many, many drabbles
i won first place in two categories over at paire_awards! it's funny to think that at the time of nominations, i only had one paire story written. and now i have, literally, a billion.
earlier this week i asked my flist for drabble requests. what good timing. because now i can give them to you guys with my sincerest thanks for whomever voted for me over there. it was really kind of you guys. i appreciate anyone who takes the time to review and/or vote for me. thank you, again.
now, on with the drabbles! there are a ton, and they were, every one of them, a blast to write. what great pairings and prompts. props to you all. so. here's the order of stories under the cut, organised by fandom. if a prompt was given, it will be listed at the end of the story.
harry potter
cedric/hermione: "a matter of practicality" for infiniteskies.
snape/lily: "where the mudblood baddies go" for tju_tju_tju_tju & open_embrace.
lupin/hermione: "come september" for mycelestia.
harry/luna: "luckiest" for mycelestia.
sirius/hermione: "an accidental memory" for prfct_serenity.
draco/luna: "what the malfoy men do" for angeldylan628.
heroes
nathan/claire: "beautiful things" for joanna_484.
peter/claire: "what the workers saw" for joanna_484.
sylar/claire: "snowfall" for shimmeree.
buffyverse
buffy/xander: "of swirls and shivers" for andbless_mybaby & numbereleven.
buffy/angel: "lover liabilities" for open_embrace.
miscellaneous & crossovers
michael/liz (roswell): "broken corners" for andbless_mybaby & prfct_serenity.
christopher/lorelai (gilmore girls): "the third time's a charm" for amathela.
claire (heroes)/jess (gilmore girls): "a goddamn modern-day shelley" for eowyn_girl.
logan (veronica mars)/rory (gilmore girls): "been there, done that" for eowyn_girl.
peter (heroes)/veronica (veronica mars): "nice boys" for an anon!
koi kaze genfic: "a bad heart" for sandoz_iscariot.
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Title: A Matter of Practicality
Pairing: Cedric/Hermione, Harry Potter.
Rating & Notes: Rated G, AU. For infiniteskies.
Her grandmama once said that Hermione would never find a fellow if she didn’t ‘set her cap’. It was an antiquated phrase that made Hermione roll her eyes at the time.
Cedric Diggory was given a position in PR. Nothing too grandiose, mostly a figurehead for the war effort. Hermione saw him in the employee cafeteria one afternoon. She shook his hand and bid him welcome, offered to help in any way she might.
It was all exactly what she would have said to any other old friend.
He shoved a hand into his hair and told her that’d be lovely, thanks.
So she helps him with his backlog of files, updates his system with the newest and latest in organizational spells. She sends her assistant over to help his learn the ropes. She nods at him gravely in the elevator and they chat briefly over the coffee pot.
Kingsley thanks her personally for helping the boy make the transition so smoothly. She tells him briskly that it’s no trouble at all, really. They were old school mates, and he’s very good PR. For the division, of course.
Practical Hermione. She can see the words behind Kingsley’s eyes. She looks steadily at him, her face blank and impassive.
Cedric has smooth cheeks and she loves the way he blinks when he laughs, eyes pinched shut, mouth crooked and pink.
Cedric/Hermione - "no one writes songs about the ones that come easy."
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Title: Where the Mudblood Baddies Go
Pairing: Lily/Snape, Harry Potter.
Rating & Notes: Rated R for language. For tju_tju_tju_tju.
“So you aren’t perfect.” He said this as he passed the cigarette back to her. Filthy Muggle habit she’d picked up over the summer.
“Fuck off.” She took a slow drag, her cheekbones taut, hair falling into her face.
“She curses and she smokes.” He shook his head. “Teenage rebellion incarnate. I think I’ve seen this film already.”
Her eyes turned up to his - watery and green (the smoking caused the former, the latter hadn't changed, ever). “Then why are you here?”
Here, behind the school, where the rest of the Muggle baddies snuck off for a smoke between classes.
He drew his robes around himself more snugly. “I’m fond of repeat viewings,” he says grouchily.
She laughs and passes the cigarette back, then leans her forehead against his shoulder.
He places his lips just so on the pink swirl of lipstick and inhales deeply.
Snape/Lily
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Title: Come September
Pairing: Lupin/Hermione, Harry Potter.
Rating & Notes: Rated PG-13 for language, slightly AU. For mycelestia.
The day it happened was sunny and bright and she’d spent most of it inside, researching Horcruxes with Lupin at Grimmauld Place.
The house was bursting to the brim with order members. Ron would walk past them periodically, muttering ‘shite’ and ‘balls’ interminably. Finally Lupin cleared his throat politely, and Ron got the hint and took himself off elsewhere.
Which left Hermione and Lupin alone in the front room, sitting at a table in front of one of the window. The grimy glass afforded a small amount of natural light, which fell over their hands.
His skin was pale, his fingers smooth and hairless.
Under his direction, she scooted her chair closer to his to obtain a better reading of the text that sat between them. She obliged. But really, she was concentrated almost solely on her traitorous heartbeat, the one that was slamming into her ribs just by his proximity.
She ordered herself to be rational.
Oh, so she had a crush on Lupin. So. She was well on her way to getting over it. She was too practical not to.
Her lips twisted as she read silently.
He was still beside her.
“I dislike this assumption…” she said, and tapped a sentence in the book.
She read on. “No. No,” she said firmly.
A few moments later she pushed the book away from her. “This is ridiculous. The supposition that a soul can only be split into just so many parts is naive and relies almost entirely upon a slippery slope of evidence.”
“I agree,” said Lupin lightly. “So this book’s a bust. Ah well, it was a good suggestion. Pince tried.”
“Old bat. Now we’ll have to start all over.” Her voice shook with disappointment and she contemptuously shut the book, pushing the spine with her finger for spite.
He nodded slightly.
She sighed. “Shite. And balls,” she grumbled under her breath.
Lupin leaned back in his chair and laughed lightly. “Hermione.” And then she swore she felt the feathery-light touch of something just grazing the back of her hair.
She looked at him, stricken. On his face - that sad, twisted face - was a look of pure amusement and…regret.
“I so wish you weren’t seventeen,” he said with a rueful little smile.
Lupin was smiling. He never smiled.
Her words jammed in her throat, and she garbled them out as soon as she was able, her tongue tripping over itself. “I w-won’t always be so!”
She cursed herself for the eagerness in her voice.
“Too right,” said Lupin lightly, as he pulled another book off the stack on the floor. “Now, regarding Himmert’s theory on soul propagation incantations…”
Like he’d no more than mentioned that tea was ready and to come to the table, please.
Some days she lays awake in her bed at night, even though she’s tired in her very bones. She thinks.
Some days she wonders if she imagined the whole thing.
She wonders as she waits for September.
Lupin/Hermione “angstly romantic and fluffy”
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Title: Luckiest
Pairing: Harry/Luna, Harry Potter.
Rating & Notes: Rated G. AU if you actually pay attention to DH epilogue. For mycelestia.
For Halloween that year she said she was going to go dressed as a Muggle. She wore tight jeans and a loose tank top, a pair of sneakers that he’d rustled up for her at a shop in Camden Town.
It was really a pretty good effect, actually. He sat on the corner of their bed, and watched admiringly as she spun in a little circle.
“Very real. Looks very good,” said Harry.
She nodded and turned to the large gold mirror on the wall.
“Will you go as a Muggle as well?” she asked.
“Sure.” He tried not to laugh. It was a feeling he’d grown quite used to when around her.
“I’ll need to find some chains then, for you.”
“Er-” He hesitated. “Sounds good.”
“And a motorcycle - well there’s Sirius’s, so we can use that. Must find a charm for some tattoos…and to grow your hair out too…” She was mumbling to herself softly.
“Chains? Tattoos? What sort of Muggle am I going to be?”
She either ignored or didn't hear him, and turned purposefully back to the mirror, where she muttered a few words.
He laughed for a full minute straight when she began to streak her hair different shades of purple and pink, all of it interwoven with sparkly bits.
“What? What is it?” asked Luna.
“I don’t think Muggles do that, love,” said Harry easily, as he watched her from the bed.
“Of course they do,” said Luna in her soft, whispy voice. “I saw a girl just like this on the telly last week.”
“Yes, but…” Harry hesitated, unsure if he would be capable of properly conveying the difference between a pop star and your average, every day Muggle.
He laced his fingers and slid them under his neck. “You know what? Nevermind. It looks great.” He grinned approvingly.
“Thank you, Harry.” Luna turned her face to his in the mirror. She never showed her teeth much when she smiled, just sort of lifted her lips up gently.
God, but she was…indescribable. She was absolutely dreamy and mad and she never, ever made him feel anything but happy and occasionally completely confused.
