comment_fic 1140 - 1144: RPF, Leverage, original, Heroes
Title: I try to picture me without you (but I can't)
Fandom: RPF(ish)
Disclaimer: … they’re sorta mine? in this incarnation, at least. title from Fall Out Boy
Warnings: references to canon character death, violence/battles
Pairings: Alexander/Hephaestion
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 670
Point of view: third
Prompt: Historical RPF. any. we will never be royals
He dreams of deserts and elephants, of battles and blood, of a faceless man he loves more than life itself.
He listens to dry history lectures and devours dry history texts and watches documentaries and films, and thinks, over and over and over again, This is wrong.
He hears, whispered on the wind, He too is Alexander and mutters, “But my name is George.”
.
George is the youngest son of an insurance salesman and a fairly successful poet, with two sisters - his oldest sister, Harriet, becomes an Olympic gold medalist in swimming, and his older sister, Nancy, teaches math in public school. George has no idea what do with his life, but he does find history fascinating.
He majors in it at college, and then goes on to grad school, focusing his thesis on how history is wrong about Alexander the Great.
.
He hadn’t been popular in high school but neither had he been bullied. He’d never been truly athletic or anything, but he and his sisters all took self-defense, and for some reason, George excelled. He researched martial arts on his own time, astonishing the instructor with moves far beyond his skills.
He dreams of dying, sometimes. It hurts. It hurts but the greatest pain is knowing he’s leaving that faceless man to live alone.
(The greatest pain is knowing, somehow, that the man won’t live for long.)
.
George’s thesis doesn’t rock the academy on any sort of level. He still isn’t satisfied, though, so he goes for a Ph.D.
.
He still dreams of deserts. Of kings and queens, of gods who walk with men. Of a horse untamable except by one man, a man whose name tastes like blood and hope on his lips.
He too is Alexander, a son of the gods tells a conquered queen in the greatest city in the world. He too is Alexander, and George wakes in tears, reaching for someone who has never been there.
.
George meets Vince at a party thrown by his mother, in celebration of becoming Dr. Tomaras. His dissertation ruffled far more feathers than his thesis had, but he’d also proven that too much of what is known of Alexander the Great is incorrect. What truly happened, he cannot prove - but he has proven that no one else can, either.
Vince is the son of a friend of a friend of his father’s; he works with horses, training them as therapy animals, occasionally helping wounded ones heal. George spends most of the party tucked away in a corner with him, just talking.
They exchange numbers; Vince had only been in town for a meeting about a horse, and happened to have extra time to attend the party. He’ll be leaving in the morning. George doesn’t want to see him go but Vince smiles at him, promising to text soon.
And he does. There is a text waiting on George’s phone when he wakes, a smiley face with the words, told you so.
.
George finds work as a researcher, shuffling between three museums on the East Coast. He’s kept busy arguing with some of the biggest historians in the world. He texts daily with Vince, about anything and everything, and when Harriet gets engaged, George calls Vince during his lunch hour and dithers about for fifteen minutes before Vince says, “Just ask whatever you called to ask.”
After taking a deep breath, George asks, “Will you go to my sister’s wedding with me? As my date.”
Vince laughs softly. “Of course I will.”
.
He still dreams of deserts. Of forests filled with death, of elephants and horses, of blood and pain. He wakes screaming sometimes, in a language he barely recognizes.
Vince has nightmares of his own, which are frighteningly similar to George’s. They could probably talk to someone about it, get the dreams interpreted, but George, staring into Vince’s eyes as they both refuse to sleep, is pretty certain he’s figured it out.
He too is Alexander, George thinks, wrapping his arms around Vince, curling in as close as he can.
Title: the quiet moments
Fandom: Leverage
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: takes place anytime after season 3; references to the terrible things Eliot did willingly for Moreau; violence/death
Pairings: Eliot/Hardison/Parker, past Moreau/Eliot
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 405
Point of view: third
Prompts: Leverage, Hardison/Parker/Eliot, they want to know about Eliot's past ; Leverage, Eliot/Hardison(/Parker) and past Eliot/Damien Moreau, how Eliot finally tells them about his past relationship with Damien
They never come out and ask, is the thing. He thinks it might be easier if they did.
(It'll never be easy.)
.
He wasn't abused as a kid, went into the army out of high-school, got pulled into black-ops. He earned a couple different degrees over the years, and then it all went to hell. They were disavowed mid-mission and that was that.
Eliot shouldn't have survived but he did anyway.
.
Everything up until that is information that is easily found, especially for the best hacker in the world.
What came after -
Well. Eliot had a lot of rage to spend.
