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collating the drabbles
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sainfoin_fields, to whom I have promised a pre-series drabble as soon as I finish rewatching The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya.
Some of these are better than others. Sorry.
Fortahira_saki, who asked for Lucifer and a Russian girl called Sasha in a fur hat:
He wouldn't have looked twice except for the way she lifts her arm to catch hold of the overhead bar, swaying with the train's motion as though she is rehearsing for something. Thin-boned hands and a few fair curls escaping from the muffling bulk of her hat; one of the city's hundreds of ballerinas, Lucifer has no doubt, and she lifts her eyes as she becomes aware of his assessing gaze -- looks away instantly -- looks back, and colour starts to appear in her cheeks. Lucifer's coat is expensive and cut to perfection and the cold has brightened his too-bright eyes, but the hunger that is in her face is not the normal physical hunger but rather that profoundly Russian lower-class hunger for a domestic blaze, for the touch of fur-warmed hands, for oil lamps and warm soups and anything that holds the wind at bay.
Because she has seen the fire in him, he asks her name, and her mouth tucks into a smile that only strengthens her resemblance to another small blonde dancer that Lucifer has known.
"Aleksandra Viktorovna Korovina."
And this is the problem with this country. No power on earth, or above, or below, could entice Lucifer -- who speaks in titles because they often hold more meaning than names themselves -- to use a patronymic. To define himself in such a manner.
So he says, "Sasha. A pretty name," in a voice like strong coffee, and watches the way she moves through affront at the familiarity, and then uncertainty, and finally settles into a curiosity that goes well with the flush of her cheeks and the way her hair is caught in her eyelashes.
"And what should I call you?" she asks.
Lucifer smiles and says, "Kolya," because he has been Nikolay in this city for long enough to know what its diminutive sounds like when hissed through the lips of someone whose soul he holds in the palm of his gloved hand.
Forryokophoenix, who loves to torment me, and who asked for SasuNaru with stars, lack of dignity, wrists, fingers, strangely shaped trees, keeping time, dew, a distinctive smell, and a candle:
"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.
Forvillainny, who asked for Zack trying to teach Booth a game which Booth refuses to accept is, in fact, a game:
"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.
Fora_white_rain, who asked for Azula/Ty Lee boarding school antics and got something with an indeterminate timestamp:
"You still love Zuko, don't you?"
Mai makes an annoyed sound that isn't a denial, so Ty Lee turns her head on her pillow and smiles at the other girl's disgruntled expression.
"It's all right. I kind of love his sister."
That hits Mai, all right: she struggles upright and folds her arms around her bent legs, frowning. "Why?"
Ty Lee lifts her fingers and bends them down, neatly, one by one. "She's very clever. She's very beautiful. She's very powerful."
"Don't be stupid," Mai says. "That's a very simple way of looking at it."
People have called Ty Lee simple all of her life and she's never thought of it as an insult, so she just shrugs peaceably and touches her lips with her own fingertips, thinking about the curve of Azula's waist under her dark clothes and the economical way her hands return to her side after executing a firebending technique.
~
"Why?" Azula asks, and Ty Lee sighs and gives her exactly the same reasons.
"It might be useful to you," she adds. "I don't know. You can usually find a use for things."
"Of course," and the princess smiles, her mouth creating a cruel and perfect symmetry that makes Ty Lee's heart thump. Love should be simple, she thinks. There are adjectives and more adjectives that can be applied to Azula, but Ty Lee has never found one with enough force to overcome the plain -- simple -- urge to remain within the heat of her influence, and the slightly more complex urge to kiss her and to bend under her clever hands. She doesn't care what Azula chooses to do with her power, and she's accepted the fact that her life belongs to the Fire Nation and its rulers, so why shouldn't she have a little fun?
"I know you don't love me," she tells Azula. "That's fine."
"You're not a threat, are you?" Azula asks, clinical amusement in her voice as her fingers close around Ty Lee's arms with just the slightest suggestion of flames and heat.
Ty Lee knows what to say. She lifts her hand to Azula's neck and kisses her soft, unmoving, uncertain lips. "Keep me close," she whispers. "You can always spot traitors, can't you? You can tell as soon as I start lying."
