Ten Shorts
Ten short fic-things for you all - too long to call drables, and too short to really warrant a post for themselves individually. They're gathered from a bunch of places on my harddrive; I really need to tidy up my folders. ;;; Organised in terms of length, shortest first.
Title: Living
Characters/Pairings: Watanuki, others mentioned
Rating: PG
Length: 142
Summary: The irony of what they’d wished.
They’d all wished for Watanuki to go on living, to break the nature apparently ingrained in him that led him towards non-existence, the nature of the world that logically insisted that the future Syaoran was fighting for was not supposed to be. Not when there were two futures, not when there was only supposed to be one.
(I will not let Sakura die.)
They’d all wished for Watanuki to go living - they loved Watanuki, a boy made from a wish, who was going on and on and on to grant wishes for others while the rest of the world passed him by, as those who had wished for him grew older and wiser and wearier and still hoped, still wished.
They’d all wished for Watanuki to go on living.
Now, as the shop’s owner, it looked like he would seemingly never die.
Title: Expectations
Characters/Pairings: Kendappa-ou (Amaterasu), mentions of Souma, unnamed others
Rating: PG
Length: 162
Summary: The reaction of Nihon when Kendappa-ou becomes empress.
A/N: …I think I’m beginning to really like Kendappa-ou, and I’m not all too sure why.
There was consternation in the Court when Kendappa took the Imperial throne and sat upon it alone - unwed, unguided, and with absolutely no male anywhere in the periphery of her life. Everyone (the uninformed ones) had at least expected her to marry before stepping up to rule.
Kendappa-ou was an anathema to the expectations of the idiots - they’d expected a meek, mild lady to be married off to a young aspiring noble (every family had a match lined up waiting for her to survey), but they’d gotten an independent, strong soldier with cool dignity and a shrewd grasp on the empire she’d taken the crown for, no questions allowed. Ninja appeared from nowhere, headed by a woman just as young as their new empress, Souma, and the samurai were quick to fall in line after some of the more troublesome of their caste were knifed in the dark.
Amaterasu commanded respect, and its respect Nihon grudgingly gave.
Kendappa-ou would take no less.
Title: Domestication
Characters/Pairings: Horitsuba Kurogane, Yuui and Fai
Rating: PG
Length: 169
Summary: Kurogane gets roped into helping in the kitchen. Somehow.
Somehow hanging around in Yuui’s kitchen means being used as an assistant. Kurogane isn’t ever quite sure how it happens, but it does happen - every time, no less - and somehow or other he’s washing his hands and chopping vegetables when all he’d meant to do originally was to drop off a file for the twins, a class schedule Yuuko had neglected to hand to them before. It’s taken for granted that he’s staying for dinner.
Fai comes in later, when Yuui’s making him stir cake-mix and has all but forced him into an apron. (It’s white, has black animal paw prints on it, and Kurogane never wants it to be spoken of again.)
Yuui smiles, Kurogane freezes, and Fai whistles, leaning against the doorpost.
“Saaa, I guess this is what they mean when they talk about puppies being domesticated?”
Fai ducks just in time to miss the wooden spoon flung at his head, laughing all the time.
(Yuui makes Kurogane clean up the cake-mix that’s spattered on the floor.)
Title: Nights of the Cursed
Characters/Pairings: Fai/Yuui’s parents
Rating: PG
Length: 274
Summary: Valeria’s princess has news for her husband.
A/N: Written for a list of prompts Crys gave me a while back - this was number nine, the prompt’s the title.
The night is cold and clear and pretty, the breeze having blown away the clouds to leave a field of glittering stars in the skies overhead. The North Star, as ever, is brightest, a gleaming beacon to guide the lost of the world, the wandering, to give them some direction to turn to even in the darkest of times.
“My lady?”
The princess of Valeria, the only female of the royal family, married in to the King’s younger brother, looks away from the window over the frozen city, the beautiful bleakness she has always known. Her husband stands at her chamber door, come to answer the call she’d sent out with a servant only a little while earlier.
“My lord.” Her voice is tired, and her husband catches the sound, expression flickering with worry. “Come in.”
He comes - as bid he comes, for he loves her -, and takes her hands beside the window, wrapping cold fingers with his warmer own. “What is it?”
She smiles at him, bittersweet and hurting, and lowers one of those gentle hands to her stomach, sweeping aside her elegant cloak of fur. “I’m pregnant.”
Her husband smiles and even though they’re both gilded in moonlight the expression is like the breaking dawn, his arms drawing her close to his chest, his lips kissing her on the forehead. He’s happy - it’s so very clear he’s happy, and she relishes the affection for a little while, indulging herself and trying to quell the aching hurt in her chest, in her heart.
She looks up, and tries to treasure his joy, even as she goes to shatter his dream. “It’s twins.”
Title: Strange
Characters/Pairings: Ashura-ou, Fai, random unnamed others
Rating: PG
Length: 337
Summary: The first few months in Celes.
Those first few months were strange for everyone. Ashura-ou had always been a quiet, peculiar ruler, prone to impulses that were swiftly acted on and carried through - but the palace and his people had never minded, because those impulses had usually been to the great benefit of them all. Then again - Ashura-ou had never produced children before.
