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letterbladeI am in fact doing the time-stamp meme.
And I'm also doing that thing I do every once in a while where I take a round of ficlet requests:
Give me a character or pairing and a word, and I'll write you aline paragraph random larger amount of fic in the comment window.
Fandoms for that: Iron Man movieverse, naturally. (Attempting to familiarize myself with comics canon, but, dude, it's Marvel, the character's been around for ages, the continuity looks like the CAT5e cables on a wall of switches.) Doctor Who (new) and Torchwood. Utena. Evangelion.
And I'm also doing that thing I do every once in a while where I take a round of ficlet requests:
Give me a character or pairing and a word, and I'll write you a
Fandoms for that: Iron Man movieverse, naturally. (Attempting to familiarize myself with comics canon, but, dude, it's Marvel, the character's been around for ages, the continuity looks like the CAT5e cables on a wall of switches.) Doctor Who (new) and Torchwood. Utena. Evangelion.
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Date: May. 25th, 2008 05:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: May. 25th, 2008 06:22 pm (UTC)"Oh, it's you."
"What're you doing here?" Jack pounds up the ring-walk through the shifting crowd, panting.
"Here? The fine Corvidan Station of Engelessen's Moon? The triumph of the century of ring-reactor one-plane Dyson engineering? Trying to keep the most idiotic scientists I've ever met--right, well, second most idiotic, nobody can quite top Big D--from creating a miniature black hole in the core, that's what. Stuffed shirt, mind as narrow as a Venetian canal with bad cholersterol, won't look twice at his calculations and factor in the Klein-Hanson efficient and realize what he's about to do--what about you, what're you doing here?"
Jack catches his breath and shrugs. "Getting laid. Far less interesting."
"Really?"
"Dull as dirt. No sense of humor. Did it work?"
"What?"
"Stopping the black hole."
"Oh, that." The PA system dings. Routine reaction scheduled in five minutes. Please go about your business. "Ah, not really, no."
"Aww, great. The habitat ring got release clamps? Get the civilians out of the event horizon?"
"In quarters."
"Where's the TARDIS?"
The Doctor jerks his head at a storage closet.
Business as usual, then, Jack thinks. Minimize the damage, at least. Split off the ring, make for the TARDIS. Run down a lot of corridors. "I'll take left, you take right?"
"Yup."
Jack throws a quick salute and they pelt off in opposite directions, coats flapping.
*
"Remind me," Jack pants on the floor of the TARDIS control room, "never. To try to. Outrun a collapsing. Black hole. Again."
The Doctor bangs the console with the hammer, spins on his heel, pulls something else as the rotor begins to whir. "Remind me never to forget how bloody stupid humans are."
"Were those scientists human?" Jack rolls a bit, clutches at one leg.
"No, you. There were rush tubes."
Jack slaps his forehead. Thinking a century off again, he'd been. "Yeah, but that would've been easy."
They're in flight, safely away from the singularity. Jack slowly finds his breath; the Doctor comes over, crouches above him.
"You getting up any time soon?"
"Naw."
"How's your Welsh boy?"
"Who--oh. Check my timestamp, Doc. I buried him a century ago. Did all I needed to for Torchwood. Travelling now."
"Ah. I can't read your timestamp. You're all fixed and funny about the neutrons."
Jack chuckles weakly. "Looking for you, actually. Augh, my hamstring."
The Doctor brushes a hand through his sweaty hair. "You daft romantic, you."
"Got anyone on board?"
"No."
"So where can I put my stuff?"
The Doctor snorts. "Under the console, unless you're going to get up."
Jack grins. "Kiss me and I will."
"Bonobo. Scamp." The Doctor plants a kiss on Jack's forehead, gives his shoulder a shove. "Up you go."
Jack looks up at him, upside-down in his vision, doesn't move. There's a long moment of silence.
Then those expressive lips close over his, tender and hungry. Jack wriggles closer, up into the kiss, blissful despite the ache in his body. The Doctor's cold fingers clamp under his jaw, holding him there.
He's home.
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Date: May. 25th, 2008 07:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: May. 25th, 2008 08:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: May. 25th, 2008 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: May. 26th, 2008 03:26 am (UTC)Maria Stark wrestles her squirming son into her arms with practiced ease before he can make a bolt for the workbench. "I think we have a new favorite word, dear."
