[PoT, Saiyuki, HxH] Half-hour timed ficlets (G - PG-13)
Ficlets written in half an hour each to the prompt of a song. Songs are provided here for your entertainment so you can boggle at how totally unrelated and often inappropriate my writing is to the song in question. Songs are alternately supplied by me and anjenue. Totally rough and ready; take 'em as you find 'em.
Song: Within A Mile Of Home - Flogging Molly
Title: Return
Characters: Niou, Niou-sister.
Rating: PG
Notes: Silver Bullet 'verse, before the main story.
It's his sister who meets him, and she has a scowl on her face. Same old, then.
"Yo," he says, waves, wariness working its way into his mind despite it being her.
She smacks him. She probably figures he deserves it. Maybe he even does.
"Selfish bastard, Masaharu."
His sister; the only woman in the damn world he ever let hang around for long enough to get the chance to smack him, though plenty more have probably wanted to.
"Yeah?" he says, smirks, because if he doesn't then she'll really fucking worry and she hits even harder when she's worried. "What this time?"
"Oh, fuck off. Don't what this time me. I only see you once every few damn years, what do you think?"
"Figured I was doing the family a favour," he says. Broadly true. He always thought of it as a mutually beneficial arrangement. "You trying to tell me you missed me, sis?"
He ducks. She wasn't really aiming to actually smack him again, anyway. If she had, she would've been faster. She can be way faster.
"As if. Some of us just don't want to have to be the good kids to compensate for your shit."
"It doesn't suit you even a bit," he agrees. It's true. Everyone figured she was the wild one when they were kids; he bleached his hair the first time because she had and he thought it looked cool, and their mother had taken ages to forgive either of them. When she'd come home with piercings he'd been explicitly forbidden from going and getting any on the spot, just in case.
"Anyway, you're here." She sounds grudging, but there's a spark of genuine affection somewhere under there. "Didn't think you had it in you."
"If it makes you feel better, pretend I've got hideous ulterior motives and I'm not just here 'cause you blackmailed me."
They walk together from the station, Niou hauling his bag, through fading afternoon light. It's quiet, peaceful. The phrase before the storm drifts through Niou's mind, and he has to kick it out pretty forcefully.
His family still live in the same place. It's not far from Rikkai; they walk right past the school. Used to take him five minutes to get there, falling out of bed fifteen before classes started if his parents were too busy to kick him out sooner. The campus is deserted; weekend evening. If he let himself, he could imagine people standing on the tennis courts; Yukimura sitting on the benches, watching Kirihara practice. Yagyuu's body arching as he served. Yagyuu...
Yeah. Yagyuu.
What the fuck ever. Yagyuu is back in the country, he knows. Yukimura told him so. Yagyuu is living in a little appartment in Yokohama. Yagyuu has a real job and a respectable life.
He didn't like the way Yukimura told him about it, either. As though he should still give a shit. He even has a bloody address, and the address of his work, too.
Well, maybe it's out of date. He hasn't spoken to Yukimura in six months now anyway.
Not that he cares. About that, or about Yagyuu's fucking perfect life.
"Within a mile of home now," his sister says, and grins at him in a not entirely pleasant way. "Brace yourself."
Song: The World I Know - Collective Soul
Title: The top of the world
Characters: Sanada/Yukimura
Rating: G
Notes: This is home.
They watched the sunrise from the mountain top. It was far more of a Sanada sort of thing to do than a Yukimura one, but maybe after spending so much time away from Japan he had been feeling homesick enough to place a little more value on tradition than he used to.
Of course, it would only actually have been traditional if they'd done it on New Years, the way they'd planned to. Yukimura hadn't been able to make it home then; had insisted that they climb a mountain when he could get there anyway, even if it wasn't the right time.
Sanada had his suspicious about that particular point, but Yukimura was right about one thing - the view was better when they were only sharing it with each other, and not with everyone who lived nearby and was fit enough to climb.
