Drabble Meme
Name 10 characters before you read the prompts. Then, write a fic of 100 words or less for each prompt.
1. Asher (Anita Blake: VH)
2. Harry Dresden (Dresden Files)
3. Prussia (AP Hetalia)
4. “Gentleman” Johnny Marcone (Dresden Files)
5. France (AP Hetalia)
6. Thomas Raith (Dresden Files)
7. Requiem (Anita Blake: VH)
8. Michael Carpenter (Dresden Files)
9. Jean-Claude (Anita Blake: VH)
10. Canada (AP Hetalia)
First Time 4 and 6 (Marcone and Thomas)
To say Marcone was a little sexually frustrated would be a lot like saying the Great Chicago fire was a little accident. As a vampire of the White Court, Thomas knew these things.
Of course Thomas had approached him before, on numerous occasions, but Marcone always managed to turn the other cheek. He was a businessman, first and foremost. That was why when Dresden complained about finding the time to deliver his latest batch of truth serum to the tycoon’s current main office, Thomas had leapt at the chance.
When he sought the crime lord out, he hadn’t expected to find him dosing at his desk. Clad in a three piece five thousand dollar suit with his feet propped up on his desk blotter, immaculate Gucci loafers gleaming in the light. Pausing at the door, Thomas propped against the frame and took a second to absorb the moment of impromptu vulnerability. His head was lolled back against the plush leather of the desk chair, his mouth drooped open in a quiet snore.
Of course he was never really unguarded. In fact Guard had let Thomas through already, otherwise he wouldn’t have made it past the front door. Hendricks lounged against the wall on the far side of the hall. The vantage point gave him a good view into the interior of the office, but Thomas had a feeling he wouldn’t interfere unless called.
Thomas stepped around the desk like a ghost, leaving Harry’s package in its brown paper sack in the guest chair. Soft fingertips brushed Marcone’s weathered brow and the sleeping gangster sighed. Thomas absorbed that tension like a tick taking to a wound. Unexpectedly, Thomas replaced his fingertips with his lips and kissed a butterfly’s path down the slumbering man’s face. With the first tentative touch of his lips to the other man’s, Thomas took all that frustration, all that stress into himself. When Marcone awoke some hours later, he would feel satiated and completely refreshed.
Most were under the impression Thomas needed the nitty gritty parts of sex to feed, but that was an illusion. A half-truth his kind projected to protect themselves.
On top of that, what was the fun of a little nuzzling if you never get the good parts?
“Assurez-vous que vous revez de moi,” he told the mobster in his faux-language after slipping the business card from his salon into the other man’s inner vest pocket. Pressing a kiss to the shell of his ear, Thomas left like the dream he was.
AU 1 and 8 (AsherxMichael)
When I first laid eyes on him, I knew that he had to be an emissary of the Devil. Gold spilled from his crown like God’s light, and though he had the face of an Angel, a demon hid behind his roguish smile. Our anonymous source advised us as to the location of his day time resting place, while centuries of the Good Word prepared us for the rest. God taught us these demons couldn’t survive the light of day.
We stuck mid morning, after we had glimpsed his kindred dark haired hell-spawn slipping away during the night. We incapacitated his human woman easily enough. Though we were Holy men and bore His Mark, she fought us tooth and nail. We gave her the chance to repent. We told her no human soul was truly unredeemable, if only she’d accept Jesus Christ into her heart…
And she laughed. She took up a knife from the cutlery drawer and sliced it across her palm. Before our eyes the wound re-knit itself, whole and unblemished. It was no miracle, but trick of the Devil. I struck her down with Amoracchius’ pommel. The Holy blade left a burn mark where it touched her temple.
We burned her as a witch.
The blonde awoke as she called out to him in a high, piteous keening. Asher. Asher. We had him strung up on the cross shaped alter. His skin puckered and singed around the silver chains we bound him with. He called out to her, his Julianna, but he couldn’t pull free of the lashing we delivered. All around me, I watched my lessers waver in their resolve, but I willed my heart to stone. We were performing God’s work in His name. These two didn’t feel love, only mimed the concept, sullied it with their lips and bodies.
T’was a show only for our benefit.
It was his name they should invoke, not each others, if they truly wished a reprieve from the immortal hellfire.
