happy things, the fic edition: Vikings, Skyfall, Penny Dreadful, and The Eagle
I have had an extremely excellent birthday, made even more so because it was Friday the 13th. Thank you to everyone who sent emails/good wishes. SO! Here's a compilation of the tinyfics (aka comment!fic) I wrote today, yay. Part 2 is coming soon.
Vikings, Athelstan/Ragnar, 309 words
Prompt: tattoo
For killabeez
Athelstan first asks about taking the ink as the winter winds are howling outside, and Ragnar lends his heat to their bed in the night. He needs no permission - not even Ragnar's - but he craves it, for all that it represents.
"Not yet," Ragnar whispers, and shapes his hands to Athelstan's shoulders, his neck, the small of his back -- all the places a mark may be both seen and unseen.
He asks again in spring, when he has surprised Bjorn during practice and knocked him down, and wears twin bruises on his arms as a result of Bjorn's quick response. They ache when Ragnar's hands press into them, when Ragnar tumbles him in the tall grass and laughs against his mouth. "Why are you in such a hurry?" he asks.
There is an answer, but the words are too difficult. Athelstan's fingertips trace the symbols on Ragnar's skin, a longed-for language of war, a history without words. Ragnar answers him with his sure touch, but the skin Athelstan wears is empty and barren, and he wants, oh, he wants.
He thinks of it for the last time in summer when he stands in a trampled field, soaked in dead men's blood and his own triumph. His hands shake when he lowers his axe, but his legs are strong as he fights his way past the dead, toward the living.
He does not ask, but Ragnar finds him at the water's edge. Ragnar's blue eyes are fierce with victory as he smears the blood across Athelstan's neck, circles and jagged stripes that burn down through his skin and into his bones, a design of Athelstan's own making. The fire of pride and satisfaction grows in Athelstan's belly. "Now," Ragnar offers, pressing his lips to the spot where the mark will be born. "Now you are ready."
Skyfall, Bond/Q, 243 words
Prompt: hurting
For alby_mangroves
Bond takes Q's fingers in his mouth, tasting metal and scorched wire on his skin. His own hands are gnarled and scarred, crooked where they were broken, sharp where they were smooth. Q turns his head, kisses the pulse jumping in Bond's wrist, as if he understands. Bond knows better.
Q is not a youth, but he is still young nonetheless - young enough to be startled when he makes a mistake; young enough to exchange arrogance for knowledge; young enough to care about his future and all the repercussions of his actions, and to push ahead through his doubts regardless.
James can't remember what it was like to feel so much, so keenly. Most days, he can't quite believe he was ever that young. His body reminds him of harsh reality when he knees up on the bed, when he works open the buttons of Q's shirt to reveal the lean muscle beneath. Even the breath shuddering through him seems drawn from a place of long-ignored pain.
Whatever this is, it's not love. Bond knows the path of love quite intimately - betrayal, agony, death - and he doesn't follow those traces anymore.
But the ache in his belly, the constant hunger for things he won't name, is satisfied by the curve of Q's spine beneath his lips. The starving, snarling part of Bond curls up quiet, content, when Q looks up and smiles.
It's not love. But whatever this is, it's enough. For now.
Penny Dreadful, Dorian Gray/Ethan Chandler, 602 words
Prompt: beauty
For nestra
All of London knows Dorian Gray to be a collector of precious and beautiful things. His home is a shrine to decadence, to the wasteful pursuit of time and money, and he has a reputation to uphold in both arenas.
Time, however, is not the precious commodity it used to be. Dorian has spent evenings engaged in every carnal pursuit imaginable, and it ceased to amuse him long ago. The clock ticks on, the candles and gas lamps leave their sooty marks upon the wall as the flames lick higher, and he wishes nothing more than for the night to end so the next day may begin. Every morning brings with it a fresh hope for something new. Something different.
The night he spends with Ethan Chandler is the first night in a very long time that he is caught off-guard by the dawn.
Ethan dresses, casting hot looks at Dorian from the corner of his eye as he buttons his shirt, and for once Dorian finds slippery words too petty for the moment. Instead he pulls Ethan back into bed, rips those buttons off because he is contrary, and sinks his hands into Ethan's tousled hair.
