Recent Fic Chat Dump
Random ficlets from recent fic chats. I am clearly out of practice.
Prompt: http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/nebulae/ngc2237.jpg
Prompter: *pets*
A/N: Spacefic by *pets*pular demand
***
"So, where are we now?"
Maren has taken to joining him at the bridge, late at night, as the rest of the ship partakes in the sleep cycle. They still have coffee, his black, hers with four cubes of sugar, and he never realised how much he has come to expect her-- look forward to this quarter-hour out of every day-- until two days ago.
They had landed on Gaul, intending on a quick few hours' rest and refuel. The mostly-agricultural moon was tiny, known primarily for its apples and pork, and yet the TERN had landed right in the middle of an inexplicably violent firefight. The quick stop had turned into an impromptu rescue mission, and that night all of them had posted vigil over their newest passenger. Zariel Quigley remained unconscious for twelve hours before coming to, a hot-headed, wild-eyed journalist with a crazy tale and a look of fresh heartbreak. His conspiracy theories about Metaria Enterprises were outrageous, and yet... why else would a battalion of cruisers and battleships have been breaking down the doors of his tiny compound?
Right now, for the first time since they'd taken on their troubled, distraught refugee, Kaz is alone with Maren. Both she and Jace had been very eager to listen to Zariel's tale, and he just knows that behind those sad, fathomless blue eyes, there are secrets underneath the surface that he has yet to scratch, tears that she will never publically shed.
But she sips her sweetened coffee right now, curled up in the chair next to his with her bare feet tucked underneath her and her hair a golden fleece flowing over a plain white shift, and Kaz has never wished so hard that things were different-- for her, for him. For all of them.
So instead, he drains his coffee, sets down the cup. "We're passing the Sinanne-5 Nebula, Kochana," he tells her softly. "It will be a few days before we're by any inhabitable planets or moons."
"What does it look like?" Maren asks, her voice a whisper. Her sightless eyes are affixed upon the vast, dazzling cloud of stars visible within the viewscreen, and Kaz aches for her. He's not a man of many words, and he would never describe himself as poetic.
"It's bright, far too many stars for anyone to count," he murmurs. "They range from the very hot to the relatively cold, in colours from bright blue to dusky red. It almost looks like a cloud, all mist and glow. Gold like your hair and blue like your eyes."
Maren smiles in a way that is wholly feminine, almost knowing, but her cheeks pink under the overhead lights.
Prompt: "Both were fascinated with prostitution and perversity. Both distrusted sleep, fearing it as death’s mirror. Both hated being alone."
Prompter: Teh BAMF
A/N: The, uh, what is this I don't even ficverse?
***
"Where did you come from originally? Russia? Germany?"
Konstantin does not have the habit of making idle conversation in his line of work. Even now, in the long, boring hours of waiting, he prefers to be silent and watchful, back against the pitted brick and eyes fixed upon the quiet street. The blonde vixen with the wildflower honey voice and the deft fingers of a pickpocket chooses, instead, to lounge indolently against the alley wall, pouty lips cupping the filter of a menthol cigarette and leaving scarlet smudges of lipstick like blood on white paper. He knows that the levity of her manner disguises her inherent cunning and deadliness, but can't bring himself to be overly friendly.
"Czech Republic," he answers shortly, sparing her one glance. "Why?"
"I like to get to know people, and our friend won't be out for another two hours, fourteen minutes," Jessamine smiles graciously and sardonically, blowing a smoke ring that haloes briefly over her head before dissolving. She's definitely no angel, and in these condemned streets, in her low-cut blouse and thigh-high boots, she blends in with the streetwalkers almost flawlessly. Konstantin sometimes wonders at her chameleonish ability to play so many roles-- from socialite to whore to ingenue to warrior and all the way back in blinks of the eye-- but thinking too hard would make him wonder who the real Jessamine was, and what she was like.
That was not his business.
"I doubt he will be prompt to the minute," he says in an indifferent tone. "He has a very important deal to complete if he wishes to keep his head. Such things take time."
