halloween ficcage
Damn me and my inability to get things done on time. Well, anyway, a little late for Halloween but SHHHHH it's still October 31st somewhere, I'm sure. Shhhh.
Title: Untitled (My brain's too dumb for titling at 3:30 am)
Pairing: Axel/Rikku (dysfunctional-aka-LSC-style)
Rating:PG
Summary: Rikku and Axel share their first kiss...?
Warnings: Written on the fly; probably has lots of little bugs and needs nit picking. Hopefully I'll get to it sometime. Used some of the ideas I'd discussed with Jess about using for the bigger Halloween fic that... didn't happen. Hell, this barely happened. Sorry, Carly and Demy-mun! ;O; I'll make it up to you later somehow.
Axel glanced down the street at the houses, mostly darkened by now, and checked his Corum watch again. He was just on time to watch the minute hand tick-forward to read 11:14.
Rikku skipped back down the pavement, away from the house she had just visited for candy and back to him. “Watcha’ checking your watch for,” she teased him gaily, swinging her bag of “loot” up over her shoulder. “You have a bed time or something?”
He regarded his ‘companion’ coolly, quirking an eyebrow at her suggestion. As though he, of all people, would have a curfew. Rikku might not know it, but Axel was one of the most powerful men in the city-he had hundreds, even thousands, of people in his employ; he was the head of a family with enough wealth to buy a small fleet of yachts without so much as blinking; with a single word he could have her rewarded with more money than she could even dream of or put down like a dog.
Instead of stating the obvious-no doubt this was her way of trying to “play” with him-he chose to say, “Do you know how easy it would be for someone to poison your candy?”
Rikku blinked rapidly and glanced at her bag. “You’re being paranoid. Why would anyone want to taint perfectly good candy?” She tapped her plastic rapier against her right thigh and then adjusted his eye-patch to cover the other eye. She glanced at it again as they started walking down the sidewalk; he could tell he’d gotten under her skin, at least a little.
Considering that her outfit was no doubt self-constructed, it worked well. A red tunic doubling as a belted dress (where in God’s name had she found all those belts? There were five of them of varying widths) fell to her thighs; a pair of old, faded to brown tights that disappeared into flat-footed boots that ran all the way up to her knees. She wore no less than three bandanas in her hair and enough beads and jewelry that he’d been nearly blinded trying to look at her as the sun set hours ago.
Of course, despite her over-adornment of glittering “shinies,” her outfit fell short on luxuriousness. If he’d known, he might have been willing to pay for her costume to be rented with his as a pair. He imagined they looked silly, her trying to pose some kind of semblance of riches and him actually decked out with exotic feathers, velvet waistcoat and cotton shirt complete with a leather and satin sash, authentic breeches and a genuine pearl handled pistol.
“Do you really need more candy,” he asked, trying to hide his impatience. They had been wandering up and down the streets for a good three hours, and while the experience had been novel-he now understood exactly why it was his father never allowed him to partake in the “festivities”-it had also grown old. “Most of the houses’ lights are off,” he pointed out.
He managed to hold his tongue when the impish thought ‘If you get anymore candy to eat you’ll get fat,’ crossed his mind. He was, after all, attempting to ingratiate himself with the girl. Imagining how she’d pout and sputter and fume at the suggestion did make him want to say it all the more…
“What, are you tired already?” She called over her shoulder, sauntering right along. “You can always just go home,” she suggested him, as though he needed the reminder. “I mean, that is why your body guards have trailed us the entire way like a giant mechanical beetle-baby sitter?”
Both of his eyebrows shot up, as though threatening to try to escape into his hair line. She always had the most… interesting… analogies. Her English teachers must have loved her. “That, and to be here to put a bullet in you if you tried anything.” He did not, in fact, feel threatened by her in any way-she was about as fearsome as a puppy-but he was not so foolish to think her placidity (as though there was anything “calm” about her) was a common trait in people.
As expected though, he was rewarded with a pouting, betrayed expression as she turned around and started to walk backward. “You’re so mean! Honestly,” she grumbled with notes of exasperation and what in the dim light of lamp posts appeared to be rolled eyes He smiled, letting his expression assume an almost feral edge. If she was looking for kindness in life, she had meandered down a very dark path that only a blind man would fail to recognize as perilous. “I would never hurt you; I invited you, didn’t I?”
