Flower - G rating – Gen.
"No."
"But—"
"No. N. O - no."
Rhyth pouted, sticking her lower lip out cutely. It trembled and her eyes filled with tears, making them sparkle.
"I swear to God I'm gonna tie you to a post in the public gardens; the flowers 'd never go dry again."
The tears disappeared as quickly as they had welled up, and Rhyth, sensing she was about to lose, clasped her hands together, crashed onto her knees and toddled forward. Her eyes were eyes as big as they would possibly go, eyelids fluttering, shoulders jutted back so that her breasts stood out as far as possible, but with her metal bra on, it made little difference.
Corn, finally sick of her wheedling, slammed his computer game thing down on the arm of the sofa and stormed out. Rhyth jumped up, giggled and plonked herself onto the sofa, grabbed the game and began to play it, suddenly as happy as a sand-boy. Beat glanced over to her from where he was smoking a stolen cigar and reading the paper.
"One o' these times, he's gonna smack you one."
Rhyth winked.
Rain – PG - Jazz/Clutch Pairing
Jazz peeked over the edge of the concrete shelf. It looked over the murky depths of Kibogaoka River, and even as high above the body as she was, the gush of rain water from the pipes leading from every drain in Tokyo to the deepest river in Japan was very loud. It roared in her ears and made her nervous – but not as nervous as looking down made her; she pulled her head back quickly, and directed her gaze to the closest pipe to her instead.
When you were a thirteen year old going to Shibuya High School, a 'test of nerve' was running full tilt across a zebra crossing during rush hour. When you were a Rudie, it was grinding this very pipe right across Kibogaoka Hill right after a rain storm. This pipe was very short – only a few feet – but one of the exit pipes for the rainwater was directly above it, and it was pretty powerful; any Rudie grinding it was at risk of being blown off.
No one's fallen yet!, Jazz kept telling herself. Yet, some treacherous part of her brain would remind her.
"Not scared, are you?" Clutch was behind her – there was a hint of a laugh in his voice, and he sneezed as soon as he'd said it. He'd literally just went through, to 'show her how easy it was' (although she did suspect he enjoyed it more than anything else) and the redhead was dripping wet. He almost radiated cold air and Jazz shivered just standing next to him.
"If scared means 'not doing something that could kill me', yeah I am, actually," she said, trying to sound relaxed – it sounded forced even to her. Clutch laughed again, and a second later Jazz shrieked, shivering, as he slid his soaking wet arms around her midriff.
"You're freezing!"
Clutch ignored her, save for a very small chuckle right beside her ear. She trembled, but it wasn't the cold.
"Come on…" he murmured cajolingly – only Clutch could sound whiny and sexy at the same time – his breath hot on the side of her neck. She felt him press his body against her back and was distinctly unimpressed with his clumsy attempt at persuading her to put her life on the line.
All for a stupid dare. How asinine.
She spun in his arms and allowed herself a small smile at the sudden guilty-puppy look on his face.
"I'm not doing it!" she exclaimed. Clutch wavered, a bit, but:
"Come on, you fight cops, rivals and Beat on a daily basis. You can – we all can – handle anything and everything.
Learn to live a little."
Jazz rolled her eyes at the cliché, but turned back toward the river, staring at the pipe fixedly, determined not to give in for once – she wasn't going to play the love-struck schoolgirl again, she wasn't…
"See?" Clutch had mistaken her wariness for consideration, "It ain't that bad. Just think of it as going underneath Benten tower – you get a bit wet, that's about it."
She blew out all the air in her lungs suddenly, as if getting rid of her doubts, and decided – she was going to do this. It was totally pointless, it might kill her – but hey. At least it would shut Clutch up. And it might even be fun!
… Probably not.
Before Clutch could say anything and before she could even stop and think about it, she jumped onto the pipe – her skates found purchase and the metallic screech and spray of sparks out behind her comforted the girl somewhat. This was familiar, normal.
"Aah!" She gave a short scream as the gush of cold water hit her head, soaking her hair and the back of her neck and making her squirm involuntarily. It pushed her head down – the world spun as she saw the river far below – and soaked her back; she screamed again.
Jazz hadn't anticipated the end of the pipe, and as she hit it, she stumbled and fell to her knees, trembling and panting – not from the spray of water so much as the fright and dizziness of looking down.
"You know, I pro'lly should've told you…" she heard from somewhere above her – Clutch had skated around the pipe to join her, "It's not the gush of water that knocks people off. It's really the looking down. They always look down."
She got up – the world spun again, but she stood up straight, shaking excess water from her cropped hair – and began to walk toward the sewers, making to go back to the GG Garage, barely suppressing a grin.
She wouldn't tell Clutch (she'd decided to officially not talk to him for leaving out certain details, and she'd get him back later), but she was really proud of herself for that.
Rain was for the drabble-me community in LiveJournal. This is really for a practise before I actively join in, but according to Word, I've made the 801 word deadline and I've worked the line 'Learn to live a little' in. I haven't, however, made it a PG-13 rating, so that irked me.
