MiniPrompt Fill: Raspberries (Lestrade/Mycroft)

{I’ve never tried Mystrade before, but I gave it my best shot. <3 Hope I did it justice.}

{Prompt 1 of 6}

—-

They keep bursting between Lestrade’s fingers. They’re fresh and small and dark red, as one can expect from the last of the season, and they’re impossibly delicate between his blunt thumbnail and the pad of his index finger. The slightest amount of pressure crushes the pockets (“Drupelets,” Mycroft tells him, and he forgets immediately) and the juice speckles the coffee table in front of them, leaving little pockmarks behind on the worn wood.

He doesn’t have to look to see Mycroft’s lips quirk, and he resists the urge to smear his fingers on that expensive, upturned collar of his. He imagines large, red thumbprints, left all over the crease in his dress shirt, and that smirking mouth beneath his.

The television drones on. It’s the evening news. Mycroft doesn’t need to watch the evening news, for he knows exactly what happens- the how and the when and the where of it all- but he suspects that it gives him closure of some kind to see everything reported on ‘correctly’.

He amuses himself by picking more raspberries from the container.

One, two, three, burst. One, two, burst. One, burst.

Would he make him pay for the drycleaning? How much would it cost to get that done, anyway? What kind of shirt is that? Lestrade is dimly aware that it’s very expensive, as is everything else that Mycroft owns, and he lifts his fingers to the level of his eyes, spreading the juice until it darkens the creases between his nails.

Just one quick grab, only one, just to see what happens…

He half turns, and a firm hand takes his wrist, pulls it close and, with what almost seems like a sigh, his fingers are caught between a pair of lips. He can feel the slight cut of his incisors and the heat of his tongue- and good lord- suction-

Mycroft takes his time, and never once breaks eye contact.

When he is done, he releases that hand, moves the small tub of raspberries to the very edge of his side of the table and settles back against Lestrade’s worn loveseat with one leg firmly crossed over the other.

He waits for the last eleven and a half minutes of the evening news before taking it upon himself to press him- and his stupid, expensive, completely unnecessary, perfectly starched shirt- down, against one arm of the sofa.

He can only hope that the both of them get wrinkles.

Minifill: Curls (Sherlock/John)

{Just a little thing that I knocked out. Felt like writing. Wanted some quick, no-pressure practise with Sherlock, even though I’m really tired. Just a drabble.}

Prompt: Just before he returns from hiatus, I’d like to see Sherlock spending the night at Mycroft’s to prepare or something. He ends up worrying about seeing John again, after John’s thought him dead for 3 years, and honest-to-god preening a little, like a teenager before a date.

—-

He’s longer, around the mouth. Thin, nimble fingers pull and tug as he bares his teeth, puts on a quick, simpering smile, frowns, pulls again, bites down, sighs.

He has lines around his eyes. They’re deeper now, less like accents, more like quotation marks that almost announce just how much he has seen: from the thinnest, deepest alleyways between the canals of Amsterdam to the bleakest corners of the worst drug dens in Juara and everywhere in between.

He fusses with a few long curls- the ones that Mycroft tutted at when he appeared back at his door. He had had an extra glass of whiskey poured before he even arrived, but he had the good graces to at least seem concerned at the little creases and bruises and scars that his journey left him with.

He’s thinner, now, than he ever has been before, and he’s sure that John will notice that. He isn’t an idiot, and although he has always been somewhat used to running his fingers along the hollow of his stomach, John will know the difference.

He pulls at his hair with a comb, gets bored and tosses it directly at the mirror. It bounces back and skids across the bathroom floor, next to the tasteful rug and the small potted plant.

John will see him when he sees him. What does it matter how he looks? Who would expect him to look perfectly groomed after everything that he has achieved, after living out of a bag for the past three years? He has spent more time in airport lounges than he cares to remember. He has rebuffed at least several hundred ‘fans’ of John’s blog with even the laziest of his personas. An addict, a beleaguered father, a hansom cabbie, an old man, a grad student, a fisherman… Even though they were less polished than the others, he still fit inside them perfectly. It seems easier to disguise himself than it ever has been in the past.

Sherlock pauses by the towel rack before he turns to retrieve the comb from its place on the floor.

For the first time in three years, Sherlock Holmes does not want to look like anybody but himself.

He tries again, and he fights to unsnarl every last knot.

Writing Prompt #278:

Write a story about a child who is obsessed with a paper bag. Make it creepy and wrong.

That’s where they put it.

That’s where they put it.

That’s where they put it.

