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DRABBLE MEME
Yes! I have a free Saturday, so I'm finally going to do that drabble meme that everyone else did ages ago. I can do Good Omens, Harry Potter, any Milliways characters that you think I know well enough, Lost, a handful of anime fandoms...you people know what I do. Ask and ye shall receive. I'd prefer at least a pairing and an object/setting/theme/other prompt.
~
What do I do when I'm bored? I collect icons of my friends! Spurred by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cyrulean's Kelsey-icon and the fact that I've spent the past few days getting hugely ahead of myself and planning my in-three-years-time trip around the world to visit all you crazies.
Obviously some of you don't believe in showing your real self online and that's understandable. But if you do have any icons of yourself, when you request your drabble, comment using the one you like best? Even if you have to upload it for a day, to give me time to save it, and then take it down.
Yes, of course I'm planning to stalk you all.
I kid. I just have a folder of icons called 'Friends' and it needs filling up.
~
Went for coffee and Chinese and general catching-up withnot_in_denial and tairamika today, which was lovely :)
~
What do I do when I'm bored? I collect icons of my friends! Spurred by
cyrulean's Kelsey-icon and the fact that I've spent the past few days getting hugely ahead of myself and planning my in-three-years-time trip around the world to visit all you crazies.Obviously some of you don't believe in showing your real self online and that's understandable. But if you do have any icons of yourself, when you request your drabble, comment using the one you like best? Even if you have to upload it for a day, to give me time to save it, and then take it down.
Yes, of course I'm planning to stalk you all.
I kid. I just have a folder of icons called 'Friends' and it needs filling up.
~
Went for coffee and Chinese and general catching-up with
not_in_denial and tairamika today, which was lovely :)
no subject
He's crazy.
Failing that, our favorite brand of: it's just not healthy.
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Re: Camille et David - tu es trop douée de vivre! Pas juste.
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numero uno! très bizarre
“As you say.”
“Truly retentive.”
“I’ve forgotten who we’re talking about.”
“Salt of the earth.” Jean waved his wineglass and Bérenger nodded gloomily.
“It’s a very odd thing to say about someone.”
“What?”
“Sodium…swimming pool. That word. I don’t know.”
“Chlorine.” Jean nodded, scowled, possibly trying for wise and ending up looking fierce.
“You’re so clever, Jean.”
“Retentive!”
“As you say. It hardly sounds flattering, in any case. Salt means that nothing can grow.”
“The earth retains its seeds?”
“I didn’t mean –”
“We shall put it down to the quirks of the British,” Jean said with finality.
Bérenger laughed through his nose, his mouth being occupied with bread.
“You have a strange laugh.” Jean squinted into the bottom of his glass, as though counting the few remaining droplets.
“Really?”
“I’ve always thought so.”
“How nice of you.” Bérenger beamed. Jean clapped him on the back a little too hard; his arm shot out and knocked over the salt and pepper shakers. The salt rolled, hexagonally and with clicking sounds, and then fell.
Jean clicked his tongue and watched as Bérenger fumbled to pick it up, and a few white grains fell directly onto the place where, in precisely one month four days and ninety-seven minutes, a herd of rhinoceros would trample them into the earth.
and the second. uh. Lucifer and I cannot make the boy be quiet.
Thom takes his hand and traces the scar with his fingertips, tentative, feeling an echo of the power that created it.
Nothing; familiar and everything.
The boy likes to lie everywhere, which is sometimes downright irritating but nothing, it seems, can be done about it. Lucifer remembers, because it’s the season for it: Hob lying close but never intrusive, touching at one point or many and occasionally opening eyes too deep and near for comfort, a sleepy smile with echoes of reverence. Thom manages to end up sprawled on top of him, tucked under limbs and pinching him in the side to make him move into a more accommodating position. Asleep too fast. Disgustingly resistant to being pushed away.
When he smiles, it’s either brief and spontaneous or he’s trying to annoy.
Thom sets his chin heavily in his hand, the elbow digging into Lucifer’s chest, and looks down at him, smug.
“I was right. You’ve been on edge for far too long.”
Lucifer won’t say that he still is, idiot boy, but he blinks up down up and it means the same thing, in the end
Thom with scratches on his cheek and lips swollen and asymmetrical and hair pushed in odd directions is in himself a work of art and magic. He tastes nothing like ricepaper. Purple power and hunger and forgetting, a taste with clean sharp edges to it. He also likes to talk, although the effect is exaggerated this night. Probably because he’s been shut up by himself and is purging the desire to babble.