He shrugged, stone walling her. It was best not to give her an inch; whenever he turned around the girl was trying to grapple onto some surface, to figure him out in some way or another. He definitely felt that this was heading in a direction he did not intend to converse about; she was not nearly so close to him to have any business question trust.
She stopped walking, rocked back on her heels, and posed there with her head craned to one side thoughtfully, arms extended behind her head and still holding her bad. “Why did you come, anyway,” she asked, voice tilted high in a combination of curiosity and absentness; he doubted that she was really addressing him. “You didn’t want to actually get candy. You didn’t want to play pranks. Are you sure you don’t want any candy? Surely you want something for your trouble.”
He had, in fact, gotten more than she knew. Or maybe she suspected; she managed to make the occasional intuitive leap that landed too close to target for his comfort. He shrugged, rolling his shoulders in an elegant but careless maneuver, and kept his voice airy and distant, “You distracted me for a few boring hours. I had nothing better to do.” And with Seifer still gone off on his snit, well, it was disgustingly true.
A thought passed through Rikku’s brain, lighting her eyes like a light bulb really had done off in the recesses of her brain. She straightened suddenly, rocking off the balls of her feet, swinging her arms in front and relaxing. She approached him, walking rather jauntily, and with a completely straight face ordered him, “Close your eyes.”
She was just full of surprises tonight, apparently. He tried not to laugh as he considered her request. “And why should I do that?”
“Well, what’ve you got to lose by doing it,” she countered, reminding him that she, too, could manage to be evasive on occasion. “Surely you don’t think that a little thing like me would try to pull on anything on you-especially not when you’ve got guys here to shoot me if I tried.” Punctuating her statement, she waved to the men she knew to be sitting behind the tinted windows.
Axel looked back in time to just barely make out the shadow of a hand waving back from the passenger seat. Apparently the rookie needed some more training. “Stop fraternizing with my bodyguards,” he snapped, a little more irritably than he meant to.
“Well, then close your eyes,” she persisted, drawing a little closer and scrunching her face into what he could only assume was her way of trying to will him into obeying out of some sense of sympathy. He let out a loud, suffering, sigh, and rolled his own jungle green eyes before shutting them.
“If you try anything”-
“I’ll be so full of lead you’ll be able to make me into a pencil, I know,” she cut him off, voice filled with restrained laughter. “I know how to be a good girl, thank you very much.” There was a moment of relative silence as he stood there waiting; he thought he heard the rustling of paper or clothes.
Just what was she doing, he wondered? He started to open an eye, just a crack to peek, but apparently she was watching him. “Hey, hey. Keep those eyes closed!”
“Or what,” he retaliated, almost unable to help himself. It worried him at little that she managed to make him respond in ways that he deemed as unfitting for his station in life. ‘Or what’-was he ten again?
“Or… I’ll cry,” she suggested. He snorted-perhaps she could manage crocodile tears at will, but she hardly sounded sad-but was otherwise quiet. There were few things more awkward in the world than a crying woman.
Axel felt something rub against his lips, relatively cool and soft; the size and curve suggested her lips. Once again he quirked his eyebrows, but this time they were matched by the curve of a grin. He had not thought her quite so brazen, but here she was, in public at night trying to kiss a man, apparently. He had not given her the permission to do so, but if she was so certain it was a “reward”… well, it would be rude to refuse point blank. And he could always put her back in her place by telling her she wasn’t very good at it.
He opened his mouth with every intention to oblige her and surprise her with , and was met with the taste of chocolate. Had she already gotten into her candy when he wasn’t looking…? But quite suddenly her “lip” was slid into his mouth, forced between his lips and past his gently questing tongue. His eyes popped open in surprise to find her forefinger resting against his lip and what was apparently a piece of chocolate melting in his mouth.
He stared at her blankly, hiding his confusing and embarrassment behind what he hoped was a good show of dispassion. “It’s a Hershey’s Kiss,” she explained, as though he’d demanded what the hell she thought she was doing like he wanted to. “See?” She showed him the crinkly silver wrapper as though it was the key to the world’s mysteries.
