A collection of all my drabbles from various fandoms and original projects I've got in the works. Feel free to ask about any content, or send a rec. Everything's game and all's fair.
The city’s never quiet, never was quiet, but these days is a roaring-screaming kinda madness. Loud, loud, always too fucking loud. When he shoves his head under a pillow hoping for some sleep, when he digs down deep and fill in the hole behind him. Even when he running across a skyrise a mile high, where it have nothing but…
They never have children, the two of them. Him, King, and Her, Queen. Though they’re bound and bond and joined to each other, trapped, they never do consummate that particular union. Because she is too selfish a thing, too caught up in her revelry and freedoms. Because he is too flighty a creature, never held down, never held up.
She would be a terrible mother, he wouldn’t be much of a father.…
Slim, Quicksilver, Dream Things Memories are hard, for Benedict, they slip through his fingers like starved sparrows. Memories are hard to keep down in the deep dark coolness.
Precious, Precocious Boys They have the same face, always have and always will share the one face. Same crooked jaws and off-centre noses; one broken, one snapped.
She’s meant to stay with the party, they rented out a whole ballroom for it after all, but she doesn’t. When the band strikes up a tune and the dancefloor starts to crowd, she excuses herself for a bathroom break, and leaves.
Springtime Delight Springtime is for love and life and all the beautiful things of the world to shake off the snow and be renewed, that is what Mother says.
Like Father, Like Daughter Progress and time and change are all hard things for the fae to grasp, to…understand. When lifespans get counted in eras, Kings and Queens and Lords and Ladies, who can keep track of the years?
The Canterbury By-Blows Gentlemen’s Club was established in 1793 in the narrow top floor of a happy couple’s townhouse. First it was the wife’s entertaining parlour, a grand little hide-away for he…
You find the place by accident, between one late shift and a run to the only groccery that’s open at three in the morning. And maybe you should’ve gone home instead, woke up early to get bread and eggs and all those little things, but you were determined. The rain would hold for the ten minute walk right?
Wrong. The blaring red thunderclouds burst halfway, hitting hard and fast and definitely not stopping soon. You start running, because there’s nothing else to do, and maybe it’s the way the sheets of rain made everything look so strange, or maybe it’s something more, but you get turned around. Not lost, not lost per se, because you know where you are but you’re not on the street you want.
I think I’ll just add on more to this as the days go until we get to the fun hanky-panky.
The door barely swings shut behind you before the thunderstorm bursts, roaring bright, and shakes the world. Bea behind the counter barely twitches and the black eyed man beside her only rolls his eyes, but the red haired woman hunches down in her seat. And V, in his back corner by the tree, looks up from his book.
His eyes lock on you as the world splits again, shattering around one flashbang point, and you swear. You swear on everything you have, when the lightning chases every bit of darkness from the cafe, the ink-black of his hair goes with it. Bleaching away, or...or dripping away like actual ink until it's white, bone white, dead white. Until his tattooes aren't so dense and dark, until his green eyes glint too bright at you.
Then the thunder crashes and you flinch, eyes shutting instinctively. You're rabbitting heartbeat is the only thing in the world for the entire seconds the thunder rolls. When you open your eyes again, V's head is dipped back to his book, not glinting cat's eye green at you, and the hair falling around his face is dead black. Like it always is.
"On the house," Bea says, lifting your hands to curl them around a warm cup of jasmine tea, and pulling you away from the doorway. You didn't even notice her move, and you don't notice the amused quirk of her lips as she sits you down in your regular seat. You do notice the glance she throws V, because you notice too much about him, and the black eyed man's wink.
After that night, the stormy night with a storm that barely lasted fifteen minutes, you start to notice more and more. In the evenings, when sunlight slants slick and golden into the cafe, the swirls and curls of V's tattoos shift across his skin. They raise in lazy wisps, like smoke, or they slide like shadows along his arms, along the backs of his fingers.
