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what_we_dreamAnd now for a music-shuffle-meme
Drabbles
Rating: PG
Series: MGS, Gintama, XXXHolic, One Piece, Hornblower
Pairings: Dave/Hal, Gin/Zura
MGS
Rise – Ghost in the Shell
(I swear I posted this somewhere, but I can't find it... If so, apologies)
They don’t plan to escape using the helicopter. It only entered into their calculations as an offensive weapon to be avoided, and an indication of enemy search range. But as they sprint across the compound with gunfire sparking like firecrackers behind them, the jeep some two miles away is no longer an option.
Otacon scrambles through the hatch first, sliding over onto the spring-less seat so hard his teeth clatter in his head and pulls out the wires from beneath the panel. It’s an ancient Huey, not surprising for a band of gorillas still using Cold War era rifles, but he’s not going to complain now – there would be no chance of hotwiring a modern bird. He rubs the wires together fervently, muttering under his breath and pumping the pedals, as though that would have an effect. Outside Snake stands with his M4 locked in against his shoulder, providing covering fire.
Finally the wire sparks and Otacon flips the rotors on, grabbing hold of the control sticks and trying not to think about the fact that this is the first time he’s ever done so outside a simulation.
“Let’s go,” he shouts over the growing noise of the spinning rotors and the crackling gunfire. He doesn’t waste time looking for Snake, but instead begins to urge the bird off the ground. She rises sluggishly, nose heavy, and he adjusts frantically. Snake waits until she’s almost two feet in the air to step up onto the skid, holding onto the door with one hand and firing with the other. Otacon raises her up out of the compound and away, hugging the tree line to avoid making a target of himself against the side.
Snake slides inside with the rifle across his lap, dropping into the passenger seat as though it were just the seat of their jeep rather than a helicopter he’s just been hanging off of piloted by a man with no real life experience.
“Sometimes,” says Hal, eyes staring hard at the tree line, “it scares me how much you trust me.”
Snake shrugs, the motion just a blur of green out the corner of his eyes. “You jump out of enough foxholes at someone else’s command, and it starts getting easier.”
“That’s not very comforting.”
“I was pretty sure you wouldn’t crash before we got out of the compound,” he adds.
“And that’s not much better.”
Water Under the Bridge – Red Hot Chili Peppers
“Doesn’t this ever seem strange to you?” Hal sets two bags of groceries down on the scarred counter. Dave glances at him from over the top of the newspaper.
“Grocery shopping? It’s not an entirely unfamiliar event.”
“No, I mean living with someone else. Not being alone. This is the first time since college that there’s always been someone around who cared if I bought milk or remembered to pay the electricity or brought in the mail.”
Dave raises an eyebrow. “None of those things require actual sentience on my part. You could just get a dog.”
“They don’t drink milk.”
“A cat, then.”
“They shed.”
“A hairless cat.”
“Ew. No. I just meant… it’s nice having someone to come home to. You know.” Hal makes a vague gesture. Dave glances at the bags, and then back at him.
“You’re trying to distract me from the fact that you forgot to buy vegetables again, aren’t you?”
“But isn’t it nice having someone to come home to?!”
“Yeah. But it would be nicer if he wasn’t a junk food junkie.”
Gintama
Eyes for the Moon - Nana
After the war, they split like the four points of a compass.
Takasugi heads north, blazing a trail through ice and darkness on his own, and what images the midnight sun burns into his brain, no one else ever knows.
Sakamoto wanders east into the rising sun, off to new adventures that destroy away any shadow of the old, and if it blinds him just a little to what he has left behind, it’s a price he pays willingly.
Katsura marches south, striking out alone with unrelenting fervour into a boiling, thirsty desert with only his ideals to sustain him, and the certain knowledge that if he gives them up he will perish.
Gintoki looks west towards the setting sun, falling into as calm and quiet a life he can, and trying to ignore the ever-growing shadow behind him.
They may have all started from the same place, but it is certain that they will never all meet there again.
