be proud of how far above such a creature he is; he is simply too disgusted, too bewildered, that a man like that came to be called a man at all. As he watches, that disgust becomes, against his will, a kind of pity – but a pity borne on frustration, still, because if he focuses, he can see the shape of a man, the shape of what might be, and cannot understand why the mage won’t reach into himself to shape it, sculpt it, bring it forth. It makes Kurogane even more determined, and maybe a little sad, because – again, against his will – he likes the man he sees.

10. Tracy Chapman; 3000 Miles

Sometimes there is nothing you can do. Sometimes hitsuzen, which has always been against you in a thousand small ways - which you have, all unknowing, taken a thousand small steps toward making even worse – picks you up and shoves you against a wall and takes everything you thought you were and takes it, steals it, seals it all away.

Kurogane knows this. But he doesn’t know it. Not until he’s walking his beat and he recognises the profile slumped in the alley. Not until he realises, numb, that the face isn’t moving, that where there were twins there is now just one brother, one brother left behind, and his legs will not move fast enough and his paltry whistle will not pierce the distance and bring help fast enough to count.

Sometimes there is nothing you can do.

[ATM] Music Meme #2

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 04:42:40 GMT

Another try at the music meme, in lieu of aught else to write. Ten songs, picked at random, for the duration of which I wrote about a character. In this case, Hiru. Surprise, surprise.

1. Keaton’s Quiz / Koji Kondo

There is a magic in the masks, a magic that robs all guests of sense and care, a magic that leaves them open to their every desire, to their every deadly wish.

2. Do I Disappoint You / Rufus Wainwright

She will not see him when he returns, not in the form he has always hidden from the world. Nothing could stop him entering; they are all afraid to touch him, afraid of the touch of an Unseelie even though he has dwelt among them for decades.

She is wedged in a high corner that he cannot reach, reading, carefully ignoring the evidence of her greatest personal failure, for all that he cannot see it that way any longer.

“I am leaving,” he tells her. “It would be disrespectful to leave without showing gratitude toward my mother.”

Her stony gaze does not falter, and in turn, he does not offer her thanks. A petty revenge, but revenge nonetheless.

3. Toxic Faint / Linkin Park, Britney Spears

The water sprite’s eyes are fathomless, a threadlike pupil the only sign of his focus on Hiru. It is a mark of his power, perhaps, that even so, the butterfly drowns.

4. Magic and Sword / Yuki Kajiura

The revelries are hollow when they end, and Hiru returns to his quarters empty and exhausted, feeling strangely smudged.

5. At My Most Beautiful / R.E.M.

One thing that changed with Hiru’s shift of alliance was his response to Sanga’s dramatic overtures. Though very often he still squirmed, no matter his personal embarrassment, he made every effort to return Sanga’s bold gaze, though his own remained, for a time, serious and shy. That acceptance, and careful struggle toward reciprocaton, more than anything, gave Sanga’s dedication an iron cast.

6. Zora’s Domain / Koji Kondo

Every sound echoed in the sprite’s chambers, so that the softest laugh became a soft fall of sound through stone and crystal.

7. Candy Bottom Girls / Q-Unit

If there was one thing to be said about Sanga, it was that he was persistent. It was only mildly frustrating to Hiru that his interest never seemed to wane.

“We do have other things to do, you know,” he said – gasped – as sternly as he could manage, pressed into sand and grit and cool stone and still shivering more from what Sanga’s tongue was doing to him than from the ambient temperature.

“But nothing nearly so interesting,” Sanga hummed, well-pleased.

8. Hyrule Field Main Theme / Koji Kondo

The journey was long and arduous and probably would have been less so if he had had a choice in his travelling companions. Ban had taken the addition of fae to her arsenal with a cool equanimity, and seemed to want little more of them than ease of passage and assistance with carrying or healing the weakest of their party.

Probably, if the sprite did not spend every waking moment tormenting him, Hiru would have been insulted. As it was, he was more or less relieved that she seemed to expect no more from him than she did from Skeff, healing aside, which left him plenty of time to suffer horrific levels of boredom and muscle strain when he was not busy defending himself from impolite hands.

9. Everything in Its Right Place / Radiohead

There was a full pane of reflective glass in Hiru’s chambers in his mother’s house. He was glad, when he moved to the halls of healing, that he had outgrown the mirror’s necessity: looking glasses were expensive and difficult to obtain, even for sidhe, and especially in the size he had required, growing up.

But the glamour was important. More important than food, drink, sleep, breathing.

And so, the mirror was paramount.

10. Swallow / Placebo

Auberon is silent for a long time, and when he speaks, his voice is tight and cold. “What is the meaning of this?”

The urge to explain himself, to explain fully so that his lord will understand, and so, forgive him, rises in Hiru’s throat so that for a moment the words choke him, and there are very nearly tears in his eyes as he suppresses his laughter, for he is grateful, truly: those words are not the words he wants to say.

They are certainly not the words he needs to say, here and now.

Still, it takes him time, and Auberon is impatient, angry. His anger makes the court around them shrink back, and Hiru imagines this is a good thing; Auberon’s fury would be many times greater if the entire court heard what he had to say, what he had chosen to do, in light of the iron plague and his contact with their enemy court.

It might undermine him.

They couldn’t have that.

“I do not belong to this court, Lord Auberon,” he says, and the words are smooth and calm.

He feels so very far from them.

In other news, this song should not be as addictive as it is. D:

[ATM] Chat Drabbles; 11/02/2008

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 12:29:17 GMT

Against the Moon; Skeff, Tol + piles of fallen leaves

Skeff’s favourite part of the whole affair was oft-repeated and easy to identify: practising how to gather the leaves with the assistance of air currents was all very well, but the part that made him laugh the loudest was when the leaves were piled and perfect for jumping in and rolling about upon. Tol could not very often be prevailed upon to join the younger boy’s romps through the dead leaves, but he would sit on Leysa’s stoop and hold the sack and watch as Skeff gleefully exhausted himself, first building and then destroying the fragile cairns.

Tol’s favourite part of autumn would be more difficult to judge. He took cold more often in autumn, alternately burning and freezing as his body fought the illness, which was arguably better than feeling like his brain would leak out his nose, as he so often felt it would in spring. Between fevers, though, he might well have loved sitting there with a cloak around his shoulders and hessian heavy on his legs, waiting for the moment when Skeff would declare – and it took longer every time – “The only wind I’m moving’s from my lips, my nose, or my ass.”

Waiting for the moment where he would stand, slowly and carefully, and toss the sack to Skeff, scolding him for language not befitting the house of his mother, and reach for the rake. Waiting, and watching, while Skeff’s face flushed and broadened with every smile.

Against the Moon; Landre + it’s all about fuel

Admittedly, he tries to devote as little thought as possible to the Fire Lord’s progeny, but he doesn’t understand why she wears so little clothing, and yet carries enough fabric slung about her hips and wound through her hair to clothe three lesser fae. When he makes mention of this, on one of her many trips to bring him, and persuade him to wear, something pretty, she stares at him for a moment before a wicked smirk graces her impish face, and she asks, low and lascivious, whether he’d like her to be wearing less clothes.

Kondekir’s first response, to his everlasting horror, is, “Less clothing,” followed swiftly by, “or fewer clothes,” and shortly after that by a rapidly-becoming-flustered, “and that was not what I meant, and you know it.”

She never exactly explains it to him, and he is forever appalled that he did not devote any time to discerning the nature of the symbols scrawled down the length of the cloth strips of her skirt, before the battle that required the sacrifice of every lock of her magnificent hair, in addition to the cloth that held it away from her face, and the skirt itself.

Fuel, he realised as he watched her battle, watched her burn. It was all fuel, and it all burned much too quickly, and despite her blackened, flaking skin, she grins at him and greets him as a ‘pretty’ and he can do little but cool the air around her as gently and obligingly as he knows how.

He begins to wear her baubles when he begins to wear the scarves, the strips of cloth heavy but reassuring in their weight. He carries enough fuel with him, now, to ensure that she need never sacrifice so much of herself again, even if she wants to. Not for him.

Against the Moon; Aundin + they don’t do that over there

“I don’t know what you’re worrying about,” Sanga tells him, less soothingly than if he had not been grinning from ear to ear. “She’s like our mother.”

Sanga has not met Hiru’s mother; if he had, perhaps he would have found a slightly more reassuring thing to say. As it stands, Hiru approaches Aundin with his heart in his throat and spots of terror in front of his eyes, trying to keep in mind exactly why this is important, why he’s doing this.

Aundin turns her attention upon him like a spotlight, and her darkly painted lips flex and part in a smile that darkens rather than brightens her entire face. She is thin and angular like a pixie, and barely taller than him, but the power rolls off her in waves and it feels like Auberon all over again as he sinks to his knees before her and bows his head.

It feels like Auberon all over again until Aundin says, warm and bright, “So, this is the bug that so dazzled my Water Master!” And there is a palm against his cheek, a finger applying pressure to his chin, but the hands are soft and gentle for all their sharp, black-lacquered nails. She tilts her head as she looks him over, and there are no stars in the depths of her eyes, as there were in Auberon’s. Still, he sees them flicker, and watches her lips lift at their corners, watches her slim, pale shoulders lift, too, in a shrug.

“There is black blood in you,” she says, but not as though it matters, not as though it is a crime, and her teeth glitter as her crown does not. “The Night Court is ungentle, but you will not find cruelty here unless you ask for it.”

When he returns to Sanga, he is no longer shaking, and the spots have disappeared, for the word of a monarch of faerie is the word of faerie, and truth is all they may speak. Sanga holds him close and murmurs into his ear, “Our court is not what your court was.”

Hiru can only agree, and reply, shallowly, that no one promised safety to him there.

[ATM] Chat Drabbles; 30/01/2008

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:06:44 GMT

For Tina, Rynryn, Renren, and Squeaker. :3

Against the Moon; Kondekir, Hiru + sneezing fit

“Far be it from me to criticise, Air Master,” Hiru said, muffled through one hand as he swept the other, with a cloth, along a shelf. “But this hall is filthy.” He turned, made the mistake of removing the protective hand as he inhaled, and made a strange face for a few moments before he sneezed, resoundingly, and caused a small explosion of dust.

Kondekir looked unmoved and disapproving, but the faintly guilty flick of his fingers, and the gust of wind he used to shift the dustcloud further from Hiru, belied a mild embarrassment at the situation he had allowed the hall of records to fall into.

“I had... assistants, once,” he said, obliquely. “There may have been an incident.” He looked so very carefully blank that Hiru had to stifle a laugh with his fingertips.

“Dare I ask?”

Kondekir licked his lips, stared thoughtfully at the ceiling for a few seconds, and then turned and slipped back to his desk as though he had not heard the question. Hiru directed a fond grin at his back, and turned back to the dusty shelves. When he sneezed again and dropped a scroll, he was able to assume pretty safely that aforementioned incident had also involved copious amounts of dust, and abuse of the records.

Against the Moon; Sanga + steak

It was merely an exercise in frustration until Ban secured their lodgings, which included a meal so hearty that there was meat, real meat; it wasn’t even stewed. Tol’s mouth watered as he watched thick slabs being delivered to other tables, and tried not to look quite as interested as he was. Given the grin on Sanga’s face across the table when his cut arrived first, he hadn’t succeeded all too well.

“Nice and rare,” the water sprite crooned from behind his glamoured human face. “Just the way I like it.” Tol reminded himself that he was no child, and that sticking out his tongue would be completely inappropriate for a boy his age, just before Hiru snorted, and made a soft sound of disgust over a mug of sweet (and by the look on his face, completely foul) mead.

“Mind the cutlery,” he pointed out, and Sanga glanced down at the metal implement with a swiftness that assured Tol he had forgotten about that little hitch. The surprise was brief, however.

“No need for that, my love,” he said coyly in response. “This is what hands are for. Well,” he allowed, with great relish and a leer. “One such purpose.”

Hiru did not speak for the rest of the meal.

Against the Moon; Sanga, Hiru + fascination

The most infuriating thing was the way that, when asked rhetorically what he was looking at, Sanga would always respond, simply, “You.” There was no attempt at denial, no shame, like that of the human boy when he, likewise, was caught eyeing Hiru’s wings or wrists or shoulders.

The lack of shame on Sanga’s part only provoked more in Hiru, to the point where, after he had tired of the failed attempts to make Sanga look elsewhere, to leave him well alone, he once muttered, “I don’t know what you find to stare at.” It had not been meant as invitation; it had been meant to illustrate how vastly different Hiru must be from the partners the sprite usually desired. Instead, a faint smile appeared on Sanga’s dark lips, and before Hiru knew it, he had reached forward and plucked at a tendril of Hiru’s hair.

“Here,” he said. Hiru’s eyes narrowed, but the webbed fingers flitted to his clavicle; “Here,” and onward, fingertips tracing the line of his neck; “Here,” as they touched the edge of his jaw. He stepped away hastily before the pad of Sanga’s thumb could land on his lips.

“I don’t know what you find to stare at,” he repeated, cold and only trembling a little, and Sanga’s hand closed gently on the air.

“As you say, butterfly.”

He subsided.

Against the Moon; Tol, Skeff + my stomach is eating my spine

“How’re y’ feeling?” Skeff’s eyes were huge and blue and entirely too close. Tol squinted and made a soft sound of pain and partial panic; he felt like he was going to throw up again, and he didn’t want it to be on his only friend. The nausea abated a little once he had some room, and he lay there just breathing for a few seconds, hearing Leysa thumping something around her hearth, before he managed to reply.

“Like my stomach’s trying to eat my spine,” he said, and Skeff giggled, that one sound prompting a small smile from Tol as well. They all knew he was very nearly better when he started griping about his condition. Skeff collapsed down at his side again, lying on his stomach and drawing symbols in the dirt floor, feet kicking absently in the air above him. Tol stifled a laugh: they were cleaner than he’d seen them since the last time he’d been ill. “Haven’t you been outside at all?”

Skeff looked up, brow furrowed, chin already jutting. “First mam, now you,” he grumbled. “Don’t see what I need to be outside for.”

