On the fifth day of Christmas
Dec. 30th, 2012 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tallulahgsmy true love sent to me
five lonely nights
[Title] Walking in His Shoes
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Prompt from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mayfic, "Ryuuzaki left his trainers behind (the ones he wears when he goes outside). Matsuda finds them after his death."
For a while, Matsuda wished they could stay in the headquarters Ryuzaki had built. Like, it was huge, and it had all the things you could ever need - cable sockets and plugs everywhere, secluded meeting areas, those weird office-y plants that never seemed either to grow or to die. And rooms as smart as a good hotel's, with ensuite bathrooms and crisp sheets and windows to the floor. Kind of like the sort of business trips that he never actually got to do.
Okay, he got that it was way too big for them and they didn't own it and it made sense in a lot of ways to work from Raito's apartment, but it still felt like giving up a luxury item for no reason.
Until one night. He wasn't in the main room - and that did creep him out a bit, he kept thinking he was going to see Ryuzaki out of the corner of his eye sitting on one of the chairs - he was in the bit where Watari had been. Surrounded by dead TV screens and trying not to think too much about how this was the room where the guy had actually died. In here there weren't any windows and so it was just him, and the strip lighting, and all the blank screens and soft-edged reflections catching his eye.
Raito had already been through here and taken out the files and important stuff, all the things that had clued them in as to who Watari was. Matsuda was fetching the normal things, like stationery. But he spotted a door in the far corner and when he opened it, he was in an even smaller room, staring at two empty chairs either side of a small, glossy table. On the other side of the room, a glass-fronted cupboard - his own face pale and thinned out - and behind the glass, a china coffee set, elegant white, two curved cups. Bars of chocolate, stacked up; bananas in a wooden bowl. He glanced down at the bottom shelf and then he saw, trailing from underneath the cupboard, a grubby white shoelace. No way, he was already thinking, no way would Watari have worn shoes like that, as he knelt down and tugged out the worn trainers. So...
The heels were trodden down, and the laces were faded with old mud stains. They were old trainers, too, the kind you'd have bought off-brand from some cheap shop advertising everything for under some particular crazy price. Because Ryuzaki had gone outside once or twice, hadn't he? When he'd had to. Or maybe he'd gone out lots, before the Kira case, maybe he'd only stayed hidden in hotels once that had started, once things had got so dangerous. Matsuda found himself nervous about touching the trainers, as if Ryuzaki were still wearing them, as if he were going to look down and murmur, Matsuda-san, what on earth are you doing? It was the trodden-down heels that really sealed it, you could see how he'd just shrugged the shoes on, dragged them on with him and his shuffly walk. Probably just stepped out of them when he was back here, known that Watari would pick them up and being them back to this room within a room. Matsuda found himself wishing he hadn't come here. It was much easier to think of Ryuzaki as the baffling genius who'd fallen in the battle against Kira than as a... a real person, with trodden-down heels to his shoes and, perhaps, someone he'd felt sentimental enough about to sit and drink coffee with face to face.
He took the food, of course, took it back to Raito's apartment, presented it as a gift to Misa-Misa. But he left the shoes, sliding them back under the cupboard before he walked away.
[Title] Girlfriend
[Fandom] Akira (manga)
[Rating] PG-13 for sex references and (oblique) references to non-con
[Notes/Summary] Tetsuo isn't sure what Kaori means to him now. Sort of requested byherrdeath (I don't know how you feel about manga-based fics!)
Tetsuo didn't do it because he wanted a girlfriend. He did it because he was the ruler of a frickin' Empire and he could do anything he wanted (and also he was sick of that voice in the back of his head, the one that sounded like Kaneda, saying, yeah, whatever, you're king of the world but you still haven't got laid, have you?) He could do anything he wanted and what he wanted was to get off and also he wanted to see other people being as miserable and scared as him as the pills hit their minds like freight trains.
He didn't do it because he wanted a girlfriend, but somehow he seems to have got one. Sort of.