"He knows that, which is why it's meticulously planned," Jessamine takes one last inhale, then crushes the cigarette butt into a smear in the pavement. Her eyes shine blue and amused in the shadows. "El Rey does not stand on ceremony. He's a man of habits." She quirks an eyebrow at Konstantin, all sunny guilelessness like a child lying blithely to a Sunday School teacher, "We can wager on it if you'd like."
"No." The very idea is silly. "We wait."
"This sure beats falling asleep to late-night television and a tryptophan coma after a too-starchy microwave dinner," Jessamine says cheerfully, slanting a long-lashed glance at the side of his face as though he'd believe her capable of such a mundane civilian existence when not out in the field. "What say you?"
He does not like to spend his nights in the tiny set of rooms, alone with his thoughts, either. But he feels sure that his motivations differ from her own, as well as his habits. Not that it mattered as long as she managed to hold her idle conversations and keep her watch at the same time. "You would probably rather be out, at a club, at a party, maybe."
She smiles; he has always before made scrupulously sure to keep all conversation strictly related to the job, the target, the syndicate. It's gratifying to get even a sliver of response out of him, but she knows better than to mention it. "Are you trying to tell me that this isn't a party for you, darling? I must be losing my touch."
Prompter: Apsara
Prompt: http://-fuckyeahmoviequotes-.tumblr.com/post/4478131428
A/N: Same 'verse as the one above it
BUSINESS BRISK STOP HOPE YOU ARE WELL AND ENJOYING BIMINI STOP A SENDS HER REGARDS STOP.
The telegram comes in at noon-- such an antiquated device-- but then again, hereabouts, there is no broadband, no cell phone service, and even the landline only worked sporadically. The weather is glorious and the cabin, if rustic, is picturesque, peaceful.
Zane has not seen a memo or a brief in thirteen months. The monthly telegram from Darien is just about the only connection he has to the rest of the world any more. This month he is in Bimini. The last, he was in Puerto Rico. There is a boarding pass on a private plane, due to depart the islands for Alexandria, in twenty-six days.
The sun streams through the open window, warm on slim, bare feet tanned butterscotch in bright sun without business loafers, illuminating the dark gold of his hair. It's definitely too long for fashion now, too long for business.
The sea is visible outside, tranquil blue, fathomless, and Zane sighs. It's beautiful and steadfast, the same colour as someone's eyes. Someone lost to him now, possibly forever, who lived and worked by the sea thousands of miles away where it was not so tranquil. He did not have a choice in leaving, in vanishing, in being on the move now.
But the monthly telegrams are salt in a festering wound, which may halfway be Darien's intention. Zane clenches his hands around the slip of paper, wishes for a cigarette-if-only-he-hadn't-quit-because-she-wouldn't-kiss-a-smoker, and wonders, not for the first time, when redemption would come.
Prompt: http://fuckyeahliteraryquotes.tumblr.com/post/5096490365/its-wrong-what-they-say-about-the-past-ive
Prompter: *pets*
A/N: Same ficverse as Patrol and Missing
"I like your tattoo," she says, ingenuous smiles and feathery brown eyelashes. "It's Celtic, isn't it? The cross?"
He manages to nod, and turns his face away. Hopefully she interprets it as shyness. An accident, really. He'd gotten caught in the rainstorm, and it was just a coincidence that he was walking through her neighbourhood. She'd seen him from her window and invited him up so he could wait it out and offered to throw his sodden shirt in the dryer for him.
Noel stares into the cream-flecked brown surface of the hot cocoa she'd pushed into his hands, at the cheerful row of African violets in terra-cotta pots lining the windowsill, at the somewhat incongruous choice of Automobile Quarterly magazine on the coffee table next to a Better Homes and Gardens, at anything but Daphne's pretty, frank-featured face. Someone like her wouldn't recognize a mob symbol. Wouldn't need to.
He'd much rather it stayed that way.
Prompter: Kate
Prompt: http://cdnimg.visualizeus.com/thumbs/34/87/quote,destiny,inspirational,quotes,words,gossipgirls-34877c67444c2d9df86c0d0cfc1dd9db_h.jpg
A/N: Spacefic
"Do you believe in destiny?"
