Love in ficlet form...
These drabbles are for rainpuddle13, because I know this is a rough time of the year for you and I wanted to offer something to make today just a little bit brighter. *hugs* So, some silly and possibly cracky ficlets, and a couple things I know you've been wanting to see. :)
Title: Impressions
Characters: Pansy Parkinson/Ron Weasley
Rating: PG
Word count: 200
“Are you sure no one saw you?” Ron looked around fervently, sticking his head back into the corridor to reassure himself before she’d even answered.
“I’m sure!” Pansy replied, casually dropping her jacket across a desk. The dungeon was chilly, but she thought she’d be warmed up in a few moments anyhow.
“Positive?”
“Not ashamed of me, are you?” Mischievousness colored her voice. “Or do you just think I’d want people to know I’m willing to spend time with a Weasley.”
“Hrmph,” Ron said, closing the door and setting a locking spell on it. “You don’t have to, you know. There are tons of other witches I could spend my time with.”
Pansy raised her eyebrow. “Yeah, I think I hear them all banging on the door. ‘Wonniekins, you’re my heart and soul!’” She slid onto another table, pushing aside a spare cauldron and grinning at him. “You can go woo all those other witches now.”
“Might as well start with the one throwing herself at me,” Ron replied, stepping close and resting his hands lightly on her hips. “I think she needs a reminder in why I’m so popular.”
“Go on,” Pansy purred, tossing her hair challengingly. “Impress me.”
*
Title: Settled Debts
Characters: Draco/Ginny/Remy (as per request)
Rating: PG
Word count: 630
AN: Takes place after "Collision" and Crash Course.
Remy had thought the magical world sounded like a child’s dream come true from Ginny’s matter-of-fact descriptions, but as it turned out, it was rather more terrifying than he could have guessed.
She’d taken him to London and they’d gone through a pub as sketchy as any of the dives Remy had hustled pool at in his misspent youth (which, given his current surroundings, he figured he was still living). The decor had been more Cryptkeeper than Disney, and some of the... creatures had been drinking from flagons that had been smoking. Remy tried hard to act as though they were all people, just like he did with mutants that looked less humanoid, but from the snippets of conversation he overheard, these things were as far from human as they looked.
Ginny had laughed at his nervousness, pointed out that she had met him in a place populated with criminals and thugs, and casually made a brick wall shift in order to lead him to Diagon Alley.
Diagon Alley had been more in line with what he had imagined at first, bright and bustling. She took him to an ice cream parlor, where he ordered double dutch chocolate ice cream and tried to ignore the fact that there appeared to be things burrowing through Ginny’s sundae.
Finally she had led him to their current location, which is what settled in Remy’s mind once and for all the fact that the magical world was not a place he wanted to go alone, ever.
The crooked sign had called it Knockturn Alley, and the farther down the narrow, winding alley Ginny lead him, the more he wished he was in New York, New Orleans, or basically just the hell out of Dodge. He was pretty sure he’d seen a severed head in the last dusty shop window.
Finally Ginny stopped, tapped her wand against a door that looked like it had been sealed shut since the Middle Ages, and stepped inside when it opened with a loud creak.
Remy followed her, silently berating himself for being a coward. He took in the room, needing little time to adjust to the darkness, and was surprised to see that they were standing in what appeared to be a manor house, with large windows overlooking the green English hillside.
He looked behind him, but it appeared to be a normal pantry.
“This place is scary,” he said to Ginny.
She laughed that “aren’t you adorable” laugh he loved and hated, and lead him into another room, where a skinny blond... wizard, judging by his robes, sat at a table, concentrating on a dusty book.
“Ready?” she said to him.
He looked up, startled, then narrowed his eyes at Remy. “That?”
“He’s my boyfriend, Draco,” Ginny snapped. “And you were the one who said you wanted to play.”
Draco made a disbelieving sound. “Well, he is easy on the eyes.”
Remy began to wonder just what the hell Ginny had dragged him into. “Cherie?” he asked, hoping he’d get an explanation.