Lucifer doesn’t mind, for now. He supposes that he should be indulging in sensation – not thinking – but that’s never really worked as a distraction method. Easier to think about something else entirely. He doesn’t talk himself but he listens, watching through eyes not quite closed. Thom uses his hands to make a point, traces designs on bare skin, and his rambling speech changes purpose mid-metaphor. Something about the way his mouth moves. He grins and ducks his head and suddenly the words don’t matter as much as the meaning, which is I think you’ve stopped listening, and I need you to shut me up.
When that happens Lucifer plays at sensory deprivation, catching Thom in his own trap. Eyes closed and no flicker of acknowledgement leads to a peevish grip on his shoulder, lips on his, moving in a slow rhythm.
“Bastard,” Thom murmurs idly, in between. “I know what you’re doing.”
Lucifer tucks one hand around Thom’s back and one pulling at his hair – it’s an old old game and Thom’s quick smile says that he likes the promise of tension – and speeds the kiss up.
“Really.”
“El-e-men-try,” he drawls. “Ask me how.”
Dreadful ego, say Lucifer’s lips.
Gotcha, say Thom’s.
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and at least in this picture there are no ropes.I would like to see something combining Good Omens and Harry Potter, with no reference to Milliways at all. Also, if you like, it can involve Machiavellian lemondrops, because everyone needs more of those.
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Whateeeeeever you say, Beth :D
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oh my lord, did this turn out strange
~
one
Tom Marvolo Riddle dreams an orphan’s dreams of filthy death and love denied.
Sometimes he writes about them.
two
A girl with red hair wakes breathless and trying to erase the lines of writing from her mind; lonely writing on a page and you understand me, Tom and the hiss of a snake heard through the mists of memory.
She lies down again, curling against the young man in her bed and pressing a kiss to the scar on his forehead.
The excuse of safety only works when you’re not in a state of war.
three
Carmine Zuigiber isn’t called that any more. It’s not a good name for the time, although time means very little to her, which is why she’s here in the first place. The world didn’t end, and she’s come back – gone back, in time as well as presence – to see if she can’t do something about that.
She sits and looks at her serviceable sword for a while, and when she stands up it is shining silver topped with enormous rubies.
Tacky, she murmurs, approvingly.
The thing about being banished to the minds of men is that you can pick up all sorts of fascinating ideas on the way through.
four
In one line of time a rabbit is pulled out of a hat.
In another, it’s a sword.
A phoenix drops tears and the ripples spread like derision among children.
five
The Half-Blood Prince sorts lemondrops and humbugs and ignores the way his fingers shake. He remembers passwords and green light. This is why he does not sleep much, these days, although nobody can claim to keep any sort of regular pattern. They snatch their sleep when they can.
A witch with red hair laughs in the next room, and shows the Death Eaters how Muggle weaponry can penetrate certain magical shields. They don’t like the idea, but she’s very persuasive. And the weapons do work.
Don’t you want to win? she asks.
Don’t you want to win?
Lord Voldemort has killed his dreams. He haunts those of others instead. Nagini curls around his feet and he speaks to her of war in quiet hissing words. He wouldn’t tell anyone else, but he trusts his own soul.
six
Another girl with hair just as red and a love just as fierce is not sleeping; she runs her hand through her fiancé’s blond hair and wishes that she could remember why she is dreaming about a sword.
Thunder claps its hands miles away – a storm is coming. She shivers and burrows under the blankets, because the electricity and heaviness in the air is indefinably familiar.
Déjà vu.
Sword and snake.
seven
A single golden-orange feather falls to the floor.
eight
Somewhere, something like historical precedence.
Red and gold, she-who-was-Carmine whispers to the man, centuries away from the rest of the building storm, are such lovely colours. She sprawls on the bed. Red hair and golden eyes. It’s not subtle, but neither is he.
He agrees.
Of course.
The next day she gives him the sword.
nine
Saving the world isn’t for everyone.
One young man has already done so, but he remembers.
Another is yet to do so, and it worries him.
The present unites them. Held in the arms of a red-haired girl they sleep through the night, and they do not dream.
ten
War is upon them all.
She’s laughing.
Re: oh my lord, did this turn out strange
Re: oh my lord, did this turn out strange
Re: oh my lord, did this turn out strange
Re: oh my lord, did this turn out strange
Re: oh my lord, did this turn out strange
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oh, man, these two are all kinds of fun
She tries to explain it to her husband, one short day in the cold and breezy autumn. Anthony is asleep and Sunny is enthusiastically wearing out Kitty’s supply of energy. They walk by the lake, which is grey and rough. It’s familiar, and that’s everything,
“Pumpkins,” she insists.
