So much fail.

[tuesdayficarchived]

So my lost purse with my debit card (now hot carded) and I think with A Movable Feast (thankfully already finished, though I'm one of the few in my class who likes it, damn it)? Also had my flash drive in it. And I hadn't sent important paper to my prof while all fucked up with sleep dep like I thought I had. And it was only on that lost flashdrive.

So! I'll be writing more than one paper while staying up tonight. What does this additional bit of stress mean? My loss is your gain.

Drabble trading. Yes, I know I had prompts open, but they're closed except to someone who'd asked about a fandom before I wrote this entry. This is more stress than usual, and I need something to keep me from hiding in the library basement's bathroom and never, ever, ever coming out again. There are sinks in that bathroom, and a surprisingly clean floor. I could make it until starvation set in, and so few people come along it would be years before they found my body.

You write me one drabble (and I'll be loose in the definition of this), and I'll write you two--basically, I write one, you write one, I give you another. Rinse and repeat for however long you like. I'm crossposting this with my fandom journal.

And . . . go!

ETA: Tomorrow, 4/24/2008, at 11:59:59 p.m., the drabble trade will officially be Over. By which I mean I will answer any submitted before that time with the two to one deal, but merely admire and feedback any submitted after. Because of this, you can submit as many as you want without waiting for me to catch up (and even make vague suggestions I might follow for my responses). So. Last chance. TWO TO ONE. GO!

(If I'm flooded, I'm going to try to have all my responses back by the end of finals, but I make no guarantees other than there will be responses to everything submitted before 12:00:00 4/25.)

Closed

Comments

Re: Second Guy/Kakashi

[fascimility.livejournal.com]

[I cheer for happy fics. XD but your sad ones have that painful quality that make me ache quietly. I think that's beautiful. I love your Gai/Kakashi. The last one has little undercurrents of optimism that I'm clinging onto. It's lovely. :DD

And uh, I'm beginning to really enjoy this drabble exchange thing. It's like having a brand-new and shiny present waiting for me everyday! :D Don't feel that you owe me the fics. I like the one-for-one deal. XD ]


There are fairytales in which heros sweep heroines off their dainty, slippered feet and sail into the brilliant sunset of a distant horizon. In that world clouds hang like drapery, jewel hues resplendent against a calm, dark sea with picturesque highlights that shimer.

But that world is that world, and this one is this - grimy, salt-crusted and baked in harsh sun. Dusk falls and the waning amber light is neither warm nor romantic but grainy like old stop motion films. There is a jerky, indefinite quality to the hazy light, moist as it is with misty sea spray and the perpetual haze that night brings.

Later when Kakashi presses Gai up against the mildew-damp wall the mast will creak and the sails will whine with the ropes stretched at full tension against some billowing wind. The sea roars with rage, tempestous, voracious, ready to swallow whole, rickety skeletons of ships. Gai's bodysuit feels suffocatingly tight.

The loot rattles urgently in the cabin, heavy chest sliding across the floor, leaving gashes in the unvarnished wood. Some coins break free and roll languidly past. The main ship is anchored at least one day away in a hidden aclove beneath lush ferns and dense forests. By morning, perhaps they'll be a little nearer to the haven than they are now, but there's no telling when the sky hangs so dark the stars are obscured, and the sun retreats, as though never to shine again.

It was easy, too easy tonight. No stars to illuminate their faces, the giveaway clanking of chains and lowering of mast hidden by the roar of the ocean. The targets had been too easy: sitting ducks in a shooting carnival.

Gai shudders involuntarily as Kakashi pushes in, indelicately and with barely controlled haste. Rain batters the port window, an invasion. Gai scrabbles for hold on the old timber of the walls. He wants to cry out with optimism and cheer but this is not the place for either - there is only rain, Kakashi and the swell of the ocean. Kakashi whispers into his ear like he is making Gai promises, these promises of myth that say don't die, we'll make it back, and trust me. It's been too fucking long and they're on the cusp of victory - Kakashi will make this so, and Gai, Gai will believe.

Kakashi is the best damn pirate there is. Gai lifts the rakish eyepatch and kisses the empty hollow of the socket with the tenderness that Kakashi has buried - Kakashi smiles, a fleeting almost-grimace of happiness and Gai prays for the rain to stop, and for the stars to come out again.

[...I'm aware that this most definitely is much longer than a drabble. But seriously, there needs to be more pirate!Kakashi fics. I couldn't resist. XD]

Re: Second Guy/Kakashi

[tuesdayfic.livejournal.com]

[Pirates! *glee* And yeah, I've sort of gone over the definition drabble myself quite a bit in several cases. Personally, I thought my last drabble had a totally happy ending . . . ish. Ignoring all that mental trauma.]

