Monthly Word Count -- October
Total: 17 583. Wow, not bad, not bad.
COMPLETE & POSTED:
- Teamwork: Wedding (3 497 words)
- Teamwork: Chapter 11 scene 3 (766 words)
- GW: First Five Times They Figured Out Heero Was A Girl (3 391 words)
- FF7: Restore: End of chapter 9 (1 306 words)
- Teamwork: Wedding: Neji & Hinata sidefic: Invitation delivery (963 words)
WIP:
-Two snippets about Heero and Duo in the 'verse where they have Daemons -- I have no idea where it's going, just random babble. (184 words)
-... um. Garou. In french. I... I don't know, okay. The urge petered out in the middle of the scene and besides wow am I rusty in french storytelling, it all sounds/works wrong. (526 words)
-A Katekyo Hitman Reborn fic of all things. Tsuna-POV, post TenYearsLater arc. (1 363 words)
-GW: umm. A Duo/Hilde/Heero threesome humor/possibly porn? get-together. Duo likes 'em androgynous and blue-eyed okay? (1 460 words)
-GW: Newtype!! :D (1 253 words)
-FF7: Enemy Skill (the SephZackCloud AU where CLoud is a kid from the mountains and there's psychic pack bonding.) (2 874 words)
--
GW: Heero and Duo, Daemon AU (Heero just touched Duo's daemon. or maybe the other way around idk)
--
If Duo had ever thought about how it is to be Heero Yuy, he'd have thought it'd be that way -- constant threat assessment, blooming with sharp, clearly delimited if/then decision trees. But underneath that is a will so fierce that the logic overhead ends up like a glasshouse too small for its trees, all that metal framework shoved up and warped so branches can burst out. If Maxwell is mobile, then he lives. If Maxwell is verbal, then he lives. If Maxwell is alive... there was never any other decision Heero would have made.
Could have, yes, many. Would have is a different thing entirely.
--
GW: Garou. In french.
--
Bon okay la marche à pied il savait faire. Se repérer dans une forêt en pleine nuit aussi, bizarrement; non seulement G lui avait fait donner quelques cours, au cas où, mais plus récemment il avait eu pas mal de pratique. Merci les copains poilus. Enfin bref, règle numéro un, trouver un ruisseau et le suivre vers le bas. Inévitablement il arriverait à une rivière, qui arriverait à une ville.
Règle numéro deux, quand la putain de rivière disparaît entre deux rochers et on se retrouve face à face avec de jolies petites collines, on cherche de quel côté des arbres la mousse pousse, histoire de garder à l'esprit la direction générale dans laquelle la putain de rivière allait quand on se trouve inévitablement obligé de grimper.
Putain, il était crevé.
Et une forêt en pleine nuit, c'était beaucoup plus stressant qu'une ville. Au moins même si la moitié des lampadaires étaient cassés il y avait toujours les frontons des sex-shops. Et puis Duo reconnaissait les sons. Tous ces bruissements de feuilles dans le noir devenaient agaçants quand Duo n'arrivait pas à en juger la distance et l'angle. Enfin l'avantage était qu'à cette distance de la cible les petits bruits subtils ne risquaient pas d'être une troupe de soldats ennemis en poursuite. Pour être toujours collés à lui après une heure de marche... nan, ils se seraient trahis bien avant.
N'est-ce pas?
--
Katekyo Hitman Reborn
--
He loves his mother and doesn't want her to worry, so it takes a week before he gives up on his nice, comfortable, familiar bedroom and that ceiling he's considering asking Lambo to graffiti, because even its boring blandness isn't enough to lull him to sleep and if he's going to spend the night staring up at it, it might as well be mildly entertaining.
He could get the kids to repaint it regularly, for whenever he's learned the previous pattern by heart.
Anyway he can't ask now, Lambo is of course sleeping in his mom's bed and that'd wake her up for sure. So he drags himself out of bed (so exhausted) and goes catfooted through the house, a blanket draped around his shoulders.