Just outside God’s Holy house, she burned for hours after she stopped screaming. When Asher hadn’t been able to come to her, she called for another just as piteously. Jean-Claude. I can only assume this was the black haired heathen who had departed one night earlier.
She died with another’s name on her lips. I think this turn of events struck the blonde demon much like a physical blow.
After the witch perished, I went to him with a gourd of holy water lowered at my side. He turned pale eyes on me, once blue and joy filled like the sky above the Italian Alps, now white and filmy. Dead eyes. A Cadaver’s gaze.
Raising the animal skin over my head, I showed him God’s divine justice. I made my face the last thing he’d ever see. With a steely gaze and a fierce countenance, I dribbled God’s cleansing water down the vampire’s body. Steam rose from his skin like water tossed onto a pyre, but I persisted. With his face I took much care, lest the Angels weep at the loss of such beauty. He cried out in agony as I cleansed his body. Always his left side, always his sinistra.
With a pitying gaze, I prayed for him.
“God have mercy on your soul.”
Threesome 3, 6 and 9 (Prussia, Thomas and Jean-Claude)
3 October 1990
The raven haired incubus stared over the albino’s head at the blonde.
“Wherever did you find this one?” Jean-Claude inquired as he traced a thumb-nail through a particularly gruesome gash on the ex-nation’s cheek. Bringing it to his lips to taste, he sighed. “So sweet is the blood of innocence.”
Innocent? Bah. The only innocence in him was the blood of his people, and that was seeping onto the ground in puddles as the spoke over him.
“Dumped in a ditch just outside of town,” Thomas replied with a sardonic grin. “Tossed aside like garbage, he was. By his uniform I’m guessing he’s military.”
“Then there will be records, people looking for him. You were very rash to bring him here, Thomas,” the elder vampire chastised his comrade.
“Unless he’s a deserter. In which case his death at our hands would be a blessing.” Thomas’ tone took on a teasing timbre.
Jean-Claude seemed to consider that while his hands busied themselves with picking leaves from Prussia’s hair. “Even so, he’s lost a fair bit of blood already.”
“Being flayed alive will do that,” Thomas concluded, nodding emphatically.
“Who is to say he won’t die without our help?” When the last bit of foliage was extracted, cultured, spidery hands dropped to massage his shoulders.
“I’m already dead,” Prussia groused in a tone he didn’t recognize and could scarcely understand. With a hacking fit he rolled on his side and coughed up blood. “The Wall is gone…East no longer exists..Germany is unified..I no longer exist..”
Thomas made shushing sounds as Jean-Claude rubbed soothing circles in the albino’s back. They didn’t seem confused. They seemed to have sensed something other about him from the very first moment the pair laid eyes on him. Instead of panicking like a common mundane might do, the two incubi vampires merely took the information in stride.
“Oh ye of little faith,” Jean-Claude laughed, baring fang.
Thomas grinned as well, widely and with too many teeth.
“You needn’t die, brother.” Jean-Claude purred, shucking the military jacket from the ex-nation’s haggard form. “Come with us--”
“--Be like us,” Thomas agreed as he helped prop Prussia up against Jean-Claude’s chest. The raven haired vampire soothed the tension from the albino’s throat while Thomas rolled up a bloodied sleeve to bare the limp man’s wrist.
“And live forever.” Prussia consented with an anguished sigh as both incubi struck.
Hurt/Comfort 5 and 10 (FrancexCanada)
Sometime in 1868...
Always before, Canada would be the one crying, and France would wander in out of nowhere with comforting words and a soft embrace. The elder nation would make the monsters in gentleman’s clothes go away and scare the wild animals back into the woods.
When Canada stumbled over France that day, dry eyed from crying, the younger blonde was at a loss.
“I’ve had it with him,” France confided to the younger commonwealth, without ever looking up. “This time I am really finished.”
Without being asked, Canada joined him at the bank. Drawing his knees under his chin, the small boy knew without asking he was upset over England again. “What did he do now?”
“He won’t see reason!” France exploded, turning to Canada in a rush. “He keeps going on and on about how the ‘end doesn’t justify the cost’ and how this entire ‘endeavor is doomed to fail’! I know I can’t afford this, but I can see a future where we--no, the world--will need this thing!”