Ginny flashed him that mischievous grin he so dearly loved. “I thought you might teach Draco to play poker.”
“Of course,” Remy began before Ginny interrupted him.
“Just like you taught me.”
Remy had vivid memories of learning just what a witch wore under her robes when he won them with the full house he’d dealt himself.
“Well,” he said, giving Draco the same appraising look that the wizard was giving him. “If that’s what you want.”
Ginny smiled, clearly pleased. “Oh, yes.”
Wizards, Remy learned, were just as poor poker players as witches. But it was almost as fun to settle the debts with them.
He’d underestimated Ginny, he thought. Maybe he should take her back to Westchester with him.
Just for fun.
*
Title: Rendezvous
Characters: Bruce Wayne/Remy Lebeau
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 754
AN: Takes place after “Preemptive Measures”
Remy knew better than to go back. He’d seen a lot of questionable situations in his life, and that whole manor reeked of questions.
He didn’t know the first damn thing about its owner’s secrets, or any of the questions that had been raised on his last trip there. He didn’t even know if that green-eyed vixen who had clawed him up and left him smiling would be there.
He hoped that Bruce Wayne would be there.
Out of all the strange things he’d noticed about the place, Wayne himself was the strangest. Remy’d heard of the man’s reputation - who hadn’t? - but meeting the man....
It didn’t mesh. The man he had met had been intense and fucking scary and intimidating, the exact opposite of what every account Remy had ever read of the man had indicated. The only thing the tabloids had gotten right, he thought, grinning, was that the man performed superbly in the sack.
That wasn’t the full reason Remy was picking his way carefully through a manor’s foyer that had far more security than even a place with this many priceless works of art warranted. He also had spotted a few items that he might try to procure if this encounter didn’t go how he hoped.
And, if he were completely honest with himself, he just sort of wanted to see Wayne again. See if maybe he had just been... dazzled, the first time they’d met. After Selina and Wayne had had their way with him, he’d found himself untied and ushered towards his rumpled heap of clothes.
He couldn’t remember dressing, or being escorted out of the room, or even what he had said once he’d made it downstairs, alone and befuddled and feeling as though a train - a good train - had hit him.
He’d had half a mind to get the painting he had come for, but there had been a butler standing directly in front of it who had scowled at him in such a way that Remy knew he’d been made.
And then he’d simply left, and had tried to put the encounter out of his mind.
He’d failed at that. Miserably, he thought, evading yet another motion detector and eyeing the stairwell, trying to decide the best way to get up it.
“I wouldn’t chance it.”
Remy jumped and whirled around and there was Bruce Wayne, standing not four feet away from him. With an eyebrow raised towards Remy. Looking utterly nonplussed at the fact that Remy had made it past countless levels of security and was standing in the middle of his manor.
“Mon dieu, homme,” Remy gasped. “How did you...”
Wayne’s eyebrow lowered and he uncrossed his arms, but he still looked foreboding, standing half in the shadows. “Shouldn’t I be questioning you?”
“Most people don’t question burglars,” Remy pointed out. “Usually they shoot or hide and call the police or let loose the guard dogs.”
“I’ll have to trust your greater expertise,” Wayne said. “Why are you here?”
“It ain’t what it looks like,” Remy said reflexively.
The damn eyebrow went back up. “Oh?”
“I...” Remy couldn’t say that he couldn’t get the man out of his mind. Breaking into someone’s house because you dreamed about an encounter with them two months ago was insane and obsessive, and Wayne didn’t seem the sort to cater to obsessions.
Remy was the sort to cater to his own romantic obsessions, but this felt different. He wasn’t the pursuer here, all appearances to the contrary.
He couldn’t help but think that Wayne had somehow drawn him here, but he knew that he hadn’t been... interfered with in any way. He’d just gotten paranoid from all the telepaths and other things he dealt with in his line of business.
There was something else drawing him to Wayne, and all he knew was that he wanted to explore it more before he got kicked out of here. So he stepped up closer, feeling the man tense, and kissed him like he’d been invited.