Kaori is asleep against his shoulder, wrapped up in a blanket. She smells of damp sunny air, and tinned soup, and musky skin. No perfume, no make-up. So there's that. And there's how he hasn't actually done much with her other than they've curled up asleep together and sometimes he's grabbed her hand. He could. He should, but there are other girls for that, or there could be. Kaori is special. Like, if he told her he wanted to do it now, then she'd have to say yes, right? And the Kaneda-voice would laugh at him. He's waiting for it to feel different. He's waiting to feel like he doesn't need it. He can wait, now, because he rules the city and he's more or less immortal, right? Sort of? (Not thinking about the hurting, or the visions, or all the pills. Maybe it's he doesn't want to be fucking her when there's all the pills in his head, in his system? Like when you're sick.) He can crush anyone he wants to, but with her he's actually kind of nervous that he might.
[Title] Bright Lights, Big City
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Cube and Combo discuss Grind Square.
Cube is leaning against the wall, staring out of the window. No electricity here, but it don't matter when you're in Grind Square, the lights outside stay on all night. Cube's avoiding the glare, though, stayin' put in the shadows.
"Hate this place," she says at last.
First thing she's said all day, but Combo tries not to eyeball her. Pretends he's more interested in changing tapes on the g-blaster. "Why? You can catch some crazy air."
"Huh. That's part of it." A hand waved out at the lights. "It thinks it's all that. We're meant to think it's all that. Like we're, I dunno, Bantam Street hicks or whatever."
"Hey, I done plenty of time here. It's not givin' me any inferiority complex. I was doin' tricks thirty feet up when I was fifteen." He keeps his voice chilled.
"It's a fuckin' tourist trap. Even for rudies. And it... it's all lights and wires. Like that's all you need."
"We'll find him, okay? We'll find him and be back in Bantam Street soon enough." Combo sounds more confident than he feels. Ain't like he's got any reason to think they can actually pull this off.
Cube turns her face away from the lights. Combo sees her rub her fist across her cheek, under her eyes.
"Makes me feel small," she mutters. "Like... s'just me and you. Didn't... when there was three of us, didn't feel lonely. When it's just two it... and here, when no one lives here, they just come to scope out the pretty..."
Combo realises he's put the same tape in and taken it out like three times now. But he doesn't know what to say. He's the rock, right? Cube and Coin do their thing and he follows up behind. If he says he gets it, he's feeling pretty small right now too, and the skyscrapers feel like they're wallin' him in, what's Cube gonna think? Gonna think he's breaking down on her too.
"Well, I know what I'm interested in scopin' out, and that's food," he says. "We got enough cash for some hot dogs, yeah? Stuff's always better with hot dogs."
Cube nods, takes a shaky breath like she's saying I know, I know there's nothing you can do either. "Sounds like a plan. Then let's go show this place who's boss. Maybe we can get a few tags on the Dolce and Gabbana advert."
They'll be tiny tags on a fifty-foot high billboard, and they probably aren't gonna make either of them feel less lonely, but in the short run, that's all you can do, so Combo nods, picks up the g-blaster and gets to his feet.
[Title] Happy Home
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] During the Kira case, Aizawa calls home.
Eriko sounds guarded even when she answers the phone, like she's expecting this. She probably is. Still, that makes it easier for Aizawa to get straight to the point: "I won't be making it home tonight, okay?"
"Right," she says, and if there was a hurt pause before it Aizawa can pretend he didn't notice. "Tomorrow?"
"Maybe. I'll let you know."
"All right. I'll... see you when I see you, then."
The call tangles in his head later, when he's trying to catch a few hours of sleep on the hotel sofa. The room's dark, but lit by the glow of screens, and Ryuzaki and the Chief are still awake, talking quietly. In this darkness and whispering about Kira it's like Eriko's nothing but a voice on the phone. Aizawa almost wishes he hadn't had to call her. It's not the late nights he minds - lots of people have to deal with those - it's the link out to normality, to a house and a wife cooking dinner and children's toys underfoot. How can he go home and make small talk with her about Yumi's latest spelling test or queues at the supermarket when back here, someone - or something - is out there and could strike any of them down once it saw their face? He thought he'd got over the jarring of seeing all the terrible things people do and then walking out of that world, but the Kira case is making it difficult again. When the supernatural is what's real, normality looks a hell of a lot less plausible by comparison.
