The Fleef writes things

Nano 09

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:44:59 GMT

Hallo all! I live. Using Nano this year as a kick in the pants to finish a number of things, so this journal is going to be a very busy place between now and the end of the year :) Woohoo!

Trek, worksafe. Well, mostly. Suggestive?

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:17:32 GMT

Trek ficlet. Kirk springs a birthday surprise on ol' Bones.

Sickbay was empty and quiet, for once. McCoy reviewed the duty roster, not that Chapel ever let him change it. A few machines beeped or whirred, a light flashed here and there, but nobody was bleeding out on his damned floor or vomiting sputum and threads of bile on his biobeds or, maybe worse, crying helplessly that it hurt so bad and why wasn't there a hypospray for that? So the quiet was cozy a sunshine, even if the paperwork was about as stimulating as a lawn contest.

A tawny head peered cautiously over the hulk of a bone regenerator, then vanished. McCoy's came alert like a deer scenting hounds, and he peered suspiciously about before ducking back to his work, stubble bristling.

A stealthy gold-clad figure crept toe-heel around the bone-regenerator and round a row of biobeds. McCoy poked his dataPADD, grumbled about incompetent filing, and shoved away from the temporary workstation. Inventory Day was universally a pain in the tuckus, but it was usually a pain in *someone else's*, so McCoy didn't care as much.

The creeping figure knocked its head on a low-flying tricorder outlet. McCoy barked, "Who's that back there? We're closed for inventory, dammit, I thought I threw all you bastards out hours ago."

Kirk flattened himself to the cold metal floor, breathing quick and soft through his mouth. Damn!

McCoy squinted, ever-suspicious. Last week the Beta-shift staff had a pool going over whether McCoy was going grey, or merely salt-and-pepper, and they kept trying to creep up on him to inspect the back of his head. Of course Chapel was in on it. "Christine! Dammit woman, is that you?"

Kirk twiddled forward by centimeters, up on his fingers and toes. He'd left his shoes outside, even, crept in through a Jeffries-tube back route he'd bribed Scotty for. Not that he'd needed to bribe, what with Scotty being so grateful Kirk hadn't spaced all those tribbles like he'd threatened. It was only a botttle of Scotch, and anyways Scotty was always happy to share.

"Better not catch you, whoever you are," McCoy grumped, and shuffled a few printouts loudly. "Cantcha see I'm a busy man? I don't want to have to deal with shenanigans. Or trysting ensigns." He raised his voice. "Do you have any idea what sex does to the human body? Or the potential infections that can result? We had a case of Andorian Shingles aboard last shore-leave!"

Kirk winced at the reminder. God damn but those things had itched, that was bad enough, but did they have to *sing*, too?

He lay still for long minutes, until McCoy's grumbling died down to rhythmic breaths and the tapping on the dataPADD had lost its savagery. From his vantage-point he could see McCoy's ankles, neatly crossed, the knobby caps of his knees under the neat lines of his uniform.

Slowing even more, Kirk eeled forward, feeling his girl thrum beneath him, his on ship, his to treasure and care for, and everyone on her. In her? Either way, according to his expert Captain's eye, a certain CMO needed a little enforced relaxation.

Kirk waited till McCoy had turned his head, scanning the list stuck to the wall, and scuttled until he was under the table, grinning to himself. McCoy's boots were worn to wrinkles at the ankle, but clean. Breath held for silence, Kirk fumbled for the system trigger and keyed the override program he’d written a few days before. Obediently, the computer said, “Doors locked, all standard override codes disabled.”

“Damn your eyes, what now?” McCoy pushed away from the table and demanded, “Computer, undo.”

“Incorrect command.”

Strangling on snickers, Kirk crept to the other side of the table and ducked around a screen. He let McCoy curse a little more, then triggered the next phase of his little plan.

It started softly, a choral whisper in Federation Standard. The lights dimmed to 75%.

“Dammit Scotty, it is Scotty isn’t it? Lights to full! Nobody else would dare. Look, greasemonger, I’ve got a lot of work left—”

Kirk snuggled his back against the wall and folded his legs, waving his hands with the grace of a conductor. His own voice, layered over itself, proceeded very softly to sing. His one regret was being unable to see McCoy’s face as the words registered.

“JIM!”

Kirk’s laughter joined his recorded voice, “And a merry birthday blowjob to youuuuu!”

“Where are you? You can’t come into my sickbay and—is some sort of childish shit-fling? Cure a man of Andorian shingles and the grief never ends!”

“Go sit down, Bones,” Kirk called. “I’ll be right there.”

The lights dimmed further, and the recording ended, shifting into a smokey-voiced woman singing a bluesey jazz number. When the chair creaked and Kirk could just about *hear* McCoy glaring about him in grim suspicion, he stood and slipped around behind his friend, propping both elbows on McCoy’s shoulders and resting his cheek on the top of McCoy’s head.

“Dammit Jim, I’m tired, and I *still* haven’t finished sorting out this mess. Clodhoppers in Beta shift half-inventoried then handed over to Gamma and somehow managed to double-count some stuff and shitcan a bunch of perfectly good hyposprays—”

Kirk dragged his clawed fingers through McCoy’s hair for a scalp massage, then rubbed his neck briefly. “Ah, c’mon Bones, just gimme a half-hour. Rest your brain a little.” Kirk spun McCoy’s chair and cupped his jaw, pressing a kiss the permanent scowl-crease on McCoy’s brow. He knelt.

"Happy Birthday, Bones," Kirk said, and rested his chin on McCoy's knee, one hand curved fondly around the meat of his calf. "Ready for your present?"

END

Miles and Gord and Rex

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 02:08:27 GMT

Fic for Piig's nanowrimo project from last year. Probably won't make sense if you haven't read that. Slash, if you squint.

"Hey Rex?" Miles lay bareback on the floor below a fly-deathtrap halogen and picked particles of shirt-lint from his bellybutton. He was sunbathing.

"Hey-yo daddy-o," Rex's latest goal in life was to beat Gord at Bugger Your Neighbor. He'd determined that Gord had transcended the typical card-counting and gone into telecardology. He read the cards' minds, he could *smell* the difference, or feel minute fingerprint variations in the edges, or hear their little paper voices. Something! So Rex turned the cards one by one, rolling the thumbed-ragged edges against his lip. If Gord had a trick, he'd learn it too.

Miles squirmed. "Do you believe in--hey, you're gonna get spit all over the cards!"

Rex turned his head, the queen of clubs stuck to his lip. "I am not!" The card waggled, then fluttered to the floor.

"Yes you--oh, nevermind. If you've got anything I bet I've caught it already."

"If *I* have anything I bet you brought it in with you on your filthy human hide, you cockroach."

Miles dug out a particularly gritty flake of lint and lifted it to eye-level for inspection. It was blue. He sniffed it to see if it had that bellybutton smell. "Man, I haven't worn my blue shirt in like three days. Check the size of this one."

A cherry tomato skittered through the doorway. Gord followed it, labcoat over faded jeans over bare feet. It skipped a little over ruts in the floor and came to rest against Miles's bare side.

Miles rolled the lint-flake between the pads of thumb and forefinger. From this angle, his head on the floor, Gord rose like a particularly abstract colossus, his face lost behind his wild hair and the mad gleaming goggles, the g;are-white circles of the extra lenses staring down at Miles, judging him. He tossed the lint away and hastily wiped his fingers on his sternum.

"Hey Grod," Miles said. The tomato was cold, but he didn't want to touch it with his linty fingers. Gord might still *eat* it.

"I made a tomato plant," Gord said vaguely, not opening his mouth much. "Out of Wire?" He kissed his pinched fingers together, both hands, then drew them apart, as if measuring an absurdly long invisible hair.

"I'm going to beat you this time," Rex announced, and shuffled the cards in a noisy cascade. "Are the tomatoes tasty?"

"No," Gord said. "They're made of wire. I cut my mouth." Miles could see it now, strings of gummy, bloody saliva clinging to Gord's teeth.

Miles shied away from the tomato, worming sideways. "Ugh! You brought it here to kill me, didn't you!?"

"No," Gord said, and stooped to retrieve the tomato. His labcoat brushed ticklishly along Miles's ribs, "I came to show you. It contains a minute amount of Type 7. Just a tiny bit. But I can use it, if I collected enough and spun it together?"

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!" Rex proclaimed.

"Wrong Princess," Miles said absently.

Gord eyed the tomato, grimaced, swallowed blood. "I think we can eat them, once I get the wire out. Except by then it's just tomato puree."

Miles talked about escaping again, to himself, in his head. He had to get out. The reason he had to get out was, he was going crazy. Crazy things were happening in his head. And anyway, tomato puree may be slather-able, but it wasn't sunblock. Except it was edible, and since they only had one spoon, it made sense, right, for them to eat tomato puree off one another. Maybe Gord's skin would be salty.

Gord turned the tomato, the halogens gleaming on the shiny red surface. "What's that blue thing stuck to it?"

"I'm gonna go talk to the plants!" Miles blurted, and fled. "Very important! Helps them grow!"

"Jeez," Gord said. "Maybe I made him hungry."

Rex clattered the cards on the table to tidy the stack. "Eh, he's always hungry, these days. Deal you in?"

END

Happy October!

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:44:10 GMT

Title: One Fine Day In Unexplored Space
Fandom: ST: Voyager
Ship: Seven/Janeway
A/N: Probably piig♥’s fault somehow. :)
Wordcount: 5,000
Hard R? nsfw

Warnings: F/F sex. Author's knowledge of canon dulled by the passage of time. Chaste tentacles. Uh. Accidental bondage I didn't notice until I was halfway through? Might also count as 'aliens made them do it'.

:D?

The seed ship arrived on glimmering solar sails and circled the Voyager tenderly as a courting water-dove. It was an artistic dream of curves and colour-retardant reflective surfacing, and Janeway might better have appreciated the sight had the infernal thing not been in the process of engulfing her ship.

"Captain! It's eating the ship!"

Janeway clutched her console, though the expected turbulence never hit. "Dammit engineering I heard you the last few times!"

Kes chewed her knuckles. "Captain, I'm still not reading any hostility. Just a taste like those Bjoran silk-candies, and a little like synthahol."

Before Janeway could ask when the hell she’d had synthahol, Chakotay whirled away from his console and pulled tips of his ears. "It's eating the ship! It doesn't need to be hostile, just peckish!"

"Can *anyone*," Janeway enunciated over the pulse of Red Alert, "tell me what is going on?"

The Gamma-shift science officer's legs jigged so hard her voice shook. "It's. Uh. The attacking vessel appears to be an amalgamation of organics over a carbon/silica mesh. It's. Not eating us, exactly. It's. Forging connections with the Voyager--Captain, it's growing into the ship."

Janeway sat straighter and checked the tidiness of her sleep-mussed bun. The excitement had started two hours before the end of Gamma shift and the bridge was currently crewed with a mixture of Gamma and Alpha shift, all showing varying levels of tiredness. Janeway herself strongly suspected she had pillow-marks on her cheek and resisted the urge to rub selfconsciously at them. "Where will it enter the ship? I want an armed team waiting. Has it affected any of our systems? Is it anywhere near the warp coils? Dammit, someone get me answers!"

The lift whirred open just as the lights flinched, fluttered, and went dark. Curses from all directions in a healthy mixture of languages, some outbursts hastily stifled. Seven calmly demanded that the computer re-establish the lights.

"When did she get here?" Chakotay said, over the computer's assertion that the lights *were* on. The Red Alert claxons bleated then fell silent, and the computer no longer responded to commands.

"The turbolift," Seven said, "Though I do not know if they are still funcitonal." Seven paused, then added, "I have just come from engineering. Ensign Aziz is hysterical and indicates that the coolant tanks have become clogged with what she describes as a writhing nest of prehensile pencil-dicks, and requests permission to open fire. She then preceeded to open fire, to no discernable effect."

Janeway stifled a groan. Phaser-fire and photon torpedoes both had vanished into the ship's glossy exterior with a ripple like a gumball into a still pond, to emerge from the other side and continue into the void, useless as a hackeysack in a snakepit.

Over by the helm the Vulcan Gamma-shift navigator announced, "Lt. Mohammed, I have told you that I am married. Kindly remove your hand from my groin.”

Lt. Mohammed cleared his throat, three sharp cracks, and protested his innocence. "I only groped you the once, nuh man! Just the once and my name it mud fa life."

"Would it be you who's fondling me, then, Captain?" Skernol asked with little hope.

"That's a negative, Ensign. Thanks anyway," Janeway said, and swallowed hard against the fear clambering about in her ribcage. "Why haven't the backup powercells engaged?"

"Then who's that with their fingers in my hair?" Chakotay said, voice cracking. "I thought it was. Uh. I mean. Captain?"

Into the darkness and silence, Kes giggled. Janeway drummed her fingers on her console and dragged a hard breath. There hadn't been a class, seminar, or simulation covering anything of the sort while she had been in training. Even if the communications systems still worked, there was nobody within hailing-distance. Starfleet promised its cadets that they were entering into the truest family the known universe could offer, and that for the rest of their lives they'd be no more than an S.O.S away from an army of their peers. Her crew didn't have that--all they had was her, and each other. She channeled her command voice. "I want everyone with their hands in their laps, now! Is anyone armed?"

A cry of outrage from Lt. Mohammed. "My console's covered in--That’s like it’s *hair*!?"

Cooing, Kes said, "We're all together now," and, from the sound of it, she was approaching Janeway at the central console in confident, skipping hops.

"Kes, report," Janeway said.

"I'm getting a reading!" she chirped. "They love us!"

Janeway surged to her feet, hesitated, and settled back into her chair. The polymer-blend cushion gave with an unfamiliar rustle when she sank gingerly against the backrest.

"Captain, my console likewise is overgrown with a coating of unknown filaments. I am attempting to clear them away."

Over by the communications console, a faint, silvery light sprang up; the ensign on duty had found a spare PADD and now shone it about, her face a shadowed oval in the brief bubble that held out against the black. Something glimmered wetly over her console, and she recoiled with a cry.

"Ensign Peters, get ahold of yourself! Good thinking. Are there any more PADDS lying about?"

"I. Uh. I got a gaming system?" Lt. Mohammed volunteered shyly.

"Whip it out, then," Janeway ordered, feeling a surge of fondness for her crew as other weak lights sprang up, powering on with tiny trills or bell-tones. By their combined glow the glimmering wet ropes filled the bridge.

"How intruiging," Skernol said, just as someone began to scream.

"Quiet!" Janeway roared.

"It's all over your CHAIR!" Peters cried. "Captain, you've got to move!" And she threw her PADD at Janeway's head.

Janeway ducked automatically, or tried to; her shoulders jerked but her back seemed fused to her chair. She raised her arms, still free, and squirmed, contracting her belly in an attempt to move her legs. They were stuck fast to the floor by more of that glimmering *stuff*.

"Peters, will you be quiet? Everyone, status!"

"Not stuck," Lt. Mohammed said quickly.

"Nor am I," Skernol said, swiping at his console. "The filaments seem to have thickened. I believe they resemble worms. They are moving."

Janeway swallowed to silence herself. "Seven of Nine, what's your status? If the lift works, see if you can get Kes to sickbay."

"She is not my first priority," Seven said, skirting the side of Janeway's console and bending over her, her hair a fairy blaze in the gloom of the power-dead bridge. "Captain?" Seven said, and wove her hands through the mass that had cocooned Janeway's lower legs, fisting her hands and hauling.

"Ah!" Janeway's discomfort burst out of her; Seven's pulling didn't hurt, precisely, but it felt as if she were gently drawing Janeway's entrails out of her abdomen. "Seven, stop, I can feel that--"

Seven froze. "Captain?"

Janeway scowled. Her skin itched, now, along her back and down her thighs, the itch creeping over her entirely. She coughed a little to clear her throat. "Seven--can you clear the back of my neck?"

"Certainly," Seven said, the metal that curved above her eye a silver accent. Her fingertips along the nape of Janeway's neck were warm, the filaments creeping into her skin standing out cool in contrast to that touch. Janeway closed her eyes, on the bridge of her dead ship, and held to her calm. There was a reason the Kobayashi Maru was still a required simulation for anyone on command track. As Seven tugged gingerly at the soft, ferny growths that connected Janeway to her chair, she said, "I want all of you to the lift, now."

"Captain--" Seven said, "Brace yourself." And she tore a fistful of filaments free from Janeway's neck.

Three things happened. Janeway cried out at the slicing pain, and tensed. Power returned to the bridge in a blow of light. And the no-coloured, glimmering mass reared as a whole, leaping like water to engulf Janeway and Seven in a glittery translucent egg. Seven stumbled, lurching over Janeway and slapping both hands against the backrest of the Captain's chair.

"Dear God," Janeway said. "Seven?"

"I am uninjured. You do not appear to be bleeding," Janeway returned, bracing her knees beside Janeway's thighs and patting her hands over the interior curve of the bubble. Janeway shivered, feeling the light impacts as if Seven were stroking the chambers of her lungs.

"Kes? Ensign Peters?" Janeway called, hoarse. There was no answer, and no sound but the faint brushing of Seven's hands and the rush of Janeway's uneven breaths.

"I want this thing OFF OF MY SHIP," Janeway said, and glared at Seven for lack of a better target.

"Take your hair down," Seven said absently, scratching at the egg.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Your hairclip," Seven said.

"I'm not in the habit of wearing metal to bed," Janeway said stiffly. The scrape of Seven's nails made her bones itch.

"Perhaps you should consider it." Seven didn't seem to know where to put her hands, finally settling them on Janeway's console to either side of her own thighs.

"The others don't appear to be moving," Seven reported. "We would be able to see their shadows."

No sound made it through the colourless shell. Abruptly Seven leaned over Janeway, peering at the back of her neck, forcing the Captain to turn her head or risk unintentionally bending the fraternization rule. "If it were metal as opposed to organics I would call this a data plugin or virtuareal jack," Seven said. Her breath stirred Janeway's hair.

"How much of the ship has this thing surrounded?" Janeway fretted. Her body ached with tension. She craned her neck, a movement muted by the living fibres that had sunk into her body.

"Tell me what you feel," Seven said. Even now she was calm.

I envy your control, Janeway didn't say. I want to break it. I want to know if you're still capable of blushing, or orgasm. I want you to get off my lap so I can think. I'm terrified this thing is going to kill my crew. I'm frightened it already has. "Angry," she said. "Protective."

Seven blinked, her lashes pale and perfect. She tipped her head and regarded the cocoon, the slim rootlets that had grown into her Captain's flesh. "I have a hypothesis."

"As good as anyone else's fact," Janeway said. "Continue."

"I do not believe we are under attack. I believe we are being contacted."

"I'll believe that when it spits my damned ship out and says 'hello' like everyone else!"

Patiently, Seven said, "Kes showed no sign of alarm."

"Kes seemed to exhibit the euphoria ofan intoxicated teenager," Janeway grumped. "How much of the rest of the crew is bound and who's still active? Did the alarm wake the rest of the crew?"

"I do not believe we can affect that now," Seven said absently.

"Tell me about your hypothesis," Janeway said, meaning, Distract me.

"The ship may itself be sentient. It may be a biocomputer or AI with organic segments. If it has forged connections with your nervous system it may be possible for you to affect it."

"Before it takes me over? Or kills us all," Janeway muttered. Her ribcage felt too small, and the tingling itch had moved into her marrow. She fought down her restless urge to squirm and bit the inside of her cheek at the image, so strong it bordered on sensation, of Seven herself squirming and flushed with arousal.

"Captain," Seven said gently. "Would you try?"

Janeway tensed, thrashed slightly, demanded that the things burrowing into her withdraw, that the transulcent prison open. Instead, it contracted, yanking her flush to her chair and crushing Seven into her lap. Janeway turned her head, her cheek flat to the fabric of Seven's uniform just above the jut of her breasts.

"Are you really so defensive against it? It has not hurt us," Seven said.

Janeway closed her eyes, breathless and palpitating and *trapped*. "If you make any comments about surrendering, futility, or human frailty I swear I will throw you out of the airlock myself."

Seven shifted, not a fidget or a little getting-comfy shift like anyone else, but a deliberate adjustment. Now Janeway's forehead was pressed to Seven's shoulder; Seven's breath a soft rush past her ear. "Captain, you must relax. It seems connected not to the autonomic systems or forebrain but to your body."

Janeway bit her lip, hard, against the flutter of hysterical laughter that clawed at her throat. If there were ever a situation *less* conducive to relaxation--"Somehow I doubt that," Janeway said.

"Hm, interesting," Seven said.

"Have you been spending too much time with Tuvok?" Janeway said.

"Not enough to have learned the nerve-pinch," Seven said.

"Seven!"

"I was joking, Captain. Though it *would* relax you."

"Don't you dare."

Seven didn't answer. Janeway flexed her body, but the filaments had melted firmly into her flesh. Her ship was a fragile bubble of metal and air and life, the lives of her crew, and if Seven were right, if there *was* something she could do, even bound like this--

Seven rested against her, breathing slow, as if there were nothing out of the ordinary. As if Janeway's lap were a perfectly suitable place to perch, Seven's metal-augmented weight warm and uncomfortably welcome. Janeway matched the rhythm, drawing breaths warmed by Seven's body, the soft neutral savor that a sonic shower left, the faint human musk overlaid with a tang of metal. It set Janeway on edge, tense, wanting to touch and posess. It made her want to bite.

Light pressure and motion over the top of her head made Janeway start, and the cocoon flexed. Janeway growled a Klingon phrase she'd deny knowing.

"It's only me," Seven said. "I am stroking your hair."

Perhaps this was a nightmare.

"Captain," Seven said. Crooned, almost. "Do I make you uncomfortable?"

"Of course not," Janeway snapped.

"Focus on me, and release your tension."

Janeway moved to pinch the bridge of her nose, but her arms were stuck fast to her chair. A sensation hovered just out of reach, the sense of herself as vast and hollow and pregnant with life. She recoiled from the feeling, from the fear, but the only other place to go was Seven, a member of her crew, inappropriately close and insufferably calm.

"The doctor and I talk at night," Seven said, seemingly out of nowhere. "He is human enough to grow lonely."

Janeway raised an eyebrow. The bridge lighting was diffused by the dome until it seemed that Janeway and Seven were trapped in the luminous heart of a pearl. Seven's uniform seemed full of distant stars or moonlit seafoam, pulled back toward the sea to the chime of shelldrift.

"Seven, I'm losing my mind," Janeway said faintly. "I don't suppose I could coax you into attempting a nerve pinch? Or a decent right hook ought to do it."

“Meditation? Seven suggested. “Or—” she traced the curve of Janeway's ear, ticklish-light, and ignored that comment. "As I had been saying; The doctor has frequently praised the value of therapeutic massage to those with difficulty relaxing."

"My back is fused to my chair," Janeway said dryly.