He considered telling her she would be walking herself home, if she could find it at this hour of night. He considered telling her that he was deathly allergic to chocolate and faking going into anaphylactic shock for the satisfaction of watching her panic. What came out, slightly garbled by the mound dissolving in his mouth, “Did you check that”-
She giggled and cut him off. “Oh please, that’s all urban legend. Nobody ever poisoned some kid’s candy. It’s good stuff. I thought you should at least get something for coming with me.”
He regarded her, eyes serious and slightly narrowed. He didn’t like that she had touched him without his permission. He didn’t like that she had fed him food that he hadn’t checked personally. He didn’t like being duped, though he doubted she knew that he felt tricked. “Look, if you’re really worried, it came out of this package, okay?” She showed him a tiny bag containing roughly half a dozen more candies exactly like the one in his mouth. “Shrink wrapped and everything, no tampering whatsoever. No way it was poisoned. Okay?”
He turned on his heels and grabbed her by her wrist-not too roughly; she had, at least, definitely not fed him poisoned chocolate-and tugged her along towards the car. As thrilling as this adventure had been, he’d had quite enough of this ridiculous “Halloween” tradition. She yelped a little in what he could only assume was surprise but yielded to him easily enough.
“Alright, alright! If you’re ready to go home, we can,” she announced, like she really had a choice in the matter at this point. The suit in the passenger seat got out in a hurry to open up the passenger door closest to the curb for them to climb in through; Axel made sure to award him with a glare that promised every inch of the reprimand he was going to get later when the Don could devote the time in private to busting his balls for his earlier breach of conduct.
“Ladies first,” he invited her, gesturing for her to enter the car before him. He put a hand lightly on her back as the other one went to his pocket, fishing out a certain something special for her from his pocket. He positioned that hand close to her hair, never actually touching it, and deposited his little gift for her in a perfect nest made by all those bandanas and silly braids.
As he slid onto the leather seat next to her he pointed out in a passive, utterly unamused voice, “Rikku, I believe there’s something in your hair-a roach maybe?”
After all, one good trick deserved another.
Title: Untitled (My brain's too dumb for titling at 3:30 am)
Pairing: Axel/Rikku (dysfunctional-aka-LSC-style)
Rating:PG
Summary: Rikku and Axel share their first kiss...?
Warnings: Written on the fly; probably has lots of little bugs and needs nit picking. Hopefully I'll get to it sometime. Used some of the ideas I'd discussed with Jess about using for the bigger Halloween fic that... didn't happen. Hell, this barely happened. Sorry, Carly and Demy-mun! ;O; I'll make it up to you later somehow.
Axel glanced down the street at the houses, mostly darkened by now, and checked his Corum watch again. He was just on time to watch the minute hand tick-forward to read 11:14.
Rikku skipped back down the pavement, away from the house she had just visited for candy and back to him. “Watcha’ checking your watch for,” she teased him gaily, swinging her bag of “loot” up over her shoulder. “You have a bed time or something?”
He regarded his ‘companion’ coolly, quirking an eyebrow at her suggestion. As though he, of all people, would have a curfew. Rikku might not know it, but Axel was one of the most powerful men in the city-he had hundreds, even thousands, of people in his employ; he was the head of a family with enough wealth to buy a small fleet of yachts without so much as blinking; with a single word he could have her rewarded with more money than she could even dream of or put down like a dog.
Instead of stating the obvious-no doubt this was her way of trying to “play” with him-he chose to say, “Do you know how easy it would be for someone to poison your candy?”
Rikku blinked rapidly and glanced at her bag. “You’re being paranoid. Why would anyone want to taint perfectly good candy?” She tapped her plastic rapier against her right thigh and then adjusted his eye-patch to cover the other eye. She glanced at it again as they started walking down the sidewalk; he could tell he’d gotten under her skin, at least a little.
Considering that her outfit was no doubt self-constructed, it worked well. A red tunic doubling as a belted dress (where in God’s name had she found all those belts? There were five of them of varying widths) fell to her thighs; a pair of old, faded to brown tights that disappeared into flat-footed boots that ran all the way up to her knees. She wore no less than three bandanas in her hair and enough beads and jewelry that he’d been nearly blinded trying to look at her as the sun set hours ago.
