Various Gift Drabbles

[guede-mazaka.livejournal.com]

Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: G-NC-17. See individual drabbles.
Pairing: See individual drabbles.
Feedback: Fave lines, gross errors, whatever you want to tell me.
Disclaimer: Nothing’s mine.
Summary: Shots from various universes.


Dirge: G, for monkeypuzzle

“Les fantômes,” Mani said, staring out the window. His voice was hollow, and from the side, his eyes seemed dipped in phosphorus. They glowed with eerie fire.

Grégoire stepped up next to the other man and jovially clapped his hand to Mani’s shoulder as he peered out. Stables, darkened courtyard…nothing out of place in a rural nobleman’s castle. “They sound like common wolves to me.”

Mani smiled, but kept looking away. “They are wolves. And they’re crying for the ghosts.”


* * *


Rose-Tinted Shades: PG-13, for fey_puck

They were filthy and bedraggled and wet, stumbling through the door. Spike stepped too hard on his twisted ankle and teetered, then grabbed Vicious’ shoulder.

Luckily, the couch was right next to the door. It was a soft and hard landing—broken-springed cushions and tangling limbs. Cursing turned to laughing, and from there it was only a short smooth slide into kissing. Bloodstained whiskey and bruised lips, but neither of them cared about that. Vicious caught a hangnail on Spike’s jeans, but found his snarl muffled in warm, warm mouth and sly hands and rubbing flesh. Every spot already mapped out and known.

“Got my back, huh?” Spike’s teeth were like fresh white candles in the dark.

“You know I do,” Vicious muttered, and pulled the other man back down.


* * *


Extempore [Without Premeditation]: R, for dementedsiren

Dean Corso has picked up fragments of many, many languages during the course of his ravenous searches, but he hasn’t yet learned the language of the damned. He shouldn’t have to, as it’s one of those things that come with the contract, but somewhere something must have been forgotten.

hot heat hands palms down and in and holding clenching

Damn shame. He’d like to say a lot of things right now. “Stop.” “What the hell?” “This isn’t what I was promised.”

forcing in and in and fuck, he’s going to split into too many pieces

He’d like a word with that woman, too. Something along the lines of, “Why’d you let me screw you if you were only going to—”

fire raking his bones to ashes smoke up his nose and in his mouth thick and lapping

But he’s screamed and screamed in every language he knows, and none of them seem to work.

Maybe he should have read the whole book first.

* * *

For the Dearly Departed: G, for oleander9999

Dean had met Bernie by way of a 16th-century illuminated treatise on the sexual exploits of witches. The bastard had actually managed to screw him over and make off with the text. That’d been why he remembered Bernie.

The next time, it’d been him trotting off with a first-print folio of Marlowe. That was probably when Bernie had started to remember him.

The third time, circumstances had brought them to a draw, and Dean had invited the other man out to coffee for a frank, objective discussion. Which had ended surprisingly well, dropping a nice thick packet of cash in both their pockets. Bernie was smart, efficient, and completely amoral. He was someone Dean could relate to.

It was a shame he’d gotten himself killed, and Dean felt it only right to pause a moment. But just a moment. The book was waiting.

* * *

Decision-Making: PG-13, for hippediva

He has the last engraving. He’s come back to the castle. So now he’s sitting on a rock, holding the book and staring at the door.

Well, what? Is it going to happen? Should he bother going through with this—after all, he’s come out with his paychecks and business intact. Client list a little shorter, but that can be fixed.

The parchment grazes yellow and soft against his fingers as he idly flips through the book. His thumb slips down the leather binding, testing its give. Tracing whorls across the creases of time while a light breeze does the same to the back of his neck. He can smell the richness, the power in the book—it’s like long-brewed lightning, and it makes his vision swim, his hands slip on the slim volume. The black ink, undaunted by age, blazes up and when he mouths a few words, coats his tongue with dreamy dark incense.

Gold streaks across the page, startling him into glancing at the door. The gate. The opening.

He’s going.

* * *

The Stacks: NC-17, for auburnnothenna

One minute he was wandering the back parts of the library, and the next he was spun about and shoved up into the books, fingers scrabbling wildly at gilt-stamped leather and worn cloth.

