tallulahgs (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tallulahgs) wrote2014-01-05 10:34 am
tallulahgs) wrote2014-01-05 10:34 am
On the eleventh day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
eleven inaccessible things
[Title] Home
[Fandom] Battle Royale (manga)
[Rating] PG (includes a racial slur)
[Notes/Summary] Shuuya/Noriko. Sometimes life in a new country is tough, even when you're one of the survivors.
It sleets all day – not snow, which is at least pretty when it spirals against the sky, but rain with added lumps. The kettle shorts out when Noriko tries to make tea in the morning, so she boils water on the tiny stove and manages to burn her hand decanting it into mugs. The subway's late, and at work they make sarcastic comments about people who only turn up when they feel like it. Noriko presses her lips together and tells herself you can't cry at work when you've survived the Program. Her shoe has a hole above the toe and her feet are damp all day.
Last week, Shuuya said he thought he heard someone rattling the front door. Noriko has tried not to think about it since. It's probably just a tramp, Nori. Or someone looking for some easy money – I mean, it's not the fanciest neighbourhood. They're both thinking that it's more than that. Noriko gives a customer the wrong change and he shouts in her face and calls her a stupid Chink who should learn to speak English properly. Of course then she's upset enough that all the English she does know flies out of her head.
The storm turns into snow but it isn't pretty, it's just cold and yellow-white in the streetlamps. Her purse is almost empty and the bulk-buy supermarket has closed early because of the weather. She told Shuuya not to worry about dinner, that she'd come up with something. She stands outside the locked door and metal panels and pretends she's interested in reading the graffiti scratched on them and that her vision isn't blurring too much for her to be able to do it. The shop isn't going to open no matter how long she stands there pretending not to cry, so she grits her teeth and starts walking. Her teeth chatter. People look at her. She's pretty sure it's because she's a foreign girl in a baggy, grimy coat who looks like she's about to burst into tears, but she can't stop thinking about people rattling the front door, people looking for her face.
Inside the apartment, it's cold and Shuuya's kept the lights off, stuck a candle in a bottle on the rickety table. He cuddles her and says one of the guys at work bought doughnuts for everyone and he saved one for her. She wolfs it down, trying to use it to swallow the lump in her throat and the childish, ungrateful rage at life. She hasa life. She escaped. Except sometimes she's very tired of feeling guilty about that.
It's okay, he says. And, a bit later, You always have faith – heck, I'd have given up several times over without you. So you're allowed to get mad yourself. I'll do the pep talk, yeah? I mean, I'll probably be terrible about it, but I can try. Hey, I can set it to music.
She laughs, as a sob, and he hugs her some more and makes more tea for them on the stove. The candle blinks and wax runs down the glass. You don't need to sing it, she says, crying for no reason now, just because she can.
[Title] Puppets
[Fandom] Death Note/Homestuck
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Prompted bymayfic: "Dirk and Roxy are Wammy's House children."
Footsteps, and then: “Dirk,” Roxy says, and he could put the screwdriver down and acknowledge her but he can feel the routine shaping itself around them so he keeps his gaze on the robot's chestplate, carefully tightens a nail. She sighs, dramatically: “Dirk -” and then she's come round in front of him, wrapped her arms around the robot's head. “Di-Stri. Earth to Strider. Lalonde calling, pick up the -” Little thumb and fingers extended - “phone.”
Comedy skit for whatever invisible audience he thought he had is completed, so he rocks back on his heels, looks up at her. “Roxy.”
A grin breaks over her face – she always smiles like she means it, like she's genuinely really happy. “I would be all, 'sorry for disturbing you as you build your killer robot army', but I've been looking for you for ages. If you want to build a killer robot army, why don't you do it in tech class? Mr Wammy'd like a killer robot army. He could make a whole bunch of Ls and set them on the criminals of the universe.”
“Who says he isn't?” Dirk says, wondering if she gave him that lead-in on purpose – but she frowns, looking legitimately puzzled for a second, before getting his point and rolling her eyes. “Whatevs. That's deep. Doesn't explain why you've got to sneak off and do robotics in the attic.”
“It seemed an appropriately L-like thing to do.” He keeps his face blank. Roxy pushes herself off the robot, wanders over to the small window. You can't see anything of the ground – nothing but sky, currently a bright, flat blue. Roxy starts painting a :3 face in the dust on the glass, and says, “So,” and then, “Yeah,” and then, “So what you just said is also pretty appropriate, 'cause I was looking for you to ask you about all this L stuff.”
“When does anyone here ever talk about anything else?” He lets his voice grow lighter, makes it sound like hyperbole. Roxy snorts. “Don't pretend you don't think about it. Even if it's just thinkin' about how much you're not.”
“Really? So you think there's only two modes of existence for those of us living here: obsessive consideration of how to become L, or obsessive consideration of how to avoid the entire question?”
“Nah, I think there's only one mode of existence,” she says, making air quotes, “and that's obsessive consideration of whatever it is that means we couldn't hack it in normal life. Like me being all 'oh em gee, science is the best, also, wizards. Wizards are also the best, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a loser'. Or you being all...” She looks round at him, face thoughtful, and he wonders what she's going to say, but in the end she just shrugs, grins: “Being all 'robots and puppets are my BFFs'. You know. Like that.” The easy option, the obvious dig.
“What I was looking to ask you about,” she says, “is whether you're after it. Being L. Or if you're not. Or... if you'll say you're not, but really you totally are because irony. Actually thinking about it, why am I even asking? You're not gonna give me a proper answer.”