“That’s the witch heritage speaking.” He curls an arm around her waist. “You and your pumpkin milkshakes.”
“No, really.” She pokes him in the side. “Soft and sweet and warm. It’s a colour for homey things. Orange juice and pumpkin pie and, um…”
“Carrots, I suppose?”
“Explosions?”
“That’s my girl.” Bernard grins, hugging her tighter for a moment.
“Autumn is a very orange season,” she says dreamily. “Look.”
They look. The leaves are orange – and brown, and yellow, and a dirty olive shade that blends into the smudged grey of the sky. For a moment there’s just the colours, and their combined warmth blocking out the chill of the wind.
“Maybe you’re right –” As soon as their eyes meet he stops, bemused.
“Yes?” She flutters her lashes.
He starts laughing and it takes a while for him to stop. “You look horrendous. Stop that.”
“Huh.” But she blinks a few times. “Maybe orange eyes don’t go with pink hair after all.”
“Sorry, sweetheart.”
“Ah well. There are enough orange genes in this family already,” she says firmly, sliding a hand up the back of his neck.
“I was waiting for you to get to that…”
“What can I say?” she murmurs against his lips. “Sucker for the colour.”
“So my wonderful personality didn’t really count for anything, I suppose.”
“Hmm.” She pulls back and pretends to inspect him. “Nope. Just the hair.”
“I’m insulted. But then, everyone knows I only married you for the amazing sex.” He leers at her, dropping a kiss on her neck.
“Git.”
“Watch it, Tits.” He slaps her bottom, fondly.
“We rhyme,” she gushes mockingly.
“We should get the angel to write us an epic poem.”
“He tends a sentient bar…she is known for her autographed bra…”
“Can there be dragon-slaying?”
“You want dragons.”
“I’m good at valiant.”
“Our life does not need to be any more interesting than it already is, thank you.” She leans closer, breathing him in. “Not just now. I’m finding myself terribly fond of the mundane life.”
“Mundane, the woman says.”
“Not you, Bernard.” She smiles, and it’s almost shy. “Never you.”
Re: oh, man, these two are all kinds of fun
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It'd have to be Remus/Sirius of course, MWPP, and lets see...
*looks at interests*
Alright, how about fluffywuffy kitty cats, making strange noises, sparkly things and...erm...Peter Pan. Oh, and things with bells (it's cheating if you put them on the kitties).
For bonus points, throw in some Greek religion and at least one secret passageway. XD
*snickers* I do this to you every time, you'd think you'd learn. :D
Bwahahahahahahahahha!no subject
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because everybody loves drunk Marauders
“Never ever ever ever –”
The others match him drink for drink, mostly out of self-defense. James has just finished waxing maudlin about Lily and showing off the earrings he bought her as a birthday present; tiny bells hanging from green stones. Remus chose them, but has promised never to tell. James likes to hang onto the possibility that one day he too will have this mysterious thing called taste.
“Ever ever ever ever –”
“Sirius...” Remus groans and tries to cover his ears with a pillow. Off to his left James is trying something similar, only in the absence of a pillow he’s using Sirius’ jacket and his own hands.
“Ever ever –” Peter joins in enthusiastically, and Sirius slings a triumphant arm around his shoulders.
“– want to grow UP!” They finish with a flourish of Sirius’ bottle of Firewhiskey and a stumbling bow.
“Charming sentiment,” James mumbles into the carpet.
“Second star to the...the...sparkly. Star.” Peter giggles and looks as though he could be living up to his fictional namesake any second now and dashing off to bribe Snape into making him some flying fairy dust.
“Nothing wrong with brooms,” Remus’ mouth says, before he can remember that mental images are meant to stay on the inside of one’s head.
“Of course not!” James lifts his head. There is fluff stuck to his lower lip. “Who said there was?”
“Kitty!” Sirius announces, sounding ecstatic at his own non sequitur.
“What’s that, mate?” James levers himself upwards, looking around to see if there are any bottles left. They have a stash – well, Sirius has a stash – hidden in the most obscure of their secret passageways, but on the rare night they go through it alarmingly fast.
