Suigetsu Cosplay; Juugo/Kimimaro ficlet; Team Hebi drabble
Two new cosplays, go me. Now that I'm at university, expos are going to become really difficult to get to. Therefore, I think I'll savour what I have.
Suigetsu, Karin and Sasuke doing a photoshoot can produce some fairly fun photos. (All photos, editted or otherwise, are by our Karin, Carrie, in her role as CosplaySnap photographer. She's made of win and awesome, basically.
I've been checking through the drabble and ficlet pair that I wrote earlier, so I think they're passable by now. Still, if anyone is free to beta for me, I'd love them so much.
Listening
Juugo/Kimimaro
When Juugo woke up, Kimimaro was just there, slumped heavily against his shoulder as though flung there by a greater force (even though there was no greater force than Kimimaro). He settled against the cool wall and watched the top of the other boy's head for a while, Kimimaro's thin form creaking and snapping as bones shifted unconsciously to allow for his awkward slouch.
The night passed slowly, all external sounds muffled as they were by the thick walls, and the only way of telling the passing time was listening to Kimimaro's coughing fits. (It had been once a day, an age ago. Now they came every hour, and Juugo knew that it wasn't just his own blood on the concrete any more.)
After eight hours (or were the fits just getting worse?), Juugo dozed off, one deceptively frail shoulder digging into his arm.
He woke surrounded by blood-spattered bones, trapped in a cage of ribs and vertebrae that should have been keeping Kimimaro's body together, rather than his. With the dawning realisation (and familiar horror) in Juugo's face apparent, Kimimaro had dropped onto the skeletal frame, pushing it back into his skin with his own weight until he was kneeling between Juugo's legs, human again.
Juugo watched him, and felt his knuckles bruising against pale arms.
He did not smile, or offer meaningless reassuring noise. He was not Kabuto (all promises and medicine), he was Kimimaro (a paradox). Gracefully, simply, he leant forward and brushed cold lips (blood-smeared lips) against Juugo's own, the sensation strange as inky marks raced back into hiding across his skin.
And Juugo wept raggedly with relief, and Kimimaro coughed blood onto their shirts, and somehow they were both content.
---
"What do you think he sees?"
Suigetsu glanced across to where Juugo was still standing transfixed. The crater they were sitting in still smoked, and snake scales littered the rubble. At Suigetsu’s feet, in a pool of blood, their last hapless foe moaned feebly and stopped struggling. "When Sasuke… calms him," Karin clarified, "What do you think he sees?"
"Whatever Sasuke wants him to see, moron."
But as Juugo fell to the blood-soaked ground, support and illusions gone, he thought that if he listened hard enough, believed strongly enough, he could still hear coughing, tears, and their heavy silence.
End of the World
Team Hebi, some Suigetsu/Sasuke
The ability to become water: a childhood of experimentation and murder.
Passage into innermost Amegakure: three bottles of catnip, two spare robes and a lot of patience.
Discovering that during a crisis in Amegakure, it never stops raining: priceless.
"It's the end of the world," Karin moaned.
Sasuke sliced off the hand currently materialising out of his trousers, and splashed away towards the village.
Juugo was just surprised by how innocent Suigetsu could look without arms.