“What about you?” he says. And then – it's a kindlier comment than he'd normally make, but she has this effect on him: “You do have two Ls in your name already. You're ahead of the curve.”
She grins again. “Right, and don't you forget it.” Then, face growing more serious, she slides down against the wall to sit. “I dunno. I reckon they don't want an L who pinches Roger's gin all the time. I reckon that has, shall we say, scuppered my chances. The good ship RoLa-L -” She makes an L shape with her thumb and finger. “- is holed below the waterline and we forgot to pack enough lifejackets.”
Dirk wants to ask her something along the lines of whether it was intentional sabotage or not, but he wonders if she knows the answer. Quite often they can talk like this all afternoon, neither of them admitting anything. Not that that's ever been outside his capabilities, but her chattiness and hand gestures and flirting are a mask, and he wonders how conscious she is of it. She'd probably make a pretty good L, though he agrees the gin-drinking would be a problem. But he can't say it out loud. It's wrapped in too many layers of meaning, like everything here. The smiley face she drew on the window hangs in the sky above them as he opens up the robot's face plate and starts wiring its optics.
[Title] Hunger
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Prompted bystill_lycoris: "So why does Mello like chocolate so much, anyway?"
It feels like a night for saying all the things in your heart that would normally be left unsaid – or some other shit line from a Top Forty ballad – but Matt's not sure he's got many things left to say. There's pointless it was me who filled your shoes with baked beans that one time stuff, which either Mello will use as an excuse to punch him or won't even pretend to care about (and Matt's not sure which one would be more depressing) or there's the real down-to-the-wire we're going to die, aren't we shit, which he sort of doesn't want to get into.
Which leaves only one other thing-he's-always-wanted-to-say-but-never-quite-dared:
“So why do you like chocolate so much, anyway?”
Mello fixes him with the death glare he always gives when he suspects Matt is trying to get one over on him. “What sort of a question is that?”
“Well, I know everyone likes chocolate, but not everyone kneecaps a mobster because they deliberately buy Hershey's instead of the fancy dark cocoa stuff.”
“He was asking for it,” Mello says, absently, but he leans back on the couch now as if the reminder of past sins has reassured him there isn't a trick to this. Or perhaps he'd been wondering what to say, too. “I like eating chocolate, why's that so weird? Especially the really strong stuff -”
“Yeah, I know, 90% cocoa -”
“The way it sort of sucks a layer of skin off your tongue because it's so bitter... it's a rush, what can I say.” A scowl: “And don't say I'm only doing it because L likes cake and I want to be like him, it's nothing to fucking do with that. I liked it way before I even came to Wammy's House, okay?”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” A quick glance, and then: “My parents came to England in a shipping container, okay? I think when I was really little there were eight of us living in one room and hiding every time it looked like the police might come round. And even when it was just us... I've got no idea where they got their money from, I reckon she was probably a hooker and he was stealing stuff and selling it on. I know the house was always full of dodgy electronic shit, I used to get... I mean, I wasn't allowed to touch it.” His eyes are narrowed and he spits out the words. “The point was there wasn't any fucking money. Dunno when I first ate chocolate, but it wasn't for ages. I think... it was at school, some kid... I shoved him over and took his Crunchie bar...”
“Yeah, that sounds like you.”
Mello gives him the finger. “It was amazing. I was hungry like all the time, and I swear, getting high's got nothing on that first taste of chocolate after I'd had two meals in three days.”
Matt nods, feeling kind of bad really that he's known Mello way too long and never bothered to find out anything about his pre-Wammy's life (though Mello did always give the impression he'd kick him in the balls if he asked).
Actually, what he feels bad about is that Mello would never have told him that – even if it is a lie, an appropriately tough background – if he didn't think that they're going to be dead by tomorrow.
“It tastes really fucking good,” Mello says, almost awkward. “That's all it is.”
Matt could make fun of him a little – that's what their friendship's meant to be about, after all (that and joining the Mafia/fighting crime) – but the night's getting to him too. He shrugs. “Lucky we've got a box of it out back then, isn't it.” No need to discuss whether they'll be alive to eat it.
[Title] Daring
[Fandom] Malory Towers
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Sally/Alicia. Sally thinks she knows why she's doing this; she isn't so sure Alicia does.
Alicia leant over the side of the bed, reaching for her handbag. Sally watched her tangled hair sliding over her shoulders. Somehow that was more - intimate? No, more unsettling - than what she'd seen - and heard - of Alicia before now. Her back, spotted with a few freckles; her spine; her hair falling out of its grips.
Alicia flopped back onto the bed, cigarettes in hand.
"I didn't know you smoked," Sally said.
"Well, it's hardly surprising, is it?" Alicia sounded oddly listless. "And there's a lot you don't know about me."
"If you smoke in here, Darrell will notice."
"Tell her you've picked the habit up." A slow smile. "Give her some unexpected news to think about."
"I doubt she'll think about it -" and Sally had only meant that, as Alicia said, it was hardly a surprising thing to do, but somehow it ended up sounding like Darrell never thinks about me. She thought she'd done a good job of keeping her voice steady, too, but Alicia glanced at her, then dropped the cigarettes onto the bedside table and gave her a sort of shove on the shoulder.
"Don't start," she said, but quite gently, for her. "You're fine. Unless you've decided you've made a horrible mistake, letting someone as don't-care-ish as me into your room?"
Sally wanted to say it's a little late to start regretting it now, or it isn't as if I didn't know what you were like, or isn't it funny, me finding you a comfort now? But deep down perhaps she was still the strange, quiet girl who closed herself off when things were bad, because she didn't want to say anything. (Were things bad? In a lot of ways - tea and toast and afternoons in the library and the sun orange and white against bare branches - things weren't bad at all.)