Nodding sympathetically, Canada reached out to stroke his elder brother’s rigid back. He knew all about France’s lofty plans for the future. He also knew all about England’s never ending ploy to sabotage them.
“He staged a revolt among my workers. A revolt, can you believe it?”
Canada nodded. Not that France saw.
“He’s been against my idea since the get go. He thinks just because he has the biggest boat fleet he can dictate to me! Pha! I’ll show him. We’ll push him out. I’ll get the others to agree. Egypt doesn’t want old springy eyebrows around anymore than I do..”
“France,” Canada cautioned before his elder brother could go off on too much of a tangent. “Be careful not to burn your bridges. After all, it’s just a canal.”
Crack 1 (Asher)
Lestat really gave vampires a bad rap when it came to dealing with technology. Jean-Claude wielded a blackberry with more finesse than any self important, perma-blue toothed suit in line at Starbucks. Belle Morte had a god damned black Mastercard. Asher was no exception. He kept immaculate financial records on Quickbooks and did his taxes every year on Turbotax.
He even checked his comms when he got a little down time at the Casino.
Unbeknownst to the Uber-snatch (a.k.a Anita) most of her ‘hunnies’ had banned together to create a forum for complaining about what a tyrannical, self centered slut she was. There was even an up-to-date Lay Chart that was updated hourly. This week, recent entries included Nathaniel, Byron, Requiem, and some random called the White Raith.
Nathaniel was complaining about how the big, bad, scary vampire Executioner had cut her leg in the shower shaving today, and then called him up from cooking her meal to patch up her ’battle scar’. Of course he didn’t mind taking care of her, but Jesus Christ. He’d seen her lift small cars to impress JC’s bodyguards and yet she couldn’t seem to handle applying a facking bandaid?
Asher suggested slipping her a blood thinner in her coffee, so next time she might accidentally bleed out.
Byron was once again still very confused as to why she thought he wanted to sleep with HER. He preferred blokes for crying out loud. Of course he’d hit it once before, but only because sleeping with Anita seemed to be some sort of unofficial ‘bro’ hazing… But honestly it had been like throwing a hotdog off the Empire State Building. …Yeah! That little resistance!
“She doesn’t think gay men or woman can have real relationships,” Asher advised him sagely. “She saw you as lacking ‘real’ intimacy so that’s why she tossed you on the ground and had her way with you. Good job taking one for the team though. Nobody else wanted to fuck her right that instant. We all had other, more important things to do like work, sleep, get shot, or organize our collection of toenail trimmings.”
Additionally, Asher sent him a PM with his phone number, just incase he had misplaced it.
Requiem was quoting Sir Thomas Wyatt (again). Asher’s glacial blue eyes narrowed in pique. Yeah, yeah. Everyone knew the vampire was well read, but after awhile it just started seeming like he was plagiarizing the men he’d probably known on a first name basis back in the day.. “I love this work’s stunning originality and use of poetic form.” Asher commented by way of criticism. It was just pointed enough to piss Requiem off. Perfect.
“Hey,” White Raith’s post read, “Long time lurker first time poster. This bitch sounds like a real piece of work. I say we lock her and my brother’s ex-gf together in a steel plated room and see what causes who to eat the other first. That pussy ass half-vampire or Anita’s actual vampire snatch..”
Jason had already commented. “I’d put money on Anita’s snatch! It ate my watch once!”
Smirking to himself, Asher clacked out a hasty reply. “Oui. We found your timepiece, mon loupe. She said she thought it was her NuvaRing..”
Horror 10 (Canada)
For six whole days Canada couldn’t find Kumo. On the seventh day, the door bell rang. Bedraggled and miserable from worry, Canada stumbled to the door in his bathrobe and fuzzy polar bear slippers.
Flinging open the door, he squinted into the morning light. “Gil? What are you doing here?”
“M-matty,” the albino stuttered, his face contorted in agony. It was then Canada took in the little details: Prussia’s disheveled hair and tear stained face, the bloodied orange snow coat he held wadded in his arms.
“What--”
“Matty--I’m sorry. I was out driving last night. It was dark and--”
No, not wadded. Draped. What Prussia held was beneath the coat, and infinitely more precious. Realization dawned, and Matty felt all meaning drain away from the world.
“Oh God, I didn’t see him. Forgive me. You have to forgive me.”