Harry sat up from the bed, and walked over to her. He placed his hands lightly on her shoulders, a soft kiss on her pale cheek. “I adore you. I’m about the luckiest bloke in the world to have you, did you know that?”
She said nothing for a moment, as was her way whenever she was complimented. “Well. I really think I’m rather lucky, too. Argentcavo.” She swished her wand in front of his face.
And then he felt something curling on his nose. He looked in the mirror. There was a large silver ring hanging from his right nostril.
“Now, about a leather jacket…”
Harry/Luna
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Title: An Accidental Memory
Pairing: Sirius/Hermione, Harry Potter.
Rating & Notes: Rated PG for slight language. DH spoilers, sort of, but also AU. For prfect_serenity.
Broke up into twos, they did, the night Hermione drank the polyjuice and turned herself into Harry. One of the many Harry’s.
But it went wrong, all wrong. She heard the screams and shouts, though he tersely told her that it was nothing when she asked.
She’d clung to Sirius’s back, closed her eyes, and hadn't looked down as he took her somewhere, somewhere else. She didn't know where they were, didn't want to know.
They flew for hours. By the time she shakily tried to stand up from the broom, her hair was back to being long and loose, and the only thing that felt stronger than her desire to know what the hell was going on was her desire to sleep.
“There we are,” said Sirius as he helped her up some cobblestone steps. “Always makes me a bit tired too, coming off the Polyjuice,” he said kindly.
He ushered her into an inn, a small inn that sounded like it was on a moor, maybe.
Hermione sank gratefully into a chair by the fire, her eyes drooping slowly as she saw him stick his head into the flames and start shouting.
She was jostled awake sometime later, and she realised that he was settling her onto a bed in a dark room.
“S-sorry,” she said sleepily. “How is -“
“Fine. Moody’s gone, but we’ll find him,” said Sirius comfortingly. He set her down onto the bed, and pulled a blanket over her. “You just sleep. We’ll leave in the morning.”
He started to back away from the bed, when she grasped his hand.
“Stay. Please,” she said simply.
He looked at her for a quiet moment, and then sighed, shrugging out of his dark velvet coat.
In the bed, he curled around her, and she rubbed her face against his chest. He smelled like soap and cigarettes and that night she dreamt of a curving mouth and laughing eyes.
Sirius/Hermione
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Title: What the Malfoy Men Do
Pairing: Luna/Draco, Harry Potter.
Rating & Notes: Rated PG for slight language. Technical DH spoiler, but I swear to you it will not ruin anything in the book for you. For angeldylan628.
“Octavius, you’ll remember to watch out for the centaurs, yes? They’re a kind people, and you should say hello to them. Be friendly from the first moment, and it’ll all be well.”
Luna smoothed the brow of her son.
“Here.” Draco handed him a fat bag of coins. “Should get you through ‘till Christmas. Don’t give it to some poor Hufflepuff sod who comes crying because he can’t afford a chocolate frog-“
“Tush. Octavius, do whatever you like with your money. Father is just being silly.”
He’d married her to spite his parents, years ago. Much like his old man had done, actually. She was a Pureblood, and she was a blonde, those being the only real unspoken requirements he’d ever been made aware of. And really, one wife was as good as the next, wasn’t it?
“Mummy, I’m worried about which house I’ll get,” said Octavius quietly, as he eyed the slim redheaded boy that stood not too far from the train.
“You’ll want Slytherin.”
“Father’s being silly again. You’ll want whatever you want, sweeting,” said Luna. “They're all really very nice houses.”
He’d had no intention of staying faithful, hell, his grandfather’s will stipulated only that he be married in order to inherit. His father had implicitly told him that it didn't matter if he felt like fooling around.
“But Father says that Slytherin’s the best,” said Octavius.
“It isn’t,” said Luna lightly. “They are all very much equal. Remember Mummy’s friends, Hugo’s parents?”
The little boy nodded gravely.
“They were both in Gryffindor. Very nice people, yes? And your sitter, Marnie Day? She’s in Hufflepuff. You see?”
He’d be faithful until he got tired of her. That was what he thought as she walked down the aisle toward him.
She looked up at him, now…her light eyes imploring him softly.
Draco cleared his throat. “They’re all much the same, Octavius. Nothing to worry about.”
She smiled at him vaguely. Her own seal of approval.
But he didn't grow tired of her - hadn’t. Not yet at least, and it’s been almost 15 years.
She waved frantically as the train left the station, her bracelets clanging, the moonstones on her fingers glinting.
“Oh, Draco,” she sighed, and hooked her arm through his. “It’s so sad, isn’t it?”
His eyes flicked across the station quickly and, finding no one was looking, he pressed a quick kiss to her forehead.
“It might be, a bit. But now lets think on other things, hm?” said Draco.
“Like what?”
She’d performed an interpretive dance of the life of a nargle at their wedding brunch, twisting her body in a cocoon made of gnome straw. When she emerged, hair long and wild, the look of horror on his mother’s face alone was enough to please him for the rest of his natural life.
He spoke easily. “I'm not concerned about that. You always find a way to entertain.”
Draco/Luna - “them sending their first kid off to Hogwarts”
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Title: Beautiful Things
Pairing: Nathan/Claire, Heroes.
Rating & Notes: Rated PG-13 for themes, language. For Joanna_484.
She bought him a humidor for Christmas - spent too much of her own money on it, he’s sure, and it’s still a piece of shit. Its plain and cheap and a horrible Elie Bleu knockoff.
Nathan loves beautiful things, and that humidor is not beautiful. But her proud smile on Christmas morning had been beautiful.
So he takes it when he goes to Washington, and leaves the one Heidi got him a couple years ago, the one that’s inlaid with Spanish cedar and has his initials in platinum. Heidi’s humidor sits in his office in New York, and gathers dust until the maid wipes it off once a week.
Claire’s humidor sits on his desk in DC, and he brings it out when the other elected WASPs come over to hash out business. He smiles and says that his daughter gave it to him when they tease him about the poor quality. Then they apologize and nod knowingly. They’re family men too, of course.
Of course.
He taps gently at her window when he has a spare minute or two. He taps gently and he wonders if Bennet can hear him, if she’s told her dad that he comes to visit her this much. It used to be not that much.
She smiles when he knocks on her window, and it is beautiful.
He loves to fly with her - he loves to scare her. He doesn’t know if it’s her age or his that makes him feel like a teenage boy on a motorcycle, speeding recklessly just so she’ll squeal and hold on a little tighter.
Her hair ruffles over his face, and he goes faster.
Nathan/Claire
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Title: What the Workers Saw
Pairing: Peter/Claire, Heroes.
Rating & Notes: Rated PG-13 for language. For Joanna_484.
It’s an okay place to work - most of us are in college or whatever. A small coffee shop here in Carmel, not nice enough to feed the tourist trade, but the tips are local and decent.
There are some real asshole customers, and some really great ones. Most of us will argue over the great ones.
So it makes sense that we take turns with the best customer, who comes on Saturdays. Or customers, we should say. They’re a young couple, and they tip big enough that we’re on a written schedule as to who waits on them.
The girl and boy are in love, it’s so obvious.
She’s barely legal, has blonde hair that is long and curly. Totally out of fashion, some of us say, but the others say it’s a conscious throwback since her clothes are very in. He is thin and compact with dark hair and pale skin and he doesn’t smile much but he’s always polite.
They come in early. He reads the news while she drinks orange juice and looks out the window. It’s odd. Most people their age are still asleep at seven on Saturdays.
An old man will shuffle in to meet them about an hour later. This guys’s really old - eighties or nineties. He is tall with a ruffle of curly white hair and has watery, sad blue eyes. But he’s all smiles when he sees the boy and the girl. The girl jumps up and throws her arms around him, clasps him down to her body with every muscle in her arms.
The boy will clap a hand on the old man’s shoulder, and when they say goodbye he does the same thing, except he stretches and kisses the man on the cheek. An odd gesture, kinda, but it’s sweet we think.
We don’t know if he’s a grandfather or a great-grandfather, or what, but they laugh and talk while they eat, and, like we said, they tip a ton, so they can have the table for as long as they want, as long as they keep on tipping.
Which is why one of us made the extra effort last week. That morning they had brought in a pile of photographs and gone through them one by one, joking and teasing each other over every one. The old man’s gravelly chuckle mixed with the girl’s giggles, the boy’s handsome face quirking back in a smile every so often.
They had just walked out the door, and we were cleaning up their table. Then we saw a loose photograph on the bench of the booth they had been in. Must have slipped down or something.
So we ran it out there to them, before they got into their cars. Here, you forgot this, we said.
The girl took it, and smiled her thanks, and then they left.
