(multifandom) accumulated drabbles!
Thank you lovelies so much for putting up with all my housekeeping. Here are some accumulated drabbles. And as a reward for your patience, there are drabble requests open here! Browse around a bit.
Titania/Ophelia: our moonlight revels.
The maid was but a novelty when they plucked her from the pool.
The Fair Folk exclaimed over her lovely figure, the unabashed bitterness of her tears, the quaver in her voice when she sang nonsensical things of loves long lost. The Puck pinched her to see her weep; Oberon, ever gallant (except when he wasn't), would give her garlands to make her smile once more. None of the merry band knew what sorrow was, only knew that it was different, and different was amusing, and amusing was something they had precious little of, so long-lived were they.
"I knew a queen once," the maid said, as Titania wove flowers into her hair. "She was as fair as dark and kind as pain."
Her attendants tittered. Titania frowned just slightly, remembrance stirring, of soft furry ears, of an irrational, mad, human night. It slipped away, but the feeling lingered. "Was she beautiful as I, this queen?" She turned the maid around to tuck the last blossoms behind one ear.
"You are light and she is earth," was the reply.
Titania felt disturbed. "You have a name."
"Ophelia," sang she, and gave the queen a kiss. She tasted of violets and tears, moonlight filtered through breeze and dark leaves. Titania took Ophelia in her arms and half-expected her to evaporate, the ephemeral changeling. Strangeling.
She was singing again, singing to the moon overhead. "I do not understand," Titania confessed.
"There are more things in heaven and earth," Ophelia whispered. "I had not thought of that before, thank you."
The air was suddenly chilly. Titania thought of ghosts.
--
Remus/Narcissa: no more yielding than a dream.
She was always reminding him of things: milk and honey, bone and wheat, porcelain and gold. But Narcissa Black was none of these things, however blonde her hair and white her skin. She shone against her Hogwarts robes and washed out in the rain.
Remus was beginning to suspect he'd thought about this a bit too much.
Watching her take points from a Hufflepuff for being "unbearably stupid": I want her.
Watching her sweep through the corridors: She is dangerous.
He did not expect to be accosted during one night of quiet study in the library, but then, Remus Lupin knew not of the appeal that secretive boys had to certain girls. Most girls. Any girls. "You watch me," she said into his ear, voice low and certain. "You never say anything. You want something."
And though it was he who kissed her it was she who did all of the necessary maneuvering into position, all of the manipulation as befitting a Slytherin. She smelled clean and bare and too innocent, a poison concealed by something surface sweet.
Remus had not thought to ask what she wanted in return.
--
Gatsby: how slow this old moon wanes.
He did not like the rain because it did not make him think of Daisy. Daisy was all things laughing and bright and beautiful, lit with a certain razor edge that made him feel alive with the risk of slicing himself open. The rain gave softness even to the lines of his new and impressive house (mansion, but he grew up saying house), muted everything to some distant hum.
"Damn," Gatsby said, and had a drink.
The rooms were not yet furnished, so although he had the means for a scotch on the rocks, there was nowhere to sit and enjoy it. Or even to sit and hate the rain. No, he didn't hate the rain, it just made everything slow to a crawl. He would find her again. They would go somewhere it never rained.
"Damn," Gatsby said again, and poured himself another drink.
--
Sorata/Arashi: let him roar again, let him roar again.
He opened his eyes, squinting at the unfamiliar sunlight. Monks generally rose well before sunrise, and he was not used to waking to light pouring in through the window. There was a girl by his bedside, a girl with long dark hair and wide dark eyes. A crying girl.
"Nee-chan, you're beautiful," he said, and quirked a grin, in hopes of making her smile.
"Sorata-san!" In a moment she had his hand clasped between her two little ones, and all he could think of was how soft her hands her, and how small. But there was something important about those hands. Something he should remember.
You will die for a woman...
Understanding dawned. "What year is it?"
And he could see comprehension in her face as well. Good to know that he'd picked a smart one. "It's the third of April, 2000. How much do you...?"
Sorata closed his eyes, chuckled grimly. "None of it. 1999 is completely gone. I take it we won?"
She was crying again as she nodded. He hated to see her cry.
"Hey, Nee-chan, you never forget love."
--
Fuuma/Kotori: how chance the roses there do fade so fast?
Kotori began sleeping in Fuuma's bed shortly after their mother's death. The nightmares came more and more steadily and she hated to wake up sobbing and alone, images of shattered glass haunting the shadows of the room. Comforting her brought back memories of corpses, of splashes of blood, but Fuuma could not watch his little sister succumb to the madness that had lurked behind Saya's eyes in the last days. If he trembled as he held Kotori, she did not notice.
