LOL FIC
I return from the depths of Hell higher education with two drabbly fics! And by fics, I mean monstrosities! And by monstrosities, I mean GIFTS. GIFTS THAT I WROTE FOR PEOPLE.
Worry not, chaoticdance and inverts who also requested stuff on the request meme, I swear I'm getting around to yours next just as soon as I figure out how to draw Sirius in a skirt without dying of hilarity.
Title: Tension, Dark
Fandom: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3
Author: carmentakoshi
Beta: none
Rating: PG
Pairing(s): Mitsuru/Yukari
Summary: Mitsuru thought things would be different after that, but all she got was the same Takeba.
Warnings: unbeta'd, serious UST
Word Count: 1 269
Author's Notes: For the delightful misrepha , who requested some Mitsuru/Yukari with a side of fierce!Mitsuru. ;) I comment-boxed this earlier in the meme itself, but I decided to post it here for archiving purposes.
Tension, Dark
The moon hung heavily in the sky, bright, reflective, watching closely for their next move.
Takeba was not looking at her.
Akihiko tried not to. He knew. Perhaps.
“Arisato.”
He only turned after a long moment, shaking his head a bit as his gaze swung around. This was not unusual; Arisato often spent long moments standing by the high arching windows as the rest of them prepared for battle, staring out as though he was seeing something past the distorted view that others could not see.
“Yes, Mitsuru-senpai?”
“I have a suggestion for today’s training,” said Mitsuru in a clear voice. It was the voice of the valedictorian, the one Takeba probably hated. “A plan of action, if you will.”
“I’m-” Arisato paused to stifle a yawn against his sleeve, mumbling an apology, “I’m all ears.”
“I suggest that we split into smaller groups for our training tonight. That way, all of us are certain to get our fair share of battle, and everyone will be required to, shall I say, pull their own weight.”
“Hey, don’t look at me like that! I totally pull my own weight around here-”
“She wasn’t even looking at you, Stupei. But since you seem to recognize yourself...”
“Shut up, Yuka-tan!”
“Both of you, shut up,” said Arisato without venom. “Mitsuru-senpai is right. We need to be tougher on ourselves if we’re going to improve. How about we split into pairs this time?”
Mitsuru nodded once.
“Okay, then,” Arisato continued, sounding suddenly a lot more alert. “Junpei, you’re with me.”
”Yeah, yeah.”
“In that case, I’ll be on my own,” Akihiko said.
His eyes blazed. He had forgotten his doubts about Mitsuru now, consumed again by the recollection of his wounded body and wounded pride. She understood this, and him, but simply letting him go would not be...plausible, even in this scenario. “Akihiko, remember what happened last time you fought on your own.”
“I remember,” Akihiko replied fiercely. “As if you’d ever let me forget. But I can’t let that stop me. Besides, I won’t be alone up in that damn tower. You guys will all be in touch.”
“Yes,” Fuuka piped up, standing alone under the stairway. She had one hand laid delicately against an elaborately-sculpted pillar. Her white fingers trembled against the stone, like she was still afraid to touch. “I’ll be keeping tabs on all of you through Lucia, so if anyone gets into trouble, I can send along the others.”
“You all right with that, Mitsuru?” Akihiko said, smiling out of one corner of his mouth; a tease. But he could not possibly know. She sometimes forgot that when it came to people, Akihiko was not all that bright.
“Fine.”
“Great,” said Arisato. He crouched and picked his spear up from the floor, hefting it over one shoulder. “So that leaves Mitsuru-senpai and Yukari as study buddies. Cool. Go, team, rah, rah, rah.”
And he turned, making a vague fist-pumping gesture with his free hand before beginning to climb the stairs.
Mitsuru thought she caught Takeba glaring at her from across the room, but in the next instant she had finished adjusting her bow on her shoulder, and had walked off without waiting.
=====
They were quiet for three floors, saying only what was necessary for their partnership to function.
Mitsuru had thought it would be different.
Takeba walked ahead of her, most of the time, scouting with her bow at the ready. Only when she spied a Shadow along the dark hallway would she stop, and signal to Mitsuru with a jerk of her head. Then she would wait, as Mitsuru advanced cautiously and sprung on the enemy at the most opportune moment. They finished off a fair number of Shadows this way, with minimal trouble. It was an efficient system.
This was not how Mitsuru wanted it at all.
They rested in a stairwell, well out of reach from either floor. Mitsuru watched how Takeba sat on the stair with her ankles crossed, but tried not to look like she was staring. Anyway, Takeba was looking resolutely in the other direction, sometimes up, sometimes down, but never before her, where Mitsuru sat with her rapier laid carefully across her lap.
