fahye | so this is what responsibility feels like

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so this is what responsibility feels like

Wow. Having a dead computer makes me actually behave like a med student. I went to my two labs this morning -- Jesus Christ, bones are tricky little buggers when you actually look at them, and I am rethinking my love of the clavicle -- and then I spent some time in the LIBRARY with my NOTES and I've thoroughly revised my upper limb anatomy and the entire text chapter on clinical examination of the respiratory system. Man. The things you have time to do when you don't have classes from 8am-5pm (this week is remarkably light \o/) and also don't have fic writing itself feverishly in your head.

Tomorrow classes finish at 11am and I am determined to be likewise productive in the afternoon, but you know what, I'm kind of enjoying this being-uncharacteristically-prolific thing, so for the gaps in between study:

Drabble requests?

You know what I write. Though if you're having trouble deciding, I'm on this serious animated-things kick at the moment, so throw me Avatar/anime-of-your-choice prompts and everyone will be happy.

(Please note that due to the fickle natures of both free time & inspiration, I am not putting my hand on my heart and swearing to finish every request this time, but...request away anyhow! We'll see how I go.)

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I just like watching you throw a literary Mr Squiggle. :D

HAHAHA that is one way to put it, certainly.

"Oh, amazing!" Ty Lee is all but sparkling as she comes out of her combat roll. "It’s so nice to find someone to play properly with."

"Yes." The tiny blond kid is sparkling, Mai is sure of it, it’s like he’s got his own damn light display as well as a six-foot bodyguard. Not that he needs one; he’s holding his own against Ty Lee, and most people twice his size have trouble with that.

Mai clutches her longbow closer to her side and wishes that the archery event was over so they could leave; she is not impressed with this school. Bad enough that her boyfriend was immediately accosted and almost kidnapped by an obnoxiously handsome French-accented freak yammering something about 'broody types' and 'sure to be a hit' – now Ty Lee has found someone almost as good as using cuteness as a weapon as she is. Fantastic.

Mai sits on the edge of a fountain and trails her hand through the water; the school is a madhouse, yes, but it’s also enormous. (Azula’s eyes widened and then narrowed when it first came into view. Mai isn’t sure if she’s considering buying the place or burning it to the ground.)

"At least I don’t have to wear a hideous yellow dress," she says aloud.

"Well, neither do I," a mild voice says. "It’s all a matter of the assumptions people make." Mai looks up: on the other side of the fountain stands the quiet boy who rescued Zuko by calmly hauling his hyperactive blond assailant away.

Mai opens her mouth – looks closer – and almost smiles, but not quite.

Ooooooh, this made me shiver. Wonderful.

*beeeaaams*

*lots and lots*

CLEARLY THIS SHOULD HAPPEN.

And, oh, Zuko kidnapped by Tamaki. Hee hee hee. And Mai and Haruhi! And that would so be Azula's reaction. <3!

"No," Sasuke says.

"Yes," Sakura says.

Naruto looks from the one to the other and makes a choice based solely on self-preservation.

"Okay," he mumbles.

Sasuke's glare is sharp and immediate and says that this betrayal will be remembered for a long, long time, and will very likely result in a month of him having showers that are long enough to use up all of the hot water. (Things discovered only through cohabitation: Naruto will always, always sleep the longest out of the two of them, and Sasuke's vindictive streak cannot be erased even with sex.)

"Fine," Sasuke says flatly. "But I'm leading."

~

As it turns out, being forced to dance at Sakura's wedding is a very handy way of avoiding all of the other insane preparations.

"Naruto --"

"Can't!" Naruto yelps through the front door, struggling into his clothes. "We're going to practice."

"We're what?" Sasuke demands, his mouth full of rice. The kitchen smells like the bizarre combination of sauces that he likes to dump on his breakfast, with a struggling under-note of ramen. Naruto used to hate that smell, but now it's familiar. It's home.

"It's this or table decorations," Naruto hisses at him, yanking him out of the chair by one wrist; Sasuke widens his eyes a little and then gives a quick, resigned nod.