This, from a boy who only slept inside because his mother insisted upon it, was enough to silence Tol, and set him to staring at the ceiling, a faint (if pained) smile on his lips, and his hand at the edge of his pallet, not so far that it would seem that he was reaching, but far enough that his fingertips could graze Skeff’s loose shirt as he drew: circles and circles and circles with words Tol would never be taught but would always understand lent protection.

Against the Moon; Sanga + kelp in odd places

Hiru was disgusted. Sanga did not appear to have any issue, but that was only typical. He had probably liquefied convenient body parts to rid himself of the scourge.

“It’s everywhere,” Hiru complained, trying to disentangle a dark, sticky clump from the hair behind one ear. Sanga gave a lazy shrug against the sand, and rolled onto his stomach, completely unperturbed.

“It does that,” he said, and watched complacently as Hiru plucked at his clothing, trying to free himself of the water weed in question. A smirk curved his lips, rippled up his face and flared out his gills, and within a few seconds he had bellied across the sand until he could slip between Hiru’s wings, beneath them, and wrap one arm around his waist, pressing his mouth to the Seelie’s spine, ostensibly to remove the kelp there, and Hiru straightened, all the muscles underneath his tongue snapping instantly to attention.

He twisted to glare at Sanga, who let the kelp dangle from his tongue, innocent. “Gets everywhere,” said the sprite cheerfully, even now working a hand under the damp edge of Hiru’s tunic. Hiru gave him an exasperated look, turned faintly red.

“It doesn’t get there,” he muttered, water-darkened curls clinging to his neck and cheeks, and another clump of weed just below the junction of throat and jaw. Sanga took the opportunity. That was something Hiru couldn’t complain about.

Against the Moon; Landre, Kondekir + achin’ for bacon

“I’m really, really not,” Kondekir tried to say, but it was very difficult to say anything when he was trying not to a) move his face any closer to Landre’s chest, or b) lean any further back and make it even easier for her to become a fatal distraction. “If I am aching for anything, Landre, Fire Master, it is for you to get off me, because you have just eaten lunch and that lunch was rocks.”

Against the Moon; Tol + kaleidoscope

When they were older, and Tol was tinkering at his workbench while the fae rattled around his workshop and cheerfully disturbed everything that wasn’t tied down, Hiru picked up a spyglass and put it to his eye at Tol’s prompting. He pulled it back almost immediately, frowning.

“You can only see one thing,” he said, petulant, before tossing it to Sanga (Tol made a small, high noise of distress before the sprite caught it deftly), who raised one brow after taking a look of his own out the wide workshop window.

“Seems normal enough to me,” he said, tilting his head for a moment so that his dark hair spilled forward over his shoulders. His pupils, black on liquid black, contracted into slits as the light hit them again, and Hiru made a sound of understanding.

“My eyes,” he said, and dropped the glamour that kept his wings and antennae and his multi-faceted eyes hidden from the rest of the world, in explanation. Tol looked from the spyglass to Hiru’s face and after a moment, his eyes narrowed speculatively.

“I wonder...” he said, and from the corner, occupied with a mortar and pestle, Skeff huffed a breath of amusement.

“Now you’ve done it,” he said.

[PSOH] Music Meme #1

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 08:34:54 GMT

1. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.
2. Turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle.
3. Write a drabble related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. No lingering afterwards!
4. Do ten of these, then post them.

01. Garbage; #1 Crush

It happened all the time. Before he thought about it, his hand was moving, and a confused Chinese woman would be staring back with liquid eyes and raised brows.

“Sorry,” he said. “My mistake.” And it is, it was – it had always been a mistake. But this was one mistake he would fix. He had the resources, now; he wasn’t just some kid, fresh out of college and drunk on violet eyes.

If it took a hand on every shoulder from here to Hong Kong, Vesca would find him.

02. Placebo; Allergic (To Thoughts of Mother Earth)

“You’ve gotta stop,” the human said, from the door. “You’re exhausting yourself, Dee. You can’t make this kind of breakthrough in a year, you gotta pace--”

“Just bring me the tea, Mr University Student,” he snapped, perhaps too harshly, “and let me handle the rest.”

“You’re crazy,” Vesca said, and set down the pot, and the biscuits.

“Such has often been said of the greatest men in history,” D replied, obliquely, and did his best to avoid the possible truth of the statement.

03. Alanis Morisette; Still

It takes Leon a while to understand, and to realise he has understood all along, and it is on that day that he dreams of the ship, and steps onto it.

“Everything I don’t understand,” he said to the man at the helm. “Everything I believed, anyway. You’re just—”

“Just waiting,” agreed the man, the more-than-man, and smiled. “For you to realise it, Mr Detective.” The eyes become more temperate. “Welcome aboard, Leon.”

“D,” he says, reaching, and, “D.”

“Welcome aboard,” the kami repeats, stroking his hair, and for the first time in many mnonths Leon awakens with hope in his heart and the sweet scent of incense in his nostrils.

He follows it home.

04. Mika; Ring, Ring

The first time he asked to speak to his father, his grandfather looked briefly discomposed. “Of course,” he said, naturally, and gave D the number.

It was not long after that he left on his lie of a business trip, and D called the number, just to check.

“Father,” said the voice on the other end, cold and unwilling, and when D countered it:

“No.”

Puzzled.

“Father?”

There was silence broken by breathing and, so softly,

“Say that again.”

05. VAST; Pretty When You Cry

He’s drunk. They both are. He is mad with grief, with anger, and Vesca, he supposes, is the same – some girl from the microbiology department – and it is a biting comment on that very girl that led to this, to the sweet, heavy press of flesh that will hurt him in the morning, hurt his muscles, hurt his heart. He wants this, and he doesn’t, and when it’s over, he pulls Vesca’s face close and he whispers, Forget.

He will never forget the tired reluctance in the instant before Vesca sleeps, and he will always wonder if it would have hurt more to cling than to let go.

He doesn’t think so.

06. Goo Goo Dolls; Sympathy

He knows something is wrong when D’s tone is kind and conciliatory rather than smug and biting, when the sympathy does nothing to move him and everything to leave him where he is: drowning, struggling. D does not distract him, pull him up, and as he watches, that last week, he realises that it’s something he has needed, something he has wanted: someone to make those snide suggestions and pull him up off his ass.

When D leaves, that’s what he looks for first.

07. Tori Amos; ’97 Bonnie and Clyde

“I found it. Father, I found it, I understand, I have a cure—”

“You have the human sickness of believing you can change things for the better.” Sourly. “Why are you here?”

Faltering. “I wanted... I wanted to see him. You must... Father, please, you cannot be serious. He is suffering; he is not whole—surely you cannot mean to—”

“He will prevail, or he will not. This is the way of things.”

“The way of things. Th-the way of things? I have slaved, I have struggled, spent years with these—these—the way of things?”

“My son, you must becalm yourself—”

“He is my son. My son. Nothing in this world or another can take that from me. Not even you, Father, especially not you, I cannot—I won’t let you.”

The kingdom spills outward, even as blood does, and somewhere a child’s cry turns to a baby’s shrill siren wail.

Shaking, stumbling, large hands find the child, wrap him close, wrap him tightly, and if there are tears he does not notice for the pain.

“I’ll save you,” he whispers. “I’ll save you, little one, and we’ll be fine. Won’t we?” Choked. “Just the two of us.”

08. Caleb Kane; Longer

It has been a long day. Long for both of them, and complicated, and it brings the worst in them both bubbling to the surface.

When the last cup has been thrown, Leon puts his head in his hands and says, softly, as though he has just realised it:

“I cannot deal with this shit any more.”

There is such finality in the tone that D cannot reply, cannot formulate a response, and it is not until Leon stands and gathers his jacket that he even realises what he wants his reply to be, what his reply must be.

The difference between them sticks in his throat, and he says nothing at all as Leon walks away.

09. Placebo; Drag

At first, it just drove him crazy – he was jealous, all right, that some Chinese bastard could come to this school he’d worked so hard to get into and be amazingly intelligent and gracious and an excellent tutor and—he was jealous, okay, for a long time, and when he stopped hating D for his talents all of a sudden he admired him for them instead, and those secret smiles and half-lidded glances were something warm and dangerous that he couldn’t afford to touch.

10. Tori Amos; Father Lucifer

After the fact, Count D sits alone, untouched by pets or plantlife, untouched by anything other than despair, and he remembers his son and his grandchild and he remembers a rounded, rolling accent and painfully bright blue eyes and instead of pitfalls avoided, he can only see chances lost.

[ATM] Smoke and Mirrors;

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 07:21:44 GMT

Title: Smoke and Mirrors
Fandom: Original (Against the Moon)
Character/s: Hiru, Auberon, Kagami
Words: 361
Notes: For Squeaker + 'beyond all expectations'.

Hiru was in his twentieth year the first time he appeared before Seelie Court, and he was so afraid that he could hardly breathe. So many of the fae here were more powerful than he was; it would take the slightest push from any of them to shatter his careful glamour and destroy what he had worked all his life to create.

The trick, his mother had said, lay in convincing an audience that this was all they were supposed to be seeing. And so today, she herself was unglamoured; in her large form, but unglamoured, so that anyone in the Court could see that they were mother and son, because Hiru's glamour's appearance was based so heavily on hers. Only his wings remained the same, and only because, in his mother's words, "No one would believe you were full Seelie. Better to give them an obvious trait to connect you to Unseelie Court than to have them search for one. Who knows what they might find?"

They both knew, and so Hiru never argued. His glamour was his skin; he maintained it even while he slept; he had been trained to maintain it for twelve full hours' unconsciousness. He should not have been so concerned when he was presented to Auberon, but he was. His hands shook; the hands of his glamour shook, also, because it was so much more obvious when an emotion was false in a glamour; it was so very easy to forget, no matter how long such a thing was cast.

Hiru will never forget Auberon's gentle laugh, and the sight of that large, slender-fingered hand being extended toward him as he knelt. Why tremble, child? Auberon's power pouring over his and not noticing, not realising that the delicate, beautiful youth before him was nothing but the thinnest of illusions. Hiru's mother knew her trade. She smiled when Hiru looked back at her, and he swears it is the only moment of satisfaction in him she has ever known.

Your blood throws strong and true, Lady Kagami, if his wings and size are his only imperfections.

But they were not. And now, they all know it.

Master List, 2008

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 14:22:49 GMT

- = -

ONE-SHOTS
(standalones and drabbles)

Evolution (Darwinism) (PSOH) 01/01/08 [link]
Smoke and Mirrors (ATM) 04/01/08 [link]
Music Meme #1 (PSOH) 29/01/08 [link]
Chat Drabbles (ATM) 30/01/08 [link]
Chat Drabbles (ATM) 11/02/08 [link]
Music Meme #2 (ATM) 13/02/08 [link]

- = -

[PSOH] Evolution (Darwinism);

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 14:18:21 GMT

Title: Evolution (Darwinism)
Fandom: Petshop of Horrors
Character/s: Count D, Vesca Howell, Papa D (implied)
Words: 710
Notes: The third part of the Dissonance Arc. In which Count D pays a visit to his grandfather, and there are hints of D/Leon. Uh. >_>; Happy New Year?

Vesca is in the front room trying to decipher a dried and faded scroll when around him, the pets still. A customer? Vesca glances around him, waiting for Grandfather to appear, as he usually does, whenever a customer enters the petshop. But Grandfather does not materialise, and the door opens and closes almost silently, and for a moment Vesca thinks that it is Grandfather, returning from a bakery or a sweet shop.

But then the customer turns, and stares at Vesca for a moment in something like surprise. His left eye is violet – for a moment, Vesca’s heart jumps to his throat – but his right eye is Grandfather’s cool amber, though it is mostly veiled with carefully parted hair. The stranger watches him for a moment, and then his brow furrows delicately. There is a lump in Vesca’s throat, preventing him from welcoming the stranger, promising that Grandfather will be with him in a moment; the stranger speaks first:

“Why do you weep, child?”

Vesca blinks and discovers, yes, there are tears in his eyes, and they run down his cheeks as the motion of his eyelids disturbs them. He touches his face with his hands, wondering, and finally manages to say, “I don’t know.”

The stranger’s brow furrows more deeply for a moment, and then his expression clears, as though he understands. Vesca doesn’t, but he cannot speak again; the stranger is smiling gently, and stepping past the lounge generally used by customers to stand beside Vesca, and Vesca’s hands are rising of their own accord to take the stranger’s when they are held out for him to take. His flesh is cool like Grandfather’s. Vesca feels his own tears as hot lines down his face, and his breath shudders painfully for a moment, before some crushing, explosive emotion moves out of his mind’s reach and frees up his lungs.

“I do not believe we have been properly introduced,” the stranger murmurs. “I am Count D. The third,” he adds with a smile, when Vesca opens his mouth to object.

“I’m Vesca,” Vesca tells Count D, and D’s hands tighten on his for a moment. “What?”

D eyes him carefully. Slowly, he sits. He does not release Vesca’s hands. “The name my grandfather chose for you is fitting. Though...” A small smile curves his lips, like Grandfather’s, but warmer, and a little more bitter. “I suppose he has not explained its meaning.”

Vesca shakes his head slowly. Grandfather has never mentioned it. But D only nods; he does not offer anything else, and Vesca supposes this is just another item on a long list of things he must work out for himself. He moves on. “Did you come to talk to Grandfather?”

D smiles. “I would much rather speak to you,” he says, and Vesca is choked, he is doubled over, there is a pain in his chest, in his heart, and the tears are running down his face as though there is a pipe in him that has burst, and he only realises when his fingers start to ache that his hands have closed on D’s hands like claws—

“Sorry,” he gasps, throat tight, and tries to let go. He cannot. His fingers are not his own. He does not understand, but it seems that D does; he tugs Vesca forward and strokes his hair as Vesca’s body clenches and shakes without his consent.

“I came because I have been caught, at last,” D says, once the tears that are not Vesca’s have subsided. “Grandfather will be...” a quick breath “...furious. But there is only so much pain that I can bear. You understand that, do you not?”

Someone that is not Vesca compresses D’s free hand with both of his own, and Count D looks downward and smiles through a sheen of tears.

“I was certain you would.”

Grandfather emerges after Count D has taken his leave, both hands clasped before him. His lips are pressed into pale lines; his hands are trembling.

“Count D visited,” Vesca tells him, though he is certain that Grandfather already knows. “The third,” he adds, conscientiously. “He said he had been... caught?” It seems important.