Those first few months were strange, and the servants watched as the solemn boy brought from nowhere slowly stumbled into Celesian life, his lips coaxed first into quiet words, and then into quiet words they could all understand. (Nobody knew what language it was the child spoke - but the king spoke it, and the boy liked to speak to no-one but the king in the first months, so it didn’t matter.) They washed him and they dressed him and they cut his hair, feeding him so that his cheeks lost their hollow look and rounded out into the freshness of youth. He had a fluting voice and the prettiest blue eyes, and it didn’t take long for the servants to dote on him - he stayed out of trouble, apologised for everything, and tried his best to do his best always, as if afraid they’d put him out again alone into the wild winter of their world. They spoke to him gently, but they could do nothing about the shadows in his gaze - and they tried to dispel them, they did, with treats and sweets and toys and playful teasing and games. Nothing could coax him to smile.
Those first few months were strange. Ashura-ou continued to be as he had always been - quiet, peculiar -, but he smiled a little more at the boy who trailed along at his side, his little shadow. There was no explanation given for the child and it looked like one would never be forthcoming - he was another object produced on whim, a child who didn’t really seem to know what childhood was.
Those first few months were strange. So were all the years after.
Title: Yue
Characters/Pairings: Soel, Larg, Yue, Keroberos, Yuuko, Clow
Rating: PG
Length: 343
Summary: The Mokona think Yue doesn’t like them.
Yue doesn’t eat or drink or smile or play or do anything that Soel and Larg feel they can bond with sometimes, not like Keroberos does. When they’ve all devised some new great game to take to Yuuko or Clow Yue sits alone - reading, or just looking dull -, and scolds them all for all the tricks they’ve pulled, or are planning to pull. He’s boring, and Soel and Larg complain to Yuuko about it when she carries them home, letting them ride in her bag. Yue doesn’t like them, and they’re hurt.
Yuuko only smiles, pets them, and tells them that Yue shows his affection in a different sort of way. Soel and Larg try to bear that in mind, next time they meet up with Yue when Clow comes over (Keroberos has a summer cold, and has to stay home), but it’s hard, especially when Yue is busy telling them off for tugging at Clow’s robes to get his attention. They pout, and wail, and Yue gets fed-up with them and goes inside with Yuuko and Clow, and leaves the Mokona in the garden.
It rains later, and all the doors of the house are locked tight. Yuuko and Clow probably didn’t mean to do it, but they can get distracted when they’re together discussing magic, or drunk, or drunk and discussing magic, and Soel and Larg are left outside in the cold, soggy and wet. They huddle together, and tell stories, and eventually fall asleep. Yuuko and Clow will notice eventually.
Soel wakes up later wrapped in a fuzzy towel, warm and cosy and tucked up against a slowly-moving chest with Larg still snoring quietly beside her. She’s confused of course, but looks around, and eventually sees Yue’s sleeping face nearby - the angel is holding them both, and it’s his warmth that’s holding the Mokona close. His breathing is soft, stirring the strands of his silvery fringe, but he looks comfortable, so Soel nuzzles down against Larg again, and closes her eyes once more.
She’ll tell Larg about it later.
Title: Jacket
Characters/Pairings: Horitsuba Kurogane and Fai
Rating: PG
Length: 388
Summary: Fai doesn’t want to get wet, and Kurogane notices.
Fai stared out at the rain from the entrance, grudgingly offering the round to Mother Nature and all her wiles. It had been sunny that morning so he’d walked to the school complex with only a thin shirt and pants on - he was regretting it now, had been regretting it since two o’ clock that afternoon in fact, ever since the heavens had opened and the rain had poured down in one unceasing downpour. He was going to get drenched going home.
Fai sighed, and accepted the inevitable. It was pointless putting off his journey home for any longer, and Yuui would no doubt be waiting, wondering where he was already. (It wasn’t at all fair that Yuui had only had morning classes that day - rainstorms were much more fun to experience with someone else to jump in puddles with.) He stuck one hand outside the door for a few seconds, pulling it back in already sopping, the skin slick and shining under the school’s fluorescent lights. Never mind drenched - drowned would be a better word.
He sighed again - and then the world suddenly went dark, something soft and heavy and dark draped over his head. Fai reached up, fumbling with cloth for a few seconds before he pulled the thing off of his head - a tracksuit jacket emblazoned with the school symbol, still warm from the body that had been wearing it and tinged with a hint of exceedingly familiar cologne.
He smiled fondly, recognising it at once - and then looked around wildly for the owner, seeing a certain PE teacher renowned for his grumpiness already halfway down the hall away from him and still walking. (Kuro-pon-sensei really should have been born a ninja.)
Fai smiled a little more brightly, and swept the jacket around his shoulders - it was far too large for him, but it was warm, and cosy, and felt like a hug. He didn’t call out though; Kuro-tan-sensei’s ears were already bright red (he could see their beacon flare from the other end of the corridor) - he was just so shy, and it probably wouldn’t be nice to tease the poor man, especially not after he’d so kindly loaned out his jacket. (Fai would stuff the pockets with love notes before he returned the clothing instead.)
Feeling warm, Fai stepped out into the rain.