“Kitty.” Sirius makes a very strange sound and twitches oddly. Remus recognises this as the second stage of his intense drunkenness; Padfoot Emerges, and wishes his own neural connections would kick into gear as fast as James’ so that he could stand up.
“That…ooh!” Sirius lets go of Peter and dashes for the door.
“Grab him, Pete!” James yells. Normally Peter wouldn’t stand much of a chance, but Sirius turns into a pile of limbs held together by rubber bands when he’s had enough alcohol. They go down – oof, onto the ground – and Remus curses the day Amanda Hogtree ever brought that bloody cat into the girls’ dorm.
“Look,” James says vaguely, balancing Peter’s Herbology assignment on his head. “I’m Dio-dio-knee-whatsit.” The plant is not pleased with this turn of events, and sticks a tendril in his ear.
“Dionysus.” Remus winces. “Yes. Well done. You’ve got the drinking part down pat.”
“Bugger,” says Peter. They all look at the door, which is open, and the room, which is now sporting a conspicuous absence of Black.
Remus sighs. “I’ll go.” His legs have finally consented to work again, and his metabolism allows him to make his way to the deserted common room – no cat, thank any available deities, but Sirius is leaning against the wall holding his head and looking sheepish.
“I’m an idiot. Stupid cat. Ow. Ran into the...the...y’know, I’m not even sure. I think it was the ground.”
“Not quite an idiot.” Remus tilts his head up and brushes back his hair with gentle fingers. “But you’re going to have an amazing bruise in the morning.”
“What am I, then?” Sirius asks him solemnly. He releases the wall, balances on one leg and drapes himself over Remus, a warm and heavy weight.
Remus laughs. “Second star to the right.”
“Do we have to grow up?” A hint of plaintiveness, and Sirius buries his face in Remus’ neck. “Neverevereverever,” he sings absently, his lips buzzing against the skin.
“Not today.” Remus shivers at the contact and kisses his hair. “Not today.”
*love to all of your marauders*
Re: *love to all of your marauders*
Re: *love to all of your marauders*
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(This is me when I was about seventeen. Three years ago or so.)
aaaand once again it's about dreams. I sense a pattern!
This in itself is not something to wonder at, although he does begrudge the time; he never wakes refreshed from an active dream, his consciousness knows that it’s been working hard and refuses to grant him the relief. And he’s only sleeping because Sorata forced him to, locked him in his room and stood guard. Kamui was too tired and too grateful to point out that he could have blown the wall out of the building if he really wanted to, although he had been so fuzzy-headed by that stage that he could have accidentally collapsed the roof down upon them all instead.
So.
He inspects the other boy, who inspects him right back. For a single frozen moment he imagines it’s like looking into a mirror.
“What are you doing here?” the boy says, stealing his question.
He opens his mouth a few times before settling on, “I’m pretty sure I’m dreaming.”
“That would make sense, I suppose.” The boy has a shock of black hair, similar to his own, and green eyes. “I was wondering if this was a spell. Some new form of Divination. Although my dreams have never been particularly quiet, and I don’t think I’ve been able to talk in them before.”
Kamui blinks. “Divination?”
The boy blinks back. “Are you a Muggle?”
“A what?”
“You know. Non-magical. Without powers.”
Kamui considered this. “No,” he said. “No, I have powers.”
“Oh. Right then.” The Dreamscape helpfully grew a few chairs and the boy sat down, his hair falling across his forehead and brushing into his eyes. Kamui felt his breath jump a little at the sudden – fleeting, but strong – resemblance to Subaru. “I’m sorry. I’m not a great conversationalist, and someone close to me is…” He swallowed. “Was killed.”
“I know that feeling,” Kamui said, sitting down himself, wishing his words were stronger or more helpful. “I’m sorry.”
“They all do.” The boy lifted his head; steel in his face, but still a tinge of youth and uncertainty. “The people I love. Eventually they die.”
Kamui thought of Subaru, again, and twined his own thin fingers in his lap.
“So,” he said with a tone that was almost bright, trying to inject some normality into the scene. “Why do you think we’re here?”
The boy shrugged. “Preparation? Everything is, these days.”
“For what?”
Green eyes were suddenly older, more painful, and Kamui had to look away. “The world is coming to an end,” the other boy said sadly.
“Oh,” said Kamui. “Yes. Yes, I know.”
no subject
I wouldn't mind some SeishirouxSubaru. I can't think of any decent crack pairing I'd like right now. But the setting/theme/whatever? Pirates.
Or going along something normal-ish, something SxS with some type of music or musical instruments, a beach house, and apples.
this makes: no sense at all, wtf. crack. pirates. uh huh.
