comment_fic 521-525: Animorphs, original, Chuck/WC, Chuck, HSM
Title: touch the ground and climb to the sky
Fandom: Animorphs
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: future!fic
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 165
Point of view: third
Prompt: Animorphs, Rachel, the well intentioned, lost girl behind the tragic heroine no one really remembers any more (post series)
Of them all, Rachel has the most legends. She's remembered as bloodthirsty, as dangerous, as beautiful, as the sacrifice who won the war, as a hero who never thought twice about doing her duty and doing it with style.
Of course, what very few people remember is that all the legends are true.
And what even fewer people remember, because so very few ever knew, is that Rachel was once a little blonde girl who dragged her mother from one store to another, who tumbled and cartwheeled, who taught her baby sisters to dance.
She's known the world over as a warrior. People on other planets know her name, know how her story ended. Barely anyone remembers that she was just a little girl, once.
Cassie almost names her first daughter Rachel. She closes her eyes, gently holds her baby to her breast, and remembers that golden-haired, bright-eyed girl who promised that, together, they'd change the world.
She names her daughter Hope instead.
Title: besought the deep to shelter us
Original fantasy, PG, 375 words
Prompt: Any, any, mermaid/merman
The first time she saw the boy in the water, Rian was five. She told Mama, but Mama just kissed her forehead and carried her to bed, and read her a book about dragons.
o0o
Ten years later, Rian fell off her father's fishing boat and drowned. She felt herself die, sucking down water instead of air, and she prayed, please, ancestors, let me live.
If the ancestors heard, their answer was no.
o0o
When Rian opened her eyes after dying, she saw the boy again. She knew it was him by his sunshine-bright orange-yellow eyes.
"Hullo," he said, except it wasn't in any language she knew and she understood him anyway.
She looked past him, to the dark blue tail twitching on the mother of pearl floor.
"Ancestors," she whispered, "this is a horrible joke."
The boy frowned at her and said, "I'm Viychan, Prince of the Deep. You're mine, now."
Rian shook her head. "I'm dead, and this is the ancestors playing a trick on me. Let me move on."
Viychan crossed his arms. "The Waves took you, so I claim you. My right as the Youngest Son of Oceanus." He flicked his head. "The servants will explain."
She watched him swim away, quick as a receding wave, and just as careless.
o0o
Rian's only saving grace was that Viychan thought of her as a pet instead of a concubine. Her first year, she spent learning about the Deep and Oceanus, believed by her people to be a myth. The Spirit of the Ocean… no better than the Great Dragon, an old tale to explain away natural phenomena that the ancestors hadn't understood. Yet… here she was. Pet to the Prince. Like her own griffin cub, back home.
On the anniversary of her death, Viychan told her that she must complete the transformation and accept her own tail.
She kept her eyes to the appropriate place, the black pendant on the silver chain around his throat, and asked if that were the only current available to her.
Careless as a wave that consumes what it will, he said that it was.
o0o
Rian's tail was pale green, and she eventually became a trusted confidant to the Prince of the Deep. She never did love him, though.
Title: the ghost of one who came here often
Fandom: White Collar/Chuck
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: AU for Chuck; anytime for White Collar
Pairings: implied Bryce/Chuck
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 320
Point of view: third
Prompt: Chuck/White Collar, Bryce + Neal (no slash), "How is it we're identical twins, you can wear my clothes, you can style your hair right, and you still don't look enough like a spy to pass at the agency?" "I'm just not enough of a dick." "Nice."
The undercover op is successful at first, because Neal is a very good liar and he has years of experience pretending to be his brother.
But it's doomed to failure because while he is good with guns, and proficient at hand-to-hand (his brother insisted), Neal isn't a killer. Not that he can't kill, because he can, and he has, and he will again, to save Peter or El or Moz or (above all) Bryce. But he isn't a killer, not like Bryce. It isn't easy for him.