Title: The Dawn
Characters/Pairings: AU/Horitsuba!Fai/Yuui (it doesn’t really matter what universe)
Rating: T/M - incest, sex, rather oblique (but still pretty obvious)
Length: 425
Summary: Together at morning.
A/N: Another one of Cry’s prompts - number ten, and the title again.
Silver, grey light brushes in through his half-closed lashes, a slow spilling over the duvet, smooth skin pressing sleepily close, fine hair fanning out across their pillows, spidersilk and magic.
“Fai…” he hears his name as the other breathes out into the encroaching morning, a soft sigh that gently lowers the stomach his hand is splayed across, knowing before knowing (something they’d always known) that their heartbeats are in time. He presses his lips to the nape of the other’s neck, brushing a warm kiss to where skin trails into fine golden hair, smiling as the other drowsily tilts his head - more. Please, do that again.
Again, again, lips parting to touch the tip of his tongue to that soft skin, the gleam of blue from under silver-blond lashes as he slips one leg between two others, rocking forwards as he pulls the other back to hear the quiet groan. (The other, and the same.) Whimsical patterns drawn over the other’s abdomen with light fingertips, the muscles there flickering at the teasing, the other’s spine half-arching, pushing back and into the touch. His mouth is stolen, caught in a languid kiss and there’s a moan somewhere between them, pitched low as the light creeps in further, tentative rays of gold on bare skin. It’s warmer under the blankets but someone’s hands are fisted too tightly in the cloth to pull it up, rocking firmly, faster, breathing far more ragged than before.
“Ah,” the other pants, lips still against lips, head still half-twisted for that warm kiss, fingertips on his face and butterfly fluttering down the line of his neck, torso, abdomen... “Ah-”
“Yuui,” he murmurs, lets his breath fan out across that panting mouth, pale cheeks coloured with rose and gold. He sounds like his twin with his voice pitched so low, husky from sleep, desire, and Yuui is trembling, eyes closed and pressing back into soft skin - please, ah -
His hand curls around velvet hardness, strokes, strokes, and the trembling is stronger now, his own breath gasping, mouths bumping, as Yuui mewls for him, smooth hot heaviness against his palm, pushed between their two bodies as Yuui keeps moving, moving - oh -
Their breaths are louder than the morning afterwards, spilling into unexpected laughter when Yuui rolls over onto his back and their gazes lock, head bowed and chuckles reverberating through both of them. They’re both sticky, but they’re flush and warm and smiling, nuzzling the arch of one collarbone, the crook of a smooth neck.
The sun shines in, and everything is golden.
Title: Black Knight
Characters/Pairings: Sakura-hime, f!Fai
Rating: T - for mentions of blood
Length: 645
Summary: The thoughts of a princess-queen in Infinity on her knight.
A/N: Written for the clampkink anon meme. I didn’t really like it so much when I was finished with it - Fai being female had very little relevance from Sakura’s point of view by the end, but I didn’t want to scrap it. ;;;
Sakura's never had a knight before. Not really, not in the way that has someone down on one knee before her, head bowed over her small hand.
She'd never really been a princess for bowing to, as far as she can remember - she'd always been too small, too little, dusty and beaming and with sand in her hair. Touya had despaired then, had called her names from monkey to monster, and maybe that had just been him being a big brother, or maybe it had been true. Sakura can't remember enough to tell, either way, and now that is behind her.
Fai's rather interesting, as a first knight. It's probably not normal - or usually considered acceptable - to take a knight who called herself your mother for a time, even if it was in jest. But...nothing's really normal anymore - normal changes from world to world - and who cares what counts as acceptable among their group anymore, anyway? The days of puppies and kitties and playing happy families feels like a lifetime ago, and their laughter doesn't even sound long enough anymore to ring hollow. Sakura's queendom is a one full of problems.
"Fai-san?" Sakura speaks, and though her voice is quiet it's perfectly steady. She knows she's taken to that steadiness a lot just lately, her knight educating her by example how to be an impassive doll. You can be lovely, and as long as you're lovely who's to know that you're broken on the inside? Stating the obvious when it's dark has long since grown out of fashion.
Fai looks up at her, and the streetlights outside slant in to run down the line of the vampire's throat and bare collarbone, edging pale skin with dull orange and shadows, dipping into the line between the older woman's breasts. Fai's wearing all-black again today; it hides the blood from fighting better, matches the black patch covering where her left eye should be and the black mood she carries with her as armour. The black knight, the last defence, a night wrapped around the cold and wintry snow.
"Fai-san," Sakura says again, when her companion still hasn't spoken, when that one blue eye is still looking at her as though waiting for a command. Fai's fingers are still wrapped around her own; they tighten slightly, as Sakura repeats the name, soft lips part (Sakura knows they're soft, Fai's brushed them over the back of her hand before), and there's the faintest gleam of white fang.
"Sakura-chan," Fai replies, and Sakura can't help it - queen or not she misses Fai's old sweet smile, vanilla and flour and the fresh breeze wrapped up in warm silly hugs and cute cat faces doodled in the messes they'd made in various kitchens, on counters. "What is it?"
That is very much what Sakura had wanted to ask her. But Fai had been the princess' teacher for a reason, so Sakura does nothing but pull her knight up beside her, letting herself be weak for a little while by resting her head on Fai's shoulder. There's a tremble there but Sakura doesn't comment on it, not on the scent of blood on her knight, nor the hand that slowly - so slowly - draws around her to keep her close, always a defence. Always obeying, without question or query, even if they'd wanted to do more.
