The Peninsula

The Fiction and Poetry Archive of Liana Mir and scribblemyname

Spilt Like Wine

Feb
28

Red goes well with the Queen of Attolia. Her reign was founded on bloodshed, and she spills it like wine as she must to keep her nation and protect her people.

“Invoking the goddess again?” Eugenides’ smile is in his voice as he trails his gaze over the ruby red, the burgundy hues of her attire.

He doesn’t comment that sometimes her reign has stained them with blood. No one can tell with just their eyes.

She puts her hand on his arm above the hook, and they both still. They are both ruthless and vicious in the service of their nations, she thinks.

“And you your god, my king?” she queries, a brow raised.

He laughs, and she loves him for it, for rising to the occasion of her.

Then he bows over her hand with a kiss, drawing heat to her cheeks. “Shall we?”

Hers are not the only clothes which hide blood well.

Kingmaker

Feb
24

Khun children were vicious and ruthless. They were a dangerous family and above all, not kind.

Then Maria sat down and asked Khun Aguero Agnis to help her become the princess of Jahad, and she was the kindest person that Khun had met. He’d been raised to be able to measure a person quickly, and he listened, measured, and at least considered the fact that he’d been raised to make his sister princess.

His sister was vicious and ruthless and dangerous—everything a Khun should be. Maria was different.

“Okay,” he said.


The Tower was just another competition, demanding the regulars be vicious and ruthless, willing to kill anyone that stood in their way. Khun had been born for this.

Then he met Bam—kind, stubborn, loyal Bam who didn’t want to hurt a fly and was willing to fight to the death for others, knowing he was too weak to win. He was good, and Khun measured him with a sort of shocked realization that Maria wasn’t as kind or good as Bam.

“Okay,” he said and set the crown on Bam’s head.

Bought with Blood

Feb
20

Khun Aguero Agnis is a name bought with blood.

His mother gives him, his sister, and Kiseia each their own knife and the opportunity to train. His first instructor says he has an affinity for the spear. His father’s spear. He turns it down and keeps his mother’s knife.

The first time they draw blood is on each other, and it was perhaps the most terrible idea his mother ever had. He bloodies his sisters and bleeds red to each of them.

You’re not a Khun until you survive the battle against your siblings and win, the battle that earns your own name. He bought his name with violence and a knife sharp in hand, blood between his teeth.

When he stabs his sister in the back, sends Maria to Jahad instead of his sister, they throw them out of the family. He keeps the name.

And the knife.

Lazy Days

Feb
20

“Let’s go train, turtles!” Rak announced to the occupants of Khun’s room, that is Bam and Khun.

Khun looked up from his lighthouse work (which he was doing from the comfort of his bed) and blinked. “No, today’s a lazy day.”

Rak scoffed.

Bam looked curious. “What do you mean?”

“Come here.” Khun made room and Bam curled up against him, then sighed softly as he relaxed his head against Khun’s shoulder.

Rak waxed eloquent on the merits of hard work. (Khun was quite familiar with those merits, having been obligated to train hard since his childhood every time another life and death contest loomed.)

Bam burrowed closer and tucked his face against Khun’s neck, clearly quite comfortable.

“Come on, Black Turtle. You and I will go train!”

Bam muttered something indecipherable. Khun smirked.

“What did he say?” Rak demanded.

“He sees the appeal.” Khun stayed on his lighthouse, enjoying Rak’s jaw agape, and plotted and schemed their next victory.

Blue and Gold

Jan
06

Golden moments strung together, sweet and glowing in the light of every good memory Khun had. (more…)

Between Two Beaches

Dec
20

The First Beach

Some people’s lives did not revolve around someone else. Khun, my love, Shibisu wanted to say but didn’t, life did not begin or end on that beach.

(more…)

Unfinished Business

Jul
25

Bam was dead.

“Were you eaten by a fish?” It was an inane question. It didn’t matter.

He answered though. “The bull.” (more…)

Challenge

Jul
24

Bam likes Khun’s knife. Likes wrapping his hand around Khun’s wrist and asking without words for— (more…)

Light Me Up

Jul
24

The campfire flickered orange and gold across Khun’s face, bathing him in a wash of light and warmth. He was beautiful. Bam knew he was beautiful, smiling that crooked, smug grin as he pressed Bam’s stick back into his hand, a toasted marshmallow on the end. (more…)

Never Let Go

Jul
21

For a moment, just one long perfect moment, Khun’s arms are around him and Bam still feels like he’s vibrating out of his skin, but he also feels like everything will somehow be okay, because he still has this. (more…)

Non-Believer

Jul
19

“You’re our god,” they say, and it weighs Bam down, hanging heavy on his soul because he never asked to be their god. He never asked to be the one to kill Jahad. (more…)

Stronger

Jul
01

He has to become stronger. (more…)

Between His Teeth

Jul
01

A Khun doesn’t need love. Khun children were fed on ambition and cunning and trained to compete for their lives and their name by the time they were ten. They don’t need affection. They need strength in their limbs and lightning in their bodies and blood between their teeth.