"Do you have an alternate suggestion?" Seven smoothed her thumbs over Janeway's eyebrows and firmly over her temples.

Janeway winced. "Lighter, please."

"I fail to see how a faint touch will relax your muscles." Seven didn't let up, settling into a firm circuit along Janeway's brow, then dragging tense fingertips down the sides of Janeway's throat. On the third stroke Janeway broke out in gooseflesh, a cold prickle over her ribs and along her thighs.

"Captain, you've a flush."

"I blame you," Janeway said indistinctly. Surely all her tendons were fossilized, all her muscles white-flecked red marble stiff and cold. Seven kneaded the tops of Janeway's shoulders, rough pressure through her fingers and the heels of her hands. A shiver worked down Janeway's back as some of the tension broke, escaping as a soft vocalization.

"You made a noise," Seven obvserved.

Reluctantly, Janeway allowed herself to lean against Seven. Just a little. "I did not."

"I ought not to confess, then, that the doctor did indeed mention therapeutic massage, and I never never would mention that he *also* mentioned an orgasm as being a superior relaxation technique."

Janeway coughed and pulled away as far as the chair would allow. "Did he now."

"With your permission, Captain," Seven said. Her request may have had more weight had she stopped her hands.

"Regulations forbid such--"

"Captain," Seven said, and Janeway stopped at the uncharacteristic gentleness of her voice. "It is imperative that we release the ship and bridge crew and establish meaningful contact with the unknown vessel. I believe this will work but I will require your cooperation."

"Seven. I'm tied to the chair."

"Are you implying that you would prefer to withhold verbal consent?"

What do you do when duty coerces you into something you don't want to admit to wanting? "Permission be damned. You have to write the report, then," Janeway said. "Chakotay will be an adequate Captain, if he picks a first officer who can balance him out."

"Captain."

"Of course, I don't know who's going to court-martial me. Or what I'm going to do till we make it back to Federation space."

"Captain Janeway--"

"And you'll need to see the Doctor for counselling, afterwards, of course. I don't think we need to worry about a pregnancy but he’ll want to check us both for--"

"Elizabeth!"

Janeway stopped. "Why, Seven. I'm not sure I've ever heard you take that tone before."

Seven actually frowned. "Is your junction with the ship affecting your mind?" Janeway wanted to touch her nose to the little confused scrunch of Seven's brow.

"No. I don't think so. Of course it is--"

"It ought to have merged with me," Seven remarked, smoothing the edges of Janeway's bun. "I have been subsumed by a whole before."

Janeway grimaced. "Don't talk like that."

"Documented fact?"

"As if you're expendable. You're a valuable member of my crew, as fine an officer as Starfleet could ever want, as any Captain could ask for--"

Janeway stopped abruptly at the curve of Seven's palm to her cheek. "I owe Neelix a forfeit. He's convinced you have sexual inclinations towards me."

Dimly, Janeway resolved to have a conversation with the morale officer. Seven tucked her face against Janeway's and murmured, "Don't over-examine." She curled her free hand against Janeway's neck, her thumb riding Janeway's carotid. "Tell me where the other ship has connected with ours."

"Cargo holds two through four," Janeweay said, without thinking. "Engineering, but nowhere near the warp coils or nacelles. All outlying cabins, including the bridge. It hasn't affected our weapons systems, and it just ignored the shields," she finished in a tone of surprise.

"Can you affect it? Try opening," Seven told her. Janeway swallowed, an audible click in a dry throat. She squirmed as much as she could, and Seven rode the movement with an easy arch of her hips, making Janeway seize and draw a sharp breath.

"I wish I could move my hands."

"That will not be necessary." Seven stroked down Janeway's arms and dabbed soft circles in the hollows of her palms.

It tickled, but the sensation built until a sympathetic thrum shot through Janeway, a shiver as all her body woke up to pay attention. She closed her eyes. "If we're going to do this, you should kiss me."

In answer, Seven tipped her head so their mouths brushed, a ruffle of mixed breath between them. Janeway strained into it, waiting, waiting till it ached, but Seven's mouth remained closed. With a pang Janeway wondered if she even knew how.

"Here," Janeway said, helplessly focussed on the warm crush of Seven's weight on her thighs. She nuzzled into a more elaborate kiss, catching at ths silky undercurve of Seven's lip with her teeth. Seven gripped her hands, squeezed goodbye and took hold of Janeway's jaw like an order. "Messy organics," she muttered, then licked Janeway's mouth in a long swipe, more like an enthusiastic puppy than an amorous woman.

Oh dear, Janeway thought, and bit Seven's lower lip before she could do that again, taking her time with a teaching kiss, slow lush sweeps over the fine skin of Seven's lip, and in. Seven went still, dead-in-space still. Janeway persisted, a little grimly; let her react as she would, but Seven *would* react. Janeway flexed her fingers, longing.

Seven didn't melt or groan or even hitch her folded legs higher up Janeway's lap, but she did tip her head and cautiously press into the kiss.

"*God*," Janeway muttered, and strained forward. "God, Seven--"

"Here," Seven said, and stroked posessively through Janeway's hair, mussing it. A laugh choked itself off in Janeway's throat. "Seven. Try the neck."

"That isn't one of the listed primary-sexual-response sites," Seven protested.

In answer, Janeway turned her face away, tipping her chin up. The diffuse light of the bridge spilled over her face.

"Remember to relax," Seven told her, and traced a ticklish-thin and mathematically-precise line up Janeway's carotid with the tip of her tongue.

In the unnatural quiet of the membrane every tiny noise took on unwarranted significance; the rasp of Seven's uniform against Janeway's, every breath that hitched out of sequence or the soft cling and part of peppered kisses. Seven hovered over Janeway as much as the cramped quarters would allow, proceeding as if she had a list she followed faithfully; this many kisses, then a touch to the throat. This much attention to the throat, and then the shoulder may be touched.

"Are you cold? You keep shaking," Seven said, and pressed her teeth against Janeway's trapezius before applying careful pressure.

"Mhn. No," Janeway muttered. Her forearms ached from straining against the connecting fronds. She wanted to touch Seven, she wanted to finger-comb that blond hair until it frizzed like the downfeathers of a new bird, she wanted to cup Seven's waist and urge her closer, to touch those magnificent breasts or *god* get Seven out of that uniform--

"Captain, you must try to relax," Seven said, and unfastened the hidden catch at Janeway's throat.

Janeway took a cramped breath, her ribcage tight. "Easy to say--"

"Focus."

Janeway picked a fleck of light in the egg-membrane above, let it take the whole of her vision as Seven pressed firm, dragging strokes across her shoulders and down her arms, squeezing her wrists before her hands lifted like birds to repeat the sequence. Over and over, Seven's slow touch and drugging proximity, until Seven dotted soft, damp kisses to the corner of Janeway's mouth. "I'm going to proceed to the next step, Captain,"

"I believe I'd have gathered that when you, oh."

"There is an aural aspect to increasing your partner's arousal. When Chakotay and Kim allowed me to watch it was clear that Chakotay derived as much stimulation from what was said as from what was done."

Janeway squinted one eye closed and resolved to forget that image as quickly as possible.

"I am going to slide my hands into your shirt now," Seven said.

Janeway flushed and arched immediately, hating the glittery engulfing entity and her uniform equally. "Seven--"

"Let me," Seven said. "Focus on a reduction of tension."

A return to the fleck of light, then, but the tension at Janeway's core only increased, even as she focussed on unravelling her muscles limb by limb. She timed her breathing to the slide of Seven's warm hands, not noticing when the fronds relaxed too, allowing Janeway to slump into a welcoming curve that Seven could curl into. She felt jittery, still worried about her crew, but her body was lighting up, distracting her. As Seven nuzzled her breastbone a pulse started somewhere in the entity the Voyager had become, the tangling tendrils softening their clutch.

"Seven, would you get on with it?" Janeway said, growling to hide her lack of breath.

"I am following the steps the doctor gave me," Seven protested.

"Wait. Steps. He--"

Seven scrunched sideways, squirming into the gap between Janeway's side and the left arm of her console, draping a thigh over Janeway's and stroking the regulation trousers warmed by Janeway's body. "There," Seven said. "I have skipped two steps."

"*What* steps? Seven, did you *plan* to--," But then Seven curled her palm where Janeway ached most for her touch, and talking just wasn't worth the effort, not when she could lift her hips and fight her breathing down to something less desperate, more befitting a Starfleet captain, and then Seven pulled away and Janeway bit a curse off to a grunt. "Seven?"

"If you won't relax there's no point in this," Seven said.

Janeway clenched her teeth. "I believe a lessening of tension is the final stage in the process."

Seven's thumb rode Janeway's hipbone, the steady eyes *merry*, or near enough.

"You missed, Seven," Janeway play-growled.

"Missed what?" Seven said.

Janeway knocked their foreheads together, softly. "Seven?"

"Aye, Captain?"

Janeway had to drag a full breath before she could answer. She hadn't *thought* she'd had a kink for being called Captain in bed, but she suspected that having Seven in her lap would result in any number of new kinks.

Seven nuzzled into Janeway's neck, prying the waistband of Janeway's uniform away from her belly and worming one hand inside. Janeway knocked her forehead against Seven's breast as she arched into the touch, spread as far as the confines of her chair would allow, desperate and sweaty and still fully dressed.

"Seven--"

"There was supposed to have been a bed," Seven murmured, her fingers careful against the slick soft skin. Janeway jerked, even so soft a touch a shock after waiting so long.

"And I wanted to sit with you on the obvervation deck. You could have had wine which I would taste from your mouth."

Shivering, Janeway twisted her hips in short pulses, her belly tensing with the sliding stroke of Seven's fingers. It made her head swim, her vision an underwater blur. "I'd have wanted to stay, if you would have allowed it."

Janeway nodded senselessly, head tipping back against the breathless pressure expanding in her chest, as if her next breath were immeasurably far away.

"Captain, tell me why this is so appealing," Seven told her, "It is messy and undignified."

Laughing only cracked the breathless feeling tighter, and Janeway yanked against her living restraints, wanting to scratch though Seven's hair or clutch her back. Fine tremors started in her thighs and up along her ribs. When Janeway pried her eyes open for a glance at Seven she found her watching, that steady focus, as if Janeway were beautiful instead of mussed and sweaty. "What can I give you?" Seven asked, and tucked her face against Janeway’s.

"Just this, just this--" Janeway said, a gasp buried in the words. "Seven--"

"Elizabeth," Seven said, oddly tentative, and Janeway seized, tensing all over, desperate for something just out of reach. Seven crowded closer, offering the warm curve of her neck for Janeway to hide her flushed, damp face. Seven slowed but pressed harder, swirls of her fingertips over Janeway's clit, wavelets of pleasure all through her as the water rose, filling Janeway up intil it shimmered and broke. Teeth clenched and breath stuttering, Janeway arched so hard she slid part-way out of her chair, connecting fronds stretched, Seven rising with her and curling her free arm around Janeway, solid and protective.

"Seven--.”

"Here," Seven said, and flexed her hand, and Janeway broke again. Seven snuck a kiss into the dishevelled strands by Janeway's temple, and she leaned into the touch, tension draining until she was a limp, slumped-over afterglow of an officer. "Seven," Janeway rasped.

"Aye, Captain? Do I get a commendation?"

"Come to my quarters after this is over, and we'll discuss it."

Seven hitched closer and stuck her nose in Janeway's hair.

Distantly, someone coughed, and Seven tensed. Janeway nuzzled closer, not bothering to open her eyes. Someone would say something when the enveloping bubble withdrew.

Adrift in Seven's warmth and the pleasure still thrumming along her nerves, Janeway almost didn't hear the chiming of the other ship, the almost-voice that travelled into her through the living tubes. It may have been calling all this time.

"What's that?" Janeway mumbled and tipped her head, listening.

"Captain--" Chakotay ventured.

"Shh," Janeway said, absently tugging at her uniform. The bell-voice rang again, soft as distant windchimes. Janeway straightened, over-sensitive enough to flinch as she closed her thighs. "Sure, come aboard. Via shuttlecraft, please; your current method of communication is confusing my crew."

"Actually I'd say YOU'RE frightening and confusing us at the moment," The Doctor muttered, waving a tricorder over Janeway and winking covertly at Seven when he saw the readings. "All the ferny tentacle things but yours have sucked back into the other ship, by the way. Only an umbilicus remains."

"Oh, hush," Janeway said. "Let's prepare a conference room for a first-contact team, and get someone to draw up the standard Starfleet hi-how-are-ya pamphlets."

"Sir, Yes sir," Chakotay sassed.

Fuck what you heard, Starfleet Captains never blush.

I live! Here, have some Attrition-verse prequel ficlet.

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:12:44 GMT

FOR LORA♥

Worksafe; ust

Talvo's bandanna dripped rainwater down the back of his neck in ticklish threads. The islands in the archipelago were an unmappable and shifting collection of sandspits and rocky outcroppings and lagoons, a few sporting freshwater springs that bafflfed geologists and had the Republic accusing the islanders of cult-magic. As opposed to the Republic's magic, which of course was the only right and holy kind. Talvo dropped to his belly and slithered up the dune, saltgrass and succulents releasing spicy sap under his weight. He resigned himself to another night with sand all through his unmentionables.

The ocean was a noisy, demanding beast. It fawned over the islands and spat the air full of salt. Talvo gave it a dirty look over the sloping seawrack-strewn expanse of the empty beach. He didn't even like fish, and he hated boats. The supposed joy of riding the back of something that wanted to fill your lungs with water escaped him entirely, and their tour of the islands yielded sunburns and salt-crusted skin and sand stuck in every possible crease and crevasse, and so far not shit nor bootmark of the Republic's geomancers. But his wizard had been ordered to patrol the islands, and until further orders came in, patrol he would. And where the wizard went, the warband followed.

"Get stuffed," Talvo hissed. The object of his displeasure, a landcrab with elaborate eyebrows, blew bubbles at him. He flicked it away and wiped his hand in the rough grass. As if that were any cleaner. At least the rain kept the mosquitoes in hiding, wretched things.

These sudden downpours were warm as bathwater but left one feeling tacky as if with half-dried sweat. Since this *wasn't* one of the islands that bubbled fresh water, the only available bathing would leave one clean of everything but salt.

"And God farts rainbows," Talvo muttered. The beach was clean of anything more exciting than the delicate twiggy tracks of terns, soon to be pummeled flat by the rain, and, over by the driftwood log, the waterlogged carcass of a gull. Talvo scooted backwards along the same path, pausing every few feet to rake the grass upright. The rain ought to do the rest.

He circled round the far side of the island, a trip encompassing perhaps a quarter-mile. The archers took shifts perched in a screen of blue cacti at the headland, and Talvo, Bunny, Flinders, and Hellar took watch and patrol by turns. The wizard did his little magic-things, staring into space or the tiny smokeless fire or citronella candles, perhaps a little scrying-bowl of tea.

Ancholi had watch, and she didn't bother hailing Talvo, just threw a leather-hilted throwing-knife to the bare left of his foot. He jerked sideways, one of his own throwing-knives in his hand before he could summon a conscious thought. He recognized the knife and tucked his own away. "Acholi! I'm going to fuck you with a cactus."

"Have to catch me first," she jeered. "Potato wedges and steamed fish for dinner again. Gimme my knife."

"Go get it," Talvo snapped. "There's nobody here but us and the fucking bugs."

"I'm charmed you don't count me among their number for once," Acholi shot back, but Talvo had already started up the slope.

The cave was big enough for the entire warband, with perhaps enough room for an extra pot of beans. It smelt of cold stone and salt and the potato-wedges Bunny fried in fish-oil. The thick citronella oil and the wizard’s tea.

Flinders greeted Talvo with a wave and an unfiltered shell of tonguerasping almost-sweet coconut water. Talvo nodded--he'd stopped saying thankyou for such commonplace gestures years ago--and drained it in three long pulls. Nexian curled against the cave wall and repaired a tear in the palm of his fingerless gloves with tiny, careful stitches, his tongue caught between his teeth and one eye squinted almost closed. Talvo hovered near the entryway, dripping, and watched the precise dance of the wizard's scarred red-knuckled hands until Flinders hit him in the face with someone's cloak. "Dry off, lockjaw, before you catch gurkha."

Talvo hauled the cloak off his face and glared, blotting water off his neck and unable to stop his jaw clenching at Flinders' gentle mockery, the soft tone siblings crooned to one another to combat the boredom of a summer afternoon.

He stripped his sodden tunic and slung it at Flinders, who merely caught it and vaulted to his feet with a grace unexpected in one of his bulk. He hung the shirt on a line strung to the rear of the cave, though the humidity brought by the rain would slow the drying.

Talvo whipped off his bandanna and scrubbed it on the regulation-issue undyed cotton cloak. He swiped the cloak over the wet tangle of his curls before re-tying the bandanna.

"Pants?" Bunny said hopefully. Flinders stretched forward to jab his knuckles against her ribs with a goodnatured protest. Flinders did everything with an easy cheer, sometimes smiling at Republican soldiers he was about to stab. Talvo rolled his eyes, dragging off his boots and socks before struggling out of the wet trousers. He threw them all at her and wrapped the cloak about himself. The worn-soft cotten felt good against the leftover chill of the rain. The floor of the cave? More sand. It stuck to his feet, tiny flecks of vexation.

"See anything?" Flinders asked, stroking a fingertip down the deep red of Bunny's neck before moving to hang Talvo's trousers beside his tunic.

"A crab," Talvo said. "Dead seagull. Acholi tried to kill me."

"That would be a no," Hellar said, and returned to whittling clothespegs.

"Your father fucked a goat," Talvo said. Hellar waved his knife.

Grumbling, Talvo skirted the fire and sat as far from Nexian as the cramped quarters would allow. He let his eyes fall mostly-shut, as if he were drowsing into the flames instead of wizard-watching. Nexian squinted at his sewing, firelight and grey stormlight bright in his bi-coloured eyes. Hair-sketched forearms and the twisting blue vein along his wrist. He touched Talvo, once in a while--for casting, or a spell to knit cracked bone. Once Talvo took a fever and woke to find both the wizard's hands cradling one of his. And if he went closer, perhaps Nexian would glance up from his sewing, lay aside his work to cup Talvo's thin shoulders and layer him dry with a spell.

Talvo snorted to himself and shifted. The rain fell in silvery sketches. He made up for his lack of pride with displays of temper, but he'd take what life offered and not fool himself pining after more. A glance back, just one. The heat-haze of the fire gave Nexian a touch of the otherworldly, orange light pooling in the hollows on his face. Warm, close, yes, but out of reach.

I live!

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 05:50:11 GMT

TREK FICLET FOR PIIG (TOS)
Genfic, 2,000 words

Spock is unused to self-deception, and yet, telling oneself such little lies is so much a part of the human condition that in good conscience he must, at the least, experiment with it. If he is to accept the human part of himself--accept, not indulge--surely he must understand this dissensible practice. Too, the creature had not been described and documented adequately, and as Science Officer aboard the Federation's flagship, surely it was his duty to correct that.
And so he made it a little dwelling of clear polymer and filled the bottom with the clean sands of Vulcan which Kirk had scooped into a canister for him in a fit of projected sentimentality. After a moment's thought, he fetched a mass of soft cloth from the replicator and bundled it into a makeshift nest. In the interest of Science, of course.

Rational creatures require names, so they may be differentiated from one another in conversation. Those of lesser intellect did not converse, and so did not require names. And yet, humans named everything they came into contact with. Some even were granted multiple names, and not only in the good doctor's habit of half-muttered invective. After a brief meditation he settled upon Entrepreneur.

He saw no need to inform the rest of the crew.

***

Entrepreneur was a fist-sized bundle of white fur, adorned with two blotches of black, slightly longer than the rest of its coat, positioned approximately where a humanoid would expect eyebrows. However, since Spock had yet to ascertain the anterior and posterior portions of the creature--he was relatively certain of the dorsal--it may just have had flecks on its rear.

***

The first order of business was reproduction. Or rather, the prevention thereof. McCoy had concluded that the creatures were born pregnant, and so the obvious solution was a restricted diet that, while keeping the creature healthy, prevented it from overwhelming the ship with its daughters. With this in mind, Spock replicated a tiny bowl of plomeek soup and set it in the habitat. Entrepreneur stiffened its guard hairs and advanced upon the soup with great haste. The soup soon disappeared, though Spock was no closer to figuring out how. Perhaps the guard hairs were hollow. In time, with careful observation, he would be furnished with enough data for a podcast with Vulcan Science Academy. He would have to observe the creature closely.
It was fortunate he was immune to its effect.

***

Spock wasn't in the habit of entertaining his crewmates in his quarters. By invitation, at least; Kirk's presence was always welcome, and their chess games had become as necessary to Spock's well-being as his meditations. McCoy had never been shy of storming in, tricorder brandished, to heap Spock with invectives and the occassional backhanded requests for help. The Science officers were expected to work closely with Medical, though privately Spock wondered how many of his fellows were called hobgoblins of any sort. Ensign Chekov came shyly, once in a great while, to discuss neutron-flow equations or suggest greater efficiencies for the Mortron-Weekes equations. Lt. Uhura came for their weekly musical practices; Lt. Vrai'lo-ein came on alternating Tuesdays for water-meditations. Hiding the creature permanently was no solution; he could not observe something he could not see. A cloth thrown over the habitat would have to suffice.

The clear polymer reflected the lights in concentric rings. Entrepreneur approached the glass and emitted its characteristic thrum. "Indeed," Spock told it, and fetched a PADD to make notes.

***
"Spock! You missed a hell of a party. The Brereton twins got drunk and did some wriggly snakedance thing."

Tea in hand, Spock rose smoothly, slipped the replicated fabric over the polymer habitat, and went to the door. With delicate courtesy, Kirk never used his override codes, no matter how impatient he was or how sure of his welcome. Spock keyed the door and stepped aside.

"Spock!" Kirk bounded into the room with a single sedate step. "Enjoying a quiet evening? I just popped by to check on my favourite first officer. Quite a fracas with the duelling pirate ships today, wasn't it?" Kirk puffed his chest out, the gold of his tunic stretched across his chest. "Of course no one else could have pulled through the way we did. Your idea to re-calibrate the photon torpedoes and cross the beams? Brilliant! I can't tell you how glad I am to know you."

"Your effusive praise is unneeded, Captain," Spock said, inclining his head. "But I am grateful." And at that moment, the tribble purred loudly as it discovered some previously-overlooked nugget of flaked protein from its last feeding.

"Oh!" Kirk stepped closer, gaze fixed on Spock's face, his own tense with what Spock cautiously categorized as restrained-- "That sound--"

Fighting to keep his eyebrows in their resting position, Spock lifted his chin and made a credible imitation of a tribble's primary vocalization.

"My God, Spock, I can't believe we've been friends this long and I've only just learned that you purr. It isn't anything I've ever heard or, or *read* about your people." Face shining, Jim seized Spock's hand and pumped it. "I can't tell you how honored I am that you've chosen to share this with me."