Sakura's never had a knight before. Not really, so she doesn't know much about them. Fai's her knight now, though, her black knight. Knights don't ever tell their princesses everything; they care too much, it seems.
Sakura despairs a little, as she learns from Fai, as she feels lips touch her forehead, a butterfly brush. Somehow, Sakura feels, she doesn't think her knight will ever tell her more, not even if Sakura really does ever manage to become a queen.
Title: Little World
Characters/Pairings: AU!Kuroparents, AU!Youou
Rating: T - sex, but not terribly explicit
Length: 916
Summary: Family is one’s world.
A/N: Also written for the clampkink meme.
The scenario, I guess: Kuropapa (hereafter Kurogane, for the family surname) has been on a business trip of some kind in Tokyo, and arrives home. What business he works at/for - your guess is as good as mine.
It’s late and the station isn’t particularly full, so it isn’t hard to miss the slim woman standing waiting on the platform as the train pulls in, nor the small child all but vibrating by her knees in his excitement. He’s trying not to show it of course; he’s six years old and very determinedly trying to draw his face into a serious grown-up sort-of frown, but he keeps glancing between his mother and the train and is practically bouncing on the spot waiting for the doors to open. Their god-given little miracle has never been the patient type.
“Father!”
The doors open and the few people disembarking step out, and it’s a case of drop all bags and scoop up one beaming son (the grown-up frown is apparently a lost cause) as Kurogane is assaulted by his monkey-limbed boy, automatically shifting his centre of gravity to rest Youou comfortably in his arms.
“Hello brat.”
Youou, predictably, flails. “’M not a brat!”
“’Course you are,” his father asserts, and casually ducks his son’s madly waving hand - it’s an ease born of years of practice. “The brattiest brat in all of bratdom. With a monkey face.”
“It’s not a monkey face!”
“You’re right,” Kurogane teases, amused when Youou lets out a loud huff of breath beside his ear. “It’s the face of a gorilla.”
“Father-!”
“Welcome back.” Kurogane smiles when a hand lightly touches his shoulder, looking down into the face of his smiling wife. She looks well - something they’re all always glad to see -, the fluorescent lights overhead casting a light in her eyes, on the silver-green teardrops hanging from her ears. She looks lovely - a sight for sore eyes -, so he bends down to kiss first her forehead then her lips, smiling back against her mouth.
They both ignore Youou’s disgusted ‘urgh’ that follows promptly thereafter.
#
“He wanted to see you home,” she explains later, removing those earrings in the bathroom adjoining their bedroom. Kurogane hasn’t switched the light on in their room; there’s enough light coming in through the open door for him to smooth out the wrinkles in their futon, hang up his jacket and unbutton his shirt. Her jewellery chinks slightly as she places it on the edge of the bath. “He missed you.”
“Staying up a little later every now and then won’t do him any harm.” Kurogane goes up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and dropping his head a little to breathe in the scent from her hair. “He’s dead to the world now, anyway.” The boy had dropped off in the car back from the station, slumped in the back-seat after rattling off a stream of endless questions about his father’s trip, about how big Tokyo was, whether the food had been weird, were the hotels really that modern and he bet the buildings were massive. Kurogane had carried him in and put him to bed; Youou had barely stirred. “How have you been?”
“The same as what I told you when you last called.”
“No more spells of sickness?”
“No more spells of sickness,” she assures him, pleased at how the news crinkles the corner of his eyes, his lips tugging upwards into the warm smile she fell in love with. “The new treatment really seems to be helping.”
He bows his head again, letting his forehead drop to her shoulder, and she raises one hand, touching it lightly to dark spikes. The warmth of her skin bleeds through her blouse, the shadow of her bra’s strap just visible beneath the cloth. “I’m glad.” He splays his fingers across her stomach, feeling his wife breathe in, breathe out, and can’t help the surge of contentment that sweeps through him even with something as simple as that - his world, his precious little world, is still safe, has been safe while he’s been gone. “I’m glad.”
#
She moans softly when he pushes into her, all the lights off now but neither of them needing them, knowing the movements, the partner, smooth skin and hot breath, the silk of her loose, long hair beneath his fingers as the muscles of his arms flex, controlling his thrusts, tempering them. Kurogane knows his wife’s body as well as he can know it short of living inside her skin, how she arches when touched, half-formed words in her throat, the tilt of her head when she wants to be kissed.
She kisses him, instead, their mouths sliding together as she pushes up from under him, rocking into his movements, her breasts rubbing against his chest. She’s close - so close -, her nails biting into his shoulder as he reaches down to touch her where she’s hottest, watching pleasure twist through her body, across her face before letting loose his own reins, chasing after that glorious crest himself.
Even their breathing seems loud, afterwards. He comments on it - his brain hasn’t quite caught up with him yet -, and she laughs at him, a drowsy murmur, and tells him he should hear himself snoring. He thinks about spending the next few minutes or so protesting the statement - he doesn’t snore -, but his wife’s breath is evening out into a doze, and his mind is distracted smoothing through the tangles they’d made in her hair, the slight bumps in her spine as he draws his fingers in an idle line down the dip in her back.
