Argh! The plot bunnies won't stop pestering me! This one sprang to life within minutes of my finishing 'Hot Chocolate', refused to die until I'd written it and therefore follows a similar sort of theme. Ish.
I am taking slight liberties with character's pasts but nothing that couldn't be canon (I think!)
As usual, DON'T own, I hope you enjoy and tell me what you think!
ErinDolphin91
Black Star always drank black coffee during his occasion bouts of insomnia. Tsubaki could never quite pin down what it was that dragged her from her sleep when her partner was suffering from sleeplessness, but it had never failed her and she invariably found him in the kitchen.
For some reason, they never felt the need to turn on the lights.
The first time that it happened, about a month after they'd started sharing an apartment, Tsubaki thought that she'd misidentified the beverage inside his mug. When it dawned on her that Black Star was in fact drinking industrial strength black coffee at two thirty in the morning, she decided that he probably knew what he was doing and didn't comment beyond mouthing Caffeine? at him.
Once he finished the mug, the two of them slipped silently into their separate bedrooms and Tsubaki felt him finally asleep. Like with waking up, she couldn't explain how she knew that he was actually asleep, she just did.
For his part, Black Star didn't offer any explanation beyond an smile that flickered across his face and mouthing the words Mind over matter just before they re-entered their rooms.
Tsubaki is still half convinced that all Black Star actually does by drinking the cup fully caffeinated coffee – both of them refuse to buy de-caffeinated - is knock himself into a hyperglycaemic coma.
She even went as far as asking Maka if it was possible for caffeine have such an effect on someone who seemed to be on a permanent sugar high.
Black Star finally told the story behind his coffee drinking habits quite out of the blue, whilst they were running through a series of katas in the forest by Shibusen. At first, as with just about everything, it seemed to be utterly random in nature.
"I only really have one memory from when I was little." He announced suddenly, and by 'little' Tsubaki knew he meant from before the day his clan was wiped out.
"It's not much of a memory, more a jumble of light and sound. Someone is carrying me, I don't know who, but they seemed kind and I felt safe. I get the impression of going up, way up into the top of a tree cause the light gets brighter and I remember clinging onto bark when they put me down cause I didn't know how to climb down from there. They smelt really strongly of coffee. Then they left."
They've stopped moving long ago and Black Star goes quiet, quiet like Tsubaki's never heard him, and she's almost worried enough to slide out of weapon mode when his hand tightens on her hilt.
"They tell me I was found in a tree." Black Star finishes.
No further words are needed, and all that the people in Death City see as the weapon and her technician return home are a pair of shadows that dissipate into nothing when they turn their back.
Now I think I need a ficlet for Kid - ideas anyone?