Reason? What? No, sorry, there is none of that here.
This started out as an the iPod shuffle challenge. For those of you who are unaware, that's when you choose a subject, character, or fandom to write for, then grab your iPod, set it to shuffle, and write to the first ten songs that pop up, in the time during which they play. I put a small twist on the challenge for myself: I was only going to use Ludo songs (hahaarentIsoclever). And, surprisingly, that worked out well. A little too well, actually; I was soon staring down two thousand plus words for just three songs. Needless to say, those words were not written in the span of the songs they were supposed to represent.
Now, that would be the point where most sane people would scrap the challenge, or just post the stories as their own, independent works and call it a day. I, however, am not most sane people (or even sane, really). I am, rather, an individual who is easily swept up in the exciting prospect of and just seems to love starting huge projects (that almost never get finished). That said, it's rather easily to see how my debating on if I should just toss the short (read: poorly written) bits I had created led to me saying to myself: "HAHAYEAHIT'SA GREAT IDEA TOWRITEALOTOFTHSEMOREMORE MORE". And yes, on paper, that sounds insane. However, you weren't there. You don't know what it was like (STOPJUDGINGME), and I'm damn persuasive when I scream ideas in my head at a speed that rivals a squirrel on crack.
Damn. Persuasive.
Mild self deprecation aside, I decided that, rather than do something sane with the stories I had, that I would make a collection of stories for HiNaBN which included a piece written to every single Ludo song I could get my hands on (which about forty-five, if you're wondering (but that's including a few songs that span less than two minutes)).
Is this a good idea? No, not really. Is it going to be interesting? Probably. Is it going to be entertaining? It might be. Is it going to advance my understanding of the characters in the comic? I sincerely hope so. But, regardless of how this turns out, it's going to turn out.
So, keeping in mind that I'm not expecting anything phenomenal to come of this, and that some of these fics might not make sense without the song (I suggest pulling them up on YouTube if that does indeed wind up being the case), let's get this Hindenburg flying, shall we?
A big "thank you" to MissDomaYuset, who checked this over for me.
The Horror of Our Love
It wasn't often that the zombie displayed any kind of concern (he had rather taken to a quiet and regular stoicism over the previous decade he'd endured at both the hands of of rigor mortis and decay), but this moment seemed to be one that was separate from the norm: during its span, orange eyes were gazing out of one of the few impossibly small windows the apartment their host lived (ah, that... was decidedly not a word that should have been applied to the zombie or any zombie, really) with marked worry.
Occasionally, Andrew mused on what kind of life he might have had before he died. It wasn't often that he did so; he only took to such imaginings when he had absolutely nothing else to do. And, "having absolutely nothing else to do", with the partner he currently found himself working alongside, was a rare occurrence indeed.
Yet, when he did take to aforementioned imaginings, he saw... something.
A small, faint, fleeting something as he attempted to remember what he knew very well he could definitely not remember. But these shimmering slivers of what were either nightmares (which he very much doubted he could have, considering his lack of and outright inability to sleep) or memories, were foreboding enough to hamper Rudolph's desire to know who he had been beyond what they were previously. These stabbing, glaring somethings were enough to keep Kurt from gripping at them and the dirt tinged, adrenalin ensconced (blood doused, wait, no, was that... they weren't...?) nature they always managed to present; enough to keep him from meditating on them when he did so for just about everything else that had found it's way into his unlife.
Although to say he saw this something (or, rather, these somethings) in his mind's eye every time he thought about his intangible past would have been almost if not wholly inaccurate. Rather than a regular and vivid image, they were only occasional in their disruption of his thoughts, and, as one might have expected with it's irregularity, these somethings were fleeting. But, even given that they were fleeting, these somethings were more than enough to perturb the otherwise stoic zombie. And these somethings continued to be perturbing, if not upsetting or even disturbing, regardless of how many times they presented themselves and regardless of how intent he became in maintaining a straight face in their presence.
That said, when Hanna had asked his undead partner what he'd concluded from his musings during a particularly lazy winter morning (it was amazing how much snow could fall in just two nights; amazing more still how things, bodies, even, could get so impossibly and irrecoverably lost under that finite blanket of white), it wasn't incredibly surprising that Casimir had responded with a simple "nothing worth thinking about". And that answer was suffice enough to appease the bouncing redhead (who had immediately launched into a discussion on what kind of hot coco they should buy when the snow let up, and if it was rude to bum some off of Conrad "since, yanno, he can't like have it anymore").
But, as much as the simple statement might have appeased Hanna, Wapaheo found it in no way sufficient to mollify his own, repressed (though increasingly pressing) disquietude.