Rewrite - Asian Kung Fu Generation
Sometimes Zura, like the stupid credulous idiot he is, tries to write Gintoki’s future on his back.
i. The world outside the tent is frozen, everything painted in washed out coloursexcept the blood, always red red red. Zura undresses him from behind, his warm breath raising hairs on Gintoki’s neck. He places a rough finger on the tip of Gintoki’s shoulder blade, leaving it there for so long that Gintoki’s about to open his mouth to ask Zura if he’s frozen to death back there, when he moves it again. Traces, in long flowing strokes across the soft plane of Gintoki’s back, long life.
ii. Gintoki lies on his stomach on some uncomfortable sacking, clothes soaked and body aching. The salty harbour water has seeped into his wounds, and his fingers are tensing unconsciously against the constant stinging. Zura, hissing against his own pains – they’re getting old – bends down behind him and pulls the soaked clothes from him. Chafes his hands until they are warm and presses them like bricks against Gintoki’s back. After a few moments he removes them, though, and replaces them instead with a single finger. Hums low under his breath, and eventually writes changeless.
iii. They sprawl twisted together, hot and sweaty and sticky, and any minute Gintoki is going to kick Zura the hell out of the bed because it’s Saturday morning and he should be able to sleep comfortably in his own bed, dammit. In the darkness, he feels Zura grin against his collarbone. Down his spine, the rebel etches self-satisfaction.
iv. Gintoki is shouting at Kagura, who is busy eating the last of the rice that was supposed to last them until next week straight out of the cooker with a paddle. Beside him, Shinpachi is having a minor breakdown over the bankbook, filled (as usual) with red ink. Behind the desk, Sadaharu is savaging some important bills; at the door, Catherine is repeatedly asking for this month’s rent in her irritatingly bland voice.
Behind him, Zura rests casually against the back of the couch presses a single finger against the back of Gintoki’s neck; he shivers and pauses in his tirade – just to breathe, a perfectly natural pause that has absolutely nothing to do with paying any sort of attention at all to the idiot behind him. Out of his sight, Zura traces in tiny, perfect strokes: happiness.
XXXHolic
Still Time - Saiyuki
“Sometimes,” says Doumeki in a flat tone that is the nearest he ever comes to displeased, as he steps out the door to the shop, “I wonder what you see when you look at yourself in the mirror.”
Watanuki glares at him, toes just inside the doorway hidden under one of Yuuko’s elaborate kimono. “This is why no one can stand you – who makes stupidly significant statements like that? What do you think I see? Myself, obviously!”
Doumeki’s eyes rake over the kimono with such obvious scepticism that Watanuki feels himself flushing in spite of himself. Finally he meets Watanuki’s eye again and raises one very pointed eyebrow.
“Really,” he says dryly.
“Yes! Really! Now go home!” Bristling, Watanuki slams the door shut in his face and turns away.
It’s the fury that’s making him tremble. Really.
One Piece
Fare Thee Well Love - Rankin Family
Vivi says nothing for the entire duration of the ceremony: this is because she is choking on her tears.
They raise a cross above an empty grave for Pell on the fifth evening after the Rebellion. It’s a small ceremony, simply because it would be impossible to honour one man’s death above all the others who lost their lives for their country, one way or another. Her father and Igaram speak, and some of the guards. Chaka stands beside the marker dressed in his ceremonial robes, the heavy Jackal mask shadowing his face. He too says nothing, but if he’s crying she does not see his tears.
After the ceremony Vivi climbs up high into the palace gardens and sits on the ramparts staring out at the empty desert with tears still in her eyes. She can’t look into the Square, not tonight. The dry winds fan her hair out behind her, and she wraps her arms tight around her thin robes.
She doesn’t notice Chaka coming up behind her; doesn’t hear him or even see him appear. She just eventually notices a shadow at her side and turns.
He is staring, not at her, but out at the dark desert. His mask is gone now, the heavy black and silver robes folded up carefully somewhere, replaced by his usual coat and robes. His face, unlike hers, is dry. She wipes at her eyes with her sleeve, aware in the back of her mind that her manners are disgraceful.
“I shouldn’t cry for him,” she chokes out, and looks away as Chaka turns towards her. Out to the desert, where only a faint outline of the dunes is visible. “He never liked that.”