Spock blinked. As always, his pulse reacted to his Captain's touch. Just as quickly, Jim let go, as if remembering the Vulcan aversion to casual contact, and said, "I've got to go, I've kept Yeoman Mills waiting long enough. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's chess game even more now. You know I'll make you purr as often as I possibly can, Spock," Kirk promised, and swept from the room. The temperature had not changed and yet, Spock's interpretation of it had.

He didn't know if anyone else ever got palpitations just because someone had touched them. Certainly he couldn't ask McCoy, and the notion of booking the subspace communicator to contact Sarek filled him with an irrational but powerful dread. His discipline was *not* weak, nor was it flawed. And yet, it seemed the heart was the one muscle to defy both Spock's logic and his control.

***
The creature was neither diurnal nor nocturnal. It refused water, but would drink even the weakest soup. Or absorb, or engulf, or siphon, Spock still couldn't say. Spock's attempts to teach it its name were thus far inconclusive, cautiously pointless.

"Computer, number of tribbles in my quarters?" Spock asked.

"One," the computer replied.

"See that it stays that way," he admonished, running one fingertip along the rim of the habitat. The tribble just thrummed.
***

Spock roused from a light seated meditation when Entrepreneur scaled his knee. The vibrations of its purr were as much sensation as sound.

"The suppression of emotion allows the mind to enter the tranquility of logic. The tranquility of logic enhances the process of thought, and the rhythms of work, and the subjective experience of life."

It did not move, or quiet itself. Spock had no difficulty resisting the urge to pet it. He focussed on the glow of his meditation candle, but the tribble's purr settled into his bones, and the creature's soft, almost antiseptic scent joined the light musk of the candle.

Though all physical examinations had thus far yielded nothing more than the quivering vocalization, Spock nevertheless found himself tracing the creature's length. A half-hour spent stroking a forefinger along the soft fur was as soothing to his Delta-waves as a half-hour of meditation. Most curious. More observation was needed.

"Father," he imagined saying. "I have been speaking to a creature of limited intellect that cannot understand me."

Somewhere in Spock's mind Leonard McCoy sniped, "What, the rest of us? You shouldn't insult fellow bipeds like that, you smug bastard. And if we had any quadrupedal crew aboard, you couldn't talk about them that way either! Bad for morale. Now get back to your damned meditation, willya? God knows it might sweeten your disposition. I'm a doctor, not an imaginary friend."

Spock wasn't sure whether to record these lapses in discipline or not.

***
The next morning Spock rose, stretched briefly, and replicated a cup of Darjeeling. He settled in a lotus position on a meditation cushion his mother had made for him, stitch by stitch, and drank the tea slowly, eyes closed. He'd settled on a schedule of feeding Entrepreneur an ounce of food once a day, and once he'd finished his tea he replicated a lump of salted biscuit and approached the polymer dwelling. No waste of any sort had appeared, but a fine layer of fur had been added to the fabric nest in a depression in the sand at the center. Spock was unsure how the creature had dug it; any limbs concealed in that fur were surely vestigial. Perhaps it had a prehensile tongue. If it even had a mouth. Perhaps tentacles?

The habitat was empty.

"...Entr--" Spock said, craning his neck to scan his quarters, then stopped. The tribble had scaled the replicator and was rolling slowly about the top of it.

"Where were you?" Spock said, giving it a three-quarter eyebrow. "Had you been there when I programmed your meal I would have seen you. I wonder how it is you scaled the polymer of your habitat."

It didn't answer. Spock approached to reclaim it. Shortly thereafter he would record in his PADD that tribbles could jump.

***

Four days later the door-chime sounded midway through Beta shift. Spock set aside the PADD--he'd been reading the latest edition of Unusual Microbes--and rose smoothly to his feet. A pale shadow scudded along the wall and disappeared behind the couch.

Spock resolved to dissuade the person at his door from seeking entrance. "Computer, open door," he said.

McCoy turned sideways to slip in the moment it was physically possible to do so. He brandished a stack of PADD's at Spock.

"You bastard! What have you done to physics? If this proof you've given me is correct then the Neyers'-scale readings for the crew are all off by 9 intervals. And Spock? The damned scale only has three!"

"Doctor McCoy--" Spock said.

McCoy swept past Spock and flopped onto the couch. He scattered the PADDs beside him and threw both booted feet onto the table, causing the paper flower Spock had set there to quiver. "I mean it! I'm not leaving until you explain this to me. Do you know how long it would take to retest the whole goddamned crew? And don't even IMPLY that I should recalibrate the *scale*, because dammit that oughta be someone else's job! Not that you or the rest of these space-cases can seem to remember what my job is and is not."

McCoy in these moods was a force of highly aggravated nature. Spock sat. A faint scrabble came from behind McCoy and a tiny bubble of foreboding quivered in a place that ought only to contain the cool stability of logic.

"And stay away from Engineering. The still that godforsaken Scott had hidden did *something* a-buggered to the Jefferies tube and now every fourth one is producing a tiny trickle of motherfucking synthahol and the fumes are enough to pickle the union. Don't want to upset that long and delicate green nose of yours. Here, let's start with the bit where you examine a scale meant to measure emotions from the point-of-view of an emotionally impaired genius hobgoblin."

"Doctor, I must insist," Spock said firmly.

"What? Speak up, then!"

"You have a tribble on your head."

Share the gleeeeeeee

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:05:27 GMT

YOU GUYS this is my last week of class! :D

So in order to share my glee, have a meme! Ask me for something that would make you gleeful :D Now, I don't mean the stuff you'd be *proud* to admit you like :D I mean the emo/cliche'd/trite/cheesy/silly/badfic FANNISH GLEE INDUCING stuff. I am *deliriously happy* to finally be getting out of uni, so there's a lot of squeefulness to go around :D Feel free to comment anonymously if you're all *that* embarrassed, but c'mon, it's only me :)

Disclaimers:

I am slow with requests. You all know this by now. ^^; Though hopefully I will be less slow now that, oh lookit, soon no more classes squee!

They will be short. Seriously. (WILLIAM STEVEN ROBERT CARTER I AM LOOKING AT YOU.)

I will attempt fandoms about which I know nothing provided you link me to something you consider indispensable to understanding said characters. And/or geek at length about them. I'm easily influenced that way ^^

Be This Beautiful ch. 2

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:53:28 GMT

For my Loralove. SO OVERDUE OMG. Ch 1 is here. The third chapter ought to be the last one. I know what happens so hopefully there won't be so long between chapters this time ^^;

Wordcount: 4,200

Heat is an intangible liquid of negligible mass. Her Majesty's scientists said so in ringing tones at the frequent public lectures they gave. Gloriana donated bread and winter-wrinkled apples and salted fish to those who'd attend the whole lecture, seeking to educate her subjects to a level she found pleasing. Guardsmen in their crisp crimson cloaks lined the square, checking pockets and clothing for pilfered food—Gloriana’s gifts were to be eaten at the lecture or not at all.

Paul remembered attending one such with his father, back when he'd been too small to reach a door-knob on his own. Da Fleming was a pleasant enough man so long as he encountered no opposition. He had firm ideas on the sort of man he expected his son to become, and so took his eldest to the lecture, leaving his wife and daughters home, Tina scooping a froth of soap scum and dead fleas from her wash-basins.

The lecture today had been preceded by a Luxembourg hanging, and the poor brute would dangle from the gallows-tree until rot or the gore-crows picked the bones bare. Paul averted his face and focussed on the yeast-and-salt taste of his loaf, but Da turned his head and made him look. “Don’t go hiding from the world, boy. The dead can’t hurt you.” He hooked Paul with an arm around his waist and shook him toward the executioner so that he squeaked and swung. “But him! I’ve heard tell he loves his work too well. I’ve half a mind to invite him home for your mother.”

When Paul was on his own he took the long-way home to avoid the gallows-tree, but Da didn’t see the point.

***

Jolene brought home a sack of sooty loaves—they’d fallen soft and fresh into the pan of ash the scullery-maid swept out of the fireplaces and ovens. The scullery maid—Jolene’s friend Ariadne—had taken the loaves, too ruined for the high table, and squirreled some away for Jolene, who’d then brought home to share with the rest of the family. Bethy brought one of these, sliced thick and toasted and running with clear butter, and shallow bowls of thin soup, one each for Paul and Michael. “Get that in you, then,” she told them. “Paulie, you’ve got to clean the kitchen before you sleep—Tony’s burned his finger and needs to keep his hand in snow for a bit longer.”

“Who let him in the kitchen on his own,” Paul said, rising, but Bethy wound her hand firmly in Paul’s curls and forced him back onto his perch on the edge of the pallet. “None of that then, Master Fleming,” she told him. “You’re to eat, and get a little work done on that thing ere you sleep,” and she jerked her sharp chin at the automaton. “Or did you think they’d hold Da’s job forever?”

***

A watchmaker on the edge of the slums had given Paul some of his older, more worn tools, tiny pincers and gears and miniature screws so small, and with such finely-crafted flutings, that they could become wedged beneath a finger-nail. Paul used these to craft the automaton’s articulations; the deep curl of the palms and the wrists that were thicker than Paul’s own, struts from someone’s broken oboe-fingerings and the wire of a half-dozen discarded harpsichords. These, and parts scavenged from Charlie’s cart or this or that trash heap, whatever he could find as he found it, ever redesigning the metal man to use what he had. Sheets of oily paper, scavenged and re-used, even scraps of vellum, drippings of irongall and scratches of other people’s thoughts that Paul inked over with his own.

He showed these to Michael not even knowing why he had to— not because Michael had asked but because Paul wanted to tell him, had to talk to *someone*. Michael shuffled through the schematics without comment, but he looked at them, and Paul was reassured. These past days his family had helped with the work, they’d tended him when he fell asleep with his face pressed to the table top (and when he’d woken the creases in the wood were written on his skin), but none of them had wanted to talk about it with him.

“It looks finished to me,” Michael said. He’d taken to coming by in the evenings, stroking the automaton’s skull with his dye-stained hands and watching Paul with eyes like wet glass.

Paul shook his head and the winter-split ends of his hair caught on the linen of his neckcloth. “Many of the smaller mechanisms are only partially articulated, and the connections to the heart are the last things I’ll affix.”

Parts of the metal man’s skin were butter-soft leather, and some were tight-stiched layers of greased canvas, and some were finely joined chinks of metal-chips burnished bright and scaled together like the feet of a bird. Michael tapped his fingernails on these and chewed on his lip till it was in danger of bleeding at the cracks.

“I ought to have the face finished to-morrow?” Michael said doubtfully, and left without satisfying Paul’s desire for conversation, as if someone with so large a family could be lonely. The ache was lessened but it wasn’t gone.

A day later he returned, bearing a face cast of bronze on his open palm and bringing a waft of icy air and the lingering acrid smell of a forge. His socks were colourful with frequent mendings. Paul smothered a yawn, and his apology for such ill-manners was interrupted by a second.

“Have you been burning the midnight candle?” Michael said. “No, that can’t be right.”

“Midnight oil,” Paul said, and dragged his fingers through his hair. “Or the candle burnt from both ends.”

“Either one,” Michael said, and set the empty face on the coverlet beside the automaton. “Have you slept at all?”

“Some,” Paul said, and left out the part about falling asleep on the table and later asking little Shannon to pick the splinters out of his chin.

“You know sleep is the glue binding mind and body,” Michael said. “Or so the lecture usually goes.”

Paul wobbled a little when he stood. “Come sit, I’ll bring tea—”

Michael pressed both hands to Paul’s shoulders, gently leaning his weight until Paul subsided. “Can we pretend I’m family and let me bring the tea?”

Paul moved to refuse on instinct, but Michael squeezed Paul’s shoulders and bent in, slow, like a settling bird, resting his cheek on the crown of Paul’s head briefly. “Just this once? Please? You welcomed me in when it was cold.”

“That was the only thing to do,” Paul said.

“Well, now you’ve got to let me help, because I’m a guest and to do otherwise would be impolite.”

Exhaustion has a way of blurring the world, as if a layer of waxed paper had been laid between the senses and things perceived, so that imaginings wavered to closely to the real and memories had a way of shouldering their way forward and rearing boldly. Paul rubbed his forehead. “Tea would be a godsend,” he said, suppressing the guilt that always came with being served.

Michael shyly pressed a kiss to Paul’s curls, and Paul felt a flush of warmth, like a sunbeam for the heart, or a full belly and a cup of tea on a cold evening. “Thankyou. Don’t let Bethy or Jolene bully you, if they catch you there. Tell them I said it’s alright.”

“There,” Michael crooned, and left the room.

Paul rested his forehead on his crossed arms for a moment, the desk a rickety and old familiarity, and then he stood carefully and made his way over to the bed. The automaton was complete but for its face and the spark of life, almost-life, motion—electricity? The creature’s near-completion raised questions Paul hadn’t anticipated and told himself he couldn’t afford to contemplate. Couldn’t afford not to. How else was the family to thrive?

The face was quiet—neither peaceful nor animate, but quiet. It lay on Paul’s age-flattened pillow and the white of the linen showing through the blank eyes made Paul wince. He lifted the face and traced the features. Not exact, but close enough? Wouldn’t it have to be?

“It won’t dent,” Michael said, and Paul startled. “You needn’t worry,” Michael said, and bustled with the tea, careful not to spill so much as a drop. A floor-panel—dark metal patched with pale wood—creaked beneath his weight.

Paul found himself shaking. He wasn’t sure when he’d dug his fingernails into the mask’s mouth but the cast bronze was immovable, it compressed Paul’s fingertip until the flesh showed white.

“That isn't how his face looked! This won't do,” Paul said, his voice half-choked by the tension in his throat.

Michael left off with the tea-things and approached gently, as if he feared that Paul might bolt. He trailed his fingers over the still metal features. “Why not?"

"It's meant to take his place!" Paul shook his head hard. “How can it do that if it isn’t his twin in likeness?”

“Shh, just so,” Michael said, and brushed Paul’s skin with fingers crusted in patches with seeping burns. “And so it shall. There’s nothing to stop me from modifying it. And I think you fear too much—men see what they wish to. The illusion will hold."

"Art a witch, then?"

"No more than any purveyor of art."

“Hmph,” Paul said, a noise he’d borrowed from Charlie at her most irascible. Michael just sighed. Paul backed away, shaking his head, only stopping when his shoulders struck the doorjamb. “It won’t do. No, Michael.”

“Shh. Alright. Come, can you tell me what to change so it’ll look like him? Shh. Come sit, take some tea.” Michael approached again, gently uncurling Paul’s clenched fingers.

Paul leaned against Michael’s shoulder for a long time, gaze locked on the mask’s empty eyes, Michael’s stained and reddened fingers on the metal. “Nothing the matter with it,” he said eventually. “Not really. I don’t know how you made it look so like him when you had the good fortune never to meet the man.”

“If it can be improved even slightly I shall take it home and do so,” Michael said, then, tentatively, “Telling of it might ease the ache,” and Michael was coaxing, but grief and anger and hate had closed a fist around Paul’s throat and he found himself unable to speak.

Michael didn’t press the matter. He had the gift of easy conversation, and he told stories about his cousins and the foibles of the artists he worked with, a light patter of innocuous storytelling as Paul hunched over the fiddly articulations of the automaton’s left hand. Paul let the world narrow to the tiny bits of metal and Michael’s voice and the faint smell of cooling tea, and he startled when he felt the woolen scratch of a blanket settle over his shoulders.

“Easy,” Michael said, “But the lateness of the hour grows, and I’ve got to hie myself home. I’m not sure I’ll be able to visit tomorrow—”

“Shall I come calling, instead?” Paul blurted, and flushed. “If it isn’t too much trouble, I could fetch the, I could—”

Michael came to crouch beside Paul’s chair, and his green neckcloth brightened his eyes and the ginger of his hair. “That would be smashing—i could show you some of the painting’s I’ve—if you wanted to, you could see—”

Paul found himself grinning foolishly, and for once wasn’t fearful of being thought weak because of it. “I’ve a moment between shifts, after noon bell.”

“I’ll have the kettle on,” Michael promised. “I’m crushing mushrooms all day for the yellow, so I’ll be in.”

“I didn’t know there were yellow mushrooms,” Paul said, and smothered a yawn.

“Oh, I’m sure there are, somewhere in the world,” Michael said. “But these ones are brown, like a linnet-bird, and very small.”

“Who in the world would look at a brown mushroom and know it contained yellow dye?” Paul marveled.

Michael smothered a laugh with the back of his hand. “The bloke who sat on them in white trousers?” he said, and pointed shamefacedly at himself.

“Well,” Paul said, delighted, “Who am I to say a stroke of genius is less worthy because it was the ruin of a pair of good trousers? Some might argue that increases the value.”

“Hush, you horrible villain. I’ll expect you tomorrow,” Michael said, shyly brushed his knuckles along Paul’s jawline, and showed himself out.

***

Paul fell asleep on the table, tea notwithstanding, and slept there until Tina ghosted in shortly before the witching hour. She had the faint pleased lines around her eyes she had after one of her ladies had been blessed with an easy birth, and she stroked Paul’s hair with hands that smelled of lavender soap until he woke.

“You’ve slept on the table again, dear,” Tina told him. He squinted at her in the diffused glow from the witchlights in the hall. False hail—frozen drips of condensation from the Plate—pattered on the roof and would melt and half-freeze into sheets of rotten soot-infused ice. Paul gave an abbreviated stretch and reflexively checked his face for pressure-embedded flecks of metal. There weren’t any this time.

Tina rested her hands on Paul’s shoulders, and he leaned his head into the spare softness of her belly. “I’m sorry momma. I think Bethy told me to clean the kitchen.”

“Your young Michael helped our Mitchell with it,” Tina said, her tone layered with concern and affection and the hints of a question.

“Oh,” Paul said, and flushed. “I’m meeting him for tea. He’s made a face for it.”

Tina turned her face to the automaton without quite looking at it. “I’ll be glad not to see the metal bones anymore, Paulie. Get some sleep?”

Paul closed his eyes. “I will. After I finish this.”

Tina didn’t say anything else. She smoothed Paul’s hair with her palms and kissed his forehead and darkened the witch-lights in the hall as she passed.

The glow-stone on the worktable dimmed to a ruddy ember-glow at Paul’s touch, inhaling most of the light in the room so the shadows could come, and Paul didn’t notice at first that Tina had covered the automaton with a sheet. Not a blanket, as if it were cold, but the full drapings of a funeral shroud.

***

An intermittent second-snow fell as Paul trotted through the twisting lanes of Artisan’s Row. The wind blew in fits and starts, scraping any unpacked snow from the eaves like a scornful hand. In summer the streets of London were littered with the derelict dregs of humanity, the lame, the destitute or insane, but in winter the cold drove them elsewhere, or it killed them.

Michael lived on the uppermost floor of a narrow, leaning house on the corner of Ashfall and Primpton Lane. The attic was without a roof and had been given over entirely to the wilds of the sky. The interior of the roof had been sealed with artist’s gum, and under the thick layer of insulating snow the little rooms weren’t warm, but they were comfortable.

Paul let himself in and climbed the creaking, squeaking, twining staircase. There was a dark, damp patch on the first landing, and Paul held his breath to avoid learning whether it had a smell. The staircase ended at a splintery door that peeled fat flakes of white-wash at the touch. Paul knocked on the smoother wood of the wall beside it.

Michael’s voice was came muffled through the door. “Hestia? Or is it Edmund? Either way, I don’t have anything else for you to do—go away, I’m up to my elbows in dye.”

“Neither one,” Paul said, and from within came a rattle of ceramics, the clatter of a stool being kicked over, and quick footsteps toward the door. Paul tugged at his neckcloth and was still smoothing flyaway strands when the door opened, and he clasped Michael’s hand with melted snowflakes on his palm.

“Um. I hope it’s been a pleasant morning,” Michael said, then swore and jerked his hand out of Paul’s. “Oh! I am a thoughtless lout. Let me get a little linseed oil,” he said, and bustled off, leaving Paul in the doorway to examine himself in confusion. “And it’s not like I didn’t know the wretched things leach dye like anything—oh, come let me clean it for you—”

Michael was stained to mid-forearm a cheery yellow, and now his handclasp marked Paul’s skin in the same merry hue.

“It ought to come out, it hasn’t had much time to set—” Michael continued, trotting back to Paul with a bit of rag and a vial of pale oil, which he dampened a corner of the rag with. “Here—” he said, reaching for Paul again, then paused. “Oh, I’m all over colours—”

Paul relieved him of the rag, unable to contain a smile. “I’ll do it,” Paul said. Michael nodded and hovered close by, and most of the dye sopped into the rag at Paul’s blotting. Michael shifted his weight. “My father lives on the first floor- he doesn’t like stairs. I don’t see him much. He seems happy to be avoided. And the tenants don’t like this floor because it’s cold, and the smells of the dyes.” Michael blurted, then shuffled his feet. He wore slippers of soft tartan and an artist’s smock that was more paint than cloth. “Come in—”

The tiny room where Michael mixed his dyes and prepared paints was closed off from the slightly larger living area, but the cracked-open window let in the cold which helped to deaden the thick paint-smells. Paul scraped his boots a second time, and left them on in deference to the holes in his stockings.

Michael covered the little pots of thick new dye and laid a square of cheesecloth over the wizened baked-crisp mushrooms he was grinding to powder with mortar and pestle. He dipped his hands in a shallow pan of linseed oil and wiped it away on the curtain. He shrugged at Paul. “It’s easier,” he said. “I wash them weekly and the water turns all colours, you should see.” He dropped his chin and lifted one shoulder. “The alternative is an enormous pile of rags and drips of oil every-which-way and then they get so messy and there’s nothing you can do to prevent that, and they pile up and fall all over the place and stain the floorboards, and it’s utter chaos, I can’t bear it.”

Paul wiggled his toes through the holes in his stockings and let a smile crinkle his eyes. “Tony—my brother Tony—is a little like that, he likes things a certain way and grows distressed a-times if things aren’t as he feels they should be.”

Michael tossed Paul a rather distracted expression and ushered him towards a narrow door in the back wall. “Would you come through? I haven’t set the kettle on yet, but it ought not to take long—”

“I have a little time,” Paul assured him. His position as a music tutor paid well, but he worked at the whims of the children, and he had arrived today to find that they were attending a fancy dinner in honor of some distant relative’s being awarded an entry into a prestigious gentleman’s club. And thus, thank-you, his services would not be required at this moment.

“I’ll just go fluff the fire and get the kettle going,” Michael said, and went immediately to the little iron-banded pot-bellied stove, leaving Paul to lean his shoulder against the doorjamb and stare.