They're tranquil for once, the two of them, and in the skies, the stars shine blue and white. Morela shivers slightly, and Newman gruffly plops his coat--worn, in hues of military khaki and olive-drab, rough cotton and smelling of smoke and plain soap-- over her bare shoulders. It's warm and rough as his hands.
Newman glances at the stars, then sidelong at her face as it tilts up towards the heavens. Her chestnut hair glistens under the starlight, spilling over the collar of his coat like satin covering canvas. "Destiny's for those who wait for life to happen. Never had that sort of time on my hands."
"Do you believe that things happen for a reason, then?" Morela asks, eyes still fixed upon the skies rather than his face. "Or are they random, meaningless occurrences?"
"Nothing's meaningless, and most things aren't random," Newman replies, draining the rest of his barley ale in one gulp. They haven't had a moment to themselves since-- that day. He never did take the job from the Wiseman, after all. There were a thousand things that remained unsaid between them, and perhaps no right way and definitely no right time to say any of them. He watches her adjust his coat around her shoulders so that it fits her more securely, and just knows that the next time he puts it on, even if he washes it beforehand, the rosewater scent of her hair will cling to his senses like an embrace, a wish for something that he has no right in wanting.
Hell with this. Reaching over, he tugs the lapels of the coat til she's all but sprawled over him in a ruffled and indignant heap. "I don't believe in destiny," he whispers, dark eyes searing her emerald ones, "because if I did, we'd be doomed."
Prompt: http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g405/LadySodamnice/Erotic%20Black%20and%20White/wpql7e5t8ss.jpg
Prompter: *pets*
A/N: I don't know... some weird sort of M/K thing.
***
She's brought in, veiled and lushly beautiful, with a chain of gold around her waist and stark defiance in her eyes. It's considered a fair exchange-- a gesture of goodwill to Khuzaymah Al-Malik and the High Prince he serves. The handmaids bathe her in orange water and crush jasmine flowers into her sunbeam hair, paint her unsmiling lips the blood-red of poppies and war. Isis is deposited upon a bed draped in damask and covered in exotic furs, bejeweled and perfumed and snarling. Nothing could be more degrading than to be the tribute of the savage Terran princes.
The beaded curtain rattles like her nerves as he walks in, and for the first time, she lays eyes on Khuzaymah Al-Malik, as a man and not a warrior-king of a barbarian world. His eyes are cool, the colour of clouds heavy with rain, and he does not swagger in as Isis had thought he would. He greets her with no more than a polite sort of nod and turns to his reports, his maps. Isis has no choice but to watch, wary and bewildered, as he focuses on his work.
A few hours later, he sends for food from the kitchens, and over a soft silence and the scent of incense, they share a meal of figs and olives, grapes and roast meat. Isis sleeps that night in the fur-lined bed, alone and unscathed, unaware that Al-Malik watches her from his chair, eyes soft and unguarded in their solitude. She dreams of sunshine, of pleasant warm days gone by when she used to run about the gardens of Serenitas with Rhiannon and Kali and Metis, and smiles in her sleep. He watches, enchanted.
One day turns to two, then three. It is on the fourth that she finally speaks, no longer afraid of this tall, austere warrior with stern features and meditative eyes. He asks, she answers. They share another meal over incense and lamplight, and she finds herself feeling vaguely guilty over the dark shadows under his eyes. He has not laid a finger on her. Later, when there is nothing left to tell in a conversation gone soft with the night, she silently slides to one side of the bed, and he raises an eyebrow before lying down next to her. He still keeps his hands to himself, and Khuzaymah does not know that as the moon rises high in the skies above, Isis watches him sleep much as he'd watched her, her fingers hovering over the pulse in his throat, the muscles of his arms. She does not want to wake him with a touch-- she has yet to find the words to explain that.
When he finally touches her, a light brush of rough fingers over a smooth arm, another month has passed, another thirty nights of peaceful sleep, a few hundred quiet conversations later. Isis falls forward, her heart pounding too quickly for her to understand, and closes the space between their faces. In short order they're on the bed with his hands skittering up the smooth skin of her back and her lips parting eagerly underneath his. Isis traces her fingers over his ribs, his back, throws her head back as his lips nip their way down her neck, and moans before pulling him down with her onto the furs.