We didn't all get to see the photo before it was gone, but the ones that had described it this way. It was a picture of the boy and the girl...dressed up for some party or something, because they were wearing really old-fashioned clothes. A Halloween picture, for sure.
On their lap was a tiny baby, with sad blue eyes and a ruffle of curly brown hair.
Peter/Claire - hopefully this made sense. if it didn't, let me know in the comments and i will clarify :)
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Title: Snowfall
Pairing: Sylar/Claire, Heroes
Rating & Notes: Rated R for language, naked-ness, bloody-ness, I don’t know what else…it’s Sylaire, come on.. For shimmeree.
The quiet snowfall encapsulates the empty street, like a cocoon over twisted cars, metal, and broken heroes. The defeated good guys, a chapter in the comic book that no one ever wanted to read.
That’s the way it is, though, and he feels no pity for them.
He doesn’t see her go down but he picks through the wreckage for her now. He’d like to think it’s just to make sure she’s good and dead, but it’s more than that.
He sees her hair peeking out underneath a large mass of coat and arms. Part of her head is sodden with blood, but there are a few curls that gleam blonde and bright on the snowy ground.
She’s half rolled underneath the large heap of something. He takes a few steps over, and squints.
It’s her annoying uncle. His still arms are wrapped around her shoulders, and his body covers her in a protective last embrace.
How touching.
He nudges a toe onto her coat and kicks the dead mimic off of her body, giving the corpse a spiteful shove.
He can see bullet holes over her body, dark masses of red that stain her once-white coat.
He kneels on the ground beside her. The air is silent save for the footfalls of his compatriots, the quiet murmuring of victors who had never doubted their supremacy in this final battle.
He leans over her body and unbuttons her coat. He tugs her flopping arms to the side of her body, unbuttons her blouse until she’s spread open like the legs of a lover. Her skin is still tan and her breasts are smooth and tipped with dark pink.
Her torso is a mass of ragged tearing though, and he carefully sticks his fingers into the holes that are still seeping blood. Warm and wet and red trickling into the cold snow.
He picks the bullets out of her gut, flicks pieces of flesh and skin to the ground beside him. Her blood isn’t cold yet, and when her eyes finally flutter, he smiles and shows her just how it’s going to be, from now on.
Sylar/Claire - “snow”.
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Title: Of Swirls and Shivers
Pairing: Buffy/Xander, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Rating & Notes: Rated R for language, sex. For andbless_mybaby.
Buffy Summers had had a lot of sex.
Angel did this thing…this was after they knew they couldn’t do it ever again. He wouldn’t do this thing a lot, because it was dangerous he said, but sometimes, late at night, she could give him that big-eye look and he’d do it. He’d take her to his bed and lay on top of her, ease his weight over her slowly. He’d wrap his arms around her and push his hips into hers, pretending like they were doing it, even though they weren’t. He’d do a whole lot of other things after that, but she liked the hip rubbing the best, and from what she could tell, he did too.
Riley…loved it when she was on top. God, did he love it. He could practically pick her up with one hand. After awhile he didn't even ask anymore (Fine with her. Really). He’d lift her hips up smoothly, and she’d ride…and ride. For all his boy scoutish-ness, he had loved to fuck, yup, with her on top.
Spike (from what she could tell)…did it in the typical vampire-ish way, meaning whatever position made you look straight into his eyes. She wasn’t allowed to look away, not for a second. Which was hot and intense and yeah, she missed Spike. Some times more than others.
Buffy dated a warlock who had a thing for chains and an older guy who looked like Liam Neeson that made her come just by pinching her this one way. She spent an entire summer on a beach in Kuala Lumpur with a guy who was five years younger than her and had abs like a frickin’ washboard. She had so much sex in the ocean that she wasn’t sure she’d ever remember what it felt like to do it on a bed.
Xander has chest hair. She hadn’t ever been with anyone that had chest hair. She blames cherry wine and the holidays for this, for both of them fumbling on the bed in Willow’s guest room. She’s tipsy but not drunk, and she’s telling herself that this isn’t going to change anything. This isn’t going to change anything.
He grips her legs shakily and drags her jeans off without unbuttoning them, which makes her giggle.
She licks the corner of his mouth. He tastes like cherry wine and clean boy, the stubble of his chin is rough against her tongue.
He crawls over her hurridly, the seam of his pants rubbing into the skin on her thighs. His knee pushes between her legs with very little practiced seduction.
She swirls her tongue into his mouth, and she hopes she’s appreciating that she’s using all her nicest techniques.
His teeth crack against hers on the third or fourth manic kiss and that’s when things went from silly to serious - no warning at all, like a bucket of cold water over her head.
For a minute she just lays there, doesn’t know what to do or say. Something she hasn’t felt in years. If ever.
His arms have a light dusting of hair, and there’s a dark trail from his belly on down. His hands are rough but feel incredible on her breasts and hips. His hair curls around his temple. These are the things she concentrates on as he pulls his shirt off.
And suddenly she’s not thinking about the give and take. She just reacts.
When she ropes her fingers around his cock, he shivers against her.
“God, Buffy. God.”
That’s when it stops being serious, and changes to something even worse (better?). Something she hasn’t felt on a beach or in a crypt or even in a fucking portal dimension.
Her throat burns in the morning.
Buffy/Xander - “shiver”
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Title: Lover Liabilities
Pairing: Angel/Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating & Notes: Rated R for sex. For open_embrace.
He’s a liability, and he’s come to terms with that. She puts her own life at risk for his. He’s weak, soft, and a target just to get his legendary head on the wall, so to speak.
Let alone being the lover of the Slayer…let alone sending a message or making a point.
But she’s practical above all else. She’s learned to sacrifice, learned to do the right things even if it’s hard. She’ll be realistic. She won’t do anything stupid.
He’ll be dead soon, bits of ash and bone flittering in the sunlight, somewhere. She’ll cry and he hates the thought of it, hates the knowledge that she’ll be down for a good week or two, her big eyes filled with tears that will plop into Willow’s lap.
But she’ll pick herself up again, get out there and save the world, because that’s what she does, what she was born for, and he’s proud of her for that. So proud.
This is his final stolen moment, he thinks, as he thrusts into her body, feels her writhe underneath him. This is a stolen moment that is never going to last, and he’s okay with that, she’s okay with that. It’s how it’s going to be, and even if it only lasts for a week or an hour, it will have been worth it.
300 years of self-denial and bone-weary repentance, all erased in minutes.
He trails his tongue down her neck, over the soft pulsing below her jaw, and she shivers.
“Love you.”
Angel/Buffy “fluffy smutty” (but it kinda went angsty instead. sorry.)
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Title: Broken Corners
Pairing: Michael/Liz, Roswell
Rating & Notes: Rated R for sex. For andbless_mybaby and prfect_serenity.
They’re two halves that don’t quite fit together - each part of a larger, more comfortable whole that isn’t around anymore. But they’ve jammed themselves together, somehow, their edges rigid and chipped but not quite ruined, just yet.
In a lot of ways it’s probably easier for her. At least Max is dead. At least Max didn't choose to leave.
He says that he understands why Maria took off. “Hey, I can’t blame the chick. I wouldn’t choose it, if I had a choice,” he says in that huffy tone, and purses his lips in the way that he does.
Liz nods quietly and says that he’s right, he’s right. But she can’t forgive Maria. Not like he does, or has.
He still paints and he never makes a ton of money, but he contributes, and that’s all she ever really wanted.
He makes love to her gently, because that’s surely how Max would have done it. If he were still alive.
She clings to him and talks him quietly out of his weary, brooding moods. She scolds him when he gets too pissy, and can usually make him crack a grin even at his worst.
But she doesn’t even try to replicate Maria’s bright chatter, just like he doesn’t pretend to be tender. The pretending would have been worse.
One morning she looks over her coffee cup at him, watches as he squints and shifts in his seat, his dark brow curled over a copy of Ulysses. And then she smiles.
Something quiet grows between them. It’s tenuous and it’s small, but it wraps around their mashed edges and broken corners, and every day it knits itself around them just a little more.
Michael/Liz
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Title: The Third Time’s a Charm
Pairing: Christopher/Lorelai, Gilmore Girls.
Rating & Notes: Rated G. For amathela.
“I’m in love. I’m getting married,” crackles her voice, through the air and into his ear, even though he’s in Phoenix at the moment and she’s, well. She’s Lorelai. Where Lorelai lives - where she will live till the day her bones crumble.
“That’s great!” he says enthusiastically. He’s heard this three times now, and he’s never, ever failed to be anything but chipper and bright when he hears it.
“Who’s the lucky guy?” he asks, as he traces his finger lightly along the seam of his couch.
“Nice guy - Marcus. You’d like him,” says Lorelai.