[Title] Farewell Ultraman
[Fandom] Akira
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Kaneda-and-Tetsuo fic forherrdeath. Kaneda comes to hang out with Tetsuo.
Tetsuo hates the nights most. During the day, okay, people are mean and pick on him but he can pretend that there's someone who cares, he can pretend it's just Mum is round the corner and hasn't seen. Nights he's in bed on his own and there are noises outside or in the corridor and lights on, all the time, and he knows no one's gonna come if he gets scared. Or they'll yell at him, tell him not to be such a baby. Maybe he wants to be a baby. If you're a baby you get a hug and no one yells at you for being scared all the time. Only it's stupid to want that, everyone'd laugh if they knew, everyone'd hate him even more than they do already.
Only tonight there's a knock on the door and his heart goes all jumpy but before he can panic, the kid from before - Kaneda, that's it - has stuck his head round the door.
"Cool, it is the right room," he says. And then he scurries in, glancing quickly around. "I wanted to show you, you had Ultraman before, yeah? I got Ragon and Zetton - Zetton's kind of busted, but he was from a jumble sale. I nearly didn't find him, someone else tried to nick him but -" A pleased smile, a confident shrug. "I showed him. But I thought you'd like to see. Seeing as your Ultraman got broken."
Tetsuo waits for the trick but it doesn't come, Kaneda just scrambles up onto the bed, toy robots in each hand. Tetsuo used to have one like one of them, he remembers - it got lost when they moved the first time. He says this, his voice all dry and stupid, but Kaneda only grins, tells him to keep his eyes out next time they have a toy sale. "People are always giving good stuff away to us, 'cause they feel sorry for us. We'll go and look." Tetsuo finds himself nodding. He can't remember the last time there's been a plan for something good happening.
five lonely nights
[Title] Walking in His Shoes
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Prompt from
mayfic, "Ryuuzaki left his trainers behind (the ones he wears when he goes outside). Matsuda finds them after his death."For a while, Matsuda wished they could stay in the headquarters Ryuzaki had built. Like, it was huge, and it had all the things you could ever need - cable sockets and plugs everywhere, secluded meeting areas, those weird office-y plants that never seemed either to grow or to die. And rooms as smart as a good hotel's, with ensuite bathrooms and crisp sheets and windows to the floor. Kind of like the sort of business trips that he never actually got to do.
Okay, he got that it was way too big for them and they didn't own it and it made sense in a lot of ways to work from Raito's apartment, but it still felt like giving up a luxury item for no reason.
Until one night. He wasn't in the main room - and that did creep him out a bit, he kept thinking he was going to see Ryuzaki out of the corner of his eye sitting on one of the chairs - he was in the bit where Watari had been. Surrounded by dead TV screens and trying not to think too much about how this was the room where the guy had actually died. In here there weren't any windows and so it was just him, and the strip lighting, and all the blank screens and soft-edged reflections catching his eye.
Raito had already been through here and taken out the files and important stuff, all the things that had clued them in as to who Watari was. Matsuda was fetching the normal things, like stationery. But he spotted a door in the far corner and when he opened it, he was in an even smaller room, staring at two empty chairs either side of a small, glossy table. On the other side of the room, a glass-fronted cupboard - his own face pale and thinned out - and behind the glass, a china coffee set, elegant white, two curved cups. Bars of chocolate, stacked up; bananas in a wooden bowl. He glanced down at the bottom shelf and then he saw, trailing from underneath the cupboard, a grubby white shoelace. No way, he was already thinking, no way would Watari have worn shoes like that, as he knelt down and tugged out the worn trainers. So...
