The Tarot: Eight Prompts (Twilight: various pairings)
title: deamboat's waiting on the docks at night
fandom: twilight
prompt: the devil
character(s)/pairing(s): lauren/(bella)
rating: hard r
word count: 250
spoilers: eclipse
summary: based on this throwaway line: "you’re too desirable for your own good... do i have to send a petition around to get you to believe? shall i tell you whose names would be on the top of the list? you know a few of them, but some might surprise you.”
the devil.
title: i'll put a spell on you
fandom: twilight
prompt: the lovers
character(s)/pairing(s): angela/bella
rating: g
word count: 213
spoilers: none, but you have to have read eclipse to get the joke.
summary: fluff. she’s beaming as she reemerges, the signature pointed hat perched on her head.
the lovers.
title: falling (in love) rocks
fandom: twilight
prompt: the fool
character(s)/pairing(s): alice/leah
rating: pg
word count: 250
spoilers: eclipse
summary: she’s walking a tightrope that at any moment could turn into razor wire or a branch that ends in fruit.
Being with Leah is like being blind, forced to feel her way along walls and furniture.
She’s walking a tightrope that at any moment could turn into razor wire or a branch that ends in fruit, but she’s never felt more alive. It’s true what they say about losing a sense; blood tastes richer, sounds sharper, her she-wolf warmer to the touch. The universe is just… more.
Alice discovers she loves surprises. A sunny day spent streaking through the forest, the color of Leah’s socks when she kicks off her shoes, the next Hollywood scandal - they become her drug, an intoxication that excites so much that Leah not-so-secretly worries she’s become maniacal.
When she traces a cold finger down Leah’s white hot spine, it’s instinct and experience that tells her the other woman will shiver, no vision needed. Her actions feel like stones dropped in a river, heavy and rippling, instead of the slow slide of a crocodile. Each decision could end in disaster, but the future uncurls for her like a leaf each day, and nothing could be more beautiful. She’d forgotten that time was a sequence instead of scattered flashes along a continuum. When she looks ahead she sees only Leah, simply because it’s what must be, not because of some self-fulfilling prophesy.
That first kiss - frozen lips pressed to scorching ones, an experiment, a question - is probably the first true decision she’d made in close to a century. A step without looking beforehand.
A leap of faith.
title: and the moral to the story goes
fandom: twilight
prompt: the hanged man
character(s)/pairing(s): edward || tanya/bella, edward/bella
rating: pg13
word count: 245
spoilers: none.
summary: it’s only in the aftermath that you realize this was your entire bloody fault.
It’s only in the aftermath that you realize this was your entire bloody fault.
You didn’t notice when conversations soured, your mind otherwise occupied and Bella’s sight wandering. You could have said something that actually mattered. You could have followed the trail of her gaze.
There was no protest on your lips when you first heard Tanya’s impure thoughts shift from your body to hers.
Instead of nights for quiet revelations, delicate touches on marble skin, you gave her morning returns smelling of musk and blood. You could have given her a reason not to stray.
There were no growls when you found them intertwined, Tanya’s devilish smirk proof enough that this was her plan all along, because you couldn’t help feeling so fucking sorry for yourself and you were drowning in it.
You could have protested when Tanya swept Bella’s mahogany hair over her shoulder and whispered to youhereveryone mockingly.
Don’t worry; he loves to be miserable. You’re just giving him what he wants.
Her eyes locked with yours over the flesh of Bella’s bare shoulder as her lips descended. But you forced apathy to settle low and heavy in your gut, smothering the fire of possessiveness, of pure, white hot rage. You watched as Bella’s eyes drifted closed, whether from shame or the play of Tanya’s mouth along her collar bone, you’d never know.
You could have loved her enough to love yourself.
But you didn’t. And there’re no proverbs about third chances.
title: careful darling; humanity is catching
fandom: twilight
prompt: emperor
character(s)/pairing(s): jane/heidi
rating: pg13
word count: 246
spoilers: new moon.
summary: this is not a love affair. this is office politics.
This is not a love affair.
This is office politics. This is a means to an end. This is Aro’s will trickling down through the ranks.
“It’ll be good for you both,” he’d suggested, tickled pink at the idea of a lesbian fling amongst his disciples. It was in style, he’d gathered, and he’d learned that fashions have their use. Loyalty towards to another guard equals loyalty towards the entire operation.
Neither had been opposed, but both were wrapped in such a muslin of apathy that the decision would, to the outside observer, appear no different than a bought property and signing on a dotted line.
