Title: Impressionist or Pinup Art?
Summary: Lovers will always be important to each other; even from one universe or life to the next. But, they're not the most important things to the world. That could be any number of people, including—or not—the Zeroes, Ritsu, Yuiko, Kio, etc. One-shots, with many pairings, including AU and gentle crossover. Mostly Ritsuka/Soubi.
Warning: Some one-shots will include graphic violence, sappy fluff and comfort, hinted dub-con or rape, sexuality, under-age romance, crossover universal merging, spoilers from the manga, etc. Also, hetero pairings and friendships that may or may not EVER come to pass in the manga. Written warnings will be posted if the one-shot goes above high 'T' and borders 'M'. Prompts are welcome.
Dedication: To Kirra kills for being the sweet-spark that she is in adding to conversations and answering questions and being open to new things. Also, this is sort of the opportunity for me to say "congrats on getting a boyfriend!" And, you know…stuff.
-:-
in the morning you ask me to be on top of you,
then we take a nap, we're late for school.
-First turn to me… (Benadette Mayer)
An apple tree puts to shame all the men and
women that have attempted to dress since
the world began.
-H.W. Beecher.
…by the rules of the game of Loveless, Yuiko would make an excellent Fighter Unit.
-Christine Boylan (essayist of Loveless vol. 7)
bingo-card: Word Spell AU-:-Nursery Rhymes-:-
Oh, Butcher-:-
His ears are still attached to his head and his tail still sways with the rhythm similar to a dainty cat, but lately (school days of early fall were closing in with red leaves tanned with orange and yellow falling to the sidewalk and lawn of the high school Ritsuka and his friends had been attending going on three years) Ritsuka had been wondering what it would be like to lose them to Soubi.
He wasn't a pervert, even though Yayoi told him constantly (the both of them being more chatty now that the two of them found similarity in liking older men; Kio there with Soubi every day after class to carry Yayoi's books) that with hormones coming in more readily with puberty it was perfectly natural to think about…and vocalize without realizing it. He just felt like it was almost time for him to no longer be a child. It wasn't that he held anything against people who kept their ears and tail (Shinonome-sensei had finally lost hers the year before in a 'hook-up' that ended her reign as the second oldest virgin elementary teacher—the old bat who taught Latin still reigning queen; Yuiko likely to keep hers until she found someone taller than her—which would mean finding someone taller than Soubi since they stood at the exact same height at present) but some mornings he woke up with…
Soubi said that when he was young, he would claw at his own ears and tail to make his morning erection go away, but when Ritsuka put it to practice he found that his nails were too sharp and left gashes with the rubbing. He was tired to death of waking up to his own blood on his fingers and bed covers and having to swab sheep-fluffy cotton swabs of iodine on his self-inflicted wounds.
Stepping down the front walk of the high school, Yayoi having already left for the day an hour earlier and Yuiko going to Seven Voices full-time, Ritsuka tried not to think about it as he spotted Soubi standing at the front of the school gates, cigarette in his mouth less harsh in smell as it had been years before (he didn't know, but Soubi had switched to ultra-lights when Ritsuka's name appeared on his belly and Beloved's name healed and vanished with nothing behind but the thorny vines on the Fighter's neck; this taking place at about the same time Yayoi yelled at Sagan Youji and all the lights in their junior high school flashed out in broken glass and wiring and Yuiko mostly stopped referring to herself in the third person) but still harsh enough for Ritsuka to snatch it from Soubi's mouth before saying anything.
The cigarette went out under Ritsuka's foot without a single sound—not even the leftover tobacco crunching in the white paper—and he fished around in his pocket for the gum he bought from the store every morning before school (pure red cinnamon that looked like raw hamburger when chewed on), pushing it into Soubi's mouth, "If you want to kiss me, chew first and we'll see."
"Mm," Soubi surrendered, teeth grinding against the gum for exactly two seconds before catching the sacrifice off-guard and planting a soft press of wet lips to dry lips and making Ritsuka sputter.
He hummed cheerily when the teen broke the contact and practically squeaked, "Cheat!"