The upstairs closet is full of mothballed winter clothes. He wedges himself in a corner anyway. It's all good until three hours later, when a garbage truck backs up in the street, going BEEP BEEP BEEP at the top of its voice and giving Tsuna a small heart attack.
He also accidentally takes out the closet door while fighting his way free, and thumps face down on the wooden floor, legs tangled in a crushed cardboard box. His heart is going a mile a minute.
... Tomorrow. He'll fix the door tomorrow. Well. In the morning. He sets it back up against the wall, piles up the clothes that spilled out back on the box. It's five AM and this is the longest spot of uninterrupted sleep he's gotten in a week (in a month, if he were thinking about that stint in the future, but he is not) and it is not enough.
Bathroom's too cold and there's a window there, too, with bars on it to prevent burglars but no blinds to prevent assassination. He stumbles his way downstairs, tripping on his blanket. He's so exhausted he could cry, only if he let himself he doesn't think he'd ever stop, and then Reborn would kill him for being the most pitiful Mafia boss ever.
Living room couch would be awesome if the room wasn't full of wide open spaces and really bad about providing any cover; it gives him hives to think about. Maybe if he tells Reborn that, he'll be proud enough not to kill him too hard when he comes in the morning and finds Tsuna standing somewhere sniffling because he can't find anywhere to sleep. Haha. Right.
Under the table in the kitchen will be just as cold as the bathroom floor but it's the last choice he's got. He stands in the doorway for a full minute or maybe five, trying to get his brain in gear, figure out angles of view and escape paths and...
... huh, funny, those off-color tiles kinda look like a cellar trapdoor. If he presses here...?
... didn't his dad dig out a basement a few years back? Tsuna vaguely remembers finding it stupid, because houses in Japan don't usually have basements; the water table in Japan is really high compared to, say, Italy, and why does he even know those things. (Reborn, of course.) But anyway it'd be all damp and probably useless and all for stocking those stupid bottles of wine Dad is never here to drink anyway and wouldn't drink even if they weren't centuries old, seriously that's disgusting and what was he thinking again (oh god sleep, want sleep.)
The trapdoor is heavy under his hand, and he doesn't find a lightswitch until he's all the way down the very steep staircase and the trapdoor has swung shut over him, which of course means he trips and lands face first into a concrete wall first.
The silence is deafening, the way his steps ring against the walls peculiar in a way that never happens unless they're there to keep several tons of earth and stone out rather than intruders or rain. The room's angled weird, like it's more under the garden than under the house, but then again it'd probably bite into the foundations otherwise and oh.
Oh.
It's not a wine cellar his father dug out.
It's a bunker.
Tsuna feels a very strange burst of immense love for his progenitor, which he immediately chalks up to utter exhaustion. (He is not crying. By the way.)
--
GW: Duo/Hilde/Heero get-together.
--
"Stop trying to wank your joysticks already! Ah, men!"
They'd engaged enemy scouts two minutes ago; so far Preventers intel was still right enough and the cobbled-together frames were proving no real danger for three Tauruses. The issue there being that the enemy was no real danger, and stats showed this would be an easy win, and yet the fight still wasn't over.
Heero flicked open his vid channel window with Hilde, arched an eyebrow in question. A fierce scowl on her face, she was busy shooting down the mines the enemy seeded all over the place before they could activate.
"These are not Gundams, okay? You keep expecting their reaction times to be -- they can't turn on a dime!" A huff blew short bangs away from her forehead. "Try being more fluid, anticipate more."
"Aw, but Hildie-baby, I like wanking my joyst--woow that one was close."
Heero sighed and admitted she was right. He'd been aware of the problem before she pointed it out, but even years after the war his reflexes were still primed for a Gundam's response time. It fouled things just enough to be bothersome.
Duo had handled Tauruses since the war, though, and other Zodiac suits, for his salvage operation. Heero doubted he'd pushed them to battle speeds all that often -- it was easy to imagine him sneaking away with a suit and spar with imaginary adversaries in the shadow of the colony before he had to get it to the scrap yard, but without actual danger the effect wasn't quite the same. Still, he adapted faster than Heero did.