Baby!fic 5 and 10 (France and Canada)
A snow ball at his window woke Canada in the middle of the night. Rolling over, he resolved to ignore it.
Two more struck the glass in quick succession. Scowling, Canada sat up and stumbled to the window. Throwing back the glass, he leaned out the sill prepared to hurl profanities that were not indicative of the nicest nation in the entire world.
It was three o’clock in the morning. Surely whatever it was could wait until daylight!
A story below, France donned a stylish charcoal overcoat and a cashmere scarf and gloves. In his arms he cradled a tiny, ruddy faced, blonde little girl.
“No,” Canada murmured, horror-struck. “This couldn’t of happened. She wouldn‘t have let it go through.”
“Don’t be daft, little brother! The emancipation was ratified by your Governor General just this morning. Come down and greet your little sister, Québec.”
The child tilted her head up to regard the commonwealth with a glacial stare at odds with her angelic, baby-blonde curls.
“Oui, frère,” she agreed in her peculiar mixture of English and bastard French. “I should hope the three of us can become quite close.”
Dark 2 and 8 (Harry and Michael)
It’s not every day I find a man in my bathtub, let alone one that was stripped to the waist and bleeding profusely. Michael looked up at me with a serene sort of calm that unnerved me. I was still trying desperately to staunch the bleeding with a shabby dishtowel.
The vamp had gotten up close, between Michael and his sword. He’d gotten a pretty grisly chunk torn out of his throat before I’d managed to dislodge and dispatch of it. Others had smelled the blood and descended on us in a swarm. I set the entire den on fire with a spell, but it hadn’t been enough. I wasn’t quick enough. There wasn’t enough time to get him to All Angels.
He’d asked to come here, of all places, even though I didn’t have an exorbitant amount of holy water on hand.
“Come on Michael, it’s not that bad. We’ll get you patched up! I’ve already called Father Forthill over here! He’s on his way.”
“It is over Dresden. Amoracchius shuns my touch. The demon got into me. It is God’s way of telling me my time as a Knight, as well as my time on this Earth, has come to pass.”
“It’s just a stupid sword, Michael!” I cried, abandoning my attempt at first-aid in order to grasp him by the shoulders and shake him bodily. “You were attacked. It’s just confused. After we get some holy water in you, it won’t burn you anymore! You can’t just give up.” Halfway through my voice broke into a sob, and I dropped from the lip of the tub onto my knees on the grimy tiled floor. I didn’t have any jokes left. No snarky commentary, no asinine comments. Somehow, I didn’t see how I could ever laugh again.
“Just let me go,” Michael smiled, just as serenely as he had this morning when he picked me up in his white work truck. Inexplicably, a warmth flooded my heart. As I gazed upon his bloodied, weathered face, I felt love. I felt love as powerful as any believers’ who stared upon a well executed oil portrait of Christ. He wasn’t some mystical figure removed by thousands of years, he was Michael. My Michael. I’d known him for years. I was named Godfather of one of his children. I’ve eaten Sunday dinner at his home with his family a hundred times. He’d been willing to sacrifice himself for me. For my addiction to danger. For my over estimation of my own abilities. For my sins.
Tears misted my eyes, and as I kissed his hand I loved him.
Dear God, what about his family? His children? His wife? What would Charity say when she learns I got her husband killed? Please, God, don’t let this happen. Take me instead. I deserve this. Not him. He has always believed in you, even when he had no reason to. He is your faithful subject. He will always carry your light with him, and his children after him. I’m the unrepentant sinner, the murderer, the practitioner of dark and unholy magic. Take me instead.
After several moments of silence punctuated only by my quiet hiccups and his thready breathing, there was a labored laugh. “Are you praying for me, Harry? Have I finally converted you?”
“Michael, don’t do this..”
“It’s done.” He collapsed into a hacking fit, but there was finality in his tone. “I see my Father, Harry. He’s come to take me home.”
His eyes took on a glassy quality, and I lashed out at him in my fear. “Michael!” I shouted, shaking him roughly. “Michael come back!”
“He forgives you, Harry. With his infinite grace, he forgives you of all your many trespasses.” He turned that sage gaze onto me. The same gaze I remembered from the first time I’d met him. I wished I had never seen it before, so that I might capture him in a soul gaze and keep him there, with me, forever. But it was already done, and my gaze was just a gaze now, red rimmed and pouring tears. With one last, rattling breath, he spoke: “I forgive you.”