A few minutes passed this way in tense silence, then Takeba suddenly stood up and straightened her skirt, still not meeting Mitsuru’s eyes as she said, “All right, we should get going. Maybe we can do a couple more floors then regroup with the others.”
Mitsuru said, “Fine.”
Takeba nodded, and turned to ascend the stairs, not meeting her gaze.
And Mitsuru had had enough.
“Takeba.”
“What?”
“Takeba.”
“What?” Takeba snapped, as she finally stopped climbing and turned around. She met Mitsuru’s gaze for just a second, then looked away, frowning. Mitsuru remained sitting on the stair.
“What do you want, senp-”
“For this to stop. I thought you had more courage than this.”
Takeba stood agape for a moment, before her gaze hardened. “Wha-...you’re blaming this on me?”
“And what is ‘this’, exactly?”
“You know what ‘this’ is, and you don’t get to sit there so calmly and tell me you don’t!”
“All right, then.”
So Mitsuru placed her sword down on the step, and rose to her feet, and climbed the stairs until she was level with Takeba, and kissed her.
There was a pause that stretched out on all sides, dispelling the darkness, filtering the sickly green midnight light out, but then Takeba tore herself away from Mitsuru, stumbling on the stair, and the closeness and gloom of the Midnight Hour returned in a rush. Shadows groaned from the darkness but none approached them here, on the boundary between floors.
“What are you doing?” Takeba shrieked, the fingertips of one hand pressed against her mouth. “Mitsuru-senpai, I thought we said-”
“We didn’t say anything, Takeba,” Mitsuru said sternly. “That is why this feels so...unfinished. We’re not done.”
“We never started.”
“Maybe we should.”
Takeba seemed startled at this, but she recovered in an instant, saying suspiciously, “You don’t even like me. More importantly, I don’t even like you. We’ve never gotten along.”
“So you’re saying our first kiss was an accident?” Mitsuru replied. She took a step back and down, distancing herself from Takeba even though every fibre of her was screaming at Mitsuru to just go, make her yours, you can. “You’re saying that since we never seemed to outwardly like each other in our everyday interactions, the fact that we just so happened to kiss was nothing but a mere misfortune, a stroke of bad luck?”
“Of course it wasn’t an accident!” Takeba snapped. “It was a mistake, nothing more.”
“A mistake?”
“Yeah.”
“...I see. In that case, there really is nothing more to be said.”
“Exactly.”
“Very well. Let us move on, then.”
And with that, Mitsuru descended the stairs to retrieve her weapon, then climbed back up, past Takeba and the darkness of the previous floor and up towards the darkness of the next.
Takeba hung back, standing alone on the stairs, her figure growing dimmer in the poor light as Mitsuru moved farther and farther away from her. She seemed angry, and confused, and maybe even hurt, but Mitsuru could sense nothing deeper than the surface emotions that Penthesilea helpfully projected back to her, partly against her will, perhaps in an attempt to appease Mitsuru’s own conflicted feelings.
She told Penthesilea to stop, and kept walking.
And only when she had reached the top stair, and was almost out of sight, did Takeba pick up her bow and follow her.
The End
Title: The Other
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Author: carmentakoshi
Rating: PG
Pairing(s): Axel/Sora
Summary: With Roxas gone, Axel turns to the only person in the world who can come close to replacing him.
Warnings: slight sexuality, spoilers for Kingdom Hearts 2
Word Count: 638
Author's Notes: Extremely late birthday fic for the awesome retraux . Happy belated b-day, Alex, and may this year be a better one than you've ever had. :) ♥
Also I may have channeled your writing style to get this out. XD
The Other
When they first met - really met, touching, intimate - it was like a firestorm in the pit of his chest. Raging, wild. Then, the regret, or the closest thing he could ever feel to regret.
Axel doesn’t know how it happened, and couldn’t care less why (although this he knows, it’s been obvious from the start), so he just tries not to think, just tries to let his body do the thinking like it always does. He trusts his limbs and his hands, not his head, certainly not the hole deep in the middle of his chest.
When they first met, it was dark. Axel doesn’t remember where (Twilight Town, a stormy day so darker than usual) and he doesn’t care, he stopped caring the moment he realized Rox-he wasn’t coming back. That’s about when he started getting reckless (always been reckless except now he’s alone), about when that other one caught his eye. The one who made him feel like he (damnit, Roxas, where are you?) was still around, like he was nearby, just around the corner and down the street from him, close but out of sight.