"Why don't we try the pirates tonight instead?" Guy suggested.

Kakashi smirked and adjusted his eye patch. "I'm surprised to see you so eager to play my cabin boy."

Guy didn't like to admit to any failings as an accommodating lover, but . . . "I'm starting to get sick of being tied up," he admitted.

Kakashi's smirk turned to a full-fledged grin. "Why didn't you say so?" he asked, stalking closer. He pressed the ropes into Guy's hands. "Never let it be said that I wasn't willing to take my turn." Kakashi flung himself onto the bed, wrists conspicuously close to the headboard.

"Well?" he asked, after a few moments of Guy looking from the silk bonds in his hands to Kakashi laid out on the mattress.

"I think you should take off your shirt so I don't have to rip it open." Kakashi complied. Guy felt a sudden surge of power. Yes, power, nothing untoward about it. Then Kakashi spread his legs and Guy gave up any pretense, crawling over Kakashi to lash his arms to the headboard, fingers stumbling just the tiniest bit through the knots when Kakashi bucked up, bumping their bodies together.

"Hurry up," Kakashi said, and Guy finished the last tie.

"I don't remember being nearly so mouthy when I was in this position." Guy ran his hands down Kakashi's arms, down his sides, pulled open and pushed down Kakashi's pants.

"But you were twice as loud," Kakashi countered.

Guy allowed a smirk of his own to slip through. "We'll see how loud you get when you're the one unable to use his hands."

It turned out that it was loud enough for the neighbors to stare and stare, the next morning as Guy passed them in the hall, then whisper something very speculative and highly private about Guy's apparent prowess. Torn between pride and embarrassment, Guy wondered if this was why Kakashi had usually insisted on it being the other way.

Re: Second Guy/Kakashi

[fascimility.livejournal.com]

"You so did not fucking do that!" Hikaru yelled past the closed door of Akira's bathroom.

Unperturbed, Akira continued his languid perusal of Go Weekly. "I'm not responsible for your current problem."

Muffled thumping issued from the bathroom, where Hikaru was, presumably, thumping his fist on the hapless sink. "Don't you try to deny this, you bastard!" Hikaru, boldened by anger and clutching his stomach, shouted.

"You brought this upon yourself." Akira abandoned the glossy pages of the magazine in favour of going to the kitchen for a glass of water. Where Hikaru's voice had to pass through considerably more walls and thus would be fainter.

"I had onions just a week ago!" Hikaru nearly screamed in frustration, ignoring the fact that he'd only taken the onions because they were part of the instant ramen seasoning.

"No proper fruits and vegatables for a month," came Akira's voice, this time distinctly louder and near the other side of the bathroom door. "Think of what all the toxicity is doing to your colon."

This had Hikaru speechless with outrage for an instant. "My bowel movements are none of your concern! And goddammnit, stop meddling in my private affairs!"

"...this does concern me, you know."

"And in what way?" Hikaru huffed. "Like you've ever been concerned with my health enough to slip laxatives into the tea that you offer me. You're not my mother!"

Akira thought of how best to phrase his thoughts. "Yes," he said, choosing his words with a certain exasperation, "but I do have my dick stuffed up your ass on a constant basis, so yes, I'd consider it something of my concern."

"Not because you care about my well-being?" Hikaru asked, with what Akira imagined must be indignation.

There wasn't a need to think for this one. "No," Akira retaliated firmly. "Not at all." Except that he was lying.

Re: Second Guy/Kakashi

[tuesdayfic.livejournal.com]

[Yay, more Hikago. Sorry, I'm a little off my game tonight. By which I mean frothing with rage and disgust over something. So, uh, porn? Ish?]

"Fine," Hikaru said and shoved Touya onto the bed. "Fine, but do you really think it'll change anything?" Touya bounced a little when he hit, breathing unsteady, and glared up at Hikaru in defiant response.

Hikaru unbuttoned Touya's ugly puce shirt (and God, what had Hikaru said about not letting Touya's mother do his clothes shopping? No one ever listened) with trembling fingers. Halfway down, Touya gave up, batted Hikaru's hands away, and tried pulling off the shirt himself, tangling his head and arms and revealing his stomach. Hikaru stepped in again once the flailing had calmed, and cleared where Touya had caught his hair on the buttons of one sleeve. Hikaru tossed the shirt to the side, ignored the way Touya's eyes expressed a will to murder as Hikaru climbed on the bed.

Hikaru stroked the smooth skin of Touya's stomach, his chest, raised his hand to Touya's neck and pulled him in to a kiss more teeth than tongue and lips.