“I’d like to meet him, Lor.”
“Promise not to get in a fight with my fella this time?”
“Do you promise not to secretly like it when I do?” he asked her teasingly.
They banter for a few minutes and then they hang up. That night, in his bed, he thinks about this Marcus person. An architect. A solid, steady guy. Rory stamp of approval, indifference from her parents, which is as good a prospect as any man in Lorelai Gilmore’s life could hope for.
That’s fine.
Maybe this time she’ll marry the guy. Maybe this time she’ll make it to the alter or even to the bridal shower.
That’s fine too.
Lorelai and Christopher, Christopher and Lorelai, his classmates used to tease, and though he never wrote the equation on a tree, he did write it in her school yearbook, sophomore year.
He closes his eyes and he worries a little, but not too much.
Lorelai Gilmore, we’re officially Juniors now and I think that you are finally old enough to know that you are the woman of my dreams and I will never, ever love another. Sincerely, your future Husband.
Christopher/Lorelei
-----
Title: A Goddamn Modern-Day Shelley
Pairing: Jess (Gilmore Girls)/Claire (Heroes). Crossover!
Rating & Notes: Rated PG-13 for language. For eowyn_girl.
At first she keeps seeing him just to piss off her Father (the one that doesn’t love her). And then she dates him just on the principle that her Father hates…seriously hates him.
“A slacker. A poet. A goddamn modern-day Shelley,” says Nathan. They’re arguing in his office.
“He’s published. So what?” she asks.
“So what?” Nathan folds his arms, leans forward into her face. It used to intimidate her, but not anymore. “So what - he’s a rude little prick, and I don’t want him around here anymore.”
She has to crane her neck almost straight up, but she does, meets his angry eyes with her own. “Fine, I’ll just go to his place.”
“No,” says Peter from the couch
“Shut up,” says Claire, and her words burn with a fiery contempt just for Peter.
“He looks like him, you know,” says Nathan, points a finger accusingly at her uncle. “Just like him. It’s creepy as hell.”
Claire’s face screws up. “What?”
“Nathan, you shut up now,” says Peter, and flips through a magazine. “He doesn’t look anything like me.”
“He looks like a younger you, but not by much.” Nathan speaks distastefully. “Not the point. The point is that he’s rude and poor and he doesn’t treat you well.”
Her fingers flutter through her hair. “Ugh. He treats me fine. Great. He’s a great kisser,” she hisses, and for a minute she thinks Nathan really might hit her.
Peter’s suddenly at her side though. “Calm down, Nathan. Let the teenage girl have her rebellious phase,” says Peter sarcastically.
It got so bad so fast between them, she’s barely even surprised by the bitterness in his voice.
She tells them both to go to hell as she walks out of the office.
She takes the subway instead of a cab, her refusal to use Nathan’s credit card making her feel marginally self-righteous.
It’s a horrible, horrible neighborhood, and she covers her hair with the scarf in her purse before she walks up to the street.
A fat guy with a buzz cut holds the door for her at his apartment building.
“What are you doin’ here?” Jess has a cigarette between his lips. It wiggles as he speaks.
“I’m here to visit,” says Claire, like he’s clueless.
He steps back from the door. “I hope you took a cab. I don’t live in Manhattan, y’know.”
Claire steps into his apartment. It’s a tiny studio and the lighting is bad, but he doesn’t have any roommates.
She bobs her head forward, blonde ringlets over her shoulder as she slips out of her jacket. “I did. Take a cab, I mean.”
He’s still standing there, blinking at her in his way. He does it to intimidate people into talking when he wants them to.
She doesn’t say anything. Learned how to play the game pretty quick with him.
He balances his cigarette on an empty Red Bull can. “It’s late.”
“Yeah. Sorry.” Claire sits on his bed, since there isn’t a couch. “Got into a fight with Nathan.”
He sits down next to her, and nods. “Sucks.”
She smacks her lips shortly. “He’s a prick.” And then she reaches for his cigarette, and lays back on his bed.
He looks at her as she inhales, and then stretches out beside her, curling his arm under her neck.
She coughs.
He takes the cigarette from between her fingers.
“Hey,” she says lightly, and reaches for it.
“Nope. Don’t want you to get cancer and die,” says Jess, and he takes a drag.
She feels tears gather in her eyes, for some crazy reason. She rolls her head onto his shoulder, and for a brief minute he hugs her close and presses a kiss to her forehead.
She watches the smoke from his lips drift lazily into the soft air of the night, and closes her eyes.
Claire (Heroes)/ Jess (Gilmore girls) - “he's the spitting image of a certain uncle”
-----
Title: Been There, Done That
Pairing: Logan (Veronica Mars)/Rory (Gilmore Girls). Crossover!
Rating & Notes: Rated PG-13 for language. For eowyn_girl.
She’s an older woman, and that excites him. Not much older than him, but still.
He gives her eyes for a good three weeks.
Usually that’d work. Usually she’d have come to him. But not this one. He likes it, likes a challenge.
“So…how’s it going?” He perches on the corner of her desk in the newsroom, and leans his hands on her computer monitor. An absurd rendition of office coquetteishness.
“No.”
“Excuse me?” He places a hand on his chest.
“I said no.” Her eyes don’t leave the screen. “Whatever you’re going to say or ask me, answer is no.”
He sits up straight, just a bit taken aback.
“What if I was offering you an all-expenses paid trip to Cancun? Or Sheboygan. Your choice.”
At this her blue eyes flick to him, briefly. “Very funny. No. Sorry. Really. I’ve been there, done that.”
“Sheboygan? Intrepid girl reporter spend much time in Wiscansin?”
She rolls her eyes. “No, Logan. Intrepid girl reporter has dated smartass bad boys. Most days it seems like that’s all I’ve done is date smartass bad boys. Both rich and poor, blonde and brunette, young and old. Been there, done that, wrote the book on it, beat it to death after. So just stop.”
She fiddled with the papers on her desk, and stood up. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I wasn’t given this job by a friend of the family, so I actually have to work.”
And then she’s gone, her feet scurrying lightly down the hallway, her hair bouncing over her back.
Logan watched her retreat, that slow smile creeping into the corner of his mouth.
Rory (Gilmore Girls)/Logan (Veronica Mars)
-----
Title: Nice Boys
Pairing: Peter (Heroes)/Veronica (Veronica Mars). Crossover!
Rating & Notes: Rated R for sex, language. For an anon!
Veronica doesn’t like people to know this, but she really likes nice boys. A lot. Duncan was a nice boy. Piz was a nice boy. That’s who she’d pick first, if she had to. Can’t go wrong with a nice boy.
Which doesn’t explain why she’s dated so many goddamn assholes. Logan was an ass. Troy was a tit. Weevil, well…the scant seconds they’d lasted were just better not mentioned.
So, she thought it was probably time for a nice boy, after the last round of complete and utter fuckery she got from her last boyfriend. An 09’er. She just couldn’t learn, could she?
She meets him in a coffee shop, and it’s such a meet cute that she doesn’t spread the story around. She drops her change. He helps her pick it up. They bonk heads. Cupids and fluffy puppies would’ve been appropriate in the background.
He’s a nice boy, she can tell that right off the bat. He’s such a nice boy that it takes her almost three months of steady dating to realize that he has a secret - a big one.
She doesn’t kiss him any different, still makes him crepes in the morning while wearing a t-shirt of his. She goes out with him on Fridays and takes him to meet her dad and they have some pretty great sex. Really great sex - its like he knows exactly what she wants and how she wants it.
But the point is, she doesn’t let on that she knows that he’s hiding something.
She’ll find out though. She is Veronica Mars after all.
Veronica (Veronica Mars)/Peter (Heroes)
------
Title: A Bad Heart
Pairing: Koshiro/Nanoka (Koi Kaze)
Rating & Notes: Rated PG-13 for themes. For sandoz_iscariot.
It happens in the worst way possible - with them tangled up in sheets and her hair and an unmistakable embrace.
And then he was there - Father. Gasping in the doorway, shock and disgust congealing on his face.
Thank God their mother wasn’t there to see it, is all he can think.
He thinks this as he dabs at the blood on his chin and stares at the still body of his father.
“This wasn’t your fault.” She speaks softly beside him, her hand creeping into his lap.
He grunts, and doesn’t say a word.
Nanoka puts her other hand over the still, wrinkled one that is next to the body in the hospital bed. He had a bad heart. He always had a bad heart.
Part of him hopes that their father doesn’t wake up. It’d be a lot easier that way, for everyone.
As he thinks this, he’s horrified by his own thoughts, and leans his head into his hands.