"This is it," Yukimura said, voice so soft Sanada might have missed his words if the world had been any less perfectly still. "Home." He takes a deep breath, turns his eyes to the horizon. Stretching away below them were lights from towns, wide clusters of light connected by the fine threads which are roads, a web covering the land even as the day began to break, becoming paler under the sun.
Sanada had no idea how to interpret Yukimura's expression; distant, but something else too. He wondered what exactly Yukimura was seeing, standing too close to the edge, up on the top of the world.
"I can travel to as many other paces as I like," Yukimura murmured eventually, glancing back over his shoulder to look at Sanada. "Tournaments and special training and anything else. But sometimes it's too many other worlds. They're not really mine. I'm only okay so long as there's tennis."
This is mine, Sanada interpreted. He wasn't entirely oblivious, however much Niou had teased him once upon a time. He didn't think he would be flattering himself if he supposed that his presence was a big part of that, Yukimura's world - the things he felt were his. Familiar and safe.
"Sometimes," Yukimura said, "you don't know how much you miss things until they're there again."
Song: Bouncing Off Clouds - Tori Amos
Title: Close to ideal
Characters: Hakkai/Gojyo
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Not waiting on fate.
"If I married a woman, she'd have to be indestructible."
Later, when everything has calmed down as much as it ever does, the thing that Gojyo keeps thinking is that it's really good to hear Hakkai talk about women.
Probably that just shouldn't figure at all, but if he can think about other women then he can think about people other than her and that's a whole load of levels of relief to Gojyo. There are moments when Hakkai goes distant and blank and he'd always figured it was because he was remembering, wondered if he might lose the guy to a ghost.
"Thought any more about your perfect woman?" he asks Hakkai, stretched out on a bed in their latest inn room. Hakkai is reading, in an absent sort of way which suggests it's only a token effort. You get to know those kind of things about someone if you live with them for long enough, maybe. Or maybe he's just obsessive.
"Hmm. A little," Hakkai says, folds his book neatly shut and stares at the cover as though waiting for some brilliant, startling revelation from it. "But I really don't suppose she exists. Are you disappointed?"
"Man, your daughters sounded pretty hot," Gojyo says. "Maybe a bit."
Hakkai gives one of his cautious little smiles, the kind that make Gojyo feel just a bit warm somewhere low in his stomach. This is such a creepy conversation to be having, let alone to be feeling good about having. He doesn't actually care, though, he realises.
"I suppose we'll just have to make do," Hakkai says.
"Not waiting on fate?" Gojyo give a lopsided smile of his own back, shakes off an unidentifiable feeling at the words.
"I... do you think I should?"
"What, and wait forever?"
"I do have considerable patience."
Gojyo snorts.
"Except when you insist on going to efforts to push my limits," Hakkai amends. He sounds more affectionate than anyone should saying something like that.
Being with Hakkai should be such a difficult thing, and okay, he's had his share of nights wondering about what the hell it all means; but it doesn't fucking matter, in the end. He and Hakkai have got whatever they've got, and it's pretty enjoyable.
Kissing Hakkai isn't hard. So what if he's not a woman? Gojyo likes women okay, but they're for fun, for a few nights or however long it takes for someone to get bored. Hakkai is something else.
It's just as well Hakkai is kissing him now, soft but determined, because otherwise he might be tempted to say something fucking stupid. Maybe.
Probably not, really, but it's as good an excuse to keep right on kissing back as any.
Song: 2:19 - Tom Waits
Title: Still Water
Characters: Hisoka, Illumi
Rating: Hisoka. (Okay, okay. PG.)
Notes: Taking leave.
"So soon?" Hisoka says, a whimsical smile on his lips. "Ah, but we've barely had any fun."
Illumi raises one eyebrow, holding himself as aloof as ever. "Don't try to tell me you've a problem with entertaining yourself."
