On the third day of Christmas

[tallulahgs]

my true love gave to me

three insect encounters

[Title] Tripping
[Fandom] Akira (technically manga, though most of it could apply to either)
[Rating] PG-13 for swearing, mild sex references and drug use
[Notes/Summary] Tetsuo should have known better than to take drugs Kaneda bought off a suspicious man in a noodle bar.



Mostly the pills were fine. Kaneda banging the school nurse meant the stuff they got was made by someone who actually knew what the hell she was doing, and if one of them had dropped dead, she'd probably have had to deal with awkward questions. But then this one time, she'd told Kaneda her boss was getting suspicious, and at the Harukiya the guy said Kaneda still owed him from last time so no deal, and so Kaneda went and bought a bag of random shit from some guy in a noodle bar. It made Tetsuo think of clear plastic bags of mixed sweets in a one-hundred-yen shop. Sometimes you got lucky and it was all fizzy snakes and chocolate bars, but more often it was weird chewy things with names in other languages that tasted of cough mixture.

Of course the pills didn't taste of much, and for most of the night the one Tetsuo took didn't seem to do much, either; there was just this slow sense of something coming along behind him, like someone else on a bike tailgating him. It wasn't bad, exactly, just weird, and he didn't say anything about it because he'd only look pathetic – everyone else seemed as hyped as they were on the usual stuff so it was probably just him not doing it right. It was only after he and Kaneda were heading home that he started feeling like there were bugs all over him. Like, he could see there weren't, but he knew there were. Which made no sense but not a lot did at three a.m. after you'd been out all night.

The thing was he wasn't grossed out by the bugs themselves. And they weren't itchy or anything. He was just freaked out that they were there and he was gonna have to do something about them. Maybe squish them? But what if more just kept coming? That'd make him lose it. And he didn't want to squish them. He was feeling bad for them. He didn't usually feel bad for most people, or bugs, or things, but he was pretty sure they were scared. On the other hand, he didn't think he could really go to sleep covered in bugs. He just had to keep very still and hope that they flew away. Could they fly, though? He wasn't sure.

“Kaneda,” he said as they started climbing the dimly lit stairs. His mouth was seriously dry, but that was more normal. There weren't any bugs inside his mouth, at least.

“Yeah?”

Tetsuo hadn't been sure exactly that he wanted to admit he was sort of tripping out and worried about killing imaginary bugs. He'd been trying to be more like Kaneda's friend rather than his sad little hanger-on always following him around and asking dumb questions. But his heart was going twice as fast as his footsteps and if he didn't say something other people were gonna start noticing the bugs and they were starting to itch, too, kind of, little feet on his skin, and if he just sat there scratching then that'd look just as weird.

“I'm not really covered in bugs, am I? I mean, it's just the pills, right?”

Kaneda stopped, turned to look at him. Streetlight through the window on his face. He grinned, shakily.

“Thank god for that,” he said. “I thought it was just me.”

They stared at each other and Tetsuo found his mouth wriggling into a smile and then they were both laughing, hissing quiet laughter but so strong Tetsuo had tears in his eyes for it.

“Last time I get shit from that joint,” Kaneda said at last, once they were together enough to carry on up the stairs. “I mean I wasn't even that buzzed earlier. I reckon... I reckon we should, like, drink loads of water, right? Piss it out of our systems? And let's watch TV or something, maybe that'll stop us thinking about it.”

Tetsuo was still really worried about squishing the bugs, but he felt a lot better now. Kaneda always knew what to do, even when it was something like this, pills doing weird shit to your head.

Of course, that wasn't true later, but he didn't know that was coming.



[Title] Robert the Bruce
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio Future
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] There's a reason Rhyth doesn't kill spiders.



Rhyth always caught the spiders, the old pizza-restaurant-menu-and-spray-paint-can-lid manouevre, and put them out onto the pavement. She played it up, even, squeeing they're too cute to kill! and if people like Soda and Beat rolled their eyes, well, they did that about a lot of stuff she did. Probably they were playing it up too. She didn't feel like explaining about that first night in Rokkaku-dai, when she'd fled home way late at night – she'd not meant to go then, she'd meant to go in the day, but things had got very bad very quickly and thank god she'd squirrelled away a bag of stuff to grab and go –

So like she'd been feeling super-bad because, okay, she wasn't at home any more, but it was three in the morning and she'd been crying for like hours and she'd kept thinking people were following her (they probably were, seeing as it was Rokkaku-dai Heights, but she'd jumped and flipped and climbed until any tramp out to get her would've had to be a seriously good skater and she figured anyone that good wouldn't be getting smashed in a derelict slum, they'd be in a gang like a normal person -)

But yeah, the spiders, they'd been a little thing to focus on. Like, sometimes when you were wrapped up in a sleeping bag and you couldn't sleep 'cause it was so cold and so all you could do was lie there and think about how your life had fallen to bits around your ears and you'd never find a gang to join 'cause you were just a stupid kid and oh my god what if that noise was some psycho with a machete, all that stuff... But there were spiders in the corners of the room, and after a bit she stopped pretending to sleep and sat up and used the light from her phone to watch them just sitting in their webs, or slowly climbing from strand to strand, or cascading down into the shadows at the bottom of the wall. It still wasn't the best night ever, but at least it stopped her completely losing it, so she figured she owed the little guys something.



[Title] Counting Cockroaches
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Mello writes a letter to Near from America.



Dear Near To the weird little albino freak who still plays with toys like he's seven years old or something,

So, I'm only writing this because the TV in this place doesn't work. Looks like someone kicked it in. Not that I care, but there's literally nothing else to do except see how many cockroaches you can spot. I'm up to three four. I don't know why America's got so many of these things. I bet you do, but don't bother telling me, because I don't care.

Actually now the people in the room next door are having a massive argument, so that's something to listen to. Not that it's interesting in any way whatsoever. He thinks she's been sleeping around, she says he's only saying that because he wants to break up with her and go off with that slut Patsy. His evidence is patchy and he got pretty defensive when Patsy was brought into the conversation, so I think she's the one telling the truth. Not that I give a shit either way, but like I said, nothing to do. I didn't think America would be this boring. Of course when I start looking for

Of course I'm not going to actually send this, so I can say whatever I want without worrying having to care what you think about it. Spent the day washing dishes in a really dodgy Chinese takeaway. I could've counted cockroaches there too if I'd had a moment in between people yelling at me and chucking manky crockery in my direction. Still, I'm not actually eating anything there and I reckon pretty much everyone else there is here illegally, so it seems like a good place to start. Bet you're wondering what it is I'm starting, but tough luck, I'm not going to tell you. It's more use than you're being, doing your codebreaking and blood spatters homework like a good little successor. Although are you studying different stuff now you're definitely the new L? Are they training you up?

There isn't any air-conditioning in here so I'm not even bothering trying to sleep, so that's why I'm still writing this stupid letter. Idiots next door have shut up now, he's stormed off and she's crying. Cockroach count is at seven, but I reckon some of those I might have already seen. If I was a massive geek like YOU I'd probably tag them or something, paint them, so I could tell when I'd already counted one. But I'm not, because I've got bigger things to worry think about. Are you missing me already? I bet you're not, I bet you think you know exactly how it's all going to work now. That's where you're going to lose, because actually real life is cockroaches and weirdoes ordering egg fried rice at three a.m. and sluts called Patsy and all that stuff. This is just the next test, I'm going to walk it, and you won't even show up. Cockroach just crawled across the ceiling. Think I'm going to try throwing my boot at it and see if that helps.