"Must you go?" he asks. "I'm quite certain Ms. Ives will still pay you if you are late."
"I have work for the day," Ethan says, chuckling as he pitches aside a broken button.
"Just for the day?" Dorian stretches out beneath the silk sheets, one eyebrow arched. His point is made.
"We'll see," is all Ethan says.
**
Midnight has come and gone when Ethan rings the bell. The second night goes much as the first did, with astonishing quickness, and this time Dorian is asleep when Ethan leaves. He wakes to find a gift on his pillow, a bit of carved bone, curved to a point at one end - an antler, perhaps, or a horn from some unknown creature. It is rough in his hands, despite the smoothing its creator has attempted. Faint lines stretch across the surface, whorls which remind him of the wind and dappled jagged lines which might be leaves in the sunlight.
He rests it on his belly, stroking over the gentle curve, straying back to the dangerous point every time.
In the afternoon, he takes down some of the pictures in his salon - women with sad faces, men with lies in their eyes - and moves a table to that spot, with a silver tray on top. The carving seems at home there, plainly displayed, uncaring of its opulent surroundings or the care taken to show it off.
With a slight push, the chaise is at the proper angle, and he sits back to watch his prize, half-expecting a spirit animal to rise up around it.
The moments between awareness and sleep are slight, and wakes to find Ethan on the floor at his feet, drinking a glass of Dorian's least expensive brandy. His back is against Dorian's leg, warm and solid, as he stares at the room's newest display.
"Do you like it?" Ethan asks. His voice is hoarse; when the glass rises to his lips, there's a fine tremor in his arm. His clothes smell of gunpowder and decay.
The carving is the plainest thing in Dorian's grand house. Everything around it is built of privilege; it is art at its most simple, and it stands in contrast to the golden glow all around it.
Dorian slides his hands into Ethan's unwashed hair, leans forward to press his cheek against the rough stubble scattered across Ethan's face, the bristles of his beard. "I've never seen anything so beautiful."
The Eagle, Marcus/Esca, 525 words
Prompt: fog
For ignipes
Esca rides.
It is still strange country, for all that he's spent hours and days with Marcus, rambling up the low hills and down again into the sparse forest. Days like this, he has no care for direction. The fog comforts him, protects him; he might be riding toward the edge of the world, or into the sea, for all he knows or cares. His mare snorts and shudders, used to his knees pressing into her, urging her ever on.
When the rhythm of hoof beats matches the pounding of his heart, he closes his eyes and remembers: a pale bird soaring over open fields; the trill of his sister's laughter; the stink of leather and piss around the warriors' camp as they repaired their war shields. All the things that created a home are fading into the grey now, too easily forgotten.
He turns the mare east, and whispers to her, "We must go back." She knows the way better than Esca does, and he gives her free rein.
They cross a low valley, skirting the edges of a familiar field. The small stable comes into view first, and then the hut. It is a poor place, not a fit home for a proud soldier, but they can do no better until the first years' crops are in and Esca has sold some horses. "Not you," he says to his mare, pleased to be a conspirator in her fate. Marcus will want to fetch a good price for her, but Esca likes the way she runs.
Marcus is waiting inside by the hearth, well out of the weather. He has been using his hands, applying his skill with tools to the life they are building. He does not look up when Esca enters, or when he strips out of his warm cloak. "You have been gone most of the day," Marcus says, obvious words to fill the space between them. The fire is well-tended; stew sits in a pot beside it. "There is food."
"I see," Esca says. He ignores his grumbling stomach; instead, he sits beside Marcus, turning a roughly-hewn chair leg in his hands. "This is fine work."
"It is not, but we can both pretend it is, if you like." Marcus grins, and Esca smiles back. Pride is not a thing which comes between them any longer. Marcus sobers, and says, "How do you find anything at all out there in the fog?"
Someday, Esca will tell him the truth - that he is lured away by what he does not find. To ride, and to pretend that it is not Rome's land all around him, Rome's trees and villages, Rome's heavy hand on his heart - to stretch his mind back to simpler days, so that he might remember his mother's face, and his father's war cry. But Marcus would be wounded by Esca's longing, no matter how much they have shared, and there are simpler truths to deliver.
