131. ficlets: cersai/jaime (game of thrones), nate/serena (gg), chiles/beau (country strong)
Title | remember spring swaps snow for leaves
Rating | r
Characters | Cersei; Cersai/Jaime
Summary | She took what was his and made it theirs.
Notes | This is really vague head!canon for Cersei. I have not read the books so please don't sue me George R. R. Martin.
She is eleven the first time she kisses (really kisses) her brother, a messy collision of tongue and teeth, and she steps on his toes hard enough to make him growl deep in his throat and bite her lip enough to draw a thin line of blood.
She doesn't do it to rebuke him and she thinks that Jaime understands - she was only trying to get closer.
Cersei was a charming little girl, blonde hair trailing behind her through the courtyard in the endless summer, tongue poked into her cheek. She smiled with her eyes.
Her brother liked to taunt her, pulling her braids and racing past her. He smiled with his teeth, sharp and predatory.
She learned that smile from his mouth, from his tongue curling against hers, took what was his and made it theirs.
When noble boys game flocking to her blonde hair and her beguiling smile, Jaime would taunt her. "Children," he'd say, sneering, "chasing after your virtue like mutts."
She would smile and show her teeth: "I wouldn't fuck children."
He would tilt his head back and laugh. "Who's good enough to get under your skirt, Cersei?"
"The king." It was a throwaway answer.
Like a child, he'd pulled her hair. "And if you're already mine, sister?"
Jaime would take her much like she'd taken him: moving inside of her, stealing her secrets.
Cersei was lucky enough to come into the world with a partnership already in place. Born from the same womb, born of the same blood.
She fucks her brother in the king's bed, hisses his name and leaves marks on his shoulder with her teeth. She gives birth to his children and raises them to call him uncle, raises them to rank power and purity above all else.
She is not a queen who has regrets.
Life is a game and she plays it. Her allies and her family, the one based on blood and not the relationship she'll never have with a king who's in love with a corpse, are one and the same.
(The first baby, the first son - he was Robert's.
Cersei thinks of him sometimes when Jaime's mouth is hot by her ear and he says my queen in that mocking tone they both use so well - but only sometimes.)
Sansa Stark has a cluster of idiotic ideas in her pretty little head about what it will mean to be queen.
It takes a moment of studying her red hair and the way her tongue pokes into her cheek for Cersei to agree to her husband's idea. She will let this girl marry her son - maybe even once the Lannister dynasty overpowers the Baratheons.
Sansa is a silly little thing but she'll be easy enough to train, as long as there's someone to do her hair in the mornings and to share a bed with her at night. She'll carry beautiful sons.
It would be the sweetest of victories, incorporating a Stark daughter into the Lannister line.
Power and purity: Sansa will learn to listen to her husband.
Cersei was born in the summer and born with a brother.
She knows where she belongs, and she will fight for it.
Title | right back where we started from
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Serena; Nate/Serena.
Summary | Post-s4. California, here we come.
California's sun burns brighter than New York's and Serena learns that she doesn't want to make movies.
Nate appears out of nowhere on the one day it rains and it's his mouth by her ear, whispering, we need to cheer Chuck up. She rolls her eyes but she smiles and skips off work because she's never been good at saying no to Nate and bars and a critical part of this plan involves getting Chuck drunk.
There's a moment that night when she's at the bar demanding another round of tequila shots when Nate is suddenly behind her, his body pressing into hers, and she turns her head and laughs and lets him kiss her.
They leave Chuck to wallow in his misery, or whatever the hell he's doing, a gaggle of girls with beach-messy hair watching him across the bar. Nate spins her under his arm when they get to the beach and they kick off their shoes and she knows, right then, that she'll never see that pair of heels again, and she can't bring herself to care.
Nate tugs her skirt down her hips and her shirt over her head and she makes quick work of his clothes, too - they talk, yelling at each other over the sound of the waves, but she giggles more than she listens and waits until they're both naked in the water, limbs tangled, to kiss him again.
It's messy, sandy-skinned sex on the beach after that and he whispers too fast? against her lips and she breathes no, no, no and the moon is a white-bright spot behind her eyelids.
I don't know yet, she says softly when they're getting dressed, tugging at her skirt to straighten it out, but Nate's eyes are smiling at her, stars glinting in blue, like he knows just how much of a lie that is.
Because she knows that three years from now there will be one apartment and one rent cheque with both their names on it, that they'll eats Eggos for breakfast and Chinese food too often, that her stomach will swell with their first baby - made by accident, kept on purpose - and that Nate will ask her to marry him on this beach at night with one hand against the curve of her belly and the other in her hair and she'll say no but she'll kiss him anyway; he'll whisper I love you into her mouth and she'll tuck those words behind her teeth and under her tongue, swallow them down and keep them in her heart forever.
