Petshop of Horrors: Drabbles
Aug. 5th, 2010 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
what_we_dream(New) Petshop of Horrors Drabbles
Pairings: Leon/D
Ratings: Nothing above PG
LaLaLa Love Song (Soul’d Out)
The music they play in this country drives Leon nuts. It’s bad enough that they have it in the Mall, but in fact it is also nearly everywhere else Leon frequents. In the supermarket. In restaurants. In the open street shopping centres. In other words, cheap places, which is in and of itself annoying.
The Petshop, thank god, does not play music. And if it did, it would probably be prissy Classical, with a lot of violins and violas and shit.
Leon sometimes wonders whether the music doesn’t bother D, because as irritating as the man is he’s not quite at the level of being able to pretend things don’t annoy him just to piss off Leon. He thinks it’s more likely, though, that the man simply doesn’t encounter it often enough. Has his food delivered, buys his clothes in the small upscale boutiques that don’t play it, doesn’t eat in popular cheap restaurants. Trust D’s simple way of life to be able to put his back up.
Today Leon slams in as usual and throws himself down on the empty couch. “Fuck I hate that music.”
“I have no idea what you mean,” says D, sounding disapproving as always. Which gets him started on D.
Ten minutes later, he realises he’s entirely forgotten the stupid tunes.
Stray (Wolf's Rain)
Leon doesn’t belong here. It’s completely, patently obvious in all respects. Physically, culturally, linguistically. He’s an oddity, a stranger, an outsider. He’s okay with that for now; he doesn’t want to fit in here.
He did belong back in San Fran. Belonged perfectly, was entirely suited to that life, that place. And D, who fits in so well here it’s almost scary, stood out like a sore thumb.
It hurts. Wherever they go, if they go together one of them will always be an outcast. Leon doesn’t believe in that romantic crap about one person being everything to another. D may be enough to make him give up his home, but he’ll never be his home. And Leon sure as hell’ll never be that for D, either.
They’ll have enough, certainly. It’s probably some kind of cosmic retribution for their sins that that’s all they’ll have.
Superman Song (Five For Fighting)
“I am perfectly fine,” protests D, as Leon takes the keys from his shaking hands and opens the store. “Just my blood sugar.” He pulls them out of the lock and they slip from his shaking fingers to land with a metallic clatter on the hard floor; he jumps at the sound.
“Right.” Leon scoops them up and puts them in his coat pocket. He doesn’t need to be watching D to have noticed the count’s white hand clutching the door frame.
“Just some tea and cakes, and I will be fine,” he continues.
“You’re not fooling anyone,” replies Leon.
“My dear Leon, I have no idea – put me down!” the outraged hiss accompanies Leon’s scooping him up, as easily as he did the keys. He carries him inside, kicking the door closed, and over to the couch.
“D, you don’t have to be perfect all the time.”
“I never said I was,” protests D, sulkily.
Koigokoro Kagayaki Nagara　(Detective Conan; Naifu)
Sometimes, Leon thinks wearily, even having turned in his badge he’s still stuck playing the peacemaker.
“D, he’s just a petty thief,” he says, heavy hand on the count’s slim shoulder. He can’t see D’s expression, but he knows it all the same. Coldly furious, and still so beautiful as to seem impossible, alien. He’s staring down at a young man lying in a heap in a back alley, weighed down by several hundred pounds of reticulated python. The man, for his part, is staring up at them in terror, probably trying to follow the conversation with limited success.
“He broke into the store, destroyed my register and, far worse, kicked at Pa-chan.”
Leon restrains from pointing out that, in that case, the kid’s lucky to still have a foot. “Still. Petty theft isn’t usually punished by strangulation.”
“Perhaps not in your jurisdiction.”
Leon sighs. “D, just let the kid go. He’ll return the money, and I can guarantee he won’t bother you again.”
D shifts. It’s a tiny, sharp movement, but Leon can feel the acquiescence in it. “I occasionally wonder whether I am going soft,” he says, as he motions the snake away.
“D, you just ordered your snake to crush a kid for stealing from your register. You hardly even keep any money in there.”
“It is the principle of the thing,” spits D.