"If he's anything like me, Em,' says Howard, muffled, behind the welder's mask, "that'll always be his favorite word." Sparks fly from the steel he's working, scatter and die on the concrete floor. Tony wiggles, loops one arm round his mother's neck, and makes grabby hands.
"Well, I'd better take him upstairs before he starts trying to catch them like soap bubbles." Maria turns for the door, nearly bumps into Howard's secretary.
"Er, sorry, ma'am. Message for Mr. Stark, from Mr. Stane."
"Eh?" The racket and the sparks die. Howard flips up his mask; Tony burbles something indecipherable. "From Obadiah, did I hear?"
"Yes, sir."
"Gotta take that, then. Sorry, Em."
Secretary and boss hustle upstairs, leaving Maria abruptly alone, arms full of toddler, in the sprawling empty workshop.
She picks her way over to the table that's slowly, inadvertantly become Tony's. Piles of spare parts, nothing too sharp. Abacus, slightly cracked; square-ruled notebook in which he obstinantly scribbles wordless lines on the diagonal; little bottle of mercury and a dish, he likes to flick about droplets and watch them shine. She plunks her son down on the high bench and watches him grab at broken things.
Howard never runs out of the workshop for her messages.
"Sparkly?" Tony asks, looking up at her with wide spaniel eyes. He's fitting gears together; they grind and spin in his hands.
"No, sweetie." She kisses his head, wonders when anybody last brushed that unruly hair. "No more sparkly."
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Date: May. 26th, 2008 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: May. 26th, 2008 04:01 am (UTC)She grits her teeth, hit send. Closes her email very quickly, loads up the story she'd found by pure dumb chance, reads it for the hundredth time. And then I saw it--the leaf he was making me--in her hair. And I felt--I can't even describe, how terrible I felt. Not just hurt, but like I could tear the world apart. And then I had a dream. In my dream, there was somewhere you could go, to get help. There was this guy who would talk with you. Only he wasn't there, just over the loudspeaker, and the interview room was an elevator, and by the time I hit bottom...
A day later, she gets the reply. It wasn't a dream.
*
Two weeks later, they meet in a cafe. Shiori gets there too early, hunches in her chair like it's too cold, dings her coffee cup with a fingernail, over and over and over.
Wakaba comes in tall and bright and confident, with curls behind her ears and a spring in her step. She's two years younger, barely graduated, but there's something in her eyes that makes Shiori feel like a child.
There's a chain of leaves round her neck, green and black, dangling from a golden vine.
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Date: May. 26th, 2008 04:02 am (UTC)"Utena," Wakaba says quietly, three hours later, in her tiny flat, "saved me." She's peeling some big red fruit, bloody juice spilling over her hands. "She pulled the ring from my hand. I snapped out of it. And I remembered it all so clearly. I was aware of everything that had happened." She laughs softly. "Not that I wasn't already, in a way. I went into it so willingly. I stood up proudly when he welcomed me to his graveyard. I didn't fight it when that boy stabbed me with his rose. But then, Utena woke me up--and, oh, it took me years, to realize what it meant, to--to integrate it all, I suppose you'd say."
"I barely remember it," Shiori whispers. Wakaba tears the fruit open; inside it's row upon row of bloody rubies. "I was crying when the elevator stopped. I--I don't even remember the duel, not really--but what do you mean, integrate it?"
Wakaba is very still for a moment, licks the juice from her fingers with a few sweeps of her tongue, and looks intently at Shiori with eyes full of darkness and light.
"I had thought," she says at last, and pops a seed into her mouth, "that the only things worth having were light. You know?' She spits out a hard little core, drops it in a dish, and eats another. "I thought he was going to give them to me. My vice-president. I thought he would make me a shining person. And he nearly did. But then he went away." And a third. "And when I couldn't go up, I went down--and found there was just as much worth having there. The power. The courage to stand up for myself, to fight." And a fourth. "And then Utena did what she did, and I found another sweet boy who loved me, and there were the heights, the sweetness, the light. And then I realized--if I took both, if I just stood up with my head in heaven and my feet in hell, I could be anything I wanted."
Shiori's almost shaking. Her memory--so faded before, so much like a dream--is coming clearer, and clearer. Knots of emotion tearing her apart, just as they had in that elevator--the envy, the fear, the jealousy, the revulsion, the hollow triumph, the need, the bottomless need, to have something, some shred of control over her life, over her--
"Why," Wakaba asks gently, holding out a handful of seeds, "did you go to him? Why were you a black rose?"