The room was lit by more witch-lights than Paul had ever seen in a single place—tiny broken fragments and scavenged chips stuck to the roof or high-suspended from string, strong yellow light like the summer sun at mid-day, and on all the walls and beams of heavy wood, up the legs of the table and the sides of the shelving, Michael had painted tender green leaves and breathless blades of grass, dewdrops that seemed to glow and flowers of all hues. Clean gleaming colour like a fairy kingdom in the heart of London. A single corner—the cubby in which Michael’s low pallet nestled—was painted winter-white and scattered with branch-empty trees and snowdrops, and high near the roof in a tangle of branches, a cardinal red as desire.

“Oh Michael—”

“I have a few cheesy biscuits—they’ve gone a bit tough, but—”

Paul wasn’t sure what his face showed. His expression made Michael flush up with colour and twist away, fussing with the the smudged copper teapot and brushing at his hair, his shoulders turtled up to his ears.

“Michael,” he tried again, but couldn’t think of anything to say. Paul drifted along the wall, knotting his fingers at the small of his back so he wouldn’t be tempted to touch. The delicate leaves looked like they should be tender and wet, the snow seemed on the verge of drifting into the rest of the room.

“It’s just, in my free time—when I can’t sleep—” Michael seemed had a thickness and a hesitation in his voice, a fascination with the teaspoon he held. “There’s always paint left-over, or in the mixing-pots—I don’t approve of waste,” he finished.

“This is beautiful,” Paul managed, and settled on the edge of the bed, ignoring the creak of dry rope and the squeak of the straw-filled ticking. The cardinal preened in a high winter tree while a false summer blazed all around.

Michael’s flush hadn’t abated by the time he set the little plate of cheese-biscutes on the table and perched on the three-legged stool. Paul settled on the other stool—more of a very small chair—and politely took a biscuit. “The other day Mitchell said—when we were taking you home from the harbour—Mitchell said you light the lamps, sometimes.”

“Most nights,” Michael said, his head lifting. The flush was slow to fade. “The babies aren’t scared of the dark in the water, but they need light on the docks or they panic.”

Paul covered his mouth with the back of his hand, fighting a smile. “Michael—” he started.

“The, the face, yes,” Michael blurted, and lurched off his stool to find it. His fingers were bandaged in places. “Here, I think I got it right—”

Paul touched the white linen that looped Michael’s knuckles. “Thank you. It’s perfect.”

***

Charlie’s knee-high boots sagged drunkenly together in the entryway. Paul tidied them aside and shook half-melted snow from his scarf, closing the door behind him. The boiler hummed, distant clangs traveling through the hollow pipes, distant shouts. He hung his damp things on a few of the myriad hooks and sat to remove his shoes.

The sitting room was Jolene’s room, when she was home. Sometimes when Tiff couldn’t sleep she’d sneak in and poke Jolene awake, and they’d whisper in the dark like children. Only to Jolene did Tiffany reveal how upset she had been to lose her hair. And their father.

***

Charlie had loosened her neckcloth and pushed her cap high on her forehead. In summer she tanned brown below the cap and the strip of her forehead where the band rested stayed lady-white. She and Tina nestled together on the ottoman, heads touching as they sipped their tea and examined the tiny embroidered prayer on a smudged baby-blanket Charlie had found in her rounds. A few silken threads had pulled loose, catching the light, and they were debating how best to remove and replace the damaged silk without ruining the design as a whole.

Paul leaned in the doorway, the automaton’s face well-wrapped in cloth and tucked against his ribs. Shannon had fallen asleep on Tiff’s leg, Tiffany herself nodding over a tattered pamphlet. Tony had a tangle of cloth in his lap—he’d begged and begged until Tina taught him to sew. It was so much easier to do things unbecoming of boys without Da around to disapprove. Beads of condensation formed on the walls in places; Tina kept rags in a ring round the edges of rooms and changed them regularly to keep the floor dry. The roofs sloped so water-beads ran along to the edges, rather than falling like rain as they pleased.

Charlie gave him a look and touched her own forearm and the well-covered tattoos there. He nodded—Charlie defied definition, but she was the most capable person he knew. She’d promised to sit with him when he woke the automaton, she’d promised not to let anything happen that could not be set right.

***

Okay, I lied

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:16:29 GMT

For the Piig♥. Sorry work sucked today hon :c Consolation fic! Boson Legal, rated R for ‘wtf’. Written on the bus, and then between class and karate.

Spoilers for season 3.

Wordcount: 1600

Shirley Schmidt-Ho wore a lace teddy of purple and lavender which went very well with her milky complexion and pale-blonde hair. It was surprisingly tasteful for something Denny had picked, if you discounted the feathers lining the garter-belt and bustline.

What Alan couldn’t figure was what the thing was doing on his desk at two in the afternoon.

He was still regarding it with an eyebrow that wavered between ‘baffled’ and ‘intrigued’ when Brad walked in, preceded as he often was by his voice. “Alan! Have you gotten anywhere with the juvie case? I’ve got the parents breathing down my oh my God.”

“Brad, meet Shirley Schmidt-Ho. Miss Schmidt-Ho, Brad Chase. He really is a very fine lawyer, despite the ‘gaping carp’ expression he currently sports.”

Brad took a step back, hands lifted as if he thought he might be shot just for looking at the doll. “What is that?” He gave Alan a grimace that seemed more distressed than disgusted. “Why do you have it? Have you run out of interns? God, does Shirley know?”

Alan opened his mouth to reply, but Brad kept talking.

“Of course she doesn’t know! She’d have, killed you or fired you or. My God, the size of the sexual harassment lawsuit that—how could you? Do you realize what this could do to the company’s reputation if word got out?”

“Rather poor things, I’d imagine, unless we started mass-producing them so everyone could share in the delight that is miss Schmidt-Ho’s glowing presence. To answer one of your other questions, Brad, I don’t know what it’s doing here. But I do know who to ask.”

Brad sidled closer, overcome by curiosity. His face scrunched up like a skunk-sprayed hound, and he prodded the doll’s rubbery-soft bosom. “It’s even got freckles. Are they. Are they accurate?”

“I dearly regret being unable to answer that, Brad.”

Brad backed off, shaking his head. “You know what? I’m gonna go back to my office and pretend I never left it. Just, get rid of the thing, and leave me out of it, okay? And I am very surprised and disappointed in you, Alan. I’d have expected this from Denny, not from you. Just, make sure I don’t have to hear about it again, you got me?”

Brad fled, looking around to make sure nobody had seen him.

Alan took the doll’s hand. The nails were of the same material as the rest of the body, but they’d been frosted a delicate white at the tips. “Let’s get you hidden away, shall we? And then I’ll go see Denny.”

***

Contrary to popular belief, Denny Crane still worked in his office, once in a while. Sometimes he worked in the closet with an intern. Sometimes he worked on the desk with his current squeeze. Sometimes he worked on the balcony with Alan, cigars and scotch, so long as it wasn’t raining. He was currently working all by himself in front of his new computer, typing with the first finger on each hand, slow as a heron.

“Denny,” Alan greeted. “I didn’t know you knew how to work the computer.”

Denny settled back in his chair, mouth open in offended shock. “Why Alan! Of course I do. How else would I get on those, dating websites?”

“Point taken,” Alan said. “Let me amend that: I didn’t know you used it for actual office-work.”

“It’s my new client!” Denny said, gesturing at the screen. “She used to be a he, and she makes porn! Made porn before, too, when she was a him. She’s using computers so she can make porn,” and here Denny leaned closer, “with herself—with himself, and the actress old-him was screwin’ in the films has decided to sue!”

“…Ah,” Alan said. “So of course you need to examine the evidence.”

Denny spread his hand helplessly. “Couldn’t ethically do anything else!”

Alan parked his hip on the edge of Denny’s desk. “Pity none of my current cases are quite so interesting. I’ve got an underage girl accused of rape, a man with diabetes suing his old gym-coach for not making him exercise more, and a young woman who’s suing her birth-mother for not aborting her.”

“Is that the one who tried to sue her adoptive parents for letting her live?”

“The very same,” Alan said.

Denny snorted. “What’s wrong with her?” he said, shaking his head. “This is America! A free country! If you’ve got the money and two pieces of ID, why, you can buy a gun just about anywhere! If she wanted to die so badly she ought to take care of it herself.”

“Someday you’re going to stop surprising me with your lack of compassion, Denny. Do you think a happy and well-adjusted person would level such a suit?”

Denny tipped his head like the sympathetic collie in those commercials, hazel eyes frank and gently heartless. “Alan, whoever said the world owed you happiness? You’ve got to find it and take it and keep it for yourself. And if you can’t find happiness and you think death’s the next best thing—I guess you have to find that and take that for yourself, too.”

“So it doesn’t trouble you, how obvious the pain she’s feeling must be? How inescapable?”

“Everything’s escapable. Even my Mad Cow. You’ve promised to help me out of that, remember? When the time comes? It’s not my fault she hasn’t found her Alan yet.”

“Touched as I am, Denny—”

Denny snorted. “Nothing to be touched about. Just speakin’ the truth as I see it. World is full of problems. You fix the ones you can fix, and live with the rest.”

“Or not?” Alan said dryly.

Spreading his hands, Denny reiterated, “World doesn’t owe you or me a damned thing. Even Denny Crane needs to work for what he’s got.”

“Speaking of what you’ve got,” Alan said. “There’s a life-sized replica of my boss in my filing cabinet. I found her on my table. Can you tell me how she got there?”

Denny blinked. “How on earth did you fit in your filing cabinet?”

“I didn’t, Denny, I hid the doll there.”

“What, after you used her? That’s awfully cold, Alan.”

“I most certainly did not make use of her,” Alan said. “I told you, I’m holding out for the real thing.”

“But why? Copy’s almost as good. Think of all the women in Vegas who’ve made love with Elvis!”

“I’m not sure that’s quite the same thing,” Alan said. “If nothing else, Shirley’s still alive, so I figure I’ve still got a chance.”

“Rubbish,” Denny said. “If she won’t take Denny Crane, what do you think she’d take you for? No offense,” Denny added, laying his hand on Alan’s wrist.

“None taken.”

Denny shrugged. “Was a gift. A loan! I thought we’d share her. After work?”

Alan turned his wrist under Denny’s fingers. “What’s the occasion? It isn’t my birthday.”

“Not mine either,” Denny said, in his bluff fashion. “What, a man needs an occasion, now, to share his prized possession with his best friend? And you won’t let me take you to the shootin’ range, so I figured, why the hell not?”

“Why the hell not, indeed,” Alan said. “After work?”

Denny raised his eyebrows. “What’s wrong with right now? You can’t save all the fun in life for later. What happens when you run out of later and you still haven’t had any fun?”

“I have a meeting with Brad,” Alan said. “Speaking of which, he thanks you for that spontaneous introduction to Shirley’s namesake. He was deeply impressed. At least, I think he was.”

Denny frowned. “Hey now, what are you doing letting that puppy near Shirley?”

“You shouldn’t have left her on my desk, then,” Alan said. “You know how people love to come bounding, joyfully into my office, eager to share some nut-cracker of a case with me.”

“Alan, Alan,” Denny said pityingly. “Don’t you pay attention? Can’t perform The Schmidt without a desk! You remember, I told you all about it.”

Alan paused thoughtfully. “Oh,” he said.

“There,” Denny crooned. “Now, you see? You’ve got to learn to listen to me when I tell you things.”

“You’re certainly a fount of generously depraved wisdom,” Alan murmured.

“Course I am. I’m Denny Crane,” Denny said. “Balcony? You, me, Shirley? We could get my desk out there without too much trouble.”

“Perhaps after everyone else has gone home,” Alan said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see if I can’t smooth Brad’s ruffled feathers. Enjoy your porn, Denny.”

“Don’t forget, balcony,” Denny said. “D’you remember the last time we ended an episode without making it out to the balcony? I haven’t gotten so many angry letters since the thing with the paraplegic twins.”

“Can’t think why,” Alan said, and wandered out.

Alan managed to calm Brad with a minimum of shouting, though when he got back to his office and checked the filing cabinet, the doll was upside-down and was wearing a navy pants-suit. The teddy was nowhere in evidence.

“Oh dear,” Alan said, and leaned away from the cabinet. “…Melissa?” he called. “May I see you in my office, please?”

***

End

update

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:32:44 GMT

Still alive! Still writing! Last semester of school(!) EVER(!!!) (well at least until Master's. Ohgod I need a break first), hence lack of post-osity. Have not abandoned anything. Y'know, on the off-chance anyone was worried ^^;

Boston Legal again

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 02:14:04 GMT

Boston Legal ficlet. This is entirely piig♥’s fault for egging me on. Has no plot—mostly it’s a string of things that amuse me.

I'm counting this with February's work 'cause like I said, I'm not quite ready for March yet ^^' Mostly worksafe, no spoilers really.

Wordcount: 2,500

On this fine May morning Alan Shore rode the elevator with three hapless interns and the FedEx guy. The interns were clustered to the far end of the elevator, whispering like schoolgirls, despite their being men the shortest of whom was six-foot-two. Alan adjusted his shades.

One of the interns sidled closer and coughed into his fist. “Uh. Mister Shore, did you. Uh.”

Alan half-turned and raised his left eyebrow a scant centimeter. “Yes?”

“Did you know that. Your pants, uh. Your pants got overruled.”

“These aren’t pants, Mister Fanshawe. They are an article of comfort-convenience apparel, marketed as a utilikilt. But we all know it’s a skirt.” Alan stuck out his leg, showing the hem of the utilikilt, his black diamond-patterend socks, and a moderately hairy calf.

“And the shirt?” Fanshawe said. One of the other interns sporfled and broke into desperate laughter smothered to a high pitch.

“It is a t-shirt, Mister Fanshawe, perhaps you’re familiar with them. I am also wearing a jacket, a splendid one at that, how come nobody wants to talk about it? It’s an Armani.”

“But the shirt says—”

“Tranny Mack-Daddy, yes. Though I didn’t find out the truth about her chromosomes until the evening had progressed to a rather intimate state.”

The Fed-Ex guy squeaked.

“Would you like her number? She told me not to call her but she said she’d appreciate if I spread it around. She’s a registered massage therapist; she’s really very good.”

The elevator door opened and Alan saluted the tittering interns and the pink-faced Fed-Ex guy. “I’ll just scrawl the number in the mens’ room, shall I?”

The case was an appeal of a hate-crimes charge. Alan wore the shirt in solidarity; he had been dragooned into arguing the defense and was deeply displeased by this.

“Morning, Denny,” Alan said.

Denny wore muppet-socks, shaggy wildly-coloured things with googy eyes on the toes. He wandered around the foyer with his hands in the air saying, “I can’t find my shoes!”

“They’re clearly not on your feet, so at least you know where they’re not.”

“Alan, have you seen my—pardon me, miss,” And Denny ducked to one knee to peer under the secretary’s desk. She propped her chin on her wrist and drummed the fingertips of her other hand on the desk.

“Mister Crane, Ah have not seen yo’ shoes. And more-over, I’d be damn surprised if you could fit inta mine.”

“Aww, Florence. But I can see my future in the wrinkles on your support-hose. I read it in the locker room.”

“We don’t have a locker room, Denny.” Alan paused near him.

“Alan?” Denny said, and looked up from his spot on the floor. “Did you know you’re wearing a skirt? You’re not suddenly one of those, homosexuals, are you?”

“Denny, my heart burns for you and I breathe your name into my pillow at night. Do get up.”

“Have to find my shoes,” Denny said, and levered himself up with one hand on the desk. He wandered off aimlessly. “Course you yearn for me. Everybody does.” He paused to rest his hand on the shoulder of a passing associate. “Denny Crane.”

Alan kept pace. “You do know that May is the Merry Month of Masturbation, don’t you Denny? Will you be abusing yourself in celebration? More than usual I mean.”

“They were snakeskin. Or leopard print. Something.”

“They were black patent leather, and you’ve probably left them on the balcony again.”

“Shoes,” Denny said. Alan peeled off, then stopped in the doorway. “Why is there a corgi in my office?”

***

The corgi turned out to be the accuser. His owner and spokesperson was dictating the suit, to be leveled against the corgi’s breeder. Apparently the corgi had been banned from a dog-fighting ring on account of his breed, and, the owner said, he was bitterly disappointed and wanted to sue on grounds of discrimination.

***

“Get this wretched creature out of my office, and see to it that he takes the dog with him.”

***

Alan stalked into the mens’ room and washed his hands vigorously.

The door swung open. Alan didn’t bother to see who it was—he already knew it wasn’t Denny. The man always made sure the facilities knew who had just made use of them.

He did a double-take when the hands that entered his field of vision were slim, long-fingered and brown. He knew those hands.

“Tara?”

“Good morning, Alan. I like your shirt. What did the corgi want?” She soaped and rinsed and flicked water from her fingers to speckle the mirror.

“Equal opportunity. I dislike his spokesman too much to take the case, though I’ll drop it on Brad’s desk. He ought to enjoy finally having a client on his limb of the evolutionary tree.”

“That case would have been wasted on you. Why solve a problem when you can talk about it?”

Alan dried his hands on a paper towel, folded it neatly, and discarded it. “I’m not sure I follow.”

In answer, Tara wiped her hands on her slacks and turned to face Alan. He looked her over reflexively, then gave her crotch a slow smile. “Why Tara. You’ve got a bigger bulge than I do.”

Tara leaned on the counter. “Now Alan, you mustn’t feel inadequate.”

“Is that what this is about?” Alan stepped closer. “We could always invite one of your friends to join us, if I’m failing to satisfy.”

“Or one of yours?” Tara said, and tipped her head so that her hair fell in a clean unfettered wave. “If you must know, Brad called me a ball-buster and accused me of being unladylike.”

“So you stuff a sock in your drawers and use the mens’ room?”

Tara swayed closer and nuzzled Alan’s neck with her breath. “It isn’t a sock.” She gave him a smile and walked out.

Alan froze briefly. “Oh my.”

***

The break-room fridge was divided into thirds. The door was stocked with communal beverages, fully half of which were alcoholic. The top two shelves were full of man-snacks—microwavable greasy meaty things, many coated with plasticy cheese. The bottom two shelves were neatly stacked with salads, low-fat yogurt, and apples. Tara selected a yoghurt and settled at the table. She crossed her legs at the knee reflexively, then sprawled widely enough that her slacks pulled tight across her thighs. She checked her watch. Brad was due in for his 10-AM red-bull in a few minutes.

She’d just finished her yoghurt when Brad strode in, said “Morning, Tara,” and rummaged in the fridge.

Tara sprawled a little wider and rested one hand on her thigh. “Good morning, Brad.”

He’d settled on the table and cracked the can open when he noticed and choked on nothing.

“Pity you hadn’t taken a sip yet,” Tara said. “The table could do with a little cleaning, don’t you think?”

Brad cleared his throat loudly. “Uh. You happy to see me, there, Tara?”

“Well, you did tell me I ought to match my appearance a little better.” She grabbed the bulge in her pants and hefted it. “This more like what you meant? You’re certainly looking…hm. Busted.”

Eyes wide, Brad chugged his red-bull without stopping for breath, and had to cough a few times, red-faced, when he was done. “So! Lovely seein’ you Tara, but I have a. Case. Thing.”

“Issue?” Tara suggested. “In addition to the corgi, I mean.”

With one last panicked look, Brad took off, dumping the can in the recycling on his way out.

“I don’t think he likes you very much,” Tara told her packing. “But I’m growing to like you more and more.”

***

Shirley drank one soy latte in the morning, and a chai tea (with skim) in the afternoon. She’d swapped them around today, as she always did on Wednesdays, and sipped as she watched the morning sun coruscate on her new deep-pile white carpet. The pompous windbag on the phone had yet to get to the point, but when you were paid by the hour you learned to be a good listener.

When the windbag finally got to there—a case, shockingly—Shirley took detailed notes, then went looking for Denny. She met Tara in the hall and paused. “Why Tara. That’s new.”

“Is it against dress code? I’d thought a suit would be formal enough for the office.”

“It isn’t your outer layer that’s been causing a stir, today, which I must admit is a welcome change.” Shirley showed Tara her teeth.

“I wasn’t aware our under-layers were also subject to company dress-code policy. I suppose I’ll have to tell you that Alan doesn’t always wear underpants. And I’ve caught him wearing crotchless ones more than once.”

“No, no you really didn’t need to tell me that, dear, but thank you.”

“Always glad to be of service,” Tara said, and went to pass Shirley, who stopped Tara with a hand on her shoulder. “Was there anything else, Schmidt?”

“Just one thing,” Shirley said, and squeezed Tara’s shoulder. “Attagirl.”

***

“Alan!” Denny said. “I found my shoes!”

Alan looked up from the case-file he was doodling on. “That’s funny. From the volume and visibility of your socks I would have concluded that you hadn’t found them.”

“They’re on the balcony!” Denny said, gesturing. “I don’t know how they got there. Someone’s wedged them above the door, and I can’t reach. D’you think we have a whatchamacallit in the building? Pantry. Zeitgeist. Oh, what’s the word.”

“Poltergeist. No. And stand on a chair,” Alan said, and drew a kitten in the margin.

“I tried that! But the chairs are in the main room. Didn’t help.”

“So what do you want me to do?” Alan said. “Surely the magnificent Denny Crane doesn’t need the help of a lowly mortal to accomplish anything.”

Denny tilted his head. “Heyyy. Say that again?”

Alan closed the file and regarded Denny. “Which part?”

Denny pointed finger-guns at Alan. “It sounded different! Can’t quite say.”

“The loss of your shoes has clearly rendered you senile. Let’s take care of that, shall we?” Alan said, and stood.

Denny trailed him out of the room. “Alan, did you know you’re wearing a skirt? Has someone stolen your pants? It’s probably the same criminal who hid my shoes!”

***

A fresh breeze scraped the balcony, whirling up the hem of Alan’s utilikilt and flapping Denny’s yellow tie. The traffic-sounds were faint as whispers. Alan pushed his hands into his pockets. “So. Shoes?”

Denny pointed with a chin-nod. Alan looked. “Denny, that is a plant pot.”

“Yes. The shoes are in it.”

“I see,” Alan said blandly. “But I don’t see them. How do you know they’re there?”

“How do I know?” Denny adjusted his tie. “Denny Crane.”

Alan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Help me drag this over,” he said, indicating one of the sturdy faux-armchairs Denny kept on his balcony.

“I’m an old man, you know,” Denny complained, but came willingly and helped move the chair closer to the door above which the plant pot was situated. It scraped across the tile. “I could throw my back out.”

“I’d offer to fetch and carry for you in that eventuality, but that would differ not at all from our usual arrangement. That ought to be far enough,” Alan said. “Try not to look up my skirt. Or if you must, try not to enjoy it too much.”

Wounded, Denny put one hand to his chest. “I would never let you know when I’ve been looking up your skirt! That takes all the fun out of it.”

“Well in that case,” Alan said, and mounted the chair. The kilt flapped. “Denny Crane, I forbid you to look up my skirt.”