City of Love (Persephone Bees)
Tokyo by night is all neon lights. The signs are bright hummingbird pink and tiger orange, tree-frog green and puffin-foot blue. The streetlights, less extravagant, hum a faded chick-yellow or sickly mourning dove grey.
They stream in through D’s long windows to paint an elaborate menagerie on his plain tatami floor. He doesn’t often leave the blinds open while the lights are off, but tonight the lights have a raised canvas to work on. Leon’s usual carelessly-chosen clothes, faded jeans and a t-shirt with some garish motif, have been strewn over the floor. Are tangled up with his own silk robe, the expensive garment lying twisted among them. They are a mirror of their owners, D thinks, twisted together on D’s simple futon bed.
The city lights slant in to paint their skin in the shades of the wild.
Jenova Absolute FFVII
Video games are after Leon’s time. He’s watched Chris struggle his way through the levels of the arcade games, providing a few quarters out of his pockets before he cuts the kid off – he doesn’t need his brother becoming more of an introverted nerd than he already is.
He thinks that his life with D isn’t really that different from one, though. He always has to put in more to get anywhere with the man – more time, more money, more effort, more understanding. And somehow or the other, he always gets cut off before he actually reaches his goal.
Fallen Through Skye Sweetnam
Leon used to wish he’d never met D. Back in the early days in Chinatown, when every meeting with the man was pure antagonism and he went home fuming for hours, he would have given anything to never have found out about the crooked Count and his backroom dealings.
It’s too late to wish that anymore. But nevertheless, he still feels like he’s only holding on by a thread. Like every time he meets D he falls just a little further into the gaping chasm between them, comes a little closer to sympathising with the man but worse, a little closer to caring for him. A little closer to knowing that D’s a lot like an addiction, and he’s already hooked.
He likes to think that D feels the same, that that’s the reason the man tolerates his bumbling presence and encourages his visits. Likes to believe that the reason D runs those ridiculous nails over the back of his neck and gives him that sugar-coated smile is because he wants Leon.
Really, though, he thinks the man just likes screwing with him. He knows he should back off, get the hell out before that comes out. But he’s already in too far over his head to be able to climb out.
19sai xxxHOLiC
D’s beautiful, and that’s often a very helpful business asset. It’s also often helpful in his chequered personal life – he certainly is very aware of the way Leon frequently can’t help but stare at him.
The problem is that it’s a delicate, fragile beauty, and sometimes that’s interpreted as youth. It’s not an issue at work – D’s very good at creating a presence, and he has designed the shop around his own image so that he fits it perfectly, chameleon-like.
Where it is an issue is out in the real world. In simple, everyday things. Like buying Leon some of the disgusting beer he likes. D doesn’t have a driver’s licence, and doesn’t carry his passport around with him.
“I’m sorry, sir, but if you can’t prove you’re over 21, we can’t sell this to you,” the spotty kid at the register tells him, looking bored.
D sighs, and wishes he had brought T-chan. Beauty is all very well when he’s in the mood to charm, but sometimes he would almost prefer to have had the gift of instant terror instead.
Get Me Through December Alison Krauss
They both hate December.
Leon hates the falseness of it all, the consumerism thinly veiled as warm-heartedness, the carols on the speakers and the Santas in the mall, the admonishments of his bad mood in the face of Christmas Cheer, whatever the hell that is. Mostly though he hates the fact that he’s never really sure what D wants from him. Knows the man doesn’t celebrate western holidays but decorates the shop anyway, and spends a ridiculous amount of time admiring fancy store displays and the wealth of delicate and expensive sparkling bobbles and fancy cut glass and colourful streamers that come out of the woodwork this time of year. Knows that D likes to say he doesn’t support buying things for the sake of buying them, but at the same time sulks all day if there isn’t anything wrapped up in elaborate paper for him on the 25th.
D hates the swell of last-minute purchases, because he knows how many of them will be forgotten or abandoned in the days and weeks and months after Christmas when it becomes apparent to the little children that cute little kittens and puppies actually need a considerable amount of work and care and grow up to be larger-than-expected cats and dogs. It’s an opportunity to teach a few lessons, and his pets are well trained enough to make their way back to the shop if they end up on the streets, but there are always a few who are too slow or too innocent or too trusting. Who end up in shallow holes or garbage cans before they reach adulthood.