Grandfather bows his head, and turns his face away.

“I did not want to hear.”

[MS!Bleach] Some Assembly Required; Mayuri/Hanatarou

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 09:52:40 GMT

Title: Some Assembly Required
Fandom: Bleach (MS)
Character/s: Hanatarou, Mayuri
Words: 614
Notes: AU, clearly, since this also never happened in the game. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to my one and only Shini. ♥ Continuing the srs crack tradition of Fray, Darning, Patterns, and An Inconvenient Truth. (And, orz, it seems like it cuts out, but I don’t know how else to finish it. |D;)

1. Blood wells as the scalpel presses downward, and his aide siphons the blood swiftly away. Mayuri’s hands do not shake; they never shake. He has learned to mask the quickness of his breathing, but there is nothing to be done about the way his pupils flare. He is glad he needs so few staff for these operations, glad they all know their business and pay only brief professional attention to him. He is appreciative of the way Yamada’s movements anticipate his own, never in Mayuri’s line of vision, always drawing the blood away before it can impede Mayuri’s work. He wishes he had help as skilled as this in his other job, and recognises the thought as uncharacteristically and hopelessly optimistic.

Yamada’s body heat grows ever so slightly distracting as the operation goes on, but the boy never touches Mayuri in the theatre, not even so much as an accidental brush, and sometimes his hovering heat is worse. Mayuri has yet to determine if this is coincidence, skill, or if the boy simply knows – as he seems to know so many things without asking – what is coming; when it will come; how.

2. Yamada writhes and gasps, but he does so soundlessly. Sometimes it takes both of Yamada’s own hands, both of Mayuri’s, to achieve this; sometimes suffocation-adrenaline tears glitter on Yamada’s face as they breathe together, recovering over sinks in darkened prep rooms, on gurneys still damp with other fluids, but Yamada never makes a sound.

Mayuri is certain that this very quality is what makes Yamada ideal. It occurs to him only rarely that generally appreciation is rendered vocally during such an act, and when it does, the thought is swiftly shut down by two facts: first, that Yamada had enjoyed himself well enough if the stain on his (now discarded) smock is any indication; second, that Mayuri doesn’t care.

3. Yamada has a place, and that place is dark rooms and abandoned corridors in St Camillo’s. This trend breaks once, and as far as Mayuri is concerned it will never happen again.

It is late. Technically they are on a twenty-four hour shift, but the power is out and no one seems to know how long it will be before it is restored. There is no point in Yamada commuting when it takes him an hour just to go one way, Mayuri grudgingly extends the use of his couch. There is no need for him to be without assistance for the time it took Yamada to get back into the city, after all.

He does not forget that Nemu is awake so much as he is so accustomed to immediate compliance that he fails to take Yamada’s otherwise insipidly cheerful, polite personality into account.

When Yamada introduces himself to a slightly startled silence and says, “You must be Nemu-san,” Mayuri is too irritated by the disruption to his schedule to do more than flap a hand at his daughter’s wide, cautious eyes. Yamada is no threat, he thinks, and remembers thinking, later. Yamada is never any trouble.

He considers saying learn, but decides that Yamada’s fluster and explaining his own thoughts is too much effort to waste on the pair of them. He leaves them alone, returns to his paperwork, and seventeen minutes later, to his scheduled nap.

It is a few days later that Yamada mutters something that causes Mayuri first to gape and then to scowl. “What?”

“She could be my sister,” Yamada repeats, blue eyes solemn. “Doesn’t that bother you at all?”

“You’ve bothered me from the day we met,” Mayuri snaps. It is the truth.

He does not expect Yamada to find it quite so pleasing.

[Loveless] More Than We'll Ever Feel; Youji/Natsuo/Kio

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 09:50:56 GMT

Title: More Than We’ll Ever Feel
Fandom: Loveless
Character/s: Kio, Youji, Natsuo
Words: 819
Notes: A Christmas gift for the lovely squeakelala. X3 Hope you enjoy it, sweetness. It didn't quite make it into pairing territory, but I still think it counts, ne? ♥

Youji sits at the edge of the spring, chin on his knees, hands around the tops of his shins, just below the water line, tail somewhere around his ankles. He isn’t sure; he can’t feel it, and the weightlessness of the water is disorienting. Natsuo must feel it, too – but Natsuo is standing on the bottom, throwing water with short, brisk movements of both arms, fighting with Kio over... something. Youji hadn’t been paying attention, and it probably hadn’t been important, anyway. Kio never said anything important.

The hot springs are practically next door to Seven Voices, but the Zero have never been before. They are only here now because Nagisa-sensei conceded to Youji’s whim to be near Ritsuka while they all recovered from Seimei’s assault. But Ritsuka and Soubi have a private spring; they need tome alone to repair their bond. And so Youji and Natsuo have spent most of their time with Kio, who is recovering, too, although from a different kind of hurt.

He seems fine now, though, laughing and sweeping his arms in great wide arcs, sending walls of water to flood over Natsuo, leaving his thick hair sodden, his ears flattened with the weight of the water more than dislike of it. They are both ahving fun and Youji is glad, almost. But Youji feels heavy, lethargic... warm.

He realises it, and is too sleepy to take much notice. So this is ‘warm’. He could drown in it; the sensation relaxes him completely, his every muscle, his every thought...

Warm.

And, moments later, hands, mouth, choking. Youji sputters, pukes a stream of slightly saline liquid and lies gasping, black spots before his eyes, still feeling hands, the touches unfamiliar and invasive, and someone is forcing him upright, shaking him, so only the adrenalin prompts him to gape at the feeling of fingers, the feeling of skin.

Why—?

Kio is in front of him, calling his name, eyes wild, but it is only when Natsuo hugs him from behind that he realises properly just what is wrong. He can smell Natsuo, he can hear Natsuo’s heartbeat, but he can feel the tremble in Natsuo’s forearms, feel the crushing pressure of those thin limbs, and for a moment, he is dumbfounded.

Then the terror hits.

He thrashes, first pushing away from Kio’s face, then struggling out of Natsuo’s arms. Natsuo is calling to him, shocked, hurt, and Kio echoes Natsuo with words that don’t reach nearly far enough.

“You-chan! You-chan—” He grabs for Youji’s shoulders again and Youji’s ears flatten, his tail puffs as well as it can, waterlogged. And Kio sees these things, and stops. His hands withdraw. His voice gentles. “You-chan. You fainted in the bath. I want to take you up to the medical wing again and make sure you’re really okay. Hot water worsens bleeding, so if you’ve opened something up just now, you might be in trouble, even if you can’t feel it.”

Youji can still feel the cold night air and the tentative grasp of Natsuo’s hand at his shoulder; he knows he would be able to feel a re-opened wound. But Natsuo’s hand is enough reason not to say any such thing. He nods, slowly, shakily. Kio’s hands stay out.

“C’mon. Kio-san’s going to carry you to the infirmary.” His arm slips behind Youji’s shoulders, still hot from the water. For the first time, Youji feels the shifting tendons in Kio’s wrists and forearms, feels the strain in the man as he lifts Youji into his arms, sliding the other under Youji’s knees. Youji doesn’t move as Kio steps cautiously out of the bathing area, his breathing growing more laboured as they progress. Kio is not fully recovered, either. That is not why Youji keeps perfectly still.

He does not move because he does not want the nauseating slide of skin on skin; he keeps perfectly still because while he can handle the pressure of Kio’s body against his own, even the small movements as Kio manoeuvres him toward the sick bay are enough to make Youji writhe.

He closes his eyes, brings his hands to his face, and presses them there for half a second, before he hovers them above the skin instead. The hot press of his own palms had been suffocating; the vague emanation of his own body heat is tolerable by comparison.

He stays there, concentrating on the space that he has made, until he cannot feel the heat from his hands anymore. Kio’s touch is less obvious; Youji touches his own cheeks tentatively as Kio takes him into the med bay.

He cannot feel his fingers anymore. And as the sensation of Kio’s chin on his hair fades, as he loses the ability to feelk the reverberation of Kio’s voice through Kio’s chest and hears it, only, instead, Youji thinks he should not be so relieved.

He should not be so disappointed.

[PSOH] One-Liners;

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 23:26:16 GMT

Another one-liner meme that is just pretending. Two ficlets in here, and no small number of drabbles. All PSOH-related, in honour of Shin Petshop v5. And... there are a number of different AUs in here. I've tried to group the related ones, but you know how AUs spiral out of control. XD

pon-chan, vesca; on the subject of bratz dolls (au)
for chibify

The first day that Vesca had seen Pon-chan in her human form had been interesting for all involved; she was dainty enough in her own way, he supposed, but she was also a thief and a rascal and if he’d been asked to think of her as a person, his mental image would certainly not have been of golden locks and bright blue eyes.

chris, tetsu; hairball (au)
for squeakelala

Living with the toutetsu was simple enough for Chris; the creature did listen to him, and made meals he was sure people would die for (although no longer literally). The problems arose whenever Leon came to visit. There was something about Tetsu that Leon just didn't like, and the feeling was mutual. The order to let Leon go right now was the only one Chris ever had to repeat, and he hated it-- but he had to admit that Tetsu wasn't the only one at fault; if Leon stuck to calling Tetsu 'hairball' instead of less polite epithets, maybe this wouldn't be such a problem.

chris, tetsu; relic (au)
for chibify

“You’re so old,” he says, and his voice is wondering. The toutetsu makes a point of reminding Chris on a regular basis that his age has nothing to do with infirmity or the approach of death – usually with a full-body tackle and some well-placed nips – but every time Chris says it, the toutetsu is forcefully reminded that he is the immortal, here, not Chris, and that one day, he will be once more a relic without a master.

vesca, chris, hon lon; imprisoned (au)
for chibify

“Look, Dee said you’d be fine on your own,” Vesca said, setting both palms to the door of the Crystal Chamber. “I’m just here because she’s been in here a long time and she gets a little grouchy when she thinks she’s being neglected.”

leon, vesca; chance
for feather_qwill

It was sheer chance that it even came up, especially to Howell, but oblivious as Leon was (or tried to be) he couldn't miss the sharpening of Howell's eyes when, queried on who the Norma Langley impostor had been after, on her strychnine spree, Leon answered, "The owner of a petshop in Chinatown. Count D."

sofu d/wu fei; deceit
50 words exactly
for feather_qwill

His breath failed as he crumpled, hands clutching at air as he fell, but Lao Wu Fei’s own breathing did not concern him. Lao Wu Fei could see the elder D’s eyes. Gold was never meant to freeze; these eyes, never meant to hold tears.

But they were.

They did.

leon/wu fei; revenge is a dish best served cold
for phoenixstorm

Leon had run this through his head a thousand times; the ways it could pan out, the ways he wanted it to. He could tell that D hadn’t by the way his eyes widened for a split second when he saw Leon in the door, duffel and all, before his mask dropped into place, and he bent to set an elegant china mug in front of a Chinese guy in the armchair, who even now was twisting to stare Leon down, dark eyes narrowed.

Leon recognised that look. He’d only worn it a thousand times. He grinned, knowing D knew it was a nasty grin, anticipating his response with a kind of glee. He stopped anticipating, knew with an odd little flare in his chest that he had won, when D smirked at him, dropped a hip against the other guy’s shoulder where he was craning to see past the chair, and said, “It’s been a long time, Mr Detective.”

“Yeah, it has,” Leon agreed, rummaging in his duffel. “Spent a lot of time tracking you down, you bastard, you could have stayed in Munich for more than a month.” The words should have been angry; they wanted to be. Leon had enough bottled anger for an army, but he’d learned to keep it bottled, recently; he knew how he wanted to beat D, now, and it wasn’t by being louder or more offensive. So the words came out calm, and he strolled forward instead of striding, and when he brought the paper out to give to D, folded in precise quarters, he flipped it out between finger and thumb instead of shoving it into D’s chest with one palm. “You forgot something, asshole, and you made my kid brother cry. Don’t leave it behind again.”

“Who is this?” The Chinese guy sounded non-plussed; Leon guessed he was getting decent at Mandarin if he could understand that already. Must have been all those months looking for fucking pandas in the wilderness, said a voice in the back of his head, and he stepped on it. He knew how he wanted to win.

“Ah, sorry. Leon Orcot. Ex-detective, LAPD.” He jerked his thumb at D, who seemed riveted by the paper in his hands, as though he remembered what it contained, but was reluctant to see it again. Good, thought Leon, and held out a hand for the other guy to shake. “I see you’re looking after the Count, now.”

The guy reddened, stood up, and turned to shake Leon’s hand. He was shorter than Leon, but not by enough to brag about. “Lao Wu Fei,” he said shortly. “I own the building.”

“Ah,” said Leon, and tried not to smirk too hard when he looked back at D, still dithering with the paper. “Nice choice, D. I bet you can afford the candy a lot better than I could,” he added in Mandarin to Lao, who was looking stymied that Leon had made D’s expression twitch, and he couldn’t understand what Leon had said to make it so. The comment didn’t look to make Lao any more comfortable, but there was a gleam in his eye that Leon recognised, too – the gleam Leon had no doubt had, the first time he’d got a real lead on the Count. Leon had his plan.

“Why don’t we go out for a drink, get acquainted?” he asked, just this side of a leer, and D’s fiddling with the paper slowed. Leon could feel his eyes, violet and gold, on the side of his face, and he ignored them. He was good at that; he’d always been good at that, for better or worse.

Lao’s eyes narrowed, considering, assessing. Leon already knew curiousity about D would override his caution. Leon jerked his chin, nodded politely to D and the stillness of his hands and his expression as he took a few steps backward, expectantly, and Lao followed.

They left D standing there with tea on the table and a folded piece of paper in his hands, and Leon was never surer of his victory.

leon, wu fei; bicycle
for chibify

“Getting along with D is like riding a bicycle,” Leon said later, over beer, and Wu Fei frowned through the alcohol in his system.

“I don’t ride bicycles,” he confessed. He had three cars and people to drive them; what would be need bicycles for? But Leon was looking pleased.

