[requested drabbles]
Well, as usual, half of these turned out far too long. You people and your weird requests.
If you didn't ask for a drabble, feel free to do so now over here - Internet at the apartment won't be happening for a while, so I have many free evenings in which to write!
For darthrami - Kaylee and her first boyfriend
There was no denying that Miss Kaywinnet Lee Frye was a very odd sort of girl. All the boys agreed. She didn’t keep her hair neat like the others did, and she wore dirty overalls and heavy leather boots, and she was always getting in trouble for humming to herself in class. But her smile was bright, her eyes were very large and somehow attractive in a way that many years later the boys would learn to label artless, and she was good fun to talk to.
But still. Odd.
Gerald Tate discovered just how odd she was when he, greatly daring, asked to kiss her. Kaylee blushed a little and chewed her lip, but eventually agreed on the condition that he gave her his screwdriver, the one with the pink handle.
It’s red, he said.
It’s pink, she said. But okay. You can kiss me now, if you want.
And so it went. The other boys pretended disgust but asked Gerald for details which his eleven-year-old tongue could not quite articulate. Kaylee hummed even more cheerfully in class and held his hand in grease-streaked fingers when they kissed; shyly, clumsily, with the dutiful curiosity of children.
Gerald Tate lost half his toolset and a large amount of equipment from his beloved model sets before he worked out what Kaylee had known all along; that even the best kisses are transient, but engines are forever.
For wickedtrue - something involving Boomer
The kid has fallen asleep on the rec room table again. Sharon covers him with someone’s discarded jacket and shrugs off the bemused looks that come her way - our Boomer, acting maternal? She’s never been one to explain herself. And the simple fact of it is that having someone else to be responsible for can be a relief in itself, sometimes, a distraction to draw her mind away from the stress of their situation and the darker thoughts that flood her insomnial nights.
The triad game ends and Dee heads off for her shift in CIC, Crashdown to his rack. Starbuck slings an arm around Apollo’s shoulders as they wander away and steals a puff of the stogie he won right out of her lips, bluffing outrageously, taking the pot. Everyone is always taken aback when Apollo bluffs; Sharon suspects that’s why he doesn’t do it often. She watches him smile fondly at Starbuck’s animated insistence that she’ll win it all back from him tomorrow, and wonders if they’re frakking yet.
She yawns and shakes Boxey’s shoulder gently. “C’mon, mister. You can’t sleep here. Wake up.”
When his eyes open they are the same shape, the same colour, in every dimension and subtle tired shade the same boy’s eyes that she knows. And yet her heart muscle seems to wrench itself out of position for a moment.
“Hello, Three,” he says. “I don’t think you were meant to wake me up just yet.”
She opens her mouth to form a reply and a sharp pain lances through her forehead, slicing her thoughts neatly into pieces before the words can come out.
“Oh. It’s all right, Boomer.” His disinterested smile swims before her eyes. She tries to remember what they are talking about, flails for the thread of conversation, but it has drifted out of reach. “I doubt you’ll remember.”
She doesn’t.
For dearladydisdain - Saffron’s POV at any time in either OMR or Trash
The music reminds her of a place she once called home. She pastes a sweet and almost-drunken smile onto her face, lets her feet remember how to dance, and makes mental lists of the things she will buy with her reward money. This is just groundwork, nothing challenging or dangerous about it.
The mark follows her into the crowd and his hands are rough and warm. She tangles their fingers together and turns her head away from the spiced leather smell of his shirt, ducking and blushing and sending a smile up at just the right angle. He smiles back, vague and hazy-happy. The flowers on his head make him look a right gorram fool.
Firelight dances across their bodies, myriad flickering shadows, browns and golds and the bright orange of her current namesake. She lets her dress slip down on one shoulder and leads him in the dance without making it seem as though she is the one in control. There’s no need for such finesse, most likely - he’s gone, floating - but she is an artisan and takes pleasure in the perfection of her craft. Also: she has long taught herself to assume any drunken man is at least two shades more sober than he appears. To remain in the game one must act as if everyone else is a player as well.
Saffron gives a deft twist of her wrist and the man dances her steps, unknowing.
For schiarire - Lucifer/Xas, citrus, German opera that is not Wagner, and a lack of Italians.
Niall Cayley frequents the opera in Paris at a time when canes are fashionable. He looks very well in the thick cloaks of the day and the language curves itself around his tongue with the same ease as ever. The name is a familiar conceit. The cane he detests, because he knows that he walks better with its help. He wants to soar into the chandeliers and burn and fall, still burning, because it will have been worth it for those four heartbeats of flight.