He’s dreaming himself before he really knows it - peace follows him there.
Title: Living
Characters/Pairings: Watanuki, others mentioned
Rating: PG
Length: 142
Summary: The irony of what they’d wished.
They’d all wished for Watanuki to go on living, to break the nature apparently ingrained in him that led him towards non-existence, the nature of the world that logically insisted that the future Syaoran was fighting for was not supposed to be. Not when there were two futures, not when there was only supposed to be one.
(I will not let Sakura die.)
They’d all wished for Watanuki to go living - they loved Watanuki, a boy made from a wish, who was going on and on and on to grant wishes for others while the rest of the world passed him by, as those who had wished for him grew older and wiser and wearier and still hoped, still wished.
They’d all wished for Watanuki to go on living.
Now, as the shop’s owner, it looked like he would seemingly never die.
Title: Expectations
Characters/Pairings: Kendappa-ou (Amaterasu), mentions of Souma, unnamed others
Rating: PG
Length: 162
Summary: The reaction of Nihon when Kendappa-ou becomes empress.
A/N: …I think I’m beginning to really like Kendappa-ou, and I’m not all too sure why.
There was consternation in the Court when Kendappa took the Imperial throne and sat upon it alone - unwed, unguided, and with absolutely no male anywhere in the periphery of her life. Everyone (the uninformed ones) had at least expected her to marry before stepping up to rule.
Kendappa-ou was an anathema to the expectations of the idiots - they’d expected a meek, mild lady to be married off to a young aspiring noble (every family had a match lined up waiting for her to survey), but they’d gotten an independent, strong soldier with cool dignity and a shrewd grasp on the empire she’d taken the crown for, no questions allowed. Ninja appeared from nowhere, headed by a woman just as young as their new empress, Souma, and the samurai were quick to fall in line after some of the more troublesome of their caste were knifed in the dark.
Amaterasu commanded respect, and its respect Nihon grudgingly gave.
Kendappa-ou would take no less.
Title: Domestication
Characters/Pairings: Horitsuba Kurogane, Yuui and Fai
Rating: PG
Length: 169
Summary: Kurogane gets roped into helping in the kitchen. Somehow.
Somehow hanging around in Yuui’s kitchen means being used as an assistant. Kurogane isn’t ever quite sure how it happens, but it does happen - every time, no less - and somehow or other he’s washing his hands and chopping vegetables when all he’d meant to do originally was to drop off a file for the twins, a class schedule Yuuko had neglected to hand to them before. It’s taken for granted that he’s staying for dinner.
Fai comes in later, when Yuui’s making him stir cake-mix and has all but forced him into an apron. (It’s white, has black animal paw prints on it, and Kurogane never wants it to be spoken of again.)
Yuui smiles, Kurogane freezes, and Fai whistles, leaning against the doorpost.
“Saaa, I guess this is what they mean when they talk about puppies being domesticated?”
Fai ducks just in time to miss the wooden spoon flung at his head, laughing all the time.
(Yuui makes Kurogane clean up the cake-mix that’s spattered on the floor.)
Title: Nights of the Cursed
Characters/Pairings: Fai/Yuui’s parents
Rating: PG
Length: 274
Summary: Valeria’s princess has news for her husband.
A/N: Written for a list of prompts Crys gave me a while back - this was number nine, the prompt’s the title.
The night is cold and clear and pretty, the breeze having blown away the clouds to leave a field of glittering stars in the skies overhead. The North Star, as ever, is brightest, a gleaming beacon to guide the lost of the world, the wandering, to give them some direction to turn to even in the darkest of times.
“My lady?”
The princess of Valeria, the only female of the royal family, married in to the King’s younger brother, looks away from the window over the frozen city, the beautiful bleakness she has always known. Her husband stands at her chamber door, come to answer the call she’d sent out with a servant only a little while earlier.
“My lord.” Her voice is tired, and her husband catches the sound, expression flickering with worry. “Come in.”
He comes - as bid he comes, for he loves her -, and takes her hands beside the window, wrapping cold fingers with his warmer own. “What is it?”
She smiles at him, bittersweet and hurting, and lowers one of those gentle hands to her stomach, sweeping aside her elegant cloak of fur. “I’m pregnant.”
Her husband smiles and even though they’re both gilded in moonlight the expression is like the breaking dawn, his arms drawing her close to his chest, his lips kissing her on the forehead. He’s happy - it’s so very clear he’s happy, and she relishes the affection for a little while, indulging herself and trying to quell the aching hurt in her chest, in her heart.
She looks up, and tries to treasure his joy, even as she goes to shatter his dream. “It’s twins.”
Title: Strange
Characters/Pairings: Ashura-ou, Fai, random unnamed others
Rating: PG
Length: 337
Summary: The first few months in Celes.
Those first few months were strange for everyone. Ashura-ou had always been a quiet, peculiar ruler, prone to impulses that were swiftly acted on and carried through - but the palace and his people had never minded, because those impulses had usually been to the great benefit of them all. Then again - Ashura-ou had never produced children before.