Then Bam looks at Khun Aguero Agnis and tells him, “I didn’t have any friends. Let’s be friends with them.”

There’s something else between his teeth and he can’t decide whether he likes the taste of it, the word coming out before he can hold it in. “Fine.”

He doesn’t need the feeling of Bam’s shoulder between his fingers, but he can’t stop reaching for it. Doesn’t need this sudden warmth in his chest when Bam asks to climb the Tower with them. A Khun doesn’t need love, he tells himself, unwilling to admit he doesn’t still believe it.

Make My Morning

Apr
07

Fushimi’s morning didn’t start off well. He’d never been a morning person, and someone drank the last of the readily available coffee. But then he was off on a morning assignment to retrieve something for the Captain–”a parcel of great import”, he said, but most likely no more important than coffee–so it’s not like he had time to raid his backup stash.

He was scowling when he left and by all rights, that should have been the start of a terrible day.

Instead, he bumped into Misaki. Literally.

“Hey, watch where you’re going!”

A few grumpy words turns into a halfhearted wrestling match, that nonetheless leaves Misaki flushed and breathless and staring right at Fushimi for the longest few moments of Fushimi’s week.

By mutual agreement, they brush themselves off and go their separate ways without much in the way of further comment, but the warmth stays with Fushimi for hours afterward, and it’s not such a terrible day after all.

Contagious Smile

Feb
22

“You want me to do the song with you?” Atsushi demanded, eyes wide.

“Of course!” Kenji shot him a radiant smile. “You’re perfect for it!”

Atsushi doubted it many times over the following days of practice before New Year’s, learning not only the drums but how to match Kenji’s tone and rhythm without tripping over his own feet and while adjusting to their outfits for the performance.

“That’s the tone we want! Let’s celebrate!” Kenji’s smile was as contagious as ever.

When finally the night came and they beat the drums in time together, Atsushi finally smiled, having caught it.

Death, Taxes, and Paperwork

Jan
31

Kunikida pushed up his glasses on his nose and went over another stack of reports, marking them up with a judicious (and vicious, in Domyouji’s opinion) eye. “Crayon again?” he demanded while Domyouji made an attempt to disappear into the floor.

It was bad enough when Fushimi got on his case, because Fushimi cared more about removing the offending annoyance than correcting the one instigating it. Kunikida’s sense of order and the rules of society was far more personal.

“I’ll fix it.”

Kunikida sighed when he’d dismissed yet another member of the sword squad to fix their mission report. Somehow he always started following a wonderful, sword-bearing leader of justice and high ideals and ended up buried in minions with an allergy to well-written paperwork.

“Kunikida-kun!” a terrible, no good, very bad voice suddenly sing-songed through the space as Dazai poked his head in Kunikida’s office. “We have a case!”

Kunikida didn’t have to go take one, but he was more than ready to get out of the office Munakata had given him. “You’re writing the mission report.”

Dazai blinked, then smiled in a most disturbing way. “Of course!”

Kunikida sighed. Death, taxes, and bad mission reports they would ever have with them.

A Happy Child

Jan
25

Love wasn’t the kind of word that Accelerator said. It wasn’t because he didn’t care, though he tried not to. It was because he hadn’t known love in a very, very long time.

Sometimes he thought he could almost remember it, the feeling of parents who loved him, could almost remember his name if he reached back hard enough, thought long enough. He still knew the number of characters, remembered that it was ordinary. It had been easier to discard himself and any happiness he’d once expected to be his, once it was obvious he’d never be that innocent happy child again.

“Accelerator! Misaka Misaka admonishes you to pay attention to Misaka when she’s talking to you,” a different happy child bounced onto the couch, halfway landing on top of him. She waved her arms as if she didn’t have his complete attention at this point already.

He tumbled her over on the couch to her delighted squeals and picked up a pillow with his hands, not his esper power.

Maybe it was safe now to remember love.

Festival

Jan
25

Kyouka’s eyes were shining beside Atsushi as they stared at all the good things offered in the stall at the festival—crepes, chazuke, warm buns with different spices and fillings. Colorful lights had been strung over stalls and the stars twinkled down on festive music and chattering crowds. It was all in all a delight.

Atsushi grimaced at his poor purse. An expensive delight.

But as Kyouka gasped softly, biting down on soft crepe and sweet warm fillings, the stars in her eyes as bright as the ones in the sky, he thought to himself that it was worth it.

Crimson

Jan
25

Chuuya is crimson, the color of blood and destruction. Dazai runs his hand through his sleeping partner’s red hair, when he can’t protest (likely with a fist) nor think it means something it doesn’t.

It doesn’t mean friendship, but it is partnership. They share the blood, but not the wine.

Dazai is fascinated by the conundrum of Chuuya’s humanity versus his inhumanity, his equal passion for life and bloody violence. It’s a reason to keep living, to keep looking. Chuuya straddles the line between life and death more closely than even Dazai.

It’s almost odd that he never realizes it.

Untouchable

Jan
10

Rogue was just a teenage girl who couldn’t touch anyone. Accelerator was just a teenage boy no one could touch.

(more…)