This time Azula responds to the kiss, fierce and curious, seizing control as though she was the one to initiate the whole thing. "Yes," Azula says, one hand moving to unwind Ty Lee's plait, the other laid firm and expert over her heart. "Yes, I can."
Fortammaiya, who asked for Kyouya/Tamaki with best laid plans/interruptions:
"Forty percent."
"Fifteen," says Tamaki, who isn't really paying much attention. Kyouya is spinning a pen in his fingers and has one long leg clad in very expensive black fabric stretched out over the arm of the sofa, and his shirt is so flawlessly stiff that Tamaki wants to throw himself bodily onto his best friend and wrinkle it all up.
Come to think of it, he can't think of a good reason not to.
"Thirty-seven," says Kyouya, who never bargains like normal people, but creeps downwards or upwards as though someone's glued him to a ladder, "and I -- oof --"
"Twenty." Tamaki grins at him from a focal distance, liking the way the other boy's eyes cross and then align distractedly behind his glasses. "Hi."
"Idiot. We're leaving in ten minutes, do you think I have time to get my shirt re-ironed?" Kyouya's mouth becomes a straight line and he drops his pen so that he can take firm hold of Tamaki's shoulders and push him off. "I spend my life making sure things run smoothly, and this is what I get."
"Yes, yes, I don't deserve you," Tamaki rambles, resisting the push, wriggling around and making himself more comfortable. Kyouya hasn't put his tie on yet; Tamaki works the top button of the Ootori's shirt open, and then the next. "But you'd be bored if your plans never got interrupted."
Kyouya removes his glasses with two neat fingers and gives Tamaki a slow, mathematical look, the look that means he's calculating time losses and contingency plans in his head, and enjoying it. After a moment he picks up his cell phone and makes a brief call, ordering two more formal suits to be prepared and laid out in the guest suite. Then he snaps the phone shut and places it carefully on the ground. "Fifteen minutes," he says finally, tangling his fingers in Tamaki's hair. "Don't waste it."
Tamaki grins and undoes three more buttons.
Forquestofdreams, who asked for Sasuke and Naruto, comrades in arms, with exploding tags and ninja wire:
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.
Foragonistes, who asked for Iroh and Bill Adama, Broody Son (Or Nephew) Support Group, and got something that's probably in the same narrative as this:
"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.
Forpirateygoodness, who asked for Katee Sackhoff/Jamie Bamber (UM, I DON'T DO THIS OFTEN, GUYS):
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.
Forschiarire, who asked for (er, among other things) Lucifer-Nacio:
"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.
Forgenarti, who asked for Honey & Ty Lee and Mai having a headache at this combination (ERGO: HIGH SCHOOL AU. WHOO.):
"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 the latter; 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 at using cuteness as a weapon as she is herself. 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.
Fordopplegl, who asked for Kara/Lee/Anders:
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.
sainfoin_fields, to whom I have promised a pre-series drabble as soon as I finish rewatching The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya.Some of these are better than others. Sorry.
For
tahira_saki, who asked for Lucifer and a Russian girl called Sasha in a fur hat:He wouldn't have looked twice except for the way she lifts her arm to catch hold of the overhead bar, swaying with the train's motion as though she is rehearsing for something. Thin-boned hands and a few fair curls escaping from the muffling bulk of her hat; one of the city's hundreds of ballerinas, Lucifer has no doubt, and she lifts her eyes as she becomes aware of his assessing gaze -- looks away instantly -- looks back, and colour starts to appear in her cheeks. Lucifer's coat is expensive and cut to perfection and the cold has brightened his too-bright eyes, but the hunger that is in her face is not the normal physical hunger but rather that profoundly Russian lower-class hunger for a domestic blaze, for the touch of fur-warmed hands, for oil lamps and warm soups and anything that holds the wind at bay.
Because she has seen the fire in him, he asks her name, and her mouth tucks into a smile that only strengthens her resemblance to another small blonde dancer that Lucifer has known.
"Aleksandra Viktorovna Korovina."
