On the fifth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
five skeletons
[Title] Skeletons in the Closet
[Fandom] Akira (movie)
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Kai/Yamagata. Kai doesn't have any secrets. Except one.
Kai doesn’t have skeletons in the closet. The stuff he does, the mistakes he makes, they’re always on display. The criminal record and the delinquent reputation and the way he’s too loud and too smart not to piss people off (Kaneda, though, seems generally cool with it, which is probably why Kai’s in the gang at all)…
Nope, he’s hardly perfect but he’s honest about it.
Except... that’s bullshit and he knows it’s bullshit because if he’s got nothing to hide then why is he keeping Yamagata’s old T-shirt under his pillow?
It was a late night, Yamagata blackout drunk and sleeping on the floor of Kai’s dorm room because he could barely walk, let alone ride a bike. The next morning hungover and grouchy and pulling off the layers of T-shirts, Kai keeping his eyes on the floor and not on the patches of lean, tanned skin. Yamagata wandering back into his room damp-haired and slightly less bad-tempered, shrugging shirts over his head, hair in his eyes, one shirt left behind half-kicked under the bed. Kai wasn’t going to hand it over at school like he thought Yamagata really cared, was he? And it smelt of the guy’s skin and of oil and of soy sauce without being filthy. And if Kai caught a breath of that he could remember Yamagata in his room, patches of skin, hands, and come on, he knew for a fact that everyone else kept girlie mags under their beds and Kaneda had said once he always tried to steal a pair of panties from every girl he dated…
So it was fine and normal and he wasn’t doing anything creepy with it, and if Yamagata found it then Kai would just say it must’ve got tangled up in the sheets somehow and can’t he be bothered to keep track of his stuff, geez? But he knows that’s bullshit.
[Title] Knit Together
[Fandom] Malory Towers
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Mary-Lou was even a bit scared of skeletons.
Mary-Lou isn't going to admit this to anyone, but when she first came to Malory Towers she was even a little frightened of the skeleton in the science lab. Of course she knew it wasn't a real skeleton, she wasn't that silly, and if someone had asked she would have said that of course she didn't expect it to start moving or anything like that. But the sight of its grinning skull made her throat tighten and she spent the first term gazing fiercely at her book or at the blackboard and trying not to let it slide into the corner of her eye.
After everything that happened - Sally being ill, and Darrell being in trouble, and Mary-Lou being able to walk downstairs in the dark - she thought that maybe she could be brave about something else. And so on the last day of term, when no one was in lessons and her parents not due for another two hours, she stood in the empty sunlit lab in front of the skeleton hanging on a hook. Skulls and bones had always been something to be frightened of, but she stood still and watched it and after a bit her heart stopped thumping. “Poor thing,” she said to it, “you can't help it.” And - because the corridor outside was silent and it was the last day of term, after all - she took its hand, shook it as if she were saying thank you, and smiled at how she could see the pattern of its knuckle bones in her own hand. After all, it was rather wonderful how bones fitted together, and how they joined themselves back together if you broke them, and even real skulls would have only been people once, people just like her.
[Title] Last Rites
[Fandom] Akira (manga)
[Rating] PG for language and mention of death
[Notes/Summary] Kaisuke's doing the best he can to give the dead a send-off.
“I reckon this whole place could be cursed,” Kaisuke said, taking a swig from the bottle and passing it on. The glass glinted in the firelight. The darkness was much thicker now than it had been before. Kaneda wouldn't have said he was scared of the dark, just kind of taken aback how much of a difference it made when the dark was all there was.
“Shut up,” he said, taking a gulp of the vodka, “you're drunk.”
“And you're not?”
“You're shorter, you'll be drunker quicker -”
“Think about it,” Kaisuke said, louder, fixing him with the I'm-smarter-'n-you-and-we-both-know-it stare he'd only usually ever pulled on Yamagata. “You weren't here right after -”
“Geez, I'm sorry I got basically psychically obliterated, I'll be more careful next time -”
“Remember how great it was when he wasn't here?” Joker growled from the other side of the fire. Kaisuke rolled his eyes and nodded; Kaneda raised a finger at both of them. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me why we're cursed.”