"Treat 'er like a woman, Heero," Hilde said, sending a crooked smile through the video link. "Steady and smooth or she'll balk."
"Yeah, when you handled a Gundam you knew you were handling a man!"
Duo grunted, from where he was executing a maneuver that took him right in the middle of the cluster of enemy suits. Heero shook his head in disbelief, even though that was just like him.
"That's a little homoerotic," Hilde commented, and shot down a suit that was trying to get in Duo's blind spot. Heero sighed and dove toward the battle once again. He'd only be a hindrance in the melee -- Duo liked target-rich environments, meant he didn't have to check for allies before he hit -- but he could circle and pick off the ones trying to run away.
"Damn straight it is! I don't care how not-homo you are, 'Scythe was the hottest piece of mecha ass anyone'd ever fly. Not that this little honey is all bad, after a little tune-up..." A bright laugh, edging on feral delight. "It's a good thing I'm cross-trained, huh?"
... Had Duo just implied what Heero thought he'd implied?
--
GW: Newtype!! :D
--
"Locker room," Maxwell indicated with his thumb, pulling his helmet off as he walked inside said room. The lockers were just as old and rusted as the rest, but the locks on them were, if not new, then just as good as. Still...
"You trust these?" Wufei asked doubtfully, even as he started taking his off.
"Not really, but if someone steals my stuff I get to have it reimbursed." A thumb indicated the other exit, the silhouette of a man sitting there with a rifle over his knees. "And the thief gets to be blacklisted. Or kneecapped, either or."
Of course this illegal little docking station would be manned by some kind of protection racket. "And the... caretakers of this place never steal anything either?"
"With how much we pay 'em? They better fuckin' not, else we'd be the ones kneecapping them. Honor amongst thieves!" Maxwell concluded brightly, and stuffed his empty suit in a locker. Wufei shook his head, mildly disgusted. "I'm sure they go through the lockers from time to time looking for loot that'd be worth it, but you'd have to be real stupid to leave anything like that in there in the first place."
"And if one day your suit is gone when you need it?" Heero inquired mildly.
"Steal your neighbor's," Maxwell replied. Of course.
Wufei finished undressing and stashing his suit, and closed the locker. He pocketed the key and put his cap on, tucking it low on his face.
"Yo! Max and two guests." Maxwell stopped in front of the man and fished a handful of bills from some place down the front of his pants Wufei didn't want to think about too much.
"Yo, Max." The guy looked them over closely, though when he met Heero's eyes suddenly he didn't seem very interested anymore. "Got a tax on shipment, you know that."
"Sure," Maxwell said easily. "Twenty percent of the contents, right?" Suddenly Maxwell's smile wasn't friendly so much as slightly unhinged. "You want the head or one of the legs?"
"--oh my fucking god, usually you bring the corpses out of the colony, the fuck?"
... The man wasn't joking along; he wasn't freaked out, but he was disgusted. Wufei held onto his composure. He already knew Maxwell killed people.
"Pff. Just kidding. It's another creepo sex doll for that good old Werner. Though it's real pretty, almost tempted to keep it to myself." He waggled his eyebrows; the man cracked a smile and relaxed his hold on his rifle. "Two hundred okay to you?"
"Three. You almost wonder what the fuck he did with Linda, that he needs a replacement already."
"Two fifty. Eh, Werner's just like any red-blooded man out here; who wouldn't want a threesome with a pair of lesbo hotties?"
Maxwell and the man cackled together. Wufei did his best to look bored, since he didn't want to know who and what the hell they were talking about. (Heero looked blank; Wufei briefly wondered if he honestly didn't get it. Likely it was the concept of sex dolls that caused a problem, and not the concept of lesbian sandwiches.)
--
FF7: Enemy Skill (psychic pack bonding AU)
--
"... Nnrh?" Even skin to skin, his helper was locked up like Fort Condor. Curious to identify the person helping him, he committed the mistake of breathing in to get the scent. His eyes watered when all he could smell was his own vomit, the stinging sharpness of stomach acid.
"Don't move. If you fall off your bird now I am taking her and leaving you behind. Don't move and for the love of all the gods you believe in don't speak."