Why that particular image is spinning in his mind below the taut waves of Mozart does not become clear until intermission, when a voice pours cold lyrical French into his ear and a hand pours cold gin into his glass.
The angel Xas has learned by now to play at emotions that he does not feel and to conceal those he does. He is not very good at it. But his fingers do nothing more than tighten on the stem of the glass as Lucifer steals lemon wedges from behind the bar and squeezes them into the drinks. Some of the juice spills onto their hands.
Niall Cayley sips and looks away. Bitter, is all he says. Lucifer’s hand rests on his upper back in a gesture that appears both artless and affectionate from an external perspective. The angel feels impossible heat threading through muscles that have not quite forgotten their original use. Yearning and strange.
You get used to it, Lucifer says, and touches Xas’ mouth with fingers that smell of citrus.
For vaudevilles - Kara and Zoe, comparing weapons and the hotness of their menfolk
“Can I help you?”
Kara ducks behind a rack of pink gauzy things and tries very hard to forget that she came close to failing the stealth part of her basic ground training.
“No?” she snaps, creeping backwards. “No, I think I’m -”
“Ow.”
She turns, a grumpy apology on her lips, but the woman on whose toe she has just stepped makes a sharp beckoning motion with her hand and disappears behind a red curtain. Kara follows out of pure curiosity and finds herself in one of the tiny dressing rooms.
“If you’re in here they assume you’ve already picked something to try on,” the woman says, seating herself on a bench that runs along one wall. Her dark eyes are amused.
“I’m not here to try things on,” Kara says decisively. “I’m looking. For a friend. A present, I mean.”
The woman laughs, a slow chesty kind of laugh that Kara likes despite herself. “Uh huh. Me too.”
“I have a knife,” Kara tries.
“I have two. And a gun.”
Kara’s mouth twitches into a grin and she relaxes, collapsing down on the opposite bench. “I’m glad we sorted that out.”
The woman pushes back a thick curled ponytail and holds out her hand, smiling in return. “Zoe. And if you tell anyone I was in this store, I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”
“Kara. Likewise.” Zoe’s grip is dry and firm and Kara feels thin muscle rippling in the wrist. “So what kind of thing is your friend looking for?”
“Ah, well.” Zoe starts sorting through a pile of discarded garments in one corner of the room. “Her husband expressed a desire for something slinky, and he tends to fly badly when disappointed about things like that.”
“So it’s an act of public service, really,” Kara drawls, amused, poking at another pile with her foot.
“That’s the way I see it.” Zoe pulls a purple dress out and tries to untangle the mess of strings and straps for a moment before discarding it. A dark green one is similarly put aside. A blue one is inspected for a bare moment and then dumped firmly in Kara’s lap.
“What…?”
Zoe winks. “Your friend will knock him dead.”
For a bare moment Kara wavers between knock who dead? and it’s a very sharp knife, you know. But then she shrugs, smirks and decides the act is too much bother to keep up. “Mine’s a pilot too,” she says eventually, trying to work out which is the front of the dress and which is the back. There are floating bits. Kara has a soldier’s inherent distrust of anything that can slow you down or get caught on branches, but perhaps allowances can be made in the cocktail dress domain.
“Mine’s better looking,” Zoe says with impressive immediacy.
“Doubt it.” Kara sees a flash of black in her pile and dives for it. “Mine’s got a cuter smile.”
“Mine’s got a better sense of humour.”
“…I think I’ll give you that one,” Kara says after a moment. “Mine looks better in uniform.”
“Granted.” Zoe gives that low laugh again. “Mine has better biceps.”
Kara screws up the black dress - slits in the sides, lots of slink - and throws it in Zoe’s face. “Sorry,” she says with absolute cheerful assurance, “but that’s frakking impossible.”
For dopplegl - War/Lucifer, with lots of red in the form of wine, blood and fire
London’s burning. It’s not the first time, and if she has her way it won’t be the last.
“If I had a violin…” He’s walking towards her through the devastated remains of a busy commercial area, his bare feet sure and comfortable on the muted crackling embers.
She tosses back her hair and smiles like a tiger. Someone threw a bottle-grenade through a shop window a little while ago and the exploding glass cut her hand open. She hasn’t licked the blood away yet. It makes such nice patterns on her skin.