For now, he swats at her with his wrinkled t-shirt before he puts it on. Maybe I'll stick around while you figure it out.
She sticks her tongue out. Maybe, she says breezily, as if it isn't already set in stone, laid out already, a footpath in their memories.
Title | don't get more than your hopes up
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Chiles; Chiles/Beau.
Summary | Five facts about Chiles Stanton, beauty queen turned singer/songwriter.
Notes | I thought Country Strong was cute, okay. Title from Leighton Meester's Summer Girl.
one.
Fact: nobody takes a pageant queen seriously.
Chiles memorizes the dictionary and physics formulas. She can make a soufflé. She believes that she can sing and dance and write music, she knows she can.
But James likes to crook a finger under her chin fondly and call her honey and put her in dresses with full skirts that offer a view of her legs while still making her look like an innocent little kids. He hires people to fuss with her hair and her shoes and her makeup.
People look at her and they see perfectly coiffed hair and blush-red cheeks and ankles more comfortable in four-inch heels than cowboy boots. They see a pageant queen and they all call her honey - with their mouths and their eyes and the way they phrase their questions. Honey, like there's nothing beyond her dress and her smile, nothing but a pageant queen.
two.
Fact: Beau is like a little boy on the playground, but instead of pulling her air and throwing pebbles he mocks her flashcards and gets her drunk enough to strip off her clothes.
He mocks her the next morning, like she's scorned him somehow because she didn't fall apart at his charms and pull him into her bed.
three.
Fact: Chiles Stanton has seven smiles that she's perfected over the years.
But she doesn't quite recognize the way her lips tilt up when Beau invites her on stage to sing with him.
four.
Fact: She is mostly a virgin when she sleeps with Beau. Mostly, because there have been more maybes than she can count and quite a few almosts - but she always choked, never quite made it through, always got too caught up in her head.
five.
There is a part of her that can't help but love the reporters and the cheering crowds and the people who rush around her before a show, the pure rush of being up on stage, of sharing her music. It's a dream come true; it's what she's always wanted. Kelly dies and there isn't even a moment of darkness - the spotlight keeps on moving until it lands on Chiles instead.
She has seven pageant smiles and a few she's kept stored away from quieter moments. She's seen thousands of smiles from fans in crowds below her stage or on sidewalks as she drives by.
Fact: her favourite smile is the one she finds in a crappy bar in California when she sits next to Beau and he sings right to her, give into me, and she thinks that, yeah, she will.
Rating | r
Characters | Cersei; Cersai/Jaime
Summary | She took what was his and made it theirs.
Notes | This is really vague head!canon for Cersei. I have not read the books so please don't sue me George R. R. Martin.
She is eleven the first time she kisses (really kisses) her brother, a messy collision of tongue and teeth, and she steps on his toes hard enough to make him growl deep in his throat and bite her lip enough to draw a thin line of blood.
She doesn't do it to rebuke him and she thinks that Jaime understands - she was only trying to get closer.
Cersei was a charming little girl, blonde hair trailing behind her through the courtyard in the endless summer, tongue poked into her cheek. She smiled with her eyes.
Her brother liked to taunt her, pulling her braids and racing past her. He smiled with his teeth, sharp and predatory.
She learned that smile from his mouth, from his tongue curling against hers, took what was his and made it theirs.
When noble boys game flocking to her blonde hair and her beguiling smile, Jaime would taunt her. "Children," he'd say, sneering, "chasing after your virtue like mutts."
She would smile and show her teeth: "I wouldn't fuck children."
He would tilt his head back and laugh. "Who's good enough to get under your skirt, Cersei?"
"The king." It was a throwaway answer.
Like a child, he'd pulled her hair. "And if you're already mine, sister?"
Jaime would take her much like she'd taken him: moving inside of her, stealing her secrets.
Cersei was lucky enough to come into the world with a partnership already in place. Born from the same womb, born of the same blood.
She fucks her brother in the king's bed, hisses his name and leaves marks on his shoulder with her teeth. She gives birth to his children and raises them to call him uncle, raises them to rank power and purity above all else.
She is not a queen who has regrets.
Life is a game and she plays it. Her allies and her family, the one based on blood and not the relationship she'll never have with a king who's in love with a corpse, are one and the same.
(The first baby, the first son - he was Robert's.
Cersei thinks of him sometimes when Jaime's mouth is hot by her ear and he says my queen in that mocking tone they both use so well - but only sometimes.)
Sansa Stark has a cluster of idiotic ideas in her pretty little head about what it will mean to be queen.
It takes a moment of studying her red hair and the way her tongue pokes into her cheek for Cersei to agree to her husband's idea. She will let this girl marry her son - maybe even once the Lannister dynasty overpowers the Baratheons.
