All I Want For Christmas (is my friend under the tree) [Trickster, Piper]
Canon Status: Probably AU. See if I care. Spins off at about Countdown #20.
Genre: Fix-it.
Rating: PG.
Characters: Pied Piper (Hartley Rathaway), Trickster I (James Jesse).
Pairing: None.
Warnings: If you see it, it's there.
Notes: Set in a nebulous future in which most things have been sorted out, although Trickster is still dead. Originally posted to piper_trickster.
Summary: Merry Christmas, Hartley!
“Wow,” said Hartley when he came into his living room on Christmas morning. “I must have been really, spectacularly bad last year.”
“I prefer to think of it as you being really good,” said James. “Or else I’d saved up enough ‘nice’ points to get a gift of my own.”
Hartley gave him a Look (both eyebrows, and James could practically see the glasses that weren’t there sliding down his nose to give it that extra skeptical-schoolteacher touch). “James. You are in my living room, tied up with what looks like exceptionally tough tinsel, underneath my Christmas tree, with artificial needles poking you in the neck, and you think this was in return for being nice?”
James pouted. Hartley was willing to bet that he’d practiced in front of a mirror. “What, you’re not happy to see me?”
Hartley thought of the days which had turned into weeks of waiting for the reply of someone who wasn’t there, of expecting a tug on his wrist that never came, of wondering what he could have done to keep James alive. “Yeah,” he said seriously. “Yeah, I really am.”
“Me too. I wouldn’t want to be tied up under anyone else’s tree.” James’s smile was genuine, for once in his life. “Uh, speaking of which, help?”
Genre: Fix-it.
Rating: PG.
Characters: Pied Piper (Hartley Rathaway), Trickster I (James Jesse).
Pairing: None.
Warnings: If you see it, it's there.
Notes: Set in a nebulous future in which most things have been sorted out, although Trickster is still dead. Originally posted to piper_trickster.
Summary: Merry Christmas, Hartley!
“Wow,” said Hartley when he came into his living room on Christmas morning. “I must have been really, spectacularly bad last year.”
“I prefer to think of it as you being really good,” said James. “Or else I’d saved up enough ‘nice’ points to get a gift of my own.”
Hartley gave him a Look (both eyebrows, and James could practically see the glasses that weren’t there sliding down his nose to give it that extra skeptical-schoolteacher touch). “James. You are in my living room, tied up with what looks like exceptionally tough tinsel, underneath my Christmas tree, with artificial needles poking you in the neck, and you think this was in return for being nice?”
James pouted. Hartley was willing to bet that he’d practiced in front of a mirror. “What, you’re not happy to see me?”
Hartley thought of the days which had turned into weeks of waiting for the reply of someone who wasn’t there, of expecting a tug on his wrist that never came, of wondering what he could have done to keep James alive. “Yeah,” he said seriously. “Yeah, I really am.”
“Me too. I wouldn’t want to be tied up under anyone else’s tree.” James’s smile was genuine, for once in his life. “Uh, speaking of which, help?”