.
Eliot has always been a quick learner.
He pretends, for the team, and for their marks, but if he wasn't brilliant, he wouldn't have survived sitting at Damien Moreau's right hand, or sleeping beside Damien Moreau in bed, or leaving Damien Moreau behind.
He wasn't the first. He was the last.
.
He loved Damien with a fierceness that had been unmatched, till then. He was possessive, protective, out-and-out dangerous. Damien was the first thing that was his since his team died in the dirt.
That fierceness is no longer unmatched.
But where Damien had been jealous, had to ensure (every day, it felt like) that Eliot was his alone, they aren't. They understand why he has to disappear sometimes, and they wait for him to come back. They trust that he will. They don't follow, unless he fails to send hints that he's fine.
Damien Moreau had owned him; it's why he finally walked away.
.
They will never ask, though they want to.
It's why he sometimes will share what he can bear to say.
…
It's a quiet night in, with Hardison hacking another database just to prove he can and Parker watching reruns of old cartoons while Eliot flips through a baking magazine (baking isn't his thing, but looking at all the pretty food comforts him, okay?).
The words have been building for months, and he doesn't want to bite them back anymore.
"I loved him," he says with no warning, without looking up from the cupcake decorated like an Easter egg. "I woulda done anything for him. I did."
Hardison's fingers still on the keyboard and Parker turns down the TV, and neither of them say anything as the scant details he can bear to provide pour out of his mouth.
None of them will ever mention it again.
Title: ascent
Written September 23, 2015
Author's choice (except Supernatural), any once-human creature, We can give you a new body, a new voice. You'll miss your parents, and the sun, but you could sing. (We all float down here)
When we (were young)
The world was alight
We had (legs) then
(smiles and cries
smiles and cries)
We could run then
(do you remember the sun?)
.
Do you remember the sun?
Family. We sing now,
We who were you and me.
We sing together
Entwined and inseparable
But I miss
(no i don’t i swear
i don’t)
I don’t miss the sun.
.
When we were young
(we weren’t)
We were given the choice
(smiles and cries
laughs and lies)
And this eternity of flight
(i wish I could run again)
Is ours for the taking
The world and the sky
(i wish I could run)
.
(i’d trade it all away
never sing again
if i could be in Mama’s arms
i’d trade it all away)
.
There is no young
No running, no sun
There is only us
Title: mastermind
Fandom: Heroes
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: AU at some point
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 120
Point of view: third
Prompt: any, any, Life is never so bleak / that you can't turn things around / with a crime spree.
"Look, kid," Luke says, "I know what I'm doing, okay?" He's barely older, and Micah glares at him, but it's the truth. "I promise," he says, "we'll find your mom, and we'll save some people, but to do that, we gotta keep moving."
"Yeah, I know," Micah mutters. But he stops arguing, follows Luke to the car, and monitors every communication device in range.
Luke does mean it, when he says they'll find Micah's mom. That they'll save people. He really does. But that's not why he's doing this.
They're gonna kill so many normals on the way and Luke can barely wait.
(And if maybe it'll impress Sylar enough to let Luke come back - well. He keeps that to himself.)
Title: I know your look when I get there
Fandom: RPF
Disclaimer: they belong to themselves (or each other); title from Dido
Warnings: takes place in early 2011 but after February 1
Pairings: Louis Tomlinson/Harry Styles
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 233
Point of view: third
Prompt: any, any/any, standing there with just a tan and a slow, shy smile
He's nervous, of course, but sure, so sure, and he knows he has maybe three minutes before Louis' back with the take-away, and they've been talking about this for months, but Lou doesn't know he's chosen tonight-
He pauses in the act of lighting one of the candles because he's just noticed how much his hand is shaking. He blows out the match and sinks down onto the bed, breathing 1 2 3, 1 2 3.
There's no need to worry. Louis'll laugh at him, of course, for the candles spread across his bedroom, the one they share even though Louis has one just across the hall. Louis'll laugh and then he'll smile, crowd in close and murmur against Harry's lips, "You been plannin' this, then?"
He bounces off the bed, leaving the rest of the candles unlit. He's planned this so many different ways, fantasized a dozen different things. What to do now?
"Harold!" Louis shouts. "Food!"
"Back here, Lou!" Harry calls, glancing around the room again.
"You won't believe," Louis is saying as he steps through the door, and Harry glances up in time to see the smile slowly spread across his face.
"Tonight then, love?" he asks, and Harry feels the way Louis' eyes move along his body. "Aren't you bit overdressed?"