Tongue invading his mouth, tearing out his words by the roots. His hands jammed through the built-in bookends and locked there while his tie was stuffed into his mouth and his pants were ripped down to his ankles. And then he was rising up on tiptoes, gagging on the silk as he arched back and pushed and helped rip himself to shreds—

--sagging onto the floor, limp wrists sliding from the sharp metal. Beside him, a single book lay open. Its pages fluttered flirtatiously in the slight breeze that coasted through the empty aisle.

That settled it. Fuck his major; Dean wasn’t going into advertising. Not after that.

* * *

Rationale: PG, for wingedkiare

He didn’t believe in the Devil. What was the point of having an ultimate evil when man was already so very, very good at screwing himself over?

And no, that time in New Orléans didn’t figure at all into the equation. He’d drunk too much, then staggered into a cemetery to sleep it off because there were cemeteries everywhere. The entire city was just a cemetery, with lots of tourists to space out the graves.

There had been no claws sinking into his wrist, and he’d stumbled against that mausoleum. He hadn’t been pushed, and he definitely hadn’t kissed anything—anyone. Besides, he’d still been able to walk fine the next morning, hadn’t he?

No, Corso did not believe in Satan. He believed in himself.

* * *

Post Scriptum: NC-17, for angieloki

When his struggles almost upset the inkpot, a sharp slap to his left buttock sent him hissing into the sheets. The leather around his wrists and ankles tightened, cutting as painfully as a knife drawn slow and hard across the skin. He felt lightheaded. Faint. He wanted to black out, but that wasn’t allowed.

Just in range of his peripheral vision, whiteness moved. The quill daintily brushed over his nose as excess ink was scraped off the nib, and then it was whispering down his throat, over his straining shoulders.

A pause while the work so far was considered, and then fire prickled into Dean’s blood, an agonizing scorch, as the next line was inscribed upon him.

* * *

Bargain: The Ninth Gate/From Hell, G, for elefwin

Corso eyed the book, then the man. Book—correct paper and ink, excellent condition. Man—thin and hazy-eyed, slightly less gentle-seeming when he wasn’t bowing his head. “Standard Victorian medical text. They’re quite common, and I’m afraid you won’t get too much for it unless it’s got some mark of distinction attached.”

“It belonged to Jack the Ripper.”

As he shook out a cigarette and offered the pack, Dean shook his head and smiled, wolfishly sharp. “Look, Mr. Abberline—”

“It’s all right.” Abberline took up the book and tucked it into his satchel, then plucked out a cigarette and stuck it into one corner of his mouth. He lit it as he walked out. “I only wanted to see if you’d take it.”

The encounter left a sour taste in Dean’s mouth, and he spent a good fifteen minutes trying to remember if he’d seen a lighter or book of matches in the other man’s hand. But then Balkan called, and there were more important things to think over.


* * *


Precipitate: G, for fangirl_lizzie

Opium is concentrated air, laced through with lazy poison.

Laudanum is deadened water, all its life strained out to leave only the cold.

Absinthe is drunken fire, doped with momentary echoes of sweetness.

Abberline needs them all, for he is nothing more than earth, pounded flat by the tread of fortune. He’s crumbling and disintegrating, and he needs to borrow from the others if he wishes to stay on his feet of clay.

If he wishes to.

* * *

Thus Conscience Does Make Cowards: (title from Hamlet) PG, for penguingal

“Sir, you’re drunk. And you’ve been smoking opium.”

Drawn-out, slurring chuckle muffled in Godley’s shoulder, and the hands kept up their feeble plucking. He fought down the flinch and pulled Abberline’s fingers off his coat, then pried the other man’s moustache from his neck. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I know you’re a man. You’re holding onto me.”

Vice versa, and they didn’t pay him enough for this. But Godley put up with it anyway, gently fighting off the advances until he had the Inspector safely bundled into bed. And then he walked out, found the nearest bar, and ordered himself a stiff drink.

He’d never liked men, and he never would, under any circumstances. When Abberline was like tonight, though, Godley came dangerously close to thinking that didn’t matter.

* * *

Intoxication: PG, for ghostgecko

Blacker than hell, and sweet as heaven. It’s a saying, used to describe the perfect cup of Turkish coffee. It describes the feeling of the knife very well.

Gull remembers the warm contentment of the teaching rooms, the glow of royalty. The admiration of colleagues, and lastly, the dark sleepy gleam in the Inspector’s eyes. One who came closer than any of the rest to understanding. Close. So close…

But nothing to the slice and flash of the blade. Nothing.