(In other ways, things hurt.)
"Why are you doing this?" she said at last, once Alicia had got bored of comforting and started lighting up. "Is there someone you miss?" She worked on how she said that. She made sure there wasn't any emphasis, nothing to turn it into is there someone you miss too?
"Gosh, no," Alicia said, with that annoying little smile Sally remembered from school. "Some of us do things just because they're fun, surely you know that? After all, you've known me long enough."
"Yes. Too much dare, isn't it?" Sally didn't believe it for a second, but she didn't actually want a confrontation. When they were being civil, it was easy to pretend that none of the hurt was really there after all.
[Title] After the Earthquake
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] The Kira case is over, and maybe things are getting back to normal. Prompted bystill_lycoris: "Matsuda/Ide, looking for hope."
The days were getting longer - even though it was still dark when Ide left work- and he no longer had to pull on an overcoat in the mornings. And reality was slowly settling back around him. Kira was gone. The news only mentioned him every other week. Ide hadn't spotted any fanatical graffiti for at least a month. It made him think of earthquakes and how once they were over you couldn't quite believe the ground had been able to shake itself so violently because now everything seemed so still, and as if it had always been still.
He didn't want to say this to Matsuda, because he knew it was stupid and made no sense, but he wanted to say something to Matsuda, because Matsuda had been silent and unsmiling since January 28th and that was too long to keep thinking about everything Raito had done. And the last time he had tried to say something to Matsuda – tried to actually be the initiator in one of their interminable discussions about romance – it had been early February, with frost on the ground, and he'd said... some stupid things and Matsuda hadn't even laughed at him.
The sun spilled through the water-spotted windows and Matsuda turned to him and said, About what you said before... and suddenly Ide was nothing but pins and needles and heartbeats and he snapped, Forget it, it's not important. Matsuda blinked and said, I just thought, if you wanted...
You don't have to. It was stupid.
I want to, Matsuda said, and he actually smiled, that stupid I-know-I'm-being-an-idiot-but-if-I-smile-about-it-maybe-you-won't-hate-me look. Ide thought that he shouldn't know anybody this well. He also thought it was most likely a desperate attempt on Matsuda's part to pretend everything was back to normal, that you could still find small, stupid, nice things in the world. On the other hand, what was wrong with looking for that? Maybe he wouldn't find it, but on a softly sunlit day you could pretend.
[Title] Friday Nights
[Fandom] Doctor Who (new series)
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Prompted bystill_lycoris: "Rory wouldn't mind something normal..."
You could argue – and Amy does, sometimes, usually when Rory is looking wistful about how they don't have a regular-film-night or a cooking-dinner-together or a weekend-breakfast-in-bed like other couples – that someone who wanted a structured week and cuddling on the sofa in the evenings wouldn't have become a nurse. “It's not like you're not being dragged out of the house on shift half the time anyway,” she says, hugging a cushion and leaning over to prod him. “And last week was because of Neil calling in sick and you covering for him, it wasn't anything to do with the Doctor.”
She smiles at him, and he finds himself smiling back: “Yeah, fair point. But... you know, that was flu. And then when I got there I was just picking broken glass out of drunk people's legs. Sewing children's fingers back on. That kind of stuff. There wasn't any reality-warping. Time stayed in a straight line. You know.”
Amy pulls a face. “Can't understand why you weren't desperate to get back on the TARDIS.”
She really can't, and so Rory lets it go. He doesn't bother explaining that while she seems to feel like this – eating takeaway on the sofa and kicking idly at each other's feet – is what she does in-between times and the Doctor's return is what she waits for, things are the other way round for him. Perhaps he did choose his job because part of him wanted uncertainty, high pressure – but he's got that, so he's more than happy to have dull, quiet evenings in, or weekends doing the shopping, or something. He doesn't say it, though. Amy understands that he likes nights like this, even if she doesn't understand why – so she makes time for them, and in turn he follows her, now, when she runs back off into space and time again.
[Title] Glitter
[Fandom] Battle Royale/Blake's 7
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Avon remembers his first kiss. A lot about it was confusing. Requested bystill_lycoris and the first time I've written for Blake's 7, so apologies for any canon errors.
Avon thinks very little about his childhood and adolescence for a number of reasons; in fact, he thinks so little of it that he doesn't bother enumerating those reasons even to himself. When faced with one of Vila's typically stupid questions: So, when was your first kiss, then? I mean, you have had one, right? he issues a put-down without the recollection of the incident even crossing his mind.
It surfaces later, just as he's falling asleep, but as the memories rise up he remembers also that thoughts of Kazuo had a habit of doing this – awakening just as he slept – even at the time.
It wasn't a time for thinking: at least, that's how he remembers it. He spent most of it being bored, and annoyed (more than annoyed? Angry? Possibly) and bypassing the laughably easy filters on the school vid-screens to cheat the game on online poker sites. Mostly the ones where the algorithms had clearly been written by a three-year-old. It wasn't much less boring than whatever they were meant to be studying, but at least it was boredom on his terms.
Kazuo, three rows behind him, had noticed his activities and asked him, after class, why he bothered to spend time on something so easy. He said, Are you afraid a more secure site would present too much of a challenge? Avon still can't tell if it was a goad or just directness.
Everything seemed full of potential that was closed off to him. Screens promised puzzles but they were always too easy. His route home from school took him down a street full of casinos that glittered with gold, but it was only coloured light. (People were closed off, too, but then they didn't even promise potential.)
