[Fic] "Lemonade" chapter 16 -- BtVS/Gundam Wing/Naruto
Here, after a year and four months, is chapter 16 of "Lemonade." For those of you who have forgotten that I was even writing this, it is a story that really ought to be crack but which I am treating completely seriously because I like a challenge. *grin*
Basically, a demon cult screws up an interdimensional summoning spell and sends Faith Lehane (of Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Duo Maxwell (of Gundam Wing), and Uchiha Sasuke (of Naruto) to a hell dimension. The three impromptu companions are forced to work together to survive and return home. Eventually this will result in a threesome. In the meantime, there is a lot of character development and occasional intrusions of plot.
Chapter 15 ended with the trio in their little cabin sheltering from a sandstorm as nightfall approached. Chapter 16 picks up immediately after Sasuke falls asleep. (1,975 words)
---------------------------------------------
Lemonade
---------------------------------------------
Part XVI: In which isolation proves to be an illusion
After what might have been two hours, the storm began to settle into steady wind and rain with only faint grumbles of thunder in the distance, and the last shreds of light faded into blackness. "Nightfall, more or less," Duo said, nudging Faith's leg with his boot. "This time I'll just ask: who takes first watch?"
"Me," Faith told him. "I'll wake Sasuke when I turn in."
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it?" Duo asked, leaning in to smile suggestively against her skin, just underneath her left ear. "Works for me. Just be careful waking up Mr. Ninja. He might still be grumpy."
"I think I've got less to worry about in that direction than you do," Faith said, twisting to run one hand down Duo's side to his hip. "And this is not the time. Sack out. We can play again tomorrow."
"Tease," he said, and kissed her, hard and deep and ruthless, like he wanted to drink the air from her lungs and leave her dizzy and aching. Two seconds -- heat pooled in her belly -- she grabbed his wrist to pull him closer -- and he broke off, ducked away, and rolled across the hard-packed floor toward Sasuke and the blanket. "Tomorrow, chica. It's a promise."
"Tease, am I? Takes one to know one," Faith muttered as she propped herself up against the wall, legs crossed Indian-style and her hands resting loose on her knees. Soldier-boys. Like B said, you shouldn't trust them, no matter how sexy they might be.
A drop of rain splashed on the top of her head, cold and heavy, and sent little tendrils trickling down her scalp. Faith made a face and scrubbed her fingers through her hair. They really should have thought to caulk the roof.
Oh well, at least the Chinese water torture would help keep her awake.
She spent the next few hours drifting in and out of the Zen no-mind she'd learned in prison, doing her best to just be -- to let the world pour in through her senses and not filter or judge or sort any of the information unless it might be a threat. Now and then a gust of wind or a crack of thunder pulled her back, and once she heard a shrill, grating call that sounded far too close for comfort, but the unidentified animal wandered off, its cry fading into the wind, and she slid back into meditation.
After a long while something began to nag at the back of her mind. Faith frowned, and flexed her arms and legs, and listened to Duo and Sasuke's steady, even breathing patterns, and then remembered. Three watches. She'd been up maybe four or five hours. Sasuke's turn now.
No point standing -- the little shack wasn't that far across, and tripping over the boys would be wicked embarrassing. Faith eased over on her hands and knees, listening hard, until she was right over two warm bodies, two slow, steady breathing patterns rasping faintly in the pitch-black air.
Too steady. "Just me," she said, and there, that was the faint click of a knife set back down on the sandy ground. "Sasuke, wake up. Your turn."
"Turn?" he asked, cloth rustling as he sat up.
"Watch," she said, sitting back on her heels. "Your turn, then Duo's. Hand over the blanket."
"And then shut up, for god's sake," Duo muttered. "Some of us are trying to sleep."
Sasuke shoved the blanket into Faith's arms, his fingers brushing against the back of her hand as he misjudged the distance slightly. "Thanks, Sasuke. See you in the morning," she said. Then she crawled forward and lay down beside Duo, dragging the blanket over his body as well as hers. She made sure to press against his back and brush her fingers over his thighs and chest under the pretext of straightening wrinkles in the rough fabric.
"Such a tease," he muttered, but he inched sideways toward her, prolonging the contact.
Faith grinned into the darkness. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. I want you dreaming of me, not giant zombie centipedes."
There was a brief, disgusted silence. "Oh, you are evil," Duo said. "Like I'm going to have anything but nightmares now. Thanks a million, chica."