Wayne made a near-silent sound that may have been surprise, tensed even more for a moment, then, as though he were making a conscious decision, relaxed into the kiss, stroking Remy’s tongue with his own in a way that made Remy clutch at the man’s robe like a jelly-kneed schoolgirl.
Well, Remy thought when cognitive ability returned, maybe he’d figured out his own motivation for returning after all.
And maybe the question of who - what - Wayne really was could wait just a bit longer.
*
Title: This Side of Paradise
Characters: Argus Filch/Gisella Torrio
Rating: PG
Word Count: 712
AN: Takes place after “Linger Awhile”.
Gisella stretched languorously, feeling sweet aches and weariness in all her limbs and wondering why she felt so safe.
Then she cracked open her eyes, and cold dread manifested in her belly. The ceiling was cracked and had a big brown water stain, which she had never seen in the darkness. The walls were dingy, the wallpaper peeling from the wall, and when she looked to her side, she wasn’t staring at her husband’s hulking, snoring form.
“Goddamn it,” she whispered.
“Mmm?” Argus mumbled into his pillow before stiffening - she watched with fascination how she could see the tension in his shoulders - and turning over, eyes clear, conscious and wary. “Gisella.”
The wariness faded somewhat.
She sat up, letting the blankets fall as she grabbed the tips of her hair, looked up and made a loud, frustrated sound. “I fell asleep.”
“You...” He paused, and then sat up, startled. “You never went home?”
“I’m still here, aren’t I?” she snapped. “Oscar is probably worried sick about me!” She didn’t say that he was more likely in a murderous rage over her absence, but Argus knew him as well as she did. She’d been part of this life long enough to know that just because her husband treated her with kindness didn’t make him any sort of innocent.
“Oh,” Argus said, looking worried. Probably wondering if he was going to have to kill Oscar, or maybe thinking he was going to be getting the business end of an icepick sometime soon. Gisella couldn’t tell; Argus was inscrutable at the best of times, and right now all she could tell was that he was concerned.
She climbed out of bed and began picking her clothes off the floor, shoving legs into stockings as she shimmied into her underthings and dress. Argus watched her until she glared, then obediently climbed out of bed and was dressed in his customarily rumpled clothes before she had even found her shoes.
“What am I going to do?” she said, finally sitting down on the edge of the bed, holding a shoe listlessly in one hand. “Oscar won’t believe I was doing something innocent all night long.”
Argus was silent. She looked up at him, and he looked... angry.
“What’re you in a tizzy for?” she snapped. “I’m the one in trouble.”
“Do you even remember what you said to me last night?”
“Of course I do,” Gisella said. “But this is different from having faith in you. This is about keeping up the pretense to my husband so that I can still come and see you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” he said darkly.
“Are you breaking this off?” Gisella snapped.
“No!” Argus said quickly. “Keep up the pretense.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh! Argus, come here.” She wrapped her arms around him and looked up at him and said, “I can’t let things get rocky with Oscar. You know that. The things we’re involved in...”
“And this is less dangerous?” Argus’ voice was flat and Gisella was beginning to see what about him made the others so wary.
“Yes, of course this is!” Gisella said quickly. “Even if they suspect, they can look the other way. But insulting Oscar to his face... you know how precarious things have been since my brother died. Giulio’s doing the best he can, but he’s not the man Aldo was. And neither are you,” she added, seeing that Argus was about to say something. “Oscar is a good man, and he doesn’t deserve to have to break apart what little we all have left because of us!”
Argus silently nodded, though reluctantly. “You should go home. See... see if you can fix things.”
Gisella put on her shoe and stood, but then stooped back down and kissed Argus soundly. “You know I love you, right?”
From his thunderstruck expression, she realized that he hadn’t.
“I... I probably won’t be back tonight,” she said. She didn’t say that she didn’t know how long it would be before it would be safe for her to come again. He knew.