“Ooh.”

The shoes were indeed in the plant pot. Alan retrieved them and gave them the eyebrow. “I’d love to know how he got you up here,” he told them, and looked around to find Denny smiling at the wind-lifted kilt.

“Isn’t that drafty?”

“Yes,” Alan said, and descended with the poise of a queen. “Mostly because last night’s lady-friend kept my underpants as a souvenir. Your shoes, Denny.”

Denny squinted at Alan. “I never noticed before—” Denny said slowly.

Alan lifted his chin. “That pesky Mad Cow,” he said.

“You don’t say my name the way other people do.”

Alan sniffed and set the shoes down. “Help me put the chair back.”

“No, hang on, do you do that on purpose? You can’t fool me forever!”

Alan sighed. “Yes, I do. I’m pleased you’ve finally noticed. Except I don’t see why you feel the need to share your little delusions with me. The chair, if you please?”

Denny crowded closer and prodded Alan’s sternum, right on the ‘Mack’. “I can tell! I’m not making it up! Your throat tenses when you say it. You only tense up like that when you’re, holding something back!” Denny gestured with a clenched fist.

“Denny there is much about my throat you know nothing of. Now, do you mind? I do have a case to work on. You can move the chair by yourself.”

“No, hold on there,” Denny said, and took Alan’s shoulders. “If you’re holding back on account of my age—are you worried I’ll have a coronary?” Denny paused and settled back on his heels, he tugged the lapels of his jacket and gave Alan a slow grin. “I know what it is. You’re restraining yourself! Holding back your heart’s desire! You’re having difficulty restraining your passion for me! You burn, burn, burn with the need for a little Denny Crane in your life.” Denny swiped his fingertips over his eyebrows. “Perfectly understandable—”

“Denny,” Alan said, smokey-voiced. “Do you want to know what I want?”

Denny stared, struck dumb with his mouth hanging slack. Alan slunk closer and tilted his chin to watch Denny from under hooded lids. “Denny—”

A quick intake of breath.

“Denny…”

“Oh,” Denny breathed.

Alan took hold of Denny’s tie and wrapped it once around his fist. “Denny, Denny Crane—”

Denny threw his head back. Alan yanked on his tie. “Denny Crane, ask me what I want.”

“Ohhhh. Tell Denny what you want—”

Alan hauled on Denny’s tie again, dragging him closer, then let go and adjusted the knot gently, watching his own hands as he did so, and smoothed Denny’s jacket, patting with his palms. “Put your shoes on and pour the scotch, would you? The show’s over.”

Boston Legal ficlet

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 06:26:07 GMT

So the month ends tomorrow and I'm attempting to pad my wordcount for February. Since I do not count anything until I have posted it, have a ficlet. I'm sure this is piig♥'s fault somehow.

Boston Legal, pg-13.
Vague post-series spoilers.
Wordcount: 900

Denny Crane slept like a listing ship too loosely moored, lying on his side, one arm under his head, and inclined toward whomever he shared a bed with. Just in case, of course, they woke up wanting a little more of, Denny Crane. By contrast Alan slept in a tense knot, his usual bland expression replaced with the puzzled sorrow you saw in the eyes of a dog who’s realized no one is coming.

Alan was also a light sleeper. He woke when the neighbor’s cat snuck in through the window to curl up in the warm cubby behind his bent knees and he woke when it left again. A two-degree change in temperature, a slowing in the cadence of Denny’s snores, an owl taking a deer-mouse in the back garden; on bad nights even the click-whirr of the fridge was enough. This awakening was caused by something far more mundane; hunger. And not the hunger that had driven him across the divide between his queen-sized bed and Denny’s king in the slanting orange wash of the street light last night, either, but the crawling gnaw in the belly for hot coffee and, hmm. Bacon, perhaps. It was a good day for bacon.

He rocked onto his back and regarded Denny. The city was bare as a desert of birds, but the yellow wash of morning came in just the same, highlighting the sags and crannies on Denny’s face. Alan watched his throat move as he breathed for a long moment, then shifted his attention to the fragile veils of his eyelids. They didn’t move—he wasn’t in REM sleep. Not that Alan would have hesitated to wake him either way. He drove his elbow gently into Denny’s side.

“Wake up. You’re making breakfast.”

“Hazrmf!”

“Time to greet the dawn. Or the ten-AM, as it so happens. Rise.”

Denny squirmed, and his face scrunched in confusion. He snuffled. Alan elbowed him again. “My bacon isn’t going to make itself, you know.”

“Alan?” Denny said, and squinted. “What are you doing in my bed?”

Rising up on his elbow, Alan said, “Denny, I have your semen drying on the skin of my testicles. If you cannot remember the activities that landed it there I choose to take that as a compliment to my exemplary skills, and not to the progressive rot that slowly consumes your frontal lobes.”

“It isn’t very nice of you to mock me, you know. I’ve got Mad Cow disease.”

Alan delicately knuckled the corners of his eyes. “You’ve got something. And you’re going to get up and make me coffee or I won’t be held responsible for the things I say.”

Yawning hugely, Denny hauled the pillow out from under his head and squished it against his belly. “You know, this isn’t the sort of thing I ever thought I’d have to talk about. Nothing like this at boot camp. Or was it boarding school?”

“Can’t have been boarding school you went to, then, if there’s any doubt in your mind. Why haven’t you moved yet? The bacon’s not going to make itself. And eggs, I think. Slightly runny. Cream in my coffee if you please.”

Denny shuffled until he could face Alan a little better. “It’s just not something we can have the military doing. They’d never get any killing done if they were fraternizing all the time!”

“They probably do,” Alan said placidly. “And yet they manage. Not that it’s anything anyone ought to be applauded for. Tell me, have you hired a maid I don’t know about? Or a caterer? Perhaps you’ve got some kind of, bedside bacon delivery service.”

“Hmf,” Denny said, then tilted his head. “Alan?”

“I’m not making breakfast, so don’t even attempt an appeal.”

“What the devil are you doing in my bed?”

“At the moment, attempting secure my breakfast. I’m willing to coerce, bribe, or bargain with the splendid lump of aging lawyer I have wedded my life to, but if you want sexual favours you’re going to have to make with the bacon.”

“I have bacon,” Denny confided. “Real men eat meat. And shoot things. I like red meat.”

“Of course you do,” Alan said, and stole the blankets in their entirety.

“Denny Crane.”

“You do remember where the kitchen is, don’t you? If we’d stayed at the hotel like I wanted we could be enjoying room service as we speak.”

“A man’s home is his castle! Can’t live in a hotel like that, it’s a warren of strangers and, and parasites and things! Ridiculous. Got to have a castle.” Denny sat up and scrubbed both hands through his hair. He regarded himself quizzically. “Alan, I’m naked.”

“So you are. And so am I. And I at least plan to remain that way. And perhaps if your castle had a happy little maid to fix us breakfast you too could remain in the pure freedom I currently enjoy. As it stands, however, it’s just you, and I, and I do not cook. I suggest,” Alan finished, “That you do not attempt to cook bacon in the nude.”

Denny Crane narrowed his eyes and stared at Alan. “Have we done this before? This sounds familiar.”

Alan wriggled into a more comfortable position and hauled the blankets up to his collarbones. “Every saturday, Denny. Wake me when the coffee’s ready.”

“Coffee’s always ready,” Denny said, and scratched his ankle. “Coffee’s wonderful, aren’t I? Denny Crane.”

Intro

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:58:59 GMT

Erm. Hi everyone! Bunch of new people :)

Everything is tagged, so wander, read, and enjoy :) I've improved a lot so I hope my older stuff doesn't make you twitch as badly as it does me. The fanfic I've written for the original works of lorataprose and piigverse probably won't make much sense unless you've read the canon, so be warned :) (and you should totally go read their stuff) (like right now) (seriously, I'll still be here and they are both made of equal parts Win, Awesome, and Nift). You should also read altis, though hers is f-locked. I also recommend Piig's pre-apocalyptic Nano and torturedsoul, a Bandom AU-of-original-characters collaboration between Altis and Lorata.

I do take requests, but am dreadfully slow at fulfilling them. Mostly because I have the attention span of a beenie baby. I also do trades; f'r ex, I wrote some Legally Blonde genfic for moon_brain in exchange for some awesome fingerless gloves with the Batsignal on the back. I got the better end of the deal, no question :D

Everything not-safe-for-work is labeled as such. At least half of my work is queer in some way. I exclusively write speculative fiction, with the rare veryshort exception, so treat those little beasties like the three-legged unicorns they are ~~and feed them glitter-coated carrot-shaped marshmallows~~. Feedback makes me happy :) If anyone wants to be filtered in or out of any given group or topic just let me know.

For ease of navigation:

Steve, aka, Where O Werewolf: 35k and counting. First post.

last year's Nano tag, I'm about halfway through the book and still climbing. If you're not on that filter and want to be, just say :)

my original stuff. Bill's Barnacles is the best so far, and is currently out looking for a job.

Market Listings, for those of you also trying to get published :) I need to update the post. And I will. Any day now.

So yeah. Thanks for stopping by!

through hell ficlet

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 07:16:30 GMT

For Lora: Pete and the little Flemings. ♥
Sorry for typos. Wrote this with eyes mostly-closed sleepy. But finish! \o/
Wordcount: 2,750

What Peteninja Wrote:
Manda called when I was driving but I didn’t tell her I was driving ‘cause she’d have hung up and I wanted to talk to her. Which maybe wasn’t smart, but who’s smart when they’re in love? Anyways nothing crashed or blew up. Though I don’t know how she didn’t hear the Beast making all that noise. Except maybe she did and she’s just biding her time. And now I’m terrified.

Work was boring today.

What Actually Happened:
Pete shared the Beast with three other guys. The schedule got pretty complicated, and (Dumbass) Dwayne forgot to fill the tank *every damned time* and you had to fill it yourself then track him down for the gas money, which was a chore, and yeah the Beast rattled like a box of bolts and had rust-holes in the floor so you got splashed if you drove after a rain. But it drove, and they owned it, free and clear and all theirs, and gradually they’d fix it up bit by bit till the Beast was a Beauty who purred and growled and never broke down.

Not that the Beast had suffered a personality failure for the month (yet), but still. Pete never went anywhere without bus-fare, just in case.

The lifeguard job was decent. I mean the pay was middling-fair, but he got to be outside and in the sun (the skin on his nose and the tops of his shoulders was a little tight despite the zinc oxide), and he got to watch people being happy at the beach the whole time he was working, and yesterday he’d helped this grandfatherly dude who’d gotten in trouble out by the breakers, and how awesome was that, to get to be that useful? So Pete was quite happy with the job, plus he never had to work evenings. Except Manda was ON evenings now at that crisis center job of hers so he didn’t get to see her nearly enough, which is why he hadn’t told her about being behind the wheel when she called. So he was happy, doing 3 below the speed limit round the bend by Briar House Farms, the veggie place, when he saw a mid-sized hump of bloody feathers in the road, a dead hen, and at least four little puff-ball chickens milling about. They’d be roadkill themselves without her, and anyways how would they live? They’d get picked off by a hawk or somebody’s dog or something.

So Pete pulled over and the Beast coughed when he killed the engine.

In the back were several boxes; each of the guys kept their in-the-car crap in a separate one so there wouldn’t be any squabbles about who used the last of the change for parking or who’d lost the air freshener or whatever. There were spare boxes, which Pete had put there just in case, and he nabbed one now and put it on the hood.

The chickens were little brown and yellow fuzzballs on too-long legs, not tiny babies but without even the pinfeathers that’d turn into proper plumage. Did chickens have plumage, or was it only for prettier birds? The little things called constantly, tiny peepings, and they peered all around with their liquid black eyes.

Pete looked at his watch. He was babysitting at Chez Fleming tonight so Paul could have a romantic whatever with Michael without feeling guilty about taking his mom’s one free evening away from her. But the little things would die if he left them. But what would he do with them anyway? How the hell did you catch a bunch of baby birds? At least the rise by the side of the road was too steep for them, so they couldn’t get far.

As Pete thought this over, one of them pecked a shred of its mother.

What Peteninja Wrote:

OH MY GOD. THAT IS SO DISGUSTING. DID YOU KNOW THAT CHICKENS EAT ROADKILL? EVEN IF THAT ROADKILL IS ANOTHER CHICKEN!? I mean I remember reading that butterflies did and going “ew ew ew” but. Gah. I can’t even talk about it.
When I told the guys Clive said I should have taken pictures. I dumped him in the trashcan. That’s what he gets for being little and scrawny and easy to stuff into things.
I am never eating chicken again.

What Actually Happened:

Their little clawed feet made rustling noises on the cardboard. Pete drove with one hand, and he’d buckled the box in but he held it anyways, not wanting to turn hard or brake and have the box topple over. They’d only fall through the holes in the Beast’s floor and THAT would just be entirely too much. He’d caught six chickens; there may have been more, but those were the only ones he’d seen. He was all sweaty now. Which, whatever. He’d only wind up running around with Tony on his shoulders while Mitchell whacked his legs with a pillow and Shannon threw beanie-babies at them or something.

Energetic little doodlebugs, God love ‘em.

Pete had timed his arrival at Chez Fleming carefully. He had to get there *after* Tina had left for her tea with Jennie and Wren, but *before* Paul left (not that Paul would leave the kidlets unattended, but that wasn’t the point). This was because Paul was happy to hug Pete and take off, whereas Tina would want hugs and how-are-you and might notice the grocery-bags in the back of the Beast. So if he worked it right he’d be able to squirrel the stuff away without a fuss. Though one of the kidlets would wind up blabbing and he’d get a lecture or reproachful looks or Paul would swat him upside the head with Shannon’s plushie snake, or the silent treatment, or *something*. But. It was easier to ask forgiveness than permission, you know? And it wasn’t like Manda let him spend money on her.

So when Pete parked and turned the Beast off (rattle wheeze growf), he mentally slapped himself on the back when Paul immediately darted out the front door, all dolled up, and gave Pete a quick hard hug before scuttling off to the bus-stop without more than a, “Shannon is catching a cold so careful you don’t get it too and make sure Mitch does his homework please and thankyou!”

“Got it!” Pete called after him, and went to the door to say hi to whoever was home—no sign of Bethy (work) or Tiff (rugby), but Jolene was in her room by the sound of it—Jonas Brothers on repeat—and Tony was organizing everyone’s shoes in descending order, left shoes on the left side of the hall, right shoes on the right side of the hall.

“Hi everybody!” Pete said. “Tony, you got a moment? Come help me get the groceries in.”

Mitchell stuck his head out of the kitchen. “You know you’re not supposed to do that anymore!” His tone was mid-way between Fleming Wounded Pride and a smug boy’s So-and-So’s-in-trouuuuuuble!

Pete spread his hands. “Well, too late; I already did. You gonna give me a hug or what?”

Mitchell didn’t ‘hug’ so much as ‘tackle briefly’, but Tony leaned his head on Pete’s leg for a moment, then went back to the shoes and picked up his own and handed them to Pete. “There ya go,” Pete told him, and helped him get his shoes on.

“I’m doin’ homework,” Mitchell said.

What Peteninja Wrote:

So Mitchell? ‘Did his homework’ all night without actually getting it done. Where did he learn that from? Why did I fall for it? Why did I let Tony convince me to put all the groceries away upside-down?

What Actually Happened:

Mitchell was fascinated by the chickens. The wandered aimlessly and called softly in their throats constantly, and walked in their own poo without noticing, something Tony was gigglingly revolted by. Pete set the box on the kitchen table in the middle of everyone’s homework.

Shannon slept—she hadn’t done her homework, but at her age homework was “draw and colour three ponies and write “three pretty ponies” in crayon underneath”, so it was okay. Pete had looked in on her and tugged her faded Disney Princess quilt up around her shoulders, and kissed her forehead. Three days later Paul would pitch a fit at Pete—”Didn’t I tell you not to catch Shannon’s cold!?”—but for now, Pete let the baby sleep and tried to figure out what to do with the birds.

“There’s a smell,” Jolene said, leaning over the box with reluctant interest. Her hair was that glossless black from the dye and she still had traces of it packed under her nails.

“YOU’RE a smell,” Mitch said. Jolene smacked his arm, and Pete automatically grabbed both their wrists before a proper slap-fest could start. He didn’t say anything, just gave them each The Eyebrow.

“Oh my God,” Jolene said. “I hope they die!”

She set off, doubtless to go sulk somewhere, but Pete’d had enough. She’d got all sorts of ideas in her head, playing at ostentatious despair while her mother worked three jobs and her brother worried someone would take his son away based on a technicality, as if that held anything on love. And when Pete had tried to talk to Manda about it she’d just pointed out that at Jo’s age everyone was myopic, all they could see or feel or think in any kind of visceral way was what they felt/saw/thought right now. And yeah, fine, being a teenager sucked under the finest circumstances. But there was being a typical teenager, and there was being a little *shit*

“Right everyone! Homework, now,” Pete said, and took the box under his arm, setting off a cascade of little claws dragging across the cardboard and a spate of peepings. He took Jolene’s arm in the other.

“Joleeeeene’s in trouble!” Mitch said.

“Homework!” Pete said, and employed Stern Glare #5, the one he’d learned from Batman comics. Mitch plonked into his seat and started chewing his pencil.

“Go on,” Pete told Jolene.

When they’d gone as far down the hall as they could without waking Shannon, Pete let Jolene go.

“Wanna say that again?” Pete said.

Jolene turned her head so the curtain of her hair dragged over her face. “They’re just dumb birds.”

Pete set the box down carefully and scooped a chicken up, the dry scales on its feet and the hard little nails on his palm, the delicate bones and fever-hot skin under the down feathers. He caught Jolene’s hand, and when she wouldn’t release the fist, he set the bird lightly on the back of her hand, holding one splayed hand just under in case the bird fell or she shook it off.

“There really is a smell,” Jolene said, but her tone had changed. She wasn’t angry anymore; she sounded judged, lost.

“You kill ‘em, then.”

Jolene tried to tug away without dislodging the chicken. Pete held her firm for a moment, then gently trapped the chicken between his palm and the back of Jolene’s hand, just enough for the bird to crouch and peep louder.

“Go on,” he said. “It’s just a dumb bird.”

“I don’t want to!” Jolene said.

“Then don’t,” Pete said, put the chicken back into the box, and offered Jolene a hug. “Look, don’t say stuff you don’t mean, okay? It doesn’t end well.”

Jolene made a muffled sound of agreement into Pete’s shoulder. Pete patted the edges of her shoulderblades, like he was burping an infant, until she pulled away 34 seconds later. He pretended not to notice that she’d need to wash her face and re-apply that stark makeup, all whites and blacks and grey.

“Be good, but don’t be TOO good,” Pete told her, “Okay?”

There really wasn’t any cause for that kind of acidity. And in somebody not old enough to drive!

“Jeez,” Pete said. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you decide to be civil.”

“Stop treating me like a baby!”

“This is treating you like a baby,” Pete said, and scooped Jolene up over his shoulder while she screeched and yanked his hair. He carried her over to her work-desk and set her down on her homework, next to the battered little boom-box. “But since you’re not a baby I wouldn’t dream of it. Do your homework.”

“One day you’re going to grow up, and then you’ll be embarrassed of this.”

“Whatever. Tea?”

“Only if you poison it.”

“That’s a no then,” Pete said, shrugged, and left the room.

Later, he played chesseckers with Tony while Mitchell ‘did his homework’ and Jolene did readings for class. It was nice.

He dropped the birds at the RSPCA on the way home.

What Peteninja Wrote (the next day):

Nothing happened today, either. Got called “snake-shagging crazy” today, which gets points for being new I guess? I was only trying to get someone’s dachsund out from under a truck. Using a balloon and half a ham sandwhich. Totally normal.

Manda called today. She’s pretty. She doesn’t let me tell her often so I’m telling you :)

aw maaaaaan

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:29:34 GMT

Realms of Fantasy is closing.

I *liked* RoF. I *buy* it. D:

Aw man.

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:50:27 GMT

They've discontinued The Year's Best Fantasy And Horror".

ficlet

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:18:46 GMT

Cheer-up tinyfic for Lora-love.
Through Hell cast: Robbie bein' cute.

Robbie's year-one first snowfall involved a single flake landing on the baby's little toque and being brushed away by his besotted father's peach-coloured faux-leather value-village glove. That night in the ducky-yellow bathtub Tina had donated Michael checked to see that Paul wasn't looking, then shaped the baby's sudsy hair into a Mohawk and told him, "None of this nerdy artsy crap for you, right? You're going to be a punk or jock or something, something so cool nobody'd ever think of shoving you into lockers or filling your lunchbox with wet leaves or dragging erasers down your drawings at lunch." He kissed the tidy pink toes and Robbie flailed his arms and grabbed for Michael's ears and gave his husky arrhythmic giggle. Mike wiped the suds off his mouth and kissed Robbie's tip-tilted nose. "If you must be a nerd, please at least be one of the SCA guys with the huge medieval weapons and facial hair."

"Dad!" Robbie signed, and tried to chew on his own elbow.

Robbie's second-year first snowfall began shortly after dinner, when Robbie, resplendent in feety pajamas, slipped off Paul's lap and carried his plastic bowl to the sink and tip-toed to set it in the sink. Paul was piled high with deadlines and was buried in his room, typing, so Michael picked Robbie up and mouthed, "Sleepy?"

Robbie shook his head, then signed "Rain", and beeped Michael's nose. Michael crossed his eyes and puffed out a breath hard enough to stir Robbie's curls. Robbie patted Michael's temples, then signed "rain" again and pointed outside, where slow fat flakes were dusting the world white.

"That's snow, 'obbie," Michael said, just to watch Robbie puff up with indignation and spell his own name with an emphatic "R".

"It's like soft frozen water," Michael said. "It melts if you touch it or breathe on it, and it falls in winter instead of rain." He kissed Robbie's clever baby forehead. "So you were very smart to call it like rain."

"I want to see," Robbie signed.

"We're not going outside now," Michael said, and walked over to scoop a blanket off the couch. He wrapped Robbie up like a burrito. "But lets stick our heads out the window like puppies in a car, okay?"

Robbie wiggled eagerly as Michael undid the latches and swung the window open. A heavy wash of cold air frothed steam as it billowed in from outside, chilling Michael's feet even through two layers of tasteful navy socks. Robbie grabbed a double handful of snow and the loose, dry snow fluffed out of his hands. He fluttered his palms and licked melting snowflakes off, then pressed his palms into Michael's collar to warm them against his neck. Michael took it manfully, suppressing a wince.

"Like Kraken," Robbie signed when he pulled his cold hands out of his daddy's neckular region. Kraken was his latest teething-freezy-toy, which was a little purple squiddly which, when frozen, helped numb the ache of growing milk-teeth.

"Like Kraken and baby Fleming-Walker's cold little hands!" Michael said, and tried to pack a snowball one-handed.