Across the floor, Sasuke coughed in disapproval.
"All part of the service," Faith told Duo. After a moment, she snuck her left arm forward and rested it over Duo's chest. He brushed the back of her hand with his fingertips, just for a second. Then he sighed and went still.
Good enough. Faith closed her eyes and thought about sunlight until she fell asleep.
---------------------------------------------
The storm had mostly died off by the time Sasuke woke Duo -- the wind still moaned eerily around the walls and brushed a sporadic drift of sand through the gaps in the roof, but the rain and thunder were gone. "Lucky," Duo murmured as he unwound Faith's arms from his waist and slid out from under the blanket. "I was afraid we'd be trapped inside for days."
Sasuke grunted in agreement and tried to lie down on Faith's other side, with no covers.
Duo laughed to himself. "Here, idiot," he said, and tossed his now-dry jacket to Sasuke. "It's one thing to avoid sex. It's another thing to be stupid." He waited until the ninja dragged it over his torso as a makeshift blanket. Then Duo sat cross-legged, propped his back against the wall, and waited for morning.
He had a lot of experience waiting in the dark, after all, and at least this time he wasn't in danger of suffocation, explosive decompression, or most of the other standard risks he ran in his line of work.
Morning dawned with a faint, gray seep of light through the cracks in the roof. Duo waved his fingers in front of his face to make sure he wasn't just imagining the hints of visibility, then waited another half hour to be sure. Yeah, partly he wanted to give Faith and Sasuke a little more sleep while he tried to make plans for the day, but mostly he saw no point in stumbling around through unsecured territory during false dawn.
Eventually, though, he could see grayed-out hints of color in his shirt and the blanket Faith was still wrapped in. Duo sighed. Then he pulled on his smile and flicked a pebble at Sasuke's head. "Rise and shine, sleepyheads! The sun is shining! The birds are singing -- or they would be, if the zombie centipedes hadn't eaten them. Up and at 'em!"
Faith mumbled something incomprehensible and pulled the blanket over her head. Sasuke sat up and blinked in utter confusion. "Slower?" he said after a moment.
"Time to get up," Duo said in Japanese, and then repeated himself in English. "Don't worry about the rest," he added. "I'm just teasing Faith. She's obviously not a morning person."
"Ah." Sasuke stood and stretched, his navy blue shirt riding up over his stomach. His black hair was even wilder than usual, sleep having accentuated the choppy, hacked-off-with-a-knife style he seemed to favor. Duo itched to go after the guy with a comb, mostly just for aesthetic reasons. Though if Sasuke felt like relaxing and letting Duo play with his hair and trail fingers down the back of his neck, maybe reach around and... nah. Not going to happen any time soon. Better to focus on Faith, who wouldn't bite his head off just for grinning suggestively.
Duo yanked his expression back to neutral amusement by the time Sasuke bent to gather his knives and Duo's jacket. He threw the jacket to Duo -- his aim was annoyingly perfect despite the bad light and the fact that he'd been asleep just a minute before -- and made the knives disappear. "Faith's targets are nocturnal," Sasuke pointed out. "If she wants to track them to their lairs, she needs to be awake when they are."
Duo swung the jacket around his shoulders and slipped his arms into the sleeves, then shrugged to adjust the fit over his own knives. "Don't spoil a perfectly good bit of mockery with logic." He lifted the wooden latch on the door and swung it open, letting weak morning sunlight stream inside. "Faith, Sasuke and I are going to see what the damage is. You're on your own for a while, chica, so you might want to open your eyes."
"Bastard," Faith grumbled, but she yanked the blanket down and rolled onto her back, prying her eyes open. "Give me a minute and I'll come along."
---------------------------------------------
The sandstorm had done surprisingly little damage to the oasis. One of the pathetic trees had blown down, several had lost a branch or three, and all looked noticeably more tattered about the leaves, but the grove, such as it was, had survived largely intact. The lake was dirty with sediment and likely would remain so for several more hours, but it hadn't been smothered by sand.
"Rocky desert," Duo said, walking along the shore to stand at Sasuke's shoulder. "You need a sandy desert to really build up a killer storm, I guess, and if we were out in the dunes, we wouldn't have found a lake in the first place." He shrugged. "I should've remembered that."
"Even a little sand can wound if the wind is strong enough," Sasuke said. "You're not the only one who's spent time in deserts." And if he never saw Wind Country again, that would be more than fine.
