The Peninsula

The Fiction and Poetry Archive of Liana Mir and scribblemyname

The Morning After

Aug
07

Mikoto stood in the doorway to the bar, and Kusanagi just looked at him for a long moment before Mikoto shrugged and dropped onto his usual seat at the front.

It wasn’t his way to apologize. Kusanagi had been the one to tell him that ages ago.

“You’ve had that in your system for years,” Kusanagi commented. His voice was just slightly sharper than usual, more disappointed.

Mikoto leaned his head back. Kusanagi was too close to this, too close to Mikoto’s inability to protect Totsuka, and he’d be the first hit when Mikoto left him holding all the pieces. There wouldn’t have been comfort in Kusanagi’s bed.

Munakata should know this was the only warning he was going to get.

“Did you find the gun?” Mikoto asked.

Kusanagi studied him for a long moment, seeming to pack up his pain, his disappointment, his face and tone smoothing out to something both casual and dangerous. “Yes.”

Daily Ficlet 2019, Fanfic, Ficlet, K , , , , , , 0 Comment

Thinking

Jun
21

Shame crashed in right after the high. (more…)

Daily Ficlet 2019, Drabble, Fanfic, K , , , , , 0 Comment

A Work of Art

Jun
21

He’s a work of art, Dazai—most beautiful when he’s bruised, bloody, with the faint curve of his scheming smile to match the glint in his eyes.

Chuuya buries his hand in Dazai’s hair to pull him closer, grinning fiercely. His blood is pounding. Every nerve ending feels alive and on edge. There aren’t many feelings that can compare.

This is what a job should feel like. Like despite the superfluous chains on Dazai’s arms, despite the clear power difference, each wears equal strength and provocation on their tongues, in their faces, in their bodies.

“After all, I’m your old partner.”

Bungou Stray Dogs, Daily Ficlet 2019, Drabble, Fanfic , , , 0 Comment

The Scars, Our Masks

Jun
21
Sometimes when it had just happened, Shouto felt like the newly healed scar on his face was a mask. He’d touch it and think of his mother’s face when she saw him, before she’d burned him. He’d think that it looked red, like his hair, like his father and wish he knew how to take the mask back off.

He rolled over in the bed and reminded himself he wasn’t a little kid anymore. He couldn’t turn to his mother for comfort. He had to protect her. He couldn’t go to her when he wearing a reminder of his father.

Boku No Hero Academia, Daily Ficlet 2019, Drabble, Fanfic , , 0 Comment

Do You

Jun
12

Do you love me? They don’t ask it in words.

Saruhiko asks in the curve of his mouth, a bitter-tasting smile Yata swallows down in a kiss.

Misaki asks with hesitant hands before Saruhiko grips him hard enough to make him wince. He doesn’t wince, he surges up into the embrace to more easily devour each other mouths and skin in hunger.

Do you love me? An arrested hand, an open mouth, those wide eyes wondering as Saruhiko pauses before turning his back.

Do you love me? A fierce grin, demanding words and sword to draw Misaki’s attention.

They answer.

Daily Ficlet 2019, Drabble, Fanfic, K , , 0 Comment

Everyone Is Terribly Human

Jun
01

“You’re really fucked up, aren’t you?” a low, rough, altogether too familiar voice sounded in Dazai’s ear.

He raised his head muzzily and looked around for a too short redhead with anger management issues. “Chibi.”

(more…)

Bungou Stray Dogs, Daily Ficlet 2019, Fanfic, One-Shot, We Die Like Fen 2019 , , , , , , , 0 Comment

Let’s Go Home

May
11

“Let’s go home.”

It’s the end of a long day—longer. They’re all weary from battling the Guild, and there’s plenty of mop-up work for the Black Lizard dealing with those who would capitalize on anything left behind. The Port Mafia still rules the local underground and has no interest in letting others get a foothold in their territory.

But at home, they shed that. Ryuunosuke eases into their home with a sigh—perhaps relief, perhaps comfort. Gin makes tea and curls up in a chair, freed of the hard silence that guards her during work.

“Drink,” she suggests.

Her brother drinks.