He thought, and thinks, that Kazuo felt the same. Or at any rate, was plagued by a sense of something missing. It started with in-class competitions to overturn sites the fastest. The proposal to move on to dipping their hands into the pockets of each casino on that street and not get caught seemed natural: consideration of an academic problem that very swiftly became less academic in the small hours of the morning as they knelt by the screen in a small, stuffy room and tested their theories and walked away with fifty credits each every day for a month.
The kisses – and other things – were theory-testing too. Curiosity in case perhaps this was what was missing: if the reason they'd each never found a soulmate before was because of intelligence levels, or because no one else realised how people are just bones inside. Anyway, Avon didn't find anything in those kisses other than the realisation that unlikely the majority of his classmates, he wasn't going to risk anything for a quick grope in the dark. It was satisfying, but every time he got that close to Kazuo he knew he was risking – something – though he's damned now if he can work out what it was.
(Because Kazuo broke someone's arm once and popped out a man's eyeball on another occasion and once snapped Avon's little finger with little provocation, but that wasn't the risk – that was almost expected -)
It was always dry and hot and there was always dust in your shoes. Avon doesn't miss that, or the kissing, or even the teamwork, but something about it stays with him. Perhaps just that then he still believed one day he'd make the potential into reality.
[Title] Hearts
[Fandom] Malory Towers
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Felicity and June talk about vulnerability.
“Do you have a heart?” Felicity said, staring up at the night sky by the swimming pool. “I don't mean that horribly, June. Does anything ever actually hurt you?”
June snorted. “What an idiotic question.”
“Which you're not answering.”
“Midnight feasts aren't for dissecting my faults.”
“I don't think it counts as a midnight feast if there's only two of us.” Felicity rolled onto her stomach, let her fingers drift through the shimmering water. “And I didn't mean it as a fault. It seems like you could go on forever, no matter what bad things happened to you.”
“I'm better than I was,” June said, sitting up. “I can admit when something's upset me. I just don't let it show. I think you're better off, though.”
“Really?” Felicity said. “You wait – if we get caught out here, I'll be the one trying not to cry when we get a wigging.”
“Yes, but right now, you look happy.” June turned away, picked at the edge of the picnic rug they were sitting on. “It's nice to watch you, actually. No one would say that about me.”
Silence for a few moments except for the hiss of the waves.
Felicity stared out at the dark horizon and the moon fragmenting on the surface of the pool, and said, “Well... I would.”
[Title] Happy New Year
[Fandom] Death Note
[Notes/Summary] In which three groups of people see in the new year and try not to notice all the things it probably won't bring them.
Misa was at home on her own this New Year's with a bottle of wine and frost on the inside of the windows. Huddled in a duvet on the sofa watching the New Year sing-off show. (Not invited to perform this year.) She'd had a couple of texts earlier in December from once-friends: we're going out drinking but I guess you'll want a night in with the boyfriend? ;) Bring him along if not! Misa hadn't even bothered asking Raito.
It's late and it's cold and she's wearing a skimpy black dress just because and she's finding it hard to taste the wine: it's just warmth and sourness and pushing-away-the-feelings. She's not sure what the feelings are but she's happier without them. Raito's working, of course, because that's what he does, but that's okay, you don't want a fiance who's a sponger. The duvet smells of wine and her own body heat and the singers behind the glass of the TV seem more and more stupid every time she looks up at them.
There is one moment. A sip of wine, and a high note from a girl onscreen in a red kimono, and knowledge as perfect and delicate as the frost flowers:
Raito will never love you like you love him. He just won't.
Misa breathes in and it's like taking a breath in freezing temperatures; you feel it stick in your throat. A high ringing in her ears like a finger dragged round a wine glass. A silly little girl in a cheap dress waiting for someone who'll never come home.
A shadow behind her. She turns away from it, refills her glass to the brim, drinks. Tells herself she's had so much her thoughts no longer make any sense. Turns the music up louder. Waits for everything to freeze.
***
“We're going to get him, right?” Matsuda says, too cheerfully, on January 3rd.
“Of course we will,” Raito says, giving him that warm determined smile that always makes you believe him.
“We'll certainly do our best,” Chief Yagami says, but he sounds tired even only three days into the new year.
The other three don't say anything. It's hard not to think about cold cases, files archived, grieving relatives slowly forgotten about. Only they won't get a chance to forget this case, not with the slow drip-feed of new deaths. Perhaps you would stop caring about it, if you accepted you were going to have to give up. Perhaps.
***
Sayu and Sachiko sit in front of the TV watching the sing-off show and eating noodles. Outside, there are already spatters of fireworks going off. Sachiko makes little comments every so often like, “Doesn't she sing well?” or, “I don't think much of her dress,” or “I wonder if it'll snow? It's been cold enough.” When the meal's over and the washing-up is done, she sits on the couch with Sayu and, as the bells ring and the fireworks explode at midnight, clutches her hand.
Sayu thought she'd be unable to stop thinking of how New Year's should be: the stupid games, her shouting at Raito that he's a cheat because he keeps winning; helping Mum make the dinner; money in soft red envelopes; Dad pulling faces at her to make her laugh and then telling her, First smile! First smile of the new year! But actually she hardly thinks of it at all, because it all seems so far away. When Dad couldn't come home for new year's, she forgave him, because he was Dad and he was like that. Raito...