(damnit, Roxas, why did you go?)
So now Axel has turned to his other - Roxas’ other - the one with the same weapon and the same height. The same eyes. And it’s like finding Roxas, almost, except this one doesn’t talk back, doesn’t sulk and scowl with the familiar hint of a smirk playing around his lips, tugging him this way and that.
And this one knows. Not all of it (he’s been careful, though not careful enough, obviously), but enough for him to freak out about it. Except he doesn’t. He just smiles. He takes Axel in.
Sometimes, he tells him, “It’ll be all right.”
And Axel hates him. He hates him but he needs him too, needs his presence and his touch in those furtive hours of the night when the other’s friends are resting, asleep, too naive to realize what’s going on every time their third member leaves and returns only at dawn. He needs these stolen hours like he needs to breathe, or to fill the empty space in his chest with violence and fire, or with...him.
He needs the chase, the thrill of pursuit (though he already has him), needs the closeness, the intimacy (though he’s far away, in his mind, as it’s happening), needs the act of searching, searching frantically, deeply, desperately, searching for Roxas in his fingers and hands, in his hair and in his eyes, in his mouth and in his voice. Always looking, never finding. Unquenched, in the end, though the intimacy itself resolves in a kind of satisfaction.
(And he can’t bring himself to think this wholeheartedly much less say it aloud but) Axel had begun to lose hope, maybe, and in this hopelessness he has begun to cling to something else, something closer and much more dangerous than the Nobody who makes him feel like he has a heart.
He hates himself for thinking of Roxas when he’s there. When Sora touches him gently when it’s over - on the shoulder, the side of the face - and says softly, “Axel. It’ll be all right”, he feels like a filthy being, a stupid hollow shell who can’t do any better than searching blindly for his best friend while seeking refuge in the arms of the enemy.
But it’ll be all right. Roxas may be gone, maybe forever, but Axel doesn’t need a heart. He never did.
(before him)
And Axel doesn’t need Sora either, but he keeps coming back. Just like Sora keeps coming back. Maybe one day, if neither of them ends up dead because of everything that’s happening, he’ll come to appreciate the constant presence of Roxas’ other.
But for now, he’s just an other.
The End
Now let's all forget the fact that Axel probably didn't know about Roxas' connection to Sora in the way that is explicitly described here.
Worry not, chaoticdance and inverts who also requested stuff on the request meme, I swear I'm getting around to yours next just as soon as I figure out how to draw Sirius in a skirt without dying of hilarity.
Title: Tension, Dark
Fandom: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3
Author: carmentakoshi
Beta: none
Rating: PG
Pairing(s): Mitsuru/Yukari
Summary: Mitsuru thought things would be different after that, but all she got was the same Takeba.
Warnings: unbeta'd, serious UST
Word Count: 1 269
Author's Notes: For the delightful misrepha , who requested some Mitsuru/Yukari with a side of fierce!Mitsuru. ;) I comment-boxed this earlier in the meme itself, but I decided to post it here for archiving purposes.
Tension, Dark
The moon hung heavily in the sky, bright, reflective, watching closely for their next move.
Takeba was not looking at her.
Akihiko tried not to. He knew. Perhaps.
“Arisato.”
He only turned after a long moment, shaking his head a bit as his gaze swung around. This was not unusual; Arisato often spent long moments standing by the high arching windows as the rest of them prepared for battle, staring out as though he was seeing something past the distorted view that others could not see.
“Yes, Mitsuru-senpai?”
“I have a suggestion for today’s training,” said Mitsuru in a clear voice. It was the voice of the valedictorian, the one Takeba probably hated. “A plan of action, if you will.”
“I’m-” Arisato paused to stifle a yawn against his sleeve, mumbling an apology, “I’m all ears.”
“I suggest that we split into smaller groups for our training tonight. That way, all of us are certain to get our fair share of battle, and everyone will be required to, shall I say, pull their own weight.”
“Hey, don’t look at me like that! I totally pull my own weight around here-”
“She wasn’t even looking at you, Stupei. But since you seem to recognize yourself...”
“Shut up, Yuka-tan!”
“Both of you, shut up,” said Arisato without venom. “Mitsuru-senpai is right. We need to be tougher on ourselves if we’re going to improve. How about we split into pairs this time?”
Mitsuru nodded once.
“Okay, then,” Arisato continued, sounding suddenly a lot more alert. “Junpei, you’re with me.”
”Yeah, yeah.”
