On the third day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
three alerting cries
[Title] Warnings in Dreamscapes
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Chell still dreams about where she used to be.
For a long time, after she was out, she dreamt of being back in. That didn’t surprise her. It was all she’d known for an untold length of time, and she had no memories from before it; what else could she make dreams from? Those dreams weren’t always nightmares. Sometimes they were; sometimes she was slipping and falling, or she was about to put a foot wrong, or she was falling into fire and woke up with her face feeling hot as if she had been staring into flames - but other times she was just there, she was walking through a corridor crawling with vines, or she was waiting in a room that looked like a hotel, or she was opening a portal, and diving into it, and flying. Sometimes there were voices that she remembered. Sometimes she was choosing what to do to them. She never dreamed about any of her choices being different.
For a long time, after she was out, she was still on her own. That wasn’t exactly a choice. First there were no people around, there was just her, walking, and sleeping in empty houses or fields at night, and dreaming. Eventually, she came to a city, and she supposed that there would be people there, but she kept out of their way for a long time. She doesn’t remember deciding to do that, but when she thinks about it, it made sense. People can leave messages on the walls and you can decide whether to trust those, but then when they talk to you, you have to decide whether to trust those words as well, and she has had to make a lot of those decisions. And that was only with a few beings. She can’t just dive into having make dozens of those choices every day. You practise, you watch, you learn the puzzles, and then when your life depends on it, hopefully you’ve learnt enough. Hopefully.
Now, a long time after she was out, she has let people talk to her, even if she didn’t (couldn’t?) talk back to them, and if she never said I trust you, she has at least allowed them to lead her to safety, or share their rations with her, or tell her the stories of what had happened while she’d been underground. After that, the dreams changed. She still dreams about being back there, but now the people she’s decided to trust are with her. She’s still the only person who knew this place, the person who had to practise and watch and solve the puzzles. Nearly always, the people she trusts don’t know enough, or she hasn’t told them enough. Nearly always, they’re the ones who are about to slip and fall, or put a foot wrong, or step into the flames. She tries to cry out and warn them, but she never can, because down there, when she’d been alone, it had been much better not to speak at all. She tries to cry out, but she stays silent. That’s as bad as the dreams where she died herself. Sooner or later, she knows, she’ll need to decide to speak again. Then, when someone’s life depends on it, hopefully she’ll be able to. Hopefully.
[Title] Magic Missile
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Gum rescues Beat from helicopters.
It happens before Gum realises it is. She’s grinding down the crash barrier, Beat’s tagging up the fence nearby all chill like he’s out for a pleasant evening walk, she sees the chopper out of the corner of her eye, and then she’s hearing herself yelling, “Look out -” and at the same time she’s hurled herself forward, off the barrier, grabbed him, and thrown them both off the embankment, through one of those unfenced gaps Kogane-cho has because health and safety is for losers, and -
They hit the ground and it knocks all the breath out of her and before that, or after, she hears the explosion as the missile obliterates the fence and whatever Beat had been painting on it.
Somehow they’re up on their feet and dashing into one of the narrow alleyways lined with rubbish and creaky air-con units. The air’s thick and smelly and the shadows are dark and could be hiding any number of rats, crows or axe murderers, but they’re also great at hiding rudies from police helicopters, and above her the chopper circles and then buzzes off, evidently figuring just taking out a chunk of Kogane’s residential district is going too far, even for Onishima.
She and Beat are sort of clutching each other and gasping for breath like holy shit, that just happened, but after a bit, they both start laughing, like, holy shit, that actually did just happen.
“Well,” Beat says, eventually, “I picked the right team to join up with. You were in there like boom. Push me out of the way of a missile like it ain’t no big deal.”
Gum tries to shrug, but she can feel she’s grinning like a dork, which is probably ruining the too-cool-for-school vibe she’s trying to project. “You know it. Clearly I’m taking this gang thing seriously.”
They’re still sort of hugging each other. Gum wonders if she should let go. With most guys, they’d figure you were propositioning them for a quickie in the alley. Except Tab, of course, but Tab’s been her best friend since she was old enough to remember, they’re constantly smacking each other across the head or leaning against each other or grabbing each other’s arms. Or, she supposes, dragging each other out of the way of missiles, no way today isn’t going to repeat itself given the way police brutality is going.
It’s Beat who coughs and says, “Um, we’re hugging. Are we a gang who hug? We don’t have to be a gang who hug.”
“Yeah, don’t commit me to mandatory hugs,” Gum says. She steps back now, starts brushing the grime off her dress. There’s going to be a wicked bruise where she landed. “We don’t know what kind of weirdos are going to fetch up with us. I’m not an equal-opportunity hugger, okay, I just hug Tab, and… guess I hug you.” She kind of hadn’t meant to say that, but -
The thing is, she finds a lot of people annoying, but even though she hasn’t known Beat anything like as long as Tab, it’s… like the opposite. Which she figures means she... genuinely likes him? Just, he’s such a dork, and he was like hey, thanks when she showed him how to pull some moves and sounded like he meant it, and he’s just - he just seems like a guy who’s pleasant to be around.