Bungou Stray Dogs, Daily Ficlet 2019, Drabble, Fanfic , , , , 0 Comment

Actions Speak Louder

May
11

Gin proves herself strong. She’s quick, agile, and more driven by the need for vengeance and to no longer be helpless than by gratitude for Dazai’s choice to take them in.

It was the Port Mafia that killed their companions, and the Port Mafia that punished the killers and rewarded Gin and her brother. The Port Mafia values strength, values proficiency with knives and body and all goes well—until she hits puberty and her voice doesn’t change.

“Nobody listens to me,” she vents, frustrated, to Ryuunosuke as she washes blood from his shoulders where Dazai’s training has harmed him.

“Words mean nothing,” he says in a low rasp. “Actions are everything.”

Gin pauses, considers that, stops her brother from escaping, and finishes dressing his wounds.

She’s getting to be pretty and that’s a problem. She ties up her hair and forces it to be just the right amount of wild, the right amount of out her way. She covers her delicate features with a mask and stares keen-eyed into the mirror. She closes her mouth and makes her points with the tip of a knife instead.

They listen to her. She rises in the ranks. She takes command.

Bungou Stray Dogs, Daily Ficlet 2019, Double Drabble, Fanfic , , , 0 Comment

Welcome to the Mafia

May
02

“Mori’s asked me to look after you.” The woman folded her hands into her sleeves as she looked Chuuya over, assessing. “I’m Ozaki Kouyou,” she introduced herself.

Chuuya remembered Mori’s comments that someone was responsible for teaching and caring for new Port Mafia recruits, and it was only a relief he clearly didn’t consider that devil Dazai his recruiter. He stood up a little straighter for Kouyou. “Thank you, Ane-san.”

She paused, a hint of surprise on her face, but waved it aside for the moment and handed him a small box. “For you.”

He opened it curiously, then slowly slipped off the band marking him a member of the Sheep. He reached up and fastened the choker around his neck.

Kouyou smiled. “It suits you.”

Bungou Stray Dogs, Daily Ficlet 2019, Fanfic, Ficlet , , 0 Comment

Chocolate and Kisses

Apr
30

Typically, it was the boy walking the girl home from school, but Kukuri was the most familiar with Ashinaka and had once served as a guide to Kuroh. It was natural for her to keep walking him back to the dorm at times, especially on days when Shiro promised to keep Neko out, generally with a promise of “Shopping!” or “Food!” explained by Neko as she hung off him excitedly and he blushed a little and waved in his sheepish innocent manner.

(more…)

Daily Ficlet 2019, Fanfic, Ficlet, K , , , , , , , 0 Comment

She Dances

Apr
28

Grace dances because she’s good at it. It’s the only thing she’s good at.

She doesn’t know how to be a good person or how to love. She doesn’t know how to be a good friend.

(She does know. Only it doesn’t last after the jealousy rises up inside her to fight against being abandoned again—and again, and again, and again.)

Her mother fractured under the weight of her own genius, and they’re waiting for Grace to do the same. (Is she manic to suit them? To perform?)

She dances because there, at least, she knows exactly what to do.

Daily Ficlet 2019, Dance Academy, Drabble, Fanfic , , 0 Comment

Smile Recklessly

Apr
24

“Smile recklessly,” Kusanagi asked, desperate for a bit of hope and normalcy in their crisis.

Totsuka thought of his childhood wish to be the joker in the King’s court, to make the King laugh. He smiled recklessly. “Hey, hey, don’t sweat it. It’ll all work out.”

Yata was holding him, and there was Kusanagi standing over him stricken shock instead of the emotional composure that carried him through all major and minor catastrophes.

Smile recklessly.

Totsuka struggled to breathe. “Hey, hey, don’t sweat it,” he managed to get out. Normalcy in their crisis. “It’ll all work out.”

Daily Ficlet 2019, Drabble, Fanfic, K , , , 0 Comment

The Sound of Contentment

Apr
18

Kuroh’s heartbeat was warm under her head. Kukuri hummed softly under her breath in time with the feeling. It was the first time they’d gone beyond kissing, and the first time she’d ever woken in the warmth of another’s arms. She felt it when he woke, slight tension, but not immediately speaking.

“What are you humming?” he finally asked.