"Oh, bring logic into it again," Duo said, laughing. He pivoted on his heel and cupped his hands around his mouth, calling up toward the cabin. "Hey, Faith, the water's dirty. No baths today, ---- you want sand in ---- places."
Sasuke couldn't quite make sense of the second sentence, but judging by Duo's tone of voice, that was probably for the best.
"Don't you wish," Faith said as she sauntered down to the shore. "Then ---- get to clean me up." She nudged Duo with her hip and they exchanged a sideways grin. Sasuke frowned. Idiots. Why couldn't he ever end up partnered with sane, focused people?
"We need to plan our day," he told Duo. "The meat won't last much longer, even if I roast it. The Sarguls might attack again at any moment. Faith's witch might open a portal..." An unpleasant idea hit him. "Or she might summon Faith home without coming here first, and then what happens to you and me?"
Duo rolled his eyes. "Seriously, chill out for half an hour. We haven't even eaten breakfast yet. I want to do thorough recon just as much as you do, and I am all in favor of contingency plans, but for now, let's settle for not getting out of earshot of each other. We'll hash out the rest in a bit."
"----, please?" Faith asked.
"Sasuke wants to make plans," Duo said. "I said to wait ---- after ----."
"Fine. You do whatever you want down here. I'll climb the ridge and check the surrounding territory," Sasuke said to Duo, and left the others to their mutual distraction. He paused at the cabin to retrieve his spare knives -- with no ready backup, he needed all the advantages he could create -- and then strode upward through the scraggly grove toward the sheltering ridge.
Sasuke paused before cresting the hill, ingrained caution making him wait and listen and feel for hostile intent. Nothing seemed amiss, so he climbed the last few paces and prepared to survey the empty desert.
It wasn't empty.
Sasuke stared at the caravan of gold and blue insect-like creatures -- the blue ones mounted on the gold -- for two frozen heartbeats. The creatures stared back, equally startled. Then Sasuke threw himself backward down the ridge.
A rising cacophony of clicks and whistles, like a chorus of shrieking teakettles, pursued him as he ran.
---------------------------------------------
End of Part XVI
Back to part XV
Continue to part XVII
See the original crack pairings meme and the scene that attacked me and became the first section of part I
Read the final version on ff.net
---------------------------------------------
So yeah, cliffhanger. Sorry about that.
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
Basically, a demon cult screws up an interdimensional summoning spell and sends Faith Lehane (of Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Duo Maxwell (of Gundam Wing), and Uchiha Sasuke (of Naruto) to a hell dimension. The three impromptu companions are forced to work together to survive and return home. Eventually this will result in a threesome. In the meantime, there is a lot of character development and occasional intrusions of plot.
Chapter 15 ended with the trio in their little cabin sheltering from a sandstorm as nightfall approached. Chapter 16 picks up immediately after Sasuke falls asleep. (1,975 words)
---------------------------------------------
Lemonade
---------------------------------------------
Part XVI: In which isolation proves to be an illusion
After what might have been two hours, the storm began to settle into steady wind and rain with only faint grumbles of thunder in the distance, and the last shreds of light faded into blackness. "Nightfall, more or less," Duo said, nudging Faith's leg with his boot. "This time I'll just ask: who takes first watch?"
"Me," Faith told him. "I'll wake Sasuke when I turn in."
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it?" Duo asked, leaning in to smile suggestively against her skin, just underneath her left ear. "Works for me. Just be careful waking up Mr. Ninja. He might still be grumpy."
"I think I've got less to worry about in that direction than you do," Faith said, twisting to run one hand down Duo's side to his hip. "And this is not the time. Sack out. We can play again tomorrow."
"Tease," he said, and kissed her, hard and deep and ruthless, like he wanted to drink the air from her lungs and leave her dizzy and aching. Two seconds -- heat pooled in her belly -- she grabbed his wrist to pull him closer -- and he broke off, ducked away, and rolled across the hard-packed floor toward Sasuke and the blanket. "Tomorrow, chica. It's a promise."
"Tease, am I? Takes one to know one," Faith muttered as she propped herself up against the wall, legs crossed Indian-style and her hands resting loose on her knees. Soldier-boys. Like B said, you shouldn't trust them, no matter how sexy they might be.
A drop of rain splashed on the top of her head, cold and heavy, and sent little tendrils trickling down her scalp. Faith made a face and scrubbed her fingers through her hair. They really should have thought to caulk the roof.