And he's leading away the spooks after his brother while Bryce escapes, and he slips into a well-dressed crowd, drapes the leather jacket over a model-pretty woman, snags an awesome hat from a guy in a sloppy suit, and sheds Bryce to become Nicholas Calden again.
He gets a text halfway through the party: made it. vanish
He meets up with his brother at the loft, and Bryce smiles at him. "Mind if I lie low here for awhile?"
Neal shrugs and stretches his spine, trying to work out the kinks of carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. (Or maybe just the weight of one computer geek from Los Angeles. It doesn't matter. Either way, it was a weight he assumed to sell the con, and it failed. How Bryce manages it all the time… well, no wonder he needs to get away, and has died multiple times to do it.)
"Thanks, Noah," Bryce says quietly. He stares over the balcony and Neal tugs him gently toward the bed.
"C'mon, Brendan," Neal murmurs. "When's the last time you slept, lil'brother?"
"I'm barely two minutes younger than you," Bryce mutters, but he lets Neal tuck him under the covers and curls in close when Neal slides next to him.
It's the first time they've curled up together since they were boys, and it's the best sleep Bryce has had since Stanford.
Title: had, having, and in quest to have
Fandom: Chuck
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: AUish
Pairings: Chuck/Sarah, Bryce/Chuck
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 290
Point of view: third
Prompt: Chuck, Chuck/Bryce, On (what would have been) Chuck's wedding day, they find out that Bryce is still alive.
The priest asks if anyone knows why this man and woman shouldn't be wed. It's quiet; no one responds.
Chuck grins at Sarah and she smiles back, and the priest opens his mouth to continue the service.
And then, out the corner of his eye, Chuck sees dark hair and blue eyes and a white shirt with dried blood. Which is impossible, because Bryce died two years ago. Chuck checked.
But now Sarah's mouth is dropping open, and Casey curses, and Ellie shouts, "Larkin!"
Chuck turns away from the priest and Sarah, to gape at the man who had been his best friend, who had died in his arms, and he says, "Bryce?"
Bryce's face is bruised, his lip split, and there's blood trailing along his hairline. "Hey, Chuck," he says. His smile is rueful and his left arm is wrapped around his middle. His weight is mostly on his right leg. "So, you're getting married."
"Yeah, yeah, I am," Chuck replies. "I... you were dead. Again."
Bryce starts to nod, then stops, wincing, and says, "Mostly, yeah."
The priest politely clears his throat. Sarah squeezes Chuck's hand. "Chuck," she says quietly.
It takes great effort to rip his eyes away from Bryce. He's irrationally afraid that if he's not looking closely, Bryce will vanish again. (On second thought, based on their history, maybe it's not so irrational.) "Sarah," he says. "I…"
She smiles, squeezes his hand again, and then steps back, turning to the priest. "I object," she tells him. Then, with her head held high, she turns to face the crowd and walks down the aisle.
Chuck doesn't watch her go. Instead he steps down and walks to Bryce, and he says, "Come with me."
Title: thou and I sigh one another's breath
Fandom: High School Musical
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: post HSM3
Pairings: Chad/Ryan
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 140
Point of view: third
Prompt: High School Musical, Chad/Ryan, Am I gay?
The day after graduation, when he should be sleeping off a hangover, Chad wakes up next to bright blond hair and wrapped up in someone else's arms.
It's when he realizes there are no boobs and something else instead that he panics.
"Chad," the blond hair says, "calm down. It's okay."
The blond hair is Ryan Evans. Oh shit.
"Chad!" Ryan says again. "Breathe."
Ryan who made their final play something epic. Ryan who's going to New York. Ryan who plays a mean game of baseball and has a nice laugh.
Oh shit.
He could freak the fuck out and punch Ryan in his pretty mouth and storm away.
… but he doesn't want to. He wants to lean back in and maybe nibble at Ryan's neck a little.
So he does, and Ryan clutches him in what feels like relief.