For a long time, Chaka doesn’t say anything. So long that she wonders whether he was listening to her. But just when she’s opening her mouth to say something, anything, else, he sighs.
“No, but it’s all the more reason you should. I don’t see why we should let him off easy.” He sheds his coat and wraps it around her; it's heavy and warm and smells of Chaka – of metal and grass and fur. “You cry for both of us, Vivi-sama,” he says gruffly.
Vivi’s brow wrinkles, and as she pulls the coat more firmly over her shoulders she turns to ask him what he means. But he’s already gone.
Hornblower (bookverse)
In My Mind - SR 71
It’s not until Hornblower is Posted out of the Hotspur and leaves Bush behind that he realises just how much his command has lost: not a perfect lieutenant, but one who could run a perfect ship with a the right captain above him.
It’s not until Hornblower loses the Sutherland and Bush’s foot along with it that he realises just how much the service has lost: not an intelligent captain, but a dependable one who could benefit the service with a thoughtful admiral issuing his orders.
It’s not until Hornblower leaves Le Havre without Bush that he realises just how much he himself has lost: not a perfect lieutenant or an intelligent captain, but the only true friend he ever had.
Drabbles
Rating: PG
Series: MGS, Gintama, XXXHolic, One Piece, Hornblower
Pairings: Dave/Hal, Gin/Zura
MGS
Rise – Ghost in the Shell
(I swear I posted this somewhere, but I can't find it... If so, apologies)
They don’t plan to escape using the helicopter. It only entered into their calculations as an offensive weapon to be avoided, and an indication of enemy search range. But as they sprint across the compound with gunfire sparking like firecrackers behind them, the jeep some two miles away is no longer an option.
Otacon scrambles through the hatch first, sliding over onto the spring-less seat so hard his teeth clatter in his head and pulls out the wires from beneath the panel. It’s an ancient Huey, not surprising for a band of gorillas still using Cold War era rifles, but he’s not going to complain now – there would be no chance of hotwiring a modern bird. He rubs the wires together fervently, muttering under his breath and pumping the pedals, as though that would have an effect. Outside Snake stands with his M4 locked in against his shoulder, providing covering fire.
Finally the wire sparks and Otacon flips the rotors on, grabbing hold of the control sticks and trying not to think about the fact that this is the first time he’s ever done so outside a simulation.
“Let’s go,” he shouts over the growing noise of the spinning rotors and the crackling gunfire. He doesn’t waste time looking for Snake, but instead begins to urge the bird off the ground. She rises sluggishly, nose heavy, and he adjusts frantically. Snake waits until she’s almost two feet in the air to step up onto the skid, holding onto the door with one hand and firing with the other. Otacon raises her up out of the compound and away, hugging the tree line to avoid making a target of himself against the side.
Snake slides inside with the rifle across his lap, dropping into the passenger seat as though it were just the seat of their jeep rather than a helicopter he’s just been hanging off of piloted by a man with no real life experience.
“Sometimes,” says Hal, eyes staring hard at the tree line, “it scares me how much you trust me.”
Snake shrugs, the motion just a blur of green out the corner of his eyes. “You jump out of enough foxholes at someone else’s command, and it starts getting easier.”
“That’s not very comforting.”
“I was pretty sure you wouldn’t crash before we got out of the compound,” he adds.
“And that’s not much better.”
Water Under the Bridge – Red Hot Chili Peppers
“Doesn’t this ever seem strange to you?” Hal sets two bags of groceries down on the scarred counter. Dave glances at him from over the top of the newspaper.
“Grocery shopping? It’s not an entirely unfamiliar event.”
“No, I mean living with someone else. Not being alone. This is the first time since college that there’s always been someone around who cared if I bought milk or remembered to pay the electricity or brought in the mail.”
Dave raises an eyebrow. “None of those things require actual sentience on my part. You could just get a dog.”
“They don’t drink milk.”
“A cat, then.”
“They shed.”
“A hairless cat.”
“Ew. No. I just meant… it’s nice having someone to come home to. You know.” Hal makes a vague gesture. Dave glances at the bags, and then back at him.