Sakura looks baffled when they open the door. "Naruto, it's seven in the morning. I thought --"

"Practice makes perfect!" Naruto runs for it, dragging Sasuke behind him, out onto the dew-wet grass.

So by rights they should be improving much faster than they are, but roughly a third of the time Sasuke gets sick of Naruto insulting his dignity (or lack thereof) and starts a fight instead. A third of the time they actually practice. (And for the final third of the time, well, Naruto thinks that the people who thought up dancing should really have realised that there's only so long a guy can stand having his body pressed up flush against another body before he gets...distracted.)

~

"Places, everyone!" Ino trills. There's a slightly manic edge to her enthusiasm: throughout the last week Naruto has learned to be very, very wary of anyone in a bridesmaid's dress, especially anyone as detail-oriented as Ino. Though the girls have done a good job, Naruto has to admit: flowers everywhere, ribbons on seats, that kind of thing. There are even tall pink candles on the tables; Naruto thumps his hand against Sasuke's shoulder and the Uchiha stops trying to entice the nearest one into igniting the delicately twisted bonsai centrepiece.

"It's good that she decided on an outdoor dinner, isn't it?" Naruto nods upwards, valiantly stabbing out in the direction of tension-defusing small talk. "It's a nice night. Stars everywhere."

Sasuke doesn't even look, he just stands there with his perfect straight back and his perfect thin lips and his expression of perfectly unimpressed anticipation. If he didn't look so fucking hot in his formal coat, Naruto would be tempted to push him into a mud puddle.

"Come on, don't be an ass about it," Naruto mutters. "If we can coordinate an ambush, we can coordinate this."

The music begins. Sasuke looks at him for a long moment and then reaches for his hand; slowly, deliberately twines their fingers together; tilts his head in elegant acquiescence. Naruto grins and falls into step, his feet tracing out something that's not quite a jutsu and not quite a waltz, Sasuke's fingertips keeping impeccable time on the back of his hand.

AHAHAHAH THEY'RE SO DOMESTIC. <3 I love it when fic does this, as it's such a lovely break from all the angst. XD I think my favourite part was Sasuke trying to set fire to the bonsai - there's always someone setting fire to things when there are candles on the table, and Sasuke is the resident pyromaniac.

Also - "If we can coordinate an ambush, we can coordinate this."

I WOULD BE MORE COHERENT if I wasn't trying to read five articles in time to teach twenty people only a couple of years younger than me tomorrow. D: BUT you've done it again and I shall never know how you manage it.

ONE DAY I'LL GET YOU. ONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNE DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY. *shakes fist*

"What I don't understand is why you lot don't just play Monopoly with these like normal people."

"No no no, look, it's very simple." The kid rushed around the table and took the little silver objects out of Booth's hand. "I'll demonstrate. I throw them onto the periodic table -- there, like that -- and let's say the iron lands on -- ha, this one is great --"

"If you say so," Booth said, poking the little silver dog upright with one finger so that it was no longer lying on the border between Pd and Ag.

"Well, it's an iron. On the periodic box for oxygen. So I might tell Hodgins something about a rusty ferris wheel." He stopped and peered expectantly at Booth with one corner of his mouth twitching, as though trying to suppress a joke. Booth made a gesture that meant 'keep going' and he jumped. "Oh! Because you know, iron oxide is rust, and the symbol is Fe and the prefix is ferric so...ferris..." He trailed off. "So he'd be able to deduce where it is. Ideally my hypothetical situation would also include sentences hinting at the locations of the other objects, too."

"It's a tiny iron. For ironing clothes," Booth said, hopelessly lost, sticking with what was familiar.

Zack blinked at him earnestly. "The people on the ferris wheel could have crumpled clothing, if you like."

"I don't -- oh will you listen to that, that's my phone, thanks a lot, Zack, it's been fun."

Booth had never been so happy to be informed of a double homicide in his entire life.

;\akjh;SLAH;ASLKF THAT IS THE CUTEST THING IN THE WORLD

Do you mean...Fire Nation boarding school, or an AU?