He just nodded. She felt his eyes on her as she left the room, and felt more alone than ever when she shut the apartment door behind her, blocking out the sound of his quiet breathing.
She slowly began walking home.
Title: Impressions
Characters: Pansy Parkinson/Ron Weasley
Rating: PG
Word count: 200
“Are you sure no one saw you?” Ron looked around fervently, sticking his head back into the corridor to reassure himself before she’d even answered.
“I’m sure!” Pansy replied, casually dropping her jacket across a desk. The dungeon was chilly, but she thought she’d be warmed up in a few moments anyhow.
“Positive?”
“Not ashamed of me, are you?” Mischievousness colored her voice. “Or do you just think I’d want people to know I’m willing to spend time with a Weasley.”
“Hrmph,” Ron said, closing the door and setting a locking spell on it. “You don’t have to, you know. There are tons of other witches I could spend my time with.”
Pansy raised her eyebrow. “Yeah, I think I hear them all banging on the door. ‘Wonniekins, you’re my heart and soul!’” She slid onto another table, pushing aside a spare cauldron and grinning at him. “You can go woo all those other witches now.”
“Might as well start with the one throwing herself at me,” Ron replied, stepping close and resting his hands lightly on her hips. “I think she needs a reminder in why I’m so popular.”
“Go on,” Pansy purred, tossing her hair challengingly. “Impress me.”
*
Title: Settled Debts
Characters: Draco/Ginny/Remy (as per request)
Rating: PG
Word count: 630
AN: Takes place after "Collision" and Crash Course.
Remy had thought the magical world sounded like a child’s dream come true from Ginny’s matter-of-fact descriptions, but as it turned out, it was rather more terrifying than he could have guessed.
She’d taken him to London and they’d gone through a pub as sketchy as any of the dives Remy had hustled pool at in his misspent youth (which, given his current surroundings, he figured he was still living). The decor had been more Cryptkeeper than Disney, and some of the... creatures had been drinking from flagons that had been smoking. Remy tried hard to act as though they were all people, just like he did with mutants that looked less humanoid, but from the snippets of conversation he overheard, these things were as far from human as they looked.
Ginny had laughed at his nervousness, pointed out that she had met him in a place populated with criminals and thugs, and casually made a brick wall shift in order to lead him to Diagon Alley.
Diagon Alley had been more in line with what he had imagined at first, bright and bustling. She took him to an ice cream parlor, where he ordered double dutch chocolate ice cream and tried to ignore the fact that there appeared to be things burrowing through Ginny’s sundae.
Finally she had led him to their current location, which is what settled in Remy’s mind once and for all the fact that the magical world was not a place he wanted to go alone, ever.
The crooked sign had called it Knockturn Alley, and the farther down the narrow, winding alley Ginny lead him, the more he wished he was in New York, New Orleans, or basically just the hell out of Dodge. He was pretty sure he’d seen a severed head in the last dusty shop window.
Finally Ginny stopped, tapped her wand against a door that looked like it had been sealed shut since the Middle Ages, and stepped inside when it opened with a loud creak.
Remy followed her, silently berating himself for being a coward. He took in the room, needing little time to adjust to the darkness, and was surprised to see that they were standing in what appeared to be a manor house, with large windows overlooking the green English hillside.
He looked behind him, but it appeared to be a normal pantry.
“This place is scary,” he said to Ginny.
She laughed that “aren’t you adorable” laugh he loved and hated, and lead him into another room, where a skinny blond... wizard, judging by his robes, sat at a table, concentrating on a dusty book.
“Ready?” she said to him.
He looked up, startled, then narrowed his eyes at Remy. “That?”
“He’s my boyfriend, Draco,” Ginny snapped. “And you were the one who said you wanted to play.”
Draco made a disbelieving sound. “Well, he is easy on the eyes.”
Remy began to wonder just what the hell Ginny had dragged him into. “Cherie?” he asked, hoping he’d get an explanation.
Ginny flashed him that mischievous grin he so dearly loved. “I thought you might teach Draco to play poker.”