Then he wondered if Kakyou was drunk and the Dreamscape was suffering accordingly.
Then he wondered if he was, but his hangovers had never included hallucinations before.
“Wake up, Subaru-kun.” There was a hand running over his shoulder, mmm, quite nice, the contact, and then down across his neck and whoa hey no bad!
Subaru scrambled into a sitting position, cheeks flaming, and opened his eyes.
Seishirou was wearing an eyepatch over his bad eye and leering at him in a highly suggestive fashion. Much more used to subtle smirks and cold glances, Subaru thought through the almost-awake haze of confusion that this sudden change of tactics was very unfair.
“This is a dream, right?” Subaru said weakly. “Induced by…rum.” He was drinking a lot of things the night before. Rum might have been among them. He looked around. Judging by the amount of empty bottles that were now being used as – oh, charming – an improvised calypso drum set, it’s highly probable.
Kamui looked up from the drums and waved briefly.
“If that makes you feel better,” Seishirou said, sounding cheerful.
Subaru couldn’t help himself. He looked around for Hokuto. The entire scenario was just so ridiculously...her.
“Hokuto-chan is dead,” Seishirou reminded him, appearing to have added telepathy to his long list of annoying habits.
“Yes, but...if this is a dream...”
“Not everything is as it seems, Subaru-kun.”
“All right. She’s dead.” Subaru glared. “By your hand. I haven’t forgotten.”
“Neither have I.” Seishirou patted his arm, and Subaru snatched it back before it could turn into another grope. “Have a Pina Colada.”
An indeterminate number of cocktails later, Subaru was no longer finding the fact that his apartment had been turned into an impromptu island-themed party strange. He backed out of an animated discussion about pieces of eight, leaving Yuuto and Arashi arguing the relative merits of how one should bury one’s booty, and staggered over to sit in a convenient hammock.
“Ah – Subaru-kun?”
“I’m...I’m not sorry. So there.” He tried his utmost to look as though he’d been aware that someone else was already occupying said hammock, and bounced slightly to convey his disregard for Seishirou’s comfort.
“All right.” Seishirou’s arm slipped firmly around his waist, and he tried to find a good reason to escape. The cocktails were all strongly in favour of him not trying to stand up. In fact, something downright weird was happening to his vision, because all of the colour appeared to be bleeding away from the walls and the music was fading.
He looked down at the ofuda that Seishirou had just pulled from his pocket and placed in his hands.
“Oh.”
Seishirou yawned and tightened his grip on Subaru’s waist.
Subaru looked at the ofuda intently. “How did you –?”
“Stop trying to distract me.” Seishirou plucked it from his hands.
Subaru ran a hand over the sheets of what was definitely his bed, and not a hammock, and swallowed hard.
“Parlez?”
Re: this makes: no sense at all, wtf. crack. pirates. uh huh.
no subject
OR
Karen/Yuzuriha, three blind mice, and dishwashing.
Femmeslashers represent, yo. :D
I wrote you a sort-of-sestina *is random*
and eyes blinking in the dull light of the moon.
(Der Mond, la luna, said to turn the prophets mad.)
She pulls on a dressing gown, pale blue with two tea
stains. She smoothes it down, laughs and has to hush
herself, creeping careful through the summer dark.
Cho’s feet on the stairs break the late-night hush;
and then she smiles. Only one girl in this House is mad
enough to set up plates of cakes, a single pot of tea
in a common room all candle-lit and shadow-dark.
Luna hums, gently, and from outside the half-full moon
streams silver on the pretty cups. Cho licks her lips.
Luna sees her soon enough; perhaps she’s mad,
perhaps nonsense falls too often from her lips,
but she smiles at the Seeker, slim and tall and dark,
and nods for her to sit. A gesture with her hand – hush!
Cho sits, takes a cake, picks up a cup of steaming tea.
They agree in silence not to tell. They promise by the moon.
Maybe later she’ll blame it on the pressing dark,
the surreal and furtive nature of their muted hush,
but Cho keeps glancing at the cheeks and curving lips
of this elusive girl, named for virtues and the moon.
Cho thinks, through flushing awe: the world’s run mad.
Luna smiles, and her fingers deftly pour more tea.
And so it goes, whispering as the stars and moon
dance behind the clouds. They finish all the tea.
Into the middle of a breathless, careful hush
Luna says, from nowhere – “You have such lips.