“Nothing.” It was nothing, no particular melody or tune. She sat up just enough to slide up and kiss him properly awake, enjoying the freedom and feeling of doing it.

It was nothing, really, but the quiet sound of her contentment.

Daily Ficlet 2019, Drabble, Fanfic, K , , , , , 0 Comment

The Point

Apr
12

“What is the point of living?” Dazai demanded with a sigh.

“How should I know?” Chuuya demanded right back.

They were both fifteen years old and neither of them had a very good grasp on being human. Chuuya though, Chuuya was intent on figuring it out by doing everything that made him feel alive. Dazai seemed to flirt so strenuously with death in an effort to figure out what being not alive felt like, the better to see a contrast he could make sense of.

Dazai studied Chuuya out of one eye.

Chuuya shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We just live.”

Bungou Stray Dogs, Daily Ficlet 2019, Drabble, Fanfic , , , , 0 Comment

The Warmth of His Voice

Apr
08

Kukuri woke in Kuroh’s arms, groggy and lightheaded and wondering what had happened to her, if everyone else was okay. Except she couldn’t remember and for a moment, she tried to panic. Had she hit her head, gotten amnesia, but there was Kuroh’s warm smile as he reassured her, “Just rest.”

She listened to the warmth of his voice, the sound of his heartbeat as he carried her away. She looked back, something in her heart disquieted enough to realize something was still wrong.

But Kuroh would make it better, she thought. She would believe the sound of his voice.

Daily Ficlet 2019, Drabble, Fanfic, K , , , , 0 Comment

No One There

Apr
08

Why did you leave me? Yata’s heart demanded. Weren’t you there when my friends turned against me? Weren’t you there when my family no longer needed me?

Wind whipped through his hair.

He couldn’t quite believe the feeling, flames burning on Saruhiko’s chest. He didn’t need Yata anymore and could not have made it more clear.

Yata slipped and lost his grip on the skateboard, flying into a wall. It hurt, it hurt, but that was good. He could focus on the pain in his knee, his arm, and pull himself upright.

It hurt so much less than his heart.

Daily Ficlet 2019, Drabble, Fanfic, K , , , , 0 Comment

Talk About the Magic

Apr
06

Everything sounded so possible around Sarah. Little serving girls could walk in dainty shoes that didn’t hurt their feet. Monsters could be slain by magic. Becky would imagine each of the dusty, dirty clods she cleaned from behind stove or furniture as another monster to be vanquished.

In a world where magic was real and little girls were princesses, Becky herself could feel a lost princess with an inheritance of magic slippers locked in her trunk so no one could find it.

One day, the prince would come, find her in the attic tower, rescue her at last.

A Little Princess (1995), Canon Consumed 2019, Daily Ficlet 2019, Drabble, Fanfic , , 0 Comment

A Vision of Glamour

Apr
06

Melody was pleased to discover a world once denied her. She cherished it to herself, telling almost no one of the folds of ether now visible to her, the glamour she could gather in hand and take so much less than before without it disappearing into a fuzzy mass of shimmering color.

She’d never been able to see the fine details, the splendid possibilities, but now she wove over and under her fingers, tied and, breathless, laughed.

“I’ll never weave glamour like Jane,” she said, recovering, faintly wistful.

Alastar caught her hands. “She will never be like you.”

Canon Consumed 2019, Daily Ficlet 2019, Drabble, Fanfic , , , , 0 Comment

Dance of the Dragonfly

Apr
06

They call her the dragonfly. She floats across the stage, soaring into a perfect spiral, extension, the leap like magic, her trailing red and gold dress fluttering about dainty brown limbs. Emotion writ through every limb, across her face—she shines like she was made to dance and only dance.

For a moment, we are captured with her, dancing in the brightness of her motion, feeling the swell of music within our hearts. We leap, we cry as she comes to a stop and beckons; a smile invites into her stage, the flight of her spirit. We follow where she leads.

Canon Consumed 2019, Daily Ficlet 2019, Drabble, Fanfic, World of Dance (TV) , 0 Comment

Consolations

Mar
01

“Sometimes you’re a real piece of work,” Kusanagi commented dryly, (more…)

Daily Ficlet 2019, Drabble, Fanfic, K , , , , , 0 Comment