Zack breathed through his mouth. Male voice, he thought, young and kept ruthlessly quiet and controlled, but there was a promise of depth in there, a hint of huskiness.
... Danger. Danger out there. He forced his eyes to crack open, blinked away the fuzziness.
A boy standing beside the chocobo, holding onto the reins. Gray-brown clothes, kind of rock-colored actually, and a pale flesh-colored oval that was probably a face, topped off with a shock of gold-blond... hair? If that wasn't hair, the stranger had weird tastes in hats.
Something was moving off to the side, low to the ground and gray as the rocks, dull and dark, circling them...
Wolf. Oh, shit. Nibel wolf. Slower than a black chocobo, by far, and a well-trained warbird could kill off a few of them with a few well-placed kicks. Slower but never alone, never stopping, they could relay each other for days and weeks when on the hunt, and he was injured and couldn't move. Oh fuck.
"Don't get so tense," the boy muttered through clenched teeth. "Why couldn't you stay asleep? It'd be easy."
What would be, thought Zack as increasing panic cut through the fog in his mind -- leaving him behind in the middle of the pack? Haha. Funny.
A callused hand slipped around to the back of his neck, pressed firmly, keeping him still. He probably could have reared up. (It would open the wound in his side back up, but.)
"... Shh."
Against all reason Zack stilled.
The boy kept walking beside the chocobo, reins loose in his right hand, left hand resting on Zack's skin, fingertips cold and palm warm and rough like a strange, wild animal, a living cipher. Slow, step by almost-casual step. All around them huge wolves watched them go past, sitting or laying down on sun-warmed rocks, ears prickled up in casual interest.
"The trick," breathed the boy, "is not to be afraid."
Zack swallowed an incredulous chuckle somehow, but his back still twitched with it.
"They've fed today, and we are not prey. See? Everything's fine. Come on up, girl. No running. Keep going, slow and steady, slow and steady..."
It took Zack's addled brain a few seconds to catch on that the boy was speaking to his chocobo. Well, good. He wasn't that pretty.
COMPLETE & POSTED:
- Teamwork: Wedding (3 497 words)
- Teamwork: Chapter 11 scene 3 (766 words)
- GW: First Five Times They Figured Out Heero Was A Girl (3 391 words)
- FF7: Restore: End of chapter 9 (1 306 words)
- Teamwork: Wedding: Neji & Hinata sidefic: Invitation delivery (963 words)
WIP:
-Two snippets about Heero and Duo in the 'verse where they have Daemons -- I have no idea where it's going, just random babble. (184 words)
-... um. Garou. In french. I... I don't know, okay. The urge petered out in the middle of the scene and besides wow am I rusty in french storytelling, it all sounds/works wrong. (526 words)
-A Katekyo Hitman Reborn fic of all things. Tsuna-POV, post TenYearsLater arc. (1 363 words)
-GW: umm. A Duo/Hilde/Heero threesome humor/possibly porn? get-together. Duo likes 'em androgynous and blue-eyed okay? (1 460 words)
-GW: Newtype!! :D (1 253 words)
-FF7: Enemy Skill (the SephZackCloud AU where CLoud is a kid from the mountains and there's psychic pack bonding.) (2 874 words)
--
GW: Heero and Duo, Daemon AU (Heero just touched Duo's daemon. or maybe the other way around idk)
--
If Duo had ever thought about how it is to be Heero Yuy, he'd have thought it'd be that way -- constant threat assessment, blooming with sharp, clearly delimited if/then decision trees. But underneath that is a will so fierce that the logic overhead ends up like a glasshouse too small for its trees, all that metal framework shoved up and warped so branches can burst out. If Maxwell is mobile, then he lives. If Maxwell is verbal, then he lives. If Maxwell is alive... there was never any other decision Heero would have made.
Could have, yes, many. Would have is a different thing entirely.
--
GW: Garou. In french.