And he shows it now, because he doesn’t make a dirty remark, he just says, she can hear him smiling, “If only when we both nearly die?”
“That’s probably still gonna make it happen every other day,” she says. “Let’s get up there. Get some tagging done before the cops come back.”
[Title] Spring
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Ide considers asking Matsuda out on a date (as requested by
still_lycoris)
It’s a very long time since Ide has asked anyone out on a date. He actually can’t remember the last time it happened. It was probably in college. It was probably at Aizawa’s insistence. He was probably half-hearted about it. Certainly for most of his professional life he’s been legitimately too busy to think about that kind of thing, and if that means he still hasn’t got married, well, that hardly seems a great loss.
But on the other hand, he is now hopelessly out of practice at how one actually does go about asking someone on a date. Which is unfortunate, now that -
Well. No. He isn’t considering asking anyone out.
It’s a cool spring day and the sky is bright blue and Matsuda is walking back to the car with a coffee in each hand and it is just because it’s the kind of day when you feel like you can do anything. Matsuda has reached him, hands him one of the coffees, takes the lid off the other. “Hey, hang on,” he’s saying, “Wait, you’ve got the wrong one -” He puts the open coffee on the roof of the car. “Sorry, I forgot which hand was left for a moment -”
He isn’t considering asking anyone out, least of all a colleague, which has always seemed to him an entirely too risky choice. Matsuda is his friend (he supposes; they seem to have ended up that way after five years on a nightmare case that culminated in a traumatic experience of near-death and betrayal), and his colleague, and male, and idiotic much of the time, and quiet and sad about the Kira case even now, over a year after it ended, and there are any number of reasons why it wouldn’t be a good idea to ask him out, not least because Ide doesn’t even know where to start.
And yet. Last year, they could both have died within moments of each other. Last year they found out they’d been being led wrong all this time. Not to mention the knowledge of the gods of death watching them from some unspecified other realm and the life spans hanging over everyone’s head.
“What did you buy yourself this time?” he says instead.
“Caramel latte. It’s all right, yours is plain black as usual.”
Ide is not going to ask Matsuda out because he doesn’t even know where to start, but perhaps on another day like this, he might work it out.
three alerting cries
[Title] Warnings in Dreamscapes
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Chell still dreams about where she used to be.
For a long time, after she was out, she dreamt of being back in. That didn’t surprise her. It was all she’d known for an untold length of time, and she had no memories from before it; what else could she make dreams from? Those dreams weren’t always nightmares. Sometimes they were; sometimes she was slipping and falling, or she was about to put a foot wrong, or she was falling into fire and woke up with her face feeling hot as if she had been staring into flames - but other times she was just there, she was walking through a corridor crawling with vines, or she was waiting in a room that looked like a hotel, or she was opening a portal, and diving into it, and flying. Sometimes there were voices that she remembered. Sometimes she was choosing what to do to them. She never dreamed about any of her choices being different.
For a long time, after she was out, she was still on her own. That wasn’t exactly a choice. First there were no people around, there was just her, walking, and sleeping in empty houses or fields at night, and dreaming. Eventually, she came to a city, and she supposed that there would be people there, but she kept out of their way for a long time. She doesn’t remember deciding to do that, but when she thinks about it, it made sense. People can leave messages on the walls and you can decide whether to trust those, but then when they talk to you, you have to decide whether to trust those words as well, and she has had to make a lot of those decisions. And that was only with a few beings. She can’t just dive into having make dozens of those choices every day. You practise, you watch, you learn the puzzles, and then when your life depends on it, hopefully you’ve learnt enough. Hopefully.
Now, a long time after she was out, she has let people talk to her, even if she didn’t (couldn’t?) talk back to them, and if she never said I trust you, she has at least allowed them to lead her to safety, or share their rations with her, or tell her the stories of what had happened while she’d been underground. After that, the dreams changed. She still dreams about being back there, but now the people she’s decided to trust are with her. She’s still the only person who knew this place, the person who had to practise and watch and solve the puzzles. Nearly always, the people she trusts don’t know enough, or she hasn’t told them enough. Nearly always, they’re the ones who are about to slip and fall, or put a foot wrong, or step into the flames. She tries to cry out and warn them, but she never can, because down there, when she’d been alone, it had been much better not to speak at all. She tries to cry out, but she stays silent. That’s as bad as the dreams where she died herself. Sooner or later, she knows, she’ll need to decide to speak again. Then, when someone’s life depends on it, hopefully she’ll be able to. Hopefully.
[Title] Magic Missile
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Gum rescues Beat from helicopters.