Your hair is like a dragon’s eye, so rich and dark.”
Cho wonders if it’s such a bad thing, being mad.
She flushes more, looks into her cup, sees the tea
leaves scattered in their clumps, wet and dark.
It’s either that or admit she likes the way the moon
shines on Luna’s hair, like rain on gold. “This is mad,”
she says. Luna’s fingers slip over her parted lips.
“You’ll wake the leprechauns,” she says. “Hush.”
Re: I wrote you a sort-of-sestina *is random*
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uh ... *fixes typos and tags* ... voila!
Re: uh ... *fixes typos and tags* ... voila!
no subject
Why don't you pick one of my requests over the past few months that you haven't done yet and drabble that?
*finds one* our boys in Milliways being somehow cute. hmm. 'somehow' is the operative word here.
He speaks through other things. He feels at home with Susan, because they can communicate through their hands on the neck of a horse, and with Alanna because all they need are their swords. Meg is good for him. Meg makes him talk. It’s as well he cannot dance more than the few formal patterns, because then they would have no need for speech at all. Mordred never did. Mordred never claimed him for his words, although perhaps - a little - for his voice. They lasted a good year before words started clamouring for a part in their relationship – before that it was glares and lifted chins gone to the quick pain of a hand-edge and kisses that meant many things.
Galahad thinks about this. It worries him, because they’re so far beyond that now, and yet it never really left them. When the hysteria hits he has too many words, which is part of why it seems so wrong, and he needs that violent return to normality to cut them off again, send them fleeing back into the depths of his own self. And it’s ironic, because that of all things – the snapping, the brief and terrible periods when he is just a shell for the panic and laughter – that is the one thing he cannot capture at all, in words.
So when Mordred asks him, one insomnial night when they’re sitting, side-by-side, feet dangling in a cold pool of moonlight...he closes his eyes and tries. Lies back, twisting the sheets, his head on Mordred’s legs, taking away the effect of gravity. Maybe the words won’t flow down and away from his mouth. He has to speak slowly, giving his sentences time to line up and dust themselves down and arrange themselves in a proper order.
Nothing is ever the right speed, he says quietly, shivering with the absent brush of Morded’s knuckles down his face. Sometimes everything speeds up and I have to try and keep up, and everything I say is a race but I don’t even know where I am racing to. And sometimes the speed drops away from the world and I can watch one thing, just one, for a thousand hours and feel it as being nothing more than sensible. Everything is happy, or everything is sad. There’s no constancy. My mind presses inwards and it’s like –
It’s like a child’s darkness, Mordred says abruptly, and that just shatters the rest of the inadequate words, because it is. Light candles or see the sun rise and you’ll wonder why you were ever scared in the first place, but the fear is never entirely gone. It’s hiding in your memory of the night, and waiting for the first chance to return.
That flashes through Galahad’s mind in a few brief moments. He opens his eyes, turns his cheek into Mordred’s lazy hand and waits for him to understand.
Re: *finds one* our boys in Milliways being somehow cute. hmm. 'somehow' is the operative word here.
Re: *finds one* our boys in Milliways being somehow cute. hmm. 'somehow' is the operative word here.
Re: *finds one* our boys in Milliways being somehow cute. hmm. 'somehow' is the operative word here.
no subject
Aziraphale/Crowley, 'losing a bet'. Plus evil sense of humour.
Part 1, tags fixed!
"The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins."
He’s never been guilty of a feeling like that before.
Crowley keeps going; mutters something about far horizons. Beauty and terror. His voice doesn’t suit poems and never has, but this one doesn’t seem to mind.
And the angel’s curious. That’s part of it. There aren’t many things outside of their own precious green-drenched island of grubby history that can be said to be Crowley’s area of interest. Aziraphale knows things, just knows them, makes it his business and his hobby to find out. He doesn’t like the suggestion that he overlooked something.
There’s one more thing: a bet. Gambling’s a sin, but Aziraphale has always thought it a matter of duty to seek out the Lord’s best works and admire them, and if a demon declares that he has seen a sunset more beautiful than any other then…well, he’s practically obliged to go and check for hyperbole and cheating so that he can thwart them.
By this stage of the reasoning he realises that Crowley is trying to get him drunk and may, in fact, have already succeeded.
The demon is humming something about warm dark soil in a tone of voice that makes Aziraphale go an odd shade of pink.
Well, why not?