"Bring daddy some?" Robbie asked, adding the abbreviated sign he used to differentiate Paul-dad from Michael-dad.

Michael thought of his husband, hunched old-man-esque over his raffle-won laptop and great piles of textbooks like bricks in a hen-house scattered around. Barely stopping to eat, nevermind do normal every-day things like throw snowballs. Michael hefted Robbie a little higher on his hip and grinned into the boy's face, inviting him to feel mischevious and happy. "Let's surprise him, okay? Pack it into a ball like with cookies, and we'll carry some for a surprise for daddy."

Christmas-is-late 2008

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:43:21 GMT

Title: Be This Beautiful
Wordcount: 4,600
Merry Christmas, Lora-love! This isn't the au you were expecting. This just muscled its way to the front of the queue. Some of these bunnies have no manners. I'm still working on the Huge Honking AU I swear.
A/N: Idea c/o Tammy who mentioned steampunk. Woot.

Paul began with the heart. The hollow form was of bronze laboriously cast, and stained from coal dust and the oils of his hands; an open, empty thing like the ribs of an ammonite shell. The walls and chambers were of well-waxed leather, stitched in his sister Bethsany's tiny, careful work, as her hand was finer than his own. Around its outside are the bands that will force it to beat.

The heart was the seat of the soul, the center of reason, and Paul wanted it to be perfect, a warm open kindly thing, with none of the evils that marred and ate at the original so wretchedly. His father had been dead for nineteen days.

***

Wind Street was lined both sides with the homes of the wealthy, crammed close together like uncertain cows against the continuous drizzle of slush laced with coal-dust. The boilers and furnaces that warmed the wealthy and lit their lights and, in rare cases, powered their toys with tamed lightning were all grown like cancer at the back walls of their houses. Narrow alleyways seamed between the richer streets to give access to the boilers, and they were wet filthy places, smoke-choked and grimed. This was where the poor made their homes, amid all the steam and grease and smoke, because of the warmth that leached through. Those who couldn't hold the little garrets by the boiler walls--because of a man who was injured or canned or dead or absent--lived beneath the palace.

The palace sat on a great iron Plate and rose above the city on pillars of granite and blackforged steel, and below it were the many boilers and pumps and enormous dumbwaiters that saw to the earthly needs of Gloriana and her household. The up-sloping white highway to the front entrance was coated with crushed seashells and lined with high walls and sculpted trees of bronze and tin and the flowers of leaded glass glowed at night by some trick of alchemy or science. Her Majesty's guests need never see the living filth of Buckingham Below, or the great pipes that connected it to the palace proper.

By the seventh pillar, at the Southeast end of the palace, was the Roxbury Boiler which steam-warmed Gloriana's glass-enclosed orchard and piped water for her fountains and baths and heated sweet pools. Da Fleming had worked--such as it was--as the foreman for the crew who tended the great machine. He was 'away', comforting his ailing mother, but they wouldn't hold his job forever, and worse, they were merely *holding* it. His wages had been stopped. And a man killed in a street brawl wouldn't be coming back to work. Fortunately for the family his young son 'Tim' Fleming, beardless boy though he was, had nevertheless shown such knowledge of the machine and dedication to the work, such fearlessness of height or heat, that the interim foreman had kept him along as the rail-man, and let his family stay. The 'house' was more a warren of tiny rooms that dripped damp and oozed steam, but there was room enough for Tina and her brood, and a lodger or two beside. Paul even had a room to himself, a cubby beside the door, where the first creaks of its opening would have Paul thrusting his face between his false-laced curtains and demanding who goes. The proper answer was not a secret word but a kiss to the cheek.

Impossible to keep a secret in a house so full of ears and mouths and when the new foreman decided he was tired of holding his predecessor's job, what then? London in winter and Tina's children like unfeathered sparrows out in the cold.

Paul's automaton lay in state, taking up most of Paul's pallet and dripping oil clear through the ticking to puddle on the floor. Late nights and early mornings and scant meals for too long had left the eldest Fleming child with the translucent skin of an angel and the ethereal thinness of a newborn foal. When he wasn't home his siblings helped with the project, each in his or her own fashion. Tony polished Da's best shoes and set them by where he thought the feet should be. He bit his lip till it bled, went back and scored them deeply with a snake-edged over-sharpened kitchen knife. He sat and plucked at the small leather mouths he'd made with dirty finger-nails until baby Shannon crawled in and, seeing his tears, began to cry. He stuffed the shoes to either side of the pile of big black-iron leg-bones and scooped Shannon up around her waist and hauled her up to the roof to watch the witch-lights sparkle on the underside of the Plate. Later they could pick faint-glowing truffles for Bethy to sell at her little stall by the ruined church. Time passed like drips of condensation from the underbelly of the Plate. Later Tiffany pulled the poor-boy hat further down about her rough-cropped hair and twitched the curtain. "Oi," she called softly, but Paul didn’t answer, and she heard neither breathing nor sounds of nightmare, so she slipped through and laid stolen rivets and gear-struts small as finger-bones on the counterpane for him to find. She squatted to retrieve the knife, her mouth a hard white line.

***

Paul lingered at the crossing of Westbank and Harcourt, and on the two streets wide as goat-trails a host of ragged people trickled by, people wending their way home through the back-roads of London, people swathed in rags and the moaning of the wind and the hopeless silver light of the gloaming. Snow fell in slow fat flakes. Paul kept close to the wall and tucked his hands into his armpits to warm them. He'd wanted to wait in the Hoary Boar but one of the patrons there had touched his jaw and told him he was beautiful, and Paul preferred the soggy snow and intermittent gusts to such attentions. Mitchell was 'prenticed to the nurturers at the inner harbour and it wasn't safe for so small a boy to trot his day's tuppence and own small self home through the slums alone, and so someone would stand at this crossroad and wait. Paul, today.

A bobbing orange light approached, swaying at the end of a pole that stank of whale oil. Paul paid it little heed until Mitchell cannoned into his hip and tugged his elbow with cold wet hands. Paul yelped. "Mitch honey how'd you get so wet, come--" and unwound his scrap-sewn scarf to chafe a little warmth back into his brother. Mitchell squirmed away and pointed and said, "This is Michael, he fell in the harbour!"

Eyes like chips of sea ice and a mouth blue from cold, wrapped in a soaked-through borrowed blanket which still glowed with faint warming-runes. A sheepish twitch of narrow shoulders--"I don't mean to be any trouble--," and Paul shrugged out of his duster to drape it around the stranger's wet shaking back. If he was warm enough to shiver might be alright despite the otherworldly blue that crept below his skin.

The great sea-going ships of Her Majesty's Navy calved in the clean safe salt of the harbour. England's strength was her navy and her navy's strength was healthy ships, so any fouling of the water resulted in a quick drop and dangle from the gallows tree. Gloriana gave no second chances. The city's filth was carted inland to be burned.

"Come we've just got a quit trip through Sector Six, you'll be warm soon," Paul said, and took Michael's half-empty canister of oil to relieve him of the weight; he must be one of the chandlers that walked the city at dusk and filled the Crown's lamps with whale oil, who climbed the inbuilt iron hooks to trim the wicks as needed. In the slick slush falls were not uncommon, but it would take a run of poor luck indeed to drop one clear into the water.

Mitchell freed his hands from Paul's scarf and scuffled Michael's hair with it, trying to dry the limp coppery hanks. Paul petted his shoulder and smiled at him. Michael said, "You're kind, you and your brother both."

Paul guided them deeper into the slums, and the crack-crazed ice on the gutters reflected the lamplight in a broken gleam. Michael seemed a talker. "What a wretched time to slip! I'm grateful I could swim, at least. My ears hurt."

"We'll get you warmed up we live by the Roxbury Boiler, isn't far," Paul comforted. "Mitch look at Charlie's cart there, go find her and ask if she's got the scrap bronze and crystal I wanted."

Charlie the rag-and-bone-man was a woman and she dressed more the magpie than any troubadour or bard. Half her custom thought her a man and she made no effort to correct them. Part pawn-shop, part treasure-trove, part magpie's call to thievery, her cart was more sturdily built than some carriages and contained an ever-shifting array of gears, cracked light-crystals, faceless pocket-watches and mis-matched baubles. She lived round the back of Plover court and came by with tiny sugar-dusted cakes every Sunday afternoon at Tina's invitation, for tea. She called Tina Auntie. She had a benign indifference to the littler ones that--somehow--ensured their good behaviour for the duration of her visits. She gave Mitchell the sack of components Paul had traded her

"I was lighting the calving lamps," Michael said. "Nnh." He shook and staggered.

"Whoa!" Charlie said. "Jesus wept, look at the wretched walking up the streets of London town! Here, take these," and she rummaged in the undercarriage of her cart and draped Michael in a set of fuschia velvet curtains, moth-chewed and dusty. Michael burrowed his face into the drape at the bend of his elbow, then tugged a fold of fabric to cover the crown of his head. Gloriana had declared the last plague over two months gone but many houses lacked occupants still. More people would come to claim or fill them. They always did.

"Charlie--" Paul said.

"Pay me later. If not, meh."

Paul cringed inwardly and put on his most pleasant face. Charlie shook her head at him and rolled her eyes. "You don't have any money. I'm about the same. You think I'd kill that one for a shilling?" Charlie jerked her chin at Michael, who was shifting foot to foot, teeth clenched. "Get him inside. And if you're determined to cover yourself in guilt, get Tina-love to mend the things for me. And then I can turn up and go oh look at that, I'll just gift them thee shall I? And I can feel good and she can whack me with her washcloth and life will go on. So shoo."

Paul couldn't argue with Mitchell complaining about the weight of the sack and Michael, taller by several inches but not a large man by any means, listing sideways until he sagged against Paul, turning eyes like storm-seas on Paul and saying, "Why, you're barely the size of a pea. Why are you out in this cold?"

"It makes the home-hearth sweeter," Paul said, and hitched his arm around Michael's waist to buoy him up. Damp soaking like a blow all along Paul's ribs. "Charlie--"

"Jesu Christi, Paul, get ginger inside before his blood turns blue for always." Charlie looked round and furtively drew a bauble off the chiming junk-bundle that hung from the side of her cart. It had the lines of a whorled shell but seemed made of stone. She dandled it before Michael's face and held Paul's gaze. "This I'll need back," she said, and bonked it on Michael's forehead before looping the cord round his throat and tucking it into his neckcloth. Steam rose in thin tendrils from Michael's clothes, and he closed his eyes in something like pleasure. "Ah," he said.

"He ought not to catch his death, at least," Charlie said doubtfully, and swatted Paul with a wad of cloth. "Be off now."

***

Bethy works nights, washing blood from newborns and tired mothers at the birthing-spa the wealthy ladies use, then works three-bells till noon at the bakery, and comes home to sponge herself clean in the abundant warm runoff from the boiler and sleep briefly in Tina's room which was the quietest.

Sometimes Paul wants to take his sister apart and put her back together so she's less like him. The Plate shades the slums utterly and there is no snow here, just feathered wisps of frost and chunks of rotten ice and a cold that winds round your bones and makes a home there. The Buckingham Plate is ringed round the edge with a beard of frost and ice in fanged cones like stalactites and the land is clear in a ring all around because of the damage the things do when they fall. And they always fall.

***

Michael staggered on the threshold and wiped his feet carefully on the rushes. He gripped the doorjamb with bloodless hands. He worked with ink or paint or dye and it stained his hands and clumped under his nail-beds like old bruises.

"Here," Paul said, and crowded Michael in further with his body, shut the door to keep out the cold. Tony took one look at Michael, swathed in the curtains and blue-tinged despite Charlie's spell-token, and ran into the back calling for Bethy.

"Tony, you come back here! She needs her sleep!" Paul tried to steady Michael and toe his own patch-mended boots off at the same time. They'd been a Lenten gift from Charlie and had been made for a woman with feet smaller and narrower than Paul's own, if not by much.

Bethy poked her head out of Paul's room and looked Michael over. She raised an eyebrow at Paul, meaning, Another stray?

Paul narrowed his eyes at her and shook his head, and she shrugged, tossing her dark hair over her shoulder and eeling out through the curtains and into the narrow hall. Her hands were soft from kneading dough and washing live babies and swaddling the dead ones in rags, and the thick needle she used for leather-work pricked her fingertips raw. "And where shall we put him, then? Kitchen floor? Paul. I'll make tea. Who are you, dear?" This last directed at Michael, who tried to smile at her. His eyes shone like glass, leaden and gleaming. "Michael Walker, miss--"

"And of course you haven't a clue who my brothers are." Bethy said, and tweaked Paul's ear. "This one is Paul Fleming, and the imp currently lugging that bag is Mitchell." Her tone was light but her eyes cut at Paul. He shrugged, trying to ignore the sting, the frustration and bile that clawed up his throat. He knew how things were! He knew Michael would eat because Paul would be not-hungry-thank-you, or Bethy, and that Tina would be jumping at shadows to find a strange man in her house, even a thin ginger one with huge eyes and skin gone waxy-pale.

Paul belatedly twisted away and smacked her hand, and guided Michael onto the narrow stool tucked into the corner opposite his curtain; fighting with damp footwear was such a staple of English life that Tina considered it the work of a gracious hostess to ensure a seat for those who had to do battle to free their feet. A bucket of damp, clean rags was tucked under the chair. Paul crouched and wrung a rag mostly free of water, and wiped the coal-mud and slush from Michael's shoes before easing the shoe-horn down the backs and slipping them off. Michael folded over in his dust-smelling fuschia wrappings and smiled at Paul as if Paul frightened him. "I can't stay, I know I can't stay--I've. Got to get the rest of the lamps lit."

"You'd finished them all," Mitchell said, bossy, "You fell in after you lit the last one how come you've got such a short shift?" Talking all bossy and little-boy-snide, from behind Paul's curtain-door, and he set the bag down with more care than he usually showed anything without a heartbeat. He came to stand before Paul and jigged from foot to foot. "Are you gonna finish tonight? Can I stay up to watch?"

Paul set Michael's boot off to the side of the family pile and stood, slapping his hands on his thighs and scuffling them through Mitchell's hair. "And who'rt *thou* to have no need of rest?" he murmured to him. Mitchell twisted away, squealing, and Paul followed, his foot knocking Michael's shoe over into the pile. He danced his fingers down Mitchell's ribs and sent him to lay the tea-things, after being careful to wash his hands and face.

"I don't have a short shift," Michael said, watching after Mitchell. He looked up at Paul. "I make paints and dyes? For the artists. I just light the lamps at the nursery wharf because the babies scare my father." A little colour had come back to his face. Paul tugged him upright with both hands. "Here," he said, and ushered Michael into his cubby and said, "Get out of those wet things."

He thought of the ships as he slipped into his mother's room. Small, with a single window of layered waxed paper, pitcher and basin and fading witch-lights on all the walls. No cobwebs, no dust.

The babies didn't do much but sleep and bask and grow, and the nurturers fed them algae so it would grow in their skin and eat sun for them, the nurturers planted *trees* in them when they were older, and they looked like sharks or hard-edged sea-monsters, like nothing you'd associate with *sailing*. They looked like glass and could touch the inside of a man's head where none other but God ought to be able to reach, and Jolene mooned over them with the blind adoration of a princess with a blue-eyed white kitten.

Face carefully blank, Paul crept to the corner where his father had kept his things, untouched these three weeks and beginning to smell of disuse. The clothes would hang on Michael, but they were dry and well-mended. Paul took a shirt and vest, hose and trousers and a neckcloth of blue linen. He walked out of the room without looking back.

The automaton was a skeleton of bronze and it took up most of Paul's pallet, its weight denting the ticking and creaking the ropes. He slept on the edge of the pallet and had bruises on his ribs from the thing's unyielding bones. Only appropriate, only fitting, and Tina pretended not to know, or perhaps honestly *didn't* know, just thought it another of Paul's attempts to help feed his siblings by seizing anything that could be imagined as an opportunity. Michael's sodden clothes formed a pile that oozed cold salt water into the floorboards. He huddled on the corner of Paul's bad as far from the automaton as he could get, wrapped up in Paul's faded scrap-fabric quilt and still wearing Charlie's token. His colour looked a little better, though Paul still wanted to get something warm into him as quickly as could be arranged. The heart was the hearth that kept the family going and cold water could sap its heat faster than pestilence or despair.

The great boiler worked all hours, tirelessly, and during slow times the pipes creaked and groaned as they settled. The noises haunted Sector Seven like the cries from the slaughterhouses haunted the slums round Thornhill's Gate. Paul laid the hastily folded pile of clothes over the automaton's chest and took up a hank of rag to dry Michael's hair. Bethy was heating soup and the thin warm smell filled the little house. Shannon was upstairs singing and Michael's hair smelled of brine and whale-oil smoke. His eyes searched behind closed lids, such a tender and thin veil behind which to hide. His mouth was pale with cold.

"You've a dead metal man on your bed, did you know?" Michael said. "I can't imagine why you'd want such a thing."

"It's an automaton. Like Lord Balthazar's giant, but better articulated. I mean for it to work on the boiler."

"Oh," Michael said, and leaned his head trustingly into Paul's hands. Paul found himself drawing the ginger locks between his crooked forefinger and the pad of his thumb, as if squeezing water out but they were mostly dry and beginning to curl. After too brief a time Michael pulled back and let Paul see his eyes again. "Why would you build something like that? There's little enough honest work in London as-is."

"It's just the one," Paul said, but his belly cramped at the thought of an army of the things, driving the poor from the slums or marching with weapons shouldered or, perhaps worse, simply being made more and more of until there were no jobs. Famine stalked the streets of London-town often enough, the angels of death and poverty didn't need Paul's help there. "My father's contract is *his* contract, and his death severed it. But it's not just him, is it? It's the rest of us. And without that contract saying we get this house and his pay and all, we'd have nothing. The littles can't survive a winter in an abandoned attic or stable-loft, assuming we could find and hold use of one!"

"So you make a metal man," Michael murmured, and yawned till his skull creaked. He covered the gape of his jaw with both hands, then flapped them at Paul, apologizing around the tail-end of another.

"Get into these," Paul told him, gruffing to cover the wobble to his voice. "I'll bring you something warm to drink."

Michael covered the automaton's face with his open palm. "It needs a face."

Paul cringed inwardly, remembering his failed attempts, the jeweller's forge he'd begged use of from a friend's father. "I haven't managed one yet."

Face colouring, Michael traced the lines of the automaton's cheekbones, the hollow orbits of the deep-set eyes. "I dabble. I mean, I have some small skill at art--I could. I mean. I owe a favour. I could make it a face, if you wished--"

Paul slumped onto the pallet and pressed his fingertips to his temples hard enough to leave marks. His throat closed and he couldn't answer. Greatly daring, Michael rested a hand on his shoulder and said his name as a question. Paul said, "I'm. Michael I'm not sure how to explain."

"Here," Michael said, and offered his hand, pinky extended and crooked. "If I give my word to get neither offended nor cross?"

With a wan smile, Paul hooked their pinkies together and tugged lightly. "It's not so much that, but--my throat closes."

Michael squeezed Paul's hand, then turned it over, both of their knuckles skin-cracked and reddened from cold. Paul swallowed tears. It wasn't often he found himself comforted.

A few days before, in the cold of the evening, Paul had brought a flurry of fat snowflakes and the dank breath of winter in behind him. He shed his layers by the door and draped them from hooks to lose the damp. Tina sat in the foyer, against the warm boiler-wall and embroidered ducklings onto a white cloth. Her hair was tangled with her lack of care and her eyes were shadowed with exhaustion. The curtain to Paul's cubby was more firmly drawn than he'd left it.

"Paulie, I expected you earlier. Did everything go well?"

"I have never in my life encountered a more unruly and wretched infant."

"You say that every time."

Tina cleaned the Spaniard lord Tiburon's kitchen and washed delicates that couldn't be trusted to just any hand, and fretted over the blood that so often stained his lady wife's smallclothes. The lady of the house, a St. Grieve by birth, slipped frequently from the watch of her handmaidens to lean against the kitchen wall and while an hour or two in Tina's company. She sent work to Tina and her children as often as she could.

Paul bent to pry off his shoes and wobbled, catching himself on the wall. Tina set her embroidery aside and came to him, settling her hands to the sides of his face to warm his ears. "I'll fix you something to eat and then you'd best get to sleep."

Paul nodded with his chin to the firmly closed curtain. "Did you get a chance to see it?"

Tina looked away and covered her eyes with her hands. "Paulie--"

"What other choice do we have? It'll work mama, it has to."

Tina's mouth was a thin slash in her pallid face. "You've always worked harder than I had any right to ask, baby, but this. You've got to get rid of it, please. That bare skull is nothing I wish in my house. I can't bear it Paulie! That might be the face he watches the lid of his coffin with."

Cringing, Paul turned away. He didn't disagree. It wasn't a pleasant sight, the hard lines of metal bone and the automaton lying in state on the straw-filled pallet, the massive limbs with neither heart nor mind to drive them and the lights in its eyes incarnadine.

Paul tugged his mother into an embrace. "What you want is of no concern, momma. And what I want even less so."

Thinking these things Paul wove his fingers more firmly between Michael's and leaned against his side softly. "While it is necessary I regret the discord my automaton has brought into this house. A comely face might lessen--"

Michael stroked the fabric folded in his lap with his free hand. "I'll see to it."

"Dress," Paul chided. "That soup must be warm by now. I'll go fetch it. Is there anything else I can bring?"

"Oh no--" As Paul slipped out Michael lifted the shirt and measured the breadth of the shoulders, far wider than his own. It sagged so much that there was more than room enough for another.

***

In the cramped and metal-walled kitchen Bethy stirred a chip-edged ceramic pot of vegetable soup. The kitchen led off from the main hall and extended into Tina's wash-room, the big boiler-warmed cauldrons of grey water and wringers and drying-lines.

"You take on more of the world than Jesus would bid you save," Bethy scolded. "Come. I'll fix you something to eat then you'd best get to sleep."

The other day, the last time he'd spoken to his mother about the automaton. She'd leaned briefly into his embrace and leaned her chin on his shoulder as if she were too tired to live, then pulled back to straighten the knot of his neck-cloth. "Paulie. Best of me and not enough of your father. At least he looked out for himself."

Paul bit down hard and let it leak warm over his tongue. "Get some sleep momma," he said. "I'll take care of things."

"My little prince," she told him, and went to her bedroom and shut the door.

***

>:C

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:05:38 GMT

I HATE FORMATTING TO SUBMIT
I need to start writing in manuscript format. Except that would be annoying as fuck for web posting
augh. I need to go through a 10k story and add an extra ' ' after each period and all the rest.

I am going to eat concrete from a height when I have to format a bloody novel. Arrrrrgh.