She can't actually imagine her brother laughing at the card games or eating too much or teasing her about joining in with the TV singers. Not any more. In the flickering light of the screen she thinks she sees two little kids scampering to the window to look at the fireworks, but they might as well be strangers. Or shapes hidden under the snow; once they meant something but now they're just part of the emptiness.
eleven inaccessible things
[Title] Home
[Fandom] Battle Royale (manga)
[Rating] PG (includes a racial slur)
[Notes/Summary] Shuuya/Noriko. Sometimes life in a new country is tough, even when you're one of the survivors.
It sleets all day – not snow, which is at least pretty when it spirals against the sky, but rain with added lumps. The kettle shorts out when Noriko tries to make tea in the morning, so she boils water on the tiny stove and manages to burn her hand decanting it into mugs. The subway's late, and at work they make sarcastic comments about people who only turn up when they feel like it. Noriko presses her lips together and tells herself you can't cry at work when you've survived the Program. Her shoe has a hole above the toe and her feet are damp all day.
Last week, Shuuya said he thought he heard someone rattling the front door. Noriko has tried not to think about it since. It's probably just a tramp, Nori. Or someone looking for some easy money – I mean, it's not the fanciest neighbourhood. They're both thinking that it's more than that. Noriko gives a customer the wrong change and he shouts in her face and calls her a stupid Chink who should learn to speak English properly. Of course then she's upset enough that all the English she does know flies out of her head.
The storm turns into snow but it isn't pretty, it's just cold and yellow-white in the streetlamps. Her purse is almost empty and the bulk-buy supermarket has closed early because of the weather. She told Shuuya not to worry about dinner, that she'd come up with something. She stands outside the locked door and metal panels and pretends she's interested in reading the graffiti scratched on them and that her vision isn't blurring too much for her to be able to do it. The shop isn't going to open no matter how long she stands there pretending not to cry, so she grits her teeth and starts walking. Her teeth chatter. People look at her. She's pretty sure it's because she's a foreign girl in a baggy, grimy coat who looks like she's about to burst into tears, but she can't stop thinking about people rattling the front door, people looking for her face.
Inside the apartment, it's cold and Shuuya's kept the lights off, stuck a candle in a bottle on the rickety table. He cuddles her and says one of the guys at work bought doughnuts for everyone and he saved one for her. She wolfs it down, trying to use it to swallow the lump in her throat and the childish, ungrateful rage at life. She hasa life. She escaped. Except sometimes she's very tired of feeling guilty about that.
It's okay, he says. And, a bit later, You always have faith – heck, I'd have given up several times over without you. So you're allowed to get mad yourself. I'll do the pep talk, yeah? I mean, I'll probably be terrible about it, but I can try. Hey, I can set it to music.
She laughs, as a sob, and he hugs her some more and makes more tea for them on the stove. The candle blinks and wax runs down the glass. You don't need to sing it, she says, crying for no reason now, just because she can.
[Title] Puppets
[Fandom] Death Note/Homestuck
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Prompted by
mayfic: "Dirk and Roxy are Wammy's House children."Footsteps, and then: “Dirk,” Roxy says, and he could put the screwdriver down and acknowledge her but he can feel the routine shaping itself around them so he keeps his gaze on the robot's chestplate, carefully tightens a nail. She sighs, dramatically: “Dirk -” and then she's come round in front of him, wrapped her arms around the robot's head. “Di-Stri. Earth to Strider. Lalonde calling, pick up the -” Little thumb and fingers extended - “phone.”
Comedy skit for whatever invisible audience he thought he had is completed, so he rocks back on his heels, looks up at her. “Roxy.”
A grin breaks over her face – she always smiles like she means it, like she's genuinely really happy. “I would be all, 'sorry for disturbing you as you build your killer robot army', but I've been looking for you for ages. If you want to build a killer robot army, why don't you do it in tech class? Mr Wammy'd like a killer robot army. He could make a whole bunch of Ls and set them on the criminals of the universe.”
“Who says he isn't?” Dirk says, wondering if she gave him that lead-in on purpose – but she frowns, looking legitimately puzzled for a second, before getting his point and rolling her eyes. “Whatevs. That's deep. Doesn't explain why you've got to sneak off and do robotics in the attic.”
“It seemed an appropriately L-like thing to do.” He keeps his face blank. Roxy pushes herself off the robot, wanders over to the small window. You can't see anything of the ground – nothing but sky, currently a bright, flat blue. Roxy starts painting a :3 face in the dust on the glass, and says, “So,” and then, “Yeah,” and then, “So what you just said is also pretty appropriate, 'cause I was looking for you to ask you about all this L stuff.”
“When does anyone here ever talk about anything else?” He lets his voice grow lighter, makes it sound like hyperbole. Roxy snorts. “Don't pretend you don't think about it. Even if it's just thinkin' about how much you're not.”
“Really? So you think there's only two modes of existence for those of us living here: obsessive consideration of how to become L, or obsessive consideration of how to avoid the entire question?”
“Nah, I think there's only one mode of existence,” she says, making air quotes, “and that's obsessive consideration of whatever it is that means we couldn't hack it in normal life. Like me being all 'oh em gee, science is the best, also, wizards. Wizards are also the best, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a loser'. Or you being all...” She looks round at him, face thoughtful, and he wonders what she's going to say, but in the end she just shrugs, grins: “Being all 'robots and puppets are my BFFs'. You know. Like that.” The easy option, the obvious dig.
“What I was looking to ask you about,” she says, “is whether you're after it. Being L. Or if you're not. Or... if you'll say you're not, but really you totally are because irony. Actually thinking about it, why am I even asking? You're not gonna give me a proper answer.”
“What about you?” he says. And then – it's a kindlier comment than he'd normally make, but she has this effect on him: “You do have two Ls in your name already. You're ahead of the curve.”