"I find a reason to come home," he says instead, to see Marcus' eyes shine in the firelight and to know the touch of his hand, this one thing of Rome's he has taken for himself.
Vikings, Athelstan/Ragnar, 309 words
Prompt: tattoo
For killabeez
Athelstan first asks about taking the ink as the winter winds are howling outside, and Ragnar lends his heat to their bed in the night. He needs no permission - not even Ragnar's - but he craves it, for all that it represents.
"Not yet," Ragnar whispers, and shapes his hands to Athelstan's shoulders, his neck, the small of his back -- all the places a mark may be both seen and unseen.
He asks again in spring, when he has surprised Bjorn during practice and knocked him down, and wears twin bruises on his arms as a result of Bjorn's quick response. They ache when Ragnar's hands press into them, when Ragnar tumbles him in the tall grass and laughs against his mouth. "Why are you in such a hurry?" he asks.
There is an answer, but the words are too difficult. Athelstan's fingertips trace the symbols on Ragnar's skin, a longed-for language of war, a history without words. Ragnar answers him with his sure touch, but the skin Athelstan wears is empty and barren, and he wants, oh, he wants.
He thinks of it for the last time in summer when he stands in a trampled field, soaked in dead men's blood and his own triumph. His hands shake when he lowers his axe, but his legs are strong as he fights his way past the dead, toward the living.
He does not ask, but Ragnar finds him at the water's edge. Ragnar's blue eyes are fierce with victory as he smears the blood across Athelstan's neck, circles and jagged stripes that burn down through his skin and into his bones, a design of Athelstan's own making. The fire of pride and satisfaction grows in Athelstan's belly. "Now," Ragnar offers, pressing his lips to the spot where the mark will be born. "Now you are ready."
Skyfall, Bond/Q, 243 words
Prompt: hurting
For alby_mangroves
Bond takes Q's fingers in his mouth, tasting metal and scorched wire on his skin. His own hands are gnarled and scarred, crooked where they were broken, sharp where they were smooth. Q turns his head, kisses the pulse jumping in Bond's wrist, as if he understands. Bond knows better.
Q is not a youth, but he is still young nonetheless - young enough to be startled when he makes a mistake; young enough to exchange arrogance for knowledge; young enough to care about his future and all the repercussions of his actions, and to push ahead through his doubts regardless.
James can't remember what it was like to feel so much, so keenly. Most days, he can't quite believe he was ever that young. His body reminds him of harsh reality when he knees up on the bed, when he works open the buttons of Q's shirt to reveal the lean muscle beneath. Even the breath shuddering through him seems drawn from a place of long-ignored pain.
Whatever this is, it's not love. Bond knows the path of love quite intimately - betrayal, agony, death - and he doesn't follow those traces anymore.
But the ache in his belly, the constant hunger for things he won't name, is satisfied by the curve of Q's spine beneath his lips. The starving, snarling part of Bond curls up quiet, content, when Q looks up and smiles.
It's not love. But whatever this is, it's enough. For now.
Penny Dreadful, Dorian Gray/Ethan Chandler, 602 words
Prompt: beauty
For nestra
All of London knows Dorian Gray to be a collector of precious and beautiful things. His home is a shrine to decadence, to the wasteful pursuit of time and money, and he has a reputation to uphold in both arenas.
Time, however, is not the precious commodity it used to be. Dorian has spent evenings engaged in every carnal pursuit imaginable, and it ceased to amuse him long ago. The clock ticks on, the candles and gas lamps leave their sooty marks upon the wall as the flames lick higher, and he wishes nothing more than for the night to end so the next day may begin. Every morning brings with it a fresh hope for something new. Something different.
The night he spends with Ethan Chandler is the first night in a very long time that he is caught off-guard by the dawn.
Ethan dresses, casting hot looks at Dorian from the corner of his eye as he buttons his shirt, and for once Dorian finds slippery words too petty for the moment. Instead he pulls Ethan back into bed, rips those buttons off because he is contrary, and sinks his hands into Ethan's tousled hair.
"Must you go?" he asks. "I'm quite certain Ms. Ives will still pay you if you are late."
"I have work for the day," Ethan says, chuckling as he pitches aside a broken button.
