the sea of many prompts
Many, many Zephy prompts. So many prompts. I guess I'll post them by fandom? Why not.
These are the Arakawa prompts. The first one was meant to be Ed and Al, but then turned out to be Trisha, idk. And the last one is too long and I didn't even try to explain how the Ryuukou/Taitou came to be. Which is a shame, because I'm sure it was hilarious.
Fullmetal Alchemist, Ed and Al: children, wallpaper, sticker
She’d never thought she wanted children until she had them. Children were loud and messy and...sticky. How did they always get sticky anyway? Or was that one of those things it was best not to know?
No, she'd never wanted children, and she'd resented pregnancy more than she’d ever admitted-the sheer discomfort of it (her ankles, her back), the stretching, the random cravings; she’d hated all of it.
But she'd never said a word to Van. She'd never even hinted, because if she had, she knew she would have woken one morning to find she wasn't pregnant, after all.
She did hate pregnancy, but...she couldn't stand the thought of not seeing it through. Was it curiosity? Who was this little person making her life agony, anyway? What would someone who was a mix of her and Van become? She was surprised by how much she wanted to know. Maybe it was some mothering instinct belatedly coming into play.
Whatever it was, she’d never regretted it once Edward opened his baby-blue eyes and looked up at her. It undoubtedly said something about her personality that her baby had endeared himself to her by staring at her with suspicious hostility.
Those eyes had slowly lightened to gold, but the look in them had never changed. He was seven years old now, slumped in a chair next to his brother, waiting to see Dr. Milton for his annual checkup. Still suspicious and hostile.
Alphonse was a much more gentle child. Right now, he was carefully removing a sticker from Dr. Milton's wallpaper. Edward would never dream of doing Dr. Milton a favor; he was convinced Dr. Milton had it in for him. He was convinced half the world had it in for him.
She'd worried about Al's gentleness when the boys were younger. She'd worried that Ed would walk all over him; that his spirit would be crushed. She needn't have worried. Al was her child as much as Ed was Van's. Now she worried that Ed never did anything that wasn’t somehow Al’s suggestion.
Al was getting nowhere with that sticker, and Ed couldn't stand it. He always was more impatient. He produced a stick of their ubiquitous chalk and leaned into Al. They had a murmured debate, then Ed passed the chalk to Al, Al drew an array, Ed touched it...
Where there had been a sticker, there was now a folded flower made of sticker-material, which fell into Al's waiting hands.
"Here, Mama!" Al said happily, passing the flower to her with awkward care. "We made it for you!" Ed peeked shyly from behind Al to see if she was pleased. It was the only time Ed was ever shy; when he was trying to make someone happy, and wasn’t at all sure he knew how.
"It's beautiful, Alphonse, Edward." They grinned identical pleased grins. Her sons, who were always happiest when she was happy.
It was just as well Fate didn’t ask people what they thought they wanted.
Fullmetal Alchemist, Al (any timeline): kitten, shoe, metal, nose
Alphonse Elric was waiting for his brother to wake up.
He'd calculated, once, the percentage of his life spent this way. He forgot the exact number, maybe because it hurt to think about, but it was very nearly forty. Ed slept a lot. Almost half of his life from the age of ten, Al had spent waiting for his brother.
If there were deeper meanings in that, he carefully didn't think about them.
He knew he should research while his brother slept. He knew that if Ed were the one who never slept, that's what he would do. But Ed was dedicated, focused, obsessed...possibly insane. Al needed a break sometimes. Ed got to sleep, didn't he? Al was a big hunk of metal that couldn't sleep; he deserved breaks.
Well, he probably didn't, actually, but he took them anyway.
Sometimes he went for walks, though he'd never told his worrywart brother. Sometimes he just sat and thought, or maybe read fiction-not alchemy, not biology, fiction. Tonight he was playing with a kitten. Playing with kittens was his favorite, even if he did wonder where the kittens belonged and whether it was really safe to leave them in whatever horrible, cold alley he'd found them.
But he couldn't have a kitten. He knew that. His brother was right.
This one was an especially cute kitten. It clearly thought it was the toughest beast in all of Central. Right now it was viciously attacking an abandoned shoe.
When Al had first walked into the alley, the kitten had thought he was trying to take away its shoe, and had growled and spit and hissed. This despite the fact that Al was about two hundred times its size.
There was something comfortingly familiar about it.
He let the kitten attack the shoe until it lost interest, then reached out to it. It ignored him. He pulled his hand back. After a pause to establish that this was entirely the kitten's own idea and nothing to do with Al, it strutted over to him, climbed up his knees, planted its feet on his chest plate, and pushed its nose to his.