Oh well, at least the Chinese water torture would help keep her awake.
She spent the next few hours drifting in and out of the Zen no-mind she'd learned in prison, doing her best to just be -- to let the world pour in through her senses and not filter or judge or sort any of the information unless it might be a threat. Now and then a gust of wind or a crack of thunder pulled her back, and once she heard a shrill, grating call that sounded far too close for comfort, but the unidentified animal wandered off, its cry fading into the wind, and she slid back into meditation.
After a long while something began to nag at the back of her mind. Faith frowned, and flexed her arms and legs, and listened to Duo and Sasuke's steady, even breathing patterns, and then remembered. Three watches. She'd been up maybe four or five hours. Sasuke's turn now.
No point standing -- the little shack wasn't that far across, and tripping over the boys would be wicked embarrassing. Faith eased over on her hands and knees, listening hard, until she was right over two warm bodies, two slow, steady breathing patterns rasping faintly in the pitch-black air.
Too steady. "Just me," she said, and there, that was the faint click of a knife set back down on the sandy ground. "Sasuke, wake up. Your turn."
"Turn?" he asked, cloth rustling as he sat up.
"Watch," she said, sitting back on her heels. "Your turn, then Duo's. Hand over the blanket."
"And then shut up, for god's sake," Duo muttered. "Some of us are trying to sleep."
Sasuke shoved the blanket into Faith's arms, his fingers brushing against the back of her hand as he misjudged the distance slightly. "Thanks, Sasuke. See you in the morning," she said. Then she crawled forward and lay down beside Duo, dragging the blanket over his body as well as hers. She made sure to press against his back and brush her fingers over his thighs and chest under the pretext of straightening wrinkles in the rough fabric.
"Such a tease," he muttered, but he inched sideways toward her, prolonging the contact.
Faith grinned into the darkness. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. I want you dreaming of me, not giant zombie centipedes."
There was a brief, disgusted silence. "Oh, you are evil," Duo said. "Like I'm going to have anything but nightmares now. Thanks a million, chica."
Across the floor, Sasuke coughed in disapproval.
"All part of the service," Faith told Duo. After a moment, she snuck her left arm forward and rested it over Duo's chest. He brushed the back of her hand with his fingertips, just for a second. Then he sighed and went still.
Good enough. Faith closed her eyes and thought about sunlight until she fell asleep.
---------------------------------------------
The storm had mostly died off by the time Sasuke woke Duo -- the wind still moaned eerily around the walls and brushed a sporadic drift of sand through the gaps in the roof, but the rain and thunder were gone. "Lucky," Duo murmured as he unwound Faith's arms from his waist and slid out from under the blanket. "I was afraid we'd be trapped inside for days."
Sasuke grunted in agreement and tried to lie down on Faith's other side, with no covers.
Duo laughed to himself. "Here, idiot," he said, and tossed his now-dry jacket to Sasuke. "It's one thing to avoid sex. It's another thing to be stupid." He waited until the ninja dragged it over his torso as a makeshift blanket. Then Duo sat cross-legged, propped his back against the wall, and waited for morning.
He had a lot of experience waiting in the dark, after all, and at least this time he wasn't in danger of suffocation, explosive decompression, or most of the other standard risks he ran in his line of work.
Morning dawned with a faint, gray seep of light through the cracks in the roof. Duo waved his fingers in front of his face to make sure he wasn't just imagining the hints of visibility, then waited another half hour to be sure. Yeah, partly he wanted to give Faith and Sasuke a little more sleep while he tried to make plans for the day, but mostly he saw no point in stumbling around through unsecured territory during false dawn.
Eventually, though, he could see grayed-out hints of color in his shirt and the blanket Faith was still wrapped in. Duo sighed. Then he pulled on his smile and flicked a pebble at Sasuke's head. "Rise and shine, sleepyheads! The sun is shining! The birds are singing -- or they would be, if the zombie centipedes hadn't eaten them. Up and at 'em!"
Faith mumbled something incomprehensible and pulled the blanket over her head. Sasuke sat up and blinked in utter confusion. "Slower?" he said after a moment.
"Time to get up," Duo said in Japanese, and then repeated himself in English. "Don't worry about the rest," he added. "I'm just teasing Faith. She's obviously not a morning person."