Crowley amuses himself for the first week by pretending to be American. It works, especially with the sunglasses, and the relaxed people in the cheerful busy cities tense up a little and look interested. Someone asks if he’s from the CIA. Crowley snickers behind his hands and ignores Aziraphale’s remonstrations about his sense of humour and points out that the angel is having just as much of an effect.
“Americans inspire a weird mixture of admiration and derision,” he explains. “Everything’s fine. Everything’s cool. The British are still the policemen. You sound posh.” He nudges the angel with his elbow. “You resurrect the national inferiority complex.”
Aziraphale begins to see what he’s talking about.
and Part 2, fixed also
Re: and Part 2, fixed also
no subject
better late than never? :D
Also: 'hogging the bathroom' is such a loose term. Kinda.
~
Sirius’ footsteps sounded unbearably loud to his own ears. Back and forth against the stone floor, whispering under his breath with the warm rasping residue of sleep. I need to find Moony, need to find, need to find, come on. He threw up his hand and broke into a brief interlude of less-than-proper language. The Blacks weren’t as clean as they liked to appear. They cultivated the Pureblood propensity for filthy language behind closed doors. It was just about the only part of his heritage that Sirius had a real enthusiasm for, although Regulus was better at it than him; such a scope for imagination, though you’d never know it to look at the kid. He was easily underestimated.
Sirius forced his train of though back onto the matter at hand before he somehow managed to conjure a passageway back into the dorms where his brother was sleeping. Moony. Moony. Merlin’s beard, what was wrong with – ah!
As soon as the door appeared he tried the handle – locked.
“Hey. Moony.” He pounded the edge of his fist against the panels.
“…Sirius? Where’s James?” Remus’ voice was muffled through the wood. But even so, there was a painstaking quality to his words that sent alarm bells ringing in Sirius’ head.
“Still asleep. Open the door.”
He refrained from mentioning that Remus’ owl was too polite to peck anyone on the ear, which was just about the only way that anyone could awaken James Potter when he was in for the long haul. Sirius had woken up to the sounds of mournful hooting, taken the almost illegible (unlike Remus, so unlike him, warning bells redoubling in recollection) note from the owl and left James and Peter still snoring in blissful unison.
Prongs -
In the RoR. I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant to happen tonight; I’m a little out of synch.
Don’t wake Sirius.
- R
And of course only Remus was exact enough to use a bloody semicolon when he was bloody bleeding onto the bloody paper. “A little out of synch?” Sirius tried to yell through the door, but it was hard to whisper a yell. “What the bloody fuck is that supposed to mean, anyway?”
Remus’ voice came again, still quiet. “Sometimes it happens. Stress. An almost-full moon can be enough of a trigger. I…wasn’t prepared.”
“Shit, Moony. Open the damn door.” Sirius leaned his head against the wall and heard running water from inside the Room, a few splashes and a few low gasps that made him want to dig his nails into the stone and scream in rage. “Please?”
“I think I’ll be all right.”
“I beg to differ.”
Something that could have been a laugh. “You don’t beg anything.”
“True,” Sirius said, amiably enough, partially reassured by the humour. He angled his spine into the corner of the doorframe and wriggled until the position was almost comfortable. “I am remarkably stubborn that way.”
A pause, and the water shut off. Remus sounded more normal with each word. “Sirius Black, was that a hint?”
“You got that? Subtlety. It won’t happen again. Maybe if -”
When the door opened, he almost fell straight through.
Re: better late than never? :D
no subject
*pats* good frar.
decidedly NOT what you were thinking, I'll bet :D
~
It’s something that should be set as a tongue twister for children, she thinks. Whispering words that curl around the teeth.
Faith fears fever. Flitting fearsome fanciful Faith fears foreign fever.
Fucking fever.
Fever dreams, slicing her mind apart. When she has the lucidity she gets annoyed; they don’t even have the decency to be proper nightmares. No vampires, no blood, no knives slicing through her own flesh or (more common) that of others, driven by her hand. She dreams instead of running through sand, of being taught to dance by a grave little man half her height, of trying to build a castle from stones and being driven to tears by a blonde girl, faceless, who kicks it over as soon as she reaches the last tower.
There’s a message there.
She’s not fucking stupid.
Faith twists the sheets, twists her thoughts inside
out
like a baby with bathwater and
such an odd phrase
that one
with echoes of unwanted children and
a drowning, bubbling scream as
a door
closes.