Or perhaps she did. They developed a ritual of goodnight kisses, of the soft slide and press of lips and limbs as much for his peace of mind as hers. Even as he grew older, even as he learned that such practices were generally associated with negatives, the initial impression of love and warmth lingered. Kept him kissing his little sister in the dark, though she had stopped having so many nightmares. They were a world unto themselves, some remnant of childhood innocence.
He ended that world, too.
--
Karen: spangled starlight sheen.
Karen had always had considerable trouble shopping for lingerie. The trouble wasn't that she couldn't find anything, it was that just about everything (excluding shades of yellow and orange) looked good on her. Flower deserved her best face forward (cleavage, too!) and sometimes the decision was too difficult to make alone.
Which was where Jeeves came in.
She had no idea what an incredibly proper Englishman was doing working in Tokyo's most glamorous lingerie store, but his taste was impeccable and she always trusted his judgment. A girl had to get by on a budget, and he was just so good at picking out the top three whenever she went shopping.
"I might suggest that the lavender is a bit too pale, Karen-san," Jeeves remarked one afternoon.
Really, a marvel of a man.
--
Neville/Luna: crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy.
They were earth and air when they met again at last, he with his leaves and she with her clouds, he so solid and she so fancy free. Neville did not think of himself as a person capable of soaring and Luna thought of herself as permanently untranslated, speaking a foreign tongue to the rest of the world.
Neville surprised himself one day, saying to Luna that you could make great friends with anything if you loved it enough. He was talking about his plants, of course.
So Luna went singing through the Forbidden Forest, emerging unscathed and with a crown of buttercups and dandelions that she set atop his head with a smile that became a kiss, and both thought that perhaps that happened with the best smiles, the best kisses.
They both spoke the language of flowers.
--
Boone/Shannon: these are the forgeries of jealousy.
Her brother was smart. It didn't take long for him to trace all his break-ups back to her, though she had been hoping for it to take longer than three girls. Three bitches, had no clue what they were doing. Shannon was doing everyone a favor by keeping her brother where he belonged.
She was immune to those big blue hurt eyes, or at least when she stared at some point past his shoulder rather than look him in the face. "Shan," he pleaded, "Shan, you know I won't forget about you! Leah was good for me, I liked her. Why do you feel like you need to ruin my life this way?"
"What about my life?" she sobbed, irrationality be damned.
His hand was at her chin, jerking her head so she had to look at him. Shannon let the tears spill out of sheer anger, just because he hated to see her cry. "This is my life. You can't keep me for yourself and then go out with boyfriends, wanting me to be at home every time you decide you're bored with them. You can't keep me unless I get to keep you."
Boone's voice had gone so soft and intense at that last bit. Of course she kissed him. Of course he couldn't keep her. That was too much to expect. But he'd always have her. Always.
--
SasuNaru: while these visions did appear.
He suffered hallucinations of all his happy memories, spliced backwards on the reel in his head, the film choppy and spotted in places, the sound blurred almost to mute. He went back and back from his friends and his teachers until he was alone again, and crying. Holed up someplace where nobody could see his tears, the snot he kept wiping on his sleeve even though he'd heard from some mother talking to her kid that it was disgusting. Well, who cared?
A kick to his chin snapped him out of it.
"BASTARD!" Naruto was awake at once and hurling a cup with pinpoint accuracy. Sasuke dodged... but got spattered with water anyway.
"Idiot. That was full."
"Was." Naruto grinned. "Guess it's time to start the day, huh?" He yawned, stretching. "Looks gorgeous out! Gonna be a good one!"
He might need Sasuke around to wake him from nightmares, but Naruto could damn well cope with reality on his own.
That's why Sasuke had come back.
--
Pansy/Cho: O night with hue so black.
"Of all nights to have a meeting," Pansy grumbled, kicking ineffectually at a tree root. She could feel the rain soaking through shoes and cloak alike. "Your boyfriend's mad, Chang. And what's wrong with having a proper headquarters? It's not as if we're not legitimate now. All this sneaking around at midnight is going to make the Ministry paranoid again."
"He's not my boyfriend," Cho sighed. "And stop being such a bureaucrat."
"Somebody has to be. You lot have no clue how to do anything at all."
