Stop! Drabble Time!
Title: 100 Things
Author: nevcolleil
Fandom(s): Inception
Pairing(s): Arthur/Dom
Rating: G
Word Count: 100
Prompt #: 100
Summary:…before it was this.
It was a hundred different things before it was this. Professional admiration. Growing affinity. Sexual infatuation. Friendship. A secret, desperate wanting. More than he can name - a hundred restless, rioting emotions that began as itches at the very back of his mind and stitched themselves to the underside of his skin.
Rioting all the more wildly in Arthur’s presence.
It was a hundred nameless things also. Feelings too frightening, or ambiguous, or important to define. To label and acknowledge.
It was a hundred different things before it was this.
But it could never be more than it is now.
[end.]
Title:Sweeter (Than You Ever Were)
Author: nevcolleil
Fandom(s): Smallville
Pairing(s): Clark/Lex
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 500
Prompt #: 124: Betrayal
Summary: Clark and Lex were together during the events of Bound.
It doesn’t have quite the impact of being slammed into by something massive and fast, like a bus - Clark would know, that’s actually happened. But it’s close.
The worst thing about clichés? Is that they’re actually true. Clark is actually the last one to know. There’s no pretending otherwise; the headlines are everywhere, and there Chloe sits. Not looking at all surprised.
She looks sorry. Sympathetic - which only makes Clark want to curl up into a ball and hide all the more - and sorry.
“Clark, I’m-”
“Don’t say it.”
He doesn’t mean to be short with her. This isn’t her fault. But he’d kinda like a couple of minutes to flagellate himself before the cold comfort begins. (And is “flagellate” even a word? Clark’s heard Lex use some derivative of it. Jesus - even Clark’s vocabulary has traces of Lex in it now, like every other part of Clark’s life. How is he supposed to-)
“You know how he is with women, Clark,” Chloe says.
Clark realizes his eyes have closed and his breaths have quickened when he has to open them to face her and his voice comes out breathless. “Was, Chloe. How Lex was with women. Before-”
Before he met Clark? Before Clark poured out his heart to Lex? Before they started sleeping together?
Clark realizes also that there is no definite point at which he was given reason to believe that Lex had sworn off playing musical beds. Clark just assumed that Lex had because Clark had sworn off everybody else for Lex.
“I’m turning this off.”
Chloe reaches over Clark’s shoulder, to turn off the computer screen with the nearly-bus-crash-powerful image frozen on it, but Clark grabs her wrist before she can. He has to remember, at the last split second, to control his grasp so he doesn’t hurt her. And if that’s not a sign that he is not capable of handling this right now, nothing is.
But they have a job to do. Lex may be- He may be a lot of things Clark is too dazed to call him just yet, but he isn’t a murder. Clark hadn’t known a lot of things, but this? This Clark knows. H and Chloe are going to prove it.
Then Clark can handle - or not handle, if that’s the case - Lex’s betrayal.
“We haven’t watched the whole thing yet.”
“Clark.” Chloe looks at him like he’s grown a second head.
Maybe he has. Maybe Kryptonians respond biologically to getting their hearts trampled into a thousand pieces.
“We’re doing this to prove that Lex was set up.” Clark swallows thickly. He won’t have this - exposing himself to this, this tape - be for nothing. “We have to watch the- the whole thing.”
Chloe stares at him a long time before she nods. She doesn’t take her hand back as Clark hits play, and the image of Lex and his date from the other night unfreezes on the computer screen.
[end.]
Title: Whitney, Bobby
Author: nevcolleil
Fandom(s): Angel
Pairing(s): Wes Pryce/Marcus Hamilton
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 400
Prompt #: 122: Flesh and Bone
Summary: It’s like lovemaking. Without the love. Or the making.
It’s like lovemaking - without the love. Or the making. Destruction seems to be goal of their encounters. To see who can destroy whom the most efficiently. You can practically hear their composures snap, like dry twigs - like bird bones - beneath a heavy foot. Every spoken barb cuts cleaner than the last, slick with success, until the wounds are bleeding freely, and you can’t trace which vein is the source. Love? Hate? (The lust goes without saying.)
There are never any visible signs of demolition, afterwards. They’ve never ripped one another’s clothing - never popped so much as one button, ruined one zipper. They don’t bite or claw at one another, leave bruises or scratch marks to tell the tale of what they’ve been doing.