It happens before Gum realises it is. She’s grinding down the crash barrier, Beat’s tagging up the fence nearby all chill like he’s out for a pleasant evening walk, she sees the chopper out of the corner of her eye, and then she’s hearing herself yelling, “Look out -” and at the same time she’s hurled herself forward, off the barrier, grabbed him, and thrown them both off the embankment, through one of those unfenced gaps Kogane-cho has because health and safety is for losers, and -
They hit the ground and it knocks all the breath out of her and before that, or after, she hears the explosion as the missile obliterates the fence and whatever Beat had been painting on it.
Somehow they’re up on their feet and dashing into one of the narrow alleyways lined with rubbish and creaky air-con units. The air’s thick and smelly and the shadows are dark and could be hiding any number of rats, crows or axe murderers, but they’re also great at hiding rudies from police helicopters, and above her the chopper circles and then buzzes off, evidently figuring just taking out a chunk of Kogane’s residential district is going too far, even for Onishima.
She and Beat are sort of clutching each other and gasping for breath like holy shit, that just happened, but after a bit, they both start laughing, like, holy shit, that actually did just happen.
“Well,” Beat says, eventually, “I picked the right team to join up with. You were in there like boom. Push me out of the way of a missile like it ain’t no big deal.”
Gum tries to shrug, but she can feel she’s grinning like a dork, which is probably ruining the too-cool-for-school vibe she’s trying to project. “You know it. Clearly I’m taking this gang thing seriously.”
They’re still sort of hugging each other. Gum wonders if she should let go. With most guys, they’d figure you were propositioning them for a quickie in the alley. Except Tab, of course, but Tab’s been her best friend since she was old enough to remember, they’re constantly smacking each other across the head or leaning against each other or grabbing each other’s arms. Or, she supposes, dragging each other out of the way of missiles, no way today isn’t going to repeat itself given the way police brutality is going.
It’s Beat who coughs and says, “Um, we’re hugging. Are we a gang who hug? We don’t have to be a gang who hug.”
“Yeah, don’t commit me to mandatory hugs,” Gum says. She steps back now, starts brushing the grime off her dress. There’s going to be a wicked bruise where she landed. “We don’t know what kind of weirdos are going to fetch up with us. I’m not an equal-opportunity hugger, okay, I just hug Tab, and… guess I hug you.” She kind of hadn’t meant to say that, but -
The thing is, she finds a lot of people annoying, but even though she hasn’t known Beat anything like as long as Tab, it’s… like the opposite. Which she figures means she... genuinely likes him? Just, he’s such a dork, and he was like hey, thanks when she showed him how to pull some moves and sounded like he meant it, and he’s just - he just seems like a guy who’s pleasant to be around.
And he shows it now, because he doesn’t make a dirty remark, he just says, she can hear him smiling, “If only when we both nearly die?”
“That’s probably still gonna make it happen every other day,” she says. “Let’s get up there. Get some tagging done before the cops come back.”
[Title] Spring
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Ide considers asking Matsuda out on a date (as requested by
still_lycoris)
It’s a very long time since Ide has asked anyone out on a date. He actually can’t remember the last time it happened. It was probably in college. It was probably at Aizawa’s insistence. He was probably half-hearted about it. Certainly for most of his professional life he’s been legitimately too busy to think about that kind of thing, and if that means he still hasn’t got married, well, that hardly seems a great loss.
But on the other hand, he is now hopelessly out of practice at how one actually does go about asking someone on a date. Which is unfortunate, now that -
Well. No. He isn’t considering asking anyone out.
It’s a cool spring day and the sky is bright blue and Matsuda is walking back to the car with a coffee in each hand and it is just because it’s the kind of day when you feel like you can do anything. Matsuda has reached him, hands him one of the coffees, takes the lid off the other. “Hey, hang on,” he’s saying, “Wait, you’ve got the wrong one -” He puts the open coffee on the roof of the car. “Sorry, I forgot which hand was left for a moment -”
He isn’t considering asking anyone out, least of all a colleague, which has always seemed to him an entirely too risky choice. Matsuda is his friend (he supposes; they seem to have ended up that way after five years on a nightmare case that culminated in a traumatic experience of near-death and betrayal), and his colleague, and male, and idiotic much of the time, and quiet and sad about the Kira case even now, over a year after it ended, and there are any number of reasons why it wouldn’t be a good idea to ask him out, not least because Ide doesn’t even know where to start.
And yet. Last year, they could both have died within moments of each other. Last year they found out they’d been being led wrong all this time. Not to mention the knowledge of the gods of death watching them from some unspecified other realm and the life spans hanging over everyone’s head.
“What did you buy yourself this time?” he says instead.
“Caramel latte. It’s all right, yours is plain black as usual.”
Ide is not going to ask Matsuda out because he doesn’t even know where to start, but perhaps on another day like this, he might work it out.