She grins again. “Right, and don't you forget it.” Then, face growing more serious, she slides down against the wall to sit. “I dunno. I reckon they don't want an L who pinches Roger's gin all the time. I reckon that has, shall we say, scuppered my chances. The good ship RoLa-L -” She makes an L shape with her thumb and finger. “- is holed below the waterline and we forgot to pack enough lifejackets.”
Dirk wants to ask her something along the lines of whether it was intentional sabotage or not, but he wonders if she knows the answer. Quite often they can talk like this all afternoon, neither of them admitting anything. Not that that's ever been outside his capabilities, but her chattiness and hand gestures and flirting are a mask, and he wonders how conscious she is of it. She'd probably make a pretty good L, though he agrees the gin-drinking would be a problem. But he can't say it out loud. It's wrapped in too many layers of meaning, like everything here. The smiley face she drew on the window hangs in the sky above them as he opens up the robot's face plate and starts wiring its optics.
[Title] Hunger
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Prompted by
still_lycoris: "So why does Mello like chocolate so much, anyway?"It feels like a night for saying all the things in your heart that would normally be left unsaid – or some other shit line from a Top Forty ballad – but Matt's not sure he's got many things left to say. There's pointless it was me who filled your shoes with baked beans that one time stuff, which either Mello will use as an excuse to punch him or won't even pretend to care about (and Matt's not sure which one would be more depressing) or there's the real down-to-the-wire we're going to die, aren't we shit, which he sort of doesn't want to get into.
Which leaves only one other thing-he's-always-wanted-to-say-but-never-quite-dared:
“So why do you like chocolate so much, anyway?”
Mello fixes him with the death glare he always gives when he suspects Matt is trying to get one over on him. “What sort of a question is that?”
“Well, I know everyone likes chocolate, but not everyone kneecaps a mobster because they deliberately buy Hershey's instead of the fancy dark cocoa stuff.”
“He was asking for it,” Mello says, absently, but he leans back on the couch now as if the reminder of past sins has reassured him there isn't a trick to this. Or perhaps he'd been wondering what to say, too. “I like eating chocolate, why's that so weird? Especially the really strong stuff -”
“Yeah, I know, 90% cocoa -”
“The way it sort of sucks a layer of skin off your tongue because it's so bitter... it's a rush, what can I say.” A scowl: “And don't say I'm only doing it because L likes cake and I want to be like him, it's nothing to fucking do with that. I liked it way before I even came to Wammy's House, okay?”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” A quick glance, and then: “My parents came to England in a shipping container, okay? I think when I was really little there were eight of us living in one room and hiding every time it looked like the police might come round. And even when it was just us... I've got no idea where they got their money from, I reckon she was probably a hooker and he was stealing stuff and selling it on. I know the house was always full of dodgy electronic shit, I used to get... I mean, I wasn't allowed to touch it.” His eyes are narrowed and he spits out the words. “The point was there wasn't any fucking money. Dunno when I first ate chocolate, but it wasn't for ages. I think... it was at school, some kid... I shoved him over and took his Crunchie bar...”
“Yeah, that sounds like you.”
Mello gives him the finger. “It was amazing. I was hungry like all the time, and I swear, getting high's got nothing on that first taste of chocolate after I'd had two meals in three days.”
Matt nods, feeling kind of bad really that he's known Mello way too long and never bothered to find out anything about his pre-Wammy's life (though Mello did always give the impression he'd kick him in the balls if he asked).
Actually, what he feels bad about is that Mello would never have told him that – even if it is a lie, an appropriately tough background – if he didn't think that they're going to be dead by tomorrow.
“It tastes really fucking good,” Mello says, almost awkward. “That's all it is.”
Matt could make fun of him a little – that's what their friendship's meant to be about, after all (that and joining the Mafia/fighting crime) – but the night's getting to him too. He shrugs. “Lucky we've got a box of it out back then, isn't it.” No need to discuss whether they'll be alive to eat it.
[Title] Daring
[Fandom] Malory Towers
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Sally/Alicia. Sally thinks she knows why she's doing this; she isn't so sure Alicia does.
Alicia leant over the side of the bed, reaching for her handbag. Sally watched her tangled hair sliding over her shoulders. Somehow that was more - intimate? No, more unsettling - than what she'd seen - and heard - of Alicia before now. Her back, spotted with a few freckles; her spine; her hair falling out of its grips.
Alicia flopped back onto the bed, cigarettes in hand.
"I didn't know you smoked," Sally said.
"Well, it's hardly surprising, is it?" Alicia sounded oddly listless. "And there's a lot you don't know about me."
"If you smoke in here, Darrell will notice."
"Tell her you've picked the habit up." A slow smile. "Give her some unexpected news to think about."
"I doubt she'll think about it -" and Sally had only meant that, as Alicia said, it was hardly a surprising thing to do, but somehow it ended up sounding like Darrell never thinks about me. She thought she'd done a good job of keeping her voice steady, too, but Alicia glanced at her, then dropped the cigarettes onto the bedside table and gave her a sort of shove on the shoulder.
"Don't start," she said, but quite gently, for her. "You're fine. Unless you've decided you've made a horrible mistake, letting someone as don't-care-ish as me into your room?"
Sally wanted to say it's a little late to start regretting it now, or it isn't as if I didn't know what you were like, or isn't it funny, me finding you a comfort now? But deep down perhaps she was still the strange, quiet girl who closed herself off when things were bad, because she didn't want to say anything. (Were things bad? In a lot of ways - tea and toast and afternoons in the library and the sun orange and white against bare branches - things weren't bad at all.)