Calling Himura Kyosuke (went overtime)
Leon never tells him this, but he kind of loves talking to D on the phone. The man is just such a prick it’s unbelievable, and at the same time he doesn’t even realise he’s doing it. Leon thinks maybe it’s a result of D’s upbringing, maybe the man really relies on reading facial expressions to tell him what’s going on in a conversation and has trouble reading the currents otherwise. Or maybe D just doesn’t bother with his usual subtle machinations when he can’t see the resulting mind-screw in person, and is actually much blunter than he usually seems.
“Hello, Treasured Things.” D always answers the phone in exactly the same tone. That bland politeness which anyone who knows him in person knows means I am completely uninterested in having this discussion.
“Hey D, it’s me. I’m in the store and those little koala chocolate cookie things are on sale. Want some?”
“You know you shouldn’t call during business hours,” D says, in that tone that means he’s bored out of his mind and no one’s come in all day. “And no, thank you, I do not. Manufactured desserts are tasteless and often prepared in squalid conditions.” D seems to think that thank yous are like sprinkles and automatically make whatever they’re put in better.
“That’s not what you said last week when I bought those rolls of chocolate.” Leon picks up a couple boxes of koala cookies and drops them in the basket.
“Your memory is terrible, Leon. You should consider consulting someone. Also, I need tea.”
“Oh yeah?” says Leon, in a danger ahead tone. D ignores it, as always.
“Yes. I showed you the box last time.”
“D, they all look the goddamn same. You know I can’t read Japanese. Buy it yourself, it’ll save money and both our time when you don’t have to spend half an hour blowing up.”
“How you were never accused of slander in your years on the Force, I have no idea. I do not ‘blow up,’ I simply expect a grown man to be able to recognize a box of tea. It has the green leaves on it,” he adds, as if throwing a bone to an undeserving dog.
“D, those are tea leaves. They’re on half the boxes. Have you been to a store lately?”
“I have better things to do,” sniffs D, and hangs up.
But he calls back five minutes later to tell Leon to remember to buy sugar, too.
Pairings: Leon/D
Ratings: Nothing above PG
LaLaLa Love Song (Soul’d Out)
The music they play in this country drives Leon nuts. It’s bad enough that they have it in the Mall, but in fact it is also nearly everywhere else Leon frequents. In the supermarket. In restaurants. In the open street shopping centres. In other words, cheap places, which is in and of itself annoying.
The Petshop, thank god, does not play music. And if it did, it would probably be prissy Classical, with a lot of violins and violas and shit.
Leon sometimes wonders whether the music doesn’t bother D, because as irritating as the man is he’s not quite at the level of being able to pretend things don’t annoy him just to piss off Leon. He thinks it’s more likely, though, that the man simply doesn’t encounter it often enough. Has his food delivered, buys his clothes in the small upscale boutiques that don’t play it, doesn’t eat in popular cheap restaurants. Trust D’s simple way of life to be able to put his back up.
Today Leon slams in as usual and throws himself down on the empty couch. “Fuck I hate that music.”
“I have no idea what you mean,” says D, sounding disapproving as always. Which gets him started on D.
Ten minutes later, he realises he’s entirely forgotten the stupid tunes.
Stray (Wolf's Rain)
Leon doesn’t belong here. It’s completely, patently obvious in all respects. Physically, culturally, linguistically. He’s an oddity, a stranger, an outsider. He’s okay with that for now; he doesn’t want to fit in here.
He did belong back in San Fran. Belonged perfectly, was entirely suited to that life, that place. And D, who fits in so well here it’s almost scary, stood out like a sore thumb.
It hurts. Wherever they go, if they go together one of them will always be an outcast. Leon doesn’t believe in that romantic crap about one person being everything to another. D may be enough to make him give up his home, but he’ll never be his home. And Leon sure as hell’ll never be that for D, either.
They’ll have enough, certainly. It’s probably some kind of cosmic retribution for their sins that that’s all they’ll have.