“Having fun?”
“It’s your party, my dear,” he returns, with a slow bow that’s somehow more arrogant than respectful.
She purrs and slips an arm around his neck once he’s close enough, the blood on her palm staining his crisp shirt. “So?”
He looks down, amused; down, but not by much. They are well matched. “Very well. I am enjoying myself. Most kind of you to invite me. Are there to be refreshments after the main event?”
“I hear you cater to most thirsts,” she says, and kisses him because she can. A building collapses behind her in a cloud of dust and choking ash.
“So demanding,” he murmurs against her lips, but half an hour later they sit in the centre of a bridge spanning the Thames and watch the horizon turn as red as his eyes, as red as her hair, as red as the blood that spills from her cuts, as red the wine he gives her to drink.
For not_in_denial - a drabble that is a drabble request!
Unlucky in a linear count, this is my request:
I want to see how far you can stretch
a code of twenty-six symbols into four times that minus four again
when considering their space-divided combinations,
and to find within this arrangement
a meaning beyond the simple fact of syntax;
a gestalt, a higher order that transcends the placement of verb and noun
and pushes each clause into place with a neat clicking sound
that is nothing like
the rhythm of a train
but somehow resembles the glottal cry that a semicolon would make
if your words could give it voice.
For ryokophoenix - pointlessly happy GO/HP, usual pairings, the bookshop in SoHo, a stuffed dog that sings ‘Singing in the Rain’, lovely jealousy, a reference to history
“Make it stop,” Sirius said plaintively. “Nothing warrants a torment like this, Moony, especially not innocent little songs about someone whose name begins with an L and ends with an Ily Evans.”
“I’m trying.” Remus frowned. “I haven’t got James’ talent for Charms.” He gave the stuffed toy a prod with his wand and muttered another spell. Its furry muzzle immediately jerked open to emit -
“What a wonderful feeeeeeeeling, I’m haaaaappy again!”
“That wasn’t even a spell,” Sirius accused. “You’re just making up Latin phrases now, aren’t you?”
“It’s worked before.” Remus absently pulled black fluff off Sirius’ shirt. “This thing sheds as badly as you do, you know.”
“Prongs has outdone himself,” Sirius said, leaning against the nearest building and trying to plug his ears with twists of paper torn from his shopping list. “I’d throw the damn thing away altogether, but it was such a nice birthday present before he decided to enchant it, and I feel that such thoughtfulness should be encouraged.” He held the tiny black dog up at arms’ length. “Losing it would break the poor boy’s heart, and Evans is doing such a good job of that that I hardly need to join in.”
“Excuse me.” The voice came from the half-open door of the bookshop, and was swiftly followed by a pleasant face that reminded Remus of what Peter might look like if he grew up and became a librarian. “I’m sure you two young gentlemen are very fond of that song, but this is a bookshop and some of us would appreciate…well…”
“Fewer irritating showtunes floating through the walls,” a new voice chimed in, from inside the shop. “Scram.”
Scram? Sirius mouthed at Remus, but the other boy took him firmly by the elbow and hurried them past the shop with an apologetic nod at the man in the doorway and no more than a brief pang of regret at not being able to stop and look around inside.
“Scram, my dear?”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Crowley shrugged, ambling over to the door and watching them walk away. “I’m surprised. I thought we’d have to prise the cute one with the patched trousers away from your shop. He might even have gotten away with buying a book.”
“Unlikely,” the angel said darkly.
Crowley looked at him with mild surprise, and then grinned smugly beneath his sunglasses. “Why, angel. Are you jealous? I can rescind the allegations of cuteness, if you like.”
“Of course I’m not.” Ariraphale raised his eyebrows. “Mortal sin, you know.”
Crowley’s grin became dangerously wide. “You are. Just like that time in the eighteenth century, when I -”
“I thought you invented showtunes,” the angel put in, heading hastily for the back room.
“I did. Professional pride doesn’t mean I like the sodding things. Don’t change the subject,” Crowley shot after the angel’s retreating back.
Aziraphale made three pots of tea and sulked all afternoon.
Crowley considered this a win.
For varadia - more than one person flirting with Raguel
Raguel tilts his glass to catch the light and wonders just whose bright idea the dancing was. It’s hard to pin the blame, in this place. Ideas tend to snowball. For a while it was just a small group of people, laughing, slightly drunk, but now there’s music washing to and fro between the walls - for that, at least, he can confidently blame Tonks - and half the patrons are on their feet. Couples giggle and move uncaring with their hands entwined; beings of power throw smiles across the room and let themselves go for a little while. The little dead ballerina swirls amongst the crowd doing hilarious, lighting-fast impressions of people’s steps.