(In other ways, things hurt.)
"Why are you doing this?" she said at last, once Alicia had got bored of comforting and started lighting up. "Is there someone you miss?" She worked on how she said that. She made sure there wasn't any emphasis, nothing to turn it into is there someone you miss too?
"Gosh, no," Alicia said, with that annoying little smile Sally remembered from school. "Some of us do things just because they're fun, surely you know that? After all, you've known me long enough."
"Yes. Too much dare, isn't it?" Sally didn't believe it for a second, but she didn't actually want a confrontation. When they were being civil, it was easy to pretend that none of the hurt was really there after all.
[Title] After the Earthquake
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] The Kira case is over, and maybe things are getting back to normal. Prompted by
still_lycoris: "Matsuda/Ide, looking for hope."The days were getting longer - even though it was still dark when Ide left work- and he no longer had to pull on an overcoat in the mornings. And reality was slowly settling back around him. Kira was gone. The news only mentioned him every other week. Ide hadn't spotted any fanatical graffiti for at least a month. It made him think of earthquakes and how once they were over you couldn't quite believe the ground had been able to shake itself so violently because now everything seemed so still, and as if it had always been still.
He didn't want to say this to Matsuda, because he knew it was stupid and made no sense, but he wanted to say something to Matsuda, because Matsuda had been silent and unsmiling since January 28th and that was too long to keep thinking about everything Raito had done. And the last time he had tried to say something to Matsuda – tried to actually be the initiator in one of their interminable discussions about romance – it had been early February, with frost on the ground, and he'd said... some stupid things and Matsuda hadn't even laughed at him.
The sun spilled through the water-spotted windows and Matsuda turned to him and said, About what you said before... and suddenly Ide was nothing but pins and needles and heartbeats and he snapped, Forget it, it's not important. Matsuda blinked and said, I just thought, if you wanted...
You don't have to. It was stupid.
I want to, Matsuda said, and he actually smiled, that stupid I-know-I'm-being-an-idiot-but-if-I-smile-about-it-maybe-you-won't-hate-me look. Ide thought that he shouldn't know anybody this well. He also thought it was most likely a desperate attempt on Matsuda's part to pretend everything was back to normal, that you could still find small, stupid, nice things in the world. On the other hand, what was wrong with looking for that? Maybe he wouldn't find it, but on a softly sunlit day you could pretend.
[Title] Friday Nights
[Fandom] Doctor Who (new series)
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Prompted by
still_lycoris: "Rory wouldn't mind something normal..."You could argue – and Amy does, sometimes, usually when Rory is looking wistful about how they don't have a regular-film-night or a cooking-dinner-together or a weekend-breakfast-in-bed like other couples – that someone who wanted a structured week and cuddling on the sofa in the evenings wouldn't have become a nurse. “It's not like you're not being dragged out of the house on shift half the time anyway,” she says, hugging a cushion and leaning over to prod him. “And last week was because of Neil calling in sick and you covering for him, it wasn't anything to do with the Doctor.”
She smiles at him, and he finds himself smiling back: “Yeah, fair point. But... you know, that was flu. And then when I got there I was just picking broken glass out of drunk people's legs. Sewing children's fingers back on. That kind of stuff. There wasn't any reality-warping. Time stayed in a straight line. You know.”
Amy pulls a face. “Can't understand why you weren't desperate to get back on the TARDIS.”
She really can't, and so Rory lets it go. He doesn't bother explaining that while she seems to feel like this – eating takeaway on the sofa and kicking idly at each other's feet – is what she does in-between times and the Doctor's return is what she waits for, things are the other way round for him. Perhaps he did choose his job because part of him wanted uncertainty, high pressure – but he's got that, so he's more than happy to have dull, quiet evenings in, or weekends doing the shopping, or something. He doesn't say it, though. Amy understands that he likes nights like this, even if she doesn't understand why – so she makes time for them, and in turn he follows her, now, when she runs back off into space and time again.
[Title] Glitter
[Fandom] Battle Royale/Blake's 7
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Avon remembers his first kiss. A lot about it was confusing. Requested by
still_lycoris and the first time I've written for Blake's 7, so apologies for any canon errors.Avon thinks very little about his childhood and adolescence for a number of reasons; in fact, he thinks so little of it that he doesn't bother enumerating those reasons even to himself. When faced with one of Vila's typically stupid questions: So, when was your first kiss, then? I mean, you have had one, right? he issues a put-down without the recollection of the incident even crossing his mind.
It surfaces later, just as he's falling asleep, but as the memories rise up he remembers also that thoughts of Kazuo had a habit of doing this – awakening just as he slept – even at the time.
It wasn't a time for thinking: at least, that's how he remembers it. He spent most of it being bored, and annoyed (more than annoyed? Angry? Possibly) and bypassing the laughably easy filters on the school vid-screens to cheat the game on online poker sites. Mostly the ones where the algorithms had clearly been written by a three-year-old. It wasn't much less boring than whatever they were meant to be studying, but at least it was boredom on his terms.
Kazuo, three rows behind him, had noticed his activities and asked him, after class, why he bothered to spend time on something so easy. He said, Are you afraid a more secure site would present too much of a challenge? Avon still can't tell if it was a goad or just directness.
Everything seemed full of potential that was closed off to him. Screens promised puzzles but they were always too easy. His route home from school took him down a street full of casinos that glittered with gold, but it was only coloured light. (People were closed off, too, but then they didn't even promise potential.)