Those first few months were strange, and the servants watched as the solemn boy brought from nowhere slowly stumbled into Celesian life, his lips coaxed first into quiet words, and then into quiet words they could all understand. (Nobody knew what language it was the child spoke - but the king spoke it, and the boy liked to speak to no-one but the king in the first months, so it didn’t matter.) They washed him and they dressed him and they cut his hair, feeding him so that his cheeks lost their hollow look and rounded out into the freshness of youth. He had a fluting voice and the prettiest blue eyes, and it didn’t take long for the servants to dote on him - he stayed out of trouble, apologised for everything, and tried his best to do his best always, as if afraid they’d put him out again alone into the wild winter of their world. They spoke to him gently, but they could do nothing about the shadows in his gaze - and they tried to dispel them, they did, with treats and sweets and toys and playful teasing and games. Nothing could coax him to smile.
Those first few months were strange. Ashura-ou continued to be as he had always been - quiet, peculiar -, but he smiled a little more at the boy who trailed along at his side, his little shadow. There was no explanation given for the child and it looked like one would never be forthcoming - he was another object produced on whim, a child who didn’t really seem to know what childhood was.
Those first few months were strange. So were all the years after.
Title: Yue
Characters/Pairings: Soel, Larg, Yue, Keroberos, Yuuko, Clow
Rating: PG
Length: 343
Summary: The Mokona think Yue doesn’t like them.
Yue doesn’t eat or drink or smile or play or do anything that Soel and Larg feel they can bond with sometimes, not like Keroberos does. When they’ve all devised some new great game to take to Yuuko or Clow Yue sits alone - reading, or just looking dull -, and scolds them all for all the tricks they’ve pulled, or are planning to pull. He’s boring, and Soel and Larg complain to Yuuko about it when she carries them home, letting them ride in her bag. Yue doesn’t like them, and they’re hurt.
Yuuko only smiles, pets them, and tells them that Yue shows his affection in a different sort of way. Soel and Larg try to bear that in mind, next time they meet up with Yue when Clow comes over (Keroberos has a summer cold, and has to stay home), but it’s hard, especially when Yue is busy telling them off for tugging at Clow’s robes to get his attention. They pout, and wail, and Yue gets fed-up with them and goes inside with Yuuko and Clow, and leaves the Mokona in the garden.
It rains later, and all the doors of the house are locked tight. Yuuko and Clow probably didn’t mean to do it, but they can get distracted when they’re together discussing magic, or drunk, or drunk and discussing magic, and Soel and Larg are left outside in the cold, soggy and wet. They huddle together, and tell stories, and eventually fall asleep. Yuuko and Clow will notice eventually.
Soel wakes up later wrapped in a fuzzy towel, warm and cosy and tucked up against a slowly-moving chest with Larg still snoring quietly beside her. She’s confused of course, but looks around, and eventually sees Yue’s sleeping face nearby - the angel is holding them both, and it’s his warmth that’s holding the Mokona close. His breathing is soft, stirring the strands of his silvery fringe, but he looks comfortable, so Soel nuzzles down against Larg again, and closes her eyes once more.
She’ll tell Larg about it later.
Title: Jacket
Characters/Pairings: Horitsuba Kurogane and Fai
Rating: PG
Length: 388
Summary: Fai doesn’t want to get wet, and Kurogane notices.
Fai stared out at the rain from the entrance, grudgingly offering the round to Mother Nature and all her wiles. It had been sunny that morning so he’d walked to the school complex with only a thin shirt and pants on - he was regretting it now, had been regretting it since two o’ clock that afternoon in fact, ever since the heavens had opened and the rain had poured down in one unceasing downpour. He was going to get drenched going home.
Fai sighed, and accepted the inevitable. It was pointless putting off his journey home for any longer, and Yuui would no doubt be waiting, wondering where he was already. (It wasn’t at all fair that Yuui had only had morning classes that day - rainstorms were much more fun to experience with someone else to jump in puddles with.) He stuck one hand outside the door for a few seconds, pulling it back in already sopping, the skin slick and shining under the school’s fluorescent lights. Never mind drenched - drowned would be a better word.
He sighed again - and then the world suddenly went dark, something soft and heavy and dark draped over his head. Fai reached up, fumbling with cloth for a few seconds before he pulled the thing off of his head - a tracksuit jacket emblazoned with the school symbol, still warm from the body that had been wearing it and tinged with a hint of exceedingly familiar cologne.
He smiled fondly, recognising it at once - and then looked around wildly for the owner, seeing a certain PE teacher renowned for his grumpiness already halfway down the hall away from him and still walking. (Kuro-pon-sensei really should have been born a ninja.)
Fai smiled a little more brightly, and swept the jacket around his shoulders - it was far too large for him, but it was warm, and cosy, and felt like a hug. He didn’t call out though; Kuro-tan-sensei’s ears were already bright red (he could see their beacon flare from the other end of the corridor) - he was just so shy, and it probably wouldn’t be nice to tease the poor man, especially not after he’d so kindly loaned out his jacket. (Fai would stuff the pockets with love notes before he returned the clothing instead.)
Feeling warm, Fai stepped out into the rain.
Title: The Dawn
Characters/Pairings: AU/Horitsuba!Fai/Yuui (it doesn’t really matter what universe)
Rating: T/M - incest, sex, rather oblique (but still pretty obvious)
Length: 425
Summary: Together at morning.