Lucifer isn’t dancing. Raguel is almost surprised. The devil sits on a table in the familiar cross-legged pose, resting his chin in his hand, watching. Eyes bright. The ballerina bounces up to him and makes insistent gestures, but he turns her away with a brief widening of the smile and a touch on her shoulder.
Raguel lights a cigarette and lets his eyes drift idly over the room. Coyote is dancing with Xas, although it’s not really a dance. The angel has never looked comfortable on his feet, and although he moves his body to the music the motion seems almost accidental in its grace. Each part not quite in synch with the next, and yet the whole effect somehow alluring in that infuriating way that Xas has. As though every breath, every blink is an invitation.
“Enjoying yourself, Raguel?” Lucifer’s voice is a surprise, coming from very close to his ear. The angel turns and shrugs, taking a draw on his cigarette and taking care to blow the smoke downwards. He needs no hazy ambiguity between their eyes; Lucifer is hard enough to read as it is.
“I can’t say it’s my idea of a good time, but most people seem to disagree.”
“I’ve never quite determined what your idea of a good time is,” Lucifer murmurs, taking the nearest seat. “I suppose you’re of the intellectual school. A glass of wine and a game of, oh, Scrabble?”
Through monumental effort, Raguel does not quite choke on his next inhalation. “Right,” he mutters, fixing his eyes back onto Xas’ not-quite-dance with desperation. He knows better than to bite at that verbal hook. But Lucifer follows his gaze and laughs, and Raguel grits his teeth because at the exact same moment Xas looks up and flashes his blue eyes in their direction. Raguel feels caught. Those eyes and that laugh. It’s entirely fucking unfair.
Lucifer throws him a smile so light it could have come from the Captain that Raguel once knew, and then his bare feet are carrying him into the dance. He does not look back but he drops a whisper into Xas’ ear and the other angel nods, smiles, the carefree curve of his mouth suddenly almost more than Raguel can bear.
But he watches them until his cigarette burns down, because to do otherwise would be an admission of defeat.
If you didn't ask for a drabble, feel free to do so now over here - Internet at the apartment won't be happening for a while, so I have many free evenings in which to write!
For darthrami - Kaylee and her first boyfriend
There was no denying that Miss Kaywinnet Lee Frye was a very odd sort of girl. All the boys agreed. She didn’t keep her hair neat like the others did, and she wore dirty overalls and heavy leather boots, and she was always getting in trouble for humming to herself in class. But her smile was bright, her eyes were very large and somehow attractive in a way that many years later the boys would learn to label artless, and she was good fun to talk to.
But still. Odd.
Gerald Tate discovered just how odd she was when he, greatly daring, asked to kiss her. Kaylee blushed a little and chewed her lip, but eventually agreed on the condition that he gave her his screwdriver, the one with the pink handle.
It’s red, he said.
It’s pink, she said. But okay. You can kiss me now, if you want.
And so it went. The other boys pretended disgust but asked Gerald for details which his eleven-year-old tongue could not quite articulate. Kaylee hummed even more cheerfully in class and held his hand in grease-streaked fingers when they kissed; shyly, clumsily, with the dutiful curiosity of children.
Gerald Tate lost half his toolset and a large amount of equipment from his beloved model sets before he worked out what Kaylee had known all along; that even the best kisses are transient, but engines are forever.
For wickedtrue - something involving Boomer
The kid has fallen asleep on the rec room table again. Sharon covers him with someone’s discarded jacket and shrugs off the bemused looks that come her way - our Boomer, acting maternal? She’s never been one to explain herself. And the simple fact of it is that having someone else to be responsible for can be a relief in itself, sometimes, a distraction to draw her mind away from the stress of their situation and the darker thoughts that flood her insomnial nights.
The triad game ends and Dee heads off for her shift in CIC, Crashdown to his rack. Starbuck slings an arm around Apollo’s shoulders as they wander away and steals a puff of the stogie he won right out of her lips, bluffing outrageously, taking the pot. Everyone is always taken aback when Apollo bluffs; Sharon suspects that’s why he doesn’t do it often. She watches him smile fondly at Starbuck’s animated insistence that she’ll win it all back from him tomorrow, and wonders if they’re frakking yet.