He thought, and thinks, that Kazuo felt the same. Or at any rate, was plagued by a sense of something missing. It started with in-class competitions to overturn sites the fastest. The proposal to move on to dipping their hands into the pockets of each casino on that street and not get caught seemed natural: consideration of an academic problem that very swiftly became less academic in the small hours of the morning as they knelt by the screen in a small, stuffy room and tested their theories and walked away with fifty credits each every day for a month.
The kisses – and other things – were theory-testing too. Curiosity in case perhaps this was what was missing: if the reason they'd each never found a soulmate before was because of intelligence levels, or because no one else realised how people are just bones inside. Anyway, Avon didn't find anything in those kisses other than the realisation that unlikely the majority of his classmates, he wasn't going to risk anything for a quick grope in the dark. It was satisfying, but every time he got that close to Kazuo he knew he was risking – something – though he's damned now if he can work out what it was.
(Because Kazuo broke someone's arm once and popped out a man's eyeball on another occasion and once snapped Avon's little finger with little provocation, but that wasn't the risk – that was almost expected -)
It was always dry and hot and there was always dust in your shoes. Avon doesn't miss that, or the kissing, or even the teamwork, but something about it stays with him. Perhaps just that then he still believed one day he'd make the potential into reality.
[Title] Hearts
[Fandom] Malory Towers
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Felicity and June talk about vulnerability.
“Do you have a heart?” Felicity said, staring up at the night sky by the swimming pool. “I don't mean that horribly, June. Does anything ever actually hurt you?”
June snorted. “What an idiotic question.”
“Which you're not answering.”
“Midnight feasts aren't for dissecting my faults.”
“I don't think it counts as a midnight feast if there's only two of us.” Felicity rolled onto her stomach, let her fingers drift through the shimmering water. “And I didn't mean it as a fault. It seems like you could go on forever, no matter what bad things happened to you.”
“I'm better than I was,” June said, sitting up. “I can admit when something's upset me. I just don't let it show. I think you're better off, though.”
“Really?” Felicity said. “You wait – if we get caught out here, I'll be the one trying not to cry when we get a wigging.”
“Yes, but right now, you look happy.” June turned away, picked at the edge of the picnic rug they were sitting on. “It's nice to watch you, actually. No one would say that about me.”
Silence for a few moments except for the hiss of the waves.
Felicity stared out at the dark horizon and the moon fragmenting on the surface of the pool, and said, “Well... I would.”
[Title] Happy New Year
[Fandom] Death Note
[Notes/Summary] In which three groups of people see in the new year and try not to notice all the things it probably won't bring them.
Misa was at home on her own this New Year's with a bottle of wine and frost on the inside of the windows. Huddled in a duvet on the sofa watching the New Year sing-off show. (Not invited to perform this year.) She'd had a couple of texts earlier in December from once-friends: we're going out drinking but I guess you'll want a night in with the boyfriend? ;) Bring him along if not! Misa hadn't even bothered asking Raito.
It's late and it's cold and she's wearing a skimpy black dress just because and she's finding it hard to taste the wine: it's just warmth and sourness and pushing-away-the-feelings. She's not sure what the feelings are but she's happier without them. Raito's working, of course, because that's what he does, but that's okay, you don't want a fiance who's a sponger. The duvet smells of wine and her own body heat and the singers behind the glass of the TV seem more and more stupid every time she looks up at them.
There is one moment. A sip of wine, and a high note from a girl onscreen in a red kimono, and knowledge as perfect and delicate as the frost flowers:
Raito will never love you like you love him. He just won't.
Misa breathes in and it's like taking a breath in freezing temperatures; you feel it stick in your throat. A high ringing in her ears like a finger dragged round a wine glass. A silly little girl in a cheap dress waiting for someone who'll never come home.
A shadow behind her. She turns away from it, refills her glass to the brim, drinks. Tells herself she's had so much her thoughts no longer make any sense. Turns the music up louder. Waits for everything to freeze.
***
“We're going to get him, right?” Matsuda says, too cheerfully, on January 3rd.
“Of course we will,” Raito says, giving him that warm determined smile that always makes you believe him.
“We'll certainly do our best,” Chief Yagami says, but he sounds tired even only three days into the new year.
The other three don't say anything. It's hard not to think about cold cases, files archived, grieving relatives slowly forgotten about. Only they won't get a chance to forget this case, not with the slow drip-feed of new deaths. Perhaps you would stop caring about it, if you accepted you were going to have to give up. Perhaps.
***
Sayu and Sachiko sit in front of the TV watching the sing-off show and eating noodles. Outside, there are already spatters of fireworks going off. Sachiko makes little comments every so often like, “Doesn't she sing well?” or, “I don't think much of her dress,” or “I wonder if it'll snow? It's been cold enough.” When the meal's over and the washing-up is done, she sits on the couch with Sayu and, as the bells ring and the fireworks explode at midnight, clutches her hand.
Sayu thought she'd be unable to stop thinking of how New Year's should be: the stupid games, her shouting at Raito that he's a cheat because he keeps winning; helping Mum make the dinner; money in soft red envelopes; Dad pulling faces at her to make her laugh and then telling her, First smile! First smile of the new year! But actually she hardly thinks of it at all, because it all seems so far away. When Dad couldn't come home for new year's, she forgave him, because he was Dad and he was like that. Raito...
She can't actually imagine her brother laughing at the card games or eating too much or teasing her about joining in with the TV singers. Not any more. In the flickering light of the screen she thinks she sees two little kids scampering to the window to look at the fireworks, but they might as well be strangers. Or shapes hidden under the snow; once they meant something but now they're just part of the emptiness.