A/N: ………… I couldn't resist. I blame DireSphinx. Wholeheartedly. She needs to stop writing such hilarious crack it makes me want to try my hand at it, too. This is completely based off her own Essentialist Conversations, which is a thousand times better, but what the hell–it's fun. Hee hee. 8D
Warnings–mentions sexuality.
Gosho-sensei and DireSphinx own pretty much everything. I own my laptop. And my stuffed tiger, which is really called Hobbes, thank you.
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Trouble In Paradise
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She knew the moment she saw the grinning KID caricature on her laptop screen she shouldn't have asked DireSphinx to send her Kaito (and Aoko, if possible) if he bothered her too much on hers.
Evidently, he had. Shit.
She frantically looked around. Closed doors… check. Brother safely on the other side of the apartment… check. Father watching a movie in the other room with the headphones on… check. Okay. She was nervously smoothing down the sides of her jeans (shit, shit, shouldn't look too fangirly) when a white-clad figure strolled up on-screen and grinned up at her.
Damn.
She felt (vaguely) relieved when she saw Aoko stalk up beside him, hands gripping the handle of a mop. At least if she was here he wouldn't–well, he wouldn't get too–would he?
…. oops, she looked mad too.
Calm down, she thought. They're fictional characters. Virtual pixels on a screen. They're not going to–they won't just get out of here and start spanking you. … ow. KID plus spanking–never think that again. I mean it, brain.
"Um. Hi," she said, and wished her voice didn't sound so damn nervous, for goodness' sake. "It's–er. It's nice to see you?"
They glowered. At any rate, Aoko glowered, and gripped her mop more threateningly still. (The girl at the laptop eyed it warily, wondering how the hell Kaito could just dodge it over the heads of other students. It looked like quite a lethal weapon to her.) KID just grinned in his usual maniacal fashion, which abode no good, either.
"Good evening, S2lou-san!" he chirped, eyes glinting dangerously.
Well, shit. Incognito–busted. "Bonsoir," she said, politely. "C'est un plaisir de vous voir." After all, French was the language of the bonnes manières, the good manners. If anything it might disconcert them. And she might make it to the door while they babel-fish'ed what she had just said–
It didn't. "Il était temps que nous venions te rendre une petite visite," KID said, in flawless French. Damn him. She still had an accent when she spoke English (or any other language for that matter), and she was older than he. Well. Technically. When had the first Magic Kaito manga come out in Japan again?
She tried smiling. The result rather resembled a mix between a sneer and a grimace of pain after biting in a pepper, but what the hell. "Really?" she said, returning on softer, safer grounds. "Um–you have… reclamations to make?"
(Inside, she was thinking frantically. What had she written recently that might have caused their ire–well, okay, maybe that fic might get a strong reaction, but she hadn't even posted it yet. … wait. Hadn't DireSphinx said something about reading minds?
… Shit.)
"Sort of," KID said, still smiling in that soft, caring, terribly infectious way. "But I think Aoko here has more to say in that respect than me." He nodded at her.
Aoko frowned, put her mop–warily–down, and took out a folder from where folders come from. (Namely, thin air. S2lou goggled.) "Alright," she said, flipping through it. Seriously, how big was that thing? they couldn't have that much data about her, could they? "Our first claim concerns your AUs."
S2lou stared. "My… AUs."
"Yes."
She stared some more. "What's wrong with them? I mean, I haven't killed either of you–" yet, "–I haven't paired you off with anyone else–" god forbid, "–you always end up together–" well, nearly always, anyway, "–you usually have a happily ever after…" So okay, maybe her stuff was getting a little saccharine these days. But she'd had no complaints, and besides the mood would get darker soon…
Aoko glared. Kaito grinned, and took off his hat. (… damn it, he really had messy hair. She'd never realized just how much.)
"We have no qualms about your regular AUs," Aoko said, holding the folder like a weapon. "It's the cracky AUs that get to us. Namely–" she leafed through the pages again, furiously–you could see the pixels fly off in anger– "Of Moving Castles, Nekomata!Kaito, and we have it from a good source you're planning on a Cinderella parody."
And a Little Red Riding Hood one, too, and a Little Mermaid one, she did not say, and then wondered how the hell they knew she was planning on a–damnit, butterfly-chan. Note to self–no cookies for her for a week. No, wait. She still wanted that vampire!fic. Dilemma. Where to stand, where to stand…
"W-wait," she said, frowning. "What's wrong with nekomata!Kaito? I mean, he's adorable that way. People out there love him. Cats are cute–cuddly, purring, playful and everything. Halfling Rogue got me lots of data to make it as close to reality as possible–" And we get the fanservice, she added mentally, watching in the corner of her eye KID undo his tie nonchalantly.
Aoko glared some more. "Yeah, but you don't show them the way he behaves when you're done writing about us. Do you know how many times he ravaged the living-room these last two months? and then he comes and wants to cuddle while I'm working–I do have a history thesis to work on, you know. And then, of course–" her eyes narrowed, "there's the matter of those cracky AUs you've started with 66ButterflyOfDarkness99 and Katiesparks."
Oops. "Um," S2lou said, not very coherently. "Yeah. But that's–that's mainly for fun, you know. We're just amusing ourselves with crazy ideas. Katie-chan wanted to write–wait, never mind. …A-and Kaito likes talking like a pirate, after all."
He gave her a saucy wink. "I be agreeing with ye on that, wench," he said, and then grinned at Aoko. "Besides, you look hot in your pirate clothes, cap'n, my cap'n."
"You're the pirate one," Aoko ground out, grabbing the mop. She swatted him with it once, and then turned back to S2lou, who'd been quietly hoping they'd forgotten her in her corner. "That's another problem."