Sansa is a silly little thing but she'll be easy enough to train, as long as there's someone to do her hair in the mornings and to share a bed with her at night. She'll carry beautiful sons.
It would be the sweetest of victories, incorporating a Stark daughter into the Lannister line.
Power and purity: Sansa will learn to listen to her husband.
Cersei was born in the summer and born with a brother.
She knows where she belongs, and she will fight for it.
Title | right back where we started from
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Serena; Nate/Serena.
Summary | Post-s4. California, here we come.
California's sun burns brighter than New York's and Serena learns that she doesn't want to make movies.
Nate appears out of nowhere on the one day it rains and it's his mouth by her ear, whispering, we need to cheer Chuck up. She rolls her eyes but she smiles and skips off work because she's never been good at saying no to Nate and bars and a critical part of this plan involves getting Chuck drunk.
There's a moment that night when she's at the bar demanding another round of tequila shots when Nate is suddenly behind her, his body pressing into hers, and she turns her head and laughs and lets him kiss her.
They leave Chuck to wallow in his misery, or whatever the hell he's doing, a gaggle of girls with beach-messy hair watching him across the bar. Nate spins her under his arm when they get to the beach and they kick off their shoes and she knows, right then, that she'll never see that pair of heels again, and she can't bring herself to care.
Nate tugs her skirt down her hips and her shirt over her head and she makes quick work of his clothes, too - they talk, yelling at each other over the sound of the waves, but she giggles more than she listens and waits until they're both naked in the water, limbs tangled, to kiss him again.
It's messy, sandy-skinned sex on the beach after that and he whispers too fast? against her lips and she breathes no, no, no and the moon is a white-bright spot behind her eyelids.
I don't know yet, she says softly when they're getting dressed, tugging at her skirt to straighten it out, but Nate's eyes are smiling at her, stars glinting in blue, like he knows just how much of a lie that is.
Because she knows that three years from now there will be one apartment and one rent cheque with both their names on it, that they'll eats Eggos for breakfast and Chinese food too often, that her stomach will swell with their first baby - made by accident, kept on purpose - and that Nate will ask her to marry him on this beach at night with one hand against the curve of her belly and the other in her hair and she'll say no but she'll kiss him anyway; he'll whisper I love you into her mouth and she'll tuck those words behind her teeth and under her tongue, swallow them down and keep them in her heart forever.
For now, he swats at her with his wrinkled t-shirt before he puts it on. Maybe I'll stick around while you figure it out.
She sticks her tongue out. Maybe, she says breezily, as if it isn't already set in stone, laid out already, a footpath in their memories.
Title | don't get more than your hopes up
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Chiles; Chiles/Beau.
Summary | Five facts about Chiles Stanton, beauty queen turned singer/songwriter.
Notes | I thought Country Strong was cute, okay. Title from Leighton Meester's Summer Girl.
one.
Fact: nobody takes a pageant queen seriously.
Chiles memorizes the dictionary and physics formulas. She can make a soufflé. She believes that she can sing and dance and write music, she knows she can.
But James likes to crook a finger under her chin fondly and call her honey and put her in dresses with full skirts that offer a view of her legs while still making her look like an innocent little kids. He hires people to fuss with her hair and her shoes and her makeup.
People look at her and they see perfectly coiffed hair and blush-red cheeks and ankles more comfortable in four-inch heels than cowboy boots. They see a pageant queen and they all call her honey - with their mouths and their eyes and the way they phrase their questions. Honey, like there's nothing beyond her dress and her smile, nothing but a pageant queen.
two.
Fact: Beau is like a little boy on the playground, but instead of pulling her air and throwing pebbles he mocks her flashcards and gets her drunk enough to strip off her clothes.
He mocks her the next morning, like she's scorned him somehow because she didn't fall apart at his charms and pull him into her bed.
three.
Fact: Chiles Stanton has seven smiles that she's perfected over the years.
But she doesn't quite recognize the way her lips tilt up when Beau invites her on stage to sing with him.
four.
Fact: She is mostly a virgin when she sleeps with Beau. Mostly, because there have been more maybes than she can count and quite a few almosts - but she always choked, never quite made it through, always got too caught up in her head.
five.
There is a part of her that can't help but love the reporters and the cheering crowds and the people who rush around her before a show, the pure rush of being up on stage, of sharing her music. It's a dream come true; it's what she's always wanted. Kelly dies and there isn't even a moment of darkness - the spotlight keeps on moving until it lands on Chiles instead.
She has seven pageant smiles and a few she's kept stored away from quieter moments. She's seen thousands of smiles from fans in crowds below her stage or on sidewalks as she drives by.
Fact: her favourite smile is the one she finds in a crappy bar in California when she sits next to Beau and he sings right to her, give into me, and she thinks that, yeah, she will.