Love never did come when one expected it, after all.
Prompt: http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/nebulae/ngc2237.jpg
Prompter: *pets*
A/N: Spacefic by *pets*pular demand
***
"So, where are we now?"
Maren has taken to joining him at the bridge, late at night, as the rest of the ship partakes in the sleep cycle. They still have coffee, his black, hers with four cubes of sugar, and he never realised how much he has come to expect her-- look forward to this quarter-hour out of every day-- until two days ago.
They had landed on Gaul, intending on a quick few hours' rest and refuel. The mostly-agricultural moon was tiny, known primarily for its apples and pork, and yet the TERN had landed right in the middle of an inexplicably violent firefight. The quick stop had turned into an impromptu rescue mission, and that night all of them had posted vigil over their newest passenger. Zariel Quigley remained unconscious for twelve hours before coming to, a hot-headed, wild-eyed journalist with a crazy tale and a look of fresh heartbreak. His conspiracy theories about Metaria Enterprises were outrageous, and yet... why else would a battalion of cruisers and battleships have been breaking down the doors of his tiny compound?
Right now, for the first time since they'd taken on their troubled, distraught refugee, Kaz is alone with Maren. Both she and Jace had been very eager to listen to Zariel's tale, and he just knows that behind those sad, fathomless blue eyes, there are secrets underneath the surface that he has yet to scratch, tears that she will never publically shed.
But she sips her sweetened coffee right now, curled up in the chair next to his with her bare feet tucked underneath her and her hair a golden fleece flowing over a plain white shift, and Kaz has never wished so hard that things were different-- for her, for him. For all of them.
So instead, he drains his coffee, sets down the cup. "We're passing the Sinanne-5 Nebula, Kochana," he tells her softly. "It will be a few days before we're by any inhabitable planets or moons."
"What does it look like?" Maren asks, her voice a whisper. Her sightless eyes are affixed upon the vast, dazzling cloud of stars visible within the viewscreen, and Kaz aches for her. He's not a man of many words, and he would never describe himself as poetic.
"It's bright, far too many stars for anyone to count," he murmurs. "They range from the very hot to the relatively cold, in colours from bright blue to dusky red. It almost looks like a cloud, all mist and glow. Gold like your hair and blue like your eyes."
Maren smiles in a way that is wholly feminine, almost knowing, but her cheeks pink under the overhead lights.
Prompt: "Both were fascinated with prostitution and perversity. Both distrusted sleep, fearing it as death’s mirror. Both hated being alone."
Prompter: Teh BAMF
A/N: The, uh, what is this I don't even ficverse?
***
"Where did you come from originally? Russia? Germany?"
Konstantin does not have the habit of making idle conversation in his line of work. Even now, in the long, boring hours of waiting, he prefers to be silent and watchful, back against the pitted brick and eyes fixed upon the quiet street. The blonde vixen with the wildflower honey voice and the deft fingers of a pickpocket chooses, instead, to lounge indolently against the alley wall, pouty lips cupping the filter of a menthol cigarette and leaving scarlet smudges of lipstick like blood on white paper. He knows that the levity of her manner disguises her inherent cunning and deadliness, but can't bring himself to be overly friendly.
"Czech Republic," he answers shortly, sparing her one glance. "Why?"
"I like to get to know people, and our friend won't be out for another two hours, fourteen minutes," Jessamine smiles graciously and sardonically, blowing a smoke ring that haloes briefly over her head before dissolving. She's definitely no angel, and in these condemned streets, in her low-cut blouse and thigh-high boots, she blends in with the streetwalkers almost flawlessly. Konstantin sometimes wonders at her chameleonish ability to play so many roles-- from socialite to whore to ingenue to warrior and all the way back in blinks of the eye-- but thinking too hard would make him wonder who the real Jessamine was, and what she was like.
That was not his business.
"I doubt he will be prompt to the minute," he says in an indifferent tone. "He has a very important deal to complete if he wishes to keep his head. Such things take time."