He wondered what he smelled like to a cat. Like steel and oil and Ed, probably.
Cats didn't like Ed. Made sense. Cats generally don't like other cats.
Whatever he smelled like, the kitten found him acceptable. It curled into a ball on his knee (which looked really uncomfortable) and started purring like a motorboat.
He’d tried to explain to Ed why he loved cats, but he never got anywhere. “They’re adorable,” he said, which was true, but not complete.
“That one’s not adorable,” Ed had said once, pointing from a safe distance to the hissing kitten in Al’s hands. It kept taking a swipe at him when he got close. “That one’s just a tiny ball of rage.” Which took a lot of nerve, considering.
"My brother is an idiot," he whispered to the kitten, scratching its chin. The kitten purred.
Juushin Enbu (Hero Tales), Ryuukou/Taitou (any timeline - as best you can): stick, caravan, sword, blisters
The tapping was going to drive Ryuukou truly insane.
He'd flirted with insanity before, but this was going to be no flirt. This was going to be the real thing, complete with frothing at the mouth and tearing of the hair. This was going to be entirely Taitou's fault.
Taitou, oblivious, continued tapping a stick against the side of the wagon.
"Taitou, knock that off before I kill you!" came the shout from inside the wagon.
Of course. The scream at him until he stops solution hadn't actually occurred to Ryuukou, but it was second nature to Laila.
Taitou scowled and dropped the stick. "Fuck off! What the hell are you doing sitting in there anyway? Get off your ass and come train with me!"
"You had me swinging that stupid sword until I had blisters, Taitou! I'm not touching it again until they're gone, so forget it!"
"How do you think you're going to get better if you can't handle a little pain?"
"How do you think I'm going to get better if I get my hand infected and die of gangrene, stupid!?"
Ryuukou tried to look blank and uninvolved, in the hope that when the rest of the caravan turned on them and killed them out of sheer irritation, they would spare him.
It worked about as well as it always did. As soon as the bickering stopped, Taitou wandered over to bump Ryuukou's shoulder and complain bitterly about his insane sister. Ryuukou could feel the judgment of everyone around, the collective conclusion: "Ah, so you're responsible for them."
No. Please, I'm just the closest victim.
"Anyway, at least you're on my side," Taitou said, shifting in his abrupt way from sulkiness to demented cheer.
"You know I won't take sides between you and your sister," Ryuukou said firmly. "I made that very clear when we started all this...this." This total fucking insanity, to put in Taitou-terms.
"What kind of lover are you?" Taitou huffed. Somehow the word lover became more terrifying every time he used it. "You're obviously supposed to defend me from crazy sisters."
"Keep your voice down!" Ryuukou hissed. "And I don't see you defending me from Linmei!"
"Well, no," Taitou admitted, grinning a guilty little grin that Ryuukou refused to find adorable. "That's because it's really funny."
Ryuukou made a despairing noise.
"It's not like Linmei would try to steal you from me on the sly or something. That's not her style. Swords at dawn, maybe." Taitou looked away, briefly unreadable, then turned back with a grin. "Anyway, I can’t blame her. You are pretty freaking awesome."
This was more terrifying than being called lover.
"You only say that because you're biased," Ryuukou muttered uncomfortably.
"Huh, I'm biased now," Taitou replied, taking his usual sadistic pleasure in causing embarrassment. "But I wasn't biased back when I won."
Horror. This was definitely horror. "Won?"
"Oh, yeah, it was a total catfight. You missed it. You were off somewhere, I forget."
"It was excellent," Laila said, sticking her head out of the wagon. "They broke a cow."
"You're lying," Ryuukou insisted through the haze of mortification. "You can't break cows, that's not the correct term. I don’t see how that could be. Taitou wouldn't. Anyway, Linmei wouldn't. It doesn't make sense and it couldn't have happened. Ryuushou would never have let it happen."
"He was laughing too hard to stop it, actually," Laila reflected fondly.
"Don't worry about it," Taitou said in a would-be consoling tone, patting his head just as if they weren't in public where anyone could see and come to the correct conclusion. "You really are gonna make yourself bald, and that'll be a lousy look for you."
Ryuukou wished Taitou had just kept tapping. If he had, Ryuukou would be insane already, and he wouldn't have to think about any of this. Nor would he have to wonder what Housei was doing on top of the wagon with what looked very like fireworks but had better not be.