A/N: Another one of Cry’s prompts - number ten, and the title again.
Silver, grey light brushes in through his half-closed lashes, a slow spilling over the duvet, smooth skin pressing sleepily close, fine hair fanning out across their pillows, spidersilk and magic.
“Fai…” he hears his name as the other breathes out into the encroaching morning, a soft sigh that gently lowers the stomach his hand is splayed across, knowing before knowing (something they’d always known) that their heartbeats are in time. He presses his lips to the nape of the other’s neck, brushing a warm kiss to where skin trails into fine golden hair, smiling as the other drowsily tilts his head - more. Please, do that again.
Again, again, lips parting to touch the tip of his tongue to that soft skin, the gleam of blue from under silver-blond lashes as he slips one leg between two others, rocking forwards as he pulls the other back to hear the quiet groan. (The other, and the same.) Whimsical patterns drawn over the other’s abdomen with light fingertips, the muscles there flickering at the teasing, the other’s spine half-arching, pushing back and into the touch. His mouth is stolen, caught in a languid kiss and there’s a moan somewhere between them, pitched low as the light creeps in further, tentative rays of gold on bare skin. It’s warmer under the blankets but someone’s hands are fisted too tightly in the cloth to pull it up, rocking firmly, faster, breathing far more ragged than before.
“Ah,” the other pants, lips still against lips, head still half-twisted for that warm kiss, fingertips on his face and butterfly fluttering down the line of his neck, torso, abdomen... “Ah-”
“Yuui,” he murmurs, lets his breath fan out across that panting mouth, pale cheeks coloured with rose and gold. He sounds like his twin with his voice pitched so low, husky from sleep, desire, and Yuui is trembling, eyes closed and pressing back into soft skin - please, ah -
His hand curls around velvet hardness, strokes, strokes, and the trembling is stronger now, his own breath gasping, mouths bumping, as Yuui mewls for him, smooth hot heaviness against his palm, pushed between their two bodies as Yuui keeps moving, moving - oh -
Their breaths are louder than the morning afterwards, spilling into unexpected laughter when Yuui rolls over onto his back and their gazes lock, head bowed and chuckles reverberating through both of them. They’re both sticky, but they’re flush and warm and smiling, nuzzling the arch of one collarbone, the crook of a smooth neck.
The sun shines in, and everything is golden.
Title: Black Knight
Characters/Pairings: Sakura-hime, f!Fai
Rating: T - for mentions of blood
Length: 645
Summary: The thoughts of a princess-queen in Infinity on her knight.
A/N: Written for the clampkink anon meme. I didn’t really like it so much when I was finished with it - Fai being female had very little relevance from Sakura’s point of view by the end, but I didn’t want to scrap it. ;;;
Sakura's never had a knight before. Not really, not in the way that has someone down on one knee before her, head bowed over her small hand.
She'd never really been a princess for bowing to, as far as she can remember - she'd always been too small, too little, dusty and beaming and with sand in her hair. Touya had despaired then, had called her names from monkey to monster, and maybe that had just been him being a big brother, or maybe it had been true. Sakura can't remember enough to tell, either way, and now that is behind her.
Fai's rather interesting, as a first knight. It's probably not normal - or usually considered acceptable - to take a knight who called herself your mother for a time, even if it was in jest. But...nothing's really normal anymore - normal changes from world to world - and who cares what counts as acceptable among their group anymore, anyway? The days of puppies and kitties and playing happy families feels like a lifetime ago, and their laughter doesn't even sound long enough anymore to ring hollow. Sakura's queendom is a one full of problems.
"Fai-san?" Sakura speaks, and though her voice is quiet it's perfectly steady. She knows she's taken to that steadiness a lot just lately, her knight educating her by example how to be an impassive doll. You can be lovely, and as long as you're lovely who's to know that you're broken on the inside? Stating the obvious when it's dark has long since grown out of fashion.
Fai looks up at her, and the streetlights outside slant in to run down the line of the vampire's throat and bare collarbone, edging pale skin with dull orange and shadows, dipping into the line between the older woman's breasts. Fai's wearing all-black again today; it hides the blood from fighting better, matches the black patch covering where her left eye should be and the black mood she carries with her as armour. The black knight, the last defence, a night wrapped around the cold and wintry snow.
"Fai-san," Sakura says again, when her companion still hasn't spoken, when that one blue eye is still looking at her as though waiting for a command. Fai's fingers are still wrapped around her own; they tighten slightly, as Sakura repeats the name, soft lips part (Sakura knows they're soft, Fai's brushed them over the back of her hand before), and there's the faintest gleam of white fang.
"Sakura-chan," Fai replies, and Sakura can't help it - queen or not she misses Fai's old sweet smile, vanilla and flour and the fresh breeze wrapped up in warm silly hugs and cute cat faces doodled in the messes they'd made in various kitchens, on counters. "What is it?"
That is very much what Sakura had wanted to ask her. But Fai had been the princess' teacher for a reason, so Sakura does nothing but pull her knight up beside her, letting herself be weak for a little while by resting her head on Fai's shoulder. There's a tremble there but Sakura doesn't comment on it, not on the scent of blood on her knight, nor the hand that slowly - so slowly - draws around her to keep her close, always a defence. Always obeying, without question or query, even if they'd wanted to do more.