Koshiro/Nanoka - Koi Kaze
hope those pleased everyone! again, i thank you for reading and for being such great reviewers/voters. it's so appreciated. <3 mab
earlier this week i asked my flist for drabble requests. what good timing. because now i can give them to you guys with my sincerest thanks for whomever voted for me over there. it was really kind of you guys. i appreciate anyone who takes the time to review and/or vote for me. thank you, again.
now, on with the drabbles! there are a ton, and they were, every one of them, a blast to write. what great pairings and prompts. props to you all. so. here's the order of stories under the cut, organised by fandom. if a prompt was given, it will be listed at the end of the story.
harry potter
cedric/hermione: "a matter of practicality" for infiniteskies.
snape/lily: "where the mudblood baddies go" for tju_tju_tju_tju & open_embrace.
lupin/hermione: "come september" for mycelestia.
harry/luna: "luckiest" for mycelestia.
sirius/hermione: "an accidental memory" for prfct_serenity.
draco/luna: "what the malfoy men do" for angeldylan628.
heroes
nathan/claire: "beautiful things" for joanna_484.
peter/claire: "what the workers saw" for joanna_484.
sylar/claire: "snowfall" for shimmeree.
buffyverse
buffy/xander: "of swirls and shivers" for andbless_mybaby & numbereleven.
buffy/angel: "lover liabilities" for open_embrace.
miscellaneous & crossovers
michael/liz (roswell): "broken corners" for andbless_mybaby & prfct_serenity.
christopher/lorelai (gilmore girls): "the third time's a charm" for amathela.
claire (heroes)/jess (gilmore girls): "a goddamn modern-day shelley" for eowyn_girl.
logan (veronica mars)/rory (gilmore girls): "been there, done that" for eowyn_girl.
peter (heroes)/veronica (veronica mars): "nice boys" for an anon!
koi kaze genfic: "a bad heart" for sandoz_iscariot.
-----
Title: A Matter of Practicality
Pairing: Cedric/Hermione, Harry Potter.
Rating & Notes: Rated G, AU. For infiniteskies.
Her grandmama once said that Hermione would never find a fellow if she didn’t ‘set her cap’. It was an antiquated phrase that made Hermione roll her eyes at the time.
Cedric Diggory was given a position in PR. Nothing too grandiose, mostly a figurehead for the war effort. Hermione saw him in the employee cafeteria one afternoon. She shook his hand and bid him welcome, offered to help in any way she might.
It was all exactly what she would have said to any other old friend.
He shoved a hand into his hair and told her that’d be lovely, thanks.
So she helps him with his backlog of files, updates his system with the newest and latest in organizational spells. She sends her assistant over to help his learn the ropes. She nods at him gravely in the elevator and they chat briefly over the coffee pot.
Kingsley thanks her personally for helping the boy make the transition so smoothly. She tells him briskly that it’s no trouble at all, really. They were old school mates, and he’s very good PR. For the division, of course.
Practical Hermione. She can see the words behind Kingsley’s eyes. She looks steadily at him, her face blank and impassive.
Cedric has smooth cheeks and she loves the way he blinks when he laughs, eyes pinched shut, mouth crooked and pink.
Cedric/Hermione - "no one writes songs about the ones that come easy."
-----
Title: Where the Mudblood Baddies Go
Pairing: Lily/Snape, Harry Potter.
Rating & Notes: Rated R for language. For tju_tju_tju_tju.
“So you aren’t perfect.” He said this as he passed the cigarette back to her. Filthy Muggle habit she’d picked up over the summer.
“Fuck off.” She took a slow drag, her cheekbones taut, hair falling into her face.
“She curses and she smokes.” He shook his head. “Teenage rebellion incarnate. I think I’ve seen this film already.”
Her eyes turned up to his - watery and green (the smoking caused the former, the latter hadn't changed, ever). “Then why are you here?”
Here, behind the school, where the rest of the Muggle baddies snuck off for a smoke between classes.
He drew his robes around himself more snugly. “I’m fond of repeat viewings,” he says grouchily.
She laughs and passes the cigarette back, then leans her forehead against his shoulder.
He places his lips just so on the pink swirl of lipstick and inhales deeply.
Snape/Lily
-----
Title: Come September
Pairing: Lupin/Hermione, Harry Potter.
Rating & Notes: Rated PG-13 for language, slightly AU. For mycelestia.
The day it happened was sunny and bright and she’d spent most of it inside, researching Horcruxes with Lupin at Grimmauld Place.
The house was bursting to the brim with order members. Ron would walk past them periodically, muttering ‘shite’ and ‘balls’ interminably. Finally Lupin cleared his throat politely, and Ron got the hint and took himself off elsewhere.
Which left Hermione and Lupin alone in the front room, sitting at a table in front of one of the window. The grimy glass afforded a small amount of natural light, which fell over their hands.
His skin was pale, his fingers smooth and hairless.
Under his direction, she scooted her chair closer to his to obtain a better reading of the text that sat between them. She obliged. But really, she was concentrated almost solely on her traitorous heartbeat, the one that was slamming into her ribs just by his proximity.
She ordered herself to be rational.
Oh, so she had a crush on Lupin. So. She was well on her way to getting over it. She was too practical not to.
Her lips twisted as she read silently.
He was still beside her.
“I dislike this assumption…” she said, and tapped a sentence in the book.
She read on. “No. No,” she said firmly.
A few moments later she pushed the book away from her. “This is ridiculous. The supposition that a soul can only be split into just so many parts is naive and relies almost entirely upon a slippery slope of evidence.”
“I agree,” said Lupin lightly. “So this book’s a bust. Ah well, it was a good suggestion. Pince tried.”
“Old bat. Now we’ll have to start all over.” Her voice shook with disappointment and she contemptuously shut the book, pushing the spine with her finger for spite.
He nodded slightly.
She sighed. “Shite. And balls,” she grumbled under her breath.
Lupin leaned back in his chair and laughed lightly. “Hermione.” And then she swore she felt the feathery-light touch of something just grazing the back of her hair.
She looked at him, stricken. On his face - that sad, twisted face - was a look of pure amusement and…regret.
“I so wish you weren’t seventeen,” he said with a rueful little smile.
Lupin was smiling. He never smiled.
Her words jammed in her throat, and she garbled them out as soon as she was able, her tongue tripping over itself. “I w-won’t always be so!”
She cursed herself for the eagerness in her voice.
“Too right,” said Lupin lightly, as he pulled another book off the stack on the floor. “Now, regarding Himmert’s theory on soul propagation incantations…”
Like he’d no more than mentioned that tea was ready and to come to the table, please.
Some days she lays awake in her bed at night, even though she’s tired in her very bones. She thinks.
Some days she wonders if she imagined the whole thing.
She wonders as she waits for September.
Lupin/Hermione “angstly romantic and fluffy”
-----
Title: Luckiest
Pairing: Harry/Luna, Harry Potter.
Rating & Notes: Rated G. AU if you actually pay attention to DH epilogue. For mycelestia.
For Halloween that year she said she was going to go dressed as a Muggle. She wore tight jeans and a loose tank top, a pair of sneakers that he’d rustled up for her at a shop in Camden Town.
It was really a pretty good effect, actually. He sat on the corner of their bed, and watched admiringly as she spun in a little circle.
“Very real. Looks very good,” said Harry.
She nodded and turned to the large gold mirror on the wall.
“Will you go as a Muggle as well?” she asked.
“Sure.” He tried not to laugh. It was a feeling he’d grown quite used to when around her.
“I’ll need to find some chains then, for you.”
“Er-” He hesitated. “Sounds good.”
“And a motorcycle - well there’s Sirius’s, so we can use that. Must find a charm for some tattoos…and to grow your hair out too…” She was mumbling to herself softly.
“Chains? Tattoos? What sort of Muggle am I going to be?”
She either ignored or didn't hear him, and turned purposefully back to the mirror, where she muttered a few words.
He laughed for a full minute straight when she began to streak her hair different shades of purple and pink, all of it interwoven with sparkly bits.
“What? What is it?” asked Luna.
“I don’t think Muggles do that, love,” said Harry easily, as he watched her from the bed.
“Of course they do,” said Luna in her soft, whispy voice. “I saw a girl just like this on the telly last week.”
“Yes, but…” Harry hesitated, unsure if he would be capable of properly conveying the difference between a pop star and your average, every day Muggle.
He laced his fingers and slid them under his neck. “You know what? Nevermind. It looks great.” He grinned approvingly.
“Thank you, Harry.” Luna turned her face to his in the mirror. She never showed her teeth much when she smiled, just sort of lifted her lips up gently.
God, but she was…indescribable. She was absolutely dreamy and mad and she never, ever made him feel anything but happy and occasionally completely confused.