Harry takes one more breath, holds it, and as he breathes out, begins pulling off his clothes.
Fandom: RPF(ish)
Disclaimer: … they’re sorta mine? in this incarnation, at least. title from Fall Out Boy
Warnings: references to canon character death, violence/battles
Pairings: Alexander/Hephaestion
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 670
Point of view: third
Prompt: Historical RPF. any. we will never be royals
He dreams of deserts and elephants, of battles and blood, of a faceless man he loves more than life itself.
He listens to dry history lectures and devours dry history texts and watches documentaries and films, and thinks, over and over and over again, This is wrong.
He hears, whispered on the wind, He too is Alexander and mutters, “But my name is George.”
.
George is the youngest son of an insurance salesman and a fairly successful poet, with two sisters - his oldest sister, Harriet, becomes an Olympic gold medalist in swimming, and his older sister, Nancy, teaches math in public school. George has no idea what do with his life, but he does find history fascinating.
He majors in it at college, and then goes on to grad school, focusing his thesis on how history is wrong about Alexander the Great.
.
He hadn’t been popular in high school but neither had he been bullied. He’d never been truly athletic or anything, but he and his sisters all took self-defense, and for some reason, George excelled. He researched martial arts on his own time, astonishing the instructor with moves far beyond his skills.
He dreams of dying, sometimes. It hurts. It hurts but the greatest pain is knowing he’s leaving that faceless man to live alone.
(The greatest pain is knowing, somehow, that the man won’t live for long.)
.
George’s thesis doesn’t rock the academy on any sort of level. He still isn’t satisfied, though, so he goes for a Ph.D.
.
He still dreams of deserts. Of kings and queens, of gods who walk with men. Of a horse untamable except by one man, a man whose name tastes like blood and hope on his lips.
He too is Alexander, a son of the gods tells a conquered queen in the greatest city in the world. He too is Alexander, and George wakes in tears, reaching for someone who has never been there.
.
George meets Vince at a party thrown by his mother, in celebration of becoming Dr. Tomaras. His dissertation ruffled far more feathers than his thesis had, but he’d also proven that too much of what is known of Alexander the Great is incorrect. What truly happened, he cannot prove - but he has proven that no one else can, either.
Vince is the son of a friend of a friend of his father’s; he works with horses, training them as therapy animals, occasionally helping wounded ones heal. George spends most of the party tucked away in a corner with him, just talking.
They exchange numbers; Vince had only been in town for a meeting about a horse, and happened to have extra time to attend the party. He’ll be leaving in the morning. George doesn’t want to see him go but Vince smiles at him, promising to text soon.
And he does. There is a text waiting on George’s phone when he wakes, a smiley face with the words, told you so.
.
George finds work as a researcher, shuffling between three museums on the East Coast. He’s kept busy arguing with some of the biggest historians in the world. He texts daily with Vince, about anything and everything, and when Harriet gets engaged, George calls Vince during his lunch hour and dithers about for fifteen minutes before Vince says, “Just ask whatever you called to ask.”
After taking a deep breath, George asks, “Will you go to my sister’s wedding with me? As my date.”
Vince laughs softly. “Of course I will.”
.
He still dreams of deserts. Of forests filled with death, of elephants and horses, of blood and pain. He wakes screaming sometimes, in a language he barely recognizes.
Vince has nightmares of his own, which are frighteningly similar to George’s. They could probably talk to someone about it, get the dreams interpreted, but George, staring into Vince’s eyes as they both refuse to sleep, is pretty certain he’s figured it out.
He too is Alexander, George thinks, wrapping his arms around Vince, curling in as close as he can.
Title: the quiet moments
Fandom: Leverage
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: takes place anytime after season 3; references to the terrible things Eliot did willingly for Moreau; violence/death
Pairings: Eliot/Hardison/Parker, past Moreau/Eliot
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 405
Point of view: third
Prompts: Leverage, Hardison/Parker/Eliot, they want to know about Eliot's past ; Leverage, Eliot/Hardison(/Parker) and past Eliot/Damien Moreau, how Eliot finally tells them about his past relationship with Damien
They never come out and ask, is the thing. He thinks it might be easier if they did.
(It'll never be easy.)
.
He wasn't abused as a kid, went into the army out of high-school, got pulled into black-ops. He earned a couple different degrees over the years, and then it all went to hell. They were disavowed mid-mission and that was that.
Eliot shouldn't have survived but he did anyway.
.
Everything up until that is information that is easily found, especially for the best hacker in the world.
What came after -
Well. Eliot had a lot of rage to spend.
.
Eliot has always been a quick learner.