Superman Song (Five For Fighting)
“I am perfectly fine,” protests D, as Leon takes the keys from his shaking hands and opens the store. “Just my blood sugar.” He pulls them out of the lock and they slip from his shaking fingers to land with a metallic clatter on the hard floor; he jumps at the sound.
“Right.” Leon scoops them up and puts them in his coat pocket. He doesn’t need to be watching D to have noticed the count’s white hand clutching the door frame.
“Just some tea and cakes, and I will be fine,” he continues.
“You’re not fooling anyone,” replies Leon.
“My dear Leon, I have no idea – put me down!” the outraged hiss accompanies Leon’s scooping him up, as easily as he did the keys. He carries him inside, kicking the door closed, and over to the couch.
“D, you don’t have to be perfect all the time.”
“I never said I was,” protests D, sulkily.
Koigokoro Kagayaki Nagara　(Detective Conan; Naifu)
Sometimes, Leon thinks wearily, even having turned in his badge he’s still stuck playing the peacemaker.
“D, he’s just a petty thief,” he says, heavy hand on the count’s slim shoulder. He can’t see D’s expression, but he knows it all the same. Coldly furious, and still so beautiful as to seem impossible, alien. He’s staring down at a young man lying in a heap in a back alley, weighed down by several hundred pounds of reticulated python. The man, for his part, is staring up at them in terror, probably trying to follow the conversation with limited success.
“He broke into the store, destroyed my register and, far worse, kicked at Pa-chan.”
Leon restrains from pointing out that, in that case, the kid’s lucky to still have a foot. “Still. Petty theft isn’t usually punished by strangulation.”
“Perhaps not in your jurisdiction.”
Leon sighs. “D, just let the kid go. He’ll return the money, and I can guarantee he won’t bother you again.”
D shifts. It’s a tiny, sharp movement, but Leon can feel the acquiescence in it. “I occasionally wonder whether I am going soft,” he says, as he motions the snake away.
“D, you just ordered your snake to crush a kid for stealing from your register. You hardly even keep any money in there.”
“It is the principle of the thing,” spits D.
City of Love (Persephone Bees)
Tokyo by night is all neon lights. The signs are bright hummingbird pink and tiger orange, tree-frog green and puffin-foot blue. The streetlights, less extravagant, hum a faded chick-yellow or sickly mourning dove grey.
They stream in through D’s long windows to paint an elaborate menagerie on his plain tatami floor. He doesn’t often leave the blinds open while the lights are off, but tonight the lights have a raised canvas to work on. Leon’s usual carelessly-chosen clothes, faded jeans and a t-shirt with some garish motif, have been strewn over the floor. Are tangled up with his own silk robe, the expensive garment lying twisted among them. They are a mirror of their owners, D thinks, twisted together on D’s simple futon bed.
The city lights slant in to paint their skin in the shades of the wild.
Jenova Absolute FFVII
Video games are after Leon’s time. He’s watched Chris struggle his way through the levels of the arcade games, providing a few quarters out of his pockets before he cuts the kid off – he doesn’t need his brother becoming more of an introverted nerd than he already is.
He thinks that his life with D isn’t really that different from one, though. He always has to put in more to get anywhere with the man – more time, more money, more effort, more understanding. And somehow or the other, he always gets cut off before he actually reaches his goal.
Fallen Through Skye Sweetnam
Leon used to wish he’d never met D. Back in the early days in Chinatown, when every meeting with the man was pure antagonism and he went home fuming for hours, he would have given anything to never have found out about the crooked Count and his backroom dealings.
It’s too late to wish that anymore. But nevertheless, he still feels like he’s only holding on by a thread. Like every time he meets D he falls just a little further into the gaping chasm between them, comes a little closer to sympathising with the man but worse, a little closer to caring for him. A little closer to knowing that D’s a lot like an addiction, and he’s already hooked.
He likes to think that D feels the same, that that’s the reason the man tolerates his bumbling presence and encourages his visits. Likes to believe that the reason D runs those ridiculous nails over the back of his neck and gives him that sugar-coated smile is because he wants Leon.
Really, though, he thinks the man just likes screwing with him. He knows he should back off, get the hell out before that comes out. But he’s already in too far over his head to be able to climb out.