Harry sat up from the bed, and walked over to her. He placed his hands lightly on her shoulders, a soft kiss on her pale cheek. “I adore you. I’m about the luckiest bloke in the world to have you, did you know that?”
She said nothing for a moment, as was her way whenever she was complimented. “Well. I really think I’m rather lucky, too. Argentcavo.” She swished her wand in front of his face.
And then he felt something curling on his nose. He looked in the mirror. There was a large silver ring hanging from his right nostril.
“Now, about a leather jacket…”
Harry/Luna
-----
Title: An Accidental Memory
Pairing: Sirius/Hermione, Harry Potter.
Rating & Notes: Rated PG for slight language. DH spoilers, sort of, but also AU. For prfect_serenity.
Broke up into twos, they did, the night Hermione drank the polyjuice and turned herself into Harry. One of the many Harry’s.
But it went wrong, all wrong. She heard the screams and shouts, though he tersely told her that it was nothing when she asked.
She’d clung to Sirius’s back, closed her eyes, and hadn't looked down as he took her somewhere, somewhere else. She didn't know where they were, didn't want to know.
They flew for hours. By the time she shakily tried to stand up from the broom, her hair was back to being long and loose, and the only thing that felt stronger than her desire to know what the hell was going on was her desire to sleep.
“There we are,” said Sirius as he helped her up some cobblestone steps. “Always makes me a bit tired too, coming off the Polyjuice,” he said kindly.
He ushered her into an inn, a small inn that sounded like it was on a moor, maybe.
Hermione sank gratefully into a chair by the fire, her eyes drooping slowly as she saw him stick his head into the flames and start shouting.
She was jostled awake sometime later, and she realised that he was settling her onto a bed in a dark room.
“S-sorry,” she said sleepily. “How is -“
“Fine. Moody’s gone, but we’ll find him,” said Sirius comfortingly. He set her down onto the bed, and pulled a blanket over her. “You just sleep. We’ll leave in the morning.”
He started to back away from the bed, when she grasped his hand.
“Stay. Please,” she said simply.
He looked at her for a quiet moment, and then sighed, shrugging out of his dark velvet coat.
In the bed, he curled around her, and she rubbed her face against his chest. He smelled like soap and cigarettes and that night she dreamt of a curving mouth and laughing eyes.
Sirius/Hermione
-----
Title: What the Malfoy Men Do
Pairing: Luna/Draco, Harry Potter.
Rating & Notes: Rated PG for slight language. Technical DH spoiler, but I swear to you it will not ruin anything in the book for you. For angeldylan628.
“Octavius, you’ll remember to watch out for the centaurs, yes? They’re a kind people, and you should say hello to them. Be friendly from the first moment, and it’ll all be well.”
Luna smoothed the brow of her son.
“Here.” Draco handed him a fat bag of coins. “Should get you through ‘till Christmas. Don’t give it to some poor Hufflepuff sod who comes crying because he can’t afford a chocolate frog-“
“Tush. Octavius, do whatever you like with your money. Father is just being silly.”
He’d married her to spite his parents, years ago. Much like his old man had done, actually. She was a Pureblood, and she was a blonde, those being the only real unspoken requirements he’d ever been made aware of. And really, one wife was as good as the next, wasn’t it?
“Mummy, I’m worried about which house I’ll get,” said Octavius quietly, as he eyed the slim redheaded boy that stood not too far from the train.
“You’ll want Slytherin.”
“Father’s being silly again. You’ll want whatever you want, sweeting,” said Luna. “They're all really very nice houses.”
He’d had no intention of staying faithful, hell, his grandfather’s will stipulated only that he be married in order to inherit. His father had implicitly told him that it didn't matter if he felt like fooling around.
“But Father says that Slytherin’s the best,” said Octavius.
“It isn’t,” said Luna lightly. “They are all very much equal. Remember Mummy’s friends, Hugo’s parents?”
The little boy nodded gravely.
“They were both in Gryffindor. Very nice people, yes? And your sitter, Marnie Day? She’s in Hufflepuff. You see?”
He’d be faithful until he got tired of her. That was what he thought as she walked down the aisle toward him.
She looked up at him, now…her light eyes imploring him softly.
Draco cleared his throat. “They’re all much the same, Octavius. Nothing to worry about.”
She smiled at him vaguely. Her own seal of approval.
But he didn't grow tired of her - hadn’t. Not yet at least, and it’s been almost 15 years.
She waved frantically as the train left the station, her bracelets clanging, the moonstones on her fingers glinting.
“Oh, Draco,” she sighed, and hooked her arm through his. “It’s so sad, isn’t it?”
His eyes flicked across the station quickly and, finding no one was looking, he pressed a quick kiss to her forehead.
“It might be, a bit. But now lets think on other things, hm?” said Draco.
“Like what?”
She’d performed an interpretive dance of the life of a nargle at their wedding brunch, twisting her body in a cocoon made of gnome straw. When she emerged, hair long and wild, the look of horror on his mother’s face alone was enough to please him for the rest of his natural life.
He spoke easily. “I'm not concerned about that. You always find a way to entertain.”
Draco/Luna - “them sending their first kid off to Hogwarts”
-----
Title: Beautiful Things
Pairing: Nathan/Claire, Heroes.
Rating & Notes: Rated PG-13 for themes, language. For Joanna_484.
She bought him a humidor for Christmas - spent too much of her own money on it, he’s sure, and it’s still a piece of shit. Its plain and cheap and a horrible Elie Bleu knockoff.
Nathan loves beautiful things, and that humidor is not beautiful. But her proud smile on Christmas morning had been beautiful.
So he takes it when he goes to Washington, and leaves the one Heidi got him a couple years ago, the one that’s inlaid with Spanish cedar and has his initials in platinum. Heidi’s humidor sits in his office in New York, and gathers dust until the maid wipes it off once a week.
Claire’s humidor sits on his desk in DC, and he brings it out when the other elected WASPs come over to hash out business. He smiles and says that his daughter gave it to him when they tease him about the poor quality. Then they apologize and nod knowingly. They’re family men too, of course.
Of course.
He taps gently at her window when he has a spare minute or two. He taps gently and he wonders if Bennet can hear him, if she’s told her dad that he comes to visit her this much. It used to be not that much.
She smiles when he knocks on her window, and it is beautiful.
He loves to fly with her - he loves to scare her. He doesn’t know if it’s her age or his that makes him feel like a teenage boy on a motorcycle, speeding recklessly just so she’ll squeal and hold on a little tighter.
Her hair ruffles over his face, and he goes faster.
Nathan/Claire
-----
Title: What the Workers Saw
Pairing: Peter/Claire, Heroes.
Rating & Notes: Rated PG-13 for language. For Joanna_484.
It’s an okay place to work - most of us are in college or whatever. A small coffee shop here in Carmel, not nice enough to feed the tourist trade, but the tips are local and decent.
There are some real asshole customers, and some really great ones. Most of us will argue over the great ones.
So it makes sense that we take turns with the best customer, who comes on Saturdays. Or customers, we should say. They’re a young couple, and they tip big enough that we’re on a written schedule as to who waits on them.
The girl and boy are in love, it’s so obvious.
She’s barely legal, has blonde hair that is long and curly. Totally out of fashion, some of us say, but the others say it’s a conscious throwback since her clothes are very in. He is thin and compact with dark hair and pale skin and he doesn’t smile much but he’s always polite.
They come in early. He reads the news while she drinks orange juice and looks out the window. It’s odd. Most people their age are still asleep at seven on Saturdays.
An old man will shuffle in to meet them about an hour later. This guys’s really old - eighties or nineties. He is tall with a ruffle of curly white hair and has watery, sad blue eyes. But he’s all smiles when he sees the boy and the girl. The girl jumps up and throws her arms around him, clasps him down to her body with every muscle in her arms.
The boy will clap a hand on the old man’s shoulder, and when they say goodbye he does the same thing, except he stretches and kisses the man on the cheek. An odd gesture, kinda, but it’s sweet we think.
We don’t know if he’s a grandfather or a great-grandfather, or what, but they laugh and talk while they eat, and, like we said, they tip a ton, so they can have the table for as long as they want, as long as they keep on tipping.
Which is why one of us made the extra effort last week. That morning they had brought in a pile of photographs and gone through them one by one, joking and teasing each other over every one. The old man’s gravelly chuckle mixed with the girl’s giggles, the boy’s handsome face quirking back in a smile every so often.
They had just walked out the door, and we were cleaning up their table. Then we saw a loose photograph on the bench of the booth they had been in. Must have slipped down or something.
So we ran it out there to them, before they got into their cars. Here, you forgot this, we said.
The girl took it, and smiled her thanks, and then they left.