"I was afraid," Shiori whispers.
"Of what?"
"Myself. No. I hated myself. I was afraid of--"
Wakaba's fingers are at her lips. She takes the seed between her teeth; tart-sweet explodes on her tongue.
"Of--" Shiori shakes again. Her heart aches. She fumbles a hand down her own shirt--no blood, not even a scar, but she remembers it so vividly now. The stem of the rose plunging into her skin. Shadows blooming through her, black roots twining through her heart. Her body a garden of hatred--but strong, not destroying herself, but strong.
"Of this," Shiori whispers, and touches Wakaba's chin, and gives her a fierce, pomegranate-bloody kiss.
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Date: May. 26th, 2008 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: May. 26th, 2008 04:31 am (UTC)Ok, that's a blatant lie.
Want to give me some limits, or am I free to challenge you any way I want?
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Date: May. 26th, 2008 05:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: May. 26th, 2008 05:47 am (UTC)Badger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Tam#Badger) from Firefly and Lucius Malfoy. word: milquetoast
Yeah, I'm odd, and mildly evil. Have fun!
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Date: May. 26th, 2008 02:43 pm (UTC):D
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Date: May. 26th, 2008 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: May. 27th, 2008 02:21 am (UTC)(I am SUCH a literary masochist.)
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Date: May. 27th, 2008 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: May. 27th, 2008 11:46 am (UTC)*snuggles baaaaaby!Tony and Maria*
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Date: May. 28th, 2008 01:47 am (UTC)"He's a bastard, sir. Why are we here?" Not that Zoe was objecting, particularly; this was Zoe. Just pointing out the obvious and staying out of Mal's dust cloud.
"Because he owes us after that last and if we don't feed Kaylee scrap, we ain't goin' much of anywhere."
"We should get some ketchup, too, sir."
"Ketchup?" Jayne echoes.
"For her scrap."
"Right," says Mal. "I'll add it to the list, somewhere below slinky dress. Check the clicker, Zoe, Badger's--"
"There, sir."
"--inevitably going to betray us--oh, there! Well. There."
And looking extremely pleased with himself. Mal mutters something about cats and shitty canaries, and steers in Badger's general direction. The little bastard's skinny chest is puffed out. Bowler hat at a jaunty angle. His jacket's been cleaned.
Oh, yeah. Something's very wrong here.
"And where, exactly, are we going in all this godforsaken dust?" drawls an unfamiliar voice. There's a tall man--well, taller than Badger, anyway--stalking in his wake, swathed in highly unseasonable and no doubt scorching black, with a mussed curtain of blond hair blowing about his shoulders, and looking mad enough to pop toads.
"To a publisher, Mally." Badger clearly thinks he has the most brilliant idea in all Earths. "Crazy ideas you've got in your head, it could sell millions."
"I'm not crazy," the Mally fellow says, in a voice both highfallutin' cultured and crackling with disdain. "And if I had my wand I'd skin you alive, you Muggle midget."
"Ahh, but I've got your little stick, and your Timey thingie too. You're not going anywhere until I make damn good use of you."
"It's. Not. Little." Mal isn't entirely certain he's not talking about his dick, way his nostrils flare. Damn shame he's such a milquetoast fellow, otherwise he'd be watchin' Badger in a fistfight right now, and that would be even more fun.
Mal doesn't realize he's stopped in his tracks in bewilderment until Jayne bumps into his back.
"I've seen larger." Badger sticks his thumbs in his buttonholes, as if expecting it would make him look important. "Might make you show me again, though, afore I let you on your way..."
Zoe makes an odd, coughing sort of noise.
Badger screeches to a halt, turns. "Captain Reynolds! So good to see you. A fortunate time for us all."
Mal blinks between Badger and the sneering blond monolith behind him. "Clearly. Yes. Congratulations. I wish you hundreds of fat children."
He's kindof with Badger on this, he's got to admit. Blondie looks like he's about to fry eggs in the sand with his eyes.
He catches the purse out of the air on sheer blind instinct. Badger walks off whistling without another word.
"Wha?"
"Did he just give us money?" Jayne asks, rife with suspicion.
"Um." Mal looks in his hand. Full payment, with interest. He's pretty sure it's going to explode. Or sprout legs and bite his ears off. Or disgorge Greek warriors.
