Four Queerditch Pub Ficlets
I still have Easter eggs to do, and the end of the DvD commentary to On a Wing and a Prayer, not to mention my Peterficathon story, and oh, yes, possibly some non-fandom stories that I could actually sell. Not to mention reading and reviewing new fic as per starrysummer's post.
So what am I doing here? Posting my ficlets from this afternoon's queerditch_pub challenge, of course. Today, the inspirations were to be lines from songs, so each ficlet is headed by the lines in question.
Tested by Fire
Sirius/Remus: Cause love don't need a reason / Love don't always rhyme /
And love is all we have for now / What we don't have is time
Perhaps it has something to do with belonging to the Order of the Phoenix, for their days are filled with brightness and their nights consumed by fire. Their hips need only rub against each other to cause a spark to flare; their bodies flow together as if melting in some incandescent forge; their eyes are molten; their kisses, as all-devouring as the flames of a forest fire.
They are not sure when time begins burning away as well--perhaps when members of the Order start evaporating like smoke, perhaps when the first corpses of their friends are found, twisted and seared by curses, no more than burnt logs and dead embers. Perhaps it is then that time begins melting together, each day, week, month just like the last. Or perhaps it is when they have to part so often (though always for burning, urgent reasons) and the secret, suspicious silence both must maintain about their own missions--a silence that quenches the quiet messages they used to be able to convey with a fiery glance, a blazing touch.
Time and duty are consuming their lives and their love, and they can feel both life and love crisping into blackened ashes.
***
BRIGHTNESS OF BRIGHTNESS
Ted/Andromeda: Out of doorways, black umbrellas came to pursue me / Faceless people, as they passed, were looking through me / No one knew me
It begins in thunder and lightning, in the crashing of porcelain vases, in her mother's black eyes and blackwood wand, both flashing curses.
When she leaves for good the next day, organised and packed, the storm seems to be over. Her mother's voice is calm, and only one who knows her as Andromeda would realise that the calm is as chill as glacial ice.
Andromeda maintains her own calm, telling herself it does not matter, that she does not care, that she must just get to Ted and everything will be all right.
She is not sure (and never will be sure) if she is pursued at a discreet distance by her relatives. She sees bowler hats and black umbrellas bobbing after her relentlessly; she glances at the faces of the Muggles about her, but their features are blurred, unreal, nonexistent. Muggle London seems to have transformed into one of the fantasy kingdoms from the books she loved as a child, but somehow the fantasy has become a surreal nightmare.
Time and again, she has to remind herself that she loves, wants, needs Ted. Ted makes her laugh and think. She must remind herself, because, little as she likes it, she wants to return home and for everything to be all right, even though nothing has ever been all right in the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. She is tired of the shadow-shrouded house, of the Uriah Heep-ish house elves, and of the casual, almost indifferent hatred of those not well-born or magically gifted. She is weary of position and prestige and pedigree, of spiderweb conspiracies and tawdry ambitions. She yearns for something bright, powerful, real.
She does not know how Black of her this is.
When she finally sees Ted, she is astonished by how real he looks in this city of umbrellas and faceless Muggles
And then his face lights up when he sees her.
A supernova goes off inside her, and she basks in the light of a loving smile as brilliant as ten thousand stars.
***
Apologies--I got the idea for this one from someone else's fic, and I don't know who wrote the fic or what the name of the fic is.
MAPMAKING
Remus/Sirius: Here's me, and here's you, draw a line between the two. This is cartography for beginners...
Remus always considered the cartography he and Sirius did together to be the real Marauder's Map; a tongue drawing latitude and longitude down a tan neck and across a muscular chest, a fingertip's brush over feet, calves, thighs; an eager mouth exploring things and areas that should be marked "here be dragons."
When Sirius returned from Azkaban, he was reluctant to let Remus see the dark tattoos scattered over his body--black routes and highways twisting what had once been pristine, untainted by incursions of civilisation.
Not until one night when Sirius was drunk on Firewhiskey and despair did Remus learn the secret of those tattoos: that Sirius had bound his memories into them--friendships and pranks, kisses and consummation---inscribing a mnemonic map into his flesh and bones, so that one day Sirius could return to him.
***
GOLD
Bellatrix/Regulus: Your heart of gold has long since tarnished
Gold, Regulus remembers from his Potions classes, does not tarnish. Bury it beneath a polar ice cap, abandon it in a desert, fling it to the bottom of the ocean, and it will always remain its brilliant, unconquerable self.
Somehow, he and Bella have always been the golden ones in their family--the good boy and the good girl who do so much more than is expected.
Between the harsh, punishing kisses she gives him, Bellatrix laughs at his naïve questions about how to be so much better and brighter than he is now. He knows that he is in no way the equal of Bella, whose passion and zeal are pure gold, and she knows it too. Still, she gives him advice, and for that, he is grateful.
He takes her advice. How could he not? He is a good boy, and she is a good girl.