19sai xxxHOLiC
D’s beautiful, and that’s often a very helpful business asset. It’s also often helpful in his chequered personal life – he certainly is very aware of the way Leon frequently can’t help but stare at him.
The problem is that it’s a delicate, fragile beauty, and sometimes that’s interpreted as youth. It’s not an issue at work – D’s very good at creating a presence, and he has designed the shop around his own image so that he fits it perfectly, chameleon-like.
Where it is an issue is out in the real world. In simple, everyday things. Like buying Leon some of the disgusting beer he likes. D doesn’t have a driver’s licence, and doesn’t carry his passport around with him.
“I’m sorry, sir, but if you can’t prove you’re over 21, we can’t sell this to you,” the spotty kid at the register tells him, looking bored.
D sighs, and wishes he had brought T-chan. Beauty is all very well when he’s in the mood to charm, but sometimes he would almost prefer to have had the gift of instant terror instead.
Get Me Through December Alison Krauss
They both hate December.
Leon hates the falseness of it all, the consumerism thinly veiled as warm-heartedness, the carols on the speakers and the Santas in the mall, the admonishments of his bad mood in the face of Christmas Cheer, whatever the hell that is. Mostly though he hates the fact that he’s never really sure what D wants from him. Knows the man doesn’t celebrate western holidays but decorates the shop anyway, and spends a ridiculous amount of time admiring fancy store displays and the wealth of delicate and expensive sparkling bobbles and fancy cut glass and colourful streamers that come out of the woodwork this time of year. Knows that D likes to say he doesn’t support buying things for the sake of buying them, but at the same time sulks all day if there isn’t anything wrapped up in elaborate paper for him on the 25th.
D hates the swell of last-minute purchases, because he knows how many of them will be forgotten or abandoned in the days and weeks and months after Christmas when it becomes apparent to the little children that cute little kittens and puppies actually need a considerable amount of work and care and grow up to be larger-than-expected cats and dogs. It’s an opportunity to teach a few lessons, and his pets are well trained enough to make their way back to the shop if they end up on the streets, but there are always a few who are too slow or too innocent or too trusting. Who end up in shallow holes or garbage cans before they reach adulthood.
Calling Himura Kyosuke (went overtime)
Leon never tells him this, but he kind of loves talking to D on the phone. The man is just such a prick it’s unbelievable, and at the same time he doesn’t even realise he’s doing it. Leon thinks maybe it’s a result of D’s upbringing, maybe the man really relies on reading facial expressions to tell him what’s going on in a conversation and has trouble reading the currents otherwise. Or maybe D just doesn’t bother with his usual subtle machinations when he can’t see the resulting mind-screw in person, and is actually much blunter than he usually seems.
“Hello, Treasured Things.” D always answers the phone in exactly the same tone. That bland politeness which anyone who knows him in person knows means I am completely uninterested in having this discussion.
“Hey D, it’s me. I’m in the store and those little koala chocolate cookie things are on sale. Want some?”
“You know you shouldn’t call during business hours,” D says, in that tone that means he’s bored out of his mind and no one’s come in all day. “And no, thank you, I do not. Manufactured desserts are tasteless and often prepared in squalid conditions.” D seems to think that thank yous are like sprinkles and automatically make whatever they’re put in better.
“That’s not what you said last week when I bought those rolls of chocolate.” Leon picks up a couple boxes of koala cookies and drops them in the basket.
“Your memory is terrible, Leon. You should consider consulting someone. Also, I need tea.”
“Oh yeah?” says Leon, in a danger ahead tone. D ignores it, as always.
“Yes. I showed you the box last time.”
“D, they all look the goddamn same. You know I can’t read Japanese. Buy it yourself, it’ll save money and both our time when you don’t have to spend half an hour blowing up.”
“How you were never accused of slander in your years on the Force, I have no idea. I do not ‘blow up,’ I simply expect a grown man to be able to recognize a box of tea. It has the green leaves on it,” he adds, as if throwing a bone to an undeserving dog.
“D, those are tea leaves. They’re on half the boxes. Have you been to a store lately?”
“I have better things to do,” sniffs D, and hangs up.
But he calls back five minutes later to tell Leon to remember to buy sugar, too.
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Date: 2011-06-24 04:06 am (UTC)