Oh, Baker-:-
Yayoi liked to read the recipes for apple, cranberry, blackberry and chocolate melody pies aloud to Kio when the lime haired artist came back from those oft retched meetings with his daughter. The words in English sometimes made the glass cups in their cupboards ring in opposing sounds and if he wasn't careful to keep his mind blank in the reading Kio would become covered in magic manifestations, but it kept the man calm and got him back to behaving like himself rather than the depressed person that walked through the door pulling at some of his earrings in frustration.
"So, if I peel the red apples and put the skins aside for later, then we can suck up all the sweetness of the fruit and—"
The banana bread that he had started on when Kio left, with an arm full of daffodils, was tucked into the oven, scent wafting through the air (some of the stickiness of the meal was still slick along his wrists from grinding and pulling and kneading at it; the scent impeccably better than any cologne the teen would ever buy) as Kio finally got out of his seated position in the living room and wrapped his arms around the boy's middle. His teeth against a grey-tipped kitten ear made Yayoi flinch a little, but the tongue that soothed the teasing nip caused a scarlet blush and kept his (getting better) English going on to describe use of chocolate chips.
The oven dinged the high-pitched bell of the egg-timer that caused Yayoi to drop the recipe book and push Kio gently off of him to pull on the oven-mitts that the artist had picked out before they had started dating. They were mismatched green and blue, one had a black rooster stitched on the tip of the right mitt's over-large thumb and the left was checkered with robin's egg blue daisies.
Kio groaned but it stopped from being lengthened out when the oven opened and the feel of heat from inside the metal box washed over his body from below his stomach to above his ankles; Yayoi's face heated entirely from both the hot air and the sound that Kio made.
It was just so… Yayoi couldn't stop his tail from curling at that moment.
Oh, Pain Killer Maker-:-
The Zero boys would loathe to admit that moving in with a girl was probably the best thing that could have happened to them since Soubi; so they never mentioned it. They just paid their share of the rent on time and constantly went over to continuously bother Soubi when the Dumb Girl (it was nice to have something like a sister in Yuiko, even though they would never call her that, her breasts had leveled out to just B-cups and her height was only just beginning to stop in the eleventh grade and so it meant that teasing her was getting difficult) was either at Seven Voices trying to come up with a spell without breaking something or at nursing school for whatever reason.
(They didn't think how her turning into a nurse was probably an effort to keep herself, Soubi, Yayoi or the Zeroes themselves alive after realizing that just keeping a first-aid kit around and hoping for the best when using it was not going to cut it with Seimei and Nisei still running around. If she could barely voice that as a reason, then it might not have been right to begin with.)
Nagisa might have basically been the only mother they ever had (teaching them about pain, about survival, about why it was unlikely that they might live very long) but the pink haired bumbler gave them a female figure that they could see as potentially more helpful. She did buy a thermometer that hung next to the door and explained to them that if it was below fifty degrees indoors they were to turn the furnace up to seventy and make sure to wear dry socks and thick sweatshirts.
And other things that she said without thinking about were helpful, too.
"Hot and cold are the same if they are in equal numbers but if they are not equal then they could mean plenty of other things," Yuiko recited from another Seven Voices book that Ritsu-sensei had told her to "Read, goddammit; unlike other Blank Fighters like Soubi your spells and language are still pitiful," on her way back to her apartment where Natsuo and Youji were sucking on each other's tongue on the couch, Youji's foot resting atop the armrest and bleeding from a battle they'd won, but not without injuries he couldn't notice; waiting for her to bandage it.
"Like what?" Natsuo paused, annoying Youji when the darker haired Zero paused running his tongue up his throat to question Yuiko while simultaneously helping her with the gauze she said was better for Youji's blood flow, "Temperature doesn't mean anything to us."
"Of course it does," Yuiko replied, fingers carefully measuring the gauze in inches before she rummaged around the first-aid kit for alcohol wipes to removes loose scabs and lint that stuck to Youji's blood from inside his heavy boots, "Soft warmth is like a hug or fresh towels out of the dryer. Soft cold is like spring rain or those smooth pebbles fished out of the river. Really, really hot is like… meat burning and smoking in the oven and really, really cold is like when you can't breathe in winter or when a full soda can explodes in the freezer."
