cross-contamination...
Wow, ok, so I've been absent.
BUT, I have been writing fic and leaving it places that aren't here, and they're short fics, so I figured I'd bring them all over in one post and that would be that.
So here goes.
Title: Totem
Show: Nikita
Characters/pairing: Michael/Alex, not really shippy, unless you want it to be, and then it could be
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 177
A/N: Written for staringiscaring 's nikita comment ficathon. Prompt - It's just your face
It's a very bad thing that just the sight of him calms her down. Very bad indeed for her, and Nikita, and everything they're trying to accomplish. Very, very bad.
She doesn't understand it, but she looks for him. When shit goes down or starts to get real, she looks for him. Mostly she doesn't realise she's doing it until their eyes lock.
It only ever holds for a millisecond, a blip really, before he looks away again, but it's there, that moment, and it calms her down, and everything she was feeling in the moment before seems somehow far away, and she is able to do what she needs to do.
She could do it without him, he's not like a crutch or anything. But she instinctively goes to him for support before looking to herself, and she thinks that that is a very very bad thing.
Whenever something happens she looks for him.
She never really stops to think about why, when her eyes are searching for him, his are always there to be found.
Title: If that railroad train were mine
Show: Nikita
Characters/pairing: Percy
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,000
A/N: Written for staringiscaring 's nikita comment ficathon. Prompt - One night in bangkok makes a hard man humble
Everyone was young once. Everyone. Even him.
Young. And Stupid.
His dad had a handgun that he kept in a lockbox in the bottom of the closet. He didn't think anyone knew about it. He was most definitely wrong. Locks were easy enough to pick, and afternoons with no one else home easy enough to come by.
There were plenty of things to shoot at in the woods behind the house, he never really gave much thought to the idea that they were living things. Or the possibility that someone could be walking around out there just waiting to get shot.
He liked the feel of the metal beneath his skin, the weight of the pistol in his palm, the rough grain of the butt, contrasted with the smooth curve of the trigger, the power in his hand when he held it. Nothing else seemed to matter all that much. No other feeling came close.
He joined the Marines when he was eighteen and never looked back. He trained hard, fought hard, did everything as hard as he could. He knew he was good, one of the best, and he made sure everyone else knew it too.
He was cocky, too cocky probably, but he was good enough that it didn't matter, for a while there he almost thought that he was invincible. He took stupid chances and claimed credit that wasn't his when things happened to go his way. He crowed too loud and laughed too much and he had it coming. He knew as much.
He learned his lesson the hard way. He hadn't been expecting it to be as hard as it turned out to be.
From what he'd seen of it, Bangkok was his kind of town. Bars and clubs and girls and people who don't give a fuck who you are and what you do. Definitely his kind of town.
He's not really supposed to be out drinking. He's on a job, a mission, and he's on orders to stay with the merchandise. But hell, this city is alive with the sound of every single sin there is, and damn if he aint just the willingest sinner.
He's leaving the casino, a guy at the blackjack table told him about some titty bar down the street that sells Buffalo wings, and he hasn't been home in a long while and a slice of Americana sounds actually quite appealing. He's had a few drinks, four or five, or twelve, he's not so sure, but enough so that everything's got that glow that it gets when you're heading down into that particular hole, so he's not quite as alert as he probably should be.
He doesn't register the footsteps or the muffled voices, or the shadow insinuating itself beside his own until it's too late. There's a sack on his head and a pair of arms around his middle and he's being dragged sideways off the main street. He trips over his own feet and lands on his face, jaw banging off the pavement, he's pretty sure his shoulder is dislocated, he's finding it pretty hard to focus. He hears voices talking in English. He passes out.
When he comes to he's tied to a chair, it's hot and airless, and smells like piss. There's a warm trickle of blood rolling down his forehead, his neck is killing him, and it's too dark to see.
He's pretty sure they're after his cargo, but he's got it stowed somewhere safe, somewhere only he knows, and he's confident they're not going to find it. He knows he's not gonna talk. He just has to wait it out, let them run themselves ragged trying to get it out of him, and then find a way to escape. He's not worried.
Turns out, he's never really had the shit beat out of him before. Not in any kind of way that means anything.