“In that case, I’ll be on my own,” Akihiko said.
His eyes blazed. He had forgotten his doubts about Mitsuru now, consumed again by the recollection of his wounded body and wounded pride. She understood this, and him, but simply letting him go would not be...plausible, even in this scenario. “Akihiko, remember what happened last time you fought on your own.”
“I remember,” Akihiko replied fiercely. “As if you’d ever let me forget. But I can’t let that stop me. Besides, I won’t be alone up in that damn tower. You guys will all be in touch.”
“Yes,” Fuuka piped up, standing alone under the stairway. She had one hand laid delicately against an elaborately-sculpted pillar. Her white fingers trembled against the stone, like she was still afraid to touch. “I’ll be keeping tabs on all of you through Lucia, so if anyone gets into trouble, I can send along the others.”
“You all right with that, Mitsuru?” Akihiko said, smiling out of one corner of his mouth; a tease. But he could not possibly know. She sometimes forgot that when it came to people, Akihiko was not all that bright.
“Fine.”
“Great,” said Arisato. He crouched and picked his spear up from the floor, hefting it over one shoulder. “So that leaves Mitsuru-senpai and Yukari as study buddies. Cool. Go, team, rah, rah, rah.”
And he turned, making a vague fist-pumping gesture with his free hand before beginning to climb the stairs.
Mitsuru thought she caught Takeba glaring at her from across the room, but in the next instant she had finished adjusting her bow on her shoulder, and had walked off without waiting.
=====
They were quiet for three floors, saying only what was necessary for their partnership to function.
Mitsuru had thought it would be different.
Takeba walked ahead of her, most of the time, scouting with her bow at the ready. Only when she spied a Shadow along the dark hallway would she stop, and signal to Mitsuru with a jerk of her head. Then she would wait, as Mitsuru advanced cautiously and sprung on the enemy at the most opportune moment. They finished off a fair number of Shadows this way, with minimal trouble. It was an efficient system.
This was not how Mitsuru wanted it at all.
They rested in a stairwell, well out of reach from either floor. Mitsuru watched how Takeba sat on the stair with her ankles crossed, but tried not to look like she was staring. Anyway, Takeba was looking resolutely in the other direction, sometimes up, sometimes down, but never before her, where Mitsuru sat with her rapier laid carefully across her lap.
A few minutes passed this way in tense silence, then Takeba suddenly stood up and straightened her skirt, still not meeting Mitsuru’s eyes as she said, “All right, we should get going. Maybe we can do a couple more floors then regroup with the others.”
Mitsuru said, “Fine.”
Takeba nodded, and turned to ascend the stairs, not meeting her gaze.
And Mitsuru had had enough.
“Takeba.”
“What?”
“Takeba.”
“What?” Takeba snapped, as she finally stopped climbing and turned around. She met Mitsuru’s gaze for just a second, then looked away, frowning. Mitsuru remained sitting on the stair.
“What do you want, senp-”
“For this to stop. I thought you had more courage than this.”
Takeba stood agape for a moment, before her gaze hardened. “Wha-...you’re blaming this on me?”
“And what is ‘this’, exactly?”
“You know what ‘this’ is, and you don’t get to sit there so calmly and tell me you don’t!”
“All right, then.”
So Mitsuru placed her sword down on the step, and rose to her feet, and climbed the stairs until she was level with Takeba, and kissed her.
There was a pause that stretched out on all sides, dispelling the darkness, filtering the sickly green midnight light out, but then Takeba tore herself away from Mitsuru, stumbling on the stair, and the closeness and gloom of the Midnight Hour returned in a rush. Shadows groaned from the darkness but none approached them here, on the boundary between floors.
“What are you doing?” Takeba shrieked, the fingertips of one hand pressed against her mouth. “Mitsuru-senpai, I thought we said-”
“We didn’t say anything, Takeba,” Mitsuru said sternly. “That is why this feels so...unfinished. We’re not done.”
“We never started.”
“Maybe we should.”
Takeba seemed startled at this, but she recovered in an instant, saying suspiciously, “You don’t even like me. More importantly, I don’t even like you. We’ve never gotten along.”
“So you’re saying our first kiss was an accident?” Mitsuru replied. She took a step back and down, distancing herself from Takeba even though every fibre of her was screaming at Mitsuru to just go, make her yours, you can. “You’re saying that since we never seemed to outwardly like each other in our everyday interactions, the fact that we just so happened to kiss was nothing but a mere misfortune, a stroke of bad luck?”