She yawns and shakes Boxey’s shoulder gently. “C’mon, mister. You can’t sleep here. Wake up.”
When his eyes open they are the same shape, the same colour, in every dimension and subtle tired shade the same boy’s eyes that she knows. And yet her heart muscle seems to wrench itself out of position for a moment.
“Hello, Three,” he says. “I don’t think you were meant to wake me up just yet.”
She opens her mouth to form a reply and a sharp pain lances through her forehead, slicing her thoughts neatly into pieces before the words can come out.
“Oh. It’s all right, Boomer.” His disinterested smile swims before her eyes. She tries to remember what they are talking about, flails for the thread of conversation, but it has drifted out of reach. “I doubt you’ll remember.”
She doesn’t.
For dearladydisdain - Saffron’s POV at any time in either OMR or Trash
The music reminds her of a place she once called home. She pastes a sweet and almost-drunken smile onto her face, lets her feet remember how to dance, and makes mental lists of the things she will buy with her reward money. This is just groundwork, nothing challenging or dangerous about it.
The mark follows her into the crowd and his hands are rough and warm. She tangles their fingers together and turns her head away from the spiced leather smell of his shirt, ducking and blushing and sending a smile up at just the right angle. He smiles back, vague and hazy-happy. The flowers on his head make him look a right gorram fool.
Firelight dances across their bodies, myriad flickering shadows, browns and golds and the bright orange of her current namesake. She lets her dress slip down on one shoulder and leads him in the dance without making it seem as though she is the one in control. There’s no need for such finesse, most likely - he’s gone, floating - but she is an artisan and takes pleasure in the perfection of her craft. Also: she has long taught herself to assume any drunken man is at least two shades more sober than he appears. To remain in the game one must act as if everyone else is a player as well.
Saffron gives a deft twist of her wrist and the man dances her steps, unknowing.
For schiarire - Lucifer/Xas, citrus, German opera that is not Wagner, and a lack of Italians.
Niall Cayley frequents the opera in Paris at a time when canes are fashionable. He looks very well in the thick cloaks of the day and the language curves itself around his tongue with the same ease as ever. The name is a familiar conceit. The cane he detests, because he knows that he walks better with its help. He wants to soar into the chandeliers and burn and fall, still burning, because it will have been worth it for those four heartbeats of flight.
Why that particular image is spinning in his mind below the taut waves of Mozart does not become clear until intermission, when a voice pours cold lyrical French into his ear and a hand pours cold gin into his glass.
The angel Xas has learned by now to play at emotions that he does not feel and to conceal those he does. He is not very good at it. But his fingers do nothing more than tighten on the stem of the glass as Lucifer steals lemon wedges from behind the bar and squeezes them into the drinks. Some of the juice spills onto their hands.
Niall Cayley sips and looks away. Bitter, is all he says. Lucifer’s hand rests on his upper back in a gesture that appears both artless and affectionate from an external perspective. The angel feels impossible heat threading through muscles that have not quite forgotten their original use. Yearning and strange.
You get used to it, Lucifer says, and touches Xas’ mouth with fingers that smell of citrus.
For vaudevilles - Kara and Zoe, comparing weapons and the hotness of their menfolk
“Can I help you?”
Kara ducks behind a rack of pink gauzy things and tries very hard to forget that she came close to failing the stealth part of her basic ground training.
“No?” she snaps, creeping backwards. “No, I think I’m -”
“Ow.”
She turns, a grumpy apology on her lips, but the woman on whose toe she has just stepped makes a sharp beckoning motion with her hand and disappears behind a red curtain. Kara follows out of pure curiosity and finds herself in one of the tiny dressing rooms.
“If you’re in here they assume you’ve already picked something to try on,” the woman says, seating herself on a bench that runs along one wall. Her dark eyes are amused.
“I’m not here to try things on,” Kara says decisively. “I’m looking. For a friend. A present, I mean.”
The woman laughs, a slow chesty kind of laugh that Kara likes despite herself. “Uh huh. Me too.”
“I have a knife,” Kara tries.
“I have two. And a gun.”
Kara’s mouth twitches into a grin and she relaxes, collapsing down on the opposite bench. “I’m glad we sorted that out.”
The woman pushes back a thick curled ponytail and holds out her hand, smiling in return. “Zoe. And if you tell anyone I was in this store, I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”
“Kara. Likewise.” Zoe’s grip is dry and firm and Kara feels thin muscle rippling in the wrist. “So what kind of thing is your friend looking for?”