And with those words, Michael died.
Romance 4 and 7 (Marcone and Requiem)
“I don’t usually go for English pricks.” Marcone told the vampire across from him. They were in an upscale restaurant, one Marcone actually didn’t have his fingers in. Guard had really done her homework for this blind date. Begrudgingly, he vowed to himself he would purchase a minority share of the company on E-Trade as soon as he got home to ensure that the Valkarie could never snare him here with unsolicited company ever again.
“T’is quite alright, as I do not usually ‘go for’ uncouth slime in cheap suits.” The Englishman shot back contrarily.
Marcone felt his jaw drop open before he could lock it. “Excuse me!? This is Versace you damn, tasteless pirate! What are you going for with that cloak, anyway? Zorro? Superman?”
“You’re excused,” Requiem assented with a nod as he stroked fondly at his staple Van Dyke beard. “And even so, the shade makes you look like a pumpkin.” As to his insults, the vampire valued them not at one penny. “Oderint dum metuant,” he laughed.
“What’s that mean?” Marcone snapped after waving the waiter with their Dom Perignon.
“But sir, it’s a forty-thousand dollar opened bottle of champagne--”
“Pour it out!”
“Let them hate, so long as they fear.” Requiem translated, clearly bored. “It’s a Latin proberb.”
Marcone mirrored his disinterested countenance, though he was admittedly piqued. “Interesting. I’d like to have coasters made with that motto..”
“Indeed?” Requiem queried, suddenly voracious.
“Indeed. Nobody knew enterprise like the Romans.” Marcone stated, pointedly.
“Yes,” the vampire laughed, leaning forward over the table, closer to the gangster. “I’m afraid I’d be inclined to agree.”
“Not like that English guy, what’s his name? Elgin? Didn’t he bankrupt himself trying to ‘save’ those Greek scraps of marble?” Marcone leaned forward as well, green eyes sparking excitedly.
Reqiuem was momentarily taken aback at the good-natured barb, but quickly parried. “Elgin had high ideals. It’s the French who have no idea what they’re doing.”
“I know, right? Did you see the Suez Canal? Jeeze.”
“I did. I was there actually,” the vampire bragged.
“Really? How was that?”
“Well..”
Deathfic 2 and 3 (Harry and Prussia)
Gilbert faced his little brother with a serene look of acceptance. Germany didn’t like it. On Prussia, it looked too much like surrender.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” The teenaged wizard inquired for at least the fifteenth time. Enchanting trinkets and casting locator spells were one thing, but transfiguration magic was another matter entirely. There were at least a dozen other wizards, half of which were on the Senior Council, that Dresden could think of that could perform these rights better and with a smaller margin for catastrophe. For some reason, fate had chosen him.
“Of course it’s what I want,” Prussia consented, resigned. “There is no place for me in this world any longer. Is this what you want, brother?” Pink eyes turned to blue in interest. “To keep a piece of me with you, always?”
Almost imperceptibly, Germany’s hand went to his throat to the iron cross hanging there. “I do have a piece of you. You don’t need to do this.”
“Of course I do. Eventually my people will stop calling themselves Prussians. They will become Germans of Germanic decent. They will look to your boss for leadership and your lands for sustenance. They have no need for a memory.”
“Your more than a memory,” Germany murmured, almost intelligibly.
“Am I to gleam you might miss me when I’m gone, little brother?” Prussia barbed, almost sadistically.
Germany didn’t reply.
This is what Prussia wanted. Not a dramatic execution by rifle squad. Not to quietly vanish one day, as Rome had done. Not to go off to war like Holy Roman Empire and never return. Just this. Just the opportunity to become something else, something stronger. Something bigger than himself. Something that shines.
“My people will live on in you. I will live on in you. “ Placing one hand on brother’s, his only real brother’s chest, he looked into those wolfish eyes and smiled. “This is what I want. Take care of Matty for me?”
Stony eyes filling with tears, he bowed his head in acquiescence. “Ja, Bruder. Immer.”
“Alright then,” Harry Dresden, Apprentice wizard cleared his throat. “Show time.”
Dropping to his knees, he drew a circle in chalk around the seated brother nations and willed it closed.
One nation, under God, indivisible…