In spite of herself, Pansy reddened as Potter appeared just in time to hear her last comment. Still, he just smiled and laughed, not at all the self-important git he'd been at Hogwarts. She'd come over to the Order for her girlfriend, but found herself (horror of horrors) actually enjoying the rest of the company. Even if they were all fools.
Still. She squeezed Cho's hand as the meeting began.
--
Horatio/Ophelia: I must go seek some dewdrops here.
The rain had not stopped for days; it seemed as if it would never stop. Horatio counted his boots fortunate as he slogged through what seemed like league upon league of mud. They had sent him, as usual, to find the poor mad maid Ophelia, as if his experiences with the Prince Hamlet had made him some sort of expert at confronting lunacy.
There was much of him in her, however. It was there in the lines of grief her face carried, in the grace with which she moved, in the otherworldly quality of her eyes. He always knew where to find her, and found her now under a particular tree, dress soaked and clinging. She had grown thin and streaked with tears.
"A dance would do nicely," she said, a greeting of sorts.
"A dance indoors, perhaps."
She threw her arms around his neck, laughing and weeping in the same breath, pressed a cold wet kiss to his cheek. Horatio pulled his cloak about them both and felt her shiver.
"I can almost see my sweet prince," she murmured. "He is just beyond."
"Beyond," Horatio agreed.
--
AkiUme: nothing to do with kinky bondage.
"I hate you," Hokuto groused.
Akiha patted him on the head. "That's nice, dear. But you see, you had to be restrained. As a doctor himself, senpai might be nicer when he has to go in for an annual check-up!"
Hokuto wriggled around, but between the seatbelt, the little space he had in Akiha's car, and the bedsheets wound all around him, there was no escape. "Idiot, I'm not even sick! What's wrong with you?"
"I'm only thinking of senpai's health~!" Akiha sang, and drove on.
--
Roger/Mimi: you're staring again.
Waking up was--weird.
Mimi was back. Granted, Mimi was also incredibly sick and malnourished and all manner of unpleasant things, but she was back and she had everyone to nurse her back to health. Even if Mark was the only one who could get her to choke down another serving of chicken soup. Mark was good at forcing people to survive.
Maureen had fallen asleep last night after curling up nonchalantly in Joanne's lap as if they hadn't had countless fights and breakups and tears between them. Roger caught Collins covering them with a blanket early in the morning.
Kissing Mimi's temple, he wondered if this wasn't Angel's Christmas gift to them all.
Titania/Ophelia: our moonlight revels.
The maid was but a novelty when they plucked her from the pool.
The Fair Folk exclaimed over her lovely figure, the unabashed bitterness of her tears, the quaver in her voice when she sang nonsensical things of loves long lost. The Puck pinched her to see her weep; Oberon, ever gallant (except when he wasn't), would give her garlands to make her smile once more. None of the merry band knew what sorrow was, only knew that it was different, and different was amusing, and amusing was something they had precious little of, so long-lived were they.
"I knew a queen once," the maid said, as Titania wove flowers into her hair. "She was as fair as dark and kind as pain."
Her attendants tittered. Titania frowned just slightly, remembrance stirring, of soft furry ears, of an irrational, mad, human night. It slipped away, but the feeling lingered. "Was she beautiful as I, this queen?" She turned the maid around to tuck the last blossoms behind one ear.
"You are light and she is earth," was the reply.
Titania felt disturbed. "You have a name."
"Ophelia," sang she, and gave the queen a kiss. She tasted of violets and tears, moonlight filtered through breeze and dark leaves. Titania took Ophelia in her arms and half-expected her to evaporate, the ephemeral changeling. Strangeling.
She was singing again, singing to the moon overhead. "I do not understand," Titania confessed.
"There are more things in heaven and earth," Ophelia whispered. "I had not thought of that before, thank you."
The air was suddenly chilly. Titania thought of ghosts.
--
Remus/Narcissa: no more yielding than a dream.
She was always reminding him of things: milk and honey, bone and wheat, porcelain and gold. But Narcissa Black was none of these things, however blonde her hair and white her skin. She shone against her Hogwarts robes and washed out in the rain.
Remus was beginning to suspect he'd thought about this a bit too much.
Watching her take points from a Hufflepuff for being "unbearably stupid": I want her.
Watching her sweep through the corridors: She is dangerous.
He did not expect to be accosted during one night of quiet study in the library, but then, Remus Lupin knew not of the appeal that secretive boys had to certain girls. Most girls. Any girls. "You watch me," she said into his ear, voice low and certain. "You never say anything. You want something."