"He knows that, which is why it's meticulously planned," Jessamine takes one last inhale, then crushes the cigarette butt into a smear in the pavement. Her eyes shine blue and amused in the shadows. "El Rey does not stand on ceremony. He's a man of habits." She quirks an eyebrow at Konstantin, all sunny guilelessness like a child lying blithely to a Sunday School teacher, "We can wager on it if you'd like."
"No." The very idea is silly. "We wait."
"This sure beats falling asleep to late-night television and a tryptophan coma after a too-starchy microwave dinner," Jessamine says cheerfully, slanting a long-lashed glance at the side of his face as though he'd believe her capable of such a mundane civilian existence when not out in the field. "What say you?"
He does not like to spend his nights in the tiny set of rooms, alone with his thoughts, either. But he feels sure that his motivations differ from her own, as well as his habits. Not that it mattered as long as she managed to hold her idle conversations and keep her watch at the same time. "You would probably rather be out, at a club, at a party, maybe."
She smiles; he has always before made scrupulously sure to keep all conversation strictly related to the job, the target, the syndicate. It's gratifying to get even a sliver of response out of him, but she knows better than to mention it. "Are you trying to tell me that this isn't a party for you, darling? I must be losing my touch."
Prompter: Apsara
Prompt: http://-fuckyeahmoviequotes-.tumblr.com/post/4478131428
A/N: Same 'verse as the one above it
BUSINESS BRISK STOP HOPE YOU ARE WELL AND ENJOYING BIMINI STOP A SENDS HER REGARDS STOP.
The telegram comes in at noon-- such an antiquated device-- but then again, hereabouts, there is no broadband, no cell phone service, and even the landline only worked sporadically. The weather is glorious and the cabin, if rustic, is picturesque, peaceful.
Zane has not seen a memo or a brief in thirteen months. The monthly telegram from Darien is just about the only connection he has to the rest of the world any more. This month he is in Bimini. The last, he was in Puerto Rico. There is a boarding pass on a private plane, due to depart the islands for Alexandria, in twenty-six days.
The sun streams through the open window, warm on slim, bare feet tanned butterscotch in bright sun without business loafers, illuminating the dark gold of his hair. It's definitely too long for fashion now, too long for business.
The sea is visible outside, tranquil blue, fathomless, and Zane sighs. It's beautiful and steadfast, the same colour as someone's eyes. Someone lost to him now, possibly forever, who lived and worked by the sea thousands of miles away where it was not so tranquil. He did not have a choice in leaving, in vanishing, in being on the move now.
But the monthly telegrams are salt in a festering wound, which may halfway be Darien's intention. Zane clenches his hands around the slip of paper, wishes for a cigarette-if-only-he-hadn't-quit-because-she-wouldn't-kiss-a-smoker, and wonders, not for the first time, when redemption would come.
Prompt: http://fuckyeahliteraryquotes.tumblr.com/post/5096490365/its-wrong-what-they-say-about-the-past-ive
Prompter: *pets*
A/N: Same ficverse as Patrol and Missing
"I like your tattoo," she says, ingenuous smiles and feathery brown eyelashes. "It's Celtic, isn't it? The cross?"
He manages to nod, and turns his face away. Hopefully she interprets it as shyness. An accident, really. He'd gotten caught in the rainstorm, and it was just a coincidence that he was walking through her neighbourhood. She'd seen him from her window and invited him up so he could wait it out and offered to throw his sodden shirt in the dryer for him.
Noel stares into the cream-flecked brown surface of the hot cocoa she'd pushed into his hands, at the cheerful row of African violets in terra-cotta pots lining the windowsill, at the somewhat incongruous choice of Automobile Quarterly magazine on the coffee table next to a Better Homes and Gardens, at anything but Daphne's pretty, frank-featured face. Someone like her wouldn't recognize a mob symbol. Wouldn't need to.
He'd much rather it stayed that way.
Prompter: Kate
Prompt: http://cdnimg.visualizeus.com/thumbs/34/87/quote,destiny,inspirational,quotes,words,gossipgirls-34877c67444c2d9df86c0d0cfc1dd9db_h.jpg
A/N: Spacefic
"Do you believe in destiny?"
They're tranquil for once, the two of them, and in the skies, the stars shine blue and white. Morela shivers slightly, and Newman gruffly plops his coat--worn, in hues of military khaki and olive-drab, rough cotton and smelling of smoke and plain soap-- over her bare shoulders. It's warm and rough as his hands.