"Ah." Sasuke stood and stretched, his navy blue shirt riding up over his stomach. His black hair was even wilder than usual, sleep having accentuated the choppy, hacked-off-with-a-knife style he seemed to favor. Duo itched to go after the guy with a comb, mostly just for aesthetic reasons. Though if Sasuke felt like relaxing and letting Duo play with his hair and trail fingers down the back of his neck, maybe reach around and... nah. Not going to happen any time soon. Better to focus on Faith, who wouldn't bite his head off just for grinning suggestively.
Duo yanked his expression back to neutral amusement by the time Sasuke bent to gather his knives and Duo's jacket. He threw the jacket to Duo -- his aim was annoyingly perfect despite the bad light and the fact that he'd been asleep just a minute before -- and made the knives disappear. "Faith's targets are nocturnal," Sasuke pointed out. "If she wants to track them to their lairs, she needs to be awake when they are."
Duo swung the jacket around his shoulders and slipped his arms into the sleeves, then shrugged to adjust the fit over his own knives. "Don't spoil a perfectly good bit of mockery with logic." He lifted the wooden latch on the door and swung it open, letting weak morning sunlight stream inside. "Faith, Sasuke and I are going to see what the damage is. You're on your own for a while, chica, so you might want to open your eyes."
"Bastard," Faith grumbled, but she yanked the blanket down and rolled onto her back, prying her eyes open. "Give me a minute and I'll come along."
---------------------------------------------
The sandstorm had done surprisingly little damage to the oasis. One of the pathetic trees had blown down, several had lost a branch or three, and all looked noticeably more tattered about the leaves, but the grove, such as it was, had survived largely intact. The lake was dirty with sediment and likely would remain so for several more hours, but it hadn't been smothered by sand.
"Rocky desert," Duo said, walking along the shore to stand at Sasuke's shoulder. "You need a sandy desert to really build up a killer storm, I guess, and if we were out in the dunes, we wouldn't have found a lake in the first place." He shrugged. "I should've remembered that."
"Even a little sand can wound if the wind is strong enough," Sasuke said. "You're not the only one who's spent time in deserts." And if he never saw Wind Country again, that would be more than fine.
"Oh, bring logic into it again," Duo said, laughing. He pivoted on his heel and cupped his hands around his mouth, calling up toward the cabin. "Hey, Faith, the water's dirty. No baths today, ---- you want sand in ---- places."
Sasuke couldn't quite make sense of the second sentence, but judging by Duo's tone of voice, that was probably for the best.
"Don't you wish," Faith said as she sauntered down to the shore. "Then ---- get to clean me up." She nudged Duo with her hip and they exchanged a sideways grin. Sasuke frowned. Idiots. Why couldn't he ever end up partnered with sane, focused people?
"We need to plan our day," he told Duo. "The meat won't last much longer, even if I roast it. The Sarguls might attack again at any moment. Faith's witch might open a portal..." An unpleasant idea hit him. "Or she might summon Faith home without coming here first, and then what happens to you and me?"
Duo rolled his eyes. "Seriously, chill out for half an hour. We haven't even eaten breakfast yet. I want to do thorough recon just as much as you do, and I am all in favor of contingency plans, but for now, let's settle for not getting out of earshot of each other. We'll hash out the rest in a bit."
"----, please?" Faith asked.
"Sasuke wants to make plans," Duo said. "I said to wait ---- after ----."
"Fine. You do whatever you want down here. I'll climb the ridge and check the surrounding territory," Sasuke said to Duo, and left the others to their mutual distraction. He paused at the cabin to retrieve his spare knives -- with no ready backup, he needed all the advantages he could create -- and then strode upward through the scraggly grove toward the sheltering ridge.
Sasuke paused before cresting the hill, ingrained caution making him wait and listen and feel for hostile intent. Nothing seemed amiss, so he climbed the last few paces and prepared to survey the empty desert.
It wasn't empty.
Sasuke stared at the caravan of gold and blue insect-like creatures -- the blue ones mounted on the gold -- for two frozen heartbeats. The creatures stared back, equally startled. Then Sasuke threw himself backward down the ridge.
A rising cacophony of clicks and whistles, like a chorus of shrieking teakettles, pursued him as he ran.
---------------------------------------------
End of Part XVI
Back to part XV
Continue to part XVII
See the original crack pairings meme and the scene that attacked me and became the first section of part I
Read the final version on ff.net
---------------------------------------------
So yeah, cliffhanger. Sorry about that.
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)