We didn't all get to see the photo before it was gone, but the ones that had described it this way. It was a picture of the boy and the girl...dressed up for some party or something, because they were wearing really old-fashioned clothes. A Halloween picture, for sure.
On their lap was a tiny baby, with sad blue eyes and a ruffle of curly brown hair.
Peter/Claire - hopefully this made sense. if it didn't, let me know in the comments and i will clarify :)
-----
Title: Snowfall
Pairing: Sylar/Claire, Heroes
Rating & Notes: Rated R for language, naked-ness, bloody-ness, I don’t know what else…it’s Sylaire, come on.. For shimmeree.
The quiet snowfall encapsulates the empty street, like a cocoon over twisted cars, metal, and broken heroes. The defeated good guys, a chapter in the comic book that no one ever wanted to read.
That’s the way it is, though, and he feels no pity for them.
He doesn’t see her go down but he picks through the wreckage for her now. He’d like to think it’s just to make sure she’s good and dead, but it’s more than that.
He sees her hair peeking out underneath a large mass of coat and arms. Part of her head is sodden with blood, but there are a few curls that gleam blonde and bright on the snowy ground.
She’s half rolled underneath the large heap of something. He takes a few steps over, and squints.
It’s her annoying uncle. His still arms are wrapped around her shoulders, and his body covers her in a protective last embrace.
How touching.
He nudges a toe onto her coat and kicks the dead mimic off of her body, giving the corpse a spiteful shove.
He can see bullet holes over her body, dark masses of red that stain her once-white coat.
He kneels on the ground beside her. The air is silent save for the footfalls of his compatriots, the quiet murmuring of victors who had never doubted their supremacy in this final battle.
He leans over her body and unbuttons her coat. He tugs her flopping arms to the side of her body, unbuttons her blouse until she’s spread open like the legs of a lover. Her skin is still tan and her breasts are smooth and tipped with dark pink.
Her torso is a mass of ragged tearing though, and he carefully sticks his fingers into the holes that are still seeping blood. Warm and wet and red trickling into the cold snow.
He picks the bullets out of her gut, flicks pieces of flesh and skin to the ground beside him. Her blood isn’t cold yet, and when her eyes finally flutter, he smiles and shows her just how it’s going to be, from now on.
Sylar/Claire - “snow”.
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Title: Of Swirls and Shivers
Pairing: Buffy/Xander, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Rating & Notes: Rated R for language, sex. For andbless_mybaby.
Buffy Summers had had a lot of sex.
Angel did this thing…this was after they knew they couldn’t do it ever again. He wouldn’t do this thing a lot, because it was dangerous he said, but sometimes, late at night, she could give him that big-eye look and he’d do it. He’d take her to his bed and lay on top of her, ease his weight over her slowly. He’d wrap his arms around her and push his hips into hers, pretending like they were doing it, even though they weren’t. He’d do a whole lot of other things after that, but she liked the hip rubbing the best, and from what she could tell, he did too.
Riley…loved it when she was on top. God, did he love it. He could practically pick her up with one hand. After awhile he didn't even ask anymore (Fine with her. Really). He’d lift her hips up smoothly, and she’d ride…and ride. For all his boy scoutish-ness, he had loved to fuck, yup, with her on top.
Spike (from what she could tell)…did it in the typical vampire-ish way, meaning whatever position made you look straight into his eyes. She wasn’t allowed to look away, not for a second. Which was hot and intense and yeah, she missed Spike. Some times more than others.
Buffy dated a warlock who had a thing for chains and an older guy who looked like Liam Neeson that made her come just by pinching her this one way. She spent an entire summer on a beach in Kuala Lumpur with a guy who was five years younger than her and had abs like a frickin’ washboard. She had so much sex in the ocean that she wasn’t sure she’d ever remember what it felt like to do it on a bed.
Xander has chest hair. She hadn’t ever been with anyone that had chest hair. She blames cherry wine and the holidays for this, for both of them fumbling on the bed in Willow’s guest room. She’s tipsy but not drunk, and she’s telling herself that this isn’t going to change anything. This isn’t going to change anything.
He grips her legs shakily and drags her jeans off without unbuttoning them, which makes her giggle.
She licks the corner of his mouth. He tastes like cherry wine and clean boy, the stubble of his chin is rough against her tongue.
He crawls over her hurridly, the seam of his pants rubbing into the skin on her thighs. His knee pushes between her legs with very little practiced seduction.
She swirls her tongue into his mouth, and she hopes she’s appreciating that she’s using all her nicest techniques.
His teeth crack against hers on the third or fourth manic kiss and that’s when things went from silly to serious - no warning at all, like a bucket of cold water over her head.
For a minute she just lays there, doesn’t know what to do or say. Something she hasn’t felt in years. If ever.
His arms have a light dusting of hair, and there’s a dark trail from his belly on down. His hands are rough but feel incredible on her breasts and hips. His hair curls around his temple. These are the things she concentrates on as he pulls his shirt off.
And suddenly she’s not thinking about the give and take. She just reacts.
When she ropes her fingers around his cock, he shivers against her.
“God, Buffy. God.”
That’s when it stops being serious, and changes to something even worse (better?). Something she hasn’t felt on a beach or in a crypt or even in a fucking portal dimension.
Her throat burns in the morning.
Buffy/Xander - “shiver”
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Title: Lover Liabilities
Pairing: Angel/Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating & Notes: Rated R for sex. For open_embrace.
He’s a liability, and he’s come to terms with that. She puts her own life at risk for his. He’s weak, soft, and a target just to get his legendary head on the wall, so to speak.
Let alone being the lover of the Slayer…let alone sending a message or making a point.
But she’s practical above all else. She’s learned to sacrifice, learned to do the right things even if it’s hard. She’ll be realistic. She won’t do anything stupid.
He’ll be dead soon, bits of ash and bone flittering in the sunlight, somewhere. She’ll cry and he hates the thought of it, hates the knowledge that she’ll be down for a good week or two, her big eyes filled with tears that will plop into Willow’s lap.
But she’ll pick herself up again, get out there and save the world, because that’s what she does, what she was born for, and he’s proud of her for that. So proud.
This is his final stolen moment, he thinks, as he thrusts into her body, feels her writhe underneath him. This is a stolen moment that is never going to last, and he’s okay with that, she’s okay with that. It’s how it’s going to be, and even if it only lasts for a week or an hour, it will have been worth it.
300 years of self-denial and bone-weary repentance, all erased in minutes.
He trails his tongue down her neck, over the soft pulsing below her jaw, and she shivers.
“Love you.”
Angel/Buffy “fluffy smutty” (but it kinda went angsty instead. sorry.)
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Title: Broken Corners
Pairing: Michael/Liz, Roswell
Rating & Notes: Rated R for sex. For andbless_mybaby and prfect_serenity.
They’re two halves that don’t quite fit together - each part of a larger, more comfortable whole that isn’t around anymore. But they’ve jammed themselves together, somehow, their edges rigid and chipped but not quite ruined, just yet.
In a lot of ways it’s probably easier for her. At least Max is dead. At least Max didn't choose to leave.
He says that he understands why Maria took off. “Hey, I can’t blame the chick. I wouldn’t choose it, if I had a choice,” he says in that huffy tone, and purses his lips in the way that he does.
Liz nods quietly and says that he’s right, he’s right. But she can’t forgive Maria. Not like he does, or has.
He still paints and he never makes a ton of money, but he contributes, and that’s all she ever really wanted.
He makes love to her gently, because that’s surely how Max would have done it. If he were still alive.
She clings to him and talks him quietly out of his weary, brooding moods. She scolds him when he gets too pissy, and can usually make him crack a grin even at his worst.
But she doesn’t even try to replicate Maria’s bright chatter, just like he doesn’t pretend to be tender. The pretending would have been worse.
One morning she looks over her coffee cup at him, watches as he squints and shifts in his seat, his dark brow curled over a copy of Ulysses. And then she smiles.
Something quiet grows between them. It’s tenuous and it’s small, but it wraps around their mashed edges and broken corners, and every day it knits itself around them just a little more.
Michael/Liz
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Title: The Third Time’s a Charm
Pairing: Christopher/Lorelai, Gilmore Girls.
Rating & Notes: Rated G. For amathela.
“I’m in love. I’m getting married,” crackles her voice, through the air and into his ear, even though he’s in Phoenix at the moment and she’s, well. She’s Lorelai. Where Lorelai lives - where she will live till the day her bones crumble.
“That’s great!” he says enthusiastically. He’s heard this three times now, and he’s never, ever failed to be anything but chipper and bright when he hears it.
“Who’s the lucky guy?” he asks, as he traces his finger lightly along the seam of his couch.
“Nice guy - Marcus. You’d like him,” says Lorelai.
“I’d like to meet him, Lor.”