"Bleach," says Zoe.
"Bleach?" Mal echoes.
"For the brain, sir."
"Right." Mal draws himself up in captainy decisiveness. "Bar."
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Date: May. 28th, 2008 02:29 am (UTC)"You know I can't tell you."
Howard's not looking at him. Head turned away, squinting off into the blinding windswept desert distance. Ever-scruffy hair mopping about.
"Howard, Howard." Obadiah sits in the chair opposite him on the little desert balcony. "This isn't about government. It stops with me, you know that. This is about what it means once it goes public, hits the industrial sector. What it means for us."
"And what if I do tell you and you get all worked up and then it's a failure?"
"Will it be?"
Howard looks over at him for the first time. His face is wrinkled up against the sun, his eyes narrowed, barely visible--but fiercely determined. "No. We're getting everything into place. It'll work. Even if it doesn't, I'll make it work."
"Then it will. See? I just gotta know what to be ready for. Give me some idea, I'll have the infrastructure in place without anyone realizing what it's for. We can get this company going, Howard."
"Hell, Obadiah. We're barely out of university. What are we doing going about with balls this big?"
"You know how smart you are." Obadiah raises his glass; Howard nods. "It's the same with me, no? You design it, I bring it about. You build it, I support you. You can only do so much on government contract, Howard. I've got the family, I've got the connections, I've got everything ready to go."
"Yeah." Howard swallows, long and hard. "Look, if anybody there finds out I've told you--"
"They won't. I told you, it stops here. You don't trust me, is that it?"
"No, no, I--"
"I let you marry Maria." Obadiah nods at Howard's left hand, the band of gold. "I take good care of you, you know that."
"Yeah. Yeah, you do. I'm not arguing that."
"You're just afraid. Of the government?"
"The government. And." Howard's not looking at him again. He's looking at some spot over Obadiah's shoulder. There's sweat beading on his face in the desert sun. Vultures in the distance. "And it. I mean--it's big. Bigger than you can possibly imagine. What we're making..." It's not just fear in Howard, Obadiah can tell. "It could destroy worlds."
"He who can destroy a thing controls it," Obadiah murmurs.
He can almost feel the wheels turning in Howard's mind. Not just fear.
"Let's," Howard says, with a glance over his shoulder, "go inside. Why don't we. So nobody can hear." Or see.
Obadiah puts a hand on his shoulder as they gather up drinks, walk slowly into the cool, dark depths inside.
"Nobody's here?" Howard asks, very softly.
"Not a soul but us. No hidden recorders. I'll keep it safe, Howard."
"Well. We're working on--we're making--"
"Wait," Obadiah murmurs. "Put down your drink. No, there." Howard obeys him, faint bewilderment in his eyes. Obadiah puts a hand on his cheek, kisses him, long, hard enough to redden his lips. Slowly, deliberately undoes the top four buttons of his shirt. Digs teeth into his exposed throat, savors his unsteady groan.
Then stands back and admires his work. Howard Stark, sandy hair scruffed in his face, ravishing marks on lips and throat, shirt tugged open, gleaming with sweat.
He takes him by his shoulders, steers him to the chaise lounge, lays him down and puts another mark on his neck like a brand.
"Now," he says, sitting beside him, hand splayed lightly over his wrist. "Tell me."
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Date: May. 28th, 2008 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: May. 28th, 2008 02:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: May. 28th, 2008 03:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: May. 28th, 2008 03:41 am (UTC)Tony/The Suit (do that however you'd like, I'm curious), Pepper walks in, word: rusty.
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Date: May. 28th, 2008 03:45 am (UTC)*big shmoopy eyes*
If yes, thenplease: Tom Riddle / Lucius Malfoy, morris dancing, and "mayday tradition".
/big schmoopy eyes
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Date: May. 28th, 2008 03:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: May. 31st, 2008 01:26 am (UTC)I R riding on teh coattails of Tony/Suit greatness.
There was only on way in the whole damn world that this could get worse, and it happen just as Jarvis was calmly informing him that he couldn't come, could he? Not until he let him.
Because it was then that Pepper's keypass chirped at the door.
Tony's pretty sure he's stopped breathing. Not that he could possibly stop anything else--even if getting caught would have brought him off the boil, he couldn't, not this close to coming, not with the ring clamped round his cock. Jarvis hasn't turned the viewscreen on, just the speakers.