Touya fumbled for the second light switch by the bed, flicked it off with one hand even as the other pressed under Hikaru's t-shirt. "Off," he mumbled into Hikaru's mouth.

Hikaru helped pull off his shirt, his belt, push down his pants and boxers. "Fuck, Touya. You—"

Touya flipped them, and what little Hikaru could see of him in the dim light from the open window was definitely moving down the bed, to—oh.

"Touya, wait, don't—"—and there were the lips and tongue, the go-callused fingers gripping Hikaru's thighs to spread them determinedly apart. Hikaru clutched the rough thread of his sheets and tried to think of formations, progressions, old kifu. What if he'd attacked on the right instead of the left, or placed in the opening five spaces ov—

It was over quickly.

Touya withdrew entirely, footsteps thudding against the wood floor, and it took Hikaru too long to pull up his pants and follow. Touya was already smudging the bathroom mirror with the oil of his hair and forehead, clinging to the sink as he'd clung to the sheets the week before, desperate and just as unable to change things.

"I'm sorry," Hikaru said, hands spread uncertain on Touya's too tense shoulders. "You don't have to, to . . . it's oka—"

"It's not okay." Touya kept his eyes down. He turned on the faucet. They waited a few minutes. Touya turned it off. "It's not okay."

Hikaru kept his hands on Touya's back, pressed his own turned head against Touya's.

--

The next morning, they play two games of go without a single word. After the third, Akira leaves with what little shreds of dignity that remain, tamping down hard on the regret and self-disgust. The next four years, they play only in go parlors and at official tournaments. One fifth of May, Hikaru finally tells him about Sai, and Akira wishes fervently, once more, that he wasn't straight.

Re: Second Guy/Kakashi

[tuesdayfic.livejournal.com]

[AU, whoo! Maybe I will kick this depressing canon-based stuff.]

Kakashi always smelled of burnt clover and old ink, always had smears of it along his lips like he sucked on his pens while grading and imprinted in the whorls of his thumbs from the constant reading. If it wasn't a paper or a photocopied journal article, then he had a cheap Harlequin novel on hand and a demeanor that demanded silence as he finished this one last passage. Guy always immediately interrupted, or else Kakashi would move to the next and the next, always seeing how far he could push it this time.

The first time they'd met was the record. One hundred and fifteen pages (and two paragraphs) and then Kakashi had finished the entire book and turned to stare at Guy, who wordlessly offered up the pen that had slid from Kakashi's open lips a couple hours before.

It was an instant and mutual fascination, though Kakashi would never own up in person (though he'd once spent a week answering Kakashi's e-mail for him and had caught in a reply that Kakashi had cited as his important reason why he kept driving away his grad students as "not one has waited for me to finish my damn book").

Despite appearances, Kakashi was a worthy academic rival. It was a stretch to publish before Kakashi, a push to just keep up with his output.

Better, though, than their rivalry, was this, the slide of hands through hair and against skin, the warm shared beds and trading off who cooked breakfast in the morning, the way that Kakashi chose Guy's office to hide in every time despite the dean having figured it out ages ago.

Kakashi might have said it was the way that Guy shared his grad students for grading periods, but his lips would smile if he said it, and his firm grip on Guy's arm would tell the lie.

last one (slightly burnt out, sorry--but this was fun, so thank you!)

[tuesdayfic.livejournal.com]

There was this once that Guy thought it would all work out for the best and that everyone would be happy in the end. It was when he had reached the status of genin and the sensei had placed the sign of his graduation on his forehead, adjusted the plate to best protect his brain, and Guy was young enough to feel stronger and safer and better for it (before he realized that it was only a symbol and the human body's weak points were too numerous to come close to complete, or even significant protection).

Despite his later epiphanies, the constant lessons life thrust upon him, he couldn't help but believe that something had to work out. Enough senbon will hit, enough strikes will break through and break down the strongest wall. It was why he could encourage Lee to be the best without any twinges of conscious, try to open Neji to the possibilities of flight and freedom in ways he didn't yet realize were open to him, told Tenten what he knew of the legendary Tsunade and spoke of his admiration for Kurenai and Anko. He hoped that each of his students would strike true.

And this endless, unexpected hope for the future was why he kept his challenges, his promise to be better to Kakashi, rewarded with their own strange brand of friendship. But it was too much to hope for more, to bridge the gap between them, press lips and open hands to spaces that only fists and feet had touched before. It was too much to hope to sprout wings halfway down to the waiting abyss or expect to land on his feet.

So why--Guy had to wonder, watching Kakashi watch the stone, novel discarded to the side and hand pressed to one set of names of many--why did it feel so much like waiting?