Taitou was wrong. The stress wasn't going to make him bald, it was going to kill him.
These are the Arakawa prompts. The first one was meant to be Ed and Al, but then turned out to be Trisha, idk. And the last one is too long and I didn't even try to explain how the Ryuukou/Taitou came to be. Which is a shame, because I'm sure it was hilarious.
Fullmetal Alchemist, Ed and Al: children, wallpaper, sticker
She’d never thought she wanted children until she had them. Children were loud and messy and...sticky. How did they always get sticky anyway? Or was that one of those things it was best not to know?
No, she'd never wanted children, and she'd resented pregnancy more than she’d ever admitted-the sheer discomfort of it (her ankles, her back), the stretching, the random cravings; she’d hated all of it.
But she'd never said a word to Van. She'd never even hinted, because if she had, she knew she would have woken one morning to find she wasn't pregnant, after all.
She did hate pregnancy, but...she couldn't stand the thought of not seeing it through. Was it curiosity? Who was this little person making her life agony, anyway? What would someone who was a mix of her and Van become? She was surprised by how much she wanted to know. Maybe it was some mothering instinct belatedly coming into play.
Whatever it was, she’d never regretted it once Edward opened his baby-blue eyes and looked up at her. It undoubtedly said something about her personality that her baby had endeared himself to her by staring at her with suspicious hostility.
Those eyes had slowly lightened to gold, but the look in them had never changed. He was seven years old now, slumped in a chair next to his brother, waiting to see Dr. Milton for his annual checkup. Still suspicious and hostile.
Alphonse was a much more gentle child. Right now, he was carefully removing a sticker from Dr. Milton's wallpaper. Edward would never dream of doing Dr. Milton a favor; he was convinced Dr. Milton had it in for him. He was convinced half the world had it in for him.
She'd worried about Al's gentleness when the boys were younger. She'd worried that Ed would walk all over him; that his spirit would be crushed. She needn't have worried. Al was her child as much as Ed was Van's. Now she worried that Ed never did anything that wasn’t somehow Al’s suggestion.
Al was getting nowhere with that sticker, and Ed couldn't stand it. He always was more impatient. He produced a stick of their ubiquitous chalk and leaned into Al. They had a murmured debate, then Ed passed the chalk to Al, Al drew an array, Ed touched it...
Where there had been a sticker, there was now a folded flower made of sticker-material, which fell into Al's waiting hands.
"Here, Mama!" Al said happily, passing the flower to her with awkward care. "We made it for you!" Ed peeked shyly from behind Al to see if she was pleased. It was the only time Ed was ever shy; when he was trying to make someone happy, and wasn’t at all sure he knew how.
"It's beautiful, Alphonse, Edward." They grinned identical pleased grins. Her sons, who were always happiest when she was happy.
It was just as well Fate didn’t ask people what they thought they wanted.
Fullmetal Alchemist, Al (any timeline): kitten, shoe, metal, nose
Alphonse Elric was waiting for his brother to wake up.
He'd calculated, once, the percentage of his life spent this way. He forgot the exact number, maybe because it hurt to think about, but it was very nearly forty. Ed slept a lot. Almost half of his life from the age of ten, Al had spent waiting for his brother.
If there were deeper meanings in that, he carefully didn't think about them.
He knew he should research while his brother slept. He knew that if Ed were the one who never slept, that's what he would do. But Ed was dedicated, focused, obsessed...possibly insane. Al needed a break sometimes. Ed got to sleep, didn't he? Al was a big hunk of metal that couldn't sleep; he deserved breaks.
Well, he probably didn't, actually, but he took them anyway.
Sometimes he went for walks, though he'd never told his worrywart brother. Sometimes he just sat and thought, or maybe read fiction-not alchemy, not biology, fiction. Tonight he was playing with a kitten. Playing with kittens was his favorite, even if he did wonder where the kittens belonged and whether it was really safe to leave them in whatever horrible, cold alley he'd found them.
But he couldn't have a kitten. He knew that. His brother was right.
This one was an especially cute kitten. It clearly thought it was the toughest beast in all of Central. Right now it was viciously attacking an abandoned shoe.
When Al had first walked into the alley, the kitten had thought he was trying to take away its shoe, and had growled and spit and hissed. This despite the fact that Al was about two hundred times its size.
There was something comfortingly familiar about it.
He let the kitten attack the shoe until it lost interest, then reached out to it. It ignored him. He pulled his hand back. After a pause to establish that this was entirely the kitten's own idea and nothing to do with Al, it strutted over to him, climbed up his knees, planted its feet on his chest plate, and pushed its nose to his.