“Of course,” Remy began before Ginny interrupted him.
“Just like you taught me.”
Remy had vivid memories of learning just what a witch wore under her robes when he won them with the full house he’d dealt himself.
“Well,” he said, giving Draco the same appraising look that the wizard was giving him. “If that’s what you want.”
Ginny smiled, clearly pleased. “Oh, yes.”
Wizards, Remy learned, were just as poor poker players as witches. But it was almost as fun to settle the debts with them.
He’d underestimated Ginny, he thought. Maybe he should take her back to Westchester with him.
Just for fun.
*
Title: Rendezvous
Characters: Bruce Wayne/Remy Lebeau
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 754
AN: Takes place after “Preemptive Measures”
Remy knew better than to go back. He’d seen a lot of questionable situations in his life, and that whole manor reeked of questions.
He didn’t know the first damn thing about its owner’s secrets, or any of the questions that had been raised on his last trip there. He didn’t even know if that green-eyed vixen who had clawed him up and left him smiling would be there.
He hoped that Bruce Wayne would be there.
Out of all the strange things he’d noticed about the place, Wayne himself was the strangest. Remy’d heard of the man’s reputation - who hadn’t? - but meeting the man....
It didn’t mesh. The man he had met had been intense and fucking scary and intimidating, the exact opposite of what every account Remy had ever read of the man had indicated. The only thing the tabloids had gotten right, he thought, grinning, was that the man performed superbly in the sack.
That wasn’t the full reason Remy was picking his way carefully through a manor’s foyer that had far more security than even a place with this many priceless works of art warranted. He also had spotted a few items that he might try to procure if this encounter didn’t go how he hoped.
And, if he were completely honest with himself, he just sort of wanted to see Wayne again. See if maybe he had just been... dazzled, the first time they’d met. After Selina and Wayne had had their way with him, he’d found himself untied and ushered towards his rumpled heap of clothes.
He couldn’t remember dressing, or being escorted out of the room, or even what he had said once he’d made it downstairs, alone and befuddled and feeling as though a train - a good train - had hit him.
He’d had half a mind to get the painting he had come for, but there had been a butler standing directly in front of it who had scowled at him in such a way that Remy knew he’d been made.
And then he’d simply left, and had tried to put the encounter out of his mind.
He’d failed at that. Miserably, he thought, evading yet another motion detector and eyeing the stairwell, trying to decide the best way to get up it.
“I wouldn’t chance it.”
Remy jumped and whirled around and there was Bruce Wayne, standing not four feet away from him. With an eyebrow raised towards Remy. Looking utterly nonplussed at the fact that Remy had made it past countless levels of security and was standing in the middle of his manor.
“Mon dieu, homme,” Remy gasped. “How did you...”
Wayne’s eyebrow lowered and he uncrossed his arms, but he still looked foreboding, standing half in the shadows. “Shouldn’t I be questioning you?”
“Most people don’t question burglars,” Remy pointed out. “Usually they shoot or hide and call the police or let loose the guard dogs.”
“I’ll have to trust your greater expertise,” Wayne said. “Why are you here?”
“It ain’t what it looks like,” Remy said reflexively.
The damn eyebrow went back up. “Oh?”
“I...” Remy couldn’t say that he couldn’t get the man out of his mind. Breaking into someone’s house because you dreamed about an encounter with them two months ago was insane and obsessive, and Wayne didn’t seem the sort to cater to obsessions.
Remy was the sort to cater to his own romantic obsessions, but this felt different. He wasn’t the pursuer here, all appearances to the contrary.
He couldn’t help but think that Wayne had somehow drawn him here, but he knew that he hadn’t been... interfered with in any way. He’d just gotten paranoid from all the telepaths and other things he dealt with in his line of business.
There was something else drawing him to Wayne, and all he knew was that he wanted to explore it more before he got kicked out of here. So he stepped up closer, feeling the man tense, and kissed him like he’d been invited.