The heels were trodden down, and the laces were faded with old mud stains. They were old trainers, too, the kind you'd have bought off-brand from some cheap shop advertising everything for under some particular crazy price. Because Ryuzaki had gone outside once or twice, hadn't he? When he'd had to. Or maybe he'd gone out lots, before the Kira case, maybe he'd only stayed hidden in hotels once that had started, once things had got so dangerous. Matsuda found himself nervous about touching the trainers, as if Ryuzaki were still wearing them, as if he were going to look down and murmur, Matsuda-san, what on earth are you doing? It was the trodden-down heels that really sealed it, you could see how he'd just shrugged the shoes on, dragged them on with him and his shuffly walk. Probably just stepped out of them when he was back here, known that Watari would pick them up and being them back to this room within a room. Matsuda found himself wishing he hadn't come here. It was much easier to think of Ryuzaki as the baffling genius who'd fallen in the battle against Kira than as a... a real person, with trodden-down heels to his shoes and, perhaps, someone he'd felt sentimental enough about to sit and drink coffee with face to face.
He took the food, of course, took it back to Raito's apartment, presented it as a gift to Misa-Misa. But he left the shoes, sliding them back under the cupboard before he walked away.
[Title] Girlfriend
[Fandom] Akira (manga)
[Rating] PG-13 for sex references and (oblique) references to non-con
[Notes/Summary] Tetsuo isn't sure what Kaori means to him now. Sort of requested by
herrdeath (I don't know how you feel about manga-based fics!)Tetsuo didn't do it because he wanted a girlfriend. He did it because he was the ruler of a frickin' Empire and he could do anything he wanted (and also he was sick of that voice in the back of his head, the one that sounded like Kaneda, saying, yeah, whatever, you're king of the world but you still haven't got laid, have you?) He could do anything he wanted and what he wanted was to get off and also he wanted to see other people being as miserable and scared as him as the pills hit their minds like freight trains.
He didn't do it because he wanted a girlfriend, but somehow he seems to have got one. Sort of.
Kaori is asleep against his shoulder, wrapped up in a blanket. She smells of damp sunny air, and tinned soup, and musky skin. No perfume, no make-up. So there's that. And there's how he hasn't actually done much with her other than they've curled up asleep together and sometimes he's grabbed her hand. He could. He should, but there are other girls for that, or there could be. Kaori is special. Like, if he told her he wanted to do it now, then she'd have to say yes, right? And the Kaneda-voice would laugh at him. He's waiting for it to feel different. He's waiting to feel like he doesn't need it. He can wait, now, because he rules the city and he's more or less immortal, right? Sort of? (Not thinking about the hurting, or the visions, or all the pills. Maybe it's he doesn't want to be fucking her when there's all the pills in his head, in his system? Like when you're sick.) He can crush anyone he wants to, but with her he's actually kind of nervous that he might.
[Title] Bright Lights, Big City
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Cube and Combo discuss Grind Square.
Cube is leaning against the wall, staring out of the window. No electricity here, but it don't matter when you're in Grind Square, the lights outside stay on all night. Cube's avoiding the glare, though, stayin' put in the shadows.
"Hate this place," she says at last.
First thing she's said all day, but Combo tries not to eyeball her. Pretends he's more interested in changing tapes on the g-blaster. "Why? You can catch some crazy air."
"Huh. That's part of it." A hand waved out at the lights. "It thinks it's all that. We're meant to think it's all that. Like we're, I dunno, Bantam Street hicks or whatever."
"Hey, I done plenty of time here. It's not givin' me any inferiority complex. I was doin' tricks thirty feet up when I was fifteen." He keeps his voice chilled.
"It's a fuckin' tourist trap. Even for rudies. And it... it's all lights and wires. Like that's all you need."
"We'll find him, okay? We'll find him and be back in Bantam Street soon enough." Combo sounds more confident than he feels. Ain't like he's got any reason to think they can actually pull this off.
Cube turns her face away from the lights. Combo sees her rub her fist across her cheek, under her eyes.