"What, the pirate talk?"
"No. We've remarked that your fics are getting more and more… you know… perverted."
S2lou blank-stared. That, if anything (and especially knowing Kaito's character), should not have been a problem. "Not that much," she protested. "There's probably one or two around here–a few random tries–"
Aoko was unrolling a list that was several inches long. Surely–oh, surely not. There couldn't be that many, could there?
"To quote a few examples," Aoko said tartly, giving her a stern look through the screen, "in Summer Leaves, Broadcast-what's-that-name-that's-too-long-to-say, So I Can Breathe, Educated Dumbass, Kiss The Girl, and quite a few sentences in Rhetorical Blessings, you had us have sexual intercourse, or very close to." She rolled up the list with a snap. "Thank Kami at least you never wrote it in details."
"Yeah, I never went farther up than T-rating," S2lou said with (ahem) dignity, trying very hard not to think about that Teachers!AU smut fic she had written on butterfly-chan's request, and thanking whoever was up there that this visit was taking place before she posted it. Then they wouldn't stop to talking with her–she'd get a good mop-beating. "And what with Kaito always flipping your skirt, anyway," she added, feeling that was a good argument for the defence, "it's obvious you'll come to it one day, and Gosho-sensei won't ever let us see it, so we might at least use our imaginations. And you know how the muses are–Kirby-chinchan has been pestering her for days. Besides, I don't see him complaining," she said, nodding at Kaito.
He appeared to think about it, and then cocked his head toward Aoko, arching an eyebrow. "You know, she does have a point here. It's not like we don't–"
"That's not the point," Aoko said hastily, seeing that S2lou wasn't losing one piece of his speech.
"What's the point?"
"… the point is that we can't let just anyone start disserting over our private life, and let other people read the stuff she writes, too." Well, that certainly was interesting. Or would have been, hadn't it been for–
"Anyone?" she repeated, outraged. "C'mon, guys–I've been writing you for two years. Almost. It's not like I'm a total stranger. I've got pictures of you two, I've seen vids over there on YouTube, there are some awesome ones, I've read fic all over the internet–"
"You know, technically, that qualifies as stalker behaviour," Kaito put in, grinning still.
"Shut up," she snapped. "According to my latest writing, you're currently heartbroken because Aoko broke up with you, so you just should just curl up in a corner and cry."
They gasped simultaneously. Shit, shit, shit. "You had her break up with me?" "You had me break up with him?" "What are you, crazy?"
"Yes. No. It was a request. Shut up." She cleared her throat, and hoped to hell that her father wasn't hearing her in the other room and wouldn't be coming in to see why she was making so much noise. "My point is, I love you two. Hells, if I had to write yaoi in the fandom I would genderswap Aoko so I could keep you together–"
"Don't you dare," Aoko fumed. Kaito grinned, suddenly, inanely, and she swirled round on him in an instant. "And don't you say anything, you pervert."
"Wasn't going to," he crooned.
"Anyway," S2lou cut in, feeling very much that the situation and conversation was rapidly escaping the realm of (what was left of) her sanity, "what I'm trying to get across here is that I'm the fanfic author. You're not. Therefore, you shut up and do as I say. After all, you're fictional characters, you know, just pixels on my screen–"
She hadn't finished the last word that a mop was hurled right at her through the screen. She ducked, and it flew into the disaster that was her room, landing amid the books strayed on her bed beside the far other wall. She stared at it. Sweatdropping was beneath her, but she did ogle the mop for a good ten seconds before turning back to the screen.
"You could have shot my eye out with that!" she protested.
"Yeah, and then you could have joined the ranks of CLAMP characters, so you should be happy," Aoko said nonchalantly, taking the second mop Kaito was gallantly handing her and smacking him over the head for good measure. ('Ow!') "Where were we again?" She weighted the mop in one hand.
"I deny everything," S2lou said immediately. "And besides, it's too late. You should have come two years ago. Now I'm in the fandom, I'm not about to quit."
"And what got you in the fandom in the first place?" Aoko asked, making wild passes with the mop. S2lou inched prudently away, looking mildly embarrassed.
"Well, there are Fyliwion-sempai's fics…"
"Ooh, yes," Aoko snapped, still looking grim–if possible, even more so. "Yes, we know her. Very well. Didn't she kill you off, recently?" she asked Kaito, resting the mop on her shoulder.
"Not really," Kaito said. "But you're not supposed to know that just yet."
He waited until Aoko stalked away, brandishing her mop and muttering curses under breath, and then turned back to the screen, grinning again in a very dangerous-because-insane way. "I heard that you'll be writing Aoko in a maid costume in the near future."
Make that two weeks, vampire!fic or no. "I… might be," she admitted, still wary of any messy-haired-girls' reactions.
He winked at her. "Make sure you get me some whipped cream there, too, will ya? And handcuffs. Handcuffs are good," and trotted off-screen with his hands in his pockets, leaving no traces of their presence behind if it weren't for the mop that was currently batting at Hobbes, her stuffed tiger, on the bed. (Damn it, was that thing alive, too? What was it with non-animated things (or characters) becoming animated recently?)
S2lou stared at the laptop a few minutes longer. (You never knew: they might be coming back.) When she saw that they weren't, she sighed, leant back against her chair, and thought back to their conversation.
… whipped cream, uh. And handcuffs. Well. She grinned suddenly, and set back to typing.
On with the show.
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Whoo! run for your lives. They might be coming to yours next. *ships them back off to DireSphinx for the time being* Thanks, dear! *hugs* cookies, anyone?