"This is Admiral William Adama," the President says, and there's an uncharacteristic roughness of tone when she says the man's name that makes Iroh think she is accustomed to a more familiar form of address.

"Good to meet you, General."

"It is an honour, Admiral."

Iroh smiles and their eyes meet over their firmly-grasping handshake, and that's all it takes for them to recognise each other as soldiers of the truest kind. It's a relief. Iroh admires Laura Roslin intensely and the woman has a way of letting her reddish hair fall across a white shirt that reminds him of certain firebending techniques, but she is no soldier.

"You have a son, I recall. An excellent commander?"

"My son is no longer a member of the military," the man says stiffly, and Iroh decides not to point out that he was making a comment about skill, not title.

Instead he says, "Ah. I have a nephew, myself -- currently at a most troublesome age," and he smiles again, and the atmosphere shifts from two soldiers to two men who have had to deal with adolescent males. Well and good, Iroh thinks.

Roslin laughs; accusingly, but without bitterness. "Maybe I should be grateful for never having been blessed with a son."

Iroh is still looking at the Adama. "You are blessed with a very capable head of state, I think," he says politely, testing, and the Admiral's face creases in pleasure. So Iroh adds, "And beautiful, too," just so he can watch the man cough and move an inch closer to the President, voicelessly and almost unconsciously defining the boundaries of his command.

Katee tells herself every night before she goes to sleep that the world is not a television show, but it's hard to keep control of your mental boundaries when every word you say during the day belongs to a girl whose world is not a world but the whole universe; who has conquered even what passes for death on the small screen; who has visited Earth and spun away again to be with the man she loves.

Katee's cell buzzes green in the darkness and she sits on the edge of the bed looking at it, blinking the few lines of text into focus, before walking over to the front door of her apartment -- her bare feet slap against the wooden veneer -- and opening it.

"You could have just knocked," she says.

Jamie smiles.

It's only okay when looked at from outer space. It's only okay because one day they'll be allowed to stop looking at each other like they're the only universal constant, and then maybe Katee will be able to stuff her thoughts back within normal boundaries. Maybe she'll be able to forget the fact that in her breakthrough role she broke the one cardinal rule and fell into a love that could only be reached by scaling the fourth wall at midnight and dropping down into the Eden on the other side.

For the first two months after he returns to Konoha, Sasuke is a sleepwalker who has gone wandering and has woken up somewhere entirely unfamiliar. Naruto watches him struggling to fit into the shallow curve of his old life, only to find that he is adorned with new edges that chafe and destroy and make the fit impossible.

Naruto is glad -- so glad -- that he's making the effort, because for a long time he was afraid, guilty-afraid, that maybe Sasuke wouldn't. But they're a team again, sort of, and Sasuke is alive, sort of, and at least when Naruto tries to yell him into acknowledging that he has woken up home, finally, home, Sasuke immobilises him with wires before he can get too far. So he's still shinobi, if nothing else, and Naruto would rather like to run his hands over the new edges and see if they fit with his own, but first Sasuke has to let him close enough to touch.

"What's the point of this?" Naruto demands, tugging insistently until the wires fall with a loose releasing flick of Sasuke's hands. "Who are you fighting?"

"Nothing. Nobody. This is not a war," Sasuke says, turning away, and Naruto thinks that maybe that's the problem.

So the next morning he carefully attaches a tag to a kunai and hides on a rooftop, and when Sasuke opens his front door it explodes in his face.

The second kunai embeds itself in the scorched doorframe: its tag does not explode, but it reads, Well, if it's war you want.

And then, Tag.

Sam keeps saying, "I understand," in a voice like the groan of metal on metal, like he doesn't actually understand but hopes he does, and this has always been the thing about Sam, hasn't it? Black and white like the negatives of all the photographs she never took after the world ended: cylon or not cylon. Married or not married. Understanding or the lack of it, and if he doesn't have one then he must have the other, and he can't stand to not understand her.

(Kara knows that he never has understood her, not totally, not once.)

And the ironic thing is that Lee understands her better than she does herself, some days, but he's the one standing there acting like the world has been turned on its head and he understands nothing. He stares at her as though she's inexplicable, but his eyes are blue like the oceans of a planet that Kara is still trying to convince them that she's seen, and he loves her more than she deserves.