That really isn't the point at all, but Hisoka just shrugs, because it no-one gets under his skin, not even Illumi Zaoldyeck. "Your loss. Maybe I'll go and find, hmm, Kuroro. He's just arrived in the city, you know."
No rise from that one. Ah, well.
Illumi really is leaving. Well, it isn't as though he'd be joking, really.
Hisoka watches him go in the big central station, wondering whether members of the Zaoldyeck family like to travel by train rather than private airship or if that's just for when they're spending unauthorised time with members of the Genei Ryodan.
The most interesting thing about Illumi, Hisoka thinks, is that he is almost entirely hidden below the surface, like an iceberg or a shark. It's impossible to know what's behind those eyes - still water, or sharp ice? Teeth, maybe?
Playing with him is a little like pulling the tiger's tail, to use a rather tired metaphor. It's apt, so never mind. Seeing how hard he can tweak before it wakes up. One day he'll really get to Illumi, get him to react, but for now Illumi is the one who gets reactions, lets them pass over him without really touching him.
He walks to the train without looking back, gets on board without saying any more formal goodbyes. Hisoka raises his hand in a little wave, wiggling his fingers and blowing a kiss in as outrageous a manner as he can, and Illumi remains unmoved. How heartless.
As the train pulls out from the station he sees Illumi leaning out from one of the windows; it looks almost as though he's waving goodbye, and maybe Hisoka will choose to interpret it as such for the next time they meet.
Song: Drive You Home - Garbage
Title: Distance
Characters: Yukimura, Renji, Sanada (Kinda Sanada/Yukimura)
Rating: PG
Notes: I never said I was perfect. (Recent manga spoilers.)
He regrets telling Sanada to get out. It was reflex, a knee-jerk reaction.
"He needs..." Renji begins to tell him the next day, then trails off, shakes his head a little. "Apologies. But we're feeling our loss, and Sanada feels it most of all."
I need things too, Yukimura thinks. That's what it comes down to. He can't be everyone's perfect, brave hero. He's just a boy with an illness they can't even give a name to and even if they've done all they can to fix him he doesn't know what will happen in the future because he doesn't really know what happened in the past to cause this in the first place, doesn't know if hard work and determination will be enough. What is he meant to do? Bear everything silently, look noble, and just smile and nod when they tell him he might not be able to play tennis again? His personal world just doesn't work like that.
He doesn't know what to do right now. About anything.
It's an uncomfortable feeling. Not that he hasn't been experiencing enough uncertainty this year, but it was meant to be better now.
It isn't. Maybe it won't be.
He's asleep when Sanada comes to see him, and when he wakes up he finds a piece of paper folded neatly on the table beside his bed; beautiful, unmistakable calligraphy. Health. He traces the characters over and over, and wonders if he should smile or cry.
He thinks you let me down, and then, but I still don't deserve you.
The next time, he's awake. It's the day he's meant to go home, and Sanada appears in the doorway as he's dragging a brush through his hair, pulling faces at the way it sticks out at odd angles from being slept on. Maybe he imagines it, but he thinks there's the faintest flicker of a smile on Sanada's face as their eyes meet. Amusement at his mad hair and wide-eyed surprise?
It's an oddly nice thought. That Sanada would smile at him for a less-than-perfect moment. It wouldn't have been strange once, but this year has changed them both, turned him desperate and turned Sanada to stone, and there hasn't been a whole lot of room for anything other than fighting onwards. The distance between him and everyone on the team has seemed to stretch wider and wider until--
Things can become so strange so quickly.
"I heard you were being released back into the wild today," Sanada says solemnly, and Yukimura smiles at him.
"Renji told you?"
"Yes. Ah... I'm sure your family will be here soon. I should..."
"...stay," Yukimura says, shrugs. "I'll call them. Take me home, okay? And stay for lunch."
I don't deserve you.
"If you want me to help you train..." Sanada begins, and then looks away. Yukimura feels a flash of guilt about his outburst.