“Exactly,” he agreed, with a thud of his beer can. “Neither do I.”

leon/wu fei; animalistic
for chibify

D had entertained the thought only briefly, but he had thought, should Lao and Leon ever meet, that they would be at odds, that they would bristle at each other like animals finding each other on contested territory. He had been wrong, it seemed. And when he ran again, he left behind a man who knew him well enough to trace his movements without the aid of the police department’s mortuary records, and a man with the financial power to let him.

chris, tetsu; excursion
for phoenixstorm

“It’s just a camping trip,” Tetsu said gruffly, hands on narrow hips, gold eyes narrowed, pupils slit with impatience or frustration at Chris’s tears. “You’ll be back in three days. What are you worrying about?”

tetsu; mobile doggy bath
for phoenixstorm

It was probably the only time Leon had ever been allowed to retaliate when Tetsu buried his teeth in Leon’s forearm; D and Chris cheered him on from a safe distance while he cursed and dumped another bucket of soapy water over the sheep-tiger’s head. Tetsu howled, and bit harder. Leon cursed. “Keep your damn eyes closed, then!”

This was the last damn time he listened to D about getting a pet to go along on Chris’s camps. The burrs had been annoying enough.

leon; moving on
for leviathanmirror

What scares him most, what spurs him on, is that he could do what D said, he could pretend this was all a crazy dream, a smoke-hallucination, and he could go back to what he was, what he thought made up his world, and he could forget about it all. He could forget, and Chris would have no one to remind him, and soon the man who had returned his voice to the world would be nothing but a memory of smoke and incense. What scares him most, what keeps him running, is that Leon’s mother is already a faded ghost in his mind; he can’t let go because if he does, D will be the same. Worse. And he can’t have that.

papa d, leon; forgotten
for leviathanmirror

It wasn’t D he found first, or at least, it wasn’t the D he was looking for. He’d walked into the shop full of triumph, and come face to face with a younger D, not quite eleven, with hair short enough that he almost looked male, for once. Leon pulled up too quickly, startled, and the younger man smiled at him in the way they all had, hands clasped in front of him.

“Welcome to Count D’s pet shop,” he said simply, violet eyes gleaming, and Leon knew a moment of fear before the smooth voice continued, “Father isn’t here right now, but perhaps I can be of service?”

Father, Leon thought in some confusion. Not grandfather. Not great-grandfather, either. Should he be running? “I was looking for... uh. The one with different eyes,” he finished, gesturing helplessly between his own, unable to explain any better, and the younger D blinked.

“I can’t tell you where to find him,” he said, a little wistfully. “My father and his grandson have had little contact since I was born. But his last card was from Germany.”

“Why are you helping me?” Leon asked, just above a whisper, bewildered, and the boy – clearly much younger than the Count or his grandfather, now – frowned.

“Is there a reason I should not?”

papa d, count d; bubbles (au)
for chibify

Dee just watched as his son stared, wide-eyed with wonder, as a chemical rainbow across the bubbles’ surface caught and shimmered in the air above his head. True, most of Vesca’s games did not catch D’s interest, but when they did, they were a hit, and could occupy him for hours.

papa d, vesca; penguins
for leviathanmirror

These days, they were one of the few birds that D was not perfectly content to be around. They brought back memories, messy hair and strangely captivating eyes and a walk impeded by flippers, and D had no time for the memories; his son was running out of time.

leon, vesca; should have known better
for leviathanmirror

The kid hadn’t been expecting it; Vesca could tell, though he had to ask, anyway. Whether Orcot had tipped D off. Whether the Count had been acting strangely. He had to ask, even though the kid was already tearing into the back room, just one, small and dingy like any other in China Town. Not a maze of corridors Vesca has never seen, but has heard of from a hundred near-victims, and hates every time he hears them. He looks at the kid and he hates him just a little for not doing his goddamn job. Orcot should have known better. They both should.

sofu d, hon lon; popcorn
for chibify

Count D visited his ‘daughter’ as often as he was able, all too aware that no matter the affectations of Shuuko and Kanan, Junrei, at least, showed her misery plainly. He had taken to leaving Q-chan behind, however, when he entered the Crystal Chamber of late; there was something about the way Kanan eyed the tiny creature that reminded D of humans greedily eyeing treats at a cinema.

count d, vesca; sitting in a tree (PRETTY WELL AU, WHAT)
for chibify,
who clearly wants Vesca in a whole lot of trouble. XD

“I confess, Vesca, I am torn. But after all else I have gone through for my son’s sake, could you ever think it would be otherwise?”

leon, tetsu; better off
for leviathanmirror

The toutetsu seemed to watch him with sinister promise, at first, as though waiting for Leon to break a clause. But there were no clauses – or none that applied to Leon; D appeared to have made sure of that, at least – so either Tetsu just liked to make Leon nervous (a distinct possibility) or Leon was imagining things.

“I know Chris’ll be glad to see you,” he grumbled at it. “But I still have no idea why the hell D left you with me.”

The creature gave him a look, which Leon interpreted as don’t ask questions, and rested his chin on his front paws, moody. Leon had wondered before how long it would take before he understood Tetsu well enough to get an answer out of him; more often, now, he wondered if Tetsu knew any better than he did.

As it turned out, it took until after Chris visited for the first time – nearly six months later – before Tetsu (at Chris’s behest) deigned to allow Leon to see his true form. It creeped Leon right out when he woke up to a horned man making breakfast, and Chris swinging his legs at the table, chattering the toutetsu’s ear off. Tetsu had given him a sullen glare, which looked strange from slitted sheep’s eyes, and refused to say a word to him until Chris used his big blue eyes and wobbly lower lip to force a temporary truce.

While Chris was in the shower (Leon’s apartment didn’t have a bath), Leon stood in his kitchen and dried the dishes, feeling very strange about having his pet goat-tiger hand him the pots and the pans. Tetsu was shorter than Leon was, and kinda scrawny, too. He never looked underfed when he was covered in fur, but maybe Leon wasn’t feeding him enough.

He and Chris went grocery shopping together later, Chris carrying the basket rather than riding on Leon’s shoulders, these days, and Leon wondered aloud as they perused the meat section, whether Tetsu’d stay human when Chris had gone home. “Must be boring as shit for him in that apartment,” he admitted, feeling faint traces of guilt, mostly because Tetsu hadn’t bitten him once since the contract had been drawn up. “At least if he stayed human he could talk to me.”

Mentioning this to Chris, of course, pretty much settled matters as far as the toutetsu went. The first thing Leon brought up was the issue of boredom; Tetsu had eyed him for a long time before he cautiously requested baking supplies, and Leon was ever after supplied with needlessly intricate and entirely-too-delicious-to-have-been-made-by-a-furball pastries to go with his coffee before he headed into the station of a morning.

The second thing he brought up was about a month after Chris had gone home again, and it was D. Tetsu looked at him a long time then, too, but when he spoke, he didn’t sound cautious. He sounded kind of like Leon felt, when he thought too long about how weird it felt, not to be drinking tea in that underground parlour, enveloped in cool perfumed air and surrounded by the small sounds of a dozen hidden animals.

“You didn’t wanna meet the Count’s grandfather,” he said, voice full of teeth. “Neither did I.”

Leon nodded, but thought Tetsu agreed with him when he said, “Bastard could have let me decide that for myself.”

[PSOH] Devotion;

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 00:07:56 GMT

Title: Devotion
Fandom: Pet Shop of Horrors
Character/s: Sofu D, Papa D, Vesca Howell
Words: 1040
Notes: This was much better the first time I wrote it. The second story in the Dissonance Arc, which can be found here. Sofu D does not have high hopes for this grandchild.

- - -

There is a moment of silence in the pet shop as every occupant holds its breath. Then, cacophony. The animals cringe away from the lusty wail of a baby, and the customer – a round-faced woman who, only seconds ago, had been berating Count D on some matter of pet care – claps her hands over her mouth.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she whispers through her ring-encrusted fingers, and Count D waves an elegant dismissal with one hand as he crosses the room. It is richly decorated, filled with antique furniture and priceless artefacts. The cradle does not look out of place, draped as it is in coloured silks, shielded from the rest of the room by a screen decorated with painted goldfish.

The cradle does not look out of place, but the baby does – creamy skin flushed with infant rage, golden curls dampened with sleep-sweat and tears. As Count D lifts the child close and bends his head to murmur soothingly against the baby’s brow, its wails become sobs, and finally turn to deep, shuddering breaths. Its eyes blink open grudgingly. Tiny fist against its mouth, it rests the side of its face against the Count’s shoulder and stares at the customer as though it has never seen a woman before. Its eyes are as large and as blue as her own small son’s most prized glass marble.

“Oh, isn’t he adorable,” she coos, immediately charmed. “Is he yours?”

The Count smiles his pleasant vacant smile and for a moment the twist of his lips is a wry one. “In a manner of speaking,” he says, golden eyes impossible to read. “I am caring for him in his mother’s absence.”

“Oh, dear.” The woman ventures close enough to wiggle her fingers at the child; they both giggle delightedly. “Well, if you ever need a helping hand with this little man, you just give me a call,” she croons, more to the child than to the Count. “I’m sure he’d have a ball with little Joshua.”

Count D smiles and shifts the child toward a hip he barely has. “Of course, Mrs Gardiner,” he demurs. “But it will be some time before he is old enough to be trusted with other children. Sharing is so difficult when they are young.” And with another brilliant, blank smile, he makes an encouraging motion with his free hand.

“Now... you were saying?”

-

It will be a long time before the child is fit to leave the pet shop, but not precisely for the reason he had quoted to Mrs Gardiner. Learning to share should actually come very easily to the child; it is, D suspects, what it has been doing from the day it first drew breath.

When he had left Los Angeles, he had been able to feel the lingering presence of his son within the human baby. It had given him hope that somewhere within the flesh there lay a remnant of the son he had adored, for all his flaws, for all his wrong decisions. He need only be patient, and his son would once again reveal himself to D.

But as he flew, he felt the presence fading, and by the time he reached a new city, his son’s spirit had been buried so deeply within the human flesh that he wondered for a moment if he had allowed his emotions to take hold of his reason – if the familiarity he had felt was merely a reflection of the same foolish hope that had driven his son, his grandson.

For a long moment, Count D wanted nothing more than to reach into the soft, mortal flesh with both his hands. Surely if he only dug deep enough he could find some remnant of his son, and restore him to the way he should have been. But his son had never been the way he should have been, and for a few terrible moments, looking down at the child’s mind that had stolen his son, Count D suspected he might, at last, understand why.

He had never needed to name a child before. They were, and always had been, D. But this child is not a D; this child is human. And so, Count D – who can respect his child’s decisions, even if he cannot understand them – had named the human child ‘Vesca’.

-

Later, Count D wonders if that naming had been even more significant than it seemed at the time, for no matter what he does, his native tongue only perplexes the boy, though he does well enough with English.

Sometimes he says words that D knows he has not been taught, and D suspects he is remembering, rather than learning the language anew.

Despite a nagging irritation at the child, there are certain things that Count D hopes the child will not remember, just as there are certain memories that he wishes were never given to his beloved grandchild.

Learning to speak having long preceded learning to write, Vesca has a more than adequate vocabulary when it comes to the spoken word. He knows the names and breeds of all the pets in the store – at least, all the pets he is permitted to visit – and he is not shy about demanding to be shown how to write them all. It is disheartening to Count D that these names – names from a thousand countries, a thousand cultures – must all be rendered carefully in English.

It is nevertheless a relief to him when Vesca comes to him one evening with a children’s book and an expression of great puzzlement.

“It’s all wrong,” he says. His blue eyes are concerned. “It says this is a cat, but our cats don’t look like that at all.”

Count D smiles at him, possibly the first real smile he has ever bestowed upon the child in his five short years of life, and Vesca looks surprised for half a second before his face brightens and he glows up at his grandfather.

“That is because it is a human story,” he replies. He sets the book aside and pats the space beside him on the sofa. “Come,” he continues, as Vesca scrambles eagerly into place. “It is time for a different story. The oldest our family has.”

[PSOH] With Both Hands; D/Vesca

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 08:04:40 GMT

Title: With Both Hands
Fandom: Petshop of Horrors
Character/s: Papa D, Vesca Howell, Sofu D
Words: 883
Notes: The reincarnation fic, all growed up. Despite knowing better, as far as translation goes, I’m going with the lines in the Tokyopop edition, for the sake of easy recognition. Thankyou to my seme-sama, feather_qwill, without whom this would have vascillated even longer. XD

- - -

The shot came first, of course, but the sharpness of the bullet’s impact seemed to precede the sound as far as his nerve endings were concerned. His whole arm jerked away from the button, driven by the force applied to his shoulder. It was a good three seconds before the pain set in, pulsing along his neck and tightening all the muscles there – which did nothing to help, as they spasmed around the lead ball lodged there.

D steadied himself against the controls, blood seeping down his sleeve, trickling between his fingers, slicking the metal beneath his hand. Smile still firmly in place as he stared over the bannister at the human holding the gun.

It was strange. D had never associated that face with fear, had never associated that blue with the kind of horror that seemed to hold Vesca in thrall. But he could see Vesca’s jaw twitch, see his hands tremble, see the fear-sweat on a high brow – higher than D had expected. The years had not been kind to his old friend.

This grief would be far crueller.

Yet Vesca’s hand must be forced, for D’s son to be saved. The thought hollowed him, carved through his body leaving nothing but guilt and pity in its wake. Vesca’s hand must be forced, because if there was one thing in this world that must be removed, that could be removed so that his son could see thr truth, then D would remove it, because no matter the years or the hatred or the madness, D loved his son. More than plants, more than animals, more than vengeance for a perfect world dessicated by humans.

Certainly more than he loved the truth in human eyes as clear as water.

“Not much of a shot, are you, Vesca?”

The words emerged as was their custom: honey’s smooth drift down the blade of a knife, sweet and sharp and deadly. But there was a rattle, a rasp, and he knew that the agent’s bullet had severed more than mere muscle and bone.

“You can do better.”

A hitch; a heaviness, warm and wet, and an echo of his own voice through his head: how does it feel to be dying, Detective?

“After all, if there’s one thing you humans can do, it’s kill.”

Vesca’s face creased, the lines, all the lines, engraving themselves more savagely, and D knew that the agent, for all his bravado, could hear that death rattle, too. “You monster.”