Of course, despite her over-adornment of glittering “shinies,” her outfit fell short on luxuriousness. If he’d known, he might have been willing to pay for her costume to be rented with his as a pair. He imagined they looked silly, her trying to pose some kind of semblance of riches and him actually decked out with exotic feathers, velvet waistcoat and cotton shirt complete with a leather and satin sash, authentic breeches and a genuine pearl handled pistol.
“Do you really need more candy,” he asked, trying to hide his impatience. They had been wandering up and down the streets for a good three hours, and while the experience had been novel-he now understood exactly why it was his father never allowed him to partake in the “festivities”-it had also grown old. “Most of the houses’ lights are off,” he pointed out.
He managed to hold his tongue when the impish thought ‘If you get anymore candy to eat you’ll get fat,’ crossed his mind. He was, after all, attempting to ingratiate himself with the girl. Imagining how she’d pout and sputter and fume at the suggestion did make him want to say it all the more…
“What, are you tired already?” She called over her shoulder, sauntering right along. “You can always just go home,” she suggested him, as though he needed the reminder. “I mean, that is why your body guards have trailed us the entire way like a giant mechanical beetle-baby sitter?”
Both of his eyebrows shot up, as though threatening to try to escape into his hair line. She always had the most… interesting… analogies. Her English teachers must have loved her. “That, and to be here to put a bullet in you if you tried anything.” He did not, in fact, feel threatened by her in any way-she was about as fearsome as a puppy-but he was not so foolish to think her placidity (as though there was anything “calm” about her) was a common trait in people.
As expected though, he was rewarded with a pouting, betrayed expression as she turned around and started to walk backward. “You’re so mean! Honestly,” she grumbled with notes of exasperation and what in the dim light of lamp posts appeared to be rolled eyes He smiled, letting his expression assume an almost feral edge. If she was looking for kindness in life, she had meandered down a very dark path that only a blind man would fail to recognize as perilous. “I would never hurt you; I invited you, didn’t I?”
He shrugged, stone walling her. It was best not to give her an inch; whenever he turned around the girl was trying to grapple onto some surface, to figure him out in some way or another. He definitely felt that this was heading in a direction he did not intend to converse about; she was not nearly so close to him to have any business question trust.
She stopped walking, rocked back on her heels, and posed there with her head craned to one side thoughtfully, arms extended behind her head and still holding her bad. “Why did you come, anyway,” she asked, voice tilted high in a combination of curiosity and absentness; he doubted that she was really addressing him. “You didn’t want to actually get candy. You didn’t want to play pranks. Are you sure you don’t want any candy? Surely you want something for your trouble.”
He had, in fact, gotten more than she knew. Or maybe she suspected; she managed to make the occasional intuitive leap that landed too close to target for his comfort. He shrugged, rolling his shoulders in an elegant but careless maneuver, and kept his voice airy and distant, “You distracted me for a few boring hours. I had nothing better to do.” And with Seifer still gone off on his snit, well, it was disgustingly true.
A thought passed through Rikku’s brain, lighting her eyes like a light bulb really had done off in the recesses of her brain. She straightened suddenly, rocking off the balls of her feet, swinging her arms in front and relaxing. She approached him, walking rather jauntily, and with a completely straight face ordered him, “Close your eyes.”
She was just full of surprises tonight, apparently. He tried not to laugh as he considered her request. “And why should I do that?”
“Well, what’ve you got to lose by doing it,” she countered, reminding him that she, too, could manage to be evasive on occasion. “Surely you don’t think that a little thing like me would try to pull on anything on you-especially not when you’ve got guys here to shoot me if I tried.” Punctuating her statement, she waved to the men she knew to be sitting behind the tinted windows.
Axel looked back in time to just barely make out the shadow of a hand waving back from the passenger seat. Apparently the rookie needed some more training. “Stop fraternizing with my bodyguards,” he snapped, a little more irritably than he meant to.