But as he tentatively examines the swollen Dark Mark twisting serpentine along the inside of his left arm, he briefly wonders if this has turned him gold for good--or if he has permanently turned a tarnished, ordinary Black.
So what am I doing here? Posting my ficlets from this afternoon's queerditch_pub challenge, of course. Today, the inspirations were to be lines from songs, so each ficlet is headed by the lines in question.
Tested by Fire
Sirius/Remus: Cause love don't need a reason / Love don't always rhyme /
And love is all we have for now / What we don't have is time
Perhaps it has something to do with belonging to the Order of the Phoenix, for their days are filled with brightness and their nights consumed by fire. Their hips need only rub against each other to cause a spark to flare; their bodies flow together as if melting in some incandescent forge; their eyes are molten; their kisses, as all-devouring as the flames of a forest fire.
They are not sure when time begins burning away as well--perhaps when members of the Order start evaporating like smoke, perhaps when the first corpses of their friends are found, twisted and seared by curses, no more than burnt logs and dead embers. Perhaps it is then that time begins melting together, each day, week, month just like the last. Or perhaps it is when they have to part so often (though always for burning, urgent reasons) and the secret, suspicious silence both must maintain about their own missions--a silence that quenches the quiet messages they used to be able to convey with a fiery glance, a blazing touch.
Time and duty are consuming their lives and their love, and they can feel both life and love crisping into blackened ashes.
***
BRIGHTNESS OF BRIGHTNESS
Ted/Andromeda: Out of doorways, black umbrellas came to pursue me / Faceless people, as they passed, were looking through me / No one knew me
It begins in thunder and lightning, in the crashing of porcelain vases, in her mother's black eyes and blackwood wand, both flashing curses.
When she leaves for good the next day, organised and packed, the storm seems to be over. Her mother's voice is calm, and only one who knows her as Andromeda would realise that the calm is as chill as glacial ice.
Andromeda maintains her own calm, telling herself it does not matter, that she does not care, that she must just get to Ted and everything will be all right.
She is not sure (and never will be sure) if she is pursued at a discreet distance by her relatives. She sees bowler hats and black umbrellas bobbing after her relentlessly; she glances at the faces of the Muggles about her, but their features are blurred, unreal, nonexistent. Muggle London seems to have transformed into one of the fantasy kingdoms from the books she loved as a child, but somehow the fantasy has become a surreal nightmare.
Time and again, she has to remind herself that she loves, wants, needs Ted. Ted makes her laugh and think. She must remind herself, because, little as she likes it, she wants to return home and for everything to be all right, even though nothing has ever been all right in the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. She is tired of the shadow-shrouded house, of the Uriah Heep-ish house elves, and of the casual, almost indifferent hatred of those not well-born or magically gifted. She is weary of position and prestige and pedigree, of spiderweb conspiracies and tawdry ambitions. She yearns for something bright, powerful, real.
She does not know how Black of her this is.
When she finally sees Ted, she is astonished by how real he looks in this city of umbrellas and faceless Muggles
And then his face lights up when he sees her.
A supernova goes off inside her, and she basks in the light of a loving smile as brilliant as ten thousand stars.
***
Apologies--I got the idea for this one from someone else's fic, and I don't know who wrote the fic or what the name of the fic is.
MAPMAKING
Remus/Sirius: Here's me, and here's you, draw a line between the two. This is cartography for beginners...
Remus always considered the cartography he and Sirius did together to be the real Marauder's Map; a tongue drawing latitude and longitude down a tan neck and across a muscular chest, a fingertip's brush over feet, calves, thighs; an eager mouth exploring things and areas that should be marked "here be dragons."
When Sirius returned from Azkaban, he was reluctant to let Remus see the dark tattoos scattered over his body--black routes and highways twisting what had once been pristine, untainted by incursions of civilisation.
Not until one night when Sirius was drunk on Firewhiskey and despair did Remus learn the secret of those tattoos: that Sirius had bound his memories into them--friendships and pranks, kisses and consummation---inscribing a mnemonic map into his flesh and bones, so that one day Sirius could return to him.
***
GOLD
Bellatrix/Regulus: Your heart of gold has long since tarnished
Gold, Regulus remembers from his Potions classes, does not tarnish. Bury it beneath a polar ice cap, abandon it in a desert, fling it to the bottom of the ocean, and it will always remain its brilliant, unconquerable self.
Somehow, he and Bella have always been the golden ones in their family--the good boy and the good girl who do so much more than is expected.
Between the harsh, punishing kisses she gives him, Bellatrix laughs at his naïve questions about how to be so much better and brighter than he is now. He knows that he is in no way the equal of Bella, whose passion and zeal are pure gold, and she knows it too. Still, she gives him advice, and for that, he is grateful.
He takes her advice. How could he not? He is a good boy, and she is a good girl.
But as he tentatively examines the swollen Dark Mark twisting serpentine along the inside of his left arm, he briefly wonders if this has turned him gold for good--or if he has permanently turned a tarnished, ordinary Black.