"You want to know why I do this? It's not too complicated. In fact, it's the easiest answer of all: It feels so good. What do you think?" Angelus pauses to hear the answer in the woman's hitched breathing, the race of a heartbeat going nowhere. He nods in agreement, but doesn't loosen his grip against her scream. "Ah, of course. You're not the first. You think: it's unfair; it's ignoble; it's painful.

"You are right."

"Darling?" Darla drawls from the doorstep. The whimpers of the children have been long quieted, and it is obvious that his lady is bored by the slow development on his side of the house. Her green eyes flick to the woman in his grasp, and her nose furrows in distaste. She's hated every moment that he had courted the little widow, but she also understood that a man needed his diversions. Her patience is now at a low ebb, though. Not even Darla understands his little pleasures. "I am sure she's had plenty of time to regret letting you in. Do us all a favor and finish her."

Her words sound too much like a command for him to do it now. Instead he lifts up the woman until his forehead touches his. Her sweat is cold, but the tears running into his hand are warmer. He licks the bridge of her nose, and tightens his grasp at her shudder. "We don't have to listen to her, do we?" he whispers, leaning back and turning them until she can see Darla.

She wasn't nearly as stiff when he twirled her around the dance floor a week ago. How fickle is the woman.

"Well?" Darla snaps, all impatience.

Sometimes Angelus wonders why he does still keep her company...

At his silence, she searches his face, then looks at the woman between them, and her expression softens. "Unless you are giving her to me?"

...but her little weakness for him keeps him close.

He is about to respond, when the woman in his arms starts fighting in earnest again. A wild thing now; her struggle, the last hope of the damned. He glances down at her, bemused, and sees her eyes fixed on Darla's bodice. "My dear," he says, amused even as he contains his suddenly feral little widow, "perhaps you should have cleaned up before meeting my new friend?"

Darla looks down, and purses her lips at the blood drops now adorning the costly fabric. "Children are so messy," she sniffs.

Angelus laughs. The woman has passed out, at last. Keeping his hand over her nose probably helped. Ignoring the slower tempo of the only heartbeat in the house, he lifts the body in his arms and lays her down on her bed. After a moment's thought, he arranges the bedclothes around her, and steps back to admire his handiwork.

"Well?" Darla snaps, rolling her eyes.

"Now we go," he says, walking to her and offering his arm.

She nods toward the bed. "What about that?"

"She will wake up. She will bury her dead. Perhaps she will kill herself," he guesses. "Not necessarily in that order."

"Such a waste."

Angelus lifts his shoulders, already tired of this conversation. He will need to make haste is order to make up for the dinner he's denying himself. "The theater has lacked true drama this season."

That surprises a laugh out of Darla. "Indeed," she allows. She glances at his face, and his good mood must be contagious because she links her arm through his and allows him to escort him to the door.

Sophie hates to cook, but she loves watching Eliot work a stove, steam frizzing his hair as he tenderly pushes layers of flavor into a stew, a sauce, a risotto.

Once, when he lifted a wooden spoon full of cassoulet to her lips, she wrapped her lips around its edge and tasted a memory: a summer in Marseilles, too hot and full of sordid deeds.

She tells Eliot about this summer as he pours a hearty helping into her bowl. It goes without saying that she has never told anyone this before.

--
He doesn't see the point of shopping. But when she calls in a favor because she doesn't feel like going shopping alone, he rolls his eyes and growls that he won't be holding her purse.

It isn't until she's tried on her fourth short dress, a tight black one-shouldered number, that he realizes that he is going to spend their shopping excursion biting his lip at the sight of Sophie's long legs, at the exquisite curve of her hips. And that his growing desire was almost certainly by Sophie's design.

--

She asks him to teach her about American football. Eliot's no fool; he knows Sophie doesn't give a damn about football.

But he explains the game to her, answers her questions. Shows her a good spiral. Shows her how to tackle, shows her how to get tackled.

He lets Sophie tackle him to the ground and then she stays there, pinning his shoulders to the ground as she looks down at him, her intentions clear.

And suddenly, Eliot doesn't give a damn about football either.

--

She wants to go to London to see the Royal Shakespeare Company put on King Lear.

He sighs but accompanies her, and watches as a famous Sir plays a man who has everything become nothing. The set is overdone and the costumes are ridiculous, but is gut-wrenching and utterly, utterly believable.

It makes Eliot think about the day he will be nothing.

After, he kisses Sophie on the cheek as he helps her with her coat. He thanks her for the tickets.

--

She sees Eliot staring at the car, and she should be jealous. He's looking at its body, its lines and curves, almost the way he looks at her.

But she feels benevolent instead. And even though she's a (mostly) reformed thief, she manages to leave the car outside his apartment a week later.

He returns it to its rightful owner. But not before giving it a good ride first.

--

It was something Sophie kept secret -- more secret than her past, more secret than her names.

Sophie used to draw.

Her love of pilfering art came from her artist's eye.

She decided long ago that she wasn't anywhere close to good enough to be one of the great artists, but that she was certainly a good enough grifter to be one of the all time greatest of those.

It wasn't until she (mostly) retired from stealing that she took it up again.

Very reluctantly, Eliot agrees to sit for her. He wears his hair back and sits on a chair in jeans and a tee, tapping his foot impatiently as she sketches.

She does her best to convey the man in the form - his strength and his vulnerability, his danger and his goodness. Raw energy atop a calm self-knowledge, wrapped around a decency, a softness.

When she shows him the drawing, nervously, he stares at it a long time.

"What is it?" she asks.

He looks at her. "I just... never knew that anyone saw me this way."

She smiles, a little sad. "Now you know."

Spoilers for ep 1x12.