“Well, then close your eyes,” she persisted, drawing a little closer and scrunching her face into what he could only assume was her way of trying to will him into obeying out of some sense of sympathy. He let out a loud, suffering, sigh, and rolled his own jungle green eyes before shutting them.
“If you try anything”-
“I’ll be so full of lead you’ll be able to make me into a pencil, I know,” she cut him off, voice filled with restrained laughter. “I know how to be a good girl, thank you very much.” There was a moment of relative silence as he stood there waiting; he thought he heard the rustling of paper or clothes.
Just what was she doing, he wondered? He started to open an eye, just a crack to peek, but apparently she was watching him. “Hey, hey. Keep those eyes closed!”
“Or what,” he retaliated, almost unable to help himself. It worried him at little that she managed to make him respond in ways that he deemed as unfitting for his station in life. ‘Or what’-was he ten again?
“Or… I’ll cry,” she suggested. He snorted-perhaps she could manage crocodile tears at will, but she hardly sounded sad-but was otherwise quiet. There were few things more awkward in the world than a crying woman.
Axel felt something rub against his lips, relatively cool and soft; the size and curve suggested her lips. Once again he quirked his eyebrows, but this time they were matched by the curve of a grin. He had not thought her quite so brazen, but here she was, in public at night trying to kiss a man, apparently. He had not given her the permission to do so, but if she was so certain it was a “reward”… well, it would be rude to refuse point blank. And he could always put her back in her place by telling her she wasn’t very good at it.
He opened his mouth with every intention to oblige her and surprise her with , and was met with the taste of chocolate. Had she already gotten into her candy when he wasn’t looking…? But quite suddenly her “lip” was slid into his mouth, forced between his lips and past his gently questing tongue. His eyes popped open in surprise to find her forefinger resting against his lip and what was apparently a piece of chocolate melting in his mouth.
He stared at her blankly, hiding his confusing and embarrassment behind what he hoped was a good show of dispassion. “It’s a Hershey’s Kiss,” she explained, as though he’d demanded what the hell she thought she was doing like he wanted to. “See?” She showed him the crinkly silver wrapper as though it was the key to the world’s mysteries.
He considered telling her she would be walking herself home, if she could find it at this hour of night. He considered telling her that he was deathly allergic to chocolate and faking going into anaphylactic shock for the satisfaction of watching her panic. What came out, slightly garbled by the mound dissolving in his mouth, “Did you check that”-
She giggled and cut him off. “Oh please, that’s all urban legend. Nobody ever poisoned some kid’s candy. It’s good stuff. I thought you should at least get something for coming with me.”
He regarded her, eyes serious and slightly narrowed. He didn’t like that she had touched him without his permission. He didn’t like that she had fed him food that he hadn’t checked personally. He didn’t like being duped, though he doubted she knew that he felt tricked. “Look, if you’re really worried, it came out of this package, okay?” She showed him a tiny bag containing roughly half a dozen more candies exactly like the one in his mouth. “Shrink wrapped and everything, no tampering whatsoever. No way it was poisoned. Okay?”
He turned on his heels and grabbed her by her wrist-not too roughly; she had, at least, definitely not fed him poisoned chocolate-and tugged her along towards the car. As thrilling as this adventure had been, he’d had quite enough of this ridiculous “Halloween” tradition. She yelped a little in what he could only assume was surprise but yielded to him easily enough.
“Alright, alright! If you’re ready to go home, we can,” she announced, like she really had a choice in the matter at this point. The suit in the passenger seat got out in a hurry to open up the passenger door closest to the curb for them to climb in through; Axel made sure to award him with a glare that promised every inch of the reprimand he was going to get later when the Don could devote the time in private to busting his balls for his earlier breach of conduct.
“Ladies first,” he invited her, gesturing for her to enter the car before him. He put a hand lightly on her back as the other one went to his pocket, fishing out a certain something special for her from his pocket. He positioned that hand close to her hair, never actually touching it, and deposited his little gift for her in a perfect nest made by all those bandanas and silly braids.
As he slid onto the leather seat next to her he pointed out in a passive, utterly unamused voice, “Rikku, I believe there’s something in your hair-a roach maybe?”
After all, one good trick deserved another.