Sakura's never had a knight before. Not really, so she doesn't know much about them. Fai's her knight now, though, her black knight. Knights don't ever tell their princesses everything; they care too much, it seems.
Sakura despairs a little, as she learns from Fai, as she feels lips touch her forehead, a butterfly brush. Somehow, Sakura feels, she doesn't think her knight will ever tell her more, not even if Sakura really does ever manage to become a queen.
Title: Little World
Characters/Pairings: AU!Kuroparents, AU!Youou
Rating: T - sex, but not terribly explicit
Length: 916
Summary: Family is one’s world.
A/N: Also written for the clampkink meme.
The scenario, I guess: Kuropapa (hereafter Kurogane, for the family surname) has been on a business trip of some kind in Tokyo, and arrives home. What business he works at/for - your guess is as good as mine.
It’s late and the station isn’t particularly full, so it isn’t hard to miss the slim woman standing waiting on the platform as the train pulls in, nor the small child all but vibrating by her knees in his excitement. He’s trying not to show it of course; he’s six years old and very determinedly trying to draw his face into a serious grown-up sort-of frown, but he keeps glancing between his mother and the train and is practically bouncing on the spot waiting for the doors to open. Their god-given little miracle has never been the patient type.
“Father!”
The doors open and the few people disembarking step out, and it’s a case of drop all bags and scoop up one beaming son (the grown-up frown is apparently a lost cause) as Kurogane is assaulted by his monkey-limbed boy, automatically shifting his centre of gravity to rest Youou comfortably in his arms.
“Hello brat.”
Youou, predictably, flails. “’M not a brat!”
“’Course you are,” his father asserts, and casually ducks his son’s madly waving hand - it’s an ease born of years of practice. “The brattiest brat in all of bratdom. With a monkey face.”
“It’s not a monkey face!”
“You’re right,” Kurogane teases, amused when Youou lets out a loud huff of breath beside his ear. “It’s the face of a gorilla.”
“Father-!”
“Welcome back.” Kurogane smiles when a hand lightly touches his shoulder, looking down into the face of his smiling wife. She looks well - something they’re all always glad to see -, the fluorescent lights overhead casting a light in her eyes, on the silver-green teardrops hanging from her ears. She looks lovely - a sight for sore eyes -, so he bends down to kiss first her forehead then her lips, smiling back against her mouth.
They both ignore Youou’s disgusted ‘urgh’ that follows promptly thereafter.
#
“He wanted to see you home,” she explains later, removing those earrings in the bathroom adjoining their bedroom. Kurogane hasn’t switched the light on in their room; there’s enough light coming in through the open door for him to smooth out the wrinkles in their futon, hang up his jacket and unbutton his shirt. Her jewellery chinks slightly as she places it on the edge of the bath. “He missed you.”
“Staying up a little later every now and then won’t do him any harm.” Kurogane goes up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and dropping his head a little to breathe in the scent from her hair. “He’s dead to the world now, anyway.” The boy had dropped off in the car back from the station, slumped in the back-seat after rattling off a stream of endless questions about his father’s trip, about how big Tokyo was, whether the food had been weird, were the hotels really that modern and he bet the buildings were massive. Kurogane had carried him in and put him to bed; Youou had barely stirred. “How have you been?”
“The same as what I told you when you last called.”
“No more spells of sickness?”
“No more spells of sickness,” she assures him, pleased at how the news crinkles the corner of his eyes, his lips tugging upwards into the warm smile she fell in love with. “The new treatment really seems to be helping.”
He bows his head again, letting his forehead drop to her shoulder, and she raises one hand, touching it lightly to dark spikes. The warmth of her skin bleeds through her blouse, the shadow of her bra’s strap just visible beneath the cloth. “I’m glad.” He splays his fingers across her stomach, feeling his wife breathe in, breathe out, and can’t help the surge of contentment that sweeps through him even with something as simple as that - his world, his precious little world, is still safe, has been safe while he’s been gone. “I’m glad.”
#
She moans softly when he pushes into her, all the lights off now but neither of them needing them, knowing the movements, the partner, smooth skin and hot breath, the silk of her loose, long hair beneath his fingers as the muscles of his arms flex, controlling his thrusts, tempering them. Kurogane knows his wife’s body as well as he can know it short of living inside her skin, how she arches when touched, half-formed words in her throat, the tilt of her head when she wants to be kissed.
She kisses him, instead, their mouths sliding together as she pushes up from under him, rocking into his movements, her breasts rubbing against his chest. She’s close - so close -, her nails biting into his shoulder as he reaches down to touch her where she’s hottest, watching pleasure twist through her body, across her face before letting loose his own reins, chasing after that glorious crest himself.
Even their breathing seems loud, afterwards. He comments on it - his brain hasn’t quite caught up with him yet -, and she laughs at him, a drowsy murmur, and tells him he should hear himself snoring. He thinks about spending the next few minutes or so protesting the statement - he doesn’t snore -, but his wife’s breath is evening out into a doze, and his mind is distracted smoothing through the tangles they’d made in her hair, the slight bumps in her spine as he draws his fingers in an idle line down the dip in her back.
He’s dreaming himself before he really knows it - peace follows him there.