In the night, when you come in for your usual, you notice the strange play of light on his hair. The way the inky black seems to flow and ebb, oil slick at the tips but a silver-black at the root. You sneak glances between ordering and sauntering over to your table to enjoy something sweet before you trudge home. And he never looks up, not once, but you can never shake the feeling that he knows.
He knows you're looking, that you've been looking, and doesn't seem to mind at all. He reads with the same half-amused smirks, still whispers words just under his breath with soft smiles, and doesn't say anything to you. His eyes stay on those pages, but you almost think that he looks at you too.
One morning, when you're regretting covering for a co-worker but need the money, you stop in for some of Bea's coffee and he's there, V. He's there quite a lot, not always though, so maybe this isn't the first time he's brought a huge black...cat with him. Maybe he's came with his pet before, maybe you just never saw it.
You're not sure how you could've missed it though. The thing is huge, at the shoulder, it just higher than V's hip and he's already a tall man. And there's muscle on it, more muscle than you've seen big cats have in documentaries, it's built more like a pitbull than a cat but the feline arrogance is still there.
Red eyes pin you to the spot when a huge head swings your way and you can't do anything but stare. Jaw locked, tongue heavy, as your tired brain screams "Predator! Fear! Don't Move!" and some general, wordless shrieks. A cold sweat breaks out across your neck and your fingers go numb. Your whole world disappears down its throat when it yawns.
"Shadow, be nice," V hums, a light admonishment. He doesn't even look up from his book, but the cat chuffs and flops at his feet, and you remember how to breathe. Shaky and sharp but you remember. And your feet feel leaden but you make them move, one step, two step, until you're standing behind him in line.
Until the cat is right there in front you.
"Sorry about her," V says, the very first thing he's ever said to you, "she can be overprotective."
Is it pathetic that your heart beats faster when V speaks to you than it did when his cat stared you down? Is it more pathetic that it skips two whole beats when he glances up from his book, eyes half lidded, looking at you from under long black lashes?
His glasses slip and settle on the bridge of his nose, golden-green eyes peering over the top of those sleek black frames, and your poor heart stutters. He's far prettier up close and much too handsome when he looks right at you. Smiling so faintly, at you, like you're the only thing in the world.
"She ah, she startled me," you mumble, forcing your stuck tongue to do something, to hack your bulky words into something worth saying. And his faint smile quirks into a proper grin, stretching his thin cheeks and showing off a sharp white smile. There's something vicious about that smile, dangerous, like the cat at his feet, but you...you're not scared of this.
You want this. You want to know more about this, to feel a smile so vicous pressed into the hollow of your throat. And you want to hear your name in that voice, cooed and crooned and moaned.
"I've never seen her with you before," you say without thinking and you blanch when you hear the implied "because I watch you a lot" in your own words.
Your cheeks burn with shame but he--he looks positively delighted. Grin stretching wider, a soft chuckle building in his throat and spilling past his lips rich and sweet. His eyes squint closed when laughs, and they're lighter too, closer to gold than green, and you want to see more of that. You want to be the cuase of it.
"Not many do," he murmurs in a voice that hints at an inside joke though you can't begin to guess it, "Oh but I haven't introduced myself, I'm V."
Nice to know your eavesdropping was right, and compared to his single letter mystery, your own name doesn't quite measure up but he doesn't seem to mind. He says it with that same quiet delight, low and far too sensual for the god awful hour, and orders something with so much honey you wonder how it's still a liquid by th etime Bea slides it over.
Then, he's off to his corner, with his cup of sweetness cradled in one hand, and the other working his cane while Shadow pads along beside him. He doesn't say anything else to you but he does look up from his book when you leave, waving lazily through the glass. You almost don't respond, too busy juggling a hot cup and a bag full of treats, but you manage a nod and a giddy smile.
You find the place by accident, between one late shift and a run to the only groccery that's open at three in the morning. And maybe you should've gone home instead, woke up early to get bread and eggs and all those little things, but you were determined. The rain would hold for the ten minute walk right?