“You’re trying to distract me from the fact that you forgot to buy vegetables again, aren’t you?”
“But isn’t it nice having someone to come home to?!”
“Yeah. But it would be nicer if he wasn’t a junk food junkie.”
Gintama
Eyes for the Moon - Nana
After the war, they split like the four points of a compass.
Takasugi heads north, blazing a trail through ice and darkness on his own, and what images the midnight sun burns into his brain, no one else ever knows.
Sakamoto wanders east into the rising sun, off to new adventures that destroy away any shadow of the old, and if it blinds him just a little to what he has left behind, it’s a price he pays willingly.
Katsura marches south, striking out alone with unrelenting fervour into a boiling, thirsty desert with only his ideals to sustain him, and the certain knowledge that if he gives them up he will perish.
Gintoki looks west towards the setting sun, falling into as calm and quiet a life he can, and trying to ignore the ever-growing shadow behind him.
They may have all started from the same place, but it is certain that they will never all meet there again.
Rewrite - Asian Kung Fu Generation
Sometimes Zura, like the stupid credulous idiot he is, tries to write Gintoki’s future on his back.
i. The world outside the tent is frozen, everything painted in washed out colours
ii. Gintoki lies on his stomach on some uncomfortable sacking, clothes soaked and body aching. The salty harbour water has seeped into his wounds, and his fingers are tensing unconsciously against the constant stinging. Zura, hissing against his own pains – they’re getting old – bends down behind him and pulls the soaked clothes from him. Chafes his hands until they are warm and presses them like bricks against Gintoki’s back. After a few moments he removes them, though, and replaces them instead with a single finger. Hums low under his breath, and eventually writes changeless.
iii. They sprawl twisted together, hot and sweaty and sticky, and any minute Gintoki is going to kick Zura the hell out of the bed because it’s Saturday morning and he should be able to sleep comfortably in his own bed, dammit. In the darkness, he feels Zura grin against his collarbone. Down his spine, the rebel etches self-satisfaction.
iv. Gintoki is shouting at Kagura, who is busy eating the last of the rice that was supposed to last them until next week straight out of the cooker with a paddle. Beside him, Shinpachi is having a minor breakdown over the bankbook, filled (as usual) with red ink. Behind the desk, Sadaharu is savaging some important bills; at the door, Catherine is repeatedly asking for this month’s rent in her irritatingly bland voice.
Behind him, Zura rests casually against the back of the couch presses a single finger against the back of Gintoki’s neck; he shivers and pauses in his tirade – just to breathe, a perfectly natural pause that has absolutely nothing to do with paying any sort of attention at all to the idiot behind him. Out of his sight, Zura traces in tiny, perfect strokes: happiness.
XXXHolic
Still Time - Saiyuki
“Sometimes,” says Doumeki in a flat tone that is the nearest he ever comes to displeased, as he steps out the door to the shop, “I wonder what you see when you look at yourself in the mirror.”
Watanuki glares at him, toes just inside the doorway hidden under one of Yuuko’s elaborate kimono. “This is why no one can stand you – who makes stupidly significant statements like that? What do you think I see? Myself, obviously!”
Doumeki’s eyes rake over the kimono with such obvious scepticism that Watanuki feels himself flushing in spite of himself. Finally he meets Watanuki’s eye again and raises one very pointed eyebrow.
“Really,” he says dryly.
“Yes! Really! Now go home!” Bristling, Watanuki slams the door shut in his face and turns away.
It’s the fury that’s making him tremble. Really.
One Piece
Fare Thee Well Love - Rankin Family
Vivi says nothing for the entire duration of the ceremony: this is because she is choking on her tears.
They raise a cross above an empty grave for Pell on the fifth evening after the Rebellion. It’s a small ceremony, simply because it would be impossible to honour one man’s death above all the others who lost their lives for their country, one way or another. Her father and Igaram speak, and some of the guards. Chaka stands beside the marker dressed in his ceremonial robes, the heavy Jackal mask shadowing his face. He too says nothing, but if he’s crying she does not see his tears.