D felt his distress more than the next three bullets; the betrayal roiled through those clear blue eyes as—you bastard—his collar—how can you—his hip—why would you make me—and D’s own hand clenching desperately at his own hip, supporting, reminding—he had to, he had to, he must.

The gun clicked empty. D’s fingers hovered over the switch at his side, the switch that would—destroy us all—do absolutely nothing.

Their eyes met as his long nails grazed the button’s surface.

And then searing pain and a too-loud noise and his thoughts turned suddenly to confusion. There was blood in his eyes instead of blue horror and his son was screaming and disbelief emanating from the agent’s every pore what do I do--do. Do. There was something he had to do.

He touched the switch and his legs gave out beneath him as the explosion rocked the room, robbing him of balance and leaving him sprawled and bleeding, a broken doll crumpled to the floor.

This is all your fault, father.

“Father! Father!”

His son. So pained. So sincere. Sch a sweet child he had grown to be. Such a lovely child. His child. His son.

There was something he had to do.

He forced his eyes to focus on that face, so like his own, the bicoloured eyes that should have brough the three of them together and instead tore them apart; blinked away the blood that streaked his pupils.

“Remember what you have seen,” he said, and his voice really was faltering now, though he would not cough, he would not sputter his way into the death he had worked so hard to create, though he grew so cold, and it hurt. “…for it is the last memory I bequeath to you. Blood enveloped by flame. Our kind slain by the humans.”

His son’s eyes were wide and desperate and grieving already; he understood, as well as D himself, the sacrifice that had been made.

“Do not embrace hope again. We… must n-never forgive…” a shallow lungful; violet and gold, ebony and ivory blending before his eyes even as he reached for them to keep them close, keep them clear; blue eyes on them both and the resounding fury no “…the humans…”

His vision darkened. A thousand strands of light and life poured outward from the flesh that had contained him, a thousand woes and vengeances of the creatures that had fought to remain in this world. He could almost… almost reach…

He felt Vesca falter in the onslaught, felt all that he was being swept by the tide, felt the despair no, I will not let you and felt, finally, warmth. Warm existence on the tip of his… tip of…

He pulled Vesca towards himself, inside himself, and was gone.

[ATM] Building, Tumbling Down; Hiru/Sanga

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:04:11 GMT

Title: Building, Tumbling Down
Fandom: Original (Against the Moon)
Character/s: Hiru, Sanga
Notes: Written with 1sentence's theme set Delta, but unclaimed because I am lazy and nonparticipatory like that. [Also, written like YEARS AGO, JUST FYI.]

- - -

#01 - Air

Sanga had never been fond of the air against his skin - not until it had occurred to him that the wind's caress could be interpreted as a caress from a certain moth fey; from that point on, he leered outrageously whenever a breeze tugged at his hair.

#02 - Apples

Hiru ate with great enthusiasm, licking juice from his sticky fingers and even chasing the drips down a forearm with his tongue, until he noticed how intently Sanga was watching and promptly pitched the apple core at the water sprite’s head.

#03 - Beginning

It was clear from the beginning that the moth fey did not realise the truth of his ancestry, and Sanga pondered long and hard about how to break it to him without being shrieked at.

#04 - Bugs

There had been a brief scuffle the first time Rin had tried to eat a moth in Hiru's presence; to everyone's surprise, the Seelie had actually won.

#05 - Coffee

Much, much later in his life - centuries, in fact - Hiru would realise that being woken with a kiss at sunset was infinitely superior to having to scrounge for a certain type of bean.

#06 - Dark

Hiru felt more comfortable speaking with the water sprite after the sun had set, and refused to consider that this might be because his King had no power to see through the Night.

#07 - Despair

He had never cared to identify exactly what he had felt, when Hiru had passed out, halfway along the dungeon floor toward him; he had loathed those moments far too much to wish to return to them, even in memory.

#08 - Doors

Sanga liked to think of it as a mark of spirit, rather than dislike, when Hiru steadfastly refused to go through a door held open for him by the water sprite.

#09 - Drink

Hiru tries to be subtle, sipping from the river with the soles of his feet, but Sanga is the master of the river, and always manages to glide over unnoticed to tickle them.

#10 - Duty

Most of all, Hiru hates that he can never wring a straight answer from the Unseelie; all he receives when he asks why Sanga feels the need to protect him is a wounded expression.

#11 - Earth

They have one thing in common: they can both feel the earth's diminished presence beneath their feet.

#12 - End

By right of birth, theirs is a life without end, and Sanga will see that it is so.

#13 - Fall

To this day, Sanga is not certain whether Hiru had been clinging to him, or merely attempting to strangle him and failing.

#14 - Fire

Like the moth he is, Hiru is entranced by fire; even Sanga's most daring antics cannot completely draw his gaze.

#15 - Flexible

Hiru did not need to be a mind-reader, to interpret Sanga's thoughts as the moth fey twisted nimbly down through the branches of an oak.

#16 - Flying

Though neither could truly fly, if Hiru held his breath and Sanga's hands, the speed with which they moved through water was comparable.

#17 - Food

For all Hiru's protestations of power, the butterfly still ate flowers whenever they sat down to eat, and Sanga sniggered appropriately.

#18 - Foot

As usual, Hiru's furious sputters failed to convince Sanga to keep that one remaining foot of distance between them.

#19 - Grave

Sanga was unusually grave when he shook Hiru awake; the moth fey was worried until he realised that Ban had been dyed a pale purple by the twinweed, and the glum expression was a carefully constructed farce.

#20 - Green

When Aundin asked him, slyly, what were the colours of his little bug's eyes, Sanga could not form an adequate reply - Hiru's eyes were so much more than green.

#21 - Head

Hiru had very serious doubts about the water sprite - for one thing, he was at least two heads taller (Sanga entirely failed to view this as a problem).

#22 - Hollow

Sanga had reacted with great affront when Skeff had asked, innocently enough, if water demons really had hollows in the top of their skulls; he was instantly mollified when Hiru curiously patted the area in question.

#23 - Honour

Sanga's honour was an odd and convoluted thing; he would waste no opportunity to touch, smirking wickedly, and yet when the moth fey collapsed fully against him, the inky eyes were only concerned.

#24 - Hope

It came at the strangest of moments, the half-smile or the not-quite-accidental brush of a hand that gave Sanga hope.

#25 - Light

Only after he had turned completely from the light did Hiru realise - it had only ever stung his eyes.

#26 - Lost

Without Sanga to guide him, Hiru was lost in Unseelie Court; though he tried his hardest to see people, sometimes all he could see were monsters.

#27 - Metal

He had returned to Seelie, briefly, to formally withdraw his alliance, and Narda had given him iron earrings as a cruel parting gift; the expression on her face as he unflinchingly pierced new holes and thanked her graciously for them was worth every shivery moment of being irontouched.

#28 - New

Hiru had not liked the ragged scraps of his wings to be touched, but the feel of Sanga's hands sweeping along the new velvet growth had changed his mind in an instant.

#29 - Old

Sanga sometimes felt like a cradle robber, but ceased to be regretful the first time a lazy, sated Hiru told him his experience must match his years.

#30 - Peace

It took time before there was peace between them; Hiru thought their truce more uneasy than it truly was.

#31 - Poison

Sanga constantly wondered, that deadly poison could flow through his veins, yet all it took were words from Hiru's mouth to cause him hurt.

#32- Pretty

"You are not 'pretty'," he told the butterfly with disgust, and at the half-furious, half-wounded expression, added, "give yourself some credit."

#33 - Rain

To their mutual surprise, they wound up sharing a tree in the storm; when Sanga explained that the water hurt, irontouched, Hiru lay awake all night, struggling with whether to release the seal or not.

#34 - Regret

Though he knows he would have reacted adversely at the time, Hiru's greatest regret is that Sanga did not just shake the stupidity from him; they had wasted so much time.

#35 - Roses

Sanga feels both cheated and justified when, presenting Hiru with a rose, the moth fey exclaims in delight... and stuffs a petal in his mouth.

#36 - Secret

They learn quickly that there are no secrets from a wolf-cub; with her nose, Rin can detect everything - everything - and wastes no time in proclaiming her knowledge to Skeff and Ban.

#37 - Snakes

Although they pose no danger to him personally, Hiru dislikes snakes, in the same way he dislikes small wolf-children who make frequent attempts to digest his brethren.

#38 - Snow

Sanga is particularly slow in the cold; when the snow begins, he pleads a very convincing case about the merits of sleeping close to another warm body, which Hiru will have none of, before making it his new mission to sit as close as possible to Skeff, Rin and the fire without singeing hair or clothing.

#39 - Solid

Furious (and terrified) as he had been at the time, Hiru was grateful for the cool, solid presence of the water sprite - even if, without him, the reassurance as they plunged into the Narrow would not have been necessary.

#40 - Spring

Hiru is spring - birth, life, light, the lot of it - and constantly has to remind Sanga that most animals actually mate in late winter, and will you please stop breathing down my neck like that.

#41 - Stable

The first time they slept in a stable, Hiru woke up with straw tangled in his hair; the second time, he slept on top of Sanga.

#42 - Strange

Upon first meeting the water sprite, Hiru had come to the conclusion that Sanga was strange; the more time they spent together, the further that opinion was cemented.

#43 – Summer

Summer is a time for the both of them; a time of sweeping updrafts and a time of torential rains, just as harsh and just as necessary as their relationship has always been.

#44 – Taboo

It was not that Hiru’s scars, physical or mental, were taboo – it was that speaking of them made the moth fey weep, and the water sprite angry, and that did neither of them any good.

#45 – Ugly

For the longest time, Hiru had laboured under the impression that his lack of power made him ugly – Sanga found it positively one of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring things about the diminutive butterfly fey.

#46 – War

Sanga is desperately glad that the butterfly was not old enough to have lived through the civil war between their people; knowing what spawned Hiru makes him coldly certain that the butterfly would not have survived intact.

#47 – Water

Sanga is water; Hiru knows this because the sprite can crash down on him, can suffocate him, can steal his life as easily as dripping downward – and that he is the only real necessity in life, the thing that buoys Hiru up, and washes the filth away.

#48 – Welcome

Hiru knew he had never exactly been welcome in Seelie Court, but the sheer level of unholy glee in the air when Sanga first brought him home to Unseelie was enough to make him very, very grateful of that fact.

#49 – Winter

They spend the winter charitably in the human realm, ostensibly to keep an eye on things, but more truthfully because of the benefits of being thought in-hibernation for a season.

#50 – Wood

Sanga was not a creature of the forest, but that did not mean he did not enjoy them - quite the opposite, in fact, if Hiru was around.

[ATM] Five Times Landre Cooked Dinner; Landre/Kondekir

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 11:32:10 GMT

Title: Five Times Landre Cooked Dinner
Fandom: Original (Against the Moon)
Character/s: Landre, Kondekir
Words: 820
Notes: For gehdra, who, despite not-knowing these characters, comes up with highly entertaining prompts for them. XD

- - -

1.

Kondekir wasn't sure when the last time he had slept had been, but it was certainly not in recent memory. He had just made it back to his chamber, had just sunk gratefully onto his bed when the knock came and he experienced a moment of intense mental anguish before, courtesy taking over, he stood and grudgingly opened the door.

"Great! You're in."

He stepped back in something of a hurry as Landre, juggling a carafe, cutlery, and a plate of something unidentifiable, pushed forward without a thought as to what the contents of that plate might do to his clothing. She strode past him to the dressing table, strips of warded fabric fluttering around her ankles and braided back through her hair, and when she had settled everything in more-or-less an order, she flashed a grin over her shoulder.

"Thought you could do with some grub. And some company." She was pouring the wine, gesturing him into a seat, and all without any regard for the weariness dragging at his frame.

"Landre," he began, and paused when she turned and handed the goblet to him, steering him toward the lone chair. Her hands were low on his hips by the time she had him seated, and her mouth tugged impatiently at his scarves. He sighed and set down his goblet.

"It was a lovely thought," he said, "but I'm really very tired and I think it's probably best if I just go straight to sleep," except he had to stop on 'think' because Landre had settled herself happily over his lap and was doing interesting things to his earlobe, so he ended with nnh or some variant and, halfway through a half-hearted protest, managed to knock the plate onto the floor.

It wasn't missed.

-

2.

"C'mon, Kir. Aren't you hungry?" Landre dragged a finger through the sauce of a meal she certainly had not prepared herself, and somehow contrived to pout as she sucked it away from her fingertip.

Kondekir turned the page. "No."

Landre laid her head sideways, amber eyes watching him closely from behind a dark, bloody fringe. He adjusted his lantern slightly, and picked up a quill to make it abundantly clear that he was working, and not paying attention to her at all.

Fifteen minutes later, his desk was aflame and Landre had her hands spread wide, all innocence as she said, "See? You're getting all stressed out; you should take a break and have some dinner."

-

3.

Kondekir stared from his partner to the raw, skinned rabbit skewered on a pointy stick that she was waving enthusiastically in his face, and tried not to feel offended. "I'm not eating that."

She gave him an exasperated look. "There's nothing wrong with it, Kir, look--" and before he could stop her, she had sunk her teeth into the flank of the creature and stripped away most of the flesh there with a single mouthful. There was solid matter on her chin when she bobbed her head with a slight frown and admitted, as though this was the only problem, "Little stringy, but they're fast little buggers, so you gotta expect that."

"It's raw," he sputtered, wondering if this was some kind of joke, and her expression cleared immediately.

"Oh, is that the problem?" Flame engulfed the rabbit's corpse for a few seconds, burning through red and gold straight to white. When it dissipated, the rabbit was little more than charcoal, and Landre still looked pleased with it. "There ya go," she said, cheerfully, and Kondekir resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands.

"...I'm going to find some berries."

"Suit yourself," shrugged the Fire Master, and chomped happily on her charcoal.

-

4.

When he opened his door and she was juggling plates and jugs again, Kondekir stood back, resigned to his fate. "Just put them on the table," he murmured, kneading his eye sockets with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

He opened his eyes at a crunching sound and was surprised to see that, although Landre had curled herself into his hammock, she was snacking on a selection of uncut gems and looking at him expectantly. She jerked her chin at the table, and popped a chunk of sapphire in her mouth.

Kondekir looked at the steaming meal. Looked at her smug expression. And with a smile, moved so that he could kiss her cheek; there were shards of precious stone still on her lips, and he had been cut by such before.