"Yes." I don't know if I ever deserved you. "And... ah... I'm sorry. For everything."
"It's no trouble."
Sanada even sounds as though he means it.
Song: Within A Mile Of Home - Flogging Molly
Title: Return
Characters: Niou, Niou-sister.
Rating: PG
Notes: Silver Bullet 'verse, before the main story.
It's his sister who meets him, and she has a scowl on her face. Same old, then.
"Yo," he says, waves, wariness working its way into his mind despite it being her.
She smacks him. She probably figures he deserves it. Maybe he even does.
"Selfish bastard, Masaharu."
His sister; the only woman in the damn world he ever let hang around for long enough to get the chance to smack him, though plenty more have probably wanted to.
"Yeah?" he says, smirks, because if he doesn't then she'll really fucking worry and she hits even harder when she's worried. "What this time?"
"Oh, fuck off. Don't what this time me. I only see you once every few damn years, what do you think?"
"Figured I was doing the family a favour," he says. Broadly true. He always thought of it as a mutually beneficial arrangement. "You trying to tell me you missed me, sis?"
He ducks. She wasn't really aiming to actually smack him again, anyway. If she had, she would've been faster. She can be way faster.
"As if. Some of us just don't want to have to be the good kids to compensate for your shit."
"It doesn't suit you even a bit," he agrees. It's true. Everyone figured she was the wild one when they were kids; he bleached his hair the first time because she had and he thought it looked cool, and their mother had taken ages to forgive either of them. When she'd come home with piercings he'd been explicitly forbidden from going and getting any on the spot, just in case.
"Anyway, you're here." She sounds grudging, but there's a spark of genuine affection somewhere under there. "Didn't think you had it in you."
"If it makes you feel better, pretend I've got hideous ulterior motives and I'm not just here 'cause you blackmailed me."
They walk together from the station, Niou hauling his bag, through fading afternoon light. It's quiet, peaceful. The phrase before the storm drifts through Niou's mind, and he has to kick it out pretty forcefully.
His family still live in the same place. It's not far from Rikkai; they walk right past the school. Used to take him five minutes to get there, falling out of bed fifteen before classes started if his parents were too busy to kick him out sooner. The campus is deserted; weekend evening. If he let himself, he could imagine people standing on the tennis courts; Yukimura sitting on the benches, watching Kirihara practice. Yagyuu's body arching as he served. Yagyuu...
Yeah. Yagyuu.
What the fuck ever. Yagyuu is back in the country, he knows. Yukimura told him so. Yagyuu is living in a little appartment in Yokohama. Yagyuu has a real job and a respectable life.
He didn't like the way Yukimura told him about it, either. As though he should still give a shit. He even has a bloody address, and the address of his work, too.
Well, maybe it's out of date. He hasn't spoken to Yukimura in six months now anyway.
Not that he cares. About that, or about Yagyuu's fucking perfect life.
"Within a mile of home now," his sister says, and grins at him in a not entirely pleasant way. "Brace yourself."
Song: The World I Know - Collective Soul
Title: The top of the world
Characters: Sanada/Yukimura
Rating: G
Notes: This is home.
They watched the sunrise from the mountain top. It was far more of a Sanada sort of thing to do than a Yukimura one, but maybe after spending so much time away from Japan he had been feeling homesick enough to place a little more value on tradition than he used to.
Of course, it would only actually have been traditional if they'd done it on New Years, the way they'd planned to. Yukimura hadn't been able to make it home then; had insisted that they climb a mountain when he could get there anyway, even if it wasn't the right time.
Sanada had his suspicious about that particular point, but Yukimura was right about one thing - the view was better when they were only sharing it with each other, and not with everyone who lived nearby and was fit enough to climb.