And though it was he who kissed her it was she who did all of the necessary maneuvering into position, all of the manipulation as befitting a Slytherin. She smelled clean and bare and too innocent, a poison concealed by something surface sweet.
Remus had not thought to ask what she wanted in return.
--
Gatsby: how slow this old moon wanes.
He did not like the rain because it did not make him think of Daisy. Daisy was all things laughing and bright and beautiful, lit with a certain razor edge that made him feel alive with the risk of slicing himself open. The rain gave softness even to the lines of his new and impressive house (mansion, but he grew up saying house), muted everything to some distant hum.
"Damn," Gatsby said, and had a drink.
The rooms were not yet furnished, so although he had the means for a scotch on the rocks, there was nowhere to sit and enjoy it. Or even to sit and hate the rain. No, he didn't hate the rain, it just made everything slow to a crawl. He would find her again. They would go somewhere it never rained.
"Damn," Gatsby said again, and poured himself another drink.
--
Sorata/Arashi: let him roar again, let him roar again.
He opened his eyes, squinting at the unfamiliar sunlight. Monks generally rose well before sunrise, and he was not used to waking to light pouring in through the window. There was a girl by his bedside, a girl with long dark hair and wide dark eyes. A crying girl.
"Nee-chan, you're beautiful," he said, and quirked a grin, in hopes of making her smile.
"Sorata-san!" In a moment she had his hand clasped between her two little ones, and all he could think of was how soft her hands her, and how small. But there was something important about those hands. Something he should remember.
You will die for a woman...
Understanding dawned. "What year is it?"
And he could see comprehension in her face as well. Good to know that he'd picked a smart one. "It's the third of April, 2000. How much do you...?"
Sorata closed his eyes, chuckled grimly. "None of it. 1999 is completely gone. I take it we won?"
She was crying again as she nodded. He hated to see her cry.
"Hey, Nee-chan, you never forget love."
--
Fuuma/Kotori: how chance the roses there do fade so fast?
Kotori began sleeping in Fuuma's bed shortly after their mother's death. The nightmares came more and more steadily and she hated to wake up sobbing and alone, images of shattered glass haunting the shadows of the room. Comforting her brought back memories of corpses, of splashes of blood, but Fuuma could not watch his little sister succumb to the madness that had lurked behind Saya's eyes in the last days. If he trembled as he held Kotori, she did not notice.
Or perhaps she did. They developed a ritual of goodnight kisses, of the soft slide and press of lips and limbs as much for his peace of mind as hers. Even as he grew older, even as he learned that such practices were generally associated with negatives, the initial impression of love and warmth lingered. Kept him kissing his little sister in the dark, though she had stopped having so many nightmares. They were a world unto themselves, some remnant of childhood innocence.
He ended that world, too.
--
Karen: spangled starlight sheen.
Karen had always had considerable trouble shopping for lingerie. The trouble wasn't that she couldn't find anything, it was that just about everything (excluding shades of yellow and orange) looked good on her. Flower deserved her best face forward (cleavage, too!) and sometimes the decision was too difficult to make alone.
Which was where Jeeves came in.
She had no idea what an incredibly proper Englishman was doing working in Tokyo's most glamorous lingerie store, but his taste was impeccable and she always trusted his judgment. A girl had to get by on a budget, and he was just so good at picking out the top three whenever she went shopping.
"I might suggest that the lavender is a bit too pale, Karen-san," Jeeves remarked one afternoon.
Really, a marvel of a man.
--
Neville/Luna: crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy.
They were earth and air when they met again at last, he with his leaves and she with her clouds, he so solid and she so fancy free. Neville did not think of himself as a person capable of soaring and Luna thought of herself as permanently untranslated, speaking a foreign tongue to the rest of the world.
Neville surprised himself one day, saying to Luna that you could make great friends with anything if you loved it enough. He was talking about his plants, of course.
So Luna went singing through the Forbidden Forest, emerging unscathed and with a crown of buttercups and dandelions that she set atop his head with a smile that became a kiss, and both thought that perhaps that happened with the best smiles, the best kisses.
They both spoke the language of flowers.
--
Boone/Shannon: these are the forgeries of jealousy.
Her brother was smart. It didn't take long for him to trace all his break-ups back to her, though she had been hoping for it to take longer than three girls. Three bitches, had no clue what they were doing. Shannon was doing everyone a favor by keeping her brother where he belonged.