It weighed heavy in her hand, but she couldn’t set it down. Not yet. She focused all of her attention on the bag, even after the house was out of sight and the corner was turned and school loomed on the horizon like a great ship coming into port, ready to drop anchor.

That’s where they put it.

That’s where they put it.

That’s where they put it.

It sat in her lap during class and she stared at the folds in the paper that sealed it. It was getting cold outside and the radiators had been switched on, but there was only a lingering, soft smell that made her lips purse and her chin crinkle and her eyes water.

That’s where they put it.

That’s where they put it.

That’s where they put it.

Class let out and she slipped out of the building through the back. She had forgotten her sweater, but she would have had to put down the bag to slip it over her head and she couldn’t let herself do that. The breeze nipped at her bare elbows and the apples of her cheeks as she crossed the field and picked her way through the mud and the small stones on the river’s bank. She found a piece of cardboard and carried it with her in her other hand as she tried to navigate the thin bars of land that hadn’t been swallowed by the water yet.

She squatted in the cold and balanced the paper bag onto the cardboard. She set it down. She let it go.

It drifted.

It sank and she watched. An impromptu burial. The runt of the litter.

That’s where she put it.

That’s where she put it.

That’s where she put it.

And that’s where it went.

(Source: awesomewritingprompts)

oh, what’s this- it’s some goddamn Descole/Layton, that’s what it bloody is

{read more break isn’t working - sorry, guys. Goddamn tumblr.}

The sword slipped down his torso, parried away the flutter of the academic’s hands and cut through the thread of every button on his shirt. And, although he had never been one to shirk the slightest amount of attention to detail, Descole’s gaze slid up with the plain intent of searching for fear in Hershel’s eyes.
There was none to be found.
Hershel simply wouldn’t allow it.
He wouldn’t have him rub those slender fingers through and into the hollow beneath his ribs where his anxiety twisted and tangled deep inside him. It had already formed a solid knot of twine within his stomach. It had already wrapped itself in nooses and snarls around his lungs, threatening to steal his breath away with a single, deliberate tug. He had already curled himself and his will around it, as though he was protecting a small child from the cold- and he wouldn’t let anybody in.
Descole coaxed him backwards in an undignified stumble-step with a soft tickle of his sword and flicked the remains of his shirt to pool around his shoulders. A gesture was all it took for Hershel to slowly shrug it off. Then the point rested at the waistband of his trousers. Those fell to the ground too. The blade edged him back to the bed and Hershel Layton, a man with one of the finest minds in the United Kingdom, sat as if he had a choice in the matter.
That was his first mistake.

uh, so, sometimes I write about courtesans and pirate captains

I get bored.

—-

Giles is not in frills or petticoats when Shaw arrives for his five o’clock.
He sits, as he always does, at his looking glass and he fusses, as he always does, with his curls- but he wears a well tailored suit, coat-tails and brass buttons and knee-high white stockings. The dark blue fabric is pleated and flared and ruffled appropriately to evoke the image of a young naval officer and, for a moment, something paranoid and unsure flares in the back of Shaw’s mind. Has it all been an elaborate set-up? Is Darling still a courtesan, still ready and waiting for his attention- or is he another plant by the crown to place him in shackles until his tide finally ebbs?
There is a pause, heady and dizzying, before Giles turns his head and stands to approach the Captain, to drape himself with those strong arms, to kiss and murmur as he always does- but something in the unsure tremble of his favourite visitor’s jaw makes him ease up on his kisses. Shaw has noticed the lack of paint on his eyes and lips, has caught on to the lighter-than-usual powdering of rouge on the apples of his cheeks.
Giles, for the first time, looks unmistakably male.
He has no skirts to flip up, no corsets to unlace, no heels to push off and throw onto the carpet. He is still polished and carefully presented, but the illusion of fragility is significantly less than it ever has been.
 Giles, for the first time, begins to doubt his decision.
His kisses become lighter and unsure, his fingers hover uncertainly over the first button of the captain’s coat, his eyes flicker up like lamplight in the evening’s breeze. He wants reassurance and absolution, not the hard line of Captain Shaw’s lips. He wonders if he can change back, if it’s worth asking him to for a moment to amend his mistake- and he finds himself pressed up against the door with a knee between his thighs and bites- harder than usual- against the nape of his neck.
Giles resists melting into those fingers that rub harshly against his spine, against his unconcealed Adam’s apple, and he gives Shaw the fight that he never knew he came here for.

54 Word Piece

He curled into himself like script, eyes wide as the plains he hailed from, pupils dilated, ruddy cheeks going white as he drowned on the thick carpet in the grand study. A blast of esuna and he was left to shake on the floor as the fourth ingredient was crossed off of the list.