The signs are there, though. The whisper of cloth against skin is not the same sound in Wesley’s mind as it had been before Marcus, quiet and unobtrusive. It’s a hoof in the dirt, a sound of warning and intent, made all the more unsettling by its patience. The unmarked throat Wesley considers in the mirror the next morning doesn’t look the same to Wesley as it must to the others, who have yet to catch on to his… arrangement with the liaison. The lack of scorch marks where Marcus’s lips brushed the night before seems disingenuine; the smooth, undisturbed flesh of Wesley’s wrists mock his memory of Marcus’s large hands and firm grasp.
They aren’t lovers. Wesley can’t accept that word. They’re a study of passive-agression with its teeth bared. A ‘how-to’ on the topics of transference and projection. They attempt to staunch the natural flow of attachment into the little grooves they’ve carved into one another’s routines - but all their patience drains out. Their resolve is left corpse-pale and waxy, unreal; an imitation of the fortitude Wesley ought to feel to pull himself away from the mouth of the pit.
It’s like finding something - something worthy of taking his mind off of the horrors of the everyday since coming to work for Wolfram & Hart, but Wesley isn’t fooled. Marcus‘s eyes dog Wesley‘s steps as he moves across a room and his own track Marcus‘s lips as they form their lies and half-truths, and Wesley feels it all like an animal curled against his spine and ready. And Wesley knows: this-
This is not what being found feels like.
[end.]
Title: About Face
Author: nevcolleil
Fandom(s): White Collar/Chuck
Pairing(s): Bryce/Peter implied, past Neal/Peter implied
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 500
Prompt #: 71: Masks
Summary: A different take on the Bryce is/is not Neal conundrum. There’s a lot of fic in which Chuck has to cope with a Neal who reminds him an awful lot of a lost love. I thought it only fair that Peter finally get a little bit of that action.
They all have a problem with it, to some degree; even those who didn’t have a personal affinity for Caffrey seem to have a moral principle against seeing his face on someone else’s body.
Bryce doesn’t mind. He hadn’t minded when the Agency had ordered the operation. He sees the issue in the terms of a simple cost-benefit analysis. The cost is worthy of the benefit. He has no one who cared about the face he wore before. Having this one allows him to infiltrate circles he couldn’t have otherwise, and the real Neal Caffrey’s been dead and buried for almost a year.
Obviously, the people who cared about Caffrey do care about his face walking around the Bureau thanks to some “hotshot spook” (Burke called him that, their first day), and Bryce understands. He doesn’t begrudge them their awkward silences, their misplaced hurt and anger. He knows how the brain works. Occasionally people forget. They see his face and they start to smile before the neurons kick in and they remember that they aren’t smiling at the same man who smiled back at them a year ago. And then they’re even more hurt, more angry. It’s alright. Bryce knows.
And he knows he can use it to his advantage.
Because occasionally they forget other things too. If he loosens up, just a little, in the midst of casual conversation, they’ll forget Bryce isn’t someone they’re used to keeping in confidence. If Bryce grins, in just the right way, when he asks for something, they’ll forget that he isn’t the man they’re used to giving in to. They won’t forget for long; a moment - maybe two. But that’s all Bryce needs, generally.
If Bryce just waits for it... Watches, carefully. Peter Burke will forget all sorts of things.
Not just that Bryce isn’t Neal... but that, even if he were? As Burke’s CI? Those smiles should not be directed at him with Peter’s lips. Certainly not in easy view of their fellow members of the Bureau. Those dewy eyes whenever the shit hits the fan and the bullets start flying? Those shouldn’t have been Neal’s any more than they should be Bryce’s by proxy.
The US government asks a lot of its guard dogs. Bryce gave up his own face. The least Burke can do is let go of this ridiculous infatuation with a man he had no business getting mixed up with in the first place.
That Burke is seemingly incapable of this? That, Bryce has a problem with.
And if playing up the similarities between himself and the man whose image the Agency basically stole for Bryce is the key to putting Burke back in his place - if wearing his borrowed features like a mask and playing the part it entails gives Bryce the advantage...
Well. Bryce can do the secretive smiles and dewy eyes routine better than anybody. And Burke’s hardly an unattractive mark.
It isn’t the worst thing Bryce has done for his country.