It was the most enjoyable meal he remembered taking in quite some time.

-

5.

She made him exactly one meal that could have been considered edible.

Unfortunately, he never got to eat it, because by the time he woke up, head pillowed on a tome thicker than his thigh, covered over with a rug that smelled of smoke and spices, the meal was stone cold and unsalvagable.

He thanked her for it anyway.

[ATM] Vertigo; Hiru/Sanga

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 14:43:23 GMT

Title: Vertigo
Fandom: Original (Against the Moon)
Character/s: Hiru, Sanga
Prompt: Falling.
Words: 281
Notes: For oc_speedfic, for all that the comm has died and I am still way behind on the prompts list.

- - -

It would not have been proper just to bow, after all the time they had spent together. But nor would it be proper to embrace a courtier under Aundin, even though they stood in the presence of the combined courts of the Queen of Darkness and the King of Light. Hiru stepped forward, raised his face, and as Sanga bent, turned his head slightly to give and to receive two kisses; one on either cheek, one for light and one for darkness. When the elder fae moved away, his hair trailed down Hiru's forearms, the lingering touch the softest of goodbyes.

They both knew their duty. They stepped back. Hiru bowed deeply, for of course Sanga's status was tiers above his own. He bowed and tried to ignore the knot in his stomach and the burning at the corners of his eyes. A victor and a hero in Auberon's court, crying at the moment of his return? Ludicrous. And so he widened his eyes to disperse the sheen and took his place at Auberon's side, and watched as the Court of Air and Darkness took its leave.

Later he pleaded weariness too intense to allow him to be of any service to his lord, and retired to his chamber. It smelled of human from Skeff's long stay there, and the scent only compounded the gnawing sensation in his stomach. He was alone again, now, and his court did not care that he had saved them. His court cared only that he was a halfbreed and a whore, and the knowledge that he had no one, once again, left him shaking and dizzied, nails scraping fruitlessly at the walls as he fell.

[Bleach] Pretending to be One-Liners; Kenpachi/Byakuya

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 13:03:37 GMT

In celebration of the recent canonisation of Kenpachi/Byakuya, this weekend was a weekend purely for that crack pairing. XD These vary greatly in length, so I’ve actually separated them all properly this time with ruler tags... most of them are not connected at all, but I’ve tried to group the ones that were. XD;

for peroxidepest17; hair-pulling

"It has to stop!"

Zaraki looked up as Yumichika slammed both hands down on the edge of his desk, halfway through a prissy sparkly tantrum of some kind or other, and sat back with one raised eyebrow and a blank expression, waiting.

"It's not right, taichou - you have to think about the consequences when you take actions like this, you have to think about what it might mean--"

"Oi," Zaraki said, expression becoming one of bemused distaste as Yumichika got more and more frantic; Ikkaku made frantic don't-ask motions too late from behind the fifth seat. "The hell are you talking about?"

"Kuchiki-taichou!" Yumichika exploded. A silence fell in the wake of the name, and Zaraki continued to stare. Ikkaku covered his face with one hand in the background.

"Don't give me that shit," Zaraki said finally. "Don't think I didn't notice you proddin' me into fuckin' cleaning when you heard, I ain't--" But Yumichika's hands were spasming in the air on either side of his face, as though he was desperately resisting the urge to grab hold of his own hair and pull.

"No, no, no, taichou, you don't understand," he wailed, and gestured at Ikkaku wildly. "His hair, his hair, you have to stop pulling his hair or he'll end up like this idiot!"

Ikkaku grit his teeth, sighed, and walked away. Maybe when taichou stopped laughing he'd realise the danger Kuchiki-taichou was in.

for peroxidepest17; killing time

Byakuya closed his eyes and looked generally put-upon. "It means to spend time doing nothing in particular," he emphasised carefully, and Zaraki looked considerably less enthusiastic.

for peroxidepest17; wrong side of the tracks

Byakuya raised his eyebrows at the gathered dissenters of the Kuchiki clan, a carefully constructed expression of polite surprise on his face. "Surely you can have no objections this time," he said coolly. "He has been instrumental in saving Seireitei, several times now. He is equal in military rank." His hand, resting on Yachiru's shoulder, squeezed at just the right moment to prevent her making an appalling face at the gathered nobles. "Surely you can have no objections," he repeated firmly, and since he could not see Zaraki's face, had no idea whether his family drew back at his insistence, or at some gleam of murder in the other man's eye.

for peroxidepest17; spoiled

In the end, he did offer to kill them all and be done with it, and was intrigued when Kuchiki-hime smiled in a slow, sly way that he must have learned from Yumichika, although Byakuya managed to do it without the sparkles. "Now, now," he said silkily. "Don't start by spoiling me. You'll have nowhere to go."

for peroxidepest17; pre-emptive strike

He had a headache. He'd been listening to people non-stop since he arrived at division headquarters - first Yumichika, then Yachiru, then Yumichika again... Finally everyone was gone and he was about to go out and find something to beat the living hell out of (or booze) when there was a perfunctory knock and the door slid aside.

Kuchiki-hime evidently hadn't been expecting him to be standing so close to the door; his eyes focused first on Zaraki’s chest, then travelled upward as his brow furrowed. His mouth opened, and Zaraki decided right then and there that whatever it was, he didn't want to hear it today.

"No," he said before the noble could utter a word, one big hand landing on Kuchiki's head and pressing him backward as Zaraki himself stepped outside the door; the princess, clearly not ready for this at all, wound up grabbing at the front of Zaraki’s jacket so he wouldn’t just be tipped right over on his ass. The eleventh division captain closed the door before he let go of the noble’s prissy-lookin’ hairpiece, and when he saw the usual ice storm mounting, along with a pretty little flush that said he was embarrassed as well as annoyed, fisted his hand at the back of Kuchiki’s head again, tilting it back far enough that the noble was looking full into his face.

“No,” he repeated in a growl. Kuchiki didn’t move for a long moment, though his gaze sharpened dangerously. Then, apparently coming to the conclusion that it was, indeed, after hours, the anger faded from his face. Zaraki let him go. Kuchiki sniffed, hands automatically coming up to resettle the kenseikan.

“Tomorrow, then,” he said simply, and Zaraki wondered if it was the headache making him imagine the persistent pink tinge to the noble’s face.

for peroxidepest17; mother’s day

The first thing Kenpachi had to say on the matter was, “What the hell is this?”

(Actually, that was the second thing. The actual first thing he had to say on the matter was, “Oof, get offa me, brat,” when Yachiru bounded onto his bed at the ass-crack of dawn and started jumping on his stomach to wake him up properly.)

“It’s Presents-for-Ken-chan Day!” Yachiru thrilled, neither getting off him, nor satisfactorily explaining her presence. He squinted at her for a minute in confusion, and then caught sight of Kuchiki-hime standing in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, not exactly leaning against the doorframe but not standing as straight as he usually did, either; not exactly smirking, but not exactly not.

“The hell is this?” Kenpachi repeated, directing it at the princess this time, and Yachiru puffed her cheeks out and got all up in his face, little hands holding up a package so brightly wrapped he was kind of weirded out that he’d missed it the first time. Coulda been the way she was jumping up and down, he supposed; the way Yachiru moved, all her colours tended to blend together anyway.

“It’s Presents-for-Ken-chan Day,” she repeated, a little slower, and held out the little package as though he still might not understand the words. “Happy Ken-chan Day!”

“Uh.” Kenpachi sat up, took the tiny package in one hand, and stared at it for a second. Then he looked at the princess, hoping for some kind of actual explanation, instead of whatever the kid had gotten it into her head the day was about. Byakuya stepped inside the room at last, still not-smirking, though there was definitely somethin’ about his face that made Kenpachi sure the bastard was laughing at him.

“A human custom Rukia was telling us about,” he said, sounding off-hand. “Mother’s Day, I believe.”

“Right,” Yachiru agreed brightly. “Ken-chan Day! Open it, open it, open it, open it, it’s from me’n Byakushi, open it, open it, open it, open i—”

“All right,” Kenpachi growled, and opened it, figuring he’d shut the kid up first and then go talk to the princess about just who was the mother here. It was a packet of expensive-lookin’ candy – just the kind he’d be likely to throw straight at Yachiru – and a slip of paper. He threw the candy at Yachiru, and then set about the second order of business while she was suitably distracted. “Now, what the hell is this? I ain’t her goddamn mother!”

Byakuya’s expression didn’t change. It might have cooled slightly, or it might have become just a hint more amused; he wasn’t sure and he didn’t want to pay that much attention to it just now, to be honest. “You have raised her from infancy, have you not?” he asked. Kenpachi growled.

“That don’t mean I—”

“Well,” Byakuya said, examining his nails with rather pointed disinterest. “If you are so determined, then I suppose I will have to withdraw my gift.” He stepped close enough to reach for the scrap of paper, and Kenpachi caught his wrist as it passed, grabbing the tiny card with the other. He had learned from encounters with Yumichika that if someone started lookin’ at their nails while they were talkin’ to you, you’d better damn well pay attention.

So he read the card.

Blinked.

Read the card again.

Grinned.

Looked up at Kuchiki-hime, who was not smiling or looking the least bit sentimental, or indeed responding to Kenpachi’s sudden enthusiasm at all. Despite his slim wrist still being caught in the eleventh division captain’s vice-like grip, he flattened his palm expectantly, raising his eyebrows.

“Unless you have decided you do not mind this ‘Mother’s Day’,” he said, and Kenpachi’s grin only grew wider.

“Reckon I can put up with it,” he said, pocketing the ‘one free fight’ card with the Kuchiki mon on it. After the pony for Yachiru's birthday, he was swiftly coming to the conclusion that rich chicks were worth every bit of trouble they gave him, even if they were technically not chicks.

for peroxidepest17; father’s day

“So,” and here Byakuya had to pause for a moment, brow creased, as he tried to work out exactly how to put this. “You decided that... terrorizing my entire family and chasing all my servants from the house was appropriate?”

“Yup,” Yachiru chirped.

“Sure,” Kenpachi said. From his grin, he thought this was just the thing to send Byakuya into a rage blind enough to prompt a battle on a similar scale to the one that the noble had been chided for encouraging, a month ago.

Clearly, Byakuya thought, Zaraki had no idea how his family worked at all.

“How thoughtful of you,” Byakuya said, and held out a hand to Yachiru. “Did you think of it all by yourself, Yachiru?”

He could almost hear Kenpachi’s face falling as Yachiru squirmed and finally confessed, “Frilly-brows helped.” Byakuya smiled very faintly, and brushed a hand over her head.

“Then I will have to thank him, also,” he mused, and turned around when Zaraki’s reiatsu started to crackle through the air. “You as well, of course,” he added, as though the other captain’s ire was due to jealousy and not having the proverbial wool pulled over his eyes by a far-too-clever-for-his-division fifth seat. Yachiru beamed.

“I’ll go tell him ya liked it!” she cheered. “Have a fun day, Byakushi! Frilly said I only had to give it to you!” She was gone in an instant; the fact that there were no doormen to open the towering front gate for her was not an issue in the least.

Byakuya tidied his desk, selected a book, and wandered back outside to sit down and read it. Kenpachi drifted out a little later, still apparently too stunned to speak.

“Since you have robbed me of my servants for the day,” Byakuya drawled absently, “make yourself useful and find some wine, won’t you?”

He was rather surprised that the book survived the day intact, to be honest.

for feather_qwill; false (100 words exactly)

“Wrong.” Yumichika frowned. “Honestly, taichou, it’s like you’re not even trying.”

Zaraki scowled right back, a good deal more intimidatingly. He didn’t see what the big deal was; the damn princess didn’t know his favourite fuckin’ food, after all.

“Fuckin’... natto?” he tried, figuring it’d be something he didn’t like at all, since Kuchiki-hime’s tastes were so damn ‘refined’. Yumichika resisted the impulse to beat his head against the desk only by reminding himself that his beautiful face could not be sacrificed to this as easily as taichou’s face could.

“Wrong,” he said. “Try again.”

Zaraki grit his teeth. “Recruits?”

for feather_qwill; flower (50 syllables)

“Sakura.”

“That’s what he cuts you with, taichou, not his favourite flower.”

“’s comin’ to be my favourite flower,” the captain complained.

“...well. That might actually get you both further than his.”

for smokexscribbles; subtlety

Byakuya was just beginning to wonder whether Zaraki was truly, truly stupid when the other captain's brow crinkled and he asked, "The hell's wrong with your eye, hime?" (At that point, he gave up all hope.)

for smokexscribbles; waffles

The morning after the Arrancar were beaten back was a very strange morning all around; Kuchiki-taichou and Zaraki-taichou sat side by side at the head of the table, assorted shinigami and humans gathered around the room as they all waited patiently for Urahara Shoten-provided waffles. (Byakuya, having experienced Kisuke's idea of food once or twice before, was trying not to look as full of trepidation as he was.)

for eclectify; mummy and daddy time

“Um.”

It was probably the first time he had ever said the word, but he found, as Yachiru clambered gleefully over the top of him to get to ‘Ken-chan’, that he was simply too mortified to say anything else. He lay there silently, going slowly pink around his pillow, as she complained loudly that if Byakushi was gonna sleep over he shoulda told her and they coulda all had marshmallows or konpeito or somethin’ and was he gonna sleep over again cuz they could do that tonight if he wanted, and he dimly registered Zaraki grunting that he had no idea and it was too damn early in the morning to deal with her yammerin’ so could she get her ass out of there, hadn’t the damn fruit taught her anythin’ about manners?

Yachiru made a wounded sound. “But Frilly-brows said I should come make sure ya got enough sleep! Didja get enough sleep, Byakushi?” she asked conscientiously. “Ken-chan shoulda got you another bed down. That’s manners,” she added to Zaraki in a lofty tone clearly borrowed from Ayasegawa.

“Um,” said Byakuya again, and, inanely, “It’s very thoughtful of Ayasegawa-san to inquire.”

Yachiru giggled and shrugged. “Nah,” she said brightly. “He only asked cuz he was takin’ bets!”

for eclectify; twenty questions

Yachiru bounced in. She had bounced in at least a dozen times already this morning, and each time he had not actually noticed her approach until her bright, cheerful face was beaming at him from the other side of his paperwork. As he had done at least a dozen times already, Byakuya sighed softly and set down his brush.

