More drabbles prompted via iTunes (I don't think I can rightfully claim I was playing the shuffle game), the majority of which are fluffy lovey dovey crapola. Try to enjoy.

Never Gonna Give You Up

(you've just been Rick Roll'd)

"If I had to choose between you and flying, I'd choose you."

Alek's brows knit together in skepticism, his lips turning up in pink-cheeked flattery. "When you had to choose between being ostracized by the female half of your family, risking your only brother's career, risking your life, and not flying, you still chose flying."

"Aye." Deryn kissed his forehead. "But you make me feel like I'm flying half the time anyway, so it wouldn't be a huge bother."

.

Don't You Know Who I Think I Am?

(Fall Out Boy)

"I don't know who you are anymore."

"I'm the same sodding person," Deryn protests, though she can see he's already made up his mind. She tries not to let it kill her inside.

"You're not," he argues. "You're—I don't even know—hell, I doubt you even know, or you wouldn't have willingly put yourself in this situation!"

The little martyr in her gets her clart together and gets angry. She stands up, for once relishing how she towers over him. "I am exactly who I think I am."

Alek looks peeved. Tired and betrayed and peeved. "And who might that be?"

"The dummkopf who had the idiocy to fall in love with you."

.

Steady as She Goes

(The Raconteurs)

It's not an empire. It's not a collective mass of millions of souls depending on him, fearing or loving or plotting to overthrow him.

It's not a palace. It's not even the nicest house in the vicinity.

It's not the chilly, ostentatious, rigid country he grew up in.

And this moment, right now, is not a nicety preformed at a social function out of obligation, for the sake of easing political tensions, of impressing those millions.

This is a family—his family. This is an evening spent with the two souls who mean the world to him, and certainly surpass the appeal of having an entire population depending on his decisions. Hell, they hardly depend on him at all.

This is his overgrown front garden, which he has allowed to fall to such a state in the interest of spending the sunny afternoons playing with his daughter, lying about with his wife. Talking and touching and yes, they play too.

This is Glasgow, and it's bright and friendly and the dialect still catches him up from time to time, but he is welcomed.

And this moment, right now, is an awkward, stooping dance he performs out of love, trying to keep up with the ball of energy skipping in circles around his feet while his wife sits in the grass and laughs. This hand he offers, when he catches his breath, is for her alone.

.

Monster Hospital

(Metric)

Alek is terrified. He won't admit it, but lying helpless in a Darwinist hospital is quite possibly the worst thing he can imagine happening to himself. Ever.

What's worse is that here, in the ER, the only separation from the melee—the absolute chaos occurring around him—is a starchy curtain that doesn't even reach the floor. He can hear everything.

"I'll be right back with the leeches—"

"I trust you're familiar with our use of mold for—"

"—new fab that crawls under—"

"—excellent for reducing swelling, without any of the harsh chemicals of—"

"This is a nightmare," Alek groans, covering his ears. The tactic's not so effective that he can't hear his fiancée chuckling at him.

"A squick ironic, if you think about it, seeing as we're here because you tried to rescue a—perfectly capable and independent, by the way—Darwinist fab from a tree."

Alek groans again, but it's not out of pain. "No one told me lorises could climb."

.

Somebody to Love

(Queen)

She cages him in with deft limbs, a sinuous form in the dark. He didn't realize how warm it could get between two people.

He drags her playfully down—he already has to look up at her when standing; why perpetuate the annoyance in his own bed? Her laugh is little more than breath. Oh, how he loves it.

She finds the best way to hold him and be held and ducks under arms and sheets to steal the breath from his lungs. He in turn steals swatches of soft skin and finds things he never expected to find here, in a middy's cabin on a Darwinist airship, in the middle of a war. Subtle dips and curves in her carefully hidden form, the sweet sighs she returns to him when he finds them in just the right way.

He finds in her eyes an inexplicable hunger. He finds in his fingers—just under his palm, which she has taken the liberty of placing for him—the mad heartbeat of somebody, the particular kind of somebody he wasn't expecting to find here.

.

Automatic Eyes

(The Academy Is…)

She deliberately bites her lips, turning them blood red against her teeth. Eyes heavy-lidded in the mirror, she runs the tip of her tongue around her mouth to add luster, then gives a practice pucker and snorts at the sham of a girl she is. He won't care. So he says.

She pinches her cheeks, though they're already flushed with anticipation.

She rummages around in her drawer of pilfered art supplies. Spartan though they are, there is one gem she'd found abandoned, forgotten, like a ring she once unearthed while digging in the dirt (only far more useful). She rubs her fingers on the broken stick of charcoal, blackening them, then gently slides her pale lashes through her fingertips. When she's done, her blue eyes look a million times brighter. Two swatches of sky framed in black metal portholes.

Her hair—her hair is hopeless.

Deryn Sharp straightens up and wipes the charcoal off on a rag, looks herself over in the mirror, and takes a deep breath. If he doesn't acknowledge all this barking effort, she'll gladly tear him a new one.