Wayne made a near-silent sound that may have been surprise, tensed even more for a moment, then, as though he were making a conscious decision, relaxed into the kiss, stroking Remy’s tongue with his own in a way that made Remy clutch at the man’s robe like a jelly-kneed schoolgirl.
Well, Remy thought when cognitive ability returned, maybe he’d figured out his own motivation for returning after all.
And maybe the question of who - what - Wayne really was could wait just a bit longer.
*
Title: This Side of Paradise
Characters: Argus Filch/Gisella Torrio
Rating: PG
Word Count: 712
AN: Takes place after “Linger Awhile”.
Gisella stretched languorously, feeling sweet aches and weariness in all her limbs and wondering why she felt so safe.
Then she cracked open her eyes, and cold dread manifested in her belly. The ceiling was cracked and had a big brown water stain, which she had never seen in the darkness. The walls were dingy, the wallpaper peeling from the wall, and when she looked to her side, she wasn’t staring at her husband’s hulking, snoring form.
“Goddamn it,” she whispered.
“Mmm?” Argus mumbled into his pillow before stiffening - she watched with fascination how she could see the tension in his shoulders - and turning over, eyes clear, conscious and wary. “Gisella.”
The wariness faded somewhat.
She sat up, letting the blankets fall as she grabbed the tips of her hair, looked up and made a loud, frustrated sound. “I fell asleep.”
“You...” He paused, and then sat up, startled. “You never went home?”
“I’m still here, aren’t I?” she snapped. “Oscar is probably worried sick about me!” She didn’t say that he was more likely in a murderous rage over her absence, but Argus knew him as well as she did. She’d been part of this life long enough to know that just because her husband treated her with kindness didn’t make him any sort of innocent.
“Oh,” Argus said, looking worried. Probably wondering if he was going to have to kill Oscar, or maybe thinking he was going to be getting the business end of an icepick sometime soon. Gisella couldn’t tell; Argus was inscrutable at the best of times, and right now all she could tell was that he was concerned.
She climbed out of bed and began picking her clothes off the floor, shoving legs into stockings as she shimmied into her underthings and dress. Argus watched her until she glared, then obediently climbed out of bed and was dressed in his customarily rumpled clothes before she had even found her shoes.
“What am I going to do?” she said, finally sitting down on the edge of the bed, holding a shoe listlessly in one hand. “Oscar won’t believe I was doing something innocent all night long.”
Argus was silent. She looked up at him, and he looked... angry.
“What’re you in a tizzy for?” she snapped. “I’m the one in trouble.”
“Do you even remember what you said to me last night?”
“Of course I do,” Gisella said. “But this is different from having faith in you. This is about keeping up the pretense to my husband so that I can still come and see you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” he said darkly.
“Are you breaking this off?” Gisella snapped.
“No!” Argus said quickly. “Keep up the pretense.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh! Argus, come here.” She wrapped her arms around him and looked up at him and said, “I can’t let things get rocky with Oscar. You know that. The things we’re involved in...”
“And this is less dangerous?” Argus’ voice was flat and Gisella was beginning to see what about him made the others so wary.
“Yes, of course this is!” Gisella said quickly. “Even if they suspect, they can look the other way. But insulting Oscar to his face... you know how precarious things have been since my brother died. Giulio’s doing the best he can, but he’s not the man Aldo was. And neither are you,” she added, seeing that Argus was about to say something. “Oscar is a good man, and he doesn’t deserve to have to break apart what little we all have left because of us!”
Argus silently nodded, though reluctantly. “You should go home. See... see if you can fix things.”
Gisella put on her shoe and stood, but then stooped back down and kissed Argus soundly. “You know I love you, right?”
From his thunderstruck expression, she realized that he hadn’t.
“I... I probably won’t be back tonight,” she said. She didn’t say that she didn’t know how long it would be before it would be safe for her to come again. He knew.
He just nodded. She felt his eyes on her as she left the room, and felt more alone than ever when she shut the apartment door behind her, blocking out the sound of his quiet breathing.
She slowly began walking home.