*
Mike sits on the gurney in the ambulance, trying to ignore the renewed pain in his side, in his head, from his encounter with Joe Carroll. The paramedics have given him painkillers, the good ones, and he's waiting for them to kick in. He already knows, however, that they're not going to do a thing about the pain in his heart.

Because that pain comes from fear, not just for himself but for the woman who is sitting across from him. Debra holds an ice pack to her nose and when he sees it vibrating the tiniest bit, he knows she's still shaking. Like him, she was caught by surprise by a killer today; Jacob Wells hit her, threatened her, held a knife to her throat and a gun to her head. He saw her eyes, through the plexiglass window, knew how scared she was.

And in his own reflection, he could see how scared he was for her - for them both.

Nothing like the company of killers to make you realise that your casual relationship isn't quite so casual, he thinks.

Slowly, because movement hurts, and carefully, because anyone could walk in, he reaches out, lays a hand on her knee and squeezes gently. She drops the ice pack for a moment, just long enough that he can see the smile that ghosts along her lips. Not for long, because she winces, raises the ice pack again, but for long enough.

She moves one of her hands to cover his and he flinches because it's cold, turns his hand over so that he can grip her fingers properly, warm her up.

In the midst of pain and fear, their touch is a simple pleasure but one they both need, one they are learning to take where they can and hope that it will be enough. 

Some day, he thinks, with this case a distant memory, it will be more than enough. 

Spoiler alert to the end of the manga and brotherhood anime









Ed let out a tire sigh, smiling softly when Winry dragged him into yet another mechanics store. He wasn’t a big shopping fan, nor a big mechanics fan. He didn’t like being constantly reminded that he used to need these places every other day when he was a soldier. He still had his automail leg, but that one rarely broke and now, when he led a quiet, calm life it really never did.
However, Winry still loved these places. Automail and mechanics were her passion just like Alchemy used to be his before he gave it up, so he understood her want to see as many of those. He just didn’t understand why it had to take hours every time and eat up the time they had together, making them end up hasting their dinner and rushing back home with the last train.
“Look it’s a brand new model!”
He turned his look towards where his girlfriend was looking. She was currently glued to a glass window that showed an automail hand. In Ed’s opinion, there was nothing special about it – just a hand made of metal. It didn’t even look as cool as the one he used to have.
“It’s the millennium turbo 103! I read about it in a magazine! It has five different states and weights about half as the one before it – you know, like the northern kind! Ohhh Ed this is soooooo exciting!”
Ed rolled his eyes and was about to say something when he felt Winry’s warm hand grabbing his and squeezing it lightly with excitement. He looked up at her, and suddenly realized how strange it was to be here, looking at automail. He smiled and squeezed her hand back, enjoying the feeling of palm against palm, the tenderness of her skin and the way her fingers entangled with his own. Two years ago, he wouldn’t be able to feel that. She’d hold his right hand and all he’d feel would be a light pull on the connections. He could never really be sure he wasn’t holding her back too tight, even though she never once complained, always smiling at him.
“Yeah, it sounds really cool. Maybe you could build something like this for one of your customers,” he said with an honest smile. With these thoughts in mind, suddenly he didn’t mind looking at automail so much. He didn’t care that it reminded him of what he used to be, didn’t care that he still had a scar to remind him of how stupid he was to try Human Transmutation, didn’t care to be reminded of how crippled he used to be. On the contrary, he was actually thankful of the reminder now, as he was holding Winry’s hand. It made him appreciate it, the mere fact that he could feel her warmth and the tiny movements of her muscles as she moved. It was a simple thing, yet to him, after five years of not having his flesh arm, it was everything.

Cloud underestimated how long they had all lived under the disc of Midgar.

Once they had all fled the city, and ran as far away as they could before Shinra troops lost them, Tifa stopped. She looked up at the sky.

Aerith stopped and looked up, too. The sky was brilliant clear blue. The skies above Midgar had an odd greenish tint, even on a cloudy day. Not that many people in the lower sections saw the sky often, obstructed by the upper plate that held the well-to-do above the lower classes.

The sun was out. Tifa and Aerith tilted their faces upward, feeling the heat and light against their skin. Even Barrett gave an appreciative glance upwards, shielding his eyes. Red XIII seemed to purr under the sunlight.

Cloud was a little anxious to keep moving, “Come. We can’t stop.”

Aerith strode alongside Cloud, “To finally feel the sun on my back and on my face. You don’t know how nice that feels.”

The side of Cloud’s mouth turned upwards just a little.

Edited at 2013-08-06 01:36 am (UTC)

Sheldon was perturbed. There were some very disconcerting noises coming from Leonard’s room.

“Oh my God, oh my God!” Penny carnal grunting could be heard through the closed door.

“That’s it, baby! Keep going!” And there was her cheerleader, Leonard.

Sheldon was not pleased, not pleased at all.
Whatever unspeakable acts were going on in that room are a clear violation of the Roommate Agreement.

“Yes…yes…” Penny was screaming.

“A little more to the left…there, there, that’s it!” Leonard was practically squealing.

Sheldon was not going to put up with this. He was not going to put up with the nauseating cries of passion that could be clearly heard in the common area. Sheldon rose from his seat and approached Leonard’s room just as a united cry of “YES!” carried through the door. Sheldon was just about to knock, but then the door flew open.

“LEVEL 169 OF CANDY CRUSH SAGA…CRUSHED!” A jubilant and unexpectantly fully-dressed Penny bounded from the room, thrusting her fists downward.

“I knew you could do it, baby!” Leonard, also fully dressed but a little sweaty, cheered.

“Who the Candy Crush mama!” Penny demanded.

“You the Candy Crush mama!” Leonard replied, a little awkwardly.

“SAY MY NAME, BITCH!”

A frustrated Sheldon was already out the door.


Edited at 2013-08-05 10:15 pm (UTC)