He pretends, for the team, and for their marks, but if he wasn't brilliant, he wouldn't have survived sitting at Damien Moreau's right hand, or sleeping beside Damien Moreau in bed, or leaving Damien Moreau behind.
He wasn't the first. He was the last.
.
He loved Damien with a fierceness that had been unmatched, till then. He was possessive, protective, out-and-out dangerous. Damien was the first thing that was his since his team died in the dirt.
That fierceness is no longer unmatched.
But where Damien had been jealous, had to ensure (every day, it felt like) that Eliot was his alone, they aren't. They understand why he has to disappear sometimes, and they wait for him to come back. They trust that he will. They don't follow, unless he fails to send hints that he's fine.
Damien Moreau had owned him; it's why he finally walked away.
.
They will never ask, though they want to.
It's why he sometimes will share what he can bear to say.
…
It's a quiet night in, with Hardison hacking another database just to prove he can and Parker watching reruns of old cartoons while Eliot flips through a baking magazine (baking isn't his thing, but looking at all the pretty food comforts him, okay?).
The words have been building for months, and he doesn't want to bite them back anymore.
"I loved him," he says with no warning, without looking up from the cupcake decorated like an Easter egg. "I woulda done anything for him. I did."
Hardison's fingers still on the keyboard and Parker turns down the TV, and neither of them say anything as the scant details he can bear to provide pour out of his mouth.
None of them will ever mention it again.
Title: ascent
Written September 23, 2015
Author's choice (except Supernatural), any once-human creature, We can give you a new body, a new voice. You'll miss your parents, and the sun, but you could sing. (We all float down here)
When we (were young)
The world was alight
We had (legs) then
(smiles and cries
smiles and cries)
We could run then
(do you remember the sun?)
.
Do you remember the sun?
Family. We sing now,
We who were you and me.
We sing together
Entwined and inseparable
But I miss
(no i don’t i swear
i don’t)
I don’t miss the sun.
.
When we were young
(we weren’t)
We were given the choice
(smiles and cries
laughs and lies)
And this eternity of flight
(i wish I could run again)
Is ours for the taking
The world and the sky
(i wish I could run)
.
(i’d trade it all away
never sing again
if i could be in Mama’s arms
i’d trade it all away)
.
There is no young
No running, no sun
There is only us
Title: mastermind
Fandom: Heroes
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: AU at some point
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 120
Point of view: third
Prompt: any, any, Life is never so bleak / that you can't turn things around / with a crime spree.
"Look, kid," Luke says, "I know what I'm doing, okay?" He's barely older, and Micah glares at him, but it's the truth. "I promise," he says, "we'll find your mom, and we'll save some people, but to do that, we gotta keep moving."
"Yeah, I know," Micah mutters. But he stops arguing, follows Luke to the car, and monitors every communication device in range.
Luke does mean it, when he says they'll find Micah's mom. That they'll save people. He really does. But that's not why he's doing this.
They're gonna kill so many normals on the way and Luke can barely wait.
(And if maybe it'll impress Sylar enough to let Luke come back - well. He keeps that to himself.)
Title: I know your look when I get there
Fandom: RPF
Disclaimer: they belong to themselves (or each other); title from Dido
Warnings: takes place in early 2011 but after February 1
Pairings: Louis Tomlinson/Harry Styles
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 233
Point of view: third
Prompt: any, any/any, standing there with just a tan and a slow, shy smile
He's nervous, of course, but sure, so sure, and he knows he has maybe three minutes before Louis' back with the take-away, and they've been talking about this for months, but Lou doesn't know he's chosen tonight-
He pauses in the act of lighting one of the candles because he's just noticed how much his hand is shaking. He blows out the match and sinks down onto the bed, breathing 1 2 3, 1 2 3.
There's no need to worry. Louis'll laugh at him, of course, for the candles spread across his bedroom, the one they share even though Louis has one just across the hall. Louis'll laugh and then he'll smile, crowd in close and murmur against Harry's lips, "You been plannin' this, then?"
He bounces off the bed, leaving the rest of the candles unlit. He's planned this so many different ways, fantasized a dozen different things. What to do now?
"Harold!" Louis shouts. "Food!"
"Back here, Lou!" Harry calls, glancing around the room again.
"You won't believe," Louis is saying as he steps through the door, and Harry glances up in time to see the smile slowly spread across his face.
"Tonight then, love?" he asks, and Harry feels the way Louis' eyes move along his body. "Aren't you bit overdressed?"
Harry takes one more breath, holds it, and as he breathes out, begins pulling off his clothes.