[end.]
Author: nevcolleil
Fandom(s): Inception
Pairing(s): Arthur/Dom
Rating: G
Word Count: 100
Prompt #: 100
Summary:…before it was this.
It was a hundred different things before it was this. Professional admiration. Growing affinity. Sexual infatuation. Friendship. A secret, desperate wanting. More than he can name - a hundred restless, rioting emotions that began as itches at the very back of his mind and stitched themselves to the underside of his skin.
Rioting all the more wildly in Arthur’s presence.
It was a hundred nameless things also. Feelings too frightening, or ambiguous, or important to define. To label and acknowledge.
It was a hundred different things before it was this.
But it could never be more than it is now.
[end.]
Title:Sweeter (Than You Ever Were)
Author: nevcolleil
Fandom(s): Smallville
Pairing(s): Clark/Lex
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 500
Prompt #: 124: Betrayal
Summary: Clark and Lex were together during the events of Bound.
It doesn’t have quite the impact of being slammed into by something massive and fast, like a bus - Clark would know, that’s actually happened. But it’s close.
The worst thing about clichés? Is that they’re actually true. Clark is actually the last one to know. There’s no pretending otherwise; the headlines are everywhere, and there Chloe sits. Not looking at all surprised.
She looks sorry. Sympathetic - which only makes Clark want to curl up into a ball and hide all the more - and sorry.
“Clark, I’m-”
“Don’t say it.”
He doesn’t mean to be short with her. This isn’t her fault. But he’d kinda like a couple of minutes to flagellate himself before the cold comfort begins. (And is “flagellate” even a word? Clark’s heard Lex use some derivative of it. Jesus - even Clark’s vocabulary has traces of Lex in it now, like every other part of Clark’s life. How is he supposed to-)
“You know how he is with women, Clark,” Chloe says.
Clark realizes his eyes have closed and his breaths have quickened when he has to open them to face her and his voice comes out breathless. “Was, Chloe. How Lex was with women. Before-”
Before he met Clark? Before Clark poured out his heart to Lex? Before they started sleeping together?
Clark realizes also that there is no definite point at which he was given reason to believe that Lex had sworn off playing musical beds. Clark just assumed that Lex had because Clark had sworn off everybody else for Lex.
“I’m turning this off.”
Chloe reaches over Clark’s shoulder, to turn off the computer screen with the nearly-bus-crash-powerful image frozen on it, but Clark grabs her wrist before she can. He has to remember, at the last split second, to control his grasp so he doesn’t hurt her. And if that’s not a sign that he is not capable of handling this right now, nothing is.
But they have a job to do. Lex may be- He may be a lot of things Clark is too dazed to call him just yet, but he isn’t a murder. Clark hadn’t known a lot of things, but this? This Clark knows. H and Chloe are going to prove it.
Then Clark can handle - or not handle, if that’s the case - Lex’s betrayal.
“We haven’t watched the whole thing yet.”
“Clark.” Chloe looks at him like he’s grown a second head.
Maybe he has. Maybe Kryptonians respond biologically to getting their hearts trampled into a thousand pieces.
“We’re doing this to prove that Lex was set up.” Clark swallows thickly. He won’t have this - exposing himself to this, this tape - be for nothing. “We have to watch the- the whole thing.”
Chloe stares at him a long time before she nods. She doesn’t take her hand back as Clark hits play, and the image of Lex and his date from the other night unfreezes on the computer screen.
[end.]
Title: Whitney, Bobby
Author: nevcolleil
Fandom(s): Angel
Pairing(s): Wes Pryce/Marcus Hamilton
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 400
Prompt #: 122: Flesh and Bone
Summary: It’s like lovemaking. Without the love. Or the making.
It’s like lovemaking - without the love. Or the making. Destruction seems to be goal of their encounters. To see who can destroy whom the most efficiently. You can practically hear their composures snap, like dry twigs - like bird bones - beneath a heavy foot. Every spoken barb cuts cleaner than the last, slick with success, until the wounds are bleeding freely, and you can’t trace which vein is the source. Love? Hate? (The lust goes without saying.)
There are never any visible signs of demolition, afterwards. They’ve never ripped one another’s clothing - never popped so much as one button, ruined one zipper. They don’t bite or claw at one another, leave bruises or scratch marks to tell the tale of what they’ve been doing.
