The Peninsula

The Fiction and Poetry Archive of Liana Mir and scribblemyname

Morning Touch

Jul
22

Skylight pulled the sleepshirt over her head and eyed her remaining clothes not in the laundry. With her habit of shoving in extra training sessions wherever they would fit, she had a bad tendency to sweat through shirts almost faster than she could wash them.

Math chuckled behind her, as if he could see the speculative look on her face (he could not). There must have been something about her stance that gave her away.

“Wash tomorrow,” she commented. Her spare supply was justified.

“Yes.” He got out of the bed behind her and fished down her second to last tank top. He paused, hand tracing over her back gently then over the line of her sports bra.

Skylight breathed evenly, slow and steady, but she felt warm all over.

He carefully lifted the shirt over her head and tugged it down over her shoulders, let her fit her own arms through the holes, but smoothed it carefully into place after.

She didn’t let him go for the overshirt before she dragged him close and kissed him good morning.

Lying in Wait

Jul
09

Ahure just about vibrates out of her skin around Isot. It doesn’t make sense. He’s quiet and still in a lying-in-wait kind of way, eyes always tracking with everyone around him, never striking out unless it’s in combat training.

She understands because she lies in wait as well, but she’s anger coiled on a leash, ready to lash out at the slightest provocation, tense as a spring. Isot’s not like that, and she doesn’t know why she drifts toward him always but can’t stop her jitters.

He laughs quietly, and her whole body tenses with the rare sound.

It’s beautiful.

The Legend of Rose the Bookish Hero

Jul
06

One.

“You will be my hero,” announced the goddess standing in the doorway.

(more…)

Trying

Jul
05

Ahure preferred being on top, and Isot never seemed to mind letting her. (more…)

Vigilant

Jul
02

He’s cold. Space closes around his body without the warming blanket of riftspace caressing his hull. He moves a human hand and stares at it, wondering at the warmth of his own body heat and how it doesn’t remove the chill he feels.

Ekos has no pilot right now. He remembers how the temporary sync felt that got them to this solar system, remembers the warmth of human laughter and chatter in the corners of his mind.

They’re gone now. He’s too large a ship to be so empty.

Ekos lowers his hand and settles in for his long vigil.

Thinking

Jun
21

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

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.”

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.

To Stand

Jun
17

It’s downright educational to watch them move together, in perfect sync, like they’ve been doing it all their lives. (They have.)

She watches the way Lock and Key practically dance through the air and through any objects or obstacles in their way, hands outstretched as they mingle their power to devastating effect.

Gloria can’t help but think there’s no one like that for her, no one to reach her hands out to that both mirrors and expands her strength simply by existing, no one like her other half.

Her name over the comm.

She stands and unleashes her power—alone.

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.

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…)

Feeling Loved

May
16

Aya’s heart was hurting in ways she didn’t know how to deal with. You’re not good enough, her mind whispered to her. No one wants you.

She’d never been left before.

It took a while for her to pick herself up, quiet the tears she’d been holding inside herself unshed, and go out to where her dad was working on some computer project.

Aya curled up next to him quietly.

She felt more than saw his surprise. After a moment, he tucked one arm around her shoulders, kissed the top of her head, and kept working.

She stayed there—feeling loved.

Blood Red

May
13

He’s not paid enough for this. He’s guarding a top-secret facility on the back of beyond, storing who knows what for a government he knows better than to ask questions of when a child shows up.

(more…)

Morning Wait

May
13

Skylight woke before morning had fully come. The room was dark, and Math’s warmth and the beating of his heart lay under her head. His arms had come up around her in the night, and she blinked a moment at the sensation of being held.

She had things to do before they flew out to the next mission. There was always last minute mission prep slotted in, and she had always risen early for practice and training, but for a moment she ignored that in favor of this feeling, this warmth, the solid sense of being loved.

Morning would wait.

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.

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.

Count

May
06
This entry is part 9 of 9 in the series Counting Coup

They count coup: confirmed kills, unverified kills—which covers the halo of supposed inhabitants or workers within a given area when they destroy en masse—and sometimes when the weight gets too heavy, they count things they aren’t required to.

“Five confirmed lives saved. Seventeen unverified.”

“Ten confirmed saved.”

They pass the tea back and forth, alcohol warm on throats too young to be drinking it, and it almost washes away the taste of blood in the backs of their mouths.

Because they don’t care about those numbers. They care about mission success rates, intelligence gathered, acceptable cost.

“Mission success.”

First / Most

May
06
This entry is part 7 of 9 in the series Counting Coup

“Count me in.” Bridge leans forward.

Ice Queen swaps the coin in his hand for a jar of tea. “First kill?”

“Ah. I don’t remember that.”

“Most memorable then,” Arc substitutes with hard eyes. They count them all, adding them up like stones on their backs, in the backs of their minds.

Most memorable was “Saving Augment from that Baganechi over his back.”

Augment scowls, doubtless displeased at the reminder of being thrown from his horse at the caravan, at the old fashioned blade coming down for the kill. “It wasn’t even a planned raid.”

Planned by them.

Bridge drinks.

Head Count

May
06
This entry is part 6 of 9 in the series Counting Coup

Augment does head count when they break from the jet at base. He’s been Wolf’s right hand from early on, and it’s his job to interpret the team’s flags, for good or ill.

When Stream doesn’t smile when another team member glances at him, when Ice Queen moves like her bones ache, when Skylight actually looks like she cares… When ghost memories that aren’t Augment’s drift in from Bridge, when Arc smiles as if she means it, when Math doesn’t immediately bury himself in a book or dossier—

“Wolf.”

She pauses, sighs. “Who?”

An answer. Another down for the count.

Smiles

May
06
This entry is part 5 of 9 in the series Counting Coup

Stream keeps them laughing. They all have a thing, and that one’s his. He supports and smiles and draws smiles from their lips because at the end of the day, they have to survive this childhood and teenagerhood and time spent as a living weapon before they finally come out the other end.

He counts them sometimes, the smiles he draws from Ice Queen that reach her eyes, the number of times Math’s quiet laugh breaks the stillness, the outright chuckles he can coax from Bridge.

At base, each day he claims dozens. On missions, he’s lucky to get five.