--
Bon okay la marche à pied il savait faire. Se repérer dans une forêt en pleine nuit aussi, bizarrement; non seulement G lui avait fait donner quelques cours, au cas où, mais plus récemment il avait eu pas mal de pratique. Merci les copains poilus. Enfin bref, règle numéro un, trouver un ruisseau et le suivre vers le bas. Inévitablement il arriverait à une rivière, qui arriverait à une ville.
Règle numéro deux, quand la putain de rivière disparaît entre deux rochers et on se retrouve face à face avec de jolies petites collines, on cherche de quel côté des arbres la mousse pousse, histoire de garder à l'esprit la direction générale dans laquelle la putain de rivière allait quand on se trouve inévitablement obligé de grimper.
Putain, il était crevé.
Et une forêt en pleine nuit, c'était beaucoup plus stressant qu'une ville. Au moins même si la moitié des lampadaires étaient cassés il y avait toujours les frontons des sex-shops. Et puis Duo reconnaissait les sons. Tous ces bruissements de feuilles dans le noir devenaient agaçants quand Duo n'arrivait pas à en juger la distance et l'angle. Enfin l'avantage était qu'à cette distance de la cible les petits bruits subtils ne risquaient pas d'être une troupe de soldats ennemis en poursuite. Pour être toujours collés à lui après une heure de marche... nan, ils se seraient trahis bien avant.
N'est-ce pas?
--
Katekyo Hitman Reborn
--
He loves his mother and doesn't want her to worry, so it takes a week before he gives up on his nice, comfortable, familiar bedroom and that ceiling he's considering asking Lambo to graffiti, because even its boring blandness isn't enough to lull him to sleep and if he's going to spend the night staring up at it, it might as well be mildly entertaining.
He could get the kids to repaint it regularly, for whenever he's learned the previous pattern by heart.
Anyway he can't ask now, Lambo is of course sleeping in his mom's bed and that'd wake her up for sure. So he drags himself out of bed (so exhausted) and goes catfooted through the house, a blanket draped around his shoulders.
The upstairs closet is full of mothballed winter clothes. He wedges himself in a corner anyway. It's all good until three hours later, when a garbage truck backs up in the street, going BEEP BEEP BEEP at the top of its voice and giving Tsuna a small heart attack.
He also accidentally takes out the closet door while fighting his way free, and thumps face down on the wooden floor, legs tangled in a crushed cardboard box. His heart is going a mile a minute.
... Tomorrow. He'll fix the door tomorrow. Well. In the morning. He sets it back up against the wall, piles up the clothes that spilled out back on the box. It's five AM and this is the longest spot of uninterrupted sleep he's gotten in a week (in a month, if he were thinking about that stint in the future, but he is not) and it is not enough.
Bathroom's too cold and there's a window there, too, with bars on it to prevent burglars but no blinds to prevent assassination. He stumbles his way downstairs, tripping on his blanket. He's so exhausted he could cry, only if he let himself he doesn't think he'd ever stop, and then Reborn would kill him for being the most pitiful Mafia boss ever.
Living room couch would be awesome if the room wasn't full of wide open spaces and really bad about providing any cover; it gives him hives to think about. Maybe if he tells Reborn that, he'll be proud enough not to kill him too hard when he comes in the morning and finds Tsuna standing somewhere sniffling because he can't find anywhere to sleep. Haha. Right.
Under the table in the kitchen will be just as cold as the bathroom floor but it's the last choice he's got. He stands in the doorway for a full minute or maybe five, trying to get his brain in gear, figure out angles of view and escape paths and...
... huh, funny, those off-color tiles kinda look like a cellar trapdoor. If he presses here...?
... didn't his dad dig out a basement a few years back? Tsuna vaguely remembers finding it stupid, because houses in Japan don't usually have basements; the water table in Japan is really high compared to, say, Italy, and why does he even know those things. (Reborn, of course.) But anyway it'd be all damp and probably useless and all for stocking those stupid bottles of wine Dad is never here to drink anyway and wouldn't drink even if they weren't centuries old, seriously that's disgusting and what was he thinking again (oh god sleep, want sleep.)