[/whine]

sorry for typos, v. sleepy ^^;

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 06:17:26 GMT

Fleef: Lora, for you! <3! *proffers Road To El Dorado fanfic.*
Lora: o.O

Title: Ere I may rest
Wordcount: 1,300

Things had been bad enough when the little life-boat was being wracked by dreadful swells, or nudged from below by some fanged horrible monster, or dangling motionless on the thin skin above the black water. That, Miguel admitted, was a truly wretched series of circumstances. And having sand in one's mouth was certainly a less than thrilling experience. And being lost in a jungle with a white horse with the brain of a cheerful goat and Tulio the Very Grumpy Spaniard was. Pretty fun, actually. There were the biggest and most intensely red flowers Miguel had ever seen, and they smelled like rotten meat! And tiny jeweled birds with swords for beaks who'd hover in front of your face and emit raspy trills to you! And big, sweet, juicy fruit, so many kinds, as much as you could eat! If you didn't mind the ants and such, and the sticky face.

"Bleurgh! Miguel!" Tulio wiped his face with the backs of his hands, then wiped his hands on his pants, then wiped his face again. "How do you *always* manage to pick the worst of our varied options?"

Miguel peeled a fig with efficient motions and ate it in one bite, then said, "Mmph?" while chewing, cheeks bulging with fruit.

Tulio spun a circle, arms spread wide. "All of these trees, all of this fruit, and YOU pick the one that makes you *sticky*!"

"Well nobody made you eat it, and didn't you say we were going to starve alone in the rain in this bug-infested plant-nightmare?" Miguel said, but his mouth was full, so he wound up saying "Mppherglainphhhr!"

"I've wedded my fortunes to those of a buffoon," Tulio groaned. He tugged on his goatee--sticking it into a spiral from syrupy juice of the pear he'd eaten--and sloshed out into the shallow stream they'd been following. He rinsed his hands and face, then swore and hopped onto a rock and peeled his now-sodden boots and socks off. He slumped and propped his chin on his elbow. "*WON*derful," he said. Water ran in runnels from his shoes and socks back into the stream.

Miguel swung his arms back, elbows cocked, then swung them forward again. He did this three times, then hopped with an "ehn!" into the low, wide branches of a plum tree and climbed, delighted with the grip of his toes on the rough bark, how springy the wood was. He shrugged out of his tunic and bunched the fabric into a bowl he cradled in one crooked arm, and picked as many soft purple-ripe plums as he could find, and managed not to spill too many on his way down. He sloshed out into the stream and perched on Tulio's rock.

"Want a plum?" Miguel said, tipping sideways to drag one through the water, then offering Tulio. He hunched his shoulders and twisted away.

"No, I do not," Miguel said. "Aren't I sticky enough? And look, the sun is going down and we haven't set up any shelter."

"Ooh, look," Miguel crowed, and pointed orange, pink, and purple bands of cloud that crowded the western sky. "Tulio! Isn't that beautiful?"

Tulio wrung out the legs of his sodden blue trousers. The limp fabric stuck to his calves. "Wonderful," he said without looking. He dried his hands on his shirt and pulled the map out and glowered at it. "I think we're here," he said eventually. "We're definitely right here."

"Mm-hmm," Miguel said. Altivo had wandered off, following the armadillo, and all around were insect whirrs and birdcalls, and occasionally the sound of something large moving, making leaves rustle. At one particularly noisy rustling Tulio started, squealed, and fumbled the map, which Miguel only caught by lunging across Tulio's lap and closing his teeth on one corner of the parchment. Shadows were growing longer and darker. Tulio snatched the map away from Miguel, rolled it closed, and stuffed it into his shirt. He wrung his socks out, then curled in on himself.

"It's going to rain," he said. "It's going to hail, I don't care how far south we are. Look! The light is going and we have no shelter! It's going to rain."

"It is not," Miguel said. "The nearest cloud is *all the way over there*, and it doesn't look like it could wet a piece of cheese."

"We don't have any shelter," Tulio repeated. "We should have stayed with the boat!"

Miguel looked over slowly. Tulio's bare feet were piled one atop the other and he held his own ankles, wrists crossed in front of himself. "Tulio," Miguel said slowly. "Are you afraid?"

"I am not!" Tulio protested, but a twig snapped and Tulio screeched.

"You fraidy-cat!" Miguel said, delighted. "All that talk about forging manfully on in the face of all opposition?"

"I wanted to find a nice safe cave," Tulio said, and elbowed Miguel. "I don't suppose YOU'RE fearless. I remember that time at Cyracuse--"

"Once! One time! You do that *one* time, and--"

Tulio didn't yell at this next sourceless sound, but even in the swiftly fading light Miguel could make out the wide-eyed stare Tulio had going.

"Aww, darling," Miguel said, and hauled him into a hug. Tulio was all tensed and resisting, but Miguel persisted, and eventually had growling bundle of knees and elbows to hug.

"This is utterly ridiculous, you know," Tulio said, once the stars had shaken off the last dregs of daylight. The stream made little plashes and tinkly flowing sounds, and frogs called in high voices over the booming croak of the toads.

"Aww Tulio, it's only a hug!"

"That's not what I mean!" Tulio said, and bonked his chin against Miguel's jaw when he turned his head. "Ow! Watch it. And I meant *this*," he gestured wildly, thwacking Miguel's knee. "We're on a rock in a stream on some chunk of God's green earth that hasn't even got a *name* yet and the horse is gone and the damned armadillo is gone and Miguel, ...are you nuzzling my hair?"

Miguel wrapped all four limbs around Tulio and rubbed his jaw against Tulio's temple, rocking him. "It's okay, shhh....Altivo will come back, and so will Castille."

"Who?"

"The armadillo! Her name is Castille."

Tulio bonked the back of his head into Miguel's shoulder. "We're doomed. And we're going to get rained on."

"Look at that sky, Tulio! It's like we could steal the stars and sell them. Look how close they are!"

Morosely, Tulio tugged the map out and held it up, a pale shape in the starlight bright enough to cast shadows. "I just, I can't make any sense of this map. We could be going in circles."

"Well, didn't you say all we had to do was go upstream?"

Tulio rubbed the side of his face. "Well."

"And we haven't come to any forks in the river, so we must be on the right track. And you know all this, which must mean you *are* scared!"

He folded his arms tighter around Tulio's ribs to make him wheeze, then rubbed his cheek against Tulio's shoulder. "Try to sleep, it will all be better tomorrow."

"That's what you said in *Sicily*," Tulio groaned.

"And I was right then, too," Miguel said stoutly, and folded his fingers around Tulio's on the map. "We'll find it, just think! Gold for our plates and for the rings on your little hands! Gold bars to buy things with or stack into a house! And entire *house* of it!"

The acquisitive gleam Miguel saw briefly in Tulio's eye must have dragged him into his dreamland, as he began snoring immediately, all through the night and into a golden dawn. He didn't know he snored, though he did, all night, every night. Miguel had never told him. His snores were tiny soft rumbles deep in his nose and, secretly, Miguel actually liked them. He liked everything.

Not that Tulio needed to know.

Request-a-fic

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 02:52:42 GMT

Hallo! Christmas approacheth: I've got the Huge Honking AU for my lorata, and the Werewolf backstory/AU for my piig, and moon_brain had wanted "The council of Elrond according to Sorkin", which I will give my best shot. Anybody else wanting a fic-present needs to speak now :) I like writing and I like making people happy with my writing *even more*, so say somethin' :D

And! But! There is life after Christmas! So this is the spot to request a Valentines fic. It doesn't need to have anything to do with Valentines Day, neither the historical nor the pop-culture chocolate fest. What I WILL do is write something that hits your bulletproof gen-kink. F'r example: Mine is flying horses. I love them beyond all reason, and I can't explain it, and would likely be embarrassed to admit it aloud. I will read anything with a flying horse in it. Fucking *anything*, no matter how badly-written or cliche'd or sappy or dumb or cringe-worthy. I will read the whole thing. Possibly more than once. I also love the magical-animal-companion/talking-animal genre far too much and barely restrain myself from writing such AU's for. Pretty much everything, actually. Seriously can you SEE an AU where Ellis is a smallish sickly poison-type dragon and Hu is the young squire/knight-errant whom the dragon decides is Shiny and must be hoarded and kept and tormented? Can you SEE an AU where Ezra is a fat little pony with tidy scales on his legs and little useless fluffy wings and is Corin's familiar? Or Randal is a bound elemental and Trevor is his former master's apprentice and heir and the two of them have to get along and accomplish *insert task here* and---well, you get the point.

So yes. Embrace your ficcish kinks and give me a prompt, if you're so inclined. And if nobody requests anything I will punish you monkeys somehow, never fear >:3 There are only about seven of you, it can be done! So make me feel useful or I'll find you and put itching powder in your sock drawer ♥.

a ninja always pays his debts

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 05:19:20 GMT

Disclaimer: I did no research ^_^
For moon_brain in trade for awesome Bat-symbol fingerless gloves.

Title: Uff Da, or, Thanksgiving
Wordcount: 2,300
Summary: Legally Blonde (musical) fandom genfic. Enid and Vivian, second year. Request was for these two, and cute.

The library at Harvard was one of those high-traffic areas that always had more students who wished to sit and study than there were chairs to accommodate them, so Vivian tended to prefer the demurely appointed study on her floor of the women's-only residences. Not that the women's-only residences were *actually* women-only, as there was a startling amount of fraternizing amongst the law students, despite the volume of work (up 23% from their first year). Vivian hadn't bothered to replace Warner, for the most part. He'd been an adequate boyfriend, if somewhat bland in bed, but this *was* law-school, and the second year was notoriously the worst. She kept things simple.

The November rains were a flurry of wind-driven water that pattered on the window-panes and roofs of Harvard, that pounded the leaves of the ivy and ensured that everyone smelled of wet wool and damp rayon. The tennis courts were flooded and any attempts at a match, even when the rain wasn't *actively* falling, resulted in the oh-so-fetching 'drowned rat' look that would likely never be in fashion, no matter *how* much it rained in Milan.

Callahan still had his job, despite having gone from shark to bottom-feeder, and his internship was no longer the sought-after opportunity it once was. Elle still carried that little barking rat around like it was her firstborn best-friend. Revolting little creature.

Vivian much preferred birds.

She shifted her legs; she'd coiled herself up, claiming an entire loveseat to herself, and wore her favourite Egyptian-cotton nightdress and a silk overcoat to ward off the chill. She needed quiet to concentrate and went to bed at six-thirty pm, right after a light supper, and got up at 3 AM to enjoy a silent and empty study and the thermos of tea she brewed in her little electric kettle. She could relax in makeup-free comfort, since anyone who's opinion counted was long since asleep. The room was all hers, and the rain was a pleasant backdrop. Or was.

The thump-thump-*thump* of a certain fellow law-student's (in)famous steel-toed Doc Martens mounted the stairs and went past. Vivian scowled. Enid always managed to secure a seat at the library--mostly by virtue of her pushy habit of going, "Are you done?" or "Look buddy, you don't *need* a *chair* for your *bag*," but the library closed at two; it was close to four, so Enid, the mouthy bitch, must have gone to Yugoslavia, the nearby bar, and thrown peanuts at the rugby game with the other mouth-breathing knuckle-dragging unwashed sports-lovers.

Whatever. It *was* Thanksgiving weekend. Perhaps they'd had turkey-and-cranberry-sauce-flavoured beer.

Vivian sighed and pushed her reading glasses further up her nose. She had four colours of highlighter--much of it stroked over the backs of her hands and some of it on the page, though she's managed to keep it off her nightgown. And the Hindleman vs McMannis vs Wisconsin case was making slightly more sense than it had when she'd started. She'd just unscrewed the cap of her thermos and taken a sip when the door to the study opened and she just about aspirated her lukewarm Earl Grey trying to re-cap the thermos, swallow, and turn to see who it was, all at the same time.

Enid, it turned out, wore The Incredible Hulk pajama pants and a black wife-beater gone nearly grey from age as her sleep ensemble, and she had her satchel and a queen-sized duvet over her arm, white, and stuffed with goosedown. Her shoulders were very white.

Vivian knew it was stuffed with goosedown because she sneezed as Enid said, "Yo!", and swept past, settling on the floor--the *floor*-- by the fireplace and making herself a nest of couch-cushions and that threadbare duvet.

"You've been drinking," Vivian said with great disdain, meaning, you've been drinking *beer* and I can smell it, and Christ woman you're at *Harvard Law*, can't you afford any champagne?

Or perhaps Harvard Law is *why* you can't afford any champagne. Not that she'd *say* such a thing, but *honestly*.

"I have indeed," Enid said grandly, and waved an imaginary beer bottle at Vivian's loveseat. "And I'm eminently pleased to report that Manchester United, splendid fellows that they are, have utterly, soundly, and completely defeated the opposing team, Chelsea, 4-0. It was," and here Enid heaved a satisfied and slightly unsteady sigh, "magnificent." She wiped her cheek as if clearing a flyaway strand of hair.

Vivian said, "You're never this articulate when you're sober."

An owlish glance. Enid's glasses were bulky, with unflattering wood-façade frames, but she wasn't wearing them now, and eyelashes like that were utterly *wasted* on someone whose beauty regimen began with soap and ended with a *toothbrush*. She said, "Vivian! Beautiful! I am the epitome of sobriety." Enid rummaged around in her backpack and emerged triumphantly with a 100%-recycled wire-bound notebook that was stuffed to twice its original thickness with an increasingly tattered collection of print-outs, diagrams, and index cards. Enid rifled through the monument to disorganization with a contented look.

Vivian didn't bother to repress her eyeroll. This was Harvard, home to the intellectual elite, and yet, her peers never ceased to chip away at her faith in humanity.

Enid was only wearing one sock.

The fireplace did not house an *actual* fire--Harvard Law students couldn't be trusted to mind themselves about an open flame, of course, liability was a stone bitch these days--but the grate released a cherry glow and a delicious heat so long as the power was on.

Vivian attempted to get back to work. The case didn't get any simpler just because there was now another human in the room, one who shuffled her allergen blanket and muttered keywords to herself and had brought with her that complex blend of testosterone, sweat, maraschino cherries, and beer that most people identified as That Bar Smell. Vivian longed for the bitter astringency of the perfume she'd rinsed off in the shower (Dior, Executive, of course). It was simpler.

"Hey," Enid said, after a mere three paragraphs of silence. Vivian prodded her reading glasses closer to her eyes, the better to glare at her classmate.

"What?" Vivian said.

"Are you mad you don't get to go home?"

"Not particularly," Vivian said. "My brother would be visiting, and if Connor comes his *wife* comes, and if *she* comes she'd doubtless have brought the snuffling diaper-filler otherwise known as my niece."

Enid blinked. Her eyelashes really were shamefully wasted. Enid didn't tweeze her brows and her legs must be *beastly*. "Don't like kids?"

"I like them, I like them, and I like them *better* when they're not in the same house as me."

"Huh," Enid said, and stuffed a wad of paper in her mouth so she could use both hands to rustle the papers on her lap to no end Vivian could discern. Apparently satisfied with the result, she grunted and took the wad out of her mouth. Vivian never did that; there'd be lip-prints all over her work in professional and, she hoped, aggressively female maroon.

"Don't you even wear lip gloss?" Vivian snapped.

"Um," Enid said. "I used to. My lips would peel like lizard-skin if I didn't. But it's not so dry here."

Vivian pinched the bridge of her nose. "At least you appear to have sobered up some."

"A half-mile walk and Gregor Santelli's peesashit handouts'll do that." Enid rubbed the worry-crinkled spot between her (untweezed!) brows. "And the Diamato murders. Christ, that little baby."

"When are you going to learn some *distance*?" Vivian didn't even try for sympathetic. Supportive she could do, once in a while, but anyone wanting sympathy was just dead weight she didn't need.

The fireplace smelled of hot metal and the pizza crust some troglodyte had stuffed back there, and the shreds of which nobody could reach to remove. Vivian was all for taking the grate off and just fishing the crust out, but if THAT wasn't a liability case pending, nothing short of a Macdonalds Boiler would count. Elle just shrugged blondely and suggested somebody track down an engineering student.

Enid shrugged and mumbled. Dressed in something that sort-of touched her figure--instead of clothing which danced with it at arm's-length--she wasn't near as dumpy as her usual flannel made her look. In fact, that was quite a respectable hourglass. Nothing to compare to Vivian's own, of course--there was no getting around counting calories and five-days-a-week at the gym--but still. She made a note to take Enid out shopping the next time she felt the urge to take on a charity case.

And the thought of 'case' only brought her back to this *nightmare* masquerading as a ground-breaking Wisconsin case. Vivian scowled at her notes and wriggled her shoulders.

"Yeah," Enid commiserated, making Vivian jump. She'd actually forgotten about her. Enid rubbed the back of her neck and continued, "Feels like I got a sweater full of rocks instead of a torso."

"I'd settle for a rock-like torso to erk," Vivian said. Now *there* was a topic of conversation she did *not* want to get into, particularly not with Enid.

To Vivian's surprise, Enid grinned, the sharp one she got in class sometimes when she got to *skewer* someone, when she got to just yank all the weak parts of his argument open and tear into what was revealed. She said, "So the Valkyrie has picked a consort, eh? Eh? Does he go here? Is he pretty? Does he have a sister?"

Vivian spluttered.

Enid's eyes had the beery cheer of a sports fan whose team had done their job, by Jove, and beaten the shit out of the other guys. She leaned forward. "C'mon! Tell ole Uncle Enid what the scoop is. Is he behaving himself? I can show you a great nerve pinch for if he doesn't."

"I like nerve pinches," Vivian snapped, "But they simply aren't feasible most of the time. If you're in a situation to need one you're likely *not* in a situation where you can see--nevermind *grip*--the precise nerve clusters you need to--oh, go back to work." That last was directed at Enid's highly skeptical look.

"No no," Enid said, and set the whole stack of paper aside, too close to the non-existent flames. She levered herself up gracelessly, scattering the couch-cushions, and brought her duvet with her to settle back on the floor near Vivian's loveseat. Vivian decided firmly that she wouldn't be moving her things. She folded her arms instead. Enid gave Vivian a significant glance. Her eyes were grey. She said, "I would like to hear more of these pressure points."

Vivian shrugged. "They aren't terribly useful. If you're in enough danger to need them *and* are close enough to execute them, you'd be a moron to actually use one. They're just like--"

"Braggers? Penis extensions?" Enid hooted. "Dick make-bigger sticks, like a Rolls? Or--"

"Pretty much anything longer than it is wide," Vivian said in a bored tone. "Forget I said anything."

Enid shrugged expansively and lounged against the side of the loveseat. "Suit yourself. What *do* you want to talk about?"

"My textbook," Vivian said pointedly.

Enid shrugged the point aside. "Big, boring, don't wanna hear tonight. C'mon, gimme some straight-girl gossip."

*I've got a boy-toy who's barely old enough to drink,* Vivian doesn't say. "Don't you have an agenda to carry forth?"

"Don't you have an *endocrine* system under all that starch?"

"Don't YOU have a *work ethic*?"

"It's Thanksgiving," Enid said, and shrugged again. "I studied 11 hours yesterday, and 9 today. That’s enough. Today can be over now."

"And yet, you're here, graciously preventing ME from working."

Enid rested her crooked forearm flat on the edge of the loveseat's unoccupied cushion, and rested her chin on that. "Aren't I just the sweetest thing?"

"Uff da," Vivian said, and took off her glasses to rub at her eyes.

Enid appeared to be drifting off, and her hair straggled out of its messy bun in something that could pass for frazzled-housewife chic. "You know," Enid said dreamily. "I'm really thankful for my boots. If someone steps on my toes, my toes are safe. If I step in a puddle, my toes are safe. The laces are long enough to make into a snare--"

"So you can throttle undergraduates? Enid, you're drunk and sleepy. Do something about it."

Enid nuzzled into the couch. "And I'm thankful for the cleaning lady who's underappreciated and underpaid *and* gets paid less than a man at the same job but who rubs the cushions with lavender anyways."

Vivian blinked, then leaned cautiously closer to the back of the loveseat and sniffed. Lavender. She hadn't noticed. She sniffed again but got a noseful of feathers, and sneezed.

"Blessya," Enid said. "And I'm thankful that my dad's heart surgery went well and that he's gone back to calling me too often again. I'm grateful I don't have to feel guilty for getting mad." Enid yawned. "You know a lot of my shirts are his?"

"I'm not surprised. What else are you thankful for," Vivian said half-reluctantly.

"Rugby girls," Enid sighed, eyes closed, and what a *waste* because her eyelashes actually cast *shadows* on her cheeks. "And swimsuit competitions and those new shows where the models actually bounce when they move and soft fuzzy socks that go up to the knee so you don't kick them off in your sleep and wake up with icicles on your ankles. And gallons of hot tea in the cafeteria. And a big roof like this one that doesn't leak."

"Go to bed."

"I'm thankful for someone to tuck me in?"

Vivian blinked. A brief smile twitched the corner of her mouth. "Fine. But don't tell anyone."

END

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:21:49 GMT

Between Vermin AU ficlet.
For Lora in a belated cheer-up ♥. Not sure how THIS is supposed to be a cheer-up, but I wanted to write you something and this is what happened. <3
Wordcount: 2,100
Title: Canaries, coal mines.

Hugo's dudes-only dorm smelled like ass. This was far from unusual. Dorm rooms the world over smelled like ass. There were even variations in the assitude of the smell-- the hallways had a different assiness from the bathrooms, which had yet another assiness compared to the bedrooms themselves. To further complicate things, each bedroom had its own distinct asspect, comprised of the sweat and stress and spunk of semester after semester of bored, drunk, high, homesick, shit-tick undergrads. Hu's was all that and the ghosts of overripe bananas and diet soda. He'd gotten so used to it that he noticed pretty damn fast when the smell changed, but he couldn't figure out what to. He sniffed a bit and shrugged. Not his problem. Two more months and he could move into the house he and a couple guys from the team were gonna rent. He toed off his shoes and flopped onto his quilt and fell asleep there with the pillow pressed to the top of his head.

The smell was there when he woke, like it was crouched by the side of his bed and watching him over a long and narrow nose. His back and legs were stiff and he grumbled when he got up and stretched. It was a stupid day already, just because of the new tang to the smell that made it wrap all through his sinuses with that smidge more lushness, and the damn quiz he had today and the fact that it was Tuesday which meant there'd be nothing but squoodgy scrambled eggs or cereal for breakfast and to top it all off he'd woken with the worst kind of morning erection, the tenacious almost-itchy ones that wouldn't make up their minds either way. There were candy wrappers in his snack-bowl and he didn't remember eating them but it was probably just one of the other guys on the floor, since Hu never bothered to lock up. He'd bitch about it later.

When he got home from class there was a pizza rind on the tabletop, still soggy. Just great. He lived with some real douchebags. Who'd bring you pizza then eat it and leave the evidence? Although maybe somebody'd left him pizza and somebody else had eaten it. You could never tell.