“Ah, well.” Zoe starts sorting through a pile of discarded garments in one corner of the room. “Her husband expressed a desire for something slinky, and he tends to fly badly when disappointed about things like that.”
“So it’s an act of public service, really,” Kara drawls, amused, poking at another pile with her foot.
“That’s the way I see it.” Zoe pulls a purple dress out and tries to untangle the mess of strings and straps for a moment before discarding it. A dark green one is similarly put aside. A blue one is inspected for a bare moment and then dumped firmly in Kara’s lap.
“What…?”
Zoe winks. “Your friend will knock him dead.”
For a bare moment Kara wavers between knock who dead? and it’s a very sharp knife, you know. But then she shrugs, smirks and decides the act is too much bother to keep up. “Mine’s a pilot too,” she says eventually, trying to work out which is the front of the dress and which is the back. There are floating bits. Kara has a soldier’s inherent distrust of anything that can slow you down or get caught on branches, but perhaps allowances can be made in the cocktail dress domain.
“Mine’s better looking,” Zoe says with impressive immediacy.
“Doubt it.” Kara sees a flash of black in her pile and dives for it. “Mine’s got a cuter smile.”
“Mine’s got a better sense of humour.”
“…I think I’ll give you that one,” Kara says after a moment. “Mine looks better in uniform.”
“Granted.” Zoe gives that low laugh again. “Mine has better biceps.”
Kara screws up the black dress - slits in the sides, lots of slink - and throws it in Zoe’s face. “Sorry,” she says with absolute cheerful assurance, “but that’s frakking impossible.”
For dopplegl - War/Lucifer, with lots of red in the form of wine, blood and fire
London’s burning. It’s not the first time, and if she has her way it won’t be the last.
“If I had a violin…” He’s walking towards her through the devastated remains of a busy commercial area, his bare feet sure and comfortable on the muted crackling embers.
She tosses back her hair and smiles like a tiger. Someone threw a bottle-grenade through a shop window a little while ago and the exploding glass cut her hand open. She hasn’t licked the blood away yet. It makes such nice patterns on her skin.
“Having fun?”
“It’s your party, my dear,” he returns, with a slow bow that’s somehow more arrogant than respectful.
She purrs and slips an arm around his neck once he’s close enough, the blood on her palm staining his crisp shirt. “So?”
He looks down, amused; down, but not by much. They are well matched. “Very well. I am enjoying myself. Most kind of you to invite me. Are there to be refreshments after the main event?”
“I hear you cater to most thirsts,” she says, and kisses him because she can. A building collapses behind her in a cloud of dust and choking ash.
“So demanding,” he murmurs against her lips, but half an hour later they sit in the centre of a bridge spanning the Thames and watch the horizon turn as red as his eyes, as red as her hair, as red as the blood that spills from her cuts, as red the wine he gives her to drink.
For not_in_denial - a drabble that is a drabble request!
Unlucky in a linear count, this is my request:
I want to see how far you can stretch
a code of twenty-six symbols into four times that minus four again
when considering their space-divided combinations,
and to find within this arrangement
a meaning beyond the simple fact of syntax;
a gestalt, a higher order that transcends the placement of verb and noun
and pushes each clause into place with a neat clicking sound
that is nothing like
the rhythm of a train
but somehow resembles the glottal cry that a semicolon would make
if your words could give it voice.
For ryokophoenix - pointlessly happy GO/HP, usual pairings, the bookshop in SoHo, a stuffed dog that sings ‘Singing in the Rain’, lovely jealousy, a reference to history
“Make it stop,” Sirius said plaintively. “Nothing warrants a torment like this, Moony, especially not innocent little songs about someone whose name begins with an L and ends with an Ily Evans.”
“I’m trying.” Remus frowned. “I haven’t got James’ talent for Charms.” He gave the stuffed toy a prod with his wand and muttered another spell. Its furry muzzle immediately jerked open to emit -
“What a wonderful feeeeeeeeling, I’m haaaaappy again!”
“That wasn’t even a spell,” Sirius accused. “You’re just making up Latin phrases now, aren’t you?”
“It’s worked before.” Remus absently pulled black fluff off Sirius’ shirt. “This thing sheds as badly as you do, you know.”