"Yes, Yachiru?" He had given up persuading her to knock; she was in and out so regularly these days that the near-constant noise had begun to give him headaches.

"Byakushi," she said, very serious. "How come Ken-chan likes you so much when you don’t got any boobs? Shiny-baldy says they’re important.”

There was a long pause in which Byakuya was glad he was not holding his brush, because he would have dropped it straight onto the form in front of him and made a terrible mess. Finally, his only response was a rather weak, “You... you would have to ask him, Yachiru.”

This was not well-received. She stomped a small foot. “But Ken-chan just sent me all the way over here to ask Byakushi,” she complained loudly. “And Frilly-brows says pretty people know best, and you’re prettier’n Ken-chan, so it only makes sense to ask you!”

Byakuya blinked. “He sent you to ask—” That couldn’t be right. And then something occurred to him, and his brow furrowed slightly. “Have you been asking him a lot of questions today, Yachiru?”

She nodded enthusiastically. “Lots. And then he stopped knowin’ the answers, so he said I should go ask my mama, ‘cept I don’t have a mama, so I figured Byakushi was the next best thing!”

Byakuya struggled for a moment between irritation and an overwhelming fondness for the child. His hand edged forward, as though for a moment he was prepared to let it rest on her head, but he caught himself just in time. And then he ridiculed himself sternly and went ahead with the motion, barely ruffling her hair. Yachiru beamed at him.

“I think Zaraki-taichou stopped listening,” he said, “or he would have realised that was a question he should know the answer to. Go ask...” A split-second hestitation. “...go ask your father.”

“’kay~!” Yachiru sang, and in a second she was gone from his office, leaving a silence that was becoming more and more uncomfortable the more time he spent with her, and a warmth in his heart that was becoming less so.

for factorielle; prior engagements

“A formal dinner?” Byakuya’s brow creased, and then he waved the man away. “Out of the question. Please have it cancelled.”

“But sir,” the peon dared protest, “the entire clan is—”

“—not going to have to deal with Kusajishi-fukutaichou,” Byakuya finished darkly. “Please have it cancelled.” His sanity, he reasoned, was more important to the clan than his attending one formal dinner, especially one that happened to fall on a night he had promised to read to Yachiru. And since the house seemed to complain no matter what he did, he would much prefer to spend the evening with less polite, but infinitely less irritating company.

Bedtime stories aside, he had been promised curry so hot that it would leave him, and he quoted, ‘cryin’ his pretty princess eyes out’. He had to admit he was looking forward to the prospect. In particular, he was looking forward to proving to Zaraki that, no matter his appearance, his stomach and his tastebuds were anything but delicate. He was quite sure that in the unlikely event that he shed tears, they would be over the appalling quality of the meal rather than its spiciness.

Still, he thought as the servant scurried away, cowed by the gleam in the Kuchiki heir’s eye, it would prove interesting. With luck, he would be allowed to return the favour and, although he would never dream of giving such a meal to Yachiru, he would be able to show Zaraki the true meaning of heat.

for chibify; exhaustion

Kenpachi could hardly believe it when Byakuya returned with Yachiru nestled against his shoulder, clearly dead to the world. He remembers asking whether Byakuya'd hit her in the head or something, and he remembers a withering look, but the exact phrase that Ice Queen Kuchiki used to berate him escapes his memory. He could blame this on a blow to his own head, but he suspects that it has more to do with the firm plane of Byakuya's chest against his own as the noble comes close enough to pass Yachiru into his care, and the strangely gentle way that Byakuya slips out her hair clips and strokes the hair back from her face. Also, he would never admit to anyone that Kuchiki-hime was in any way fast enough or strong enough to hit hard enough to cause memory loss.

for chibify; hairbrush

Crashes and shouts from the entrance hall had Byakuya quick-stepping down the corridors with Senbonzakura already half drawn, but when he arrived there and saw Kenpachi, Yachiru, five servants gibbering at the sheer volume of Zaraki's reiatsu, and a hairbrush, he hesitated for a long, long moment before he decided the sword was probably not necessary.

"What is this?" His tone was frosty, despite giving Zaraki the benefit of the doubt. The eleventh division captain held up the brush and muttered something about not bein' a fuckin' hairdresser; Yachiru was slightly more helpful in explaining that Frilly-brows was in the human world and Ken-chan's hands were way too big to give her braids.

for feather_qwill; winter
(300 words; specs of madness here)

It had snowed, and Yachiru was taking full advantage of that fact, crashing around in the snow with Madarame while Yumichika lobbed the occasional, artful snowball into the fray. Byakuya seated himself primly beside Zaraki on the porch and watched the battle with half an eye; sipped heated sake, and offered Zaraki expensive child-sized woollen clothing.

for feather_qwill; desk
(2 x 50 word paragraphs, 3 lines [25 words] of dialogue)

“This desk is completely inadequate.”

It was a quick slither backward, legs coming up and around, fist caught at Zaraki’s collar. The words emerging with impeccable precision, but that was the only precise thing here; all else was haste and delirious confusion. Zaraki’s hand raking from ass to thigh. Papers slid, and fell. Breathing hitched.

“Cramped. Messy. I don’t know how you work in these conditions, Zaraki, I really don’t.”

Pressing down, pressing forward, a breath taken so quickly that it could have been confused with a whimper. Squirming, gulping thickly, still pulling closer when he should have been, the sensible thing would have been, pushing away. Crushed so tightly, deliciously downward that when ink spilled, spread, he didn’t notice.

“Go back to yours, then.”

for squeakelala; children

This is brought up by a determined mother, a far distant member of his clan who has always, if he remembers rightly, been determined to wed her daughter to the head of the clan. And for a second, Byakuya looks at the woman, looks at the room full of people holding their collective breath, and wonders if he dares to say, "In almost every imaginable way, Yachiru is a child of this clan."

(As it turns out, the girl herself interrupts the conference of his relatives by slipping in the window, and answers his relatives for him; he is very glad of her, and of the way she speaks, because there is truly no polite way that will get his point across.)

[Multifandom] One-Liners; 23/09/07

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 06:24:22 GMT

Arranged alphabetically by fandom.

-

Bleach

Yumichika, Hanatarou + sensei (eclectify)
It only took a moment, the flash of a genuine smile on the little medic's face when he raised his hand to call to Shiba-kun across the quad, but in that moment Yumichika sashayed forth and rested a perfectly manicured hand on his shoulder; "Let's be friends, Yamada-kun," he sparkled, because beautiful-people-in-the-making were just as worthy of his time as those already there.

Ganjyu/Hana, Yumichika + sage advice (eclectify)
"Lik disch?" Hanatarou asked, attempting the sultry pout that Yumichika had donned; this caused the eleventh divisioner to laugh so hard that he had to hold onto the wall for support.

-

Hellsing

Enrico/Doc/Integra + Sunday afternoon icecream (phoenixstorm)
She'd always known that Maxwell was something of a child at heart, but this was more than slightly ridiculous; still, the Doctor seemed more than happy to observe, even though Maxwell had been more than a little put out at having to wait until sundown for the icecream.

-

Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle

Kurogane/Fayuui + forgiveness, tender (stormantia)
He never thought he'd be so relieved to hear a nickname drop from the mage's lips, easy as breathing; easier still to grin and threaten in return, because it wasn't a game or a lie any more, and there was nothing else about him to be wary of.

-

[Multifandom] One-Liners; 16/09/07

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 08:07:51 GMT

Just a reminder to assume that any fandoms you see in here probably contain spoilers to their latest chapter.

Listed alphabetically by fandom; crossovers first. This week included a drabble offer, so those are listed as well.

-

Crossovers

Horitsuba; Kuro/Fai, Dou/Wata + double date! (eclectify)
Somehow, he’d known it would be like this. Whenever Yuuko-san said she had something fun for him, she meant ‘something mortifying’, and this was certainly that.

The mage grinned, and raised a hand. "Good to see you again! Isn’t it, Kuro-wan?" The ninja muttered something with a dark expression; Watanuki was pretty sure it wasn’t agreement.

Doumeki bowed and introduced himself, and sat down, leaving Watanuki the hard part of the conversation.

"Ah, Fai-san, this is..."

"Your boyfriend?"

"Ahaha… well, no, not, not, he’s actually—"

"That’s right."

It had only been a matter of time before the screaming began.

-

Bleach

Division Eleven + no pants! (leviathanmirror)
It started perfectly normally: Renji opened the door, opened his mouth, started to say, "All right, you bastards, who the hell’s got the forms I’ve been waiting on?" and stopped on ‘who’ because the scene in front of him could not possibly be real.

One of the more responsible men shuffled forward and attempted to salute without letting go of the lower hem of his shirt.

Renji’s expression must have been something to see. "What the fuck? Where are all your—"

The man coughed, looked even more uncomfortable. "Yumichika-san."

Ah, thought Renji, feeling his eye twitch. That explained it.

Kenpachi, Yachiru + no candy for breakfast (leviathanmirror)
The tantrums had been long and fierce, but finally they came to an understanding: she could have candy for breakfast on the days she left Ikkaku and Yumichika hobbling (the third and fifth seats of the Eleventh Division were slightly less pleased with this than Kenpachi was).

Division Ten, Division Eleven + who's taking responsibility for this (leviathanmirror)
Hitsugaya surveyed the room, found blond hair, and waded across the floor full of Eleventh Division members that Matsumoto had already drunken under the table in order to grab his vice captain's elbow: "We're leaving," he said shortly, "And you can be the one to explain to Zaraki-taichou why none of his men are fit for duty tomorrow except his vice-captain and his fifth-seat."

Yumichika, Yachiru + conspiracy (leviathanmirror)
For the week before her massive, division-encompassing birthday party, Yachiru was convinced that there was some kind of conspiracy afoot; Frilly Brows had taught her all about conspiracies (as well as conditioning and hygiene and things like that) and she spent most of her week trying to extract information from her division mates (while Yumichika went about taking care of all of the actual organisation, because he would never dream of leaving it to the - admittedly charming - dolts either below or above him).

Division Eleven + Zaraki Does Not Eat Babies (leviathanmirror)
"Don't be silly, Abarai-kun," Yumichika chirped, settling himself and his bar stool uncomfortably close; "He's not raising Yachiru-chan as an emergency food supply!"

Hitsugaya, Kenpachi + respect (leviathanmirror)
He'd grown unconsciously accustomed to the respect that was given to him simply for possessing one of the rarest and hardest to please zanpakutou in the history of Soul Society, so when he discovered that Zaraki Kenpachi just didn't care, it was at the same time a relief, and a bit of a blow.

Matsumoto, Yumichika, Yachiru + not that one (leviathanmirror)
It had been a long hard day already, and if the three of them didn't stop giving each other those goddamn identical dubious expressions whenever he came out of the goddamn dressing room, then Ikkaku was going the fuck home, afternoon with Rangiku's breasts be damned.

Ishida, Ichigo, Chad + please don't (leviathanmirror)
A moment of silence greeted that particular statement, and then the other three said, as one, please don't -- it took another fifteen seconds for Keigo's ears to catch up with his mouth, and to launch into a shrieking fit about just how much Mizuiro shouldn't say shit like that when he wasn't listening.

Orihime + dragons (leviathanmirror)
Ichigo blinked at the sudden warning, and then yelped as, from the side, a burst of flame nearly incinerated his character; "Flamethrowers," Tatsuki muttered absently, not noticing her ill-timing, "She means flamethrowers, not dragons."

Karakura Dorks + ice cream (leviathanmirror)
There was general grief in the circle; Orihime because she was mourning the cessation of the All Purpose Snack Food Combat Force Super Cone promotion, and the rest of them because it was kind of hard not to feel incredibly uncomfortable when Orihime was sad about something.

Division Eleven + household chores (leviathanmirror)
"No," Yumichika explained sweetly, "Fukutaichou's job is to make mess and not help with the cleaning; mine is to make the room look beautiful despite the mess until you've finished."

Ichigo/Tatsuki + "Sure you're a chick?" (haku)
It’d been hard enough to believe that Tatsuki was a real girl when they were in martial arts together as children, although maybe it shouldn’t have been, since all the women in Ichigo’s life at that point were either amazing and strong, or painfully adorable. Tatsuki very clearly remained in the latter category then, and she certainly fell into the latter category now.

"You sure you’re a girl?" he dared to ask, and tried to ignore how his breath hitched when she sank her teeth briefly into the flesh around his nipple.

Her smile was always feral. "Sure you’re not?"

-

Final Fantasy VII

Reeve/Scarlet + the bar scene (phoenixstorm)
Probably two hours after that brief gesture, an island of sanity in the middle of a long and hideously loud night, Reeve made his excuses and escaped from the table of lower-level technicians, leaving behind the wreckage of an earlier, boredom-induced tower of coasters. He was halfway to the door when something bright red latched onto his arm, laughing, waving, and escorting him forcefully out into the street.

Once there, Scarlet let go of him immediately, and jerked her chin at him. "Thanks for the excuse," she said, lips quirked.

"Um," he said. "You’re welcome?"

They went their separate ways.

Zack, Aeris + good old days (rallamajoop)
The doors burst open, and the boy ran in, eyes and grin wide and bright. "Aeris! You in here? Aeris!"

She was there, of course. She stepped carefully onto the floorboards, to prevent him from clumsily uprooting her garden in his excitement.

"Aeris, guess what?"

Her eyes crinkled. "You got in?" As though she couldn’t guess. It was all he’d talked about, for weeks.

"I got in!" he crowed in agreement, and swooped forward to wrap his arms around her. She closed her eyes and leaned into him, and tried not to think of the war instead of his achievement.

-

Hellsing

Integra/Enrico + poppycock (likeatruck)
"Poppycock. I’m not that stupid, captain."

"It’s the truth," Pip affirmed gleefully. "She may act cold, but the roses are still on the mantel in her office."

"I don’t believe you," she sniffed on her way out, and immediately belied this by finding Walter and asking whether he minded if she took Integra her supper today. The lady of the house raised an eyebrow when she came through the door, asked if something was wrong, and Seras was about to answer when she saw the card nestled amongst the roses.

She smiled, shook her head. "Nothing at all, Sir Integra."