He lasts four hours before he talks. If he could go back and meet himself from five hours ago, that guy would have called him a pussy and spat in his face. He thinks that guy is an idiot, and he's just happy to be alive.
They throw him in a van and drive him to the edge of town, push him out of the side door while the thing's still moving and he's just so glad to be breathing in outside air again that he's smiling even as his nose breaks on hard gravel.
Somehow he makes it to a phone and calls his contact, tells him he got mugged and he had the box with him at the time. When the ambulance pulls up he hails it like it's a taxi, he kinda thinks that's funny. He's still half drunk and mostly hilarious.
He's debriefed the next day and given a month's medical leave on account of having several of his bones in the wrong place and a bump on his head the size of albequerque. He goes home to his parents house in the town where he grew up and sits on the couch watching cartoons and eating cereal. His mom makes him soup in the afternoons, some of his old school buddies come calling, a couple of them bring beer, he spends a couple of days shooting the shit with them on the porch.
There's an investigation into the incident in Thailand, he gets a letter in the mail stating that he's been cleared of any wrongdoings and ordering him to report for duty on June fifth. He's not as happy about it as he might have been once.
He goes to his dad's closet one Sunday while his parents are at church and pulls out the old lockbox hidden in the bottom. The lock is familiar and easy to pick, the gun inside is cold and heavy in his hand. He looks at it for a while and then puts it back where he found it.
He's not the same as he was.
Title: Cross your heart and claim a noble cause
Show: Leverage
Characters/pairing: Eliot, all.
Word Count: 578
Rating: PG-13
A/N: Written for a challenge over at leverageland , GO TEAM HACKER! Prompt- Disastrous
Take away a man’s family and he’s grief stricken.
Then take away his friends and he’s pathetic.
Take away his livelihood on top of that and he starts to get angry.
Give that man a gun and someone to point it at and someone to blame, then you start to get yourself the makings of what could potentially be a desperate situation.
This kind of thing was happening way too often.
Inside the bank everything was quiet, save for a few muffled sobs and the soothing sounds of a young mother crooning to the baby in her arms.
It was the kind of quiet that declares tension, like a strand of horse hair just fixing to break. The kind where everyone can tell that you’re all teetering on the very brink of disaster.
They’d been separated when this all started, no two of them had ended up together, or even really near each other. That was the kind of situation that Elliot liked to avoid, if he possibly could. The only one of them he could even see was Hardison, and he couldn’t get a clear view of him through the crowd of other hostages. Comms were out because it was so damn quiet in there and he had no idea if the others were ok, or if they were able to communicate with each other, and that meant that he was basically stuck waiting this whole thing out without any way of getting them all out of there. Feeling helpless sucks. Seriously.
At some point, after maybe two hours, he became aware of some kind of disturbance coming from around a corner on the other side of the room. Someone was shouting, two people, a man and a woman, and there was the scraping of furniture along the floor.
From where he was standing in a corner by the door, he could see Hardison as his face turned towards the noise, the crease in his brow as he craned his neck to try to see what was going on, trying to assess the situation. There was more shouting, a few frightened yells from what he assumed were other hostages, he had no chance of seeing for himself what was happening, he didn’t want to draw attention from himself by forcing his way through, he sank back into his corner and kept his eyes on Hardison.
Four things happened at the same time. The crowd began to part, and as it did he saw Hardison’s face change; from concerned to understanding. The slightest hint of a grin pulled at his mouth, and a nod, imperceptible to most. The shouting grew louder, and Nate and Sophie stumbled, yelling across the marbled floor of the lobby.
“It’s a distraction.” Parker’s voice rang through his ear-bud “We need to disarm this guy, and get out of here before the police decide to storm the place and find us all in here with half a million dollars in our pockets.”
He didn’t realise until afterwards that he nodded, despite the fact that she wasn’t able to see him. She knew he heard, that he got it. His eyes met Hardison’s and a silent understanding passed between them.
“On my mark.” He breathed, he trusted that everyone would do their part, he just had to do his. He raised himself up to full height, drew in a breath, pulled back his shoulders, clenched his fists. He was ready.
“Now.”
Et Voila! Enjoy.
xx