Heidi might be taller, especially with the six inch stilettos that she refuses to remove even beneath the sheets, but Jane is older (despite her appearance) and infinitely more powerful. This is why she points and chooses where, when, how. A crooked finger and Heidi is there in an instant. When their dark robes tangle together on the floor, Jane’s coincidentally, and aptly, always ends up on top, black trumping dark grey. Luckily she’s always got off being under someone’s boot, and Jane wouldn’t have it any other way.
But there is softness. A hinted smile on Jane’s parted lips; Heidi’s liquid pupils as she stares up at Jane from her kneeled-stance. They are not just cogs in some rigid machine, though their actions might sometimes suggest it.
This is not a love affair. But it’s not without its humanity.
title: popular mechanics for lovers
fandom: twilight
prompt: chariot
character(s)/pairing(s): rosalie/bella
rating: pg
word count: 250
spoilers: breaking dawn.
summary: a thin stream of oil goes running down the pavement, sludge trailing back to a very familiar red truck.
The air hangs so thick with the smell of gasoline Bella can taste it, can feel it in her pores. A thin stream of oil goes running down the pavement, sludge trailing back to a very familiar red truck.
“Wrench,” Rosalie calls out from beneath the behemoth vehicle, and Bella reaches for the tool, tossing it into her distended pale hand.
In her human life Bella might have found the endless hours listening to the clank and whir of Rosalie working to be painfully dull. But now she revels in the peace of it, the simplicity of hearing the blonde tinker with another soon-to-be smoothly operating machine. Cars are easy; people not so much.
But this project is special: the revival of her old truck.
(With a spiffy new engine of course.)
The leather inside still smells like home after all these years and the steering wheel shapes to her hands. Just being next to the beast sparks in her an elated sense of déjà vu; she gives the rusty hood a comforting pat.
Rosalie finally rolls out from underneath, wiping her manicured hands on a dirty rag. She hops up in a blink, turning to take another peek at the engine. Her expression twists in confusion when Bella snags her elbow, a little divot forming between her eyebrows. The brunette affectionately wipes a streak of engine grease from her cheek and Rosalie’s face softens.
Bella kisses the tip of her nose, showing her gratitude in every way but words.
title: evil stepsisters always come in pairs
fandom: twilight
prompt: heirophant
character(s)/pairing(s): leah/bella
rating: r
word count: 164; 865 in longer version
spoilers: breaking dawn.
summary: leah and bella have to play nice at charlie and sue's wedding. they're sisters now, afterall.
This is not Leah’s idea of a good time.
That aunt that moved off the rez to marry an accountant is talking her ear off about babies, and how cute they are and wouldn’t you just love to have a parcel of them someday? The room stinks of bloodsucker, but she can’t do a damn thing about it because they’re family now, and there are about forty people that she’d rather chew her own arm off than chat with standing between her and the bar. And this isn’t even the reception, it’s the rehearsal dinner.
Fuck my life.
If she thought it couldn’t get any worse, boy was she wrong. Because now Bella is walking over in her pastel cocktail dress and inserting herself into this conversation from hell, cooing about the merging of families or some touching bullshit. She gives Leah this wink when she mentions breaking down boundaries, like they’re in this together. And this undead Disney Princess is her stepsister.
Shit.
(longer version here.)
title: to catch a falling star
fandom: twilight
prompt: the star
character(s)/pairing(s): alice/rosalie
rating: pg
word count: 248
spoilers: none.
summary: alice likes watching the stars fall.
Alice likes to watch the stars fall.
Rosalie has always wondered if it’s because she’s foreseen them in her visions, wants to see yet another prophesy come to fruition. Or maybe they’re the only thing she doesn’t see coming. She’s never asked; personally she doesn’t see the appeal in staring at interplanetary sand, but she’ll sit there for hours just to watch Alice’s face light up in wonder.
(In truth Alice just thinks they’re pretty.)
They tangle together wrapped in a blanket, because Rosalie still likes to pretend she can feel the cold. The blonde presses her nose into Alice’s collarbone, trying to distract her from the twinkling backdrop.
“Shhhh,” Alice giggles, even though she isn’t making any noise, and wiggles in a vain attempt to scooch away from wandering hands, even as Rosalie pulls her tighter into her arms.
Rosalie doesn’t know what she’d do without Alice. She’s the light in her life when she thought she’d be blind forever, bringing her colors in the grey of a spent afternoon and filling the desolate quiet with laughter and music. Without her she’d have only bitterness and fury, neither warming her from the inside the way Alice can.
Alice gasps as the first of the shooting stars streak across the sky, plummeting into the tops of the trees. She’d never admit aloud to a notion so idyllic, but Rosalie thinks if she could scale a pine to pocket one for Alice, she would do it in an instant.