-

MY*BOSS MY*HERO

Makio/Jun + something about growing up (peroxidepest17)

It was just one of those things, like graduating, like getting a job, like your voice breaking, like getting taller. Just one of those things. It happened to everyone. But, Jun thought, that didn't make it any easier.

Made it harder, in fact. To know that Makki had probably — definitely — done all this already, years ago. Probably lots of times. Although he suspected Makki had never quite come at it from this angle. Being so... tall, and everything.

And staring at him expectantly.

So.

"Makki..." And he didn’t mean to sigh it like that. Really. "Want to see a movie?"

Kazu, Makio/Jun + passing it on (peroxidepest17)
If he had the vocabulary, Makio would have been wondering whether Sakuranan-- whether Jun's disease was communicable, as he walked wide-eyed and somewhat dazed away from a front door and the most embarrassingly soft kiss he'd ever received.

Mikio/Kazu + sexual harrassment (peroxidepest17)
Probably the first thing that should have occurred to him when Mikio brushed past him in a hallway, altogether too close and teasing, was that it was a bit pre-emptive to (respectfully) tell the other young master that no matter how much he wanted to be Boss, no matter what he offered, Kazu would never betray Aniki that way.

Makio/Jun + honeymoon phase (peroxidepest17)
The first time Mikio laughed and mentioned a 'honeymoon phase', Makio wasn't sure exactly what he was talking about; when Kazu hesitantly explained it to him, there was a well-aimed punch, ninety seconds of intense thought, and then, profoundly, a decision that the bastard was just jealous of his happiness (Kazu agreed very profusely from the floor).

Makio/Jun + teenage guys (peroxidepest17)
As Jun rationalised afterward, pink and slightly nervous, it was something all teenage guys did, ne, so Makki shouldn't be ashamed or anything, and (in a very small voice) Jun wouldn't mind trying it again; it was something all teenage guys did, and it wasn't until after maybe the fourth or fifth time that it occurred to Makio (as it had surely already occurred to Jun) that Makio was not a teenager.

Mikio, Makio/Jun + training (peroxidepest17)
"Eh?" Jun asked, wide-eyed, and clearly intrigued despite himself - Mikio-niisan had a very interesting way of looking at the world; "Train him?"

Jun, Kazu (Mikio/Jun) + favourite foods (peroxidepest17)
Much wheedling, cajoling, and praising of Kazu as the only person to really know Makki that well later, the two of them were squirrelled away in a corner of the kitchen, teaching Jun how to make all the things Kazu put into Makio's bentou.

-

Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle

Kurogane, Fai + midnight (chibify)
He woke suddenly, but didn’t open his eyes. Didn’t move while he tried to feel out what had woken him. Slit his eyes open. Seeing nothing, opened them completely, and sat up, peering around at innocuous darkness.

They were all asleep. No movement. No attack. Everything just as it should be.

He scowled, lay down again. And it was then, on eye-level with the mage the next futon over, that he realised what had changed.

He closed his eyes again. The sound of the mage’s breathing, no longer muffled and pressed facedown into his pillow, would take getting used to.

Kurogane, Yuui + who you were doesn't matter (squeakelala)
"So."

The mage’s shoulders stiffened with the word. He hadn’t realised the ninja was awake, which was as it should be. The kids were elsewhere, helping their benefactors, thankfully having taken the manjuu with them.

The mage turned toward him, uncertain, but no longer afraid.

"What do I call you?"

Blue eye lowered. Shaggy head turned away. "Whatever you like."

He couldn’t reach to grip the thin, pale arm, but he didn’t need to; Kurogane could grab with his voice, with his growling. "What do I call you?"

Painfully. "...Yuui."

Satisfied. The long-overused name could rest.

"Then, call me Kurogane."

Fai, Kurogane + blood (squeakelala)
They'd developed something of a system, between Tokyo and Ceres, but after that the concept of taking blood from Kurogane suddenly seemed that much more intimate, that much more intoxicating, and Yuui had no way of knowing whether it seemed that way to the swordsman, also.

-

xxxHOLiC

Doumeki, Watanuki + truth or dare (lunargeography)
"What the hell do you think you're doing, asking a question like that in the middle of a game of truth or dare?" Watanuki sputtered. "Isn't it obvious? Haven't I spelled it out? Repeatedly? For years? There was no need for you to bring it up like that in the middle of the game, especially with Himawari-chan there! She thinks we're 'such good friends', remember? Did you want to make her feel bad?"

"You said you hated me," Doumeki pointed out. "It wouldn't have made her feel bad if you hadn't lied."

"NOT A LIE," Watanuki shrilled, bright red.

Doumeki, Watanuki + Zashiki Warashi (lunargeography)
Strangely, it wasn't the fact that Watanuki had gone to great lengths to retrieve his soul that first clued him in (Watanuki would do that for nearly anybody, simply because he'd feel guilty if he did not), but the pink-cheeked well-wishes of the Zashiki Warashi.

Syaoran, Yuuko + remembrance (eclectify)
It was not fair to take or to give more than one had, respectively, given or received, but this time, Yuuko was willing to let some of the payment slide - if Syaoran-kun didn't have his memories of the princess, after all, he might not have the drive to follow through with the journey to retain her memories - which were, after all, a part of his wish.

[Multifandom] One-Liners; 09/09/07

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:18:46 GMT

Arranged alphabetically by fandom; crossovers first.

-

Crossovers

Kyou Kara Maou/Final Fantasy VII; Hojo/Anissina + SCIENCE! (phoenixstorm)
It was a confused day for most at Shinra Inc. the day that foreign department members visited to oversee procedures, but for the Science Department it was a harrowing experience requiring great expense and months of therapy to put to rights; some of them could no longer see a test tube without screaming.

Kyou Kara Maou/Final Fantasy VII; Hojo/Anissina + strange methods (phoenixstorm)
Despite her thrilling at the obvious brilliance of his breeding programme, Anissina still did not quite understand why he seemed to think fusing people with chunks of rock and chunks of dead alien was a good idea - although her opinion on this matter wavered slightly when she saw photographs of the General on the operating table.

Horitsuba; Kurogane, Doumeki + comprehension (eclectify)
It wasn't really until the first time Kurogane met Doumeki in conjunction with Watanuki that he noticed a startling similarity between the way they reacted to each other, and the way the damn mage was always irritating him; once he'd noticed that, it was a swift and all-too-easy mental leap to directing a wondering stare at Fai across the campfire, and quelling the rush of irritation at the mage's raised brows and flippant remarks.

-

Final Fantasy VII

Vincent/Yuffie + blue (merlinfeathers)
The first time he shows up in Wutai, she pounces on him (knocking them both to the ground) and hugs him until he is blue in the face (not that, with his complexion, this takes much doing).

-

Good Omens

Adam/Pepper + housebroken (factorielle)
There was being the Antichrist, right, but also there was being the boyfriend of a girl who had assisted the Antichrist in rebelling against the apparent combined will of Hell and Heaven, and if you didn't do certain things like the laundry or the garbage or the dishes she got this look, right, where she was never going to help you out with War again, and also there would be no sex, and really, what kind of Antichrist could stand up to that sort of onslaught?

-

Legal Drug

Rikuo/Kazahaya + ritual (factorielle)
"Look, yes, very important, I understand, but--" Kazahaya's fingers tightened in the air on either side of his face as though, in his mind, he was strangling someone: "There is no reason I should have to wear a dress for this."

-

Loveless

Youji/Natsuo/Kio + stay (squeakelala)
And after the battles, when Youji was still sleeping more than he woke up, and Kio wasn't waking up at all just yet, and Natsuo's arms and jaw were still mending from when he'd tried to take on Seimei without his sacrifice, there was nothing for the Zero to do but push their gurneys together and curl into the space between them, and refuse to leave even when Nagisa-sensei left.

Seimei/Soubi/Ritsuka + never leave (squeakelala)
There were good days, when Ritsuka was truly his Ritsuka, and the shadow of his brother seemed so far away and powerless; on bad days, though, Soubi painted butterflies and watched 'Ritsuka' go about in a dream, and felt as though Seimei's influence on them all would never fade.

-

Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle

Syaoran + quizzical (chibify)
Syaoran had asked Fai to explain magic to him exactly once; the conversation was very short and very puzzling, and if Syaoran had not walked away with a mind so full that he didn't even notice Sakura giggling at his quizzical expression, he might have noticed that Fai-san was hiding something.

-

xxxHOLiC

Watanuki + slavery (eclectify)
Despite Yuuko's lofty promises, Watanuki was rapidly coming to the conclusion that instead of working himself to death for countless years for no apparent gain (apart from being kept alive-- to do more chores and make more bento, which was really no kind of life at all) he should really have just chained himself to Doumeki until he learned to stand the archer-- it would have saved years of back-breaking work, and running from spirits, although, he suspected, his lungs or his mind may have actually collapsed.

Doumeki/Watanuki + leash (eclectify)
The trick, he eventually discovered, was to keep Doumeki on a very short leash, not because he paid any attention to Watanuki whatsoever, but because if the leash was short then he tended not to go too far beyond its bounds - Watanuki was terrified that, if ever he lengthened it, Doumeki would charge into situations so far beyond his reach that he would never come back.

Doumeki/Watanuki + smells like hope (eclectify)
Doumeki is on the floor of his living room, staring at the ceiling; Watanuki is in the kitchen complaining about every implement and its state of cleanliness, and when the smell of dinner starts to waft through the house and Watanuki sinks into the usual mellow mood that cooking seems to provide and starts humming as he chops and stirs, Doumeki cannot help thinking that it all smells, sounds, feels-- a little bit like hope.

[Multifandom] One-Liners; 02/09/2007

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 09:45:44 GMT

As usual, alphabetical by fandom.

-

Bleach

Ishida, rain. (leviathanmirror)
The rain didn't mean to Ishida what it meant to Kurosaki, but that didn't mean he didn't understand how Ichigo felt, walking home in the rain, past a park where his mother had met her end.

-

Final Fantasy VII

Reeve/Scarlet, out of staples. (phoenixstorm)
One of the interesting things, Reeve had noticed, was that when Scarlet was around, the filter between his mind and his mouth dissolved just enough that he was capable of thinking she thinks I am very stupid right now, but completely incapable of stopping himself from telling her all the wonderful things you could build with staples if you had enough time and enough desk space.

-

Loveless

Soubi/Kio, not alone. (squeakelala)
It had taken some serious ninja skill to get Ritsuka's number out of Soubi (more specifically, Ritsuka's number out of Soubi's mobile phone, while Soubi himself was talking to a lecturer on the other side of the room), but Kio had never been more glad of the deception when he received his first unprompted message from Ritsuka (I can't leave-- please stay with him), and could arrive at Soubi's apartment unannounced, with enough food and beer and quiet companionship (and action films) to tide Soubi over until Ritsuka was able to come to him, himself.

-

One Piece

Nami, fulfilled. (factorielle)
There was something immensely fulfilling about sending your captain off into the wilderness with the rest of the crew except Usopp (who was sick) and Chopper (who was looking after him) and knowing that you had the entire afternoon to enjoy the piece and quiet because Zoro had won the fight to hold the map and therefore getting back to the ship would require a process of elimination rather than of navigation.

Arlong, redemption. (factorielle, whom I totally failed in this regard. XD)
She didn't realise it yet, but her dream would not truly be realised just by going everywhere and doing everything and putting it all down on paper - to truly be the greatest navigator, the greatest mapmaker, when she had been everywhere and done everything and put it all down on paper, she would need to go where she had gone with Arlong, see what she had seen with fresh and hopeful eyes, and replot those coastlines that before she had seen stained with blood.

-

Petshop of Horrors

D/Vesca, trying. (keikain)
There was sudden movement and a fist destroying his collar, which, if he was honest, still did not account for the hitch in his breath when Vesca snarled, "Why the hell do you think I've spent two decades trying to find you again?"

Papa D, chrysalis. (keikain)
D had a chrysalis in every stage of metamorphosis, no matter what time of year it was, but these he left to their own device; the caterpillars that had yet to weave their own were in far more dire need of encouragement.

-

Pokemon

Jessie/James, 'the grass is greener'. (phoenixstorm)
Jessie would never understand why James had fled a life of luxury for a life on the run, and James would never understand why Jessie wanted status and riches, but the important thing, they both supposed, was that neither of them wanted to go back to where they had been.

-

Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle

Kurogane, "It's only a flesh wound!" (eclectify)
He wasn't even sure if he wanted to survive this battle, whether he wanted to know whether the damn magician would thank him, go back to his stupid, fawning, annoying-as-hell, lying ways and make Kurogane scream It's just a flesh wound, you goddamn moron, now get offa me!, or whether he'd finally stop disappearing inside himself and just, just cry-- he wasn't sure he wanted to survive it all, but he was absolutely certain that no matter what, he was going to kill this son-of-a-bitch emperor-who-was-no-emperor-if-Kurogane-had-anything-to-say-about-it-and-he-did -- he was going to kill him, and when he did, maybe Fai-- Yuui-- the damn magician would finally stop floating in people's wakes and start making his own goddamn decisions.

-

xxxHOLiC

Kohane's mum, degeneration. (factorielle)
It wasn't as though she wanted to understand - it wasn't as though she wanted to be any closer than she had to - but the fact was that she didn't understand, and that her daughter's powers seemed to be growingthe more contact she had with the bespectacled boy, no matter what sort of food he brought her.

Watanuki/Doumeki, hitsuzen. (squeakelala)
~~Watanuki grabbed him by the collar and shook, hard. "It's not hitsuzen," he shrieked, and after a moment's consideration added, "and if it is, you're doing it wrong!"~~
He'd been hearing it from Yuuko every day for the better part of two years, but when Doumeki started saying it, Watanuki finally gave in to the urge to punch the boy.

Doumeki, Watanuki, Haruka; never the same. (eclectify)
At first glance, Watanuki had thought Haruka-san and Doumeki were similar to the point of being creepy. As he got to know the former, he found all sorts of pleasing differences in Haruka's mannerisms, like politeness and the occasional facial expression - but at the same time, and almost certainly against his will, by learning what he liked about Haruka-san, he also learned what he liked about Doumeki Shizuka. And after that, well, he could never think the two of them were the same.

-

Failed miserably this week, but that's okay! XD