“Of course it wasn’t an accident!” Takeba snapped. “It was a mistake, nothing more.”
“A mistake?”
“Yeah.”
“...I see. In that case, there really is nothing more to be said.”
“Exactly.”
“Very well. Let us move on, then.”
And with that, Mitsuru descended the stairs to retrieve her weapon, then climbed back up, past Takeba and the darkness of the previous floor and up towards the darkness of the next.
Takeba hung back, standing alone on the stairs, her figure growing dimmer in the poor light as Mitsuru moved farther and farther away from her. She seemed angry, and confused, and maybe even hurt, but Mitsuru could sense nothing deeper than the surface emotions that Penthesilea helpfully projected back to her, partly against her will, perhaps in an attempt to appease Mitsuru’s own conflicted feelings.
She told Penthesilea to stop, and kept walking.
And only when she had reached the top stair, and was almost out of sight, did Takeba pick up her bow and follow her.
The End
Title: The Other
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Author: carmentakoshi
Rating: PG
Pairing(s): Axel/Sora
Summary: With Roxas gone, Axel turns to the only person in the world who can come close to replacing him.
Warnings: slight sexuality, spoilers for Kingdom Hearts 2
Word Count: 638
Author's Notes: Extremely late birthday fic for the awesome retraux . Happy belated b-day, Alex, and may this year be a better one than you've ever had. :) ♥
Also I may have channeled your writing style to get this out. XD
The Other
When they first met - really met, touching, intimate - it was like a firestorm in the pit of his chest. Raging, wild. Then, the regret, or the closest thing he could ever feel to regret.
Axel doesn’t know how it happened, and couldn’t care less why (although this he knows, it’s been obvious from the start), so he just tries not to think, just tries to let his body do the thinking like it always does. He trusts his limbs and his hands, not his head, certainly not the hole deep in the middle of his chest.
When they first met, it was dark. Axel doesn’t remember where (Twilight Town, a stormy day so darker than usual) and he doesn’t care, he stopped caring the moment he realized Rox-he wasn’t coming back. That’s about when he started getting reckless (always been reckless except now he’s alone), about when that other one caught his eye. The one who made him feel like he (damnit, Roxas, where are you?) was still around, like he was nearby, just around the corner and down the street from him, close but out of sight.
(damnit, Roxas, why did you go?)
So now Axel has turned to his other - Roxas’ other - the one with the same weapon and the same height. The same eyes. And it’s like finding Roxas, almost, except this one doesn’t talk back, doesn’t sulk and scowl with the familiar hint of a smirk playing around his lips, tugging him this way and that.
And this one knows. Not all of it (he’s been careful, though not careful enough, obviously), but enough for him to freak out about it. Except he doesn’t. He just smiles. He takes Axel in.
Sometimes, he tells him, “It’ll be all right.”
And Axel hates him. He hates him but he needs him too, needs his presence and his touch in those furtive hours of the night when the other’s friends are resting, asleep, too naive to realize what’s going on every time their third member leaves and returns only at dawn. He needs these stolen hours like he needs to breathe, or to fill the empty space in his chest with violence and fire, or with...him.
He needs the chase, the thrill of pursuit (though he already has him), needs the closeness, the intimacy (though he’s far away, in his mind, as it’s happening), needs the act of searching, searching frantically, deeply, desperately, searching for Roxas in his fingers and hands, in his hair and in his eyes, in his mouth and in his voice. Always looking, never finding. Unquenched, in the end, though the intimacy itself resolves in a kind of satisfaction.
(And he can’t bring himself to think this wholeheartedly much less say it aloud but) Axel had begun to lose hope, maybe, and in this hopelessness he has begun to cling to something else, something closer and much more dangerous than the Nobody who makes him feel like he has a heart.
He hates himself for thinking of Roxas when he’s there. When Sora touches him gently when it’s over - on the shoulder, the side of the face - and says softly, “Axel. It’ll be all right”, he feels like a filthy being, a stupid hollow shell who can’t do any better than searching blindly for his best friend while seeking refuge in the arms of the enemy.
But it’ll be all right. Roxas may be gone, maybe forever, but Axel doesn’t need a heart. He never did.
(before him)
And Axel doesn’t need Sora either, but he keeps coming back. Just like Sora keeps coming back. Maybe one day, if neither of them ends up dead because of everything that’s happening, he’ll come to appreciate the constant presence of Roxas’ other.
But for now, he’s just an other.
The End
Now let's all forget the fact that Axel probably didn't know about Roxas' connection to Sora in the way that is explicitly described here.