And this is the problem with this country. No power on earth, or above, or below, could entice Lucifer -- who speaks in titles because they often hold more meaning than names themselves -- to use a patronymic. To define himself in such a manner.
So he says, "Sasha. A pretty name," in a voice like strong coffee, and watches the way she moves through affront at the familiarity, and then uncertainty, and finally settles into a curiosity that goes well with the flush of her cheeks and the way her hair is caught in her eyelashes.
"And what should I call you?" she asks.
Lucifer smiles and says, "Kolya," because he has been Nikolay in this city for long enough to know what its diminutive sounds like when hissed through the lips of someone whose soul he holds in the palm of his gloved hand.
For
ryokophoenix, who loves to torment me, and who asked for SasuNaru with stars, lack of dignity, wrists, fingers, strangely shaped trees, keeping time, dew, a distinctive smell, and a candle:"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.
For
villainny, who asked for Zack trying to teach Booth a game which Booth refuses to accept is, in fact, a game:"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.
For
a_white_rain, who asked for Azula/Ty Lee boarding school antics and got something with an indeterminate timestamp:"You still love Zuko, don't you?"
Mai makes an annoyed sound that isn't a denial, so Ty Lee turns her head on her pillow and smiles at the other girl's disgruntled expression.
"It's all right. I kind of love his sister."
That hits Mai, all right: she struggles upright and folds her arms around her bent legs, frowning. "Why?"
Ty Lee lifts her fingers and bends them down, neatly, one by one. "She's very clever. She's very beautiful. She's very powerful."
"Don't be stupid," Mai says. "That's a very simple way of looking at it."
People have called Ty Lee simple all of her life and she's never thought of it as an insult, so she just shrugs peaceably and touches her lips with her own fingertips, thinking about the curve of Azula's waist under her dark clothes and the economical way her hands return to her side after executing a firebending technique.
~
"Why?" Azula asks, and Ty Lee sighs and gives her exactly the same reasons.
"It might be useful to you," she adds. "I don't know. You can usually find a use for things."
"Of course," and the princess smiles, her mouth creating a cruel and perfect symmetry that makes Ty Lee's heart thump. Love should be simple, she thinks. There are adjectives and more adjectives that can be applied to Azula, but Ty Lee has never found one with enough force to overcome the plain -- simple -- urge to remain within the heat of her influence, and the slightly more complex urge to kiss her and to bend under her clever hands. She doesn't care what Azula chooses to do with her power, and she's accepted the fact that her life belongs to the Fire Nation and its rulers, so why shouldn't she have a little fun?
"I know you don't love me," she tells Azula. "That's fine."
"You're not a threat, are you?" Azula asks, clinical amusement in her voice as her fingers close around Ty Lee's arms with just the slightest suggestion of flames and heat.
Ty Lee knows what to say. She lifts her hand to Azula's neck and kisses her soft, unmoving, uncertain lips. "Keep me close," she whispers. "You can always spot traitors, can't you? You can tell as soon as I start lying."
This time Azula responds to the kiss, fierce and curious, seizing control as though she was the one to initiate the whole thing. "Yes," Azula says, one hand moving to unwind Ty Lee's plait, the other laid firm and expert over her heart. "Yes, I can."
For
tammaiya, who asked for Kyouya/Tamaki with best laid plans/interruptions:"Forty percent."
"Fifteen," says Tamaki, who isn't really paying much attention. Kyouya is spinning a pen in his fingers and has one long leg clad in very expensive black fabric stretched out over the arm of the sofa, and his shirt is so flawlessly stiff that Tamaki wants to throw himself bodily onto his best friend and wrinkle it all up.
Come to think of it, he can't think of a good reason not to.
"Thirty-seven," says Kyouya, who never bargains like normal people, but creeps downwards or upwards as though someone's glued him to a ladder, "and I -- oof --"
"Twenty." Tamaki grins at him from a focal distance, liking the way the other boy's eyes cross and then align distractedly behind his glasses. "Hi."