"Just for the day?" Dorian stretches out beneath the silk sheets, one eyebrow arched. His point is made.
"We'll see," is all Ethan says.
**
Midnight has come and gone when Ethan rings the bell. The second night goes much as the first did, with astonishing quickness, and this time Dorian is asleep when Ethan leaves. He wakes to find a gift on his pillow, a bit of carved bone, curved to a point at one end - an antler, perhaps, or a horn from some unknown creature. It is rough in his hands, despite the smoothing its creator has attempted. Faint lines stretch across the surface, whorls which remind him of the wind and dappled jagged lines which might be leaves in the sunlight.
He rests it on his belly, stroking over the gentle curve, straying back to the dangerous point every time.
In the afternoon, he takes down some of the pictures in his salon - women with sad faces, men with lies in their eyes - and moves a table to that spot, with a silver tray on top. The carving seems at home there, plainly displayed, uncaring of its opulent surroundings or the care taken to show it off.
With a slight push, the chaise is at the proper angle, and he sits back to watch his prize, half-expecting a spirit animal to rise up around it.
The moments between awareness and sleep are slight, and wakes to find Ethan on the floor at his feet, drinking a glass of Dorian's least expensive brandy. His back is against Dorian's leg, warm and solid, as he stares at the room's newest display.
"Do you like it?" Ethan asks. His voice is hoarse; when the glass rises to his lips, there's a fine tremor in his arm. His clothes smell of gunpowder and decay.
The carving is the plainest thing in Dorian's grand house. Everything around it is built of privilege; it is art at its most simple, and it stands in contrast to the golden glow all around it.
Dorian slides his hands into Ethan's unwashed hair, leans forward to press his cheek against the rough stubble scattered across Ethan's face, the bristles of his beard. "I've never seen anything so beautiful."
The Eagle, Marcus/Esca, 525 words
Prompt: fog
For ignipes
Esca rides.
It is still strange country, for all that he's spent hours and days with Marcus, rambling up the low hills and down again into the sparse forest. Days like this, he has no care for direction. The fog comforts him, protects him; he might be riding toward the edge of the world, or into the sea, for all he knows or cares. His mare snorts and shudders, used to his knees pressing into her, urging her ever on.
When the rhythm of hoof beats matches the pounding of his heart, he closes his eyes and remembers: a pale bird soaring over open fields; the trill of his sister's laughter; the stink of leather and piss around the warriors' camp as they repaired their war shields. All the things that created a home are fading into the grey now, too easily forgotten.
He turns the mare east, and whispers to her, "We must go back." She knows the way better than Esca does, and he gives her free rein.
They cross a low valley, skirting the edges of a familiar field. The small stable comes into view first, and then the hut. It is a poor place, not a fit home for a proud soldier, but they can do no better until the first years' crops are in and Esca has sold some horses. "Not you," he says to his mare, pleased to be a conspirator in her fate. Marcus will want to fetch a good price for her, but Esca likes the way she runs.
Marcus is waiting inside by the hearth, well out of the weather. He has been using his hands, applying his skill with tools to the life they are building. He does not look up when Esca enters, or when he strips out of his warm cloak. "You have been gone most of the day," Marcus says, obvious words to fill the space between them. The fire is well-tended; stew sits in a pot beside it. "There is food."
"I see," Esca says. He ignores his grumbling stomach; instead, he sits beside Marcus, turning a roughly-hewn chair leg in his hands. "This is fine work."
"It is not, but we can both pretend it is, if you like." Marcus grins, and Esca smiles back. Pride is not a thing which comes between them any longer. Marcus sobers, and says, "How do you find anything at all out there in the fog?"
Someday, Esca will tell him the truth - that he is lured away by what he does not find. To ride, and to pretend that it is not Rome's land all around him, Rome's trees and villages, Rome's heavy hand on his heart - to stretch his mind back to simpler days, so that he might remember his mother's face, and his father's war cry. But Marcus would be wounded by Esca's longing, no matter how much they have shared, and there are simpler truths to deliver.
"I find a reason to come home," he says instead, to see Marcus' eyes shine in the firelight and to know the touch of his hand, this one thing of Rome's he has taken for himself.