He wondered what he smelled like to a cat. Like steel and oil and Ed, probably.
Cats didn't like Ed. Made sense. Cats generally don't like other cats.
Whatever he smelled like, the kitten found him acceptable. It curled into a ball on his knee (which looked really uncomfortable) and started purring like a motorboat.
He’d tried to explain to Ed why he loved cats, but he never got anywhere. “They’re adorable,” he said, which was true, but not complete.
“That one’s not adorable,” Ed had said once, pointing from a safe distance to the hissing kitten in Al’s hands. It kept taking a swipe at him when he got close. “That one’s just a tiny ball of rage.” Which took a lot of nerve, considering.
"My brother is an idiot," he whispered to the kitten, scratching its chin. The kitten purred.
Juushin Enbu (Hero Tales), Ryuukou/Taitou (any timeline - as best you can): stick, caravan, sword, blisters
The tapping was going to drive Ryuukou truly insane.
He'd flirted with insanity before, but this was going to be no flirt. This was going to be the real thing, complete with frothing at the mouth and tearing of the hair. This was going to be entirely Taitou's fault.
Taitou, oblivious, continued tapping a stick against the side of the wagon.
"Taitou, knock that off before I kill you!" came the shout from inside the wagon.
Of course. The scream at him until he stops solution hadn't actually occurred to Ryuukou, but it was second nature to Laila.
Taitou scowled and dropped the stick. "Fuck off! What the hell are you doing sitting in there anyway? Get off your ass and come train with me!"
"You had me swinging that stupid sword until I had blisters, Taitou! I'm not touching it again until they're gone, so forget it!"
"How do you think you're going to get better if you can't handle a little pain?"
"How do you think I'm going to get better if I get my hand infected and die of gangrene, stupid!?"
Ryuukou tried to look blank and uninvolved, in the hope that when the rest of the caravan turned on them and killed them out of sheer irritation, they would spare him.
It worked about as well as it always did. As soon as the bickering stopped, Taitou wandered over to bump Ryuukou's shoulder and complain bitterly about his insane sister. Ryuukou could feel the judgment of everyone around, the collective conclusion: "Ah, so you're responsible for them."
No. Please, I'm just the closest victim.
"Anyway, at least you're on my side," Taitou said, shifting in his abrupt way from sulkiness to demented cheer.
"You know I won't take sides between you and your sister," Ryuukou said firmly. "I made that very clear when we started all this...this." This total fucking insanity, to put in Taitou-terms.
"What kind of lover are you?" Taitou huffed. Somehow the word lover became more terrifying every time he used it. "You're obviously supposed to defend me from crazy sisters."
"Keep your voice down!" Ryuukou hissed. "And I don't see you defending me from Linmei!"
"Well, no," Taitou admitted, grinning a guilty little grin that Ryuukou refused to find adorable. "That's because it's really funny."
Ryuukou made a despairing noise.
"It's not like Linmei would try to steal you from me on the sly or something. That's not her style. Swords at dawn, maybe." Taitou looked away, briefly unreadable, then turned back with a grin. "Anyway, I can’t blame her. You are pretty freaking awesome."
This was more terrifying than being called lover.
"You only say that because you're biased," Ryuukou muttered uncomfortably.
"Huh, I'm biased now," Taitou replied, taking his usual sadistic pleasure in causing embarrassment. "But I wasn't biased back when I won."
Horror. This was definitely horror. "Won?"
"Oh, yeah, it was a total catfight. You missed it. You were off somewhere, I forget."
"It was excellent," Laila said, sticking her head out of the wagon. "They broke a cow."
"You're lying," Ryuukou insisted through the haze of mortification. "You can't break cows, that's not the correct term. I don’t see how that could be. Taitou wouldn't. Anyway, Linmei wouldn't. It doesn't make sense and it couldn't have happened. Ryuushou would never have let it happen."
"He was laughing too hard to stop it, actually," Laila reflected fondly.
"Don't worry about it," Taitou said in a would-be consoling tone, patting his head just as if they weren't in public where anyone could see and come to the correct conclusion. "You really are gonna make yourself bald, and that'll be a lousy look for you."
Ryuukou wished Taitou had just kept tapping. If he had, Ryuukou would be insane already, and he wouldn't have to think about any of this. Nor would he have to wonder what Housei was doing on top of the wagon with what looked very like fireworks but had better not be.
Taitou was wrong. The stress wasn't going to make him bald, it was going to kill him.