The trapdoor is heavy under his hand, and he doesn't find a lightswitch until he's all the way down the very steep staircase and the trapdoor has swung shut over him, which of course means he trips and lands face first into a concrete wall first.
The silence is deafening, the way his steps ring against the walls peculiar in a way that never happens unless they're there to keep several tons of earth and stone out rather than intruders or rain. The room's angled weird, like it's more under the garden than under the house, but then again it'd probably bite into the foundations otherwise and oh.
Oh.
It's not a wine cellar his father dug out.
It's a bunker.
Tsuna feels a very strange burst of immense love for his progenitor, which he immediately chalks up to utter exhaustion. (He is not crying. By the way.)
--
GW: Duo/Hilde/Heero get-together.
--
"Stop trying to wank your joysticks already! Ah, men!"
They'd engaged enemy scouts two minutes ago; so far Preventers intel was still right enough and the cobbled-together frames were proving no real danger for three Tauruses. The issue there being that the enemy was no real danger, and stats showed this would be an easy win, and yet the fight still wasn't over.
Heero flicked open his vid channel window with Hilde, arched an eyebrow in question. A fierce scowl on her face, she was busy shooting down the mines the enemy seeded all over the place before they could activate.
"These are not Gundams, okay? You keep expecting their reaction times to be -- they can't turn on a dime!" A huff blew short bangs away from her forehead. "Try being more fluid, anticipate more."
"Aw, but Hildie-baby, I like wanking my joyst--woow that one was close."
Heero sighed and admitted she was right. He'd been aware of the problem before she pointed it out, but even years after the war his reflexes were still primed for a Gundam's response time. It fouled things just enough to be bothersome.
Duo had handled Tauruses since the war, though, and other Zodiac suits, for his salvage operation. Heero doubted he'd pushed them to battle speeds all that often -- it was easy to imagine him sneaking away with a suit and spar with imaginary adversaries in the shadow of the colony before he had to get it to the scrap yard, but without actual danger the effect wasn't quite the same. Still, he adapted faster than Heero did.
"Treat 'er like a woman, Heero," Hilde said, sending a crooked smile through the video link. "Steady and smooth or she'll balk."
"Yeah, when you handled a Gundam you knew you were handling a man!"
Duo grunted, from where he was executing a maneuver that took him right in the middle of the cluster of enemy suits. Heero shook his head in disbelief, even though that was just like him.
"That's a little homoerotic," Hilde commented, and shot down a suit that was trying to get in Duo's blind spot. Heero sighed and dove toward the battle once again. He'd only be a hindrance in the melee -- Duo liked target-rich environments, meant he didn't have to check for allies before he hit -- but he could circle and pick off the ones trying to run away.
"Damn straight it is! I don't care how not-homo you are, 'Scythe was the hottest piece of mecha ass anyone'd ever fly. Not that this little honey is all bad, after a little tune-up..." A bright laugh, edging on feral delight. "It's a good thing I'm cross-trained, huh?"
... Had Duo just implied what Heero thought he'd implied?
--
GW: Newtype!! :D
--
"Locker room," Maxwell indicated with his thumb, pulling his helmet off as he walked inside said room. The lockers were just as old and rusted as the rest, but the locks on them were, if not new, then just as good as. Still...
"You trust these?" Wufei asked doubtfully, even as he started taking his off.
"Not really, but if someone steals my stuff I get to have it reimbursed." A thumb indicated the other exit, the silhouette of a man sitting there with a rifle over his knees. "And the thief gets to be blacklisted. Or kneecapped, either or."
Of course this illegal little docking station would be manned by some kind of protection racket. "And the... caretakers of this place never steal anything either?"
"With how much we pay 'em? They better fuckin' not, else we'd be the ones kneecapping them. Honor amongst thieves!" Maxwell concluded brightly, and stuffed his empty suit in a locker. Wufei shook his head, mildly disgusted. "I'm sure they go through the lockers from time to time looking for loot that'd be worth it, but you'd have to be real stupid to leave anything like that in there in the first place."
"And if one day your suit is gone when you need it?" Heero inquired mildly.
"Steal your neighbor's," Maxwell replied. Of course.