“You weren't here right after,” Kaisuke said. “You didn't see all the skeletons. There was. Like. Fuck-loads of skeletons.”
“I did, remember in the subway, there were a ton of 'em -”
“That was after we started burning 'em,” Kaisuke said, like he'd been personally responsible for this idea instead of, no doubt, doing nothing more useful than rifling through the corpses' pockets and making off with anything barterable. If that was a word. Kaneda wasn't sure if it was and his friend was already carrying on, “Point is, there were a lot of dead people. And most of 'em we didn't, you know, get a priest in to do all the. You know. Rites. And if I'd been psychically obliterated by a really pissed-off creepy child for, like, no reason, I'd have held a grudge. And you know how that goes. Someone dies bearing a grudge and the next thing you know there's, there's blood coming out of the walls and ghosts with no legs crawling after you.”
“It'd be better if more of 'em didn't have legs, then we could run away faster -”
“Point is,” Kaisuke said, “That's why I started sayin' the prayers. I mean, it's way too late, there's like thousands of angry ghosts out there, but we gotta start somewhere.” He hiccuped slightly.
“You're both talkin' shit,” Joker said. “Stop hogging the booze.”
“Yeah?” Kaisuke said. “This from the guy who saw psychics communicating mind-to-mind, and Tetsuo turning into a giant melty baby, and... and a whole lot of weird shit? How d'you know all the stuff about ghosts and prayers isn't true? Kaneda came back from the dead.”
Joker glowered. “Well... first off, don't know why any crazy ghosts'd be mad at us, we spent all our time trying to beat Tetsuo into pulp. What more d'they fucking want? And... second, you don't know shit about praying. I heard you. You just mumble some crap about blah blah samsara, all is impermanent, hope the next life sucks less, rest in peace. That's hardly a fucking sutra.”
Kaisuke shrugged. “What else am I meant to do? Better'n nothing. Miyako's priests were way too busy fighting psychics and... whatever the hell else that weird bitch did. I'm the best we've got. Like with everything else in this place.”
“Right.” Kaneda raised the bottle. “We're the future.” The darkness was at his back but the campfire was hot and it jumped and popped, and when he craned his neck he could just about see the night sky behind the smoke rising.
[Title] All the World in Nature
[Fandom] X-Men: Apocalypse
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Erik talks to Nina about skeletons. Requested by lycoris.
In the garden. The sun setting. Nina sitting on her heels, staring at a tiny little skull. A mouse's, perhaps. Erik wants to tell her that it is all right, that an animal skull is all part of the natural world, but Nina talks about animals and about her friends at school often in the same breath. He looks at her, looks for tears in her eyes.
“It's all right, Daddy,” she says, and pats his arm with a grubby hand. “It's not a mouse any more. The mouse went away.”
“I know, darling.”
“Do you think it knows it's dead?”
It would be much, much better for Magda to have this conversation. Magda could tell their daughter whatever it is that children are supposed to believe about death. Erik can't remember what he used to believe about death. He thinks that he didn't really consider it much. Not until he was forced to.
“No,” he says. “I don't think that's how it works.”
Nina chews the side of her lip, then knuckles her face with her hands. Giggles. “Daddy, I can feel my bones. I've got a skeleton in my head.”
“You have.”
“Has everything got skeletons? No, things like slugs, they hasn't. But everything else. All skeletons walking around.”
Erik wants to put his arms round her and catch her up and swear to her that he will fight the entire world before he lets her end up a skeleton. He doesn't, though, he only puts his hand on her back - the tiny lumps of her spine - and says, “Not all things. What about jellyfish? Or octopuses -” He wriggles his fingers on her back and she shrieks. “No skeletons there -”
“I would like to say hello to a noctopus,” Nina says, looking sideways at him, and it amazes him that she already understands the concept of dropping hints. A baby and now a little girl with a whole universe behind her eyes. Inside her skull. “Perhaps we can find an octopus to visit. One day,” he says.