For a moment she comes back to herself, opens bleary eyes and tries not to imagine how she looks. Wrapped up tight, beanie gloves and two jumpers, almost unbearably hot when the sweating fits start but far better than freezing. She’s always liked the heat better than the cold. Bound for Hell. Heaven sounds like…cold edges, empty high skies and silence. She can deal with flames. More pragmatic, anyway, considering…considering…
Train of though derailed and hijacked. Whoops.
Images easier, in the end. Thinking about the end about the boy about the girl about the
end
of all things,
and her thoughts
return
like a dozen white pigeons set free at a
(graduation?)
wedding, with heavy background bells,
and making their own
unerring
homewards path.
The end? Comes with death. Never far away, not for one like her. She imagines a huge black book opened at her very own page, ancient scribbles of red and black ink, still wet. Paradoxical. Credit and debit. The list of her deeds and denouncements, ending in damnation and a finger pointed at her, through her, sending her away into the fever flames.
And then, a blonde girl with a stake, turning away.
Again
And again.
And again.
Re: decidedly NOT what you were thinking, I'll bet :D
Re: decidedly NOT what you were thinking, I'll bet :D
no subject
present day and near the Fall :)
He’s been marked once before, and inasmuch as he (pragmatic) promises himself anything he swore away from such damned distinction again. This is more than ironic, no matter how he laughs it off to the Vengeance. Morning. Star. No matter how far he runs, how far into space and time he throws his influence, he is the sum of the facts surrounding his creation and purpose.
Normally he’d rake his nails across, finding pain and relief in the same motion. Or find someone to do it for him. But that, he knows, would be giving in.
Pride?
But of course.
--
“I’d tell you to sleep, but…” Moriel’s hand dropped onto his shoulder.
Samael didn’t blink. “But.”
“Precisely.” The other angel sat down next to him, leaning back against the smooth silver height of a tower, any tower, not the largest or the smallest or the most central. They had been doing this for a while. Words were becoming less important. “You’re being asked for.”
“And?”
“And not found, obviously.” Moriel reached out and clasped Samael’s fingers between his own, firmly. “You’re shaking a little. Jittery, my Captain.”
“Don’t –” But when he turned, frowning, Moriel met him with a knowing smile. Though it was hard to pick as a smile unless you knew him well. Calm dark eyes. “Yes. Jittery is probably the right word. My whole body is…waiting. For something.” His wing-tips twitched, as though to prove the point.
“We’re all waiting for something, Samael.”
Their hands tightened, together, on instinct.
Change on the wind.
--
What’s funny – and it is funny, really, when you look at it from the appropriate angle – is that Lucifer Morningstar (and here we segue into the tangent of naming, which comes up again and again in his life; here, in this place, he has drifted from Sam to Lucifer to My Lord to Morningstar right back to Samael) is stark raving sane. Close up history with neat stitches and you have a being who responds, who is in control, who thinks with perfect and proud and often cruel clarity.
Put him next to any of the patrons he’s befriended, dig deep into the psyche, and he’s not broken, not shattered in reason or instinct. Not like them.
Like Hob? Maybe. The immortal was too sane for the place by half and without any of the defenses that Lucifer so adeptly weaves. Maybe for the best, then, that he got out while the damage was only extreme and not crippling.
And like any sane being, Lucifer believes in keeping the past where it belongs. Masochism has never appealed. There’s a reason he doesn’t talk about himself, and a reason why he is sick and tired and a little afraid of the flood of nostalgia and argument Raguel drags half-knowing in his wake.
Hurt is not broken. (Breaking is losing.)
Apply the head, not the heart.
--
“I should be visible, I suppose. At this stage.”
“Come on.” A quick kiss and Moriel stood up.
But somehow they ended up on the edges of the City, and Lucifer stared unflinching into the darkness, making and unmaking sparks of his own bright fire, sending them out to be swallowed alive. He didn’t like the metaphor; it had overtones that settled heavy in his chest.
“For this I was made,” he said, unthinking, hearing something like an echo that made him feel even more uneasy.
“For?” Moriel took his hand again. Moriel was tactile, forever brushing, touching, tasting, like a wind in himself. Filling every cranny with his silences and deep eyes. Samael pulled him close and did not speak for a moment. Fire woven around his fingertips.
But only a moment, and then - “Illumination.”
“Lightbringer.” Moriel laughed, and Moriel never laughed for anyone but him, and the breezes of the elemental’s joy spilled and swirled the white flame around their feet.
Re: present day and near the Fall :)
Re: present day and near the Fall :)
Re: present day and near the Fall :)
Re: present day and near the Fall :)