“Prongs has outdone himself,” Sirius said, leaning against the nearest building and trying to plug his ears with twists of paper torn from his shopping list. “I’d throw the damn thing away altogether, but it was such a nice birthday present before he decided to enchant it, and I feel that such thoughtfulness should be encouraged.” He held the tiny black dog up at arms’ length. “Losing it would break the poor boy’s heart, and Evans is doing such a good job of that that I hardly need to join in.”
“Excuse me.” The voice came from the half-open door of the bookshop, and was swiftly followed by a pleasant face that reminded Remus of what Peter might look like if he grew up and became a librarian. “I’m sure you two young gentlemen are very fond of that song, but this is a bookshop and some of us would appreciate…well…”
“Fewer irritating showtunes floating through the walls,” a new voice chimed in, from inside the shop. “Scram.”
Scram? Sirius mouthed at Remus, but the other boy took him firmly by the elbow and hurried them past the shop with an apologetic nod at the man in the doorway and no more than a brief pang of regret at not being able to stop and look around inside.
“Scram, my dear?”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Crowley shrugged, ambling over to the door and watching them walk away. “I’m surprised. I thought we’d have to prise the cute one with the patched trousers away from your shop. He might even have gotten away with buying a book.”
“Unlikely,” the angel said darkly.
Crowley looked at him with mild surprise, and then grinned smugly beneath his sunglasses. “Why, angel. Are you jealous? I can rescind the allegations of cuteness, if you like.”
“Of course I’m not.” Ariraphale raised his eyebrows. “Mortal sin, you know.”
Crowley’s grin became dangerously wide. “You are. Just like that time in the eighteenth century, when I -”
“I thought you invented showtunes,” the angel put in, heading hastily for the back room.
“I did. Professional pride doesn’t mean I like the sodding things. Don’t change the subject,” Crowley shot after the angel’s retreating back.
Aziraphale made three pots of tea and sulked all afternoon.
Crowley considered this a win.
For varadia - more than one person flirting with Raguel
Raguel tilts his glass to catch the light and wonders just whose bright idea the dancing was. It’s hard to pin the blame, in this place. Ideas tend to snowball. For a while it was just a small group of people, laughing, slightly drunk, but now there’s music washing to and fro between the walls - for that, at least, he can confidently blame Tonks - and half the patrons are on their feet. Couples giggle and move uncaring with their hands entwined; beings of power throw smiles across the room and let themselves go for a little while. The little dead ballerina swirls amongst the crowd doing hilarious, lighting-fast impressions of people’s steps.
Lucifer isn’t dancing. Raguel is almost surprised. The devil sits on a table in the familiar cross-legged pose, resting his chin in his hand, watching. Eyes bright. The ballerina bounces up to him and makes insistent gestures, but he turns her away with a brief widening of the smile and a touch on her shoulder.
Raguel lights a cigarette and lets his eyes drift idly over the room. Coyote is dancing with Xas, although it’s not really a dance. The angel has never looked comfortable on his feet, and although he moves his body to the music the motion seems almost accidental in its grace. Each part not quite in synch with the next, and yet the whole effect somehow alluring in that infuriating way that Xas has. As though every breath, every blink is an invitation.
“Enjoying yourself, Raguel?” Lucifer’s voice is a surprise, coming from very close to his ear. The angel turns and shrugs, taking a draw on his cigarette and taking care to blow the smoke downwards. He needs no hazy ambiguity between their eyes; Lucifer is hard enough to read as it is.
“I can’t say it’s my idea of a good time, but most people seem to disagree.”
“I’ve never quite determined what your idea of a good time is,” Lucifer murmurs, taking the nearest seat. “I suppose you’re of the intellectual school. A glass of wine and a game of, oh, Scrabble?”
Through monumental effort, Raguel does not quite choke on his next inhalation. “Right,” he mutters, fixing his eyes back onto Xas’ not-quite-dance with desperation. He knows better than to bite at that verbal hook. But Lucifer follows his gaze and laughs, and Raguel grits his teeth because at the exact same moment Xas looks up and flashes his blue eyes in their direction. Raguel feels caught. Those eyes and that laugh. It’s entirely fucking unfair.
Lucifer throws him a smile so light it could have come from the Captain that Raguel once knew, and then his bare feet are carrying him into the dance. He does not look back but he drops a whisper into Xas’ ear and the other angel nods, smiles, the carefree curve of his mouth suddenly almost more than Raguel can bear.
But he watches them until his cigarette burns down, because to do otherwise would be an admission of defeat.