The world is certainly turbulent. Lee is a civilian and Sam is a pilot and if Kara didn't know better she'd think she stepped through a mirror into an inverted world, all her negatives lifted up to the light and viewed from the wrong side.

Married or not married?

Kara steps out of the brig and Lee's hands trace the outline of her tattoo, and Sam watches the both of them carefully, hungrily, as though he is learning to see in shades of grey.

Actually I imagine it like a combination of Articulate and reverse Battleships: having to describe the locations of the pieces to your team members, and seeing how quickly they could guess them all.

John and Rodney could play it against Zack and Hodgins, and they'd probably win because they have more injokes, and then Zack would be bewildered <3

Umm I tried but I really think I need to rewatch the series before I write anything -- do you want a raincheck until I do so, or do you want to make an Avatar-ish request instead?

Nawwwww. They are so angsty! And so cute!

hahaa, oh Naruto <3<3 That was pure bliss. The entire ficlet was infused with Naruto's hope and, despite that Naruto is painfully dense at times, I think it's his simple-mindedness that helps him understand Sasuke the best... if that makes sense. XD

Wonderful writing <3 and thank you!

I would also accept "the reason we never see Ty Lee in season three is because she's locked up somewhere with a naked Suki" (note: I have only seen through Day of Black Sun), or wait for a rainy day.

MY HEART HAS EXPLODED WITH LOVE.
I am now dead.

But oh, what an honorable death it was.

Either or

I am planning on rewatching Haruhi VERY SOON so I'll write you a drabble then. Scout's honour.

"Do you believe in God?"

It is not the first time Ignacio has been asked this question and it won't be the last; "No," he says, pausing with the snuffer held at such an angle that the man's face is reflected in the conical gold surface.

The man laughs. Ignacio has never heard a psallopiano but he has heard the sound described, and he thinks that it might sound like this, like this shifting note that holds more complexity than should be possible considering the technical specifications of the human throat. "Good for you," he says.

It is growing cold in St Stephen's and there is only this single man with his pipe clothing and his pipe voice and something weirdly tube about the angle of his hands in his pockets and the way he looks at the cross above the altar. Ignacio has never seen the Pipe, nor the Tube, but he keeps his eyes open and he listens and he reads, and he is learning. It is odd that he should only be able to think of this man in terms of descriptions given by others. Certainly Ignacio has never seen him before, either, and he is younger than the average parishioner by a good few decades, but this did not seem to stop him from wandering in and sitting at the back throughout the evening service, listening intently, his feet resting on the prayer cushions. Father Nolan talks sometimes, hopefully, about the conversion of the young. Ignacio wonders if this is what has happened here, or if he is just another of those who turn to God only when things turn sour.

And so: "Would you like me to light a candle for anyone?" he asks politely. "Someone you are mourning, perhaps?"

"I am not in mourning, eyai." Again the odd resonance to his voice that is not due to the church, the way he pronounces eyai as though it is a curiosity and not a technicality. "What is your name? Do you have one, or just a number?"

"No, I have a name. Father Nolan calls me Ignacio." He is not sure why he should express it thus, with the qualifier -- Father Nolan calls me -- but it seems reasonable that some day someone else will give him a new name, and then another, and so on: it is perhaps too much to hope for that he should be granted definition beyond the lifespan of a human being.

A pause, then -- "What a coincidence. Our names have almost the same meaning." -- and the man smiles exactly like one of the figures in one of the stained glass windows that Ignacio has gazed at, and though he can remember everything he has ever read he cannot recall which saint or angel or blessed figure this smile belongs to.

Oh man, they are so fucked up and tragic and it's all so fantastical. I cannot wait until the new season starts!

OH.

MY.

GOD.

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so this is what responsibility feels like

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uh...high school AUs ftw?

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FTW INDEED

omg. I don't even know what this is.

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this could be terrible and I would honestly be unable to tell.

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Re: this could be terrible and I would honestly be unable to tell.