[Title] Final Girl
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Gum isn't too enthused about Hallowe'en costumes.
“I don’t see why we’ve got to dress up,” Gum said, folding her arms and glowering at the others.
“Because it’s Hallowe’en and it’s fun,” Yo-Yo said from behind a skeleton mask.
“You’re gonna melt in that thing after five minutes of skating.”
“Am not. Poison Jam can skate in masks and I’m both physically and mentally superior to ‘em. Besides, Kogane-cho’s terrifying at the best of times, you really wanna go in there on Hallowe’en in normal clothes? That’s got horror movie victim written all over it.”
“Maybe I’m the final girl, ever think of that?”
“Nah, you’re blonde, if you don’t join the ranks of the undead you’re doomed -” He yelped as Gum threw a can of spray paint at him.
“Besides,” Tab said, “it’s a cultural thing, right? We’re making Cube and Combo feel like they’re at home. Hallowe’en’s a big deal in America.”
“They’re not even in costume.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Cube’s got a pair of fairy wings on. She’s a magical goth girl. And Combo’s dyed his hair blonde and he’s gonna be Eminem.”
Gum groaned. “I thought you’d be on my side. Look at you. You can’t want to go out like that. You’re wearing a sheet.”
“And I think I can be legitimately creepy skating over the rooftops in the dark. Come on. Come to the dark side. No one’s gonna laugh at you, I promise. Mew’s got cat ears and a tail.”
Gum threw up her hands in defeat. “Fine.” She hurried into the kitchen. A few crashes later, she re-emerged clutching a piece of wood that looked like it might once have been the leg of one of the chairs. “Oh, come on,” she said when the other two looked baffled. “Short skirt? Blonde? Pointy stick? You seriously can't guess? I’m Buffy the Vampire Slayer, duh. No one’s gonna be making a horror movie victim out of me tonight.”
five skeletons
[Title] Skeletons in the Closet
[Fandom] Akira (movie)
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Kai/Yamagata. Kai doesn't have any secrets. Except one.
Kai doesn’t have skeletons in the closet. The stuff he does, the mistakes he makes, they’re always on display. The criminal record and the delinquent reputation and the way he’s too loud and too smart not to piss people off (Kaneda, though, seems generally cool with it, which is probably why Kai’s in the gang at all)…
Nope, he’s hardly perfect but he’s honest about it.
Except... that’s bullshit and he knows it’s bullshit because if he’s got nothing to hide then why is he keeping Yamagata’s old T-shirt under his pillow?
It was a late night, Yamagata blackout drunk and sleeping on the floor of Kai’s dorm room because he could barely walk, let alone ride a bike. The next morning hungover and grouchy and pulling off the layers of T-shirts, Kai keeping his eyes on the floor and not on the patches of lean, tanned skin. Yamagata wandering back into his room damp-haired and slightly less bad-tempered, shrugging shirts over his head, hair in his eyes, one shirt left behind half-kicked under the bed. Kai wasn’t going to hand it over at school like he thought Yamagata really cared, was he? And it smelt of the guy’s skin and of oil and of soy sauce without being filthy. And if Kai caught a breath of that he could remember Yamagata in his room, patches of skin, hands, and come on, he knew for a fact that everyone else kept girlie mags under their beds and Kaneda had said once he always tried to steal a pair of panties from every girl he dated…
So it was fine and normal and he wasn’t doing anything creepy with it, and if Yamagata found it then Kai would just say it must’ve got tangled up in the sheets somehow and can’t he be bothered to keep track of his stuff, geez? But he knows that’s bullshit.
[Title] Knit Together
[Fandom] Malory Towers
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Mary-Lou was even a bit scared of skeletons.