"This is it," Yukimura said, voice so soft Sanada might have missed his words if the world had been any less perfectly still. "Home." He takes a deep breath, turns his eyes to the horizon. Stretching away below them were lights from towns, wide clusters of light connected by the fine threads which are roads, a web covering the land even as the day began to break, becoming paler under the sun.
Sanada had no idea how to interpret Yukimura's expression; distant, but something else too. He wondered what exactly Yukimura was seeing, standing too close to the edge, up on the top of the world.
"I can travel to as many other paces as I like," Yukimura murmured eventually, glancing back over his shoulder to look at Sanada. "Tournaments and special training and anything else. But sometimes it's too many other worlds. They're not really mine. I'm only okay so long as there's tennis."
This is mine, Sanada interpreted. He wasn't entirely oblivious, however much Niou had teased him once upon a time. He didn't think he would be flattering himself if he supposed that his presence was a big part of that, Yukimura's world - the things he felt were his. Familiar and safe.
"Sometimes," Yukimura said, "you don't know how much you miss things until they're there again."
Song: Bouncing Off Clouds - Tori Amos
Title: Close to ideal
Characters: Hakkai/Gojyo
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Not waiting on fate.
"If I married a woman, she'd have to be indestructible."
Later, when everything has calmed down as much as it ever does, the thing that Gojyo keeps thinking is that it's really good to hear Hakkai talk about women.
Probably that just shouldn't figure at all, but if he can think about other women then he can think about people other than her and that's a whole load of levels of relief to Gojyo. There are moments when Hakkai goes distant and blank and he'd always figured it was because he was remembering, wondered if he might lose the guy to a ghost.
"Thought any more about your perfect woman?" he asks Hakkai, stretched out on a bed in their latest inn room. Hakkai is reading, in an absent sort of way which suggests it's only a token effort. You get to know those kind of things about someone if you live with them for long enough, maybe. Or maybe he's just obsessive.
"Hmm. A little," Hakkai says, folds his book neatly shut and stares at the cover as though waiting for some brilliant, startling revelation from it. "But I really don't suppose she exists. Are you disappointed?"
"Man, your daughters sounded pretty hot," Gojyo says. "Maybe a bit."
Hakkai gives one of his cautious little smiles, the kind that make Gojyo feel just a bit warm somewhere low in his stomach. This is such a creepy conversation to be having, let alone to be feeling good about having. He doesn't actually care, though, he realises.
"I suppose we'll just have to make do," Hakkai says.
"Not waiting on fate?" Gojyo give a lopsided smile of his own back, shakes off an unidentifiable feeling at the words.
"I... do you think I should?"
"What, and wait forever?"
"I do have considerable patience."
Gojyo snorts.
"Except when you insist on going to efforts to push my limits," Hakkai amends. He sounds more affectionate than anyone should saying something like that.
Being with Hakkai should be such a difficult thing, and okay, he's had his share of nights wondering about what the hell it all means; but it doesn't fucking matter, in the end. He and Hakkai have got whatever they've got, and it's pretty enjoyable.
Kissing Hakkai isn't hard. So what if he's not a woman? Gojyo likes women okay, but they're for fun, for a few nights or however long it takes for someone to get bored. Hakkai is something else.
It's just as well Hakkai is kissing him now, soft but determined, because otherwise he might be tempted to say something fucking stupid. Maybe.
Probably not, really, but it's as good an excuse to keep right on kissing back as any.
Song: 2:19 - Tom Waits
Title: Still Water
Characters: Hisoka, Illumi
Rating: Hisoka. (Okay, okay. PG.)
Notes: Taking leave.
"So soon?" Hisoka says, a whimsical smile on his lips. "Ah, but we've barely had any fun."
Illumi raises one eyebrow, holding himself as aloof as ever. "Don't try to tell me you've a problem with entertaining yourself."
That really isn't the point at all, but Hisoka just shrugs, because it no-one gets under his skin, not even Illumi Zaoldyeck. "Your loss. Maybe I'll go and find, hmm, Kuroro. He's just arrived in the city, you know."