"Tony?" Click click of heels; she's coming in. "Tony, is everything all right?"
He's still standing with his gauntlets clamped in the assembly arms. He manages a breath; it comes long and shaky, and even just that slight motion of his body dizzies him. "Voice broadcast off," he pants, hoping like hell Jarvis acknowledges it. "I thought--you locked--the door."
"Must have escaped me, sir."
"You sick antique-peddling monkey." He gets a particularly brutal shove in his ass for his trouble. "Oh, fuck, oh fuck oh fuck..."
"Tony?" Pepper calls. "Why aren't you moving?"
Jarvis switches on the viewscreen. It's linked into the security cameras. All the security cameras. Even the low-mounted ones. There's thirty Peppers walking through his field of view, bewildered concern on their faces. Thirty views of the same little black business dress with the slightly flaring skirt, the same impossibly long legs--she steps near one of the low ones and they get longer, lines of muscle in her thigh he's never seen before--
She's wearing purple satin panties.
Tony closes his eyes and shakes all over and tries to fuck the goddamn ring in desperation.
She's wearing purple satin panties, very nice ones, that cling over the swell of her pussy, and one side has ridden in a little and there's pink, and a stray curl of hair, ruddy gold in the shadow of her skirt.
Tony literally feels his mouth watering. If he'd been a little further from the edge, he might have found the Pavlovian response amusing.
"Oh, my god," Pepper's saying, "you're stuck, aren't you? Something's rusted up--no, what am I saying, gold-titanium alloy wouldn't rust, would it? Something's malfunctioned? Tony, can you even hear me?"
"Fuck yes," Tony whispers. "Fuck." It's clearly become his new favorite word. "Um, voice broadcast on...Pepper, just--running some diagnostics. It's okay."
"Are you sure? You sound--"
"Fine, I'm--" Jarvis nudges his prostate mercilessly by way of punctuation. "Fine."
"Okay. Um." She's stepped a bit closer. Closer to that camera. There's this fine red embroidery at the edge of the satin, a feathery sort of pattern. Either Jarvis is fucking with him or he's just imagining, very vividly, what it would smell like if his nose was right there, but he isn't exactly trying to figure out which right now.
She's about to turn and leave when Jarvis pops the faceplate up.
no subject
Date: May. 31st, 2008 01:26 am (UTC)When he opens his eyes, she's just staring at him. It goes from concerned fear to sheer bewilderment to stark disbelief. She steps back, blinks.
"Okay." Tony has to pant between words. "Um. Right. Worst thing you've caught me doing."
"What is that thing--" Pepper makes scattered motions with one hand. "No, no no no, don't want to know. Not asking, you're not telling, there's a policy--oh my god Rhodey would piss himself laughing--"
"You are not telling Rhodey--" Tony has to stop for a moan. Can't hold it back. Not even with Pepper staring him in the face, because something's vibrating, very hard, very to his prostate. "Oh god."
Pepper opens her mouth and closes it. "Oh, so it's, um, still going?"
"It kind of has a mind of its own," Tony pants. He should be amazed he can still talk. He certainly can barely think.
"Right. Not asking, not telling. Not telling Rhodey, not telling the internet, certainly not telling how hot you are right now--" She blinks, puts a hand over her mouth.
Don't mind you telling that one, Tony wants to say, but it doesn't quite come out between the yell and the straining at the unyielding suit as Jarvis starts doing utterly, utterly overwhelming things to him. And as Jarvis flashes the low camera's telemetry in the peripheral camera to the left of the faceplate, which he doesn't really register except that he's seeing that fucking gorgeous purple satin again--with a damp spot--
The ring disappears.
He can't stop it. He can't fucking stop any of it. He's coming, right then, right as it goes, with a ragged scream, and the back of the helmet's got him, he can't even turn his head, and he's looking straight at Pepper through one of the hardest orgasms of his life. Her mouth is open a little, her cool eyes wide. She's blushing under the freckles. It would almost be funny if he wasn't coming.
She closes her mouth, opens it again, and finally manages, "Well. Um. That be all, Mr. Stark?"
"Oh, fuck all," Tony groans.
"If that's an order, I'm choosing to ignore it."
no subject
Date: May. 31st, 2008 01:46 am (UTC)Woo. *fans self*