“Promise not to get in a fight with my fella this time?”
“Do you promise not to secretly like it when I do?” he asked her teasingly.
They banter for a few minutes and then they hang up. That night, in his bed, he thinks about this Marcus person. An architect. A solid, steady guy. Rory stamp of approval, indifference from her parents, which is as good a prospect as any man in Lorelai Gilmore’s life could hope for.
That’s fine.
Maybe this time she’ll marry the guy. Maybe this time she’ll make it to the alter or even to the bridal shower.
That’s fine too.
Lorelai and Christopher, Christopher and Lorelai, his classmates used to tease, and though he never wrote the equation on a tree, he did write it in her school yearbook, sophomore year.
He closes his eyes and he worries a little, but not too much.
Lorelai Gilmore, we’re officially Juniors now and I think that you are finally old enough to know that you are the woman of my dreams and I will never, ever love another. Sincerely, your future Husband.
Christopher/Lorelei
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Title: A Goddamn Modern-Day Shelley
Pairing: Jess (Gilmore Girls)/Claire (Heroes). Crossover!
Rating & Notes: Rated PG-13 for language. For eowyn_girl.
At first she keeps seeing him just to piss off her Father (the one that doesn’t love her). And then she dates him just on the principle that her Father hates…seriously hates him.
“A slacker. A poet. A goddamn modern-day Shelley,” says Nathan. They’re arguing in his office.
“He’s published. So what?” she asks.
“So what?” Nathan folds his arms, leans forward into her face. It used to intimidate her, but not anymore. “So what - he’s a rude little prick, and I don’t want him around here anymore.”
She has to crane her neck almost straight up, but she does, meets his angry eyes with her own. “Fine, I’ll just go to his place.”
“No,” says Peter from the couch
“Shut up,” says Claire, and her words burn with a fiery contempt just for Peter.
“He looks like him, you know,” says Nathan, points a finger accusingly at her uncle. “Just like him. It’s creepy as hell.”
Claire’s face screws up. “What?”
“Nathan, you shut up now,” says Peter, and flips through a magazine. “He doesn’t look anything like me.”
“He looks like a younger you, but not by much.” Nathan speaks distastefully. “Not the point. The point is that he’s rude and poor and he doesn’t treat you well.”
Her fingers flutter through her hair. “Ugh. He treats me fine. Great. He’s a great kisser,” she hisses, and for a minute she thinks Nathan really might hit her.
Peter’s suddenly at her side though. “Calm down, Nathan. Let the teenage girl have her rebellious phase,” says Peter sarcastically.
It got so bad so fast between them, she’s barely even surprised by the bitterness in his voice.
She tells them both to go to hell as she walks out of the office.
She takes the subway instead of a cab, her refusal to use Nathan’s credit card making her feel marginally self-righteous.
It’s a horrible, horrible neighborhood, and she covers her hair with the scarf in her purse before she walks up to the street.
A fat guy with a buzz cut holds the door for her at his apartment building.
“What are you doin’ here?” Jess has a cigarette between his lips. It wiggles as he speaks.
“I’m here to visit,” says Claire, like he’s clueless.
He steps back from the door. “I hope you took a cab. I don’t live in Manhattan, y’know.”
Claire steps into his apartment. It’s a tiny studio and the lighting is bad, but he doesn’t have any roommates.
She bobs her head forward, blonde ringlets over her shoulder as she slips out of her jacket. “I did. Take a cab, I mean.”
He’s still standing there, blinking at her in his way. He does it to intimidate people into talking when he wants them to.
She doesn’t say anything. Learned how to play the game pretty quick with him.
He balances his cigarette on an empty Red Bull can. “It’s late.”
“Yeah. Sorry.” Claire sits on his bed, since there isn’t a couch. “Got into a fight with Nathan.”
He sits down next to her, and nods. “Sucks.”
She smacks her lips shortly. “He’s a prick.” And then she reaches for his cigarette, and lays back on his bed.
He looks at her as she inhales, and then stretches out beside her, curling his arm under her neck.
She coughs.
He takes the cigarette from between her fingers.
“Hey,” she says lightly, and reaches for it.
“Nope. Don’t want you to get cancer and die,” says Jess, and he takes a drag.
She feels tears gather in her eyes, for some crazy reason. She rolls her head onto his shoulder, and for a brief minute he hugs her close and presses a kiss to her forehead.
She watches the smoke from his lips drift lazily into the soft air of the night, and closes her eyes.
Claire (Heroes)/ Jess (Gilmore girls) - “he's the spitting image of a certain uncle”
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Title: Been There, Done That
Pairing: Logan (Veronica Mars)/Rory (Gilmore Girls). Crossover!
Rating & Notes: Rated PG-13 for language. For eowyn_girl.
She’s an older woman, and that excites him. Not much older than him, but still.
He gives her eyes for a good three weeks.
Usually that’d work. Usually she’d have come to him. But not this one. He likes it, likes a challenge.
“So…how’s it going?” He perches on the corner of her desk in the newsroom, and leans his hands on her computer monitor. An absurd rendition of office coquetteishness.
“No.”
“Excuse me?” He places a hand on his chest.
“I said no.” Her eyes don’t leave the screen. “Whatever you’re going to say or ask me, answer is no.”
He sits up straight, just a bit taken aback.
“What if I was offering you an all-expenses paid trip to Cancun? Or Sheboygan. Your choice.”
At this her blue eyes flick to him, briefly. “Very funny. No. Sorry. Really. I’ve been there, done that.”
“Sheboygan? Intrepid girl reporter spend much time in Wiscansin?”
She rolls her eyes. “No, Logan. Intrepid girl reporter has dated smartass bad boys. Most days it seems like that’s all I’ve done is date smartass bad boys. Both rich and poor, blonde and brunette, young and old. Been there, done that, wrote the book on it, beat it to death after. So just stop.”
She fiddled with the papers on her desk, and stood up. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I wasn’t given this job by a friend of the family, so I actually have to work.”
And then she’s gone, her feet scurrying lightly down the hallway, her hair bouncing over her back.
Logan watched her retreat, that slow smile creeping into the corner of his mouth.
Rory (Gilmore Girls)/Logan (Veronica Mars)
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Title: Nice Boys
Pairing: Peter (Heroes)/Veronica (Veronica Mars). Crossover!
Rating & Notes: Rated R for sex, language. For an anon!
Veronica doesn’t like people to know this, but she really likes nice boys. A lot. Duncan was a nice boy. Piz was a nice boy. That’s who she’d pick first, if she had to. Can’t go wrong with a nice boy.
Which doesn’t explain why she’s dated so many goddamn assholes. Logan was an ass. Troy was a tit. Weevil, well…the scant seconds they’d lasted were just better not mentioned.
So, she thought it was probably time for a nice boy, after the last round of complete and utter fuckery she got from her last boyfriend. An 09’er. She just couldn’t learn, could she?
She meets him in a coffee shop, and it’s such a meet cute that she doesn’t spread the story around. She drops her change. He helps her pick it up. They bonk heads. Cupids and fluffy puppies would’ve been appropriate in the background.
He’s a nice boy, she can tell that right off the bat. He’s such a nice boy that it takes her almost three months of steady dating to realize that he has a secret - a big one.
She doesn’t kiss him any different, still makes him crepes in the morning while wearing a t-shirt of his. She goes out with him on Fridays and takes him to meet her dad and they have some pretty great sex. Really great sex - its like he knows exactly what she wants and how she wants it.
But the point is, she doesn’t let on that she knows that he’s hiding something.
She’ll find out though. She is Veronica Mars after all.
Veronica (Veronica Mars)/Peter (Heroes)
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Title: A Bad Heart
Pairing: Koshiro/Nanoka (Koi Kaze)
Rating & Notes: Rated PG-13 for themes. For sandoz_iscariot.
It happens in the worst way possible - with them tangled up in sheets and her hair and an unmistakable embrace.
And then he was there - Father. Gasping in the doorway, shock and disgust congealing on his face.
Thank God their mother wasn’t there to see it, is all he can think.
He thinks this as he dabs at the blood on his chin and stares at the still body of his father.
“This wasn’t your fault.” She speaks softly beside him, her hand creeping into his lap.
He grunts, and doesn’t say a word.
Nanoka puts her other hand over the still, wrinkled one that is next to the body in the hospital bed. He had a bad heart. He always had a bad heart.
Part of him hopes that their father doesn’t wake up. It’d be a lot easier that way, for everyone.
As he thinks this, he’s horrified by his own thoughts, and leans his head into his hands.
Koshiro/Nanoka - Koi Kaze
hope those pleased everyone! again, i thank you for reading and for being such great reviewers/voters. it's so appreciated. <3 mab