Mary-Lou isn't going to admit this to anyone, but when she first came to Malory Towers she was even a little frightened of the skeleton in the science lab. Of course she knew it wasn't a real skeleton, she wasn't that silly, and if someone had asked she would have said that of course she didn't expect it to start moving or anything like that. But the sight of its grinning skull made her throat tighten and she spent the first term gazing fiercely at her book or at the blackboard and trying not to let it slide into the corner of her eye.
After everything that happened - Sally being ill, and Darrell being in trouble, and Mary-Lou being able to walk downstairs in the dark - she thought that maybe she could be brave about something else. And so on the last day of term, when no one was in lessons and her parents not due for another two hours, she stood in the empty sunlit lab in front of the skeleton hanging on a hook. Skulls and bones had always been something to be frightened of, but she stood still and watched it and after a bit her heart stopped thumping. “Poor thing,” she said to it, “you can't help it.” And - because the corridor outside was silent and it was the last day of term, after all - she took its hand, shook it as if she were saying thank you, and smiled at how she could see the pattern of its knuckle bones in her own hand. After all, it was rather wonderful how bones fitted together, and how they joined themselves back together if you broke them, and even real skulls would have only been people once, people just like her.
[Title] Last Rites
[Fandom] Akira (manga)
[Rating] PG for language and mention of death
[Notes/Summary] Kaisuke's doing the best he can to give the dead a send-off.
“I reckon this whole place could be cursed,” Kaisuke said, taking a swig from the bottle and passing it on. The glass glinted in the firelight. The darkness was much thicker now than it had been before. Kaneda wouldn't have said he was scared of the dark, just kind of taken aback how much of a difference it made when the dark was all there was.
“Shut up,” he said, taking a gulp of the vodka, “you're drunk.”
“And you're not?”
“You're shorter, you'll be drunker quicker -”
“Think about it,” Kaisuke said, louder, fixing him with the I'm-smarter-'n-you-and-we-both-know-it stare he'd only usually ever pulled on Yamagata. “You weren't here right after -”
“Geez, I'm sorry I got basically psychically obliterated, I'll be more careful next time -”
“Remember how great it was when he wasn't here?” Joker growled from the other side of the fire. Kaisuke rolled his eyes and nodded; Kaneda raised a finger at both of them. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me why we're cursed.”
“You weren't here right after,” Kaisuke said. “You didn't see all the skeletons. There was. Like. Fuck-loads of skeletons.”
“I did, remember in the subway, there were a ton of 'em -”
“That was after we started burning 'em,” Kaisuke said, like he'd been personally responsible for this idea instead of, no doubt, doing nothing more useful than rifling through the corpses' pockets and making off with anything barterable. If that was a word. Kaneda wasn't sure if it was and his friend was already carrying on, “Point is, there were a lot of dead people. And most of 'em we didn't, you know, get a priest in to do all the. You know. Rites. And if I'd been psychically obliterated by a really pissed-off creepy child for, like, no reason, I'd have held a grudge. And you know how that goes. Someone dies bearing a grudge and the next thing you know there's, there's blood coming out of the walls and ghosts with no legs crawling after you.”
“It'd be better if more of 'em didn't have legs, then we could run away faster -”
“Point is,” Kaisuke said, “That's why I started sayin' the prayers. I mean, it's way too late, there's like thousands of angry ghosts out there, but we gotta start somewhere.” He hiccuped slightly.
“You're both talkin' shit,” Joker said. “Stop hogging the booze.”
“Yeah?” Kaisuke said. “This from the guy who saw psychics communicating mind-to-mind, and Tetsuo turning into a giant melty baby, and... and a whole lot of weird shit? How d'you know all the stuff about ghosts and prayers isn't true? Kaneda came back from the dead.”
Joker glowered. “Well... first off, don't know why any crazy ghosts'd be mad at us, we spent all our time trying to beat Tetsuo into pulp. What more d'they fucking want? And... second, you don't know shit about praying. I heard you. You just mumble some crap about blah blah samsara, all is impermanent, hope the next life sucks less, rest in peace. That's hardly a fucking sutra.”