The signs are there, though. The whisper of cloth against skin is not the same sound in Wesley’s mind as it had been before Marcus, quiet and unobtrusive. It’s a hoof in the dirt, a sound of warning and intent, made all the more unsettling by its patience. The unmarked throat Wesley considers in the mirror the next morning doesn’t look the same to Wesley as it must to the others, who have yet to catch on to his… arrangement with the liaison. The lack of scorch marks where Marcus’s lips brushed the night before seems disingenuine; the smooth, undisturbed flesh of Wesley’s wrists mock his memory of Marcus’s large hands and firm grasp.
They aren’t lovers. Wesley can’t accept that word. They’re a study of passive-agression with its teeth bared. A ‘how-to’ on the topics of transference and projection. They attempt to staunch the natural flow of attachment into the little grooves they’ve carved into one another’s routines - but all their patience drains out. Their resolve is left corpse-pale and waxy, unreal; an imitation of the fortitude Wesley ought to feel to pull himself away from the mouth of the pit.
It’s like finding something - something worthy of taking his mind off of the horrors of the everyday since coming to work for Wolfram & Hart, but Wesley isn’t fooled. Marcus‘s eyes dog Wesley‘s steps as he moves across a room and his own track Marcus‘s lips as they form their lies and half-truths, and Wesley feels it all like an animal curled against his spine and ready. And Wesley knows: this-
This is not what being found feels like.
[end.]
Title: About Face
Author: nevcolleil
Fandom(s): White Collar/Chuck
Pairing(s): Bryce/Peter implied, past Neal/Peter implied
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 500
Prompt #: 71: Masks
Summary: A different take on the Bryce is/is not Neal conundrum. There’s a lot of fic in which Chuck has to cope with a Neal who reminds him an awful lot of a lost love. I thought it only fair that Peter finally get a little bit of that action.
They all have a problem with it, to some degree; even those who didn’t have a personal affinity for Caffrey seem to have a moral principle against seeing his face on someone else’s body.
Bryce doesn’t mind. He hadn’t minded when the Agency had ordered the operation. He sees the issue in the terms of a simple cost-benefit analysis. The cost is worthy of the benefit. He has no one who cared about the face he wore before. Having this one allows him to infiltrate circles he couldn’t have otherwise, and the real Neal Caffrey’s been dead and buried for almost a year.
Obviously, the people who cared about Caffrey do care about his face walking around the Bureau thanks to some “hotshot spook” (Burke called him that, their first day), and Bryce understands. He doesn’t begrudge them their awkward silences, their misplaced hurt and anger. He knows how the brain works. Occasionally people forget. They see his face and they start to smile before the neurons kick in and they remember that they aren’t smiling at the same man who smiled back at them a year ago. And then they’re even more hurt, more angry. It’s alright. Bryce knows.
And he knows he can use it to his advantage.
Because occasionally they forget other things too. If he loosens up, just a little, in the midst of casual conversation, they’ll forget Bryce isn’t someone they’re used to keeping in confidence. If Bryce grins, in just the right way, when he asks for something, they’ll forget that he isn’t the man they’re used to giving in to. They won’t forget for long; a moment - maybe two. But that’s all Bryce needs, generally.
If Bryce just waits for it... Watches, carefully. Peter Burke will forget all sorts of things.
Not just that Bryce isn’t Neal... but that, even if he were? As Burke’s CI? Those smiles should not be directed at him with Peter’s lips. Certainly not in easy view of their fellow members of the Bureau. Those dewy eyes whenever the shit hits the fan and the bullets start flying? Those shouldn’t have been Neal’s any more than they should be Bryce’s by proxy.
The US government asks a lot of its guard dogs. Bryce gave up his own face. The least Burke can do is let go of this ridiculous infatuation with a man he had no business getting mixed up with in the first place.
That Burke is seemingly incapable of this? That, Bryce has a problem with.
And if playing up the similarities between himself and the man whose image the Agency basically stole for Bryce is the key to putting Burke back in his place - if wearing his borrowed features like a mask and playing the part it entails gives Bryce the advantage...
Well. Bryce can do the secretive smiles and dewy eyes routine better than anybody. And Burke’s hardly an unattractive mark.
It isn’t the worst thing Bryce has done for his country.
[end.]