Newman glances at the stars, then sidelong at her face as it tilts up towards the heavens. Her chestnut hair glistens under the starlight, spilling over the collar of his coat like satin covering canvas. "Destiny's for those who wait for life to happen. Never had that sort of time on my hands."
"Do you believe that things happen for a reason, then?" Morela asks, eyes still fixed upon the skies rather than his face. "Or are they random, meaningless occurrences?"
"Nothing's meaningless, and most things aren't random," Newman replies, draining the rest of his barley ale in one gulp. They haven't had a moment to themselves since-- that day. He never did take the job from the Wiseman, after all. There were a thousand things that remained unsaid between them, and perhaps no right way and definitely no right time to say any of them. He watches her adjust his coat around her shoulders so that it fits her more securely, and just knows that the next time he puts it on, even if he washes it beforehand, the rosewater scent of her hair will cling to his senses like an embrace, a wish for something that he has no right in wanting.
Hell with this. Reaching over, he tugs the lapels of the coat til she's all but sprawled over him in a ruffled and indignant heap. "I don't believe in destiny," he whispers, dark eyes searing her emerald ones, "because if I did, we'd be doomed."
Prompt: http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g405/LadySodamnice/Erotic%20Black%20and%20White/wpql7e5t8ss.jpg
Prompter: *pets*
A/N: I don't know... some weird sort of M/K thing.
***
She's brought in, veiled and lushly beautiful, with a chain of gold around her waist and stark defiance in her eyes. It's considered a fair exchange-- a gesture of goodwill to Khuzaymah Al-Malik and the High Prince he serves. The handmaids bathe her in orange water and crush jasmine flowers into her sunbeam hair, paint her unsmiling lips the blood-red of poppies and war. Isis is deposited upon a bed draped in damask and covered in exotic furs, bejeweled and perfumed and snarling. Nothing could be more degrading than to be the tribute of the savage Terran princes.
The beaded curtain rattles like her nerves as he walks in, and for the first time, she lays eyes on Khuzaymah Al-Malik, as a man and not a warrior-king of a barbarian world. His eyes are cool, the colour of clouds heavy with rain, and he does not swagger in as Isis had thought he would. He greets her with no more than a polite sort of nod and turns to his reports, his maps. Isis has no choice but to watch, wary and bewildered, as he focuses on his work.
A few hours later, he sends for food from the kitchens, and over a soft silence and the scent of incense, they share a meal of figs and olives, grapes and roast meat. Isis sleeps that night in the fur-lined bed, alone and unscathed, unaware that Al-Malik watches her from his chair, eyes soft and unguarded in their solitude. She dreams of sunshine, of pleasant warm days gone by when she used to run about the gardens of Serenitas with Rhiannon and Kali and Metis, and smiles in her sleep. He watches, enchanted.
One day turns to two, then three. It is on the fourth that she finally speaks, no longer afraid of this tall, austere warrior with stern features and meditative eyes. He asks, she answers. They share another meal over incense and lamplight, and she finds herself feeling vaguely guilty over the dark shadows under his eyes. He has not laid a finger on her. Later, when there is nothing left to tell in a conversation gone soft with the night, she silently slides to one side of the bed, and he raises an eyebrow before lying down next to her. He still keeps his hands to himself, and Khuzaymah does not know that as the moon rises high in the skies above, Isis watches him sleep much as he'd watched her, her fingers hovering over the pulse in his throat, the muscles of his arms. She does not want to wake him with a touch-- she has yet to find the words to explain that.
When he finally touches her, a light brush of rough fingers over a smooth arm, another month has passed, another thirty nights of peaceful sleep, a few hundred quiet conversations later. Isis falls forward, her heart pounding too quickly for her to understand, and closes the space between their faces. In short order they're on the bed with his hands skittering up the smooth skin of her back and her lips parting eagerly underneath his. Isis traces her fingers over his ribs, his back, throws her head back as his lips nip their way down her neck, and moans before pulling him down with her onto the furs.
Love never did come when one expected it, after all.