Wufei finished undressing and stashing his suit, and closed the locker. He pocketed the key and put his cap on, tucking it low on his face.
"Yo! Max and two guests." Maxwell stopped in front of the man and fished a handful of bills from some place down the front of his pants Wufei didn't want to think about too much.
"Yo, Max." The guy looked them over closely, though when he met Heero's eyes suddenly he didn't seem very interested anymore. "Got a tax on shipment, you know that."
"Sure," Maxwell said easily. "Twenty percent of the contents, right?" Suddenly Maxwell's smile wasn't friendly so much as slightly unhinged. "You want the head or one of the legs?"
"--oh my fucking god, usually you bring the corpses out of the colony, the fuck?"
... The man wasn't joking along; he wasn't freaked out, but he was disgusted. Wufei held onto his composure. He already knew Maxwell killed people.
"Pff. Just kidding. It's another creepo sex doll for that good old Werner. Though it's real pretty, almost tempted to keep it to myself." He waggled his eyebrows; the man cracked a smile and relaxed his hold on his rifle. "Two hundred okay to you?"
"Three. You almost wonder what the fuck he did with Linda, that he needs a replacement already."
"Two fifty. Eh, Werner's just like any red-blooded man out here; who wouldn't want a threesome with a pair of lesbo hotties?"
Maxwell and the man cackled together. Wufei did his best to look bored, since he didn't want to know who and what the hell they were talking about. (Heero looked blank; Wufei briefly wondered if he honestly didn't get it. Likely it was the concept of sex dolls that caused a problem, and not the concept of lesbian sandwiches.)
--
FF7: Enemy Skill (psychic pack bonding AU)
--
"... Nnrh?" Even skin to skin, his helper was locked up like Fort Condor. Curious to identify the person helping him, he committed the mistake of breathing in to get the scent. His eyes watered when all he could smell was his own vomit, the stinging sharpness of stomach acid.
"Don't move. If you fall off your bird now I am taking her and leaving you behind. Don't move and for the love of all the gods you believe in don't speak."
Zack breathed through his mouth. Male voice, he thought, young and kept ruthlessly quiet and controlled, but there was a promise of depth in there, a hint of huskiness.
... Danger. Danger out there. He forced his eyes to crack open, blinked away the fuzziness.
A boy standing beside the chocobo, holding onto the reins. Gray-brown clothes, kind of rock-colored actually, and a pale flesh-colored oval that was probably a face, topped off with a shock of gold-blond... hair? If that wasn't hair, the stranger had weird tastes in hats.
Something was moving off to the side, low to the ground and gray as the rocks, dull and dark, circling them...
Wolf. Oh, shit. Nibel wolf. Slower than a black chocobo, by far, and a well-trained warbird could kill off a few of them with a few well-placed kicks. Slower but never alone, never stopping, they could relay each other for days and weeks when on the hunt, and he was injured and couldn't move. Oh fuck.
"Don't get so tense," the boy muttered through clenched teeth. "Why couldn't you stay asleep? It'd be easy."
What would be, thought Zack as increasing panic cut through the fog in his mind -- leaving him behind in the middle of the pack? Haha. Funny.
A callused hand slipped around to the back of his neck, pressed firmly, keeping him still. He probably could have reared up. (It would open the wound in his side back up, but.)
"... Shh."
Against all reason Zack stilled.
The boy kept walking beside the chocobo, reins loose in his right hand, left hand resting on Zack's skin, fingertips cold and palm warm and rough like a strange, wild animal, a living cipher. Slow, step by almost-casual step. All around them huge wolves watched them go past, sitting or laying down on sun-warmed rocks, ears prickled up in casual interest.
"The trick," breathed the boy, "is not to be afraid."
Zack swallowed an incredulous chuckle somehow, but his back still twitched with it.
"They've fed today, and we are not prey. See? Everything's fine. Come on up, girl. No running. Keep going, slow and steady, slow and steady..."
It took Zack's addled brain a few seconds to catch on that the boy was speaking to his chocobo. Well, good. He wasn't that pretty.