She was immune to those big blue hurt eyes, or at least when she stared at some point past his shoulder rather than look him in the face. "Shan," he pleaded, "Shan, you know I won't forget about you! Leah was good for me, I liked her. Why do you feel like you need to ruin my life this way?"
"What about my life?" she sobbed, irrationality be damned.
His hand was at her chin, jerking her head so she had to look at him. Shannon let the tears spill out of sheer anger, just because he hated to see her cry. "This is my life. You can't keep me for yourself and then go out with boyfriends, wanting me to be at home every time you decide you're bored with them. You can't keep me unless I get to keep you."
Boone's voice had gone so soft and intense at that last bit. Of course she kissed him. Of course he couldn't keep her. That was too much to expect. But he'd always have her. Always.
--
SasuNaru: while these visions did appear.
He suffered hallucinations of all his happy memories, spliced backwards on the reel in his head, the film choppy and spotted in places, the sound blurred almost to mute. He went back and back from his friends and his teachers until he was alone again, and crying. Holed up someplace where nobody could see his tears, the snot he kept wiping on his sleeve even though he'd heard from some mother talking to her kid that it was disgusting. Well, who cared?
A kick to his chin snapped him out of it.
"BASTARD!" Naruto was awake at once and hurling a cup with pinpoint accuracy. Sasuke dodged... but got spattered with water anyway.
"Idiot. That was full."
"Was." Naruto grinned. "Guess it's time to start the day, huh?" He yawned, stretching. "Looks gorgeous out! Gonna be a good one!"
He might need Sasuke around to wake him from nightmares, but Naruto could damn well cope with reality on his own.
That's why Sasuke had come back.
--
Pansy/Cho: O night with hue so black.
"Of all nights to have a meeting," Pansy grumbled, kicking ineffectually at a tree root. She could feel the rain soaking through shoes and cloak alike. "Your boyfriend's mad, Chang. And what's wrong with having a proper headquarters? It's not as if we're not legitimate now. All this sneaking around at midnight is going to make the Ministry paranoid again."
"He's not my boyfriend," Cho sighed. "And stop being such a bureaucrat."
"Somebody has to be. You lot have no clue how to do anything at all."
In spite of herself, Pansy reddened as Potter appeared just in time to hear her last comment. Still, he just smiled and laughed, not at all the self-important git he'd been at Hogwarts. She'd come over to the Order for her girlfriend, but found herself (horror of horrors) actually enjoying the rest of the company. Even if they were all fools.
Still. She squeezed Cho's hand as the meeting began.
--
Horatio/Ophelia: I must go seek some dewdrops here.
The rain had not stopped for days; it seemed as if it would never stop. Horatio counted his boots fortunate as he slogged through what seemed like league upon league of mud. They had sent him, as usual, to find the poor mad maid Ophelia, as if his experiences with the Prince Hamlet had made him some sort of expert at confronting lunacy.
There was much of him in her, however. It was there in the lines of grief her face carried, in the grace with which she moved, in the otherworldly quality of her eyes. He always knew where to find her, and found her now under a particular tree, dress soaked and clinging. She had grown thin and streaked with tears.
"A dance would do nicely," she said, a greeting of sorts.
"A dance indoors, perhaps."
She threw her arms around his neck, laughing and weeping in the same breath, pressed a cold wet kiss to his cheek. Horatio pulled his cloak about them both and felt her shiver.
"I can almost see my sweet prince," she murmured. "He is just beyond."
"Beyond," Horatio agreed.
--
AkiUme: nothing to do with kinky bondage.
"I hate you," Hokuto groused.
Akiha patted him on the head. "That's nice, dear. But you see, you had to be restrained. As a doctor himself, senpai might be nicer when he has to go in for an annual check-up!"
Hokuto wriggled around, but between the seatbelt, the little space he had in Akiha's car, and the bedsheets wound all around him, there was no escape. "Idiot, I'm not even sick! What's wrong with you?"
"I'm only thinking of senpai's health~!" Akiha sang, and drove on.
--
Roger/Mimi: you're staring again.
Waking up was--weird.
Mimi was back. Granted, Mimi was also incredibly sick and malnourished and all manner of unpleasant things, but she was back and she had everyone to nurse her back to health. Even if Mark was the only one who could get her to choke down another serving of chicken soup. Mark was good at forcing people to survive.
Maureen had fallen asleep last night after curling up nonchalantly in Joanne's lap as if they hadn't had countless fights and breakups and tears between them. Roger caught Collins covering them with a blanket early in the morning.
Kissing Mimi's temple, he wondered if this wasn't Angel's Christmas gift to them all.