Kaisuke shrugged. “What else am I meant to do? Better'n nothing. Miyako's priests were way too busy fighting psychics and... whatever the hell else that weird bitch did. I'm the best we've got. Like with everything else in this place.”
“Right.” Kaneda raised the bottle. “We're the future.” The darkness was at his back but the campfire was hot and it jumped and popped, and when he craned his neck he could just about see the night sky behind the smoke rising.
[Title] All the World in Nature
[Fandom] X-Men: Apocalypse
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Erik talks to Nina about skeletons. Requested by lycoris.
In the garden. The sun setting. Nina sitting on her heels, staring at a tiny little skull. A mouse's, perhaps. Erik wants to tell her that it is all right, that an animal skull is all part of the natural world, but Nina talks about animals and about her friends at school often in the same breath. He looks at her, looks for tears in her eyes.
“It's all right, Daddy,” she says, and pats his arm with a grubby hand. “It's not a mouse any more. The mouse went away.”
“I know, darling.”
“Do you think it knows it's dead?”
It would be much, much better for Magda to have this conversation. Magda could tell their daughter whatever it is that children are supposed to believe about death. Erik can't remember what he used to believe about death. He thinks that he didn't really consider it much. Not until he was forced to.
“No,” he says. “I don't think that's how it works.”
Nina chews the side of her lip, then knuckles her face with her hands. Giggles. “Daddy, I can feel my bones. I've got a skeleton in my head.”
“You have.”
“Has everything got skeletons? No, things like slugs, they hasn't. But everything else. All skeletons walking around.”
Erik wants to put his arms round her and catch her up and swear to her that he will fight the entire world before he lets her end up a skeleton. He doesn't, though, he only puts his hand on her back - the tiny lumps of her spine - and says, “Not all things. What about jellyfish? Or octopuses -” He wriggles his fingers on her back and she shrieks. “No skeletons there -”
“I would like to say hello to a noctopus,” Nina says, looking sideways at him, and it amazes him that she already understands the concept of dropping hints. A baby and now a little girl with a whole universe behind her eyes. Inside her skull. “Perhaps we can find an octopus to visit. One day,” he says.
[Title] Final Girl
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Gum isn't too enthused about Hallowe'en costumes.
“I don’t see why we’ve got to dress up,” Gum said, folding her arms and glowering at the others.
“Because it’s Hallowe’en and it’s fun,” Yo-Yo said from behind a skeleton mask.
“You’re gonna melt in that thing after five minutes of skating.”
“Am not. Poison Jam can skate in masks and I’m both physically and mentally superior to ‘em. Besides, Kogane-cho’s terrifying at the best of times, you really wanna go in there on Hallowe’en in normal clothes? That’s got horror movie victim written all over it.”
“Maybe I’m the final girl, ever think of that?”
“Nah, you’re blonde, if you don’t join the ranks of the undead you’re doomed -” He yelped as Gum threw a can of spray paint at him.
“Besides,” Tab said, “it’s a cultural thing, right? We’re making Cube and Combo feel like they’re at home. Hallowe’en’s a big deal in America.”
“They’re not even in costume.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Cube’s got a pair of fairy wings on. She’s a magical goth girl. And Combo’s dyed his hair blonde and he’s gonna be Eminem.”
Gum groaned. “I thought you’d be on my side. Look at you. You can’t want to go out like that. You’re wearing a sheet.”
“And I think I can be legitimately creepy skating over the rooftops in the dark. Come on. Come to the dark side. No one’s gonna laugh at you, I promise. Mew’s got cat ears and a tail.”
Gum threw up her hands in defeat. “Fine.” She hurried into the kitchen. A few crashes later, she re-emerged clutching a piece of wood that looked like it might once have been the leg of one of the chairs. “Oh, come on,” she said when the other two looked baffled. “Short skirt? Blonde? Pointy stick? You seriously can't guess? I’m Buffy the Vampire Slayer, duh. No one’s gonna be making a horror movie victim out of me tonight.”