No rise from that one. Ah, well.
Illumi really is leaving. Well, it isn't as though he'd be joking, really.
Hisoka watches him go in the big central station, wondering whether members of the Zaoldyeck family like to travel by train rather than private airship or if that's just for when they're spending unauthorised time with members of the Genei Ryodan.
The most interesting thing about Illumi, Hisoka thinks, is that he is almost entirely hidden below the surface, like an iceberg or a shark. It's impossible to know what's behind those eyes - still water, or sharp ice? Teeth, maybe?
Playing with him is a little like pulling the tiger's tail, to use a rather tired metaphor. It's apt, so never mind. Seeing how hard he can tweak before it wakes up. One day he'll really get to Illumi, get him to react, but for now Illumi is the one who gets reactions, lets them pass over him without really touching him.
He walks to the train without looking back, gets on board without saying any more formal goodbyes. Hisoka raises his hand in a little wave, wiggling his fingers and blowing a kiss in as outrageous a manner as he can, and Illumi remains unmoved. How heartless.
As the train pulls out from the station he sees Illumi leaning out from one of the windows; it looks almost as though he's waving goodbye, and maybe Hisoka will choose to interpret it as such for the next time they meet.
Song: Drive You Home - Garbage
Title: Distance
Characters: Yukimura, Renji, Sanada (Kinda Sanada/Yukimura)
Rating: PG
Notes: I never said I was perfect. (Recent manga spoilers.)
He regrets telling Sanada to get out. It was reflex, a knee-jerk reaction.
"He needs..." Renji begins to tell him the next day, then trails off, shakes his head a little. "Apologies. But we're feeling our loss, and Sanada feels it most of all."
I need things too, Yukimura thinks. That's what it comes down to. He can't be everyone's perfect, brave hero. He's just a boy with an illness they can't even give a name to and even if they've done all they can to fix him he doesn't know what will happen in the future because he doesn't really know what happened in the past to cause this in the first place, doesn't know if hard work and determination will be enough. What is he meant to do? Bear everything silently, look noble, and just smile and nod when they tell him he might not be able to play tennis again? His personal world just doesn't work like that.
He doesn't know what to do right now. About anything.
It's an uncomfortable feeling. Not that he hasn't been experiencing enough uncertainty this year, but it was meant to be better now.
It isn't. Maybe it won't be.
He's asleep when Sanada comes to see him, and when he wakes up he finds a piece of paper folded neatly on the table beside his bed; beautiful, unmistakable calligraphy. Health. He traces the characters over and over, and wonders if he should smile or cry.
He thinks you let me down, and then, but I still don't deserve you.
The next time, he's awake. It's the day he's meant to go home, and Sanada appears in the doorway as he's dragging a brush through his hair, pulling faces at the way it sticks out at odd angles from being slept on. Maybe he imagines it, but he thinks there's the faintest flicker of a smile on Sanada's face as their eyes meet. Amusement at his mad hair and wide-eyed surprise?
It's an oddly nice thought. That Sanada would smile at him for a less-than-perfect moment. It wouldn't have been strange once, but this year has changed them both, turned him desperate and turned Sanada to stone, and there hasn't been a whole lot of room for anything other than fighting onwards. The distance between him and everyone on the team has seemed to stretch wider and wider until--
Things can become so strange so quickly.
"I heard you were being released back into the wild today," Sanada says solemnly, and Yukimura smiles at him.
"Renji told you?"
"Yes. Ah... I'm sure your family will be here soon. I should..."
"...stay," Yukimura says, shrugs. "I'll call them. Take me home, okay? And stay for lunch."
I don't deserve you.
"If you want me to help you train..." Sanada begins, and then looks away. Yukimura feels a flash of guilt about his outburst.
"Yes." I don't know if I ever deserved you. "And... ah... I'm sorry. For everything."
"It's no trouble."
Sanada even sounds as though he means it.