"Makes me feel small," she mutters. "Like... s'just me and you. Didn't... when there was three of us, didn't feel lonely. When it's just two it... and here, when no one lives here, they just come to scope out the pretty..."
Combo realises he's put the same tape in and taken it out like three times now. But he doesn't know what to say. He's the rock, right? Cube and Coin do their thing and he follows up behind. If he says he gets it, he's feeling pretty small right now too, and the skyscrapers feel like they're wallin' him in, what's Cube gonna think? Gonna think he's breaking down on her too.
"Well, I know what I'm interested in scopin' out, and that's food," he says. "We got enough cash for some hot dogs, yeah? Stuff's always better with hot dogs."
Cube nods, takes a shaky breath like she's saying I know, I know there's nothing you can do either. "Sounds like a plan. Then let's go show this place who's boss. Maybe we can get a few tags on the Dolce and Gabbana advert."
They'll be tiny tags on a fifty-foot high billboard, and they probably aren't gonna make either of them feel less lonely, but in the short run, that's all you can do, so Combo nods, picks up the g-blaster and gets to his feet.
[Title] Happy Home
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] During the Kira case, Aizawa calls home.
Eriko sounds guarded even when she answers the phone, like she's expecting this. She probably is. Still, that makes it easier for Aizawa to get straight to the point: "I won't be making it home tonight, okay?"
"Right," she says, and if there was a hurt pause before it Aizawa can pretend he didn't notice. "Tomorrow?"
"Maybe. I'll let you know."
"All right. I'll... see you when I see you, then."
The call tangles in his head later, when he's trying to catch a few hours of sleep on the hotel sofa. The room's dark, but lit by the glow of screens, and Ryuzaki and the Chief are still awake, talking quietly. In this darkness and whispering about Kira it's like Eriko's nothing but a voice on the phone. Aizawa almost wishes he hadn't had to call her. It's not the late nights he minds - lots of people have to deal with those - it's the link out to normality, to a house and a wife cooking dinner and children's toys underfoot. How can he go home and make small talk with her about Yumi's latest spelling test or queues at the supermarket when back here, someone - or something - is out there and could strike any of them down once it saw their face? He thought he'd got over the jarring of seeing all the terrible things people do and then walking out of that world, but the Kira case is making it difficult again. When the supernatural is what's real, normality looks a hell of a lot less plausible by comparison.
[Title] Farewell Ultraman
[Fandom] Akira
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Kaneda-and-Tetsuo fic for
herrdeath. Kaneda comes to hang out with Tetsuo.Tetsuo hates the nights most. During the day, okay, people are mean and pick on him but he can pretend that there's someone who cares, he can pretend it's just Mum is round the corner and hasn't seen. Nights he's in bed on his own and there are noises outside or in the corridor and lights on, all the time, and he knows no one's gonna come if he gets scared. Or they'll yell at him, tell him not to be such a baby. Maybe he wants to be a baby. If you're a baby you get a hug and no one yells at you for being scared all the time. Only it's stupid to want that, everyone'd laugh if they knew, everyone'd hate him even more than they do already.
Only tonight there's a knock on the door and his heart goes all jumpy but before he can panic, the kid from before - Kaneda, that's it - has stuck his head round the door.
"Cool, it is the right room," he says. And then he scurries in, glancing quickly around. "I wanted to show you, you had Ultraman before, yeah? I got Ragon and Zetton - Zetton's kind of busted, but he was from a jumble sale. I nearly didn't find him, someone else tried to nick him but -" A pleased smile, a confident shrug. "I showed him. But I thought you'd like to see. Seeing as your Ultraman got broken."
Tetsuo waits for the trick but it doesn't come, Kaneda just scrambles up onto the bed, toy robots in each hand. Tetsuo used to have one like one of them, he remembers - it got lost when they moved the first time. He says this, his voice all dry and stupid, but Kaneda only grins, tells him to keep his eyes out next time they have a toy sale. "People are always giving good stuff away to us, 'cause they feel sorry for us. We'll go and look." Tetsuo finds himself nodding. He can't remember the last time there's been a plan for something good happening.