After the ceremony Vivi climbs up high into the palace gardens and sits on the ramparts staring out at the empty desert with tears still in her eyes. She can’t look into the Square, not tonight. The dry winds fan her hair out behind her, and she wraps her arms tight around her thin robes.
She doesn’t notice Chaka coming up behind her; doesn’t hear him or even see him appear. She just eventually notices a shadow at her side and turns.
He is staring, not at her, but out at the dark desert. His mask is gone now, the heavy black and silver robes folded up carefully somewhere, replaced by his usual coat and robes. His face, unlike hers, is dry. She wipes at her eyes with her sleeve, aware in the back of her mind that her manners are disgraceful.
“I shouldn’t cry for him,” she chokes out, and looks away as Chaka turns towards her. Out to the desert, where only a faint outline of the dunes is visible. “He never liked that.”
For a long time, Chaka doesn’t say anything. So long that she wonders whether he was listening to her. But just when she’s opening her mouth to say something, anything, else, he sighs.
“No, but it’s all the more reason you should. I don’t see why we should let him off easy.” He sheds his coat and wraps it around her; it's heavy and warm and smells of Chaka – of metal and grass and fur. “You cry for both of us, Vivi-sama,” he says gruffly.
Vivi’s brow wrinkles, and as she pulls the coat more firmly over her shoulders she turns to ask him what he means. But he’s already gone.
Hornblower (bookverse)
In My Mind - SR 71
It’s not until Hornblower is Posted out of the Hotspur and leaves Bush behind that he realises just how much his command has lost: not a perfect lieutenant, but one who could run a perfect ship with a the right captain above him.
It’s not until Hornblower loses the Sutherland and Bush’s foot along with it that he realises just how much the service has lost: not an intelligent captain, but a dependable one who could benefit the service with a thoughtful admiral issuing his orders.
It’s not until Hornblower leaves Le Havre without Bush that he realises just how much he himself has lost: not a perfect lieutenant or an intelligent captain, but the only true friend he ever had.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-26 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-26 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-27 09:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-26 06:29 am (UTC)Have you read Good Omens? Cuz there's this bit about black light in there and how one can see it and now I'm imagining that's what happened to Takasugi and suddenly everything makes sense. o/
falling into as calm and quiet a life he can
Oh Gin-chan. That'll never happen. But don't worry, you'll love it! :')
Rewrite - Asian Kung Fu Generation
Fffft, EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS DRABBLE. T^Tb You're making me like this pairing a lot, drat you.
Watanuki such a tsundere. ♥
Pellll you unintentional diiiiiiick.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-26 05:36 pm (UTC)You know you love Gin/Zura! How could you not! :D
Ahahaha, Pell. Way to screw up everyone by doing the right thing.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-27 05:04 am (UTC)Sob sob orz. XD
You can't win with him, hahah.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-27 11:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-01 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-02 12:01 am (UTC)*carefully skips the last one*
Date: 2011-02-27 11:35 pm (UTC)since college that there’s always been I don't think you need "always".
None of those things require require[s]
that destroy away any shadow of the old Again, I don't think you need "away". On a seperate note, that one was short but amazing.
Sometimes Zura, like the stupid credulous idiot he is, tries to write Gintoki’s future on his back. Holy crap, this one stole my heart, alsdkfjgh. ♥♥♥
It’s the fury that’s making him tremble. Really. Ahahaha, oh Donuts, why do I love you so?
of the ceremony: this is because she This is a little weird. I think technically it should be a semi-colon but I think you want it more connected. So I would probably go with a simply "ceremony, because".
SCIMITAAAAAAAAAAR~ *shakes fist*
Date: 2011-03-01 01:55 am (UTC)Did I? I don't even know. I don't see why I would have, since it was never intended to be anything longer than a drabble, but on the other hand I really feel like I posted it somewhere.
(Also I swear I fixed that guerilla problem in a different fic, OR MAYBE THIS ONE. x.x)
Man, Donuts. It is a terrible, terrible addiction.
MWAHAHAHAHA
Date: 2011-03-02 12:03 am (UTC)(Lol. Times are tough.)
Terrible, wonderful, lovely addiction. XD