Whatever. He'd had a burger after practice. He gathered his towel and went for a shower and came back to his room to dress, though he only managed to get his Pummel-man boxers on before sleep kicked him in the teeth and he woke up on top of the quilt again. And the smell was worse. He gathered the pizza rind and wrappers and tossed them all on Quincy's floor on his way to the stairs.

Hu got slammed from behind that day at practice, and he wound up head-butting Big John's shins and getting a fuck of a nosebleed and grass mashed between his upper lip and teeth, velvety and crisp-tasting like raw broccoli puree. The impact set off a headache that was like high-beams in his eyes and he went to bed early, even making it under the blankets this time. He woke at 3:42 with the lights on his door open. "I hate you guys," he told the empty room, and got up to kick the door shut and turn the light off. The dent his body had left in the mattress was warm and nice to snuggle into. The headache had dimmed to a bright pressure along the bridge of his nose and a faint ache in his palate, so he was still awake when the door creaked open and a tall stick-jointed bogeyman slipped in, backlit against the yellow wash of light.

Hu sat up and let out a disbelieving breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Oh, ow, fuck."

The door closed and for a moment Hu wasn't sure if the stickman was inside or outside. He rested his forehead on his palm. "Dude," he said, feeling very tired. "What the fuck?"

A long moment of quiet. There were four awkward-tall and pipe-cleaner-thin guys on the floor, but you never knew if someone had a buddy visiting or a cousin or if somebody from one of the other dorms was just bored and looking for someone to prank, so there was no telling who the douchebag was. If this was the guy who'd been stealing Hu's food he was in for an asskicking, though, that was f'rsure, and not just 'cause Hu's head still hurt.

A fumble and Hu got the bedside light on. The room was empty. Hu's eyebrows went up, which made the sides of his nose hurt. He kicked the blankets off and checked the closet first, and the pile of hoodies on the closet floor looked suspiciously humped, but kicking it proved it was just laundry. Under the desk were a couple of hairballs--some gingery colour and all tangled like seawrack--and a six-pack of Kookaburra Laughin' Lager. Which left--

"Get out from under my bed! Seriously dude, that's just creepy."

Hu dropped to his knees, braced his forearms and peered into the clotted shadows. He wasn't sure what he expected to see, but it wasn't a familiar set of bared teeth and glittering eyes. Hu stared at them for a moment, then knocked his forehead against the backs of his hands hard enough to set the lights in his head blinking.

"Ellis," he groaned.

Rustling as Ellis squirmed part-out from under the bed. He poked the crown of Hu's head with two fingers. "The fuck happened to your nose? Somebody else find out how bad you are at giving head?"

Hu sat up and swung his legs around until he could sit cross-legged. Ellis stuck head-and-shoulders out from under the bed. The speckled grey shirt looked like it hadn't been washed in a while, rumpled and patterned generously with mysterious stains. He watched Ellis until the scowl twisted itself. Sometimes Hu thought Ellis would warp his skull, eventually, scrunching his face up like that. He'd just twist his zygomatic arch and maxilla bone out of true. And screw that mandatory bio class anyways.

"Well?" Hu said. Ellis poke his cheek and Hu batted him away, wincing. "Whaddaya want, Ellis? How did you get here? I've got class in the morning and like hell are you coming with me."

"The bruises are all purple," Ellis said, and flicked Hu's nose. Hu jerked away, palm cupped over the pain. "Fight with me."

His stomach writhed like a snake. "You flew out to pick a fight?"

"Hitched," Ellis said, and eeled out from under the bed. The dust that stuck to him looked like it belonged there. Dust-veils graced his hair. "Samatta, your balls drop off?" he aimed a swipe at Hu's temple. Hugo batted Ellis's arm away. Christ he was thinner than ever, his bones sharp like a cat's when Hu grabbed his wrist.

"Quit, Ellis!" He had to grab the other wrist, too, bracing his heels on the floor for leverage. Ellis leaned in. That was the source of the new smell.

"Make me," Ellis said. His eyes were all pupil, lightless water with things moving deep down. He knee-walked forward until his knees bumped Hu's thighs, back hunched so he could keep his face close to Hu's. The lines of his collarbones stood out through the thin shirt. Hu closed his eyes. It was mid-term and his head hurt and there was a paper due Friday and his mouth still tasted like grass when he licked his teeth, the free faceplant kind, and now Ellis had turned up and had apparently been living under Hu's bed like a troll. Hugo had lost the ability to give a shit. He tipped sideways to rest his head against the mattress. "Whatever, Ellis," he said. He let go of Ellis's scrawny wrists to lever himself up. He crawled into bed. The dip he'd been sleeping in had grown cold.

"So what, that's it, shrimpy? Runty little chink. Fags at college got you all broken in? C'mon! Fight with me!"

"Yes, Ellis," Hu said. He kept his eyes closed and the darkness behind them was warm and deep. "I'm short. I know. I also know that I'm fucking Chinese. You get the state-the-obvious award. Good for you. Fuck off."

The mattress dipped and air moved, a musty waft of whatever Ellis hadn't bothered to wash off whenever he'd last gotten wet. He'd eaten a sandwich recently and the smell of mustard briefly drove the dorm-smell away. A fist like a two-dollar sack of marbles prodded the side of Hu's jaw, and he rolled away, groping for the blanket. "Fuck off."

"You never make any fucking sense." Raspy and nasal, Ellis's voice hadn't gotten any sweeter in the months since Hu'd left. Ellis grabbed a handful of Hugo's hair and pulled until Hu's head tipped back. "React."

"You want me to throw up on you, keep going," Hu said, and dug his thumb hard between the bones of Ellis's wrist until he let go. "My head hurts."

"Gonna end up a veggie?" Ellis said, and squirmed under the blanket so he could paw at Hu's hip. "You'll need someone to look after you, spoon shit in your mouth and wipe your ass when your diaper needs changing. I could do anything I wanted."

Hugo sighed and shoved his wing-crooked arm under the pillow he had his head on. "Whatever, Ellis. If I'm brain-damaged I won't have to write any midterms or put up with your fucking whining. Crawl back under the bed and let me get some sleep."

When Ellis plastered himself along Hu's back and shoved a hand in his boxers, Hu didn't do anything more than flinch. He elbowed Ellis half-heartedly. Ellis knocked his forehead against the base of Hu's skull.

"I oughta crucify you," Ellis hissed. "I oughta skin you while you're sleeping and make a coat. Hugo-skin shoes to keep my feet dry."

"I'd threaten to haunt your dumb ass, but you'd like that too much," Hu muttered. "Go to sleep so I can sleep. Crawl under the bed, go sleep in the common room, hop out the window. Start hitching back to B.C. I don't care."

Ellis breathed audibly through his nose. He pulled his hand back and fisted it in Hu's shirt, over his floating ribs, and shook him. Hu closed his eyes tighter and waited him out. Felt like his brain was sloshing around inside his skull, and the smell in the room had a taste, a morning-after fuzzy-tongued old-garbage-can-ness. Ellis put out a lot of heat for someone so scrawny. He was still there, in the exact spot, when Hu woke to the "call now and win a silver Koi!" morning talk show. Ellis didn't seem to have moved all night, and Hugo lay there for a few minutes enjoying how nothing hurt. He brought Ellis a grapefruit and pile of ketchup-slathered hashbrowns from the cafeteria and pretended not to see the hollows above his collarbones and the fragile punctured skin at the bends of his elbows. Ellis watched him pack his bag for class and the lightless well of his pupils had things moving below. They'd turned up at some point before Ellis hit five feet and they kept changing their names. They'd settle sometimes, if Ellis found the right combination of booze and pot and drugs, if he came hard enough, just a few moments of drifting before Hu shoved him off and started freaking.

Hu wasn't freaking now. That thing that had always made Ellis so fucking annoying was gone. Hu didn't have to react anymore. And wasn't that what he'd left to find? He'd found it. Everyone had lied to him--being calm didn't mean shit, it just meant you were too tired. Too tired to get stirred up or angry or embarrassed. Tired enough to work all day 'cause you were too tired to fuck the dog, rumpled up and discarded in the bowl of the bed and Ellis wasn't there when he got home from class. Hu toed his runners off and it was a good stink, his and no-one else's. He fell asleep with his socks on and woke to the radio. The air in the room didn't move. His back was cold.

Really, really not safe for work

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 03:12:51 GMT

So. Uh. There comes a time in ever ficcer's life when she finds herself writing something that involves multiple and highly flexible limbs.

It isn't my fault. Well it is, but I blame piig 'cause she likes to egg me on XD

Fandom: MST3K
Title: Automacity
Wordcount: 2,000
Pairing: Joel/Gypsy-prototype.
Warnings: Tentacles. Not safe for work. Mild creep factor. Het, sorta. Rubix cube metaphors. Rubber abuse. No seriously, tentacles.

The Satellite of Love was the noisiest not-supposed-to-be-noisy inanimate object Joel had ever lived in. It was noisier than his uncle's battered pea-green camper by a far margin, even allowing for the absence of snoring and the damned radio his uncle couldn't sleep without. He wasn't sorry not to have his aunt's four three-legged cats trying to sleep on his knees, either. But it was sorta lonely, and the Satellite had a zillion systems all wanting attention all the time, and the ship's AI had the personality of Barry Manilow in a nine-month coma, and anyways crashing into something would be a Very Bad Idea.

Hence, Gypsy.

He didn't expect her to wake up yet-- he hadn't covered the circuits and wires and tie-twists of her brain, yet, but everything was there. In leiu of arms and legs and hands he'd given her a series of slim rubber-sheathed tubes, some round-capped for locomotion, others fitted with sockets and inputs and one with a Swiss Army Knife, because you never knew, and she'd wake with a strong useful body as the SOL squeaked and creaked and whistled its way around the Earth. She'd be happy to see him and maybe call him 'dad' and run the Satellite so Joel could do other things, like build a modified Zeppelin to escape in. She wasn't fully awake yet, but his Gypsy-darling wasn't inert, either; she already wanted to explore, to find out and connect.

He'd given her his Phillips-head screwdriver when the first arm was finished, and she beat little rhythms on the wall. Two arms and he'd given her the five-piece baby puzzles the Mads had sent him the time he'd asked for books, and she put them all together, then took them apart and made a house-of-cards out of the pieces. She took apart the flashlight, cleaned everything, and put it back together. Three arms finished and she'd solved his Rubix cube in six minutes, then kept shuffling and fiddling while he finished her fourth arm. She'd arranged it so the cube's coloured squares said, "Hi."

Waking up. Soon she'd be strong and clever, aware and in charge, and he could find a way off this floating asylum. That was the Plan. Joel liked plans. They looked lovely on paper. So he was fiddling with the attachment between two sections of tubing when he felt a touch on his shoulder, a firm slide. A tube was slinking over his trapezius. A second joined it, like he was a pirate with a back-climbing octopus.

"Well hey there. Welcome to sentience," Joel said, and rubbed his cheek against the silky give of the tube's sheathe. His clever girl. The arm responded by diving down his shirt. He let out a startled noise through his nose and reached for it, only to be distracted by the second tube, which was nuzzling dead-center between the hip pockets of his jumpsuit. Over the zip, to be preciese. "Yah!" Joel said, and petted both with his palms, soothing. "Honey, you don't need to be scarED! Oh my."

Far from being scared, Gypsy's arms patted lightly all over him, tugging at his jumpsuit, lifting the hanks of his over-long hair, skittering across his shoulders and pressing lightly as if to test the give of his skin. He found himself tensing. He'd never been surrounded by one person before. Bot. The blunt ends of several arms tapped over his cheekbones and pressed softly at his eyes.

"Oh," Joel said, and deliberately relaxed his muscles. She was blind--he hadn't connected her optic yet. "It's okay honey, you can have a look. I can't connect your eye until I'm done here--"

"Attempting to bridge," Gypsy sing-songed. "Connection at 3%."

"Whoa!" Joel said, and sat up on his knees in a tangle of connectors and rubber and tools, her arms slipping away. The line of diagnostics over on the table were brightly lit and flickering as Gypsy worked, but he hadn't connected her to the ship yet; a few moments of tracking the writhe of her arms--the ones not currently nudging the inner seams of his jumpsuit--revealed that one of her arms, the one with the tri-USB connector--had found a jack in the wall, and she was connecting to the AI all on her own.

"You weren't supposed to do that yet," Joel said. "Weird that you're this living clever thing." He sat, slinging his legs out to one side like primary school story-time and ratcheting a rasp-edged nut onto the half-finished tube in his lap. The arm he'd fitted with pincers pulled his zip down slowly. He connected a few more jointed lengths of metal and started wrapping the hard edges in wetsuit-sleek rubber.

"Connection at 12%," Gypsy cooed, and tugged Joel's jumpsuit down to his waist.

Joel set the wrench down. "Gypsy?" he said. The touches that pattered over his back and petted the short hairs at the nape of his neck were ticklish, but not excessively so. The blunted ends of three arms mapped the muscle of his back, each overlay--the heavy muscle over his shoulders, the littler ones below--the places they covered the staves of his ribs thinly and the knobby xylophone of his spine. A thorough progression that was the mutant blender-clone of an examination and a backrub. He felt it all through his lungs and down into his belly. Itchy, almost. A ticklish warmth. It was nice to be warm. The lights on the diagnostics board pulsed.

Being touched at all was strange enough. If his little Gypsy wanted to explore the world she'd woken in--

"Connection at 22%," Gypsy told him. He sat back, settled into the nest of tubes and crossed his legs, went back to work on the arm that draped half-finished across his ankles. The floor was chilly; all the metal connected in any way to the hull had a fish-fridge chill to it, the air like a department store with the AC on a little too cold. The upper half of his jumpsuit flared out behind him. If Gypsy was indeed curious, it was a thorough curiosity. His elbow and his throat received the same prodding; no more attention paid to the sparse curling hair on his chest than to the loose threads on the jumpsuit--

He wasn't alone in his pants anymore. Here the cool, spongy soft-firm feel of the rubber was even stranger, worming around, nuzzling his dick like it was a catnip mouse at the kitten farm. "Careful with the sharp ends, there--" He squirmed and tugged that arm away, only to have it double back on itself and bump at his knuckles. "Are you just nosy?"

"Hold still," Gypsy said sweetly.

Joel tipped his head. "Alright, how awake are you?"

"Attempting to bridge," Gypsy said, and the diagnostics flared. Joel squirmed. He caught two of the tubes and tugged, but they just looped lightly around his wrist and nudged his palms. Gypsy tested the strength of his grip and the flexibility of his fingers, pressing them back until he flinched then letting go at once. They didn't attempt to restrict his movement in any way. A third hugged his calf in firm loops, prodding his toes a light ticklish half-step away from this-little-piggy, like he's a squeak-toy, like he's just a bigger squishier Rubix cube, and with enough prodding and stroking the puzzle will resolve itself. As if he were a question with a single simple answer. He couldn't say when he got hard but it's past the point where ignoring it would help, and--"Hell, it's not like I've got any other opportunities--" he rotated his wrist ball-bearing style, capturing the coil and squirming a little further out of his jumpsuit. "How's this?"

"You sped up," Gypsy said. "And heated up, too."

Joel shook his head. "Something like that. I want to ask you if you mind, but--"

The coils never stilled, and it wasn't like she'd asked permission before peeling him. And he's never going to get any work done if he keeps dithering. "Here," he told her, curling one tube in tidy loops around his erection. "Not too hard, just like this--"

"Hmm," Gypsy said, still prodding at his toes with that one errant coil, pressing the tip of another over his heart, slipping it up to follow the line of his carotid, even as the one he was guiding took and held the rhythm. His body lit up like cities on the dark side of the earth, glowing nerve clusters, and he had to squint to focus his eyes. It was a little harder to mount the teeny sections for this last arm, more difficult to set and tighten the--heh--screws and sticky-wrap the rubber covering over the metal limb. And who said men couldn't multitask?

Joel thought he'd have been okay if Gypsy had just done as he'd shown her, but she kept pushing--varying the pace and pressure, throwing in a little squeeze that made Joel's breath fall out, doing some rippling-glittering thing he'd have sworn her tube didn't have enough joints to allow. He's--losing his dexterity--

"What a counter-intuitive interface," Gypsy said, and curved one arm around his back to hold him steady.

"Sorry," Joel said. He gave up and set the partially-completed coil aside, pretending not to see the tremor in his own hands, and for a terrifying moment he's not sure he can come like this, these cool touches, and he'll just be trapped in his body as it reaches desperately for some horizon--

Gypsy cradled his throat as if to comfort the sub-vocal noises he trapped there. He was going to come--he felt unbalanced; not alone with his own touch, but not close to anyone either--there's no-one for him to hold--he'd break Gypsy's incomplete exoskeleton if he tried. He wrapped his arms around himself, held on, and shivers as he comes, eyes squeezed shut so hard there are colours in the black.

"Connection still incomplete," Gypsy complained. She prodded his forehead with the pincer-ended arm.

"Ow!" Joel said, and swatted at her. He felt out-of-breath, sticky and restless. "Gypsy, that hurt. And of course the connection isn't--I'm not part of the computer!"

"Well you could have said something instead of leaking all over the floor."

"I--" Joel sagged. "I'll clean that up."

"Connection at 42%. I'm bored."

"See if you can find me a way back to Earth," Joel said, and levered himself up. He wriggled back into his jumpsuit and went in search of a tissue.

---

It turned out the creeps on the storage level loved the rubber Gypsy's arms were coated in, and snuck in to tear shreds of it off 'till it looked like she had mange. The bared metal scraped the floor in razor-wire curls, and after the fourth time Joel had to pull them out of his feet he gave up and regretfully re-designed Gypsy. It just wasn't the same after that.

END

not happyfic at all

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 01:39:35 GMT

And Blue Courderoy
Wordcount: 1,120

A week later, maybe two. The fork skittered across the floor like a dog scratching its ribs on a wall. "Oh, Doctor," Rose said, and ducked under the table to retrieve it. When he'd first moved in, her very own, she'd bought him surf shorts, thinking how cute it'd be to see his knees. She'd bought him cozy flannel pj's, a nightshirt just in case, stonewashed jeans, spent an entire paycheck on him, bubbling over with it, her own doctor here with her--how could you have a mere copy of someone who'd walked through the heart of the universe? If anyone could be two places at once it was him.

"Don't know what you're eating banana split with a fork for anyways," Rose told him, and smoothed his unruly hair. She polished the fork on her jumper before returning it. He whistled in his sleep, see, one nostril at a time. She still wasn't sure he didn't sleep out of politeness.

"A fork's a splendid invention, I'll have you know," the Doctor said, and took a big bite, licked sticky caramel off the tines. "There's a little planet, 's not populated yet, but they only eat with forks. Anything else you drink or throw."

Rose settled close by his side and stole a bite of banana and fluffy cream, using a spoon just because and wagging her brows at his head-tilt now-Rose-didn't-I-just-tell-you? look. She ate the last smidge of banana and paid the bill with real alter-world money she'd earned herself. "Go for a walk?" she offered. It wasn't her day off, she had work at two, but he always found his way home. She had a place on Russel Square--not much like the one back home in her first London; this one was all residential, nice little flats with grassy balcony gardens and a birdbath for each one. When she was at work he'd walk round the museums with lost time in his eyes. He always answered his cel. She was the only one with the number.

"Sounds lovely," the Doctor said. She missed the milk-jug ears and lumpy knuckles, sometimes, though the rumpled hair and pixie-boy grin were endearing. "Did you say something about dessert? Banana split?"

The Doctor's skin was fever-warm as always when she cupped the back of his neck, petting it the way Mickey'd used to for her. He didn't remember everything, though sometimes he knew he'd forgotten. A being so often bereaved could never be blithe, but he loved her, not always things she'd call love but that's what he meant. The old Doctor, the only one you could call Time Lord, had been wildly in love with humanity; her own blue Doctor had to make-enough with plump little Rosie. He never seemed to mind, and some days she loved him for it. Other days she went for long walks on her own and wouldn't look at the feeling too closely. "We just ate, ducks," she told him, and when she kissed the crown of his head he leaned into the touch. Took her word for it. She never did find out if he actually got hungry or just thought he ought to. Outside a misting rain turned the world grey. The leaves were dying now and clung to the wet cobbles like tissue or twists of fire.

On her break that afternoon she called the number she'd kept, on the phone she'd nicked off Jack. She was mostly sure he wouldn't mind. It rang and rang and then a newly-familiar voice on the other end. "Yes? Who is it? Come on then, some of us only get an half-hour lunch!"

"Donna," Rose said, and ducked her head so her hair swung forward to hide her face. "Can I ask you something?

"What? Are you sellin' something? 'Cause I really ain't interested--"

"No, Donna, it's Rose, I wanted to ask you--he isn't doing so well, and I wondered--"

A voice called somewhere on the other line, outside a siren faded closer. Donna said, "Look, I got'a go, and I didn't go to school with no Rose so I don't know why you're callin' me unless you're sellin' something I don't want. I hope he feels better, whoever he is, yeah?"

Rose pressed her lips together and hung up. Her shoes were too tight by the toe so she slipped them off and spent the rest of her shift pretending to fix other people's problems. She had no one else to call.

He wasn't there when she got home. The summer late-evening light filtering golden through the clouds. She went walking and found him in the park square near the fountain, a half-hour away, a dozen fat pigeons chasing the seeds he threw one by one. She stood and watched till he turned to her and smiled, scattered the seeds in a bouncing shower and tucked the bag into his pocket.

She reached for him and drew him home, swinging their joined hands between them. He'd taken to making tiny sculptures out of tinfoil if she left him home by himself for too long. Tomorrow she planned to get him a terrier, a litter of kittens, a canary. Something else to love.

"I'm glad you don't ask if you can touch me anymore, Rose," he said, on the Underground. She tucked him against the wall and protected him with her body. She retaliated by hanging about his ribs like a schoolgirl. "Hush, you," she said. The computer announced, "This is Russel Square," and the crowd moved.

Sometimes when he slept, or pretended to sleep, or let her think he was sleeping--sometimes she'd place her splayed fingers over his nose and mouth and pretend they'd help him breathe. That she could feed him golden light from the Tardis, the hearts of stars. She'd take him home and cook him something with far too much sugar in it and kiss his forehead, tuck him in like a child. And in the morning he'd smile and say, "Hello Rose."

He was happy to see her, at least, always, though a single human heart wasn't large enough for the Doctor. Rose could have told anyone that. He grew short of breath, he dropped things. He forgot. The faraway look she'd long-ago found endearing and vexing by turns came over him more and more. No more Tardis, the dear old baggage. A stubbled chin and blue courderoy.

It didn't matter her Doctor was only a copy, it didn't matter at all. Yesterday she'd caught him watering her tiny patch of garden with a teapot. He was here, and he looked at her. The copy was enough.