Wrong. The blaring red thunderclouds burst halfway, hitting hard and fast and definitely not stopping soon. You start running, because there's nothing else to do, and maybe it's the way the sheets of rain made everything look so strange, or maybe it's something more, but you get turned around. Not lost, not lost per se, because you know where you are but you're not on the street you want.
You're at least one over but it'll end up in the same place so you don't turn around, and then, there it is. Neon sign glowing warmly in the night, like a neon tinged angel, "Bea Sweet Cafe". The only thing open for who knows how far and you rush there before you're completely soaked through.
The door tinkles airily when you step in and the most heavenly smelling honey wraps around you as you stand there, dripping on the threshold. It's not what you expected from a place open at three in the morning, not what you thought from the name.
The walls are creamy yellow, and there are bees painted along the moulding, but there's a...well you think it's a fake but there's an apple tree in the corner, stuck halfway through the wall. And there are people. A barista carrying a whole tray of cakes, and a woman laughing behind the counter.
There's a man sitting by the tree, under a warm yellow light, reading, and there's a party of five crammed into a booth not so far from him. And there's you, who almost walks back out into the rain because this place feels...private. Like something you weren't meant to find, but the woman spots you before you can and smiles.
She smiles and it cuts right through the rainstorm chill and wet misery, and you're not going anywhere.
"Welcome to Bea Sweet," she says, beckoning you over, "I'm Beatrice, see anything you like?"
And that's how you find sweetest, neatest, strangest cafe in the city. Sometimes you stop in after work, when the late shift leaves you half dead on your feet and you need something easy to eat. Beatrice is always there, smiling and packing in "end of the day" stock with your orders. She says it's either you take them or she dumps them because they won't keep.
Sometimes you squeeze in a couple hours during the day, when there's more people crammed into a space that seems far too intimate for a crowd. Lots of college students mill around then, sipping cold brew and gushing over the many pastries Beatrice makes.
There's always space for you though, a table by the glass front, a back booth by the very much alive apple tree. Always enough space for you to enjoy a cup of flowery tea and a sweet something.
And you're not the only one, in fact, you're the newest regular and maybe the only one without some kind of strange double life. At least, you think that's what's going on with the other people you see at Bea Sweet.
Like the black eyed man who disappears into the back and always has smoke hanging around him, though you've never seen a cigarette in his hand. Or the red haired woman who sweeps in like she owns the world, eyes always laughing, though her mouth is...wicked.
Or, the tattooed man who sits quietly and reads the hours away. He's always there, with his over-sized, black framed glassed perched on his nose and his ink-black hair forever falling in his face. You've seen him smile at his book, plush lips curling into the sharpest smirks and prettiest grins.
You've heard him order before, asking for something so sweet it makes your teeth ache, in a voice like smoke and honey whiskey and more dirty things than you should think about a stranger. You've heard the barista call him "V" too, so maybe he's not a complete stranger, but he's still not a friend.
Though, you'd like to be. You'd very much like to be. He's every bit your type in his leather and tattooes, and those glasses don't hurt either. They compliment the angles of his face and his eyes, his pretty green eyes.
...maybe you have a little crush on him, nothing illegal about that, and maybe you've fantasized about tangling your fingers in that ink-black hair and kissing him breathless. Nothing illegal about that either, it's just a fantasy after all.
One you think about a little too much, after draining shifts when you're in bed, too tired to sleep. You think about him then, V, and his voice like sinful indulgence. You wonder what your name would sound like soft in his mouth, whispered against your lips by him.
You wonder if those long fingers are as dextrous as they seem when they fiddle with bookmarks and the head of his cane. Maybe it was a little much, peaking at him while he ran his fingers along the length of it, thumb rubbing smooth circles into the tip, but he was in public.
Sometimes you try to mimic those smooth little motions, when you're very much alone in your own bed. Face pressed into a pillow, eyes squeezed tight, thinking-thinking about V.
Stay Wild Moon Child Kalani thinks of his mother in streaks and jumbles of colour. He thinks of her long black hair and the way it looked like a strip of empty night sky stretching into forever.
kaledo-art
romaincrisis
dededos
origamiaround
turnnoffyourmind
kianamaiart