"Idiot. We're leaving in ten minutes, do you think I have time to get my shirt re-ironed?" Kyouya's mouth becomes a straight line and he drops his pen so that he can take firm hold of Tamaki's shoulders and push him off. "I spend my life making sure things run smoothly, and this is what I get."
"Yes, yes, I don't deserve you," Tamaki rambles, resisting the push, wriggling around and making himself more comfortable. Kyouya hasn't put his tie on yet; Tamaki works the top button of the Ootori's shirt open, and then the next. "But you'd be bored if your plans never got interrupted."
Kyouya removes his glasses with two neat fingers and gives Tamaki a slow, mathematical look, the look that means he's calculating time losses and contingency plans in his head, and enjoying it. After a moment he picks up his cell phone and makes a brief call, ordering two more formal suits to be prepared and laid out in the guest suite. Then he snaps the phone shut and places it carefully on the ground. "Fifteen minutes," he says finally, tangling his fingers in Tamaki's hair. "Don't waste it."
Tamaki grins and undoes three more buttons.
For
questofdreams, who asked for Sasuke and Naruto, comrades in arms, with exploding tags and ninja wire: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.
For
agonistes, who asked for Iroh and Bill Adama, Broody Son (Or Nephew) Support Group, and got something that's probably in the same narrative as this:"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.
For
pirateygoodness, who asked for Katee Sackhoff/Jamie Bamber (UM, I DON'T DO THIS OFTEN, GUYS):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
schiarire, who asked for (er, among other things) Lucifer-Nacio:"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.
For
genarti, who asked for Honey & Ty Lee and Mai having a headache at this combination (ERGO: HIGH SCHOOL AU. WHOO.):"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 the latter; 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 at using cuteness as a weapon as she is herself. 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.
For
dopplegl, who asked for Kara/Lee/Anders: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.
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!!!!!!!!!!
Moar later but...I must say right now that...AVATAR/OURAN IS THE GREATEST THING EVER CONCEIVED POSSIBLY?!?1 (MAI/KYOUYA BFF?!?!11)
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You could do it more often! It would be excellent!no subject
It's fun sometimes, I guess! But the thing is that I use fanfic to react to canons -- especially speculative canons -- and twist or play with ideas and opinions that they spark off in me. And I never pay ANY attention to celebrity things, or watch interviews, or go to conventions, so it's not like I have any ideas to deal with where RPF is concerned. It's just pure invention. Or else I have to use it as a vehicle for fourth-wall issues about the show itself, like I did there...but I really prefer to mix my meta in with my fanfic, for the most part.
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I even love the ones where I have no clue about the fandom. And I think Lucifer-Ignacio is the fic I have waited for without knowing I was waiting. HOMG.
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I was so terrified of writing that, Ji had to hold my hand. Maybe I shouldn't have tried for Nacio's POV, but I loooove writing Lucifer from another person's perspective.
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We liked your crossover Avatar/Ouran fic SO MUCH that we immediately began plotting THE SEQUEL. Okay tell me what you think of this: Kyouya and Azula spend the equivalent of a few episodes pretending to be BFF before unleashing their respective GENIUS PLANS upon the other and being TOTALLY AWESOME nemeses who are fascinated with each other because they have NEVER MET THEIR MATCH before. You know you want to write this!
(And meanwhile Ty Lee and Honey occasionally meet up to chat about how their respective friends really mean well, honest, and Mai and Mori break into completely silent and badass fight scenes every couple times they meet and no one knows why or what their signal is, except for Honey and Ty Lee. And then after a while Zuko gets all jealous and is like "DO YOU HAVE A THING FOR HIM" and Mai is like 'Whatever.'
And Kasanoda and Zuko can bond.)
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(The next Ouran crossover in my head is unfortunately a Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya one. But I will keep the Avatar one stored away somewhere, I guess. UNLESS YOU WRITE IT. HINT HINT.)
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IN WHICH YOU COMPETE TOO. HINT HINT RIGHT BACK.
:D?
(Becca says REMEMBER HOW MUCH YOU LOVE WRITING INTELLECTUAL DUELS OF SCHEMING NEMESES.)
WE SHALL SEE.
*sidles off for sleep, and away from the capslock key*